Confused about life? No worries - it's a developmental stage! Or not?

In a recent article in New York Times (recommended by Elisa), I read about 'emerging adulthood' as a developmental stage propagated by Jeffrey Arnett Jensen. As most people in my generation realize, we live a different life than our parents in the same age. Many of us don't aim at a straight career, a house, a car and a wife / husband with kids - rather we appear confused. We don't have any substantial obligations - we don't need a house or car since we don't have kids; in turn, this means no significant financial obligations. And as we can always imagine a more interesting job, we change our career, try another job, continue studying or just travel around the world. (And we do yoga and are vegetarians.)

Jensen claims that this distinguishes us form our parents but more importantly also from ourselves in adolescence (ending between 18 and 21) and proper adulthood. He calls this 'emerging adulthood' and defines it as a new developmental stage between adolescence and adulthood. Earlier generations didn't have the opportunity to act out this natural confusion about career and family due to social norms. Jensen argues that it is likely that 'emerging adulthood' is an important stage in life and that it should be supported by social institutions. However, there are two obvious problems with this view. Some people do have a straight career and family already in the early twenties - is something wrong with them? Others might keep up the 'emerging adulthood' lifestyle for the rest of their life - are they retarded?

The first problem becomes even more prominent by studying the psychological perspective of developmental stages. In the traditional view, adolescence is the essential previous step after childhood before adulthood can emerge. This is one of the defining criteria for developmental stages. Whoever does not have an adolescence cannot become an adult. The previous stage is essential for the rise of the following stage. As also the article points out, this makes it hard to argue that 'emerging adulthood' is a developmental stage.

The second problem is tightly connected to the first problem. If 'emerging adulthood' is not a developmental stage, it cannot block the advent of adulthood. Hence, a zigzag career without house, car and (traditional) family might not even conflict with an adulthood. Rather, the characteristics of 'emerging adulthood' should be seen as an alternative lifestyle, which was hard to execute in the past due to social norms. Now, we have the opportunities to live such lives but it is not more natural than the traditional life style. It is an alternative without downgrading any other lifestyle. Otherwise, we would lose the freedom to choose a lifestyle by forcing people into 'emerging adulthood'. Therefore, it is rather dangerous to connect these characteristics to a developmental stage instead of an alternative lifestyle.

Being vegetarian as a moral obligation?

Why do vegetarians justify themselves for being vegetarian instead of carnivorous persons justifying eating animals? Can we morally justify the killing and eating of animals? Today, I listened to the article 'Animals are also only humans' from Iris Radisch (in 'Die Zeit' from the 11th of August 2010), which argues that killing animals cannot be morally justified. There are two main arguments for the support of eating animals:

1. Evolutionary argument: It is human nature to eat animals.
2. Cultural argument: Human kind has developed the tools and knowledge to subjugate all other animals. Hence, human kind can rule over the animal kingdom including killing animals to eat them.

Radisch objects both arguments. The first argument is subject to the naturalistic fallacy: It wrongly concludes from the fact (description) to the norm (assessment). Human nature can explain what we see but doesn't tell anything about how it should be. Although it might be evolutionary beneficial for humans to eat their human fellows, we don't do this due to cultural norms. 

The second argument employs unique features of humans to distinguish them from other animals. Based on this distinction, one can separate humans from animals and apply moral only to humans. This argument has been made in many different flavors from selection by god over consciousness to reasoning and language. Radisch makes the point that all such features are only arbitrarily selected. Instead she advocates the high similarity between humans and animals. Even Steven Pinker is cited with the claim that animals are likely to have a consciousness. This argument is enforced by the difficulty to detect such a consciousness: Maybe, we are just not (yet) smart enough to prove a consciousness of animals. Maybe, animals think in a completely different way than us (or are even much smarter than we are) and, therefore, we are incapable of recognizing their consciousness. I've encountered this argument in many discussion. Is it a good argument?

I have two objections against this argument: First, the argument can never be proven to be wrong. Independent of any (empirical) results showing that animals don't have a comparable consciousness to humans, one can always say that we might just not be smart enough to detect their consciousness. Hence, it is not an argument at all. Second, is any distinct human property always arbitrarily selected? The question misleads since it asks for a distinct human property. The real question is whether moral requires certain properties from its members. If animals don't have these properties, they indeed have a different moral status. 

Moral consists of rights and obligations. These rights and obligations are abstract since they are not defined for every possible situation but they need to be 'applied' to specific situations. The process of applying is called moral reasoning. A moral accusation assumes that the person can understand 'why' it was wrong. Although we might learn moral behavior by punishment, punishment itself is not the reason for concurring with moral rights and obligations. If a kid replies to the question why it shouldn't do certain things, it is unsatisfying to hear punishment as a reason. From a moral person, one would expect as answer that neither oneself would want to be treated like this. Hence, moral requires the abstract concepts of rights and obligations as well as language in general and reasoning to participate in the moral discourse. Although animals obviously communicate with each other and we might be able to describe certain animal behavior with abstract concepts, animals themselves cannot explain why they behaved in a certain way (intentionality). They are missing a sufficiently abstract language to be able or to have the potential ability to ascribe intentionality to their behavior (more details are in my post about consciousness of animals). This at least shows that animals must be treated differently than humans in the moral context. Hence, it is not valid to conclude from the norm that humans are not allowed to kill other humans that humans are not allowed to kill animals. 

At this point, I only showed that a vital objection of Radisch against the distinction between humans and other animals fails. Therefore, we cannot derive a killing veto for animals from the killing veto of humans. However, there might be other reasons not to kill animals for food but the article doesn't give any. This - of course - doesn't touch the fact that there are very good moral reasons for not torturing animals.

'An Idea of Justice' from Amartya Sen

Eventually, I finished reading the book 'An Idea of Justice' from Amartya Sen. The book starts rather quickly by introducing his idea of justice already in the introduction (which I didn't get at the beginning). The chapters in the middle of the book tend to be very repetitive and shed light on arguments from different perspective dealing with rationality, objectivity, impartiality and so on. Finally, the last chapters are much more interesting (and might be understandable despite skipping the middle part of the book) investigating democracy, human rights and justice in the world. As it is obviously not possible to describe a book of more than 400 pages in detail in a blog post, I will focus on a few points I kept in mind.

The approach from Sen starts off from the 'Theory of Justice' or justice as fairness formulated by John Rawls. Though Sen reassures that both approaches do have many similarities, of course, the discussion mainly points out differences. The main difference is the goal of the theory. While Rawls tries to derive ideal institutions for a perfectly just society, Sen argues that a perfectly just society might be hard to find and might not be unique meaning different people might have different perfectly just societies in mind. The diverging views of justice are made cogent by a powerful example:

Imagine three kids Anton, Berta and Charlie and one flute. Each of the kids claims that the flute should be given to himself. Anton argues that he is so poor that he cannot afford any other toys and, therefore, he is the one who will benefit most from the flute. Berta says that she plays flute best, hence, she will have most fun with the flute. Finally, Charlie states that he made the flute, thus, it simply is his flute. Given that the statements of the kids are all true, there are good reasons to follow each of the arguments. Rawls would probably give the flute to Anton to maximize the utility of the worst off. A utilitarian would rather vote for Berta since this would maximize the sum of all utilities. A libertarian would support Charlie since what you've made with your own hands is yours. Considering the huge and at least partly convincing arguments for each of these theories (justice as fairness, utilitarianism, libertarianism), it is hard to believe that there exists one best notion of justice. At least, such an idea would hardly be practical since many people would disagree with this best notion.

Therefore, Sen argues that instead of searching for the best institutions for a perfectly just society, one should rather discuss how to improve a society such that it is a little more just than before. He gives many reasons why this is feasible mainly pointing to partial orderings where one can agree that x is better than y and z is better than y without knowing which one of x and z is better. In this case, it would be an advancement in justice to omit y. Interestingly, there are not even many reasons to believe that justice can be measured in one dimension, which can be ranked. It rather appears that this is one of the typical wrong assumptions as have been made for the IQ (compare my post about 'The Mismeasure of Man' from Stephen J. Gould).

Based on these observations, Sen directs the reader to the process of deriving justice rather than defining justice. Rawls requires that a just idea needs to withstand an impartial scrutiny of all concerned persons. Impartiality is implemented by the assumption that all concerned persons don't know which person they are. In contrast, Sen extends the requirement following Adam Smith. Smith demands that not only the concerned persons scrutinize the issue but everybody. This introduces the impartial spectator. There are a couple of advantages for this public reasoning. First, the scrutiny will be free of cultural predispositions. Second, this leads to an implicit worldwide reach of justice. This circumvents one of the main problems of Rawl's theory of justice, which only holds locally and is hard to extend globally.

Sen applies this idea of justice to democracy and emphasizes the process of democracy as public reasoning following Habermas. A democracy is characterized by some freedoms like freedom of speech (and others). This process-view of democracy supports that the majority doesn't subjugate the minorities. Furthermore, it connects the idea of justice as public reasoning with democracy. Though this doesn't tell us that a democracy is necessarily just but it is compatible with a just society because it allows public reasoning, which is necessary to arrive at just ideas. I think this is a nice ending since it gives hope that we are on the right track to improve justice but it makes us aware that we shouldn't stop where we are.

The [Im-]Moral Life of Babies

Last night, I was referred to an article in the New York Times supporting the idea of certain in-born mental capabilities in terms of moral assessment. The article is written by Prof. Bloom from Yale University, whom's group conduct the respective research. I'm highly skeptical about the interpretation of the experiments.

In the historical introduction, Bloom explains the advent of a new epistemological approach to the mental life of babies. In the eighties, researchers found that babies tend to look longer at new, surprising and pleasing things. Therefore, measuring the 'looking-time' gives insights into these mental categories. Bloom cites a study where magical tricks were shown to babies. As the babies looked longer at scenarios apparently contradicting the laws of physics, one can conclude that babies have an innate understanding of the physical world including its physical laws. In my opinion, this is a far-reaching claim, which cannot be necessarily concluded from the experiment. Babies already lived in the physical world before the experiment. In this world, they mainly encounter scenarios where physical objects comply to physical laws (since childhood is not a never-ending magician show). Hence, magic tricks are rather new observations, which don't fit into the already observed scenarios. Thus, an innate capability to 'study' (look at) something longer the less often it has been observed is sufficient to explain the outcome of the experiment. And though babies might be able to expect certain behavior of physical objects, this doesn't mean that they think about physical objects as units of mass subject to gravity.

Similarly I think about the claim that babies can do rudimentary math. Put two dolls behind a screen such that the baby can observe that you put the dolls behind the screen. If the screen is removed and there are one or three dolls on the stage, the baby is surprised (looks longer). That's nice and I would be interested to know whether any animal can do this, too. However, neither I would call this math nor counting. It obviously doesn't even tell anything about the understanding of numbers.

Then, the discussion turns to moral. Bloom tells us that the claim of a universal moral code is controversial because of the wide variation between societies. This already points to the fact that Bloom might have a very broad definition about moral. Many philosophers believe that regional morals cannot exist in a secular moral theory because a moral statement is necessarily unconditional. If I claim that you are behaving morally wrong, I don't say that I wouldn't do this (if I were you) - since this is purely a reproach of irrationality. Rather, I claim that it is universally wrong. Otherwise moral sanctions (which are necessary for a moral society) wouldn't work since one would always be required to reassure that the subject of the sanction is part of the moral society. For example, if someone kills someone else (and not in self-defence), it doesn't sound very convincing if someone would claim, "uuh, ok, you belief in moral or religion X, hence, it is totally fine if you kill this guy". A exculpation like this is only appropriate for cultural differences (and, hence, obviously not for moral issues). Bloom cites a study showing that different populations have different behavior towards strangers. Instead of seeing this evidence for cultural-dependent morals, one might rather realize that this is a cultural in contrast to a moral issue.

In the remainder of the article, Bloom is using his super-broad definition of moral to show that babies are innately moral. Bloom claims that behavior is moral and doesn't require an explanation why one behaves in a certain way. Hence, he would probably assign moral behavior to a bunch of animals as well. Based on Wittgenstein, I belief that moral is a concept which only exists in language. The reason is that we need language to have intentionality (another purely purely linguistic concept), hence, neither does it make sense to say animals are moral nor that they are unmoral (read here my post about consciousness of animals). Returning to babies, I think it is a wrong question to ask whether they are moral (as if neuroscientists try to answer the question what consciousness is) before they can use the respective concepts in their language.

Looking at Bloom's experiments where babies are able to select a good guy, the experiments are, again, over-interpreted. There are three puppets on the stage and the middle one has a ball, which it passes to either side. One of the puppets passes the ball back while the other puppet runs away with it. If the baby can choose between the two 'side'-puppets, it tends to select the one, which passes back the ball. Bloom claims that this would show that babies can distinguish between good and bad. I think the explanation is much simpler and the babies selects the one puppet, which it would like to play with itself. Obviously the one which passes back the ball. And why it this so? Since the babies already have experience in playing with others and the neuronal reward system releases more good-feeling substances in the brain if the game goes longer. Hence, the baby might be able to select what is good or bad for itself and making the connection that the puppets consistently behave as they did. For me, it has nothing to do with moral or to distinguish between good and bad in a moral sense.

In summary, I do believe that babies are capable of doing a lot of things and I appreciate the corresponding research. However, it looks to me that results are over-stated and decorated with fancy buzz-words to create interest. Though, I've to note that Bloom admits some of those problems in the second half of the article. Unfortunately, he continues talking about moral behavior...

'State of Exception' from Giorgio Agamben

Today, I finished the book 'State of Exception' from Giorgio Agamben. Some countries explicitly define how a state of exception (suspension of the constitution) can be reached - for example in case of a (civil) war - while others are very sloppy about that. Even others - like Germany nowadays - don't have such a concept in the constitution but instead the right of citizens to disobedience if their fundamental rights are consistently violated (Art. 20 of the German constitution). It seemed to me that Agamben mainly makes two statements concerning state of exception in contemporary politics. First, he explains totalitarian regimes in terms of a state of exception. Second, he observes that democracies (or constituted countries in general?) tend to shift power from the judicature and the legislative power to the executive power. Instead of warning about this, it looks to me that he rather describes it as an inevitable chain of events, which would be Historicism as Karl Popper condemns it. However, this is only covered in the first pages followed by a thorough analysis of Carl Schmitt's concepts and its relation to iustitium in the Roman Empire, which ends up as a very historical instead of a philosophical or political analysis.

Why does a constitution contain mechanisms to suspend the constitution? Here, Agamben uses an interesting rephrasing to point to an inherent trade-off: Norms defined by law are applied within the context of law. These norms constrain decisions. For example, if it is not allowed to go faster by car than 60mph than the space of decisions for the speed of the car is constrained to less than 60mph. If norms cannot be applied any more (like in a civil war), one suspends the norms by using the state of exception to - paradoxically - preserve the norms. This moves the force from the norms to the decisions, which become unconstrained. This leads to the main problem, how do we return from the state of exception to a state of norms. Although there might be a norm to return, however, in the anomic space this norm has no force. This leads to the two types of dictatorships described by Carl Schmitt. A commissionary dictatorship still tries to return to the primordial constitution while a sovereign dictatorship targets a new (if at all) constitution. So, the juridical law contains a law, which allows the sovereign to suspend the law. Hence, this concept in the juridical system is highly paradoxical since the law is made to be able to return to or conserve the law but it cannot ensure the return since it suspends itself.

Nowadays, in democratic (and so-called democratic - Agamben) countries, one can observe the voluntary and not necessary execution of the state of exception. This shift of power to the executive can be observed, for example, by Bush's governance and analyzed in the dimension of biopolitics (Foucault). Bush eliminates aliens, who are suspected to destabilize US's security, in the political and juridical sphere by abrogating their status as persons and as prisoners of war (Geneva convention). Agamben uses this as the main evidence (besides historical events in Rome and the Third Reich) to show the tendency of contemporary states employing the state of exception. Actually, this is not really a new observation since already Orwell describes this in the book 1984. Furthermore, one cannot talk about a state of exception in this example (Bush administration) as the state of exception doesn't hold for American citizens but for aliens. It also appears a bit exaggerating to deduce a general tendency from this. In summary, the book is not uninteresting to read but appears to rephrase a lot of known facts, deliver few new insights despite - maybe - the historical analysis of iustitium, which I cannot assess.

Why CO2 ventilation helps surviving!

For my PADI rescue diver class, I needed an up-to-date first aid and CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) training. In the introduction of rescue breaths (giving manual respiration to the victim), the instructor was posing the question why it helps to use his own breath to ventilate someone else. The question makes sense since one might think that there is no oxygen left in the exhaled air. The instructor answered the question by himself. We exhale carbonic acid. And as one might know, the formula for carbonic acid is CO2. Looking at the formula, one detects an O2 in there, which is obviously oxygen. Therefore, oxygen (though connected to the C) is still in the exhaled breath and, thus, we can use our exhaled breath to ventilate someone. What a pretty explanation - correct conclusion but amazingly wrong logic. In fact, I was wondering whether I'm overly critical and should look at this explanation as a helpful 'simplification'. Though, if someone knows the chemical formulas CO2 and O2, he is smart enough to understand that air is a composition of different gases...

Another interesting issue was the delivery of breast compressions to a manikin. As they used the same manikins as in Germany, I was familiar with them. They make a noise like breaking rips (krrr) if one presses at the wrong position or too deep. Here in the US, nobody cared about that - that instructor didn't even mention it. Hence, administering breast compressions was a happy krrr-krrr-krrr...

Rationality vs. Emotionality?

How often do you hear this, "don't be so rational, give way to your emotions!". What does the speaker try to say? Probably something like, "don't think, feel!". This implies an opposition between rationality and emotionality such that a thoroughly rational person cannot be emotional. This would also mean that an emotional person tends to make non-rational decision. I don't believe in this antagonism. And I received some support while reading "An Idea of Justice" from Amartya Sen. In the chapter "Reason and Objectivity", he also cites Adam Smith and David Hume as further supporters. Later in the chapter "Rationality and Other People", he refers to the "short, concise and elegant book 'Reason and Rationality'" from Jon Elster. In the library, I searched for this book but couldn't find it easily because it's a booklet of not more than 70 pages amid huge multi-hundred page books. Despite my surprise of its size, the book helped to clarify my thoughts about reason, rationality and emotionality.

The opposite of rational is irrational while reason(able) opposes emotion(al). Reason and emotions or passions are different ways to arrive at a decision. Reason demands a scrutiny of the underlying beliefs, desires and related information while being impartial to persons and time. This (usually?) yields a rational decision, which is defined by acting for sufficient reasons (plural, which is different from the singular reason). The rational decision is not necessarily a self-interest decision because beliefs can also be based on traditions like helping strangers. Therefore, rational decisions do not oppose moral decision. In fact, many philosophers argue that moral decision are rational decision. Now, David Hume says "reason and sentiment concur in almost all moral determinations and conclusions". This points to the essence that reason and sentiment or emotions are different ways to reach at a decision but often they result in the same decision. An emotional decision is an intuitive and impulsive decision without scrutiny. Therefore, an emotional person can either be rational or irrational or both depending on the situation while a reasonable person usually is rational. Furthermore, making a rational decision doesn't tell whether a person is reasonable. Nor does a reasonable person deny being affected by desires.