The Standard Blog Critique
Chris has a good post at CT on some of the omissions and blind spots in the ‘standard blog critique’ (cf. ‘Standard Social Science Model’) of the proposal to criminalize incitement to religious hatred. We’ve been talking past each other for some time, B&W and CT, but in this post I at least see Chris’ point, or rather points. The part about media ownership and access to the airwaves as a crucial part of free speech I completely agree with and always have. It’s always irritated me when free speech is defined in an such an impoverished way that it just means a cop doesn’t handcuff you for saying something. The next part, about hate speech and intimidation, I’m not so sure about, because the law itself seems like such a form of intimidation.
But then in item 2, I think he does point out some genuine problems for the SBC (not that I necessarily agree that B&W’s critique is a ‘standard’ one, on account of I’m far too vain and conceited to think I’m standard and predictable – but never mind that).
Many advocates of the SBC write about religion being a matter of choice, or religion consisting of a body of doctrine which ought to be open to critique etc. I basically agree, though I think people sometimes overstate the chosenness of religion. But their insistence on these points amounts to an almost wilful neglect of another, namely that even if religion is a matter of choice, religious identity may not be. There are societies where “Are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?” is a sensible question…
I think that’s a fair point about overestimating how chosen religion is. I’ve been discussing religion (and its chosenness) as a system of ideas that adults can rationally consider and accept or reject – which of course it is, but equally of course that’s not all it is. It’s also what your parents teach you (or don’t), what you grow up in, your history and past and memory bank. And looked at in that way, it’s obvious enough how extremely difficult it can be to choose to reject it. Just for one thing it’s bound to be all tangled up with issues of class and education and upward mobility, with abandonment and loyalty and love. Especially for people from marginalised or underprivileged or impoverished or excluded groups – immigrants, the poor, the working class. The parents work and slave to get the children an education, and then the educated children become alienated from the parents: it’s a familiar pattern, and a heart-breaker. How can the children reject the religion of the parents without implying that the parents are stupid and just don’t know any better? Not easily. So that is one factor that makes the chosenness of religion a lot less easy or automatic than I’ve been saying. I needed brackets or something, or an automatic ceteris paribus or some such stipulation. Religion is chosen considered in the abstract as a set of ideas independent of family history and affective ties. (The argument applies to football, as well. A guy I used to work with once informed me that one can’t choose not to support a football team one has always supported, from earliest childhood; it’s simply impossible. Thus so is free will, I think he added, but I could be misremembering.)
The point about religious identity is also true, I think, but there are complications. For instance there’s a difference between our internal ideas of our own identity, and what other people take to be our identity (though of course the one can reinforce or even create the other: one may not think about one’s own identity in such terms at all until other people make an issue of it). Yugoslavians used to think of themselves as Yugoslavians, and then they started (or reverted to or revealed that they always had been) thinking of themselves as Serbs or Bosnians, and look what good came of that. It seems to me at least possible that the proposed law would reinforce the conflation of race with religion that’s already prevalent, and that that would just promote a sort of Bosniazation. That’s going on anyway, but the law and the way it’s being viewed and discussed could help that process along, and make it more entrenched and hard to counter. At least I think so.
My personal dilemma with critique on religion is that religion is world model, the foundation of one’s perception of existence and purpose. What if our criticism is sufficiently persuasive to deprive the other of his perceived purpose, but we fail in our persuasion to provide him with a substitute? There could not be anything more damaging to a person.
In that light, I appreciate that free speech cannot exist without respect for what should be considered an inalienable human right: one’s raison d’etre. We have to be careful in our judgement of the other and in the worth of our message.
On first sight, it seems that this UK law does very little to secure this, or to protect free speech. However, if we refrain from gratuit dismissal of the lawgiver’s capacities and intelligence, we may find that its sole purpose seems referal to the court. In my opinion, this is probably the most sound decision, because -as Chris and Ophelia noted- general quantification of the dilemma is quite impossible.
Hmm. But the trouble with that is, if everyone refrained from articulating anything that might remove someone’s sense of purpose in life…that would effectively be a gag rule on practically anything one could say. At the expense of truth, reason, science, research, critical thinking – at the expense of an enormous amount. No, I’m afraid I think the risk of having one’s world view upended with nothing to replace it is just one of the hazards of existing, not something we can all protect each other from. (Which, as I’ve said before, doesn’t mean I confront people personally and tell them what they believe is nonsense – unless they confront me first, as believers so often do.)
It’s preferrable to have a bad law one can argue against than some self-censorship of the kind of respecting other people’s deep convictions.
One doesn’t respect anybody by assuming he or she will go bunkers at mere suggestions of the inadequacy of his or her beliefs. I imagine that our Christian tradition is of the nature of applauding self-censorship – to hell with it.
The issue is not attacking somebody’s “set of beliefs” but attacking somebody via attacking a set of beliefs. As if a belief is worth more than a person & as if any belief not respecting the primacy of the value of a person is needed for “existential” well-being of any person.
Crypto-Christianity under existentialist guise is worse as the original. Quite as drugs, any designer drug is rather worse as the original it mimicks.
Were Galileo, Newton ‘respective of their audience’? Sometimes (often?) discussion is irrelevant, or (cf Kansas) a way of validating the erroneous. Darwin had the bright idea, but he needed his ‘bulldog’, Huxley, to get it out there because the latter was prepared to be obnoxious and argumentative, which Darwin wasn’t.
A few random reactions to the above correspondence.
“I appreciate that free speech cannot exist without respect for what should be considered an inalienable human right: one’s raison d’etre”
Everyone has a right to a raison d’etre? So who does one complain to if one doesn’t have a raison d’etre?
“I appreciate that free speech cannot exist without respect for what should be considered an inalienable human right: one’s raison d’etre”
What about a serial rapist, or child molester, or other such people? Aren’t we taking away their raison d’etre by not only condemning what they do, but actually banning it, and punishing them?
It seems this “inalienable human right” (which is only a rhetorical concept anyway) needs some more thought.
I think I’m going to have to propose a new ‘Bad Move’ – the ‘Argumentum ad Child Molester’. Can anyone help with the Latin on that?
Argumentum ad pedophiliam, I suppose. (Does ‘ad’ take the accusative? I forget. I was awful at Latin. And what declension would pedophilia be…) Though that’s a doggerel mix of Latin and Greek, but never mind.
ad paedophiliam, I’d say.
It takes accusative. After all, the child molesters are presently the accused.
JoB
PS: “true with no modifications”, so very unabashedly rationalist – how refreshing! False, but refreshing nevertheless.
A punster! And in another language, at that.
False? Really, JoB? Isn’t it true pretty much by definition?
Maybe so. Then again, anything can be true subject to proper definitional context.
ChrisM: “What about a serial rapist, or child molester, or other such people? Aren’t we taking away their raison d’etre by not only condemning what they do, but actually banning it, and punishing them?”
No.
OB: “No it isn’t. If X is true, it is true. It’s not true that X is true subject to education and survival.”
Yes, you exposed me for the lousy linguist I am. :) What I was attempting to communicate, is that the purpose of truth is often in competition with other purposes.
Well ces you’re a vastly better linguist than I am. And yes, sure, sometimes other purposes trump that of truth (the famous example of the crazed murderer who asks where the children are hiding, springs to mind). But vice versa, too.
“Well ces you’re a vastly better linguist than I am.”
Are you expressing solidarity in an amical atmosphere, but proving my assertion? ;)
“And yes, sure, sometimes other purposes trump that of truth (the famous example of the crazed murderer who asks where the children are hiding, springs to mind). But vice versa, too.”
Yes, sometimes truth can be a great distraction.
Now that we have the homocidal maniac out of the way, why not consider social contracts. For example, equal rights while not even identical twins are equal. Or what about freedom of speech, but greeting the neighbor you cannot suffer. Etcetera.
“Are you expressing solidarity in an amical atmosphere, but proving my assertion?”
Just saying you write English (and debate in it) much much better than I could write and argue in even my best non-native language.
Yup, agreed, about social contracts. I talked about that a good deal here a year or so ago (annoying some people in the process, perhaps because I expressed it badly) – about the fiction of rights. I think we need to keep in mind that they don’t actually exist, are not ‘natural’ etc, but still treat them as binding.
I’m a little late to this post, but I was thinking about it over the weekend. Especially the “people sometimes overstate the chosenness of religion” point.
I’ve always felt that ‘racism’ was a strange beast, clearly illogical and unethical both, yet it still continues to thrive. It’s has some commanality with religion, I think, as something ingrained in people by their upbringing. Sure, both religion and racism can spontaneously generate in someone who was raised without those predispositions, but I think its likely quite rare. Most people are as racist as their parents, maybe less, rarely more.
Of course none of this can be easily measured or quantified – I’m talking about my perceptions and observations.
What ought we to do about this, though? Surely racist children are a product of parents, but once they reach adulthood (intellectual, not age) can I, well, judge them? I know ‘judging’ is a bad word in this era.
Do people have an ethical responsibility to be ethically responsible? If you are not capable of confronting your cultural programming, are you capable of being an ethical being? I’d say no.
Letting people off on the ‘chosenness’ of religion is apologism; an excuse made for a child, another in a long line of excuses for lack of personal responsibility. Upbringing ceases to be an excuse for morally autonomous (adult) beings, unless they are mentally damaged.
Definitely, Mark. I’ve thought a couple of times that I ought to have said that more clearly in the Note. I’m not saying that it’s difficult therefore forget it, nobody can or should do it, or the like. Just that Chris has a point that it’s not easy.
It’s not easy, but it has to be done. Unless we want to give archbishops and other clerics the right and the power to shut us all up whenever they feel ‘offended’ or otherwise put out, it has to be done. Just ask Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti…
OB – “I talked about that a good deal here a year or so ago (annoying some people in the process, perhaps because I expressed it badly) – about the fiction of rights. I think we need to keep in mind that they don’t actually exist, are not ‘natural’ etc, but still treat them as binding”
Right to the core of the matter. I’m sorry to have missed that discussion. After 9/11, it was my leading argument against the neo-conservative position, in defense of modernity.
Modern society is a construct of -surprise!- modernity, resting only on our consensus and unwavering dedication. It is a bubble of ideological determination. Consensus in turn is carried by factual commitment to compromise, and voila… there we have my position that in modern society you cannot simply beat people unconcious with a club (of whatever inspiration) without draining yourself of the very power to wield it. The club is cursed, the proverbial abyss.
Mark – “Do people have an ethical responsibility to be ethically responsible? If you are not capable of confronting your cultural programming, are you capable of being an ethical being? I’d say no.”
Not by yourself, and group-think can be a hindrance, but “no” is too much. We are not isolated entities, so it seems to depend on inter-exchange with other programs.
“Letting people off on the ‘chosenness’ of religion is apologism; an excuse made for a child, another in a long line of excuses for lack of personal responsibility. Upbringing ceases to be an excuse for morally autonomous (adult) beings, unless they are mentally damaged.”
Morally autonomous? That’s quite a premise! Who can be considered morally autonomous when ethics are subject to a plethora of inputs being under constant assessment?
Further more, in real life individual capacities, education, personality and opportunity are a number of variables threatening the usefulness of your (bold) assertion.
Despite terms like groupthink, despite the power of advertising, education, despite multiple input streams, in the end, people make decisions perfectly, solipsistically, by themselves. Even the most potent and powerful ideas (Marxism, Christianity, say, or the Atkins Diet) sprang from one person at one point (yes, I know about Engels). Political and social actions are indeed permanently interconnected and based on consensus, conflict and compromise, but the core is made of individual, autonomous, discrete units. Rules, guesses, percentages and likelihoods can be expressed and used for groups, but never for an individual.
While we are certainly affected by our culture and cultural programming, we are not necessarily products of it.
No matter how much psychiatry and sociology might have to say (and if they have anything to say at all is arguable), they are still almost worthless applied to an individual.
A subject might have grown up different if their life took a different path, certainly, but that doesn’t change the fact of who they are now.
So, we are isolated entities. That’s the human lot. And we are all also complicated, complex creations of unique and massive sets of experience. The fact that any one set of experiences is different from another is inarguable, and the fact that those experiences at least partially molded that person is as well. We each much carry our burdens; abdication because of your lot is not ethical.
Mark – “Despite terms like groupthink, despite the power of advertising, education, despite multiple input streams, in the end, people make decisions perfectly, solipsistically, by themselves. […]”
And you are now going to present us the evidence, substantiating to a person who has lived in the ethereal void since birth, I presume? The less-than-wolf-child from beyond the universe as we know it?
First, let us lock the target in reference to authority: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=decision
With definitions 1 and 2 in mind:
We are born with the *capacity* to make decisions, but a decision without input does not compute, literally. One cannot evaluate zero considerations, cannot judge without a case. Therefore, our *effective* capacity to make a decision is immediately interdependent on input, derived from our context and/or genetic code.
Considering this, a man (whether child or adult) is *always* the product of his capacities and opportunities. As such, we cannot judge a man without consideration for his natural capacities, nor can we judge him in isolation from his context.