The following is largely based on chapter 1 of Bertrand Russell's "The Problems of Philosophy"
1. Asking a Good Question
If I have learned anything, it is that no matter how complicated you think things are, they are always more complicated. There is always another layer to uncover, another angle to explore. You don’t have to keep digging, and most people would usually prefer to let things be, but that doesn’t mean that those other paths are not still there to be explored. Of course, no matter how long you keep going, how long you keep looking, there will always be something else to discover. This can be frustrating or inspiring. Take your pick.
To access this kind of complexity is to become aware of all the potential questions that you could ask but that most people don’t. Look around you. Pick some object, any object. I notice the chair at the desk across the room from where I am typing this. It is simple to describe the chair. In fact, describing household objects is the kind of thing any kindergartener can do. The chair I am looking at is a folding chair. It has a gray, metal frame and a sea foam green, plastic seat and back. It is the color of the plastic that makes this chair special. Other than that, it is the kind of chair you could imagine set up in any auditorium.
This feels like a pretty exhaustive description. You must have formed a mental image of the chair, and probably whatever your picture is pretty close to the truth. But next, I try to draw the chair. I am not very good at drawing. The picture I draw looks nothing like the chair I am looking at. As I move my pencil across the table, I realize that I don’t really know what to do with it. The doodle I produce has for legs, kind of, it sort of has a seat and back, but I am sure that if I showed you my drawing, you wouldn’t be able to pick the chair out of a lineup. Why can’t I draw a realistic chair? I am certainly able to describe it. I can get up and look as closely as I want, yet I feel confident that your mental image of the chair is much closer to what the chair looks like than my drawing.
As I look closer, I realize that it is because I left all kinds of things out of my description. The back of the chair is facing me and there is a line of shadow across the seat. The whole back of the chair is shadowed and looks like a darker shade of green than the seat. There are much lighter spots on the chair where the light is hitting it directly. I realize that I left perspective out of my drawing. The parts of the chair that are farther away from me look narrower.
It’s much easier to describe a chair than to draw a chair. This is because when I describe it, I imagine myself to be describing it as it is, whereas when I draw it, I can only draw it as I see it. Good artists are able to draw the chair from their own particular perspective. They are able to represent the particular pattern of light and shadow, bright patches and dull patches that are an effect of the particular point of view from which they see the chair. Bad artists, like me, imagine that somehow we can draw the chair from no perspective, or from a universal perspective. Failing to take into account the aspects of the image of the chair that change depending on the viewer yields stunted representations of the chair.
So how much of what I see when I look at the chair depends on my perspective and how much depends on the chair itself? I tend to think that a thing like the color of the chair (that strange sea foam green I described above) doesn’t depend on where you stand. But the color does depend on the light in the room. I remember going to the Boston Science Museum as a child where there is a room lit by a black light. I was amazed to see that my white t-shirt looked purple! The thought occurred to me, if all light were black light, things would look like this all the time. All of a sudden, the colors of objects, which had seemed fixed, were dependent on tricks of lighting.
One wants to insist that the chair has a definite color that doesn’t just depend on the circumstances in which the observer finds him or herself. One wants to say, “The color of the chair is whatever color the chair is in normal light.” But unfortunately, it is not obvious what “normal light” is. Can I specify it as a time of day? A brand of lightbulb? A particular wavelength? Regardless of what standard I choose, I acknowledge that any standard will be just that, a choice. There is no scientific experiment I can perform to decide whether or not some particular light is normal or not. This is because the only way we can perform a scientific test of whether something is or isn’t normal is if we have already established a standard of what counts as normal.
At this point, most people are going to shut off. For most people, it is enough to say that we all basically agree on what colors things are. We know that the world is not black lit, and even if it were, it wouldn’t matter because it would be that way for everyone. And frankly, I agree with this. It doesn’t really matter that objects look different from different perspectives. I don’t worry about whether the chair is really green or not. In fact, the only time I think awareness of different perspectives matters in my life is when there is a glare on the T.V from one angle and not from another, or when I am trying to figure out how to tilt the laptop screen so that both Ziva and I watch a movie.
But there is something much deeper going on here. The analysis of the different perspectives from which we can see the chair shows us that often times, the way things look depends less on inherent qualities of the thing we are looking at and more on where we are standing. I asked above about how much of what I see when I look at the chair depends on me and how much depends on the chair. This question is not necessarily that interesting when applied to the chair, but it becomes important and essential when applied to other parts of life. How much of my opinions, and belief system is determined by the way the world is and how much is determined by the way that I am? For example, what effect did being raised as an orthodox Jew, or in Massachusetts, or as one of three brothers have on my world-view? Many people feel like they can shed their particular context and simply see the world as it is, unadulterated by context.
What the discussion of the chair raises is that not only is it difficult to distinguish between the way the world is and the way that we are, it may not even be possible. In some sense, the qualities of the chair are reflections of qualities in ourselves. We want there to be a context-free way to look at the chair. Just as we may sometimes wish that we could reexamine many of our beliefs without context. But this is like asking for a context-free context. The discussion of the chair convinces me that there is no context-free context. All our observations, all our beliefs, all our experiences are always from our perspective. Just as the artist asks about the effect of her perspective on the chair, training ourselves to ask what is the effect of our perspective on the way that we see the world.
Once you look at the chair as something that may not have qualities that are entirely independent of the person looking at the chair, whole new avenues of exploration open up. I start to want to know more about my own beliefs. I start to see my perspective itself as something worth analyzing and investigating. What do I believe exactly and how might those beliefs shape the way that I see the world? At this point, it is not clear how we would go about answering these questions. If everything I believe is influenced by my perspective, how can get a clear look at my own perspective? I feel like I am trying to trim my fingernails one handed.
But at least we have some interesting questions.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Monday, June 14, 2010
All the World's a Stage...
Sometimes people play roles. A simple case of this is an actor in a play. The director assigns them a role and then may give them input on how to play the role: what clothes to wear, what mannerisms to use, what accent to speak, etc. Something similar happens on Halloween, Purim, or when going to a costume party. You often wear certain clothes, or carry certain props in order to communicate your identity to the people who see you.
There are some costumes that seem to come up over and over again. People often dress up as the president, Marilyn Monroe, or a famous athlete. If you pick one of these “standard” costumes, you know that there are certain things you do, say, wear, hold to show that you are Marilyn Monroe, etc.
Most of us assume that we can distinguish between the “real” person and their performance. No one would mistake the actor who plays Hamlet for a real prince of Denmark, or a person dressed as the president for Barack Obama. But on some level, we all play roles all the time. When someone, before entering a stressful situation, encourages him or herself to “just act confident,” that person is implying that there are certain ways that a confident person acts, certain things that a confident person does. Maybe it has to do with where you put your hands, or with making eye contact, or a certain posture. The point is that the shy person wants to project confidence and he or she does this by performing in a particular way.
What is the difference between peoples “true” selves and the roles they present in everyday life? At what point does one become a confident person simply because one has been playing a confident person for so long? Is there a “true” self that exists “under” or “behind” the performed self?
The idea that the world is a stage and all of us are acting all the time provides a powerful lens through which to analyze society. I will end with a brief example. Someone might ask, “what does it feel like to be a man or a woman?” The implicit assumption of that statement is that what determines one's gender is an internal and subjective experience. I don't know what my gender feels like. When try to investigate this, I close my eyes and “observe how I feel.” There is nothing that pops up that I would describe as “the feeling of being a man” or “the feeling of being a woman.” Maybe when you close your eyes, you have a different experience. Try it.
In the end, we project our gender to the world much in the same way that an actor projects his or her character on the stage. By speaking Hamlet's lines, by holding Yorick's skull (or at least a skull that is performing as Yorick's skull) in one's hand, one can begin to feel like Hamlet. What it means to play the role of a man is very different on the street than it is in a gym locker room. For one, playing the role of a man on the street does not require having a penis, while playing a man in a locker room often does (for more on this see Judith Butler's Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity). In many contexts, performing as a woman may simply come down to dressing a certain way and talking a certain way. Considering what one would do, say, hold etc. in order to perform the role of being a woman goes a long way to telling us what it means to be a woman.
Check out the video below to see a collection of how Bugs Bunny performs the role of a woman. What does this video show about what it means to be a woman (obviously some things have changed since this cartoon was made)?
There are some costumes that seem to come up over and over again. People often dress up as the president, Marilyn Monroe, or a famous athlete. If you pick one of these “standard” costumes, you know that there are certain things you do, say, wear, hold to show that you are Marilyn Monroe, etc.
Most of us assume that we can distinguish between the “real” person and their performance. No one would mistake the actor who plays Hamlet for a real prince of Denmark, or a person dressed as the president for Barack Obama. But on some level, we all play roles all the time. When someone, before entering a stressful situation, encourages him or herself to “just act confident,” that person is implying that there are certain ways that a confident person acts, certain things that a confident person does. Maybe it has to do with where you put your hands, or with making eye contact, or a certain posture. The point is that the shy person wants to project confidence and he or she does this by performing in a particular way.
What is the difference between peoples “true” selves and the roles they present in everyday life? At what point does one become a confident person simply because one has been playing a confident person for so long? Is there a “true” self that exists “under” or “behind” the performed self?
The idea that the world is a stage and all of us are acting all the time provides a powerful lens through which to analyze society. I will end with a brief example. Someone might ask, “what does it feel like to be a man or a woman?” The implicit assumption of that statement is that what determines one's gender is an internal and subjective experience. I don't know what my gender feels like. When try to investigate this, I close my eyes and “observe how I feel.” There is nothing that pops up that I would describe as “the feeling of being a man” or “the feeling of being a woman.” Maybe when you close your eyes, you have a different experience. Try it.
In the end, we project our gender to the world much in the same way that an actor projects his or her character on the stage. By speaking Hamlet's lines, by holding Yorick's skull (or at least a skull that is performing as Yorick's skull) in one's hand, one can begin to feel like Hamlet. What it means to play the role of a man is very different on the street than it is in a gym locker room. For one, playing the role of a man on the street does not require having a penis, while playing a man in a locker room often does (for more on this see Judith Butler's Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity). In many contexts, performing as a woman may simply come down to dressing a certain way and talking a certain way. Considering what one would do, say, hold etc. in order to perform the role of being a woman goes a long way to telling us what it means to be a woman.
Check out the video below to see a collection of how Bugs Bunny performs the role of a woman. What does this video show about what it means to be a woman (obviously some things have changed since this cartoon was made)?
Monday, May 24, 2010
Me vs. US Air: a multiplicity of force relations
What does it mean to have power? I think of the power that a strong person has over a weak person. The power to compel someone to behave in the way that you want them to. I usually think of power as the ability to use physical force to get what you want.
In his, The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault goes to great lengths to argue that power is not something that you have, that you can use to subjugate people. He spends significant time articulating his definition of “power:”
“It seems to me that power must be understood in the first instance as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate...as the support which these force relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or a system.” You shouldn't look for one central source of power. “Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything but because it comes from everywhere” (92-93).
It is hard to know what Foucault is talking about here. He makes three main points:
1.Power is a “multiplicity of force relations.” To understand what Foucault means by this, picture a piece of paper blowing in the wind. The paper is acted upon by many forces in many different directions at one time. How this applies to power will become clearer in a little bit.
2.These force relations support each other to form a system. Picture the feather at the beginning of Forrest Gump. It is blown back and forth in the wind, and comes to rest at Forrest Gump's feet. It is almost as if the multiplicity of forces were acting together to bring the feather to him. Foucault is pointing out that different forces can often act together such that there action seems systematic.
3.Power is everywhere. All you have to do is step outside and you are immediately feeling the wind's pressure upon you.
To explore Foucault's definition of power, I want to apply it to a recent experience I had. Notice the omnipresent, (seemingly) systematic multiplicity of force relations acting upon me.
Yesterday morning, while on a trip in Michigan, I received an automated call from USAir informing me that my flight home that evening had been canceled. I called the number provided and was told that an error had generated the call and that the flight was still on schedule.
The flight was scheduled to take off at 6:05, and boarded on time, but an hour later, we were still sitting on the runway. There was no communication from the captain or crew regarding the delay.
The flight was scheduled to land in Philadelphia at 7:50 (just enough time to catch my 8:30 connection to Boston), but at 8:10, we were still thousands of feet above the airport flying in circles. The anxiety level among the passengers rose as time passed and people began to wonder whether they would make their connections. The passengers around me presumed that we were simply waiting for clearance to land, but again, there was no communication from the captain or crew regarding the delay.
After the plane landed and taxied to the gate, a passenger asked a flight attendant if she could deplane first to make her connection. The flight attendant replied that she had no control over the order in which people deplaned.
I arrived at the connecting gate at 8:25 only to be told that I had missed my flight and should report to customer service to try to get on the next flight.
The customer service rep placed me on the 10:45 and when I pressed her for some explanation for why a delay in of one USAir flight had led me to miss my connecting USAir flight she angrily replied, “We can't control air traffic. You should be happy you're getting out tonight.”
Throughout the day, I was time and again denied access to information. Why was my flight cancelled? Why was it reinstated? Why were waiting on the runway? Why did we have to wait to land? Why did the plane leave when someone had to know that a group of people waiting for the connection were literally minutes away? Why does USAir allow you to book connections that someone must know will be difficult to make? Why do we all accept this state of affairs? If I wanted to talk to someone about this, who could I talk to? How long would I have to wait on hold?
I would fly only when USAir said I could. My flight could be cancelled at anytime for any reason. The pilot and crew have no responsibility to transmit information which they presumably have. The flight attendant is under no obligation to help passengers make their connections. The customer service rep is under no obligation to explain anything to me. The only means I found to strike back was to fill out a form on USAir's website. Pathetic.
The multiplicity of force relations acted on me to render me powerless, to increase USAir's power at my expense. Of course, there is no “USAir” at least no USAir that cares at all about me. It is not the case that USAir (or any other airline) is systematically conspiring to deprive its consumers of power and information. There is no central point. Each person I interacted with (or failed to interact with) was making a personal and independent decision. They only seemed to be acting systematically. Power is everywhere because it comes from everywhere.
Think of Foucault the next time you are wading through an automated phone menu, or trying to understand an overly complicated form, willing to give anything just to talk to someone with the power to help you.
In his, The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault goes to great lengths to argue that power is not something that you have, that you can use to subjugate people. He spends significant time articulating his definition of “power:”
“It seems to me that power must be understood in the first instance as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate...as the support which these force relations find in one another, thus forming a chain or a system.” You shouldn't look for one central source of power. “Power is everywhere; not because it embraces everything but because it comes from everywhere” (92-93).
It is hard to know what Foucault is talking about here. He makes three main points:
1.Power is a “multiplicity of force relations.” To understand what Foucault means by this, picture a piece of paper blowing in the wind. The paper is acted upon by many forces in many different directions at one time. How this applies to power will become clearer in a little bit.
2.These force relations support each other to form a system. Picture the feather at the beginning of Forrest Gump. It is blown back and forth in the wind, and comes to rest at Forrest Gump's feet. It is almost as if the multiplicity of forces were acting together to bring the feather to him. Foucault is pointing out that different forces can often act together such that there action seems systematic.
3.Power is everywhere. All you have to do is step outside and you are immediately feeling the wind's pressure upon you.
To explore Foucault's definition of power, I want to apply it to a recent experience I had. Notice the omnipresent, (seemingly) systematic multiplicity of force relations acting upon me.
Yesterday morning, while on a trip in Michigan, I received an automated call from USAir informing me that my flight home that evening had been canceled. I called the number provided and was told that an error had generated the call and that the flight was still on schedule.
The flight was scheduled to take off at 6:05, and boarded on time, but an hour later, we were still sitting on the runway. There was no communication from the captain or crew regarding the delay.
The flight was scheduled to land in Philadelphia at 7:50 (just enough time to catch my 8:30 connection to Boston), but at 8:10, we were still thousands of feet above the airport flying in circles. The anxiety level among the passengers rose as time passed and people began to wonder whether they would make their connections. The passengers around me presumed that we were simply waiting for clearance to land, but again, there was no communication from the captain or crew regarding the delay.
After the plane landed and taxied to the gate, a passenger asked a flight attendant if she could deplane first to make her connection. The flight attendant replied that she had no control over the order in which people deplaned.
I arrived at the connecting gate at 8:25 only to be told that I had missed my flight and should report to customer service to try to get on the next flight.
The customer service rep placed me on the 10:45 and when I pressed her for some explanation for why a delay in of one USAir flight had led me to miss my connecting USAir flight she angrily replied, “We can't control air traffic. You should be happy you're getting out tonight.”
Throughout the day, I was time and again denied access to information. Why was my flight cancelled? Why was it reinstated? Why were waiting on the runway? Why did we have to wait to land? Why did the plane leave when someone had to know that a group of people waiting for the connection were literally minutes away? Why does USAir allow you to book connections that someone must know will be difficult to make? Why do we all accept this state of affairs? If I wanted to talk to someone about this, who could I talk to? How long would I have to wait on hold?
I would fly only when USAir said I could. My flight could be cancelled at anytime for any reason. The pilot and crew have no responsibility to transmit information which they presumably have. The flight attendant is under no obligation to help passengers make their connections. The customer service rep is under no obligation to explain anything to me. The only means I found to strike back was to fill out a form on USAir's website. Pathetic.
The multiplicity of force relations acted on me to render me powerless, to increase USAir's power at my expense. Of course, there is no “USAir” at least no USAir that cares at all about me. It is not the case that USAir (or any other airline) is systematically conspiring to deprive its consumers of power and information. There is no central point. Each person I interacted with (or failed to interact with) was making a personal and independent decision. They only seemed to be acting systematically. Power is everywhere because it comes from everywhere.
Think of Foucault the next time you are wading through an automated phone menu, or trying to understand an overly complicated form, willing to give anything just to talk to someone with the power to help you.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
The Moral Life of Babies
In my last post, I raised some questions about Paul Bloom's article in today's Times Magazine entitled, “The Moral Life of Babies.” In it, Bloom summarizes some of his findings about the “naive morality” that babies possess from the moment they are born. From this finding, Bloom concludes not only that there is a universal morality, but that morality has a biological basis.
In my last post, I tried to argue that it is not necessarily obvious that there is a universal morality. It is far from clear that we could discover any single moral principle that all societies share. If we can't, then there is no universally shared morality, how could morality have a biological basis?
Today, I would like to question Bloom's conclusions from a slightly different angle. Let's stipulate that all societies value compassion (just for the record, this seems unlikely to me). Bloom wants to argue, on the basis of his research, that this value is biologically based. He hypothesizes that if babies exhibit this value, then presumably it is encoded in their biology rather than coming about by socialization.
However, there is a problem. How are can we know what a baby is thinking? Not only are babies unable to speak, but newborns can barely move. However we investigate babies moral values, it will have to be indirectly. Bloom has a solution. For some time, infant psychologists have believed that “the eyes are a window to the baby’s soul. As adults do, when babies see something that they find interesting or surprising, they tend to look at it longer than they would at something they find uninteresting or expected. And when given a choice between two things to look at, babies usually opt to look at the more pleasing thing. You can use 'looking time,' then, as a rough but reliable proxy for what captures babies’ attention: what babies are surprised by or what babies like.”
According to infant cognition specialists, if a baby looks at one thing longer than another, the baby either prefers it or is surprised by it. For example, an infant will look at his or her mother's face longer than an unfamiliar face presumably because the baby prefers his or her mother's face to the stranger's.
Similarly, a baby who witnesses an impossible event (like one animated object passing through another) and a possible event (two animated objects bumping to each other), the baby will look longer at the impossible event presumably because the baby is surprised.
Here is an example of one of Bloom's experiments that shows how he used “look time” to deduce babies' moral values:
Recall that longer look time can either indicate preference or surprise. How did Bloom know whether the baby was surprised that the ball approached the triangle, or whether the baby preferred to see the ball approach the triangle?
Perhaps babies looked longer at the ball approaching the triangle because they liked that animation better. Maybe babies are totally immoral. They desire the opposite of what we would call moral behavior. They wanted the ball to approach the triangle that had mistreated it, and therefore, they looked longer at this preferable outcome.
Here's another: perhaps babies share adult morality, but they believed that the ball was approaching the triangle to attack it. Again, this outcome seemed preferable and so the babies looked at it longer.
Bloom seems to interpret the babies' increased look time as expressing surprise because an Bloom (and those who share his moral outlook) would be surprised to see a person react in a friendly way to someone who had hindered them. The point is that Bloom is reading his own morality onto the baby.
It seems like no matter what the baby does, the researcher can interpret that baby either as saying “I like what I see,” or “I am surprised by what I see.” One of these two statements probably applies in almost any situation. Imagine a baby who watches a video of a person hitting another person. And then watches a video of a person hugging another person. The baby looks longer at the hugging video than the hitting video. This could either mean that the baby finds hugging surprising, or that the baby prefers hugging over hitting. What conclusion can be drawn from this experiment?
Can we even assume that the baby understands the animation of the ball, square and triangle, maybe the baby sees the triangle as trying to pull the ball up the hill, while the square is trying to drag it back down. The researcher needs to supply a great deal of information to be able to make sense of the baby's reactions. Basically, Bloom assumes that the baby interprets the events similar to the way the Bloom interprets the events.
How much of the moral lives of babies is in the heads of the baby and how much is in the mind of the theoretician? Is it possible that we so badly want babies to possess rudimentary morality that we will interpret any observations such that they prove what we want them to prove?
In my last post, I tried to argue that it is not necessarily obvious that there is a universal morality. It is far from clear that we could discover any single moral principle that all societies share. If we can't, then there is no universally shared morality, how could morality have a biological basis?
Today, I would like to question Bloom's conclusions from a slightly different angle. Let's stipulate that all societies value compassion (just for the record, this seems unlikely to me). Bloom wants to argue, on the basis of his research, that this value is biologically based. He hypothesizes that if babies exhibit this value, then presumably it is encoded in their biology rather than coming about by socialization.
However, there is a problem. How are can we know what a baby is thinking? Not only are babies unable to speak, but newborns can barely move. However we investigate babies moral values, it will have to be indirectly. Bloom has a solution. For some time, infant psychologists have believed that “the eyes are a window to the baby’s soul. As adults do, when babies see something that they find interesting or surprising, they tend to look at it longer than they would at something they find uninteresting or expected. And when given a choice between two things to look at, babies usually opt to look at the more pleasing thing. You can use 'looking time,' then, as a rough but reliable proxy for what captures babies’ attention: what babies are surprised by or what babies like.”
According to infant cognition specialists, if a baby looks at one thing longer than another, the baby either prefers it or is surprised by it. For example, an infant will look at his or her mother's face longer than an unfamiliar face presumably because the baby prefers his or her mother's face to the stranger's.
Similarly, a baby who witnesses an impossible event (like one animated object passing through another) and a possible event (two animated objects bumping to each other), the baby will look longer at the impossible event presumably because the baby is surprised.
Here is an example of one of Bloom's experiments that shows how he used “look time” to deduce babies' moral values:
“Our experiments involved having children watch animated movies of geometrical characters with faces. In one, a red ball would try to go up a hill. On some attempts, a yellow square got behind the ball and gently nudged it upward; in others, a green triangle got in front of it and pushed it down. We were interested in babies’ expectations about the ball’s attitudes — what would the baby expect the ball to make of the character who helped it and the one who hindered it? To find out, we then showed the babies additional movies in which the ball either approached the square or the triangle. When the ball approached the triangle (the hinderer), both 9- and 12-month-olds looked longer than they did when the ball approached the square (the helper). This was consistent with the interpretation that the former action surprised them; they expected the ball to approach the helper.”Bloom interprets his observations as follows: Because the yellow square helped the ball, the babies expected the ball to approach the square. When they saw an animation in which the ball approached the triangle, who had hindered the ball, the babies were surprised, which the babies indicated by looking at this animation longer.
Recall that longer look time can either indicate preference or surprise. How did Bloom know whether the baby was surprised that the ball approached the triangle, or whether the baby preferred to see the ball approach the triangle?
Perhaps babies looked longer at the ball approaching the triangle because they liked that animation better. Maybe babies are totally immoral. They desire the opposite of what we would call moral behavior. They wanted the ball to approach the triangle that had mistreated it, and therefore, they looked longer at this preferable outcome.
Here's another: perhaps babies share adult morality, but they believed that the ball was approaching the triangle to attack it. Again, this outcome seemed preferable and so the babies looked at it longer.
Bloom seems to interpret the babies' increased look time as expressing surprise because an Bloom (and those who share his moral outlook) would be surprised to see a person react in a friendly way to someone who had hindered them. The point is that Bloom is reading his own morality onto the baby.
It seems like no matter what the baby does, the researcher can interpret that baby either as saying “I like what I see,” or “I am surprised by what I see.” One of these two statements probably applies in almost any situation. Imagine a baby who watches a video of a person hitting another person. And then watches a video of a person hugging another person. The baby looks longer at the hugging video than the hitting video. This could either mean that the baby finds hugging surprising, or that the baby prefers hugging over hitting. What conclusion can be drawn from this experiment?
Can we even assume that the baby understands the animation of the ball, square and triangle, maybe the baby sees the triangle as trying to pull the ball up the hill, while the square is trying to drag it back down. The researcher needs to supply a great deal of information to be able to make sense of the baby's reactions. Basically, Bloom assumes that the baby interprets the events similar to the way the Bloom interprets the events.
How much of the moral lives of babies is in the heads of the baby and how much is in the mind of the theoretician? Is it possible that we so badly want babies to possess rudimentary morality that we will interpret any observations such that they prove what we want them to prove?
Friday, May 7, 2010
This coming Sunday's York Times magazine includes an article titled “The Moral Life of Babies.” In it, Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale, summarizes some his findings, which suggest that babies are born with an innate “naïve morality.” For example, babies’ morality includes compassion, that is, babies prefer people who help others achieve their goals over those that hinder them.
The first question which Bloom addresses is, “Why would anyone even entertain the thought of babies as moral beings?” His answer is that empirical evidence suggests that babies seem to respond in ways that we would characterize as moral, and therefore, “some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone.”
In other words, the fact that even babies are moral implies that there is a universal, objective morality, and second, that this universal morality has a biological basis. He recognizes that “the existence of a universal moral code is a highly controversial claim; there is considerable evidence for wide variation from society to society.” But, he continues, “People everywhere have some sense of right and wrong. You won’t find a society where people don’t have some notion of fairness, don’t put some value on loyalty and kindness, don’t distinguish between acts of cruelty and innocent mistakes, don’t categorize people as nasty or nice.”
Bloom argues that these universals “make evolutionary sense.” That is, having compassion for your family will help them survive, and therefore, compassion will evolve.
But wait a second. Bloom's conclusions rely on the assumption that it is actually the case that there are universally shared moral norms. Is it really true that every society puts “some value on loyalty and kindness” or distinguishes between “acts of cruelty and innocent mistakes?”
In her groundbreaking book, Patterns of Culture, Ruth Benedict writes,
Of course, Bloom could respond by following John Rawls and distinguishing between a conception of morality and the concept of morality (Rawls distinguishes between the concept of justice and conceptions of justice in his, "A Theory of Justice" (5). A society that has the concept of morality is one that distinguishes between right actions and wrong actions. It seems plausible that every society makes this distinction. One might even argue that such a distinction is a necessary condition for a society existing at all. A society’s conception of morality is the particular way that a society distinguishes between right and wrong, the particular list of actions that a society counts as right or wrong.
It is probably the case that in every society, you could find something that looks like what we would call categorizing people as “nasty or nice,” that is, the concept of morality, but if one society categorizes action A as nasty and another society categorizes action A as nice, to what extent can the nasty/nice distinction be considered universal? Given a wide enough range of meanings for “nasty,” could we even say that it is, in every case, the same category?
Paul Bloom does not clearly distinguish between the concept of morality, which presumably all societies share, and conceptions of morality, which, according to Ruth Benedict, vary enormously. In the Times article, Paul Bloom describes an experiment in which a baby views an animated square helping a red circle roll up a hill, while a yellow triangle hinders the circle. He argues that the babies prefer the helpful square to the hindering triangle, thus proving that helping someone achieve a goal is part of an innate conception of morality.
It seems easy to imagine a society that would not find the square’s helpful behavior particularly moral. Does that mean that that society is wrong about morality? Maybe the baby is wrong. Baby’s have a lot of preferences that we would not necessarily characterize as moral. Ruth Benedict’s argument raises questions with the whole idea of an innate morality. Whose society gets to judge the whether or not the baby’s conception of morality is correct?
If societies have conceptions of morality that don’t overlap, to what extent can we talk about a universal morality? Perhaps you could argue that there one correct conception of morality, but that not every society shares it. That is, there are right conceptions of morality and wrong conceptions of morality. But if Bloom believes that the sense of morality “seems to be bred in the bone,” that is, universal morality is biologically innate, how could different cultures have such radically different moralities?
The first question which Bloom addresses is, “Why would anyone even entertain the thought of babies as moral beings?” His answer is that empirical evidence suggests that babies seem to respond in ways that we would characterize as moral, and therefore, “some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone.”
In other words, the fact that even babies are moral implies that there is a universal, objective morality, and second, that this universal morality has a biological basis. He recognizes that “the existence of a universal moral code is a highly controversial claim; there is considerable evidence for wide variation from society to society.” But, he continues, “People everywhere have some sense of right and wrong. You won’t find a society where people don’t have some notion of fairness, don’t put some value on loyalty and kindness, don’t distinguish between acts of cruelty and innocent mistakes, don’t categorize people as nasty or nice.”
Bloom argues that these universals “make evolutionary sense.” That is, having compassion for your family will help them survive, and therefore, compassion will evolve.
But wait a second. Bloom's conclusions rely on the assumption that it is actually the case that there are universally shared moral norms. Is it really true that every society puts “some value on loyalty and kindness” or distinguishes between “acts of cruelty and innocent mistakes?”
In her groundbreaking book, Patterns of Culture, Ruth Benedict writes,
“We might suppose that in the matter of taking a life, all peoples would agree in condemnation. On the contrary, in a matter of homicide, it may be held that one is blameless if diplomatic relations have been severed between neighboring countries, or that one kills by custom his first two children, or that a husband has the right of life and death over his wife, or that it is the duty of a child to kill his parents before they are old… among some peoples a person suffers torments at having caused an accidental death; in others, it is a matter of no consequence” (45-46).A society that punishes someone for something done accidentally seems precisely not to distinguish between “acts of cruelty and innocent mistakes.” It is at least an overstatement to argue that the intention of the criminal plays a role in every moral system. Benedict might even argue that it is false.
Of course, Bloom could respond by following John Rawls and distinguishing between a conception of morality and the concept of morality (Rawls distinguishes between the concept of justice and conceptions of justice in his, "A Theory of Justice" (5). A society that has the concept of morality is one that distinguishes between right actions and wrong actions. It seems plausible that every society makes this distinction. One might even argue that such a distinction is a necessary condition for a society existing at all. A society’s conception of morality is the particular way that a society distinguishes between right and wrong, the particular list of actions that a society counts as right or wrong.
It is probably the case that in every society, you could find something that looks like what we would call categorizing people as “nasty or nice,” that is, the concept of morality, but if one society categorizes action A as nasty and another society categorizes action A as nice, to what extent can the nasty/nice distinction be considered universal? Given a wide enough range of meanings for “nasty,” could we even say that it is, in every case, the same category?
Paul Bloom does not clearly distinguish between the concept of morality, which presumably all societies share, and conceptions of morality, which, according to Ruth Benedict, vary enormously. In the Times article, Paul Bloom describes an experiment in which a baby views an animated square helping a red circle roll up a hill, while a yellow triangle hinders the circle. He argues that the babies prefer the helpful square to the hindering triangle, thus proving that helping someone achieve a goal is part of an innate conception of morality.
It seems easy to imagine a society that would not find the square’s helpful behavior particularly moral. Does that mean that that society is wrong about morality? Maybe the baby is wrong. Baby’s have a lot of preferences that we would not necessarily characterize as moral. Ruth Benedict’s argument raises questions with the whole idea of an innate morality. Whose society gets to judge the whether or not the baby’s conception of morality is correct?
If societies have conceptions of morality that don’t overlap, to what extent can we talk about a universal morality? Perhaps you could argue that there one correct conception of morality, but that not every society shares it. That is, there are right conceptions of morality and wrong conceptions of morality. But if Bloom believes that the sense of morality “seems to be bred in the bone,” that is, universal morality is biologically innate, how could different cultures have such radically different moralities?
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Teaching Myth and History: The Battle of Tel Hai
This semester I am teaching a History of Zionism course to three sophomore classes. I have chosen to use this class as an opportunity to explore the nature of historical truth. The Arab-Zionist conflict seems like a perfect case study of this issue not only because there are two competing narratives of the same historical events, but the choice of narrative may have important political implications for the future.
Yesterday, I used the story of the battle of Tel Hai to explore the interaction of myth and history. Students began by reading Benny Morris’s account of the battler. Morris writes describes how following the British withdrawal from the Galilee in 1919 and the French failure to assert sovereignty, rebellious Bedouin tribesmen pushed for control. There were four Jewish settlements in the region. At first, the Arabs announced that they meant no harm to the Jews and attempted to persuade them to join the revolt, but the Jews insisted on neutrality, and therefore, the Arabs began to treat them as enemies.
In January of 1920, two out of the four settlements decided to evacuate until the security of the area was assured. The other two settlements, Kfar Giladi and Tel Hai remained in order to show their commitment to including the area in a future Jewish National Home.
On March 1st, a group of Arabs gained entry to Tel Hai saying that “they wanted to check whether the Jews were quartering French Troops. A fierce firefight erupted, apparently triggered by an unintentional shot by one of the Jewish guards.” In the fighting, six Jews, including the military commander, Joseph Trumpledor, died. Trumpledor’s last words were reputed to have been, “It is good to die for our country.” Following the battle, the remaining settlers withdrew to the south abandoning the settlements (Morris, Righteous Victims, 92-93).
Morris’s account makes the decision of the settlers to stay put seem questionable and dangerous, the circumstances of the battle complicated, and the results inconclusive. However, the battle of Tel Hai quickly became a modern national myth. Trumpledor was seen as the model of a nationalist hero, willing to give his life to defend his country.
Even prior to the attack it seems that Trumpledor himself conceived of Tel Hai in mythological terms. On February 9th 1920, Trumpledor wrote about “a new generation, children of eretz yisrael... prepared to sacrifice themselves in defense of this border.” He goes on to describe how Metulla, one of the already evacuated settlements, “has been almost wrenched from our hands.”
Trumpledor's account seems somewhat melodramatic. First, there was no border. Trumpledor was one of a small group of settlers far from the main population of Jews in Palestine. Furthermore, Metulla had hardly been “wrenched” from the Jewish settlers. As Morris argues, the inhabitants of Metulla had abandoned the settlement realizing the impossibility of securing and defending it.
I asked my students to pick out to summarize key points of the document. They noticed that Trumpledor perceived the situation as a case of small, weak group surrounded by a strong group bent on destruction. I asked them to brainstorm other stories that shared these elements. At first, they stuck to stories in the Jewish tradition like Masada, the story of the Macabees, and the story of the Israeli war of independence. Then they started to get more creative. They added Braveheart, the American Revolution and The Lord of the Rings to the mix. Finally, a student suggested the 2004 Red Sox and their triumph in the ALCS.
Eleven days after the battle of Tel Hai, on March 12, 1920, one of the inhabitants of Tel Hai described Trumpledor's death. After being shot, the settler wrote that Trumpledor,
My students had no trouble identifying the Trumpledor figure in each of the other stories they had mentioned. William Wallace, George Washington, Legolas and Gimli all share some of Trumpledor's superhuman attributes; maybe Curt Schilling does as well.
They realized that the narrative of Tel Hai that in the mind of Trumpledor and in the minds of the other Zionists took on much more significance than the historical account given by Benny Morris.
The next class, we further investigated the relationship between the mythological narrative of Tel Hai and the historical study of Zionism. We read Bialik's poem “City of Slaughter” in which he seems to view the vicitms of the 1903 Kishniev pogrom with contempt.
Bialik writes,
I asked the students to summarize the key points of the document. They noticed how Bialik uses references to Jewish history to mock the victims and to indict them for inaction. He talks about the “cowering sons of Macabees,” and calls them “mice, roaches and dogs.” We again brainstormed similar stories. They quickly noticed that the theme of the weak, oppressed, and exiled Jew. They were able to mention stories from the destruction of the temple to the holocaust that had similar elements. They realized that the story of the oppressed Jew is almost directly opposed to the narrative of Trumpledor and the battle of Tel Hai.
According to Yael Zerubavel, “Trumpledor emerged as the first national hero of the young Hebrew society in Palestine” (Recovered Roots, 43). But why did this story become a myth rather than a different story? Zerubavel quotes Eliade as saying, “For something genuinely new to begin, the vestiges and ruins of the old cycle must be completely destroyed.” Zerubavel argues that it was precisely the old myth of the exilic Jew with which the story of Tel Hai contrasted to create a myth of a new Jew ready to fight and die to defend his country. In the absence of the old myth, the new myth could never have formed.
I asked the class to consider the relationship between history and myth and to reflect on which one is more important? By the end of class, students discussed the extent to which the mythological narrative of Tel Hai is important. Some argued that even if the story is exaggerated and even if it took on a significance that exceeded the objective historical facts, stories can be important for giving people hope and helping them make sense of their place in history. Other students pointed out that it is important to learn the objective historical facts when making political decisions because while other groups have different myths, they will have the same facts. One student questioned whether it is possible to distinguish history from myth and whether all history is to some extent informed by myth. His classmates disagreed.
Yesterday, I used the story of the battle of Tel Hai to explore the interaction of myth and history. Students began by reading Benny Morris’s account of the battler. Morris writes describes how following the British withdrawal from the Galilee in 1919 and the French failure to assert sovereignty, rebellious Bedouin tribesmen pushed for control. There were four Jewish settlements in the region. At first, the Arabs announced that they meant no harm to the Jews and attempted to persuade them to join the revolt, but the Jews insisted on neutrality, and therefore, the Arabs began to treat them as enemies.
In January of 1920, two out of the four settlements decided to evacuate until the security of the area was assured. The other two settlements, Kfar Giladi and Tel Hai remained in order to show their commitment to including the area in a future Jewish National Home.
On March 1st, a group of Arabs gained entry to Tel Hai saying that “they wanted to check whether the Jews were quartering French Troops. A fierce firefight erupted, apparently triggered by an unintentional shot by one of the Jewish guards.” In the fighting, six Jews, including the military commander, Joseph Trumpledor, died. Trumpledor’s last words were reputed to have been, “It is good to die for our country.” Following the battle, the remaining settlers withdrew to the south abandoning the settlements (Morris, Righteous Victims, 92-93).
Morris’s account makes the decision of the settlers to stay put seem questionable and dangerous, the circumstances of the battle complicated, and the results inconclusive. However, the battle of Tel Hai quickly became a modern national myth. Trumpledor was seen as the model of a nationalist hero, willing to give his life to defend his country.
Even prior to the attack it seems that Trumpledor himself conceived of Tel Hai in mythological terms. On February 9th 1920, Trumpledor wrote about “a new generation, children of eretz yisrael... prepared to sacrifice themselves in defense of this border.” He goes on to describe how Metulla, one of the already evacuated settlements, “has been almost wrenched from our hands.”
Trumpledor's account seems somewhat melodramatic. First, there was no border. Trumpledor was one of a small group of settlers far from the main population of Jews in Palestine. Furthermore, Metulla had hardly been “wrenched” from the Jewish settlers. As Morris argues, the inhabitants of Metulla had abandoned the settlement realizing the impossibility of securing and defending it.
I asked my students to pick out to summarize key points of the document. They noticed that Trumpledor perceived the situation as a case of small, weak group surrounded by a strong group bent on destruction. I asked them to brainstorm other stories that shared these elements. At first, they stuck to stories in the Jewish tradition like Masada, the story of the Macabees, and the story of the Israeli war of independence. Then they started to get more creative. They added Braveheart, the American Revolution and The Lord of the Rings to the mix. Finally, a student suggested the 2004 Red Sox and their triumph in the ALCS.
Eleven days after the battle of Tel Hai, on March 12, 1920, one of the inhabitants of Tel Hai described Trumpledor's death. After being shot, the settler wrote that Trumpledor,
“asked that someone push his intestines back into his stomach. Not one of us dared to take this duty upon himself. But he reassured us saying, 'No matter: wash your hands and I will show you what to do.' In a wondrous silence and cold calm he watched us push his intestines back inside and wrap the wound with a towel. After we had finished dressing the wound, he said, 'These are my last moments; tell everyone that we defended this place to the last for the sake of the honor of Israel.'”
My students had no trouble identifying the Trumpledor figure in each of the other stories they had mentioned. William Wallace, George Washington, Legolas and Gimli all share some of Trumpledor's superhuman attributes; maybe Curt Schilling does as well.
They realized that the narrative of Tel Hai that in the mind of Trumpledor and in the minds of the other Zionists took on much more significance than the historical account given by Benny Morris.
The next class, we further investigated the relationship between the mythological narrative of Tel Hai and the historical study of Zionism. We read Bialik's poem “City of Slaughter” in which he seems to view the vicitms of the 1903 Kishniev pogrom with contempt.
Bialik writes,
“Behold on tree, on stone, on fence, on mural clay,
The spattered blood and dried brains of the dead.
Proceed thence to the ruins, the split walls reach,
Where wider grows the hollow, and greater grows the
breach;
...
On wreckage doubly wrecked, scroll heaped on manuscript,
Fragments again fragmented—
...
Come, now, and I will bring thee to their lairs
The privies, jakes and pigpens where the heirs
Of Hasmoneans lay, with trembling knees,
Concealed and cowering,—the sons of the Maccabees!
The seed of saints, the scions of the lions!
Who, crammed by scores in all the sanctuaries of their shame,
So sanctified My name!
It was the flight of mice they fled,
The scurrying of roaches was their flight;
They died like dogs, and they were dead!”
I asked the students to summarize the key points of the document. They noticed how Bialik uses references to Jewish history to mock the victims and to indict them for inaction. He talks about the “cowering sons of Macabees,” and calls them “mice, roaches and dogs.” We again brainstormed similar stories. They quickly noticed that the theme of the weak, oppressed, and exiled Jew. They were able to mention stories from the destruction of the temple to the holocaust that had similar elements. They realized that the story of the oppressed Jew is almost directly opposed to the narrative of Trumpledor and the battle of Tel Hai.
According to Yael Zerubavel, “Trumpledor emerged as the first national hero of the young Hebrew society in Palestine” (Recovered Roots, 43). But why did this story become a myth rather than a different story? Zerubavel quotes Eliade as saying, “For something genuinely new to begin, the vestiges and ruins of the old cycle must be completely destroyed.” Zerubavel argues that it was precisely the old myth of the exilic Jew with which the story of Tel Hai contrasted to create a myth of a new Jew ready to fight and die to defend his country. In the absence of the old myth, the new myth could never have formed.
I asked the class to consider the relationship between history and myth and to reflect on which one is more important? By the end of class, students discussed the extent to which the mythological narrative of Tel Hai is important. Some argued that even if the story is exaggerated and even if it took on a significance that exceeded the objective historical facts, stories can be important for giving people hope and helping them make sense of their place in history. Other students pointed out that it is important to learn the objective historical facts when making political decisions because while other groups have different myths, they will have the same facts. One student questioned whether it is possible to distinguish history from myth and whether all history is to some extent informed by myth. His classmates disagreed.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Dealing with the "gender gap": Do we need affirmative action for men?
Although recent reports show that the gender gap is leveling off, women still outnumber men in college 57% to 43%.
Richard Whitmire, author of Why Boys Fail, speculates on the social implications of failing to deal with the “gender-gap”:
“The marriageable-mate dilemma, whether white women decide to "marry down" to less-educated males, will be a long-term impact of these gender gaps, and probably the biggest impact. Black women have long faced the marriageable-mate dilemma, and college-educated black women have low marriage rates and high out-of-wedlock birth rates. The question is whether more white women will start making similar choices.”
Sounds like if we don't do something about this soon, we could face serious repercussions.
What is the root of the gender gap? Why are girls attending college at such higher rates than boys?
Whitmire says, “the reforms launched by the nation's governors more than 20 years ago to get more students college-ready had an unintended consequence: Most girls adjusted nicely to the intensified verbal skills demanded in the early grades; most boys didn't.
Lionel Tiger and his Foundation for Male Studies blame feminism, “a well-meaning, highly successful, very colorful denigration of maleness as a force, as a phenomenon.”
Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men, writes, “It's a bad time to be a boy in America... Boys are less likely than girls to go to college or do their homework.” Hoff Sommers goes on to paint a bleak view of the future: “There have always been societies that favored boys over girls...Ours may be the first to deliberately throw the gender switch. If we continue on our present course, boys will, indeed, be tomorrow's second sex."
So is the hype deserved? Should we fear a future in which women dominate men and relegate them to the status of a “second sex?”
Well, before answering this question, let me quote one more educational theorist. G. Stanley Hall, former president of Clark University, and a vocal opponent of coed education, was “deeply distressed by the evils… of a rising divorce rate, a declining birth rate… and the appearance of feminized men.” Hall seems to confirm Whitmire's, Tiger's and Hoff Sommer's fears.
Hall was also concerned with the fact that women outnumbered men at some large state universities including California, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, and Washington. He suggested that educational reforms could solve the problems caused by too many women going to college and the social forces “feminizing” men.
Of course, Hall was writing in 1907.
Let me repeat that. Women first began to outnumber men at large state universities in 1907. The ratio began to favor men again during the forties and fifties (perhaps due to the passage of the G.I bill.) Starting during the sixties, the ratio began swinging back towards women.
What I find so fascinating is that the fears about the dangers of female education and the social implications of female achievement have not changed in over a hundred years. Just as Hall did a hundred years ago,Whitmire fears the effects of the gender gap on the institution of marriage. Just like Hall did a hundred years ago, Sommers fears “male-averse attitudes” and the political incorrectness of masculinity.
How long are we going to use the rhetoric “reverse oppression” as an excuse to keep down the educational achievement of women?
You can read more about the ideas of G. Stanley Hall and his proposals for educational reform in Maxine Seller’s “G. Stanley Hall and Edward Thorndike on the Education of Women: Theory and Policy in the Progressive era” (it is interesting throughout, but unfortunately not available to the general public).
Richard Whitmire, author of Why Boys Fail, speculates on the social implications of failing to deal with the “gender-gap”:
“The marriageable-mate dilemma, whether white women decide to "marry down" to less-educated males, will be a long-term impact of these gender gaps, and probably the biggest impact. Black women have long faced the marriageable-mate dilemma, and college-educated black women have low marriage rates and high out-of-wedlock birth rates. The question is whether more white women will start making similar choices.”
Sounds like if we don't do something about this soon, we could face serious repercussions.
What is the root of the gender gap? Why are girls attending college at such higher rates than boys?
Whitmire says, “the reforms launched by the nation's governors more than 20 years ago to get more students college-ready had an unintended consequence: Most girls adjusted nicely to the intensified verbal skills demanded in the early grades; most boys didn't.
Lionel Tiger and his Foundation for Male Studies blame feminism, “a well-meaning, highly successful, very colorful denigration of maleness as a force, as a phenomenon.”
Christina Hoff Sommers, author of The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men, writes, “It's a bad time to be a boy in America... Boys are less likely than girls to go to college or do their homework.” Hoff Sommers goes on to paint a bleak view of the future: “There have always been societies that favored boys over girls...Ours may be the first to deliberately throw the gender switch. If we continue on our present course, boys will, indeed, be tomorrow's second sex."
So is the hype deserved? Should we fear a future in which women dominate men and relegate them to the status of a “second sex?”
Well, before answering this question, let me quote one more educational theorist. G. Stanley Hall, former president of Clark University, and a vocal opponent of coed education, was “deeply distressed by the evils… of a rising divorce rate, a declining birth rate… and the appearance of feminized men.” Hall seems to confirm Whitmire's, Tiger's and Hoff Sommer's fears.
Hall was also concerned with the fact that women outnumbered men at some large state universities including California, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, and Washington. He suggested that educational reforms could solve the problems caused by too many women going to college and the social forces “feminizing” men.
Of course, Hall was writing in 1907.
Let me repeat that. Women first began to outnumber men at large state universities in 1907. The ratio began to favor men again during the forties and fifties (perhaps due to the passage of the G.I bill.) Starting during the sixties, the ratio began swinging back towards women.
What I find so fascinating is that the fears about the dangers of female education and the social implications of female achievement have not changed in over a hundred years. Just as Hall did a hundred years ago,Whitmire fears the effects of the gender gap on the institution of marriage. Just like Hall did a hundred years ago, Sommers fears “male-averse attitudes” and the political incorrectness of masculinity.
How long are we going to use the rhetoric “reverse oppression” as an excuse to keep down the educational achievement of women?
You can read more about the ideas of G. Stanley Hall and his proposals for educational reform in Maxine Seller’s “G. Stanley Hall and Edward Thorndike on the Education of Women: Theory and Policy in the Progressive era” (it is interesting throughout, but unfortunately not available to the general public).
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