In baseball, of course, this means things like:
The Mariners, predicted to be terrible this season, are tied for first in the league!

(Also there are nineteen pitchers tied with an unbelievable 0.00 ERA. This season looks set to turn a lot of conventional wisdom on its head.)

We see Small Sample Size Theater in other domains as well; no surprise that most trend reporting is of this type. I wanted to post this today because I think the term is so apt. And of course, if my posting this year keeps up at this rate, I’ll post well over 300 entries, which would more than double my previous record. In year seven, anything is possible.

Gareth B. Matthews. Dialogues with Children

Gareth B. Matthews is a professional philosopher well-known for his work on Ancient and Medieval philosophy. He has also had a long-standing (and often related) interest in pedagogy. These two books of his on philosophy and children, both from the early 1980s, are wonderful, and deserve a much wider audience than they probably currently enjoy.

Neither book aims to offer a “how-to” for engaging children in philosophical dialogue, though they are brimming with examples. One of their main virtues, besides simply offering clear accounts of interesting philosophical issues, is the spirit in which they approach philosophical conversation with children. Here is a nice statement of Matthews’ approach, from Philosophy and the Young Child:

The combination of assets and liabilities that an adult brings to a philosophical encounter with a child makes for a very special relationship. The adult has a better command of the language than the child and, latently at least, a surer command of the concepts expressed in the language. It is the child, however, who has fresh eyes and ears for perplexity and incongruity. Children also have, typically, a degree of candor and spontaneity that is difficult for an adult to match. Because each party has something important to contribute, the inquiry can easily become a genuinely joint venture, something otherwise quite rare in encounters between adults and children.

In the wrong hands, it’s easy to imagine this slipping into an unrealistic, naive or romantic view of children, and indeed, without further discussion, it’s exactly what I would have imagined. But it’s very clear from the dialogues that he produces that Matthews really does succeed in pulling off some wonderful conversations.

Both books are also interesting because they offer a forceful challenge to prior work (Piaget is a special target) on children, philosophy and cognitive development. Matthews argues that researchers are often too quick to try to cram interesting questions and thoughts into unhelpful developmental stages, often misunderstanding the relevant philosophical issues along the way. Chapter 4 (“Piaget”) of Philosophy and the Young Child is especially focused on this issue, and it’s refreshing to see a philosophically sophisticated defense of a child’s end of a conversation with the famous psychologist.

Although Matthews’ focus throughout both of these books is the young child, educators at any level could read them with profit. They’re informed by a genuine love of interesting philosophical questions, and I could imagine myself dipping into them for inspiration as I planned a first year introduction to philosophy class, just as readily as I will in fact be dipping into them again when I am thinking about philosophy with my (due in April) son, when he is old enough to talk philosophy with his Dad.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned on here yet that Yoon is (19 weeks and one day) pregnant. I’ll try not to turn this into an awful baby blog, but the fact that I’m going to be spending a significant amount of time in the company of an infant come the Spring has got me interested in reading about babies.

The Philosophical Baby by Alison Gopnik (sister of the New Yorker’s Gopnik) tackles some really interesting questions: What is it like to be a baby? How do young children think, experience the world, view moral issues? Gopnik is pretty effective at challenging the classic view of children as cognitively defective adults. When you consider just how much children are absorbing, and how quickly, they start to seem anything but cognitively defective. Gopnik proves a thoughtful and engaging guide through some recent work by cognitive psychologists on these issues.

I thought the least effective part of the book was Gopnik’s discussion of morality and moral intuitions in children. Gopnik at least avoids confusing altruism and morality—they’re really completely different, the former being a kind of motivation, and the latter having to do with what we owe one another—as some writers sometimes do. But the connection between them seemed to me somehow muddled in parts of her discussion, as betrayed by a proliferation of vague expressions connecting them. I also noticed that her discussion of morality treated it as entirely concerned with what we owe other people. But that’s only half of it! Morality is also about what they owe us, and that side of it is important to understanding essentially moral emotions like indignation, to give just one example. It seems to me that there are also fairly rich and interesting connections between self-conception and morality (“Am I that sort of person?”) that would have served Gopnik better for reflection than the trolley problem, to which her discussion failed to add much.

But that’s just quibbling from a grad school drop out. This is a fun book, and people interested in kids and how they see the world will probably find lots here to enjoy.

“paying for someone else” is the whole concept behind insurance. the idea of insurance is that there are certain things (floods, catastrophic medical costs, car crashes) which can be so economically devastating that individuals would be ruined if they had to pay the entire thing out of their own pocket. insurance is a way of pooling risk, everyone pays in, only the unlucky ones draw out. but then everyone can feel more secure knowing they have insurance to fall back on if disaster hits.

in other words, all insurance involves you paying other people’s bills (or other people paying your bills). that’s what insurance is all about. you can call it “socialism” if you want, that’s not an argument, that’s just slapping a label on something. but if you happen to believe it’s evil to pay for other people, then cancel all your insurance policies.

While I’m certain ‘noz and I stand united on the moral imperative of health reform that gives all Americans access to high-quality affordable healthcare, I don’t think his account of the argument he targets is fair, and thus I don’t think he offers a very satisfying response to the person who endorses that argument. Here, as I understand it, is ‘noz’s line of argument:

1. Proponents of the Stupidest Argument Against Health Reform maintain that they should not be forced to pay for another’s medical care.

2. But proponents of the Stupidest Argument willingly buy various forms of insurance without complaining.

3. But buying insurance just is the paying for another’s medicare care.

4. So to be consistent, the proponents should either withdraw their objection to health care reform, or else “cancel all [their] insurance policies.”

I think we can see clearly where ‘noz’s line of argument fails by changing the story a bit:

1. Opponents of income maintenance policies maintain that they should not be forced to pay for another’s wages/income.

2. But opponents of income maintenance policies willingly buy stereos without complaining.

3. But buying stereos just is the paying for another’s wages (namely those who make stereos).

4. So to be consistent, the opponents should either withdraw their objection to income maintenance policies, or else stop buying stereos.

It seems clear that while purchasing a stereo does in fact pay another’s wages, it is false to say that paying another’s wages is the “whole concept” of purchasing a stereo. But then what distinguishes purchasing insurance from buying a stereo? Each seems to amount to the same thing: parting with a sum of money to procure a good or service which is available to one only because certain others are willing to help produce that good or provide that service only because they too get something out of the economic arrangement.

The fact seems to be that those who wish to buy stereos and those who wish to buy insurance may not really care about the economic arrangements and contracts that lie in the background of these purchases. They do not really care that buying a stereo and buying insurance involves paying an amount of money a portion of which ends up paying another’s bills. The one person wants a stereo, and parts with a certain amount of money to get it. The other wants protection from the economic risks associated with (the treatment of) ill health, and pays an insurance premium to get it. It just so happens that, in our world, the reason why these purchases are available to one at all is that other people, who play different roles in the relevant economic domain, also get something out of their involvement. So, again, what could make the purported difference between buying stereos and buying insurance?

If this analogy is as revealing as I think it is, it shows why the proponent of the Stupidest Argument may not be making the silly mistake that ‘noz ascribes to him. To extend the analogy: Assume a tax is levied on all stereo purchases in order fund income maintenance policies for the unemployed. And assume that a would-be stereo-purchaser objects to this. Then that objection cannot be met simply by pointing out that he didn’t have a problem paying another’s wage through his purchase before the tax was levied.

In the case of health insurance, what would be the analog to the stereo tax that the proponent of the Stupidest Argument objects to? Since insurance is typically paid for through premiums, the proponent will likely claim that he should not have to subsidize another’s premium. But this raises the question of whether the initial distribution of income is itself fair, as that is the distribution that determines who has what to put toward premiums. To the extent that it is unjust that some work long hours in dreary jobs for what is now a largely depreciated compensation package, that can provide a reason to ask those who are favored by the structure of the economy to give some back to subsidize the premiums of those who get the short end of the stick.

Another barrier to insurance access has to do with differentials in health status (of which “pre-existing conditions” are one kind). To use a stylized example, assume that you and I form a two-person health insurance market, and that I am fairly healthy and you have a disease that can be treated with only very expensive health interventions. In this situation, each of us is presented with the option to buy insurance. But which insurance we buy, if any, will be influenced by which insurance products are available. If the only insurance product is one that pays for the sort of interventions you need, that product will be very expensive. In that case, I may choose not to buy it, since I feel there are other things I’d rather spend that amount of money on. But that may leave you without the prospect of insurance, since the resulting premium for you will be the same price as the expensive medical care you were hoping to avoid having to pay for directly by purchasing insurance in the first place. You will face a similar problem if there are in fact several insurance products available, and if I choose one that is cheaper. For that one will be cheaper precisely because it doesn’t not cover the expensive treatment you need. So while you may be able to afford that cheaper product, it doesn’t do you much good.

These thought experiments seem to show that the proponent of the Stupidest Argument is also probably objecting to having to subsidize the insurance choices that the market makes expensive for others because they are either more risk averse than he his, or because they in fact require more expensive insurance than the proponent himself wishes to purchase with the funds he has chosen to dedicate to health risk reduction. This is in fact not an objection we should dismiss as stupid, as I think the two-person example shows.

I’m sure ‘noz and I agree that when the simple two-person example is replaced with the much more complex picture presented by the macro situation in the U.S. today–a situation in which income is not distributed fairly and where individuals’ health status is profoundly influenced by myriad social circumstances beyond their control–there is a solid argument in favor of providing all Americans with at least basic health care paid for by general, progressive taxation. But even if we are right, we cannot dismiss the objections of those who disagree with us simply by pointing out that all insurance involves using what was once one person’s money to pay for the health care of another.

The moral of the story is this: it is false to say that the “whole concept” of insurance as such is to pay for another’s care. Yes, it involves that, but the sense in which it does is just the sense in which buying stereos involves paying another’s wage. Not much of moral relevance follows. But, it is absolutely true that the whole concept of certain social insurance schemes is to spread risk and cross-subsidize care for appropriate moral reasons. But those reasons cannot themselves be teased out of the idea of insurance as such.

But I must say that I felt some sense of pride when I saw this and felt revulsion at the thought of reading it. (The fact that it exists at all, in published form, is more than a bit nauseating, as well.)

There is some hope for me after all, I guess.

A logician vacationing in the South Seas finds himself on an island inhabited by the two proverbial tribes of liars and truth-tellers. Members of one tribe always tell the truth; members of the other always lie.

He comes to a fork in a road and has to ask a native bystander which branch he should take to reach a village. He has no way of telling whether the native is a truth-teller or liar. The logician thinks a moment and then asks one question only. From the reply, he knows which road to take.

What question does he ask?

…For our purposes here, we’ll assume that the answer is confined to a single “yes” or “no.”

I had heard this one years ago, and cannot now remember if I figured it out on my own or not. (Probably not, knowing my limitations.)  The only snag is that either I’m wrong, or else the last instruction—”the answer is confined to a single “yes” or “no.””—is slightly misleading. Here’s a hint: the instruction is playing fast and loose with the use/mention distinction. Oh, and if my solution works, then there are actually two questions he could ask.

Anyway, I submitted an answer.  We’ll see what happens.

Alright, I’ll admit it. It’ll behoove me if you read on. You see, I might have gotten myself into a bit of hot water, although with some thought and an even keel, this water may turn out resemble more the palliative springs of many a television boom town than the terrifying pit at the end of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The sitch is that I am giving a talk on Friday. My first talk professional talk post-grad school. And I’m nervous. I’m nervous for the usual reasons. These include the fear that I’ll make a fool of myself in the Q&A, and that my central argument is just not that good. But there is an additional, more idiosyncratic reason that I really want to think hard about before delivering the talk. And that’s the distinct possibility that while my central argument is fine, I have used a poorly chosen example to add support to my conclusion. This would leave me dialectically naked, even if my underlying argument remains cogent. So I want to try to extract myself for this situation as carefully as possible, and this is my test run.

Here’s the deal. I have just argued that since we democratic citizens act politically to enforce coercive laws on each other, we should show concern for one another’s autonomy, so that all can accept these laws willingly and competently. So what we have here is an example of one feature of modern political life that generates a duty to be concerned with our fellow citizens’ educated autonomy. This is not yet an argument in favor of any particular institutional scheme, much less an argument to the effect that every unchosen departure from full autonomy underwrites a claim to further autonomy-enhancing resources. But it does suggest that there are duties we have toward others that are separable from facts about what they have done for us, or how much they have contributed to GDP, say.

I then ask whether there are features of modern political life that could generate further duties of concern, especially those that would bear on the justness of health care policy. Here’s where I seem to get myself into trouble:

If the fact of joint-coercion generates a duty of concern for fellow citizens’ autonomy, then arguably the facts of mutual loyalty and dependence generate further duties of concern. But concern for what? It is, I suggest, a concern for them, for their general wellbeing. Anything less, such as a concern fairly to grant them the share of socially generated resources that has been calibrated to reflect the marginal value of their role in the economic division of labor, involves too much alienation from them as persons, individuals on whom we rely to sustain the social basic structure which in turn sustains our quality of life. Consider an analogy. If husband Jack’s mother is a delight and wife Jill’s mother is a nightmare, Jack would be wrong to say he is not obliged to accompany and support Jill on stressful outings with her mother on the ground that Jill has never had to make a comparable sacrifice for Jack. Rather, the nature of the relationship they share generates a wider, less discriminating duty of concern for Jill herself, concern whose proper expression is inconsistent with Jack’s refusal. Analogously, the especially acute and pervasive relations of mutual dependence and vulnerability that attend the citizen relation warrant concern for our fellow citizens themselves…

In the comments he’s sent me, my commentator already notes the obvious: surely Jack should be concerned for Jill because he is her husband, because he loves her, because that’s what husbands do. And of course I agree with this. But I don’t think the success of the analogy depends on the citizen-relation being intrinsically one of mutual love.

While Jack should do certain things for Jill because he loves her, this is not the only reason he has. It seems to me that he has special responsibilities to her that stem from the intimate intertwining of their lives, not simply from the intersection of their affection. As I say in the quote: both the citizen relation and the husband/wife relation give rise to acute and pervasive forms of mutual dependence and vulnerability. These are what I wish to stress, not love.

I think it is safe to say that the analogy is going to draw a lot of criticism from the crowd. But why should it? Since at least Aristotle is has been common in political theory to illuminate the demands of “civic friendship” through reflection on what close, personal friends owe to each other. This of course does not justify the strategy, but it should be some help in deflecting the knee-jerk reaction I expect to the Jack/Jill case.

In fact, there is at least one feature of the spousal relationship that is present in the civic relationship, but not amongst friends. And that is the involvement of the state. That spouses have responsibilities to each other that are not grounded in love seems to be the guiding principle behind many a divorce law. Soon-to-be former spouses seek an equitable parting of ways, and the state steps in to ensure this happens. True, divorcing partners often do not have the forms of concern for each other that we may think warranted by their joint history and the tough predicament each (or maybe just one) finds him- or herself in. But this may just be a case of relying on the state to help enforce moral duties that each party in fact has, but may be unlikely (for obvious reasons) to discharge in its absence. (Did you know that social security benefits are paid out to ex-spouses as long as the marriage lasted ten years?)

There are three features of the citizen relationship that I emphasize in my paper. These are (1) the coercive imposition of laws, (2) our profound dependence on the cooperation and compliance of those others on whom we help to impose laws, and (3) the cloud of vulnerability we operate under when virtually every facet of our lives is left open to influence by the legitimate political actions of others. While the first, I believe, generates strong duties of concern, it is not present in the spousal relationship. But the last two are. What, precisely, do they contribute to the moral story I want to tell?

It seems right to say that the primary initial inducement to enter into or accept both an intimate relationship and a political relationship is self-interest, prudence. I of course don’t mean pathological self-interest, which yields a disregard for the interests of others. I mean perfectly legitimate concern with the betterment of one’s life. Now, in the case of intimate relationships, this initial self-interest or self-love is a gateway drug: it leads us to a different form of valuing, valuing or loving another for his or her own sake. Our relationship with them is not (only) a means to some independent end, but something worth valuing in its own right. And we come to see their good as part of our own and as something that helps give our lives meaning.

Even if this last feature is not present in the civic context (many think it is, but I want to stay agnostic), the initially prudentially motivated joining with others should be attended by a recognition of them as having legitimate interests of their own, and of possessing a dignity that places constraints on what forms of treatment are permissible. One way of respecting that dignity is to be responsive to how that other person’s life is influenced by one’s own choices, actions, and omissions. The more profound the effect of these influence on another’s life, the more, it seems, we should be concerned about the person influenced.

In the spousal case, while the aim ultimately becomes one of a shared life well lived, it is still a relationship comprised of distinct individuals with distinct personalities, aspirations, foibles, and, yes, sometimes downright pathologies. Each person is not only a contributor of the benefits realized by the union, but also of the inevitable hurdles and injuries that arise when distinct persons pin their hopes and dreams on the choices and good faith of one another. I think most of us know how challenging such an arrangement can be, even when things are going as well as could reasonably be hoped.

Likewise in the civic context. Even when prevailing laws track the demands of social justice reasonably well, there will still be conscientious disagreement both about whether this is the case and about further policy decisions that don’t seem wholly resolvable by a priori moral reasoning. Monetary policy, fiscal policy, trade agreements, etc., all appear to require a willingness to make second- and third-best tradeoffs, often in ignorance of likely outcomes. This creates inevitable risks and strains of commitment.

In both contexts, we join in a profoundly fateful project with others on whose willing cooperation we are heavily dependent and whose lives we profoundly shape. Even if they too are benefiting greatly from the arrangement, it seems wrong not to specially acknowledge the self-discipline and good will it often takes to be fully entrenched participants in both marital and political life.

Although I am in disagreement with him on many things, moral and political philosopher David Schmitdtz seems to take a similar view, and puts the point poignantly:

I do not believe that reciprocity and gratitude are called for only in response to people who are going above and beyond the call of duty. Because reciprocity and gratitude are forms of mutual affirmation, it makes perfect sense to feel grateful to people simply for doing their duty…Normal competence is an achievement, not an effortless default. (Elements of Justice, pp. 87-88)

How, then, ought we to show our gratitude? One way, I suggest, is by not conditioning provision of benefits to relevant others solely on (the prospect of) their having provided something of similar value to us. As I indicate in my paper, keeping a moral ledger of this sort seems to me alienating, divorcing the person with whom I am related from the things I can get from the relationship. Of course the things I can get matter, but so do the people I cross paths with to get them. And showing others that they matter to me seems to me to require my showing concern for how their life goes, independently from whether the moral tally sheet is sufficiently even at the end of the day. Such concern, I hypothesize, is properly displayed when I stand willing to make certain sacrifices for their wellbeing, and doing what I can to support universal health care seems as good a place to start as any.

Obviously I don’t have a knockdown argument in favor of my thesis that there are facets that are shared by both spousal relationships and civic relationships and that underwrite strong duties of mutual concern among those standing in these relationships. But I think I have done enough to help me get through Friday’s talk. Thanks to anyone who made it this far—even if you never even accounts by leaving a helpful or encouraging comment!

——————–

1. Is it “first thing’s first,” or “first things first”?

I’m not sure why this irritates me so much. I can suspend disbelief for an impressive variety of fictional worlds. But this! This I can hardly stand. Perhaps it’s because the mistake here is one that I see in serious contexts, whereas journalists don’t typically go around talking about star trek transporters as though we have currently working models. Anyway. Yeeeeearg.

On the other hand, there are a couple of reasons to question whether there is in fact a right to health. One such reason is that it is by and large impossible to deliver full health to those who don’t have it. We may simply not have the technology to do so. And when fulfilling a right to X would require doing Y, where Y is impossible, it seems correct to say that we were wrong to recognize a right to X in the first place.

But impossibility is not the only reason for thinking there is no right to health. Suppose that unless you receive a kidney transplant soon, you will die. And suppose that I am the only perfect match around, and that I could afford to give one up (in the sense that I will not die without it, and, let’s say, believe with a reasonable degree of certainty that I will suffer no kidney-related health problems in the future). Still, I think that we would not wish to say that in this situation you have a right to my kidney, even if giving it to you—or your taking it from me—would be quite feasible.

One way around this problem for someone who wishes to speak of a right to health would be to switch to talk of a prima facie right to health, reading “prima facie” in the sense usually meant by moral philosophers. A prima facie right would be a special sort of moral consideration that carries great weight in determining what we ought to do, but which may be outweighed or overridden by other (constellations of) strong moral considerations. So prima facie rights would be defeasible. (Those who think it silly to talk of rights that are not dispositive or conclusive could switch to claims-speak, saying that there exist morally special, if defeasible, claims to certain benefits, actions, or forbearance on the part of others.)

It’s not clear that these moves would rebut point raised by the kidney example. For it still seems strange to say that your need generates even a prima facie right or claim to my kidney. But can we say anything more than that this just sounds strange?

One thought that comes to mind when trying to explain this strangeness is that, typically, when one of my prima facie duties is defeated or overridden by another, we think that I am still under some duty to perform actions that I would not be under if I had fulfilled the prima facie duty that was overridden. For example, suppose I break a promise to pick up your drycleaning but fail to do so because I had to take care of my sick wife. Even if I was morally obligated to break my promise to you, I should still call you to tell you what happened and to express my regret. This is not (only) because I don’t want you to hate me or because I want you to know that you’ll have to get your drycleaning yourself. Of course these are reasons I have. But they would apply to me even if I was a just a third-party to your agreement with Charlie, whom I knew was now unable to fetch your clothes and unable to convey this to you. In contrast, it was my breaking the promise that imposed a special duty to express regret that I could not keep it, and this special duty derives from the fact that I was morally obligated to avoid fulfilling what was a genuine a prima facie duty.

The existence of such special duties stemming from the non-fulfillment of genuine prima facie duties should lead us to ask whether there are corresponding special “make up” duties we have when we do not contribute as much as we could to meeting all the health needs of others. When I refuse to give up my kidney, do I thereby acquire a special duty to express regret, or otherwise “make it up to you,” in some way? And if I have such a duty with respect to you, do I have that duty with respect to all those persons with health needs that I could feasibly help by my actions?

I think many of us would be inclined to reject the existence of (the) quite demanding (aggregate collection of) “make up” duties owed to those whose health needs we did not cause but whom we could help by our actions but do not. But if this is right, perhaps it is correct not to recognize prima facie rights here in the first place. When we dispositionally non-extravagent folk choose to go to a nice restaurant instead of giving that money to Doctors Without Borders, many of us, quite sensibly I think, never experience the feelings of regret that we’d feel if we were flouting a duty, or even if a prima facie duty to others was being overridden by a prima facie duty to, say, oneself and one’s friends.

I don’t claim that these reflections constitute an air-tight case against the existence of a prima facie right, or even strong justice-claims, to be brought up to the level of health that is currently feasible. But they do seem to be in tension with that suggestion.

And yet, I believe that we do have health-related duties to our fellow citizens, and quite possibly to persons in other countries as well. But if there is no strict right to health, and if the mere having of grave needs cannot alone generate a prima facie right or claim to any and all feasible health care, what is the basis for what we owe each other healthwise? That’s a good question

I was still at my Canadian university. He was visiting, trying to get an offer there so he could go negotiate with his home university (not intending to come to Canada, just making everyone spend a bunch of money and time so he could get a raise). He was stalking magisterially about the common room, and someone introduced him to me and it became my job to entertain him for a little while. He sat down and asked, “So, do you have any puzzles?” – meaning logic puzzles or philosophical puzzles that he could work on.

Guilt and horror. Oh crap, I haven’t been thinking about this stuff well enough to have anything good to say to him… yet more evidence that I shouldn’t be in philosophy. Is he giving me a look of withering disapproval? I can’t bear to look. Scanning the bookshelf in hopes of finding inspiration.

Then it came to me: we could play a strategically interesting boardgame. He would be entertained and I would be off the hook. What board game best suits the situation? It should be short, a perfect information game, and a game where I have a chance.

I took down Hey That’s My Fish (in which penguins compete to eat the most fish – it is actually a very short strategic game, very fun) and started to set it up. Then the dream ended, so we’ll never know whether I beat Bertrand Russell in Hey that’s my Fish.

My colleague is teaching Aristotle on catharsis this afternoon. The cartoon view of catharsis is that drama (or just? mainly? tragedy) is useful because it allows us to purge our harmful emotions by getting emotionally wrought over a fictional situation. My colleague is wondering whether Aristotle could say pornography is useful for purging the bad emotion (or, excess emotion?) of lust, or whether Aristotle would be required to say that porn is bad because it forms bad habits. So, Aristotle: for or against porn?

I told him I knew the man for this job, and then I thought other people might be interested too so I’m posting this rather than emailing you, CY.

Is Kit Fine hard to read, so we are macho if we read him? Does Kit Fine inspire us to do difficult things by his salubrious example? What is this video trying to tell us? I hope I’m not missing a philosophy joke out of ignorance; I’ll be really embarrassed if I am.

Whatever it is, I’m strangely fascinated.

Let’s begin by facing the obvious: Aristotle is really difficult. There are several reasons for that. First, almost none of what comes down to us from antiquity with Aristotle’s name attached to it was written for “publication” (i.e., wider circulation). Rather, what we have seem to be more like lecture notes, or perhaps the sort of notes you might circulate after a lecture as a sort of memory aid. It’s a pity. An author renown in antiquity for the prose style of his published writings is now enjoyed mainly by eccentrics with an odd, acquired taste for crabbed lecture notes in a dead language. Just as we would expect with notes that were circulated among the initiated, Aristotle’s writings are also filled with arcane terminology and refer to contemporary debates familiar to his audience but often not to us.

And it gets worse. Those lecture notes—or whatever they are—seem to have been stitched together, sometimes rather crudely. For example, the text we read as the Nicomachean Ethics isn’t the unity we might expect from the fact that people are always going on about Nicomachean Ethics this and Nicomachean Ethics that. To take just one example, there are two discussions of pleasure in the work, apparently in conflict, and neither of which refers to the other. Clearly someone, whether Aristotle or a later editor, has done some cutting and pasting. This adds to the general air of confusion.

Finally, Aristotle is really hard to read because he was interested in really hard problems, and his answers to those questions were often subtle, and sometimes restated in different ways over a lifetime of thinking about them.

So, one way to answer the request for advice about getting into Aristotle is: you might just want to skip it. Or perhaps, defer it until you know a bit about the context in which Aristotle is writing. You might, for example, want to begin instead with Plato. Now of course Plato has difficulties all his own. But there at least the student (often) has the benefit of a polished text, and sometimes a highly readable and entertaining one. And while the dialectical context matters there too, you can get a quite a bit from, say, the Gorgias (which is a wonderful place to begin reading Plato) even if you don’t have any background in Classical Greek philosophy or culture.

If this isn’t enough to dissuade you, then I suppose the best way into Aristotle depends on your interests. You might approach Aristotle for a number of different (but compatible) reasons. You might, for example, be looking for true claims about matters of interest to you, along with good reasons for believing those true claims. In that case, my advice would be to spend rather more time poking around in Aristotle’s ethics than anywhere else. Both this and this translation of the Nicomachean Ethics are pretty good, and if you like to go it alone, you might pick them up and just start reading. (It can be useful to compare translations when you’re working through a difficult passage, but either one will do for the first few passes through the text.)

You might, however, be interested in Aristotle because you want to know more about the influence he exercised on Western intellectual history. In that case, you might be interested in the Physics, and in particular the first three books or so.

Now, usually when I’m recommending philosophy books, I just tell people to jump right in and ignore the secondary material. (I think this is especially good advice when it comes to Plato.) But for the reasons I mentioned above, it seems to me that it might be very useful to introduce yourselves to Aristotle’s texts in conjunction with carefully chosen secondary material. If you’re interested in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, then, you might get your hands on The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, edited by Richard Kraut, and dip into it as you read through Aristotle’s text. I’ve read a few of the papers in this collection so far and they’re just superb. In particular, I really enjoyed Gavin Lawrence’s “Human Good and Human Function,” which you can read with enormous profit immediately after giving Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics a shot. Jennifer Whiting’s “The Nicomachean Account of Philia is also wonderful.

I’m a bit less sure about the best secondary material on the Physics, but I do recall being extremely impressed by Sarah Waterlow’s (=Sarah Brodie) Nature, Change, and Agency in Aristotle’s Physics a while ago when I was working through some material in the Physics. Waterlow is especially good in that book at drawing contrasts between Aristotle’s and modern approaches to the study of nature. And it seems to me that this makes reading the Physics alongside Waterlow a challenging but possibly very rewarding way of starting to get a grip on a part of Aristotle’s thought that had an enormous influence historically.

There are also other ways in, and some very good introductions to Aristotle. To name just one, the Cambridge Companion to Aristotle is pretty solid, and is good at pointing the way forward in many more directions than I’ve mentioned here. The first chapter by Jonathan Barnes is also funny and helpful as the sort of introduction that I would attempt if I were less busy.

Aristotle enthusiasts are encouraged to add further suggestions in the comments.

Enjoy!

Interesting that Aristotle’s assumption about breath still held in Farquharson’s day. My understanding is that this is not a good thing to do, and the laziest of googlings suggests that the current consensus is that the proper technique involves breathing out as you work the muscle through its range of motion and in as you relax it. So, also, I was recently told by a rather large man at my gym who noticed that I was holding my breath a bit without noticing it, and who shouted, “Gotta breathe, baby, gotta breathe!”

Dear Editor:

Let’s put to one side the question of whether philosopher John Rawls’s normative theory of justice is true or false. Even focusing on just the non-normative facts, David Lewis Schaefer’s portrait of Rawls’s work is flatly mistaken where it is not simply incoherent (“Justice and Inequality,” July 23, p.A 14). For example, in one breath Schaefer says that Rawls’s work “legitimize[s] the view that the absolute well-being of most Americans matters less than their relative position.” Yet in the next he says, correctly, that Rawls’s principles permit inequalities that raise citizens’ absolute standard of living. Schaefer next says that “Rawls did not ground his account of justice in an empirical examination of human nature,” but then goes on to mention Rawls’s discussion of “excusable envy”, which occurs within a dense, 150-page expanse of text wherein Rawls engages in an empirically-informed discussion of developmental psychology. Finally, Schaefer says that Rawls’s later writings were “increasingly deferential to the Marxist critique of liberalism,” while in fact Rawls has been widely criticized by those attracted to his earlier arguments for dulling their radical bite with his later work. Those interested in what Rawls actually thought will be well-advised to look beyond Schaefer’s new book.

Love,

Paul

UPDATE: My letter was not published (sub req). Three others were. The good news is that these letters offered some good criticism of the original article. For instance:

I was asked to write a paper on the lifeboat scenario — a thought experiment involving an overcrowded lifeboat entering a storm, where it is clear that not all will survive. A dedicated Rawlsian at the time, I decided to apply his theories to the assigned situation. But no matter how I construed them, his theories kept leading me to the conclusion that the only “fair” result was that everyone in the lifeboat had to die.

And:

As Rawls’s dictums are alive and growing in the body politic, the instances of trashing our ideals are endless. They are eroding the very fount of our republic and have become a cancer on our civilization.

And:

It is no accident that Rawls’s “general ideas” result in Marxist policies. Thirty-five years ago, Ayn Rand accurately predicted the logical political consequences of Rawls’s ideas.

So there really was no work left for my letter to do.

And while we’re looking for aspects of one’s *relative* situation that may, as Tyler Cowen wants, affect one’s *absolute* position or level of well-being in a way that makes the inequality itself unjust, we should remember the recent discussions about how economic inequality *as such*–even after controlling for societal variations in median income–seems to be harmful to our physical health. These mechanisms are not yet well understood, certainly less well understood than the ones Plummer points to. But the correlations are compelling, and deserve mention in debates like this.

But setting aside these other potentially powerful arguments against inequality, there is a sensible, old-fashioned reason for being concerned with certain sorts of inequality itself. It is embodied in the following line of thought:

1. In a modern market economy people get ahead by working hard within various institutions that are coercively imposed by the state and which play a central role in assigning the benefits and burdens of social cooperation. (See the great book by Dean Baker that Plummer cites for an account of some of these institutions and how they are severely biased in how they determine resulting economic shares.) It is in no one’s interests not to have such institutions, broadly construed. But they are coercively-imposed and life-shaping nonetheless, and these features matter greatly to the question of how any particular institutional arrangement can be justified.

2. In a market economy many of the benefits one gets or the burdens one’s forced to bear befall one through no fault or merit of one’s own: they are matters of supply and demand, both of which are densely social, that is, are determined by social factors one can’t possibly control or be responsible for. Yet these facts very often play a decisive role in determining one’s life prospects.

3. Although it is in no one’s interests to abandon a market economy for a non-market alternative, and although there are clearly certain salient respects in which one’s economic position can be influence by aspects for which one is responsible–hard work, say–the features pointed to in (1) and (2) above are important enough to lead us to question whether our *current* market arrangements do the best they can to recognize that our most fundamental civic relation is one of cooperation and compliance within the context of coercively imposed institutions, and that those institutions by their nature tend to distribute benefits and burdens in light of features that participants are not responsible for, and in light of features that some have purely because of the unchosen place they occupy within the coercively imposed institutional framework.

4. So if our fundamental relationship is one of cooperation, as it should be if we are seeking to control one another’s lives through dominant institutions; and if market institutions should do all they can to be responsive to what people have done to uphold these institutions and to contribute to their shared economic project through their compliance with its terms; and if market institutions make it harder for some than for others, through no fault of their own, to get ahead with the same talent and effort–since resources are typically needed to translate talent and effort into capitalist success–then we should be concerned to ensure, in the best way we can within a market system, that that citizens’ unchosen social position (i.e. the economic positions they are born into) do not lead to differential life prospects given equal talents and willingness to strive. When it does (and it in fact does), the problem with (some forms of) inequality is that it is unfair: although I contribute the same talented striving to our shared, cooperative economic project, I receive less social reward simply because you (say) were smart enough to choose the right parents, or because your parents were smart enough to support institutions that protect the already wealthy from bad market luck but which did not so protect my parents. (Again, See Baker’s book for more on this tactic.)

5. Therefore: when the fundamental relationship of citizenship is one of mutually respectful cooperation–as it again must be if that relationship permits my seeking to coerce you and determine your life-prospects through dominant social institutions–then the inequality of opportunity for success that is avoidably engendered by current economic arrangements is prime facie unfair. You get more through your talented and loyal striving than I get. And still Bruce Bartlett expects me actively to uphold these arrangements through my political loyalty, just because my income doesn’t fall? Typically I’m pissed at myself when my blogging gets in the way of my real work, when I throw up an eminently avoidable roadblock to the sort of success and progress that it is rational for me to want for myself. But apparently Bruce Bartlett and the “inequality doesn’t matter” crowd wants me to give my active and loyal support to arrangements that coercively impose roadblocks to my economic success, roadblocks that are jointly imposed by those to whom I must fundamentally stand as cooperator–not capitalist competitor–if those arrangements are to have any chance in hell of being morally justified. And it’s hard to see how I’m being treated with respect as an economic and political cooperator when the terms of “cooperation” lavish grossly more benefits on you than on me, despite our offering the same talented and loyal striving.

(Of couse this is too facile. But there’s something to it, and I couldn’t resist.)