Will the Virus Make Us More or Less Religious?

April 23, 2020 Kevin coronavirus, Religion, secularization 0 Comments

Some are starting to speculate about whether the virus will affect American religiosity, which as we know, is abnormally high for a developed democratic country. Religious affiliation and practice in the US has been slowly declining for a few decades now. So we might think that pattern will intensify. In this post, I want to see if this is likely to be true.

Before I begin, let’s understand religiosity as adherence to some kind of religious belief, combined with a modest degree of religious observance corresponding to those beliefs. There are lots of ways to make these ideas more precise, but they won’t matter much for the purposes of this post.

The main way to predict the effects of the virus on religiosity is to ask how the virus affects the relative costs and benefits of religious belief and practice. I’ll assume that most churches have or will have services online, and that most of their adherents will be able to attend if they wish.

Factors Favoring Increased Religiosity:

Increased Uncertainty and Poverty: according to a common secularization thesis, people become less religious as they become more secure in their possession of worldly goods. To the extent that the virus deprives people of security and prosperity, they are most likely to form religious beliefs and engage in religious practices that they feel provide them with a balm for their suffering.
Decreased Costs of Attendance: it is much easier to “attend” church from home than to get up, get dressed, and drive to services.
Decreased Opportunity Costs of Religious Practice: people are working less, if they’re working at all, and so they have more time to devote themselves to religious practices like worship, prayer, and study.

Factors Favoring Decreased Religiosity:

Fewer Social Benefits: one of the advantages of religious observance is the ability to form close social bonds with members of one’s faith, and that is easier to sustain with personal contact in church and in church activities, like worship and charity work.
Less Social Punishment: a lot of religious observance is driven by the fear that others will disapprove of us if we are not sufficiently observant. But without social contact, it is harder to monitor whether people are observant or not, and this leads to slacking off. I admit I’m more distracted when I worship from home than when I worship in church, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
Less Religious Instruction: a lot of religious belief and practice comes from religious instruction, like Bible studies, that are much more easily carried out in person than over the internet, so the dissemination of religious knowledge and inspiration might be decreased.

These factors apply to existing religious belief and practice. But we should also not discount innovations in religiosity, both in the delivery of religious services (like drive-in worship) and in the nature of religion itself (a sufficiently bad global pandemic could lead to the creation of new religions or new variants on old religions).

My suspicion is that, on balance, a prolonged viral infection will favor a modest increase in religiosity among those who feel most negatively affected by the virus, and that religious observance will be partly facilitated by innovation in service delivery.

April 23, 2020 Kevin coronavirus, Religion, secularization 0 Comments

Is Social Distancing Big Brother?

April 18, 2020 Kevin coercion, coronavirus, COVID-19, government, social norms 1 Comments

Many conservatives and libertarians are complaining that our practice social distancing is objectionable because it is a form of government control. I’ve not been too sympathetic to this line of criticism because I think the vast majority of social distancing is voluntary, with little by way of threats of government coercion. I engage in social distancing because I think it protects me and my family, that it is my duty to my fellow citizens, and, frankly, because I’m afraid of being reprimanded by other people for violations. I’m not so worried about the police, going to jail, or being fined. I bet most people in the country feel similarly.

Social distancing is not primarily the result of government power. Instead, high-status persons are functioning as trendsetters in establishing new social norms, like hand-washing. Some people feel more constrained by those new norms than others, but that is not primarily because of government action. Instead, social distancing is a largely spontaneous order of social norms, which do indeed restrict freedom, but not in a big brother kind of way

Here’s something odd about these complaints. Conservatives and libertarians traditionally argue that many public goods can be provided through ostracism and social norms. Government coercion isn’t required. But our present predicament is that people are providing a public good (safety from the virus) through ostracism and social norms, by and large. Yet conservatives and libertarians are complaining about this state of affairs rather than lauding it. I’m delighted because social distancing is coming from people’s own hearts and self-interest, and not through violence. People are mostly doing the right thing for the right reasons.

This suggests that we might be able to provide lots of other public goods through social norms. Cool! Why aren’t we hearing more about this?

My guess is that conservatives and libertarians are focused on the economic costs of social distancing, which are gigantic. I get that. I’m feeling it. My wife has been furloughed, I’ve lost thousands of dollars because of speaking honoraria that aren’t coming my way. We’re fine, and blessed to have what we have, but it is unfortunate and difficult all the same.

People are also understandably upset about the fact that we’re making big social decisions based on bad data and worse models. If conservatives and libertarians were simply upset that we’re being told things that aren’t true, then I would completely sympathize. But the truth is that we have bad models and bad data in large part because there are so many unknowns, such that the degree of social distancing we’re adopting may well be reasons. And, as I’ve said here before, it’s really hard to know how to make these trade-offs, and so people are defaulting to extremely risk-averse behaviors. I don’t see why that reaction is especially less reasonable than alternative plans of action. As a result, the spontaneous order of social distancing is a reasonable, moral, and local reaction to the virus. It is not a matter of mere top-down planning.

April 18, 2020 Kevin coercion, coronavirus, COVID-19, government, social norms 1 Comments

The Queen Builds Trust

April 8, 2020 Kevin Queen Elizabeth, social trust, trust, United Kingdom 0 Comments

Monarchies tend to be more trusting than non-monarchies. Why? One hypothesis is that societies with non-partisan leaders, who are “above the fray,” have the unique ability to remind everyone of the common interests of the tribe/nation. That’s one reason Queen Elizabeth’s amazing message to the British people is so effective. She speaks to all of the British people about their common concerns, about how they need one another, while taking no partisan stances.

It helps that, as she points out, she addressed the nation during World War II, as a teenager. This was a time when the Brits say “everyone did their bit,” activities that I think played a major trust-building role during and after the war.

The Queen also thanks people in whom people already trust a great deal, like nurses and doctors.

Further, she emphasizes how many people are observing important social norms and succeeding in tackling the virus. And she stresses that people will want to look upon their own actions favorably in the future, again stressing the importance and motivation for following important norms, like staying home, washing one’s hands, and so on.

In short, the Queen builds trust by being a long-time non-partisan, tribe-unifying, trust-reminding, norm-cueing, and compliance-motivating high-status trendsetter. From a trust-building perspective, she’s got it all!

Trump cannot be this kind of leader, not just temperamentally, but because he polarizes public opinion perhaps more than any figure in American politics in historical memory. The difference in leadership ability could not be more stark.

If you haven’t watched the video, take a few minutes and watch it.

April 8, 2020 Kevin Queen Elizabeth, social trust, trust, United Kingdom 0 Comments

Assess Common Good Constitutionalism With One Question: What Happens to Dissenters?

April 2, 2020 Kevin Catholicism, integralism, Liberalism, originalism, the common good 1 Comments

One of the remarkable things about Adrian Vermeule is that when he speaks, people listen. They even when, perhaps especially when, he shocks the moral conscience of his reader by rejecting traditional liberal pieties about the purpose of government. I endorse most of those liberal pieties, but liberals cannot approach those who dissent with mockery and scorn, which I’m seeing all over Twitter. So here I’d like to try to provide a sober assessment of Vermeule’s alternative to conservative originalism, common good constitutionalism (CGC). [I’ve assessed integralism here and here and here and here and here and here.]

1. What is Common Good Constitutionalism? What Makes It Unique?

Common good constitutionalism holds, roughly, that the constitution of the United States should be read such that it permits and even requires the state to promote the values emphasized by Catholic social thought, though in the article Vermuele does not put it this way. CGC is a kind of supra-Catholic integralism [where integralism can be understood as the view that the state is to promote the common good as understood by the Catholic Church and in tandem with the Catholic Church]. CGC leaves the content of the common good a bit more open than integralism does, but CGC is clearly meant to pave the way for integralism.

CGC is simple. It combines a substantive Catholic conception of the common good, a political perfectionist principle that society should be organized so as to promote the common good, and a principle of constitutional interpretation. The interpretive principle is that the constitution should be reinterpreted so as to gradually conform the state to promote the common good, that is, to become a kind of perfectionist state.

Many on the left adopt a left-wing version of CGC, where the common good is given by, say, the moral system advanced by John Stuart Mill, which prizes autonomy and collective flourishing. There are plenty of left-wing CG constitutionalists; they just don’t think of themselves in this way. Where Vermeule is unique is in boldly claiming that Catholicism provides the best account of the common good.

2. What Happens to Dissenters Under Common Good Constitutionalism?

To assess CGC, we must first ask what happens to people who reasonably disagree with the account of the common good that Vermeule endorses. It is unclear how dissenters will be prevented from disrupting the common good constitution, though Vermeule does endorse some pretty dramatic means of establishing Catholic integralism. And you can see similar ideas in the piece. Vermeule wants to co-opt the power of the administrative state to serve the common good rather than limiting that power. So he is prepared to use rather heavy-handed means to establish the common good, which presumably required the suppression of dissenting voices where necessary to ensure that the state can successfully promote the common good. This includes, I think, considerable restrictions on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and most importantly on freedom of religion. Any religious or secular organization that has an opposing view of the common good, and is a genuine threat to state power must be monitored and controlled before it can metastasize.

Vermeule does not address the treatment of dissenters in the piece. But once we ask the question, we can challenge CGC with what I shall call the dissenter trilemma.

3. The Dissenter Trilemma

Catholic integralist states were prepared to use severe legal means to preserve the common good, from fines and imprisonment, to execution, and even burning heretics alive. In a way, this is all rather cooly rational. The human good is on the line, perhaps even the eternal good, and so threats to the good must be contained however possible. To be fair to Vermeule, however, he would surely use the minimum amount of harm necessary to protect the common good, and he obviously thinks that there are some ways of protecting the common good that are intrinsically evil.

For this reason, I will assume that Vermeule adopts a limiting principle that forbids certain methods of securing the common good even if those methods were known to succeed. Vermeule will not permit the killing of the innocent to realize the common good, or any means that requires people to sin.

The dissenter trilemma arises when we ask what the limiting principle is. The first question is this: is the limiting principle is adequately just? That is, does the principle forbid means of realizing the common good that the vast majority of reflective persons agree are unjust? For instance, does the limiting principle permit burning heretics alive? It is our settled considered judgment that no one should be burned alive for any reason. Similarly, I think nearly everyone, including theologically orthodox Catholic intellectuals, will think that executing people for heresy is unjust.

The second question follows from the first: assuming the limiting principle is adequately just, what relationship does it bear to the common good? In particular, is the limiting principle an external constraint on the common good or a proper part of it?

This leaves us with three options.

A. The limiting principle is inadequately just.

B. The (adequately just) limiting principle is external to the common good – an independent moral principle that limits how the common good may be pursued.

C. The (adequately just) limiting principle is internal to the common good – the common good fails to be the common good when the principle is violated.

Here are the problems with each horn of the trilemma.

On (A). If the limiting principle permits extreme acts of violence like burning heretics alive, then CGC will violate very deep considered judgments about justice. It seems unjust to imprison or execute people who dissent from the common good, even if the dissenters may lead others into deep moral confusion. This is a severe demerit for CGC, and is probably sufficient reason all by itself to reject CGC. Perhaps a few integralists are willing to take extreme measures, but the vast majority of people who might adopt CGC will be unsympathetic, to put it mildly.

On (B). If the limiting principle is adequately just, but operates as a constraint on the common good, as a principle of respect for rights might, then we don’t really have CGC. We have a common good + rights constitutionalism. But the whole point of CGC is that the common good is the master normative concept for how the constitution should be interpreted and applied. If we include an additional principle, we’ve violated the spirit of CGC.

On (C). If the limiting principle is adequately just and does not constrain the common good, then it must be internal to the common good, specifically by helping to determine what counts as the common good. If that is correct, we don’t know what CGC comes to because the proper understanding of the common good involves an appeal to a deeper principle. My hunch is that the limiting principle must appeal to the dignity of the human person. For instance, a society does not realize the common good if it sacrifices the one for the many because the individual has God-given dignity. And indeed, I think this is how modern Catholic theologians often think about how the dignity of the person and the common good are related: respect for the dignity of the person is a proper part of the common good.

But now one wants to know whether the dignity of the person grounds other rights. Contra Vermeule, most Catholic theologians think the common good requires respect for a robust right of religious freedom, including for baptized persons. In that case, reading the constitution so as to allow for violations of religious freedom would mean that the constitution can no longer be understood as advancing the common good, because respecting the right of religious freedom is part of the common good.

And unhappily for Vermeule, we’re now engaged in a thoroughly modern rights discourse that he wants to supplant.

4. Resisting the Dissenter Trilemma and the Originalist’s Reply

The best way out of the dissenter trilemma, in my view, is to adopts a theory of rights that includes a right to, say, nutrition and basic healthcare, but not a right to choose one’s own religion or to be free from state interference if one fails to contribute to the common good in other respects. This will involve an appeal to a theory of personal virtue, but in Catholic social thought, you can’t formulate a complete theory of virtue for the individual without attending to the person’s social context and the good of the community as a whole. Unfortunately, that means the best way out of the dissenter trilemma is to formulate a theory of rights by appealing to … the common good.

But now we have a difficult circularity to resolve, and I don’t know how Vermeule can resolve it. That’s not to say there’s no resolution; I’m sure Catholic theologians have tons of stuff on how the common good and rights are compatible and flesh out each others’ ambiguities. But I don’t know the tradition well enough to guess where Vermeule would fall. But I suspect this will be tricky business for him because most Catholics who theorize on the matter think the dignity of the person entails rights that Vermeule rejects.

In light of all this, here’s how originalists should respond to Vermeule. Yes, the common good is important, but the dignity of the person is a proper part of the common good, and the dignity of the person grounds extensive rights against state interference. The goal of originalism is to read the constitution in such a way as to limit government to protect those extensive basic rights. In this way originalism is a kind of common good constitutionalism because it protects proper parts of the common good: basic natural rights.

April 2, 2020 Kevin Catholicism, integralism, Liberalism, originalism, the common good 1 Comments

Economic vs Human Costs Under Conditions of Uncertainty (Not Risk)

March 31, 2020 Kevin coronavirus, economics, human rights, risk, uncertainty 1 Comments

We are presently suffering from a once-in-a-lifetime viral pandemic, and the only way to keep millions from dying is to shut down large parts of the economy. The economic costs are staggering, but we might keep hundreds of thousands of people alive, and millions more from bad health, lung damage, and the like. A lot of people, especially some conservatives and libertarians, are chafing under the restrictions. Their concerns are reasonable: the costs of the shutdowns are staggering! But I fear this is tempting many into conclusion-driven reasoning: “Oh, the reasons for the shutdown are based on bad models, but the economic costs are real, so let’s relax and stop freaking out before we destroy ourselves economically.” People are desperate for some degree of certainty so that we can figure out how to avoid paying all of these costs.This is part of what has driven the recent, severe, and frankly well-earned embarrassment of Richard Epstein for making predictions. He was almost certainly reasoning backwards: economic destruction and lost liberty are bad, and so the viral threat necessitating those costs must be being overblown. I’ve seen this all over Facebook as well.

But there’s also an error in the other direction. “Economic” costs are human costs. Human beings suffer, and often die, when they are poorer and out of work (though oddly it looks like human morality in the US has fallen off a cliff this year). Folks mocking people for caring about the economic costs aren’t taking the economic costs seriously enough and seem to prefer dehumanizing their opponents to figuring out a constructive solution.

Here’s the trouble for both sides, though: we lack the information necessary to determine, or even begin to determine, who is correct. And that’s because there’s a lot we don’t know about COVID-19, in particular its true fatality rate and how widespread it is at present. Because of that, we don’t have a sense for how many people could die, with estimates between a few thousand to millions. If we knew that social distancing would save a million lives in the US, the “economy” side of the debate would be wrong, and if we knew social distancing would only save ten thousand lives in the US, the “human” side would be wrong.

But we not only lack certainty, we don’t even know the probabilities of these outcomes. We are in the condition that Frank Knight dubbed uncertainty. We don’t know that there’s, say, a 20% chance of 1 million people dying, a 60% chance of 100,000 people dying, and a 20% chance of 10,000 people dying. Even in that case, we could make trade-offs, and we could debate which trade-offs were correct.

Until then, we’re all going to desperately grasp for knowledge of probabilities, but we must be careful not to manufacture probabilities without the very best information available. Until then, well, we should … Well, I’m not exactly sure because I don’t know the probabilities. I guess extreme caution is called for? Precautionary principle, save us all!

March 31, 2020 Kevin coronavirus, economics, human rights, risk, uncertainty 1 Comments

Why Won’t Trump’s Approval Ratings Change?

March 26, 2020 Kevin coronavirus, George W Bush, Politics, Trump 0 Comments

Wars are known to create a rally around the flag effect, where presidential approval skyrockets, as does trust in government. This was true for George H. W. Bush, and for George W. Bush after 9-11, so in political conditions not wholly unlike ours.

So far, Trump’s approval rating seems locked in, though we saw a bit of an uptick yesterday. Regardless, few people approve of him more or less than they did before the virus shut everything down. It seems like our political tribalization is preventing any movement in approval ratings. Remarkably, we were fairly polarized in 2001, but W still got a huge effect, and now Trump gets next to nothing.

So what’s going on? Why did 9-11 help W but the new coronavirus hasn’t helped Trump much?

Here’s my best guess. In the case of 9-11, everyone came to have the same beliefs about it pretty quickly (and this months before 9-11 was falsely tied to Iraq). The human death toll was immediate and visible, and the culprits were visible in many ways as well. Moreover, it was expected that there would be a military response, and so people geared up to support the troops and whomever was going to lead them.

Things are different with the virus. First, beliefs about the virus remain somewhat polarized. Second, the human death toll is not immediate and is far less visible, and cannot easily be tied to a human culprit. Moreover, while we all have to change our behavior to beat the virus, we aren’t going to war. People aren’t going to get shot and killed fighting against an enemy so the bonding effect is smaller.

And yet, you would still expect something of a rally, right? What else is going on? Trump was already quite unpopular, far moreso than W, and people’s beliefs about him are extremely polarized, more than they were about W, even following the 2000 election. Further, Trump has had an inconsistent response to the virus, which I think has dampened the rallying effect as well. But if his behavior is more consistently seen as positive, then we should expect a modest rallying effect. I can imagine his approval rating getting up to 60% or s0, though that would surprise me somewhat. But it could go above 50% for a few weeks. It might be enough to win the election depending on how things go, but right now both Trump and Biden are below 50%!

March 26, 2020 Kevin coronavirus, George W Bush, Politics, Trump 0 Comments

“The Chinese Virus”

March 21, 2020 Kevin China, coronavirus, trade policy, Trump 0 Comments

I posted this on Facebook the other day, but I thought I’d share it on the blog. I thought it might be worth offering some thoughts about why Trump and now many conservatives are calling the new coronavirus the “Chinese” virus. In my view, it is not *because* of racism, even if the term has racist consequences by leading Americans to, say, harass Chinese Americans. And the term wasn’t picked because it is “accurate” because Trump could have picked a bunch of other accurate names, like the CCP virus.

Here are a few possible reasons, some of which have occurred to Trump, but all of which have likely occurred to his elite supporters:

1. One of Trump’s longtime fears is China’s growing economic power. He’s been talking about this for decades. I think Trump and elite Trumpers want us to commercially decouple from China because he thinks it is bad for the US. By blaming China for the virus, he makes decoupling more politically viable. It was unthinkable a month ago. Now things are different. Fox is talking about being all pharma production back to the US. And some on the left seem sympathetic.

2. Trump and elite Trumpers wants to isolate China politically and weaken Xi because they think China isn’t a mere economic threat, but a political one too. If the world blames China for the virus, and indeed there are some grounds to blame the Chinese government, then that could weaken them greatly.

3. Trump and elite Trumpers recognize that Trump can win re-election if there’s a rally around the flag effect over the virus. If he can get the country to blame China rather than him, or to blame a visible foe rather than just an invisible virus, he may make the rally around the flag effect more likely. It might work too. If some of the blue tribe can be convinced that China is a bigger threat right now than the red tribe, they might be willing to vote for Trump.

Along these lines, I expect Trump is going to go after Biden hard for purportedly pro-China trade policy under Obama. Biden wants to remind us of Obama-era normalcy to boot Trump, but now Trump’s most potent line of attack is that Biden and Obama made us more dependent on China than we should have been. I’m not saying I agree with that, but I can imagine it being an effective line.

I want countries to be economically interdependent because I think it promotes peace and prosperity. But I sort of get not wanting the Chinese Communist Party, one of the most evil organizations in the world, to be able to deny us all our pharmaceuticals if they decide they want to. I don’t think they’d do it, but they’re engaged in mass murder and concentration camps right now, so maybe we should mistrust them.

March 21, 2020 Kevin China, coronavirus, trade policy, Trump 0 Comments

To Save Lives, Embrace Political Diversity

March 17, 2020 Kevin conservatism, COVID-19, ideology, libertarianism, progressivism 0 Comments

One of the more interesting facets of the coronavirus is that some people seem to have temporarily put off their ideological blinders and aren’t opposing policies and practices they would normally oppose. Right now, as I see it, libertarians, conservatives, and progressives/egalitarians advocate the following policies and practices meant to combat the virus:

Libertarians: deregulate medical testing and information-sharing in the medical profession and private sector generally.
Progressives: increase confidence in public health institutions and expand the social safety net.
Conservatives: increase personal virtue in the form of better personal habits.

Right now, the wisdom of all three viewpoints is clearer than usual.

US labs now have limited permission to engage in new experimentation, and it looks like FDA regulation and controls will slow down the proliferation of effective testing. Libertarians have a point in stressing the ways in which regulation slow innovation and the spread of those benefits to the general public. Moreover, libertarians are generating new ideas, like awarding huge prizes for innovation related to stopping the virus.

The US is increasing public health spending and relying more on government agencies for social order, and we are suffering from a lack of trust in public institutions like the CDC, especially because it appears that the Trump administration slashed funding for the CDC’s pandemic response team, a grave error. Progressives are right to complain. And proposals to expand and strengthen the social safety net are currently far more bipartisan than they were just a few weeks ago.

US elites are also massively stressing the importance of personal virtue in the form of responsible personal habits as a way to secure the public good and make government more effective. Indeed, unless the public is prepared to exercise personal virtue in activities like washing their hands and engaging in social distancing, no amount of government policy is going to matter. This is a central insight of traditional “character counts” conservatism.

In my view, the coronavirus suggests that traditional conservatism is the most underrated of the three systems of thought at the moment.

Everyone is going to respond that their particular ideology has exceptions built in, so there’s no need for progressives to like deregulation generally, or for libertarians to like high state capacity generally. But the coronavirus reveals what we’re ready to tolerate under emergency conditions, and this suggests at least a partial rationale for adopting these policies after the virus subsides.

But the most important point is that we can see the need for different ideologies and diverse perspectives both in times of crisis and in ordinary daily life. Adherents of different perspectives can learn from each other. We are better when we can work as a diverse team.

The coronavirus has helped many of us remove our ideological blinders for a moment. Let’s use that opportunity to see further, together. Let’s beat this thing.

March 17, 2020 Kevin conservatism, COVID-19, ideology, libertarianism, progressivism 0 Comments

Teaching Upper Division Philosophy in Canvas – What I’ve Done

March 13, 2020 Kevin Philosophy, philosophy of religion, philosophy online, philosophy teaching 1 Comments

I expect that most philosophers and other academics will be thrust into online teaching in the coming weeks. I’m currently teaching a course (PHIL 3170: Philosophy of Religion) in the classroom that I’ve already taught online six times. So I thought I’d put together a post on what I’ve found works. Unfortunately, only some of what I’ve said here will help people whose universities do not use Canvas. Also, I assume throughout that you have the bandwidth and storage space to do as I’ve done, and that you’ve already prepped the readings, your notes, and course discussion topics.

(1) Record Lectures: I put together Powerpoint slides and then record lectures where I talk through the slides. I have used different programs to record lectures, and the one I’ve found most useful is AceThinker Screen Grabber Pro. It records your voice and your monitor screen at the same time, and creates nice, neat MP4 files. However, the program has a limit in how large its files can get, so most of my lectures have three separate MP4 files. That’s fine, though, because students appreciate shorter videos that they can digest in stages.

(2) Create a Page then a Module: I then create a page in the “Pages” tab where I upload the videos, and then a module in the “Module” tab. I then add the relevant “page” to the Module, then I upload the slides into the module.

(3) Create a Discussion: to facilitate student involvement, I then create a Discussion, which I add to the Module. I don’t know how to create an optimal discussion, but here’s what I’ve found to be useful. I require each student to offer at least a 100-word question or comment, and a 100-word response to another student’s question. I award participation points based whether students actually do this, and based on the quality of their comments. I will then add my own comments in the discussion in order to correct misunderstandings or to incentivize students to focus more on a thread I find of particular use. This process doesn’t always work, but I’ve found it creates a good balance between the number of threads and the number of comments in each thread. I know my approach here could be improved, however.

I do find that upper division philosophy students handle the discussions pretty well. I don’t know how lower division students would handle this process in general, though I did teach Intro Ethics one summer on Canvas and the discussion requirements didn’t work very well at all. The nice thing about upper division philosophy students is that many are pretty self-motivated.

(4) Assign Times and Due Dates: you will also need to specify when the module is available, when it stops being available, and when assignments within the module are due. Once you do this, just make sure the module has the right titles and feel.

(5) Complete Module and Repeat: Once you’ve finished one module, repeat these steps until you have all the modules you need.

I also assign papers through the assignment tab, and I provide comments on rough drafts and final drafts electronically, but y’all know all about that.

Feel free to ask me any questions through Facebook, Twitter, or the comment section below.

March 13, 2020 Kevin Philosophy, philosophy of religion, philosophy online, philosophy teaching 1 Comments

Congratulations, Democrats, You are a Political Party

March 4, 2020 Kevin 2020 election, democracy, Democratic Party, Republican party 2 Comments

The last 72 hours have been truly extraordinary. Bernie Sanders had somehow become the favored candidate in the Democratic primary, but after Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg dropped out of the race on Monday, moderates coalesced around Joe Biden, whose campaign many had written off. Today the race looks completely different and the betting markets heavily favor Biden. What a turn of events!

Here’s my analysis. In most democracies, there are no primaries. Parties pick their standard-bearers in accord with their own criteria, often drawing heavily on electability. The US is unusual in giving so much power to party primaries. Ordinarily, this isn’t a big deal, but it occasionally allows parties to lose control of who they want to nominate. Given how polarized US politics has become, and how much trust in the political system has fallen, however, the primary system has become the main way in which anti-establishment candidates can hope to win political power. Donald Trump did precisely this in 2016. The GOP opposed him, but he was able to parlay his strong support among a minority of primary voters into the nomination. That is a very strange thing in democratic politics – for a populist, anti-establishment candidate to stage a hostile takeover of a political party. It suggests that indeed the GOP is a very weak political party. It is easily swayed and bandied about by special interests, the super rich, and right-wing media.

The Democrats, we can now see, are different. My guess is that, behind the scenes, Democratic elites successfully pressured Klobuchar and Buttigieg out of the race because they did not want Sanders to be the nominee for all kinds of reasons. This shows that they aren’t willing to be taken over in the way that the GOP was.

In my view, this is a good thing. You want parties to have their own integrity so that they can offer voters stable, distinct policy choices in order for people to be self-governing. It is also usually better for party elites to be able to formulate coherent platforms and ideological principles for similar reasons. I know that, in reality, this ideal often does not hold, but it is a reasonable regulative ideal that many countries approximate rather well, and departures from the ideal seem to make matters worse, not better.

Many Democrats are disappointed with Biden, and for all kinds of good reasons. But the overall story of Super Tuesday is a positive one: American democracy may not be ripped to pieces by populist, anti-establishment forces and extreme polarization. Maybe our hatreds and radicalisms will not be the only currents governing public life.

So American democracy had a good night. Congratulations to the Democrats for actually being a political party. Maybe Republicans can learn from them.

March 4, 2020 Kevin 2020 election, democracy, Democratic Party, Republican party 2 Comments

Reconcile When You Can

February 28, 2020 Kevin reconciliation 0 Comments

One of the reasons I focus on the ideal of reconciliation in my work and my thinking more generally is that I think broken relationships are among the greatest harms that humans endure. Almost nothing hurts well-being more than the loss of a loved one, or becoming estranged from one’s partner, children, parents, or friends. Indeed, many people spend most of their lives in dysfunctional, even abusive, relationships because those relationships provide them with meaning and value, and many other goods besides. Reconciliation has supreme value because it is the resumption of these lost relationships.

Reconciliation is also valuable as a process because it requires us to engage in morally admirable acts, such as admitting wrongdoing and forgiving others. In reconciliation, we express regard and love for another person, and are often prepared to humble ourselves in order to restore the relationship to working order. That’s why I find the process of reconciliation one of the greatest beauties the world has to offer.

One main barrier to reconciliation is pride. People who have broken the relationship often cannot admit to others, or even themselves, that their actions have done so much harm. As a result, the unreconciled retreat into their own emotional worlds, often guarded by the false belief that the other person is at fault, or that the relationship was broken by forces outside of their control. Reconciliation has value because in reconciling, people can break through self-deception, unfairly blaming others, and social isolation. The other main barrier is simply overwhelming hurt; reconciliation means reopening old wounds, which might not get healed, and so many refuse the opportunity based on their assessment of the risk of how it will go. When people pursue reconciliation anyway, they exhibit a kind of trust or faith, and indeed courage, because they care enough about healing to take a chance.

These are all very good reasons to try to reconcile with others. But there are two good reasons not to pursue reconciliation. The first is if you have very good reason to believe that the other person does not want to reconcile. That’s because reconciliation is a two-way street, and trying to force or cajole others into reconciling can often backfire, and even further damage the relationship by creating an additional source of resentment and division. The second is if you think the resumed relationship is likely to be harmful to you, the other person, and/or some third party. For instance, resuming a relationship with a drug-addicted friend might lead you back into addiction as much as it might lead the other person away from addiction.

But before refusing to reconcile, we need to be fairly sure that the other person does not want to reconcile and/or that reconciliation would be harmful in some respect.

A final point. Most people stay in bad relationships too long, but others err in cutting people out of their lives too quickly. In my experience, the most painful harms people are endure are being cutting out of others’ lives, and their former lovers, friends, or colleagues refusing to communicate with them, so that they have no chance to heal or even ask for forgiveness. In many cases, people end relationships based on past grievances that could be healed even by a simple conversation. Many people will endure enormous pain and loss, and give into anger and fear, rather than spend five minutes with the person who hurt them. While such conversations are often painful, the benefits of the attempt usually outweigh the costs, if for no other reason than that we do not always know how the other person thinks about the loss. In my own attempts at reconciliation, I’ve often found that the other person is hurt for reasons I could not have anticipated, or that they think I have attitudes towards them that I simply lack.

So reconcile when you can. And if you’re refusing to reconcile with another person who wants it, reconsider, at least for a moment. Reconciliation is one of the great joys in life, and breaks us free from the chains that hurt and loss place on our hearts.

February 28, 2020 Kevin reconciliation 0 Comments

Is Anything Rotten in the State of Denmark? It Has Become Far More Trusting. We Don’t Know Why.

February 26, 2020 Kevin Denmark, political stability, social trust 0 Comments

Denmark is the only major developed country where social trust has substantially increased since measurement began: from 47% in 1979 to 76% in 2008, converging with the high levels of trust in Norway and Sweden. Here’s something else: Germany borders Denmark and shares many cultural and institutional features with it, but German social trust in 2008 was 39%. So what could account for a difference over over 35 points? This 2012 paper suggests that the difference is due to greatly differing degrees of political stability. Denmark simply saw far less political instability during this time period.

My theory is that social trust is grounded in the observation of compliance with social norms.* If political instability generates more observable norm violations, or undermines stable norms, then the capacity to learn to trust other is greatly limited.

So here’s a thought: perhaps Denmark would ordinary have social trust levels at Scandinavian levels but trust was suppressed through somewhat less political stability and because of its proximity to Germany, whose recent institutional history is quite chaotic. Once Germany stabilized, Danish trust could converge with other countries.

This may suggest that German social trust should gradually approach Scandinavian social trust, and it might be at similar levels if not for Nazism, division under communism, and a difficult reintegration period. We don’t see that in the data yet, but that might be because social trust in East Germany remains low.

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*The authors seem to agree. They say that the “stable ‘underlying rock’ of social trust in any society, including a political stability secured by formal institutions that are firmly embedded in shared norm” (355)).

February 26, 2020 Kevin Denmark, political stability, social trust 0 Comments