Pragmatic Progressive Ethics and Penny-wise Issues

by Gary Berg-Cross

The observation of being penny-wise but pound foolish probably covers lots of example of poor reasoning, some of it public that misses the big picture because of things like niggling adherence to narrowly interpreted dogma. We don’t conduct witch trials anymore, although there is still a non-enforced, minority belief that the devil is abroad and the anti-Christ may be with us.  It is reassuring to observe that we’ve slowly come to the realization that religious beliefs, such as from the Hebrew Bible, change as our knowledge and understanding of reality advances. Religious prescriptions, such as women’s rights or the inherent evilness of people, are not anchored in granite; and thus do not provide an ethical basis for establishing just & durable laws. Instead a good portion of society has come to understand that ethics and morality can be and are best

separated from religion. There is a pragmatic element to laws which are based on experience with lessons than come to be rationalized and mutually accepted.  These are then empirical, rational and institutionally vetted beliefs that in turn ground ethics and morality. As Ron Lindsay (A featured speaker at our regional WASHcon15 in Lynchburg, VA., October 2-4, 2015.) put it in Future Bioethics: OvercomingTaboos, Myths, and Dogmas  we want 

"a well-reasoned, pragmatic approach" with substance.

One might talk about this in terms of pragmatic ethics , a theory of normative, progressive philosophical ethics going back to ethical pragmatists, like John Dewey. The idea is that some societies have progressed morally in a way that is similar to scientific progress. Progress is based on inquiry into testing ideas.  Is no fault divorce a good idea?  Let’s test it and if it proves useful future generations can refine, build on or replace is as social principle.

So as we still find enemies enough and have institutional cruelty in some areas of society there is preponderance of pragmatic sense and we’ve seen some cultural progress on a large scale.  One example is growing acceptance of gay marriage.  But bucking the trend are some penny-unwise spots of resistance on very narrow symbolic grounds provided by a blend of religious, emotional and ideological roots. 

In the gay marriage case it is some free floating belief in the idea of the “sanctity” of marriage. Exhibit A might be from fundamentalist Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis (she had served a deputy role in that office for many years) who pitches a penny-narrow definition of a religious, civil right. Indeed the Davis family has a long history in Rowan County, Kentucky.  She ran her election campaign to replace her mother who was Rowan County Clerk before her.  Among Kim’s arguments for the office was efficiency - the public needed a seamless transition from mom Davis and Kim could provide uninterrupted services including for things like marriage licenses. This sounds ironic now, but daughter Davis was (narrowly) elected in 2014 to be County Clerk.

Now in office, rather than keeping her “civil (religious freedom) rights” to herself, she seems to feel privileged as a public official to pick and choose from ancient prescriptions as her guide to public behavior.  This seems surprising since she was elected to a public, secular office she know well and there are laws governing behavior. We expect that public officials will understand that to operate efficiently we have a pragmatic, modifiable Constitution that is not based on faith this side of the Enlightenment.  Our founders themselves realized that basing laws and governmental practices on religious beliefs would be ultimately unworkable at the public level. But Kim’s penny foolishness, like others, anchors itself in frozen, fundamentalist ethical judgement on things like marriage.  And as Ron Lindsey points out they can defensively externalize their own real dogmatism to attribute righteousness on others:

"Any attempt by humans to control and shape their lives in ways not previously contemplated by some religious tradition results in the claim that we are trying to 'play God.'"

Projection may not be the only psychological process going on here. Pragmatic agreements take time, effort and compromise.  They require "thinking slow" and critically and taking many things into account.  It is not at all playing God to do the hard work and getting agreement. So one suspects that selective “articles of faith” provide an unreasoned rationalization for "believer's"  distaste for things just can’t relate to and don’t like. It’s part of the take back America and “making America great again” slogan we hear as part of the cultural wars.

Unfortunately articles of faith, such as the earlier belief in witches, provide ready-made, emotion-laden explanations rather than reasoned one for when “bad” things happen in the new America. Recently we had Bill O’Reilly explain away the phenomena of mass shootings. It’s not guns or mental illness he argued but atheism. This taps into a cauldron of witchy beliefs common among fundamentalists and perhaps Kim— that morality derives from religion. It follows that: "Bible good", "atheists bad", since they lack any real basis for ethics or morality and live empty lives in pursuit of pleasure in this world.

Not all religious folk are like that and at least think through what is ethical for them and could step aside if religious values kept them from doing their jobs.  United Church of Christ's Rev. Emily C. Heath described how she handled the dilemma of private belief vs public service. She decided not to apply for a job with the Federal Bureau of Prisons because she of the death penalty, which went against her religious beliefs. As she observed:

"Religious liberty is guaranteed in this country. But that does not mean that every job needs to bend to your particular interpretation of your faith....If you really believe doing your job is violating your faith, then stepping aside would be a small price to pay for the love of the Gospel." 

But, unfortunately a rational stepping-aside approach is not what we see as faith intrudes into our civil processes.

You could hear more pragmatic takes from the WASHcon15 speakers:

·                     Ron Lindsay, Center for Inquiry President and CEO , 

·                     Julien Musolino, author and scholar 

·                     Tom Flynn, Executive Director Council for Secular Humanism 

·                     Dr. Andy Thomson, author and psychiatrist

·                     Dr. Jason D. Heap, United Coalition of Reason Executive Director , and 

·                     Linda LaScola, author and researcher .

Searching for the Real Hannah Arendt -Her Life & Thoughts, a movie version

by Gary Berg-Cross

During a recent trip to Europe a friend recommended German director Margarethe von Trotta's new film Hannah Arendt. It’s a look at a portion of the life of philosopher & historical-political theorist Hannah Arendt. A secularized, agnostic, German Jew & refugee from Nazism Arendt settled in New York to lecture and write. In the 50s she wrote on "The Origins of Totalitarianism."  In the 60s she covered the war crimes trial of the Nazi transport chief Adolf Eichmann for The New Yorker.  Trotta’s new movie, with Arendt as the protagonist flashed through DC theatres before I had a chance to see it, but the DVD was released recently and is available from Netflix.

The movie is interesting on several dimensions.  It tries to deal with an intellectual life, personal and world history as well as related controversy. As a film it is challenging to see the portrayal of thinking, skeptical musing along with reluctant understanding covered within a biopic frame. Along the movie we see long trains of thoughts punctuated by rather pointed arguments.

Coming out of a Hegelian tradition layered under Martin Heidegger’s Existentialism and her own efforts to reconcile reasoned and cultural understanding, there is much to infer going on below the surface of facial expressions.  This is alluded to sometimes in flashbacks and group debates, but the film’s main device is to show things through Arendt penchant for questioning the conventional wisdom of the times. In particular it is what she sees and tries to understand at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. .She worries that there is a show trial aspects using as a frame crimes against a people, the Jews, rather than a crime against humanity which she sees as the relevant concept. Slowly she develops a counter narrative to the trial’s frame.

At the trial Eichmann adopts a "Nuremberg-style defense" which argues that he was only following orders from a maximum leader. He didn’t know any more than that people were being moved.  He was disinterested and thus could not possibly be charged with war crimes. The man that Arendt sees thinking (in contrast to seeing her thinking about what he is saying)  in some robotic way (shown in black and while clips from the actual trial) is not that a raving, power-centric sociopath with special goals. Instead she sees a hollowed out person who speaks like a bureaucrat. He is more of a clown or an amoral careerist playing by rules with a system and uninterested in asking questions. Honestly this portion of the film had me thinking of plausible deniability mixed in with George W. Bush and friends and the run up to and execution of the Iraq War.

To Hannah Eichmann is a nobody who seems frightfully conformist & normal. This is the result, she speculates, as part of a de-humanizing and anti-intellectual aspect of modern life with dire consequences.  As a person who sees special virtues in reasoning she is horrified and fears future atrocities if civic humanism and ciritical thinking is not restored and emphasized.  The horrendous consequences passively following orders without reason leads to a situation that she calls "the banality of evil."   

Much of the latter part of the film concerns the backlash to her 5 part series in the New Yorker and the subsequent book on that banality.  Along the way we get to know more about her values and how she frames her life.  We see the consequences of various criticisms such as defending Eichmann by trying to understand him, disrespecting the Jewish victims and not defending her tribe, the Jews.  The film nicely shows and implies points on both sides of the argument, her strengths as a critical thinker and her weaknesses in not always applying that same critical thinking – perhaps due to the brittleness of being too abstractly philosophical. You can imagine the type of criticism she took for her critique of what she called a “cooperative” European Jewish leadership that often worked with the Nazis.  To them (and many of us looking back) there was some hope of saving as many Jews as possible by accommodation. To Arendt, it was an enabling capitulation reached by an absence of perspective and a central value for civic humanism in their reasoning.

A strong point of criticism was her apparent lack of self-identification with nations, cultures, or faiths. These are not the primary foundations for Arendt as shown in this portion of a letter not shown in the film, but implied in her stances:

“this kind of love for the Jews would seem suspect to me, since I’m Jewish myself….. We would both agree that patriotism is impossible without constant opposition and critique. In this entire affair I can confess to you one thing: the injustice committed by my own people naturally provokes me more than injustice done by others.”

Critical thinking covered in portions of her letters are used as dialog in the film with a central one being an exchange with Zionist Gershom Scholem. The film has a dear friend, stand-in character for Scholem, named Kurt Blumenfeld.  Their debates are used to show the destruction of some of Arendt’s great friendship due to political-philosophical differences. In a letter to Arendt the real Scholem wrote (in 1963) that “In the Jewish tradition there is a concept, hard to define and yet concrete enough, which we know as Ahabath Israel, or Love for the Jewish people.’ In you, dear Hannah, as in so many intellectuals who came from the German left, I find no trace of this.”

Arendt response to Scholem is covered as movie dialog and seemed to me a central point of her character as shown in the movie:

“How right you are that I have no such love, and for two reasons: first, I have never in my life “loved” some nation or collective — not the German, French or American nation, or the working class, or anything of that kind.  Indeed I love ‘only’ my friends and am quite incapable of any other kind of love.”

The film nicely exposes Arendt’s relations with a network of friends who largely abandon her with exceptions like Mary McCarthy, who is deliciously portrayed.  A paradox glimpsed is her unchanging devotion to mentor Martin Heidegger, who was Rector at Freiburg in the 34 where he instituted the Hitler salute, and collaborated in the persecution of Jewish students and faculty-members including his own mentor. Interestingly the

argument is that he saved some Jews by such accommodations – which seems to be of a type of what Jewish leaders were trying.  Arendt accepts this for her mentor, but not other leaders. At Freiburg Heidegger in 1934 told the student body that “the Führer and he alone is the present and future German reality and its law.” It is an unexplored paradox that Arendt had the temerity to wave away as a minor weakness. After the war in a birthday address broadcast on West German radio Arendt explains Heidegger’s Nazism as an “escapade,” a mistake, which happened only because the thinker naïvely “succumbed to the temptation . . . to ‘intervene’ in the world of human affairs.”  What conclusion does she take from Heidegger’s behavior?  Well she seems to say “the thinking ‘I’ is entirely different from the self of consciousness.” And so Heidegger’s thought cannot be contaminated by the actions of the mere man.

Whew!!  Now there is a separation that raised moral issues of responsibility. Where did critical thinking go when a friend, lover,and great man was involved?  Some blind spots remain almost irresistibly seductive for intellectuals of all magnitudes. And that is perhaps part of the movie’s message, but made quietly in contrast to the big dialogic arguments.

On the plus side, if you can get over her blindness for great thinkers, we see in the movie some of her important insights in lectures to admiring students at the New School.  Part of it is a warning about the danger that comes from some meta-belief, some idea that humans can "know" in some permanent or absolute way what is an ultimate "good" or is “right.” She fears ideologies that define some fixed course of future human history rather than thinking through it pragmatically in context – an approach that she might share with John Dewey. This belief in a God or Grand Leader view she associated with religious fanatics and violent revolutionaries who accept using a necessary evil in the pursuit of desirable ends. Her counter to this was an evolutionary type of change she called revolution. This idea of "revolution" she reserved for identifying fundamental changes in human ways of thinking and relating which she associates with modernity.  It is interesting to know that she speculated that this revolution had a secular form, whereby we humans are slowly freeing ourselves from long-established fears, often though violence and power from cultural-national-religious myths.

Neutral Monism

By Gary Berg-Cross

My education was a bit deficient so I don’t remember running into the idea of neutral monism as part of my training in Psychology and the questions of world materialism and mind idealism.  A new book by Thomas Nagel is provocatively entitle:is provociisi “Mindand Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False.” It features a skeptical take on materialism, but a naturalistic and not theistic alternative. Nagel is well known for an interesting and influential 1974 paper called "What is it like to be a bat?" He used the bat view of the world to argue that phenomenological facts about consciousness are not so obviously reducible to physical facts. In his new book he argues that lack of progress in materialistically explaining  suggests he is right in rejecting naïve materialist explanations.  Early on Nagel defines materialism succinctly as follows:
 

Materialism is the view that only the physical world is irreducibly real, and that a place must be found in it for mind, if there is such a thing.  This would continue the onward march of physical science, through molecular biology, to full closure by swallowing up the mind in the objective physical reality from which it was initially excluded. (p 37)

I’m not convinced by Nagel’s anti-materialist arguments about the irreducibility of mind rather than matter, although I doubt reductionist approaches that try to explain everything in reductionist concepts. I like evolutionary explanations for the emergence of cognition and the related concept of consciousness.  But I did find the discussion of neutral monism stimulating, if only because I had missed its presence in thinkers I had studied. I also appreciated Nagel's conversational style and in Mind and Cosmos and his frank admission that his aim "is not so much to argue against reductionism as to investigate the consequences of rejecting it". This blog is not so much about that as a some intro to neutral monism.

Thoma

See search results for this

Are you an author? Learn about Author CentralAs covered in the Wikipedia entry neutral monism is the philosophical/metaphysical view that:

 the mental and the physical are two ways of organizing or describing the same elements, which are themselves "neutral," that is, neither physical nor mental. This view denies that the mental and the physical are two fundamentally different things. Rather, neutral monism claims the universe consists of only one kind of stuff, in the form of neutral elements that are in themselves neither mental nor physical. These neutral elements might have the properties of color and shape, just as we experience those properties. But these shaped and colored elements do not exist in a mind (considered as a substantial entity, whether dualistically or physicalistically); they exist on their own.

It’s an exciting idea of continuity of reality rather than dichotomy and some faint versions of it were quietly posed in works by some of my favorite philosopher – James, Russell and Dewey as cited. 

OK, it wasn’t just my education. The ideas were probably too subtle for me to grasp when I dashed over their discussion of mind-body dualism. William James, for example, followed Peirce in developing Pragmatism as a way of getting beyond dualist debates on realistic materialism and idealism. 

According to an easy summary and readable source by David Pears (answers.com):

 the philosophy of mind adopted by Russell in his middle period was neutral monism, which denies that there is any irreducible difference between the mental and the physical and tries to construct both the mental world and the physical world out of components which are in themselves neither mental nor physical but neutral. He adopted this theory because he believed that there was no other way of solving the problems that beset his earlier dualism (see Russell's philosophy of mind: dualism). The book in which he developed the theory, The Analysis of Mind (1921), is an unusual one. The version of neutral monism defended in it is qualified in several ways and it is enriched with ideas drawn from his reading of contemporary works on behaviourism and depth psychology. The result is not entirely consistent, but it is interesting and vital especially where it is least consistent.

John Dewey followed James in seeing more continuity between mind and brain than a gulf. Like many my brief exposure to philosophy courses left me somewhere in the pragmatic camp with a healthy respect for reality-based materialism as the hull hypothesis. Dewey account of phenomena like intelligence does have a naturalistic basis that integrates biology & psychology as does Nagels’ new work.  But one is surprised to see have non-reductionist subjects of intentions and communication ala social psychology as front and center in Dewey’s new view. It is interesting to bump into some of these thinker’s metaphysical struggles to reconceptualize our view of nature to resolve the issues, even if one does not follow into a form of panpsychism with mind and consciousness everywhere and everytime in the universe. 

Images

 

Nagel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Nagel

Mind-Body Dualism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dualism-vs-Monism.png

Something Monism: http://telicthoughts.com/category/philosophy/

What we can learn from David Noise’s Revisiting John Dewey's God.

By Gary Berg-Cross
In the recent blog There is no Alliance Between Liberal Churches and Secularists,and Don't Try to Blame This on New Atheists Hos makes a point by referencing and quoting from David Niose’s, ( president of the American Humanist Association) Nonbeliever Nation.
I will quote below from an earlier 2009 article by Noise called Revisiting John Dewey's God. I think this better captures the complexity of the issues and puts the failure of secular humanist to thrive in context. Take this one small part from the larger quote as an example:

The semantic possibilities with humanism are innumerable, just as the semantic debates are so tiring to most of us, but the one point that most humanists should concur with is the importance of encouraging openness about atheist/humanist identity and beliefs. Many humanists adamantly insist that they are in fact religious, and that is indeed their right, but all should stand behind those who openly declare that they simply aren’t religious.

We can probably agree here, but note this is one of freedom to say you are not a believer is not the same as advocating a focus on attacking religion to the exclusion of promoting humanism. Noise makes a point about people not “shunning atheistic rhetoric in public discourse.“ And we can probably agree here, after don’t you see such language on this blog? It is more of a type – this is what I believe in, rather than “you are silly to believe in anything else.” Those “semantic possibilities” again to use Noise’s phrase.
I like the Noise article because it includes the unintended consequence of Dewey naturalistic humanists strategy regarding religious language – “ humanists simply needed to wait patiently, focusing attention perhaps on timely social and political issues but letting the religious landscape progress on its own.
As Niose says “none of ….the effects of his approach should have been foreseeable to him. You can read below about this and his analysis of what happened and what Dewey would approve of now. Much of this is consistent with the snippets of history I proved on post WWII American and its turn away from intellectualism.
So with that here is the full section of the quote:

But forthrightness isn’t the issue here, because the real problem with Dewey’s zealous usage of religious language is not the underlying intent but the effect. If even atheists were shunning atheistic language and labels in favor of traditional religious dressing, then clearly the real winner was traditional religion. Dewey, as spokesman for naturalistic humanists, established the norm that still stands today in the United States—religious language is condoned and viewed favorably, whereas atheistic language and identity are shunned.

In Dewey’s defense, none of this should be interpreted as suggesting that the effects of his approach should have been foreseeable to him, and in fact there were good reasons in Dewey’s time to believe that religious progress was leading society in the direction of naturalism. If so, humanists simply needed to wait patiently, focusing attention perhaps on timely social and political issues but letting the religious landscape progress on its own. Given the rich intellectual atmosphere and remarkable scientific advances of the times, Dewey and his contemporaries understandably saw little need to publicize atheism or tend to its public image. A more subtle naturalism complemented them, while also serving as what appeared to be a proper incubator for the religious views that they expected would eventually grow more prominent.

But as all humanists today know, a massive trend towards humanism did not occur by the end of the twentieth century. Just three decades after Dewey’s death, the Moral Majority had emerged as a powerful political force, born-again Christianity was flexing its political muscle, and organized humanism was unable to mount any serious resistance. We soon saw the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, and of course the election (if we use the term loosely) of George W. Bush, the darling of the religious right. Religious conservatism has thrived in modern America, enjoying enormous wealth, great numbers of followers, and significant stature as a political demographic.

Perhaps more significant than the emergence of religious conservatism in the latter decades of the twentieth century is the relative absence of organized humanism as a political force during those same years. In fact, even today the word “humanism” is rarely used in public discourse and few Americans can define it. Moreover, though atheism has captured some public attention in recent years, the general image of atheists has remained very poor. Hence, while the religious right was resurrecting itself, humanism and atheism were making little progress.

To attribute these disastrous events solely to the overuse of religious rhetoric by early twentieth-century humanists would be to oversimplify phenomena that are in fact quite complex, but surely today’s organized humanists must reconsider all aspects of the strategies use by prior generations. Whatever those strategies were, they obviously didn’t work. As such, any fair analysis would question the wisdom of validating religious rhetoric while simultaneously shunning atheistic rhetoric in public discourse.

Clearly, those who embrace a naturalistic lifestance should be able to declare as such without fear of being ostracized, vilified, or scorned. To the extent that American culture still frowns upon such openness, a cultural shift is needed. Nonbelievers should be part of the landscape, capable of being open about their views without suffering repercussions or limitations. Open nonbelievers should be viable candidates for public office, respected in public ceremonies, and seen for what they are—valuable contributors to society. The Dewey approach, while no doubt helping to promote liberalism generally, didn’t achieve this.

This doesn’t mean that many of us won’t sometimes use religious language. (See Neil deGrasse Tyson’s defense of the term Godspeed in his article in the September/October Humanist.) The semantic possibilities with humanism are innumerable, just as the semantic debates are so tiring to most of us, but the one point that most humanists should concur with is the importance of encouraging openness about atheist/humanist identity and beliefs. Many humanists adamantly insist that they are in fact religious, and that is indeed their right, but all should stand behind those who openly declare that they simply aren’t religious. Surely even those who identify as “religious humanists” (and many naturalists do) would enjoy seeing a candidate for public office openly declare, “I’m not very religious.” And even those who follow the Dewey standard by using the term “God” in a naturalistic sense would surely smile at seeing an open atheist elected to office.

The biggest fear of the religious right is not abortion on demand or the end of faith-based initiatives, but the emergence of openly nontheistic Americans as a respectable demographic recognized as such by the public, the media, and public office holders. This can only happen if secular Americans unite—whether they be humanists, atheists, agnostics, or some other classification—as decent citizens who embrace a naturalistic worldview. Being a man of empiricism who valued learning from experience, John Dewey would no doubt approve.”

No doubt….You may have seen Noise’s article “9 Great Nonbelievers In U.S. History” John Dewey he lists as #5.

Image credits:

Noise: http://www.meetup.com/humanistfellowship/events/64995092/
Non Believer Nation: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2011/12/20/future-book-alert-nonbeliever-nation/

A Philosopher for our Times - John Dewey

By Gary Berg-Cross

John Shook will be talking Saturday Dec. 7^th at the WASH MDC chapter about "The Psychology of Religion, the Sociology of Theology, and the Humanist Strategic Response." As part of this we are likely to hear a bit about John Dewey and Pragmatism as evidenced by his recent book, John Dewey's Philosophy of Spirit by John R. Shook and James A. Good, published by Fordham University Press, in 2010.

John has woven together the threads of some of Dewey philosophical concepts and values into a poem.

A Philosopher's Faith
Inspired by John Dewey

My person returns to unwind all its threads,
Woven by language into the habits of heads;
An old wearied head must bow down one final eve,
But my lively thought shines in cloth I helped to weave.

Your gift by my leave is but some seeds yet to grow,
Whose value was found in times of need long ago;
Sow all of these seeds in our vast garden with care,
Protect and defend the greater harvest to share.

To view such swift change, see truths melt under new suns,
To watch how scared souls kept on refining their guns;
My nation was home despite such strife with no cease,
My freedom was here while humbly searching for peace.

By trial did I live, by more trial find my thought’s worth,
My death you will get if you conceive no new birth;
No life without doubt, for the best fail now and then,
No rest for my faith, that each new day tests again.

--John Shook

It’s fair to say that I’m a fan or John Dewey’s life and thoughts. I was dimly aware of him as one of America's premier "public intellectuals,". I had run into philosophic and pragmatic influence on progressive education, which served as a testing ground for some of his psychological-philosophical thinking.Some of that was readily available

“It was no accident”, he observed in Philosophy of education (see Middle works of John Dewey 1912-13, “that like himself many great philosophers had taken a keen interest in the problems of education because there was ‘an intimate and vital relation between the need for philosophy and the necessity for education.’ If philosophy was wisdom, a vision of ‘the better kind of life to be led’, then consciously guided education was the praxis of the philosopher. ‘If philosophy is to be other than an idle and unverifiable speculation, it must be animated by the conviction that its theory of experience is a hypothesis that is realized only as experience is actually shaped in accord with it. And this realization demands that man’s dispositions be made such as to desire and strive for that kind of experience.’ The shaping of dispositions might take place in various institutions, but in modern societies the school was the most crucial, and as such it was an indispensable arena for the shaping of a philosophy into a ‘living fact’ “(Dewey, 1912-13, p. 298, 306-7 quoted in JOHN DEWEY (1859-1952) by Robert B. Westbrook).

My formal education didn’t include much of Dewey’s thinking but his unifying concept critiquing the simple Reflex Arc concept. In his "Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" (1896) paper, Dewey advanced a Functional School of Psychology by integrating his early Hegelianism with William James' recent take on evolutionary naturalism. Dewey's critique argues made the point that the idea of a stimulus based reflex arc account of human action fails because it contains an apparent logical paradox based on physical-mental dualism. What really is needed is an intentional level of analysis including feedback as the R of response affects the environment and changes the stimulus situation - see Figure on the left).

An "explanatory" account of animal or human action, he argues, needs to include this larger, intentional unit of analysis, which reconceptualized sensori-motor coordination.

Thus he added a cognitive, coordinating aspect that transcended and reformed old dualistic theories. A more thoughtful reflex arc provided the space and structure to reconceptualize stimulus-response behavior into a cognitive theory of habit. It emphasized active conceptualization and adaptive reconstruction as part of learning, an idea pursued in his experimental educational endeavors.

As a graduate student dating a Teacher’s College student at Columbia I got a bit closer to Dewey, whose name I could see along with other famous educators on engraved on the building. I had time later in life to select one of Dewey’s works as vacation reading and there I discovered that Dewey’s middle and later books were all on topics of interest to me (How we think ,1910, Democracy and education, 1916, Experience and Nature, 1925 etc.).

It was only more recently that I learned enough to see Dewey life and progression as a whole and understand how his early work and teaching in Psychology (e.g. pushing social theory beyond an instincts explanation) became an adjunct to his philosophy and work on broader public problems. His reconstruction idea for philosophy reflected his own life’s journey. When asked if he would update a book for a 2^nd edition he was known it say, “it will be a different book.” His ideas were always evolving.

Coming from an idealist background of Kant and Hegel, Dewey intellectual life was tempered by the pragmatist influence of Charles Peirce and William James. Trained in emerging experimental psychology Dewey constructed a natural philosophy in which vague concepts of mind were forged into more defined cognitive models. In these human thought was understood as instrumental practical problem-solving, which advances incrementally by testing rival hypotheses against experience in order to achieve the "warranted assertability" that grounds coherent action.

Dewey continually updated to his ideas in a search for truth and progress. The process of inquiry was central to his stance addressing the problems of society that consumed him. We can also say that he provided many good ideas to the modern Secular Humanism movement along with scientific/pan-objectiveness. In the 50s his voice could still be heard on cultural controversies and Dewey still provides a good model for the combined role of philosophy and philosophy to address the larger problems of society. Updated psychological models of human bias are one type of experimental result that Dewey might have appreciated and used to guide coherent action to make us a better society.

Transparency and TCamp: Shining a Little Light into Dark Corners

There is a natural curiosity in most of us to know how things work. There is a joy in having mystery solved and its nature revealed. Figuring out the “why and how of things” is part of the charm of childhood and extends into adulthood. Understanding the clear nature of natural things was a central goal of the Enlightenment. The Encyclopedists made a start on organizing the scientific profession and that’s why they might have enjoyed our current state of knowledge. I’m sure they would have enjoyed the knowledge available at a site like: http://www.howstuffworks.com/. Building on the 17^th century revolution science has done a pretty good job of shining some light on natural phenomena. As John Dewey noted “Revelation” is an ongoing process. Scientific advances like Darwinian evolution reveal the world to us. This continues to pull back the curtain on some deep mysteries of how and why things are as they are.

“The question of why anything exists is the most awkward that philosophy can raise- and Revelation alone provides the answer. “— John Dewey

Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature and Other Philosophical Works (1753/4), ed. D. Adams (1999), Section

But when it comes to understanding how our society (and its politics) actually functions may things are unrevealed –economics included. In part this is because the objects of study are subjects themselves and have to participate to help understanding. When the subjects of study are powerful they can make understanding difficult. If they are not interested in understanding as an obvious good then can spin a tale and refuse to open things up. Why should The Prince show how they influence events? This side of Machiavelli it can still be a sensitive and shocking topic. In his blog “PEARL of Great Price: Public Education and Religious Liberty" Edd Doerr (http://secularhumanist.blogspot.co/2011/05/pearl-of-great-price-public-education.html) noted how the non-transparent American Federation of Children (AFC) group works to defund public education and for channeling public funds to sectarian/private schools using vouchers and tuition tax credits. In actually they are one of several fronts for the infamous Koch Brothers as well as the DeVos family (of Amway fame) interests. This is just one of many covert operations that seek a more conservative, religious society.

The workings of business, government and their related doings are also often opaque. Sunlight is not what some in these institutions want across the board. That is why there are now a range of transparency organizations that shed light on dark areas of society. Transparency International, for example, is one civil society organization engaged in the fight against corruption across the globe - http://www.transparency.org/. One tool it uses is a Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) which was launched in 1995, to put a spotlight on international corruption. The CPI ranks almost 200 countries by their perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys. See http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi

In the US the battle over transparency and the effort to open window into how political things work is heating on around political influence -such things as having companies seeking federal contracts influencing the contract possibilities through political contributions. The Washington Post recently reported that a White House budget official will testify May 12th at a joint congressional hearing to explain a draft proposal to require company disclose of political contributions. Public disclosure of contributions seems reasonable, but apparently 21 House Republican members (including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor & Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy) have a problem. They saw a leaked draft order by President Obama forcing federal contractors to disclose their political donations and quickly signed a letter condemning this form of transparency. Officials have been asked testify at the May 12^th hearing which they are calling “Politicizing Procurement: Would President Obama’s Proposal Curb Free Speech and Hurt Small Business?” Perhaps they see it as the administration counter to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision - which freed up endless corporate (yes even foreign) donations to support political campaigns. If so I think an executive order for more sunlight on political and electoral process is timely. Many people feel that democracy has been hijacked by a hybrid of corporate interests, their lobbyists and pliable policymakers/officials. As a result policymaking is driven by whatever vested interests have the best planted operatives and tacit agreements supported by big pocket strategies to manipulate public opinion. What can we do to recover more of a real democracy of free interests? Now is a time to find practical steps to reclaim popular democracy so that it once again centes on what is best for our society in the long term. Well transparency into the way the corporate-lobby-political alliance works is one step. I was actually quite surprised to hear words arguing for such transparency on the PBS Masterpiece Theatre’s South Riding show. South Riding describes England’s 1930 era debates over the need for, and efficacy of, public works. In particular South Riding describes the desperate need for new roads and hospitals, schools and maternity clinics. These became progressive goals and resulting in conflict between old and new, especially between a traditional rural lifestyle built on personal relations, and a new social organization created by bigger government trying to solve problems. But government also brings an impersonal bureaucratic style mixed with more democratic processes. As one character favoring a new approach says of a conservative – “I dislike, I oppose everything he stands for — feudalism, patronage, chivalry, exploitation."

We are beyond the ‘30s memory of feudalism but our economic woes have stirred the political pot anew. In the ‘30s FDR pursued public works programs, but people also called for more government transparency to understand what was happening. This is stirring again.

Transparency then and now seems very American and democratic, since it helps hold lawmakers (and their corporate backers) accountable for their actions. It was important then and necessary now and should be welcomed because transparency comprehensively affects civic life. People are interested in a range of processes from how their money is spent on road to what drives legislative priorities and spending). Transparency combines with other activities like regulation and might help avoiding another round of bank meltdowns. Federally insured institutions should be required to hold more reserves. In general a good citizens needs to be informed in a democracy. For example we could use better transparent into the nature holdings and risky, leveraged dealings.

There have been attempts to legislate this, but there are counter efforts to block such transparency. One might think that attempts to rollback transparency, Freedom of info laws and block greater government transparency should bring progressives & tea party folks together. Indeed there has been some massive citizen backlash following such attempts. Nonetheless, we see powers in the House fighting to keep the campaign donations of federal contractors essentially secrete. Which suggests that we need a sustained effort to keep the degree of transparency we now have and indeed move forward with this as part of a more open and participatory society.

WikiLeaks is one effort to show the way things work. It’s threatening so rather than face an embarrassing after the fact disclosure, government and businesses should be working to balance the transparency and security tradeoff and throw in some development of ethics. One group that is helping move constructively is the Sunlight Foundation.
Early in May the Sunlight Foundation hosted Transparency Camp 2011 (aka Tcamp) http://transparencycamp.org/). This is there annual a two day event overflowing with talented, dedicated people discussing how to improve transparency throughout society using open data, better technology, and providing more access to information. Discussions of how to donations more transparent was just one aspect of Tcamp discussion. Efforts on a more participatory democracy include improving neighborhood information. White house Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Andrew McLaughlin discussed civic commons and Code for America - a platform for cities, working with tech companies to solve common problems (http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/09/civic-commons-code-sharing-ini.html). Many sites providing useful information on government and corporate operations were discussed for example opencongress.org, Participarorypolitics.org & http://www.muckrock.com/. Other people discussed how understanding is enhanced by visualization in a post-Google maps era. With simple tools using open source technology one can take openly published data and visualize it on a map using. Mapping data helps tell a story story about what is going on. A simple example was the Department of Education mapped broadband internet speeds over school districts throughout the country. Other examples of explanatory maps made with simple tools, include the Chicago Tribune’s map of mayoral election results, a map of seismic activity after the Japan earthquake, and the ‘I Heart NPR’ Facebook app.

Twitter fans you can see the stream of tweets from #tcamp11. These give some idea of the range of topics covered in 2 days of sessions. The “wordle” picture shown below created from discussions at the camp is another way. A Wordle generates “word clouds” from text. The formed cloud gives greater prominence to some words (e.g. Data and Government) that appear more frequently in the source text. It’s just one of many examples of technology served up at Tcamp - you can create your own by inputting particular text to http://www.wordle.net/create.

For more on what was discussed at Tcamp2011 see http://transparencycamp.org/sessions/.