Drum's Summary of the Torture Memo
With Comments on Our Epistemic Position
Here.
Sorry for all the drive-by posts, but busy writing.
One quick thought:
Part of the idea behind this blog--though I haven't been doing much of it lately--is to try to ask how ordinary, non-expert folks like us should think about the news. One option is always: become ye more like unto experts. That is, learn more. But then the question of how we should reason about those new facts will arise yet again. Anyway, we're all more on top of the news than most folks and, given that level of engagement, how should we think about what's going on?
I think it largely becomes a matter of figuring out what new questions to ask, but more on that later.
Now, the question at hand is: is Yoo's memo right about the legal issues in play? This is a question none of us is qualified to answer. We can appeal to experts, but its fairly easy to predict that most liberal experts will say he's wrong and at last many conservative experts will say he's right. So what are we non-experts to do under those circumstances?
I find the current conservative ideal of a virtually unbridled, imperial president alarming as all hell, but that's not a constitutional argument, obviously. I've only had one undergraduate constitutional law course...no, two now that I think of it (one with the estimable George Suggs). But my shaky hunch here is that what we're going to find is that there is at least some unclarity in the Constitution as regards such matters. In such cases, the interstices and penumbras often end up getting filled in and fleshed out in ways that are influenced by immediate goals and ideological commitments. It's my view that conservatives have been worse about this sort of thing over the past seven years than have liberals (though look back much farther and that might change. Look back to Roe v. Wade and it will almost certainly change). It's also my view that the Bush administration and its cronies are particularly ideological and intellectually dishonest. My very shaky guess here is that what objective experts will tell us is that, though the Constitution can be interpreted as Yoo says it can, it will take some stretching to do so. And I'm fairly certain that anyone who would try to stretch things in that direction cannot and should not be trusted. If stretching is possible, how one stretches will be very telling.
This--if true--interestingly suggests that the epistemic position of non-experts in such matters is not as bad as it seemed above. We may be in a somewhat better position to judge whether this or that person is more or less intellectually honest and responsible. And, of course, the evidence on the current administration is about as clear as it could be.
The downside is that--if the above is right--we are pushed rather away from the logical analysis of particular arguments and rather toward the assessment of peoples' character. The bad news there is obvious: that's a dicey game and such judgments are easily distorted by political allegiances and differences. The good news, though, is that we might typically be better at assessing character than at analyzing arguments, especially in unfamiliar domains.
If any of that is right, then one might reason about Yoo's memo like so:
There are some arguments that I can understand fairly well. In those cases, it is clear that the administration has had an unusually strong tendency to cheat in favor its preferred conclusion--and that it's inclinations are unusually reprehensible. The constitutional issues involved in the Yoo memo are likely to be at least somewhat unclear, and to leave some room for cheating. So I must conclude that Yoo's memo is at least suspect here, though I have to remain open to new information and expert opinion, of course.
My point here isn't so much to damn the Yoo memo as it is to think out loud about the epistemic position of non-experts in such cases.
As usual, all that could be wrong.
With Comments on Our Epistemic Position
Here.
Sorry for all the drive-by posts, but busy writing.
One quick thought:
Part of the idea behind this blog--though I haven't been doing much of it lately--is to try to ask how ordinary, non-expert folks like us should think about the news. One option is always: become ye more like unto experts. That is, learn more. But then the question of how we should reason about those new facts will arise yet again. Anyway, we're all more on top of the news than most folks and, given that level of engagement, how should we think about what's going on?
I think it largely becomes a matter of figuring out what new questions to ask, but more on that later.
Now, the question at hand is: is Yoo's memo right about the legal issues in play? This is a question none of us is qualified to answer. We can appeal to experts, but its fairly easy to predict that most liberal experts will say he's wrong and at last many conservative experts will say he's right. So what are we non-experts to do under those circumstances?
I find the current conservative ideal of a virtually unbridled, imperial president alarming as all hell, but that's not a constitutional argument, obviously. I've only had one undergraduate constitutional law course...no, two now that I think of it (one with the estimable George Suggs). But my shaky hunch here is that what we're going to find is that there is at least some unclarity in the Constitution as regards such matters. In such cases, the interstices and penumbras often end up getting filled in and fleshed out in ways that are influenced by immediate goals and ideological commitments. It's my view that conservatives have been worse about this sort of thing over the past seven years than have liberals (though look back much farther and that might change. Look back to Roe v. Wade and it will almost certainly change). It's also my view that the Bush administration and its cronies are particularly ideological and intellectually dishonest. My very shaky guess here is that what objective experts will tell us is that, though the Constitution can be interpreted as Yoo says it can, it will take some stretching to do so. And I'm fairly certain that anyone who would try to stretch things in that direction cannot and should not be trusted. If stretching is possible, how one stretches will be very telling.
This--if true--interestingly suggests that the epistemic position of non-experts in such matters is not as bad as it seemed above. We may be in a somewhat better position to judge whether this or that person is more or less intellectually honest and responsible. And, of course, the evidence on the current administration is about as clear as it could be.
The downside is that--if the above is right--we are pushed rather away from the logical analysis of particular arguments and rather toward the assessment of peoples' character. The bad news there is obvious: that's a dicey game and such judgments are easily distorted by political allegiances and differences. The good news, though, is that we might typically be better at assessing character than at analyzing arguments, especially in unfamiliar domains.
If any of that is right, then one might reason about Yoo's memo like so:
There are some arguments that I can understand fairly well. In those cases, it is clear that the administration has had an unusually strong tendency to cheat in favor its preferred conclusion--and that it's inclinations are unusually reprehensible. The constitutional issues involved in the Yoo memo are likely to be at least somewhat unclear, and to leave some room for cheating. So I must conclude that Yoo's memo is at least suspect here, though I have to remain open to new information and expert opinion, of course.
My point here isn't so much to damn the Yoo memo as it is to think out loud about the epistemic position of non-experts in such cases.
As usual, all that could be wrong.
posted by Winston Smith at
11:23 AM
10 Comments:
It seems to me that you begun by noting that the obvious response is:
If we non-experts want to know more about complex issues, we should become more like experts.
You then said that the question of how to address new facts in the process of becoming an expert would likewise provide a hindrance to us, epistemically.
But, it seems to me that experts, too, once started as non-experts, and they managed to get to where they are. One might say that it was only through the help of other experts that they successfully accomplished this feat, but that seems to provide us with an infinite regress with no situation occurring in history where someone became an expert without the assistance of other, pre-existing experts.
It seems, therefore, that it IS possible SOMEHOW to become an expert on something, as such an infinite regress is unacceptable.
Given that conclusion, I've typically been of the belief that philosophy's value lies mainly in the logical methodology it provides. If we make our study about how to locate truth, we can formulate a justified (I address the idea of formulating a "justified" methodology in the next paragraph) methodology which we can apply to any new subject area and have some degree of justification in believing that our findings are accurate.
So it seems to me that the answer to how one ought to behave as a non-expert is to study logical methodology, scientific method, etc., and first learn how best to reason and find truth. Once that is accomplished to an acceptable degree (evidenced, perhaps, by self-testing as to how well one performs in understanding unfamiliar material), I would think that one is justified in believing that, since he has been capable of and successful in discerning truth in complex and unfamiliar scenarios before, it is likely to be the case that he is now performing acceptably as well.
I could be oversimplifying due to ignorance here, but this issue doesn't seem as problematic to me as it does to you. Of course, inductively speaking, that likely means I am, in fact, oversimplifying.
In the end, I think that we will have to depend on experts not because we aren't capable of understanding, or because of epistemic problems, per se, but because we don't have the time to compile and understand everything. It therefore seems to me that, in order to be responsible, we need to develop sound methodology that we can apply not only to the understanding of new and complex material but also to the selection of wise and reliable experts whose opinions we can trust and value.
The problem with being a non-expert engaging the news is, to me, more about time management than it is specifically about epistemological problems.
But, as I said, induction tells me that when you think something's really problematic and I think it's less problematic, I'm likely confused or oversimplifying. But please do explain where I've gone wrong if it is the case.
No, I think I wrote too hastily, and I half-noticed exactly the confusion you identify.
The real problem I'm thinking about isn't really what I suggest it is. What I inadvertently suggest is that the real problem involves some kind of regress having to do with expertise, but that's not what I meant.
What I was really interested in is what you identify--more clearly than I do--at the end there: that there's a kind of resource problem or, as you put it, a "time-management problem."
We can't become experts on everything. So given that, I guess we have to do two things: first, rely on experts; second, reason about that which we ARE qualified to reason about.
I flip back and forth between thinking the following two things:
(a) what people really need is to learn to be more careful reasoners
and
(b) Most of the normal problems we face in this regard involve too little information, not insufficiently good reasoning.
I dunno. Sometimes I think it's not so much that people blow simple inferences as it is that many/most even semi-interesting issues are complex enough that people easily lose track of what they're doing.
One example: war supporters flit back and forth and around and around the various justifications given in favor of the war: WMDs, the war on Terra, giving the gift of democracy...and in each case, it's often unclear whether they're saying that there were SOME good reasons, or that the preponderance of evidence was in favor of war. And they flip back and forth between seeming to argue that the decision to invade was justified at the time, and, on the other hand, that it can be seen to be justified now. So, it's almost impossible to keep up with the an argument about three different claims, each of which morphs along at least two different dimensions. So it's just a matter of something like intellectual book-keeping rather than learning modus ponens
Er, where was I?
And another thing:
Maybe what's really important is learning how to judge the reliability of experts.
and another thing:
I've become more and more convinced that one of the most important things is emotive rather than cognitive. I, for one, have a very strong inclination to dig in my heels for my own view when I encounter dogmatists on the other side. The more reasonable are the other guys, the easier it is for me to be reasonable. Learning to identify and manage your own emotive/cognitive shortcomings seems huge to me.
But that's largely a matter of psychology rather than philosophy or logic. (One good book on roughly that topic: _How We Know What Isn't So_, by...can't remember. But you could look it up.)
End incoherent blabbering here.
One more thing:
Most "critical thinking" classes I know of mostly teach students how to avoid some very clear-cut mistakes. That can be helpful, but I often think that it's far more common to make mistakes that are not so clear-cut--e.g. mistakes involving subtle weighing of conflicting evidence.
Mistakes of that kind seem very common to me--and especially common when emotional commitments are in play...e.g. political ones. The errors that stick out like a sore thumb to me these days are ones that involve, e.g., weighing evidence that's favorable to one's preferred view more heavily than countervailing evidence. Given what close calls we often have to make, a little bias one way or the other can be devastating to the rationality of the ultimate conclusion.
And:
This stuff rarely gets taught because it's too hard to grade. Give that kind of thing on a test, and you'll have half the class in your office shrieking and whining that their answer should count. Facts about contemporary universities push prof.s to avoid trying to teach this critical skill.
One of the things about eastern religions that enchants me the most is the meditation practices that have been developed to address the exact kinds of problems of which you speak.
I agree wholeheartedly with you when it comes to these emotive/cognitive shortcomings of which you speak. Scarily enough, I was thinking along these exact lines today, prior to seeing your post.
I think it's valuable to note that your mind is not "you". I believe it likely to be the case that many people fail to understand that the mind is something which can be conditioned and trained to behave in a certain way. This failure is often caused by a belief that the mind is simply the person.
I elucidate so as not to sound new-agey and weird:
If you can't bench press 200 pounds, you don't think that you're a bad person - you just acknowledge that you've not trained to be able to do it, and therefore you can't do it. You can, however, train your muscles to be able to lift said weight.
If you find yourself to be racist, however, you probably (assuming you acknowledge that racism is bad) think you're a bad person instead of treating your mind as you would treat your body. As a result, it will not be realized that you can train your mind to not be racist. As exercise is a means by which muscles can be conditioned, meditation is a means by which the mind can be conditioned (and I'm not implying it's the only means by which said conditioning can be accomplished - same goes for exercise).
You can really accomplish a lot for your philosophical existence if you note your shortcomings, as you said, WS, and employ techniques to train your mind out of these shortcomings - just like you'd train your body out of weakness.
Very helpful - much like learning to choose one's interlocuters carefully, as arguing incessently with those who refuse to be rational leads to effects on one's mind which can be related to the effects of junk food on the body.
Acknowledging the connections between mind, body, and environment, is one of the greatest things you can learn from eastern traditions, and it can assist you philosophically, I think.
See, now that's interesting.
If you can't bench press 200 pounds, you don't think that you're a bad person - you just acknowledge that you've not trained to be able to do it, and therefore you can't do it. You can, however, train your muscles to be able to lift said weight.
Wow... I teach math, and I use this exact same analogy to try to fight the "good at math/bad at math" mindset students always come in with. It's funny what characteristics people view as immutable.
On the original post topic, I find the thoughts presented interesting, but somewhat beside the point. Yoo may be technically correct (the BEST KIND of correct!), but if he is, that only means our laws need to be changed.
As non-experts, the moral judgment is the only one we can confidently make, and in this situation, it's pretty clear.
Yeah, I was just taking it for granted that it was morally wrong--but Yoo's point seems to be one about constitutionality.
WS posts a thought provoking discussion of how to handle important decisions which require expertise we lack, when the experts are split along ideological lines.
I must note, however, that this is not the situation we are in with respect to the Yoo memos. WS frames the question as follows:
"[T]he question at hand is: is Yoo's memo right about the legal issues in play? This is a question none of us is qualified to answer. We can appeal to experts, but its fairly easy to predict that most liberal experts will say he's wrong and at last many conservative experts will say he's right. So what are we non-experts to do under those circumstances?" [Emphasis in the original]
Rather than predicting what the experts will say, let us consider the words and actions of a noted conservative legal expert, and friend of Mr. Yoo, Jack Goldsmith. The NY Times reports:
Jack L. Goldsmith was widely considered one of the brightest stars in the conservative legal firmament. A 40-year-old law professor at the University of Chicago, Goldsmith had established himself, with his friend and fellow law professor John Yoo, as a leading proponent of the view that international standards of human rights should not apply in cases before U.S. courts. In recognition of their prominence, Goldsmith and Yoo had been anointed the “New Sovereigntists” by the journal Foreign Affairs.
Not just a conservative, Mr. Goldsmith was member of the Bush Administration who became embroiled in the matter at hand when he "was hired in October 2003 to head the Office of Legal Counsel, the division of the Justice Department that advises the president on the limits of executive power."
Goldsmith's opinion of the Yoo's memo?
Goldsmith considered these opinions, now known as the “torture memos,” to be tendentious, overly broad and legally flawed[.]
What did Goldsmith do?
[H]e fought to change them. He also found himself challenging the White House on a variety of other issues, ranging from surveillance to the trial of suspected terrorists. His efforts succeeded in bringing the Bush administration somewhat closer to what Goldsmith considered the rule of law — although at considerable cost to Goldsmith himself. By the end of his tenure, he was worn out. “I was disgusted with the whole process and fed up and exhausted,” he told me recently.
Goldsmith put his professional reputation on the line to overturn Yoo's interpretation.
So, to answer WS's question, "[I]s Yoo's memo right about the legal issues in play?", we can get the correct answer through an appeal to the experts. Having done so, we find that it is held in low regard by some influential conservatives as well as essentially all liberals. We find that Yoo's memo was (at least in part) repudiated by the Bush administration. We find that Yoo's memo was repudiated by the US Supreme Court -- the court that put Bush in office -- in the Hamdan decision.
For other questions, WS's analysis will be needed, but not this one.
I'm certainly willing to concede the point, Jim. I should have thought of Goldsmith since I saw a long piece on/interview with him where he hit these and other points.
Not bad. It's what I've been trying to tell you all these years.
You're getting there.
Jim falls into the same old trap in his consideration of Hamdan, that a 5-3 Supreme Court decision is a definitive "truth," or that Goldsmith considered Yoo's contentions to be "legally flawed" similar defines truth.
Like all legal "truths," [and most political truths] these are provisional, and can be reversed by future courts or administrations.
[And in Hamdan, had there been a law explicitly favoring the Yoo position, even the SC majority would have ruled in the administration's favor, as the arguments were about law, not right or wrong.]
WS, your original contention was more honest and philosophical. Instead of insisting your position is the only possible correct one, simply say "I want Congress to ban waterboarding" [which they declined to do, BTW], or "I want Congress to pass a law closing Gitmo."
Whatever. Make your moral argument. Persuade. I think that's what Kant wanted.
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