The Equality Emotion

Contemporary political discourse is abundantly supplied with uses and abuses of the term ‘equality.’ Individuals generously spread the word around like a fine garnish on a main course – or bitter herb, depending on your seat at the table. If marriage rights are on the table for discussion, prepare for a lavish helping of equality rhetoric. If voting rights are on the debate menu, again prepare for more equality talk. At times, the word is garnished so deep, that one never gets fed the meat and potatoes of the argument.

            For all our contemporary reliance on this single term, one would expect that we know what it means. But do we? Is it possible that the term is almost meaningless filler—like garnish—spread around for presentation? Peter Western, professor of law, persuasively argues that the term ‘equality’ is garnish—or, again, bitter herb, perspective. I diverge from Western, but only slightly. But before I get to my views, I think it important to show how nearly empty ‘equality’ is of conceptual content.

            Western notes that ‘equality’ is oft defined as “[people] that are alike should be treated alike, while [people] that are unlike should be treated unalike in proportion to their unalikeness.”[1] The primary consideration, then, becomes determining precisely what it means for two person two be alike. It might mean “alike in every respect.”[2] But “the only things that are completely alike in every respect are immaterial symbols and forms[.]” No two persons, not even identical twins, are alike in every respect.

            Alternatively, “people who are alike” may mean “alike in some respects.” Id. This proposal, Western notes, won’t work either. Under the previous definition, every person is excluded, since no two people are exactly alike. Id. Under this definition, “every person and thing” are included “because all people and things are alike in some respect[.]” Id. For example, my desk and I both take up space. A woman and a fox both have eyes. Pick any two objects or people and you can find something they have in common. So, under this definition “one is left with the morally absurd proposition that “all people and things should be treated alike.”[3]

            Finally, Western proposes that “people who are alike” could refer to “people who are morally alike in a certain respect.”[4] The problem, however, is that “categories of morally alike objects do not exist in nature; moral alikeness is established only when people define categories.”[5] Thus, “[t]o say that people are morally alike is therefore to articulate a moral standard of treatment . . . by reference to which they are, and thus are to be treated, alike.”[6] This moral standard fixes both how people are alike and how they are to be treated owing to the fact that they are alike. In a nutshell this definition requires “that people for whom a certain treatment is prescribed by a standard should be given the treatment prescribed by the standard.”[7] Thus, ‘equality’ is not an empty concept, for Western, it is a mere tautology.[8] In other words, the concept is not empty, but it is wholly uninformative. We should treat people who are morally alike—as determined by a moral standard—the treatment that the moral standard prescribes for people morally alike.

            Several scholars, less than enchanted about Western’s argument, have provided intriguing responses.[9] One scholar argues that Western’s analysis of ‘equality’ provides too narrow a construction of the term. A broader understanding of ‘equality,’ or so the argument goes, “. . . evokes a particular range of moral considerations and a particular set of complex arguments, and it does that, not by virtue of its meaning, but because every political theorist is familiar with a tradition of argumentation in and around certain texts and doctrines and knows that colleagues can be alerted to the possible relevance of that tradition by using that simple word.”[10]

            While this argument clarifies the meaning of ‘equality’ in the ivory tower of the university, it provides no clarification of what the term means when uttered in the streets. When an average citizen utters ‘equality,’ are they ‘evoking a particular range of moral considerations and a particular set of complex arguments . . . [since] they are familiar with a tradition of argumentation in and around certain texts and doctrines and knows that [others] can be alerted to the possible relevance of that tradition by using that simple word”? I highly doubt it. The average citizen is familiar with certain historical conflicts for equality: slavery, civil rights, women’s rights, etc. Further, the average citizen’s awareness of these events is cursory and simplistic. There is no detailed information of texts and arguments from the era. Instead, our average citizen is familiar with who the oppressors were, what they were denying the oppressed, and with the outcome: the oppressors are now on the “wrong side of history.”

            Such broad generalizations and oversimplifications of history—while partially correct in spirit—lead to moral outrage and emotive fanaticism. When our average citizen, unread in law and history, utters ‘equality,’ he invokes an image or mood from history. This simplistic image or mood galvanizes emotional outbursts spurred on by the citizen’s historical sense of rightness. He begins seeing himself as the oppressed or liberator of the oppressed. He sees those who hold different views as the oppressors on the wrong side of history. Before long, our citizen is taken away into an emotional fugue state, saying things no reasonable person would say to another.

The problem with ‘equality’ is that users and abusers of the term are free to fill whatever imagery or content they want into it. Even worse, key political players are able to manipulate individuals by filling imagery and emotive content into the term. As for me, then, I don’t see ‘equality’ as a nice garnish or a bitter herb, but as a hallucinogen. Those who eat too much of it are intoxicated with an inappropriate sense of self-righteousness. Their public manners fade and they have no reservations, shouting abuses at the opposing side. The more they shout, the more they become intoxicated. And as they become more intoxicated, their sense of self-righteousness is heightened. With such individuals, it is strangely that which goes into the body and that which comes out that defiles them; it is, after all, the same thing in this case. My recommendation is to use the term ‘equality’ thoughtfully. Familiarize yourself with the origins of the word, its development through concrete historical events, and the complex legal, moral, and philosophical arguments surrounding its use.[11] And, if you can't use the term without emotional outbursts and feelings of resentment or hatred, better for all involved if you eliminate it altogether from your debate diet.

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[1] Peter Westen, The Empty Idea of Equality, 95 Harv. L. Rev. 537, 543 (1982). 

[2] Id., at 544.

[3] Id.

[4] Id.

[5] Id. at 545.

[6] Id.

[7] Id. at 547.

[8] Id. at 547 – 48.

[9] See e.g., Kent Greenawalt, How Empty Is the Idea of Equality?, 83 Colum. L. Rev. 1167 (1983); and Anthony D’Amato, Is Equality a Totally Empty Idea?, 81 Mich. L. Rev. 600 (1983).

[10] Jeremy Waldron, 89 Mich. L. Rev. 1350, 1352 (1991).

[11] Again, the term may possess little content. Yet, following Jeremy Waldron's lead, historical awareness of the term at least provides context for its appropriate use, minimizing inappropriate abuses.

The Modern Deified State

It is an axiom of practical politics that the power of government is limited. Realities beyond the control of even the most brilliant politicians constrain the effective potency of curative and preventative policies. Even ingenuous states, where the impetuous govern, recognize the exact contours of such limiting, dynamic constraints. Yet, unlike practiced states, where the prudent govern, the impetuous believe that limitations represent mere economic boundaries, overcome through skilled applications of state power. And the greater the boundaries, the greater justification for an increased application of that power, no matter the cost. Poverty, disease, internal strife, territorial integrity, and global conflict can each be overcome at the right price. Government can right “nearly” every wrong, correct “nearly” every injustice—while never discovering a wrong or injustice that state power cannot cure. In the face of such promise, the ingenuous will benevolently appropriate the resources of generations to come, converting them to their own present benefit. Such ennobling optimism eventually exhausts vital energies, bequeathing future generations a shell, incapable of responding to the smallest of difficulties. In the end, the hubris of the ingenuous state, where the impetuous govern, lies in the belief that the state can accomplish the miracles of a deity, which more than justifies the sacrifice of all necessary means to state ends. The sooner we recognize that the state cannot right “nearly” every wrong, nor correct “nearly” every injustice, the sooner we will proceed to govern with prudence and aim towards improving society with care, bequeathing an intact state to progeny that is prepared to meet the most taxing difficulties. The trouble in practiced and prudent governance, then, is living in hell, while waiting for heaven. Heaven may come, but it will not come in a crazed, half-coherent rush to the gates, for heaven will never permit such to enter. 

Jonathan Lear On Freud's Unconscious

In his book on Freud, Jonathan Lear argues that theorists systematically misunderstand the nature of the unconscious. In particular, psychoanalysts and philosophers model the unconscious after a second mind with “an articulated, rationalizing structure,” which he argues “is the wrong way to conceive of the unconscious, at least in its deepest forms[.]”[1]

            In pursuit of this thesis, Lear recounts an event from one of Freud’s patients, Mr. R:

He is walking along a road on which he knows his lady-friend will later be traveling in a carriage. He removes a stone from the road so that the carriage will not be damaged. A bit later he feels compelled to go back to replace the stone in the road.[2]

What accounts for Mr. R’s seemingly contradictory behavior? Lear posits a “second mind” explanation wherein the act of replacing the stone is an act of anger towards his lady-friend, flowing from “reasons . . . of which he is unaware.” In other words, when Mr. R removed the stone it was an act of love motivated by a set of internally-consistent reasons. Similarly, when he replaced the stone, it was an act of hate motivated by a set of internally-consistent reasons. The contradiction, on this “second mind” view, arises when the two behaviors get juxtaposed together, “[f]or there doesn’t seem to be any perspective from which this behavior [the taking and replacing of the stone] looks reasonable.”[3]

            In short, to make sense of two severable activities—those of removing and replacing the stone—which taken together are irrational, “we must partition his [Mr. R’s] mind into quasi-independent structures—a conscious mind and an unconscious mind—each part having a certain rationality of its own.”[4] Accordingly, “within each part of the mind there is a holistic coherence; the incoherence arises when motivations from these disparate parts clash.”[5] This clash supplies ample reasons to posit an unconscious mind with a rational structure that functions like “another person” with motivations all his own.

            Lear, however, rejects this Jekyll/Hyde view in favor of a brooding unconscious rife with emotion, but wanting any rational structure. In favor of this view, Lear introduces developmental psychology as applied to emotive life. Drawing on examples from Mr. R’s life again, Lear notes that Mr. R would, during moments of intense anxiety, leap from Freud’s couch, fearing that Freud would hit him as his father used to.[6] Lear suspects that Mr. R “never developed the capacity to tolerate anxiety, thus he does not have the capacity to let anxiety develop into more fully formed emotions.”[7] Mr. R’s poor tolerance, Lear further suspects, is the result of his father repeatedly beating him as a child.[8] Accordingly, fearing not only the rage of others—like his father—and his own rage, Mr. R unintentionally and automatically responds like a child in the face of fear; he recoils and runs from the good doctor.[9]

            So what exactly is going on here? “In such cases, the experience of fear inhibits the development of the capacity to experience [mature] fear.”[10] In short, fear becomes a stimulus inducing an automatic response to inhibit the experience of further fear. Where is the unconscious in all of this? Lear claims that,

Mr. R’s problem is that, unbeknownst to himself, he has taken over this inhibiting process and made it his own. . . . So, when he starts to feel threatened, he reacts with that behavioral-and-emotional pattern he learned from childhood: he jumps-and-cringes-and-flees. . . . He is deploying his own emotions to disrupt his own emotional development.[11]

In short, Mr. R unconsciously induces “anxiety” and “fear” because it “has some strategic value; and that is why it has been selected.”[12] As a strategic response, it has become a defense mechanism, used to ward off intense emotional experiences Mr. R is unable to tolerate.

            Lear insists that “there is no easy or clear language with which to describe” what occurs when Mr. R automatically and unintentionally leaps from the couch. That response, “does not express a propositional attitude.” Instead, “[t]he emotional outburst is motivated, it does flow from an emotional orientation towards Freud, but that orientation does not have sufficient structure to count as a reason. . . . It is the stuff from which a reason might develop—if only emotional outbursts like this one were not themselves preventing the development of reasons.”[13] In other words, Mr. R’s unconscious motivates his action, but not through internally-consistent acts, like a second-mind, but through emotively induced behaviors.

            At first glance, this all appears muddled. However, the following is, I believe, what Lear is saying: During childhood a particular event disrupts the normal development of a particular emotion. The particularly intense experience causes an emotional “tick” to form in the child—in this case, running and fleeing. When future events induce the emotion, the tick reemerges, suppressing further experience of the emotion that the child cannot tolerate—somewhat like learned muscle memory responding to a stimulus. At some point in the child’s maturation, he unconsciously takes over this “tick,” inducing it—in this case, inducing fear and anxiety—as a strategy to ward off further experiences of the emotions, since he never developed a tolerance to them. Again, as Lear indicates, “[n]ow Mr. R’s problem is that, unbeknownst to himself, he has taken over this inhibiting process and made it his own.”[14]

            This view of the unconscious appears problematic, however. First, it is unclear what positing an unconscious taking over of the process is adding, when the inhibiting behavior—i.e. fleeing and cringing—already automatically manifested itself. In other words, we can save the appearances and posit these responses as learned behaviors in response to a given type of stimuli. The unconscious, in other words, lacks theoretical economy, thereby succumbing to Ockham’s Razor.

            Second, the notion of willed emotions smacks of implausibility. Emotional responses are not under our direct control. During spells of deep depression, I cannot will happiness. Our emotive life doesn’t work that way. I can structure my life in certain definite ways to foster certain preferable emotions to manifest—for example, by surrounding myself with optimistic and loving individuals, exercising, maintaining a healthy diet and consistent sleep schedule, I can foster a better temperament. In other words, emotions are indirectly under my control, not directly. I cannot deploy them at will for their strategic value. And it is not clear how attributing this magical willing of emotions to the unconscious solves the problem.

            In the end, however, the most questionable aspect of Lear’s thesis is that it doesn’t seem to escape the “second-mind” model. Lear may rejects that model—which views the unconscious as an internally-consistent rational structure capable of giving reasons for acting—and introduces in its stead an unconscious tactician-wizard. His unconscious is a tactician insofar as it deploys emotional states because they have “some strategic value; and that is why it has been selected.”[15] Similarly, his unconscious is a wizard insofar as it possesses powers unknown to the conscious mind, directly conjuring emotional states at will. So, while Lear’s proposal is fascinating and attempts to provide a more holistic vision of the human subject, while incorporating an unconscious, in the end, I am doubtful whether Lear’s proposal actually eliminates the “second-mind” model. In short, we’ve returned to the second-mind model, where the mind is a master tactician and a wizard of the emotions.

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[1] Jonathan Lear, Freud (New York: Routledge, 2005) 24 – 25. 

[2] Freud, Notes on a case of obsessional neurosis, S.E. X:191 – 92 (as cited in Lear, 24).

[3] Id., 26.

[4] Id.

[5] Id.

[6] See id. 30 – 41.

[7] Id. 33.

[8] Id., 34 – 35.

[9] Id.

[10] Id.  at 36.

[11] Id.

[12] Id. at 37.

[13] Id., 38.

[14] Id.,  36.

[15] Id. at 37.

Disentangling Immaterial Souls

Classical Christian doctrine—and for that matter, nearly the whole of contemporary Christian doctrine—espouses belief in immaterial souls. Properly understood, our immaterial souls ground individual identity, conscious life, rationality, and moral accountability. At time of biological death, our souls will separate from the physical body, with the hopes of reunion at resurrection day.

Despite its respectable genealogy—mostly attributable to Plato—and its widespread acceptance, the doctrine of immaterial souls cannot fulfill the measure of its creation. One reason is the inability to disentangle and distinguish one immaterial soul from another.

Matter, unlike an immaterial soul, can be identified via its location in space-time.[1] Matter is extended and locatable in relation to other physical entities. An immaterial soul, by contrast, is not extended and not locatable in space-time. Consequently, we cannot distinguish your soul and my soul by indexing them to a particular space-time location.

Thus, this question emerges: in virtue of what are two immaterial souls disentangled and distinguished?

One proposal distinguishes immaterial souls with reference to a unique, identifying psychology. This psychology would include a unique set of memories, habits, character traits, and the like.

This suggestion, however, may prove inadequate. To begin, memories, habits, character traits, and the like are constituted by, and are manifested in, the causal structure of reality. My psychology is formed, in significant part, during interaction with the social and physical world. Further, my psychology manifests itself in relation to that social and physical world. So, it is not clear how my immaterial soul possesses a psychology that is dependent on the causal structure of the world. Such an immaterial psychology would be, at best, always in potentiality until reunion with a resurrected body and that is like no psychology we are familiar with.

More importantly, though, this suggestion suffers conceptual breakdown. Imagine a parallel universe identical to this universe in all relevant respects. Now imagine your parallel twin in that universe. She possesses your identical psychological structure. She has your same temperament, habits, and predilections. In short, respecting psychology, you and your parallel twin are identical. However, your parallel twin is not identical to you, since you reside in different universes. Now imagine that at the exact moment you die, your parallel twin also dies. At time of soul/body separation, you and your parallel twin possess the identical psychological structure. Thus, if your immaterial soul is distinguished from your parallel twin’s immaterial soul by psychology, it follows that at time of death, you and your parallel twin are identical. For that matter, it follows that your souls are identical during life as well. Yet, logic compels the distinction all along the way.[2] Importantly, even though this may never happen in the actual world, it shows that conceptually, the criterion cannot possibly correct.  

The parallel twin example suggests another way to disentangle and distinguish immaterial souls: each immaterial soul is distinguished by being associated with a particular body. But again, conceptually, this criterion won’t suffice. Imagine that God assigns an archangel, call him Michael, to create and bind immortal souls to particular human bodies at the time of conception.[3] However, prior to Noah’s flood, God and the other archangels are overworked and so recruit Michael to help. Unfortunately, one day Michael, multitasking and distracted, creates a soul and fails to properly bind it to its intended body. The floodwaters eventually roll in, destroying the soulless shell of a body, and the created soul never unites with its intended host. Fortunately, Michael, now devoted full time to soul-body binding, never repeats the former accident. At the end of God’s magnificent redemptive work, every single human soul was associated with a particular body, except one. However, this single immaterial soul can be distinguished precisely in virtue of the fact that it was never associated with a particular body. Thus, a soul can be distinguished without being associated with a particular body.

Now imagine the same thought experiment in the reverse: imagine the exact same scenario. Michael is distracted during Noah’s flood, only this time he does not misplace a single soul, but places two created souls into a single body. The result is conjoined-soul twins that share the same host body. If they are distinguished by reference to a particular body, then they will be identical and hence indistinguishable. But God created two souls. In short, the body-soul association suggestion can’t possibly be right. 

At this point, one may argue that God distinguishes souls. He recognizes each individual soul and in that recognition disentangles and distinguishes them. But the question reoccurs: in virtue of what does God recognize and distinguish each individual soul? Is it in virtue of a soul’s psychology, including its memories and habits? Is it in virtue of a body-soul association? Some combination? Some other criterion altogether? In the end, this explanation may prove theologically satisfying, but it will not prove philosophically satisfying.

Faced with similar arguments, German Idealists, like Hegel, and some strains of Buddhist thought, deny the existence of immaterial souls. Instead, since souls cannot be distinguished, such theorists hold, there must be a single, unifying principle, or world/universe soul underlying all of empirical reality. Accordingly, a deep unity pervades all apparently distinguishable phenomena. At the other extreme, contemporary physicalists, like Daniel Dennett and Patricia Churchland, deny immaterial souls. Instead, humans are beautifully complex meat computers, nothing more.

Between these two responses, Mormonism points to a third-way: a layered physical reality, with material souls. And I will walk that “third-way” in a subsequent post.

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[1] Though I note, quantum mechanics may challenge this claim.

[2] An argument from contradiction demonstrating the distinction could be supplied by relying upon Leibniz criterion of identity, which states that if x=y, then anything that can be predicated of x, can be predicated of y. The fact that you and your parallel twin reside in distinct universes supplies all we need to generate such an argument. I spare you the details. 

[3] In Christian theology the view that God creates the soul at time of conception is called creationism. By contrast, traducianism is the view that individual souls are generated as a natural result of the procreation process.