18,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Become the master of your world
- Presents 20 key concepts, or keys, to aid critical thinking
- Authored by one of the world's most eminent psychologists - and founder of the Flynn Effect
- Looks at topics such as Race and IQ, "good" science and the current world economic crisis
- Written in a clear and lucid style, illustrated with many examples
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 331
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
Ähnliche
Contents
List of Figures and Boxes
Acknowledgments
1 Introduction
Wherein I Seek Rapport with the Reader
Key Concepts and Anti-Keys
Universities and the Knowledge Trap
Substitute for a Diary
Part 1 Arguing about Right and Wrong
2 Logic and Moral Debate – Attacks on Blacks
Blacks and Blackness
Taking the Hypothetical Seriously
Abortion and Its Slogans
Women and Femininity
The Unborn Mosquito
3 Getting Rid of Tautologies – No Private Clubs
Tautologies
Tautologies Pretending to be Something Else
Falsification
Tautologies Used to Include or Exclude
Is Evolution a Tautology?
4 The Naturalistic Fallacy and Its Consequences – be Judgmental
Facts and Values
The Relevance of Facts
The Nihilist Fallacy
The Tolerance School Fallacy
The One-Way Street
Indignation and Ignorance
5 But that is Unnatural – Words Best Never Said
The Criterion of Being in Accord with Nature
The Criterion of Non-Interference with Nature
The Criterion of Imitating Nature
The Criterion of Preserving Nature
Using “Nature” Sensibly
The Limitations of Philosophy
Part 2 The Truth about People
6 Random Sample – Quality Not Size
Quality Not Size
Statistical Significance
Why Some Prefer Bad Polls
Taking Bad Polls Without Realizing It
7 Intelligence Quotient – Hanging the Intellectually Disabled
Understanding IQ Scores
Adjusting IQ Scores
Death Row
The Significance of IQ Scores
8 Intelligence Quotient – and the Black/White IQ Gap
Correlations and Regression to the Mean
Uses and Abuses of Regression
Regression and Race
Regression not a Cause
9 Control Group – How Studying People Changes Them
Hidden Factors
Sugar Pills and the “Hypnotic State”
Doctors and Pharmacists
Control Group
Good Luck
Making You Own Luck
Unavoidable Bad Luck
10 The Sociologist’s Fallacy – Ignoring the Real World
Matching for SES
Matching Professions
The Easiest Kind of Matching
Under-Identified Models
Marx and Popper
Marx and History
Meritocracy and History
Concepts Plus Arithmetic
Part 3 The Market and Its Church
11 Creating a Market – Not a Frankenstein
The Market and Racial Profiles
What is Money?
When Does a Market Exist?
Selecting Who Can Participate: Free Trade?
Selecting Tradable Goods, Services, and Information
Prices, Costs, Income, and Profits
12 Market Forces – How they Take their Revenge
Rent Controls
Schools Vouchers
Regulating Prices in General
A Free Good
The Strange Case of the Conventional Tip
Regulating Wages and Supplementing Incomes
Regulating inheritance
Making a Public Park
13 Market Worship – No Ritual Sacrifices
The Tennessee Valley
Universities and Cargo Cults
The Market and Environmental Disaster
The Market and Benevolence
Personifying or Objectifying the Market
Future of the Market
The Market and its Church
14 The Economic Collapse of 2008
The Law of Assessment Inflation
The Law of Assessment Inflation and Grades
The Law of Assessment Inflation and Securities
The Housing Boom
Multiplication I
Multiplication II
Multiplication III
The House Comes Tumbling Down
The Rating Agencies
The Balance of Power Between Rating Agencies and the Banks
Who has an Incentive to Reinterpret the Message?
Why the Insiders did not Care
15 What is to be Done?
What Ought to have been Done
Never Again
The Experts Think and Talk
Misinformation as a Tradable Item
The Crisis of 2011
Will the US Economy Collapse?
Part 4 Enemies of Science
16 Reality – What Scientists Really Say About Science
Reality is a Text
Perceptions of Reality
Constructs of Reality
The Nature of Scientific Progress
What the Philosophers Said
The Sociology of Knowledge
Immanuel Kant
Multiple Interpretation of Reality
How Truth Relativity Self-Destructs
Hatred for a Word
Even Muddled Minds can Teach us Something
17 History, Science, and Evolution – Only One Kind of Each
Writing Better History
Male History
Male Science
History and Bias
History and Legends
Intelligent Design
Darwin Versus an Absurd God
Science and Values
Corrupting the Youth
Part 5 Nations and their Goals
18 Understanding Nations – Understanding Anyone
Realism
Liberalism
Constructivism
Realism Revisited
The Best Pair of Spectacles
Common-Sense Psychology
19 Four Cases – Making Sense Out of Nonsense
The Case of Israel
Israel’s National Interest
Israel’s Identity
The Shadow of the Holocaust
Why Does America Support Israel?
America’s National Interest
America’s Identity
American Exceptionalism
Other Lessons from History
An Unconditional Commitment: Spain and the Netherlands
Money and Power: Britain and Suez
An Audit
20 Conclusion
Sample and Test
Class competence by item
Student Competence by Subtest
Majors and Divisions
Conclusions
James Mill
Index
This edition first published 2012© 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Wiley-Blackwell is an imprint of John Wiley & Sons, formed by the merger of Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical and Medical business with Blackwell Publishing.
Registered OfficeJohn Wiley & Sons, Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK
Editorial Offices350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UKThe Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK
For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell.
The right of James R. Flynn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.
Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Flynn, James Robert, 1934–How to improve your mind : twenty keys to unlock the modern world / James R. Flynn. p. cm Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-119-94476-8 (pbk.)1. Critical thinking. 2. Intellect. 3. Knowledge, Sociology of. I. Title. BF441.F59 2012 153.4′3–dc23
2012009765
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
WITH LOVETo Emily50 years together
The unexamined life is gross.(Socrates)
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.(Thomas Jefferson)
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it. (Voltaire)
List of Figures and Boxes
Figures
7.1
Standard deviations, IQ scores, and percentiles57
14.1
The property boom
17.1
The caterpillar that looks like a snake
Boxes
1.1
Keys replace SHAs
3.1
Reason and faith
5.1
The institution of marriage
5.2
God and lightning rods
6.1
Accuracy of random samples
10.1
The sociologist’s fallacy
12.1
The furniture movers
15.1
Poisonous prose
16.1
Mad men on the subway
17.1
Frozen at the stake
18.1
The Irish invasion of Canada
18.2
The green bullet
18.3
Alas, all academe
20.1
The FISC and Gene Debs
20.2
Mongo
Acknowledgments
I want to thank Hetty Marx for her suggestions about organization of the chapters, and Emily Flynn for editing and comments about readability. Bill Dickens was more than generous in giving me tutorials about economics and the crisis of 2008. Needless to say, any mistakes are mine. Dick Nisbett taught me how we “sample” experiences in everyday life. Otherwise, it would never have occurred to me.
Part 1 overlaps with what I said on similar topics in my book How to Defend Humane Ideals, University of Nebraska Press, 2000. The same is true of Part 5 and two other books. Where Have All the Liberals Gone? Race, Class, and Ideals in America. It is copyright © 2008 James R. Flynn and appears with the permission of Cambridge University Press. Beyond Patriotism; From Truman to Obama. It is copyright © 2012 James R. Flynn and appears with the permission of Imprint Academic.
1
Introduction
The Knowledge Trap
Who is to be master, you or the modern world? The world fills your mind from all sides with conversation, lectures, newspapers, TV, and the Internet. You must be the gatekeeper that filters out what is worth remembering and decides what is true or false. Otherwise, you are at its mercy and drift though a life that you manage only day by day. An encyclopedia of facts, and names, and places will not save you. I suspect that the moment you see a term like the naturalistic fallacy (what exactly does that mean?) or confounding variable, you stop reading. And if it is clear that an article is a piece of economic analysis, you never start. Unless you have concepts that make you feel confident that you can evaluate what you hear or read, your only defense is to stop listening. How often have you felt degraded because you know you are casting your vote on personalities, rather than a mature evaluation of the government’s economic or foreign policy? Even worse is self-deception: we tell ourselves that policies are “socialist” or “reactionary,” “imperialist” or “isolationist,” even though deep in our hearts we know we are hiding our ignorance behind a word.
I have put my heart into over 50 years of university teaching, at places ranging from Cornell and Maryland in America to Canterbury and Otago in New Zealand. It drives me crazy that there are all these bright young people at universities, and yet, when they graduate, we have not taught them how to think. Despite the scores of lectures and tutorials, the hours of marking and feedback, that I lavished on each of my students, I do not believe I gave them what I value most in thinking my way through life. This book will give you 20 Key Concepts that will empower you to analyze critically what you read, what you hear, and what you see. Without them, your mind does not have a full tool kit to fashion your own views on ethics, religion, history, economics, international politics, even what you should eat.
I hope I have written it in an accessible style. At times, I speak as if it were directed to those who are disappointed in what they got from their university education. However, some of the most critically aware people I know did not go beyond secondary school and do not intend to do so. If you are one of these, I have not written you off. If you persevere, you will not have the in-depth knowledge or specialized expertise of a graduate of distinguished universities like Oxford and Cambridge, Harvard and Princeton, Toronto and Queen’s, Sydney and Melbourne, Auckland and Otago, but you will be able to out-think most of their graduates at that crucial moment when you make up your own mind.
Wherein I Seek Rapport with the Reader
In this book, I will expose you to my own take on the modern world, but I would be most disappointed if I made converts. Everyone who has a critical mind reaches conclusions that other critical minds reject. There is a difference between the conceptual tools you need to comprehend the modern world and integrating what you learn into a comprehensive vision. Social criticism has led me to views on political economy more palatable to the left than to the right, to the conclusion that religious fundamentalism and postmodernism are enemies of science, and to a perspective on international relations that favors internationalism over nationalism. It would have been “safer” to disguise my vision, but I feel that would destroy your incentive to do critical thinking. What makes it exciting is that it eventually gives you confidence in your ability to paint a picture of the human condition that you can defend.
If we all have a good tool kit, why do we not all agree? Certain beliefs and values are more fundamental than analysis. Assume that two people agree that intelligent design cannot serve as an alternative to the theory of evolution, and that the traditional proofs of God’s existence are not valid. One may have a personal faith that he considers authentic, and the other may believe that faith is simply social indoctrination. None of our 20 concepts will unite these two in the sense of making both of them believers or both atheists. Assume two people have the basic tools they need to analyze market behavior, and both agree that providing greater economic equality for the present generation means less economic growth over the next generation. No conceptual tool can unite them if one places a greater value on equality, and the other a greater value on more material progress.
And then there is the fact that you must know things about the modern world to have anything to analyze. Everyone’s knowledge will be selective to some degree. Even if you were omniscient, new knowledge comes along that may change your perspective. Take the assumption that greater equality of income and possessions impedes growth. There has always been squabbling about whether this is in fact true in the sense that there seem to be outstanding exceptions, like Sweden, a nation with a high degree of equality and generally high growth. But unless you can say just why equality might promote growth, you are left with argument from brute facts that can be explained away. Sweden may be a special case, small, relatively few immigrants, less ethnic diversity, nothing more than an exception that proves the rule.
After I finished this book, I found a paper from 2006 (what negligence that I had overlooked it) by Sam Bowles (an economist I respect) and Arjum Jayadev (Jayadev and Bowles, 2006). They go beyond brute facts to show why inequality can impede growth, namely, the more unequal a society, the more people are employed in “guard labor.” This is a kind of labor that simply supports economic hierarchies in the sense of protecting the power and prerogatives of those at the top and keeping those at the bottom from threatening them. Guard labor is, therefore, unproductive in terms of promoting growth.
They hold that fully 24% of the labor force of America (a very unequal nation) play such a role, ranging from protecting property from those without property (guards, surveillance cameras, those who run the courts and prisons, those in prison, and at times, using troops to quell internal discontent) to supervisors who spend their time ensuring that alienated workers toe the line. I may not fully understand their thesis in that I would have thought that a large proportion of professionals qualify as “guard labor,” not just lawyers and judges in criminal cases, but trust lawyers, tax accountants, lobbyists that protect various business interests, and so forth. Clearly, I have some reading to do.
The point is this: a basic grasp of economics (which this book will give you) is a prerequisite for making up your mind on economic policy, but it is not a sufficient condition. You have to expand your knowledge base.
For now, you will have to be content with what one book can offer: 20 tools that will allow you to confront the modern world and begin to construct your own vision. Ninety percent of it is just as relevant for those who reject my peculiar stance as for those who share it, and everyone will be far more able to defend their position after reading it than before. I will try to banish confusions that absolutely prohibit understanding: naive faith in rent, price, and wage controls; appeals to nature in moral argument; rejecting science as merely one point of view among many; and so forth. And best of all, you may gain the confidence that you can think your way through the modern world, rather than be at its mercy.
Key Concepts and Anti-Keys
Over the last century and a half, philosophy, social science, economics, and natural science have enriched our language by giving us some wonderful words and phrases. Each of these stands for a cluster of interrelated ideas that collectively create a method of analysis. I call them “Key Concepts” because they share the property of virtually forcing you to do critical analysis. As someone who has written broadly about controversial issues in ethics, politics, science, the theory of intelligence, race differences in intelligence quotient (IQ), US foreign policy, and even a bit about economics and the history of America’s ethnic groups, I have found 15 of them to be indispensable.
There are other concepts that superficially resemble the Key Concepts but are actually wolves in sheep’s clothing. They pretend to offer a method of analysis, but the method is either mere words or bankrupt in some other way. I call them “Anti-Keys” because, either by accident or by design, they discourage the use of critical analysis, usually by disparaging science because their users are uncomfortable with it or misunderstand it. I will add five of them to the 15 true keys to make a list of 20. I will list them in the order they appear in the text. For the Keys, I will add the dates they entered educated usage (most dates from the Oxford English Dictionary online), and note the disciplines that invented them. Most of the Anti-Keys are as old as humankind.
Universalizability (1785: Moral Philosophy)
Immanuel Kant first formulated this rule. He thought it could settle virtually all moral questions, but modern thinkers have clarified it and restricted its use. It essentially says that if you state a moral principle, you must stand by it with logical consistency: you cannot praise generosity one day and condemn it the next day (without pointing to some relevant difference). This makes it sound very humdrum, but you will be surprised how it clarifies moral debate. For example, it puts classical racists in an impossible position. They must say either that they would be subhuman if their skin turned black or that they are superior to black people for some trait like intelligence, which invites evidence to the contrary.
Tautology/Falsifiability (1800: Logic)
We abuse logic when we use it to give a fraudulent defense of something. This is done mainly by deceptive tautologies, that is, statements that appear to be claims about facts but actually banish facts from consideration. Take the claim that the Scots, unlike the English, are a noble people. If you point to a Scot who is a liar and a villain, you may be told, “Ah, he is nay true Scot.” The tautology, only good Scots count as Scots, is implicit. The honor of any group can be defended by a definition of the group that excludes the wicked. The Scot in question has used words to define bad Scots out of existence. Nothing counts against the goodness of Scots, which is a cheat.
Karl Popper (1902–1994) used the concept of falsifiability to expose the misuse of tautologies. If anyone makes a claim of fact, ask him what evidence would count against it. If they say nothing, it is just empty words. It is also tempting to misuse the concept of a tautology to discredit something. Darwin’s theory of evolution has many enemies. The more sophisticated ones say that it is just an empty tautology, and I will show that they are mistaken. I will also address the naïve enemies of evolution, that is, those who believe in something called intelligent design.
Naturalistic Fallacy (1903: Moral Philosophy)
One should be wary of arguments from facts to values. For example, the mere fact that execution does not deter potential murders (if it is a fact) does not entail that capital punishment is wrong. You may have values (an eye for an eye) that render the fact not decisive.
Tolerance School Fallacy (2000: Moral Philosophy)
Perhaps you have heard someone say, “Do not be judgmental.” This makes tolerance the supreme virtue, which is very odd given all the behavior we should not tolerate such as profiting from human misery. There is a fallacious argument that lends such an attitude respectability: it argues that we should respect whatever anyone values because we cannot show that any value is better than another. It makes the attempt to justify your ideals suspect as a supposed source of intolerance. It surfaced in William James, was embraced by anthropologists such as Ruth Benedict, and is now propagated by postmodernists who think they have invented it. Somehow my label for this mistake has not caught on, but no doubt that is merely a matter of time.
Contrary to Nature
This is an “Anti-Key.” If you really grasp the naturalistic fallacy, you may be already immune to it. But it deserves analysis because it does so much mischief. By calling something “unnatural,” the speaker labels it intrinsically wrong in a way that is supposed to bar investigation of its consequences including beneficial ones. Nature never tells us that something is either right or wrong. It does not condemn gays; we do.
Random Sample (1877: Social Science)
People are often skeptical of a poll because the sample is relatively small. They are mistaken. If the sample is truly random, it does not have to be very large. A random sample is one selected strictly according to chance. If it seems odd that this makes it reliable, note that the only alternative to chance is to introduce a bias. In 1936, the Literary Digest conducted a huge telephone poll that showed that Landon was going to beat Roosevelt for President. However, in those days, few had telephones except the more affluent. The poor were for Roosevelt, and he won in a landslide.
Intelligence Quotient or IQ (1912: Social Science)
In 1905, Alfred Binet published the first modern mental test. In 1912, the German psychologist William Stern introduced the concept of an “IQ.” Each child was to be given a score that conveyed whether he or she was typical of children of the same age, or matched the performance of younger or older children. IQ tests may be unpopular today, but I can vouch for the fact that they still determine the fate of many people, ranging from convicts on death row, to those who need a disability benefit, to those who want to be classified as gifted.
Few members of the public fully understand what IQ scores mean, and confusion about their significance is almost universal. IQ scores are significant because they correlate with valuable achievements such as doing well in school. To evaluate them, you will have to learn what a correlation is, and that is founded upon a concept called “regression to the mean.”
Placebo (1938: Medicine)
Merely being given a sugar pill (that the patient hopes will work) often relieves the patient’s symptoms. A placebo is something that has no beneficial effects aside from those conferred by the subject’s faith in it. Without the notion of a placebo, a rational drugs policy would be overwhelmed by the desperate desire for a cure by those stricken with illness.
Charisma Effect (1922: Social Science)
When a technique is applied by a charismatic innovator or disciples fired by zeal, it may be successful for precisely that reason. Patients or students feel that they are being noticed and benefit psychologically, and are spurred on by the excitement of the enterprise.
Control Group (1875: Social Science)
Placebo and charisma effects are special cases of confounding variables. A confounding variable is anything that may blur what you are trying to assess. We introduce an enrichment program in which pre-school children go to a “play center” each day. It is designed to raise the IQ of children at risk of being diagnosed as mentally retarded. Throughout the program, we test their IQs to monitor progress. Assume that at the end of the program, they have higher IQs.
The question arises: what has raised their IQs? Was it really the educational program? Or was it all the others things that were done, such as getting them out of a dysfunctional home for 6 h each day, the lunch they had at the play center, the continual exposure to IQ tests. The only way to nullify the effects of confounding variables is to use a control group. You must select a group from the same population and subject them to everything except the enrichment program. Then you may get your answer.
The Sociologist’s Fallacy (1973: Social Science)
Sometimes you think you have made a fair comparison between groups, but they are mismatched because they are part of a larger group. For example, you find that the IQs of professionals have dropped from one generation to the next, and you assume that the professions have lost some of their allure (bright people are beginning to prefer other jobs). This ignores the fact that the percentage of professionals has risen dramatically over 30 years. Say it has increased from the top 10% of the population to the top 30%. Well, the top 30% cannot have the same intelligence advantage over the average person as the top 10% does, so the decline in the IQ of professionals may have been precisely because more people wanted to be professionals.
This kind of mistaken matching of groups for comparison is called the sociologist’s fallacy, which is rather unfair in that sociologists are more aware of it than most academics.
Percentage (1860: Mathematics)
It seems incredible that this important Key Concept made its debut into educated usage less than 150 years ago. The concept of a percentage is an introduction to the closely related concepts of a rate and a ratio. Its range is almost infinite. Recently in New Zealand, there was a debate over the introduction of a contraceptive drug that kills some women. It was pointed out that the extra fatalities from the drug amounted to 50 in one million (or 0.005%), while without it, an extra 1000 women (or 0.100%) would have fatal abortions or die in childbirth. It was heartbreaking how many journalists never got beyond telling their audience that it was a “dangerous” drug.
Market (1776: Economics)
With Adam Smith, this term was altered from the merely concrete (a place where you bought something) to an abstraction (the law of supply and demand). It provokes a deeper analysis of innumerable issues. If the government makes university education free, it will have to budget for more takers. If you pass a minimum wage, employers will find unskilled workers more expensive to hire. They may replace them with machines that employ skilled workers instead. This is not to imply that minimum wage legislation is wrong, but merely that it has to have advantages that outweigh its unwelcome consequences.
Reality is a Text
The phrase behind this Anti-Key comes from Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), but it sums up the anti-science of our time. Those who use it are reluctant to state plainly what it means because its plain meaning is ridiculous: that the physical universe is a blank slate on which we can impose whatever subjective interpretation we like. The evidence against the assertion that all theories are equally explanatory/non-explanatory was refuted every time Derrida put on his spectacles. The theory of optics explained why they worked, and nothing else does so.
This Anti-Key distracts us from what science does (explaining the real world) into the blind alley of classifying the different kinds of texts we “impose” on the world. At its best, it merely copies the distinctions made by orthodox philosophy of science, which is careful to emphasize that some of these “texts” contain truths attested by evidence (physics), while others do not (aesthetic categories). Usually, it blurs these distinctions and asserts that they are all merely subjective, as if the text of an up-to-date telephone book were not more valuable than the text of an out-of-date one because it tells the truth about something, namely the phone numbers people actually have. If all of this sounds absurd, that is not my fault.
Alternative Histories
One Anti-Key leads to another. If telling the history of the physical universe is subjective, why should not the history of various peoples be subjective? That is, why should it not be told however they tell choose to tell it, giving us black history, Maori history, and so on. Political correctness gives this notion extra fuel. It was considered demeaning if you told a prescientific people that a scientific approach to its past was more authoritative than their own legends. Legends are not reliable history of any sort, although a real historian may find something that is accurate within them. Each people have their own history, but the methods that best reveal what that history really was are the same.
Alternative Sciences
This Anti-Key introduces confusion because it says that the nature of science varies with who does it (male science, Jewish science). In fact, there is only one scientific method: understanding the universe and human behavior by using theories, predictions based on those theories, and attempts at falsifying those predictions by evidence.
The practice of science is flawed in all the ways in which any human endeavor is flawed, that is, the interests and prejudices of scientists color the problems they investigate, how they go about it, the theories they propose, and the evidence they collect. However, the antidote is better science, not endless and empty assertions that science itself is arbitrary or subjective. The Nazis spoke of Jewish physics as if it was methodologically tainted. It was not: it was simply physics (mainly very good physics) done by Jews. Some feminists have spoken of male science, as if female science was a better alternative. There is no such alternative, although certain women may well do better science than certain men.
Intelligent Design
This Anti-Key tries to use God (or gods) to explain what we see in the physical universe in general and the variety of living things on earth in particular. As a proof of the existence of God, it is no more objectionable than other such proofs. For example, recently it has been argued that the conditions for the development of the universe into something interesting (galaxies, planets, people) require laws so delicately balanced that they could not be an accident but must have been legislated by a creator with an intelligent design. However, intelligent design as an alternative to evolutionary biology is entirely counterproductive. It pretends to be a method of investigating nature that discloses signs of order imposed by a rational agent. In fact, it adds nothing to our knowledge of nature. Whenever science is unable to give a full explanation of something, we get nothing better than a monotonous refrain: “it was designed that way.”
The National Interest (1939/1948: Social Science)
If you wanted to understand a person’s behavior, you would ask yourself at least three questions. What does his self-interest dictate? Does he always seek his interests, or is he sometimes swayed by friendship (or enmity), and at other times by his self-image, perhaps whether he thinks of himself as unusually virtuous or knowledgeable or both. Modern theories of international relations ask the same questions about nations but have an unfortunate tendency to push one question at the expense of the others.
The concept of the national interest took hold beginning with Carr’s (1939/2004) The Twenty Years Crisis and Morgenthau’s (1948) Politics Among Nations. The latter awakens some nostalgia in me in that I took Morgenthau’s course at the University of Chicago in 1952. The theory he pioneered was called realism, because he argued that the only rational foreign policy was the pursuit of “national interest” taking into account the realities of the balance of power.
To weaken your nation so as to pursue altruistic goals was irresponsible and condemned as idealism. Political realism never monopolized the theory of international relations thanks to the two competing schools that follow.
National Affinities (1939/1917: Social Science)
Liberalism is a theory that holds that the relative power of nations is often less predictive of their behavior than whether or not they have some affinity with one another, that is, shared culture, or are economically dependent on one another, or all have democratic government. The original realists called this particular brand of idealism “Wilsonian idealism.” They attributed it to Woodrow Wilson, the US President who was the architect of the League of Nations (parent of the United Nations) at the end of World War I.
National Identity (1989: Social Science)
Constructivism holds that every nation has a unique national identity shaped by its sense of itself, that is, its values, mores, culture, institutions, and history. Nicholas Onuf coined the term in his book World of Our Making (Onuf, 1989). That makes three schools of international relations theory. Since each of these schools has a share of the truth, it seems odd that they all did not merge into one, but there is nothing to prevent you from using all three of their basic concepts to get a real understanding of how nations behave.
I call these 20 notions Key Concepts because they identify the keys that unlock the door to understanding the modern world, plus naming the anti-keys that do nothing except spread confusion (see Box 1.1)
Universities and the Knowledge Trap
Given that I have spoken of the need for wide-ranging knowledge, it may seem odd to speak of the knowledge trap. I will illustrate what I mean by recalling my own experience at the University of Chicago. It prided itself on its great books program, books that exposed all undergraduates to philosophy, history, social science, natural science, the humanities, and so forth. Its faculty had a coherent notion of what an educated person should know and adopted a curriculum that forbade too much specialization. The lecturers were themselves critically aware and made sure that all students were exposed to the concepts they needed somewhere in the collection of courses they took. However, even this university failed to educate properly.
The problem is that every lecturer is commendably eager to impart knowledge, and the Key Concepts get lost in the sheer volume of that knowledge. I am guilty as well. When I teach an introductory moral and political philosophy course, I do discuss the pitfalls of tautologies and the naturalistic fallacy. But there are so many fascinating things to teach about Plato’s theory of being, his theory of knowledge, his psychology, and his theory of tyranny. And then there is Aristotle, Hobbes, Marx, and Nietzsche. A colleague teaches history with due emphasis on what distinguishes real history from mere tradition or self-serving myths. But there are the fascinating events that led to World War I, and how the class system structured strategic thinking and made the lives of ordinary soldiers cheap, and why the League of Nations was doomed.
Even if you tell students to note and treasure the Key Concepts as you introduce them one by one, they simply do not stand out from the background of the total content of the course, all of which will be on the examination. The concepts of one course do not appear in the next course, and those encountered in one year are absent the following year. Students would have to keep a special Key Concepts diary, to be compiled and consulted for its own sake, to be added to on the rare occasion when a new concept is encountered, and sustain this as a regular chore throughout their undergraduate experience. What university actually advises this, rewards this, and keeps track of whether it is being done? On one level, the antidote is simple: just prior to graduation, every department should offer its majors a one-semester course that identifies the concepts and shows how to use them.
Substitute for a Diary
This book is a substitute for the diary you never kept at school or university. The concepts fall naturally into five groups: those associated with philosophy, the social sciences, economics, the nature of science, and international politics. The next 18 chapters will present them in that order. By the end, you will have a good tool kit. No doubt, the 20 concepts I have selected reflect my competence. If I knew more about the environment, I would list “Gaia” (the concept of the Earth as an integrated living entity) and “tipping point” (the point at which gradual change suddenly turns into chaotic change). Let others write similar books, but these 20 concepts will do for a start.
References
Carr, E. (2004) The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939, Perennial, New York. (Original work published 1939).
Flynn, J.R. (2007) What is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect, Cambridge University Press. (Expanded paperback edition 2009).
Jayadev, A. and Bowles, S. (2006) Guard labour. Journal of Development Economics, 79, 328–348.
Morgenthau, H.J. (1948) Politics Among Nations, Knopf, New York.
Onuf, N.G. (1989) World of Our Making, University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, SC.
Part 1
Arguing about Right and Wrong
2
Logic and Moral Debate – Attacks on Blacks
Key Concept: (1) Universalizability. Logic clarifies all kinds of debate, but its role in moral debate is often overlooked. This is a pity, because it can be a weapon of extraordinary power.
Preview: Logic and the rule of universalizability; blacks and blackness; why we must take the hypothetical seriously; abortion and its slogans; the unborn mosquito.
Ethics consists of judgments about how people ought to behave and how people ought to be treated. Asking whether or not someone’s judgments are logically consistent with one another can put them on the defensive. Philosophers call this the “rule of universalizability.” Some philosophers try to read into it more than logical consistency, and this engenders a controversy. I will evade it by not doing so.
Blacks and Blackness
Classical racists say that all blacks (or Jews or “even” whites) ought to be treated as inferiors. They should be denied freedom from bondage, the vote, freedom of movement, freedom to marry any partner that is willing, and so forth. The first question that should be put to them is: why? This forces them to state what is called the practical syllogism. They then have a choice, namely, to appeal to sheer blackness of skin or name a desirable human trait for which blacks are supposedly deficient. Assume the first option:
Major premise: All people with black skin should be denied the right to vote.
Minor premise: Thirty-seven million Americans have black skin.
Conclusion: Therefore, those Americans should be denied the right to vote.
If racists choose this option, we can ask what they would say if their own skin turned black, perhaps because we sneaked a pill in their food or because of some pollutant in the water supply. This of course is a demand for logical consistency. In reply, they must answer in the positive or the negative. We can learn much from examining a positive answer.
