As you will see in Hartmann's first reading in chapter 3 of Quest, criticism is an important part of the academic study of art. And when we come to read "Looking at Art: What's the Story?" next week, we might extend Hartmann's suggested definition of what characterizes criticism (2007, p. 73). In some of the responses that you wrote this in class earlier today, some of you did, in fact, go beyond the simple two part definition that Hartmann offers us.
Academic discussion, even in respected journals, is often also heated. This is because people care very much about the issues, about what is true and what is to be done, but even a heated academic discussion does not (usually) collapse into a shouting match, although academics, being only human, do sometimes shout, and worse. During this morning's discussion, I was reminded of a debate in 1946 between two of the greatest philosophers of the last century: Karl Popper, whose work continues to exert enormous influence on how we think about science, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, who did work on logic, language and philosophy of mind. In their friendly (!) debate at the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club (what better place) among other greats such as logician and philosopher of mathematics Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein is reported to have threatened to beat Popper with an iron fire-poker that was conveniently at hand in the chilly English weather. They behaved a bit better in the journals, where the same argument was carried on with equal passion but less iron waving.
Getting back to the topics this morning, I'd like to discuss the drug question first because I think it's the easier one. As Grace rightly pointed out, if I claim that legalising all drugs will not increase drug use or addiction rates, I have to support that opinion, and because it's a factual claim, argument alone is not good enough: an opinion about the way the world really is must be supported with relevant facts. I agree that it sounds very plausible, that it is very easy to believe, that legalising drugs must lead to an increase in drug use and addiction rates, but being easy to believe does not make any claim about the world true. Many ideas that seem obviously true are false. Aristotle, and every one after him for more than 1,000 years, believed that heavier objects must naturally fall faster than lighter objects; they were all wrong. Unfortunately, this became part of Christian belief supported by the Catholic popes who tortured, killed and threatened anyone who said otherwise, such as Galileo. This legally enforced censorship did not help the misunderstanding to be corrected; on the contrary, as such censorship always does, it guaranteed ignorance and worthless opinion on the topics where free speech was strictly forbidden.
Chieko then helped by pointing out that the relevant facts to consider to determine what effects legalising and criminalising drugs have is to look at examples where some drug has been legalised or criminalised, specifically, at the situation before compared with the situation after. First, the US experience with alcohol prohibition provides a good example of what happens when a popular drug of recreation that is legal is made illegal. As Jeffrey Miron shows in "The Effect of Alcohol Prohibition on Alcohol Consumption" making this drug illegal "had virtually no effect on alcohol consumption" (1999, p. 1). To see the results of legalising all drugs on drug use, and also related health, crime and social issues, Glenn Greenwald provides a solid collection of official statistics on the consequences of decriminalising all drug in Portugal in 2001. As Greenwald emphasises in his executive summary, "none of the nightmare scenarios touted by preenactment decriminalization opponents—from rampant increases in drug usage among the young to the transformation of Lisbon into a haven for 'drug tourists'—has occurred" (2009, p. 1). In other words, everyone's worst fears of what might happen if all drugs were suddenly legalised were proved completely wrong by the resulting facts. The impressive results for Portugal are also stated more briefly in the report and headline of the Forbes business newspaper's article by Erik Kain: "Ten Years After Decriminalisation, Drug Abuse Down by Half in Portugal" (2011). Although the longer and more solidly researched academic paper by Greenwald is a bit more persuasive for me, we don't expect conservative, business publications to publish such things without good reason. You might also find it instructive to Google the effects of decriminalising marijuana use in the Netherlands.
Finally, the question that started the very academic discussion that was not on my lesson plan: Should parents be allowed to determine the sex of their children? In my level 5 class, I give students a choice of essay topics for our major writing assignment, and one of the questions is on the topic of abortion; however, I've written the question very carefully to completely avoid the moral issues. Similarly, in the discussion legalising drugs, I generally avoid the moral questions and focus on the factual, practical issue of what is most likely to be an effective and successful police to solve the serious drug problems that affect many societies. The reason for this is that although I think the moral arguments are even stronger than the practical arguments, those arguments are also much more complex, so I try to avoid them in class until level 6 and higher. It's better to practise on easier topics first and move on to the more challenging ones. I would probably not have given a level 3 or 4 class an explicitly moral question like the one you were arguing, preferring to stick with something a bit narrower and more easily resolved. I might, for example, have asked: Would it be beneficial or harmful for a society to allow parents to choose the sex of their children? This question is interesting and challenging, but I think less difficult than the explicitly moral one.
In class, Frank and I disagreed about the facts in China. Frank, sensibly and rightly, wants me to provide some evidence for my belief. As I said in class, since the statistics I was relying on were ten years old, it was certainly possible that the situation had changed since I last did some research. However, when I checked this afternoon, it appears from their study published in the British Medical Journal by academics Wei Xing Zhu and Li Lu from Chinese universities, and Therese Hesketh at University college London that sex selective abortion has continued to become increasingly common in China at least until 2005, as shown by the wildly skewed ratio of male to female births (Zhu, Lu & Hesketh, 2009). I could not find any reliable study suggesting that this trend might have changed in the years since 2005. It appears that, despite being illegal, sex selective abortion of females has been commonly practised throughout China, although less in urban areas than rural, since the determination of the sex of the foetus became medically possible.
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Reference
Hartmann, P. (2007). Quest 2 Reading and Writing (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Kain, E. (2011, September 5). Ten years after decriminalisation, drug abuse down by half in Portugal. Forbes. Retrieved October 18, 2012 from http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/05/ten-years-after-decriminalization-drug-abuse-down-by-half-in-portugal/
Miron, J. (1999). The Effect of Alcohol Prohibition on Alcohol Consumption. Working Paper 7130. Cambridge: The National Bureau of Economic Research. Retrieved October 18, 2012 from http://www.nber.org/papers/w7130.pdf?new_window=1
Zhu, W. X., Lu, L. & Hesketh, T. (2009, April 9). China’s excess males, sex selective abortion, and one child policy: analysis of data from 2005 national intercensus survey. British Medical Journal, 338 (b1211). Retrieved October 18, 2012 from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2667570/
Even before I hit the "Publish" button, I was thinking that I should have split this into at least two shorter blog posts, but the issues are all related.
ReplyDeleteAnd since this response came out of a serious academic discussion in class, it's not surprising that there is more than one source cited and therefore included in the list of references. In fact, I was thinking of citing more to support my factual claims, but it's already long enough.
And as Jha et al demonstrate, sex selective abortion is even more common, and increasing, in India than it is in China (2011). Interestingly, and perhaps contrary to what Pun and Frank might have predicted (this is my inference, which might be wrong), Jha and his colleagues found that the census statistics show that greater education led to greater increase in the rate of sex selective abortion of female foetuses, and that higher income led to higher abortion rate increases to have male children.
ReplyDeleteReference
Jha, P., Kesler, M.A., Kumar, R., Ram, F., Ram, U., Aleksandrowicz, L., Bassani D.G., Chandra, S., & Banthia, J.K. (2011, June 4). Trends in selective abortions of girls in India: analysis of nationally representative birth histories from 1990 to 2005 and census data from 1991 to 2011 [Abstract]. Lancet, 4;377(9781). Retrieved October 18, 2012 from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21612820
I quite agree with Peter's opinion which is to prevent all related people from suffering. If parents know about some abnormality in fetus, they could make a decision to continue or abort pregnancy. However, I mostly think abortion is immoral. I have a colleague who have a Down-syndrome child. Today's world, we can detect earlier as Peter's mention. But why she didn't do it? This question is always in my head when I see her. I have many question to ask like how can accept that? Why you decided to continue? Those questions I have never asked because I lack of bravery. Or the answer might be extremely short like because I am a mother and that is my child. Whatever worse I will stand beside him. Moreover, many families as I saw their family photos have special children like my friend, and they can raise up their children peacefully. After I read about Christopher in the curios incident of the dog in the night time, I understand more why my friend gave birth her child.
ReplyDeleteShould parents choose sex in their children? I cannot give any supports for this question. But, I have a question. If we can choose our children's sex, what will happen? For example, more than 90% people need a child boy, and they choose boy babies. The next effect is the next generation almost is male. The world population consists 90%of male population and the left population are female and mixed sex. Will the world still balance?
As I knew, the reason why most parent like baby boy because the elder in their families believe that it is the only way to continue their family, especially their family names. Well, the world have been changing and of course Thailand have also been revolutionizing. Thai's law now, people can choose any family name. In the other word, after married, woman can choose to use her family name or change it. This regulation might reduce some possibilities to choose a baby boy. That is, parents can be free and peaceful in their pregnancy rather than the past.
Aor,
DeleteI would never ask such questions of a friend or relative either. If they did not bring up the topic first, I would not. I do think it's important to discuss such topics, but an academic or public setting is the appropriate place, not a close personal relationship.
I don't think that all discussions are appropriate at all times.
As my classmate said that all men in the class wore a girl dress in their childhood. I feel startle a lot. It also remind me some principle in the psychology class which is about children's behaviors. In the first three years, children will close and imitate their mothers characters. After that they will change their closeness and imitation to their father instead.
ReplyDeleteThis principle might not answer why my male classmates wore a girl dress when they were child. However, those principle might answer why many children from single parent have main characters similar to their parent or fulfill some character that they do not have.
As Bus mention about technology using to choose sex for children, sometime it will be appreciate for parents who completely agree with sex they chose. If they choose sex with false agreement, the result might be as the same as our classmate wearing girl or even boy dress in childhood. I don't think that when parents treat their children as the opposite sex, their children behave as the opposite sex.
Moreover, if we choose sex for our children, what will happen when our children grow up and be not satisfied in their sex? What will you do? Can you accept if they want to change?
As my notice, many heterosexual people obtain some physical appearances of the opposite sex they are. For example, my friend is a gay and he has a male upbringing. But he has some feminine characters like high voice, fair skin, and slender build. Many time he tries to secretly change his behaves, characters, and clothes in woman;in other word, his parent have never known about it. Also, this opposite sex characters are found in women who are lesbians. How you know that cells which the doctors choose in the technology,Bus's mention, are not inherent some homosexual characters because many researches support that those characters pass through the next generation by DNA?
Maybe a week ago, there are news about a man who made a decision to be a man ask for some budget for surgeon to eliminate any character of woman. His body obtain the XXY chromosome; as a result, his body contains both genital sexual organ; man and woman. He has a beautiful face, eyes, and skin as a woman. He also has a big breast. But his voice and hair look like a man. While he was a child, his parent chose his sex, girl. In other word, he used Miss before calling his name. But not today, he made a decision to be a man and want to marry with his girlfriend. What do you think bout this news? Should we still choose sex for our children? Or should we mutate our chromosome as the news if we need prolong time to making a decision? And today's world, children can choose their sexes.
Whatever they are, they are you children.
I wonder: sex selective abortion is illegal in India and China, so would it make any difference if it were legalised, or like drug use, would a change in the law make little difference?
DeleteTHis is, again, a factual question about human behaviour, and it can't be settled except by looking at relevant data.
My guess, for which I can't think of any data that directly supports it, is that it would probably closely follow patterns of drug use in a society; that is, that social, economic and cultural factors are more important than laws in deciding what people decide to do.
As to the effects of having a large imbalance in sex ratios, we will see over the coming 10 - 20 years what happens in China, India and other countries where this is in fact happening.
Aor,
DeleteAs you mention about the homosexual or heterosexual persons,
nowadays genetic technology can predict health problems before Parents shall have a baby.
Parents who make a plan to have a baby can inspect their chromosomes and make sure their child will not get some diseases from their gene before their child fertilizes. Moreover,generic diseases can be avoided because some diseases can occur with only the man or woman such as Arthritis, heart disease and even lung cancer also seem to be influenced by a person's gender. Therefore,parent can decide for their future child's health.
In short,I strongly believed that heterosexual or homosexual person depend on how the way parent treated their children is and the environment around the children when they grow up. I thought that no one can give a guarantee for the child who was selected by the natural selection will not be heterosexual or homosexual person, even though only the god can.
Should parents be allowed to determine the sex of their children?
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, I agree to choose the sex before by the machine (I do not know how it calls) which can separate gene Y or X as Bass said, but I am not agree if they will choose babies after they born. As I am Buddhist ; therefore I think abortion is something not good because it is killing, does not exist in my religion.
There are also abortions in Thailand, but it is illegal. We cannot know exactly how many clinics do kind of this thing. I just saw some on television and I think almost of us feel not comfortable to talk about it.
In Thailand, do you think where this problem comes from? I think because of some young people who do not have knowledge how to protect themselves. Especially in the small villages, because there are more poor people than in the big cities; they have different traditional. Some parents are still shy to talk or teach their children about the important sex information which children should know.
The fact that many people do not want to discuss abortion and related issues seems to me a very strong reason why it is extremely important to start discussing it. It has a very serious impact on the lives of many people, and if the current law is unjust, that is a very serious wrong being committed by Thai governments against Thai citizens.
DeleteI know many people think that Buddhism does not allow abortion, but I hope they are wrong. If it's true, it means that Buddhist teaching is immoral, and that is not a good thing.
Although I did clearly state my opinion in class, I didn't give my reasons. I think the most difficult moral issues can avoided by noting that the foetus, at least until some late stage in a pregnancy, is not a human being, and therefore abortion is not killing a human being or any other living thing that is aware and sensing.
Killing human beings is wrong. Killing other sentient animals might be morally wrong (which would mean eating meat is definitely immoral, as Buddhism does teach). But since the foetus does not have the defining characteristics of a human being until around 7 months into a pregnancy, abortion before that time cannot be morally wrong. And any teaching, religious or otherwise, that causes real harm to women, especially teenage girls, by refusing them access to safe, legal abortion on request is immoral. This is why I hope that such immoral opposition to abortion for those who want it does not come from Buddhist teaching.
I just want to clarify my reasoning in the last comment. There are two possibilities: either 1) abortion is immoral, or 2) abortion is moral. One of these must be right and one must be wrong. They cannot both be true, and they cannot both be false.
DeleteIf abortion is immoral, then teaching that it is immoral is probably morally right.
If abortion is moral, then teaching that it is immoral is morally wrong.
I've outlined what I think is a good reason for believing that abortion, at least until some late stage in a pregnancy, is moral; therefore, any teaching, religious or otherwise, that says that abortion is always immoral must itself (the teaching) be immoral.
These are important issues that very definitely should be discussed because they have serious consequences for people's lives.
Should parents be able to choose the sex of their children?
ReplyDeleteYes, the law should allow parents to decide the sex of their own children.
First, this does not seem significantly different to other choices parents make that they believe are in their children's or their own interests. For example, most parents choose to have healthy babies, and they act to make that happen: the mother eats well, avoids alcohol and other drugs, and generally does what will help. Similarly, if the foetus is found to have a serious genetic or gross abnormality, that is seen by many as a good reason to have an abortion before the foetus becomes a human being. Choosing the sex of a child seems not radically different to decisions that we already accept parents should be free to make. And such decisions can be made with both the family's and the child's best interests at heart: a family with three sons already might reasonably decide that that is a good reason for the next child to be a daughter, a couple planning on having only one child might decide that a son will have a better chance of a successful life than a daughter - we might argue that they are wrong, but this does seem like the right sort of reason to consider, and it is done to make a better life for the child.
Second, exactly as we find with drug use, the evidence from China and India show that making sex selection illegal does nothing to stop it. The facts clearly show that criminalising sex selection merely wastes tax income, creates opportunities for official corruption, turns decent citizens into criminals, and does not reduce the rate of sex selection, mainly by abortion of female foetuses. None of these actual results of making it illegal in China and India are good for those societies.
Third, since comparing statistics for China and India with those from cultures with different social and cultural customs and ways of thinking, it is most likely that allowing parents a free choice will not, as with drug legalisation and criminalisation, have any strong impact on the extent to which it happens anyway, either to increase or decrease the occurrence of sex selection.
Fourth, and following from my past point, by allowing legal sex selection and using resources for education and awareness campaigns more good is likely to be done, especially towards correcting the current imbalance in places like India and China.
Finally, since it is not obvious that sex selection by abortion or any other means harms anyone, there can be no just reason to ban such decisions by parents. When parents select the sex of their child, no one is harmed or injured in any direct way that can count as a reason for that person to complain about the decision that was made by the parents. This, I think, must be the strongest reason in favour of allowing sex selection by parents - the other reasons are all concerned with what actually happens or is likely to happen, but while they answer some likely opposing arguments and correct mistaken beliefs about the consequences, they are not positive arguments in favour of it in the way that this moral argument strongly supports sex selection by parents.
But I certainly welcome debate on this interesting question.
If you are looking for some strong arguments against my position, the work of Harvard University professor Michael Sandel, especially his book The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering. There is also a video online of Sandel presenting university lecture as visiting professor (he is one of Harvard's most famous professors), The Case Against Perfection. Unfortunately, the lecture is over an hour and it isn't easy.
DeleteSandel addresses some related issues in easier language and using a more common university lecture format in his excellent series of lectures for first year undergraduates at Harvard University in Justice with Michael Sandel
The most relevant are lectures 2 and 5; however, it's probably useful to watch the first one first, and they are all well great examples of a great university lecturer and respected academic in action.
Obviously, I disagree with Sandel on some issues, but it's important to pay very careful attention to the strongest arguments against our own opinions - this is the only way we can be confident that our opinions are well-founded, balanced and maybe even right.
There are some question remain in my mind. Should Thai government legalize using amphetamine?
ReplyDeleteAlthough I agree with Peter and admit all his supports because many countries start to legalize using small amount of drugs, I am still not sure that it can be effective in Thailand. There are many factors involving using drugs, especially beliefs which mostly Thais believe in something unreasonable, unnatural or uncontrolled by man and self-esteem which mostly Thais are lesser than western people. Those things make me worry if the government legalize using drugs. I try to find some data to clarify myself, but my search is not successful. I need trend number of Thais involving drugs. Although I found them, all graph show some fluctuated and unrealizable. And I cannot answer my question surely.
First question:
Can I compare some data between involving drugs about twenties years ago and now? The answers is I cannot because of insufficient data.
In Thailand, since ten years ago, we have accumulated some data, but our illegal drugs are available.
I found some statistic about trend of involving illegal drugs about 2003-2012. ( Source:http://www.nccd.go.th/upload/content/sujjj.pdf.pdf) In the source, page 4 show a graph of Thais involving illegal drugs in 2003-2012 and all that period, drugs are illegal. However, there are different strict by government policy. I link the data to the government policy. I choose and separate data into 2 parts by time. First, 2004-2005, this period, Thai prime minister was Thuksin Shinnawat and his policy was really powerful in illegal drugs. And second, after Thuksin's government, 2008-2010, there are some fluctuation in Thai's politics. If I pretend after Thuksin's government is when we can legally use drug and during Thuksin's government is when we can illegally drugs, the result might differ from statistic that Peter's support because the number of Thai people involves drugs under controlling by Thuksin are lesser than the number of Thai people in fluctuated politics period.
I try to find some related relationship and try to use data based on Thais.
Of course, I knew that it is not reliable to compare the data like I do.
Aor,
DeleteI like the way you researched and used the statistics you found, and I agree that they do tell us something important about a relationship between laws and illegal behaviour: they tell us the same relationship we see in North Korea, where any negative criticism, true or not, of their "Dear Leader" and his family is severely punished. The result is that no one in North Korea ever dares to state an honest opinion on that topic and every law abiding North Korean citizen's opinion is forced by very strictly enforced law to be unbalanced, unfounded and therefore of little worth. But people certainly obey the law - terror, as terrorists know, is a powerful motivating force.
The economist Steven Levitt presents equally strong statistical evidence that harsher punishment is effective in controlling behaviour, in particular, in reducing crime. In a very famous essay, Levitt uses solid statistics to support his claim that about 30% of the dramatic drop in crime in the United States during the 1990s was caused by more severe punishment of criminals, especially longer prison sentences (Levitt & Dubner, 2006). In the same essay, based on his equally famous academic paper, Levitt presents even stronger statistical analyses showing that an even larger amount of the drop in crime (about 40%) in the 1990s was caused by the legalisation of abortion in the United States in 1973 - a result that rather upset people who wanted crime reduced but were not happy with legal abortion.
I certainly agree that there is very strong evidence that harsher punishment changes people's behaviour. If everyone who dropped garbage on the street were immediately shot or had their hands cut off, the streets would certainly be much cleaner than they are. This also explains why Singapore has lower rates of illegal drug use than many other countries - it is because the law in Singapore is far more unjust, is far more grossly immoral, and violates basic human rights of its own citizens far more than do the laws of most other countries.
References
Levitt, S. & Dubner, S. (2006). Where have all the criminals gone? In Freakonomics (pp. 115 – 144). London: Penguin Books.
And Levitt's work, amongst that of others, strongly suggests that the single most effective thing that Thailand could do to greatly reduce all types of crime, but especially violent crime and theft, is to legalise abortion: it's not only morally right, it's very good for society.
Delete