Presidential Election

I've been thinking about the candidates in the Presidential election and have come to the conclusion that they all share the same basic point of view which I would call the 60s mindset. This is the view that we possess infinite wealth, and infinite energy, and that human nature is infinitely malleable, and as a result we can accomplish anything we wish. We are going to have to learn as a country that none of these things are true and that there are sever limits to what we can accomplish. Perhaps we will have to wait until the baby boomers die off before the nation is prepared to understand this as the boomers have lived under this fantasy their whole lives. Gen X will not face it either as they share the fantasy but just are cynical that we have not lived up to its promise. And Gen Y has never had any reality to compare the fantasy with in the first place.

Learning these truths will be a hard lesson as the fantasy is so ingrained into our national psyche. We will have to learn that there are problems that we can not address financially, that there are limits to what we can accomplish, and that humans can not be perfected and freed from vice by state education.

The Child Production Problem Prevention Pact

I have been noticing that there are a number of problems in society. One is that there are lots of children who are being produced and not cared for. In many places around the world children are abandoned to living on the streets with no one to care for them, in other places orphanages require the dedication of scarce resources. I’ve also noticed that studies show that teenage girls raised in a single-parent household are more likely to become pregnant as a teenager. And boys raised by single-parents are more likely to have problems with aggression, attention deficit disorder, delinquency, school suspensions, and are more likely to end up in prison. I’ve also noticed that if a couple produces a child and then relationship ends, it places many burdens on the remaining parent as regards supporting and raising the child alone. We should do something about these heterosexuals producing all these problems! We need a way to prevent all these problems heterosexuals cause.

Therefore, I hereby introduce the modest proposal of “The Child Production Problem Prevention Pact.” All individuals who wish to form a natural reproductive unit with another individual are encouraged to join up for this pact. This institution will be designed to prevent the problems we have named. There are three obligations one takes on when signing up for the pact as there are three problems that result from the production of children. First, the couple vows not to abandon or mistreat any children that may result from their intercourse, and will provide for the material and emotional well-being of the child. Second, the couple vows not to abandon their partner to raise the child alone and suffer the problems therein. Third, the couple vows to society that they will not burden society with any child that may produce.

Eligibility: all couples who form a natural reproductive unit may join. A natural reproductive unit is a device created by God or natural selection with the function to produce offspring. It is the functioning of this unit that is causing all these problems and requires an institution by which to address them.

Question: I am infertile. Can I and my partner sign up? Yes, you still form a natural reproductive unit even if you are unable to perform that function. For example, in a liberal society the State does not have the right to prevent individuals from trying to be farmers even if they are unable to farm. A liberal State does is not in the business of saying who may join as a natural reproductive unit as it does not practice eugenics.

Question: We would like to join but have no intention of creating a child. Can we still join? Yes, functional items still have functions even if they do not perform that function. For example, even if there is never a fire and so the fire department never performs its function it still has the function of preventing fires.

Question: Can I join with a member of the same sex? No, you do not form a reproductive unit.

Question: Why can only reproductive units join? Becasue the state will be dispensing benefits to those who sign up and take on this function and it is unfair to provide these benefits to those who do not perform this function. For example, in order to join the police department you must possess a function relative to the prevention of breaking the law, such as being a police officer, or detective. In the case of marriage, sorry, I mean the Child Production Problem Prevention Pact, you must possess the function of producing children which is relevant to an institution designed to prevent the problems that result from the production of children.  A same sex couple either possesses no function or a function unrelated to the production of children.

Question:  But that is not fair to those who are attracted to the same sex.

Response: It is no more unfair than that a fireman may not join the police department, or, perhaps, that someone with cerebral palsy can not acquire the function of a linebacker and so can not join the football team.

10 Answers to Arguments in Favor of Gay Marriage

I have argued in the previous post that marriage is a social institution with the function to prevent the problems of heterosexual intercourse, namely, the production of children. People will agree that tools like hammers have functions, that biological items like hearts have function, that behaviors like animal mating displays have functions, that social institutions like the police and fire departments have functions, but when you suggest that marriage has a function, people’s heads explode. Perhaps it is just that supporters of gay marriage immediately see the implications of accepting that marriage has a function and so deny it against all evidence. To say that marriage has a function is to approach marriage the way a biologist would look at a behavior or organ. It is to ask why does marriage exist? Why hasn’t it died out like a fad? Why has it been around for centuries and millennia? What does it do that keeps it getting reproduced over and over? What problems does it solve that makes it so valuable to keep around? When looked at this way it becomes clear that the function of marriage is to prevent the problems that result from heterosexual intercourse, namely, the production of children. The reason for the disagreement over gay “marriage” is a lack of understanding of the nature of functions. This post answers 10 objections to this view.

Objection 1: Preventing the problems that result from heterosexual intercourse can not be the function of marriage since people get married for all sorts of reasons other than the having and raising of children. Couples might marry for wealth, to secure an alliance, to receive tax breaks, to avoid deportation, and so on.
Answer: Marriage has a function and functions have nothing to do with people’s intentions. For example, a screwdriver could be used to fulfill various intentions--as a weapon, a can opener, a hole puncher, etc.--but its function is still to turn screws. That is what it was reproduced for its ability to do. Furthermore, even if it is constantly used as a space heater, making toast remains the function of a toaster. Whatever people’s intentions, an item’s function does not change.

Objection 2: Marriage can have nothing to do with the production of children since lots of people might get married and decide not to have children. Or they may be infertile and unable to have children. The argument presented here would say that these couples are not married because they do not perform the function of marriage.
Answer: An item or institution may have a function and yet never perform it. Imagine a police department that is lucky enough to exist in a place where there is no crime and so no criminals ever need to be apprehended. The apprehension of criminals is still its function despite the fact that it is not performed. Or simply imagine an otherwise working toaster that is never actually used to make toast. Making toast is still its function even though it is never performed. Similarly, a marriage that never performs its function still has that function. Likewise, with infertile couples, even if an item is unable to perform its function, it still has that function as its function. A broken toaster or malformed heart still has their distinctive functions even if they are unable to perform them. All that is required for marriage is that the couple forms a natural reproductive unit and takes the vows.

Objection 3: Even if it is granted that reproduction is the function of marriage, if those who can not perform a function ought to be prevented from membership in the institution, then infertile couples ought to be prevented from being allowed to marry since they are unable to perform that function. For example, if an individual can be justly prevented from taking on the role of computer programmer when they can not program computers, then infertile couples who can not perform the function of marriage can be prevented from marrying. And so if homosexuals can be prevented from marriage because they can not conceive children together, so ought an infertile heterosexual couple.
Answer: In the computer programmer example, the person in charge of selecting candidates for the function is the hiring manager, and they are justified in rejecting a candidate who can not perform the job. But in a liberal society, the selection of marriage partner is left up to the individuals involved. Society does not have the right to prevent someone from trying to be a farmer even if they do not succeed at it. The State, however, does have the right to deny someone who is doing something other than farming from being considered a farmer.

Objection 4: An infertile couple may happily remain together for decades. How can you say that this is an unsuccessful marriage?
Answer: Mutual love and happiness are great virtues of marriage; they are properties that help to enable a marriage to perform its function. And so this marriage is good insofar as it displays these virtues. However, it has been a monumental error to mistake the virtue of marriage for its function: love is not the function of marriage. Furthermore, no one would deny that a couple that lovingly raise a child display other virtues, and that these are by necessity missing in the case of a childless couple. A couple that marries for happiness alone is indeed successful in that they succeed in the performance of the derived proper function of this marriage (assuming that the individuals entered in to the institution to make themselves happy). People may join all sorts of institutions and get much satisfaction out of them without ever successfully performing the function of the institution.

Objection 5: You say that in a liberal society the selection of partners is left to the individuals involved. How can you then deny homosexuals the right to select whomever they want for marriage?
Answer: The selector role is relative to function. In the case of marriage the role of selection is to choose with whom you wish to enter the institution of marriage, not with whom you wish to join some other institution. But suppose two individuals wished to cooperate in the function of farming. In a liberal society the individuals involved are allowed to select whomever they want as partners. But if they start building furniture instead of farming, the State is in the right to deny them the title and any benefits bestowed to farming. In the case of marriage, the fact that the two individuals are of the same sex is a guarantor that the individuals will not be joining the institution of marriage.

Objection 6: Your argument begs the question by describing the problem in such a way that it excludes homosexual couples. You have defined marriage as preventing the problems that result from heterosexual intercourse, namely, the production of a child. Considering that this definition of marriage contains “heterosexual” right in the definition, of course homosexuals will be excluded.
Answer: Saying that something has a function is not to offer a definition or analysis of that thing. A functional account of marriage is not a definition or conceptual analysis of the concept of marriage. Since I am not analyzing “marriage” it does not beg the question to point out that heterosexual intercourse has certain consequences missing from homosexual intercourse, and that these consequences might need a social institution with which to address them. If Aristotle was allowed to define the brain as an organ whose function it is to cool the body, then he could never be refuted by those arguing otherwise, he could only be shown that the item which he took to be a brain, that lump of grey matter in the skull, was not in fact a brain. Anyone arguing otherwise would be accused of begging the question by including their new account of its function in their definition.

Objection 7: It might be objected that it is acceptable to exclude someone from taking on a functional role only on those occasions where an individual or group would be harmed by allowing them to take on the position. For example, the candidate for a computer programmer position who is unable to actually program computers would harm the owner or shareholders of the company were he employed, whereas allowing a homosexual couple to marry does not harm anyone. But a lone farmer, even if he is unable to farm due to physical disabilities, can not be prevented by the state from farming since he is not harming anyone.
Answer: The State does confer certain benefits to married couples. At least one reason for giving these benefits is that marriage benefits society by preventing the problems that might result from sexual intercourse as well as providing new members of society so that society might continue to exist. Stable gay relationships might provide some benefit to society different from the benefits marriage provides. For example, the Massachusetts Supreme Court judged that stable relationships benefit society and that marriage promotes stable relationships. I am not convinced that lasting relationships in themselves benefit society apart from the benefit that it provides in the raising of children, but allowing the point for the sake of argument, the benefits that society bestows on childless stable relationships ought to be different than those it bestows on marriage since the latter provides very different benefit to society and society should bestow benefits according to the good that is produced.

Objection 8: What if a homosexual undergoes a sex change operation to become the opposite sex. Can they then marry their partner?
Answer: Sex change operations do not change an individual’s sex. Sex is a functional category and is assigned by nature. Sex change operations may however make life more pleasant for one whose sex and sense of sexual identity do not correspond.

Objection 9: If marriage has changed over time into its current state, why not call this marriage and not the institution designed to perform its traditional function?
Answer: I don’t much care what it is called as it is merely a verbal dispute. We could call it schmarriage if one likes. Or we could call it “the solution to the problem of the production of children by heterosexual intercourse whereby the biological parents jointly raise the child,” but that is a mouthful. The most important thing is that this solution to the problem be given a name that distinguishes it from other social institutions for the same reason we give anything a name, namely, to distinguish it from other things so that we know what we’re talking about when we are talking about this distinct thing. That being said, I do think there are good reasons for restricting the name “marriage” to the traditional arrangement. The main reason is that this is what has historically been called marriage. Words spread based largely by the weight of precedent, and the precedent in this case is to reserve the name “marriage” to the union of a man and a woman. A Kripkean baptism occurred many centuries ago for this arrangement and that gives it a claim to the name. In the example I gave of the corrupt police department, when the split occurs whereby a faction wishes to return to performing the original function, it seems to me that it is this institution that should retain the name of police.

Objection 10: What about someone who no longer farms at all? If the State is offering tax breaks to farmers, it seems as if the State would be justified in denying those benefits to someone who does not actually farm since they are not providing the benefits of that institution which the tax breaks are meant to encourage. If so it would imply that, say, a celibate, or infertile couple, or a couple of “empty-nesters” could be denied the title of marriage.
Answer: There is a difference between how rights and benefits are treated. A retired or even paralyzed farmer or doctor is still a farmer or doctor even if they can no longer perform that function. They still have the rights bestowed on farmers or doctors, the rights to membership in professional organizations, for instance. However, since they are no longer performing the function it might be just to deny them certain State benefits. For example, it might be just to deny the retired farmer tax breaks farmers receive since he is no longer farming and his fields lay fallow. As regards the marriage discussion, “empty-nesters” are still married and entitled to the rights therein, but they no longer get to claim a child as a dependent and receive the benefits given to those with dependants.

The Function of Marriage

If you’ve read this blog you know that I am interested in the nature of functions. The contemporary understanding is that items have a function in virtue of possessing a certain history; a history of selection and copying from ancestors. And so to have a function an item must have two features 1. it must be a copy of a previous item 2. it must be selected rather than things missing the feature because the feature produces some effect. Genes, for example, are copies of ones parents' genes, and the genes that produce hearts are selected by natural selection because they produce hearts. Hearts are produced by natural selection because they pump blood, not because they make "lub-dub" sounds, or squish when they are stepped on, or freeze when put into liquid nitrogen, or any of a million other things. Screwdrivers can do a million things, but they are copied from blueprints or a prototype in manufacturing for their ability to turn screws. I can use a screwdriver to do many things other than turn screws, but turning screws is its function. (Actually, it is its "direct" function as opposed to a "derived" function but I don't think I'll have to get into that distinction for this present purpose). Behaviors have a function in this sense as well. Animal mating displays have the function of attracting mates. That is what previous mating displays did that resulted in the genes that produce that dance being copied into successive generations. Learned behavior can have a function too. Each time I switch on a light I am copying a previous behavior for a reason, to illuminate the room. That is the function of light-switch-flipping behavior.

Social institutions have a function as well. It is the function of the police to prevent crime, the function of schools to educate students, the function of hospitals to heal the sick. These functional institutions arise where there is a social problem in need of a solution: crime to prevent, the sick to heal, children to educate. And so the possession of a function is an objective fact, it is not a matter of opinion, or what society says. If someone thinks that the function of the brain is to cool the body they are wrong; no matter how you define "brain," that is not its function. And so I think that the dispute is not a mere disagreement over how do define something, there is a fact about what the function of marriage is.

Applying these results to the controversy over gay marriage gives a different perspective on the argument. The debate has generally centered around fighting over what is the definition of marriage: conservatives claiming that it is defined as the union between a man and a woman, liberals claiming that it is defined as a consensual agreement between two people who love each other. Both sides think that they can declare victory based on their definition alone, and both sides convince no one who wasn’t already convinced. But since this is A Pox on Both Your Houses, of course both are wrong. The question we must ask is not what is the definition of marriage, but what is its function. Functions do not depend on definitions, as we have seen. The function of the heart is to pump blood no matter how you define it. Marriages, like the other examples we have been discussing, have been reproduced for a reason and so have a function, and this is just as much an empirical matter as in these other examples. Mating displays that don't attract mates go extinct, but marriages keep getting reproduced. To say that marriage has a function is to approach marriage the way a biologist would look at a behavior or organ. It is to ask why does marriage exist? Why hasn’t it died out like a fad? Why has it been around for centuries and millennia? What does it do that keeps it getting reproduced over and over? What problems does it solve that makes it so valuable to keep around?

There is a particular widespread, recurring, and important social problem in need of a solution. The problem is that heterosexual intercourse produces children, and once born, chldren require a great deal of attention and care in order for them to survive and mature. Marriage is the functional insstitution with the function to prevent these problems. A vast body of research shows that children raised in single-parent homes are at far greater risk of poverty, school dropout, delinquency, teen pregnancy, adult joblessness, and other problems. Society itself can suffer the problems of many children abandoned to orphanages or the streets. Marriage is the means of preventing these problems. Because gay relationships can not produce a child and hetero relationships can, there are problems that need to be prevented in the case of a hetero relationship that are absent in a gay relationship, namely, the problem of producing a child as a result of sexual intercourse. Thus an institution needs to exist in the case of hetero relationships whose purpose is the prevention of the problems that are created in a world where children are produced and not provided for by their parents. Gay relationships do not solve these problems.

Love is the primary virtue of marriage; it is what allows a marriage to perform its function of providing an environment that is safe, stable, healthy, and nurturing for children to be born into. There are other virtues in addition to love that allow a marriage to perform its function: having the means to support the child, living in a safe environment, having parents who are mature and responsible, and so on. As our understanding of what is involved in raising children changes, the virtues of mariage can change. Also, environmental conditions will affect what is required to raise children successfully: those living in a place where resources are scarce will need to inculcate different skills and character in their children than those who are blessed with plenty, those living in a place where there are many enemies will likewise require different skills than places blessed with peace. Thus we shouldn't be suprised that marriage is very different today than it has been at other times (a point liberals believe carries a lot of weight, but doesn't make the point they think it does).

Sadly, just like in the case of diseased hearts, many marriages are bad, and for a host of possible reasons lack the virtues of a marriage and thus fail to perform their function. But just a diseased hearts still have the function of pumping blood, the function doesn’t change simply because it fails to be performed. Where the debate goes wrong from the liberal side is in confusing the function for the virtue; love is not the function of marriage. However, liberals are correct that in recent decades marriage has indeed evolved into something of a mere celebration of love. It would not be uncommon to hear the officiant at a wedding say that we gather here to celebrate the love of a couple. Traditionally, there was no question of a couple getting married but deciding not to have children. In an age lacking affective birth control it was assumed that children would soon follow from marriage and need to be supported and nurtured. With the advent of cheap and effective birth control it is quite common for couples to have no intention of raising children, and thus physical love has been spearated from the inevitability of children. This ambiguity is at the heart of the controversy and needs to be disambiguated. It is always possible to create a new social institution of “love unions” or civil unions that serve the function of indicating that a couple love each other and that last only as long as they do. Such an institution would have the benefits of hospital visitation rights and so on, but would be clear on what its function is.

Some might object if marriage has changed as much as I claim, then it now has a different function than it once did. To see why this is wrong take another example of a changing institution. Suppose crime in a city was escalating dramatically because the police department no longer think that it is their function to prevent crime and enforce the law. Instead, the police department has morphed into an organization that believes its function is to produce police officers because police officers get respect, and that no responsibilities as regards fighting crime follow from becoming a police officer. (I use this as an example because I have heard it argued that a reason to allow gay marriage is that homosexuals want the respect for their relationships that hetero relationships have). I say that the reason crime is out of control is because the police no longer perform their function. Someone might claim that the police do perform their function, which is to gain respect. I say we need to get the police force back to enforcing the laws and catching criminals. They say that it is impossible to get the police force back to what it once was. I say that it isn’t impossible as long as we make sure that police officers are once again held to the duties, obligations, and responsibilities they once had. What’s more, despite that the police force currently thinks its function is to produce police officers with respect, it makes sense to say that its true function is to enforce the law no matter whether it currently does.

I think that the misidentification of marriage as a love union rather than the attempt to raise happy, healthy, and virtuous children helps explain much of the problems surrounding marriage in contemporary society. When you understand that you are entering into an agreement designed for the nurturing of children it affects the way you view your “job” as a married person. Love unions on the other hand might have commitment ceremonies, but generally the commitment is allowed to end the moment you no longer feel like being committed--and when you can break a commitment as soon as you feel like it, it can hardly be called a commitment at all. The goal of marriage is not to just enjoy the blessings of love--and so once love has faded you are free to end the union--the goal is to raise children, and this very much involves subsuming your individual desires and altering your self however is necesary to be successful in the larger purpose.

Modern marriages, or "love unions" have the following features:
1. There is no commitment to stay longer than than you want.
2. You enter into it in order to make yourself happy.
3. It’s purpose is to celebrate the love of the couple.
4. It is only the business of the couple involved, society has no interest is seeing it succeed or fail.

Marriage on the other hand:
1. Lasts until your obligation to your spouse and children ends.
2. You enter into it for the benefit of the children you will have.
3. Its purpose is to make sure the children who will result are supported and raised successfully.
4. Society has an interest in making sure marriages succeed because of the negative consequences of having many troubled children.

These differences are significant enough to be describing totally separate things.

This misunderstandng of marriage as a love union has had tragic yet predictable results. At last count 40% of the children being born in this country are born out of wedlock, up from 2% in the 1950s. This is a catastrophe on a vast scale. It is the primary function of marriage to prevent this current state of affairs. This is its raison d’etre. Marriage performs this function by possessing three obligations that coincide with the three problems it is designed to prevent: first, marriage is an obligation to your spouse that you will not abandon them to raise the child alone, second, marriage is an obligation to your child that you will not abandon them, third, marriage is an obligation to the society at large that you will see to it that your child is raised right and not abandoned. Marriage is a right only insofar as you have the right to take on these three obligations. There are no rights without obligations--for example, my right to free speech carries the obligation that I don’t deny others this right, and likewise for other rights. In the case of gay marriage, none of these obligations follow since there is no child to worry about. Without any obligation, there is no right.

What about the case where a gay couple wishes to adopt? I am in favor of gay adoption, but there is no need for marriage here because there is no problem to be avoided by such a marriage. Gay couples do not run the risk of creating a society with massive numbers of out of wedlock children. Preventing this is one of the functions of marriage, and, just as the fact that if you don't have something whose function is to pump blood you don't have a heart, if there is no societal problem to be avoided, there is no marriage.

For example, suppose that the purpose of the army is solve the problem of how to defend the country from attack. When you join the infantry you take on certain obligations, say you need to be able to carry a certain amount of weight, run at a certain speed, and fire a gun accurately. You do have a right to try out for the infantry, but if you can’t do these things you will be unable to fulfill your obligations and so you do not get to join the infantry. There is no unjust discrimination in preventing someone from taking part in a functional practice when they can not perform the function. Suppose someone still wants to help defend the country even if they are unable to join the infantry. We should be very happy to receive their help, but still, they can’t join the infantry. Likewise, the purpose of marriage is to prevent the societal problems that result from the production of children who are born and either abandoned or raised by a single parent.

Gay marriage does not solve the societal problems I’ve mentioned because there are no such societal problems caused by gay relationships because there are no children that result and need to be cared for. Whatever reason a homosexual couple might have for wanting to get married, it is not to prevent certain problems that might arise from their sexual intercourse. However, if homosexuals wish to help resolve the problems caused by others by adopting a child we should welcome their help. Adoption has a different function, it is to take care of children that have already been abandoned. Whereas marriage is preventative, adoption is curative.

Finally, in discussions of gay marriage you almost always will hear the claim that marriage can have nothing to do with the producing and raising of children because there are lots of heterosexual marriages that do not produce children. This objection highlights the difference between teleological approaches and essentialist ones, and the way that essentialism permeates every debate. See Teleology and the Death of Liberalism for an overview of teleology, and On Being Real for a quick discussion of essentialism. The main difference betwen the two approaches is that an item can have a teleological function and yet never perform it, whereas essential characteristics must always be present. For example, the fish swimming in a fishtank, let us suppose, have certain innate behavioral mechanisms whose function is the avoidance of predators. But because of their present protected environment, these functions will never be performed. Or a coffee maker may never actually be used to make coffee, although it could if was given the right inputs (assuming the rest of it is in working condition). And yet making coffee remains its function despite that fact that it is never performed. So the objection that marriage can have nothing to do with childbirth since there are many heterosexual couples that never have children is asuming an essentialist argument that does not apply when approaching it teleologically. Heterosexual couples are in this position, they could perform the reproductive function even though they don't, whereas homosexual couples could never perform this function.

Likewise, a relationship between infertile heterosexual couples is still marriage even though they can not produce children. On our current, somewhat unfortunate, metaphor, an infertile couple is like a broken coffee maker, something is preventing them from producing children. Yet it is still the function of a broken coffee maker to make coffee even if it can not do it. A gay relationship, on the other hand, has some completely different function. The state is in the position of discering these functions because the state gives benefits to married couples due to the benefit they provide to society. But suppose the state was giving tax breaks to farmers. An individual who makes cars decides to claim this tax break. The state is justified in excluding this individual from the tax break because he is not a farmer, he is a car-maker. Even if society humored this car-maker by calling him a farmer so as to not hurt his feelings, he would not thereby be a farmer. Were gay relationships granted the title "marriage" it would be like humoring this car-maker by calling him a farmer. It would be unjust because he is receiving a benefit for a function he does not have.

_____________________________ (1) Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories, p. 33.

Three Magic Words of Liberalism: Inclusivity, Diversity, Tolerance

There are three magic words of modern cultural liberalism: diversity, inclusivity, tolerance. Liberals invoke these words because they feel that they can automatically win any argument by invoking them. Who could possibly be against diversity, or who could be against being inclusive? Conservatives do the same thing with the word freedom. These words end all argument. The use of these words is quite effective because they have a “nice” emotional connotation to them; they seem to be the answer to any problem, that any disagreement could be solved by demonstrating one of these behaviors.


The problem is, these words don’t make any logical sense when examined. Take inclusiveness. Suppose you wanted to have an inclusive winter holiday party. The first problem is do you invite those who believe that all holiday parties should be banned? If you have your party you are not being inclusive because you are excluding the opinions of this group. If you acquiesce to this group and don’t have your party, you are excluding all those who do wish to have a party. The term in meaningless when put into practice.


But take another problem. Suppose you invite those who celebrate Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, as well as those who do not have any religious or cultural celebration of their own. Now what do you do at this party? Do you actually have a Christmas celebration, followed by a Chanukah celebration, followed by a Kwanzaa celebration? If so, are the Jews excluded from the Christmas part of the celebration? If so, you are back to being exclusionary. If not, are the Jews at the party supposed to actually celebrate the birth of the messiah, something they do not believe? That would be absurd because if they believe that they are celebrating the birth of the messiah they thereby stop being Jews and start being Christians, so you are still excluding Jews. Or are they supposed to pretend to celebrate the birth of the messiah but not actually believe it? In this case they are not actually taking part in a Christmas celebration, because they are not celebrating the birth of the messiah: no Christmas celebration is taking place. On the other hand, we could just all hang out together and enjoy each other’s company at this party and not celebrate any of the specific holidays. But this would be completely exclusionary, not inclusive, as you are hereby excluding all groups from celebrating their holiday. Or we could merge them all into some new holiday which takes parts from them all. But of course, if you do this you are no longer being inclusive as you are advocating this new holiday exclusively.


The same problems underlie any claims to “celebrate diversity.” Suppose every street in a neighborhood had representatives of 100 different cultures. In one sense this would be diverse, but in another sense it would be entirely homogenous since every street would be the same as every other street. Or if each nation on Earth was culturally homogenous, on one level this would be a case be homogeny, but the Earth as a whole would be diverse in that it would contain many culturally distinct nations. This problem runs through every model of diversity—as soon as you advocate a type of diversity to be adopted, if EVERYONE adopts it you end up with every place being the same as every other place. There is no such thing as diversity per se, it is always relative to a reference class. A diverse street might be a homogenous collection of streets. But when liberals “celebrate diversity” they always conveniently leave out what they are talking about, thinking they can win by slight of hand.


Another problem is what is the relationship between multiculturalists and the multiple cultures they love? Clearly a multiculturalist likes all of the multiple cultures they celebrate whether they are Muslim, Japanese, Chinese, Somali, African-American, etc. Oddly enough, however, none of these cultures are themselves multi-cultural. Japan for example is fiercely protective of its culture, as are most other cultures in the world. So do multiculturalists advocate we all adopt multiculturalism as our ethic? If so, multiculturalism advocates changing the cultures they purport to respect. If multiculturalism wants all these cultures to change and to adopt a common culture, in what sense is it multi-cultural and not monocultural since all the cultures would be the same as regards their embrace of multiculturalism? If multiculturalists are not urging that all people adopt multiculturalism and that instead people retain their culture, what exactly is multiculturalism advocating? That people remain mono-cultural and not multicultural? If everyone behaves multicultural, and enjoys all types of foods, all ethnic festivals, adopts all religious beliefs, enjoys all types of music and visual arts--in other words, if they abandon their culture--multiculturalism ends up destroying all the cultures it purports to protect as we end up with every place being the same and not diverse.


Finally, “tolerance” suffers from the same problem as the other two. This can be seen by simply asking should we tolerate Nazis? If so then we are saying that tolerance is acceptable, and intolerance is also acceptable: a contradiction. Otherwise, if we do not tolerate the intolerant, then we are not being tolerant as we are being intolerant towards some, namely, the intolerant. Some would amend their doctrine of tolerance to say that we should be tolerant to everyone except the intolerant. But in practice this ends up excluding just about everyone. All religions are intolerant of some behavior so they must all be excluded, and believers in rights are intolerant of those who do not believe in rights, and believers of democracy are intolerant of believers in other systems, etc.. You might want to say that all behavior should be tolerated except if it harms others, but this is not being tolerant as it is intolerant to all who do not believe this. This is not to say that this view might not be correct, only that it is not tolerant per se; it is tolerant of some things and intolerant of others, something all ethical systems share. We would be beter off just discussing what is allowed, and what is foridden, and why, as "tolerance" is no longer doing any work.


I am not saying that we should not be tolerant, inclusive, or diverse! I am just saying that whenever someone urges tolerance we should ask what are we to tolerate and why. Everyone wants tolerance. Even Nazis want tolerance for their activities. It is just that we need a standard of behavior other than tolerance itself. A standard such as "do not harm others" is plausible and rational; "tolerate others" is not, it tells us nothing about what behavior is acceptible and what is not. Or, to take inclusivity, what are we to include and why? Why is one kind of diversity better than another kind? When you start asking questions like this you find out what is being smuggled in under the cover of the magic words. Just espousing tolerance, inclusivity, and diversity is meaningless drivel.


The three concepts I have discussed are all just feel-good nonsense, they are just designed to manipulate and shut down thought and debate. The way to fight them is to come up with word to describe them that can be wielded whenever a liberal tries to invoke one of these sacred totems. It would have to be a term or phrase that can be easily grasped and basically means “feel-good nonsense, designed to manipulate, distort, and confuse.” I have called them magic words, but that doesn't quite capture what I am looking for. Any suggestions?

Republicans,ugh.

What can you do when you live in a time and place that only has the political parties we do? I guess all you can do is start a blog called A Pox on Both Your Houses and hope for the best. I actually had hope that the GOP had learned their lesson from the Bush years, as they keep telling us they had. But what do we get with their budget? Its the same bait and switch over and over again. The GOP runs on "getting government out of people's lives. That's the bait. The switch is that what they really mean is gutting environmental regulations on polluters. With a trillion dollar deficits, the GOP can only manage $61 billion in cuts. Instead they block a plan to clean up the Chesapeake Bay, bar the government from shutting down mountaintop mines it believes will cause too much water pollution, block the government from removing hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River, block rules issued last year aimed at controlling fertilizer and other pollutants that stoke the spread of algae. These actions have nothing to do with reducing the budget deficit and are not what the GOP was elected for. Again, they learn nothing. But it is a horrible political strategy as well. Does the GOP not care about expanding its constituency at all? Do they want to be the minority party perpetually? If so, who do they hope to attract from the Democratic coalition? It is environmentalists who are the most likely group that could be attracted to the GOP. I have written about this before and here and I hope readers will check out theose posts.

Neikophilia and Why Multiculturalism Has Failed

In October, German president Angela Merkel made the startling claim that multiculturalism has failed in Germany. She claimed that “the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side by side and to enjoy each other ... has failed, utterly failed." http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2010/1017/Germany-s-Angela-Merkel-Multiculturalism-has-utterly-failed

The view that multiculturalism means enjoying living side by side with members of other cultures is not everyone’s view of what multiculturalism entails, and philosophers develop more complex formulations, but it captures the popular conception close enough and so I will direct my comments towards explaining why it has failed in this sense. Simply put, multiculturalism, like communism before it, has failed because it disastrously misunderstands human nature. Whereas communism thought that an individual could be perpetually freed of all self-interest and could instead always be motivated by the good of the state or the workers of the world, multiculturalism is mistaken about the way people interact and organize and conceive of themselves. To understand the nature of this failure requires looking into some recent work in philosophy dealing with the way people interact with one another. I hope readers will stick with me as I go over this; it is pretty easy to understand. This theory will explain why people group themselves the way they do and why Merkel’s image of people living side-by-side while retaining their cultural differences is so difficult to achieve.[1]

Let’s begin by considering how cultures function. Along these lines I will start by making the uncontroversial point that there are benefits to be had by cooperating with others. This does not just go for humans, but for all social animals. For example, when sensing danger, a rabbit thumps its hind paws on the ground as a signal to other rabbits so that they may take action to avoid the predator. In order for this behavior to succeed in it function of avoiding predators both parties must play their part: one rabbit must thump the ground, and the other rabbits must find shelter and avoid the predator. Rabbits are encouraged to thump the ground because the benefits they receive of being alerted by other rabbits thumping the ground in times of danger, and listening rabbits are encouraged to keep reacting to the thumps by running for cover because of the benefits of avoiding predators. If rabbits never managed to avoid predators when hearing thumps there would be no reason to continue reacting to the thumps, and if rabbits never ran for cover there would be no reason to continue thumping. But because both parties are mutually reinforced to play their part by the benefits of the cooperation, these behaviors are likely to be repeated. When you have a situation like this, where there is a common goal that can only be achieved by two or more parties performing a part, it has what is called a stabilizing, or cooperative function.


Human language works in a similar way. We benefit by being able to communicate concerning features of our environment just as the rabbits benefit by being alerted to the presence of danger. (Of course human language is far more sophisticated and is not inherited genetically the way rabbit behavior is; humans must learn to cooperate in this specific way). For example, in order to communicate concerning the presence or actions of dogs, we create and spread a convention to use the sound associated with “dog” to be used again and again to facilitate this communication. If I have an interest in alerting you that there is a dog around I will use this conventional sound to tell you this. There is no reason that it had to be the sound associated with “dog,” other sounds could have served just as well, as they do in other languages, but a convention was started by English speakers and the benefits of having everyone on the same page resulted in this convention being copied from person to person. The same goes for other languages where a different conventional sound was instituted and it became practical for people to adopt it. The common interest of this cooperative function is producing a belief in the presence of dogs, or being able to communicate concerning dogs. This can only be done by the speaker doing his part, saying “there is a dog over there,” and the hearer doing their part of coming to believe that what is said is true. If speakers were too often wrong about this and the hearers were frequently mislead they would soon stop forming the beliefs, and if hearers stopped forming the beliefs, speakers would stop using “dog” to try to instill these beliefs in their hearers. But because both speakers and hearers interests are met sufficiently often there is no incentive to change the convention, it reinforces both parties in continuing to use it as precedent has determined. Regional accents likewise have their cooperative functions. The way words are to be pronounced need to be standardized so that listeners will be able to tell which word is being spoken when encountered on various occasions. That is why languages remain fairly stable over time, although they do change slowly for various reasons I will not get into here.

Cooperative functions work successfully when both parties play their part as they have been historically performed and so the common interest is achieved. It does sometimes happen that there are no dogs around even though someone says there is. The most obvious cases being that the speaker is either mistaken or lying. Probably even if there were no dogs around in the majority of cases it would still be worthwhile to keep using this convention just for those cases where it does work, at least until something better came along, just as even though the camouflage of snowshoe hares fails in preventing the hare from being eaten more often than it succeeds, it is worth keeping for those occasions where it does succeed in performing its function.

In addition to language, many social conventions have their cooperative functions. Drivers have a common interest in avoiding collisions, so in the United States a convention was instituted so that everyone drives on the right. We cooperate with one another in the avoidance of collisions by adhering to this convention. A driver from the north has an interest in not colliding with a driver approaching from the south, and vice versa, and so each will be reinforced in following the convention. There is nothing inherently superior to this convention. In England the convention is driving on the left.

When a cooperative function such as the rabbit thump or “dog” is produced by one party (called the “producer”) to be used by another (called the “consumer”) to indicate the presence of some feature in the environment, it has meaning. The thump means “Predator! Run!” because it is produced for use in a specific way by a consumer in response to some specific environmental feature: the presence of predators. The stripes soldiers wear on their uniform are similar: they are displayed (“produced” in the sense used here) in order to indicate rank and so to prescribe appropriate behavior on the part of perceivers (“consumers”). Styles of attire have meaning in this sense as well. For example, a style of fashion might be displayed by its wearer (its producer) because it conveys something such as sophistication, or wealth, or being carefree, not being stuffy, etc.. The Muslim headscarf means modesty for the same reasons. The wearer (the producer) displays an instance of the convention of the headscarf to convey modesty so as to indicate to the co-adapted consumers, others who are part of the tradition of responding to this display in the correct way, to treat the wearer as modest.

People are thus adapted by experience to other people in the production of these cooperative functions of language, conventions, accents, attire, morals, etc. When confronted with an unfamiliar function it produces an awareness that we can not succeed in the performance of these functions as we are accustomed. But either by experience or instinct, people become quite good at maneuvering themselves into those conditions that ensure success for their functional mechanisms. For example, our visual systems work correctly in certain light conditions. If it is too dark to tell what the color of an object is, the answer is to bring it into the light and look at it under the sun. This is a case of maneuvering oneself into the proper conditions for ones visual systems. The same goes for our cooperative functions. If you are in a foreign country and need to ask a question, the answer is to find your co-adapted partner, another English speaker, and so bring your language use into success-enabling conditions, and thus succeed in the performance of ones cooperative function of eliciting true information from ones listeners.

We can begin to see why President Merkel’s hope that cultures could live side-by-side has been foiled and why ethnic neighborhoods inevitably spring up wherever there is cultural diversity. In order to succeed at the performance of a cooperative function, one must maneuver oneself into the proper conditions that ensure the successful performance of this function. This can only be done where ones co-adapted partners are present, those who are adapted to the conventions one has learned and so can respond appropriately. Thus people will congregate with those with whom they share these conventions. The benefits of being in the presence of ones co-adapted partners are so crucial to ones ability to get by in the world, the benefits so great, that people congregate together to ensure a high frequency of successful functioning of these conventions. Being unable to communicate with one another, for example, is such a impediment to ones ability to function in the world one will obviously be better off being in a place where one can read the signs posted or speak to ones neighbors. An immigrant moving to a strange land is obviously going to settle in a place where they can communicate with others, where the people possess the same conventions, language, traditions, styles of attire, moral standards, etc.

And so we see that usually immigrants initially form ethnic enclaves because of the benefits I have discussed of being around ones co-adapted partners to cooperative functions. By maneuvering themselves into those conditions that ensure success for cooperative functions, they are able to enjoy the benefits cooperation bestows. This inevitably results in immigrants (and non-immigrants) congregating together. Groups that don’t congregate in this way, that don’t reinforce one another by the performance of cooperative functions, that disperse into a larger society and adopt the conventions of that society, simply cease to exist as groups. They dissipate. And as we usually see, over time, in order to procure the benefits bestowed by shared conventions with the wider society, people will co-adapt so as to facilitate cooperation, and the spread of the indigenous majority conventions would result in cultural integration. This is traditionally what happens as eventually carriers of different conventions (generally immigrant communities) come to integrate into the existing culture by co-adapting to the indigenous population. Even in a shorter time frame, I notice that as I travel around the country I find myself unconsciously beginning to adopt the regional accent as I begin to co-adapt to the local population. This is the traditional “melting pot” experience of immigrants which occurs as they and their ancestors adopt the cultural conventions of their new home. By the third generation immigrants have integrated into the wider American society by the adoption of the existing norms. There are very few remaining classic little Italys, or Polish neighborhoods, or Irish neighborhoods, in American cities, and if there is a preponderance of people with that background concentrated in an area simply by inertia, the young people are indistinguishable from the wider society.

The exception, tragically, has been race where racially segregated neighborhoods are still the norm in all nations with multiple races among the population. This brings us to the sensitive topic of race. Obviously, one can not adapt ones race to others the way you can adapt ones language, style of attire, accent, and behavior. However, unlike language and the other cooperative functions we have been discussing, there is no cooperative function that is achieved by race. There is no cooperative function that can only be achieved by cooperation with ones own race. So why does such separation persist? The reason has to do with history. We have discussed the way that conventions can spread as they are copied among people. Things that share a property or a number of properties because they both belong in a copy chain of this sort are called “historical kinds.” An historical kind is a group of two or more items that possess a common feature as a result of this copying from others. For example, computers coming off an assembly line are all members of an historical kind as they are all copies of a prototype or blueprint. Likewise, genes, species, biological organs, words and other linguistic items, imitated behaviors, traditions, architectural or other artistic styles, consumer products, etc., are all historical kinds as they all belong to distinctive copy chains.

The cooperative conventions we have been discussing and other traditions tend to clump together and are handed down together for reasons of efficiency. And it is this grouping of these passed down conventions and traditions that form a type of historical kind we call a culture. Cultures are likely to retain their character through time because traditions are passed down through generations; those traditions that aren’t passed down die out. (Of course, changes do occur and accumulate over time as traditions evolve.) In addition, traditions that serve a cooperative function continue to be passed down because of the mutual benefit people receive through them, as we have discussed. When people become aware that other places have different conventions and traditions, they come to understand themselves as belonging to a unique culture--as understanding that ones language, traditions, styles, etc., that make up much of ones way of life or identity, are the result of possessing a common history with others, as belonging to the same historical kind. Also, they can come to realize that their culture is merely contingent and capable of being annihilated.

People frequently form an emotional attachment to their historical kind, feeling proud of its accomplishments, taking offence at its insults, feeling ashamed of its failings, and actively seeking its perpetuation. We enjoy annual celebrations of our shared history (the 4th of July), or historical events (the birth of Christ, or the Resurrection). I would speculate that these celebrations themselves have a function—to ensure that the kind continues to be propagated. And so this emotional attachment, I suspect, serves the function of ensuring the perpetuation of the kind; those that do not form an emotional attachment to their kind are less likely to see that its traditions are passed on, or less likely to protect it from hostile forces, than those who do feel such an attachment.

Thus, those cultures that manage to instill such a patriotism in its people are more likely to continue to exist as a kind than those who don’t. Hasidic Jews, for example, obviously, do not have the emotional attachment to Christmas that Christians do. This isn’t to say that Jews can’t enjoy Christmas, or feel happy for Christians, or think that Christians shouldn’t continue to celebrate Christmas. Just that Jews do not propagate Christmas traditions because of their emotional attachment to them the way Christians do. Jews obviously have their own traditions to which they have been amazingly and admirably successful at instilling emotional attachments, and so propagating through the millennia. The Amish are another example of a people that are remarkably able to retain an emotional attachment to their culture and so continue to propagate it.

Races, ethnicities, and cultures are historical kinds, but whereas one can join a cultural kind by copying (aka learning) its conventions into ones behavior, race can not be adopted. In ones race you wear your history on your sleeve, as it were. Because of this, there is an awareness that one does not belong to the same historical kind another does. This was forcefully pointed out by Malcolm X is his criticism of a policy of integration that would require African-Americans to internalize the same self-conception of history as white Americans. “We didn’t land at Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock landed on us,” he famously stated. It would be absurd, not to mention cruel, for African-Americans to conceive of this history as their own. Likewise, when, say, the British celebrate their great naval history, Asian immigrants know that that history is not their history, that they do not belong to that historical kind. This produces the persistent racial alienation we see in every multi-racial country. No matter how welcoming a people are, no matter what efforts towards integration are put forward, racial groups are going to realize that they belong to different historical kinds and that the cultural history of the welcoming majority is not their cultural history.

Officials around the world are scratching their heads at the persistent failure of integration in their respective countries. The reason for this puzzlement is that cultures have usually been thought of as a distinctive set of practices: a language, standards of attire, annual festivals, and so on. Since anyone could adopt this set of practices, integration should be possible through education. What this theory misses is that cultures are not sets, but are histories, and that integration involves coming to conceive as oneself as possessing a certain history.

Multiculturalism was actually initially a way to resolve this problem. As opposed to integration, which attempted to instill an identical sense of historical self-conception on all, multiculturalism was supposed to allow people to retain their cultural identity and not suffer the wrong of having to adopt a false conception of ones cultural identity. However, a new problem arises. Historical alienation is the recognition that one belongs to a different historical kind than another and so is unable to partake in a cooperative function. For instance, English speakers form an historical kind as the conventions involved in speaking English are copied from person to person. An English speaker, when in the presence of the historical kind Russian speakers, experiences the type of alienation I am describing when she is unable to enjoy the benefit of communication that the Russian speakers enjoy amongst themselves. A Muslim wearing the hijab among non-Muslims will experience historical alienation as the cooperative meaning function of the attire fails due to the absence of the co-adapted consumers. Likewise, from the consumer’s side, the perceivers of the hijab experience alienation as they sense they are not the co-adapted partner, the intended audience, of the producer. Even not possessing the prevalent regional accent produces alienation as one realizes they are the odd man out and do not belong to the relevant historical kind. See my post "Alienation and Diversity" for details.

We then enter the second phase of multiculturalism, the attempt to remove this alienation or "lack of inclusiveness" (that it has created itself) by removing its cause: any display of the distinctive history of the local population. We are all too familiar with the seemingly daily reports of some new symbol, celebration, or tradition being declared offensive, or not being sufficiently inclusive, or being declared hostile, and then being removed by officials. We see this in the annual reports of how Christmas is removed in favor of “winter festivals” and the like. There have been reports of people told to remove the American flag on American soil because someone perceives it as offensive. I recently came across an article that implied that sandwiches were somehow insufficiently inclusive; that we should only eat multicultural sandwiches! This elimination of any display or acknowledgement of ones history amounts to the intentional disintegration of a people because it is the possession of a common history that forms the substance of cultures and ethnicities in the first place. Cultures are historical kinds, and if the history is removed, the culture is no more. Eliminating a people’s history eliminates the people as a people. And any theory of justice that requires a people to destroy their cultural/historical identity is seriously in error.

Thus multiculturalism in this second phase, far from preserving cultural diversity, ultimately aims to destroy it. “Neikophilia” is the name of this intentional suppression or disintegration of the ties of history that keep cultures and ethnicities in existence. The reason this seldom works is that the attempted erasure of the group’s history simply becomes another part of that history. It becomes a source of anger to whichever group’s history is being eliminated and their group intentionally dis-integrated. Native Americans suffered this injustice as their traditions, language, and festivals were systematically suppressed and erased. However, unless the group’s identity is completely annihilated by genocide or by a successful program of neikophilia, where people have a desire to continue to exist, and cultural memory is kept alive, the events of their attempted disintegration becomes a part of that group’s historical identity, as we see in Native Americans today. See my post "Cultural Homeostasis and Multicultural Neikophilia" for details.

And so where does this leave us? Forcing people to adopt an untenable self-conception is very wrong. But the alienation of being unable to enjoy the benefits of social cooperation is also very harmful. And the annihilation of a people through neikophilia is extremely wrong. The world’s cultural diversity is undoubtedly a great good and needs to be protected from the forces of nauseating homogeny and monoculture that is leading to the extinction of cultural traditions all over the world. And so what is to be done? This is a knot I would not want to have to untie, but there seems to me to be a way to avoid all three problems. And that is the establishment and strong enforcement of national borders and sovereignty. In fact, I suspect that the reasons borders were first established, reasons which we have forgotten, in addition to keeping hostile forces out, was to prevent these problems from arising. Strong borders prevent all three of these issues by preventing the conditions that cause them. In this way cultural diversity can be protected while alienation is avoided and neikophilia rendered unnecessary.





[1] The theory I will outline takes its inspiration from the writings of philosopher Ruth Millikan in her books Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories and On Clear and Confused Ideas. Millikan, as far as I know, has written nothing on political or social issues and I would not want it to be thought that she in any way holds any position. I am just trying to apply her theories to the understanding of these issues.

Still Here

Just so you know, I am still around and working on posts. Real life leaves very little time to posting, and my posts are usually pretty long and take me quite a while to complete. But I have about a half dozen posts in various stages that will one day see the light of day. In the meantime, readers can check out some of these previous essays.

Why Diversity Destroys Social Capital

The Teleology of Marriage

Libertrianism and Environmentalism

Why Integration has Failed

On Being Real

Traditionally it was not uncommon to hear claims that there were real Americans or real Englishmen, or even real New Yorkers or Californians. But in today's political climate this claim would be controversial because it would get mixed up in the politics around multiculturalism. Yet I think that most people have some fuzzy notion that there are indeed real New Yorkers, or real New Englanders, or real Tennesseans, or real Californians, even if they can’t quite put their finger on what it takes to be one. This is a very complicated subject that probably needs a book-length treatment but enough can be said here to make the necessary points. The main reason for the confusion on this issue, I would argue, is the traditional notion that to be a member of a real kind is to possess some individual or set of essential properties. This is a very ancient conception that, for example, to be a triangle is to be a plane figure with three sides. That is the essence of being a triangle; if you lack this property you are not a triangle. It was traditionally thought that anything real must have an essence of this sort.

And so to claim that there are real Americans, or Californians, etc., is to invite the challenge to name what it is that makes someone real in the way to explain what it is to be a triangle is to explain that it must have three sides. From here it is a simple matter of pointing out counterexamples to the proposed definition in order to knock down the claim. Once no candidates are left, the only conclusion is that there is no reality to these groups and that any criteria for membership are merely arbitrary and conventional.

This traditional line of thought concerning essences and group membership always got more complicated when you began to move into the biological realm. You might be tempted to define a dog as an animal with four legs, a snout, a tail, and long ears. But there are plenty of dogs that lack some or each of these features. And the social sciences ran into all manner of problems describing the essences of the social groups they sought to study.

At some point it was hoped that modern science might discover these essences. For example, instead of saying that the essence of gold is to possess a certain set of essential properties (such as being a yellow metal that melts are a certain heat, and has a certain malleability), modern science was able to discover that the essence of gold is to be the atom with atomic number 79. Likewise, to be a water molecule is to be a molecule consisting of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Genetics opened the door to the theory that to be a dog, or the member for any species, was to possess the essential genes of that species. To be a dog was thought to be a matter of possessing the essential dog genes, to be a cow was to possess the cow genes, and so on. In the social sciences there were theories that cultural traits were somehow innate.

These views have been abandoned. The social sciences knocked down essentialist views concerning cultural traits, showing that they are all matters of education or environmental factors. Likewise, modern biology has dashed these hopes in the biological realm. It has been shown that there are no essential cow genes, or dog genes, or human genes. This has lead some post-modern/post-structuralist thinkers to claim that the social sciences such as sociology and economics, and even biology, are not real sciences because they do not study real things, that is, things with essences (some even claim that physics and chemistry are merely “socially constructed”). This has also lead some to claim that there are no real New Yorkers, or real Americans, and that New Yorkers are just the group of people who live within the politically established borders of New York, and Americans are just those who live within the borders of America.

And yet the intuition remains that, say, if you speak German, wear Lederhosen, and eat German food, you are not a real American even if you are an American citizen.

Recently there has emerged a new line of thought concerning the reality of biological kinds. Instead of the shared properties of biological species being the result of a shared genetic essence, there are three factors contributing to the commonalities between members of a species. First, members of a biological species are copies of one another. In sexual reproduction genes are copied into new generations ensuring a similarity between generations. As the members of a species have common ancestors you can expect all the copies of these ancestors to have certain features in common. Secondly, the genes in a gene pool must remain sufficiently compatible with each other so that when they are combined in sexual reproduction viable offspring will result. If the genes between mates were so different from each other that they could not be combined so as to produce working organs or traits, the offspring will be less likely to survive. This need for compatibility reduces the genetic and thus phenotypic variety among members of a species. Finally, the constancy of the environment itself will see to it that most mutations will not prove beneficial and will not be passed on. The stability of the environment contributes to the stability of the species that live in and adapt to it.

These three forces—copying, compatibility, and environment—explain the commonality of traits among biological species. However, no trait of a biological species is essential in the way that having three sides is essential for triangles, or having atomic number 79 is essential for gold. Nevertheless, the forces that hold biological species together and ensure commonalities among members are no less real than the forces that ensure commonalities among, say, samples of gold. Biological species are real because there are real forces in nature which explain why the members of a species have many traits in common; it is not a mere coincidence, and the grouping of individuals into a species is not an arbitrary matter. There might be a great variety of features among dogs, but the kind “dog” is real because of the existence of forces in nature that contribute to the frequent likenesses dogs do share. Philosopher Ruth Millikan calls the real kinds that are held together in this way “historical” kinds because the commonalities among member is not explained by a shared essence, but by the historical relations among members. It is hotly debated in biology how many changes a species must undergo before it is considered a different species, but this does not affect the reality of these groups. Historical kinds have fuzzy boundaries, but the existence of borderline and controversial cases does not call into question their reality.

Now, these same three forces exist in the case of social and cultural groups and explain why individuals within these groups share characteristics. Cultural and ethnic groups are rougher and far more in flux than biological species (which are themselves in flux), but no less real. Of course, in the case of species there is the process of genes being copied across generations whereas cultural traits are not genetically inherited. Nevertheless, the same forces are at work in keeping together the cultural, ethnic, civic, vocational, and social groups studied by social sciences. Notice, first, that behaviors, language, customs, traditions and the like are copied from person to person through family and cultural traditions, and through education. Similar to the way genes are copied across generations, these behaviors and ideas are copied into new generations and will promote historical continuity.

For example, school teachers, doctors, and fathers form historical kinds when these groups are studied as limited to particular historical cultural contexts. Members of these groups are likely to act similarly in certain ways and to have attitudes in common as a result of similar training handed down from person to person (reproduction or copying), as a result of custom (more copying), as a result either of natural human dispositions or social pressures to conform to role models (copying again) and/or as a result of legal practices (Millikan, On Clear and Confused Ideas: 22).

The second factor in the biological case was the role the environment played in keeping genes stable. The environment will play a similar role in the case of social groups; cultures existing in an agricultural region, or the polar region, or a dessert, or a rain forest, or a city, or in proximity to other cultures will have persisting factors that will need to be dealt with by behavioral and cultural adaptations by successive generations.

The final factor was the need for compatibility between genes in a gene pool. The same need for compatibilities exists in the case of members of a culture. Members of a group must be compatible with one another in the way we cooperate in the use of language, or attire, or social conventions such as the rule determining that people drive on the right hand side of the road. See my post “Cultural Homeostasis and Multicultural Neikophilia” for details.

As in the biological examples, none of the traits of social groups are universal, but neither do all interpretations of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, or Hamlet, have an essence, nor is it that all swans are white, all birds fly, or all hearts pump blood. Nevertheless, the social sciences that study these kinds can persist in doing empirical research on these groups that result in justified yet fallible inductions concerning them because these real natural forces promote the possession of commonalities between members.

Californians, for example, have adapted to living in the Californian environment (their clothing, for example it suitable to the Californian climate, or perhaps they simply enjoy the beach and the mountains, and sunshine of their state), have a history and tradition in California whereby standards of behavior and values are passed down, and cooperate with other Californians in communicating through their language, accent, attire, and so on.

One might argue that even Californians form a very rough or vague historical kind. They are of the same species, many have copied behavior patterns from one another, they have been subject to certain social and physical environmental influences from the same sources; hence, certain very rough and uncertain generalizations can be made over them for good reason (On Clear and Confused Ideas, 26).

And so, historical kinds do not have an essence; there is no one or set of properties that must be had by every member of such a group. Instead you look for relations between individuals that explain the common possession of a trait and the ways seemingly unrelated traits tend to go together and are pased down together. Despite the fact that perhaps only a minority of Americans might eat hamburgers and hot dogs (themselves German imports), and watch football and baseball, these are real American traits (as compared to someone who might eat fish and chips and watch cricket and soccer). This is not to say that all real Americans must eat hamburgers and hot dogs, and watch football and baseball. To claim that is to fall back into the essentialist way of thinking about historical kinds. Instead you would merely remark upon the statistically widespread, but not universal, adoption of these traits, and why traits are more frequent among certain populations, and the history of how these things began and spread.

Cultures and nationalities are often very loose groupings, far looser than biological species, and the generalizations that result might only have a very weak epistemological strength. (On the other hand, some ethnicities have very strong and widespread commonalities that support strong generalizations.) The more traits that can be passed down independently, the looser the kind becomes until it might convey no usable information to be told that an individual is a member of that kind. But there are countervailing forces that ensure these groupings are not completely random; there are great advantages of efficiency and mutually beneficial cooperation to be gained from having conventions widely spread among a population, as I mentioned above when discussing the need for compatibilities between people such as they way people cooperate through possessing common conventions. In this way people tend to come to share conventions and they tend to disperse among people.

Now suppose that the border of California was changed to include some other place where the inhabitants did not share this history of environmental adaptation and historical traditions. Or suppose Martians moved to California. These new “Californians” would be Californians in a legalistic or nominal sense, but they would not be real Californians. There are thus two senses of “Californian”: there are nominal, or legalistic, Californians which just refers those who happen to live in politically established borders of California, but there are also real Californians who share common characteristics as a result of historical factors. (Californians are only being used as an example; the same goes for any other social, cultural, or ethnic group.) Even if the Martians went on to adopt Californian traditions and habits they would not be real Californians since their history is different. For example, if the Pilgrims in Plymouth Massachusetts, instead of being fiercely dedicated to retaining and perpetuating their cultural distinctiveness, went on to adopt the traditions, morals, language, and style of attire of the Native Americans they encountered, they would not thereby be real Native Americans (no matter how welcoming and kind the Native Americans might be to them, including not drawing attention to their different status) because of their radically different histories of arrival in New England and radically different paths those traditions took in being re-produced in these members. In this hypothetical example, we can suppose that eventually through interaction and interbreeding, the historical differences would indeed be dissolved and they would be assimilated into the indigenous population. In a sense this is exactly what did happen as the Puritans eventually failed in perpetuating their culture and thus went extinct. However, there still exists the ghost of the Puritans in current New Englanders’ famous reserved character, dedication to education, and style of architecture which continues to be replicated everywhere.

It is easy to get confused by the language here as “Californian” is just a name attached to a group. In a world of mass migrations and multiculturalism it can become quite confusing. Traditionally the name of the place and the name of the people that resided there was co-extensive. Germans lived in Germany, the English lived in England, Italians lived in Italy, and so on. As a result of migrations there are many who live in California who are not real Californians. Recent immigrants, for example, who retain the cultural features of their native soil, are not real Californians or real Americans. Also, there may be real Californians who do not reside in California. Suppose California was split into two states, only one of which retained the name “California.” Then there might be many real Californians, perhaps even the majority, who did not live in California (although it might not make sense to name this kind Californians any longer). Multiculturalism is an attempt to turn "American," or "English," or any other cultural historical kind into a nominal kind; by now it may well have suceeded and we should come up with new names for these cultural groups. Maybe these days being told that someone is American tells you nothing about them, and Americans no longer have anything in common and so we need to use hyphenated identities.

People can be quite possessive of a name and will take insult at being told that they are not real members of a group. It might be better to think of this as being a "true" Californian, or a "traditional" American or New Yorker, or as being culturally German, but I think these terms would be just as controversial so we might as well stick with using "real." "Real" has the benefit of conoting that these groups have a certain ontological status and are not merely "socially constructed" as this term is usually used. But again, people are quite attached to a name. Suppose, for example, New York was evacuated for some reason. The former residents all migrated to some new place but continued to call themselves New Yorkers. Further suppose that some new group migrated into the site of New York and began calling themselves New Yorkers. Who are the real New Yorkers? I can see the groups arguing over who had the right to call themselves the “real” New Yorkers, but the dispute is merely verbal. They are both “real” and there is seems to be no basis to decide between them. It would be best for the groups to adopt new names to avoid dispute and confusion, but, again, people are very possessive of their name. For example, Massachusetts originally referred to the Native American tribe that inhabited part of the area now encompassed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Does it make sense to say that the Massachusetteans (or whatever residents of Massachusetts call themselves) no longer exist since the tribe no longer exists? In one sense yes, but in another sense no. It is just that Massachusetts is a name for two different historical kinds. Again, the dispute is merely verbal and misunderstandings can be easily avoided by a careful attention to language and context.

To claim that there are Californians who are not real Californians, or Americans who are not real Americans drives liberals crazy, but it is nevertheless true. Liberals themselves are less real Americans than conservatives because liberals are in the business of overturning traditions and conservatives are in the business of protecting and perpetuating them. Since it is these traditions themselves that in part constitute what it is to be a member of a real kind, conservatives are inherently more real Americans than liberals. But traditions and the social groups that live by them do indeed die out to be replaced by new traditions and new groups. It is quite sad but inevitable that eventually the current group of real Californians, real New Yorkers, real Americans, etc., will go extinct to be replaced by some new and quite different group of real Californians, etc. (although they may or may not call themselves Californians). Sometimes this process can occur rapidly, in other cases the isolation and/or environmental stability of a place can keep a kind in existence for thousands of years (Jared Diamond discusses some such examples in Collapse).

In other cases a group can possess such a strong sense of their unique identity, and be so dedicated to their own cultural perpetuation that they manage to hold on to their distinctive traditions for centuries despite dramatic changes of times and environment. I know of no better examples than the Amish and Hasidic Jews who have miraculously and impressively retain their cultural distinctiveness and traditions for centuries and millennia despite every imaginable hardship and change. On the other hand, history has known no more changing and fluid group than Americans who seem to change in just about every way imaginable every generation or so. The exception being dedication to the Constitution which Americans do take exceptional measures to perpetuate in each generation.

There is one final factor at play that I find very baffling but is very important. This is the way people have emotional connections to their history and self-identify with it. People identify themselves as Georgians, Germans, Catholics, etc., and take pride or shame in their heritage, and take attacks on this identity personally. As I have mentioned, I find this fact mysterious and currently think that the best explanation for this phenomena is Darwinian: groups that have a strong emotional connection to their history (such as the previously mentioned Amish and Hasidic Jews) are more likely to perpetuate it than those who have no such emotional connection and let their traditions die out.

In any case, I think that real members of a group are in this camp, they have this strong emotional tie to their heritage, and think of themselves in these terms. It seems to me that someone who does not self-identify as a member of a group can not be counted as a real member of that group. An Englishman who might share all the historically derived traits of the English, but does not think of himself as English, has no affection for England and Englishness, and cares not if England survives or dies, seems to me to be lacking a crucial feature for being considered a real Englishman. This is the case with those who I call the “Personas.” I have discussed the Personas at length here, here, and here and will only summarize. Personas, who are mostly white, urban, liberals, are subject to the illusion that they are somehow not members of historical kinds, that they are purely self-created individuals. Personas generally start out through a sense of alienation, but in some cases their alienation is itself only a pose. Alienation is the surest way to being unreal as it causes one to disassociate oneself from kind membership. (Alienation itself however often can go on to be a bond contributing to the structural integrity of a group.)

Personas do not see themselves as members of a kind even though there is more homogeny among Personas than among just about any other group in America today. Walk through Williamsburg, Brooklyn, or some similar place in another city, and you will get the sense that you have stumbled into a distinct ethnic enclave. However, they do not see the ways in which their views are inherited, how they form into a kind by their shared and inherited styles of attire, political, social, moral, and artistic views. Personas are thus real in a sense in that they possess all the traits and bonds of an ethnicity. But they do not identify themselves as members of any kind, insisting that they are purely self-created individuals. They think that to identify with, take pride in, or accept inherited traits is to be “inauthentic.”

They are not real Americans as they are generally hostile to American mores, disapprove of pride in being an American, despise American history, and don’t identify themselves as possessing any of the traits they associate with being an American. In fact, they go out of their way to avoid possessing these traits. (The same goes for Personas living in other western countries.) But all their traits are themselves inherited through other channels; their ideas come through the sad intellectual path from existentialism, to post-modernism, to post-structuralism, they have fashion trends and fads, artistic traditions, and so on. Yet they have no emotional connection to this history either. Thus Personas in a sense go extinct every generation only to be reborn in some new guise in the string from the Beats to hippies to punks to hipsters, in the attempt to retain the illusion of individuality. Part of my motivation in putting the name “Personas” on this group is to break the illusion of individuality among its members. By naming a kind you invite observation of the commonalities among members and the traditions they share.

Deneen on the Tea Party

I have been thinking of writing something about the Tea Party phenomenon, and still might, but Patrick Deneen summarizes my concerns perfectly here: http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2010/06/tea-time/

As you would expect from this blog, my concern is that the Tea Party movement will get co-opted by the establishment Republican machine. Specifically I am worried that the message of the Tea Party has been exclusively anti-big-government and insufficiently anti-big-business. There have been some interesting victories in the primaries as establishment Republican candidates have been ousted, but overall I worry that the Tea Party is being molded to fit the pre-existing Republican agenda and not be allowed to change that agenda. I also wish that the Tea Party had a left arm where it tried to influence the Democratic party and did not view itself as a straight rightist movement. The Tea Party should not be a flank of one party but should remain party-neutral and try to influence both. I know that this is wishful thinking as the Democratic party is so firmly in the grip of what I am more and more calling the post-structuralist Left, but it seems to me that the traditional blue collar Democrats (if there are any still) has a natural affinity with the sentiments of the Tea Party. Anyway, go read Deneen's article.

Problems of the Right

This is A Pox on Both Your Houses, yet I have been pretty much exclusively giving it to the Left here. The main reason is most of the problems I have with the Right deal with economic policy, an area I don't feel that I have sufficient expertise to offer original criticism. But there is an article in this month's The American Conservative by Phillip Blond that makes a point with which I agree:

Because we're only focused on price utility as the interpreter of what would be a good outcome, the bigger your company, the cheaper you can deliver goods. So we pursue monopoly in the name of freedom and asset capture in the name of wealth extension. What we have produced, as a result, from the Right, is a whole ideology of competition but no competitors. We've created a condition in which large businesses dominate--via a rigged market of rent-seeking capital--in an economy that cuts off for the majority the path to mobility and prosperity.
...
You say you would like to open a store or business, to have some financial autonomy? Well, we can't have that. The truth is, we can't create a situation in which you could prosper because you can't compete--you can't bully suppliers, you can't cross subsidize, you can't access the supply chains that are already controlled by the new monopolies, so you can't capture the the price utility that thse big concerns can.

I've always believed that the traditional Main Street USA is the ideal, where small business owners run their own businesses, where people knew the owners of the shop, and their children went to school together. These people had a personal stake in the community, they were the backbone of an American town. Something is lost where big box stores replace Main Street that outweighs the benefit from low prices. This isn't just a nostalgic or aesthetic criticism. One of capitalism's great arguments against communism was that you were free to own and run a business under capitalism that was forbidden under communism. This was a great rhetorical weapon in the battle against communism. Today all corporate capitalism has to offer is that you have the right to work for a large corporation--not as an attractive image. The traditional conservatives are as wary of big business as they are of big government. They see how big business benefits from the destruction of national sovereignty, the dissolution of social capital, and the weakening of traditional American values.

On Being Normal

Today, any claims that something is normal or abnormal are bound to be met with suspicion or outright hostility. Under the influence of Nietzsche and Marx and their postmodern/poststructuralist descendents, such claims will immediately be interpreted as attempts by some group to exert power over some other group. The cry “normal by whose standards?” will be raised, and, truthfully an answer to this question has been hard to come by. Ever since Hume argued for the fact/value distinction the claim that there are objective standards or norms has been problematic. If the universe is just full of brute facts about the interactions of energy and this is value-free, these interactions are not good or bad, they just are.

The success of atomism and Newtonian physics had swept away the teleological approach of understanding nature which had dominated since Aristotle. The movement of objects could now be explained by natural forces and laws without having to refer to ends or final causes at all. In such a value-free universe any claims of normativity became interpreted as subjective expressions of preference without any objective standards of truth. Anyone making such a claim must be merely trying to get others to adopt a standard, one that might not be to the benefit of the adoptee.

I think that an account of objective standards of normalcy is now possible. The key lies in the recent revival of teleology in philosophy. See "The modern philosophical resurrection of teleology" by Mark Perlman for a nice history of this revival and an overview of the various positions on the issue.

As I have discussed here before, teleology revolves around the claim that some things have a natural end, aka a telos, or “final cause.” The end of the heart for example is to see to it that the body receives the nutrients contained in the blood. Where something has an end, it also has a function; it’s function being to produce its end. So again, the function of the heart is to pump blood so that it may fulfill its end of providing nutrients to the body. In the modern understanding, the possession of a function is the matter of having a certain history. See my post “Teleology and the Death of Liberalism” for more details.

For each item that possesses a function in this sense there will be an explanation of how the item has historically managed to perform this function. This explanation will mention how the structure of the item in question has managed to “do its job” historically, what conditions were in effect, what the environment was like that allowed the item to successfully perform it function. Philosopher Ruth Millikan calls such an explanation a “normal” explanation and the conditions that have historically held in order for the item to succeed in performing its function “normal” conditions (1984: 33). “Normal” here is a technical term and it is crucial that it should not be thought that normal conditions in this sense are average or frequent the way “normal” often has as a connotation.[2] For example, just think of how few sperm manage to perform their function of fertilizing an egg, or how infrequently the skull needs to perform its function of protecting the brain from impacts. It might be helpful to think of normal conditions as “activation conditions” or “enabling conditions.” In abnormal conditions an item will fail to perform its function, or at least fail to accomplish it in accordance with a normal explanation. Diseased hearts are in abnormal conditions, being underwater for extended periods is an abnormal condition for otherwise healthy lungs, and whatever it is that prevents a specific sperm from fertilizing an egg is also an abnormal condition.

Our current topic, normalcy, I argue, just is the presence of normal conditions for the performance of a function. For example, it is a fact that a diseased or malformed heart is abnormal. This is not subjective, or a matter of opinion, or an expression of personal preference, it is a fact. This heart can not perform its function; it is an objective fact that it is abnormal. These are standards of normalcy that are objective; claims of normalcy can be true or false, and people can be right or wrong about whether something is normal or abnormal. These claims are not mere efforts to “enforce values” on people. It is false to claim that certain things are normal which are not.

To take one example, there is some debate around those who are, say, deaf or disabled. Some of the more radical advocates refuse to say that those who are so affected are in any way abnormal, that they are “differently abled” and only abnormal from the standards of those who retain the use of their legs or ears. But on the current understanding we can see that the legs or auditory systems in these cases have natural functions, and that in the case of the deaf or disabled these systems are in abnormal condition. This does not entail any moral conclusions! It is still open to moral debate how those in abnormal conditions should be treated, and I would advocate great charity and efforts in order that those so afflicted to lead fulfilling lives and to be able to reach their greatest potential. But it is true that normalcy, in the sense that we are using the term, is a fact of the matter, and claims of normalcy for things that are abnormal are simply false.

So far this pretty much uncontroversial. The notion of normal biological functioning has only been questioned by the most radical poststructuralists. It becomes more difficult when we start to move into the realm of abnormal human behavior. If the function of sexual attraction is the production of offspring, as it surely is when considered functionally, then homosexuality would be abnormal. Something has malfunctioned in the mechanism which determines the object of sexual attraction. On the other hand, homosexuality might be like sickle cell anemia which some believe exists because it provides immunity to malaria. That is, it might have some other function but this wouldn't affect the fact that it is the function of sexual attraction to lead to the production of offspring. For example, some have claimed that homosexuality evolved so that the children of ones offspring do not face competition from other children. These conclusions would rely on a better understanding than we currently possess of the mechanism by which sexual attraction is determined. In other cases, behavior might be the result of abnormal psychological processing. For example, any behavior wherein one harms oneself will most likely be abnormal. Self-destructive behavior of a person suffering from schizophrenia is abnormal, but so probably is anorexia and other self-destructive behaviors, although the causes of these are still mysterious. Contrast this with Foucault who believes that mental illness is a conventional value judgment.

In some cases two or more individuals have a common purpose the achievement of which depends crucially on each party reproducing their part in a pattern of behavior. This serves to coordinate each one to the other in order to cooperate in the achievement of this common purpose. One such case are the reproduced patterns involved in certain animal mating dances where both the performer of the dance and its audience have a common purpose and have come up with a conventional form in order to coordinate with one another in order to reach it. The intended audience “expects” a dance of a certain form to be performed, its conventions followed, and the performer expects the audience to react in a standard way to its performance. Because the intended audience often enough responds to the dances in a way that benefits them, actors are encouraged to keep producing the dance form. And because responding to the dances aids perceivers, they are encouraged to keep responding in the standard way. Despite the fact that often the dance may fail in its purpose, it is more likely to succeed than some random motions, and that makes it worthwhile to keep it in use.

For example, drivers have a common interest in avoiding collisions, so, in the United States and many other countries, a convention was instituted whereby drivers drive on the right hand side of the road. In order for their common interest to be achieved, both parties must play their part. Drivers thus coordinate with one another in order to cooperate in the achievement of their common goal. Producing and maintaining this mutual adaptation whereby each party contributes to the shared goal is the “stabilizing” function of the item or behavior; it is what keeps both parties to the coordination responding in standard ways (1984: 31, 2005: 54).

As in the biological examples, these human conventions have a function. It just is normal to drive on the right in the United States. Although this is a matter of convention, it does not make the possession of the function and its normal conditions any less objective. Those who drive on the left are behaving abnormally (and ridiculously dangerously). And again, this is a fact, not an attempt to manipulate people against their best interests. It is the nature of the conventions that enable stabilizing functions that they be in the interest of both parties, otherwise there would be no reason for one or both of the parties to continue to reproduce the conventions. (I do however think that what might have been in a party’s interest at one time might no longer be in their interest at a later time at which point they will usually stop performing their part of the coordination.)

Language has its proper functions as well. It is normal for English speakers to use the term “dog” to refer to dogs. That is why “dog” has been replicated again and again by English speakers; that is its function. Using “dog” in some other way is abnormal.[3] And of course the same goes for all other words. Linguistic moods have their functions as well. It is the function of the indicative mood to produce true beliefs in one’s listeners. That is why people continue to use the indicative mood to communicate with one another. If listeners were too frequently caused to have false beliefs by responding to what is told to them by the use of the indicative mood, they would soon stop forming beliefs based on what was said. Thus lying, the production of false beliefs by means of the indicative mood, is abnormal.

Standards of attire are another case of coordinating conventions. In schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, and any other group or sub-group you will find a high degree of coordination of appearance. The way new styles of attire are selected and reproduced and thus spread through a population are extremely complex and varied, yet enough can be said here to make the point. One benefit of this coordination is that individuals are thereby able to blend in with one another in order to not attract unwanted attention. (On the other hand, there are those who take advantage of the coordinating conventions and intentionally violate them specifically in order to stand out and attract attention.) Another reason for adopting these conventions is the same for having spoken language: people are capable of communicating things about themselves by their choice of attire. We are in on these conventions just as much as they are in on the co-adaptations involved in sharing a spoken language.

Violating the conventions of dress is abnormal. Wearing a headscarf to convey modesty is abnormal in Western societies but normal in others. That is, the way an item gets its meaning through the production of a sign for a perceiver is malfunctioning. The sign, in this case the headscarf, is being produced, but in Western societies the normal co-adapted perciever, someone who is a party to the convention of interpreting the headscarf to mean modesty, is frequently absent. Of course, it can become normal if people begin to imitate the new style for its ability to convey modesty and the fashion begins to spread.

It is common among some, mostly those in the counterculture, to criticize being normal as being conformist. The reasons for this view go back to existentialism where it was thought that the adoption of any value that one did not create oneself is somehow being inauthentic. It however was not seen how these conventions served functions and bestowed benefits by being able to coordinate and thus communicate things with one another, and cooperate towards shared goals. Members of the counterculture realize this on some level as subcultures coordinate their styles in order to communicate things, such as their group membership and possession of the values of that subculture, by the intentional adoption of contrasting styles. It is abnormal for a goth or hippy or punk or rapper to wear a business suit in their respective groups. But again these styles just become conventions of their own and are adopted for their communicative function; they are their own kind of conformity. There is no real individuality here, just the adoption of other conventions. Individual creativity always occurs from within a tradition, it occurs whereby one is able to perceive a fault or weakness of a tradition and introduce a remedy, and thereby have this remedy spread through a population because of its superiority. This is a kind of non-conformity, but not what the existentialists had in mind.

Often, however the conventions do not serve to the benefit of all. Certain conventions of attire, especially in the perception of physical beauty, might produe winners and losers. The losers have no incentive to continue to perpetuate conventions that are not to their benefit. In this way sub-cultures often form as a rejection of the prevalent norms. Prevention of this dissasociation is the function of the virtue of modesty. It makes sure that the conventions do not benefit only some and not others and attempts to keep the playing field somewhat level.


[1] Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book 1, section XIV.
[2] In Millikan (1984) she capitalized “Normal” to make this difference clear and recently has been calling Normal conditions “historically enabling” conditions (2000: 62) and Normal explanations “normal mechanisms” (2004: 85).
[3] Using “dog” as a metaphor or slang might have a “derived” function. See Language, Though, and Other Biological Categories for details.