Kass on Courtship: Part 1 of n on Part 1 of 3

I've got a big stack of papers to grade today. So I can't finish what I want to write about Kass's "The End of Courtship" part 1. (Exams from my epistemology class. Many of the students wrote for 2.5 hours straight on an exam that was intended to take one hour. I'm totally psyched to see what they've got to say. Dang, I love this job... I mean I REALLY LOVE THIS JOB.)

But let me just note one thing for now so that I'm not sitting around stewing about this all day:

Kass's argument turns in large part on empirical questions, and Kass guesses at the answers to those questions instead of looking for data. Guessing--hypothesis formation--is good under certain conditions and bad under others. Kass's guess and his guessing are bad. First, there's little doubt in my mind that hard data about the attitudes and mental states of 21st-century young people concerning marriage already exists. Second, Kass, on account of his age and station, is probably not well-placed to make a good guess about the empirical points in question. Because of his age he probably has little contact with the world he speculates about, and because of his station he probably has contact with a radically unrepresentative segment of he population--college students. And, since he's at the University of Chicago, particularly rich college students at that.

Kass simply presupposes the answers to central empirical questions and moves on from there. But he gives us no real reason to believe that the average American 18-25-year-old experiences no pressure to marry, nor that the average female of that age group is "sad, lonely, and confused."

Kass may be right, but I'm closer to the age group in question and I have experience with a more representative slice of the population, and I don't find his conjecture plausible in the least.

The way to settle this is to look at the sociological data, however, not to engage in a duel of speculation.

One further point here: the important question at issue isn't whether the average female of the relevant age is "sad, lonely, and confused," but, rather, whether she is more sad, lonely and confused than she would be if she had married the first man she slept with and had a baby at the age of 19--or whatever scenario it is that Kass is imagining to be preferable.

OF COURSE many people at that age are unhappy about many aspects of their lives. The important question, however, is whether their lives are likely to be better or worse in the long run under the old, more repressive system or under the newer, more permissive one.

One strong and obvious prima facie reason for preferring the newer social arrangement is that it still allows people who want to marry and reproduce at a young age to do so--it just doesn't demand that everyone do it. The fact that so many people choose NOT to do so is some evidence in support of the conclusion that this is the preferable course of action. Kass will reply that women don't really have that option anymore because sex is easily available to men. That's probably not right, but I want to spend more space on that point than I can here.

I said before that Kass is right about a few things, though they're deeply buried in his essay. The culture has some role in influencing how people--including the young--live their lives, and currently it is less likely to pressure people into early marriage and reproduction than it used to be. Corporations find it profitable to market certain "life styles" (ugh, what a term...); they encourage the non-young to buy enormous houses and enormous SUVs and have a baby for which they can then purchase expensive accoutrements, they encourage the young to buy expensive clothes and to spend extravagantly on an allegedly cool, more-or-less out-of-control "life style." There are reasons to think hard about the ways of living that the culture in general promotes, there are reasons to worry about the role of corporations in shaping the message of the culture, and there are reasons for thinking that the ways of living that are currently being promoted are not the best ways of living for everyone. (And there are reasons for thinking that there is a wide variety of different ways one might live a good human life.) So there are reasons for addressing the issues that Kass addresses, even though Kass's particular position on those issues is probably more than a bit daft.

But those epistemology exams ain't gonna grade themselves, folks, so I'm outta here.