Just a quick application of rhetorical logic to the discussion of Sonia Sotomayor's nomination for the supreme court.
Remember, I judge statements not by the the dichotomy of true or false, but by accurate or inaccurate, precise or imprecise, and if an opinion, then reasonable or unreasonable, valid or invalid. This discussion is not about Judge Sotomayor's nomination per se, her skill as a judge, or even her specific views and whether they are right or wrong, but just an academic exercise on how to apply rhetorical logic to the discussion.
Some complain that she is a racist, their evidence is that she made the following comment during a speech at a UC Berkeley lecture on cultural diversity:
“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
Is this a racist statement? Does this make her a racist?
Sure, this is a racist statement, but it doesn't make her a racist. But remember, the meanings of words is only opinion. Words like "racist" carry connotations far beyond their dictionary meaning. I use Racism to mean a belief that people of a certain race are superior or inferior, because of their race. Certainly claiming that a Latina would make a better conclusion about certain court cases is racist. But it's also merely an opinion that is reasonable. Not that I would necessarily agree with it, but it is a reasonable conclusion for a contemporary American to make. Reasonable people can understand how living a certain life, with certain experiences, would allow a better understanding of certain situations than not having those experiences. A coach who has played the game before would be a better judge of talent than a coach who hadn' played the game. It is not fair to judge parents as good or bad unless you have been a parent. This idea is behind the concept of having a jury of peers. You want fellow citizens, people who live in your neighborhood and put up with what you put up with to be your judges. Of course there are limits. We don't want serial murderers to be judged only by other serial murderers. But usually, having similar experiences to another person would allow someone to be more fair towards that person, to ascertain what were truly good or bad attributes versus simply circumstantial misfortunes.
In contemporary America, it is reasonable to assume that race correlates with life experiences. This is becoming less and less so, but it still is above randomness. There are some Latina's who have lived a life of privilege, some who would relate to the wealthy corporation more, but in general wouldn't a Latina relate more to the immigrant or early generation life?
A good question I ask myself: If I met Judge Sotomayor at a party, would I come away with the impression of her being a "wise Latina woman" or "an experienced judge." Would I worry more or less if I had to argue a speeding ticket in front of her? Because she is a judge should she be considered "the Man?" Ah, but I digress.
So, her statement seems reasonable, albeit racist. Certainly not out of bounds during a lecture on cultural diversity. I haven't seen her whole speech, but we must also judge statements within context. I can imagine such a statement used to promote the thesis that we should have cultural, ethnic, racial, economic, etc. diversity among judicial appointments would be apropos. Making such a mildly racist statement during a conference on diversity is actually more accurate, one would want such statements to be made, to be considered, to be debated.
Let me analyze a counter point that some people make. They emphasize that she said "hope" and reason that this made the statement a "conditional" (whatever that means) and therefore not a true reflection of her thoughts. This seems specious. The phrase "I would hope that ..." is really a colloquialism about presumption, as in "I would hope a mother loves her child" or "I would hope that the pilot is not high on drugs." It is a statement of opinion so strong that its counter would be startling. I would hate for this to be used to mince her words, I think it is quite clear that she means that "Certainly a Latina woman could use her life experience to understand certain situations more than the typical white male."
So, does making a racist statement make one a racist? We've heard the saying "If you lie then you are a liar." I disagree. Saying racist statements, having some racist opinions, are part of normal life in race-conscious modern America. But we should reserve the word "racist" as applied to a person or a philosophy for those most egregious manifestations of the idea. There are people who are truly "racist", who belief that racial distinctions are necessarily important, who belief that various races should be oppressed or exploited for the benefit of other races. If we want to call her a racist to make the point that even well-educated, successful, ethical people can have racist opinions and need to be careful about their prejudices, then I would perhaps agree and could consider such a statement to be accurate. But if we want to call her a racist in the hope of smearing her reputation, then I would call that same statement inaccurate. When considering a supreme court nomination, we should avoid such ambiguous statements. If one is concerned that her statement is an example of her proclivity to judge not based on law, but based on some internal set of sympathies, then the rhetoric should be tempered toward away from inflammatory language that simply transfers the argument into semantics about what the word "racist" means. Frankly, it lowers the credibility of those making such arguments.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Truth
Let's get philosophical, or maybe just metaphysical.
I don't believe in Truth. Bare with me a while and see if you can follow me. It's not what you might think.
People use the word Truth as a noun, as if it's a thing in itself. It's really an adjective. It describes statements and mental models. As an adjective it is not an absolute. This does not mean I don't believe in reality, or that the true/false is not a useful taxonomy, or that there is not an objective measure of the truth of something. It just means that the word truth is not rigorous enough, not used precisely enough. When deep discussions are engaged in, I prefer terms like "accurate" and "precise" instead of "true."
Let's start with a simple, "true" statement: "The sky is blue." This is true, if you look up you can verify that the sky is blue. The statement is accurate. But it's truth is only as metaphor, it presumes that we know what the sky is, what the color blue is, in context we realize that the word "is" is not used as to define an equivalence, it is used to describe an attribute of something. The statement is true only for people who know what the sky is and know what blue is.
But what if the sky is overcast? Or what if it is nighttime? Then the sky is not blue? Perhaps the sky is grey, maybe there is pollution. The statement is not universally true because it is not precise enough. What about blue? We have divided colors into the primary colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. So we can agree the sky is blue as opposed to red or green. We agree that the color of the sky is closer to the color of bluebells than to roses. But is it exactly the color of bluebells? Is the blue of the sky the same as the blue of the sea?
I suppose we can bring the statement closer to "Truth" by being more precise.
"In the general, during daylight, the sky on earth has a color that is similar to various objects that reflect light of a certain frequency that we categorize as 'blue' , when the weather affords it and pollution is not too severe."
The statement is accurate, within its implied precision. It is certainly not universally true, it does not contain "Truth."
So why would anyone care about what I think about the sky?
Because we can apply this same analysis to other statements.
For example, I am tall. I am six foot five, which is above average for men of the 21st century. For professional basketball players, I am short, below average. If someone tells you "Papa Thor is tall" is he lying? Is he not telling the truth? I prefer to say that he is accurate, but not precise. Often statements can completely contradict each other, yet both are true, they are both accurate within their implied precision. "I am tall" is accurate and "I am not tall" is also accurate, depending on the circumstance. Indeed, if you were talking to a basketball scout you could say "He is tall" and even though most people would ascent to the accuracy of that statement, you might be lying.
Let's apply this to a more recent and more important situation. Please don't infer any political meaning to this example, it is just to illustrate my main point.
The US invaded Iraq with the reasoning being that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and therefore it was urgent for him to be stopped. After the invasion many people focused on whether there really were WMDs to be found. Although none were found I thought this was a red herring. Of course Saddam had WMDs, he had used nerve gas on the Kurds. Of course he thought he was developing WMDs, whether he was fooled by his own scientists or not is irrelevant. People still use that talking point, perhaps if we found WMDs then it would prove Bush was not lying. Other people point to the fact that we haven't found these WMDs as evidence that Bush was lying.
So notice the phrase WMD itself is imprecise. WMD could mean anything from nuclear intercontinental missiles to poison gas. Was Iraq an imminent threat to the safety of the US? Not at all. Was it urgent that we invade Iraq? Not at all. Even though the statement "Saddam Hussein is acquiring WMDs" is "true", it is not precise enough to be used as justification for the invasion. Is it a lie to be imprecise in order to convince people to agree with you?
Let's go to the other side: Is homosexuality a choice?
Both answers are true: Homosexuality is a choice, Homosexuality is not a choice. Should we use the "truth value" of these statements in order to enact public policy? Where is the imprecision?
The word "homosexuality" is too imprecise. Does it mean the inclination, the subconcious desire? Or does it mean the activity? I hope we could agree that we choose whom we have sex with, indeed I would hope we could agree that it was a mutual choice. Not everyone has sex with everyone they are attracted to. Can I control whom I am attracted to? Follow this thought experiment: I might meet a beautiful woman and be attracted to her. But then I discover she is my cousin and I am instantly unattracted, indeed I might be disgusted. Was that a choice? What if I were from a culture where such incest was not proscribed?
What's my point? Instead of claiming people are lying, or that statements they make are not true, apply the criteria of accuracy and precision. Some statements can be dismissed as inaccurate, some are simply imprecise. Realize that people's mental models, their paradigms of the state of things, are voiced in simple statements that are handy as mnemonics for what they really believe. People can say the same thing and be in disagreement, people can say opposite things and be in agreement.
I don't believe in Truth. Bare with me a while and see if you can follow me. It's not what you might think.
People use the word Truth as a noun, as if it's a thing in itself. It's really an adjective. It describes statements and mental models. As an adjective it is not an absolute. This does not mean I don't believe in reality, or that the true/false is not a useful taxonomy, or that there is not an objective measure of the truth of something. It just means that the word truth is not rigorous enough, not used precisely enough. When deep discussions are engaged in, I prefer terms like "accurate" and "precise" instead of "true."
Let's start with a simple, "true" statement: "The sky is blue." This is true, if you look up you can verify that the sky is blue. The statement is accurate. But it's truth is only as metaphor, it presumes that we know what the sky is, what the color blue is, in context we realize that the word "is" is not used as to define an equivalence, it is used to describe an attribute of something. The statement is true only for people who know what the sky is and know what blue is.
But what if the sky is overcast? Or what if it is nighttime? Then the sky is not blue? Perhaps the sky is grey, maybe there is pollution. The statement is not universally true because it is not precise enough. What about blue? We have divided colors into the primary colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. So we can agree the sky is blue as opposed to red or green. We agree that the color of the sky is closer to the color of bluebells than to roses. But is it exactly the color of bluebells? Is the blue of the sky the same as the blue of the sea?
I suppose we can bring the statement closer to "Truth" by being more precise.
"In the general, during daylight, the sky on earth has a color that is similar to various objects that reflect light of a certain frequency that we categorize as 'blue' , when the weather affords it and pollution is not too severe."
The statement is accurate, within its implied precision. It is certainly not universally true, it does not contain "Truth."
So why would anyone care about what I think about the sky?
Because we can apply this same analysis to other statements.
For example, I am tall. I am six foot five, which is above average for men of the 21st century. For professional basketball players, I am short, below average. If someone tells you "Papa Thor is tall" is he lying? Is he not telling the truth? I prefer to say that he is accurate, but not precise. Often statements can completely contradict each other, yet both are true, they are both accurate within their implied precision. "I am tall" is accurate and "I am not tall" is also accurate, depending on the circumstance. Indeed, if you were talking to a basketball scout you could say "He is tall" and even though most people would ascent to the accuracy of that statement, you might be lying.
Let's apply this to a more recent and more important situation. Please don't infer any political meaning to this example, it is just to illustrate my main point.
The US invaded Iraq with the reasoning being that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and therefore it was urgent for him to be stopped. After the invasion many people focused on whether there really were WMDs to be found. Although none were found I thought this was a red herring. Of course Saddam had WMDs, he had used nerve gas on the Kurds. Of course he thought he was developing WMDs, whether he was fooled by his own scientists or not is irrelevant. People still use that talking point, perhaps if we found WMDs then it would prove Bush was not lying. Other people point to the fact that we haven't found these WMDs as evidence that Bush was lying.
So notice the phrase WMD itself is imprecise. WMD could mean anything from nuclear intercontinental missiles to poison gas. Was Iraq an imminent threat to the safety of the US? Not at all. Was it urgent that we invade Iraq? Not at all. Even though the statement "Saddam Hussein is acquiring WMDs" is "true", it is not precise enough to be used as justification for the invasion. Is it a lie to be imprecise in order to convince people to agree with you?
Let's go to the other side: Is homosexuality a choice?
Both answers are true: Homosexuality is a choice, Homosexuality is not a choice. Should we use the "truth value" of these statements in order to enact public policy? Where is the imprecision?
The word "homosexuality" is too imprecise. Does it mean the inclination, the subconcious desire? Or does it mean the activity? I hope we could agree that we choose whom we have sex with, indeed I would hope we could agree that it was a mutual choice. Not everyone has sex with everyone they are attracted to. Can I control whom I am attracted to? Follow this thought experiment: I might meet a beautiful woman and be attracted to her. But then I discover she is my cousin and I am instantly unattracted, indeed I might be disgusted. Was that a choice? What if I were from a culture where such incest was not proscribed?
What's my point? Instead of claiming people are lying, or that statements they make are not true, apply the criteria of accuracy and precision. Some statements can be dismissed as inaccurate, some are simply imprecise. Realize that people's mental models, their paradigms of the state of things, are voiced in simple statements that are handy as mnemonics for what they really believe. People can say the same thing and be in disagreement, people can say opposite things and be in agreement.
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