A survey by Ipsos MORI for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science has attracted attention. It has shown that many of those in the UK who say they are Christian do not have the beliefs, views or practices that one might traditionally associate with being Christian.
Two press releases, both dated 14 February 2012, are available here:
http://richarddawkinsfoundation.org/
Survey data are available here:
http://c3414097.r97.cf0.rackcdn.com/IpsosMORI_RDFRS-UK_Survey_Topline_15-02-2012.pdf
This raises the question of whether public policy should be significantly influenced by the Judeo-Christian tradition (a vague notion, but not a hopelessly vague one).
I can only think of two grounds for giving any special role to the Judeo-Christian tradition in the formation of public policy.
The first ground would be that the relevant religions were widely believed, so that policy in tune with them would be in accordance with the wishes of the population.
The survey provides a strong reason to reject this ground. If the fact that a substantial proportion of the population claims to be Christian only indicates that a substantial proportion of the population has some belief in God, which tends to get labelled as Christian because of cultural background, then the size of that proportion will not in itself justify a claim that our society is deeply attached to a Judeo-Christian heritage, of which we should take special account in making public policy.
For example, if the people who say they are Christian do not generally subscribe to the traditional doctrines of the Church from which moral prescriptions are derived, then the size of the proportion would not count against policies that Christian churches might be expected to oppose by virtue of their doctrines (abortion, gay marriage, etc).
The second ground would be that it could be demonstrated, to the satisfaction of people at large, that there was indeed a God. This cannot be done. The purported demonstrations that have been offered over the centuries are no good at all.
It is worth noting the importance of demonstration to the satisfaction of people at large. Suppose that someone with political power was, himself or herself, entirely and sincerely convinced of the truth of some religion. That would justify his or her acting accordingly in his or her private life. We are all entitled to act on propositions that others doubt or deny, when we are the only ones affected.
But when someone's actions will affect others, and they have not individually volunteered to submit themselves to the agent's will (as many of us have not, because following each election, many will not have voted for the winning government), the agent has a responsibility to take account of the fact that others may regard his or her principles of action as mistaken. In the case of the religious politician, there would be no non-circular grounds for denying the status of epistemic peer to those who did regard the principles as mistaken. (There would be a circular ground: "Those who do not share my religion are wrong, so they should be disregarded".)
Given that, the religious politician should not be steered by his or her religion when making public policy. An analogy would be a captain who navigated a ship between submerged rocks on the basis that irregularities in waves would indicate where the rocks were. If others on the bridge told the captain that this was in their view an unsafe method, because a rock at a dangerous depth might still be too far below the surface to create any noticeable irregularities, the captain would be morally obliged to take note and use a more generally accepted method, despite outranking the others.
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Thursday, 2 February 2012
Trust in advertising
A story in the Independent, here, attributes the following words to Guy Parker, the Chief Executive of the Advertising Standards Authority (in the fifth paragraph):
"Trust in advertising has been declining for a number of years and this is not good news."
If trust in advertising has declined (and I do not know whether it really has), that is extraordinarily good news. If people have become less likely to be taken in by the tricks of advertisers, who mostly abstain from direct lies but who do not hesitate to use carefully chosen images and words (including carefully devised brand names) in order to create unjustified mental associations, that is a sign that the public is becoming more discerning.
"Trust in advertising has been declining for a number of years and this is not good news."
If trust in advertising has declined (and I do not know whether it really has), that is extraordinarily good news. If people have become less likely to be taken in by the tricks of advertisers, who mostly abstain from direct lies but who do not hesitate to use carefully chosen images and words (including carefully devised brand names) in order to create unjustified mental associations, that is a sign that the public is becoming more discerning.
Friday, 20 January 2012
Copyright and the Internet
Copyright has been much in the news recently, because of the two Congressional bills, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act), which have just led the English-language Wikipedia and some other websites to stage a 24-hour blackout in protest. Here are a few thoughts.
1. Intellectual property does not have any obvious ground in the practicalities of social life, in the way that property in physical goods has. If one person takes another person's bananas without permission, the loser can no longer eat the bananas. If one person copies another's idea or work without permission, the loser can still use the idea or the work. A society without any intellectual property rights is not hard to conceive. A society without physical property rights would be hard to conceive.
2. Given the first point, it is not surprising that intellectual property rights are limited. Patents last for 20 years, literary copyright lasts for 70 years from the later of the author's death and first publication, and so on. Rights have been granted for the benefit of society (encouraging invention and creativity), rather than for the benefit of the holder of the rights.
3. It is not at all clear why intellectual property violations should be a matter for the criminal law, as opposed to civil proceedings by the party that has suffered the violation. The fact that violations are to be treated as criminal is enshrined in international agreements, but violations need not be so treated. If we are concerned with the benefit to society, that benefit is, as already noted, not nearly so obvious as the benefit of respect for physical property. There is not enough of a motive there for criminalization. If we are concerned with the benefit to the holder of rights, we may compare the position on defamation. Someone might reasonably feel that he had property in his good name, and that would be just as reasonable as a feeling that he had property in his ideas or creative output, but that is not thought to justify making defamation a criminal matter, rather than a civil matter.
4. The motives of the corporations who are promoting SOPA and PIPA are obvious. They want to defend their ability to make money. The same thinking lies behind the (so far unpassed) Research Works Act, which would prohibit open access mandates for federally funded research. There is nothing wrong with making money, but the people who want to make it surely have wider responsibilities, not as company directors but as human beings. They should not make it difficult to run websites that attract user contributions (SOPA and PIPA), nor should they make it harder for information to be disseminated freely (Research Works Act), especially not when the taxpayer has already paid for it. There is a parallel with lawyers who seek injunctions and super-injunctions to protect their clients from exposure of the truth. Those lawyers are doing the right thing as lawyers. But if we consider them not as lawyers but as human beings, we can regard their conduct as reprehensible, because they seek to impede free speech.
5. There has been discussion of regulation of the Internet more generally. Some think it is under-regulated. It is certainly home to some nasty stuff. But it is a corner of human activity that governments are not able to control. It shows us that not everything need be governed. That lesson of the Internet is worth heeding.
1. Intellectual property does not have any obvious ground in the practicalities of social life, in the way that property in physical goods has. If one person takes another person's bananas without permission, the loser can no longer eat the bananas. If one person copies another's idea or work without permission, the loser can still use the idea or the work. A society without any intellectual property rights is not hard to conceive. A society without physical property rights would be hard to conceive.
2. Given the first point, it is not surprising that intellectual property rights are limited. Patents last for 20 years, literary copyright lasts for 70 years from the later of the author's death and first publication, and so on. Rights have been granted for the benefit of society (encouraging invention and creativity), rather than for the benefit of the holder of the rights.
3. It is not at all clear why intellectual property violations should be a matter for the criminal law, as opposed to civil proceedings by the party that has suffered the violation. The fact that violations are to be treated as criminal is enshrined in international agreements, but violations need not be so treated. If we are concerned with the benefit to society, that benefit is, as already noted, not nearly so obvious as the benefit of respect for physical property. There is not enough of a motive there for criminalization. If we are concerned with the benefit to the holder of rights, we may compare the position on defamation. Someone might reasonably feel that he had property in his good name, and that would be just as reasonable as a feeling that he had property in his ideas or creative output, but that is not thought to justify making defamation a criminal matter, rather than a civil matter.
4. The motives of the corporations who are promoting SOPA and PIPA are obvious. They want to defend their ability to make money. The same thinking lies behind the (so far unpassed) Research Works Act, which would prohibit open access mandates for federally funded research. There is nothing wrong with making money, but the people who want to make it surely have wider responsibilities, not as company directors but as human beings. They should not make it difficult to run websites that attract user contributions (SOPA and PIPA), nor should they make it harder for information to be disseminated freely (Research Works Act), especially not when the taxpayer has already paid for it. There is a parallel with lawyers who seek injunctions and super-injunctions to protect their clients from exposure of the truth. Those lawyers are doing the right thing as lawyers. But if we consider them not as lawyers but as human beings, we can regard their conduct as reprehensible, because they seek to impede free speech.
5. There has been discussion of regulation of the Internet more generally. Some think it is under-regulated. It is certainly home to some nasty stuff. But it is a corner of human activity that governments are not able to control. It shows us that not everything need be governed. That lesson of the Internet is worth heeding.
Friday, 23 December 2011
The enforcement of rules
This afternoon, at a supermarket checkout, I witnessed one of life's absurdities. Two people, together but paying for their shopping separately, were both buying alcohol, along with food. They both looked as though they were about 20. The gentleman was asked for proof of age, and produced it, so he was allowed to buy his alcohol. The lady was asked for proof of age, but had none, so she was not allowed to buy hers. Could the gentleman buy her alcohol instead? No, because he would be buying it for her, and that would be illegal if she were under 18. We were all held up while a supervisor was summoned. She confirmed the ruling, and the supermarket lost a sale of three bottles of bubbly.
If the gentleman had gone round the shop again, picked up identical bottles, and presented himself at a different checkout, he would have been able to buy them. Moreover, the lady might not have wanted the bottles for herself. They might have been to give as presents. In that case, the gentleman could have bought them, and given them as presents himself, all within the law. And it is entirely possible that once the couple got home, he would have opened a bottle from those he did buy and shared it with her. The law against buying alcohol for someone else, aged under 18, to consume off the premises of purchase is unenforceable.
I assume that the supermarket acted from an abundance of caution. The couple might have been agents provocateurs, checking on behalf of the police that the law was being enforced. If they had been, and if the supermarket had nodded the purchase through on grounds of common sense, the police might not have been sympathetic.
This raises a question. Is it possible to build common sense into rules? Suppose that an exception for this kind of situation had been written into the rules. The exception might be for situations where there was one person in a group who could prove that he was over 18, offering to step in and purchase alcohol that had been in the shopping basket of someone else who looked as though she was probably over 18, but who could not prove her age. That would not help when the second person looked as though she was under 18, but was in fact over 18, and the first person offered to be the purchaser in her stead. (Then the first person would just go round the shop again.) A comprehensive set of exceptions, that would have the same reach as common sense, would be impossible to compile. This does not make defined exceptions useless. They can eliminate many absurdities. But they are not likely to be a perfect solution.
I suspect that the main problem is that enforcers expect 100 per cent compliance. If they were prepared to ignore a small rate of rule-breaking, especially when the offence would be victimless (buying alcohol for someone who, if under 18, was not much under, or smoking in an enclosed public space), life would be better. Enforcers could tighten up if the rate of rule-breaking started to rise. We should not assume that all slopes would be slippery.
If the gentleman had gone round the shop again, picked up identical bottles, and presented himself at a different checkout, he would have been able to buy them. Moreover, the lady might not have wanted the bottles for herself. They might have been to give as presents. In that case, the gentleman could have bought them, and given them as presents himself, all within the law. And it is entirely possible that once the couple got home, he would have opened a bottle from those he did buy and shared it with her. The law against buying alcohol for someone else, aged under 18, to consume off the premises of purchase is unenforceable.
I assume that the supermarket acted from an abundance of caution. The couple might have been agents provocateurs, checking on behalf of the police that the law was being enforced. If they had been, and if the supermarket had nodded the purchase through on grounds of common sense, the police might not have been sympathetic.
This raises a question. Is it possible to build common sense into rules? Suppose that an exception for this kind of situation had been written into the rules. The exception might be for situations where there was one person in a group who could prove that he was over 18, offering to step in and purchase alcohol that had been in the shopping basket of someone else who looked as though she was probably over 18, but who could not prove her age. That would not help when the second person looked as though she was under 18, but was in fact over 18, and the first person offered to be the purchaser in her stead. (Then the first person would just go round the shop again.) A comprehensive set of exceptions, that would have the same reach as common sense, would be impossible to compile. This does not make defined exceptions useless. They can eliminate many absurdities. But they are not likely to be a perfect solution.
I suspect that the main problem is that enforcers expect 100 per cent compliance. If they were prepared to ignore a small rate of rule-breaking, especially when the offence would be victimless (buying alcohol for someone who, if under 18, was not much under, or smoking in an enclosed public space), life would be better. Enforcers could tighten up if the rate of rule-breaking started to rise. We should not assume that all slopes would be slippery.
Monday, 5 December 2011
Targeted adverts
I am struck by the acuity of the software that selects the adverts on Facebook. I am regularly offered jobs for philosophers (although when one clicks the link, one finds that no job is available today). I am also offered courses in the English language, and hope this is because I use the German interface, rather than because of the way I write in English. Today, I was offered a villa in Portugal, presumably because I mentioned the country in a comment on a post yesterday.
Should we be scared? One might feel that the software was watching one's every move, amassing data and using it in a plot to increase sales. I am more relaxed than that, precisely because it is a mass-production software system, doing the same thing to millions of people. I do not attribute agency to the software, let alone a propensity to fiendish plotting.
I attribute agency to the people who devised the Facebook business plan, and who specified the functions they wanted the software to perform. But they were only out to make money, not to kidnap my soul. The making of money is one of the most harmless of motives a collector of data on people may have. When adverts for groups of political dissidents start to appear on the page, I shall really worry that I am being watched.
Should we be scared? One might feel that the software was watching one's every move, amassing data and using it in a plot to increase sales. I am more relaxed than that, precisely because it is a mass-production software system, doing the same thing to millions of people. I do not attribute agency to the software, let alone a propensity to fiendish plotting.
I attribute agency to the people who devised the Facebook business plan, and who specified the functions they wanted the software to perform. But they were only out to make money, not to kidnap my soul. The making of money is one of the most harmless of motives a collector of data on people may have. When adverts for groups of political dissidents start to appear on the page, I shall really worry that I am being watched.
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
The metre
Wittgenstein, in Philosophical Investigations, part 1, section 50, commented that we could not say that the standard metre bar in Paris was one metre long, nor that it was not one metre long. He went on to explain that this was not to ascribe some strange property to the metre bar, but only to note its peculiar role in the language game of measurement with the metre standard. Much has been written about the problem since. A good starting-point is the paper by W J Pollock, "Wittgenstein on The Standard Metre", Philosophical Investigations, 27:2, April 2004, available here:
http://www.kslinker.com/standardmeter.pdf
Moving on to the modern definition of a metre as a certain fraction of the distance travelled by light in a second, we can reproduce the problem. One thing of which we cannot say either that it is, or that it is not, a metre is the distance travelled by any instance of a beam of light in vacuo in 1/299 792 458 of a second.
The philosophical analysis may be a bit different because the demonstrative referent (the referent of "that" in "that is what we mean by a metre") is not a physical object but a reproducible phenomenon, and one that is integrated with our physical theory. The words "any instance of" are included in order to separate examples from the theory, and get us as close as we can to actual metal bars. Our theory guarantees that it does not matter which instance we take.
http://www.kslinker.com/standardmeter.pdf
Moving on to the modern definition of a metre as a certain fraction of the distance travelled by light in a second, we can reproduce the problem. One thing of which we cannot say either that it is, or that it is not, a metre is the distance travelled by any instance of a beam of light in vacuo in 1/299 792 458 of a second.
The philosophical analysis may be a bit different because the demonstrative referent (the referent of "that" in "that is what we mean by a metre") is not a physical object but a reproducible phenomenon, and one that is integrated with our physical theory. The words "any instance of" are included in order to separate examples from the theory, and get us as close as we can to actual metal bars. Our theory guarantees that it does not matter which instance we take.
Monday, 7 November 2011
Where was I before I was born?
Here is one of my favourite paragraphs, written by Angela Carter.
There's a theory, one I find persuasive, that the quest for knowledge is, at bottom, the search for the answer to the question: 'Where was I before I was born?' In the beginning was ... what? Perhaps, in the beginning, there was a curious room, a room like this one, crammed with wonders; and now the room and all it contains are forbidden you, although it was made just for you, had been prepared for you since time began, and you will spend all your life trying to remember it. ('Alice in Prague or The Curious Room', in Angela Carter, American Ghosts & Old World Wonders, London, Chatto & Windus, 1993, page 127.)
This could mean lots of things. The interpretation of the first sentence that most resonates with me is that each of us has a tremendous urge to merge his or her perspectival view of the world, the view from his or her own point of view, with a non-perspectival view from nowhere. Each perspectival view only endures for a lifespan. The non-perspectival view is in principle available at any time and the same for all, although different people would interpret what they saw differently, but that view is in practice available to no-one. To see the world as it was before I was born, or as it will be after I die, I would have to be somewhere at a time when I was not, or will not be. There would have to be a place I was before I was born, and a place I would be after death. What I can in fact do is see traces left by the past, and current indications of what the future might hold, and make inferences from those traces and indications. But that is not the same thing at all.
There's a theory, one I find persuasive, that the quest for knowledge is, at bottom, the search for the answer to the question: 'Where was I before I was born?' In the beginning was ... what? Perhaps, in the beginning, there was a curious room, a room like this one, crammed with wonders; and now the room and all it contains are forbidden you, although it was made just for you, had been prepared for you since time began, and you will spend all your life trying to remember it. ('Alice in Prague or The Curious Room', in Angela Carter, American Ghosts & Old World Wonders, London, Chatto & Windus, 1993, page 127.)
This could mean lots of things. The interpretation of the first sentence that most resonates with me is that each of us has a tremendous urge to merge his or her perspectival view of the world, the view from his or her own point of view, with a non-perspectival view from nowhere. Each perspectival view only endures for a lifespan. The non-perspectival view is in principle available at any time and the same for all, although different people would interpret what they saw differently, but that view is in practice available to no-one. To see the world as it was before I was born, or as it will be after I die, I would have to be somewhere at a time when I was not, or will not be. There would have to be a place I was before I was born, and a place I would be after death. What I can in fact do is see traces left by the past, and current indications of what the future might hold, and make inferences from those traces and indications. But that is not the same thing at all.
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