I suggested in a previous post that when Gandhi preached non-violence, his reasoning may have been that it is impossible for a group to continue oppressing another group when that other group is acting in ways that are universally and clearly seen as admirable. I mentioned this idea to Dr. Ori Friedman, and he suggested testing it in a psychological setting. I don't know how this didn't occur to me.
I don't do social psychology, so I doubt I'll ever get around to testing the idea myself. I do love thinking about experimental design, though, and how an idea like this could be tested. And maybe someone will read this and get inspired to look into this question. So here's how I would try to go about it, without having carefully thought any of this through.
I'd start with the individual level first. The line of studies could look something like this:
First, establish that neutral participants think better of people who are exercising active, courageous non-violence (this can be done by telling participants a story about an imaginary situation, showing them a made-up news clip, etc.)
Next, establish that this effect holds even when participants are initially given negative biasing information towards the non-violent group (ie. the same kind of manipulation studies use to invoke feelings of group prejudice. I know that Andy Baron has done this kind of work with kids).
Finally, the neatest thing to do would be a Stanley Milgram-type experiment, where participants are first made negatively predisposed towards a group, are next told of the group's non-violent resistance, and are then given the chance to cause pain (or so they think) to a member of the group (a real live research assistant). The control condition would be participants hurting a member of a group who they were negatively predisposed towards, but who was not described as a non-violent, Gandhi-esque resistor. Of course, this would never pass any ethics committee these days, but a social psychologist could probably come up with a modification that would be more ethical while still getting at the same thing.
I can see problems with these proposals already. How would one know that the non-violent resistor is really being portrayed admirably, and if they are, that the admiration evoked is due only to the description of them as non-violent and courageous, without using words like courageous, which of course evoke admiration inherently. I think there should be a way to design the study so that this is taken care of, but I couldn't be sure until I tried.
Anyway, I hope that for the psychology-minded reading this, you think the idea is interesting. And for those without a background in psychology, I hope it is both interesting and an reasonably accurate snapshot of how studies go from observations and hypotheses about the world, to ideas about human nature, to studies that can be proposed and begin to develop.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
The problem with relativism
Relativism is, broadly, the idea that there are no absolutes within a certain domain. That what can exist is all "relative", depending on the frame or context within which it exists. As the cognitive scientist Jerry Fodor notes, the domains of relativism are many, mainly within the "social" sciences. There is cultural relativism in anthropology, which claims that values are determined uniquely by one's culture. There is relativism in sociology, where epistemic commitments are seen to be a product of class affiliation. And again, in my home discipline of psychology, in "empiricist" theories that claim the mind is infinitely malleable depending on life events and conditions.
What I'm going to argue is not that these theories are wrong for any sort of evidence-based reason, but that maintaining that they are "relativistic" is fundamentally incoherent, even when they are right.
The reason is this: In so far as these theories are scientific -- testable by the scientific method -- they must make systematic predictions. What I mean by systematic, in this case, is "given a set of circumstances or preconditions X, we expect a set of outcomes Y". There is no alternative to this system. Any inquiry is forced to group events into some coherent sets -- for example, differences between "men" and "women", "2-month-old babies" and "5-month-old babies", "electrons" and "protons", Culture A and Culture B, etc. It is impossible to have a science of idiosyncrasies. Even if we were somehow to have a science of one person, for example, "person" is already a grouping, a concept combining, say, a 10-year-old's identity as somehow "the same thing" as a 50-year-old's. I won't belabor this, but it can obviously be taken endlessly further to smaller and smaller scales and groupings.
The problem and the point is that a theory that says, "things are relative, depending on the context", has to specify what the things and the context are. And specifying those necessitates some smudging of the details, so that grouping the individuals can be coherent. In that way, "things" can never be totally "relative", because we are already dealing with abstractions and absolutes -- we want theories that, in the end, make universal statements -- "if the context is A, then the outcome will be B, for all instances of A and B". Relativism, no matter how extreme, still has to deal with universal rules whether it wants to or not. It's the only way to do science. At its best, relativism will provide us with exactly the same universals as non-relativism. Those universals will just have a lot if "if... then"-type rules. And the theory will only be coherent or testable as long as those universals make precise predictions without any further "relativistic" leeway. It wouldn't be science if it said, "Well, it turns out the data don't match my predictions, but... it's all relative anyway"
So imagine you have a simple relativistic theory, and a good one. For example, "Which language people speak depends on which language is spoken by the community in which they are raised". This is a good beginning. If we interpret it reasonably and charitably, it's even true. But the problem is, it's still far from being a theory. What this statement leaves out is what constrains the possibilities. Unless the theorist believes that what counts as "language" in this case is completely random -- anything goes, including monkey screeches, melodies, random flailing of the arms that signifies nothing, etc. -- the onus is still on the theorist to specify what the universals of language are. Why it is, that some children learn Japanese and other children learn English, while no children ever learn languages without syntactic structure, for example, or ones where word-boundaries blur (that is, words are not discrete and separable), or any of other countless possibilities that no one has ever observed and probably can't even imagine.
In other words, any relativistic statement, in order to have scientific meaning, must explain not just how things vary, but why they vary only as they do, and not in some other logically possible way.
This is the killer. In psychology, any empiricist who believes humans start out with a totally blank slate (maybe granting a few general learning mechanisms), must specify how it is that those mechanisms cause us to have the exact kind of minds that we have. Why we think of colors as blue and green instead of grue and bleen, and why we very quickly learn to associate "rabbit" with those hopping animals rather than with the particular configuration the furry limbs have when they're all stuck together the way they are. Similar issues are found in anthropology, sociology, and all the others.
In other words, whether they like it or not, relativistic theories must be theories of universals. In that way, they end up being no different than non-relativistic theories. Maybe non-relativists can say they're interested in what the constraints are for the range of possible things, and relativists are interested in which of the possible things turns out given which sets of conditions. But those are not rivaling perspectives, they're complementary halves of the same whole. And even those relativists will still need to group different circumstances and outcomes into describable sets, in order to provide any coherent explanations. These will generally be in a set of universal "if... then" rules, which can, of course increase in complexity as the analysis proceeds.
What I'm going to argue is not that these theories are wrong for any sort of evidence-based reason, but that maintaining that they are "relativistic" is fundamentally incoherent, even when they are right.
The reason is this: In so far as these theories are scientific -- testable by the scientific method -- they must make systematic predictions. What I mean by systematic, in this case, is "given a set of circumstances or preconditions X, we expect a set of outcomes Y". There is no alternative to this system. Any inquiry is forced to group events into some coherent sets -- for example, differences between "men" and "women", "2-month-old babies" and "5-month-old babies", "electrons" and "protons", Culture A and Culture B, etc. It is impossible to have a science of idiosyncrasies. Even if we were somehow to have a science of one person, for example, "person" is already a grouping, a concept combining, say, a 10-year-old's identity as somehow "the same thing" as a 50-year-old's. I won't belabor this, but it can obviously be taken endlessly further to smaller and smaller scales and groupings.
The problem and the point is that a theory that says, "things are relative, depending on the context", has to specify what the things and the context are. And specifying those necessitates some smudging of the details, so that grouping the individuals can be coherent. In that way, "things" can never be totally "relative", because we are already dealing with abstractions and absolutes -- we want theories that, in the end, make universal statements -- "if the context is A, then the outcome will be B, for all instances of A and B". Relativism, no matter how extreme, still has to deal with universal rules whether it wants to or not. It's the only way to do science. At its best, relativism will provide us with exactly the same universals as non-relativism. Those universals will just have a lot if "if... then"-type rules. And the theory will only be coherent or testable as long as those universals make precise predictions without any further "relativistic" leeway. It wouldn't be science if it said, "Well, it turns out the data don't match my predictions, but... it's all relative anyway"
So imagine you have a simple relativistic theory, and a good one. For example, "Which language people speak depends on which language is spoken by the community in which they are raised". This is a good beginning. If we interpret it reasonably and charitably, it's even true. But the problem is, it's still far from being a theory. What this statement leaves out is what constrains the possibilities. Unless the theorist believes that what counts as "language" in this case is completely random -- anything goes, including monkey screeches, melodies, random flailing of the arms that signifies nothing, etc. -- the onus is still on the theorist to specify what the universals of language are. Why it is, that some children learn Japanese and other children learn English, while no children ever learn languages without syntactic structure, for example, or ones where word-boundaries blur (that is, words are not discrete and separable), or any of other countless possibilities that no one has ever observed and probably can't even imagine.
In other words, any relativistic statement, in order to have scientific meaning, must explain not just how things vary, but why they vary only as they do, and not in some other logically possible way.
This is the killer. In psychology, any empiricist who believes humans start out with a totally blank slate (maybe granting a few general learning mechanisms), must specify how it is that those mechanisms cause us to have the exact kind of minds that we have. Why we think of colors as blue and green instead of grue and bleen, and why we very quickly learn to associate "rabbit" with those hopping animals rather than with the particular configuration the furry limbs have when they're all stuck together the way they are. Similar issues are found in anthropology, sociology, and all the others.
In other words, whether they like it or not, relativistic theories must be theories of universals. In that way, they end up being no different than non-relativistic theories. Maybe non-relativists can say they're interested in what the constraints are for the range of possible things, and relativists are interested in which of the possible things turns out given which sets of conditions. But those are not rivaling perspectives, they're complementary halves of the same whole. And even those relativists will still need to group different circumstances and outcomes into describable sets, in order to provide any coherent explanations. These will generally be in a set of universal "if... then" rules, which can, of course increase in complexity as the analysis proceeds.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Can Gandhi's non-violence work? Part 2
In my post yesterday I tried to find a defensible and reasonable interpretation of Gandhi's doctrine of non-violence, specifically in the most extreme circumstances. I mentioned that I think Gandhi was getting at two points that are often overlooked by his critics, and went into a bit of detail about the first. Today, I'd like to look at the second.
In addition to positing that an oppressive people would always be moved by a virtuous, resistant and non-violent victim, I think Gandhi was also getting at a much more Buddhist/Hinduist benefit to heroic, active non-violence. I group these two traditions because I think that in the context of the following discussion, they basically say the same thing.
Here is another quote from Gandhi about the advantages of using non-violence during the holocaust. "If the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the God-fearing, death has no terror."
The idea Gandhi is getting at is that the length of life (and death itself) does not matter compared to the quality of life. And the quality of life is all about inner spiritual life. A person's satisfaction with his or her own mind and life is flawless when that person behaves with virtue, in accordance with a set of predetermined principles. The idea is really very simple, but I think it is very difficult for us to accept today. After all, I think most of us, myself very much included, would do just about anything to extend the length of our lives (especially if we found out we were dying), but comparatively few of us concern ourselves with whether we are really living in accordance with the principles we think are good, noble and virtuous.
What I find so interesting about this idea is that there is no good way to really argue for it. Whether quality or length of life is more important seems like such a foundational preference -- a premise for many other conclusions and behaviours, but not a consequence of any sort of reasoning itself. The only argument I can think of making in favor of Gandhi's approach is that the Quality view would likely promote greater happiness than the Quantity view. But this is already presupposing that happiness (associated with quality) is more important than quantity, which is really presupposing Gandhi's position in the first place. The logic becomes circular, but I don't see any other way to justify either view yet.
Even if I don't know how to justify which view is "better" (if any), though, it definitely seems to me that Gandhi's view is plausible and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, even if it's pretty foreign to the way most of us "modern Westerners" seem to think these days.
In addition to positing that an oppressive people would always be moved by a virtuous, resistant and non-violent victim, I think Gandhi was also getting at a much more Buddhist/Hinduist benefit to heroic, active non-violence. I group these two traditions because I think that in the context of the following discussion, they basically say the same thing.
Here is another quote from Gandhi about the advantages of using non-violence during the holocaust. "If the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the God-fearing, death has no terror."
The idea Gandhi is getting at is that the length of life (and death itself) does not matter compared to the quality of life. And the quality of life is all about inner spiritual life. A person's satisfaction with his or her own mind and life is flawless when that person behaves with virtue, in accordance with a set of predetermined principles. The idea is really very simple, but I think it is very difficult for us to accept today. After all, I think most of us, myself very much included, would do just about anything to extend the length of our lives (especially if we found out we were dying), but comparatively few of us concern ourselves with whether we are really living in accordance with the principles we think are good, noble and virtuous.
What I find so interesting about this idea is that there is no good way to really argue for it. Whether quality or length of life is more important seems like such a foundational preference -- a premise for many other conclusions and behaviours, but not a consequence of any sort of reasoning itself. The only argument I can think of making in favor of Gandhi's approach is that the Quality view would likely promote greater happiness than the Quantity view. But this is already presupposing that happiness (associated with quality) is more important than quantity, which is really presupposing Gandhi's position in the first place. The logic becomes circular, but I don't see any other way to justify either view yet.
Even if I don't know how to justify which view is "better" (if any), though, it definitely seems to me that Gandhi's view is plausible and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, even if it's pretty foreign to the way most of us "modern Westerners" seem to think these days.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Can Gandhi's non-violence work? Part 1
This thought is not terribly original -- I've seen it elsewhere -- but I'd like to take it a bit further than the discussions I've seen before. I am obviously not a Gandhi scholar, so my treatment of Gandhi's moral and political philosophy will be necessarily cursory. I hope to get the general idea right, since that is the thing that interests me most.
Mahatma Gandhi's famous doctrine of non-violence brought independence to a nation (two nations, really -- India and Pakistan). That alone serves as lasting testament to the fact that non-violence can defeat an oppressive, violent force. But are there limits? Are there times when non-violence simply cannot cause such a force to stop?
Gandhi insisted on non-violence in every case of oppression, making no exceptions based on severity. Living during World War II, he famously said, "The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs." That is a pretty extreme position in favor of non-violence, to say the least. Sounding probably more reasonable, he also wrote, "If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war."
Much has been made of Gandhi's position. Most who hear about it, I think, can't help but scoff. And with good reason.
The obvious reaction is that it couldn't possibly work -- sure, maybe against the British, who were unwilling to kill every Indian in India, but not against the Nazis who were very much willing to kill every Jew in Germany and beyond. The strength of Indian non-violence lay in the bewilderment that it caused the British. The Indians were not dispensable in the eyes of the British -- inferior barbarians, maybe, but useful. The British needed the Indian population as a tireless workforce and revenue stream. The Nazis were in a very different position. They didn't need anything from the Jews other than their deaths.
So, of course, if the Jews had submitted en masse, bravely, defiantly, heroically to their destruction, well... they would have received it.
But I think Gandhi's point goes deeper than the critics have given him credit for. I think Gandhi was arguing two main points. I will discuss the first here, leaving the second for my next post.
The first point boils down to the idea that there can never be public support for a policy of destruction against those who are behaving admirably or virtuously (in the strongest sense of those words). This is what I find particulary interesting and original in Gandhi's thought. What he was positing is the existence of some behaviours -- specifically, the display of spritual strength required for brave, active non-violence in the face of pain and death -- that are essentially universals in evoking admiration. No person of any culture, no matter how oppressive, can view such behaviour without being moved to thinking that oppressing this person is unjustifiable. Certainly, Hitler himself might have been too mad to see it, but what I think Gandhi was implicitly positing is that public support among the Germans would erode despite the Nazi war machine's best efforts.
I don't know if Gandhi was right. I have no context for what life was really like for Germans at that time, and what kind of public sentiment was. I don't know if the fact that the Nazis were much more determined to kill the Jews than the British were to cause any harm to the Indians would have made a difference. It may be that any resistance put up by the Jews, even if effective, would not have reached the German masses since media was so tightly controlled.
But I think despite all that, it's clear that the Jews should have done exactly what Gandhi said. After all, it would have been worth a try. They had no other options. They were being sent to die anyway, and from what we can tell, had no method of effective violent resistance even if they had wanted it. The difference between what happened and what Gandhi advocated is that the Jews were (understandbly, of course) cowed and meek, whereas Gandhi was advocating mass acts of bravery. If one Jew, as I'm sure did happen, offered non-violent defiance he would have certainly been killed immediately. But if hundreds or thousands had acted the same way all at once? I find it harder to say.
I'm going to leave off for now. For the sake of readability, I'll split this long thought into two posts -- the second part should be coming tomorrow.
Mahatma Gandhi's famous doctrine of non-violence brought independence to a nation (two nations, really -- India and Pakistan). That alone serves as lasting testament to the fact that non-violence can defeat an oppressive, violent force. But are there limits? Are there times when non-violence simply cannot cause such a force to stop?
Gandhi insisted on non-violence in every case of oppression, making no exceptions based on severity. Living during World War II, he famously said, "The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs." That is a pretty extreme position in favor of non-violence, to say the least. Sounding probably more reasonable, he also wrote, "If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war."
Much has been made of Gandhi's position. Most who hear about it, I think, can't help but scoff. And with good reason.
The obvious reaction is that it couldn't possibly work -- sure, maybe against the British, who were unwilling to kill every Indian in India, but not against the Nazis who were very much willing to kill every Jew in Germany and beyond. The strength of Indian non-violence lay in the bewilderment that it caused the British. The Indians were not dispensable in the eyes of the British -- inferior barbarians, maybe, but useful. The British needed the Indian population as a tireless workforce and revenue stream. The Nazis were in a very different position. They didn't need anything from the Jews other than their deaths.
So, of course, if the Jews had submitted en masse, bravely, defiantly, heroically to their destruction, well... they would have received it.
But I think Gandhi's point goes deeper than the critics have given him credit for. I think Gandhi was arguing two main points. I will discuss the first here, leaving the second for my next post.
The first point boils down to the idea that there can never be public support for a policy of destruction against those who are behaving admirably or virtuously (in the strongest sense of those words). This is what I find particulary interesting and original in Gandhi's thought. What he was positing is the existence of some behaviours -- specifically, the display of spritual strength required for brave, active non-violence in the face of pain and death -- that are essentially universals in evoking admiration. No person of any culture, no matter how oppressive, can view such behaviour without being moved to thinking that oppressing this person is unjustifiable. Certainly, Hitler himself might have been too mad to see it, but what I think Gandhi was implicitly positing is that public support among the Germans would erode despite the Nazi war machine's best efforts.
I don't know if Gandhi was right. I have no context for what life was really like for Germans at that time, and what kind of public sentiment was. I don't know if the fact that the Nazis were much more determined to kill the Jews than the British were to cause any harm to the Indians would have made a difference. It may be that any resistance put up by the Jews, even if effective, would not have reached the German masses since media was so tightly controlled.
But I think despite all that, it's clear that the Jews should have done exactly what Gandhi said. After all, it would have been worth a try. They had no other options. They were being sent to die anyway, and from what we can tell, had no method of effective violent resistance even if they had wanted it. The difference between what happened and what Gandhi advocated is that the Jews were (understandbly, of course) cowed and meek, whereas Gandhi was advocating mass acts of bravery. If one Jew, as I'm sure did happen, offered non-violent defiance he would have certainly been killed immediately. But if hundreds or thousands had acted the same way all at once? I find it harder to say.
I'm going to leave off for now. For the sake of readability, I'll split this long thought into two posts -- the second part should be coming tomorrow.
To start
I've never liked blogs. So, of course, I've created one.
The purpose of this space is to provide a venue for thoughts and analysis on the topics that interest me most. Generally, that will mean some blend of psychology or cognitive science, and politics. But if my only goal was to express my thoughts, I'd sing in the shower. What I'm really interested in is starting discussions. I hope that the things I think about are of general interest, not only to those involved or interested in science, but to anyone who enjoys critical thinking and amicable debate. I hope that you will find a lot to agree and disagree with in my future posts. I hope that I can make you think about something new, or in a different way, and that you find it useful and fun. And I hope that through your comments, you will do the same for me.
The purpose of this space is to provide a venue for thoughts and analysis on the topics that interest me most. Generally, that will mean some blend of psychology or cognitive science, and politics. But if my only goal was to express my thoughts, I'd sing in the shower. What I'm really interested in is starting discussions. I hope that the things I think about are of general interest, not only to those involved or interested in science, but to anyone who enjoys critical thinking and amicable debate. I hope that you will find a lot to agree and disagree with in my future posts. I hope that I can make you think about something new, or in a different way, and that you find it useful and fun. And I hope that through your comments, you will do the same for me.
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