What does "I love you" mean?

Within the context of a romantic relationship, uttering the sentence, "I love you" can be quite significant.  Consider our friend George Costanza, who deliberates over telling his then-girlfriend that he loves her.  Hilarity ensues.

People wonder about when it is appropriate to tell their significant other that they love them.  Tell them too early, like during a first date, and that comes off as really creepy.  Waiting too long, of course, is also not good.  When is the ideal time to drop the L-bomb?

Part of understanding the appropriateness of the phrase involves understanding what the phrase actually means.  There are two possible approaches in understanding the meaning of "I love you."

In the philosophy of language, there are two approaches to understanding how language works.  One approach is called semantics.  The other is called pragmatics.  Semantics is the study of the informational content of words and phrases.  Under this approach, language contains information, which in turn can be evaluated as being true or false.  This information can affect our beliefs, actions and reasoning processes.  When most people think of meaning within the context of language, they have semantics in mind.

There is another way to approach language, however.  Words and phrases, instead of conveying information, can themselves be used to perform actions, similar to how we perform actions with our bodies like giving a handshake, making a pot of coffee, or signing a check.  These sorts of actions are called "speech acts."  For example, in a Blackjack game, you might say to the dealer, "Hit me."  This phrase, rather than communicating specific informational content, is interpreted as an action by the player, i.e. requesting to be dealt an additional card.  Likewise, in a wedding, the officiant my utter the phrase, "I now pronounce you husband and wife."  Again, the point of this utterance is not necessarily to convey information.  Instead, the officiant is performing an action, i.e. making official the marital status of bride and groom.

So, a big area in the philosophy of language involves determining whether certain phrases or types of phrases should be treated as semantic or pragmatic.  For example, there are words like "might" and "must" that are used in sentences like "Bob might be late today" or "The keys must be in the drawer."  How should we treat words like these?  Should they be treated semantically, i.e. as contributing to the informational content of the sentence, or should they be treated pragmatically, i.e. as performing a speech act?

We can ask the same question about the phrase "I love you."  When I tell my girlfriend that I love her, am I conveying some information, or am I performing a speech.act?  What would be the difference between these two approaches.  Well the main thing is this.  If the phrase is treated semantically, then it means that it has a truth value.  It has conditions under which it is evaluated as true and conditions under which it is false.  So when I tell my girlfriend that I love her, and were she to treat that phrase semantically, she might have in mind a set of conditions under which that claim would be true.

Suppose instead that she treated the phrase as a speech act.  A speech act doesn't have a truth conditions, because a speech act isn't true or false, much in the same way that making a pot of coffee isn't something that can be evaluated as true or false.  To interpret the phrase "I love you" as a speech act would be to interpret it as a gesture, like a hug or a kiss on the cheek.

Our attitude about the phrase "I love you" will differ based on how we interpret the phrase.  We often stress out about saying because we think we have to satisfy certain criteria before properly uttering the phrase.  To think that the phrase is only treated in one way would be a mistake, in my opinion.  Sometimes we use the phrase semantically, sometimes we use it pragmatically.

Sex vs. Gender

When I was younger I'd often hanging out in groups with guys and girls mixed in.  We'd have dinner, coffee, drinks, or whatever.  What I would notice in those settings is that they only time in which both guys and girls would jointly participate in the conversation was if it had something to do with guys and girls, i.e. sex and gender.  Basically we'd have the whole "Men are from Mars, women are from Venus" kind of conversation.

Since then, the notion of sex and gender has fascinated me.  One major question that I wonder about has to do with the connection between the two concepts.  Before getting there, however, I should try to clarify how I understand the two independently.

Sex is supposed to be a biological concept.  The sex of an organism identifies certain biological features of that organism.  This might include the sorts of chromosomes that an organism possesses, organs had by an organism, reproductive capabilities, etc.

Gender is supposed to be a behavioral concept.  The gender of an organism identifies certain behavioral features of that organism.  This might include psychological dispositions, social structures, mating rituals, different ways of communicating, etc.

So are these two concepts connected?  In particular, does sex determine gender?  Let's say that you are a female, does that in some way determine certain behavioral facts about you?  If so, how?  Let's suppose that the two concepts are not connected.  Then where does our idea of gender come from?  Why is gender so closely associated with sex?

I'm sure that there are lots of books or articles written about this.  If anyone out there has any recommendations on scholarly work, let me know.

"Is it Biblical?"

Among Evangelicals, the question "Is it Biblical?" is an oft-used litmus test for whether an individual or community should accept some norm or principle.  For instance, one might ask about the moral permissibility of premarital sex.  The typical response in the Evangelical community would be to ask whether the claim the claim that premarital sex is morally permissible is Biblical.  So what does it mean for any particular claim to be Biblical?

There are three possible relationships between claims that are pertinent here.

First is consistency.  Claim p and claim q are consistent just in case it is possible for both p and q to be true together.  Lots of claims are mutually consistent.  The claim that Syracuse is a city in New York is consistent with the claim that Albany is the capital of New York.  An example of inconsistency would be the following two claims:

James was in Syracuse on February 20, 2015, at 10:07 pm.
James was in Tokyo, Japan on February 20, 2015 at 10:07 pm.

Assuming that it is impossible for the same thing to be in two different places at the same time, these claims are mutually consistent.

Second is implication.  p implies q just in case whenever p is true, q has to be true.  You get this relationship a lot with definitions, as well as with reasoning about categories.  Here's an example of the first.

That James is a bachelor implies that James is a male.

The second claim here follows from what it means to be a bachelor.  If it's true that I'm a bachelor, then it must be true that I'm a male.

Here's another example of implication.

That Fido is a dog implies that Fido is a mammal.

Categories are often nested.  The category of dog is nested in the category of mammal.  So we can infer by implication that anything that is a dog must also be a mammal.

The third is equivalence.  p and q are equivalent just in case whenever p is true, q must be true, and vice versa.  Equivalence is basically like synonymy.  Here's an example of two equivalent claims.

James went to the store today.
It is not true that James didn't go to the store today.

So we have three kinds of relations between claims.  To say that some claim p is Biblical is basically to relate that claim to the set of all of the claims found in the Bible.  But, what sort of relation are we talking about here?  Which one of the above mentioned three is it?

Let's start with equivalence.  It seems clear that p being Biblical is not a case of equivalence.  It's obvious that some claim could be considered Biblical even though it's not equivalent to any particular claim found in the Bible.  For example, most Evangelicals would agree that it's Biblical to go on mission trips to Haiti.  However, the claim that it is good to go to mission trips to Haiti is not equivalent with any claim found in the Bible.

Having set equivalence aside, let's look at the other two relations.

Perhaps to say that p is Biblical is to say that p and the set of claims found in the Bible are related by implication.  There are two possibilities.  Either p implies the Biblical claims, or the Biblical claims imply p.  The first would be no good.  Here's why.  Most Evangelicals believe that all claims found in the Bible are true.  Remember, saying that p implies q is saying that whenever p is true, q must be true.  The only way p would not imply q is if p were true and q were false.  But since claims in the Bible are assumed to be true, p would imply q no matter what.

So, implication probably goes in the other direction.  One interpretation of p being Biblical is that the set of claims in the Bible imply p.  That is, p follows from the claims found in the Bible.  Is this the correct way to interpret p being Biblical?  Notice that this is a strong interpretation.  What I mean is that it's relatively hard for a claim to be implied by Scripture.  Think about it this way.  In order for p to be implied by the Bible, the following has to be true:

(our set of claims found in the Bible)  THEREFORE p.

How many claims is this true of?  Fill in p with anything you'd like:

(set of claims in the Bible) THEREFORE one should go on mission trips to Haiti

Is that really true?  Does it follow from the Bible that one should go on mission trips to Haiti?  If so, how?  It's not as easy as you think to make this connection.

It seems then, that to interpret p being Biblical as an implication relation would eliminate many claims that one might intuitively consider Biblical.

Now let's look at the last relation.  Suppose we consider p being Biblical as a claim about consistency.  So, we interpret p being Biblical as saying that p is consistent with the set of claims found in the Bible.  This just means that p doesn't contradict anything that's said in the Bible.  In this case, the claim that it is good to go on mission trips to Haiti would be Biblical, since that claim is consistent with all of the claims in the Bible.

Notice now that it's really easy for a claim to be Biblical if we understand this to be consistency.  Lots and lots of claims are consistent with the Bible.  In fact, some claims that we would normally think are not Biblical would be considered Biblical under this interpretation.  For instance, the claim, "It is morally permissible to smoke crack cocaine five times a day every day for the rest of your life" is technically consistent with all of the claims found in the Bible.

So, it's not clear whether a claim being Biblical means that it is implied by the Bible or consistent with the Bible.  My suspicion is that a lot of Evangelicals go back and forth between these two interpretations.  If they don't want a claim to be considered Biblical, then they interpret Biblical as implication.  If they want a claim to be considered Biblical, then they take the consistency interpretation.

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/