The Physics-Philosophy ‘Kerfuffle’

The ongoing spat between physicists and philosophers–sparked by David Albert’s negative review of Lawrence Krauss’ A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing–is the latest instance of a simmering conflict that seems to recur between the academic practitioners of discipline ‘X’ and philosophers who specialize in ‘philosophy of X.’

One kind of complaint made in these disputes is that made by Krauss about philosophers’ excessive sensitivity about encroachment. Roughly (in the case of physics): philosophers don’t like it when physicists deign to solve ‘philosophical problems’ in physics, ones that philosophers have deemed unanswerable by them. (In the context of philosophy of mind and neuroscience, see the bickering between Colin McGinn and VS Ramachandran in the New York Review of Books.) Here, philosophers consider practicing scientists too happy to accept a facile resolution of a genuine problem because they are not sufficiently aware of the philosophical niceties at play in solving it. The charge leveled here: ‘philosophical questions’ that are sought to be answered by science are first reformulated to make them so amenable.

Another kind of complaint, phrased in various forms, and directed at philosophers, runs roughly like this: ‘How can you do ‘the philosophy of X’ when you don’t specialize in X?’ The philosopher thus stands accused of lacking credentials, the appropriate graduate training or professional experience, and thus the appropriate sensitivity to subject matter; without such credentialing, the philosopher is handicapped in his investigations of the conceptual foundations of ‘X.’ This requirement often underwrites X-practitioners’ skepticism about philosophers: You don’t understand the work we do, and you don’t have the background or the experience to do so. (I suspect this forms a subtext to the attitudes expressed by Krauss.) Unsurprisingly, the most vigorous instances of this sort of skepticism about philosophers’ competence to investigate the foundations of ‘X’ are expressed by members of scientific disciplines: science, conducted in a technical, specialized language, requires an immersion in its particulars and methods before it can be philosophized about. The ideal philosopher of physics would be a physicist himself, one who could wax philosophical about a subject he is intimately familiar with. Bohr, Einstein, for instance, in their philosophical moments, arguing about quantum completeness or the measurement problem, would be archetypes of this, as would, say, Sheldon Glashow arguing against string theory.

Now, it is not uncommon to find philosophers of ‘X’–where ‘X’ is some science–who are competent in ‘X;’ they have received some training or earned some experience in it. (David Albert for instance.) Most philosophers that write on these specialized domains are competent in them–without being experts capable of producing interesting results in that field by themselves.  Physicists then, might well doubt that a ‘competent-in-physics’ philosopher could deign to pronounce on the foundations of their discipline. But it may be that this competency is all that is required in order to tackle the questions the philosopher is interested in; perhaps the abstraction of these questions–and their answers–make them amenable to the philosopher.

These considerations should suggest to us that the most perspicuous response to disputes of this sort is to focus on the nature and method of philosophical and scientific question-asking-and-answering. That, plus close attention to the intertwined history of philosophy and science,  would do much to banish the rancor needlessly on display in this latest instance of academic turf warfare. The former inquiry would clarify how the framings of questions differ in philosophy and science and influence their notions of what kinds of answers are considered reasonable. The latter inquiry would show how questions in the sciences either grew out of philosophical speculation or are original to the sciences themselves and how philosophical questions, even after generating fields of scientific inquiry, can persist in forms facilitative of persistent engagement.

Misery Needs Company, Contd.

Misery Needs Company, Part Deux prompted a series of useful comments from readers Melon, Dan K., and JR. I’m going to respond here to a central thread therein. As Dan K. asks, ‘Are luxurious union contracts contributing in a significant way to our economic problems’? (By ‘economic problems,’ I presume state budgets like Wisconsin’s are at issue.)

Now, if it is the luxuriousness of those contracts that is a problem, then the correct response presumably would be to renegotiate  those contracts when they expire. But not, surely, to take away collective bargaining rights? Does this follow as well?  Clearly, Scott Walker thought so, for that was his strategy in Wisconsin. However, to go from ‘these contracts are untenable given budgetary constraints’ to ‘you have no right to bargain collectively’ requires a union-busting–rather than mere budget-fixing–agenda.

And the Wisconsin example demonstrates what is wrong even with answering ‘yes’ to that question above. For Wisconsin shows us that the introduction of the financial crisis is not a ‘red herring.’ Consider the following reasons for its budgetary problems:

Falling tax revenue resulting from the recession is the greatest culprit of Wisconsin’s budget woes — between 2008 and 2009, state tax revenues fell over 7%.

Since July 2009, there has been an estimated dip in revenues of $200 million annually; the state saw little growth in tax revenues in 2010.

Unemployment rose more than 4 percentage points between 2007 and 2010, forcing more Wisconsin residents on Medicaid and causing state Medicaid costs to rise.

A series of tax cuts passed since 2003 that cumulatively represent $3.7 billion and, by 2013, make up a $800 million-per-year reduction in tax revenues.

In addition, this year agency budget requests will rise $2.9 billion — nearly two-thirds of which is for Medicaid, with much of that amount associated with replacing one-time federal Medicaid revenues the state received from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Look at those reasons: falling tax revenue because of the recession, tax cuts, rising unemployment, rising healthcare costs. Sound familiar? The Scott Walker solution: Bust the unions! It is the transparency of the union-busting agenda that produced the Wisconsin protests. Those protesting were not simply rejecting a particular contract; they knew that the larger Walker agenda was to get rid of unions. (Melon’s comment acknowledges that budgetary problems are better understood by paying attention to the larger economic picture that unions are embedded in.) So, again, to my interlocutors: if public sector union workers’ contract terms are untenable, then why not  revise them? Or perhaps seek to collect adequate tax revenues by not enacting tax cuts? Why take away collective bargaining?

JR seems to suggest that because  50% of American workers work for the government, there is no need to worry about the ‘profit imperative crushing them’. Does this mean that public sector workers need not–should not–form unions? But the central point is maintaining worker rights in the workplace, in the face of employer power, via representation by a collective entity. It is the imbalance in power between employer and individual employee that is at crucial, and which warrants the formation of workers into collective bargaining units.

Non-unionized labor is cheaper; that is why it will always be more popular with employers. The question is whether in seeking to pay that lower cost, by the device of getting rid of collective bargaining, the employer is actually seeking something far more valuable: the ability to regulate the workplace to his heart’s content.

Misery Needs Company, Part Deux: Scapegoating Unions

Reader JR left an interesting comment yesterday, responding to my post ‘Misery Needs Company: The American Worker’s Hostility Toward Unions.’ Rather than excerpt it here and respond piecemeal, I’m going to just write a few thoughts prompted by it. (Please do read the comment in full.)

There are, I think, two points that are being conflated in the debate over unions and unionizing:  Should workers have the right to unionize? That is, form collective bargaining units? Second, are current union contracts–whether private or public sector–the reason for nationwide budgetary crunches and economic crisis? (Someone could conceivably answer ‘yes’ to both. Alternatively, one could say ‘no’ to the first, and then find the situation described by the second especially problematic.)

To address the first, it is uncontroversial for me that workers organize themselves into collective units. It is the only way they can represent themselves as a united entity to an immensely more powerful unit, their employers. The balance of power is acutely tipped in favor of the employer; workers have to join together if they are to flourish in the workplace. Otherwise, the profit imperative crushes them. The idea that a workplace is a better place when the weaker party, the worker, is left to fend for himself alone against an entity that can regulate him, fire him on arbitrary grounds, control every single minute of his workday, is immensely unappealing to me. The workplace is where the US Constitution does not exist; the employer can crack down on the employee’s privacy, his freedom of speech; the list goes on. If workers do not present a united front, they have little chance of ensuring the elevation of their interests in the priorities of their employers. As it stands, most American workers are overworked, with the worst benefits, vacation packages and family leave benefits in the industrialized first world. Perhaps this has something to do with the shrinking percentage of unions in the private sector. Perhaps.

Unions are not perfect: their leadership has been corrupt at times, they have often defended the indefensible (as in police unions defending corrupt cops). But none of that will ever, ever change my conviction that when one massively strong and rich entity faces a weaker, fragmented entity, the weaker will lose, again and again. The workers’ only hope lies in unionizing. That is the reason for my mystification by the fact that American workers somehow cannot make the connection that the reason for their horrible vacation packages–2 weeks? Are you kidding me?–their ludicrous family leave benefits, and shrinking aspirations for upward mobility might have something to do with the fact that they did not have the means to negotiate collectively for better contracts.

Coming to the second point. Are union contracts to blame for the budgetary crunches nationwide? In a nation where income inequality is at its worst levels ever, when this nation has been fighting two catastrophically expensive disastrous wars, when corporate malfeasance is at an all-time high, when the financial crisis of 2008 has yet to see any of its criminals booked, this seems like a strange charge to lay against unions. It might be that union contracts need revisiting just because given the financial bottom-line, something has to give. But given what we know about CEO paychecks, about the extension of tax-cuts for the super-rich, about the incestuous relationship between Wall Street and Capitol Hill, the idea that unions are to be singled out and demonized strikes me as yet another instance of scapegoating  the weakest political entity available.

JR suggests in his comment too, that my language has been strong and the rhetoric overheated. Well, I suggest that if the exploitation of this nation by its political and corporate class is examined closely, the only reaction one can, and should, feel is anger. Which might then be reflected in the language employed to make political points. I often write the way I do because I do genuinely feel a rage about the imbalance of power that exists, about the financial power that has corrupted this great nation’s government, and turned it into a corporate handmaiden. Bear in mind too, again, the balance of power. Those that have declared wars can actually bring about people’s deaths; those that have made millions jobless can immiserate them and their families; those that speak glibly of family values like Santorum contribute to the continuing marginalization of gay people (a marginalization that can result in their being denied rights, living shadow lives and sometimes being subjected to violence). Protesters can dangle all the donuts they want in front of police; the ones that get to do some head-cracking and arresting are the cops.

I respect JR’s views because I see in them an intuition about unions that many people share; the sad state of unions in this country tells me that I’m in the minority in this one. But I think if the blame for the financial mess is to be assigned, starting with the unions is a mistake.

Of Pugilistic Encounters and Uncanny Resemblances

In high school, I boxed for a year in the flyweight division. In the year-end boxing tournament, I lost in the final. To my best friend’s identical twin.

Most people who I recount this story to are struck by the apparent weirdness of fighting an opponent that bore a striking resemblance to someone who I counted a near and dear one: Did it prevent me from landing blows? Was I afraid I would hurt him? Was my mind confused by seeing a supposedly friendly face contort into the determined aggression of a fighting counterpart?

The answer to all those questions is a ‘No.’ I wasn’t thrown off by the resemblance. I lost because a) I didn’t throw as many punches as my opponent did, and b) the referees forgot that punches that land are more valuable than ones that are aimlessly thrown and don’t make contact. I think I wuz robbed. When the fight was over, and we had retired to the changing room, my fellow boxer walked over to me and said, ‘You should have won that.’ Right.

There was another complication. My opponent was not a popular boy in my school; I had been urged, by many, to beat him, to teach him a lesson. But thanks to my father–a school boxing champion in his time, who disdained the idea of the boxing ring as a place to settle scores–and my coach–a former Navy boxer who stressed the ‘sweet science’ aspect of boxing–I felt uneasy about any such agenda. More to the point, I had learned enough from my coach to know that the way to box was to stick what I did best: moving quickly, defending well, looking for openings, sidestepping, jabbing, and landing straight hard lefts when I could. And to not confuse myself with thoughts of exacting retribution on the behalf of others.

But on the day of the fight, I did some things wrong. I didn’t attack enough. I was too defensive. I was content to wait and watch for openings. I landed the two best punches of the entire fight, ones that glazed my opponent’s eyes and hushed the watching crowd momentarily. But I didn’t move in after that; the fight was there for the taking. Somehow, I had become too invested in not losing control, imagining that I could just calmly pick off my opponent, scoring points casually, racking them up on my way to a unanimous points decision. That strategy didn’t work. It would have helped if my seconds had alerted me to what was happening but instead I was told, rather confusingly, that all was well.  The referees rewarded my opponent’s aggression. I had assumed they would reward me for the greater percentage of punches that landed from my side. They didn’t. I had left too much to them.

Some thirty years on, the defeat still rankles, a classic missed opportunity. I never boxed again after that; I changed high schools, moved to a school with a better academic program but a non-existent sports one. I dreamed often of getting back into the ring, but by the time the opportunity arose again, too many years had passed. I had been out of the ring too long.

I can still jump rope and shadow box; tiny leftovers from a memorable year that ended in crushing disappointment.

Misery Needs Company: The American Worker’s Hostility Toward Unions

In the midst of a Facebook discussion about the possible reasons for Scott Walker’s victory in Wisconsin,  a participant stated,

[T]here is an incredible amount of hostility towards Unions, and a unique hostility towards Public-Sector Unions. If you look at what the Unions were fighting for it’s very hard for a private sector employee to get excited about it. “Oh you want me to help you retire at 50, keep your job despite gross incompetency, 5 weeks vacation, and to top it all off raise my taxes to pay for it?”

My response was,

If I rewrite your “keep your job despite gross incompetency” as “no firing without due process” then the deal sounds like a good one, one that *all* American workers should be trying for. Unfortunately, brainwashed private sector workers, rather than forming unions and getting a good deal like that for themselves would rather drag everyone else down to their miserable, overworked, servile state.

I want to try to expand on this little exchange, because I think it contains a tiny insight about the poor state of unionized labor today.

Organized, unionized labor is on the run in the US. A tiny fraction of American workers are members of unions, and that number looks destined to decline. Part of the reason is the ‘incredible amount of hostility’ referred to above, always visibly on display when a non-unionized worker finds out:

Unions raise wages of unionized workers by roughly 20% and raise compensation, including both wages and benefits, by about 28%’

Unionized workers are more likely than their nonunionized counterparts to receive paid leave, are approximately 18% to 28% more likely to have employer-provided health insurance, and are 23% to 54% more likely to be in employer-provided pension plans.

[They are]  more likely to have a guaranteed benefit in retirement [and] their employers contribute 28% more toward pensions.

Unionized workers receive 26% more vacation time and 14% more total paid leave (vacations and holidays).

The correct response to this from a non-unionized worker should be, ‘Damn, that sounds like a sweet deal; how do I get a piece of the action?’ At which point, he responds favorably the next time a union organizer contacts him, fills out the election card, and welcomes the NLRB to make sure the NLRA is properly implemented in his workplace.

Of course, none of that happens. The average American worker’s response is, ‘How dare people organize themselves into collective bargaining units to resist the almost unlimited powers of employers and ensure a better deal for themselves?’ At which point, he throws his weight behind every anti-union force that he can find, thus conspiring against his own economic interests.

The sad truth is that the American working class has been convinced to look beyond itself, to not think of itself as a working class, but rather as one that is headed elsewhere, to the magical land of the 1%, except that they don’t have tickets, will be refused visas if they apply, and if they ever make it past the border guards, will promptly be deported. It has been taught to disdain its current status in the interests of continual aspiration with no regard whatsoever for all those forces that work–overtime–to make sure their aspirations are foiled.

Misery needs company indeed.

The Human-Computer Chess Championship: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?

Should chess grandmasters play with a computer as an aid during a championship game? (Or, should the current world chess championship become the Advanced Chess World Championship?) Hartosh Singh Bal (‘Chessmate’, International Herald Tribune, June 5 2012) offers some arguments for this claim, but fails to consider a possible unintended consequence and leaves an interesting angle unexplored.

First, I agree that allowing chess grandmasters to use the computer engines during a championship match could result in higher-quality games. (I say that as someone who, as a rather incompetent chess player, is not entirely clear about what ‘higher-quality’ chess means, but at the very least, the opportunity for cross-vetting of moves appears likely to result in interestingly new strategies.)  However, I wonder if a tendency to defer to a computer’s moves would not manifest itself, slowly marginalizing a human player. (There is ample evidence from decision support system design literature that so-called ‘mixed’ systems–those that combine automation and human inputs–slowly become ‘pure’ as humans trust, and defer to, computer-generated outcomes.)  As the power–and corresponding opacity–of the chess engines increases–as is extremely likely–it seems the human role would diminish as well. Extremely opinionated and confident grandmasters would perhaps be more inclined to resist such deference but such resistance, I’d suggest, would be fighting a losing battle in the long run, slowly turning the collaborative game into a game between computer chess engines. In this regard, I wonder if the best role for computer chess engines in the World Chess Championship would be to remain trainers, preparing humans for games against other humans. Of course, this does not preclude the possibility of a Computer Chess Championship.

Second, in the link that Bal provides for the claim that ‘computer engines play chess better than humans’ it is noted that the ‘open-source Houdini’ engine beat the ‘commercial Rybka’ chess engine (this is the wrong contrast by the way – it should be ‘open-source’ versus ‘proprietary’; an open-source engine can also be ‘commercial’). An open-source engine could benefit from one very important source of inputs: competent chess-playing programmers, who would be able to share their implementation strategies with each other to arrive at collaborative solutions for difficult chess situations.

Incidentally, as Bal wraps up his piece he claims:

[Allowing computers to play chess alongside humans] would also teach us important things about the world. Take, for example,  a game that’s winding down with this particular configuration: rook and a bishop versus two knights.  [link in original] This situation came up in a world championship qualifying game in 2007, and the match concluded in a draw. But computer analysis showed that the game was really a forced win for black in 208 moves. This revealed not just a strategic truth about chess, but also a phenomenological truth, a truth about reality, that would otherwise have remained inaccessible. [emphasis added]

The example Bal points to shows that a particular chess configuration has an outcome not found by human players for various reasons (in this case, the sheer amount of look-ahead required).   Why is the existence of this winning strategy a ‘phenomenological truth’? Furthermore,  computer chess engines can explore such outcomes, discover such ‘truths’ if you insist, on their own–generate game configurations, explore possible winning strategies–without being involved in human chess championships.

The Mountaineering Make-Over

A few days ago, as my nephew, an aspiring mountaineer who has been on expeditions to Kamet, Trishul, (both in the Garhwal Himalayas) and Stok Kangri (a trekking peak in Ladakh), chatted with me on Facebook, he said (roughly),

You know, for me it’s no longer that away from the hustle-bustle, out to find myself thing. It’s become more of a battle against a target; now, its to see if I can do it; it’s no longer like, oh let’s go into the mountains and feel spiritual, it’s become more like, ‘its me against the mountain.’

I responded (roughly):

Yes, that’s not a surprising feeling to have. Mountaineering will do that to you, but you’ll find moments of spiritual beauty up at those heights, and you find out about yourself in the course of that struggle and you’ll come back a different person anyway.

At which point, my nephew said,

You mean to say I’ve become a different person five times?

The answer to that, of course, is a most resounding ‘Yes.’

Climbing a mountain is a physical and mental challenge, among the most intense and demanding that a human being can undertake. To say this is to do no more than faithfully echo the thoughts expressed in the many millions of words written about mountaineering endeavors. But they don’t quite capture the sheer just-been-through-twelve-rounds-with-a-prizefighter feel that a climb at high-altitude in freezing weather can inflict on you. (I say this as someone who, despite having hiked a fair amount at high altitudes has only flirted once, briefly, with anything approximating a mountain climb, and that was on Stok Kangri, a hiking peak!). That feeling of having been battered around by the elements and the implacable mountain can generate, sustain and stoke the relentless competitive desire, in some sufficiently motivated beings, and evidently in my nephew, to ‘beat’ the mountain, to ‘overcome’ it. But the mountains also afford us–again, as so many have noted–ample opportunity and space to experience incredible, soul-awakening beauty (like, for instance, the open, silent, cathedral-like snow-field in a glacier basin crossing on Stok Kangri below; click on the image for a larger version).

Quite simply, it is the juxtaposition of such sublime beauty with harshness and physical discomfort that ensures that even as mountains may make us regard them as barriers to be overcome, they continue to retain their ability to reach down into our being, unsettling, rearranging and morphing it into something that will retain indelible traces of that encounter.  Up there, among the snow and the crags, lurk many spaces for enabling a new understanding of oneself.  Go up and come down; a make-over cannot but ensue. A hard-earned one.

Note: I’ve written here before, briefly, on the relationship that mountaineers have with the mountains they attempt to climb. In one post, I noted the problematic adversarial language that is often deployed in writing about mountaineering, and in another I sought to move the focus in mountaineering language away from individual effort to collective action.

Teaching Descartes: It Ain’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be

In ‘Five Parables’ (from Historical Ontology, Harvard University Press, 2002), Ian Hacking writes,

I had been giving a course introducing undergraduates to the philosophers who were contemporaries of the green family and August der Stark. My hero had been Leibniz, and as usual my audience gave me pained looks. But after the last meeting, some students gathered around and began with the conventional, ‘Gee, what a great course.’ The subsequent remarks were more instructive: ‘But you could not help it…what with all those great books, I mean like Descartes…’ They loved Descartes and his Meditations.

I happen to give terrible lectures on Descartes, for I mumble along saying that I do not understand him much. It does not matter. Descartes speaks directly to these young people, who know as little about Descartes and his times as I know about the green family and its time. But just as the green family showed itself to me, so Descartes shows himself to them….The value of Descartes to these students is completely anachronistic, out of time. Half will have begun with the idea that Descartes and Sartre were contemporaries, both being French. Descartes, even more than Sartre, can speak directly to them….I do find it very hard to make sense of Descartes, even after reading commentaries, predecessors, and more arcane texts of the same period. The more I make consistent sense of him, the more he seems to me to inhabit an alien universe.

A few brief responses:

1. ‘Conventional’? This makes me think Hacking inhabits ‘an alien universe.’ Students gathering around me at the end of the semester and telling me they thought they had just finished a ‘great course’? Be still my beating heart.

2. I suspect I too give ‘terrible lectures on Descartes.’ I’ve now taught Descartes four times–twice in introductory core classes, and twice in Modern Philosophy–and I remain unconvinced that I’ve been competent in making Descartes understandable on any of those occasions. In part, this is because, like Hacking, I  ‘find it very hard to make sense of Descartes.’ Perhaps it’s because of the apparatus that Descartes employs, perhaps because I don’t find foundationalism a coherent doctrine, or perhaps it’s the scholastic language in the Meditations. Whatever the reason, I feel defeated by Descartes.

3. What I find most surprising about Hacking’s comments is his recounting of his students’ reactions. For  I am not alone in this relationship with Descartes: I sense a general skepticism directed at him from my students as well. This might be because of my incompetent teaching of Descartes, but I’ve come to think that many students find the Meditations a let down after the Discourse on Method (and the opening of the Meditations). There is an austerity, a novelty, promised there that the subsequent sections simply do not deliver on; students, in particular, feel cheated by Descartes’ reliance on a benevolent, non-deceiving God to make his arguments work. (Of course, this is merely an impressionistic take on students’ reactions whenever these portions make their appearance: ‘All that talk about the Enlightenment, a new method, rejection of authority, an intellectual hygiene and discipline, and then we get this?’)

My second time teaching Modern Philosophy, I geared up, determined to finally lay the Descartes bugbear to rest, reading the Meditations carefully, determined to make sense of them to myself and to my students, to give good ‘ol Rene the best chance possible. Three weeks later, I surrendered.   

Michelle Maltais’ Cyber-Weapon Fantasy About ‘War Without Bloodshed’

What is it about technology that makes so many, warriors and armchair-enthusiasts alike, imagine that it will make war,  somehow, less bloody, less brutal, less inhumane? That never-ending and most curious of seductions is again visibly on display in Michelle Maltais’ article ‘Cyber Missiles Mean War Without Bloodshed’ (Los Angeles Times , June 2nd 2012). Like most demonstrations of this destined-to-be-benighted hope, it is equal parts laughable naiveté and dangerous cynicism. And unquestioning acceptance of the pronouncements of techno-optimists.

Maltais begins with a line that should have given her pause:

What do you need to disrupt nuclear facilities of your enemy? A thumb drive.

Maltais imagines, as she would like us to, I’m sure, that disruption of nuclear facilities merely means their peaceful grinding to a halt. But what if that disruption entails a catastrophic chain reaction instead? Or perhaps some other mishap that releases toxic, radioactive materials? The fallacy here is to imagine that the cyber-weapon will work precisely as intended, calmly, sanguinely, operating without collateral damage. But war, remember, is that place where, always without fail, ‘the best-laid schemes of men gang aft agley.’ This precautionary note could be cited for almost every single imagined use of cyber weapons.

But sometimes it doesn’t need to be a precautionary note about cyber-weapon malfunction. Maltais quotes ‘Phil Lieberman, a security consultant and chief executive of Lieberman Software in Los Angeles’ as saying:

You’re seeing an evolution of warfare that’s really intriguing…[W]arfare where no one is dying.

Fallacy Numero Dos: Cyber weapons may not merely conduct disruptive warfare. Perhaps they could make guided missiles go awry, planes crash, or bring about any number of other catastrophic failures of systems equipped with guidance systems susceptible to invasive hacking. These might entail loss of human life as well.

These remarks, however, are overshadowed by what might be the central confusion implicitly on display in the orgy of technophilic presumption that runs through Maltais’ article, that cyber-attacks will be responded to with acquiescence or by similarly oriented weapons, thus conjuring up an image of a world populated by belligerents that are content to merely knock out each other communication systems–and similar targets–happily trading software-coded potshots at each other.

Au contraire. Cyber attacks, if sufficiently potent, are likely to be considered casus belli by those on the receiving end. Their mode and method of retaliation might not be of the cyber variety. It might, you know, involve weapons that go boom, that shred skin and flesh and bone, and, yes, cause bloodshed. Maltais and those she quotes imagine that software will be met with software. But warfare is often asymmetrical. Do we–in this time and age, in this era of the suicide bomber, the IED, the nail bomb and the improvised Molotov cocktail, that daily go up against awesome, mechanized and computerized armies–really need to be reminded of that? Perhaps we do. And perhaps we also need the rude awakening that only war can bring–because apparently, when it comes to war, nothing quite gets rid of technological fantasies like those currently on display, like the shedding of real blood, and the return home of not-to-be-photographed body bags.

Geertz, the ‘Anthropological Understanding,’ and Persons

(As promised in an earlier post on Clifford Geertz, I will be posting a few reactions here to his essays in Local Knowledge.) 

In ‘”From The Native’s Point of View”: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding’, (from Local Knowledge: Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, Basic Books, New York, 1983, pp 59), Clifford Geertz writes,

The concept of person is…an excellent vehicle by which to examine this whole question of how to go about poking into another people’s turn of mind. In the first place, some sort of concept of this kind, one feels reasonably safe in saying, exists in recognizable form within all social groups. Various notions of what persons are may be, from our point of view, more than a little odd. People may be conceived to dart about nervously at night, shaped like fireflies. Essential elements of their psyche, like hatred, may be thought to be lodged in granular black bodies within their livers, discoverable upon autopsy. They may share their fates with doppelganger beasts, so that when the beast sickens or dies they sicken or die too. But at least some conception of what a human individual is, as opposed to a rock, an animal, a rainstorm, or a god, is…universal. Yet, at the same time, as these offhand examples suggest, the actual conceptions involved vary, often quite sharply, from one group to the next. The Western conception of the person as a bounded, unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe; a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgment, and action organized into a distinctive whole and set contrastively both against other such wholes and against a social and natural background is, however incorrigible it may seem to us, a rather peculiar idea within the context of the world’s cultures.

Indeed, this notion of a person often seems a ‘rather peculiar idea’ even without the contrasting notions of persons in ‘other’ cultures. For instance, as I suggested in a post here on the ethics of care, which conceives of persons in more relational terms, most puzzles about personhood ascription arise precisely because of our limited view of persons as unitary entities. The puzzles I have in mind are the so-called ‘borderline’ cases: new-born infants, comatose patients, and the like. They very often do not meet some or many of a conventional cluster of attributes associated with persons: rationality, consciousness, free-will, autonomy, moral sensibilities, other-directedness and so on. But our intuitions suggest to most that these entities are persons, worthy of our attention, and wait for it, care. The difficulty in these cases arises because the entity in question is considered in isolation from a surrounding social, inter-personal, and emotional context. Viewed in this light, and evaluated against a check-list of conditions, which make our putative persons resemble nothing as much as the rational, freely-acting agent so beloved of market theory, these entities fail the personhood test spectacularly. But of course.

The ‘anthropological understanding’ that Geertz highlights is crucial because it affords us a means of inspecting, evaluating, and comparing the varied conceptualizations of persons that cultures, separated by time, place, language and history, can afford us. These notions should help clarify, and even more importantly, inform ours: ‘person’ is not a static concept, it has a history, one subject to influences precisely like the ones Geertz pointed us to.

Note: The journal citation for Geertz’s essay is: “From the Native’s Point of View”: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding, Clifford Geertz, Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , Vol. 28, No. 1 (Oct., 1974), pp. 26-45