I think, therefore I blog.

Notes on a secular argument against abortion

2012-02-18T22:22:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I went to a nice presentation by Kelsey Hazzard for the Virginia Atheists and Agnostics, in which she argued against abortion on a purely secular basis. The great thing about the presentation was the extended Q&A time, during which a lot of members of the group got to express their opinions and concerns. I didn't say anything, I just wanted to listen and get a feel for the state of the argument among committed secularists. After contemplating what I heard, I decided to write some thoughts on the issue.

First, I think abortion law, like all law, should be settled on a secular basis. It is difficult to define what I mean here by "secular," but to keep things simple, I'll say that the law should be decided on the basis of scientific facts and moral arguments premised on basic individual rights as expressed in, say, the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. I should not have to appeal to any particular religious doctrine to make a case for something to be illegal. This is both a practical and a charitable principle; it lets all sorts of people enjoy freedom of conscience while living at peace with one another.

Second, educated atheists understand perfectly well that human life begins at conception. There is nothing controversial about this. The details of embryonic and fetal development are widely available on the Internet, and do not need to be rehearsed every time this debate is had. The real questions are moral and philosophical. What do we mean by person? Who has rights? And what rights to human beings have?

Some common defenses of abortion I heard were as follows. The unborn do not possess consciousness, therefore they are not persons. In some ways this is perhaps the objection to making abortion illegal. Analogies do not seem to impress the pro-abortion-choice crowd. A person in a coma still has rights, doesn't he? (Maybe not.) A person who is sleeping certainly has rights. (But that's not the same at all!) A newborn infant hardly qualifies as conscious. (Peter Singer says we can kill them, too. But let's not talk about Singer; let's just agree that consciousness begins somewhere in the third trimester, maybe.)

Consciousness is a very slippery concept, emerging gradually rather than at any well-defined moment in time. But conception is a pretty well-defined moment. Again, scientifically this is uncontroversial. If we equate personhood with consciousness, then in terms of personal rights we have no way of drawing boundaries between people. This might be acceptable in many situations, but in matters of life and death, how can we justify moving boundaries?

A most absurd version of this argument: "If my mother had aborted me, I wouldn't have cared." Of course not. You wouldn't have been. If this argument could justify abortion, it could justify any killing at all. If you kill me today, I won't care tomorrow.

Another argument is that the unborn child is not connected to society. No one would miss her. The only person to whom she has a connection is a mother who doesn't want her. I have a couple of objections to this. First, does the argument still have any weight of others connected to the unborn child (e.g. the father or the grandparents) object to her abortion? Second, does the conscience of other members of society have any bearing? (I once saw a picture on facebook that suggested: "Don't want to pay taxes for abortions? Don't make me pay taxes for wars!" I think that's a pretty good compromise.) Third, what about analogies, such as hermits removed from society, or others with very few social contacts?

This argument basically comes down to a perverse form of utilitarianism. You are only justified on the basis of your worth to society. It would be far beyond the scope of this post to get into all the reasons that is a terrible idea. Let us instead turn our minds to a real-world example. How do we feel about sex selective abortion in China, India, and other nations? Is it acceptable to abort girls because they are less wanted in your culture? Right here at home, we read that 90% of children diagnosed with down syndrome in the womb are aborted. Is this acceptable?

Another argument concerns a woman's right to make her own health decisions. Carrying a pregnancy to term is a risky decision; by many estimates it is more risky to a woman's life than getting an abortion. Certainly a woman should be allowed to decide which risks to her life she is going to take, even if it's a relatively minor risk, and even if someone else's life depends on her.

It's important to mention that the pro-life position usually allows for a woman to abort in case of an added threat to her life, due to a pregnancy complication. More controversial is the idea that women who are raped have the right to abort, on the grounds that they should not be forced to care for a child she did not willingly consent to caring for. I will go ahead and say, perhaps controversially, that I more or less accept this argument in the case of rape. (This certainly does not settle the ethical issue in my mind, but perhaps it does settle the legal issue. I am not at all suggesting that children conceived in rape ought to be killed, or that they have no competing rights claim in this case. I am suggesting, however, that a woman's right to autonomy may win out against the competing claim to her protection.)

However, in all other cases, we cannot avoid dealing with the obvious question of responsibility. The argument is so often framed in terms of a woman's rights but never about a man and a woman's responsibilities. Clearly, sex resulting in conception involves a man and a woman. Two people consenting to sex are implicitly consenting to take responsibility for the life they may conceive. I am not suggesting every sex act must be for the purpose of procreation. If a couple doesn't wish to conceive, contraception is an option. However, just because I drive safely doesn't mean I will never have an accident, and I must pay for the consequences of my mistakes. Likewise, a man and a woman who never meant to conceive are not thereby relieved from the responsibility of caring for the child they have conceived.

This is a widely accepted notion once birth occurs. It is only controversial when we are speaking of life before birth. There are, of course, lots of interesting modern questions that could be raised concerning the roles of women and men in families. How much responsibility should parents bear for the well-being of their child? How should women and men share this responsibility? What kind of family structure would grant women and men true equality? What societal factors can help or hinder this? As interesting as all of these concerns are, they have nothing to do with abortion. Whatever responsibilities men and women should bear in relation to their children, they have already begun to bear them as soon as they conceive, because that is when a new life begins.

Given the importance of the right to life, apart from which no other right has any worth, it would appear that any couple who consents to having sex and thereby conceives should be expected to refrain from killing the new human being they have brought into the world. Treating abortion as a back-up contraception is simply a denial plain fact, which is that abortion is the intentional killing of a human being.

One more remark on this: I realize that it can be uncomfortable for young pro-life activists to talk about responsibility in parenting. I, for one, am not married and have no children. However, I simply don't think we can avoid the topic in reference to the political theory. We cannot talk about legal rights without also talking about responsibilities. The connection between sex and life is obvious, and we have to find ways to address the issue directly. We cannot shy away from talking about sex in a responsible manner--which does not mean insisting on abstinence only education, demanding laws against sex outside of marriage, or any other such absurd and invasive laws. I firmly believe that it is possible to live in a society which is neither prudish nor childish about sex. There are certainly ways to prevent conception if we wish, but abortion is not contraception. As soon as we accept the moral consequences of a scientific fact, we can get the abortion question right.

Finally, I want to briefly mention an issue that I have been meaning to address at length, but will not have room to address fully here. Not surprisingly, one of the atheist/agnostic students was sharp enough to bring it up. Since life begins at conception (an this is scientific fact) we have to deal with this question raised by embryology: what do we do about the enormous number of spontaneous abortions that happen early in most pregnancies? Studies estimate that as many as 90% of embryos die within the first three weeks after conception. Women who have spontaneous abortions this early rarely even know they were ever pregnant. It may not be as high as 90%, but even a conservative estimate would give 60%, a clear majority.

What are we to say to this? Is our species afflicted with a plague? And if all human beings, from the moment of conception, deserve full moral standing, shouldn't we be focusing all our efforts on saving these tiny humans from the destruction that awaits them in the womb?

I will have to save my full response to this for another time, because I think it brings up a pile of philosophical assumptions that have to be waded through to get to the full answer. I admit, this is a serious problem for the pro-life movement on an intellectual level, but I remain optimistic. Let me throw in one quick observation and call it a day. I'm guessing about 90% of people in the world are dead by the time they are 90 years old. Does that mean we should also turn all of our focus toward saving old people and extending their life just a few more years? Obviously not. Valuing of human life does not mean we are willing to spend unlimited resources (which we don't have) to provide unlimited life and health to everyone (which we can't do). To return to my first point, we simply need to agree on some basic moral principles to guide our legal system, which are based on individual rights shared by all human beings.

While I fully endorse the right of all human beings in our society to live, work, worship, believe, teach, speak, and think as they like, and while I do fully endorse a woman's "right to choose" what to do with her own body, I do not consider it an exception to say that abortion should be illegal in a secular state guided by the rule of law. As a matter of scientific fact, we are killing thousands of human beings every day in clinics all around the country. The sooner we accept the moral implications of this fact, the sooner we can reform our society into the just society we all desire.

On faith and mathematics

2012-02-09T22:04:00.000-05:00

The occasion for writing this piece is a talk I will give at Graduate Christian Fellowship (GCF) at the Center for Christian Study this Friday evening.

To put this in context, we will be having the Oxford mathematician John Lennox come to speak at UVA on February 20 about the relation between faith and science. As it turns out, there are several in the group at GCF who have surprisingly strong opinions about why mathematics is not one of the sciences. Be that as it may, the relation between math and science is undeniable, not only historically but sociologically. In particular, mathematics is as much a part of the modernist agenda of the so-called "New Atheists" as any of the sciences. The reason should not be surprising: both mathematicians and scientists are professional rationalists, basing all of their propositions on reason and facts. It behooves us, then, to think about mathematics in this context, and to think about it as Christians.

Many of the remarks I will make could just as easily apply to faith and reason more broadly. However, mathematics is in many ways unique, and I make no apologies about speaking about it very specifically. If nothing else, it will be good to raise awareness about a field of human endeavor which many people, even educated people, seem to know so painfully little about.

Since the subject of this talk is the relation between faith and mathematics, I suppose I'd better start by addressing the question that is probably on everyone's mind: is there a relation between faith and mathematics at all? My sense is that many of us, include us Christians, do not see any relationship between that actual doing of mathematics and the actual believing in God or Jesus Christ. And I will concede, indeed I will insist, right from the outset, that there is a great deal of truth in this, more than some Christian intellectuals might like to admit. When mathematicians get together to decide whether a theorem has really been proved or not, matters of faith simply do not enter into the equation, so to speak. Any mathematician from any cultural background or religion will be forced by the same universal principles of deductive inference to acknowledge certain facts as true, certain other claims as refuted, and other claims as conjectures whose truth value is yet to be determined. There is simply no difference between a Christian and a non-christian at a mathematics conference. This much, as far as I am concerned, is indisputable fact.

And it is, indeed, quite a different story with many other fields. The assumptions about reality made by a psychologist might have a profound influence on how people in our society come to treat the human mind. Or the worldview of a sociologist might have a great deal to do with the conclusions he draws from so-called "data." It may indeed matter whether an economist believes in God, not just to his own spiritual existence, but in fact also to his work, for all economics boils down to certain assumptions about human nature. But it simply does not matter to a mathematician as a mathematician. He can prove his theorems and perform his calculations free from any theological or metaphysical controversies. "Interpreting the data" is simply not an issue in mathematics. When it becomes an issue, we are dealing not with mathematics per se, but with some other science.

If we were to end there, we would miss out on the extremely rich and beautiful relation between mathematics and the divine. It is worth mentioning right at the outset that mathematics has always had a rather privileged place in philosophy, not only because of its practical value but also because of its connection to transcendent truth. As Plato put it in The Republic:

Then this is knowledge of the kind for which we are seeking, having a double use, military and philosophical; for the soldier must learn the art of number or he will not know how to organise his army, and the philosopher also, because he has to rise out of the transient world and grasp reality, and therefore he must be able to calculate.

Today, of course, we have sadly too much of organizing armies, and too little of grasping reality. Perhaps this is not due to a lack of mathematics but to a lack of real mathematical education, in which students are taught to behold something beyond the abstract formalism in their computations.

This leads me to the main thesis of my talk. I do not want to say that mathematics leads us to God or that the real meaning of mathematics is only perceived in light of God. Rather, I merely wish to suggest two things: first, that mathematics can tell us something about God if we are willing to listen; and, second, that mathematics really is a worthy enterprise, not just for the specialist, but for anyone who is willing to stretch his mind toward the heavenly.

We've had so far this semester two talks on the attributes of God. Not that I feel any pressure to fit into that mold in this talk, but I did think about this theme as I was writing. We live in an age of what I would call "Christian sentimentalism," in which the main attributes of God are related to how caring he is, and how, in spite of life's turmoil, we always have a friend in Jesus. I don't wish to denigrate those truths about God, but only to point out that it is clearly not the whole story. The attribute of God I want to focus on for the moment is that of beauty--not, of course, of a sentimental kind, but of the kind to which mathematics is a window. Bertrand Russell, who was of course an atheist, had this to say about mathematics:

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.

If you have not had the pleasure of proving the Pythagorean theorem or the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, then perhaps such a statement sounds astonishing. But there is indeed a supreme beauty in seeing the bare structure of the universe unveiled before you. Moreover I think this beauty in mathematics points to certain underplayed attributes of God: his wisdom, his immovability, and his often stern impartiality.

The idea that we touch on divine truth when we do mathematics is a very old one. (I recall reading some time ago in one of Augustine's works, I believe it was On Free Choice of the Will, that the most certain truth is the truth of number. After some searching, I was unable to verify this, but given Augustine's Platonist influence, it hardly seems implausible.) From Plato we inherit a tradition which posits that all real-world objects are but reflections of transcendent forms, to which we have direct access when we do mathematics. Generations of mathematicians, even if they weren't "Platonists" in a broad sense, have been what we will call "mathematical platonists," in that they agreed with Plato that mathematics possesses a certain ontological reality.

For many reasons, I would rather avoid the subject of ontology, but it is inevitable that it should come up in a discussion about mathematics and the Christian faith. There is no doubt that the biblical vision of the world includes the idea that all things participate in Christ and in a heavenly reality, and for much of the Christian tradition this has struck a Platonist chord. Let me say to begin with that there is a wide consensus on at least the practical matter of doing mathematics: all working mathematicians are practical platonists. To actually solve a problem working with abstract concepts, you have to believe implicitly that they really exist. Undoubtedly the worst mathematics students are those for whom the symbols on the page remain merely symbols on the page. Manipulating symbols according to the correct procedure can only be so enlightening. At some point a student really has to get it, by somehow gaining "direct access" to the needed concepts.

It is difficult for me to list example without delving into rather advanced subjects, but I will list them anyway. One does not prove anything about convex functions without first intuiting something about the canonical example f(x) = x^2, and immediately thinking about the parabola, that Platonic form of which all other convex functions seem merely shadows. In the theory of differential equations there is really only "one" linear differential equation, namely x' = Ax + f, whose properties are derived precisely from those of A and f, seen as objects in a highly abstract space. The entire field of topology is really a matter of classifying all sorts of spaces into several categories; there are, for instance, only so many smooth manifolds in one, two, and even three dimensions. One could make similar comments about group and ring structures in algebra, and so on. The point of this digression is to say that mathematicians are always striving for those true "forms," of which everything else is but a reflection.

The practical experience of mathematicians seems to make mathematical platonism so attractive that, when a mathematician is put into a debate on the subject with a philosopher, the mathematician will more likely side with platonism than the philosopher! (See the discussion on this topic in Mathematics through the Eyes of Faith.) But does that prove that platonism is true? That is, is there anything "real" about any of these beautifully abstract (and austere) concepts? Do we reach the heavenly realm through mathematics?

It's difficult to say yes. Let me explain by telling some history. Once upon a time Euclid's Elements was absolutely these seminal textbook in geometry. Anyone who wanted to be an educated person had to read it. Euclid's geometry was based on a set of axioms and postulates on which any reasonable person would surely agree. They were so "self-evident" as to negate the need for any proof. But one postulate seemed especially cumbersome, the so-called "parallel line" postulate. The simplest way to explain this postulate is this: two lines are defined to be "parallel" if ever transversal (that is, any third line passing through them) intersects the two lines at equal angles. (It helps if you draw a picture, but unfortunately I can't.) The parallel line postulate is what most of us learned in grade school to think of as the definition of parallel lines: they do not intersect. This fact was taken as so obvious that Euclid wrote it down as a postulate, but many mathematicians for centuries following him were not satisfied. They felt sure that one should be able to prove the parallel line postulate from the other axioms in Euclid's book.

However, that just wasn't true. It turns out that the parallel line postulate is what we call an independent axiom, meaning that both the postulate and the negation of the postulate are logically compatible with the other axioms in Euclid's geometry. The example which demonstrates this is both embarrassingly obvious and, at the same time, dramatically brilliant: just try to do geometry on a sphere. It turns out that parallel lines always intersect on a sphere, because of the way angles work. Just think of lines of longitude on a globe; these are all parallel, but they intersect at the north and south poles. If you insist on parallel lines being lines that do not intersect, then what you will get is that transversals no longer cut through parallel lines at equal angles. You can't have both in spherical geometries.

Sadly, this discovery meant that Euclid's timeless geometrical truths became relegated to a mere branch of geometry, namely "Euclidean geometry." (Euclid has the last laugh, of course, because the theory of manifolds is based precisely on the notion that locally every space should be Euclidean; this is the definition of a manifold. So perhaps "Euclidean space" really is the ultimately Platonic form after all. Or perhaps our brains are just natural more attuned to measurements using rectangular pieces.)

After such discoveries as non-euclidean geometry, it appeared that what we had always taken to be truly transcendent principles were really just inventions of our own minds, abstractions which had no necessary relation to the real world. Physical discoveries such as general relativity only confirmed this idea; the universe, it seems, is not necessarily a big three-dimensional space, but a four-dimensional manifold (if string theory has any merit, perhaps there is even more to the story). As a result of such discoveries as well as certain philosophical trends in the 19th century, by the turn of the 20th century many mathematicians, such as David Hilbert, were proposing an entirely non-platonic justification for the existence of mathematics. "Hilbert's program" was to justify mathematics entirely on the basis of its self-consistency. The symbols didn't have to mean anything, they just had to be used consistently according to certain rules. This formalism gave way to instrumentalism, meaning that mathematics, rather than pointing to any transcendent reality, could be used merely as a handmaiden of the sciences, describing natural phenomena in a rigorously quantitative way.

There was one problem with Hilbert's program, which was later to be discovered by Kurt Godel. The famous incompleteness theorem shows that no complete self-consistent axiomatic system could possibly exist (or at least none that contained enough axioms to make arithmetic possible). Thus in order for Hilbert's idea of a self-consistent system of symbols to work, mathematics would always have to contain propositions which could neither be proved true nor false. Without any outside reference point, there could be no way to decide whether such propositions should be true. Godel himself, as I understand it, was a mathematical platonist, but whether or not his theorem really necessitates platonism is a matter of considerable dispute.

There are a number of other reasons to be suspicious of even a moderate form of mathematical platonism. It has been noticed that many mathematical developments seem culturally relative. The Greeks did not seem to think 0 worthy of being called a number, but they were fascinated by prime numbers. Words like "irrational" and "imaginary" betray an obvious bias in our thinking about the meaning of numbers. Even while mathematics has seemed ultimately to transcend cultural assumptions, its development also seems to be tied to very human assumptions, which could have gone another way. Consider the following thought experiment from Sir Michael Atiyah:

"[L]et us imagine that intelligence had resided, not in mankind, but in some vast solitary and isolated jelly-fish, buried deep in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. It would have no experience of individual objects, only with the surrounding water. Motion, temperature and pressure would provide its basic sensory data. In such a pure continuum the discrete would not arise and there would be nothing to count." (from Is God a Mathematician?)

Could a jellyfish-like creature ever do mathematics? It's something I've mused on before. What I do know for sure is that many of our seemingly timeless abstractions appear, upon inspection, to be rather tied to our neural circuitry, rather than to the heavenly realm of pure thought. This is something we must take seriously as we explore the relationship between mathematics and ultimate truth.

But despite all of these reasons to doubt, the mathematical platonist has a good deal of evidence to support his position. I'll discuss here two major themes. One is the mathematical encounter with the infinite; the other is what is famously discussed as the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics."

For the first theme, I highly recommend the book Naming Infinity, which tells the story of three Russian mathematicians from the early 20th century, whose faith led them not only toward deep mathematical discoveries but also to political persecution and martyrdom. (At this point I'll also mention Avril Pyman's Pavel Florensky: A Quiet Genius, a wonderful biography of this extraordinary man. Let me also recommend Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity by David Foster Wallace.) The story of the infinite goes back as long as we have recorded mathematics. One can think of Zeno's paradox as motivation: how is it that the arrow ever actually reaches its target? The seemingly infinite divisibility of nature creates all sorts of puzzles.

And so does the infinite countability of things. I've heard that recent studies show children are amazingly receptive to the concept of infinity. Many of them from an early age recognize the principle that there is no biggest number; if I think I have such a number, I can always add one more and get an even bigger number. This principle is probably our earliest encounter with infinity. There are, of course, many metaphorical ways of understanding it, such as imagining a hallway that continues forever, or imagining looking down an infinite staircase. But really the concept of infinity is a statement about what we can't experience. We can't name a highest number; we can never count to infinity. That seems to be a good old-fashioned Aristotelian account of the infinite.

Enter Georg Cantor, a German mathematician of the nineteenth century who introduced an entirely new level of infinity. The best explanation I can think of is as follows. Instead of thinking about how many numbers there are, let's think about how many ways there are to count up toward infinity. We could go the very obvious and traditional route: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,... Or we could go by even numbers: 2,4,6,8,10,12,... Or we could go by powers of 2: 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,... There are easily infinitely many ways we could do this. But here's the really jarring thing: there are more ways to do this than we could ever "count," even if we used all infinitely many counting numbers. This can be rigorously proved using set theory, pioneered by Cantor using axioms which would at first appear quite innocuous. However, his conclusions were not popular, and at first many mathematicians did not accept the notion of treating infinitely many things as a unified "set," especially given the absurd conclusion one must then draw about infinite degrees of infinity!

Indeed, set theory has its limitations. The famous Russell Paradox demonstrates that making up sets willy-nilly doesn't work, particularly if you allow infinite sets. The paradox goes like this: let S be the set containing all sets that don't contain themselves. Does S contain itself? If it does, then it doesn't, and if it doesn't, then it does. Clearly, the definition of S is meaningless. It doesn't even get the dignity of being an empty set. It just doesn't exist. For similar reasons, but more difficult to explain, there is no "set of all sets." This is also a corollary of Cantor's theorems about sets.

As Naming Infinity recounts, the French rationalists had sufficient trouble with the puzzles and paradoxes of set theory that it actually caused progress to stagnate. Not so with the Russians: their connection with Eastern Orthodox mysticism ("name-worshiping" comes up more than once) inspired in them a belief in the ontological reality of the mathematical objects they studied. P.A. Nekrasov wrote of the Moscow Mathematical Society, contrasting it with the French and Petersburg schools:

While they ascribe great importance to facts, experiment, and the experimental sciences, the founders of the Mathematical Society are opponents of the slavish worship of facts by certain scholars. They were among the first to protest this enslavement of modern scientific thought and clearly explained the value of imagination and will equipped with the prerequisite objective and subjective (authoritative and nonauthoritative) world-views and the more or less exact theories that consciousness, living by its own pure process and internal experience, combines with the phenomena of external facts in motivating actions to be taken.

The authors of Naming Infinity explain that due to the best of their historical accounting, they can only conclude that this philosophical bent actually enabled the Russian school to resolve mathematical problems that remained a mystery among mathematicians schooled in the Western rationalist tradition.

(I will warn the readers of Naming Infinity that the authors seem to misunderstand the religious tradition of Florensky, Egorov, and Lusin. If one wishes to glimpse Florensky's theology, I recommend the biography of Pyman as well as Florensky's own works, particularly The Pillar and Ground of the Truth.)

There is far more to say about this episode in history than could ever be said here. I only wish to point out how profound the experience of mathematics is in connection with the divine. While I think it is more than a bit dangerous to ascribe mathematical descriptions to God (such as the "set of all sets" or some such nonsense), I also think it is fitting to ascribe to God that kind of infinity which is simply inaccessible to the human mind. There exists, as Cantor proved, an infinite hierarchy of infinities--and God surpasses all of this. What we touch upon through the exploration of the infinite is but a taste of that truly sublime attribute of God, which is his supreme impassibility.

Now there is a second theme which also inspires the mathematical platonist, namely the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics." This is based on a famous essay by Eugene Wigner, about the remarkable way in which mathematics tells us something about the physical world. Now, it is not totally surprising that the universe can be described quantitatively. The real reason the effectiveness of mathematics is "unreasonable" is that we seem to get so much more out of it than we put in. This really is the profound discovery of the scientific revolution: a simple mathematical rule can describe not merely what is happening, but why. The fact that the rule is simple means that we can explain the world in terms of concise laws, from which we can deduce facts about nature which we can then verify through observation.

As Einstein said, the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.

Remarkable as it is, I've heard scientists get up and say how silly Einstein was for saying this. The most common argument that I hear is evolutionary: the suggestion is that it is not surprising for us to be in tune with symmetries of the universe because we are natural products of those symmetries. This argument, in my opinion, misses the point. It is not remarkable that we are parts of this universe, such as it is. What is remarkable is that the universe is the way it is. I can't help but feel that it is a bit perverse not to have what Einstein called that "cosmic religious feeling," the overwhelming sense of awe one feels at the breathtaking spectacle of order. The world is not chaos. If you look closely, everywhere you find the same law universally obeyed. This law is recovered through mathematics, and from it we may deduce the behavior of everything from the stars down to the smallest atom, if we are clever enough. Even if we grant that our mathematics will never precisely describe the order of the universe as it actually is, the fact that such a project is successful at all is a testament to an intrinsic structure--indeed, an austere beauty--in creation.

I admit, however, that this creates a bit of a conundrum for the Christian. If this divine law draws us to worship God, what, then of miraculous intervention? That is a real question, one I don't believe I'll be able to answer any time soon. You see the problem: the very same principle that fills a person with awe also seems to deny any possibility of anything like the Christian God. If all is ordered according to one universal law--and I would not be the only person to suggest there might indeed be one law--a so-called "unified theory of everything"--then what are we to make of the radical working of God's grace? Perhaps we are simply to leave it at that: his grace is radical. It is beyond the natural order of the universe, which is itself good. Perhaps, as Florensky suggested, we downplay the discontinuity of God's relationship with the universe to our own peril. Continuity and symmetry are beautiful, but perhaps they do not tell the whole story. I leave it to the listener, and indeed the reader, to decide.

Whatever the philosophical answers to these riddles may be, there is no denying the power of these experiences--beholding the infinite in the mind's eye, and beholding the intrinsic order of the universe--to evoke a sense of the divine, and to inspire worship in the believer's heart. It is enough that we acknowledge this power, without taking a firm platonist position on the ontological question. For my part, I will admit that I am no mathematical platonist. Mathematics seems to be a construct of human minds that have learned to follow certain patterns of thought, evolving much the same way language does. Its symbols do not point to heavenly realities, although they may indeed illuminate physical realities. That is not to say there is no real truth in mathematics--far from it. Mathematical theorems are irrefutable precisely because mathematical language must be spoken only with strict adherence to a certain pattern of thought, and this pattern necessitates certain conclusions, just as a piece of music necessitates a certain style of play from a musician. As Florensky said in a letter to his daughter from prison,

In mathematics try not just to memorise what to do and how but take it in gradually, bit by bit, as though it were a new piece of music. Mathematics should not be a burden laid on you from without, but a habit of thought.

As I see it, mathematics is a very human activity, perhaps one of the most human of all. We humans love to play games and enact rituals. You would not think that we would enjoy submitting ourselves to contrived rules of behavior, but in fact that is exactly what we do all the time. A mathematician is the ultimate example of this. He cannot always claim a perfect correspondence between his habit of thinking and the way the world really is, but such habits of thought as his have been so wildly successful in aiding human beings in our understanding of the world that the tradition surely will not die any time soon. Now because mathematics is a deeply human activity, and humans are made in the image of God, I believe in that way it does bring us closer to understanding God himself--not by direct access, but only through reflection. Is God a Mathematician? I don't think God needs the help, to be quite honest.

Here are some ways I think mathematics does not point to God. (Unfortunately, you can find these examples in two books which I would otherwise recommend, namely Beauty for Truth's Sake and Mathematics through the Eyes of Faith.) I don't put much stock in delightful constants such as the golden mean or the number 10. I don't put much stock in brilliant equations such as Euler's identity--though I will qualify that by saying it really should warm your heart, that is not the kind of pure, austere beauty that I ultimately see in mathematics. I certainly don't put any stock in mathematical explanations of Christian doctrine--they usually end up being heresies. I had a brief exchange with Peter Leithart about "mathematical modalism" once. Rest assured, mathematics is no way to explain the Trinity. (See, however, Florensky's exposition in The Pillar and Ground of the Truth.) If we can just avoid these pitfalls, then I think we still have a powerful argument that mathematics helps us to witness a small piece of the glory of God.

So much for the first part of my thesis. It would take me ages, I think, to really fully explain what mathematics can tell us about God and the world we live in, but I hope even this cursory explanation has been valuable. I will now move on to briefly talk about the second part of my thesis, which is that mathematics is a worthy enterprise for any human being, because it has a profound way of shaping the mind and the soul. It does this in two ways, I think. First, mathematics makes us more attuned to the truly universal, i.e. to the theoretical principles that bind together all the particulars. Second, mathematics makes us more skeptical, training us in a certain level of rigor that will not accept flimsy arguments. In some respects these two ways reinforce one another, while in others they are actually in tension. But whether through consonance or dissonance both of these influences have a way of making us truly free creatures. As Georg Cantor said,

The essence of mathematics lies in its freedom.

Perhaps nothing needs to be said here about the way in which mathematics directs us toward the universal. But let me say a few words about skepticism. It is not surprising to me that most mathematicians are atheists (and all the evidence I've seen suggests they are). Skeptics in our culture tend to be atheists, for many reasons. However, if we are concerned about the souls of skeptics, it will do no good to morally oppose skepticism. After all, skepticism is to some degree the marker of an advance civilization. It is a sign of amazing wealth and opportunity that we can afford the time and resources it takes to rigorously analyze the world around us with logic and scientific experimentation.

Moreover, skepticism can be pointed inwardly as much as outwardly, and in this way I firmly believe it becomes one of the highest moral virtues. One of the greatest contrasts between a mathematics class and a class in other disciplines is that you'll find far less "discussion" in a mathematics class. Our modern prejudice seems to be in favor of hearing out students' opinions in the hopes that discussion will become enlightening. Frankly, I rather admire the way in which mathematics (and many of the sciences) has a way of politely yet firmly assuring students that their opinion really doesn't matter. They must conform to the truth through hard work and self-discipline. As my advisor in fact put it once, "We must learn through suffering." Mathematics is submission, a form of dying to self. Only thoughts that pass the absolutely rigorous test of deductive logic are allowed to survive.

And finally, I believe that we need Christians in mathematics like Pavel Florensky, who are willing to challenge the philosophical presuppositions of the modern age. This passage from Naming Infinity says volumes about his character:

"Florensky was convinced that intellectually the nineteenth century, just ending, had been a disaster, and he wanted to identify and discredit what he saw as the 'governing principle' of its calamitous effects. He saw that principle in the concept of 'continuity,' the belief that one could not make the transition from one point to another without passing through all the intermediate points.

...

Florensky faulted his own field, mathematics, for creating this unfortunate monolith. Because of the strength of differential calculus, with its many practical applications, he maintained that mathematicians and philosophers tended to ignore those problems that could not be analyzed in this way--the essentially discontinuous phenomena. Only continuous functions were differentiable, so only those kinds of functions attracted attention... Differentiable functions were 'deterministic,' and emphasis on them led to what Florensky saw as an unhealthy determinism throughout political and philosophical thought in general, most clearly in Marxism."

It takes a certain kind of skepticism, combined with a habit of seeing universal principles underlying all things, to offer a powerful critique of cultural assumptions. Florensky's critique has indeed been vindicated by discoveries in twentieth century mathematics and physics. What else might new generations of Christian intellectuals have to say by gaining a broad view of their own disciplines and their connections to others?

As a mathematician and a Christian with many questions about life, I cannot pretend any of the answers I have given in this talk are really answers. I think the more important point is which questions we are open to asking. If I could leave my friends with one thought, it would be that mathematics might just have something to teach us about things that matter. This is not simply a matter of mathematics having "applications." It is a matter of mathematics being part of a broader vision of the universe, in which order and beauty actually matter, and in which we ought to glorify God with all our minds. I can only hope that my small contribution is a genuine step in the right direction.

The Personhood Fairy

2012-02-05T13:57:00.000-05:00

SecularProLife has come out with a hilarious new idea for a comic blog: The Personhood Fairy. Perhaps it is based on this post from the SecularProLife blog:

"At no point in the human lifetime does a Personhood Fairy magically endow us with rights."

SecularProLife needs to get more attention. Despite rather famous examples of pro-life atheists, the public perception is still that abortion is a "religious issue" for conservatives and a "women's rights issue" for liberals. We should be grateful to have an all-inclusive organization framing the debate in terms of science and the rule of law.

"The Personhood Fairy" also proves that one can take a secular pro-life stand with confidence. It's only fair that we poke fun of the logical inconsistency of the other side. Humor also disarms the other side. Far too often the pro-life movement evokes such deep religious tones that everyone in the room feels uncomfortable, even those of us who are pro-life.

So go check it out. And if you live near Charlottesville, VA, come see Kelsey Hazzard speak at UVA on Thursday.

The Planned Parenthood Media Machine

2012-02-03T14:16:00.001-05:00

We found out yesterday that the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation had plans to cease funding Planned Parenthood grants. We also found out that Planned Parenthood has the media wrapped around its little finger. We heard how "thousands of women... [may] pay the biggest price" for Komen's decision. We heard about all those poor women who will no longer have access to breast cancer screenings. We heard how Komen was giving into right-wing propaganda.

On facebook, faithful (read: brainless) supporters of Planned Parenthood posted pictures like this to express their disdain for pro-lifers:

And Planned Parenthood made the controversy into a fundraiser.

Here are some facts:

Planned Parenthood doesn't do mammograms. This fact doesn't prevent people in the media from mindlessly repeating that "37 million poor women may not be able to get mammography."
Planned Parenthood does sell abortions. Why, they even sell gift cards!
Planned Parenthood is under federal investigation for offenses ranging from misallocation of funds to covering up statutory rape and sex trafficking.

Now let's process these facts. Does a person who supports health care for women have to support Planned Parenthood? No. Should a responsible person be concerned about the ethical implications of Planned Parenthood's business practices? Yes.

Today, however, SGK announced that they are reversing their decision. Jill Stanek thinks this isn't quite what it seems. She says, "This is Komen’s attempt to get the abortion mafia off their backs."

And there you have it. "The abortion mafia." That is exactly what PP is running, and has been for years.

A lot of us (including myself) spend a lot of time worrying about all the special interest groups that run our country, including the big businesses that get a lot of money funneled into their bank accounts. Why is Planned Parenthood considered angelic by so many people on the left? As if they are any more than an ideological organization bent on promoting their agenda of greater tolerance for irresponsible sexual behavior and, of course, abortion.

Poor women can get health care through numerous channels. If PP is their only recourse for sexual health, then friends, we call that a monopoly. And no one likes government funded monopolies, do they? Especially when such a monopoly is explicitly ideologically driven.

So when do we get to call PP exactly what it is? It's a big, evil, scary corporation. And it wants your undying loyalty, so that you can never imagine how we would ever live without them.

A theological defense of freedom

2012-01-28T22:39:00.000-05:00

I was going to write my own essay on this topic, but I found as I was reading The Brothers Karamazov that the chapter entitled "The Grand Inquisitor" says all I need to say and more. Ivan tells the story of The Grand Inquisitor, a priest during the Inquisition who finds that Jesus Christ (or one we may take to be Jesus) has returned and is healing people. Upon this discovery, the priest has Jesus arrested, and goes to address his prisoner:

"'Is it Thou, Thou?' but receiving no answer, he adds at once, 'Don't answer, be silent. What canst Thou say, indeed? I know too well what Thou wouldst say. And Thou hast no right to add anything to what Thou hadst said of old. Why, then, art Thou come to hinder us? For Thou has come to hinder us, and Thou knowest that. But dost Thou know what will be tomorrow? I know not who Thou art and care not to know whether it is Thou or only a semblance of Him, but tomorrow I shall condemn Thee and burn Thee and the stake as the worst of heretics. And the very people who have today kissed Thy feet, tomorrow at the faintest sign from me will rush to heap up the embers of Thy fire.

...'Didst Thou not often say then, "I will make you free"? But now Thou hast seen these "free" men,' the old man adds suddenly, with a pensive smile. 'Yes, we've paid dearly for it,' he goes on, looking sternly at Him, 'but at last we have completed that work in Thy name. For fifteen centuries we have been wrestling with Thy freedom, but now it is ended and over for good. Dost Thou not believe that it's over for good? Thou lookest meekly at me and deignest not even to be wroth with me. But let me tell Thee that now, today people are more persuaded than ever that they have perfect freedom, yet they have brought their freedom to us and laid it humbly at our feet. But that has been our doing. Was this what Thou didst? Was this Thy freedom?'"

The Inquisitor goes on to explain to Jesus how during his trial in the wilderness, the three questions asked him by the devil were really the three questions which define mankind: the need for bread, the need for someone to worship, and the need for a figure of authority.

"They will find us and cry to us, 'Feed us, for those who have promised us fire from heaven haven't given it!' ...And we alone shall feed them in Thy name, declaring falsely that it is in Thy name. Oh, never, never can they feed themselves without us! No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us.' They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them!

..."But only one who can appease their conscience can take over their freedom. In bread there was offered Thee an invincible banner; give bread, and man will worship thee, for nothing is more certain than bread. But if some one else gains possession of his conscience--oh! then he will cast away Thy bread and follow after him who has ensnared his conscience. In that Thou wast right. For the secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for. Without a stable conception of the object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather destroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance. That is true. But what happened? Instead of taking men's freedom fro them, Thou didst make it greater than ever! Didst Thou forget that man prefers peace, and even death, to freedom of choice in the knowledge of good and evil? Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering. And behold, instead of giving a firm foundation for setting the conscience of man at rest for ever, Thou didst choose all that is exceptional, vague and enigmatic; Thou didst choose what was utterly beyond the strength of men, acting as though Thou didst not love them at all--Thou who didst come to give Thy life for them! Instead of taking possession of men's freedom, Thou didst increase it, and burdened the spiritual kingdom of mankind with its sufferings for ever. Thou didst desire man's free love, that he should follow Thee freely, enticed and taken captive by Thee. In place of the rigid ancient law, man must hereafter with free heart decide for himself what is good and what is evil, having only Thy image before him as his guide."

The Inquisitor goes on to explain to Jesus how the Church will correct his work, for they will take away their freedom, and they will gladly surrender it to them in exchange for happiness:

"Freedom, free thought and science, will lead them into such straits and will bring them face to face with such marvels and insoluble mysteries, that some of them, the fierce and rebellious, will destroy themselves, others, rebellious but weak, will destroy one another, while the rest, weak and unhappy, will crawl fawning to our feet and whine to us: 'Yes, you were right, you alone possess His mystery, and we come back to you, save us from ourselves!'

The whole story is very much worth the read.

It's worth noting that Ivan has some sympathy for the priest in this story. What if it is not sheer corruption that leads to the desire for more control, more power? What if it really is a desire to save humanity, because God cannot? Making human beings free often seems the worst punishment of all. If only we were instead taken care of!

Perhaps I'll still write my own theological defense of liberty, but Dostoevsky does what I could never do: he forces you to face the grand contradictions which make life what it is.

Layers of morals

2012-01-20T12:42:00.000-05:00

A couple of days ago I commented on an article I read on the Huffington Post, in which Jeffrey Sachs argued that libertarians are too single-minded in their defense of liberty:

Yet the error of libertarianism lies not in championing liberty, but in championing liberty to the exclusion of all other values. Libertarians hold that individual liberty should never be sacrificed in the pursuit of other values or causes. Compassion, justice, civic responsibility, honesty, decency, humility, respect, and even survival of the poor, weak, and vulnerable -- all are to take a back seat.

The short answer to this piece is that it's just a straw man argument from start to finish. What I found astonishing is that Sachs was willing to point to thinkers like F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman as examples of people who didn't hold such extreme positions, when in fact most modern day libertarians would consider themselves solidly in "their camp," i.e. the camp of Hayek and Friedman. The fact that Ayn Rand slips in there every so often does not negate the many other classical liberals who have truly shaped modern libertarianism.

But perhaps something more needs to be said philosophically. I've argued before that libertarianism has some philosophical flaws to deal with; but I view those flaws as correctable, constituting a discussion to be worked out within the libertarian camp rather than as a reason to abandon it.

The main point I want to make is that there are multiple layers of morality. The reason libertarians champion liberty over all other values is that we are speaking of the political sphere. Politicians unfortunately seem to benefit from expanding the political sphere into other areas of life. I believe this works because they appeal to our instincts, which are not very well-trained to resist their rhetoric.

What do I mean by layers of morals? Well, there are first morals which you develop within the context of your family upbringing--whatever that was like. You learn how to treat your parents and your siblings, and you learn how to become a responsible person. In this context you learn personal morals, which help to shape you into a better individual. Eventually you leave the nest and begin to learn morals from other sources, whether from your friends or from ancient texts or from elders you look up to. In any case, there is no reason to expect that everyone will share your exact moral priorities. Every time you take a particular job or make a decision about which house to buy in what neighborhood, you are making a moral decision based on the values that seem right to you, and no one else. That is the first layer of morality.

Beyond this there are morals that continue to apply to you, but are not yours personally. You act a certain way around your family, another way around your friends, and another way around your coworkers. You pick up certain conventions and certain manners that make it easier to act appropriately. This is a second layer of morals.

Beyond this there are certain morals which apply to the institutions to which you belong, such as a company or a church or an activist organization. In this case the morals you acquire may not be as close to your heart, and may even be in conflict with some of your own personal values. Commitment to these institutions will require that you continue to wrestle with these moral conflicts, just as commitment to your friends and family will also require some concessions.

Beyond this we also have civic duties, to our city or state or national government.

And beyond this, we have certain moral responsibilities to one another as human beings. Even if you don't know someone "from Adam," you do know that you are at least related in the sense of being human, and that implies a certain level of tolerance and respect is expected. (Sadly, it seems this layer of morality is the most difficult to find fully functional.)

All of these layers of morality are connected to one another and, as I have already hinted, must compete with one another in each individual mind. What ought to uncontroversial is that only through voluntary assent can people actually become more moral. For instance, it is only by my wrestling with my personal and institutional morals that the institution might actually change me as a person. If I am merely forced to do the "right thing" in the eyes of that institution, nothing happens to my personal morals; rather, I merely become resentful, angry, or perhaps resigned. The same is true at all levels.

Now the problem is that as the state grows in its influence, these layers of morality are not acknowledged, and moral questions are posed to us as if there were no layers of separation between us and the state. We are asked questions such as, "What if a young man is in an accident and has no health insurance? Should society let him die?" Because of the way our minds work, we immediately imagine ourselves in such a situation, either as the young man on the verge of death or as an onlooker trying to decide what to do. Based on our personal morality, which functions within the world of people and things we can actually see and influence, we make the conclusion that indeed, society should not let him die.

Our instincts are good and the immediately conclusion we come to is in some sense correct. Anyone in the position to help someone live should help that person live. The question is whether such an abstract question has any bearing on the relationship between the state and our individual lives. The state is not an ever-present entity always looking over every individual person. It is also not the molder of all institutions of a society. The rhetoric used by politicians and political pundits belies the fact that the powerful elite actually have exceedingly little to do with how the majority of our world came into being.

So when libertarians argue for freedom, this is emphatically not at the expense of all other virtues. However, we do insist that moral order does exist even in the absence of ruling officials.

The purpose of government is not to achieve fixed goals, which will lead to a perfect society. The purpose is rather to break down those barriers which inhibit societal progress. As a libertarian, my view is that society only makes progress when individuals have the freedom to make moral decisions of their own volition. This is a far cry from everyone "doing whatever they want." Instead, it simply means that institutions will stand or fall based on their ability to serve the needs and desires of real human beings.

I don't think I've spelled everything out quite the way I'd like, so I'll have to return to this later. In the meantime, I encourage anyone interested in a different perspective on libertarianism to to http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/ and check out some of the discussions going on there.

Conservatives boo the Golden Rule

2012-01-17T10:15:00.001-05:00

Last night in the debates, as Ron Paul was explaining what he thought was the most sensible foreign policy, he was met with boos from the audience.

What provoked such ire from conservatives in South Carolina? None other than the words of Jesus Christ:

"So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you." (Matthew 7:12)

So much for this being a Christian nation. I think it's time for Christians around the country to start having a serious discussion about American foreign policy.

The beginning of philosophy

2012-01-14T13:02:00.000-05:00

Peter Leithart has some great thoughts on why philosophy must become theological in order to truly fulfill its purpose (the link is here). His argument hinges on the givenness of reality: our lives depend on having received, as little children, things which neither earned nor could have ever provided for ourselves, including not just our physical being but also our language, culture, and ability to reason. For all of this, the fitting response is gratitude--and not only for what we received from our parents, but even for the world itself, for the existence of anything at all. And if gratitude is the fitting response, then to whom or what are we to be grateful?

But let's consider another question: how does one arrive at this realization (namely, that gratitude is the fitting response to our own existence)? As I observe little children, one thing I notice is decidedly lacking is gratitude. It is a tad ironic that during the time when we ought to be most grateful, because we are so helpless by ourselves, we are in fact least grateful. Indeed, gratitude in little children has to be taught; it almost never comes spontaneously.

When is it that spontaneous gratitude emerges? I submit that it is precisely when one experiences loss. This experience can either be personal, as when we endure suffering ourselves, or it can be vicarious, as when we see how others live in far worse circumstances than our own. It is only when we see that what we have cannot be taken for granted that we feel the spontaneous desire to express gratitude.

I would say that the experience of loss is the beginning of philosophy. To put it more starkly, I would say death is the impetus for true philosophy. To realize that we are mortal, that our very existence cannot be taken for granted, causes us to face the most fundamental struggle in human existence: the struggle between gratitude for the life we have and despair over its loss.

Which brings me to something I would add to Leithart's post. Philosophy can either be a eucharistic enterprise, or it can be a process of despair. It can either be a response of gratitude and longing, or it can be a response of defiance, sadness, cynicism, callousness--all of which are really different sides of despair. When philosophy fails to be theological, it is because despair has won out over gratitude.

The modern world, it seems to me, is largely a world shaped by a philosophy of despair, leading to a world of non-philosophers--that is, a world of children who take what they have for granted, and never bother to face their own mortality. It's hard to be philosophical when you're just so damn successful.

But that, of course, is just part of the story. Let's not act like modern philosophy begins with atheistic "presuppositions." No, the battle is not with presuppositions of the mind but with different sides of the human heart. We are all atheists, because we all know despair. And we are all believers, because we all know gratitude--transcendent gratitude, thankfulness just to be alive. The real enemy of philosophy is not atheism, but childishness, which is to say our unwillingness to confront death and to wrestle with gratitude and despair.

No one can remain a child forever. Even we modern people must eventually be theologians.

Dostoevsky on loving one's neighbors

2012-01-13T22:23:00.000-05:00

From The Brothers Karamazov:

"I must make you one confession," Ivan began. "I could never understand how one can love one's neighbors. It's just one's neighbors, to my mind, that one can't love, though one might love those at a distance. ... Beggars, especially genteel beggars, ought never to show themselves, but to ask for charity through the newspapers. One can love one's neighbors in the abstract, or even at a distance, but at close quarters it's almost impossible."

I have never read anyone quite so perceptive about the human condition as Dostoevsky writing through fictional characters.

I think this is exactly why we humans are always giving over ever increasing power to governments and authorities: we prefer to love in the abstract rather than in person. Once our noble intentions become embedded within an institutional structure, we are loathe to give it up, even when in fact those institutions no longer do any good. Oh yes, we do have noble intentions. And out of great reverence for those noble intentions we erect the most grand and most absurd idols, only we forget to laugh at ourselves for doing so.

Christian pan(en)theism?

2012-01-10T12:59:00.001-05:00

Athanasius makes a rather curious defense of the incarnation against the pagans who claim that being manifest in a human body is beneath God's dignity:

What, then, is there incredible in His manifesting Himself through that in which He is? By His own power He enters completely into each and all, and orders them throughout ungrudgingly; and, had He so willed, He could have revealed Himself and His Father by means of sun or moon or sky or earth or fire or water. Had He done so, no one could rightly have accused Him of acting unbecomingly, for He sustains in one whole all things at once, being present and invisibly revealed not only in the whole, but also in each particular part. This being so, and since, moreover, He has willed to reveal Himself through men, who are part of the whole, there can be nothing ridiculous in His using a human body to manifest the truth and knowledge of the Father. Does not the mind of man pervade his entire being, and yet find expression through one part only, namely the tongue? Does anybody say on that account that Mind has degraded itself? Of course not. Very well, then, no more is it degrading for the Word, Who pervades all things, to have appeared in a human body. For, as I said before, if it were unfitting for Him thus to indwell the part, it would be equally so for Him to exist within the whole.

(Athanasius, On the Incarnation, Chapter 7.)

This is a rather striking argument. Rather than appealing to God's omnipotence and the paradox of the incarnation, Athanasius argues that God is already in everything, so why not a human being? This is not the only argument he makes, of course, but it seems significant that he makes it. It's hard not to see it as a theological misstep, since it would apparently negate the uniqueness of the incarnation as an incomprehensible mystery. If God is manifest in Christ in the way that the mind of a man is manifest in his tongue, then Christ would appear to be just a part of a big whole which God fills.

Then again, it isn't hard to find biblical evidence to support the idea that God fills all things. It just happens to get very confusing when you try to talk about incarnation as a unique event.

Athanasius on the solidarity of mankind

2012-01-10T12:30:00.000-05:00

In explaining the effect of Christ's incarnation, Athanasius elaborates a theological anthropology:

For the solidarity of mankind is such that, by virtue of the Word's indwelling in a single human body, the corruption which goes with death has lost its power over all. You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled and the corruption of the death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Savior of all, the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death.

(Athanasius, On the Incarnation, Chapter 2. Emphasis added.)

One wonders, how far does this solidarity go?

Conservative contradictions on immigration

2012-01-06T10:40:00.001-05:00

My position on immigration is simple, and in line with classical liberal tradition: anyone who wants to immigrate into the United States for the purpose of pursuing a legitimate line of work and making a living should be welcome. In a free society, the immigration process would simply involve passing through a checkpoint, verifying your id, and allowing the government to keep some documentation of your presence here. (Probably there should be some fee to be paid for these government services.) There would be no restrictions on the number of immigrants allowed to come into the country.

Current law is very different, of course. We have restrictions on the number of immigrants allowed to enter legally on any given year. Conservatives applaud this, and in debates I've heard the likes of Mitt Romney say that would-be immigrants ought to "get in line" and wait their turn.

Whatever their arguments may be (they are probably based on myths) I think it's fair to simply point out the bold contradictions between the conservative position on immigration and other supposedly "conservative" ideas. Here are two big ones.

First, restricting the number of immigrants is an inherently socialist idea, in the true, original sense of the word. "Socialism" in its classical sense means allowing the government to have control of the means of production in a society. Very few people believe in this anymore as a consistent political philosophy, yet on particular issues we sometimes allow ourselves to move in a socialist direction almost without realizing it.

Such is the case on immigration. I hope it does not seem crass to think of people as a "means of production," but in fact people are the most essential means of production. We usually think of production being driven by technology, but the study of economics shows that even with technological advancement, we simply could not achieve the kind of market efficiency we now have without the proper division of labor among people. The most important kind of capital is human capital: the various skills, ideas, and ambitions that are dispersed throughout members of the global population.

So when conservatives argue that the government should be allowed to restrict the number of people who come into our country, they are in fact saying the same thing as a socialist who argues that the government should have control over capital investment.

(On the other hand, for all conservatives' talk about "free markets," conservative opposition to real free market policies is nothing new. See e.g. their historic opposition to ending corn subsidies, their support for trade barriers, and so on.)

Second, moving away from the economics, I propose to compare immigration with no less a controversial topic as abortion.

Just imagine if the government declared that it would set an annual limit on the number of children allowed to be born in America each year. Anyone, therefore, who failed to get a license to bear children would be forbidden to have children, and any woman who got pregnant without a license would be forced to abort.

Does that sound extreme? I don't see how it's any more extreme than a Republican saying that we should put up an electric fence on the Mexican border, or that we should be "shooting these immigrants like feral hogs."

But fine, let's say that these ideas really are too extreme for the average conservative. Let's consider instead the policy of deporting all illegal immigrants. To what may we compare this policy? It is like demanding that every woman who gets pregnant without a license be forced to send her child to be adopted in another country. Is this policy any more acceptable?

Consider the following arguments and try to tell whether they apply to immigration or to abortion: "What if we can't afford them? Shouldn't we take care of people who are already here? They're a lot different from us, after all." We cannot possibly expect people to take seriously the humanity of a child in the womb, when we are unwilling to take seriously the humanity of a person seeking a new life in this country.

(Let me add here a remark regarding those who are in favor of abortion rights. I hope none of what I said will be taken as saying that proponents of abortion rights are akin to monsters who want to slaughter immigrants. I am simply offering a comparison which I think should be particularly unnerving to conservatives, given their usual alignments. That said, I am pro-life, and I do think abortion is disturbing, even when left to a woman's "choice." But I think we can all agree that forced abortion would be a monstrous policy, and I think that many conservative proposals on immigration are similarly monstrous.)

Conservatives stress that this issue is about the rule of law, and that legal immigration should be applauded while illegal immigration is denounced. But the rule of law is not simply about people following laws. "An unjust law is no law at all." No, the rule of law is about treating all people equally according to the same moral standard. There is no moral reason to deny any individual access to a new life in this great country, provided they agree to live peaceably with their neighbors.

If conservatives care about preserving the traditions that have made us great, they ought to consider that the greatest of all such traditions is that of freedom and justice for all people. This tradition, sadly, is always in danger of being opposed by the very people who say they love it the most.

Maximus the Confessor on pleasure and pain

2011-12-31T13:17:00.000-05:00

From Ad Thalassium 61:

When God created human nature, he did not create sensible pleasure and pain along with it; rather, he furnished it with a certain spiritual capacity for pleasure, a pleasure whereby human beings would be able to enjoy God ineffably. But at the instant he was created, the first man, by use of his senses, squandered this spiritual capacity--the natural desire of the mind for God--on sensible things. In this, his very first movement, he activated an unnatural pleasure through the medium of the senses. Being, in his providence, concerned for our salvation, God therefore affixed pain alongside this sensible pleasure as a kind of punitive faculty, whereby the law of death was wisely implanted in our corporeal nature to curb the foolish mind in its desire to incline unnaturally toward sensible things.

(I am here using a translation given by Paul M. Blowers and Robert Louis Wilken from On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ, from the Popular Patristics Series.)

This dualism between desire for God and desire for "unnatural pleasure through the medium of the senses" seems to play a strong role in Christian thought. I hear it in sermons all the time. It always goes something like this: you look for satisfaction in all the things of the world, from money to sex to popularity to comfort and ease, but none of these things will ultimately satisfy; only God will satisfy you.

My complaint against this notion is that it is empirically false. In the first place, I don't see the biblical justification in it. We read in Genesis 2 that God gave us all the plants in the garden to eat. How can one argue that this didn't involve "pleasure through the medium of the senses"? When Eve was tempted to eat of the forbidden tree, she saw that it was "good for food." How could she have seen this unless she knew what "good for food" meant?

I also wonder how Maximus and similar thinkers would deal with the entire book of Ecclesiastes, but I'll let that pass for now.

In the second place, I wonder how Christian thought can possibly maintain this dualism in light of a modern understanding of the mind and its "bottom-up" construction. Rather than a sharp division between rational and sensory functions of the mind, modern science shows rational thought to emerge out of the highly complex "lower functions" of a physical mind. In particular, there is not nearly so heavy a distinction between humans and other animals as classical thought would like to maintain.

Personally, I can't help but see this dualism as a form of nihilism. You can't find your ultimate pleasure in food, sex, comfort, or even friendship--no, ultimate pleasure is found in God, you see. Which makes God sound like nothing. For once you remove everything which gives us a direct experience of pleasure, all that remains is a vacuum.

This was always my critique of Anselm's ontological argument. The greatest possible being might simply be a phantom, a nothing, a vacuum. You continue to think of really good things, and continue to reject them, saying there must be something even greater. Until you have nothing left but the idea of something really really good.

Ironically, Maximus spends much of his time countering Origenism, which imagined that the "fall" involved incorporeal beings rejecting God and thus being condemned to bodily existence. Against this, Maximus insisted that we were, in fact, created with bodies (which is the only possible way you can read Genesis 1 and 2, anyway). I wish he had gone further than this.

Against Libertarianism

2011-12-29T23:52:00.000-05:00

Whenever you happen to startfinding yourself attracted to a particular philosophy, whether political orotherwise, it is important to attack it with all the intellectual might you cansummon. Philosophies are powerful forces. They can shape a society for betteror for ill. Just as each of us individually should think before he acts, soalso society must have some means of contemplating various paths before ittakes one. There is no other way for society to do that other than forindividuals within it to do the thinking themselves, and engage in conversationwith each other.

In that spirit, let me nowenumerate my qualms with the philosophy generally called “libertarianism” inour day. Although the history of both that word at the philosophy with which Iam dealing is a bit complicated, I will generally take for granted that anyonereading this is more or less familiar with the kinds of ideas I’m talkingabout. Libertarians believe in individual rights, including rights to life,liberty, and property. They believe in limited government (or, in the case ofanarchocapitalists, no government at all) and they think that the mark of agood society is a minimal use of force and coercion. Libertarians believe infree markets and civil liberties: they don’t believe anyone should interferewith what we buy and sell, where we choose to live, who we choose to associatewith, what we choose to say or believe, or how we choose to use our ownproperty.

I find that there is much toappreciate about libertarianism, and politically I more or less identify as alibertarian because there is no broader category that defines my politicalbeliefs. However, progress is never achieved by speaking only in generalities.Here I want to nail down some specific major objections (or at least qualms) Ihave concerning the ideas that usually fall under the label “libertarian.”

1. PersonalAutonomy

My first objection tolibertarianism is philosophical in nature. Libertarians often make two claimsabout personal autonomy. The first is that people are autonomous, and thesecond is that they should be left to their autonomy. Let me take each of theseclaims in order.

The first claim: all people areautonomous individuals. This is plainly false. Indeed, there would beabsolutely no reason for a market economy if this were true. There is simply noway the number of human beings currently living could actually live if not forthe fact that they cooperate with one another. Libertarians who equate freemarket economics with the idea that everyone should be left alone to fend forhimself are only helping the opposition, since everyone knows we can’t simplyfend for ourselves and hope to survive.

No one acts independently of allother people. We all make decisions based on the morals, beliefs, and customsof other people around us. This is most obvious when we think of the obviousfact that we all come into this world as children. We learn the most basicskills which enable us to survive from our parents. Only gradually do we gain agreater degree of independence, and this independence is never absolute. Eventhe most independent among us will have to base his decisions on the decisionsmade by others.

This is more than an abstractphilosophical point. Have you ever noticed how little libertarians have to sayabout the lives of children? Can a libertarian who supports the legalization ofprostitution make a coherent argument against child prostitution? Why is a 17year-old off limits when an 18 year-old has the right to do what she wants withher body? It is simply impossible to come up with a coherent position if weimagine that at some point people magically turn into autonomous adults.

Indeed, the idea of absolutepersonal autonomy is what leads to many of the major pitfalls of liberalism,which libertarians hate so much. If all people are simply autonomousindividuals, then the only way to prevent them from destroying each other isthrough a powerful state. In the real world, liberty works precisely because weare not autonomous individuals. Rather, we rely on a highly complex set of institutions,many of which have no formal existence, and which arise through a process ofcultural evolution, rather than human design.

The second claim: all peopleought to be left alone to make their own decisions. If absolute personalautonomy does not exist, then insisting that society ought to protect it isnonsensical. If our goal is to defend liberty, then we need a definition of “liberty”which refers to something real. Perhaps in the near future, I will provide sucha definition of my own. For now, I think it will do to refer to F. A. Hayek’sdefinition from The Constitution ofLiberty, in which he defines a free society as one in which coercion isminimized. Defining “coercion” is complicated, of course, and I’ll simply askthe reader to read his book for some ideas.

2. Morality

It is common for libertarians toclaim that the government should not legislate morality. This is a piece ofrhetoric which is also popular among liberals, and it is so pervasive that mostpeople in our country have a hard time seeing just how silly it is. All law islegislated morality. If a law isn’t about right and wrong, it probably shouldn’tbe a law!

The objection typically raisedto all sorts of legislation is that we shouldn’t use legislation to impose our “personalmorality” on others. For instance, Christians who might oppose homosexualpractice should not use the law to forbid it. The principle underlying thisclaim is that all people should be allowed to make any choice they want abouttheir own lives, so long as it does not hurt anyone. This is a worthy principle—don’tmisunderstand me—but it is, indeed, a moral principle.

The question is not whether weare going to legislate morality. The question is, what moral principles shouldguide our legislation? We certainly cannot legislate all morality, as numerousexamples will illustrate. For instance, most of us agree that it is wrong toinsult other people and hurt their feelings. But no one would suggest that thegovernment should pass a law banning such insults. Why not? Because most of usalso realize that such things can easily be resolved without the use ofgovernment force, and it would be wrong to use force wherever it isunnecessary--not to mention the waste of resources involved in using suchextraordinary means to solve such a trivial problem.

Libertarians have a longintellectual tradition with some good ideas about which morals should guidelegislation. Such principles include equal rights for all individuals and the principleof non-aggression. These principles may be flawed or not, but they arecertainly moral principles, and they should be compared to other moralprinciples, rather than treated as above or outside of morality. Essentially, Iam not here criticizing the ideas of libertarians so much as their rhetoric.

3. Property

I have on occasion heardlibertarians complain that Thomas Jefferson should have kept the trio “life,liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as “life, liberty, and property.” Thisfixation on property rights gives libertarianism a decidedly right-wing feel,at least in present-day America. In many ways I applaud libertarians for theiremphasis on personal property, but I think it needs to be grounded in a propermoral framework.

In particular, I don’t thinkhuman beings are always entitled to use things in whatever way they desire.This is an especially important point to make in an age when we are most awareof the damage we have done to the earth. If libertarians are silent aboutenvironmental concerns, then the movement is either irrelevant or possibly evendangerous. Besides, it is hardly self-evident that human beings are entitled toown pieces of land and do with them what we please.

Ownership is not so much a matterof people have power over things as it is a way of establishing parameters forhuman cooperation. That is why some form of property rights is inevitable, radical left-wing claimsnotwithstanding. If we are going to have any interaction with the physicalworld whatsoever, we are eventually going to be faced with the question of howwe share it. A political system with no property rights is implicitly a systemof collectivist property rights, which inevitably means a powerful governingauthority must take charge of setting guidelines for the use of valuableresources.

Libertarians are right tocritique collectivist property rights, because such a system must rely onconcentrated power and coercion. However, it is also the case the personalproperty rights depend on coercion. For instance, if a bank has the right to tradea loan for interest on that loan, then in the future it will have the right tocoerce me based on a decision I make now. The question the libertarian shouldask himself is whether the current system of property rights actually minimizescoercion. Too often libertarians are fixated on the economic question ofefficiency and prosperity and not, ironically enough, on the question ofliberty.

I happen to think that banksshould be allowed to charge interest (yet certainly not without exception).Nevertheless, we ought to recognize that this rule depends on a commonacceptance of property rights which have not always been deemed acceptable inthe course of human civilization. There might be good reasons for that.Libertarians should not be mere defenders of the status quo, but shouldconstantly be reassessing how well our current notion of property works infavor of liberty. Perhaps it is worth bringing up old controversies in thehopes of shedding new light on our present situation, especially as protestorscall for debt forgiveness and tighter regulations on banks.

This concludes my critique oflibertarianism, which is not to say I’ve covered every flaw. In future posts, I’lltry to offer something more constructive by suggesting ways in whichlibertarians could more clearly define a sound political philosophy. I wouldlike to conclude by affirming that I do think liberty is the most valuabletrait of our society, and that we ought to work to defend it. But if we don’ttake the time to think about what we mean by this, we’ll find ourselvesdrifting in a direction none of us wanted.

Christmas meditation

2011-12-24T23:17:00.000-05:00

But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. (Luke 2:19)

In the process of maturing in one's thoughts about the Christian faith, it is possible to go back and forth between Christmas and Easter trying to decide which is the most important day for the Church. For a child, of course, Christmas seems to have far more gravity; we get off school for it, and we get a ton of presents. This fact does make one think about the relationship between faith and culture. What would life be like if the year were shifted around, and Easter were the central celebration of the year?

A more mature Christian will say Easter is the most important day for the Church because that was the day Jesus rose from the dead and accomplished our salvation. His death on the cross could not have meant salvation for the human race if not for his resurrection. Christmas doesn't even appear in two out of the four gospels. Easter, however, is the main focus of all the gospels, and indeed the entire New Testament. Without Easter, there is no gospel, hence no Christian faith.

The pendulum can swing back after a bit of contemplation. Without Christmas, the crucifixion couldn't have happened, and the resurrection would be meaningless. More specifically, without the Incarnation, there is no Atonement, because there is no blood. And more than this, Christ taking on human flesh means that human flesh is redeemed and transformed into its former glory. All of the work that Christ has accomplished began on Christmas. You cannot have the end without the beginning.

But there is another reason why I am a big fan of Christmas this year, and that is because Christmas comes really not at the beginning of the story but rather in the middle of it. The New Testament begins with Christmas, but in the larger story of the Bible, Christmas comes rather late in the game. Or in a bigger sense, recognizing that the world has really had billions of years of history, Christmas really comes at such a small, seemingly insignificant moment. When Jesus was first born, it is hard to imagine anyone noticed. Matthew tells us of a few wise men and Luke tells us of some shepherds who saw angels in the sky. Did anyone even believe them? And what difference did it make to them even if they did?

I'm not a very good Christian, in the following sense. During Christmas services, I'm told to think back to the birth of Christ and realize what a great gift has been given to humankind, and then I'm told to think about how this was the beginning of all the Christ accomplished. In other words, I'm told to believe that everything is really finished, that Christ has already done everything for us, and that the appropriate response is to celebrate that with worship and with good deeds. I admit this feels like a strange plan to me. Has it all really been accomplished? Is this really what the world looks like after salvation has already come to earth?

Perhaps it's simply too painful to remember what the world is still like, even after the good news has been preached all over the world. It's painful to remember how fragile life is, the way hurricanes and tsunamis can destroy hundreds and thousands of human lives, the way famine and disease still afflict millions of people daily, the way millions and millions of children go to bed hungry each night, the way corrupt world leaders fail to defend the rights of the most helpless, the way even good people do terrible things to each other, the way even the Church has contributed to the great evil of the world...

There seems to be a certain comfort that comes from hearing that everything has been accomplished already. That means victory is assured, and whatever evil may get in our way, we will ultimately overcome. But sometimes, I admit, this comfort seems rather perverse. The more people talk about what has already been accomplished through Christ, the more it seems to sound like a myth, a fairy tale, a comforting thought to help a man sleep at night. Many times it does feel like such comforts are all we get in this broken world. If we can't successfully lie to ourselves, maybe there simply is no comfort in life and in death.

Mary gets a lot of attention this time of year, even from us Protestants. Songs like "Mary Did You Know?" reflect on the idea that Mary was in the middle of the story, and could not see how it all would end. I guess we are supposed to appreciate the fact that we do see how it ended and how it will end, and we are supposed to wonder what it would have been like for Mary. But I find myself actually understanding Mary right where she is in Luke 2. She treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. She had neither answers nor explanations. She simply pondered what these things could mean.

Most of the time I feel so lost in the middle of a big story that I just can't understand the words "all that Christ accomplished." It's that darn word "accomplished." What about, "is doing" or "has begun"? Maybe I can understand those a little better. And maybe that's why Christmas means so much to me right now. Because in a world that really is so full of darkness, it is the height of conceit to pretend we know where we are going. Those who say they do are deluded. I've seen where it is they're actually going, and it isn't pretty: divisions in the church, hatred toward the outside world, and the neglect and/or destruction of souls who long for real answers to these questions about what's going to happen to this world. If I'm being a bit vague, perhaps my vagueness is a good way to illustrate what the real world is really like.

This Christmas, I am personally recognizing my great lack of ability to actually believe that anything has been accomplished. I'm not saying this isn't a failing on my part. The Church has always insisted that there is a higher reality which we cannot see until our eyes are opened. Perhaps that's what I am missing. In any case, it's something I wrestle with, and it isn't something that beautiful candlelight services can fix.

But while part of it may be a failing, in another sense I am certain that I ought to feel the way I do, because the world really is dark and perplexing. While I may celebrate with my family with all the comforts and conveniences of modern life, I refuse to forget in my heart all of the great mysteries and tragedies of life. How is it that I can be blessed with so much while others suffer with so little? Or on the other hand, how is it that some can find happiness with relatively little, while incredibly wealthy people find only misery? Where is the justice in all of this confusion and conflict? When will there be peace and wholeness?

There is light in the midst of darkness, hope in the midst of sadness, mercy in the midst of oppression, life in the midst of death. Though millions of children go to sleep hungry, millions more are fed by the generosity of others. Though hurricanes and tsunamis and earthquakes rage, still millions of people are willing to give their money and in many cases their time and talents toward rebuilding. Though governments oppress their own people, still the voice of reason and justice lives on. Why does it never seem to win? "A sword will pierce your own soul, too"--this, it seems, is the story of all humanity.

This Christmas, I am pondering all these things in my heart. Like Mary, I have no answers or explanations. All I can do is watch. I have seen light in the midst of darkness--but oh, how great is that darkness! Sometimes it seems we are all lost. And that is just when the Christmas story is needed most.

Grace and Freedom

2011-12-21T15:50:00.000-05:00

Peter Leithart's blog post today made me think to write some thoughts on a topic Christians rarely seem to sort out. On the one hand, we acknowledge that God is the source of everything we have, and that we can do nothing on our own. Fundamentally, everyone has to acknowledge this, including atheists: everything that we have to work with is in some sense inherited, whether biologically, culturally, or in some more abstract sense (e.g. all of us are composed of matter that came from stars billions of years ago). On the other hand, we work to earn a living in this world, to create things beautiful and/or useful, to discipline ourselves into moral people, to solve some great problem, or just to satisfy our own desires. Can we really claim credit for any of these accomplishments, given that everything we have to start with is a gift? If not, why do we bother?

This question could quickly become abstract theoretical, leading to a discussion about the famous free will problem in philosophy and theology. What we can't miss, however, is that this is an eminently political question. Many of today's biggest controversies are over the question of how a just society should distribute its resources among its members. In typical partisan terms that most people are familiar with, the "conservative" answer is that people should get to keep what they earn. The "liberal" answer is that the conservative answer is inadequate without some adjustments, because you can't deny that all of your success is built on things you didn't earn; so we should make some attempt to redistribute our wealth to make things a little more equitable.

To make my own position plain from the outset, I think both answers are wrong. I don't find them merely incomplete; I actually don't think either of them have any reasonable foundation on which to build a just society. So where to start?

Milton Friedman was not a Christian, nor was he a religious man at all. Yet I once heard him make a remarkably Christian statement. It was while he was addressing a question which someone asked him to the effect of, "Don't you think women deserve to make as much as men?" His response was, "It's not a question of desert. None of us deserve anything. Thank God we don't get what we deserve!"

Life is a gift: that is my starting point. Everything we have is also a gift. Many people will readily acknowledge this when it is pointed out to them. Where, then, do we get the concept of deserving, and why does it feature so prominently in our moral thinking?

In fact, the idea of deserving comes from situations in which there is a clear hierarchy of people, with one person in charge of deciding who gets what. For instance, if you work for a company and have a boss, you expect to get paid what you deserve--not in some ultimate sense but in the sense that there is some reasonable standard by which you can measure a given employee's performance and give out pay accordingly. In somewhat similar fashion, parents often set up a system of rewards and punishments to shape their children's behavior. Thus the idea of deserving mainly serves to form cooperative groups of people by forming clear behavioral expectations.

The reward/punishment system is very intuitive, and for that reason it is hard not to want it extended to the society at large. However, the system depends on having a leader to distribute rewards and punishments. As a consequence, the reward/punishment destroys both freedom and equality, since someone will have to be placed in authority over us (thus making society unequal) and this authority will have to be used to shape our behavior toward some preconceived ideal (thus destroying freedom).

I suppose any system could work if we had Jesus Christ himself in charge of all economic distribution. But as we read in the gospels, Jesus rejected that responsibility.

A just and free society cannot decide the question of economic distribution based on the concept of deserving. Instead, I suggest that society be built on the concept of grace, which is the radical notion that we do not get anything from merit, but from the freedom of giving. As Jesus says in the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, "Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?"

For the present I'm going to hedge the question of property rights and how they should be defined. Suffice it to say, without any concept of property (implicit or explicit), members of a society have no way to understand gift. If I cannot own anything, then I cannot give or receive anything. Ownership is not the ultimate value in a society, but it is a necessary feature.

(Note well that I have concentrated on gift and have not even mentioned exchange. Gift is always prior to exchange, since if we had never been given anything (at the very least our own lives) we would have nothing to exchange. About exchange free market economists have many things to say, but perhaps it bears repeating that a free society is based on more than economics!)

Once we accept this principle of grace, there remains a lot of work to be done concerning the nature of property rights and defining the limitations of government. However, my concern is that most people do not seem to accept this principle, because the principle of deserving is so much more intuitive. Surely no one deserves to have "so much money"--a hundred thousand dollars? a million dollars? a billion dollars?--and surely the poor deserve something from those who have more than they need. So might a liberal say. On the other hand, surely people deserve to keep the money they make, and surely lazy people don't deserve anything from those of us who work hard. So might a conservative say. I don't say either one of these things, because I know that none of us--not even the best of us--really deserve anything. I don't say that people shouldn't be praised for their accomplishments; but even this praise is a gift, freely given by those who rightly enjoy seeing good things accomplished in the world.

Yet in spite of our undeserving (or, more properly, in spite of the fact that "deserving" isn't the right category to be applied), we do have an abundance of good things. Should we reject them just because we do not deserve them? On the contrary, the best way to appreciate a good gift is to enjoy it, and to give to others as a response. But when you convince people that everything is a matter of deserving, it is remarkable how stingy they become. Or do you call it generosity when a man gives everything he has at gunpoint? Only a free society can foster true generosity.

On first examination, it looked as if grace and freedom were somehow opposed. It turns out quite the opposite: the one cannot exist without the other.

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

2011-12-19T20:43:00.000-05:00

So today, like the total nerd that I am, I actually read a couple of the articles which came out in the latest Notices of American Mathematical Society. One article that caught my attention was entitled, "A Perspective on Wigner's 'Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics,'" which refers to a famous essay by Eugene Wigner on the mysterious way in which mathematics actually seems to tell us true things about the physical world. (As opposed to merely the world of abstract ideas. It would be unsurprising of mathematics told us something about that.) In the article, Jason Nicholson appeals to the philosophy of one Robert Pirsig, who wrote what is claimed to be one of the most widely read books of philosophy ever written, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Nicholson seeks to bring Pirsig's "Metaphysics of Quality" into academic discussion, particularly among mathematicians interested in mathematical metaphysics.

Since I have never read Pirsig, let me just give a few excerpts from Nicholson's summary so that you get the main idea:

The Metaphysics of Quality is, in some limitedsense, as follows. He had in his first book realized(and made the case) that Quality is an undefinableentity that is the precursor of subjects and objects;everyone knows what it is but no one can define it.He proceeds to understand that subjects and objectsare only one dual pair of defined things intowhich the undefined Quality event gets split as it is“realized”—that is, made real through a necessarilyincomplete attempt to define it. ...

In his second book, however, he is led to a differentsplit into what he calls “static” and “dynamic”aspects of reality as the best split possible, themost useful. He actually terms them static quality(or value) and Dynamic Quality, and with them hebuilds his Metaphysics of Quality, a metaphysicalframework that provides a different, and, he demonstrates,better way of understanding the worldwe live in. Dynamic Quality is the undefined Qualitythat was described in his first book, but now heintroduces static patterns of quality alongside it toreflect the “realization” of that undefined Qualitywhich makes up our world. They act like a ratchet:the Dynamic Quality is the constant stimulus tomove to something “better”, to ratchet up, but thestatic quality is the latch of the ratchet itself, themaking tangible of the motion up into somethingconcrete which will prevent falling down intosomething “worse”. Dynamic Quality is the creativeurge, whereas static quality, or patterns of staticquality, is what is created in response.

In building his Metaphysics of Quality, Pirsigclassifies patterns of static quality into four discreteyet interrelated levels: Inorganic, Biological,Social, and Intellectual. He describes the relationshipbetween these levels as being analogous to therelationship of computer hardware to computersoftware—the software is run on the hardware, buthas nothing, really, to do with it. The program thatyou run on your computer and write your articlewith has nothing to do with the computer hardwareitself. Furthermore, the content of your articlehas nothing to do with the program you write it in.In this way the levels of static quality are related toeach other: Biological is built on Inorganic, Socialis built on Biological, and Intellectual is built onSocial, but each level is independent of the other.

Using this idea, Pirsig makes the case thatDarwinian evolution is just Dynamic Quality atwork by understanding “survival of the fittest” asmeaning the movement of static quality (survival)towards Dynamic Quality (fittest). Then the fourlevels of static quality are levels of evolution.

Nicholson then goes on to apply this metaphysics to the problem of "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics."

The key word in Wigner’s thesis is “unreasonable”;he actually hit on the solution to theproblem in the title of his article. Since DynamicQuality cannot be defined, it is by definition (soto speak) unreasonable. But that is the reason thatany explanation of Wigner’s observation requiresan expanded metaphysics. In our tacitly assumedsubject-object metaphysics, as Pirsig makes clear,anything “unreasonable” is discarded, and so theeffectiveness of mathematics in describing thenatural world is an insoluble quandary. Once an“unreasonable” entity, Quality is seen as the rootor precursor to all subjects and objects, the quandaryfades. ...

The Metaphysics of Quality also easily solvesanother long-standing dilemma among mathematiciansregarding the nature of their subject: the“is mathematics invented or discovered?” debate.The solution to this debate is reminiscent of theMetaphysics of Quality’s resolution of the “freewill versus determinism” debate referred to above.Mathematics is invented insofar as it is a processof following Dynamic Quality—that is, insofar as itis “free”. It is discovered insofar as it is a processof fleshing out previously unknown consequenceswithin the static patterns of quality that aremathematics as it stands. Most Ph.D. theses andmuch published mathematics are more of this lattertype—original work, that is, new consequencesof existing static patterns, but not in the sense offollowing only Dynamic Quality. In fact, one mightsay that any new development comes as a mixtureof both types of originality; it lies on a continuumbetween purely static quality at one end and purelyDynamic Quality at the other. The most “creative”and “original” mathematics obviously sits towardthe Dynamic Quality end of the spectrum.

As I understand this, it feels like simply an evolved, 20th century version of Platonism, with a dash of eastern religion added for flavor. And I'm entirely comfortable with that. The only thing I want to point out is how easily this Metaphysics of Quality fits into the idea of participation in the divine. Whereas the Platonist might say that concrete assertions in mathematics are reflections or shadows of a higher reality, Nicholson, drawing on Pirsig, is saying that mathematical ideas are "static patterns" emerging in response to Dynamic Quality. And whereas the Platonist might imagine this higher reality as unchanging while changeable things are merely shadows, Pirsig's philosophy flips that around and says that what is more real is changing, so that all of reality is cast in a Darwinian light.

Which leads me to the question: can we really escape the moral question about God's goodness? Whether God is the creator or simply the selector, whether he is the personal God of the Old Testament or the impersonal God of physics, it does seem like the process of discovery is tied up with this grand question: is it all worth it? In other words, if my intelligence is the result of a selection process that ultimately has no moral worth, why not rebel against it? Perhaps the answers we've been getting from science really are wrong on some fundamental level--not wrong in the sense that they have predictive power, but wrong in the sense that the universe is not worthy of our comprehension. Much like a young Christian who suddenly discovers he can't find it in himself to worship a God who banishes people to eternal torment in hell, maybe one day humanity will rebel against the very idea of knowledge, on the grounds that the universe is just too cruel or depressing to be worthy of our careful study.

Theodicy, it seems to me, is not merely a question for theists.

ReasonTV on civility

2011-12-15T20:44:00.003-05:00

In probably their greatest short video ever, ReasonTV captures the absurdity of ahistorical claims about how "uncivil" modern political rhetoric has become. Take a look:

Everyone who gets tired of "negative campaigning" needs to remember how terrible bipartisanship is. Seriously. What do we get when both sides of the aisle work together? Let's see, how about

more government spending
more military intervention in foreign countries
more government intervention in our lives
more executive powers granted to the president.

In other words, when Republicans and Democrats work together, there's no limit to how much damage they can do to our freedom.

There is a good explanation for this, I think. The spirit of cooperativeness stems from a spirit of nationalism, a sense of solidarity with one another as "Americans." When we apply this name to ourselves for the sake of political solidarity, it unfortunately means that we begin to embrace American exceptionalism: the idea that we are the chosen people of the world and we can do anything. This may sound radical, but I'm really troubled by nationalism, and sometimes I even question this whole nation-state idea that everyone in the whole world embraces in our day.

All that aside, even if you think that politicians should be nice and civil to each other all the time, maybe it at least puts things into perspective to know that our politicians have always taken jabs at one another. I personally think that spirit of competition between politicians is a good thing. Never trust politicians who like each other. That only makes it easier for them to get away with cheating you.

Empirical religion

2011-12-14T22:56:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine alerted me to a new book being released by philosopher Alvin Plantinga, who takes on the ideas of the "new atheists" and offers a new defense of the Christian faith as compatible with modern science. He says he wants to move from being on the "defensive" going on the "offensive," bringing positive arguments for why atheism is wrong and must be rejected.

I don't know very much about Plantinga, and the NYT article doesn't explain very much about his real argument. Nevertheless, the article got me once again thinking about that great question in our time: can a person believe in God and embrace science? It's a loaded question, to be sure, but it's one I am doomed to face for the rest of my life if I am to continue taking both my faith and my profession seriously.

I get very uncomfortable with Christians being either on offense or defense in this game. What most people seem to miss is a point atheists often make but don't consistently bear out in their arguments: none of us really know that much. To say that there are still questions science can't answer doesn't logically necessitate that Christianity has a claim on our lives. If science can't explain everything, it may be equally the case that Christianity can't, either. More importantly, it could very well be true that Christianity (or theism in general) doesn't even explain what it claims it does.

The reason I say all of that is because I think there is too much intellectual conservatism dominating Christian apologetics. Classical arguments for the existence of God are interesting, but there are good reasons why they don't work anymore. I find it hard to take the claim Christians so often make that even if evolution is true, it doesn't change what Christian orthodoxy ought to be. For God's sake, why not? Are there not a million ways in which this could profoundly affect our understanding of who and what we are? Or what about the age of the universe? Or the nature of atoms and subatomic particles? How can we help but think about the implications these have, not only for determining our place in the universe but for understanding our very nature?

Atheists say that the logical consequence of all these discoveries is that it's silly to believe in God, and so their bigger point gets lost because they tie it to a particular conclusion that Christians can't accept. The bigger point is, I think, a good one: it is that orthodoxy cannot simply be a matter of closing your eyes and missing new discoveries. A community genuinely interested in truth will not persecute or cut off those who challenge traditional thinking. It will not constantly be on the defensive against new explanations that refute old ones.

Is this not, in fact, more consistent with the story of Christianity? I am constantly impressed by how often the word see appears in the gospels. "The eye is the lamp of the body," Jesus says. He accuses the Pharisees of being "blind guides of the blind." And this accusation comes after they take offense at his overturning of traditional food laws, to which he replies, "Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?" The central story of Mark's gospel is the healing of a blind man, which requires two healings, because the first healing only partially restores the man's sight; this seems to symbolize the disciples only partially "seeing" what Jesus really came to accomplish. In John's gospel, light and darkness are central themes throughout. Jesus is "the light of the world," and "Whoever sees me has seen the Father." And John says that "we have seen his glory."

I could go on and on. The point is that Jesus does not make classical arguments for the existence of God. He instead wants us to see what God is doing: "See, something greater than Solomon is here!" Christianity is not a logical deduction from axiomatic truths about God. It is the direct result of people bearing witness to the world that they saw something new.

If we miss this central characteristic at the heart of the Christian faith, we lose out on the most valuable resource truth-seekers have: the willingness to be surprised, and the courage to break with tradition when the time calls for it. Not that breaking with tradition means turning away from it in resentment. Early Christians could not help but see themselves as the fulfillment of ancient Israelite tradition. In the same way, all new discoveries have the potential to give us a greater understanding of what we had previously believed.

The idea that previously held beliefs still have a place in spite of new discoveries is just tragic to me. Rather, we ought to have our eyes open to ways in which new discoveries can change our vision of who God is. I think the theory of evolution, for instance, really should cause us to rethink and reinterpret the story of creation, particularly the idea of the image of God in human beings. We should not leave this rethinking up to those who have no patience for faith and no desire to build it up. We should be the ones courageous enough to accept that God is not the same as our ancestors believed he was. The story of God and his people is full of surprises.

I am sensitive to the fact that many have taken these ideas and used them to collapse Christianity into a metaphor for the human experience, replacing divine interaction with the created world with human progress. I understand that orthodoxy cannot simply embrace the latest trends in human thinking uncritically. But after a while I lose patience with conservatives, who seem painfully close to what Jesus would call "blind guides of the blind." Do scientists really make discoveries, or not? Is theology so privileged as to be beyond all empirical correction? There would be no such thing as Christianity if that were true!

I am sorry that I am not able in these blog posts to give satisfying answers to the serious problems that Christians face in reconciling faith and modern science. Many people attempt to do this in a way that is trite or illogical, while others claim they are irreconcilable. Neither strikes me as attractive, which is why I will continue to try patiently to think about these things on as deep a level as I can manage. And whatever I think, I'll blog.

But the truth is, answers can never be satisfying forever. Life is always changing. When things stop changing, that's called death. God is the God of life, and I believe that if we are faithful to him we can never stop embracing the change that is necessary. For that we need our eyes to be open.

How not to solve problems in education

2011-12-06T11:46:00.001-05:00

In an article in the Washington Post, Marion Brady argues that our standardized tests are the product of unaccountable institutions that are out of teach with real educational needs. She relates the story of a friend "on the school board of one of the largest school districts in America" who decided to take a tenth grade standardized test himself, to see how he would do. The results were abysmal. In particular, he only managed to get 10% on the math portion (no surprise to me, by the way) and a 60% on the reading portion. The key to Brady's telling of the story is that her friend is actually a perfectly successful individual:

His now-grown kids are well-educated. He has a big house in a good part of town. Paid-for condo in the Caribbean. Influential friends. Lots of frequent flyer miles. Enough time of his own to give serious attention to his school board responsibilities. The margins of his electoral wins and his good relationships with administrators and teachers testify to his openness to dialogue and willingness to listen.

So the claim of the article is not that grown-ups on the school board are stupid, but rather that the tests are too hard, and don't really test anything that students will need to know as adults.

Maybe this is true and maybe it isn't. I'm sure we'll hear some responses back and forth about that claim. But if you dwell on this question, then the real point of the article is easy to overlook. The real point is made when Brady quotes her friend as saying,

“I can’t escape the conclusion that decisions about the [state test] in particular and standardized tests in general are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.”

Individuals who lack perspective and aren't really accountable are exactly the kind of people you get when you put some people in charge of others. If there was ever an argument for a libertarian restructuring of education it's precisely this. It comes down to a simple logical quandary, really: if the only way to hold people accountable is by putting others in charge of them, then who holds the people in charge accountable?

The case for freedom in general, and education in particular, is that people will generally be held accountable by reality. The real world does not have unlimited resources. Possibilities are only endless insofar as the human mind is able to make more creative use of what is available. This means all decisions come with considerable risk: there is no way to be absolutely sure that one particular choice is better than all of the others which could have been made.

This is true of education no less than anything else. The desire to standardize education stems from the desire to shield children from the possibility of being "left behind," but in the process it simply forces all students to bear the consequences of whatever risks the federal government takes in determining education policy. A political process simply cannot determine what is best for everyone, given the unique individual needs of millions of students.

Education is not a magic bullet. We have damaged our society by indulging ourselves in the illusory narrative that all good students who do the right thing will invariably be successful in life. Statistics may show that this is true; but for any one particular individual dealing with the particular circumstances of his own life, statistics mean absolutely nothing.

Society learns more when we allow people to make their own decisions and bear the consequences of those decisions. This often turns out badly for some people who take risks; but to imagine that we have a better alternative than this is nothing short of delusion. The only alternative is to let other people make our decisions for us, and then to bear the consequences of the risks they have taken. The idea that any government bureaucracy or corporation could produce a curriculum appropriate for all students is yet another example of the fatal conceit at work in our political system.

There are ways we could quickly make our educational system more free. School vouchers are a good idea. We could also start abolishing laws in school districts that prevent charter schools from moving in. Repeal No Child Left Behind. There have to be dozens of other actions that could be taken, but all of them are prevented by one special interest group or another. All we can do is watch those groups fight each other for power.

There are many problems in education, and almost all of them are caused by the fact that certain people have too much control over the decisions we make for ourselves and for our children. The way not to solve those problems is to give someone else even more power over the people who now have power over us.

The way to solve these problems is liberty.

Libertarianism and Consumerism

2011-11-25T20:19:00.001-05:00

Happy Black Friday, everyone. Today is the day when we celebrated the way in which consumerism saves us from all economic woes.

Or not.

Did you know that FDR once changed the day we celebrated Thanksgiving? Since Abraham Lincoln's declaration in 1863, Thanksgiving had always been celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November. So why did FDR change it? You guessed it--to save businesses!

For 75 years after Lincoln issued his Thanksgiving Proclamation, succeeding presidents honored the tradition and annually issued their own Thanksgiving Proclamation, declaring the last Thursday in November as the day of Thanksgiving. However, in 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not. In 1939, the last Thursday of November was going to be November 30. Retailers complained to FDR that this only left 24 shopping days to Christmas and begged him to push Thanksgiving just one week earlier. It was determined that most people do their Christmas shopping after Thanksgiving and retailers hoped that with an extra week of shopping, people would buy more.

So when FDR announced his Thanksgiving Proclamation in 1939, he declared the date of Thanksgiving to be Thursday, November 23, the second-to-last Thursday of the month.

(Unfortunately, none of FDR's policies ever did quite have the economic impact so many people claim: the Great Depression didn't end until after World War II was over. See also here.)

As a Christian with libertarian leanings, I'm often faced with the question about free markets and consumerism. Is the greatest society we can come up with really one in which people are simply free to pursue their material well-being, without regard for higher values? Obviously not. So why wouldn't I be in favor of a structure of government which keeps the profit motive in check, and which doesn't favor the greedy?

I have spent many words answering these questions in a philosophical way, but one should also notice the historical irony behind these questions. America has never embraced socialism, which according to its strict definition means government-run production. Rather, thanks to the influence of Keynesian economic theory, we have instead embraced corporatism, in which the government takes the role of business partner with the capitalists who produce goods.

Keynesian economics is important here. The vulgar form of this theory (that is, the most common form) is that during an economic recession, the government needs to increase consumption in order to spur producers on to further growth. This consumption-oriented mentality is now pervasive in our culture. The media endlessly parrots the idea that our major economic problem is not enough consumption. Every year reporters constantly fret about how well retailers are doing during the Christmas season. We are made to believe that it is our patriotic duty to spend more and thereby revitalize our economy.

But this idea is no libertarian idea. You will not find it in the writings of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, or Milton Friedman. You will not hear ReasonTV telling you to go out and shop more. Can you imagine Ron Paul saying we need to spend more?

No, the defenders of liberty are always the ones asking just the opposite: we must save so that we can invest; we must invest so that we can grow; only a fool would spend more to buy himself out of debt. (There are exceptions, of course; many worthwhile ventures require a great deal of risk. But it is the general idea that I'm attacking here.) Is there any doubt which philosophical movement is more responsible for the all-pervasive debt we see in our society, both in government and among private citizens? Inflation, easy credit, and increased government spending are all based on the assumption that the short term is everything--and this assumption seems to be the cultural by-product of a philosophy which is skeptical of both freedom and personal responsibility.

Libertarians want all people to free from violence and coercion. We have never promised that we can ever be free from the realities of life. Undoubtedly, people who are free to make their own choices with their excess wealth will often choose to spend it frivolously. This is not an inherently bad thing; would we really want to live in a society in which no one ever used anything without precisely weighing its value? What a dreadfully dull society that would be! But a society which feels compelled to spend beyond its means, which feels it is a God-given right that they should spend excessively year after year, which feels that consumption drives economic growth--that is a society doomed to fall apart.

So while I believe strongly that the government has no right to tell you what to buy or not to buy this holiday season, I am equally convinced that a truly free people would not be so foolish with money as we now see people are. True freedom also means real responsibility, and real responsibility teaches us through the discipline of economic realities. If consumerism was originally the product of economic freedom, its only cure is more freedom--not government sponsored capitalism.

The most important reason to vote for Ron Paul

2011-11-20T22:23:00.001-05:00

Last week I was flying out to San Diego, and I sat next to a Navy officer who had served in Afghanistan. He struck up a conversation with me during the flight, and at some point we came around to the wars in the Middle East. I asked him, "Is it worth it for us to be in Afghanistan?" His answer, sadly, did not surprise me. It went something like this:

Honestly, there are probably more terrorists on American soil right now than there are in the countries where we're "fighting terrorism."

This would not be the first soldier I have heard question U.S. foreign policy.
Ever since I was old enough to be aware of politics, we have been sending troops to Afghanistan and Iraq. Have we achieved our objectives? What objectives? Are we the nation destined to build democracy around the world? And must we sacrifice a continual supply of troops in order to do it?Consider this video (you'll see it above on my blog) outlining some of our history with the Middle East, particularly with Iran. Ever since we began playing political chess with the Soviet Union some 60 years ago, we have invested ourselves in a never-ending cycle of violence from which even now we have no respite. Did not the Soviet Union collapse? Does not empire always tend to crumble? Why are we still fighting? Why did we ever choose to fight?Christianity has shaped a great part of our tradition in America. Yet while the Church has been mobilized by political elites to argue about things like prayer in schools, gay marriage, and abortion, She has been strangely silent on matters of foreign policy. Have we any right to complain that Christianity has been pushed out of the public sphere, when on the issue on which our religion is most clear, we have been most silent? There is no Christian justification, nor has there ever been, for military occupation during times of peace. There is no Christian justification, nor has there ever been, for unprovoked war against other nations. Have we become the empire seeking to bring order through conquest? Have we no king but Caesar?The conservative elite have determined that the only "realistic" thing to do, for the sake of our national security, is to continue fighting. The most basic Christian tenet that human beings were made for peace with one another has been swallowed up by nationalist pride, and words have been twisted so that aggression becomes "defense." Our bloody history is mostly unknown or ignored by the public. All of this would be at least somewhat tolerable (though only to a cynic) if it at least made some rational utilitarian sense. But alas, the truth is, our wars are fought on the same faulty economic grounds upon which our unsustainable welfare state is built. Destruction is not gain. War does not create prosperity. War is always sacrifice, and any society called to fight must be given rigorous justification for such a horrible sacrifice.To put it another way, as Ron Paul did in one of the debates, "It's trillions of dollars...!"Trillions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dead bodies, more hatred, more anger, more resentment. This is not only immoral, it is impractical. Our foreign policy is every bit as unsustainable as our misguided health care policies. The only difference is that the latter at least have some moral justification, at least if you believe supporting human life is better than killing it!This is the fundamental reason why we ought to elect Ron Paul. Very few other issue matters nearly so much, and on no other issue does the President of the United States have so much direct influence. He is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. There is no more important question that you can ask a presidential candidate than how he thinks we ought to conduct our foreign policy, and on this matter there is no one who can even approach a moral platform than Ron Paul. See this video outlining a policy of friendship and free trade.I did not come to this position easily. Like many people, I was initially swayed by whatever options seemed available at the time I first began to form political opinions. There seemed to me to be the idealist left versus the realist right, and for a time I chose to be a "realist." But I have struggled to make sense of our foreign policy in light of Christian principles, in light of the inherent dignity of human life and the value of liberty, and even in light of sound economic sense, and I simply cannot find anywhere in my body or soul even an ounce of remaining support for the current U.S. foreign policy of global interventionism. Barack Obama, once thought to be the hope for a peaceful American regime, has only furthered many of the same policies implemented by George W. Bush, and this has only deepened my disillusionment. We have become a nation which feeds on destruction, and unless we change our course, this will be our undoing.In this time of economic uncertainty, it is natural that the average voter would be consumed by economic concerns. Tragically, our wars only hurt our long-term economic progress (as if we could ever justify killing even if it did secure our prosperity!) but you will hear almost the opposite in the media. I could cite famous economic thinkers from Adam Smith to Frederic Bastiat to Milton Friedman to justify my position, but I would rather simply appeal to common sense: destruction is not prosperity, death is not prosperity, war is not prosperity. Prosperity can only come through peace; let us therefore pursue peace.For God's sake, and for the sake of everything that is sacred--life, liberty, peace--we need to stop America's destructive foreign policy while we can. Only if our nation has enough moral courage can we ever hope to enjoy the fruits of peace. We owe it to our troops. We owe it to our world. We even owe it to ourselves, and to future generations of Americans to come.

Bastiat on What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen

2011-11-17T00:20:00.001-05:00

It is the title of this essay that made F. A. Hayek praise Bastiat's "genius" in making sound economic ideas public. It has been a good read so far. I highly recommend Bastiat to anyone interested in the major political issues of our time, for two reasons. One, he wrote quite a while ago--over a century and a half--and yet the same fallacies he found himself trying to refute are alive and well today. Two, Bastiat is much easier to read than, say, F. A. Hayek or Adam Smith.

The main point of Bastiat's essay is this:

There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.

Yet this difference is tremendous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences are disastrous, and vice versa. Whence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good that will be followed by a great evil to come, while the good economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil.

Fundamentally, according to Bastiat, although these are my words, good economics is a matter of having the right moral outlook. Often proponents of free markets are accused of one of two things. First, we are sometimes accused of not caring at all about the moral constitution of a society. This is utterly false, and in fact all of the classical arguments in favor of free markets are based on a firm commitment to justice. Indeed, it is really those who oppose free markets who also oppose the kind of logic which justice truly demands, for they insist that the ends can justify the means, that the short run must sometimes take precedence over the long run, and that only visible results are of any consequence.

Second, we are sometimes accused of caring only about the long run and never about "what happens in the meantime." Thus it is thought that we wouldn't care if thousands of people suffered in utter poverty for several years, so long as in the long run we reached the most desirable result. But this complaint is made without taking into account both what is seen and what is not seen. Our desire may be to give everyone enough to live on and not be in poverty; but even though we see the good effects of our well-intentioned programs, we may fail to see all the long term damage we are doing.
For instance, passages like the following express beautifully the fundamental error in "public works" programs (emphasis added):

Let us get to the bottom of things. Money creates an illusion for us. To ask for cooperation, in the form of money, from all the citizens in a common enterprise is, in reality, to ask of them actual physical cooperation, for each one of them procures for himself by his labor the amount he is taxed. Now, if we were to gather together all the citizens and exact their services from them in order to have a piece of work performed that is useful to all, this would be understandable; their recompense would consist in the results of the work itself. But if, after being brought together, they were forced to build roads on which no one would travel, or palaces that no one would live in, all under the pretext of providing work for them, it would seem absurd, and they would certainly be justified in objecting: We will have none of that kind of work. We would rather work for ourselves.

Note that Bastiat does not exclude the possibility that a community might actually agree to work together on something. He simply excludes the idea of taxes paying for public works. Why? Because it is all too easy to take money from people without acknowledging that what you are actually taking from them is their labor--that is, in a sense, their very lives.

It must always be remembered that the free market system is not a zero sum game. If you and I exchange something, that means I must have wanted what you had more than what I had, and you must have wanted what I had more than what you had. Otherwise, one of us is a fool. Thus an exchange means a net positive for both of us. So it is with all voluntary exchanges. That is not to say one never regrets certain purchases or ventures; I do not suggest that life can ever be without risks. But on the whole, it is possible for you to gain, while simultaneously everyone else gains from you as well.

However, it must be equally remembered that forced cooperation is a zero sum game, or perhaps even negative. If the government takes money from me and gives it to someone else, nothing has been gained or lost; the same money is there that was there before. Perhaps it will be used by the other person in a wiser way than I would have. How the government could ever know this, I cannot say. More likely it would turn out just the opposite; people who get something for free tend to be more irresponsible with it. Therefore, rather than an exchange which results in a net positive, government redistribution--whether in the form of handouts or programs or all sorts of other expenditures--results in a wash, a zero, or perhaps even less than a zero. For every dollar the government spends, what remains unseen is what else that dollar might have been spent on by the person from whom the government stole.

Anyway, read the whole essay. It's quite good. Here's an excerpt that might be pertinent for today's discussions about military spending:

A nation is in the same case as a man. When a man wishes to give himself a satisfaction, he has to see whether it is worth what it costs. For a nation, security is the greatest of blessings. If, to acquire it, a hundred thousand men must be mobilized, and a hundred million francs spent, I have nothing to say. It is an enjoyment bought at the price of a sacrifice.Let there be no misunderstanding, then, about the point I wish to make in what I have to say on this subject.A legislator proposes to discharge a hundred thousand men, which will relieve the taxpayers of a hundred million francs in taxes.Suppose we confine ourselves to replying to him: "These one hundred thousand men and these one hundred million francs are indispensable to our national security. It is a sacrifice; but without this sacrifice France would be torn by internal factions or invaded from without." I have no objection here to this argument, which may be true or false as the case may be, but which theoretically does not constitute any economic heresy. The heresy begins when the sacrifice itself is represented as an advantage, because it brings profit to someone.

Personhood still has a long way to go

2011-11-09T08:48:00.000-05:00

Mississippi voters rejected Amendment 26 yesterday. The language of the amendment was this:

Be it Enacted by the People of the State of Mississippi: SECTION 1. Article III of the constitution of the state of Mississippi is hereby amended BY THE ADDITION OF A NEW SECTION TO READ: Section 33. Person defined. As used in this Article III of the state constitution, "The term 'person' or 'persons' shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof." This initiative shall not require any additional revenue for implementation.

It would be interesting to read some in-depth analysis about yesterday's outcome, but I'm honestly not surprised. At a gut level, I just don't think people are willing to reject the status quo. I know it's easy to just explain that people are worried about all the exceptions--birth control, rape, etc.--but I think the issue is more fundamental than that. Even for conservative Christians with traditional values, abortion is not just something weird that those "other" people do. It's something everyone does, and if it's really as bad as pro-lifers say it is (does it really kill a person?) then that's quite an indictment of our entire society.I'm surprised, therefore, that it even got 40% of Mississippi's vote. That means there are a lot of truly pro-life people down there. But let's not kid ourselves into thinking that the pro-life movement will achieve victory through a triumph of traditional values. The pro-life movement is, and always has been, a radical movement.

Jesus and the 1%

2011-11-06T22:32:00.000-05:00

From the Gospel according to Luke:

"Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.
"Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.
"Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. ...
"But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.
"Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.
"Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. ...
"But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you." (6:21-28)

...

"Which one of you, having a hundred hseep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance." (15:4-7)

...

"There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." But when he heard this, he became sad; for he was very rich. Jesus looked at him and said, "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

Those who heard it said, "Then who can be saved?" He replied, "What is impossible for mortals is possible for God." (18:22-27)

...

A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today." So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, "He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner." Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, "Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much." Then Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost."

In my opinion it is wise to let Jesus' words speak more than our own, but perhaps I should comment on what I see in these passages. Two observations. First, it is a fact that Jesus said that wealthy people are in real spiritual danger. Christians of a conservative persuasion should not be blithe about this. Note that Jesus doesn't proclaim the salvation has come to Zacchaeus on account of his personal statement of faith, but rather on account of his promised generosity to the poor and repentance from fraud. Greed might be normal, but that doesn't mean we are justified in growing callous towards it. Economic success has a very real dark side.

Second, Jesus did not come to start a crusade against the wealthy, nor did he give in to popular prejudice against tax collectors. Popular dislike of the wealthy is nothing new. Those who are not seen as paying their fair share to society are always treated as outsiders. But just as Jesus welcomes the prostitutes, he also welcomes the tax collectors. Christians on the left are unjustified in viewing the world in terms of class warfare. "Love your enemies," Jesus said. In fact, the ones who actually get accused in the gospels of loving money are the scribes and Pharisees, who make a show of how much they give charitably.

No matter who you are or what side you think you're on, Jesus has something challenging to say to you. It's just always a struggle to get ourselves to realize this.

Origen on creationism

2011-11-06T17:04:00.001-05:00

Okay, so Origen didn't actually write about creationism. But he did write some things that might be relevant, such as the following passage from The Philocalia (emphasis added):

Anyway, will any man of sense suppose that there was a first day, and a second, and a third, evening and morning, without sun and moon and stars? and the first, as it were, even without a heaven? And who is so silly as to imagine that God, like a husbandman, planted a garden in Eden eastward, and put in it a tree of life, which could be seen and felt, so that whoever tasted of the fruit with his bodily teeth received the gift of life, and further that any one as he masticated the fruit of this tree partook of good and evil? And if God is also said to walk in the garden in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under the tree, I do not suppose that any one will doubt that these passages by means of seeming history, though the incidents never occurred, figuratively reveal certain mysteries. Moreover, Cain's coming out from the presence of God, if we give heed, is a distinct inducement to inquire what is meant by "the presence of God," and by a man's "coming out from" it. Why say more? They who are not quite blind can collect countless similar instances of things recorded as actual occurrences, though not literally true.

Note: this was written approximately 18 centuries ago by a Christian theologian. Doesn't that make it seem a little silly that we still have arguments about creationism?

Why You Are Not Your Brain

2011-11-05T16:40:00.000-04:00

Great Scientific American article summarizing the contribution of George Lakoff to linguistic theory and the philosophy of mind. Most of what it says I've blogged about before while reading through Philosophy in the Flesh, so I won't repeat it here. But note the way the article ends (emphasis added):

What exactly will this paradigm look like? It’s unclear. But I was excited to hear from Lakoff that he is trying to “bring together neuroscience with the neural theory of language and thought,” through a new brain language and thought center at Berkeley. Hopefully his work there, along with the work of young professors like Davis, will allow us to understand the brain as part of a much greater dynamic system that isn’t confined to our cortices.

What modern science is teaching us is that the quest to understand our own minds has been unduly limited in scope. We can only understand our minds by understanding our evolution more broadly.

The forward-thinking pro-life movement

2011-11-03T15:54:00.000-04:00

The Weekly Standard has published an article whose message bears repeating.

That the pro-life movement is bigger is a given. It’s also younger, increasingly entrepreneurial, more strategic in its thinking, better organized, tougher in dealing with allies and enemies alike, almost wildly ambitious, and more relentless than ever.

All that is dwarfed by an even bigger change. Pro-lifers have captured the high moral ground, chiefly thanks to advances in the quality of sonograms. Once fuzzy, sonograms now provide a high-resolution picture of the unborn child in the womb. Fetuses have become babies.

This passage is particularly encouraging:

Three pro-life trends have spiked in 2011. The first is the rise in opposition to abortion among young people. The under-30 cohort was the most pro-choice in the 1970s, second most in the 1980s and 1990s. Now they’re “markedly less pro-choice” than any other age group, scholars Clyde Wilcox and Patrick Carr have written. “Clearly, something is distinctive about the abortion attitudes of the Millennial Generation of Americans.”

Indeed there is. Millennials haven’t grown more religious, politically conservative, or queasy about gay rights. Nor do they go out of their way to vote for pro-life candidates. But they tend to see abortion as a human rights violation. Thus their resistance to abortion is gradually increasing.

You can see a manifestation of this generational shift at the March on Washington each January 22, the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling. For years, the marchers were geezers, initially Catholics, then aging Protestants too. In the past few years, the march has been dominated by teenagers and people in their 20s, often carrying infants.

Having attended the March for Life four times myself, I can personally corroborate this evidence of increased support among young people.

What's unavoidable about the pro-life movement is that it commands such a stronger sense of commitment than other "social issues" movements in the U.S. Oh, sure, gay marriage...whatever. Prayer in schools...*yawn.* If the abortion issue were simply a matter of having a particular religious or social point of view, it could not possibly command such dedication--and diversity--as we in fact see.

That's because abortion is a fundamentally unique issue. It is the slavery issue of our time, not because the moral contours are the same, but because it is that enormous elephant in the room. Being pro-life means you actually understand that the United States allows around 3,500 deaths every day at the hands of licensed medical doctors. This is not the kind of issue that makes you upset because of some vague dissatisfaction with the moral character of people around you. This is the kind of issue that makes you say in your heart, Oh my God, people are dying!

I'm glad that pro-lifers have found ways to energize young people in support of this extremely important cause. I would like to see the pro-life movement become more than a single-minded mission, however. Ending Roe v. Wade is not enough. In fact, it isn't even enough to end abortion. The goal is to institutionalize a respect for life. We need to be talking about our societal attitude toward violence in general, particularly nationalized violence in the name of "national security."

I'm optimistic about the future of the movement, and I would like to tip my hat to some of the groups, left unmentioned in the Weekly Standard, which I believe have made a positive difference. SecularProLife is now getting some attention among pro-life news sources. Feminists for Life has long been making a profound difference on college campuses. I Am Whole Life is a movement to make the pro-life movement more expansive and comprehensive. And I just have to throw in Libertarians for Life, who have provided some of the most rigorous (secular) philosophical and moral arguments against abortion I have ever seen.

Who sold you all these blank books?

2011-10-31T18:26:00.001-04:00

Occasionally, XKCD transcends the comic medium and offers some genuine social critique.

The mathematics of causality

2011-10-29T23:30:00.000-04:00

The other day some of my fellow grad students got an e-mail forwarded from our professor. The e-mail was from a student in electrical engineering who wanted help with a system of nonlinear differential equations. In particular, the student wanted "the solution." Keep in mind that most differential equations don't work that way. When you take a class in differential equations, you always start with those basic examples that you can solve explicitly. Once you get out into the "real world," you quickly realize how futile it is to dream of finding an exact, closed-form solution. Our professor had to respond to this student by explaining something about the general theory of differential equations, to which the student replied with apparent dissatisfaction. She was only interested in "the answer." Of course, our professor is not planning on wasting any more time with this e-mail.

The incident highlights an important fact: very few people actually understand what I do. (Most days I don't even understand what I do, which is why we call it "research.") To me this is rather unfortunate, because I actually think what I do has a tremendous philosophical contribution to make to the sciences. Too often the contribution of mathematics is seen in purely utilitarian terms: we can model a "real-world" process in mathematical terms, thereby understanding it in rigorous quantitative terms. I think there's a lot more to it than that.

What I do is actually a little strange. First, I start with a mathematical model, that is, an equation or a system of equations. The equations I study are often called evolution equations because they are supposed to describe how a system evolves at each (usually infinitesimal) increment of time. In other words, the system of equations constitutes a set of rules which describe the behavior of certain components of a system. (The technical term for this concept is dynamical system.) As a very simple example, think of a ball being dropped from a few feet above the floor. The rule governing its motion is given by Newton's law: the weight of the ball is a force, and this implies a certain acceleration. So since I know the weight of the ball, at each infinitesimal interval of time, I can describe how its position with respect to the floor is changing. This gives me an evolution equation (or differential equation).

Now here's the strange part. Instead of trying to observe what actually happens and then coming up with a way of describing it, I go the other way around: I take the system of equations I'm studying, and I see what the resulting behavior should be. For instance, the fundamental question I usually ask is whether this dynamical system is well posed. By that I mean, does it pass the following criteria: for each initial condition (how the system looks at the beginning), is there a solution? and is that solution unique? and if I change the initial condition slightly, does the solution change only slightly? In other words, does it behave the way we intuitively expect things to happen in real life? Usually we can expect that if I drop a ball from a certain point above the ground, it won't suddenly explode, it won't suddenly fall upward, and it probably won't fall in a significantly different way if I happen to hold it up slightly higher from the ground.

Once this fundamental question has been asked about the system being well posed, I can then ask other questions. How does this system behave in the long run? What if I change the system of equations slightly? What if I add some component to the equations, representing some sort of force on the system? All of these questions can be addressed mathematically.

What is going on philosophically? There are two fundamentally different notions of causality that I see at work in the sciences. One is what I'll call linear causality. This is the view that life is a series of unfolding events, and in order to explain one kind of event, you must find some other kind of event that caused it. For example, if you want to explain why someone has lung cancer, perhaps you will explain it by saying that he smoked too much. However, from this point of view there are many things which are surprisingly difficult to describe. For instance, what caused the recent financial collapse in 2008? What caused the Industrial Revolution? What causes the weather? Such questions are very difficult to understand in terms of linear sequences of events.

The second notion of causality is what I'll call systemic causality. From this point of view, instead of viewing the world as a series of events which unfold in a progression, we see things as components of a system governed by overarching rules. Mathematics justifies this notion of causality by showing how it might logically operate. What we can show is that intricate structures or patterns can come into existence through the repeated application of a rule, rather than, say, through a predetermined structure imposed on the system. Of course, one cannot explain this without referring to much more complex example than dropping a ball.

Let's consider, for example, Newton's explanation of the motion of the planets (we should also give credit to Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, Hooke, et al). Instead of resorting to the classical explanation that planets and stars had fixed spheres in which to move, Newton saw the whole thing as a dynamical system. That is, he could show that all of the complex orbits of the planets are natural consequences of simple rules. Actually, you really only need one simple rule: Newton's law of universal gravitation. From this rule, if you want to understand what the resulting planetary motion will be, all you have to do is solve the "N-body problem." Thus the beautiful and complex order we see in the heavens can be explained using a systemic approach. A linear explanation never could have given us the understanding we now have, because motion is not simply a sequence of events, but an abstract pattern. Fortunately, such abstract patterns can be shown to be logically tied to rules, thanks to mathematics.

There are other examples of systemic causality where mathematics was originally not part of the explanation. Charles Darwin's explanation of how species came to be so diverse relied not on a linear, but a systemic explanation. He proposed a simple rule, natural selection, which could be repeatedly applied to result in biological diversity. Like Newton's law of universal gravitation, natural selection is simply a rule that all components of a system--namely living organisms--seem to follow. Darwin's burden was to show that there was indeed a logical connection between this rule and the kind of general pattern we see in nature.

Another good example, before Darwin and after Newton, would be Adam Smith, attempting to explain how wealthy nations had acquired their prosperity. Instead of seeking a linear explanation, which would have made Wealth of Nations into a history book, he sought a systemic explanation, thus helping to usher in economics as a science in its own right. He showed that the principle of market exchange could explain the general order we observe. If Newton's and Darwin's theories may have been religiously subversive, explaining nature without God (though Newton himself didn't see it that way), Smith's theory was political subversive, explaining how economic flourishing could come about without any particular guidance from the state.

I have often noticed, however, this is not the kind of explanation usually desired by most people. Linear explanations are still the most frequent in our daily lives. This is probably because, in order to accomplish our particular goals, we have to plan things sequentially. We do not often need an abstract theory to explain the concrete events of our own lives. I imagine this is the case even for many scientists, or at least for engineers, medical researchers, and the like, whose main focus is on solving concrete problems. However, I am willing to wager that certain fields, particularly medicine, could benefit greatly from a more systemic rather than linear approach. It's fine that doctors are able to link symptoms with diseases, and thereby prescribe a correct treatment. This has certainly made a lot of sick people well. But if we are concerned, say, with curing cancer, I highly doubt any progress can be made without systemic explanations, and I bet mathematics might be able to help with that.

On a political level, I would say our politicians are overwhelmingly biased toward ad hoc solutions rather than considering long term principles. This is simultaneously a moral failing and an intellectual error. The idea that some particular jobs program will in fact create the kind of economy that we want (as if anyone knows what that may be) completely ignores the scientific insight of Adam Smith. If we're concerned about the economy, we ought to be focused on the general rules which make prosperity possible, rather than on the particular goals we think are important at the time.

Finally, on a theological level, I find it interesting that today we have such a controversy over Darwin's theory of evolution, when in fact this theory is a natural consequence of the general way of thinking I have outlined here. I wonder if Christians who understand the implications of Newton's laws find them to be subversive to the faith. My sense is that they do not. But why, then, is Darwin so demonized? If God has so structured the universe that simple rules can result in beautiful complexity, what are we to say against that? Do we subvert his authority by using mathematics? It should be abundantly clear from what I have said that evolution is not "random." It need not be without purpose, either. It is written in our scriptures that God shows no partiality, and in a way, that is all the theory of evolution says: all things in heaven and on earth are subject to the same laws, which wondrously result in the beautiful and complex order which we get to experience.

I suspect all of this raises more questions than it answers, but I hope it raises the right questions. That is, after all, how we make progress.

My cousin a featured artist on Transpositions

2011-10-28T23:19:00.002-04:00

Check it out.

"Transpositions is a collaborative effort of students associated with the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the University of St Andrews, voted runner-up as Best Newcomer Blog in the Christian New Media Awards 2010."

Also, check out Jonathan's web site.

Dostoyevsky on personal sacrifice

2011-10-26T21:19:00.003-04:00

I found this passage from The Brothers Karamazov particularly relevant to my life right now. In it, the narrator discusses Alyosha's decision to join a monastery (emphasis added):

He entered upon this path only because, at that time, it alone struck his imagination and presented itself to him as offering an ideal means of escape for his soul from darkness to light. Add to that that he was to some extent a youth of our last epoch--that is, honest in nature, desiring the truth, seeking for it and believing in it, and seeking to serve it at once with all the strength of his soul, seeking for immediate action, and ready to sacrifice everything, life itself, for it. Though these young men unhappily fail to understand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of their seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiply tenfold their powers of serving the truth and the cause they have set before them as their goal--such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength of many of them. The path Alyosha chose was a path going in the opposite direction, but he chose it with the same thirst for swift achievement. As soon as he reflected seriously he was convinced of the existence of God and immortality, and at once he instinctively said to himself: "I want to live for immortality, and I will accept no compromise." In the same way, if he had decided that God and immortality did not exist, he would at once have become an atheist and a socialist.

There are many times in the middle of that long process of giving yourself to study or training when you wonder if it's worth it. Shouldn't I be doing something that makes a difference? Shouldn't I be stopping injustice right now? Do I really have the luxury to spend this time considering what's true and false, right and wrong, rather than simply acting on my beliefs?

Speaking from personal experience, I think all of us who are in the middle of something like graduate work tend to have those moments, at least from time to time, of feeling tired, worthless, and even embarrassed. Why exactly did I choose to do this rather than pursue something more lucrative with my abilities? Or better, why didn't I start some project that directly addresses poverty and injustice? As a Christian, it's easy to start thinking, am I really honoring God? Shouldn't I be spreading the good news, or something?

Such thoughts surely have a ring of truth, but it's comforting to hear this wise narrator offer the counterargument, that in fact these questions are largely motivated by selfish instincts. Not that this justifies my graduate studies, or whatever. It just reminds me of my natural limitations, that even my good desires--for truth and goodness and justice--can be misleading. I think that's why freedom is so important for Christians. It turns out the most righteous of us can actually be the most wrong, even when they appear to be the most right.

Bastiat on democracy

2011-10-24T23:13:00.002-04:00

Frederic Bastiat makes fun of the contradiction between the socialists' view of voting rights and their view of individual liberties:

When it is time to vote, apparently the voter is not to be asked for any guarantee of his wisdom. His will and capacity to choose wisely are taken for granted. Can the people be mistaken? Are we not living in an age of enlightenment? What! are the people always to be kept on leashes? Have they not won their rights by great effort and sacrifice? Have they not given ample proof of their intelligence and wisdom? Are they not adults? Are they not capable of judging for themselves? Do they not know what is best for themselves? Is there a class or a man who would be so bold as to set himself above the people, and judge and act for them? No, no, the people are and should be free. They desire to manage their own affairs, and they should do so.But when the legislator is finally elected--ah! then indeed does the tone of his speech undergo a radical change. The people are returned to passiveness, inertness, and unconsciousness; the legislator enters into omnipotence. Now it is for him to initiate, to direct, to propel, and to organize. Mankind has only to submit; the hour of despotism has struck. We now observe this fatal idea: The people who, during the election, where so wise, so moral, and so perfect, now have no tendencies whatever; or if they have any, they are tendencies that lead downward into degradation.

And I can't resist reproducing this passage:

The claims of these organizers of humanity raise another question which I have often asked them and which, so far as I know, they have never answered: If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? The organizers maintain that society, when left undirected, rushes headlong to its inevitable destruction because the instincts of the people are so perverse. The legislators claim to stop this suicidal course and to give it a saner direction. Apparently, then, the legislators and the organizers have received from Heaven an intelligence and virtue that place them beyond and above mankind; if so, let them show their titles to this superiority.

I daresay this essay is still one of the best defenses of a free society in existence. Bastiat shows us how a true egalitarian is also a libertarian.

Frederic Bastiat on socialist anthropology

2011-10-23T17:54:00.000-04:00

Here is an absolute must read: Frederic Bastiat's tract entitled, "The Law." Frederic Bastiat was a French economist who lived in the first half of the nineteenth century, who was bold enough to challenge the followers of the great Rousseau ("who consider themselves far advanced, but whom I consider twenty centuries behind the times," writes Bastiat). He challenged the fundamental assumptions of socialism, and wrote an essay repudiating all forms of government intervention, including "protective tariffs, subsidies, guaranteed profits, guaranteed jobs, relief and welfare schemes, public education, progressive taxation, free credit, and public works," all of which he says "are always based on legal plunder, organized injustice." According to Bastiat, the main purpose of the Law was to banish all plunder from a society, which he defined as that "fatal desire" in mankind "to live and prosper at the expense of others." Instead, he points out, the Law ends up being used for the opposite purpose: either that the few should profit at the expense of the many, or that they many should profit at the expense of the few; or that everyone should profit at the expense of everyone else.

At the heart of his argument is a fundamental objection to the intellectual assumptions of his day concerning the nature of human beings. Consider, first of all, this critique:

"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all.

"We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. [Ironic from today's perspective, isn't it?] We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain."

This confusion between state and society is connected to a view of the human being as "inert," so the the relationship between the intellectual and society is like that "between a potter and clay":

"Present-day writers--especially those of the socialist school of thought--base their various theories upon one common hypothesis: They divide mankind into two parts. People in general--with the exception of the writer himself--from the first group. The writer, all alone, forms the second and most important group. Surely this is the weirdest and most conceited notion that ever entered a human brain!

"In fact, these writers on public affairs begin by supposing that people have within themselves no means of discernment; no motivation to action. The writers assume that people are inert matter, passive particles, motionless atoms, at best a kind of vegetation indifferent to its own manner of existence. They assume that people are susceptible to being shaped--by the will and hand of another person--into an infinite variety of forms, more or less symmetrical, artistic, and perfected."

Bastiat's view was quite different. In his view, human productivity and cooperation were tendencies given to us through Providence, and were not the product of the state. Order was achieved through spontaneous forces, which no government had the power to create or control.

This essay by Bastiat seems as timely as ever. I do not think the intellectual climate in the West has ever moved toward full acceptance of the idea that society and the state are fundamentally distinct categories. Our political discourse is dominated by the assumption that government "manages" society, and it is taken for granted that we must compete with one another for representation in government if we want our slice of the pie. I challenge everyone to rethink these assumptions, and stop pretending that our modern problems are so very different from the problems faced in centuries past!

Between private and political

2011-10-18T20:08:00.001-04:00

What is the role of an individual in a liberal social order? The philosophy of modern liberalism has in some sense tried to make this a nonsensical question by insisting that roles always come from human authority, and therefore the individual has no role, other than what he chooses for himself. As Stanley Hauerwas puts it in "Preaching as Though We Had Enemies,"

"the project of modernity was to produce people who believe they should have no story except the story they choose when they have no story."

It is essentially in response to Hauerwas' essay, along with another powerful piece by David Hart entitled "Christ and Nothing," that I want to give some reflections on the individual's role in a liberal society. Both Hauerwas and Hart have given devastating critiques of liberalism. My goal, in a word, is to revive liberalism from a Christian point of view.

The essential point of liberalism is to oppose all arbitrary power. This point can only be made coherently if one can somehow account for a transcendent moral order in which human beings do not by their own reason determine what is right and wrong. It was with this in mind that James Madison aimed to construct "a government of laws and not of men." Thus the central aim of liberalism rests on a profoundly Christian belief that the ultimate Judge of the universe "shows no partiality."

Did the project of modern liberalism live up to this belief? Hart and Hauerwas point out the many ways in which it didn't, but I want to complain that they don't give it enough credit. The triumph of the individual will over and against all hierarchy may come with significant problems, but you can't tell me there's no value in the unleashing of private enterprise, the increase in widespread education, the tremendous increase in living standards, and the gradual overthrow of horrifying institutions such as slavery accomplished due to the Enlightenment. Although the "atomistic" individualism which gave this era its driving force has had evil consequences for us, I would suggest that it comes from the fact that this kind of freedom is still so new, relatively speaking. There is still no nation on earth which has actually matured as a free society. It seems to me at least somewhat forgivable if people overindulge in the first fruits of a newly won freedom.

Yet it behooves me to admit that liberalism has, in many ways, failed. The central irony of modern liberalism has been beautifully stated in a 2009 article by Phillip Blond:

"To understand why the legacy of liberalism produces both state authoritarianism and atomised individualism, we must first note that philosophical liberalism was born out of an 18th-century critique of absolute monarchies. It sought to protect the rights of the individual from arbitrary abuse by the king. But so extreme did the defence of individual liberty become that each man was obliged to refuse the dictates of any other—for that would be simply to replace rule by one man’s will (the king) with rule by another. As such, the most extreme form of liberal autonomy requires the repudiation of society—for human community influences and shapes the individual before any sovereign capacity to choose has taken shape. The liberal idea of man is then, first of all, an idea of nothing: not family, not ethnicity, not society or nation. But real people are formed by the society of others. For liberals, autonomy must precede everything else, but such a “self” is a fiction. A society so constituted would be one that required a powerful central authority to manage the perpetual conflict between self-interested individuals. So the unanticipated bequest of an unlimited liberalism is that most illiberal of entities: the controlling state. Even the most “communitarian” liberals—from philosophers like Michael Sandel to politicians like Ed Miliband—cannot promote community without big government. They see the state as the answer, when it usually makes the problem worse. The legacy of liberal individualism is the restoration of the very absolutism that it originally sought to overthrow—a philosophical tragedy that can be summed up as: “the king is dead, long live the king.”"

Blond thinks the answer is a more communitarian conservatism, which defines the individual's role substantially in terms of what he calls community. I disagree with that assessment, not because I don't think the community is important, but rather because I disagree with the theory of community that underlies such arguments. The conservative, it would appear from Blond's essay, thinks of community as inherently political. In my view, the community exists between private and political. I do not mean to suggest that the private, public, and political lives and individuals can be ranked in an order that places the public life in second place. On the contrary, the public life an individual in some sense stands above both his private and political lives, providing both a link between the two as well as a sort of regulatory mechanism to keep both in their place.

It is unfortunate that so many liberal thinkers have stressed the role of the individual as one of pursuing "his own interests." There was a time, perhaps, when people understood "his own interests" to simply mean "what he understands to be worth pursuing." The main point here is not so much that authority never comes into the picture, but rather that political authority is kept at bay in favor of the individual choosing whom he will serve. This principle stands at the edge of a precipice, at the bottom of which is the sad notion that each individual must choose from nothing which path in life he prefers. The true liberal must resist falling, and must perhaps seek to rescue his fallen brethren from the abyss.

With this in mind, let me suggest that the role of an individual in a liberal social order is, from a Christian perspective, to obey God rather than men. This can only be accomplished through a common tradition, which in turn can only be transmitted through community. A community, in a proper sense, gains authority over the individual not through coercion or force, but through service, which is just the opposite. In other words, the community gives life to the individual and thereby gains the individual's trust. This is not politics; it is tradition in the best sense. Through a community, then, an individual's beliefs, values, and reason are developed, until that individual is able with his own voice to affirm and critique the broader society around him.

The government, on the other hand, is that institution which society permits to have coercive powers. For this reason the State is not at all a community. It does not form individuals through tradition, but through force. It cannot serve the individual except by exploiting other individuals. It cannot transmit beliefs and values except by mere propaganda. In short, most powers wielded by the State are arbitrary, destructive, and subversive to the proper relationship between individuals and their creator.

The complaint that liberalism is essentially negative is a misunderstanding, albeit probably based on experience. Of course liberalism sounds negative in the context of politics, since its goal is essentially to limit the power of government. (In case you haven't noticed, I mean here "liberalism" in the classical sense.) But on what basis do we limit the power of government? On a belief in nothing? By no means. On the contrary, the role of government must be limited by the same Law from which its authority is originally derived. Since this Law cannot come from any one individual or even any one community, it follows that government must not be allowed to pursue the particular interests of any one individual or community.

I admit that classical liberals do not seem to focus very much on the community and its role in the formation and protection of the individual. In all probability this has to do with the very skeptical tradition within liberalism and its suspicion of all authority, especially the church. But even a secular thinker like F. A. Hayek could state with confidence that

"There can be no doubt, of course, that in the language of the great writers of the eighteenth century it was man's "self-love," or even his "selfish interests," which they represented as the "universal mover," and that by these terms they were referring primarily to a moral attitude, which they thought to be widely prevalent. These terms, however, did not mean egotism in the narrow sense of concern with only the immediate needs of one's proper person. The "self," for which alone people were supposed to care, did as a matter of course include their family and friends; and it would have made no difference to the argument if it had included anything for which people in fact did care.

For a Christian, the community which is of fundamental importance in the formation of individual conscience is the church. The question we must ask ourselves, with respect to society, is whether that community is essentially a political one, or whether it stands between the individual and the State. I suggest the latter, and I reiterate that in this sense the church must be both a link and a buffer between the individual and the State. On the one hand, the church should affirm the role of the State as being the sole institution with properly coercive powers. On the other hand, the church ought basically to oppose all such coercive powers except those needed to prevent individuals and communities from harming one another. In both cases, the primary motivation should be the church's belief that it bears the truth about God, and that it alone can speak with any authority about how the individual ought to live. Yet the church, despite or perhaps because of this belief, should be committed to humility and to nonviolence, which includes refraining from all coercion.

As a final comment, I'm convinced Hauerwas is more liberal than he knows. Anyone who can maintain an absolute position of nonviolence and at the same time believe in the absolute necessity of "going to war" with ideological enemies is a true liberal. That is really the whole point of freedom, after all. We must be free to love one another even as we fight for truth's sake.

Republicans and businessmen

2011-10-16T21:38:00.003-04:00

Here is, finally, a Republican explaining true free market principles (the link is here). I listened to the whole Bloomberg debate from the other night. All of the other Republicans (beside Ron Paul) were touting the virtues of having private sector experience, claiming this makes them better equipped (than Obama) to "manage the economy."

Let's think about that for a moment. Do we need businessmen with their experience "managing" the economy?

No. In the first place, the government is not a business, as Ron Paul expresses quite well. Its purpose is not to maximize profit. Its purpose is to execute impartial justice and protect the American people. It sounds so sensible and even conservative to insist that government ought to act more like a business and balance its budget. But the important thing actually is not balancing its budget, but minimizing coercion.

In the second place, businessmen are likely to be biased toward businesses. "Corporate welfare" is no less part of big government policies than actual welfare. Who wins when the government gives big bailouts? The "little guy"? In the sense that he may not have to change his current employment, maybe...but in terms of justice it is, of course, the rich and powerful who benefit at the expense of the poor when government "manages the economy." And in the long run this management will make us all poorer than we otherwise would have been.

It is a myth that supporters of the free market must be people who appreciate business sense and buy into the attitudes of business culture. It is often quite the opposite. If businessmen are allowed to use political means to pursue their own interests, this is a perversion of justice and not a free market. Political means are coercive. The only legitimate market means for making a profit are non-coercive activities.

That Republicans are generally the party of businessmen makes them less, not more, attractive to a free market libertarian.

What would Jesus do?

2011-10-16T20:36:00.000-04:00

Stealing from Failbook.

Florensky on community

2011-10-13T23:58:00.001-04:00

From Letter Eleven in The Pillar and Ground of the Truth (scripture references in original):

Equal love for all and each in their unity, concentrated in a single focus of love for several, even for one in his separation from the general unity; disclosure before all, openness with everyone, together with esotericism, the mystery of the few; the greatest democratism together with the strictest aristocratism; "absolutely all are the elect" together with the elect of the elect; "preach the gospel to every creature" (Mark 16:15; Cf. Col. 1:23) together with "neither cast ye your pearls before swine" (Matt. 7:6); in brief, agape-philia--such are the antinomic dualities of the Good News. The power of the Gospel is accessible to all, does not need an interpreter. But this power is also thoroughly esoteric; not one word in the Gospel can be understood correctly without the "tradition of the elders," without the interpretation of spiritual guides, successively handing down the meaning of the Gospel from generation to generation. The Book clear as crystal is at the same time the Book with seven seals. All are equal in a Christian community and, at the same time, the whole structure of the community is hierarchical.

"Antinomic dualities" are at the heart of all of Florensky's theology, so it's important constantly to stress where this is coming from. Truth itself is not found apart from love, and love is found in self-denial leading to self-revelation, which is fully reflected in the Triune existence of God and more specifically in the incarnation and cross of Christ. Everything leading to the Truth, then, has an antinomical structure, consisting of two opposites which cannot be reconciled by the rational mind, but in fact reinforce one another to the spiritual mind. That is the starting point.

Here Florensky shows, as he always does, how essential this antinomical structure is to Christian life. Community itself consists thrives on a contradiction between the essential equality of all members and their essential inequality. Choose one or the other, and you'll get it wrong. Only by embracing both aspects of community, and allowing them to reinforce one another, can you fully understand--and, more importantly, experience--community.

Likewise, community has an antinomic structure in that it is both collectivist and individualist. Jesus came to call a people to himself; yet he also had disciples set apart, whom he called friends--one, in particular, called "the disciple whom Jesus loved." Jesus loves all of us, but this phrase refers to only one person in all of human history. The experience of community cannot be merely collective and abstract, but also must be concrete and personal. That is the tension. It cannot be resolved by reason, but only by love. Indeed, love finds genuine expression by embracing this tension.

Milton Friedman on balancing the budget

2011-10-12T20:53:00.000-04:00

Milton Friedman, that crazy Tea Party activist (and Nobel Prize winning economist), insisted that balancing the government's budget isn't the real problem. The real fundamental question is, as you can hear at 6:42,

"The real question is, how much are you required to spend, one way or another--directly or indirectly, by taxes, by lending, by inflation--what fraction of your income are you required to devote to have other people spend it, supposedly on your behalf?"

Today it is accepted by virtually everyone that any reasonable person would accept that we need to balance the federal budget by a combination of spending cuts and revenue increases. Of course, that's what normal people must do, so clearly that is what the federal government must do. Thus, to suggest that taxes should not be increased to pay for the federal budget is taken as doctrinaire, the crazed thinking of Tea Party fanatics. Was Milton Friedman, then, simply a fanatic?

As shocking as it sounds to suggest that a great majority of the population is in error, that is unfortunately the case today (as nearly always). The government is not a for-profit business. It is not a household. It does not increase revenue by working harder or by making a better product. If this were how the government increased revenue, I'd be all in favor of it. But let's be clear, that is not what is meant when people so casually suggest "increasing revenue." What is obviously meant is increasing taxes.

Now as Milton Friedman points out in this video, government deficit is already a tax. That money has to be paid off somehow. Make no mistake, when the government spends money, it is always spending your money. The more money the government spends, the more of your money is being spent. In other words, the more the government spends, the less freedom you have.

Unfortunately, conservatives have tried to make the case that we can balance the budget like reasonable businessmen and yet not increase taxes. The government is not a business, and we don't need businessmen running the government. What we need is a government that protects, rather than degrades, our liberty. This can only be done by reducing the amount of money government forces us to spend. Raising taxes is not a morally neutral way of "increasing revenue." It is an immoral act of force, which can only be justified insofar as it is necessary to defend our country and provide a legal system which upholds individual liberty.

There are other options, of course. It is possible, in theory, that the government could charter legitimate businesses, which must play by all the same rules as other businesses in a state of free market competition. From such firms the government could, in theory, generate revenue for various programs it would like to maintain. That is, of course, never how it works in practice. Businesses with government charters almost always get special privileges. But I wanted to mention this, lest anyone think that I am dogmatically opposed to all means of providing public services through the federal government. No, all I am dogmatically opposed to is coercion, which happens every time the government spends your money without asking your permission.

A less violent society?

2011-10-11T17:31:00.000-04:00

Steven Pinker has written a book entitled, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, in which he argues that human civilization has been evolving into a more peaceful one. I heard an interview with Pinker on NPR the other day. I found some of his statistics encouraging, and some of his arguments persuasive, but I'm a bit skeptical of the idea that human nature has actually improved.

Keep in mind that there are two very different questions one could ask. We could ask, on the one hand, whether "human nature" has improved, meaning that humans have become fundamentally more moral and genuinely more interested in the good of other human beings. We could also ask, on the other hand, whether institutions have evolved to constrain certain evil tendencies, thus producing a more benevolent societies. I suspect a positive answer to the latter question is far more likely than for the former.

Even so, even if private violence has decreased over time, this does not mean that violence in general has. I appreciated this review by Tyler Cowen, in which he makes this exact point:

Another hypothesis is to see modern violence as lower, especially in the private sphere, because the state is much more powerful. Could this book have been titled The Nationalization of Violence? But nationalization does not mean that violence goes away, especially at the most macro levels. In a variant on my point above, one way of describing the observed trend is “less frequent violent outbursts, but more deadlier outbursts when they come.” Both greater wealth (weapons are more destructive, and thus used less often, and there is a desire to preserve wealth) and the nationalization of violence point toward that pattern. That would help explain why the two World Wars, Stalin, Chairman Mao, and the Holocaust, all came not so long ago, despite a (supposed) trend toward greater peacefulness. Those are hard data points for Pinker to get around, no matter how he tries.

And here is another very good point:

When doing the statistics, one key issue is how to measure violence. Pinker often favors “per capita” measures, but I am not so sure. I might prefer a weighted average of per capita and “absolute quantity of violence” measures. Killing six million Jews in the Holocaust is not, in my view, “half as violent” if global population is twice as high. Once you toss in the absolute measures with the per capita measures, the long-term trends are not nearly as favorable as Pinker suggests.

To put it cynically, if I kill someone so that I can feed my children, it's murder; if America carpet bombs innocent civilians, it's national defense.

One more thought, which is sadly all too easy to dismiss by a great majority of the mainstream media: If not for the ideological claim advanced in the latter part of the 20th century that unborn children are not human, it would be very easy to demonstrate that violence has greatly increased in our generation. In our country alone, there have been 53,000,000 abortions since 1973. This cannot be counted as part of Pinker's data, because he cannot accept it as violence. But it's hard for me to accept that 53,000,000 bloody corpses are a sign of a more peaceful society.

Still, I think we do a disservice to society by always speaking in dreary terms, as if civilization never makes any moral progress. Slavery was once commonly accepted as a legitimate practice virtually everywhere around the world. Now it is accepted almost nowhere. That's progress.

The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life. Moral progress is far from inevitable, but neither is it futile. It's good to be reminded of both sides; I think Pinker probably dwells on one more than the other. Still, it's probably a good read. Maybe I'll pick it up one of these days.

ReasonTV on international adoption policy

2011-10-08T18:15:00.001-04:00

One of the more interesting pieces I've seen by ReasonTV. It's nice to see libertarians talking about real humanitarian issues, you know?

I think it's really sad that we don't think about these issues more. Our political discourse is so wrapped up in American issues, we rarely ever think about how political ideas affect those less fortunate all over the world. The "international community" is really a euphemism for a bunch of elites with mind-boggling amounts of power over the lives of other people. That kind of power is dangerous, even in the hands of good people. You'll find in this video yet another story of immense harm done in the name of good intentions.

There is also reason to question, to a certain extent, the very intentions driving international policies emanating from the UN. In the middle of the video you'll find some of the interviews critiquing the idea that there's some inherent value in a child growing up in her native culture. Any policies which seek to preserve abstract cultural identities are inherently flawed. People, including children, ought to be viewed as individuals, and we ought to work toward allowing all people the greatest possible opportunity for individual thriving. There are many people who seem to believe there is something morally desirable about preserving culture, but I confess I don't think this belief has any basis whatsoever.

I also think this is a very important issue from a sanctity of life perspective. Everyone who cares about abortion cares (or ought to care) about adoption. If life is sacred, we need some societal mechanisms by which we can care for life, and I think one of those mechanisms should be a voluntary adoption process. The problem is that government doesn't seem to want to solve issues of abuse by simply forcing laws. It seems to want to solve them by just taking over the whole process. That is precisely the way in which, on any given issue, government becomes more of a hindrance than a help. It is tragic that there isn't more widespread belief in the ability of free cooperation to take care of orphans.

Watch the video, tell me what you think.

Incomprehensible concreteness

2011-10-08T01:36:00.000-04:00

In the past few years I've been strongly rebelling against the long-standing trend in Western thought toward seeing God as so abstract as to be incomprehensible. Whether it's the classical "three O" definition of God (omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent) or Anselm's ontological characterization of God as "the greatest possible being" or Descartes' imagined corollary of his own self-evident existence (okay, technically his thought was self-evident, which then implied his existence), I find most philosophical approaches start with the abstract and work their way "down." (Note how skeptical I am of this metaphor. Who says abstract knowledge is "higher" than concrete details?) And in case I don't seem to talking about things that matter in the real world, just find a random web site for Christian apologetics and look for the basic arguments. If you don't find something like St. Thomas Aquinas's five arguments very quickly, I'd be surprised.

It would be a little strange, and possibly quite offensive, if someone asked me how I knew my father existed. I knew him, and there's no other way to say it than that. I could describe to you many things about him--that he was a pastor, that he obtained four degrees in four different decades, that he was the most passionate and caring person you'd ever met, that he was brilliant and loved to teach, and on and on.... But these are simply things about him, abstracted away from the concrete existence of the man who was my father. Everyone I have ever met since I graduated from high school lacks and will always lack the actual, concrete knowledge of my father, and know words can ever give that to them.

It's a good thing, in some ways, that we have abstract language in order to communicate experiences that we can never actually share. A friend of mine just recently lost her own father. In some ways it was possible to share that pain with her, to grieve with her, and to let her know she wasn't alone. That is the benefit of having language. On the other hand, the limits of language were painfully apparent to both of us as we struggled to make verbal sense of our grief. Ironic, really, how two people can share a related experience and be mutually aware of how impossible it is to actually share it.

The concrete is far more incomprehensible than the abstract. You can know it, but you can never understand it. Love is that way. Beauty is that way. Even truth itself, at its core, is that way.

That's why I kind of resent the idea that I need a five point argument for the existence of God--or any argument, really. You either know him or you don't. And I suspect there's actually no such thing as simply not knowing him. Some people just think they should be able to understand if they really want to know. I can tell you, if that were the case, we would never know love.

Not so magical

2011-10-04T20:18:00.001-04:00

Today I went with a friend to see Richard Dawkins speak at our very own University of Virginia. I was thoroughly underwhelmed. Perhaps it would have been better if I had gone into it knowing that it was simply a promotion for his new book, The Magic of Reality, which is essentially a children's atheist bible. Now if I just insert a few words into the title, like so:

Taking the Magic Out of of Reality

well then, yes, I think that about sums up the lecture today.

Dawkins opened his talk by apologizing that he might sound patronizing, since the book was originally aimed at children of age 12, but he hoped that the book would be valuable to people of all ages. Whenever you hear that expression, "Fun for all ages," don't believe it--the grown-ups will be bored to tears, I assure you. From his high-school level exposition of evolutionary biology to his stumbling explanation of how a prism really splits white light into colors (he wasn't quite successful today with his I-Pad apps), Dawkins was always somewhere in between putting me to sleep and offending me. Does one have to be an atheist to understand rainbows? It's amazing to me how he can consistently disparage any and all religious beliefs as antiquated myths and simultaneously reference scientists like Newton and Copernicus as intellectual giants, without ever dealing with the simple fact that such men had faith.

But that isn't the thing that really bugged me about this talk. Dawkins apparently had some desire to display genuine reverence for truth and to show just how beautiful the natural world really is. How, then, did he come up so short? This I can only explain by pointing out the tension between the desire to find beauty in the universe and the belief that only skepticism is an acceptable lens through which to view it. The word awe simply never came up. Speaking for myself, I heard not a trace of passion in his voice as Dawkins explain that our planet is but a tiny speck of dust compared to our sun, which is itself insignificant compared with the galaxy which enfolds it, which is itself but one out of hundreds of billions in the universe. If you can speak of such things without trembling, you simply have no sense of place in the universe.

The last chapter of Dawkins' book, on miracles, really says everything about the kind of philosophy into which he would like to indoctrinate young minds. He believes in strict rationalism, an approach to learning which refuses to accept anything which has not first been proved. It might be worth pointing out that the proposition that we ought to be rationalists cannot be proved, except by appealing to assumptions which themselves have not been proved. But aside from being logically self-defeating, this philosophy is not as consistent as it would appear with the reality of scientific progress. Were we to throw out the notion of trust entirely, we could not build on the work of others to form a scientific consensus. Trust in some sort of community is a necessary part of all intellectual development, including scientific. Dawkins knows this. That is why he works hard to build community among those who are like-minded. It just doesn't seem to occur to him that this desire for community might have implications for the philosophy he espouses.

This is not going to be a "refute atheism" post. I realize there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of all religions, and I encourage a healthy amount of skepticism in everyone. All I would warn against is making skepticism into an end in itself, and putting one's faith solely in mankind's ability to explain and control reality. Such faith tends to cannibalize itself; it destroys the very magic it once so longed to find.

Ron Paul flip-flops!

2011-10-02T21:21:00.000-04:00

I found it! There is one issue on which Ron Paul has actually changed his mind: the death penalty. Check it out:

I would have to say I agree with him...

Legislating morality

2011-10-01T21:02:00.000-04:00

What should be the government's role in legislating morality?

The claim you sometimes hear on the left is that the government should not legislate morality at all. This is complete disingenuous. All law is legislated morality. Laws aren't simply recommendations; they come backed with a threat of coercion. If the government is going to threaten to coerce me if I don't follow a particular law, they had better have a good moral argument why I should obey the law. Otherwise, they are no more than brute tyrants. In fact, the left wants to legislate morality all the time and it is completely irrational that they would call it anything else. From income redistribution to food regulations to funding social welfare programs, the left has in mind a moral vision for our country which is has every right to defend in a free society. Only don't pretend no morals are being enforced.

The right, on the other hand, will often strongly endorse the belief that all law is legislated morality. The enthusiasm is a little too strong, however, and very often the right has a very uncritical view of the relationship between morals and laws. For instance, many conservatives will go so far as to propose a constitutional amendment "to protect the institution of marriage." Yet no Republican has seriously proposed a federal ban on divorce. "Traditional values" don't seem to have a clear definition, and the phrase is mostly tossed around in order to rally support for the latest trend in conservative activism.

Libertarians, commonly speaking, tend to favor the left's position that the government ought not to legislate morality. Arguably they are more consistent in this, since they oppose government intervention in both personal and economic spheres of life. Yet unless you are actually an anarchist (in which case none of this applies to you) then you must concede that the government's role is in fact to enforce laws which protect freedom. Thus the argument I made against the left still applies: laws must really be enforced morals, or else they are nothing but tyrannical decrees.

Hopefully each of these caricatures can help warn us against pitfalls in our reasoning about these issues. The fact that we really don't think very clearly about this question shows up in political debates all the time. Very rarely to people have sound principles in mind when they decide that something ought to be law. They implicitly base their arguments on personal experience, without recognizing the unavoidable fact that our personal experience captures an exceedingly minuscule portion of reality.

In most political discussion, it would appear that morals can fall into one of only two categories: private and public. Private morals are principles which guide your own life, such as your sexual conduct, your work ethic, your religious life, and how much you will give to charity. Public morals are rules that all of us have to follow if we are to have an ordered society. They are things like "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not steal." These morals prohibit behaviors that harm others, and so others are entitled to force us to abide by them.

Most Americans seem to make the very bad assumption that no one ought to interfere in your private morals, and, simultaneously, the government has every right to interfere in all of your public morals. Thus politics becomes a battle over which morals are to cross over the line between private and public, with absolutely no gradation in between. The general result of this has been to make everything more and more public, which therefore results in more government interference, because, after all, no man is an island. The libertarian reaction to this situation is taken to be "hyper-individualist," because the notion that government should not interfere with our daily affairs is automatically equated with the idea that we should all be left alone.

To truly understand the proper role of government in "legislating morality," we ought to understand something about how morals function in creating a social order. We are constantly guided by morals in everything we do, and most of this guidance has nothing to do with a ruling authority. For instance, when going to a restaurant, almost everyone will pay some tip to their waiter or waitress. This is not done because of any legal obligation, but it is almost exclusively done because we have learned to imitate others, such as our parents, who did the same thing before us. The greetings that we use, the distance we stand from other people, the clothes that we wear, the words "please" and "thank you"--all of these are examples of morals guiding us, not because of any authority placed over us and not because we made them up out of thin air, but rather because we imitate others and gradually form habits.

If you join a particular company, corporation, university, or whatever, you generally pick up certain morals based on the kind of institution you have joined. In my own world of the university, certain morals have become particularly valuable in my daily life, such as originality, critical thinking, and giving credit to sources. In a more rigid hierarchical environment, the values instilled would be rather different: for instance, I can't imagine that in the military officers appreciate their soldiers questioning their decisions.

We thus see that a person's morals are built not merely from his own mind, but from the social institutions in which he participates. If he chooses to reject the morals of a particular social institution, then he will generally not be allowed to participate effectively in it. There are always exceptions to this rule, which makes life perpetually interesting.

What conclusion can we draw from this? That all morals are simply constructs of the social institutions in which we participate? No, that conclusion confuses the ability of institutions to shape moral behavior with the ability to actually construct morals. Social institutions either survive or perish based on their ability to strive for the good, as it were. In plain English, no one will join you in doing something unless they think it is worth doing. All human cooperation involves people who are jointly convinced that a particular activity results in something beneficial in one sense or another. They may disagree on why something is beneficial, but the fact that they are willing to participate signals that the activity is at least better than the alternatives. Thus every voluntary action I take is implicitly a wager that what I am doing falls within the bounds of "right."

It may be objected here that I am making too many things into moral decisions. Don't we, after all, tend to distinguish between seriously moral dilemmas and morally neutral preferences? This distinction is simply a matter of scale, not kind. My preference for chocolate rather than vanilla ice cream is not a matter of serious moral debate, but if we care to press the matter deeply we can still find it is not fundamentally detached from moral questions. If I buy more chocolate ice cream than vanilla, this sends a signal through the market price system that more chocolate ice cream ought to be produced. This raises the price for other people to buy chocolate ice cream, because resources are finite. Thus my decision has consequences for others and therefore cannot be deemed completely amoral. The question whether I should be eating ice cream at all is even more closely tied to moral questions, such as how I should treat my body and how much I should spend on luxuries. If I spend money on ice cream instead of giving it to the poor, have I done wrong? Thus something generally taken as trivial really is tied to our morals, no matter how much we may desire to simplify things.

This is not to say, however, that your ice cream preference is not, in fact, trivial. It's worth noting that many decisions, though ultimately tied to moral questions, really don't need to be given much thought. For instance, should I say hello to the person at the counter? Should I stop to talk to my friend who's working next to me at the coffee shop? Should I take that online survey? These are trivial questions, but they are still moral ones.

Other questions are more serious and in fact can have a big impact on others, yet we still seem to be better off leaving those questions to be handled by the individual or individuals most affected by them. For instance, what line of work should I choose? Where should I get a job? Whom should I marry? What religion should I believe? How much should I give to charity? These are very much moral questions, but they are not simply "private." They obviously involve other people, sometimes in drastic ways. If I choose to work for the military on creating more weapons, that might just have long-term consequences for society. If I choose to give a lot to charity, that might just (indirectly) save someone's life.

Let's bring all of this discussion back into focus. It should be clear from what I've said that

morals are not simply private, but they are formed by participation in social institutions;
morals exist in many layers covering many dimensions of society, and some layers are more critical than others;
most morals are not enforced by government, but through smaller and more diverse institutions;
we may not have perfect moral knowledge, but that does not mean there is no such thing as moral claims.

What principles, then, can we use to guide our understanding of the relationship between legislation and morality? First, we have to keep in mind the third point I made, that most morals are not, do not need to be, and in fact cannot be enforced by government. This common sense appears to go out the window whenever a political debate happens on a hot-button issue. Take drugs, for instance. If I suggest they be legalized, this is immediately taken to mean that they are basically "okay." I don't believe any such thing. But plainly government has no capacity to enforce this moral, anyway: we can't even get drugs out of prisons, much less people's homes where they live. If we want people to behave morally, there are plenty of things we can do (and already do) to change them: reason with them, shame them, shun them, or even take it upon yourself to coerce them (if they end up thanking you for it, it's not all bad, is it?). None of these involves the use of government force.

Second, coercion can stunt moral growth. While it is true that no one can become moral without experience some amount of coercion, particularly from parents, it is also true that the use of force can backfire. Our morals are learned by imitating those we respect as legitimate sources of morality. If someone we don't respect coerces us into so-called moral behavior, the result will not be moral growth, but something undesirable, such as cynicism, defiance, or repression. Consider the Social Security program, begun in the 1930's and expanded in the 1960's. Have people actually become more generous to the poor or to the old? No; as I see it, people have become more greedy, more demanding of government support, and more cynical about how the government is spending their money. This is hardly progress.

Third, the ends don't justify the means. Government is itself subject to certain morals, even as it seeks to enforce basic morals. Its ability to use force ought to be nearly as limited as our own. As it is, we should be disturbed by the growing tendency in government to use force more and more freely without due process of law.

Fourth and finally, and what I take to be a corollary of the other three, we should always err on the side of less use of force. Yes, we should have laws against murder and rape and theft. Yes, the government may have to use force to enforce those laws, but the amount of force they are allowed to use ought to be limited by what is already well-known as due process. But in general, just because we believe something to be wrong does not mean we should use force to regulate it. Society is already complex enough and already provides plenty of mechanisms for self-regulation. We should not assume that the default state of a society is chaos. Most of the means by which we develop morally do not involve force, and in fact when force is used it tends to diminish rather than improve moral development.

And, to conclude, here's a video from Ron Paul at the South Carolina Republican debate, talking about these very issues:

Still a classic.

What if the people wake up?

2011-09-28T22:03:00.000-04:00

There has been more than one attempt on Youtube to make this speech into a sensation. I like the style of this video:

If this speech doesn't get your blood boiling, you aren't paying attention.

"What if Christianity actually teaches peace?"

It's hard for me to hear those words without realizing my own need for repentance. I'm sorry to say I was once pretty much sold on the neo-con rhetoric. I once voted for Bush. I once thought the war in Iraq was necessary. I once had no idea how much was being spent on the military each year. I once had no idea how many military bases we had around the world. I once had no idea that we paid billions of dollars to train Osama bin Laden and support the Taliban. I once had very little awareness of how many times in the past several decades we have ousted democratically elected leaders around the world and put puppet dictatorships in their place. I once had no idea how easily fear leads people to support evil. I once believed that war could lead to peace. I once believed that good people would do the right thing.

When exactly did I wake up? I don't know the answer to that. Sometimes I feel like I'm still in a fog, like those mornings I wake up and wonder if I'm still dreaming.

I don't know if all of our military interventionism has been based solely on lies. But I'm quite certain that whatever the reasons really are, we're still wrong.

Big government and immigration

2011-09-27T23:08:00.001-04:00

So here's the latest from the Republican debates on immigration:

Given that nearly everything Rick Santorum says is absurd, this one really takes the cake. Rick Perry is a "big government moderate" because he opposes building a fence across the Mexican border?

Seriously?

Honestly, how much more "big government" can you possibly get than building a fence across the border between two countries? Maybe the Reaganites owe an apology to all those small government conservatives who were in charge of East Berlin during the 1980's.

You won't catch me supporting Rick Perry very often, but on the immigration issue, at least he, in his own words, "has a heart."

Which is nice and all, but I confess I prefer Ron Paul, who also has a head. Don't build a fence; it's a waste of money, it's an infringement on liberty, and there are much more practical ways of dealing with the immigration issue.

If you look at conservatives like Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, it's not clear to me they have either hearts or brains on this issue. (And I thought Mitt Romney was "liberal.")

Even including Ron Paul, I'm not quite sure any of the Republicans (or Democrats, for that matter) quite represent my views on immigration. (Ron Paul would perhaps be the closest.) I simply don't see why immigration shouldn't be free and open. End the quotas. Stop talking about a fence. Let people come here if they want, but don't subsidize their doing so. Obviously drug cartels are a problem, but that's a problem for law enforcement generally and is not specifically immigration-related.

(And while we're on the subject of drugs, we could probably save a lot of money and lot of lives by just letting them be legalized.)

But no matter what your opinion on immigration is, at least have the common sense to realize that in fact, the "conservative" view on immigration is in fact a big government view. If you favor the government building a fence along the border of Mexico, then you favor bigger government. If you favor a national identification system, then you favor bigger government. If you favor politicians deciding who is allowed to immigrate to this country, then you favor bigger government. If you favor tracking down small businesses to see whether or not they hire illegal immigrants, then you obviously favor bigger government. It's really not that hard.

Anyone who professes to be a "small government" conservative and yet wants more restrictions on immigration, well...hypocrite doesn't even begin to describe such a person.

Free will, dualism, and reductionism

2011-09-26T22:22:00.005-04:00

Following up on a post I wrote recently, I thought it would be interesting to think once more about the concept of free will, with respect to the idea of causality. What is the cause of my own behavior? Is it really I who act a certain way, or are all of my actions reducible down to physical causes? Do I have genuine volition, or am I simply a composite of simple particles which combine to produce something complex?

The second question is an attempt to refine the first, which is blatantly naive. This question leaves us with only two options: dualism between body and person, or else hard reductionism, eliminating the notion of "person" altogether. I think both of these options are absurd. The first option forces you to search hopelessly for a way to link the choices of the will with the behaviors of a body, which exist in totally disparate spheres. The second option forces you to eliminate the question, "Who did this?" from your language. Neither of these will do. Indeed, you can't hold people accountable for their decisions unless their decisions genuinely happen in this world; this should be enough to immediately dismiss both dualism and reductionism.

One option is "emergentism." Maybe the laws governing the fundamental particles which constitute a human being can be shown to logically imply certain complex characteristics, including the ability to make decisions. In other words, maybe free will somehow "emerges" from the "bottom up." The implied directionality is too big of an assumption. We can see humans as wholes, or we can start to divide them into parts, or we can aggregate them together. It just depends on the questions we're asking--psychological, biological, or sociological, for example.

But that really is wild, isn't it? I can look at my body and realize I have many parts. I can acknowledge that I have very little conscious awareness of all that my brain is doing. But in my conscious experience, it is hard to divide myself into parts. If my mind really is the sum of many parts (specifically neurons working together) the whole really cannot talk to the parts, and therefore the whole has a hard time even believing it is divisible. In normal human experience, it is hard to avoid thinking of the self as a single entity. In traditional terms, nothing could be more obvious than that I have a soul.

Maybe there's an analogy to be made here, even if hopelessly imperfect. A society as a whole can be thought of as a single entity. For instance, the United States has some degree of unity, and we can study its reactions as a whole to major world events--think World War II, the moon landing, the Cold War, or 9/11. The actions of this country in response to such events has truly shaped the course of history. It would clearly be wrong, on the one hand, to imagine that our nation has an existence apart from the individuals it comprises. Yet, on the other hand, it would be far too reductionist to say that the United States does not really have an impact on the world, but to insist that only the individuals do.

But a nation or society, like the United States, doesn't have a will of its own, does it? Well, it certainly isn't a will divorced from the individuals it comprises. Still, sometimes it's hard to avoid talking about the will of a society (although if I had enough time I'd list a thousand qualifications here).

Emergentism isn't quite the complete picture, because there really isn't a clear direction to nature. That is, it's not clear whether it's more important to understand myself in terms of the parts I comprise (cells), or to understand myself as part of a greater whole (society). And this question remains at every level: societies are part of an ecosystem, ecosystems are parts of a larger physical environment, which is part of a planet, which is part of a solar system, and all the way up...meanwhile cells comprise molecules, which comprise atoms, which comprise protons and electrons and neutrons, and all the way down... And who's to say that bigger or smaller is more important?

I haven't said much about free will. Here's the point: if we can't be sure whether the greater whole or the smaller parts are more important, we must be equally careful not to dismiss the level on which we actually live. Determinism seems to creep into intellectual discussion either from above or below--either society really determines everything we do and think, or else neurons do. Nonsense. Even if I can explain how one thing is a part of another, that relationship cannot explain away either the part or the whole. This is, after all, common sense: if you take away all the parts of something, that something no longer exists. I find the other direction a bit trickier to explain abstractly, but the idea is clear: the United States might truly be a bunch of people, but that in no way justifies the assertion that it is just a bunch of people.

So how can I prove that I really do genuinely have volition, and I'm not just a product of outside forces? The whole question is, as I see it, a red herring. In the sense that the cells which my body comprises, on the one hand, and the society of which I am a part, on the other, cannot explain away my own actions, I have free will. Some will see this as a "compatibilist" viewpoint, and I guess that's fair. Personally, I would just dismiss determinism as a pretty useless concept to begin with. It is useful only insofar as it encourages us to try and explain things. To try and make it into a systematic doctrine is, as is so often the case with systematic doctrines, an exercise in philosophical vanity.

Muslim libertarians

2011-09-25T23:38:00.000-04:00

The Minaret of Freedom Institute is a group of Muslim scholars dedicated to libertarian values, including both civil and economic freedom. As they put it,

The Minaret of Freedom Institute was founded in 1993 with a dual mission for educating both Muslims and non-Muslims. For non-Muslims our mission is:
to counter distortions and misconceptions about Islamic beliefs and practice
to demonstrate the Islamic origins of modern values like the rule of law and sciences like market economics
to advance the status of Muslim peoples maligned by a hostile environment in the West and oppressed by repressive political regimes in the East

(Keep reading on their web site.)

To be honest, I know embarrassingly little about Muslim thought in the modern world, considering how important it is in our time. But since ideas are often processed best through synthesis, it's nice that there are organizations like this, who combine a discussion of Islamic thought with ideas I'm already quite familiar with.

It's amazing what you can discover on Youtube.

A little unnerving

2011-09-25T12:04:00.000-04:00

Warning: violent images.

"Top down" vs "Bottom up"

2011-09-24T14:51:00.000-04:00

One repeatedly encounters these two metaphors in discussions of science and faith--or in discussions of economics! Most recently I've encountered the distinction in Polkinghorne's Exploring Reality, where in Chapter 2 he writes,

The 'laws' of physics discovered at low levels of complexity would then simply be 'downward-emergent' approximations to the character of a more subtle and supple causal story in which the whole truly did influence the behaviour of the parts. ... Making us of science's account of future behaviour in this open metaphysical way by no means demands us to abandon the principle of sufficient reason, requiring a full explanation of the origin of what actually occurs. It is simply to conceive that the portfolio of causes that bring about the future is not limited solely to the description offered by a methodologically reductionist physics and framed only in terms of the exchange of energy between constituents. Instead, the concept of causal influence can be broadened at least to include holistic effects of an informational, pattern-forming kind. One might called this top-down form of causality 'active information.'

In my opinion, Polkinghorne gets overly technical in a book apparently designed as an apologetic work for the public. In any case, here's what he's basically saying: reductionist scientists have a solely "bottom-up" approach, whereas Polkinghorne believes that a lot of our discoveries demand a more "top-down" explanation.

Let's think about this dichotomy for a bit. First, I want to stress that it is a metaphor. That is, we are not talking about a literal "top" and "bottom" to the universe. Many times metaphor is simply the only way to talk about abstract concepts like the nature of causality, but nevertheless it is often important to acknowledge the limits of our metaphors, and to be aware of the influence they have on our thinking. In this, I'm not sure the influence of the metaphor on our thinking is entirely good.

To illustrate the influence of the top down/bottom up metaphor on our thinking, consider the realm of economics (we'll talk about metaphysics a bit later). A "bottom up" approach focuses on how the microeconomic principles governing individual actors in the economy work together to form a complex order without the control of political authority. A "top down" approach focuses on the need for authority to correct and guide the behavior of the economy as a whole. Thus the "top" here refers to political authority, whereas "bottom" refers to individuals independent of political authority. The metaphor works because traditionally height has been associated with power. The king rules over his people, and his orders go down the chain of command.

The empirical question in economics is whether a complex order that allows large-scale human cooperation is possible without the guidance of political authority. In metaphorical terms, as the Keynes vs. Hayek video puts so well, should we have more bottom up or more top down?

Before turning to the metaphysical realm, we have to recognize a couple of things about the economics debate. Most free market advocates do not advocate anarchy (anarcho-capitalists excepted). In the classical theory arising from Adam Smith, laws enforced by the political authorities help shape the economic order. The difference between a command economy and a free market economy is not a matter of the government doing something versus the government doing nothing. The difference is between the government directing the whole system toward a particular goal, on the one hand, and the government treating all individuals equally without respect to particular goals, on the other hand.

Now let's turn to the realm of metaphysics, and in particular let's talk about the nature of causality. We seem to have a debate framed in terms analogous to the Keynes and Hayek debate don't we? One picture of the universe is one in which all events are reducible down to the interaction between matter and energy, the fundamental units of the physical world. The other is one in which "information" or "mind" can be taken to be another fundamental piece of the universe, guiding the physical world according to some transcendent order. It's bottom up versus top down.

The distinction is tailor-made to fit into the age-old controversy over the existence of God. Just as in economics the top down/bottom up metaphor refers to the controversy over the role of government, so in metaphysical discussion the metaphor almost has to refer to the role of God, who, it must be admitted, has often been described in terms of political authority (King, Sovereign, etc.). If we can demonstrate that order emerges in the universe, not through any conscious direction, but through the application of universal laws to material substances, doesn't this damage the case for the existence of God who intervenes in the universe? And if, on the other hand, we can demonstrate the poverty of the reductionist approach, doesn't this suggest a case for the existence of God?

Our views on this matter seen to be shaped to a certain degree by moral intuition, and, conversely, the way we think things are often influences the way we think things should be. For instance, the empirical claim that government intervention is not required to create economic order often allies itself with the moral claim that government intervention is generally wrong. Likewise, the metaphysical claim that the universe may be reduced to physical causes often allies itself with the (implicit or explicit) moral claim that God should not interfere with human freedom.

This means that often the same observations can lead to curiously different conclusions. For instance, when Polkinghorne says that he sees room for a "top down" form of causation in the universe, to me he seems to be saying no more than that the universe is not in a state of anarchy. It hardly seems like a case for the existence of God. It might be a case for a form of Deism, the belief that God has merely constructed the laws governing the universe, and everything simply goes on according to those laws. The idea that "information" can be a source of "pattern-forming" causality is really nothing more than the idea that mathematical laws applied to a large number of particles can result in order, which is the logical result of those mathematical laws. (This, by the way, is the whole point of my own mathematical research on dynamical systems.) I would think an atheist could write very nearly the same thing as Polkinghorne, and make the exact opposite theological conclusion: clearly God is not in charge of the universe, since it gets on just fine by blindly following certain laws, without conscious direction.

I can't help but think the top down/bottom up metaphor is basically misleading. To think in this way inevitably leads to a tug of war between two opposites, and I'm not sure if this is really all that enlightening. (I say this equally for both economics and metaphysics!) As Christians, we acknowledge that rather than play tug of war, Christ "emptied himself," exchanging his authority for humility. What might we say about the metaphysical nature of causation based on this upside-down image of God's authority? Unless we look for ways to upset our normal categories, I think the debate will be somewhat fruitless.

Mesmerizing

2011-09-20T23:20:00.000-04:00

Mikayla Mackaness on peace, love, and...

...wait for it...

...Ron Paul, believe it or not.

This is one of a series of endorsements for Ron Paul, all meditating on the concept of peace. All of them are quite beautiful, I might add.

When you hear that Ron Paul's support runs deep, it might be easy to conjure up images of rabid individualists and free market fanatics. But the diversity among Ron Paul supporters as quite astonishing. Most encouraging to me is seeing supporters of peace join his camp.

How about it? Peace, love, and Ron Paul 2012.

The language of money

2011-09-20T12:05:00.001-04:00

Money is a social construct. There is no eternal, transcendent principle which makes money valuable.

Language is like that, as well. There is no particular reason why the words you're reading right now should mean what they mean to you, other than the force of tradition. English is the language most of us Americans speak to our children as they grow up. It is the language we learn in schools. It is the language by which we not only communicate, but also think.

Money is a language, as well. The incentive to make money drives our economy, and as it does so it sends signals throughout our whole society, to many people who know nothing about one another and have no understanding of each other's plans. Money is a medium of exchange, and as such it is somewhat arbitrary. We don't have to exchange sheets of paper or coins. We once exchanged gold and silver, but that's certainly not the only form of currency, either (at one time tobacco was a common currency in Virginia).

Money is both arbitrary and necessary, just as the English language is both arbitrary and necessary. It thus provokes two equal but opposite responses. One response is to want to get rid of it entirely, to throw off the shackles of arbitrary institutions and live according to a pattern of behavior which we ourselves determine. The other response is to cling tightly to tradition on the belief that whatever is necessary must be preserved in its present form. Both responses are foolish, as it is easy to see when we compare money and language.

Imagine if we gave a Central Grammar Institution (CGI) the power to regulate all words used in the English language. Maybe at times there would be a shortage of metaphors, so the CGI would stimulate the American culture by printing more poetry. Facebook and Google+ would be highly regulated to insure quality grammar, so that communication wouldn't be wasted. And if you began to use dialect or (gasp) a different language while residing in America, you would be fined. If it was determined that your slang was so heavy that it constituted a dialect, you would be fined.

Now imagine a counter-revolutionary movement that wanted to abolish language, because it was "merely a social construct." They would hand out blank tracts (or perhaps sheets of paper covered in modern art). They would have conventions in which no one would speak, but everyone would make whatever kind of noise came to mind (or none at all, if they preferred). Perhaps in America they would simply rebel against English and start speaking other languages, but the purists would object on the grounds that those languages, too, had merely been socially constructed elsewhere, and were also quite arbitrary.

You see the problem. However, it is the former comparison, rather than the latter, that I am more concerned about in the present time. We live in a world dominated by States, in which central banks control the money supply of each country. We do not need a central institution to control our language; why would we need one to control our money? Both are merely social conventions, which can be passed along through natural social forces--through tradition, through free exchange, and even through experimentation.

The irony is that all of this power has coincided with us throwing off the arbitrariness of the gold standard. Unfortunately, rather than creating a political system in which people are free to exchange whatever medium they wish, we have simply cemented the arbitrary power of an institution, the love of which, in the words of Christ, is the root of all evil.

Some links

2011-09-19T17:00:00.000-04:00

Today I sent one of my professors a link to a book called The Fall of the Faculty. Here is the description:

Until very recently, American universities were led mainly by their faculties, which viewed intellectual production and pedagogy as the core missions of higher education. Today, as Benjamin Ginsberg warns in this eye-opening, controversial book, "deanlets"--administrators and staffers often without serious academic backgrounds or experience--are setting the educational agenda.

The Fall of the Faculty examines the fallout of rampant administrative blight that now plagues the nation's universities. In the past decade, universities have added layers of administrators and staffers to their payrolls every year even while laying off full-time faculty in increasing numbers--ostensibly because of budget cuts. In a further irony, many of the newly minted--and non-academic--administrators are career managers who downplay the importance of teaching and research, as evidenced by their tireless advocacy for a banal "life skills" curriculum. Consequently, students are denied a more enriching educational experience--one defined by intellectual rigor. Ginsberg also reveals how the legitimate grievances of minority groups and liberal activists, which were traditionally championed by faculty members, have, in the hands of administrators, been reduced to chess pieces in a game of power politics. By embracing initiatives such as affirmative action, the administration gained favor with these groups and legitimized a thinly cloaked gambit to bolster their power over the faculty.

As troubling as this trend has become, there are ways to reverse it. The Fall of the Faculty outlines how we can revamp the system so that real educators can regain their voice in curriculum policy.

I suspect the book may be controversial among university administrators, but not so much among faculty, who will virtually all agree on the diagnosis of today's university system.

In turn, my professor sent me a link to this article from The Economist, entitled, "A sorry story of American trade." Excerpt:

WHEN experts try to ferret out the causes of America’s lost decade, international trade is often cast as the villain. It may in fact be the victim. In the last decade America’s commitment to openness has flagged, and with it, its trade prowess and its appeal as a destination for investment. As international trade and investment have historically been major drivers of productivity, employment, and innovation, this declining engagement with the world may be an important contributor to the malaise that afflicts the economy.

Once again, economic protectionism does the opposite of protect.

Concerning "Axioms and Inferences"

2011-09-19T00:16:00.000-04:00

Here's the video I'm referring to:

Axioms and Inferences: A Mathematician Thinks About Faith from The Veritas Forum on Vimeo.

Here are my comments:

On the whole, I'm pretty underwhelmed by John Lennox's argument. Firstly, the vast majority of the argument could be summed up as "anything but atheism," which is hardly an argument for Christianity. I admit that some arguments concerning first principles can be interesting, but when it comes to religion I find them less and less so over time. When your entire argument for Christianity seems to hinge on the meaning of the word "faith" in the English language, there appears to be something missing. True, mathematicians don't primarily deal in empirical matters, but rather in matters of logic. Yet is it too much to ask that a mathematician who identifies as a Christian also be held responsible for the pressing empirical questions on which the whole of Christianity is based?

Second, I find this attack on atheism using "simple logic" very glib, and quite probably uncharitable. Consider the quote from Bertrand Russell near the beginning of the talk: "What science cannot tell us, mankind cannot know." Lennox quickly dismantles this statement by saying, well, this isn't a statement of science, so you cannot know it. Many responses could be given to this refutation, but Lennox passes them over as if basic logic can easily refute atheism.

He is also conflating atheism with scientism, and this leads me to a third point. I find this "two competing worldviews" narrative rather unhelpful and even deceptive (perhaps unintentionally so). If it is true that atheists don't fully appreciate the diversity within Christian thought, it is still more true that Christians apparently don't have a clue when it comes to the diversity of secular thought. I have grown quite tired of Christians trying to claim that atheism is a "worldview" which, like Christianity, must stand on its own. That is false. It is true that atheists must have some sort of worldview, but among the competing possibilities, we find atheist representatives in all of them. Some atheists are collectivists, and others are individualists; some are modernists, and others are postmodernists; some hold to the myth of progress, others are nihilists; some put their faith in science, others put their faith in power, and others put their faith in personal (even mystical) experience. And I really haven't begun to list all the real alternatives. So the idea that there is an "atheist worldview" is nonsense, as most atheists will be quick to tell you. Christians really should be a little less blind to this. If you're merely trying to refute Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins, just say so. Don't bring everyone else into the picture without acknowledging how big and complicated the world is.

Let me now make a fourth point on a particular topic mentioned in Lennox's talk. I find this "evolutionary argument against naturalism" thoroughly unconvincing. This could take me down some pretty long rabbit trails into the realm of epistemology, but let me simplify the issue a bit. The argument is essentially that only mind can beget mind--a sort of conservation of reason, if you will. This is certainly the direction Lennox takes it when he describes God as the ultimate Mind governing all of reality. So if you take away this ultimate Mind, then the evolution of our brains has come about through processes which have no reason to produce reliable cognitive faculties.

I don't see why this needs to be true. Much of modern science has been fairly successful in deriving models which describe how a self-organizing system could develop cognitive properties. If you don't deny that these models are plausible, on what basis do you deny the reliability of such self-organizing systems? The real-world example that has shaped my own thinking comes from the field of economics. Go back to Adam Smith, and you learn how a large number of actors, each performing activities which seemingly have nothing to do with any overarching goal, can actually form a complex problem-solving machine (in the case of the global economy, this complex market solves the problem of resource allocation). It is not as far-fetched as some might think to suggest that the brain's cognition is based on similar principles. Given that I think the market actually does well at its function--to allocate resources--what is to prevent me from thinking that the brain as an evolved system could actually be good at its tasks? Again, I have simplified the issue for clarity, but I think my point stands.

Therefore I see no reason a priori to insist that the brain can only be reliable if its evolution was guided by another rational, cognitive being. In fact, this position seems to insist that cognition is a fundamentally inexplicable concept, and therefore it cannot have a scientific explanation. I used to find this position reasonable, but if in fact there are scientific models which can give us an account of cognition, what exactly is the problem? Why is a "bottom-up" account of mind so threatening to Christians? (I ask this question rhetorically, of course; I have a few answers myself.)

I'll also make a theological point here. I've argued in the past that I do not think God should be regarded as "Mind" at all, and here I'll reiterate that point. I often get into trouble in these kinds of discussions because of my relatively unorthodox position on biblical authority. But in this case, Lennox has nothing on me, since there is no biblical description of God as "Mind." It is certainly said at times that God has a mind, but likewise it is also said that he has a heart and a mouth and hands and feet and a face and back. Are we to take only the first literally, and the rest figuratively, merely to fit our presuppositions?

Finally, let me get to the heart of Lennox's argument. I agree with him that faith is a matter of evidence, and not merely a leap in the dark. I agree that ultimately we all stand on faith in something. I agree that Christians should have a place at the table of free discussion. But I also recognize that Christianity demands a rather dramatic risk on the part of believers. Ultimately our faith rests on the claim that Jesus really rose from the dead, and this is just not the sort of thing people normally have faith in.

Where does faith come from? Why do some have faith in science, and others have faith in God, and others have faith in something else? It doesn't all happen the same way. Our modern faith in science comes from repeated testing: it keeps yielding new results, often with new and exciting applications. When someone has gradually become confident in a process because it works, we might call that faith, but it is certainly quite different from Christian faith. Christian faith ultimately cannot be based on repeated testing. The claim of Christ's resurrection cannot be tested scientifically, because it is not the product of a repeatable experiment. It was a unique event in all of history--if it really happened, that is.

Reason alone cannot justify the claim of Christ's resurrection. I think Christians have tried to trivialize this by showing that nothing can be justified on reason alone. But it is wrong to downplay the radical nature of Christian faith. I can give no comfort to Christians who expect to be taken seriously among the intelligentsia. The reality is that they have every reason to be suspicious of us, who are willing to place our hope in that which is not seen. I wish I could flesh this out in more detail, but it would be enough for another post entirely.

The goal of such talks as this one given by John Lennox seems to be building up the confidence of young Christians, whose faith is often under attack in the academy. All I can say is that I don't share this goal. Perhaps I will be poorly understood when I say this, but all the same I really mean it.

If you really want to worship Jesus, then you're worshiping a man who suffered a criminal's death. Do you think Jesus was worried about being accepted by the establishment? But remember that Christ's persecution came first from his fellow Jews. As a Christian graduate student in mathematics, I'm usually more worried what other Christians might think of me than I am about what "the academy" will say about me. I can't say that in my own life I've faced any serious conflict in either realm, but I've observed the conversations and the conflicts that do occur, and I want to offer a different perspective. I hope it is helpful.

Kevin Drum on Rick Perry's "$5000"

2011-09-14T11:01:00.000-04:00

I found this amusing. Remember when Rick Perry said he couldn't be bought for $5000? Well, it turns out it was a lot more than that.

But wait! I didn't have the whole story. It turns out it was more like $30,000

And wait again! Over the past five years, it turns out that Merck gave over $350,000 to the Republican Governors Association, a period in which Perry was heavily involved with the group, and the RGA in turn gave $4 million to Rick Perry.

And wait some more! Merck's lobbyist on the vaccine issue was Mike Toomey, Perry's former chief of staff. Toomey recently co-founded a super PAC that plans to raise over $50 million for Perry's campaign.

So we go from $5000 to $30000 to $350000 to... several million. Well, at least he values his efforts.

XKCD on Basic Economics

2011-09-14T10:08:00.001-04:00

Making the rational choice model work in real life, one changed mind at a time.

(The link is here.)

Life Matters Journal Fall 2011

2011-09-13T19:58:00.000-04:00

Via Secular Pro-life, here is a journal dedicated to pro-life issues from a broader perspective. Here's a brief description:

A journal dedicated to open discussion on all topics of human life and dignity, in an environment free of any one particular political or religious flavor.

I found Nicholas Neal's article on a consistent life ethic helpful, especially coming from someone in the university pro-life movement. The success of the pro-life movement on college campuses absolutely depends on its ability to inspire idealism and attract committed activists. These students are less likely to be conservative, at least in temperament, and more likely to reject the status quo on issues like the death penalty and interventionist foreign policy. And I think that point of view is worth considering.

Personally I think Nicholas is spot on. Many pro-lifers will be inclined to disagree, but they might find his argument persuasive. Read it!

There is certainly room for this publication to develop, but this is a great start. I simply don't know of anything else of its kind.

An exercise in futility

2011-09-12T22:58:00.001-04:00

Yes, this blog post is an exercise in futility, because I'm going to try to pull together some insightful remarks from the Republican Tea Party debate just aired on CNN.

‎"If you'd suggest I could be bought for $5000, I'm offended." -- Rick Perry

Here the always eloquent governor of Texas was responding to attacks about his executive order to require that girls be vaccinated for cervical cancer. Michele Bachmann accused Perry of ulterior motives, citing contributions from the drug corporation Merck. Perry's response was to compare the $5000 contribution from Merck with the $30 million he has raised as governor. I think the important insight here is that it's very important as a Republican to be able to raise money from multiple corporations, not just one or two. After all, how can we have a democracy if the interests of big corporations aren't represented in government?

"We are a melting pot, not a salad bowl." -- Rick Santorum.

This brilliant metaphor came as Santorum was responding to a question about immigration, and specifically, I believe, about how Republicans could get the Latino vote. For some reason Rick Santorum and most (all?) of the Republicans I saw on the TV tonight believe that building a fence to keep people out of our country is a sign of greater freedom. Here, sadly, Rick Perry was actually the only person who made at least a little sense--well, they didn't ask Ron Paul his opinion.

(For the record, I am much more a fan of open borders than either Mr. Paul or Mr. Perry, to say nothing of any of the other Republicans.)

"I am committed to repealing Obamacare." -- Michele Bachmann

OK, but apparently Ms. Bachmann is not quite as committed to answering questions given to her in a debate. The question she was actually given was how society should handle a difficult hypothetical situation: a young person decides not to get health insurance, suddenly disaster strikes, and he is in desperate need of extensive treatment. What do we as a society do with this? Ron Paul was given this question and answered directly and eloquently: freedom means accepting responsibility for the consequences of your own actions; but on the other hand, freedom also means that many people and organizations, such as churches or other charities, are likely to be generous of their own accord.

When this very challenging question was put to Bachmann, she completely ignored it and started preaching about how dedicated she was to repealing Obamacare. The insight here is the Republicans don't actually have to believe in personal responsibility; they just have to really really hate Barack Obama.

"Boo...!" -- A handful of Republicans, in response to Ron Paul's explanation that U.S. foreign policy has created an atmosphere of resentment in the Middle East.

This, of course, was the only time anyone in the audience booed a Republican candidate. Somehow, Republicans get away with repeating the same old propaganda--they hate us for our freedom, blah blah blah. Only one Republican, Ron Paul, has the courage to apply the Golden Rule to foreign policy. He alone asks the question, "How would we like it if...?" You fill in the blank: how would you like it if China built military bases on our soil? if Iraq set up dictators in our country that supported their interests? if Afghanistan bombed our cities?

It's worth reminding people that the majority of campaign contributions from U.S. soldiers have gone to Ron Paul. What gives these hawkish Republicans the right to claim that they support the troops? I would like to see us support the troops by bringing them home alive.

All in all, the debate was pretty much the show I expected. Herman Cain said some cute things, Jon Huntsman said some reasonable things that no one will remember, Mitt Romney tried desperately to compete with Rick Perry, and nobody cares about Newt Gingrich. Also, Ron Paul didn't get the question about the Fed, which of course all of his fans noticed.

I'd say tonight's winner was Wolf Blitzer, who managed to keep it together amid a swarm of Tea Party conservatives.

OK, no more politics for me. Shut it down.

Knowledge and Power

2011-09-11T23:59:00.000-04:00

For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 16:25)

On a day like today, who can help but think of the horrible things done in the name of religious zeal?

Such thoughts cause us to start drawing lines between the forces of good and the forces of evil. For some, it is between secularism and religion. For others, it is between the West and the Islamic world. I would like to believe that most of us refuse to buy into such divisions. The terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center ten years ago were evil people doing evil things. But evil unfortunately cuts across all lines. In order to fight it, you must look at yourself as well as your enemies.

Part of the great challenge of our time is to determine what we mean by truth. It might seem strange that such an abstract epistemological question could have anything to do with war and peace. Yet it is precisely when people compete for power that we need to call upon truth--whatever that may be--to know how to take a stand.

This is the central question for religious people today. What do we mean by claiming that our beliefs are true? What are we willing to do for those beliefs?

Are we willing to die for them?

Are we willing to kill for them?

The question is not for religious people only (or do we need to recount the horrible atrocities done in the name of secular ideologies?) for it is a basic human question. It is not simply a question of whether we're going to be nice to other people or not. To think that "decent people" can't do horrible things is exceedingly naive. If we are unclear on questions of principle, we are susceptible to the same horrible evil impulses that drive planes into buildings.

The basic choice all humans have to make is whether knowledge is a matter of control, or whether it is a matter of humility. That is the starting point for everything else.

One may desire knowledge because he thinks that having knowledge can make the world right. Understanding means knowing how things work, and knowing how things work means you can steer them in the right direction. Knowledge is power, and power can be used for good or for evil. Our enemies want to use knowledge for evil, but we wish it for good. This is the inevitable dualism arising from the notion that truth is power.

On the other hand, one may instead desire knowledge for love's sake, with the profound awareness that deeper knowledge is cause for deeper humility. The more we know, the more we realize how little we know. Understanding may help us solve certain problems, but it won't help us "change the world," at least not in the way we expect. Knowledge is not power, but some people might use knowledge to gain power--and this might be disastrous, no matter who it is seeking power.

The Christian seeks to make all of his conscious decisions based on deeply held convictions derived from faith. These convictions are not a private affair only, but they must influence the Christian's public life, as well. His beliefs must therefore be on display, and he can and should share them with others. Does it not follow, then, that a Christian should ultimately be a zealot, seeking to shape the whole world according to the principles which he believes are given by God himself?

Not at all, for his principles do not fall into the first category, but rather the second category of knowledge. Christian beliefs are not ultimately proved by their ability to give us control over the world. Quite the opposite, really: they tell us that with greater knowledge comes greater humility. As offensive as it may be to modern man, Christianity insists that true knowledge must be humbly accepted as a gift, rather than proved by our reason.

It is for this very reason that Christians ought not to have anything to do with "world-changing." We are not called to sacrifice the world, but rather ourselves (Rom. 12:1). Our beliefs can and do provide a very powerful critique of the modern world, but we must never mistake this for a mandate to rebuild the world according to our principles. The Tower of Babel, after all, was meant to reach heaven.

No wonder modern man is repulsed by religion! He has no other conception of knowledge than that which is synonymous with control. If man is to be controlled, he would at least like to have proof that the principles controlling him have withstood the test of rationality. If it is control we desire, then the only hope for civilization is the scientific method (although even that will fail us, since the desire itself is vain). Nothing could be more heinous than faith posing as a substitute, insisting on some unquestionable authority to guide human affairs.

I say these things not because I have any answer to why evil people fly planes into buildings. I say these things because in the future we may find that our own flawed principles have wrecked the world as we now know it, despite our best intentions. I have heard vague rumblings of Christians everywhere trying to determine how best to transform the culture. There is no question that our beliefs offer a thorough diagnosis of the modern world. What, then, is the cure?

Whatever may be the cure, we will not find it, and may rather create something horribly opposed to it, if we start with the wrong understanding of truth. The fundamental truth of Christianity is that God died for us, and this is not what we wanted him to do for us. I fear we would have preferred that he "changed the world."

God, forgive our ignorance.

I don't believe ontology exists

2011-09-09T17:48:00.000-04:00

Just an honest, gut reaction here. After a discussion group today about science and faith, I think my head will explode if I hear one more mention of ontology. We're reading through John Polkinghorne's Exploring Reality (the title really narrows down the discussion, don't you think?) and of course the first chapter had to do with this study of the "nature of being." Look, it may be interesting to distinguish between questions like, "Does God exist?" on the one hand, and "Do subatomic particles exist?" on the other. But folks, let's just agree that the difficulty in making such distinctions does not lie in the word "exist." I don't think anyone was ever convinced that something existed because he experienced a conversion of ontological principles. I have to fault the Christians, not the atheists, for bringing it up. I believe the word "ontology" was actually an ancient incantation spoken by a philosopher in ancient times as an attempt to frighten and confuse his opponents. My theory is that it never worked, but they kept doing it all the same until it finally became legitimized as a real (but how will I ever know it's "real"?????) subject of philosophical inquiry. Moral of the story: avoid talking about ontology at all costs.

Speaking of banning words, however, beware lest you fall off the other side of the horse. For all the atheists' reliance on rationality, some of them occasionally say some amazingly silly things. Heard today:

"I don't think the word ought has any meaning, and it should be eliminated from our language."

Do you need to read that again? Maybe this time I'll put some emphasis where it needs to be:

"I don't think the word ought has any meaning, and it should be eliminated from our language."

If he's allowed to say that, then I'm allowed to say, "Ontology doesn't exist."

Mathematics through the Eyes of Faith: a review

2011-09-08T20:07:00.000-04:00

James Bradley and Russell Howell have put together this exploration of the relationship between mathematics and Christian faith. The book is intended primarily for students, and could even be used as curriculum supplement for a Christian educational setting. Each chapter is completed with exercises for the student, some of which are legitimate mathematical exercises that would engage even quite advanced undergraduate mathematics students. Even without the exercises, it is a good read for anyone who wants an introduction to the philosophy of mathematics from a Christian perspective.

The main questions addressed in this book are philosophical in nature; concepts from mathematics are used primarily as instruments to stimulate thinking about the "big questions." Chapters 1 and 2 give an introduction to these big questions and an historical background in order to set the stage for the next eight chapters, which are entitled, Infinity, Dimension, Chance, Proof and Truth, Beauty, Effectiveness, Epistemology, and Ontology, respectively. These titles all allude to the "big questions" introduced in Chapter 1. The final chapter is "An Apology" for mathematics, encouraging students who might take an interest to pursue mathematics as part of a greater search for truth, and as a particular way of serving God in the world.

The authors have given a very balanced and sophisticated treatment of each of the subjects they have introduced. They have refrained from picking a side on any issue for which there appears to be room for more than one consistently Christian view (which is virtually every issue). Consider, for instance, the issue of "Chance" in the universe. It is common for believers to contrast chance with God's sovereignty; however, this can hardly be the whole story, for reasons both scientific and theological. Howell and Bradley have laid out in Chapter 5 a case for theistic determinism and a case for theistic nondeterminism. At the heart of the debate is the notion of ontological uncertainty, the state of being actually governed by chance, so that no additional knowledge could possibly remove uncertainty. Theists naturally divide on this issue as much as non-theists do; the determinist may argue that God's sovereignty and omniscience excludes ontological uncertainty, whereas the nondeterminist may argue that God has created this universe with a freedom of its own.

Perhaps that is the great puzzle of this book: is there any particular way of seeing mathematics "through the eyes of faith"? It is not so much in the answers as in the questions that Howell and Bradley demonstrate the relationship between mathematics and faith. There is no one Christian position on the ontology of numbers, or on the nature of proof; rather, there are distinctively Christian questions that we may ask. For instance, if mathematical certainty implies genuine, sure knowledge about reality, does that mean we can "know the mind of God" through mathematics? Or is mathematics merely a creaturely activity, which, just like all human thought, is in an important way eternally distinct from God's thought?

There are a few instances in the book where I find the authors drifting into speculation which may be either idle, or, perhaps, theologically disastrous. As is so typical of Christian mathematicians, the authors have indulged themselves in a little comparison between God and the three dimensional creatures in Flatland. In Chapter 4, toward the end of the chapter, we read:

And what might we expect to see if God entered the world? Think back to one of your fingers entering flatland. First, the square sees a dot: your finger has just touched down. Next, a small, tight arc which grows over time as you push your finger farther in. Is it possible that God once entered our world in much the same way, first "visible" as a very small cluster of cells, growing and changing over time as he pushed his way in until, some thirty years later, we saw in Jesus Christ the most complete picture of God that we would ever see in our world? And is it possible, even, that what we think of as unrelated individuals sitting around us in church are in fact different parts of one body whose connections can be seen in another dimension?

Personally, I find such questions mostly silly, with only a small hint of profundity. That small hint quickly loses its appeal for me once I contemplate the many abuses one may construct out of this line of reasoning: perhaps the Trinity is really just three "intersections" of an infinite dimensional God with a three (or four, or eleven, or whatever) dimensional universe. Theologians would likely protest such a description, and I have little doubt that secular mathematicians will find such analogies quite bizarre. In any case, I have never found any encouragement, or really anything useful, in the metaphorical use of higher dimensions to illustrate the relationship between God and the world.

However, such instances as the one just mentioned are rare. Overall, the discussion is sophisticated, and the authors are cautious in their conclusions. I found the last few chapters especially satisfying in this regard, particularly the chapter on the "unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics." Mathematicians have long mused on the fact that beauty seems so akin to truth, on the fact that highly abstract theories could have such robust real-world applications, and on the fact that mathematics appears to be such a universal human phenomenon. It is tempting for many Christians to try using this as a "gotcha" argument for theism. Howell and Bradley present a theistic explanation as a potentially satisfying one, but, they insist, "We want to stop short of suggesting that a naturalistic worldview cannot explain the success of mathematics." They admit the many ways in which mathematics is actually not as effective as our idealized picture suggests; for every abstract theorem that turns out to be a physical law, there are many other results which have nothing to do with reality, or may even be misleading. They also admit that "there are several evolutionary explanations for forms of human cognition, and," they add, "such explanations need not be seen as contradicting Christian beliefs." But, after all, there is still at least something to the notion that

Human aesthetic values, and their subsequent use in successful physical theories, dovetail nicely with a Judeo-Christian view that humans are created in the image of God. Whatever being in God's image exactly entails, it seems to include a rational and aesthetic capacity reflective of God's that enables humans to understand and admire his creation. In short, the implications of a Christian worldview offer an attractive explanation for the effectiveness of mathematics.

Once again, faith does not provide the "right answers," but rather helps shapes the questions. As Christian students seek to understand what being made in the image of God might mean in light of modern science, and what modern science might mean in light of faith, it is most helpful to be guided by this even-handed approach.

There is one more point on which I would like to comment. One question I have been asked in Christian circles is, "How does your faith inform how you do your work as a mathematician?" I have tried to take the question as seriously as possible, but the best answer I have been able to come up with is horribly unsatisfying: "It doesn't." From my experience, however, I do not think I am alone in this feeling among mathematicians. There is simply nothing in our field which demands that we do anything differently from any other mathematician. A sociologist or an anthropologist would surely be influenced by Christians idea about human nature; an economist or a political scientist would surely be influenced by Christian morals; a biologist or an ecologist could be greatly informed by a Christian view of creation and life. But for a mathematician, questions about first principles rarely influence work, at least so far as I am aware at this very early stage in my career.

So as I read this book, I was wondering if Bradley and Howell would have anything to say about this. Sure enough, they don't; the question never really comes up. Essentially, this is not a book about mathematics, but simply about the philosophy of mathematics. From a working mathematician's perspective, the two are highly distinct. I do not find this unsatisfying in the least. Rather, I find it very healthy that Christian mathematicians should raise deep philosophical questions, since we operate within a very interesting yet poorly understood intersection of classical and modern thought. Indeed, I think something is wrong with mathematicians who use their minds only to do mathematics, and I doubt there are really any such mathematicians in existence.

I highly recommend this book to any Christian students interested in studying mathematics or who have a general affinity for deep philosophical questions. I also think it could be a great resource for institutions like the Center for Christian Study, who are seeking ways to integrate faith and education.

You can purchase another book by Bradley and Howell from the Splintered Light Bookstore.

What I'm listening to these days

2011-09-07T23:04:00.001-04:00

He might not be the tallest man on earth, but he sure can write a good song.

Hayek on scientism

2011-09-06T22:40:00.000-04:00

From "The Pretense of Knowledge," Nobel Prize lecture given in 1974 (emphasis added):

What I mainly wanted to bring out by the topical illustration is that certainly in my field, but I believe also generally in the sciences of man, what looks superficially like the most scientific procedure is often the most unscientific, and, beyond this, that in these fields there are definite limits to what we can expect science to achieve. This means that to entrust to science - or to deliberate control according to scientific principles - more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects. The progress of the natural sciences in modern times has of course so much exceeded all expectations that any suggestion that there may be some limits to it is bound to arouse suspicion. Especially all those will resist such an insight who have hoped that our increasing power of prediction and control, generally regarded as the characteristic result of scientific advance, applied to the processes of society, would soon enable us to mould society entirely to our liking. It is indeed true that, in contrast to the exhilaration which the discoveries of the physical sciences tend to produce, the insights which we gain from the study of society more often have a dampening effect on our aspirations; and it is perhaps not surprising that the more impetuous younger members of our profession are not always prepared to accept this. Yet the confidence in the unlimited power of science is only too often based on a false belief that the scientific method consists in the application of a ready-made technique, or in imitating the form rather than the substance of scientific procedure, as if one needed only to follow some cooking recipes to solve all social problems. It sometimes almost seems as if the techniques of science were more easily learnt than the thinking that shows us what the problems are and how to approach them.

What do you think of this commercial?

2011-09-06T21:55:00.000-04:00

The link is here.

Pro: If Republicans watch it, at least they will be less favorable toward Rick Perry.

Con: If they're less favorable toward Rick Perry, they'll probably just vote for Mitt Romney.

Pro: It can't hurt Ron Paul to associate with Ronald Reagan during the Republican primary.

Con: It's a bit disingenuous of Ron Paul to act like the "true Republican." What does he have to say about Reagan's foreign policy?

Meh. Politics.

Mathematical style

2011-09-05T22:18:00.000-04:00

This semester I have the privilege/responsibility of teaching a class whose students, all very intelligent and highly motivated, are trying to get a jump start on higher level mathematics. The course is advertised as Multivariable Calculus "honors" course. I hesitate to even call it a course in multivariable calculus, as we won't cover any of that material until the second half of the course. The first half of the course will be laying a very theoretical groundwork for what students in other classes are already learning. Our class will have the advantage of seeing these concepts the "right" way--understanding the derivative in terms of linear functions, understanding functions in a rigorous way, and understanding vectors and vector spaces abstractly.

This week I am focusing on function theory and set theory. That means proofs--and lots of them. One of my students in office hours was complaining as much. (My office hours, by the way, had to be held in the common room in the math building, because apparently my office must now be under construction until an unspecified time. There was no notice of this occurrence before it started, and those of us who occupy said office still have no idea when it will end. Also, today I went in my office to see if it was finished, and I noticed that someone had messed with my Rubick's cube! All of the stickers had been taken off! Who messed with my stuff, anyway? But I digress...)

So, proofs... Yes, entering the world of mathematical rigor is not easy for most students. I have to be honest, it was pretty easy for me when I first started seeing proofs in college. Part of that was that I had a proof-based course in high school through the EPGY. Another part of it is that I've always been a naturally skeptical person, and very particular about the meaning of statements. For instance, once in fourth grade I actually battled my entire class, including my teacher, over the statement, "A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square." Obviously, the correct statement would be, "Not all rectangles are squares," but the subtlety was lost on my peers, and, yes, even my teacher, as far as I can tell to this day.

Proof writing is a beautiful and delicate art. The truly great mathematical writers are the ones who get beyond just the brute calculations and really explain what's going on. Often people ask me how one actually does research in mathematics. The answer is the same as in any other field; you come up with a new idea and you present it. This is done on a scale from acceptable to great. Acceptable mathematics presents true statements and sufficient details to prove those statements. Great mathematics presents not only true statements, but powerful ones; and it doesn't just prove the results, it also expounds the key ideas that make the results true. In other words, great mathematics is great writing, just as in any other field.

What is unique to mathematical writing is the notion that even beautiful ideas must eventually pass the test of correctness. I say "eventually" because in all truth, many beautiful ideas are worth presenting even if they're wrong. Nevertheless, even beauty is not nearly as subjective in this field as it might be in others. "Beauty" usually corresponds to genuine insight, just like a "beautiful runner" is also probably a fast one.

That's why I think all students could really benefit from taking a course that demanded mathematical rigor. When I suggest that students not be required to take calculus, it's actually because I think they should be asked to do more, not less. I'd much prefer that students take a course in some of the fundamentals of mathematics, in which proof writing was an essential part of the curriculum, than learn a bunch of formulas for differentiating functions. Learning to prove things is exactly what it sounds like--if everyone knew how to do this, we'd have a lot less nonsense in the world.

Here are the common hurdles students usually have to overcome when they're first being introduced to mathematical rigor. The first is understanding that concepts in mathematics have extremely literal meanings. Although you generally have to learn metaphorically (such as using graphs to understanding functions), eventually you have to apply the literal meanings in order to prove theorems. This can be really hard. Intuitive arguments sound plausible at first, but a professional skeptic will be able to quickly tear them down. In a sense, all mathematicians are professional skeptics.

The literalness of mathematical concepts means that a lot of proofs can be done by rote, once a general method has been ingrained in students. For instance, to show a function f:A-->B is surjective, every proof can go like this: "Suppose b is in B. Then something about the function implies that........and so, there exists an a in A such that f(a) = b. QED" For an experienced student of mathematics, this is mind-numbingly obvious. For a beginner, it is a mysterious incantation. The really good students will quickly realize how to construct a proper framework for proofs based on the statement being proved. The others will simply have to punish themselves with repetition until the patterns sink in.

The second hurdle represents is an equal but opposite difficulty: mathematics takes insight. Most students will tell me at one point or another during this course, "I don't know where to start." Of course you don't. That's why it's called a "problem." If all problems in mathematics had obvious starting points, there really would be no such thing as research in mathematics--and this is probably why the average person does not realize that mathematics still remains to be discovered.

I find this hurdle difficult to deal with as an instructor. As a calculus teacher (particularly in the "121" class I taught) I never had any qualms about just spoon-feeding my students a strategy for solving the problems that were going to be on the exam (although they did not perceive it that way). For this course, I feel I have to be relatively austere, like a parent finally telling his children, "Well, you're on your own." Real math problems, like life, don't have easy answers. Sometimes no one knows where to start. That's not true of any of the problems my students will deal with this semester, but that's not the point. The point is that in order to really learn mathematical reasoning, you have to be willing to battle through the process of discovery. You have to earn that theorem, if you really want to know what it says.

The third hurdle, the one I intend on addressing when I teach tomorrow, is hurdle of sophistication, for lack of a better term. It's one thing to answer a question. It's quite another to really own it. David killed Goliath with one stone. That's what a real mathematician wants to do; there's no sense writing out a bunch of brutal computations when a clever trick will do.

For instance, on a quiz just turned in my students were asked to find a function f:N-->N, where N is the natural numbers, which is neither injective nor surjective. I think a total of three students in the class really "got" the problem. Don't get me wrong; most of them got full credit for the problem. But only a few students understood how much freedom they had, and therefore how easy it was, to bury this problem in the ground. Sure, it's natural for students at this point to construct such a function by modifying n^2 somehow to make it no longer injective, or to come up with some double counting strategy which nevertheless misses 1. But real mathematical skill is seen in the beautifully simple response, "f(n) = 1." That's the stone that killed Goliath. No explanation is even required. (Don't feel bad if you don't understand; but you could try looking here and here if you want to know what I'm talking about.)

That's what I think it means to have mathematical style. It means you feel free to defy convention, to let yourself be restricted only by logic and your own creative insight. It means you don't throw down a page of computations when three lines of cleverness will do. It means you don't just know mathematics, you own it. I don't think I can actually teach this. The best I can hope for is that some students will find me to be a helpful guide through their own mathematical journey.

Twitter: Faster Than Earthquakes

2011-09-03T12:27:00.000-04:00

Via failbook:

What a world we live in.

The Tea Party prosperity gospel

2011-09-03T00:54:00.000-04:00

Here's how I see recent political events. The "Tea Party" Republicans, reinforced by the media support of Fox News, are kind of like "health-and-wealth" prosperity gospel Christians, who proclaim that if you just have enough faith, God will reward you with material well-being. You can hear it in the Republican debates when candidates confidently proclaim that they can "create" more jobs by keeping taxes low and reducing spending. One would think that this gospel would fall apart if economic growth stagnated under austerity measures; but as with the actual prosperity gospel, this message is backed by a religious fervor that doesn't die easily. That's why conservative politicians are being encouraged to "stand their ground" and not compromise on spending cuts and tax breaks. (Of course, cutting any part of the half trillion dollars per year we spend on foreign wars is out of the question.)

It is not surprising that some people would react against this by advocating a more scientific approach. The Keynesian economists come along with a way we can steer our way out of this economic meltdown, equipped with mathematical formulas and everything. They insist we have to "do something" in order to get out of this mess. Free markets left on their own will always result in this kind of disaster. Faith is worthless. We have to take control ourselves. More spending. More deficit. More incentives. We can't wait for private investment to start up again. After all, in the long run, we're all dead.

In such circumstances the honest advocates of free market institutions must come across as austere old clerics who insist that nothing good comes without suffering. The true defense of free trade has unfortunately very little to do with its short term success; there is absolutely no reason to believe that a free market must cause growth whenever we want it to. There is, on the other hand, enormous evidence from a broad historical perspective that the institutions vital to a free market cause, in the long run, the greatest prosperity. If we live only for the short run, we are bound to turn either to blind faith or to scientific rationalism: our short term fears can only be alleviated, it seems, either by the prosperity gospel or by atheism. (I am being metaphorical here, of course; but I sometimes wonder how much this has to do with actual theology.)

The only way to convince the public that we must not succumb to our short term fears is by demonstrating that the costs of alleviating our short term pain is just too high. An alcoholic may beg you for more liquor to alleviate his hangover, yet even though he is truly in pain, you will not give it to him. You know the booze will ultimately kill him.

If we're going to get out of this stagnation, we're going to have to feel some pain. There is no way government can decrease spending without causing a temporary contraction. Our markets and financial institutions have simply been depending for too long on government backing for cutting loose to have zero effect. We have to be willing to accept these temporary negative effects in favor of long term gains. We cannot live only for the short term.

One final remark. There is no reason why the poor should have to suffer most during this crisis. If we really want the rich to pay their fair share, maybe we should start by liquidating their failed assets (e.g. General Motors) and giving some of that money to the poor. This, after all, would increase consumption, and isn't that what Keynesians want, anyway?

Human capitalism

2011-09-02T16:49:00.000-04:00

Interesting interview with Nobel Prize winner Edumund Phelps over at Thought Economics concerning where capitalism is headed in the future. A lot of Phelps's statements echo Tyler Cowen on the Great Stagnation. What I really appreciate about the ideas expressed in this interview is an interest in the fundamentals of economics as a study of human beings, rather than a study of abstract structures.

Excerpts:

So why has productivity slowed down? I think there has been an underlying decline in the rate of innovation in the economy. There's not as much tinkering... not as much dreaming... not as much conceiving new-ways to do things... If we go a level below this and look at the cause of that, we see that a huge amount of short-termism which has crept into the system [emphasis added]. CEOs routinely devote their lives to hitting the next quarterly earnings targets... and that doesn't leave very much time for thinking about the medium term future.

America is a country that has subsidies for almost everything.... education, farming... and hidden subsidies for manufacturing and exporting... you name it! There is very little subsidy, however, for work - and almost no subsidy for innovation. There is a tax-credit and some tax-deductibility for research and development expenditures, but research and development expenditures are confined to a small number of industries- and that's not a huge amount of money. We have to make it easier for a young entrepreneur to start a company... to start his innovative project. We have to make it easier for an established company to start a new innovative project.

Modern capitalism ought not to be viewed as merely a system for producing. [...] More generally, though, western society went from a life in which ordinary people were not much involved in the economy, to one where people were engaged in conceiving new ideas, experimenting, tinkering, exploring new possibilities, experiencing the 'new' - this was an intellectual revolution. I like to amuse myself by pointing out that the arts changed alongside. Music became completely different two or three times after 1815- the visual arts such as painting followed the same trend. Modern capitalism offered a new way of life, not just a higher standard of living.

After the interview, Vikas Shah adds his own thoughts on the matter:

As society progressed through industrialisation- it was unsurprising and (largely) appropriate that our thinking became reductivist, we made machines- and those machines, in turn, made us... The world has, though, evolved and modern civilisation- in its highly globalised form, is as much a knowledge economy as a mechanical one.

...

We have had mechanical-capitalism. Now it's time for human-capitalism.

I think that's exactly right, and I think it points to a huge problem in society's perception of capitalism. The link between the market and materialism is almost rock solid in most people's minds. But the true proponents of capitalism (if we must call it that--it really is an ugly word) have argued that the economy is not about things so much as ideas, and I would hasten to add that ideas should not be reduced down to calculations. Capitalism needs a makeover. Maybe we can start with the name (I certainly wouldn't be the first to suggest this). More substantially, from the bits and pieces I've been reading, I think we need to talk about a serious overhaul of our financial system. Wealth does not equal money. Something is wrong with a society that is convinced otherwise.

A little fragmentation

2011-08-31T23:58:00.000-04:00

At the request of my uncle, who helps run the Splintered Light Bookstore, I'm reading through a book entitled, Mathematics through the Eyes of Faith, which is part of "through the eyes of faith" series. I intend to write a review fairly soon, once I finish, but at the moment I just had a general comment to make about the "through eyes of faith" series. The concept of such a series seems both familiar and strange to me. Many Christians I interact with regularly are of the kind to ask the "big questions" about how faith and life connect, about how to view everything in light of the gospel, about how to bring all things under the authority of Jesus Christ. From a Christian point of view, this seems like the right mission, even if it is an enormous undertaking. Thus, in particular, many Christians are wondering how the various academic disciplines relate to the faith; hence, this series.

On the other hand, something feels a little strange about the kinds of ideas which result from this grand endeavor. Some will argue (not the book I'm reading) the rather extreme position that mathematics makes no sense outside of a Christian worldview. That would be a powerful apologetic if it made any sense to anyone other than those making the argument. Others take the more moderate approach of just trying to draw vague but highly stimulating connections between a particular discipline and Christian faith. For instance, what does Cantor's theory of infinity say about God? Does belief in a personal infinite being open up avenues of inquiry to us which may not have otherwise existed? (Such might be suggested by the very interesting book, Naming Infinity.)

But whatever ideas you might generate by looking "through the eyes of faith," the simple fact is that all disciplines, from mathematics to history to philosophy, continue onward without adhering permanently to one guiding framework. Paradigms come and go. The notion that we need to be constantly aware of how all knowledge fits into a bigger picture can be quite stifling, or at best irritating. No, I'm really not thinking about God every time I recall a result from functional analysis in order to prove a theorem about a system of partial differential equations. Asking me to explain how this new truth I've discovered relates to the gospel is, from my point of view, silly. Frankly, I don't expect mathematics to look noticeably different "through the eyes of faith" than through any other set of eyes.

I think a case can be made for a little fragmentation in our lives. This is precisely what many Christians seem to think is wrong with the secular world: we live in many different parts of reality without being integrated into a whole. But I'm not convinced this is so much of a problem. In fact, it might be worth being more intentional about this. For instance, I highly recommend that everyone make a point of fragmenting political issues from one another. Gay marriage, abortion, prayer in schools, immigration, medicare, and terrorism are all completely unrelated issues. By saying "completely unrelated" I may have made the above statement false, but if you let yourself believe that it is true for a least a little while, you might end up thinking about each issue more rationally, without allowing your views to be predetermined by the one big picture that now informs all of your beliefs. The more we are in the habit of seeing everything through a single lens, the harder it becomes to resolve our differences without entering into conflict.

We may not be willing to say that some beliefs and ideas are unrelated to faith, but perhaps we can at least say that we do not know what the relationship is. Maybe we can never know. In our vain life, sometimes we must simply be content to solve the problems which are solvable, and to leave to God the things that are mysterious. A holistic worldview is perhaps but a chasing after wind.

Bryan Caplan on immigration restrictions

2011-08-28T16:32:00.001-04:00

This guy is fantastic.

It's a long video, so here's a brief synopsis: Most of the arguments against free immigration are based on claims that are at best exaggerated. Moreover, even if we accept all of the reasons usually given, there are cheaper and more humane ways to deal with the problems mentioned. For instance, if we're concerned about immigration lowering wages (which doesn't happen to any significant extent) or about immigrants soaking up welfare benefits (which really aren't that much to begin with) there is a simple solution: charge a flat fee for immigration (say, $30,000), or have a higher rate of taxes (say, an extra 10%) on immigrant workers. These suggestions are just concessions, of course. The real point is this: once a reasonable person has heard the facts, there really is no moral reason why he should oppose open immigration.

"What is Debt?"

2011-08-28T13:59:00.000-04:00

That's the title of an interview with economic anthropologist David Graeber (hey that name sounds familiar) on "naked capitalism." Excerpt:

Yes there’s a standard story we’re all taught, a ‘once upon a time’ — it’s a fairy tale.

It really deserves no other introduction: according to this theory all transactions were by barter. “Tell you what, I’ll give you twenty chickens for that cow.” Or three arrow-heads for that beaver pelt or what-have-you. This created inconveniences, because maybe your neighbor doesn’t need chickens right now, so you have to invent money.

The story goes back at least to Adam Smith and in its own way it’s the founding myth of economics. Now, I’m an anthropologist and we anthropologists have long known this is a myth simply because if there were places where everyday transactions took the form of: “I’ll give you twenty chickens for that cow,” we’d have found one or two by now. After all people have been looking since 1776, when the Wealth of Nations first came out. But if you think about it for just a second, it’s hardly surprising that we haven’t found anything.

Think about what they’re saying here – basically: that a bunch of Neolithic farmers in a village somewhere, or Native Americans or whatever, will be engaging in transactions only through the spot trade. So, if your neighbor doesn’t have what you want right now, no big deal. Obviously what would really happen, and this is what anthropologists observe when neighbors do engage in something like exchange with each other, if you want your neighbor’s cow, you’d say, “wow, nice cow” and he’d say “you like it? Take it!” – and now you owe him one. Quite often people don’t even engage in exchange at all – if they were real Iroquois or other Native Americans, for example, all such things would probably be allocated by women’s councils.

So the real question is not how does barter generate some sort of medium of exchange, that then becomes money, but rather, how does that broad sense of ‘I owe you one’ turn into a precise system of measurement – that is: money as a unit of account?

By the time the curtain goes up on the historical record in ancient Mesopotamia, around 3200 BC, it’s already happened. There’s an elaborate system of money of account and complex credit systems. (Money as medium of exchange or as a standardized circulating units of gold, silver, bronze or whatever, only comes much later.)

So really, rather than the standard story – first there’s barter, then money, then finally credit comes out of that – if anything its precisely the other way around. Credit and debt comes first, then coinage emerges thousands of years later and then, when you do find “I’ll give you twenty chickens for that cow” type of barter systems, it’s usually when there used to be cash markets, but for some reason – as in Russia, for example, in 1998 – the currency collapses or disappears.

The whole interview is rather fascinating. On the whole, Graeber's argument would appear to strike a blow to capitalism as it has evolved into a modern economic theory. He sharply criticizes the tendency to view all human behavior in terms of exchange. He shows how money evolved from debt, and how debt came from the threat of violence, and how this threat of violence most often came from the State.

How then can capitalism be a necessary condition for a free society, as Milton Friedman so forcefully argued? Well, I think the answer is not to turn to Friedman but rather to Hayek. Many of Graeber's points are good reminders that classical liberals and libertarians can't just construct a society axiomatically from principles such as property rights, without regard for history. But this just leads me back to The Fatal Conceit, which addresses precisely the question of how civilization evolved into the extended order which now holds together by the forces of the market.

While it would certainly be much nicer to think of the "invisible hand" emerging from peaceful developments in human civilization, we need not reject a system merely because of its origins. In fact, that's the whole point of evolution: it may be a grueling process, but what emerges is not the same as what went into the process. For instance, the State may have established money as a way to exercise power over its citizens. However, this is certainly not the only function which money has come to serve. The ability to use existing artifacts for purposes other than those originally intended continues to be a major source of innovation and progress. Under the term "artifacts" we may include both physical objects and abstract artifacts, such as social conventions and morals.

Graeber's point that not all human interaction is exchange is well-taken. Hayek's argument certainly does not rely on this myth. Rather, his argument is that exchange was the vehicle through which interactions with people we don't know could take place. So, for instance, when Graeber says, "Communism is in a way the basis of all social relations – in that if the need is great enough (I’m drowning) or the cost small enough (can I have a light?) everyone will be expected to act that way," Hayek would respond that this works just fine in a situation where you can actually see all the needs. If, however, you want a system in which people all over the world can benefit from the vast human potential that exists scattered among people who have no way of knowing anything about one another, the only system that we know of is that of exchange.

Hayek said that the one contribution he made to the science of economics was to point out how the price system worked as an abstract signal to regulate extended cooperation. If the price system had been intentionally designed for that purpose, he said, it would have been the most astonishingly brilliant achievement of mankind. As history shows, the real story is not so pretty, but the end result is still worth keeping.

That's not to say that the current understanding of debt and money must remain constant. Indeed, we never would have advanced as far as we have without changes in our cultural norms. In a world where so much debt is sovereign debt, I think it's worth taking seriously the idea of debt forgiveness, and what a fresh start could mean for the global economy. We're playing a dangerous game. Libertarians ought to take this very seriously: we can't pretend to live in a world where "property rights" are a fixed concept, and we need to understand the relationship between debt and coercion.

Since I find what he says so profound, I'll let Graeber have the last word on this:

Since antiquity the worst-case scenario that everyone felt would lead to total social breakdown was a major debt crisis; ordinary people would become so indebted to the top one or two percent of the population that they would start selling family members into slavery, or eventually, even themselves.

Well, what happened this time around? Instead of creating some sort of overarching institution to protect debtors, they create these grandiose, world-scale institutions like the IMF or S&P to protect creditors. They essentially declare (in defiance of all traditional economic logic) that no debtor should ever be allowed to default. Needless to say the result is catastrophic. We are experiencing something that to me, at least, looks exactly like what the ancients were most afraid of: a population of debtors skating at the edge of disaster.

Irrational Voters

2011-08-27T23:25:00.003-04:00

Here's an entertaining talk (part 1 of 6) from Bryan Caplan on "The Myth of the Rational Voter":

The overall point is troubling, but not unexpected: yes, it does actually make a difference how uninformed the public is about political matters. For instance, Caplan cites research showing that anti-market bias is markedly more prevalent among voters who are less informed about the facts. Those who count as "informed" here are of course not universally libertarian free market ideologues, but there are things on which people educated in certain areas can actually agree, regardless of ideology. (One comment I found interesting, but again not surprising, was that most economists are moderate Democrats, who believe in many free market policies in spite of their left-wing views.) As a result of the gap between informed and uninformed, many people support irrational policies (for instance on tariffs or what have you) even when they hurt us.

If you get to the end, you'll hear him start to talk about prescriptions. One idea is to have voters tested on basic knowledge before they vote. I understand why this is controversial, although I think people are a little too biased against this. Another idea is to "work on our communication skills"--for Caplan, this means that economists in particular should work on making basic economics presentable to the public. I grow weary of this idea. It's something we in the academy talk about endlessly, but we have very few concrete ideas about how to do it. Just as there are very few incentives for the average person to learn what experts know, so there are also very few incentives for academics to go out of their way to make key ideas popular.

In the long run, we absolutely do need ways to limit democracy. There is no question that if popular ideas are always allowed to become policy, democracy will ruin itself. In my opinion, this strengthens the argument for limited government. The argument goes like this:

If people are to have government ruling over them, it ought to be by the people's consent. That is, it ought to be democratically chosen.
If a society is going to be healthy, it must be protected at times from imposing its own irrational beliefs on itself.
Therefore, a healthy society ought to have a democratically elected government which is limited in its powers.

If we reject point (1), we end up with authoritarianism. If we reject point (2), we end up with chaos. The average American believes very strongly in point (1), but many people are eager to reject point (2), which ironically leads to more and more coercive actions by government.

Candidate for change

2011-08-25T23:47:00.000-04:00

What is the one thing the President of the United States can actually do in office? For all the policy questions candidates have to answer in debates and forums, very few of those policies can actually be put into practice directly through the Executive branch of government. The vast majority of these policies are enacted through laws made in Congress.

But there is one thing which fundamentally depends on the President, especially at this point in our history: the military. After all, he is, you know, Commander in Chief of the armed forces. If a U.S. President decided that the best thing after all would be to pull back from Iraq and Afghanistan, that would actually make a guaranteed difference--unless, of course, Congress actually declared war, which it hasn't done in...65 years?

And that's exactly what Ron Paul would do first as President:

In other words, Ron Paul is probably the only candidate who would be able to change anything substantial about what government currently does, because he is the only candidate who has staunch beliefs against our current foreign policy.

Bringing our troops home would, by the way, save us on the order of $500 billion per year.

Ron Paul is often cast as a fringe candidate with views too far outside the mainstream for the average voter. But let's face it: if Ron Paul were President, most of these views wouldn't matter, because he wouldn't be the one making laws. The way I see it, then, we ought to elect him in 2012 because on the one issue that he could influence most, he is in favor of much needed change.

In other words, the most fundamental characteristic of Ron Paul as a presidential candidate is that he is anti-war. I happen to agree with many other things he believes in, but even if you don't agree with him on anything else, peace might just be a principle worth supporting.

Now you see why the Republican party establishment hates him so much. This ain't no George W. Bush.

By the way, beside Rick Perry, Ron Paul is the only veteran in the presidential race; he was a flight surgeon during Vietnam.

"How Obamacare is Destroying Accountable Care Organizations"

2011-08-24T19:43:00.001-04:00

That's the title of an article from Forbes. Excerpt:

“Accountable care organizations” is the health wonk phrase du jour. Obamacare’s advocates point to its support for ACOs as one of the important cost-control initiatives in the law. Except that, like nearly everything about Obamacare, the truth isn’t so simple. It turns out that the government’s idea of an accountable care organization is completely unworkable, to the point where nearly all leading health providers have declared it dead on arrival.

It turns out these organizations are already being tried--under the Medicare Advantage system, which is a privatized system. But just to make the invisible hand a little more visible, the government insists on spending hundreds of millions of dollars to try out their own version. Only, the government model doesn't seem to be as popular; I wonder why?

On March 31, Donald Berwick’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued 427 pages of proposed rules and regulations that will govern how ACOs will operate.

In May, ten groups that participated in an ACO pilot program called the Medicare Physician Group Practice Demonstration, including leading centers like Dartmouth-Hitchcock, Geisinger, and the University of Michigan, told CMS in a letter that it would be “difficult, if not impossible” to participate in Obamacare’s ACO program, due to its incessant federal micromanagement and high start-up costs.

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, your tax dollars hard at work.

The future of education

2011-08-23T21:25:00.002-04:00

If a revolution in education production is possible, this is it:

"Humanizing the classroom"--with technology, incidentally. It's more than just humanizing the classroom; it's individualizing education. Educators have always been searching for ways to give each student the chance to move at her own pace; now that opportunity is readily available.

A colleague of mine is actually trying this method with her calculus class. Apparently you can make your own video lectures, which she has done, and she is assigning the lectures as homework. Then the entire classroom experience is for the students to work on what used to be homework. I'm really excited to see how it goes for her. I'd be willing to try this teaching method in the future; I sort of wish I'd thought of it before we started this semester.

And this is all thanks to YouTube...and a former hedge fund analyst. Spontaneous order, indeed.