Choosing A President:
Ethics and Epistemology
When making any important decision, the American People like to concern themselves with the Facts. When choosing a president, we often ask ourselves whether the things said about the candidates, good and bad, are actually true. We are less likely to ask whether their truth makes any difference. In other words, when we make a modus ponens argument, we ask about the P, but not the if P then Q. Even if P is true, does it require, or even imply, that Q is true? To answer questions of that sort, we often need to ask somewhat philosophical questions.
Ethics and Values
What is the point of asking whether a Candidate has quality X if we haven’t asked questions like: “What are the qualities that make a good president? How important is experience vs. intelligence vs. people skills? Is a good president (in the sense of skillful) the same as a good person? What virtues would be nice to have in friend, but may not be necessary for a president? If a president is honest, and skillful, need he also be likable?”
Judgment and Epistemology
Even if we know exactly what qualities a president ought to have, how can we be sure that the candidate has those qualities? How can we tell who would be a good president and who wouldn’t? What other judgments would we have to make to decide that a candidate would be a good president? What job experience is isomorphic enough with being a president that it can count as job experience? A senator has foreign policy experience, but a governor has executive experience. Which is more important for the presidency?
Too much of the current discourse on this topic assumes highly questionable answers to these questions. Although I intend to deal with other topics in this blog eventually, I think these are the questions that thinking people need to ask between now and this election. I have ideas of my own, which will be up soon. I’d welcome hearing yours.
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7 comments:
Greetings Teed and congratulations on your new blog. I'm always proud to know you - a rare Productive Thinker from a time where so many wasted so much. I have little time to contribute, and I know my contributions may not challenge or add in the same way as your philosopher peers may. I often wish I still had my political website which helped inform a few people and served as a great therapeutic tool for me.
So my two cents which to get the ball rolling.
"When making any important decision, the American People like to concern themselves with the Facts."
Don't I wish? Then we would never have invaded Iraq. Even many of my most intelligent friends ignored facts or 'questions about possible facts" to jump on the emotional bandwagon.
The American people are lazy and gullible. Not inherently more so than others, but these qualities have been fostered and nurtured by our culture over the last decades. Higher qualities can be nurtured with different leadership and a tremendous cultural change with concerted media help.
So where does that leave us in terms of your other questions? Ethics, Humanity, Likability, Experience, Type of Experience? You look as the process as a thinking being. Most decisions are made by people on their feelings, often explained as logical and thinking. I.E.: Bush seems like a regular American. He's more patriotic. He's more like me.
The Rovian Republicans understand this. That's why McCain’s first line of attack once Schmidt took over was against the "Elitist" Obama. It has not succeeded, partially because there is enough fight and money to duke it out and the media is a tiny touch more balanced. And it was truncated by his running-mate selection - "A typical non-elitist hard-working mom governor". But it has worked well in the past. They know the path to victory is on "feeling". I do believe the process and discourse can be raised, but we're not there yet.
Some preliminary thoughts.
All the best...
Howard
And one thing I meant to include - that I even the "thinking" process must involve a sense of "intuition" at least for me. So do we stick that in the "feeling" category?
Anyway - my comments may be a diversion from your bigger questions, so the next comments certainly do not need to reflect on my thoughts.
H.
Hi Teed,
I have all of my classes reading Al Gore's new book The Assault on Reason, which raises essentially the same set of questions. I have a long-winded hunch about this stuff which I'll boil down to three elements: (1) the Jeffersonian ideal of a healthy democratic process of deliberation (popular electoral or official policy management) places rationality at the decisive center. Clearly the American system has been exhibiting multiple symptoms of dysfunction for some time. (2) A nation, as a collective, can be usefully compared to a person, as in Plato's central analogy between the city and the individual (Republic, Book II, etc.). Following this analogy, as I understand it, democratic decision making is never a purely or entirely rational process, but will always involve the emotional and appetitive energies as well, although in a healthy state we would expect reason to lead and to mediate and moderate the other energies. (3) Still following this analogy, America behaves more and more like an addict. Rational deliberation devolves into rationalization. Reason is preempted by emotion and appetite which are rampaging out of control. Coming now to the current campaign, a very interesting commentary was posted recently on the Huffington Post by Deepak Chopra entitled "Obama and the Palin Effect". Check it out!
In response to Howard:
I'm using the word "facts" here in a technical philosophical sense. a factual claim is one which is 1) specific rather than general and 2)involves questions of what is rather than what ought to be. The arguments for invading Iraq were thus "factual" in the sense that they were based on false facts. (Saddam has WMD and ties to Al Qaeda etc.)
What I want this Blog to do is clarify presuppositions about inferences and meanings, rather than simply issues of fact. You're quite right that this is rarely done, but this part of what philosophers do, so I'm going to try to do it here. As an individual, all I can do is try to be one lamp against the darkness, and hope the light spreads.
Secondly, you're quite right that even the "thinking" process must involve a sense of "intuition", which is why I have some problems with the criticism that McCain acted from his gut. Executives do have to act from their gut a great deal of the time. The Question is: can we trust McCain's Gut the way we could trust Roosevelt's or Clinton's? I think the Palin Choice is one piece of evidence that we cannot.
To DR. JR (Joel),
I've read that Chopra piece. For those who haven't, you can find it
here
And yes, this culture is one in which we are devolving from Rational beings to Rationalizing Beings. Some people respond to that by trying to fight fire with fire. But as Swami Beyondananda says "We've got to fight fire with Water". It's very tempting to agree with any argument that supports your side no matter how bad it is, in hopes that it will convince somebody. But I think if we have a willingness to attack bad arguments that defend our points, and the ability to come up with other good arguments to replace them, we will ultimately show by example how worthless the other sides arguments are. It's a lot like Gandhian passive resistance. You have to take it on the chin for a while, but I believe that eventually people can be won over by the moral and rational high ground.
Obama showed this quality when he announced that he would immediately fire anyone on his staff who tried to make political hay out of Palin's pregnant daughter. His mother was only 18 when he was born, and he knew how painful that stigma could be. He was simply not willing to use that tactic, even if it helped him politically.
McCain used to feel that way about torture, but he's long since caved in to the Republican base on that issue.
Dear Teed,
I read your post and just have two thoughts. First, how do you define "broadcast meda"? Surely, even in an oral culture, someone will be in a position to notice and point out another person's blatant lies. The injunction against bearing false witness suggests that we are aware of such falsehoods even without the benefit of broadcast media.
Secondly, shouldn't you refer to the evidence needed to charge and convict an "alleged rapist"? While I certainly do not condone charging citizens for police services, even a rapist is entitled to the presumption of innocence before trial. People can and do bring false charges against one another.
Yours,
Nancy
To Nancy:
I have read that in the early days of American politics, say Jackon's time, or William Henry Harrison's, politicians literally said contradictory things to different constituencies. If they were caught, apparently it was too late to effect the election. This is quite plausible to me, given th success of the Swift Boat smear campaign, or the republican smear in 2004 that McCain had a black illegitimate child.
If I had discussed a real alleged rapist by name, I certainly would have not called him a rapist.(surely the masculine pronoun is acceptable here?). But I'm only talking about the possibility that at least one real rapist could have gotten away because of Palin's policy. That is cause for concern, whether it actually happened or not.
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