Texas A&M's 3rd Annual International Virtual Conference of Philosophy (Published Proceedings)

Texas A&M University

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St. Francis Xavier University

1 nternational

V irtual C onference of U ndergraduate P hilosphy

3rd Annual Installment

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Aletheia

Published Proceedings April 2022

Contents

T HE I NTERNATIONAL V IRTUAL C ONFERENCE OF U NDERGRADUATE P HILOSOPHY

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A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

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Roe v. Wade and Decisions Under Uncertainty Jake Turner, Texas A&M University

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Response to Jake Turner Ken Matheson, St. Francis Xavier University

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An Overview of The Information Integration Theory of Consciousness and Reflections on its Potential Ethical Consequences Aidan Peters, St. Francis Xavier University

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Attempting to Define Consciousness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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An Overview of Information Integration Theory . . . . . . . . . . . .

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The Introspective Underpinnings of Information Integration Theory

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The Postulates: From Phenomenology to Physics . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Failing to Provide a Causal Connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Toward an Ethical Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Response to Aidan Peters Kate Girvin, Texas A&M University

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Societal Death and Transformation: Rousseau and the Modern Democratic State Eric Nash, Texas A&M University

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Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Globalization and Modern States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Rousseau’s Social Contract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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The Two Vulnerabilities Fixed Democracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Fixed Democracies in the Globalized World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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What is Rousseau’s Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Response to Eric Nash Marshal Gillis, St.Francis Xavier University

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Discarding the Word “Feminism” in the Pursuit of Equality Olivia Leroux, St. Francis Xavier University

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Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Who Does Feminism Fight For? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Who Says No (Wo)Man Gets Left Behind? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Out with the Old, In with the New . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Response to Olivia Leroux Hunter Roy, Texas A&M University

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The Use of Money as Speech Treyton Zanutto, Texas A&M University

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Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Opposition Argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Additional Concern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Evaluation of the Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Response to Trey Zanutto Kira Tosi, St. Francis Xavier University

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Flew, Hare and Mitchell: The Means to Meaning Emily Henry, St. Francis Xavier University

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T HE I NTERNATIONAL V IRTUAL C ONFERENCE OF U NDERGRADUATE P HILOSOPHY

Introduction The International Virtual Conference of Undergraduate Philosophy (IV-CUP) is an annual meeting between universities worldwide hosted by Texas A&M University.

The first IV-CUP occurred in the spring of 2016, but in 2020 was revived as an annual tradition by Aletheia, Texas A&M’s undergraduate journal of philosophy.

Each year, the participating universities submit their top undergraduate papers in philosophy to one another for analysis and commentator review. Once responses are prepared, a one-day conference is held for the scholars and commentators to present their arguments, counterarguments, and engage in philosophical discourse.

After the conference comes to an end, all works from the contributors are published in these proceedings.

The Structure of the IV-CUP The order of publishing reflects the structure of the conference. Six scholars are assigned one commentator from different universities to interact with following their presentation. The conference proceeds by alternating the order of the scholars’ 15-minute presentations depending on the university they represent. After a presentation, the assigned commentator provides a five-minute response and then have a five-minute discourse with the scholar. After all contributors have offered their work, questions are taken from the audience until the next scholar’s presentation.

(With respect to this edition, one of the authors, namely Emily Henry, was not able to present due to some scheduling conflicts; so, no commentary was able to be given for her paper, and that is reflected in this journal.)

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A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

The third annual IV-CUP exhibits work from students at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada, and Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, USA. Four representatives from both universities oversaw and organized this conference: St. Francis Xavier’s Jordan Morgan; the executive editor of the IV-CUP, Kate Girvin, Emma Smith, and Aletheia’s Editor-in-Chief, Daniel Lightsey. Each coordinator poured copious amounts of time and energy into this project, and for this, we are deeply grateful.

Further, we would like to express our gratitude to our friends at St. Francis Xavier University. This conference would not have been possible without their brilliant scholars and professors who crafted ingenious arguments and posited thoughtful questions to the presenters. Their department of philosophy will always have a place at these conferences. We thank you all for working with Aletheia to bring the IV-CUP back to the world of academia.

Last, a special thanks go to St. Francis Xavier University coordinator, Jordan Morgan. His diligence and unwavering dedication was absolutely vital to the success of this project. Texas A&M’s department of philosophy wishes them all the best in their future philosophical endeavors.

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Roe v. Wade and Decisions Under Uncertainty Jake Turner Texas A&M University

A BSTRACT The discussion of abortion in the United States tends to pose a rather odd contradiction: Many pro-choice and pro-life advocates seem to be certain in their ability to find the objective standard of when human life begins, and then premise their arguments on this understanding. However, this can’t be true: at least one side must be wrong as their standards contradict. This becomes increasingly visible after a close reading of abortion laws and precedent in the United States, specifically that of Roe v. Wade. In the United States, most abortion law is premised on the concept of it being possible to identify the “correct” standard for when the fetus becomes morally considerable. I think this is logically wrong, as it carries the faulty premise that we can conclusively prove when the fetus becomes considerable. Therefore, the question ought to be what the morally correct abortion law is given our limited knowledge. In this paper, I do not contend to have “solved” the abortion question; rather, I argue that laws regarding abortion ought to be made in such a manner that minimizes predictable harm, specifically the harm of the infringement of rights.

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The discussion of abortion in the United States tends to pose a rather odd contradiction: Many pro-choice and pro-life advocates seem to be certain in their ability to find the objective standard of when human life begins, and then premise their arguments on this understanding. However, this can’t be true: at least one side must be wrong as their standards contradict. This becomes increasingly visible after a close reading of abortion laws and precedent in the United States, specifically that of Roe v. Wade. In the United States, most abortion law is premised on the concept of it being possible to identify the “correct” standard for when the fetus becomes morally considerable. I think this is logically wrong, as it carries the faulty premise that we can conclusively prove when the fetus becomes considerable. Therefore, the question ought to be what the morally correct abortion law is given our limited knowledge. In this paper, I do not contend to have “solved” the abortion question; rather, I argue that laws regarding abortion ought to be made in such a manner that minimizes predictable harm, specifically the harm of the infringement of rights.

While abortion has been present in the United States since its founding, the abortion debate truly came into form during the 1960s, peaking with the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. The question the court answered in that case was whether or not a Texas law prohibiting abortion except to save a mother’s life was constitutional.

The court sided with the plaintiff, naming in its decision a few key findings: a. The finding of a right to privacy in the 1st, 4th, 9th, and 14th Amendments, which reportedly creates a fundamental right to abortion. This right is generally argued as an extrapolation of a right to liberty, which is how I will be approaching it. b. Established a competing state interest through the standard of “fetal viability [of life.]” This standard argues that while the fetus is, from a scientific standpoint, alive, its life is possessed by the mother and is part of her body, until some point where its life becomes its own and it is viable outside the mother, albeit with medical intervention. c. Established a balancing test through a trimester framework. States could not prohibit abortion in the first trimester, may enact some restrictions for the second trimester, and may outright ban abortion starting at the third trimester.

It is worth noting that the trimester standard was later revised in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, being replaced with a metric that establishes ‘fetal viability’1 as the earliest point for potential state action. More importantly, in both Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the standard of fetal viability is used as a stand-in for when the fetus becomes morally considerable, therefore justifying state action. Confusingly, the court simultaneously sets a standard for when life begins, says the standard isn’t when life begins, and says that they do not know when 1. When the fetus can survive outside the womb, albeit with medical intervention.

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life begins. Speaking for the majority in Roe, Judge Blackmun admits to the issue: “We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man’s knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.”2 Despite this, their decision still places fetal viability as the binary point at which a fetus becomes morally considerable.

My primary focus for this paper is Blackmun’s last line, for I contend that it wholly undermines the rest of the argument made by the majority in Roe v. Wade.

When Blackmun states “are unable to arrive” it is not merely fluff added to the opinion as dictum. Rather, the reality is that “Human Life” is a concept defined exclusively by those who experience it. “Humanity” does not exist as a binary state; it is an idea we are still exploring and, as a term, it is not one that can ever be conclusively defined. The fetus may be a human life from conception, it may be one from birth, it may be one from its first heartbeat or its first word; no binary state standard seems to fully capture the whole of the human spirit or what makes one “human.” This is not a refutation of such a binary standard potentially existing.

However, we cannot currently prove one.

Given this reality, the Blackmun Court answered the question of Roe in the wrong manner. Instead of presuming a knowable standard of when the fetus is a morally considerable human, fetal viability, the court ought to have approached the question as a decision made under uncertainty. In this case, we evaluate the risks and rewards of putting different types of laws into place, and make decisions accordingly. Risk and reward are misleading terms however, because I contend that what we truly prioritize are human rights (which I regard as a priori obligations by definition), specifically those held by the mother and those that may be held by the fetus. But, given that we are prioritizing the fulfillment of rights, it now raises the question of what these rights are.

The primary rights I will be focusing on are life and liberty. The first of these is liberty, which I am focusing on as opposed to the supposed right to privacy. While the majority’s decision centers on a so-called right to privacy, I find issues with this terminology. On a purely legal level, finding the right to privacy in the constitution is tenuous. As constructed by the Supreme Court, the right to privacy is a necessary prerequisite to the existence of a right to liberty, which we have enshrined in various amendments, such as the 1st and 2nd . Simply put, the argument is something 2. Roe v. Wade. p, 47 https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep410/usrep410113/usrep410113.pdf

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like the following: “Privacy is a prerequisite to liberty. There is a right to liberty, therefore there is a right to privacy.” This is logically sound, but constructing the pro-choice argument as a privacy matter diverts attention away from the loss of liberty that restrictions on abortion could potentially impose. Privacy of citizens is unquestioningly infringed quite frequently, often before any crime has been committed, and many privacy laws in the United States only exist on the grounds of a “Reasonable Expectation” of privacy. I highly doubt pro-choice advocates would like to base their claim to a right to abortion on something so ephemeral and subjective as a “reasonable” expectation. Liberty as bodily autonomy is a much more serious concern, and frames the pro-abortion position into something with much greater severity and relevance than a privacy concern.

Moving on to the right to life, there are a number of subtle premises that require unpacking. First hidden with it is the idea of self-ownership; a right to life supposes “life” as a type of “thing” that one has a right to. Within this, it supposes that the life of each individual is their own, framing life in a similar measure to property.

Secondly, a right to life assigns some moral bad towards the taking of another life, similar to how the taking of one’s property is also conceived of as a morally bad rights-violation. Besides these two subtleties, it is also worth noting that one possessing their own life is a necessary precondition towards the fulfillment of any other rights. If one does not have their life, one cannot be considered to have liberty or property either, as all that is owned is ultimately owned by some “life.” But, if that life is owned by another, then those things owned by the life naturally transfer to the other which owns the life.

Given these conceptions of rights, we must now consider the moral calculus necessary to determine how our actions impact the fulfillment of rights obligations.

This calculus is as follows: For any abortion law, weigh: (Probability of infringement of life of the mother x severity of infringement of the life of the mother) + (Probability of infringement of liberty of mother x severity of infringement of the liberty of the mother)

versus

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(Probability of infringement of life of the fetus x severity of infringement of life of the fetus) + (Probability of infringement of liberty of the fetus x Severity of infringement of liberty of the fetus)3

The above moral calculus assumes a few key premises that are necessary for making a moral calculus. We assume that moral calculus is probability x severity and can be comparatively weighed. For some instances, such as the trolley problem, probability is not relevant since it’s universally 100%. In others, severity is not relevant, such as when the impacts of choice a or b are the infringement of the same right. Here we have numerous variables, each of which shifts in zero-sum fashion with the others. We have also assumed here that making such a moral calculus does not violate other Kantian obligations towards respecting personhood.

First for consideration is weighing life against liberty. Suppose we have something that is known to be a human life. Given this circumstance, I hold that it would be morally wrong to kill that human, even if prohibiting such a killing reduces the liberty of another. Reductions in liberty are much less severe than reductions in life, and this is a trade that is frequently and unquestioningly made. I believe this trade to be logically and morally correct. For example, it is morally good to incarcerate drunk drivers to stop them from committing manslaughter, as we are maximizing the enjoyment of rights. The drunk driver loses some liberty, but this is much less than the expected value of the life and liberty that would’ve been lost had they killed someone. It can also be said that one doesn’t really have a liberty claim to the killing of another, the rights on one ends where the rights of others begin. Second, with life being the precondition for all other rights, it naturally follows that the taking of a life is never contained to just the taking of a life; it always results in some eventual negation of rights elsewhere. If one does not possess their own life, they cannot possess anything else, such as liberty or property. Therefore, violations of the right to life also contain “runaway violations.”

Second for consideration is probability vs severity. This question is essentially asking whether it is preferable to avoid a more likely but less severe moral harm or a less likely but more severe moral harm. Obviously, it would be best to reduce both by as much as possible, and reducing either to zero is one way to “solve” some moral calculus problems. If there is a zero percent chance of harm being dealt, no moral 3. It should also be noted that I equate the life of any rights holder to be morally equivalent to the life of any other rights holder. All other standards seem to me to be either ableist, racist, or otherwise founded on illogical notions of some being “superior” humans, who ought to “naturally” lord over others and make decisions on their behalf. I find this objectively stupid.

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harm can be done. The same is also definitionally true if the severity is reduced to zero. The question of probability vs. severity is not entirely necessary for the conclusion at which I arrive, but it is still relevant. I find that we ought to prioritize limiting severity before liberty. My argument for this contains two parts. First, it is much easier for one to manage expected harms than unexpected ones. In this way, it can be said that high probability provides human opportunity to reduce severity, allowing us to more efficiently reduce harm. Second, reducing severity as opposed to probability definitionally makes the impacts of the moral harm easier to recover from. If the options are either a statistically relevant chance of being wounded by a drunk driver, or being less often but more severely wounded by a drunk driver, it is much easier for one to “move on” with their life if the harm is less severe, even if it is more frequent. Suffering and bad luck tend to form a feedback loop, so it may be said that severity has an internal multiplicative factor that probability does not.

Finally, I need to clarify what actual rights are engaged in the procedure of abortion. If we assume that, when it is performed, the fetus is not in any way a human life or a rights holder, abortion is simply a medical procedure. It could be compared to elective surgeries, such as a Botox injection, or a medical health choice, such as the removal of an appendix, depending on why the woman is choosing to have an abortion. If the woman is getting an abortion because she is worried about impacts on her physical health (a life or well-being question, I place abortion into a different category than if the woman is getting an abortion because of reasons like “Having a baby would dramatically change my life.”4 In either case, an abortion can be considered either a liberty question, as seen in phrases like “my body my choice,” or a life question, as with instances like “what if the mother’s life was in danger?”

The majority of abortions are undertaken as a liberty question, so I will address that as the default and address the competing lives” question separately.

If we assume that the fetus is a human life that is a rights holder when an abortion is undertaken, then abortion can be classified as nothing other than the termination of a morally innocent and morally considerable human life. Of course, this rests on the notions implicit in basic right to life arguments and does not hold if one is of the persuasion that there is no right to life. However, if there is no right to life, then there cannot be any right to liberty either,5 rendering this entire focus on 4. This was the most cited reason by the following 2004 study, hence why I consider it relevant. Finer, Lawrence B.; Frohwirth, Lori F.; Dauphinee, Lindsay A.; Singh, Susheela; Moore, Ann M. (September 2005). "Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives" (PDF).

Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. 37 (3): 110–8. doi:10.1111/j.1931-2393.2005.tb00045.x.

JSTOR 3650599. PMID 16150658 5. If there is any doubt as to whether there is any right to liberty, H.L.A. Hart provides

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rights moot. Nevertheless, I contend that there can’t be any claim to abortion based on a right to liberty without first accepting a right to life. Life is a prerequisite to liberty. If one were to claim a right to A, but not to the prerequisites to having A, then one would have no right at all to A; it is internally self-contradictory. This is the same type of argument used in Roe v. Wade to justify a right to privacy, just as it is a prerequisite to liberty so is life, and we therefore have a right to life if there is a right to liberty. In the American abortion debate, the vast majority of participants agree to a right to liberty, so I contend that it is a safe assumption.

Given the above premises, I now propose the following observation. The sooner in fetal development a standard is placed that limits or bans abortion, the higher the probability that it infringes on a woman’s right to liberty. Conversely, the later in fetal development any standard is placed, the more likely that the right to life of a rights-holding fetus has been infringed. This infringement only occurs after some point when the fetus acquires rights, but it almost certainly does acquire rights at some point, otherwise, no one would have rights. Given this dilemma, we can now finally return to the abortion debate proper and determine what question we ought to answer. I argue that the question is more properly understood as “Is it more ethical to potentially prevent the killing of a morally innocent human life at the potential cost of liberty of another person, or is it better to potentially allow the killing of a morally innocent human life to allow a person a fuller expression of their autonomy?” I conclude that it is morally better to ensure that a morally innocent life is not taken, and below I argue why.

It cannot be said that one has any liberty claim to the prima facie killing of another—such a claim contradicts a right to life. Given that an infringement of the right to life is of greater value than an infringement of a right to liberty, as with our drunk driver, if a woman has an abortion it can only be justified under a liberty claim if she is not terminating a human life. This means that, for our moral calculus, the probability of a violation of the woman’s liberty is not 100%. Secondly, as previously mentioned, I hold that life has a greater moral weight than liberty. Admittedly, there is some room for debate on this. If a woman is forced to carry a child to term, she must endure nine months of involuntary pregnancy. This includes the direct trauma of birth, as well as other reductions in liberty and well-being. However, I reject arguments that extend this further than the immediate pregnancy and birth.

While the loss of liberty and harm to well-being may be great and quite relevant, a notable argument for a right to liberty being a precondition to any other natural right. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2182586?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents.

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it doesn’t follow that it justifies the potential killing of an innocent human with a right to life. In light of this though, I do strongly argue for support networks for these women, whether these networks be family, local community, or state. It would be utterly inhumane and illogical to command women to simply carry babies to term and then say “deal with it” when that inflicts harm the commander never faces themselves. The goal is minimizing overall moral harm, and, while I am focusing on life and liberty, there are other moral harms we ought to mitigate. Well-being and liberty both have moral weight, just not as great as that of life.

Now addressing the “competing lives” question, since we have now equalized severity of terms, all that is left is probability and number. If the options are either a woman receives an abortion, or the child is delivered at the death of the mother, I conclude it is better to save the life of the mother, but it is ultimately her decision whether or not she wishes to sacrifice her life. While an indescribably tragic scenario, the mother will face less severe suffering than the child, being better able to either prepare or mitigate the downsides. She presumably has family, friends, or a local community who may share in her grief, and provide a support network that I previously mentioned. However, children born without mothers are disproportionately likely to end up as homeless, drug addicts, or criminal.6 This does not in any way argue for a diminishing of the value of the lives of those people; it is quite the opposite. In spite of their increased likelihood to commit harms to others, I still deeply hold that their lives have equal moral value. What I do argue is that we ought to pursue the route that minimizes moral harm and suffering, which, based on this evidence, seems to indicate prioritizing the life of the mother.

Finally, there is the scenario where carrying the baby to term may risk the life of both the mother and the baby. The woman may either run the risk to them both, or have an abortion to guarantee her own survival. In this instance, we refer back to our original probability x severity calculus and move as follows. Additionally, regardless of the odds of the woman dying, we need to consider this probability multiplied by two to represent the fact that we are wagering what is now two human lives.7 The probability of this must now be compared with the different probability of the abortion constituting a killing of a human life. In short, this looks like: Life of 6. “Striking Back in Anger: Delinquency and Crime in Foster Children.” Adoption in Child Time, https://adoptioninchildtime.org/bondingbook/striking-back-in-anger-delinquency-and-crime-infoster-children 7. Since the child is potentially born in the scenario, I’m treating it as a rights-holder while in the womb. I assume the stance that once the baby is born it is now indisputably considered a rights holder, but this position is not universally accepted. See arguments by Peter Singer for justification of the killing of babies after they are born. Singer, Peter. Practical Ethics. Cambridge University Press, 2017.

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the Baby vs. probability of death ×2. So, if the probability of death is 50% or greater abortion can be morally justified. Anything less than that is an overvaluing of the life of the mother.

To conclude, I find that the question of the legality of abortion is essentially an economic question made with limited information, where instead of risk and reward, we look at probability and severity of infringement of rights. I find that infringement of the right to life holds a greater moral weight than an infringement of a right to liberty, and, while both are unpreferable, it is morally more just to optimize for infringing on rights as little as possible. This naturally leads to the earliest possible standard for prohibiting abortion - conception - as it reduces the probability of the killing of an innocent life to essentially zero. Liberty may be infringed, and this is morally tragic, but it is preferable to potentially allowing innocent human life to be taken. In instances where it is a life claim vs a life claim, the determining factor ought to be the course of action that minimizes moral harm.

Bibliography

Hart, H. L. A. “Are There Any Natural Rights?” The Philosophical Review, vol. 64, no. 2, [Duke University Press, Philosophical Review], 1955, pp. 175–91, https://doi.org/10.2307/2182586.

Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions ... - Guttmacher.org. https://www.guttmacher.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/journals/3711005.pdf?lang=en.

Roe v. Wade. https://tile.loc.gov/storageservices/service/ll/usrep/usrep410/usrep410113/usrep410113.pdf.

Singer, Peter. Practical Ethics. Cambridge University Press, 2017.

“Striking Back in Anger: Delinquency and Crime in Foster Children.” Adoption in Child Time, https://adoptioninchildtime.org/bondingbook/striking-back-in-angerdelinquency-and-crime-in-foster-children.

Response to Jake Turner Ken Matheson St. Francis Xavier University It was a pleasure to read this well-crafted essay. The author’s conclusion that terminating a pregnancy earlier rather than later minimises moral harm, seems to be a reasonable moral position, however, I do not find that the author’s argument provides strong support for the conclusion. The argument is based on two claims, a fetus has rights, and that the Roe v. Wade decision established that there is a point in fetal development when the fetus becomes morally considerable, therefore justifying state action, and I believe that both claims are unfounded.

The author argues that the moral worth of a decision to terminate a pregnancy lies in the least infringement of the rights of the mother and the fetus and that the right to life carries more weight than the right to liberty. The argument rests on the author’s claim that “[a fetus] almost certainly does acquire rights at some point, otherwise no one would have rights.”1 However, this conclusion does not follow from its premise. There is no point at which a fetus acquires rights in virtue of being a person. Judge Haynsworth, citing Roe v. Wade in the majority opinion for the panel in Floyd v. Anders, writes: “Indeed, the Supreme Court declared the fetus in the womb is neither alive nor a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.”2 Consequently, a fetus does not have a right to life, liberty, property and equal protection under the law as specified in the Fourteenth Amendment.

When a viable baby is delivered of its mother, the baby is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment and has the rights so described. However, at the point of deciding to terminate a pregnancy, the fetus has no rights. The author’s proposed moral calculus considers the moral worth of a fetus’ rights to life and liberty, neither of which accrue to a fetus, and therefore, the moral calculus cannot work as a guide to making an ethical decision about terminating a pregnancy.

The author claims that “[m]ore importantly, in both Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the standard of fetal viability is used as a stand-in for when 1. Roe v. Wade and Decisions Under Uncertainty, 9 2. Floyd v. Anders, 440 F. Supp. 535 (D.S.C. 1977), section III, https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/440/535/1817339/

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Response to Jake Turner

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the fetus becomes morally considerable, therefore justifying state action.” I think the author is making a charitable interpretation of the concept of fetal viability expressed in Roe v. Wade. My reading of the court’s decision is that fetal viability is a limitation on the state’s ability to act rather than a justification for state action.

The state is prohibited from acting prior to fetal viability, and if the state has an interest in potential life (and there is no suggestion in Roe v. Wade that the state has such an interest), then the state can act to protect a fetus only after it is potentially viable outside the womb.

I don’t find anything in Roe v. Wade that provides a moral foundation for state intervention in a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy.

An Overview of The Information Integration Theory of Consciousness and Reflections on its Potential Ethical Consequences

Aidan Peters St. Francis Xavier University

A BSTRACT Consciousness is subjective experience, it is the feelings which accompany different states in a physical system, for example patterns of cortical activation. The perennial question in the study of consciousness has been: how are consciousness and the physical world causally related? If the ultimate cause of consciousness is the physical world, then volition is illusory and ethics require radical restructuring. Without paying total credence to a materialistic-deterministic philosophy, the current paper sought to explore the plausibility of this reality in order to forward an alternative ethical system grounded in empathy.

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Attempting to Define Consciousness

Consciousness refers to the entirety of experience (Tononi, 2004). Experience as a whole can be described as a structured integration of subjective (i.e., internally observable) information (Tononi, 2015). This is also true of the specific aspects of experience – they can be described in terms of subjective information with varying degrees and kinds of complexity. For example, colours and shapes (both described in terms of subjective information) integrate in vision to produce an irreducible visual percept (e.g., a traffic sign; also described in terms of subjective information), having higher structure than its components of colour and shape. A percept is seen in spatial relation to other percepts, and this will change across time, meaning that experience also has a temporospatial structure (which can also described in terms of subjective information).

The temporospatial structure of experience is irreducible and is therefore integrated (Tononi, 2015). This means that changing, adding, or removing component parts holistically changes the temporospatial structure (i.e., changes in simpler bits of subjective information changes its overarching subjective information describing the holistic temporospatial structure, meaning that all of the components of experience have an effect on the overall experience. For example, consciousness involves an integration of various kinds of perception; so, if one compared the experience of a seeing person at an art gallery to their experience if they were blind, it becomes quickly apparent that change in one dimension holistically makes the experience different. In the former condition, one sees beautiful artwork, perceives sounds, smells, temperature, etc.; in the latter condition, everything can be considered the same except the absent dimension of sight, and the overall experience is drastically different. So, although the dimension of sight may seem completely unrelated to smell, taking away sight changes the overall experience which smell is a part of.

Therefore, these two dimensions are integrated as changes to either can change the overall experience that they are both components of. Less drastically, smaller order subjective information, is irreducible in the sense that changing a particular aspect changes other aspects; for example, changing the size of an object then changes how much of its colour we see. Different kinds of information, depend on each other to exist/ be experienced (e.g., shape and colour). This irreducibility of information is described as integration (Tononi, 2015).

These prior examples help elucidate hierarchical structure of subjective information from elementary components to the grand concept of consciousness (Tononi,

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2015). This integration of information further applies such that a conscious entity can have some sense of being a particular entity across time with its particular experiences applying exclusively to it. In other words, experience/consciousness exists from a single viewpoint. The single viewpoint of experience suggests an exclusivity of subjective information, such that, subjective information is not shared between distinct conscious identities For example, the experience of a mother and a daughter are exclusive, such that each exclusively experiences their own subjective set of information and the other exclusively experiences their subjective set of information. Furthermore, this exclusive experience is such that one’s current experience excludes their past, future, and other potential experienin spacetime differs from seeing the book in a different scene, from a different viewpoint, of a different size or colour, at a different point in time, etc. The information of what is vs. what is not experienced in spatiotemporal relationship to other information describes all of consciousness from the first-person perspective.

(Tononi, 2015). In other words, one’s current experience differs from all the other experiences they have ever, will ever, or could ever experience. Even a memory of an experience is not the remembered experience itself; more generally, a replicated experience exists at a different point in space-time, and it can exist from a different conscious identity with a different conscious history.

Subjective information can be conceptualized as particular states of experience out of potential states (Tononi, 2015). For example, the experience of seeing a book at a particular point in spacetime differs from seeing the book in a different scene, from a different viewpoint, of a different size or colour, at a different point in time, etc. The information of what is vs. what is not experienced in spatiotemporal relationship to other information describes all of consciousness from the first-person perspective.

Considering that consciousness is experience itself, and therefore it is the concept with which we are most acquainted with, it is perplexing that it may be the most difficult phenomenon to explain in neuroscience (Chalmers, 1985). Scientific and philosophical attempts to bridge the gap between subjective (internally observable) consciousness and objective (externally observable) cognitive functioning/neurophysiology; in other words, attempts to explain how subjective information of experience causally relates to objective information about the properties of a physical system have always resulted in failure. The Information Integration Theory of Consciousness (IIT) (Tononi, 2004; Tononi, 2015), is a prominent contemporary cognitive theory of consciousness and furthers the ability to understand the relation-

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ship between subjective information and objective information in physical systems.

However, IIT ultimately fails to fully bridge this explanatory gap and explain how consciousness is generated and objective information becomes subjective.

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An Overview of Information Integration Theory

Physical causes (e.g., drugs, brain damage, illness, etc.) can affect consciousness, hence IIT argues that consciousness must have a physical basis (Tononi, 2004).

Cognitive theories of consciousness typically originate from objective, externally observable information describing neurological properties (Tononi, 2015). IIT is unique from other cognitive theories of consciousness because it began by investigating the internally observable subjective information describing the properties of experience/consciousness and then argued that parallel properties must exist in a physical system to account for those internally observable properties. IIT refers to the essential properties of subjective information as axioms and refers corresponding physical properties for a physical system to produce consciousness as the postulates (Tononi, 2004; Tononii, 2015). IIT uses the postulates to argue how to quantitatively and qualitatively describe consciousness relative to the objective information describing a physical system. Specifically, IIT suggests that consciousness, quantitatively, is an amount of integrated subjective information corresponding to an amount of integrated objective information produced by a physical system of elements (e.g., in terms of the patterns of neuronal firing in an integrated system of neurons). The more integrated objective information produced by a physical system, the more conscious it is (i.e., the more integrated subjective information it produces).

IIT offers a precise theoretical, albeit lengthy, approach to calculate the quantity of consciousness produced by a physical system. IIT also suggests that qualitative aspects of consciousness are produced by the many subsystems within its substrate.

It forwards some abstract relationships to exist between this kind of information which produce the entirety of qualitative experience. However, the qualitative claims of IIT are more speculative and less precise than its quantitative claims in IIT, and even Tonooni (2015) admits that his qualitative theory is underdeveloped “assessing [these relationships] systematically is [nearly impossible], mathematically, computationally, and experimentally: [because of insufficient practical and theoretical methods of doing so].” Because IIT is underdeveloped theoretically in explaining the qualitative aspects of consciousness, only the foundations of IIT and quantitative aspects of IIT will be discussed further.

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3 The Introspective Underpinnings of Information Integration Theory The essential properties of experience, the axioms, were derived from the reasoning that they should: directly describe experience; be immediately evident to conscious entities (i.e., be internally observable), and therefore not require logical proofs; apply to all experiences; completely describe all experiences such that no experiences involve additional essential properties; be independent such that properties cannot be derived from each other; not possibly contradict one another (Tononi, 2015). Thus, the first axiom is intrinsic existence – that consciousness exists, intrinsically, and undeniably. The most certain fact to any conscious entity is that it is experiencing and therefore consciousness exists. The second axiom is composition – that consciousness has structure which is composed of subjective distinctions (e.g., spatiotemporal arrangements within a percept). The third axiom is that consciousness involves subjective information – although capable of describing aspects of the experience, information can holistically describe the particular subjective experience as one of many possible experiences differing by particular elements. For example, one experience can differ from another because of the artificial lighting of a room has a white vs. a yellow hue; the experience can also be described by the kinds and degrees of emotions one is feeling in that room, where their emotional configuration differentiates their current experience from other possible ones experiences. The fourth axiom is integration – that each experience is irreducible (Tononi, 2015). The subjective information in consciousness is interdependent, such that changing certain information changes others. For example, viewing a red ball is irreducible to perceiving the colour red and a sphere. Changes to the colour of a ball or changes to its shape affect the perception of the concept (i.e., the ball). Furthermore, consciousness is integrated such that all its information is experienced from a single viewpoint. The fifth axiom is exclusion – consciousness is experienced from a particular viewpoint which thereby excludes other past, potential, and future viewpoints, each of which are described by their own set of information which is particular to them.

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The Postulates: From Phenomenology to Physics

IIT argues that anyone can introspect to find that the essential properties of experience apply whereas one can always find room to doubt the physical bases of

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experience (e.g., in perceptual illusions); therefore, theories of consciousness must start with the former subjective information to argue what the physical causes of consciousness are (Tononi, 2015). From the axioms (i.e., the essential properties of subjective experience), IIT postulates the particular physical properties which must exist in a physical system for it to produce experience.

To begin, it is important to understand the basic anatomy of a physical system.

Physical systems are composed of a set of elements, which are the most basic units of the system (e.g., logic gates, neurons) (Tononi, 2015). Elements combine into subsets of elements (e.g., neural networks). For a component of a system to be considered an element, it requires at least two potential states (i.e., internal states), for example firing/no firing in a neuron. The states of an element must also depend on inputs from other elements in the system, and its states must be able to influence the states of other elements in the system. This is what it means for an element to be integrated into the system. At a holistic level, the patterns of states in a system and how those states affect one another, in relation to time, is the integrated objective information of the system.

The first postulate is that a system must exist to produce an intrinsic experience (Tononi, 2004; Tononi, 2015). This means that the system needs to have an internal cause-effect power. In other words, the states of elements within the system can influence the states of other elements within the system.

The second postulate is that the system must have subsets of elements with internal cause-effect power, supporting the axiom of composition (Tononi, 2004, Tononi, 2015). This means that the states of any subset of the system’s elements (causes) can influence the states of the components of the subsystem (effects). In a neuronal system, this could mean that the patterns of activation in a group of neurons (e.g., a neural network) can directly affect other neurons within the neural network. Similarly, a brain could have larger subsystems which involve neural networks interacting with one another, such the pattern of activation from one neural network has the potential to alter the patterns of activation of other neural networks. This postulate essentially suggests that conscious physical systems require subsystems with their own internal cause-effect power. Subsystems allow for groups of information to have effects on other groups of information of various levels of structure. To have subsystems means that the system has a hierarchical organization of integrated objective information which parallels the hierarchical structure of its integrated subjective information (i.e., consciousness).

The third postulate is based on the axiom of subjective information (Tononi,

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2004, Tononi, 2015). Conscious experience is composed of subjective information: a particular subjective state, differing holistically from many other potential states because each of which differ by the particular states of the components of experiences (qualia; for example, the kinds and degrees of emotions felt, the shades of colours seen). Ergo, the physical system supporting the conscious experience must involve objective information. The physical system is described by the expression of its particular states (relative to its potential states) across time. These system states are composed of many particular states among its subsystems and elements. The particular physical state of the system differs holistically from its other potential system states according to the particular states of the components of the system which differ from other potential states. The differentiated nature of the expression of the system from its potential expression is described in terms of objective information.

The fourth postulate is that the system’s cause-effect structure must be unified to support the axiom of integration (Tononi, 2004; Tononi, 2015). In other words, the system is irreducible to any subgroup of its elements or subsystems because the states of any part of the system may affect and be affected by the states of other parts of the system. This can be referred to as internal cause-effect power. To elucidate the importance of this postulate Tononi (2004) considered the difference between a human observer and the photodiodes in a camera. Photodiodes either do or do not detect a given light source and react accordingly with one of two potential states, and then affect an output corresponding to a pixel. However, a camera involving an arbitrarily large number of photodiodes is not a system as it can be reduced to each photodiode and its pixel because the states of each photodiode are unaffected by the states of the other photo diodes and the states of each photodiode do nothing to affect the states of other photodiodes. All of the photodiodes are independent, in other words, the collection of photodiodes have no internal case-effect power. This means that all of the camera’s photodiodes have no integration of information; they still have information by expressing one of two states, but because the information for each photodiode fails to be affected by and affect the information pertaining to other photodiodes, none of the information is integrated. Conversely, a human perceiving a light source involves patterns neurons firing/not firing affecting other neurons’ firing/not firing, which affects other neurons’ firing/not firing, and so on.

Importantly, there are many bidirectional cause-effect relationships. This is what it means to have a high degree of internal cause-effect power, or an integration of information, and this high degree of information integration corresponds to a

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high degree of consciousness. The integration of objective information in a system is essential to supporting consciousness because consciousness is an irreducible experience of integrated information (as discussed earlier).

It should be noted that the degree of a system’s integrated objective information is measured by Φmax , determined from lengthy calculations which essentially quantify the system’s internal cause-effect power (Tononi, 2004; Tononi, 2015). Φmax is thought to correspond with the quantity of subjective information in the system (i.e., how conscious the system is). It should also be noted that, if any element or group of elements has no bidirectional cause-effect power relative to other components of a given system, then it is not a component of the system. This accounts for how sensory inputs can feed into neural networks without being conscious, how motor outputs can themselves be unconscious, how unconscious brain regions can interact with conscious brain regions, how two brain regions can be affected by another or affect another but belong to different conscious systems, and how brain regions with many neurons can be unconscious whereas brain regions wither fewer neurons can be conscious. If a group of neurons can either affect or be affected by, but not both affect and be affected by another group of neurons, then these are two or more reducible systems; in other word, they are not belonging to the same system.

Therefore, inputs which only affect the system, and outputs which are only affected by the system, do not belong to that conscious system. IIT suggests that brain region which are less conscious/unconscious have less/no integrated information or cause-effect power.

The fifth postulate is intended to support the axiom of exclusion; at any given time or time frame, a system has a particular set of states, with a particular internal cause-effect power, ultimately specified by its set of elements, with there being no more or no less (Tononi, 2004; 2015). This allows each composition of integrated objective information in a system to correspond with the particular amount of integrated subjective information in the system’s particular experience, not its past, future, other potential experiences.

5

Failing to Provide a Causal Connection

Arguably the crucial shortcoming of IIT is that it fails to offer a causal mechanism to bridge the explanatory gap. How does objective information produce subjective information? This may seem like an unimportant question, or one which seems to make little sense. One may be tempted to ask: is there a meaningful difference

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between these two kinds of information or are they trivial semantics which obscure intellectuals fuss over? Consider the thought experiment of Mary the Neuroscientist (Jackson, 1986). If a neuroscientist, Mary, was passionate about studying colour vision and read everything that was written about the topic, objective (externally observable) information about how photon wavelengths relate to visual processing systems to produce different coloured percepts, she would still lack a kind of understanding under certain conditions. If she learned everything she knew about colour vision from radio lectures, black and white TV or books, and if she was raised exclusively in a black and white room, with no red stimuli, then she would never understand what red means in terms of subjective information. She could only understand what red means in terms of subjective information if she experienced red subjectively. If Mary was totally colourblind, then she could never understand from objective information alone what colour is subjectively. This difference in subjective and objective information, as depicted by Jackson’s 1986 thought experiment suggests a nontrivial difference between subjective and objective information which must be accounted for in a complete theory of consciousness.

As alluded to earlier, Chalmers (1995) has identified an explanatory gap in cognitive approaches to the study of consciousness. He suggests that such paradigms can theoretically study/explain “easy problems”, how certain cognitive functions are mediated or even produced by neurophysiology/information-processing. This is not to say that studying these problems are actually simple or even practically possible within hundreds of years of study; however, they are possible to understand through study guided by current theory. However, he claims cognitive paradigms have never come close to theoretically explaining how consciousness is causally produced from neuronal activity/information-processing, how it is objective information becomes/produces subjective information. This is what he calls the hard problem of consciousness.

IIT suggests that the consciousness difference between something like an Alexa and a human is due to the integration of information (Tononi, 2004; Tononi, 2015).

However, in doing this IIT is not providing a complete causal explanation. Rather, IIT is observing that subjective experience is some amount of integrated subjective information which covaries with some amount of integrated objective information pertaining to an objective system. IIT is not explaining how the objective information produces/becomes subjective information, rather it simply assumes a causal direction and then it attempts to quantify the relationship between physical and subjective information. To solve the hard problem is to solve one of the most difficult

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but important problems for any neuroscientific/materialist theory of consciousness (Robinson, 1998). In doing so, a revolutionary change in belief could potentially occur such that ethical/legal thought and related punishment becomes radically empathetic entirely concerned with making behaviour prosocial, rather than partially concerned with retribution.

6

Toward an Ethical Revolution

Kurt Lewin, influenced by his background in physics, argued that one’s behavioural responses are exclusively determined by their dispositions interacting with the field of physical/social forces (i.e., the actions of others) affecting them; more generally, Lewin argued that the activity of any physical system is determined by a combination of its own properties and the forces affecting it (Lewin, 1936 as seen in Gilovich et al. 2016). One may immediately refute this equation on the reasoning that Lewin failed to include the influence of one’s volition resulting from their soul/mind (or some other nonphysical force controlling their behaviour which does not follow the laws of nature). Although the informational gap (Chalmers, 1995) provides some strong basis for believing an immaterial mind, soul, or other nonphysical force which important for determining our thoughts/behaviour, the problem of volition still remains. To clarify, consider the follow Sam Harris quote: I have to admit that if I were to trade places with [a gruesome criminal], atom for atom, I would be him: There is no extra part of me that [would think or act differently]. Even if you believe that every human [has a soul], the problem of responsibility remains: I cannot take credit for [not inheriting] the soul of a psychopath. . . if I had his genes and life experience and an identical brain (or soul) in an identical state—I would have acted exactly as he did (Harris, 2012).

The IIT (Tononi, 2015; Tononi, 2004) and Chalmer’s hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers, 1995) invokes one to consider the metaphysical nature of mind, and subsequently the nature of free will. Under the assumption that reality is entirely physical, Lewin (1936; as seen in Gilovich et al., 2016) suggests that all behaviour is predetermined by physical processes. A purely physical composition of reality and therefore the human mind would necessitate that the entirety of the human experience (e.g., behaviour, thoughts, feelings, etc.) is subject to the laws of nature and is therefore predetermined entirely by antecedent conditions (Philosophy Vibe, 2014). As disheartening as that possibility is, Harris (2012) alternatively argues that free will is ultimately an illusion regardless of whether reality is ultimately monistic or dualistic. The plausibility of free will being illusory is then something

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which must be deeply considered.

Given that ethics presuppose free will, as one can only be considered immoral if they had the choice to act morally and vice versa, the absence thereof would have significant implications for how we ethically assess/respond to behaviour (Harris, 2012). If there is no free will, punishment should then strictly serve to better society by correcting behavior through conditioning and be unconcerned with retributing degrees of evil with equal punishment. Therefore,’ criminal behaviour should be met with punishment (or conditioning more broadly) to encourage behaviour that is compatible with prosocial societal values. In this sense, the plausibility of determinism should steer ethics and punishment to become primarily rehabilitative systems.

Similarly, the current social perspective of criminals being monsters – undeserving equally humane treatment as the innocent, should shift towards a view of them mostly being damaged individuals requiring care and repair and/or victims of social injustice(s).

The view that criminals are not monsters by nature or choice, the view that social forces like poverty, systemic racism, etc. are of prime importance in determining one’s transgression, is useful in explaining the overrepresentation racial groups or lower socioeconomic individuals (Barrow, 2020). A rehabilitative view on punishment might lead to government funding being diverted from prisons and police forces, such that the former no longer serve as a form of punishment but rather as a means of protecting society from active threats. In lowering the prison population, prison systems can become more manageable and therefore less violent, cleaner, etc.

With a changed view on the nature of criminality permeating the management of these systems, prisons can become generally more humane. Similarly, if excessive funding was diverted from police forces towards preventative systems for housing the homeless, treating addictions and mental illness, restorative interventions for community violence, etc. the prevalence of crime could be reduced (Barton, 2021).

Beyond criminality, a radical empathy could penetrate our daily lives to allow for us to forgive those who have wronged, and subsequently heal ourselves without being bound by resentment or hate. Moreover, a radical empathy, considering the plausibility of determinism and greater certainty that social forces have a large influence on our behaviour could allow us to recover from failure. Such that, one can continue to strive for goals, revaluate their approach of them and continue to aim for said goals or even reasonably change such goals in the face of failure: rather than suffering excessive damage to their self-esteem. Conversely, if one takes seriously the notion that all outcomes may be predetermined, this could prevent them from

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having their ego overinflated upon the achievement of goals.

Although there do exist benefits of seriously considering the possibility of determinism, there also exists an important risk to one’s self-efficacy. Perhaps a preferable threat to one’s well-being than the harshness of conventional ethics and punishment, this threat is still nothing to be taken lightly. The only solution may be to pursue one’s idealized life, embrace the possible illusion of free will. The solution may be living a kind of duality, simultaneously acting freely while considering that one may not at all be free, allowing one to maintain the benefits of both deterministic radical empathy and possibly illusory perceptions of autonomy.

References Barrow, Holly. “Systemic Racism and the Prison-Industrial Complex in the ‘Land of the Free’” — Hampton Institute. 2020. Accessed April 10, 2022. www.hamptonthink.org/read/systemic-racism-and-the-prison-industrial-complex-in-theland-of-the-free Barton, LeRon. “Defund The Police: The true human toll of racism in American policing.”

Unwritten. 2021. Accessed April 10, 2022. www.readunwritten.com/2021/05/07/defundpolice-racism-american-policing/.

Chalmers, David. J. “Facing up to the problem of consciousness.” Journal of Consciousness Studies, vol. 2, 1995, pp. 200-219.

Gilovich, T., Keltner, D., Chen, S., & Nisbett, R.E. Social Psychology (5th Edition). W.W. Norton & Company. 2019 Harris, Sam. The Illusion of Free Will. 2012. www.samharris.org/blog/the-illusion-of-free-will Jackson, Frank “What Mary didn't know”. The Journal of Philosophy ,vol. 83, issue (5). 1986, pp. 291-295. doi:10.2307/2026143 Lewin, Kurt Principles of Topological Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1936. pp. 4–7.

Philosophy Vibe. (2014, April 24). Free will and determinism [Video]. YouTube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS8rSJr9bhI

Robinson, Howard. Materialism in the philosophy of mind. In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 1998. doi:10.4324/9780415249126-N032-1 Tononi, Gulio. An information integration theory of consciousness. BMC Neuroscience, vol. 5, 2004.

Tononi, Gulio. Integrated information theory. Scholarpedia, 10(1):4164. 2015

Response to Aidan Peters Kate Girvin Texas A&M University In this paper, Peters uses neuroscientist Giulio Tononi’s Information Integration Theory of Consciousness (IIT) to defend the claim that consciousness is a “subjective experience” found within a deterministic, physical world (Peters 2022). Using the premises in Tononi’s cognitive theory, Peters postulates a causal link between the subjective, conscious world and objective, physical world to identify an alternative solution to crime and punishment, particularly its effects on the moral agent.

Instead of enforcing a retributive model of punishment, Peters advocates for a radically empathetic approach to crime rooted in rehabilitative justice.

While Peters’ rehabilitative approach to crime and punishment is a potential solution to addressing moral wrongdoings, it fails to consider cases of moral luck, a term coined by philosopher Thomas Nagel, which introduces chance into moral evaluations. Briefly put, moral luck describes the unpredictability between luck and moral accountability which would assign a moral agent moral blame or praise for an action or its consequences, independent of any alleged free will the moral agent possessed. For example, two people find themselves texting and driving on their way to work. One person successfully makes it to work without an accident, while the other distracted driver hits and injures a pedestrian. Both moral agents in this scenario arguably violated a moral law, yet only one found himself in a situation where is more culpable. This thought experiment summarizes the problem with moral luck; society has a tendency to apply varying degrees of moral blame for identical behaviors, actions, or intentions based on their outcome.

My critique primarily addresses Peters’ application of IIT to crimes with an ethical component. In the final section of his essay, Peters proffers a solution to assumed causal direction that quantifies subjective information with objective information for the moral agent. In doing so, he brings attention to crime, specifically crimes committed with the influence of “social forces like poverty, systemic racism, etc.”

(Peters 2022). Peters argues that a rehabilitative approach to moral wrongdoings could eliminate stigmas surrounding criminals who are compelled to commit crimes based on the social factors by which they are encompassed. He says a rehabilitative 35

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approach would also allow criminals to conform their actions to be more “compatible with prosocial societal values” (Peters 2022) and improve the harsh social and physical conditions of prisons.

Peters’ application could be better supported with Nagel’s theory of moral luck.

Nagel argues that causation is independent of intentionality and is defined by the “luck” in which the moral agent is found. Nagel, too, agrees that moral agents have little to no free will in a deterministic world, leaving some of the consequences of their actions out of their control as well. Therefore, moral agents are only responsible for the causation of their actions that can be found within their control. This means that factors such as race, which are predetermined by one’s biology and thus out of one’s control, influence one’s possibility to encounter situations with favorable moral luck. Peters hints at race as a limiting factor in the legal system, but much of this claim is left to the reader’s interpretation. I do believe Peters is correct in assuming that race is a potential bias in the judicial system. He could have expanded on this application using Nagel’s theory, as the concept of moral luck directly corresponds to the ideas Peter is developing in his final thoughts. While I understand that philosophical analysis is highly theoretical and qualitative, a few statistics or case studies applicable to the theory of moral luck could attest to both the writer’s claim of systemic racism and deep understanding of overarching sociopolitical issues undermining our legal systems.

Further, Peters’ rehabilitative approach fails to consider that the said “prosocial societal values” are predicated upon the experiences of privileged white, heterosexual, middle-class males. Therefore, dominant group privilege likely penetrates any existing systems which would attempt to re-assimilate criminals into society after their incarceration. If a rehabilitative approach to moral wrongdoings is implemented, the program must acknowledge that privilege conditions our society to favor certain individuals with moral luck over others. Therefore, the rehabilitative programs must predicate the social “conditioning” of former criminals with respect to their class, gender, race, and ability (Peters 2022).

Societal Death and Transformation: Rousseau and the Modern Democratic State Eric Nash Texas A&M University

A BSTRACT In his Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau offers a theoretical account of how political communities form, operate, and evolve to meet the challenges created by their changing circumstances. For him, the form of any particular government should not be static but mutable. Prior to analyzing the basic structure of a state, Rousseau postulates why civil societies exist in the first place. Human nature is observed to identify the existential needs of the individual person, which Rousseau determines requires living within a civil society to satisfy. Once a group of individuals comes together to form a people, legitimate leadership is established in the form of government, which comes in three basic forms: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Among these, there is no ideal or objectively ‘correct’ form of government.

Rather, for maximum efficiency and proper governance, a state must adopt the form of government that is best suitable for its population size

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Introduction

In his Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau offers a theoretical account of how political communities form, operate, and evolve to meet the challenges created by their changing circumstances. For him, the form of any particular government should not be static but mutable. Prior to analyzing the basic structure of a state, Rousseau postulates why civil societies exist in the first place. Human nature is observed to identify the existential needs of the individual person, which Rousseau determines requires living within a civil society to satisfy. Once a group of individuals comes together to form a people, legitimate leadership is established in the form of government, which comes in three basic forms: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Among these, there is no ideal or objectively ‘correct’ form of government.

Rather, for maximum efficiency and proper governance, a state must adopt the form of government that is best suitable for its population size Although Rousseau may never explicitly analyze representative democracies; in this text, there is an implicit analysis of such modern, Western nation-states.

By utilizing various sections from Books I, III, and IV of the Social Contract, there is reasonable identification of a United- States-like society, an examination of its constitution, and a positing of its potential weaknesses. By understanding the shape, function, and vulnerabilities of modern-day societies, we may be able to predict and prepare for the type of challenges these states will face in the near future. The particular challenges these societies are destined to face are not within the scope of this paper (and, as will soon be explained, cannot be anticipated anyway), however, the sources of them are. Today, civil societies face a phenomenon wholly unique to the current era: globalization. From globalization comes an unprecedented quantity of unknowable crises; convoluted, interconnected problems; and pan-national threats.

Such concerns are not factors in Rousseau’s political thought, but, when discussing the proper model of a state, can still be influential in the formation of a government.

Through an exegetical approach to Rousseau’s Social Contract, this paper will come to a conclusion about whether or not the modern, democratic nation-state remains a viable form of government in the twenty-first century. Before diving into the text of the Social Contract, I will delineate exactly what globalization is, how it came to be, and identify the problems to civil societies it presents. Though this paper is meant to strike at problems of representative democracy in general, I will repeatedly elucidate these points through the example of the United States of America.

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Prior to adequately meeting the challenges in the twenty-first century, a government must be capable of satisfying its essential purpose. Since Rousseau is a person of modernity, it is important to note that, to him, civil societies are human-made and not a product of nature.1 The social contract flows from the actions of humankind itself and thus is oriented around fulfilling humankind’s purpose. Any end that the government may have is simply derivative of human beings’. Rousseau’s observations of human nature draw out two existential concerns for the entire species, which compels it into entering a social contact. All governments, no matter their form, ultimately operate under a social contract. Since freedom, as will soon be explained, is of the utmost importance for the flourishing human life, it is necessary to differentiate a leader of a society (i.e., those in government) from a master of slaves, and to understand their legitimate accession. Once the concept of leadership is put forward, I will explain Rousseau’s definitions for the different parts of the state, and describe how and when these parts come together to create the three main forms of government. Though Rousseau discusses monarchy and aristocracy in depth, I will only focus on his understanding of democracy for this paper.

Once I have analyzed Rousseau’s democracy, I will introduce what I call the two vulnerabilities of fixed democracy: inconsistency and slowness to act. When present, these two problems should be detrimental to the state. Despite this, many democratic institutions of the twenty-first century still somehow exist alongside them. I will explain why this is possible and consider whether or not these governments can continue subsisting in a globalized world. I will demonstrate how the two vulnerabilities of fixed democracy behave in the current global climate and discuss whether or not a resolution — such as the evolution of modern democratic governments — is necessary. By the end of this paper, I hope to offer a thorough application of Rousseau’s political philosophy to the current democratic state and observe how the arc of humanity’s development affects the formation of the political community.

2

Globalization and Modern States

Globalization describes the current phenomenon of heightened interconnectedness between the nations of the world. Though international affairs have existed as long as states, globalization is unique to the twentieth to twenty-first centuries.

It has, most importantly, rendered the traditional Westphalian notion of states 1. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book I, Chapter I.

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untenable. Ending the Thirty-Years’ War, the Peace of Westphalia established the international principle of state sovereignty—each state has total and utter control over its domestic affairs; no other state can infringe on this autonomy.2 However, with the onset of globalization, the Westphalian rights of nations cannot be exercised without inevitably infringing on those very same rights of others.

Due to modern advancements in international transportation and instantaneous communication technologies, the internal affairs of one state can seriously affect other nations. It is characteristic of the twentyfirst century that, “Little now stays local; just about anyone and anything, from tourists, terrorists, and refugees to e-mails, diseases, dollars, and greenhouse gases, can reach almost anywhere.”3 Globalization, in conjunction with extraordinary t 3 echnological advancements, gives rise to the three categories of problems threatening the modern nation-state: unexpected crises, interconnected problems, and pan-national threats. It is important to note that, though globalization might give rise to these problems, it is not itself the problem and should not be resisted. Rather, the issues lie within how modern civil societies plan to independently and collectively address these novel effects of a modern, globalized world.

Unexpected crises are devastating events that, for the most part, are not (and many times cannot be) anticipated. The spontaneous use of WMDs by a hostile state or non-state actor, the spread of a global pandemic, or prolonged seasons of severe drought can all fall into this category. Keep in mind these issues can be prepared for, but can rarely be anticipated prior to their imminence. These issues have always existed for civil societies, but due to heightened levels of global contact, widespread use of cyberspace, and the creation of quickly deployable weapons, unexpected crises can happen at (quite literally) any moment. Take for example the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001 or the sudden onset of coronavirus in 2019. Neither event could have been faced with a comfortable degree of certainty, but nevertheless resulted in major national security threats. Rather than trying to predict every possible danger on the horizon, governments must now accept these high levels of uncertainty and be prepared to act quickly and efficiently once unexpected crises occur.4 Interconnected problems and pan-national threats are the other two dangers exacerbated by globalization. The former concerns the domestic issues of one state affecting the domestic or international interests of another. For 2. Haass, World Order 2.0, 2.

3. Ibid.

4. Cohen, The Big Stick, Chapter 8.

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example, if one nation were to have its economy collapse, a refugee crisis is created for other states, which, in turn, causes social turmoil within them. Pan-national threats, on the other hand, are problems that are non-discriminating and reach all—or nearly all—nation-states. Pan-national threats cannot be resolved by a single state (no matter how powerful that state may be) but require the cooperation of a plurality of international bodies.5 Climate change, terrorism, global health, and t 5 he proliferation of nuclear weapons all fall into this category. Both categories of problems require healthy international relationships to resolve. Multilateral commitments must be made from one nation to another if these globalized problems are to be eliminated, or at least sufficiently mitigated. Common defense systems, trade agreements, and international legislation are possible ways of ameliorating these issues, but (like any other plausible solution) demand trust and international cooperation to succeed.

The modern representative democracies of the West have already dealt with issues generated by globalization. It must be clear, though, that globalization itself is not a problem to be resolved, but rather a fact of modern life. A highly interconnected and technologically savvy world is not going away any time soon, which means that globalized issues are not either. The question remains whether representative democracies can effectively handle these twenty-first-century issues and if they can, can they do so repeatedly? Before this can be answered, we must understand why governments exist and what their primary function is. By considering the teleological role of civil societies alongside the problems of globalization, we can determine whether modern democracies remain viable forms of government or if they must evolve into other forms.

3

Rousseau’s Social Contract

Rousseau maintains that social order does not come from nature but is instead enacted by humankind. Human beings are not naturally political animals but become so out of convention. It is through a combination of reason and natural motivation that humankind decides to associate with one another. This reasoning begins with the nature of human beings: “Its first law is to see to his maintenance; its first concerns are those he owes himself.”6 An individual is concerned with, first and foremost, following and satisfying their private will. In the state of nature, 5. Haas, World Order 2.0, 2017.

6. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book I, Chapter II.

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humankind can achieve this through their endowed natural liberty, or the ability to freely and without recourse satisfy his/her desires with the only limitation being his/her own capabilities.7 No individual will consensually forfeit this liberty unless it is in exchange for some utility that satisfies humans’ first law. In other words, we will only give up our freedom for safety (broadly understood) in return. If an individual loses their natural liberty without utility given in return, it is through an act of force and constitutes slavery.8 In this 8 instance, the individual is not led but subdued. They are thus not properly the citizens of a state, but the slaves of a master.

In the formation of a singular people, there is a vital difference between an aggregation and an association. The aggregation is controlled by the master, while the association is led by a leader. In the former, the private will of an individual controls the movement of the group and is the equivalent of tyranny. Meanwhile, in the association the general will—the will of the group as determined by itself—controls the group. The individuals that constitute an aggregation are each connected to a single common point, the master. After the demise of the master, the aggregation would naturally and instantly cease to exist, its individuals reverting back to a state of natural liberty. In the association, though, the individuals are connected to one another through identification with and as the sovereign, or the group of individuals as understood as a single volitional entity. If the leader of a sovereign were to pass away, the sovereign still remains. It follows that individuals must come together as a sovereign prior to having a legitimate ruler.9 However, the formation of the sovereign must be done in such a way that it does not make slaves (but human beings) out of its members.

It seems that in the state of nature humankind is merely an animal susceptible to one of two transformations. Depending on involvement with an aggregation or an association, a person will either become a slave or a human being respectively.

These differences come down to the ability to satisfy the first law of human beings.

However, the only way a person can see to their own maintenance is through two existential concerns: possessing individual freedom and possessing property.

Forcefully depriving an individual of these deprives them of fulfilling their nature, and transforms them into a slave. Meanwhile, in the social contract, these two elements are the progenitors of a civil society. Preserving individual liberty and 7. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book III, Chapter VIII. 8. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book I, Chapter II. 9. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book I, Chapter V.

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securing the use of property are that with which all forms of legitimate government are basically concerned.

Due to the precarity of the state of nature, the human race would surely perish if it did not bring itself out of it.10 The only way to rise out of this condition, a 10 nd sufficiently face the dangers it contains, is to unite the forces each individual possesses and direct this sum through a single moving power, or a single will. Hence, humankind must “[f]ind a form of association which defends and protects with all common forces the person and goods of each associate, and by means of which each one, while uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself and remains as free as before.”11 A proper social contract, no matter its government’s form, must fulfill this requirement. The key to this act of association is the total and willful “alienation” of each individual person to the entire community. If the alienation is made with reservation, done by means of external force, or performed by only a portion of the community, the social contract will disintegrate and no state will remain. Since this act is committed by every member of the group, the individual receives the equivalent of everything he or she loses, plus the force needed to establish secure use of his or her property.12 Moreover, each member who is a part of this act of association has a say on the direction in which the assembly goes—no one is a mere slave to the community, but a part of its general will. There is now a transformation of natural liberty into conventional liberty, and the sovereign has formed while avoiding concerns of master-slave relations.

When introducing government into the civil society, Rousseau divides action into two parts: the desire to act and then the act itself. Take for example the act of walking from point A to point B. Before an individual can undertake this act, she must will it to be so. This desire brings about action and moves the body. In the state, legislative power is the equivalent to the will to act, and executive power is that which makes the desired action occur. The legislative power should be vested in the general will, and thus belongs always to the sovereign. However, the sovereign cannot maintain both legislative and executive power, so it requires an agent—the government—to manage the latter. Government is meant to fulfill three roles on behalf of the public force: unify the sovereign as to get it working in accordance with the directions of the general will, serve as a means of communication between the state and the sovereign, and bring about the actions to fulfill the general will.13 10.

11.

12.

13.

Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book I, Chapter VI. Ibid.

Ibid.

Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book III, Chapter I.

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Just as the individuals 13 of a sovereign collectively create a single sovereign, the members of government collectively create a single government. For Rousseau, the members of the government go by one of two names: kings or magistrates. For the purposes of this paper, these members will henceforth be called magistrates. Meanwhile, the entire body of magistrates is referred to as the prince. The magistrates are distinct from the master in that they are employed “as simple officials of the sovereign [that] exercise in its own name the power with which [the sovereign] has entrusted them.”14 Moreover, the sovereign can limit or modify the magistrate’s power however and whenever it pleases. Simply put, the magistrates form the government by the consent of the public and are charged with the legitimate exercise of executive power.

Now that the elements of a state are laid out, it is possible to explain the different possible forms of government. The shape a government takes is wholly dependent on the number of individuals constituting the prince. A single magistrate creates a monarchy; a number of magistrates less than half of the sovereign’s size, but more than one, is an aristocracy; and a number of magistrates between half to the complete size of the sovereign, is a democracy. Rousseau gives both a descriptive and prescriptive account of government formations. The form a government actually takes and the form a government ought to take are two different matters.

Though the ratio of magistrates to sovereign determines the actual form of a government, Rousseau does not believe any single form is suitable for every set of circumstances. A state’s size determines the form of government it ought to utilize.

As a people continues to grow in numbers, the ratio between the individual citizen and the sovereign widens. If a sovereign consists of 100 members, then the single citizen holds one-hundredth of the sovereign authority. If the sovereign grows to 10,000 members, then the single citizen holds one-ten-thousandth of the sovereign power with no less subjection to it than before. It follows that “the larger the state becomes, the less liberty there is” for the individual, and the more private wills and the general will become unaligned.15 So that the balance can be maintained as the gap between these two wills widens, the executive power needs more repressive force. Rousseau boils this relationship down to a basic principle: “in order to be good, the government must be relatively stronger in proportion as the populace is more numerous. . . For often the government that is best in itself will become the most vicious, if its relationships are not altered according to the defects of the body 14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

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politic to which it belongs.”16 In other words, as a state 16 expands, its number of magistrates should shrink. The ultimate logical conclusion is that, as the state grows continuously, its government’s final form is embodied in the single monarch.

4

The Two Vulnerabilities Fixed Democracy

Peculiarly, against the logic of Rousseau, many large states of the modern world are not monarchies. In fact, they are a variation of what Rousseau would claim is the worst form of government given their size: democracy. Even though the United States is a democracy, it is far from true democracy as Rousseau envisioned it. In a true democracy, the government is the sovereign and each citizen is a magistrate.

Everyone has a say in the general will, which is now synonymous with the corporate will.17 Rousseau believed that a democracy could only function under a certain set of circumstances. All, as will see, are not present in nations such as the United States, which makes the modern democratic state even of more an anomaly in Rousseau’s eyes. First, the democratic state must be small enough for citizens to easily gather together and for all to know all. Second, social customs must be so simple so that the prince is not caught up in contentious or derisive discussions. Third, there must be equality among citizens so there is an equal exercise of sovereign/corporate authority for each member. Lastly, there can be no luxury, since the existence of luxury mandates the existence of wealth, which classifies and fragments society.18 If democracy is practiced by us inherently flawed humans, and without the four societal requirements, it will fall prey to the first vulnerability of fixed democracy: inconsistency. Rousseau maintains “no government is so subject to civil wars and internal agitations as a democratic or popular one, since there is none that tends so forcefully and continuously to change.”19 A democracy is subject to the whims 19 of the citizens, who, in their mortal imperfection, are liable to conflate the corporate will with their private ones. The direction prescribed by the legislative power, and now enacted by that same entity since it is also the executive power, changes erratically and for individualistic advantages.20 While some efforts may be made by the general will, there is too much space for private wills to dominate the body wielding executive power. If a democracy becomes ‘fixed’ and refuses to evolve and 16. Ibid.

17. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book III, Chapter IV. 18. Ibid.

19. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book III, Chapter IV. Emphasis added.

20. When discussing the founding of Rome, Rousseau describes democracy as “a form of government that is always uncertain and adrift” Book III, Chapter X.

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thus limit the number of magistrates in proportion to the number of citizens, the problem worsens. The viciousness of human beings will infiltrate and destroy the state through its own government.

Inconsistency is particularly prominent in any democratic government, and therefore increasingly threatens the democracy fixed in form but growing in size.

However, the second issue of these governments is not unique to them alone but applies to every fixed government. Rousseau never explicitly cites slowness to act as a state’s downfall but does think it symptomatic of a poorly functioning government. Despite this, there are several points in the Social Contract that bring me to establishing slowness as a primary weakness of fixed democracies. When discussing the inverse correlation of magistrates to sovereign size, Rousseau claims “It is also certain that the execution of public business becomes slower in proportion as more people are charged with the responsibility for it.”21 The more voices there are in government, the more opinions must be heard before a decision is made, the longer the bureaucratic process is drawn out, and the slower the executive power can act on the general will. When discussing democracy, Rousseau considers dividing the government into branches or “tribunals”. He lays down “as a principle” that when the functions of a government are split, the tribunal with the fewest members will eventually gain the greatest authority, only because of its natural ability to “expedite public business” the best.22 It is a natural consequence of having fewer people in power that power is exercised more quickly. If a government continues to grow but refuses to adjust its number of magistrates accordingly, it will become inert, acting on legislative power more and more slowly.

5

Fixed Democracies in the Globalized World

A simple look at the democratic governments of today reveals them to be fixed democracies. They do not continue to exist because the two vulnerabilities of fixed democracy are gone, but because their severity has been eased by the institutions’ unique structure. By designing its government as a representative democracy, the United States has artificially constrained the number of magistrates while still preserving the political power of each franchised citizen. Representation simply introduced an extra, mediating level in the government’s system. Rather than having each citizen serve as a magistrate, citizens have the power of electing a 21. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book III, Chapter II. 22. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book III, Chapter IV.

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representative to act on their behalf in their legislative power, or Congress. America’s population of 331 million has effectively been transformed into 535. This is not an aristocracy — a group of magistrates less than a majority of the sovereign — but still a democracy because the 535 members essentially are the 331 million citizens, not the legitimate leaders of them. Representation in the legislative power has decreased the number of voices in the assembly and ameliorated the two weaknesses of fixed democracies to a reasonable degree. Inconsistency still exists in the institution but to a far lesser extent expected of Rousseau’s democracies. Moreover, Congressmen and women are dependent on their constituents to remain in power, and so orient their private wills toward satisfying the general will; this intention may be skewed, but the effect is still the same. This government is still slower to act than one consisting of fewer magistrates, but considerably quicker than if the entire sovereign weighed in. Prior to globalization, the remaining burdens of the two weaknesses have been within an acceptable range to allow for the perpetuation of representative democracies.23 However, it appears that the pressures created by a globalized world are drawing out and dangerously testing these shortcomings of fixed democracies.

Pan-national threats and interconnected problems strike at the remaining trends of inconsistency in nations such as the United States. Inconsistency becomes a serious issue when considering the partnerships of the United State. Recently, President Donald Trump’s principle of ‘America First’ prioritized the safety of the United States far beyond that of its allies, and, according to Dr. Richard Haass, “Alliances depend on treating the security of others as seriously as one’s own.”24 This drove the United States to withdraw 24 from multiple treaties and organizations that were ultimately premised on common safety (e.g., the Paris Accords, Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the UN Human Rights Council, etc.). Trump’s behavior toward American allies deviated greatly from previous cycles of the democratic state, giving the impression that the United States could turn on its commitments in the span of a mere four years. What is more, just as America stopped honoring its allies’ safety, they will stop ensuring the United States’. These doubts become especially dangerous given the volatility of modern-day affairs. Many of the prob23. Rousseau does consider the possibility of representative governments in The Social Contract, but deplores them as a practice: “Once public service ceases to be the chief business of the citizens, and they prefer to serve with their wallet rather than with their person, the state is already near its ruin”. The metonymy of a wallet refers to citizens hiring representatives to advocate for them in the sovereign. Once representative government begins in a state, Rousseau believes that state is consider lost. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book III, Chapter XV. 24. Haass, World Order 2.0, 5.

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lems threatening civil societies today, such as pollution or global health, can only be resolved via international cooperation. The creation and widespread availability of instantaneous communication technologies and doomsday WMDs make reliability among allies invaluable. On this account, representative democracy—and by extension, the entities that practice it—may be seen as too unpredictable to provide reliable safety any longer. This inevitably forces them to overcome pan-national threats or interconnected problems alone, which, by the very nature of these issues, is impossible to do.

Though the inconsistency of democracy is serious, its slowness to act in the face of unexpected crises is, in my opinion, the bigger worry. The voices within the United States legislature are still so numerous with power so diffuse that the organization becomes paralyzed when met with unexpected and contentious problems. The desire of the sovereign is debated through its representatives prior to any action being taken. This causes immediate responses to be rare and sufficient action to be tardy; greatly lowering the chances of any executive act being both swift and efficient.

Acting quickly is characteristic of fewer power sources and is necessary to meet the dangers of a globalized world. This assessment is given credence by the COVID-19 pandemic. While the Chinese Communist Party was able to organize and handle the crisis quickly, America was slow to respond due to partisan struggles. For the United States, this resulted in serious human and economic damages. If the state were to repeatedly suffer damages equivalent to these, its eventual fall is likely. Rather than regarding COVID-19 as a once-in-a-lifetime event, modern nations ought to regard it as representative of the type of problems they will face in the coming years. Globalization allows for unexpected crises to occur much more quickly and at a much higher rate than ever before. The situation requires states to establish governments capable of swiftly responding to these crises and minimizing their damages. However, it seems that the nature of fixed representative democracy does not allow for such expedited decisions, and casts a shadow of doubt on this governance style for the modern, globalized world. At this point, it does well to return to the basic principle of civil societies. Every legitimate government must preserve individual liberty and the security of property in an effort to allow citizens to satisfy the first law of humankind’s nature. If a fixed democracy were to succumb to its weaknesses, it would fail to exist and thus obviously fail to fulfill its intended purpose. Now that globalization has rendered inconsistency and slowness to act detrimental to fixed representative democracies, something must be done to protect the interests of their citizens from future twenty-first-century threats.

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What is Rousseau’s Solution

If a state is suffering from its legislative power’s inconsistency, Rousseau would claim that the problem lies in its size being incompatible with its governance style.

Though a representative democracy artificially shrinks the size of the sovereign, the fact that it remains a democracy alone predisposes it to inconsistency. In response to this, Rousseau’s philosophy bites the proverbial bullet and calls for a true restriction in the number of magistrates, rather than a symbolic one. To find consistency, there must be a shift away from democracy toward either aristocracy or monarchy.

Though Rousseau does not provide a set threshold for a state transforming from an aristocracy to a monarchy, given the enormous size of the United States of America’s sovereign, the shift would likely be toward monarchy in Rousseau’s mind—this is barring any of Rousseau’s complaints against representative governments in general.25 Decreasing the number of magistrates in proportion to the state’s size would similarly resolve the slowness of state action. Tardiness is simply the result of too many decision-makers within the prince. Evolving the government toward a monarchy eventually decreases the number of magistrates to one. With these changes, not only is the behavior of the legislative power more consistent but also swifter and better at managing unexpected crises. Though this seems like the obvious answer (and certainly the one Rousseau gives), I believe there is an alternative.

The United States could elect to maintain a representative democracy but further restrict the number of its representatives in Congress. Once the legislative power is transferred to a smaller set of representation, it is again possible for the state to move quickly. For Rousseau, this would be the equivalent of putting a band-aid on a 25. In actuality, prior to addressing the 25 problems of fixed democracy, Rousseau would criticize the United States for utilizing a representative form of government. The legislative power must always represent the general will, which itself is not capable of being truly represented. Oddly enough, to resolve this Rousseau advocates for introducing slavery into the state. He maintains that, if the citizens of a state had slaves, then they would be freed from quotidian tasks and could participate in the legislative power: “There are some unfortunate circumstances where one’s liberty can be preserved only at the expense of someone else’s, and where the citizen can be perfectly free only if the slave is completely enslaved. . . As for you, modern peoples, you do not have slaves, but you yourselves are slaves. You pay for their liberty with your own. It is in vain that you crow about that preference. I find more cowardice in it than humanity.” Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book III, Chapter XV. Earlier in The Social Contract, Rousseau states that, just as it is within the nature of a man to die, it is within the nature of all states to fall. The state, like everything else, yields to entropy. It “begins to die from the very moment of its birth, and carries within itself the causes of its destruction.”

With this in mind, there is another implicit decision that Rousseau believes our current states could make before utilizing slavery. The people may adamantly adhere to their mores, and allow their representative states to pass away in order to secure the higher ordered value of not utilizing slavery.

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fatal wound (see footnote 24) and would fail to adequately resolve the problem of America’s form of government. Nevertheless, it is a possible method of speeding up the government’s reaction to crises in the twenty-first century thus diminishing the damages later globalized threats may cause.

7

Conclusion

When a democratic-type government is faced with growth such that Rousseau’s model would suggest transformation, refusal to evolve will naturally lead to two negative consequences. These are, what I call, the two vulnerabilities of fixed democracy. The first is inconsistency, and the second is slowness to act. States utilizing a system of fixed representative democracy have discovered how to mitigate the two associated weaknesses in such a way that allows for their governments to remain the same despite state growth. The issues of inconsistency and slowness have been reduced to a point where Rousseau’s initial concerns are no longer fatal to the democratic governments of today. However, the issues are not eliminated; they simply exist in an era that makes allowance for them. Unfortunately, this is a period of human history that is steadily coming to an end and being replaced by one that puts crippling amounts of pressure on the soft spots of fixed representative democracy.

Globalization combined with advances in technology has created an unprecedented global state of precarity. With the increasing severity of pan-national threats, interconnected problems, and unexpected crises inconsistency and slowness are no longer merely inconvenient to the fixed democratic state, but detrimental to it. On one hand, inconsistency naturally leads to distrust among nations. When multilateral commitments can be made in one phase of a democratic state only to be overturned in another, pan-national threats and interconnected problems become impossible to manage. On the other hand, slowness to act proves to be ruinous in the face of unexpected crises, which are characteristic of the current international environment.

This paper is not meant to completely resolve the issues of fixed representative democracy in the globalized world, but to provide an analysis of the problems surrounding it. By understanding Rousseau’s theory of civil society and applying it to modern nation-states, we are able to better understand the basic structures of the current Western order. Though Rousseau does not attempt to explicitly address these issues himself, his Social Contract can still be used to draw out the essential

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elements of fixed representative democracy and uncover its underlying weaknesses.

Clear contemplation of their deeper, underlying flaws allows for us to address the true problems of these governments rather than hyper-focusing on their particular manifestations. All of this is done in an effort to prepare for the problems civil societies are bound to face in the near future. With this understanding, we can discover how current forms of government can best be manipulated to adequately address those threats while preserving their original function of maintaining human freedom.

Response to Eric Nash Marshal Gillis St. Francis Xavier University Eric Nash presents a look at contemporary representative democracies and their vulnerabilities, from the perspective of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Nash identifies these vulnerabilities as slowness to act, and inconsistency. However, it is not completely clear to me how a government can be both slow to act, and inconsistent.

It seems that when something is slow to act, its actions are generally consistent, and vice versa. Nash brings up the example of Donald Trump, and how wildly different his presidency was from previous presidents, as an example of democracy being inconsistent. While his erratic behavior was certainly inconsistent, it seems that he was quite quick to act in many cases. Insofar as Trump was acting inconsistently (i.e. pulling out of international agreements) he was doing so in a way that was quite quick to action.

Furthermore, these vulnerabilities are only trivially true of democracies, and so do not, in my own opinion, constitute the grave challenges that Nash makes them out to be. For example, the claim that a democracy is inconsistent is tautologically true, in the sense that a democracy is composed of many people who will necessarily disagree about some issue; since a democracy is meant to distill many voices into one, it naturally follows that some of those voices will not be represented. Additionally, the voice with which the government speaks will change over time in a democracy.

This is not a fault of the system, but a part of the design. Public opinion changes over time, in some circumstances quite rapidly, and a democracy is designed to represent that changing opinion.

The weakness of being slow to act is, likewise, another intentional feature of democracy. Since a democratic represents many different voices, there must be a process by which the government decides which voice it will represent over others.

Most political decisions affect vast amounts of people, and those decisions can be catastrophic when all the people who are potentially involved are not considered.

Nash holds up the communist government in China as an example of a smaller government that was quicker to react to the COVID-19 crisis, in contrast with the slower response of the larger, American government. However, one might instead 55

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argue that a larger government, with a better ability to oversee and provide for its different peoples, might have been better able to prevent the outbreak from occurring in the first place. While a large government, like the American government, may be slower to act in times of international crisis, they have also been able to provide a level of peace and stability on a domestic level, that is not available in most other countries.

All of this being said, I do believe there is a way in which a government can be both inconsistent and slow to act, but this comes down to distinguishing between the different duties and responsibilities governments have on a domestic and international level. A government that pulls out of international agreements that are supposed to last for years can be inconsistent. At the same time this government could take a few months to pass a healthcare bill that is desperately needed on the domestic level. On the international scale, a democracy has the ability to be inconsistent, and on a domestic level it is much more likely to be slow to act.

Discarding the Word “Feminism” in the Pursuit of Equality Olivia Leroux St. Francis Xavier University

A BSTRACT The word feminism has been used, interpreted, and conceptualized in a variety of different ways which have misguided many. The word itself, commonly understood as derogatory, empowering, invalidating, or uplifting, has received mixed signals.

Feminism is too broad and lacks a focused lens. In this short essay, I ask if the word feminism continues to actively serve gender-oppressed people and if feminism can actually move our world closer to gender equality. I argue that the word feminism should be discarded in the pursuit of gender equality as the word is too deeply rooted in Western feminism and has become known as an exclusive practice. This essay will draw on worldly examples of post-colonial feminists, current feminist discourse, and my knowledge and experiences as a feminist.

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Discarding the Word “Feminism”

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Introduction

There was a time when I despised the thought of being called a feminist. It was a dirty word, one that implied you were a man-hater who thought them worthless and wished to oppress them. Reality struck me and I realized that I, in fact, was the one being discriminated against by men on the basis of my gender. Though with much resistance, I have become a feminist and wish not to remain one. While I believe in gender equality movements, I do not wish to exclude my genderqueer and culturally diverse peers, as feminism tends to do. Feminism is an ambiguous term that has not found a secure definition to contain its efforts. Women and genderqueer individuals, while seeking unity, have often spiraled into arguments about who is a ’real’ woman and the role of non-biological women in the movement. Feminism has also faced post-colonial critique as there are diverse conceptualizations of equality and the steps required to achieve this based on various cultural and religious influences.

I argue that the word feminism should be discarded as it is rooted within a particular Western context, which creates an overly exclusive group that turns away non-Western, non-white, lower-class women and genderqueer people. In this paper, woman and man will be terms used to express self-identified gender identities, both transgender and cisgender. I will conceptualize equality as the ability of gender-oppressed people to access the opportunities for agency experienced by their oppressors. Broadly, I define feminism as an ongoing battle against the patriarchy for gender equality, fought by women united by their gender. In the following section, I will demonstrate that because the word feminism is rooted in a particular Eurocentric context, it maintains that feminism is exclusionary. In the second section, I will further explain how feminism’s exclusivity further oppresses and delegitimizes certain gender-oppressed people. Finally, I will conclude with a discussion of the new humanist aspirations and vocabulary to replace feminism.

2

Who Does Feminism Fight For?

Language is ever-changing and vernacular vocabularies remain in flux. The difficulty with language is not the words we have at our disposal, but the meanings associated with the words we use. With words like feminism, which stem from specific political circumstances in the recent past, their meanings become adapted in ways that benefit specific groups in the public eye. One might think of the word decolonization, which was intended to strategically fight colonial governments who

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oppress Indigenous peoples. However, this political tool soon became a word used by the Canadian government, which led to the distortion of the word’s original intention, this colonized decolonization.1 The colonization of decolonization occurs when colonial states, such as Canada, use the word to describe Indigenous affirming actions within the state; this contradicts the colonial implications of the implementation of decolonial practices within such a state. Likewise, feminism has been a word used to describe unity amongst women fighting the patriarchy for gender equality. However, since its emergence, feminism has positioned itself within a Western, white, middle-class, cisgender context, making it highly exclusive and beneficial to few.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Second Wave feminism was critiqued as it left behind women of colour. Feminist academics, such as Kimberlé Crenshaw2 and Karen Brodkin-Sacks,3 have introduced the concept of intersectionality to reconcile the colonial feminist model with the interests and needs of diverse women. Intersectionality is a theory that dissects an individual’s various identities that influence their daily experience. Generally, key identities include race, gender, and class which affect how an individual is perceived and engaged with. Let us say there are four individuals, one black woman, one black man, one white woman, and one white man; we might observe how their identities change their experiences. The black woman and the white woman share womanhood, which disadvantages them in comparison to the black and white men. However, the racial difference also creates a division between the white individuals and the black individuals. In this way, the white man may experience the most opportunity, then the white woman, then the black man, then the black woman, solely based on their gender and race. Those who do not encounter as many opportunities often experience multiple forms of oppression, such as racism, sexism, and classism.

Though feminism has obtained an intersectional theory, the question becomes if feminism itself takes an intersectional approach. Mainstream, Western feminism continues to privilege Western voices, which often leaves behind critical identities, even in an intersectional approach. A feminist may consider the positionality of a Muslim woman in Pakistan by analyzing her race, gender, and class, though may miss key aspects of her identity such as her religion, cultural practices and norms, 1. Pictou, "Decolonizing Decolonization: An Indigenous Feminist Perspective on the Recognition and Rights Framework."

2. Crenshaw, "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color."

3. Brodkin Sacks, "Toward a Unified Theory of Class, Race, and Gender."

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as well as her political climate. This may lead to the belief that her veiling is a result of female oppression as the feminist may come from a particular position that opposes the Muslim woman’s cultural and religious practices, or the feminist may not be educated on the Muslim woman’s positionality. Post-colonial author Lila Abu-Lughod’s work, Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving,4 has offered critical reflections on the Eurocentric idea that veiling is a result of oppression by considering the cultural and religious agency that may be exerted by women who choose to veil themselves. This critique illuminates the values of mainstream feminism and Western feminists and how they become applied to women in a global context.

Post-colonial feminists, who often have non-Western backgrounds, are generally more considerate of the distinct historical contexts of a society which makes their practice more open. However, there is still the notion of the "white woman’s fight" that is perpetuated through the word feminism which deters many people of colour in a global context. For Nigerian poet Ifi Amadiume, the younger generations of African women are employing Western feminist narratives, which are not the narratives that have been upheld within their communities by older village women.5 Due to the lack of engagement with post-colonial narratives, the feminism that young women are engaging with idealizes women of the West while dismissing the feminist qualities of their traditional practices. This reflects an imbalance of priority; there are many countries who seek independence or the reintegration of traditional values and practices in post-colonial times, though Western feminism may imply that this begins with female empowerment rather than societal or cultural empowerment.

It appears to me that the word feminism is a tapestry woven with colonial thread which impacts the way that it is perceived and engaged with This ultimately leads to an exclusive group participating in mainstream feminism, with sub-categories emerging to combat this. Despite critique, mainstream feminism remains a political tool empowering white, middle-class, cisgender women, while actively excluding women in the post-colonial context. For those practicing post-colonial feminism, there is still a deeply embedded, negative understanding of feminism amongst grassroots people globally. In an article by Raksha Pande discussing women’s agency within arranged marriage, one woman named Khadija notes during an interview,

4. Abu-Lughod, "Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others."

5. Amadiume, “African Women: Voicing Feminisms and Democratice Futures.”

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You see I am not a modern feminist, I don’t regard men as adversaries, how can I? They are my brothers, my fathers, my uncles and my husband. I could not live with myself.. being against them.. it would be too much of a loss. But then again I know I can’t always live under their control . . . they are victims of culture too.. so I had to fight, manipulate, work. Your kind of feminism doesn’t work for me it . . . it is too airy fairy.. my feminism is a fit for purpose kind of thing. . . 6

This quote highlights the influence Western, colonial narratives have had on the general understanding of the word feminism, especially in academia. The variation of feminism that Khadija uses strategically steers feminism away from the colonial context, though reframes feminism altogether as tackling a cultural issue rather than a patriarchal issue. I am led to believe, then, that Khadija is not taking a feminist approach but a humanist approach.

3

Who Says No (Wo)Man Gets Left Behind?

If it is the case that the word feminism is used in an exclusive manner, it follows that not all gender-oppressed people would be accepted in the movement. Furthermore, if feminism cannot fight against all gender oppression, then the word itself shouldn’t be used to describe the movement. Based on the exclusive practices outlined in the previous section, feminism can often be a voice of authority that is non-representative of all women. The discourse that is currently active, such as the question “what is a woman,” has also created much inner conflict. When asking what a woman is, the debate between biological sex and self-identified gender becomes an argument about who deserves equal rights based on their reproductive organs when all human life deserves equal access to their fundamental rights.

The question “what is a woman?” in feminism ignores the effects of patriarchy on non-binary, gender-fluid, and transgender individuals as well as cisgender men.

Frequently, non-binary and gender-fluid individuals are misgendered based on their appearance and are included or excluded from feminist discourse depending on their biological sex and gendered experiences. This misgendering and emphasis on biological sex invalidates the oppression they may face as gender non-conforming people in a gendered society. Discourses regarding transgender women and their legitimacy include voices who argue for self-identification or those who believe in fictionalization. Self-identification is a theory that affirms an individual’s choice to identify as they please and be accepted in the gendered spaces they identify 6. Pande, “‘I Arranged my Own Marriage’: Arranged Marriages and Post-Colonial Feminism,” p.

180.

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with7 while fictionalization affords transgender women the ability to identify as woman though would provide them with distinct safeguarding systems from those of cisgender women.8 Regardless of the outcomes of these discussions, they actively serve to dehumanize and other transgender individuals as they argue the validity of their identities. In arguing about how transgender people should identify, the feminist discourse loses focus of the goal which is to end gender oppression for all peoples, and ultimately forgets that transgender peoples are gender-oppressed, even by cisgender women.

Feminism has also actively excluded cisgender men from the conversation of oppression. Patriarchy not only places biological males in a position to oppress other genders for their own gain but places a social script on them to be considered ’real’ men.9 This manifests as toxic masculinity, where men are expected to act as a leader, hide their emotions, to be heterosexual, to express themselves in a masculine way. Patriarchal ideas of masculinity and femininity are rooted in the division of social roles based on biological sex and form the narrative that these are universal biological traits that distinguish our gendered expressions. This maintains that there is a visible and expressive difference between men and women, which also discourages genderqueer identities.

It also seems that in excluding cisgender men from feminist discourse, there becomes a lack of incentive for men to support and encourage feminism. Let us say Suzanna wants to gain support for her cause to provide each employee at her place of work with a bonus this year because only select employees have received them in the past. She should not turn away the support of other employees who have received bonuses last year because if she does, she others them and risks losing their interest in helping her cause. In the same way, if Suzanna were looking to gain participants for her feminist rally, she should not choose to exclude men because they may be powerful tools in helping her rally gain the attention it deserves. Furthermore, men may develop a view that feminist motives are elitist and unnecessary which would cause more resistance. This exclusionary practice creates a ‘girls club’ in the likeness of the men’s ‘boys club.’10 If the goal of feminism is to fight the ‘boys club,’ it seems that making a ‘girls club’ has only upheld the patriarchal system. As women create a group based on likeness, as men have done in the patriarchy, they need 7. Edmunds and Warburton, “Amia Srinivasan on ‘What is a Woman?’”

8. Edmunds and Warburton, “Kathleen Stock on ‘What is a Woman?’”

9. Butler, "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory."

10. A ‘boys club’ refers to an elite group of men who live a privileged life within the patriarchy.

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to continue exclusionary practices to maintain the purity of the group which turns away others who are also fighting for gender equality, such as transgender men and women.

Based on the exclusionary practices of feminism outlined above, gender oppressed peoples, or those affected negatively by the patriarchy, are not always welcome in feminist discourse, making it unsuitable to remain within our vocabularies. Instead, activists should be seeking to discard the word feminism to refresh the vocabulary surrounding gender equality efforts.

4

Out with the Old, In with the New

If we are to discard the word feminism, it does not mean that the feminist movement was simply an oppressive movement. Feminism has encouraged many women to join forces and resist patriarchal oppression. However, feminist issues are not simply women’s issues; feminist issues are human rights issues. There became a need for feminism because women lacked access to the same human rights men could access. Today, all gender-oppressed peoples lack equal access to their rights as human beings, fostering the need for distinct rights to counteract sexism. The manifestation of gender equality is a humanist aspiration that must include all gender-oppressed peoples if patriarchy is to be dismantled. Feminism, in its current state, does not have the capacity to achieve this aspiration; a new name for the gender equality movement would break the exclusionary chains that hold feminism back and would provide opportunites for more people to come together in opposition of patriarchy.

It is my hope that there can be a movement that truly can truly embody equality and contribute meaningful work to the humanist aspirations that are rapidly growing. This movement would leave behind ideas of gender and move towards ideas of equal access to choice, opportunities, and rights. Perhaps the movement would actively fight patriarchy without engaging in patriarchal practices and could map out a post-gender world where people are free to express themselves as they choose.

In any case, a new vocabulary would foster diversity, inclusivity, and acceptance; it would represent the powerful and compassionate movement that feminism was meant to be.

Bibliography Abu-Lughod, Lila. "Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others." American Anthropologist 104, no. 3 (2002): 783-90.

Amadiume, Ifi. “African women: Voicing Feminisms and Democratice Futures.” Macalester International.10, no. 9 (2001). Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1244&context=macin tl Butler, Judith. "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory." Theatre Journal (Washington, D.C.) 40, no. 4 (1988): 519-31.

Crenshaw, Kimberle. "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color." Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241-299.

Edmunds, David and Warburton, Nigel. “Amia Srinivasan on ‘What is a Woman?’” Philosophy Bites Podcast (2017). Available at: https://content.libsyn.com/p/2/d/e/2deea7699d55cadd/Amia_Srinivasan_on_What_is_a_ Woman__2.mp3?c_id=13738608&cs_id=13738608&response-contenttype=audio%2Fmpeg&Expires=1647038044&Signature=LHbgDN2z0y6vDVuv2Xaa1Ki dVXR1D61qx4JE7Wy46ay5WfwLtJJGDppectzwlsmRkBT1BNKmEVMZzcGMRbCBaghXTHsiDAPEOmIa95E45dGlONmLfm6X2gyRgOVpJZYlXsK8SqFN2s4lipQ1uXqZt FMMLWNQXuFUBDaa5hA67ZvwkT2hbE3tzIquwvCdxqrHm4zvVulciUQINZU3ZpDI Ea-UX8IA71J4T8AAFXls2p9dtmujqowG44J8IqwcuwAOaBx5Bg8LrhxRd9t~MwCNAgaEGHBcY5I~uiE CvY8CzKMnzxP6xPgObJmE44YWgzYZuHtMbzuWuKR3AGCj00mg__&Key-PairId=K1YS7LZGUP96OI Edmunds, David and Warburton, Nigel. “Kathleen Stock on ‘What is a Woman?’” Philosophy Bites Podcast (2019). Available at: https://content.libsyn.com/p/f/5/d/f5d20193097ed4d3/Kathleen_Stock_on_What_is_a_W oman_.mp3?c_id=43029653&cs_id=43029653&response-contenttype=audio%2Fmpeg&Expires=1647039103&Signature=IBtNd5wwiEzuSdPVNyXxuCF924-GiD8uMtvq3r9tnVvHvII3XOFQaZBu0t8eH7SaPmK4dcAcRwyon5zKv8l~jFY51cHoV6BRsktsKVvQZuIeWvMjOwUvm4devD1gotXbBmarxyhhl23VPzF2JFNrp6RGLx77xeU~LczkDDN~RxvQ0frJLCr4dQToAYF hcZ2I8TLj1gvaI-fm7cKjEuI7ZdZ-afCB0cZSjVnqgprQKuI7zwDTGEKtH8dbInt3SFpLhfKk~-H5SgBg5v6RyJ9dIlx3zkk4ECKSoPHiLO4oSI8gDLmRhZ3YB34PGqGTPwwjXTcs-sEUZtOYPEdQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K1YS7LZGUP96OI Pande, Raksha. “’I Arranged my Own Marriage’: Arranged Marriages and Post-Colonial Feminism.” A Journal of Feminist Geography 22, no. 2 (2015): 172-187.

Pictou, Sherry. "Decolonizing Decolonization: An Indigenous Feminist Perspective on the Recognition and Rights Framework." The South Atlantic Quarterly 119, no. 2 (2020): 371-91.

Sacks, Karen Brodkin. "Toward a Unified Theory of Class, Race, and Gender." American Ethnologist 16, no. 3 (1989): 534-50.

Response to Olivia Leroux Hunter Roy Texas A&M University Present in the feminist movement is a contradiction between its nominal expression and its intentions. Mapping out the development of feminism through post-colonial discourse and contemporary discourse, as well as through their own experiences as a feminist, Olivia Leroux presents a compelling argument as to why the word feminism is no longer beneficial. The central argument of this paper relies on two essential premises: that feminism’s eurocentrism is inherently exclusionary, and that feminism’s exclusivity fails to address the issues of gender-oppressed groups. In this response I will focus on summarizing the essential claims of the paper while exploring the implications of laying blame on the nominal for issues relating to a lack of humanism in feminism.

The first section of the paper intends to demonstrate the exclusionary nature of the word feminism. An important observation the author makes is that language presents to us a unique difficulty that arises not from the words available to us but instead from the meanings that are assigned to our words. By illustrating that the meaning of political language—such as feminism—can be manipulated to benefit specific groups, the author prepares us for a critique. An example that further demonstrates the failures of words to serve their original purpose is emergence of intersectional theory in feminist thought. In intersectional theory, key identities such as race, gender, and class are argued to affect one’s day-to-day lived experience.

The conflict described in the text revolves around the failure of a Western feminist to perceive other key aspects of a Muslim woman’s identity, such as religion, culture, and political circumstances. As a result, the woman’s choice to wear a veil is misunderstood as oppression and not an expression of religious agency. If womanhood as agency is a definition limited to European forms of expression, then certainly there are internal issues in feminist thought that need attention. Yet, I hesitate to cast blame on language. The manner in which feminism is characterized in the text seems to refer to feminism in the West and not in other parts of the world. If the chief concern is the Eurocentric influence on Western feminism, it appears that this feminism should be our area of focus and not feminism globally. In the text 65

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there are non-Western authors quoted that articulate their disagreement not with feminism but Western feminism and its colonial ambition. Perhaps the assumption that a Eurocentric influence on feminism devalues the word may falsely assume that it is permissible to speak of feminism in such a globalizing manner. While I do not intend to take away from the author’s central claim of feminism as a humanism, I do want to stress the importance of identification in a Western context when global claims are made. That being said, the author’s claims are still deserving of further attention in that they lead us to consider the development of Western feminism against the backdrop of Eurocentrism. Further, the concluding claim that feminism should reorient itself in a humanistic direction is still quite pertinent.

The second section of the paper aims to reveal the manner in which the word feminism further contributes to the exclusion of gender-oppressed people. The central claim of this section is that if feminism inhibits the fight against all forms of gender oppression, it should not be used to describe the movement taking place.

The author argues that in the background of feminism’s inability to serve all gender oppressed groups is the question of what defines womanhood and who is welcome to participate in the feminist movement. This leads to two issues: first, that the oppression of non-binary, gender-fluid, and transgender individuals is ignored, and second, that cisgender men often become excluded as well. It would then seem that the use of the term feminism serves to only complicate the process of liberation from the patriarchy. The experience of the word feminism may lead to exclusion both as it is perpetrated by some feminists and affects gender-oppressed groups and cisgender men. I am interested in seeing further discussion on the manner in which feminism both as a movement and a label is perceived in non-Western cultures and whether that would inform our judgment moving forward.

The author concludes with some remarks about the humanistic goals that feminism should be oriented towards. It is certainly the case that traditional Western definitions of gender and gender relations affect our perception of these relations in other parts of the world. However, this may not entirely indicate that genderoppressed peoples are denied participation in global feminist discourse and action.

Should feminism undergo a global humanistic evolution, I am concerned that this would then allow us to then ignore the issues caused by Western influence as the author mentioned. Should the humanistic position be stressed excessively, I wonder how the movement’s ability to address issues of gender oppression will be transformed. Perhaps we are not quite ready to leave a gender-focused mode of analysis in the rearview.

The Use of Money as Speech Treyton Zanutto Texas A&M University

A BSTRACT This paper evaluates the philosophical and legal issues surrounding corporations using money as speech in political campaigns. Due to the extreme complexity of the problem, this paper will briefly cover the history of money being viewed as speech before moving on to evaluate the argument presented by opponents and proponents of utilizing money as speech. After summarizing the various arguments of both sides, this paper raises the concerns and dilemmas inherent in the concept of corporate personhood. In the conclusion, it is found that while the proponents have the stronger argument, it is not all-encompassing.

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The Use of Money as Speech

1

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Introduction

The extensive utilization of money in politics is highly controversial. Often secret, large donors are frequently perceived as having an undue influence on political outcomes. However, it is often said that restricting the use of private funds would violate freedom of speech. This dilemma creates several legal, ethical, and practical debates. Ultimately, the question must be asked: Should the use of money be considered part of exercising the freedom of speech?

The modern case with the most influence on the use of money as the freedom of speech is without a doubt Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. This case overturned a great deal of historical precedent and is the basis for nearly all modern literature on the debate over using money as speech. The case was an interesting one. The discussion was set into motion when "In January 2008, appellant Citizens United, a nonprofit corporation, released a documentary critical of then-Senator Hillary Clinton, a candidate for her party’s Presidential nomination.”1 The film was controversial because by financing it, Citizens United seemed to violate existing election laws by the proximity of the film’s release to the election. Still, Citizens United claimed that preventing the film’s release violated the First Amendment.

These claims fueled a debate around corporate personhood and whether or not corporations were entitled to the same rights as people. Some worried that if corporations could be limited in their spending rights, then so could anyone. Others worried that if corporations have speech rights, nothing stops them from exercising other rights like voting. The Supreme Court concluded, "We find no basis for the proposition that, in the context of political speech, the Government may impose restrictions on certain disfavored speakers."2 This conclusion tactfully avoided a definite conclusion on corporate personhood and ensured Citizens United’s victory in the case, solidifying the court’s position that corporate funds qualify as freedom of speech under U.S. law.

The position of the court is clear. Under U.S. law, the use of private funds is considered to be exercising the freedom of speech. However, this decision was not unanimous, overturned a great deal of precedent, and remains controversial today.

The arguments made for and against must be explored to understand the debate and conclude whether or not private funds should be considered speech. A clearer picture of what should be done about using private funds as speech will be developed 1. Citizens United v. Federal Election Com’n, 558 U.S. 310, 130 S. Ct. 876, 175 L. Ed. 2d 753 (2010): 310.

2. Citizens United, 341.

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by exploring both sides of the discussion concerning the Citizens United case.

2

Opposition Argument

There are several reasons to be skeptical of the idea that money is speech. One of the most apparent criticisms is that money is not speech in the literal sense.

Opponents of using money as speech will argue that money should be viewed "as a form of conduct related to speech—something roughly equivalent to the physical act of picketing or the use of a sound-truck.”3 This viewpoint on the use of money would allow for limited regulations and sensible laws on how money may be spent. This viewpoint is typically justified by pointing to previous cases such as United States v.

O’Brien. The O’Brien case is particularly relevant to the view that actions close to speech but not actually speech can be regulated. In the O’Brien case, the Supreme Court ruled that those burning draft cards could be convicted under a statute that banned such actions.4 The relationship between spending money and burning draft cards is easy to see. Both are physical actions meant to convey a message. Both are related to speech but not quite speech. United States v. O’Brien found that the act of burning draft cards could be legally sanctioned. Likewise, the argument goes, money should be equally subject to federal regulation as spending money is also an act adjacent to, but not quite, speech.

A common and related argument against viewing funds as speech is that the issue should not be subject to First Amendment concerns. This argument is based on the precedent set in the case Police Dep’t v. Mosley. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that "Above all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.”5 Those opposed to treating money as speech argue that this precedent supports their perspective. Putting restrictions on spending money does not restrict any speech based on its message, ideas, subject, or content. It simply restricts one method in which speech can be supported to limit electioneering and prevent corruption.

Additionally, opponents of viewing money as speech argue it unfairly empowers the wealthy in the political process. Before the Citizens United case, there was Buckley v. Valeo. Like the Citizens United case, the Buckley case ruled in favor 3. J. Skelly Wright, "Politics and the Constitution: Is Money Speech." Yale Law Journal 85, no. 8 (July 1976): 1006, Law Journal Library - HeinOnline.org (tamu.edu).

4. Wright, “Politics and the Constitution,” 1007.

5. Wright, “Politics and the Constitution,” 1009.

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of treating money as speech. However, unlike in the Citizens United case, in the Buckley case, the court reasoned, "it is hard to see how a democratic nation can have a stable government if it does not permit intensity of feeling as well as numbers of adherents to be reflected in the political process. . . Campaign contributions represent a means by which intensity can be shown.”6 This reasoning would entail that the use of money as speech cannot be limited since it is a highly efficient way to show the intensity with which one holds a belief. The more intensely someone believes in something, the more they will be willing to spend on it. Opponents of speech as money claim that this reasoning is flawed and shows the misconceptions that have led to court decisions that they believe are wrong. On the subject, United States Circuit Judge J. Kelly Wright stated, Now it is true that a government which hopes to maintain stability must preserve for its citizens some means of demonstrating intensity of feeling. The plaintiffs, however, evidently interpret intensity not from the standpoint of the potential contributor, but from the standpoint of the candidate or official who is the target of the intensity.7

The argument against viewing money as speech, as articulated by Wright, is that money expenditure is a poor metric for the intensity of belief. Wright would explain that a wealthy individual may donate a large sum of money to a cause he believes in a little, while an impoverished individual may contribute what little money he has to a cause he greatly believes in. In this situation, one would find it difficult to claim that the poor individual’s beliefs are less intense than the rich man’s beliefs. Due to this mismatch of the intention for treating money as speech and the reality of people’s differing access to resources, opponents of treating money as speech claim that the very basis for thinking of money as speech is deeply flawed.

The opposing side of the debate raises convincing points, but before any conclusions may be drawn, it is vital to analyze the arguments of those who support treating money as speech. As the court currently stands, proponents of treating money as speech seem to have the power of the law to support their claims. As the opponents of treating money as speech have their reasons to be skeptical, the proponents of treating money as speech have their reasons to support the idea.

8

Proponents of using money as speech argue that comparing money to a speechadjacent activity and not speech in itself is simply incorrect. Money is used to fund forms of communication, such as the Hillary film in the Citizens United case.

6. Wright, “Politics and the Constitution,” 1013-14.

7. Wright, “Politics and the Constitution,” 1014.

8. Proponents’ Argument

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Proponents of viewing money as speech claim there is little reason to believe that funding this communication is different from using resources to speak in public. The proponents of money as speech compare it to a book by arguing, "It would be odd to say that you can speak at will, but that you are subject to criminal sanctions if you read aloud from a written text whose publication in written form is not protected by the First Amendment.”9 In this view, utilizing the necessary resources to convey information to a broader audience in an orderly manner is protected by the First Amendment. Funds are a tool no different from a book that may be used to further ideas and information.

Furthermore, in a related argument, proponents of viewing money as speech claim the view that the First Amendment should not protect the use of money does not reflect the reality of speech. Treating money as if it is not speech would violate the First Amendment "as it would mean that anyone who uses money to obtain assistance in preparing for political speech has crossed over the line into potentially criminal conduct."10 In this light, any organized method of delivering information where resources were expended would be subject to regulation. Such a view would inhibit all speech as nearly every method of providing information to a broader community requires some resources to be bought or spent in the process. Proponents argue that the ability to regulate the spending of funds or resources in obtaining speech would effectively nullify the first amendment as stopping speech could be achieved by regulating the resources necessary to achieve said speech.

Proponents of viewing money as speech also argue that the concerns about wealthy corporations dominating politics are unfounded. Politicians care more about votes than financial contributions. Financial contributions and campaign advertisements are only as valuable as the additional public support they bring in.

Legal scholar Richard A. Epstein wrote about his early professional career: I appeared in the Pennsylvania legislature on a panel with Joe Doyle, head of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, who began his testimony by noting that he represented 2,100,000 Pennsylvania union members. . . I replied that I represented folks from Aetna, Hartford, and other insurance companies. . . No votes. I was far from impressed with the corporate might that stood at my back.11

Epstein’s experience shows the power of corporations is not all-encompassing when faced with large blocks of potential voters. Afterward, Epstein also explains 9. Richard A. Epstein, "Citizens United v. FEC: The Constitutional Right That Big Corporations Should Have But Do Not Want." Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 34, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 642-43, Law Journal Library - HeinOnline.org (tamu.edu).

10. Epstein, “Citizens United v. FEC,” 649-50.

11. Epstein, “Citizens United v. FEC,” 654.

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that it is easy for politicians to disparage corporations that refuse to donate or donate to opponents. Attacking large companies can play into populist sentiments of voters and damage the brands of corporations. Between large voting blocks and politicians’ public sway, money does not make politics as one-sided as opponents of money as speech claim.

3

Additional Concern

A final concern is the issue of corporate personhood. Granting personhood to corporations would bestow the rights of an individual onto corporations. Both sides of the debate hold significant worries over this issue. After all, personhood is connected with "inalienable rights by their Creator, which cannot be surrendered to their sovereign, whereas such rights are not conferred on corporations, which are artificial beings.”12 Those opposed to utilizing money as speech point toward the lack of natural rights for corporations as a reason to permit restrictions on their use of funds for political purposes. The lack of natural rights in this view means that corporations should not be granted any form of legal personhood. However, proponents of viewing money as speech claim stripping corporations of all personhood would have dangerous potential side effects that "would render contracts null and void and individuals unable to sue corporations for misdeeds.”13 Which side is correct depends on whether a natural law or realist outlook is better for addressing the issue of corporate personhood and the use of speech as money.

4

Evaluation of the Arguments

Both sides of the debate formulate excellent and convincing arguments. The discussion raises several grave concerns about how the relationship between money and speech should be handled. One key point in the debate is whether money is more similar to a protest or a book. If money is more similar to a protest, then regulations seem to make sense, but if it is more similar to a book, then regulations appear to be unreasonable censorship. The issue is that money contains similarities to a protest and a book, and a consensus too far in one direction could raise more issues.

12. Patricia L. Nemetz, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Corporate Personhood and Corporate Political Spending: Implications for Shareholders." Business and Society Review: Journal of the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley College 121, no. 4 (December 2016): 577, https://search-ebscohost-com.srvproxy2.library.tamu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=phl&AN=PHL2344731&site=ehost-live.

13. Nemetz, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” 585.

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If money is treated as speech, then the question must be asked, ’How justified are current regulations on protests?’ If money is treated as a protest, the question is, ’What prevents books from being regulated in a similar matter?’ On this point, it is likely better to treat money as being closer to books. It is better to risk an undue increase in freedoms than reducing one’s natural right to free thought and peaceful expression of those thoughts. Curtailing too significant a growth in individual freedom is far easier than expanding rights that the state has restricted. By treating money as similar to books, undue risks to civil liberties may be best avoided.

The first amendment’s applicability to the issue is the next subject of great debate. Opponents argue that it does not apply due to the first amendment covering a particular subset of actions. Proponents argue it does apply due to the utilization of money being necessary for carrying out those actions. The opposition argument, in this case, seems to be less convincing. Restricting access to speech through sanctioning the resources required for speech is dubious at best. However, the opposition raises a compelling point and claims that stating there is no difference between words and dollars denies reality. It would be best to identify money for what it is: a resource required for speech. It is a tool without which one cannot utilize their first amendment rights. To put money on the same pedestal as speech would be a mistake, but to put in place any restriction on money used for speech that was not required to prevent the violation of an others rights is unjust.

As for the concerns over money empowering the rich and powerful at the expense of the general population, the concerns are exaggerated by opponents and downplayed by proponents of viewing money as speech. Reality is more dynamic than the opponents’ money equals power equation, but money gives an individual more influence, unlike the proponents seem to believe. The proponents are correct when they claim that the desire to appease voting blocs will be of greater importance to politicians than donations. However, a wealthy individual will have more influence over a politician than a poor individual. The general population requires large numbers to outweigh the power of wealth. It is reasonable to presume this logic holds to a greater extent when considering the role of corporations in politics.

While political influence is more competitive than many realize, it is essential to ensure that the voters’ interests are protected. It is difficult to grant more power to individual voters without risking the speech rights of all, but a potential solution is ensuring the transparency of campaign donations from corporations. Doing so would allow voters to identify corporations donating to causes they do not believe in and enable them to more easily organize into the large groups required to counter

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the influence of money in politics.

Corporate personhood is a problematic issue. On the one hand, corporations are not people. On the other hand, corporate personhood allows corporations to be sued for legal ramifications against them. Ultimately, the Citizens United case cleverly avoided answering the question of corporate personhood by claiming the issue was fundamentally one of the first amendment and that answering the question of corporate personhood is not necessary.14 For the problem of using money as speech, this is likely the best possible answer, but the issue will rear its head again, and the consequences will have ramifications on the use of money as speech. A possible, but not perfect, solution would be to grant corporations a sort of 2nd class personhood.

Personhood that does not originate as human life is not possessive of natural rights, but personhood that may participate in civil society in many ways real people would. Such a solution could allow corporations to represent their interests and utilize money as speech without granting them rights such as voting. However, the resolution of 2nd class corporate personhood is rife with philosophical issues and without real precedent.

Ultimately, the issue of money as speech is complex and without a perfect solution. The proponents of viewing money as speech have the stronger argument, although their argument has its limits. Money is best considered to be protected by the first amendment, but with the caveat that it may be restricted when known to be preventing the utilization of another right or other speech. The use of money should be transparent and open to the voters. Finally, the issue of corporate personhood is likely best avoided in discussions of the first amendment, but it will eventually need to be solved. There will be no perfect solution that addresses all the points made by both sides; however, there may be many tiny solutions that will address most of the concerns on both sides.

14. Nemetz, “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” 571.

Bibliography Citizens United v. Federal Election Com'n, 558 U.S. 310, 130 S. Ct. 876, 175 L. Ed. 2d 753 (2010).

Epstein, Richard A. "Citizens United v. FEC: The Constitutional Right That Big Corporations Should Have But Do Not Want." Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 34, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 639-662. Law Journal Library - HeinOnline.org (tamu.edu) Nemetz, Patricia L. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Corporate Personhood and Corporate Political Spending: Implications for Shareholders." Business and Society Review: Journal of the Center for Business Ethics at Bentley College 121, no. 4 (December 2016): 569–91. https://search-ebscohostcom.srv-proxy2.library.tamu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=phl&AN=PHL2344731&site=ehost-live.

Wright, J. Skelly. "Politics and the Constitution: Is Money Speech." Yale Law Journal 85, no. 8 (July 1976): 1001-1021. Law Journal Library - HeinOnline.org (tamu.edu)

Response to Treyton Zanutto Kira Tosi St. Francis Xavier University In his paper, Treyton Zanutto investigates the morality of using money as speech, contemplating both sides that money should be used as speech and that it should not. I will evaluate two aspects I noticed about this paper. My primary concern was a lack of distinction between the use of money as speech and money objectively as speech, although both matters are defined separately. Considering that this is a philosophy paper, another concern of mine is that he has only made a comparison, as opposed to arguing something, which is not clear in this paper that he has.

Zanutto acknowledges the difference between money being speech in the literal sense and the use of money as speech. He states, “money should be equally subject to federal regulation as spending money is also an act adjacent to, but not quite, speech.” He goes on to fumble between the two, using different phrasing of the term ‘money as speech’ when intending to imply its use. This can make the paper more confusing because the distinction is essential, especially when referencing the First Amendment, which has a different effect on money literally being speech and money being used to facilitate speech. In the latter case, I wonder if freedom of expression, which is also protected under the First Amendment, might be a better route to take.

Would anything be lost to the argument by using the term expression as opposed to speech? Referencing freedom of expression instead of free speech may create a better case for analysis, as the phrasing around money being speech would not have to be as specific. The issue with the use of money being limited like this is that money does not seem to be as much speech as a condition. I find it crucial to consider whether money is really the issue in the use of money as speech, because money only has the ability to facilitate a certain desired speech and are facilitators as guilty as those performing an action? Whatever the answer to that is, the use of money would fit more comfortably under the title of expression, and not speech, correct?

Using the term expression could allow Zanutto’s potential argument flexibility and perhaps added strength.

My final concern is that of Zanutto’s lack of argument. In philosophy papers, the goal is generally to argue, as well as to compare but he does not come to any sort of 77

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stable conclusion. He finishes his paper saying, “there will be no perfect solution that addresses all the points made by both sides,” but this is worrisome for me because that should not be the point. It is rare that we find a perfect solution to anything, especially in philosophy, and I wish that Zanutto chose to argue for the strength of weakness of one or both arguments, but his position in the paper is very Switzerland-esque. I believe that the lack of sufficient argument weakens Zanutto’s work.

Flew, Hare and Mitchell: The Means to Meaning Emily Henry St. Francis Xavier University

A BSTRACT In the "Theology and Falsification" Symposium, Antony Flew, R.M Hare and Basil Mitchell each argue a different perspective of how one should perceive religious beliefs. The symposiasts have different accounts of meaning achieved within religious belief through their different ideas of what should count as evidence. In this essay, I will show how Flew and Hare’s arguments are too limited of accounts of meaning and that Mitchell’s demonstration is the most satisfactory of the three. Mitchell’s position is essential for religious believers, but its real strength is that it outlines how anyone can have any meaningful beliefs at all.

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In the "Theology and Falsification" Symposium, Antony Flew, R.M Hare and Basil Mitchell each argue a different perspective of how one should perceive religious beliefs. The symposiasts have different accounts of meaning achieved within religious belief through their different ideas of what should count as evidence. In this essay, I will show how Flew and Hare’s arguments are too limited of accounts of meaning and that Mitchell’s demonstration is the most satisfactory of the three.

Mitchell’s position is essential for religious believers, but its real strength is that it outlines how anyone can have any meaningful beliefs at all.

To understand the symposiast’s arguments, one must first know the principles of falsification and verification and the Wittgensteinian concept of language-games—as these concepts provide the evidence, or standard, of meaning within the arguments.

The principle of falsification indicates that a statement must have the capacity to be contradicted by evidence to be meaningful.1 The verification principle declares that a statement is meaningful if it is empirically verifiable.2 Within the concept of language-games, the standard of meaning derives from the context in which one finds it,3 indicating that what may render a statement meaningless in one context may not in another.

From this, there are two sorts of meaning that are also relevant to this discussion.

Firstly, there is cognitive meaning derived from genuine claims about the world’s state obtained through either verification or falsification. Secondly, emotive, or psychological meanings, contain standards relative to designated language-games but may still involve verification and falsification. Emotive meaning relates to the person’s mental state, which causes emotions in support or against a claim. These terms are essential for the overall discussion; however, each symposiast has their own terms, which I will define concerning their theories.

The initial essay in the symposium includes Flew’s challenge. Flew states that religious utterances are, for the most part, intended to be proper assertions and explanations. For Flew, an assertion must claim that things are one way and not another. For an assertion to be meaningful, p must also mean not, not p. If an assertion then does not deny anything, it also does not assert anything.4 Similarly, 1. Karl Popper, “The Problem of Demaration,” in Popper Selections, ed. David Miller (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 118-130 2. A J Ayer “Critique of Ethics and Theology,” in Language, Truth, and Logic (London, UK: Penguin Books, 1990), pp. 63-77, 66.

3. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Hoboken, New Jersey: Blackwell, 2001.

4. Antony Flew, Basil Mitchell, and R M Hare, “A Symposium on Theology and Falsification,” Wayback Machine, September 15, 2009, http://web.archive.org/web/20101124152313/http://brindedcow.umd.edu, 2.

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to be a meaningful explanation, it must explain why a particular thing occurs, and not something else.5 A meaningful explanation claims that something in the world would be different if it were true, then false. In other words, Flew argues for a falsifiable standard of meaning that should apply to religious beliefs and utterances in order for them to have meaning.

Through Flew’s Parable of the Gardener,6 he argues that religious believers qualify their beliefs to fit every possible scenario or state of affairs. To qualify a belief is to change the original hypotheses or the definition of a thing so that nothing can prove it wrong. Religious believers erode their beliefs and assertions with qualifications and render them unfalsifiable. Within Flew’s parable, the believer changes the gardener’s definition to an invisible, imperceptible, and senseless gardener to maintain the belief of the gardener’s existence despite the tests that render the belief false.

Flew ends his essay with a direct challenge to other symposiasts. Flew asks, “what would have to happen not merely (morally and wrongly) to tempt but also (logically and rightly) entitle us to say, ‘God does not love us’ or even ‘God does not exist’?”7 Alternatively, "what would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the love of, or of the existence of God?”8 Through these questions, Flew claims that if nothing would count against these beliefs, then they tell us nothing and are hence, meaningless by the falsification standard.

In response, Hare offers an alternative way in which one could view religious beliefs. Hare claims that Flew is correct in saying that religious assertions are not falsifiable. However, for Hare, this does not render them meaningless. Hare argues that a meaningful belief must include more criteria than just being falsifiable and that Flew’s standard of meaning is too strict and limited.

5. Flew, 6.

6. ‘Once upon a time, two explorers came upon a clearing in 1 the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, ’Some gardener must tend this plot.’ The other disagrees, ’There is no gardener.’ So, they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. ‘But perhaps he is an invisible gardener.’ So, they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Wells’s The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still, the Believer is not convinced. ’But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves.’ At last, the Sceptic despairs, ‘But what remains of our original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?’ Flew, 1.

7. Flew, 2.

8. Flew, 2.

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Through Hare’s Parable of the Paranoid Student,9 he introduces the concept of a blik, which has a standard of meaning like the language-game concept. A blik is a worldview that exists logically before facts. A blik tells one how to interpret the world, and it follows that a blik determines what counts as verification and falsification and what these facts come to mean within the blik. The Paranoid student believes that his dons are out to kill him. Even though it appears to prove the belief wrong to those without the paranoid blik, no amount of evidence can persuade the student to change their mind.10 The apparent denial arises because the sane blik is different from the insane blik regarding what counts as evidence.

No evidence could ever falsify a blik, and nothing counts as disproof.

From Flew’s perspective, bliks would appear to be meaningless as they assert nothing. However, a blik, or belief, does make a meaningful difference. The student’s insane blik tells us about their state of mind and how it affects their behaviour.

Similarly, the fact that we recognize the different blik, and define the student as paranoid, shows that the unfalsifiable blik also means something to us, as we can distinguish between their worldview and our own. To Flew’s challenge, Hare states that beliefs do not need to be falsifiable. Religious statements are not assertions about facts as they are in science; they express an emotionally significant, non-falsifiable worldview;11 they belong to a different language-game and context.

Religious statements then do not meet Flew’s standard of cognitive meaning, but they still contain emotive meaning. To believe in religious statements affects how one sees and interacts with the world. The emotional attachment a beholder has to their beliefs gives them emotive meaning and separates them from the detached standard of meaning Flew proposes.12 Although both Flew and Hare’s arguments appear to be sound accounts of different ways to perceive belief, religious or otherwise, they both have fundamental problems. To begin with Flew, I agree with Hare’s argument that Flew’s account of religious belief is too strict to account for the complexity of meaning within beliefs. Within the falsification challenge, Flew appears to combine the notions of 9. ‘A certain lunatic is convinced that all dons want to murder him. His friends introduce him to all the mildest and most respectable dons that they can find, and after each of them has retired, they say, ’You see, he doesn’t really want to murder you; he spoke to you in a most cordial manner; surely you are convinced now?’ But the lunatic replies, ’Yes, but that was only his diabolical cunning; he’s really plotting against me the whole time, like the rest of them; I know it I tell you.’ However, many kindly dons are produced, the reaction is still the same’ Hare, 3.

10. Hare, 3.

11. Hare, 4.

12. Hare, 4.

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emotive and cognitive meaning, which makes it unclear what exactly he attempts to criticize about religious belief. As previously addressed, Flew asks, “what would have to happen not merely (morally and wrongly) to tempt but also (logically and rightly) entitle us to say, ‘God does not love us’ or even ‘God does not exist’?”13 The “not merely” clause suggests Flew is looking for an emotive limit to meaning, or a limit of contrary evidence one will allow before changing their beliefs. However, the "but also" clause suggests he is also looking for a cognitive limit, a limit of contrary evidence that actually falsifies the statement for all.14 From this, Flew’s challenge is either too ambiguous, rendering it unanswerable, or too limited, as he seems to propose both limits could be reached by the same standard of meaning of falsification, which even Hare illuminates as false.

A criticism of Hare’s work is that there is a considerable logical difference between some bliks and others. There are pure unfalsifiable bliks, and artificially unfalsifiable bliks. The first includes phrases such as "Everything happens for a reason," as this blik is not falsifiable, nor verifiable, by any states of affairs. Pure bliks provide a means of deciding whether a statement is or is not an explanation.15 However, Hare’s example of the paranoid student is only artificially unfalsifiable, as it can be proved either true or false, but the beholder, in a sense, qualifies the evidence to maintain their blik. From this, one can also consider impure bliks as preferred assertions, as they allow one to choose between possible explanations, rather than decide what is and what is not an explanation. When one then considers religious utterances, they can only affect our explanations by being consistent with some of them and not others.16 Therefore, by Hare’s examples and inclusion of impurity, religious utterances would be impure bliks, which is essentially what Flew criticizes.

Even if one argues that religious utterances are, in fact, pure bliks, the notion that religious beliefs are worldviews and not assertions by Flew’s definition is also problematic. Religions, such as Christianity, and other beliefs make numerous historical assertions that one can falsify. To declare that historical events, such as Christ’s resurrection or if theoretically a don did attempt to kill the paranoid student, are bliks is to, in a way, say that these events did not, nor could they ever 13. Flew, 2.

14. Stephen T. Davis, “Theology, Verification, and Falsification,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 6, no. 1 (1975): pp. 23-39, https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00136997, 26.

15. H. J. Horsburgh, “Mr. Hare on Theology and Falsification,” The Philosophical Quarterly 6, no. 24 (1956): p. 256-259, https://doi.org/10.2307/2216757, 258.

16. Horsburgh, 258.

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be proven, to have objectively happened.

Mitchell’s argument, the last of the symposium, avoids the criticisms of the other two arguments, as he combines both cognitive and emotive meaning, answering both of Flew’s questions about limits in a way that maintains that religious beliefs are proper assertions and explanations, as they are falsifiable and verifiable. Mitchell does this as he breaks down three ways to interpret religious statements. Firstly, there are provisional hypotheses,17 which is how Flew sees religious language. These are like scientific ideas because if they are proven wrong, they should be discarded.

If they are not discarded, then the holder of the idea must be irrational. Mitchell thinks this is an incorrect way of looking at religious language as it speaks only to the detached observer, rather than the emotionally invested believer. Religious beliefs do not belong in the language-game of provisional hypotheses. Something that may make scientific language meaningless, like refusing to allow it to be falsified, might not make religious language meaningless.

Secondly, there are vacuous formulae.18 These are beliefs that never change and can not be proven true or false. This category includes Hare’s notion of bliks, in the impure sense, as people who possess a blik blandly dismiss contradictory evidence.

They do not allow their beliefs to be falsified, and their beliefs are not verifiable—as they have no proof behind their assertions.

This category also contains the “qualified” religious talk Flew attacks. One may redefine their terms and allow exceptions into their assertions to keep them true in every possible scenario. Mitchell agrees with Flew that religious believers sometimes do interpret religious statements in these meaningless ways. However, Mitchell also thinks that these unreasonable religious believers are themselves mistaken in how religious statements have meaning, as they are faults in both faith and logic.19 The third way to interpret religious language is as significant articles of faith.20 Mitchell argues that reasonable religious beliefs fall under this category. These are attitudes of trust that one commits to believing. The Partisan in the parable is committed to trusting the Stranger, the same way religious believers commit to believing in God.21 Believers remain committed to their beliefs despite all the 17. Mitchell, 6.

18. Mitchell, 6.

19. Mitchell, 6.

20. Mitchell, 6.

21. In a time of war in an occupied country, a member of the resistance meets one night a stranger who deeply impresses him. They spend that night together in conversation. The Stranger tells the partisan that he himself is on the side of the resistance–indeed that he is in command of it and urges

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evidence that they may be wrong to see if the contradictory evidence turns out to be mistaken. They deny the falsifying evidence because the proof, the Stranger’s impression, or a powerful religious experience, is too strong of verification for them to give up.

From this, Mitchell’s standard of meaning is what he calls trials of faith,22 which applies both to cognitive and emotive meaning. Mitchell’s argument for cognitive meaning is that reasonable religious beliefs obey the falsification principle. Religious language is falsified every day through the problem of evil, which Flew ignores, and people often lose their faith. Therefore, by Flew’s definition, religious utterances are meaningful assertions and explanations as they can be falsified. Reasonable religious beliefs also obey the verification principle. The empirical evidence of a religious experience is a verification of the belief, and thus, they are not blind faith like in Flew and Hare’s examples. The emotive meaning is the attachment and commitment to maintaining beliefs, which is relative to the language-game concept of an attached believer. Beliefs make a difference in how one lives their life and are deeply personal ways of seeing the world.

Religious believers go through a trial of faith when they suffer the full force of the conflict,23 meaning they personally experience the conflict between their beliefs and the things that happen in the world. Reasonable believers actively struggle to remain committed to their beliefs despite all the contradictory evidence.

In more technical terms, reasonable believers actively struggle to maintain that the empirical experiences that make their assertions verifiable outweigh the evidence that falsifies them. If believers ignore the tension and conflict between what is verifiable and falsifiable, or claim it does not exist, religious language would be cognitively and emotionally meaningless and would not explain anything in the form of assertions and explanations. the partisan to have faith in him no matter what happens. The partisan is utterly convinced at that meeting of the Stranger’s sincerity and constancy and undertakes to trust him. They never meet in conditions of intimacy again. But sometimes the Stranger is seen helping members of the resistance, and the partisan is grateful and says to his friends, ’He is on our side.’ Sometimes he is seen in the uniform of the police handing over patriots to the occupying power. On these occasions, his friends murmur against him: but the partisan still says, ’He is on our side.’ He still believes that, in spite of appearances, the Stranger did not deceive him. Sometimes he asks the Stranger for help and receives it. He is then thankful. Sometimes he asks and does not receive it. Then he says, ’The Stranger knows best.’ Sometimes his friends, in exasperation, say, ’Well, what would he have to do for you to admit that you were wrong and that he is not on our side?’ But the partisan refuses to answer. He will not consent to put the Stranger to the test. And sometimes his friends complain, ’Well, if that’s what you mean by his being on our side, the sooner he goes over to the other side the better’ Mitchell, 5.

22. Mitchell, 5.

23. Mitchell, 5.

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When faced with a trial of faith, there are two options: a) give up on the assertion or b) have faith that there is some explanation, even if one cannot see what it is yet.24 It is important to note here that Mitchell crucially argues that there could come the point where continuing to believe would become meaningless and irrational. A religious believer does not give up on God the first time they experience pain and suffering, but if the pains and sufferings become too great, or the disproof begins to outweigh the proof, continuing to believe in God may appear senseless. If they start qualifying the pain so that their empirical evidence remains heavier than contradictory evidence, then this is a failure both in faith and logic, and they become irrational.25 Thus, Mitchell recognizes that there are emotive and evidential limits to belief.

However, Mitchell’s key point here is that no one can say in advance when the limits will be reached.26 There is no specific thing or event that could make the believer lose his commitment, nor can they imagine what would conclusively falsify their belief. Due to the nature of religious belief, as in it is not a science one can test, people will put off admitting they were wrong for as long as they possibly can—not because they are meaningless, as Flew suggests, but because to the people involved, these significant articles of faith give their lives a certain kind of meaning that is not found in science or a mechanical world, but in the hearts of humankind and how we make sense of the world. One day, perhaps, they will admit they were wrong, but there is no way of knowing when. There is no way of knowing when the contradictory evidence will outweigh the initial verifying experience. It is dependent on the weight of the initial impression, the strength of the relationship between the believer and their belief, and the amount of falsifying evidence one endures.27 Mitchell’s proposal of meaning is not without objections. One of the objections comes from Flew’s concluding responses to the symposium. Flew claims that religious belief gives God attributes that rule out a possible saving explanation.

In Mitchell’s Parable of the Partisan, it is easy to find plausible excuses for the Stranger’s ambiguous behaviour, for the Stranger is a man of limited nature.28 However, God is supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, and the creator of all. One can not say God would help if he knew, or if he could, or that he is not responsible for the wickedness occurring. Henceforth, for Flew, there can be no explanation that 24.

25.

26.

27.

28.

Mitchell, 5.

Mitchell, 6.

Mitchell, 5.

Mitchell, 5.

Flew, 7.

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saves the existence of a loving God. Flew’s objection is valid; however, he ignores the central premise of Mitchell’s standard of meaning. For Mitchell, reasonable religious believers do not set out to understand why God does what he does, and religion is not a matter of making specific excuses. To illustrate, we can look at a non-religious example. Let us say your best friend promised you they would attend an important event, like to be the Best Man or Maid of Honour at your wedding. As they are your best friend, you trust they are going to be there. Day of, they are running late. You may begin generating excuses to explain their tardiness, such as they must bein traffic, or they must have slept in, or you will simply have faith that they will arrive. Since they are your friend and you have trust in them, some waiting is in order. However, eventually, it would be best if you went through with the wedding without them. If you started the wedding with someone else acting in their place, and your friend suddenly arrived with an understandable explanation, you would feel guilty for not trusting them and waiting that bit longer.

Although I also utilized a human example, I hope I illustrated the argument as straightforward and non-contradictory. Reasonable believers who have committed to their beliefs have faith that there is some explanation, even if we currently can not see what it is. Mitchell’s argument is not to say that believers understand, nor qualify God’s ways, simply that they trust in some future verification that proves they were right to have faith.29 Another critique I can imagine critics having about Mitchell’s argument is that it appears to only work for those who experienced a powerful religious experience in which they receive inspiration in believe in God at all. However, although that is the case within the parable itself, I do not think Mitchell would exclude other forms of evidence. The verification of one’s belief very well could be a strong religious experience, such as God appearing to them in a vision like the night with the Stanger, but it could also be testimonial evidence, like being taught religion by others or reading the bible. One’s belief in God could also result from any of the multitudes of ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments proposed by theologians and philosophers.

Similarly, Mitchell’s argument works for many cases, apart from religious belief.

When one considers politics, many believe democracy is a sound system. There are many benefits of democracy, but it also has its cons. Some countries that adopt 29. In Theology, Verification, and Falsification, Stephen Davis also talks about future verification as an adaptation of John Hick’s eschatological verification. Davis, 32.

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democratic systems may prosper, while others may be corrupt. There then would be verifying evidence, whether one learned about democracy or whether they experienced it themselves, as well as falsifying evidence for one’s belief that democracy is a good political system.

Another example is marriage and relationships. One may have an experience with their significant other in which they boldly display a sizeable romantic gesture, which may serve as the verifying proof that they love you. However, one may also just experience loving actions and words. Both would be verifiable experiences for why one has the belief that their partner loves them.

The strength of Mitchell’s argument is that it is an accurate portrayal of how belief works in religion and many other aspects of life. One does not abandon their belief in God at first sight of pain and suffering or give up their belief in democracy after the first sign of corruption—nor does one stop committing to their partner after the first fight. One commits to their belief despite the contradictory evidence because of their initial verifiable experiences, no matter the sort, and their commitment to the idea they believe.

The Theology and Falsification symposium, proposed by Flew and answered by Hare and Mitchell, is an essential discussion about belief. The three symposiasts propose different perspectives on the nature of belief, concerning both the types of meaning they hold and the standard of meaning that must be obtained for beliefs to be reasonable. Flew proposed a standard of falsification for cognitive meaning, arguing that if one attempts to make assertions, they must be falsifiable to be meaningful. Hare, on the contrary, proposed a standard strictly for emotive meaning. For Hare, religious beliefs are not verifiable nor falsifiable assertions; they are bliks that exist before and filter the facts presented. Mitchell, however, recognizes how the prior positions eliminate critical aspects of belief. Beliefs are both cognitively and emotively meaningful. Through the cognitive sense, beliefs must be falsifiable and verifiable to be meaningful assertions and explanations.

The emotive meaning arises from the language-game of one’s commitment to their belief as they hope for future verification. Mitchell calls his standard of meaning a trial of faith–the balancing act between one’s proof and commitment, and the contradictory evidence in the world. Despite the objections to Mitchell’s theory, I believe his argument for how religious belief, or any belief in general, has meaning is the strongest and most satisfactory of the three as it combines both the rational and emotional aspects of human existence.

Bibliography

Ayer, A J.“Critique of Ethics and Theology.” In Language, Truth, and Logic, 63–77. London, UK: Penguin Books, 1990.

Davis, Stephen T. “Theology, Verification, and Falsification.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 6, no. 1 (1975): 23–39. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00136997.

Flew, Antony, Basil Mitchell, and R M Hare. “A Symposium on Theology and Falsification.”

Wayback Machine, September 15, 2009. http://web.archive.org/web/20101124152313/http://brindedcow.umd.edu.

Horsburgh, H. J. “Mr. Hare on Theology and Falsification.” The Philosophical Quarterly 6, no.

24 (1956): 256-259. https://doi.org/10.2307/2216757.

Popper, Karl. “The Problem of Demaration.” In Popper Selections, edited by David Miller, 118– 30. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Hoboken, New Jersey: Blackwell, 2001.

ἀ λ ή θ ε ι α

Cover design by: Eris Donohue Image credit: Dan Flavin, untitled (for Charlotte and Jim Brooks) (2008)