Friday, March 23, 2012

Epistemic or Moral Communities

"Epistemic" is a word I first heard at this conference.  It was used frequently, and sometimes unclearly, and after extensive research found that it relates to knowledge, understanding.  This makes little sense as an adjective for "theory" as all theories are about knowledge.   This explains my personal motivation for reviewing this conference, and its attempt to address Political Civility.  I will attempt to illustrate that this department, and from this sample of distinguished academics in this field, is closer to being something other than their self defined, "epistemic community" but rather a different kind of community that is inherently inimical to the discovery and expansion of knowledge.

This is quoted from this essay by Jonathan Haidt in Science. The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology
A moral community has a set of shared norms about how members ought to behave, combined with means for imposing costs on violators and/or channeling benefits to cooperators. A big step in modeling the evolution of such communities is the extension of reciprocal altruism by “indirect reciprocity” (31) in which virtue pays by improving one's reputation, which elicits later cooperation from others. Reputation is a powerful force for strengthening and enlarging moral communities.

There is no better example of this than an academic discipline or department.  While it does not describe "how members ought to behave" it does prescribe the contours, the limits of the values that can be shared among members.  Haidt goes on to explore other types of communities, in this case religious.

Whatever the origins of religiosity, nearly all religions have culturally evolved complexes of practices, stories, and norms that work together to suppress the self and connect people to something beyond the self. Newberg (37) found that religious experiences often involve decreased activity in brain areas that maintain maps of the self's boundaries and position, consistent with widespread reports that mystical experiences involve feelings of merging with God or the universe. Studies of ritual, particularly those involving the sort of synchronized motor movements common in religious rites, indicate that such rituals serve to bind participants together in what is often reported to be an ecstatic state of union (38). Recent work on mirror neurons indicates that, whereas such neurons exist in other primates, they are much more numerous in human beings, and they serve to synchronize our feelings and movements with those of others around us (39). Whether people use their mirror neurons to feel another's pain, enjoy a synchronized dance, or bow in unison toward Mecca, it is clear that we are prepared, neurologically, psychologically, and culturally, to link our consciousness, our emotions, and our motor movements with those of other people.

Patriotism could be substituted for religion in the act of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.  I have studied the jurisprudence of this ritual beginning in 1941 up to the present day's pending appeals.  " Studies of ritual, particularly those involving the sort of synchronized motor movements common in religious rites, indicate that such rituals serve to bind participants together in what is often reported to be an ecstatic state of union" Such an example of synchronized motor movements is placing the hand to the heart when this is recited.  The concatenation of sounds are meaningless, not only to the five year olds who first repeat the words, but were to the Georgia State legislators, who recently passed a bill threating secession hours after affirming their pledge to "one nation indivisible."

Haidt is right in that the power of emotion, especially when potentiated by group fervor.  This has another effect, one that turns the ecstatic state of union into an equally powerful hatred of he who fails to join in the ritual.  It is an ugly dynamic to see in a lynch mob, or an old film of the Nuremberg volksprecht or to this eye, the mass recitation of this patriotic ritual in the halls of congress.  And when I see a hint of it, albeit for noble causes, in a house of erudition, a sacred hall of unfettered knowledge, where only discovered truth is exalted, it is an atheistic sacrilege that I must resist.

The goal of my effort, perhaps to resonate with a few, is not joy, or even serenity, but quite the opposite, the engagement of diverse ideas, the sharing of experience and insights that has the capacity to transform individuals and societies.




The Israeli George Zimmerman

April 15, 2012

"A resident from a different ethnic group with a strong desire to belong joins the homeowner association's civil guard in order to protect it from a series of break-ins. Armed with a gun that he has no idea how to use, even his own neighbors are uncomfortable with him lurking around the neighborhood-but don't want to confront him about it. Late one night he sees a group of young people hanging around, one with a defining article of clothing, a hoodie. He first tries to call the police on his cell phone. Then he leaves his car and walks towards him........The scene ends with a neighbor who had been looking out the window collapsing at the sound of a single gunshot"

This description is of a 2008 episode of "Arab Labor," a popular comedic television series in Israel. In this case the shooter was Amjad, an Arab journalist for a Hebrew newspaper who had moved into a Jewish high end condominium development in his attempt to belong; who not only became active in the homeowner's association but took on the challenge of protecting residents from the criminal element.

The worldwide popularity of this series is that it expresses deep truths about human nature, it's genius being to transform the often tragic universal conflicts of diverse ethnicities and races living together into a brilliant comedy. The final gunshot in the episode, unlike the tragedy in Florida, was Amjad's bumbling misfire, long after the kids had walked away when they saw him coming.

Last month I attended a conference at University of California San Diego on Political Civility in America that was organized by history professor Tal Golan, who was brought up in Israel where political incivility takes a different form. There the political divide is also one of territory; the intrapsychic is externalized, frequently going beyond our type of war of words to one with tanks and missiles-and vast carnage. While not part of the conference agenda, the message that I got from that event was the universal aspect of such conflicts, and how it just may be impossible to come to grips with them when focusing on your own country's version. Faced with the intransigence of finding consensual solutions, we join one side or the other, and then we focus our energies to vilify what has become the enemy. In Israel there is no illusion that the two sides can become a single unified nation, and the generations long challenge is how to disengage equitably and peacefully.

The brilliance and the pleasure of "Arab Labor" is that it displays the common humanity of both of these groups that have been in mortal combat for three generations. In the face of this ancient hatred and its current lethal manifestations, we see camaraderie and even love that thrives across this divide. There is a message to be had here, a tool for addressing political conflict in all its forms. Let's make no mistake, the differences that lead to conflict within and among countries are real, are not to be explained or even joked away.

These issues, the division of land in Israel and of wealth in this country, may only be resolvable among those who cannot only argue against each other, but who also can laugh together. There must be a vision of a common humanity that gives the incentive that out of the wars, cultural or material, there can emerge something worth achieving, a community that can rise from the battleground. As the two episodes, one comedic in Jerusalem and the other tragic in Florida illustrate, the issues are universal; and addressing them a vital challenge for us all.

Al Rodbell

Here's the link to the scene that I describe on "Arab Labor"

Thursday, March 22, 2012

The myths and fears underlying partisanship

The United States of 2012 can be viewed as two distinct political cultures that borders on tribalism, each with its own language, myths and fears.  In the month since I've started this website, March 2012 has brought the response to a regulation mandating health insurance coverage of contraception, something that has been standard for decades among Catholic owned institutions, depicted as an assault on religion, with one young advocate called a slut, and worse, by the most prominent conservative spokesman, Rush Limbaugh.  A few weeks later this was followed by publication of the killing of a young black man by a white person whose garb, a hoodie, has become a symbol of outrage at what the left is certain is a reprise of the lynching of black youth that went unpunished in the South during  my own lifetime.

Jonathan Haidt explained it this way in an article in the N.Y. Times. 
He starts with the left's "sacred myth"
“Once upon a time, the vast majority” of people suffered in societies that were “unjust, unhealthy, repressive and oppressive.” These societies were “reprehensible because of their deep-rooted inequality, exploitation and irrational traditionalism — all of which made life very unfair, unpleasant and short. But the noble human aspiration for autonomy, equality and prosperity struggled mightily against the forces of misery and oppression and eventually succeeded in establishing modern, liberal, democratic, capitalist, welfare societies.” Despite our progress, “there is much work to be done to dismantle the powerful vestiges of inequality, exploitation and repression.” This struggle, as Smith put it, “is the one mission truly worth dedicating one’s life to achieving.”
This is a heroic liberation narrative. For the American left, African-Americans, women and other victimized groups are the sacred objects at the center of the story. As liberals circle around these groups, they bond together and gain a sense of righteous common purpose.

He contrasts this with conservatives':
Once upon a time, America was a shining beacon. Then liberals came along and erected an enormous federal bureaucracy that handcuffed the invisible hand of the free market. They subverted our traditional American values and opposed God and faith at every step of the way.” For example, “instead of requiring that people work for a living, they siphoned money from hard-working Americans and gave it to Cadillac-driving drug addicts and welfare queens.” Instead of the “traditional American values of family, fidelity and personal responsibility, they preached promiscuity, premarital sex and the gay lifestyle” and instead of “projecting strength to those who would do evil around the world, they cut military budgets, disrespected our soldiers in uniform and burned our flag.” In response, “Americans decided to take their country back from those who sought to undermine it.”

To extend on Haidt's thesis, cultural myths are always comprehensive with heroes and villains, and clear visions of what shall befall them if the enemy prevails.  President Obama is routinely referred to as a socialist, with the connotation that only conservatives are thwarting his true goal of communism.  They visualize the bloody slaughter that did occur after such revolutions in Russia of 1917, Cuba of 1959 or the earlier incarnation in France beginning in 1789.  To allow the raising of taxes on the wealthy, no matter how small, is the beginning of confiscation of property, which once allowed in principle ends with the guillotine.  So the most erudite pundits such as Charles Krauthammer, proclaim that an Obama second term would  have  "irreversible" consequences for this country.  The probable nominee for the Republican party speaks of "taking out" the President, a word with violent connotations, only appropriate for someone who is being prevented from doing great harm.

What do liberals fear?  It's illustrated in this essay that I wrote, Fox Flag Fascism.  My particular slippery slope, as echoed by the many agreeing comments on this liberal blog, leads to Nazi Germany of 1938.  For me the hand placed over the heart at patriotic occasions is the outstretched arm of obeisance to the symbol of the state, that while never more than a social convention, obtained lethal universal enforcement.  So, I see adhering to peer pressure to stand solemnly for the national anthem as not unlike the right views the one percent increase in the tax rate for the wealthy, both a step to unspeakable societal disaster.   

Acceptance of these two comprehensive non overlapping partisan myths are not limited to the uneducated.  At this moment, the members of the Supreme Court are casting votes on which schemata, which sacred narrative,  shall be used to evaluate the Affordable Healthcare Act.  Technically they are in the process of "deliberation" but there's no evidence of this, as deliberation means consideration of others views in reaching a conclusion.  Other than perhaps a single "swing" justice, what is occurring is a polling of which ideology has a majority of the nine votes, which will determine the fate of this most important domestic policy initiative in decades.

Given that this polarization to the point of tribalism exists from the obscene slurs of talk radio to jurisprudential decisions of the highest court of the land,  is it possible that academia can rise above this.  My premise is that it not only can, but that it must. From my life experiences, and the UCSD conference that is the focus of this website, I conclude that the perspective of the liberal arts in public universities is of the left, and that this unexamined identification vitiates the capacity to productively pursue their stated academic goals.

My personal challenge is making this case without use of the language of the right, without anger or condemnation.  It's a form of non-violent expression that attempts to show rather than force a group to do what is right.  The first challenge is engagement, finding a way to get traction to reach the goals that I have the audacity to hope to achieve.


Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Why Education Matters-A Personal Story.


“STUDY: UC EDUCATION IS TOO LEFTIST”

I was taken aback when I caught this headline of the UCSD school paper, "The Guardian," last week. I thought that someone had stolen my thunder, pre-empted the personal project that I had started a few weeks previously after attending a conference entitled "Political Civility and Objective Science." I had come to the same conclusion as the report that was written by the California division of this organization entitled, “A Crisis of Confidence, The Corrupting Effect of Political Activism in the University of California.” I decided that I would try to connect with the presenters, try to show them one person at a time the errors of their ways, I started my own website, Virulent Partisanship-The Academic Challenge, that has become a chronicle of my effort, including conversations with some of those who spoke at the conference.

I read the eighty seven pages of the study, “A Crisis of Confidence,” with great care, and wrote this extensive review. If this NSA report was sociology, my website is anthropology, participant research with personal observations of individual cases, with generalizations to the larger academic setting. While I had sent a notification that I would be attending as a critical observer to the chair of the first panel, this was not generally known to the presenters of this conference, scholars in the field of history, philosophy and sociology of science from premier institution of this country and Europe.

Education is important to me for several reasons, some admirable and others less so. To the degree that any academic setting deviates from its “ideal,” there is a loss of the vital endeavor of instilling those qualities of mind that many have tried to define. It’s easier to capture this ideal by the deviations from it- indoctrination, socialization, partisanship, credential mongering and the list goes on. “The Crisis of Confidence” report focused on the harm of partisan indoctrination, with one section on African Americans, whom as a group most need what higher education has to offer. This I could identify with, although not being of this race.

I had known more than most the pain of ignorance from a very early age. “What” I asked my Dad, “could that boy have done to have deserved such a terrible punishment.” There he was, his head bobbing between the waves, out there in the cold river alone with no one helping him. My Dad, a kind hearted good natured man who left school at fourteen to join the Army as a baker in WWI, seemed a bit amused, and somewhat frustrated, perhaps because such bad things could happen, and he just repeated, “it’s a boy.” emphasizing the word, and to me the child’s terrible fate. I accepted it as the way the world was. Of course not too much time passed, but too much time for a child, before I figured it out, that the boy that he said was out there was a buoy. I couldn’t hear the difference and my Dad didn’t understand homophones, so how could he explain that this had caused the misunderstanding.

The neighborhood kids played ball on an empty field with the Capitol dome visible in the distance, and many of their parents worked for something that it represented called the government. But, it was a long time before I had an idea what this thing was. I knew what a postman or a baker did, but had no idea what so many people were doing at this Government thing. Not only didn’t my parents have the ability to explain the concept, neither did the families of those working class kids I played with. There were no computers to find answers, we didn’t have an encyclopedia, or any other book in the house.

Knowledge, what schools are charged with providing, was for me what food is to a starving emaciated person. It still is; and so when I feel that it is not being done as well as possible, it is personal, not so much for me anymore, but for others like I was so many years ago. Moral conundrums that confound others, such as whether hard truths should be suppressed in the name of advancing a given social end, no matter on what side of the political spectrum; for me brings up the welling pain of memory of being deprived, of not only not knowing, but having no access to knowledge.

I can’t be angry at my Dad, as he gave me all he had to give. But I can be angry at others, those born into a world of learning who would distort reality to advance their own conception of a better world; whether it’s William Buckley and his successors who would deprive students of the understanding of human behavior that explains religions, or of Stephen J. Gould who would deny the reality of racial differences that are part of the amoral processes of evolution.

There are other painful truths besides those that Buckley, Gould and others still with us today would rather not face. One is the ubiquitous irresistible need to belong to a community, physical or epistemic, be it of Christians or atheists, conservatives or liberals, cosmopolitan or provincial--but to belong. It is an imperative that demolishes reason itself, warning the members away from expressing, and to be safer still, knowing, anything that would damage the needed group identity.

By never belonging, never having the pleasures of camaraderie that is shared among those who have lived this life of knowledge, to be among the professoriate, there are things that I am able to see, to understand, to articulate without the fear of losing an identity that I do not have.

So, I will continue to write on my blog, to express my thoughts, without the pleasures. or the constraints of belonging that I saw among the participants of the UCSD conference. I also recognized the same group dynamics underlying the report of this esteemed group on the liberal mindset of the UC system, Transcending this very human quality of group identity is difficult; the only question is whether it is possible at all.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

conversations with participants

This is a copy of all of my communications with academic participants of this conference.  As of March 31, there has been two responses-removed to separate posts.   List begins with most recent with oldest  at the end

Sheila Jasanoff
Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies

Harvard Kennedy School

Dear Dr. Jasanoff

When I left the final session of the conference, I promised a review on my website. It's not been easy for reasons I'll describe. But, I've started it here. Virulent Partisanship-The Academic Challenge

I was there as a member of the public, not a part of the academic community. My attempt now is to embrace both the challenges and the advantages of this status of outsider to use this conference as a window on the larger area of STS, or Science Studies. As the head of this department at one of the worlds premier universities, I would not be imposing on your time if I did not believe that my experience is a case study of the very issues you have spent your career investigating, the connection between scientific knowledge and public policy.

What STS studies should find interesting is how it was a single individual who did more research, expended more effort contacting legislators, and wrote more about the excesses of a counterproductive law than any academic institution in California. It should interest you how this university, an aggregation of the skills to confront such excesses, did not engage this issue at all. If interested, here's a summary of my effort.

While I have received a cordial response to my follow ups, including the full transcript of the keynote address, from Dr. Hamlin, other than that there has been no responses from the UCSD faculty members that I have contacted. (copies here) The dynamics of group boundaries, or the "not invented here" effect is well known, yet it is antithetical to the very goal of promulgation of the products of academic research that is your field of study.

This conference was funded by and open to the public, yet other than a blog with no content, there is no follow up, no record of presentations, and no constructive analysis.

Did this assemblage of scholars make inroads in addressing the central issue?

Did they even engage the question- and if not, why?

Was there evidence of tacit partisanship that inherently negates effectively exploring the process of incivility among political groups?

As you know, one byproduct of our current Kulturkamph is that language itself has become identifiers of one's allegiance. If there is an idiom of value free exploration of socio-political issues, it is difficult to locate, There are think tanks whose goal is to end political incivility, but their solution to vanquish the other side. Is the liberal university simply a covert version of such think tanks; and if so does this explain the lack of clout it has over the vital issues of our day?

Thank you for reading, and I would be delighted to correspond with you on this issue.

Regards

Al Rodbell
Encinitas CA
------------

 Political Civility and Scientific Objectivity-gong forward
Thursday, March 22, 2012 10:34 AM

"Christopher Hamlin" <Christopher.S.Hamlin.1@nd.edu>
Cc:
"noreskes@ucsd.edu" <noreskes@ucsd.edu>, "tgolan@ucsd.edu" <tgolan@ucsd.edu>


Chistopher Hamlin

Copied to Tal Golan and Naomi Oreskes

Professor Hamlin

Many thanks for you simple kind words of appreciation for my participation

I read your speech carefully, and I believe we share many approaches this issue. Conant's 1943 Atlantic article had no inkling of the social revolutions, demands of women and blacks for equality, that would define the last half of the twentieth century. This social revolution is handled poorly by STS studies, as the effect of the left's demanding that science be in the service of ending these inequalities has violated the Mertonian Norms, with unexamined consequences.

This conference was difficult for me, as the pleasure of the intellectual stimulation rekindled the regret that I never completed my doctorate in Social Psychology many years ago. It was being close to the banquet, but not really being an invited guest. So, I have to separate how much of my motivation to make a contribution to this searing issue of hyper partisanship is pure, and not tainted by my trying to affirm my academic chops through the back door.

We do have a defined higher education procedure, that while imparting an approach to mastering complex material, is also a social club, one where culturally liberal values are a unifying element. It came out in subtle, but clear, ways during the conference. This would not be a problem, except for the failure of the conference at even getting near addressing the most pressing challenge of virulent partisanship overshadowing objective science.

My efforts to continue this conversation with Tal and Naomi have not been acknowledged by them. Among scholars, from Karl Mannheim to your own writing, there is an understanding of the value of perceptions that are only available from those outside of the orbit of a given "estate" including academia. There is this multidisciplinary blog* on the subject of the conference, a seeming attempt to continue addressing these goals beyond a given event. Emblematic of the degree of engagement on this issue, you will note it is empty.

Productive engagement on this issue is something I would want to participate in; but to even begin, I would need cooperation by access to the conference presentations such as you provided to me.

Regards

Al Rodbell

*  http://humctr.ucsd.edu/polciv/2012/01/
---------------
As of 3/21/12 this is the only response from any of the participants of the conference

RE: Your Keynote Address at UCSD Conference
Monday, March 19, 2012 11:11 AM
From:
"Christopher Hamlin" <Christopher.S.Hamlin.1@nd.edu>

"alvrdb-brt@yahoo.com" <alvrdb-brt@yahoo.com>
Message contains attachments
1 File (1974KB)
Political Civility and Scientific Objectivitya.docx

Enjoyed your participation.

This is pretty close to the delivered text; but I’d appreciate a heads up if you plan to quote anything, and would be happy to explain further. The Conant quotes in the middle were on a handout I used.

C
----------------


Your Keynote Address at UCSD Conference
Sunday, March 18, 2012 7:57 AM


Christopher Hamlin Ph.D
Prof. Hamlin,

I attended the full event, but unfortunately missed your opening speech. If available, I would appreciate reading it, as I plan to write an essay on the conference, focusing on how well it addressed the central challenge of bridging the cultural-political divide.
Regards

Al Rodbell

--------------

The following was prompted by my discovery that Dr. Evans, a sociologist, has done work on the topic of this conference. 

Political Civility
Sunday, March 18, 2012 9:01 AM
From:
"Al Rodbell" <alvrdb-brt@yahoo.com>

jhevans@ucsd.edu
:
tgolan@ucsd.edu

John Evans, Ph.D

Department of Sociolgy, UCSD

John,

Where you aware of the conference here two weeks ago, sponsored by the Science Studies department, entitled "Political Civility and Scientific Objectivity." I'm not affiliated with this university, and attended in the hope that it would substantively apply the tools of academic thinking to this critical issue of our country.

Well, if not addressing it, the conference did illustrate that the ubiquity of the cultural divide extends to premier academic institutions such as this one. There was no incivility, as other than me, there was no representation of the right wing culture, and I'm not really representative of that myself, as you could tell if you read this essay that I wrote that reflects our political divide as well as anything, Fox Flag Fascism.

Most of our society is politically bifurcated, as you explore in your work, yet the idea of the university is to transcend this, to be "value free" rather than a multisyllabic incarnation of what is shouted at political rallies.

You should have been at that conference, and stated that this was addressing Political Civility at all, and explained why. I tried . This is too important, perhaps vital, a question not to be seriously engaged by this university.

Regards

Al Rodbell
Note: Dr. Evans was aware of this conference, and was the moderator of one panel
---------------------
Political Civility conference
Tuesday, March 6, 2012 7:49 AM

"tgolan@ucsd.edu" <tgolan@ucsd.edu>
Cc:
"peter.weingart@uni-bielefeld.de" <peter.weingart@uni-bielefeld.de>

Tal Golan Ph.D
Department of History, UCSD

Tal - As representative of the Science Study consortium.

What a treat for me it was to be at the conference. But, while the content was fascinating, the hard part, the vital challenge of our day which is to restore political dialogue to something other that slinging projectiles of hate wasn't really addressed. I don't know whether you are familiar with the Soledad Mountain Cross controversy, only a few miles away from the UCSD campus, but invisible to the academics who could be examining it as a stark example of politics as warfare. Here's a letter that appeared in the Union Tribune yesterday that is a response to a demand from local congressmen that the White House seek Supreme Court intervention to overturn the existing ruling:

To the Editor:

The two local members of congress must never have read the decision of the ninth circuit court, or they would know that it is not the memorial that they found unconstitutional, but the Christian Cross that towers above it, for reasons consistent with a century of Supreme Court constitutional interpretation.

What they have mandated is not the work of secular warriors against religion, but a ruling that mandates a solution such as that agreed to by the unanimous vote of the Soledad Mountain Memorial Association that would have moved the cross down the hill to a church, where such symbols are appropriate, and to have created a different symbol for our unique diverse country.

It was ready to go, when politicians chose to take advantage of the juicy opportunity to turn such accommodation into the rallying cry of "Save Our Cross." It could be that the people of San Diego are tired of their game, and want a fair resolution that we all can live with.


What I didn't say in my letter is that it wasn't only politicians who were opportunists, but also the very paper that printed the letter, that continues to this day to foment this type of decisiveness. I struggle to make points such as this in many areas of public policy, something I can only do if I avoid becoming a member of any "epistemic community" that inherently must have an undefined political orientation. I tried to do this in my comment to Naomi Oreskes, and in a more extensive follow up email that she has not replied to. Please call this to her attention, with a request that she at the least acknowledge receipt, even if she does not want to engage me on the content. If we had established a dialogue I have a possible parameter driven structured approach to this issue that just may provide a context for civil scientific engagement. My contact with the major scientist whom she opposes is an opportunity for productive dialog that should not go unexplored.

The greatest of institutions are prone to the distortion of group dynamics. The N.Y. Times realized this a decade ago when they established the position of "public editor" to uncover the endemic blindness that was destroying this newspapers international legitimacy. Your department, your university seems to need the same type of intervention, as it would ultimately provide the intellectual robustness to be a more effective player in world events

Regards

Al Rodbell
------------------
My interaction with Professor Naomi Oreskes on her approach to Global Warming as both a popular writer and an academic began with this email sent to her.
http://virulentpartisanship.blogspot.com/2012/03/naomi-oreskes-and-fred-singer.html
It is in a separate section of this website since the Global Warming issue, a crucial one of our times, is illustrative of  the academic dynamics I am attempting to explore.