What's wrong with stereotyping?

Okay, so according to Google, a stereotype is,

a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.

Everybody knows what a stereotype is, and most people think that it's wrong to hold stereotypes, particularly with respect to groups of humans, but why?

Consider that we use stereotypes in science all the time, and nobody thinks that there's anything wrong with that.  We apply stereotypes when we examine plant and animal behavior.  We use oversimplifications and analogies when we consider the behavior of fundamental particles.

So what's so bad about using stereotypes of human beings?

Any stereotype that is false is bad.  So, we might think that stereotypes about groups of humans are bad because they are false.  Most probably are, so that's a fair point.

Furthermore, stereotypes can be false in different ways.  They could be completely false, meaning that no one in the group possesses the feature claimed by the stereotype.  For instance, a stereotype like "All Asians are capable of backwards time travel" would be completely false, since no Asian is capable of backwards time travel.  But quantified claims admit of degree.  So, stereotypes could be false in a manner that is not completely false.  For instance, the stereotype, "All Asians are hard working" is not completely false.  It is still false, because there is almost certainly at least one person of Asian descent that isn't hard working.  When you make a complete generalized claim like "All x's are y," all it takes is one exception to show that claim false.  Even though the claim is false, it is not completely false, since it is almost certainly true that there are at least some persons of Asian descent that are hard working.

So, we might think that stereotypes are bad because they are false.  Either they are completely false, or they are false to some degree.  Any stereotype given as a complete generalization (All x's are y) is very probably false.

But suppose that we have some stereotypes that are not complete generalizations, but rather partial generalizations.  These could come in the forms like "Most x's are y," or "A lot of x's are y."  These claims seem more likely to be true.  Suppose that there are such claims that are true of certain groups.  For example, let's imagine the claim "A lot of Asians can't drive well" is actually true.  Social scientists went out and actually did the right kinds of studies and found that the majority of Asians are bad drivers.  Would it still be bad to believe in this stereotype?  If so, why?

One reason why it might be considered bad is that it assumed that human beings have free will, whereas the rest of nature doesn't have free will.  This means that even if 99.99% of a certain group of humans behaves in some way, we are not justified in inferring that the next member of that group will behave in the same way.  Since we have free will, we are not bound by the sorts of laws and principles that the rest of nature is constrained by, and thus predictions will always have a chance at failing.

Maybe that's why some people think stereotyping is bad.  Stereotyping denies our identify as free individuals.

Okay, well suppose that you don't believe that humans have free will, but you still think that stereotyping is bad.  Why would you think that?

Well, it's important to consider how stereotypes are used.  They play a role in predictions and decision making.  We often do these sorts of things with imperfect information, so we often take risks in making decisions.  Usually this isn't a problem, since the rewards typically outweigh the costs.  The reward for eating a medium rare steak at a high end restaurant is probably far greater than the risk of the steak being contaminated.  Perhaps when making decision based on stereotypes, the costs begin to outweigh the benefits.  Making a decision to violate an individual's human rights based on information pertaining to the individual's group membership may be a risky one, and may be the reason why people think stereotyping is bad.

Or, perhaps there is some confusion over what the term "stereotyping" means.  If stereotyping included all inductive generalizations about groups of human beings, and if stereotyping was bad, then it would follow that all of the social sciences is morally suspect, since it is essential for social sciences to make inductive generalizations about groups of people.

So, maybe we want to back and say that stereotyping does not include all inductive generalizations about people.  So what then do we include?  We probably want to include false generalizations that are popular, but what about true generalizations that are unflattering to certain groups?  What if it turned out to be true that most Asians were bad drivers?  Would this be included as a stereotype?

What is Feminism?

The word "feminism" is a lot like the word "ironic."  It's a word that a lot of people use, but don't quite fully understand.  The two words are similar in that there is some kind of gist or core idea that each word refers to that people typically grasp.  Something is ironic because it is unusual in some way.  Someone is a feminist because they advocate the rights of women in some way.  In both cases, it's the details that bring about confusion.

Being a feminist is not simply about being "pro-women."  This is too simplistic a notion of feminism.  Being a feminist also typically implies views beyond just positive attitudes towards women.  These views will often dictate what sorts of moral and political beliefs.

One important question related to feminism has to do with sex and gender.  Is there an objective difference between male and female?  Is there an objective difference between masculinity and femininity?

Does this question matter?  It seems like a similar question isn't really that relevant when we talk about racism and race relations.  Even if there are no objective differences between race, we can still talk about the rights of minority racial groups.  

The case with sex and gender seems to differ because there is a debate as to whether or not there is a perspective that is uniquely gendered.  Is there a feminine perspective on ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics?  Some would argue so.  This perspective can come into play when we discuss sexism.  Some people hold that the denial or belittling of this perspective can be considered a form of sexism.

So, it is true that feminism is a political movement advocating the rights of women, but it not entirely clear to what extent these rights encompass.  Some hold a more minimal view, advocating that women be given the same rights of opportunity that men have.  Others, hold a wider view, advocating furthermore that women's rights include the legitimization of their perspective.

I'm just writing this because it really bothers me how an ambiguous term like "feminism" is thrown around in debates everywhere you go.  This creates confusion and irrational dialogue.  That kind of stuff makes me sad.

It's a Wonderful Life, Meaningfulness, and Counterfactuals

It's a Wonderful Life is a classic example of the sort of movies that I call "coulda been" movies, i.e. movies that explore alternate possibilities. For those of you who haven't seen the movie, here's the Wikipedia summary:

The film stars James Stewart as George Bailey, a man who has given up his dreams in order to help others and whose imminent suicide on Christmas Eve brings about the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers). Clarence shows George all the lives he has touched and how different life in his community of Bedford Falls would be had he never been born. 

So George, in his despair, contemplates suicide. His repeated failures and disappointments in life lead him to believe that things would have been better had he not been born at all. Clarence intervenes and demonstrates that this is not the case.

The story makes use of what are called "counterfactuals." Counterfactuals are kinds of statements. More specifically, they are types of conditionals. A conditional statement is a statement that commonly takes the form, "If x, then y." Here, x is what call the antecedent. y is called the consequent. Given what has actually happened in the past, a counterfactual starts with the antecedent being some event other than the event that occurred at a particular time in the past. The consequent is an event that would follow the event stated in the antecedent. Here's an example.

Thirty minutes ago there was a sugar cube on my kitchen counter.  A counterfactual based on this past event might go, "If that sugar cube had been placed in a cup of hot coffee, it would have dissolved."  The counterfactual is stating that if things were different in the past, that would have led to a different state of affairs.

One way to see the movie is as a series of counterfactuals that Clarence states and vividly illustrates.  Here are a few.

"If George had not been born, then Bedford Falls would have become Pottersville."
"If George had not been born, then his brother Harry would have drowned."
"If George had not been born, then Mary would have become a lonely spinster."

Are these claims true?  How do we assess the truth of these kinds of claims?  In metaphysics and philosophy of language, a popular approach is to assess these sorts of claims by employing alternate scenarios.  This is what philosophers call "possible worlds."  So, a popular approach to evaluating counterfactuals is this:  consider the alternate scenarios that are the most similar to our actual scenario, and where the antecedent is true.  A counterfactual is true only when in all of these scenarios, the consequent is also true.

Let's use the sugar cube example.  Here's the counterfactual again:

"If the sugar cube had been placed in a cup of hot coffee, then it would have dissolved."

First we consider all of the alternate scenarios that are the most similar to our actual scenario, and where the sugar cube is placed in a cup of hot coffee.  These alternate scenarios won't be weird ones, where the laws of nature are radically different.  That means sugar is made of the same thing, coffee is made of the same stuff, etc.  So in all of these alternate scenarios where a sugar cube is placed in a cup of hot coffee, it seems plausible to think that the sugar cube will dissolve.  So, we tend to think that this counterfactual is true.

Now, what about Clarence's counterfactuals?  Are they true?  In order to assess their truth, we consider the alternate scenarios most similar to ours where George has not been born.  Given that the world of Bedford Falls would be very similar, excepting the fact that George is not around, can we confidently say that Harry would have drowned, Henry Potter would have taken over, and that Mary would have become a spinster?  These subsequent events are so far ahead of the moment of George's non-birth (i.e. the date that he was born) that it is incredibly difficult to say what exactly would have happened.  Compare this with the sugar cube example above.  That claim is plausible because one event immediately follows another.  The more time you place between antecedent and consequent, the more variables you introduce, and the harder it is to say what would follow in such cases.  For instance, Henry Potter taking over Bedford Falls would have taken place at least 20-30 years after George's birth date.  In that much time in between, there are an insane number of possible scenarios that could occur.  Why believe that the scenario where Bedford Falls becomes Pottersville is that one that will play out?

The point is that if George had not been born, any number of things, good or bad, could have happened.  Mary could have met another man and have ended up happily married.  Harry could have decided not to go out to the frozen pond.  Potter could have died in a freak accident.  So, it seems clearly obvious that Clarence's point is a false one.  What Clarence shows George is just one of many possibilities.  There is no reason to think that the possibility Clarence envisages is any more likely to occur than any of the other myriad of possibilities.

This raises an interesting question about what it means for one's life to be meaningful.  Many people measure the meaningfulness of life by the impact they have on others.  But, how do we measure this impact?  Understanding impact in terms of counterfactuals is problematic, as has been shown above.  If I weren't around, would people's lives be worse?  Maybe, but it seems just as likely that their lives might be better, or that there would be no qualitative change.  If having a positive impact on people's lives require that in every similar alternate scenario where an individual doesn't exist, people's lives are qualitatively worse, then no one would have a positive impact on anyone else's lives.

So, two questions from here on out.  First, does a meaningful life require that one have some kind of positive impact on others?  If so, then how do we measure this impact?

What's (ethically) wrong with suicide?

Suicide is a taboo subject.  It's hard to raise without creating the impression upon others that there might be something wrong with your life.  This alone makes me curious.  Why do people have the attitudes that they do about suicide?  I'll have to set that aside for another day.  Today, I reflect on a related subject, the ethics of suicide.

First I should specify on the sort of suicide I'm considering here.  Not all suicide is considered immoral.  In some cultures or time periods, suicide was not only permissible, but considered either obligatory or laudatory.  I'm thinking of Japanese ritual suicide in feudal Japan or suicide bombers in radical Islamist groups.  Some types of suicide is controversial in that there isn't yet any consensus as to whether it is morally permissible.  Here I'm thinking of assisted suicide, usually done in the context of terminal illness.  The type of suicide I consider here is the type most think of when they hear the word 'suicide.'  It is the act of ending one's life in response to what is perceived to be an unbearable amount of emotional pain or suffering.  It is essentially an act of despair.

When someone commits suicide, are they committing an immoral act?  If so, on what basis?  Two dominant ways of thinking about ethics is consequentialism and deontology.  Consequentialist ethics says that the morally of an action depends on the sorts of consequences of the action.  Deontological ethics says that the morally of the action depends on the obligations of the individual committing the action.

So, let's ask the question about suicide from both perspectives.  According to consequentialism, suicide would be immoral if it led to bad consequences.  What sorts of consequences are considered relevant will depend on the type of consequentialism that you adopt.  The most popular is utilitarianism, which considers the net pleasure or pain generated to be the sorts of consequences that are relevant.  So, according to utilitarianism, if the act of suicide generates more net pain than pleasure, then it is considered to be immoral.  We can easily imagine cases in which this is true.  Robin Williams' suicide probably generated more net pain than pleasure, and would seem to be considered immoral from the perspective of utilitarianism.

However, we can, probably just as easily, imagine cases in which the act of suicide would not generate more pain than pleasure.  In fact we could imagine the opposite.  If someone is experiencing a great amount of emotional or physical pain, and that individual is not directly related to anyone else, then his suicide would generate less pain than if his life continued.  For example, imagine a homeless guy in the grip of despair.  He has no family or friends.  His death would not be noticed by anyone other than possibly the local coroner, to whom he would just be considered a "John Doe."  If he were to commit suicide, then a utilitarian would concede that he did not act immorally.

Okay, let's shift to deontology.  Here, instead of consequences, we talk about obligations.  The kinds of obligations we are most familiar with are those that we have towards others.  A woman who is embedded in a social network probably has a variety of obligations.  If she is a mother, she has obligations toward her children.  Likewise, she may have obligations as a wife, daughter, sibling, employee, employer, friend, neighbor, colleague, etc.  For her to commit suicide from this perspective would be considered immoral because she would be violating or shirking these obligations.  

But, what if we were to consider this woman as a lonely homeless individual?  It seems in this case that she has no obligations, assuming that she has no family, no friends, no job, etc.  In this case, her suicide would not violate or shirk any obligations.  Wouldn't the deontologist concede that she is not acting immorally?  One might respond by claiming that she has an obligation to herself.  What does that mean?  What sorts of obligations do we have ourselves and why?  How does this square with the sorts of personal freedoms that we have?  Do I have an obligations to maintain a certain standard of physical health?  Don't I also have the freedom to act in certain ways that might be detrimental to my health, such as smoking, eating junk food, etc?

This leads us to another perspective on morality, i.e. the religious.  Perhaps suicide is morally wrong because we have some obligation towards God.  What does this mean?  Religious individuals, or at least Christians, are pretty down on suicide.  Some go so far as to say that suicide damns you to hell.  Why?  What is the theological argument against the moral permissibility of suicide?  Again, is it that we have some obligation to God?  In Christian theology, we have lots of obligations to God.  Why this one in particular?  Why is suicide considered a sin?  Notice that not all killing is considered sinful.  God commanded the Israelites to basically commit genocide against the Canaanite nations in the Old Testament book of Joshua.  It would probably be contradictory act if God commanded the Israelites to kill, and all killing is considered sinful.  So, if not all killing is considered sinful, then why is suicide considered sinful?

It might be easy to see why people think that there is something wrong with suicide out of despair.  It's tragic and indicates that the world isn't as it should be.  But it's harder to see why exactly this sort of suicide is morally wrong.  If someone has no obligations and commits suicide out of despair without harming anyone, then how is that individual to be considered blameworthy for what they did?  What is ethically wrong with that/

Punishment and Proportionality

So I've been thinking a little bit about punishment.  It's weird how society pairs crimes with punishment.  This is something that I read about a while back when I read Foucault's Discipline and Punish.  I thought I'd revisit those themes and reflect on them a bit.

What exactly is punishment?  As a first pass, it's a type of action performed by a certain individual to a certain individual for a particular reason.  This much is obvious.  Let's break down these parts.

A particular reason:  Punishment occurs as a consequence of some broken rule.  

The punisher:  The person administering the punishment can be an individual or it can be an organization.  One necessary condition is that either the individual or organization plays some kind of recognized role of authority.

The punished:  It is assumed that the individual who is justly punished is the one who broke the rule.

The action:  The action itself is supposed to be harmful in some way to the punished individual.

What I wonder about is how the action lines up with the infraction.  Sometimes we notice a symmetry.  Some states still enforce a death penalty.  So, if an individual breaks the right kind of rules, usually involving one or more murders, then he is punished by being killed.  Kill someone, be killed.  Seems pretty symmetric.

However, most punishments administered by a society like the United States come in two forms: forfeiture of property or imprisonment.  These sorts of punishments don't seem related at all to the corresponding crimes.  For instance, the punishment for distributing a high enough volume of illegal narcotics is some amount of imprisonment.  You sell something you're not supposed to, you get locked up in a building for a while.  Why does one follow the other?

Foucault has his own theory, which I don't fully understand.  It has to do with the connection between the criminal class and social uprising.  The idea is that the criminal class can potentially cite revolution and social upheaval, so social authorities (inadvertently?) keep them contained so as to maintain the status quo.

There might be something to that theory.  I want to explore other possibilities.  One question that we can draw from Foucault's theory is this:  What exactly is punishment for?  What is it supposed to accomplish?

When you take an intro to political philosophy class.  You learn that there are three different views on what punishment is for.

1.  Deterrence
This view states that punishment exists to provide a negative incentive against individuals committing crimes in the future.  So, punishment is a preventative act, focusing on future cases.

2. Retribution
This view rests on the intuition that there is something like justice in society.  The justice understood here is the kind that has to do with a balance between crime and punishment.  The basic idea is that if you do something bad to someone, something bad should happen to you, as a way to balance the scales of justice.  Notice that this view doesn't take into consideration what happens in the future.  It's just about satisfying a certain demand that many think is intuitive about the way that society should work.  "An eye for an eye," so to speak.

3.  Rehabilitation
This is similar to deterrence in that it is future oriented.  However instead of focusing on how others will act in response to the punishment, this view focuses on the individual being punished, and how they will behave in the future.  It's pretty self-explanatory.  The purpose of punishment on this view is to change the individual in some way such that they won't commit the same crimes in the future/

These views aren't mutually exclusive.  An act of punishment can satisfy the objectives of all three views.  However, they do come apart.  For instance, capital punishment might satisfy the goals of deterrence and retribution, but it obviously does not satisfy the objectives of rehabilitation.

Given these views, we might understand a little better the rationale behind the matching of crime and punishment.  Take parenting for example.  It seems clear that the objectives behind punishment in the context of parenting either fall under deterrence or rehabilitation.  It's weird to think of parents punishing their children simply because "they deserved it."

When we look at the aims of society, however, all three views are under consideration.  Deterrence and rehabilitation views are, in a sense, empirically verifiable or falsifiable.  We can measure the effectiveness of a punishment in deterring future crime and rehabilitating criminals.  Do punishments, as they are currently administered in the United States, meet the goals of deterrence and rehabilitation?  That's probably a very complex question, and I don't have the answer.

Many think that even if punishment failed the goals of deterrence and rehabilitation, it would still be required to meet the demands of retribution.  This view implies that at bottom, punishment is really about balancing the scales of justice.  Deterrence and rehabilitation are extras.  I'd like to reflect on this for a moment.

What is retribution about?  When do we satisfy the demands of retribution?  Suppose that someone commits a crime.  Let's say that we have someone who stole a car.  What kind of punishment would be fittingly retributive and why?

How would a retributive punishment fit the crime?  In general, a crime is considered to be type of harm that is done either to an individual or to society in general.  Some crimes are obviously harmful, like theft or murder.  Other crimes are not so obviously harmful, like speeding or jaywalking.  The latter category might be considered a form of harm in that it increases the probability of some harm being done.  Speeding might be considered harmful because it increases the likelihood of a car accident, which is clearly harmful.  So, it might be plausible to think of all crimes as harms of some sort.

In order to satisfy a general sense of retribution, the punishment must also be a form of harm.  Harm must be exchanged for harm in order to balance the scales, so to speak.  Is it enough for society to respond to an act of crime by inflicting harm upon the criminal?  Or, does the harm inflicted require further specification?

Punishment can be specified along two dimensions, quantitative and qualitative.  Quantitative aspects of punishment can include the magnitude of the harm inflicted, or the duration of the harm.   For instance, life imprisonment and a year long prison sentence differ in terms of the magnitude of the punishment.  Qualitative aspects of punishment can differ across the varieties of conceivable harm.  These include physical harm, psychological harm, economic harm, social harm, etc.  For instance, execution qualitatively differs as a form of harm from a fine for however much money.

It seems pretty clear that our sense of retribution places constraints on the magnitude of the punishment.  The common intuition is that the magnitude of the punishment should at least be approximately proportional to the magnitude of the crime.  We would think it unjust if a crime of murder was punished with a ten dollar fine.  Likewise, we would find it unjust if a crime of speeding were met with the death penalty.  The challenge here is trying to come up with some sense of quantification for all crimes and punishments.  Some crimes, like theft, might be relatively easy to quantify, but what about crimes like perjury?  How do you attach a number to something like lying under oath?  Punishments might be similarly difficult to quantify.  Punishments like fines are easy to quantify, but what about punishments like caning, or solitary confinement?

Things get more difficult when we try to match up crime and punishment qualitatively.  You'd think that this would be easy to do.  If a criminal steals something, then punish him by taking away some of his property or time.  But here's where things take an interesting turn.  In modern liberal societies like the United States, certain types of punishment are considered unjust, even if they qualitatively fit the crime.  Such crimes include the various forms of physical punishment, like caning or whipping, as well as forms of public shame like using those stocks that you see in colonial villages.  So even if a crime is something like rape, many think it unjust if the rapist gets raped in return.  Why is this?  Why do we have a sense of retribution regarding crimes, but at the same time think that the punishment shouldn't fit the crime in some respects?  Note that people would probably still disapprove of these types of punishments even if they were effect in rehabilitating the criminal or deterring future crimes.

The sorts of punishments that people disapprove of are usually sorted into the category of "cruel and unusual" punishment.  What makes a punishment cruel and unusual.  Let's assume that there is no disproportionate magnitude between crime and punishment.  Why are we not okay with the punishment qualitatively fitting the crime in certain respects?  It seems clear that this sensibility partly explains why most forms of social punishment pretty much come down to either imprisonment or fine of some sort.