Sago Boulevard

In today’s NYTimes Magazine, Peter Beinart analyzes the key differences between liberal and conservative approaches to foreign policy since the Cold War. He does a good job of articulating some of the underlying values that motivate these political differences. One point, in particular, I think really hits the nail on the head. Many conservatives would have us believe that our greatness as a nation stems from our ability to distinguish between good and evil and our willingess to fight that evil at all costs. If we lose that moral clarity, they argue, we will fall prey to the very evil we fail to recognize. For a while, I couldn’t put my finger on what exactly about that argument irritates me. I do believe that America should be a moral role-model for the world. I believe that, despite our shortcomings, the values espoused by American democracy are in fact superior to those of our enemies (and even most of our allies). What bothers me, though, about the conservative mantra is its failure to recognize that we can easily fall from our pedestal if we don’t constantly take measures to safeguard the liberty that makes us great. Beinart says it well:

Americans may fight evil… but that does not make us inherently good. And paradoxically, that very recognition makes national greatness possible. Knowing that we, too, can be corrupted by power, we seek the constraints that empires refuse. And knowing that democracy is something we pursue rather than something we embody, we advance it not merely by exhorting others but by battling the evil in ourselves. The irony of American exceptionalism is that by acknowledging our common fallibility, we inspire the world.

A recent study shows that Orthodox Judaism “will become a larger and more influential force in coming decades.”

The study, which looked at the 1.5 million U.S. Jews between the ages of 18-39, found that Orthodox Jews comprise some 11 percent of all U.S. Jews, and 16 percent of 18-29 year-olds. Among even younger Jews, the percentage of Orthodox is even higher, those behind the report speculate.

Further, the survey found, Orthodox Jews marry at a younger age, have more children and are more Jewishly engaged than their non-Orthodox counterparts.

As Gil says, the study pretty much just proves the obvious.

R. Gil Student of Hirhurim, laments the lack of Orthodox Jewish intellectuals engaging in the debate over so-called intelligent design. While some rabbis and Orthodox scientists have weighed in on the issue (some much better than others), the issue certainly doesn’t arouse the same interest as it does in Christian circles. In my comment to his post, I wrote:

I think the reason is because there is no Torah position on evolution. That evolution is compatible with Torah has been proven conclusively. But the merits of the theory itself should be left to scientists.

I want to expand on that. As anybody who reads this blog knows, I think the implications, both scientific and philosophical, of evolutionary theory and naturalism in general are incredibly important and I’ve suggested a number of ways to deal with some of the difficulties (see here, here, here, & here). However, I think that the theologian and philosopher of religion should limit himself to dealing with the compatability of scientific ideas with theological ones. Whether or not evolution - or any theory for that matter - is compatible with Torah is very important and I believe, in the case of evolution, the answer is “yes” (as did such Torah giants as R. Soloveitchik, R. Kook, & R. Hirsch). But whether or not evolution itself is scientifically compelling or whether it sufficiently accounts for the empirical evidence are not questions non-scientists are equipt to answer.

Richard Posner argues that income inequality is a likely byproduct of a competitive and meritocratic society because of a more basic inequality among people “that is due to differences in IQ, energy, health, social skills, character, ambition, physical attractiveness, talent, and luck”. Yet government programs that seek to limit this inequality often have the effect of reducing total wealth by discouraging work. Posner then weighs the social advantages of greater total wealth against greater income equality. The major assumption at work here is that if wealth distribution is justified, then it is justified because it has a social advantage. Posner seems to associate “social advantage” with “political stability” and lack of “envy or social unrest”.

I think, though, that it’s far more promising to justify wealth distribution along moral lines. (The Torah is pretty clear that tzedakah is a moral, not merely a socio-political, issue but that’s a topic for another post.) (more…)

Vegetarianism poses an interesting challenge from a philosophical perspective because it forces the moral theorist to distinguish, on a fundamental level, between human and non-human animals. As far as I know, nobody (even PETA) argues that non-human animals (hereafter “animals”) deserve the same treatment as human beings. On one hand, raising the moral status of animals makes it more difficult to justify such an innocuous practice as owning a pet. I assume most pet-owners would oppose reinstituing the slave trade. Yet, most of us instinctively recoil at the thought of brutally tortuing animals for pleasure.

In this context, Rik Hine’s argument for vegetarianism is refreshing (even if unsound) because it appreciates the ambiguity involved. Taking a page from William James, he argues that “the debate about eating non-human animals is living, momentous and forced.” Despite the fact that, as he concedes, we can’t render a verdict regarding the moral status of animals, we ought to refrain from eating them anyway. In a Pascal-style argument, Hine suggests that we put ourselves in the shoes of a gambler.

(1) If we continue to eat meat when it’s a live option that this might be immoral and it turns out, in fact, to be the case, then we have committed a serious moral wrong.

(2) If, on the other hand, we decide to stop eating meat and it turns out to be morally permissible then the worst harm we have committed is to deprive ourselves of a particular gustatory pleasure.

(3) If we continue to eat meat and it is morally permissible then nothing of ethical significance rests on this result, and likewise,

(4) if we refrain from eating meat when continuing would be unethical, then we have simply acted as we ought to.
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It seems to me, ultimately, that the issue can be reduced to the potential harms proposed in (1) and (2). The severity of the respective harms, in this case, are so clearly asymmetric that we would be simply astonished if the gambler placed his chips on (1). Analogously, then, I would conclude that unless or until we are epistemologically able to access a definitive answer about the actual moral status of killing non-human animals, we are in the same position and, as in (2), we should cease to eat meat.

The obvious advantage of this argument is in its determining the relevant ethical behavior without taking a definite stand on the moral status of animals. It’s important to note, though, that Hine doesn’t conclude that eating meat is immoral but rather that we should refrain from eating meat because it might be. But are we morally obligated to refrain from activities that merely might be immoral? And if so, what is the significance of something that “might be immoral” if it’s immediately transformed into flat-out “immoral”? In the case of eating meat the possible offense is even more indirect. The meat-eater is merely benefitting from a possibly immoral activity. Even if I accept Hine’s assumption that one is obligated to refrain from possibly immoral activities, it would be too weak an obligation to extend to eating meat in general.

R. Soloveitchik in Festival of Freedom (pp. 53-54):

God reveals Himself to man if and when the latter searches for Him. If one does not inquire, if one expects God to reveal Himself without making an all-out effort to find Him, one will never meet God. “But from there you will seek the Lord and you shall find Him, if you search after Him with all your heart and all your soul” (Deut. 4:29).
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On the first night of Pesah, we tell the story of a long search by man for God, of God responding to the inquisitive search, of God taking man, who longs for Him, into His embrace. At the Seder, we try to stimulate the naive curiosity of the children and thereby make them God-searchers. The quest for God, along with the acceptance of the commandments, is the true spiritual liberation.

In anticipation of the upcoming holiday of Pesach, ADDeRabbi writes about the role of shared memory in the shaping our religious awareness. Judaism, he argues, tells a story. The primary function of our theological commitments, as important as they are in and of themselves, is to

form the ‘plot’ of this story, this ‘meta-narrative’, which is the infrastructure of how I see and understand myself and my world.

Meta-narratives form the very fiber of our perception and identity… All of my relationships – with my kids, my car, my house, my job – are predicated upon the shared memory of certain events. Inside this paramount reality, at present, the truth of the event plays a secondary role to the shared memory of it. The ‘plot’ of each of these stories is very simple. With my car it’s ‘this car rolled off the assembly line in 1998, was purchased by x, who sold it to y, who sold it to me. The story explains my possession and is the basis of my ownership.

In this light, the meaning of the specific mitzvah of recounting the Exodus (sippur yetzi’at mitzrayim) becomes clear. At the Seder tonight, Jews around the world will take special notice of our shared history and retell the theological story that is the foundation of Judaism.

Chag Samaech.

I’ve been tagged by Romach:

Accent: None. That’s something other people have.

Booze: Don’t drink.

Chore I hate: All of them

Dogs/Cats: Dogs

Essential Electronics: Computer & iPod

Favorite Perfume/Cologne: No idea.

Gold and Silver: Um, I think my watch has some silver.

Hometown: Plainview, Long Island

Insomnia: I can fall asleep on demand.

Job Title: Student

Kids: No

Living Arrangements: Apartment, one roommate. Soon moving to a new one.

Most Admired Trait: You’ll have to ask my friends.

Number of Sexual Partners: Haha, none.

Overnight Hospital Stays: Appendectomy when I was in fifth grade.

Phobia: Nothing specific comes to mind.

Quote: “My dear ones, why do we quarrel, try to outshine each other and keep grudges against each other? Let’s go straight into the garden, walk and play there, love, appreciate and kiss each other, and glorify life.”
-The Brothers Karamazov

Religion: Jewish

Siblings: Two younger brothers (they’re twins).

Time I usually wake up: Varies from day to day.

Unusual Talent: Define “unusual”.

Vegetable I Refuse to Eat: Well, potatoes are pretty much the only ones I do eat.

Worst Habit: Procrastinating

X-Rays: Yes, many.

Yummy Foods: Chulent

Zodiac Sign: Sagittarius

I tag Seth.

Keith at Summa Philosophiae surveys J. P. Moreland’s argument for substance dualism (via Philosophers’ Carnival). The first premise is that there are subjective experiences that require indexical (first-person) language and thus, are not reducible to third-person characterizations. As support for this claim, Moreland points to the unique nature of self-knowledge. If indeed there are fundamentally privileged first-person perspectives, then physicalism, which implies that everything is “exhaustively describable from a third-person point of view in terms of objects, properties, processes, and their spatiotemporal locations”, is false. Keith offers the following formal argument:

(1) Statements using the first-person indexical ‘I’ express facts about persons that cannot be expressed in statements without the first-person indexical.

(2) If I am a physical object, then all the facts about me can be expressed in statements without the first-person indexical.

(3) Therefore, I am not a physical object.

(4) I am either a physical object or an immaterial substance.

(5) Therefore, I am an immaterial substance.

Announcing the new Philosophers’ Carnival at University of No Where

From Ronald Dworkin’s Law’s Empire (p. 192):

[S]ome political philosophers have been tempted to say that we have in fact agreed to a social contract of that kind tacitly, by just not emigrating when we reach the age of consent. But no one can argue that very long with a straight face.

From Seinfeld, “The Airport“:

[George and Kramer are on their way to pick up Jerry and Elaine from the airport]

Kramer: …I never got the money back! He screwed me! And that’s the guy– John Grossbard!

George: Hey Kramer, c’mon– it was 240 bucks twenty years ago…

Kramer: No, I’m gonna turn around… I’m gonna get that guy…

George: No-no-no, Kramer. Kramer! Kramer! You *cannot* abandon people in the middle of an airport pickup! It’s a binding social contract.

I see a bright future for political philosophies based on airport pickups as the paradigm for just government.

Hit numbers are up this week so I thought I’d take the time to welcome my new readers. Open posts are for anybody to write whatever’s on their mind in the comments. It’s a good way for me to get an idea of what my readers are interested in.

The topic is Judaism as interpreted as broadly as possible. To my regular readers who never leave comments (you know who you are!), now’s the time to introduce yourself.

R. Soloveitchik often emphasizes the indepedence of religious or halakhic concepts and the danger of “translating” such concepts into the respective languages of science and philosophy. He believed, and I strongly agree, that many conflicts between science and Torah (evolutionary theory is the most popular but there are many) stem from misunderstanding this point. In The Halakhic Mind (pp. 47-50), the Rav offers the concept of time as an illustration.

There is the question of God in His full transcendence beyond time, and God in His immanence in time. This problem does not only bear upon the idea of God but also upon the idea of time. God in the temporal world presents the composite of time and eternity; it implies the intrusion of eterninty upon temporality…

In this connection, the problem of the calender bears some investigation. The division of time into days, weeks, months, and years is quite incongruous with the time concept of the scientist for whom time is a continuum with no milestone. The seasons of the year or the astronomic phenomena of sunrise and sunset do not, in the least, determine the character of time. On the contrary, like other phenomena they occur in time. The religious type, in his experience of this category, indentifies the incessant flux of the chronos with the artificial form of the calender… He sees God not only in eternity but also in time quantified and measured by the calender.

The specific religious apprehension of time as cyclic motion or as an eternal repetition (Kierkegaard) is likewise utterly unintelligible to the scientist who measures spatialized time or to the metaphysician who views time as a directed flow. The experience of time as repetition is rooted in the typically religious time-awareness and is closely associated with the concept of the calender that is indeed pure repetition.
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[Here, R. Soloveitchik works out the details of how the religious ideas of Creation, Revelation, and repentence bear out this theory of time]

It must be understood that these time concepts are not mere fantasy. They are inherent in the religious consciousness which apprehends time in its own fashion.

I took one course in philosophy of time and I found it to be the most difficult sub-discipline in philosophy. Every once in a while, I think I have a grasp of some of the keys issues, only to be utterly confused a short while later. Philosophy students will know what I’m talking about. Alan Rhoda has a post up about Presentism, the view that the present is coextensive with the real, and tries to respond to an important objection from Robin Le Poidevin by “ground[ing] truths about the past in God’s memories”. He promises “to reflect more on that in a succeeding post.”

In her review of the Conservative Movement’s Humash, Etz Hayyim, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin makes a point about the Movement’s approach to Halakhah that I’ve been arguing since my days in Schechter (via Hirhurim):

Having publicly identified itself with an interpretation of P’shat which denies the unity of the Torah, the Conservative Movement is now in a serious theological quandary. For as a movement which swears fealty to Halakhah, its rejection of the most fundamental theological assumption of the rabbis who derived that Halakhah from the text is seemingly self-contradictory.
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Not only are rabbinic claims about the divine nature of P’shat the very raison d’etre of the halakhic system, but as the talmudic dictum “ayn hamikra yotzei midey peshuto” makes clear, these claims have always been an integral part of the halakhic process as well.

As with any review that attempts to tackle such wide-ranging issues, there is room to quibble with some of her arguments. In general though, I think she touches on an important theological dilemna. You may not claim the legitimacy of Halakhic Judaism while simultaneously undermining its most important hermeneutical assumption: the divinity of the Torah.

Due to a recent influx of comment-spam, all commenters now have to be pre-approved. Basically, once you write one comment and it’s approved, you will be able to leave additional comments without moderation. I’ll try my best to approve comments on a regular basis and I apologize for the inconvenience.

Jewish Atheist quotes Carl Sagan as saying “Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.” This statement by a well-known atheist struck me as strange. What definition of “spirituality” could Sagan have in mind that would comport with naturalism? The simplist definition that comes to mind is “concerning things of the spirit”. In response to my comment asking for a “working definition of ’spirituality’”, JA writes:

[I]t’s simply the feelings of wonder, of flow, of awe, of transcendence, etc. etc. Basically, the same thing it means for religious people, except without the supernatural explanations.

First of all, that doesn’t capture what a typical speaker of English generally means by “spritual” and most dictionaries explicitly identify spirituality with God. I’m particularly struck by JA’s usage of “transcendence”. What exactly, in Sagan’s physicalism, are we supposedly transcending?