̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - morality

Interfering in big decisions friends and family take could violate a crucial moral right, philosopher argues

ta385 — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 07:30:00 +0000

If you’ve told an adult friend or family member that they should not take a job, not date someone, not try skydiving or not move abroad, you may have violated a crucial moral right to ‘revelatory autonomy’ and ‘self-authorship’, according to a philosopher at Christ’s College, Cambridge.

Dr Farbod Akhlaghi’s study, published in the journal Analysis, is the first of its kind to suggest that we have a moral right to ‘revelatory autonomy’, that is the right to discover for ourselves who we’ll become as a result of making ‘transformative choices’, choices to have experiences that teach us what that experience will be like for us whilst also changing our core preferences, values and desires.

Dr Akhlaghi says: “ ̽��ֱ��ability to see that the person we’ve become is the product of decisions that we made for ourselves is very important.

“I’m not telling people what to do. I’m just highlighting part of what is morally at stake in these very common interactions and trying to develop a framework for us to understand them. I hope some may find this helpful, as these will always be difficult moments for all of us.”

Traditionally, philosophers interested in ‘transformative experiences’ have focused on the decision-maker not on the people who are in a position to influence that person’s choices. But Dr Akhlaghi thinks that these neglected interactions present ‘an urgent ethical challenge’:

“There are lots of different reasons why we might seek to intervene – some selfish, others well meaning – but whatever our motivation, we can cause significant harm, including to the people we love most.”

While Akhlaghi accepts that advice can be offered without crossing the moral line, he warns that it is all too easy to slip into various forms of interference, such as forcing, coercing, manipulating or even ‘rationally persuading’ someone away from a transformative choice, in ways that may violate their right to revelatory autonomy.

Akhlaghi says: “Rational persuasion is probably the most common form of interference. Giving, when asked, factual information about a choice that you have knowledge about and the other person does not, can be justified. But while rational persuasion respects someone’s ability to reason, even this form of engagement can involve disrespecting their autonomous self-authorship.

For example, Akhlaghi continues: “Offering reasons, arguments or evidence as if one is in a privileged position with respect to what the other person’s experience would be like for them disrespects their moral right to revelatory autonomy.”

Initially inspired to consider this area of moral philosophy by personal experiences, Dr Akhlaghi examines and rejects a number of other conditions under which it could be argued that trying to prevent someone from making transformative choices is morally justified.

For example

Dissuading someone from becoming a parent because you think parenthood would make their life worse is problematic because becoming a parent is a positive experience for some and not for others, and no one can know that outcome in advance, even if the person doing the dissuading has experienced being a parent themselves.

A different example in the study relates to dissuading someone from making a career change that involves a big pay cut because you think that they would struggle to afford their expensive tastes. This is just as problematic, Akhlaghi says, because:

“We can only know what the future person’s interests are and whether their present interests will be fulfilled after a transformative choice has been made.”

“ ̽��ֱ��person who changes job might manage to afford their expensive tastes and we don’t even know if that future person would still have these tastes. This highlights another problem – whose interests matter morally when trying to justify interfering: those of the present or the future person?”

Is it ever right to interfere?

“It is only permissible to interfere to try to prevent a transformative choice,” Akhlaghi argues “if someone’s right to revelatory autonomy is outweighed by competing moral considerations.”

A would-be killer’s right to revelatory autonomy is, for instance, plausibly outweighed by the wrongness of killing others solely to discover who they would become by doing so. Equally, protecting a friend from gratuitous self-mutilation would plausibly outweigh their right to autonomously discover what it would be like to harm themselves in this way.

Akhlaghi suggests that the more likely it is that a choice will affect someone’s ‘core preferences, identity and values’, the stronger the moral reasons would need to be to justify interfering in their decision. For instance, interfering in someone’s decision to go to university or not, would require far stronger moral reasons than them choosing whether to eat a cheeseburger or not.

Finally, Akhlaghi clarifies that his study concerns voluntary choices to have ‘transformative experiences.’ Some such experiences are instead either the unintended consequences of something we did, or ones we are forced into as, for example, children might be by a divorce. These raise different but related problems he hopes to explore in future work.

Reference

Farbod Akhlaghi, 'Transformative experience and the right to revelatory autonomy', Analysis (2022), DOI: 10.1093/analys/anac084

We have a moral duty to allow others to make ‘transformative choices’ such as changing careers, migrating and having children, a new study argues. This duty can be outweighed by competing moral considerations such as preventing murder but in many cases we should interfere with far greater caution.

̽��ֱ��ability to see that the person we’ve become is the product of decisions that we made for ourselves is very important

Farbod Akhlaghi

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What makes a good excuse? A Cambridge philosopher may have the answer

ehs33 — Sun, 30 Jun 2019 23:01:00 +0000

We’ve all done it, offered an excuse for our poor behaviour or rude reactions to others in the heat of the moment, after a long commute or a tough day with the kids. Excuses are commonplace, an attempt to explain and justify behaviours we aren’t proud of, to escape the consequences of our acts and make our undesirable behaviour more socially acceptable.

̽��ֱ��things we appeal to when making excuses are myriad: tiredness, stress, a looming work deadline, a wailing infant, poverty, a migraine, ignorance. But what do these various excuses have in common that allows us to recognize them all as plausible? Do they differ from the excuses used in criminal law, like duress or coercion? And what does having an excuse get us – does it really exonerate us?

A researcher from Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� has suggested that the answers lie in what they all tell us about our underlying motivation. When excuses are permissible, it’s because they show that while we acted wrongly, our underlying moral intentions were adequate.

Intentions are plans for action. To say that your intention was morally adequate is to say that your plan for action was morally sound. So when you make an excuse, you plead that your plan for action was morally fine – it’s just that something went awry in putting it into practice. Perhaps you tripped, and that’s why you spilled the shopping you were helping to carry. Or you were stressed or exhausted, which meant you couldn’t execute your well-intentioned plan.

This research presents for the first time a unified account of excuses - the Good Intention Account - that argues our everyday excuses work in much the same way as those offered in a courtroom. When lawyers appeal to duress or provocation in defense of their client, they are claiming that the client may have broken the law but had a morally adequate intention: she was just prevented from acting on it because fear or anger led her to lose self-control.

Until now little light has been shed on what unifies the diverse bunch of everyday reasons we offer when making excuses. Dr Paulina Sliwa’s study from the Faculty of Philosophy, suggests a morally adequate intention is the crucial ingredient.

Recent work in psychology suggests that intentions have a distinctive motivational profile, with philosophers and psychologists both arguing that they are key to understanding how we make choices. Dr Sliwa argues that intentions are the key to making sense of our everyday morality.

Dr Sliwa goes on to explain that appealing to excuses has its limits. “Successful excuses can mitigate our blame but they don’t get us off the hook completely. Saying we were tired or stressed doesn’t absolve us from moral responsibility completely, though they do change others’ perceptions of what we owe to make up for it and how the offended party should feel about our wrongdoing.”

This means that when we make excuses we are trying to haggle, to negotiate whether we deserve anger and resentment, or punishment and how much we need to apologise or compensate. This is why it can be so annoying if someone makes spurious excuses – and also probably why we continue to make excuses in the first place.

Dr Sliwa said, “A successful excuse needs to make plausible that your intention really was morally adequate – but something beyond your control prevented you from translating it into action. That’s why considerations like the following often work: I am sorry for forgetting the appointment – I had a terrible migraine / I haven't slept for the last three nights / I was preoccupied with worries about my mother's health; or I'm sorry I broke your vase – I stumbled over the rug. They all indicate an adequate underlying moral motivation that was thwarted by external circumstances.

“Things that will never work are appeals to weakness of will ‘I just couldn't resist’ or ‘it was too tempting’ don't work. Nor do appeals to things that are obviously immoral.

“ ̽��ֱ��same is true of legal excuses: not every appeal to duress, coercion or provocation will be successful – it will depend on the details of the case.

“Philosophy can give us a better understanding of our mundane, everyday moral phenomena. There are a lot more puzzles to think about in relation with excuses: what's the difference between explaining someone's bad behavior and excusing it?”

̽��ֱ��study is published in the ethics journal Philosophy and Public Affairs.

A free version is available at: http://paulinasliwa.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/0/4/19046427/final_submission.pdf

Dr Paulina Sliwa argues that intentions are the key to making sense of our everyday morality.

Duncan C

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What is a monster?

amb206 — Mon, 07 Sep 2015 15:06:14 +0000

What do we mean when we talk about 'monsters’? ̽��ֱ��word conjures up figures from gothic horror, such as Frankenstein or Dracula, classical images of exotic peoples with no heads or grotesquely exaggerated features, and the kinds of impossible chimerical beasts inhabiting the pages of medieval bestaries. How monsters have been created over the centuries is much more indicative of the moral and existential challenges faced by societies than the realities that they have encountered.

̽��ֱ��etymology of monstrosity suggests the complex roles that monsters play within society. 'Monster' probably derives from the Latin, monstrare, meaning 'to demonstrate', and monere, 'to warn'. Monsters, in essence, are demonstrative. They reveal, portend, show and make evident, often uncomfortably so. Though the modern gothic monster and the medieval chimaera may seem unrelated, both have acted as important social tools.

Dr Walter Palmer, who illegally shot Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe, has been labeled a 'monster'. Given the moniker ' ̽��ֱ��Dentist', he has had to resign from his practice, flee his home, and hire armed guards to protect himself and his family as a result of public disgust at his actions. He has even received death threats and been described as 'barely human'. Trophy hunting, and anyone who takes part in or has involvement with it, has been similarly vilified in the media and by animal rights groups.

Such public 'monsters' serve a similar role to gothic monsters, images that embody the cultural or psychological characteristics that we as a society find difficult to acknowledge. By excising them, through fantasies of execution or simply professional exclusion, we rid ourselves of the undesirable attributes they are perceived to carry. ̽��ֱ��'murdered' lion becomes the innocent white-robed victim of the archetypal gothic tale, while murderous 'Dentist' plays the role of social scapegoat.

Until relatively recently in history, monsters close to home, such as deformed babies or two-headed calves, were construed as warnings of divine wrath. Monstrous depictions in newspapers and pamphlets expressed strong political attitudes. ̽��ֱ��monstrous races or traditional monstrous beasts such as basilisks or unicorns, that were banished to distant regions in maps, represented a frightening unknown: 'here be dragons' effectively filled cartographic voids.

Simultaneously, however, monsters represented the wonderful diversity of divine creation, a playful ‘Nature’ that could produce a multitude of strange forms. Exotic beasts brought to Europe for the first time in the 16th century, such as armadillos or walruses, were often interpreted as 'monstrous'. More accurately, they were made into monsters: things that did not fit into the accepted natural categories. An armadillo became a pig-turtle, while a walrus was a fish-ox.

It might seem counter-intuitive, but beasts that seemingly mixed the characteristics of different natural groups were not troubling. Rather, they reinforced categories by clarifying the defining criteria for these groups. By transgressing, they helped to determine boundaries. To define a deviant form, such as a 'deformed' baby or calf, or a 'monstrous' exotic creature, you have to define 'normal'.

For example, the simple Aristotelian definition of a 'bird' was something that had two legs, two wings, could fly and walk. Two new creatures arrived in the 16th century that seemed to violate this definition. Firstly, birds of paradise were brought to Europe in 1622 as trade skins with stunning, colourful plumes but no legs or wings. Their limbs were removed by the hunters who supplied the birds in New Guinea. ̽��ֱ��birds were interpreted by European naturalists as heavenly creatures that never landed, inhabiting the boundary between the avian and the angelic.

At the other end of the avian spectrum, Dutch sailors landing on Mauritius at the end of the 16th century encountered dodos. Though rarely brought to Europe physically, the descriptions and detached parts of dodos were used by naturalists to depict ungainly, fat birds. Not only did dodos not fly, they could hardly walk. Lacking the typical feathers and wings of other birds, they were almost mammalian in form.

Monsters are not self-evident; they were created to serve these roles. Even beautiful creatures like the birds of paradise could become monsters due to their lack of limbs and imagined ascetic lifestyles. Making monsters added value. They were commercially lucrative things: oddities, curiosities and rare things were very marketable.

̽��ֱ��market for monstrosity motivated the literal creation of monsters: 'mermaids' were assembled from pieces of fish, monkeys and other objects while 'ray-dragons' were created from carefully mutilated and dried rays. These objects could be sold to collectors or displayed in menageries and freak-shows. Writing about and portraying virtual monsters helped to sell books and pamphlets.

̽��ֱ��tale of Cecil and ' ̽��ֱ��Dentist' is not so different. It is certainly highly saleable, as details about this particular monster's life and activities provide valuable fodder for media outlets.

Animal monsters could have very specific roles. ̽��ֱ��dodo, for example, was depicted as vast and gluttonous in late 17th-century accounts. It greedily consumed everything it came across, even hot coals. It was described as nauseatingly greasy to eat: one bird could apparently feed 25 men. This image was created by writers who had never seen the bird, and is not supported by current paleobiological evidence.

̽��ֱ��idea of the avian glutton embodied European anxieties about the rapacious colonial trading activities in the Indian Ocean, which brought a surfeit of riches to Europe. ̽��ֱ��engorged dodo became a scapegoat for the European sin of gluttony.

What catharsis does the 'monsterification' of Palmer and other trophy hunters provide? Perhaps focusing on the tragedy of one 'personality' lion distracts from the greater horrors of illegal poaching and human-animal conflict occurring in similar regions. It also masks the fact that, though controversial, regulated commercial hunting is an important source of conservation funding in many countries.

On the one hand, excising this monster reinforces our conceptions of social boundaries of morality: don't kill creatures we perceive as having human traits, like names or personalities. On the other, it offers the illusion of absolution from the underlying horror at what all of us are doing to the natural world.

Inset images: ̽��ֱ��'Monster of Cracow', a monstrous creature born to honourable parents, from Pierre Boaistuau's 'Histoires Prodigieuses' (1560, Paris) (Wellcome Library, London); 'Draco alter ex raia' or a ray-dragon from Ulysse Aldrovandi's 'Serpentum et draconum historiæ' (1640, Bologna), p.316.

In the outrage that erupted when an American dentist killed a lion, the trophy hunter was branded a 'monster'. Natalie Lawrence, a PhD candidate in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, explores notions of the monstrous and how they tie into ideas about morality.

̽��ֱ��market for monstrosity motivated the literal creation of monsters: 'mermaids' were assembled from pieces of fish, monkeys and other objects

Natalie Lawrence

'Monstrum marinum daemoniforme' from Ulysse Aldrovandi's 'Monstrorum Historia' (1642, Bologna), p.350

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‘Moral identity’ key to charitable time giving

sc604 — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 01:31:32 +0000

Charities have long wrestled with the issue of persuading people to donate their time to worthy causes. Many potential time-givers donate money instead due to the perceived psychological costs of giving their time – which is by definition limited.

But new research co-authored at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge finds that ‘moral identity’ can overcome time aversion because it affirms and reinforces this identity, especially when the cost of giving time rises – and charities can use this key insight in recruiting people for time-giving tasks.

Significantly, the study found that charities can issue 'moral cues' that trigger such moral identity and make people more likely to donate their time to good causes – a key practical finding for the charitable sector. Defining 'moral identity' around a set of nine traits including kindness, caring and generosity, the study found that moral identity can be activated by showing people images of 'moral exemplars' such as Gandhi and Mother Teresa, and quotations focused on the same idea such as: “Wherever there is a human being, there is a chance for kindness.”

According to the study, a strong moral identity may reduce time aversion not despite the higher cost of giving time, but rather because of it. Put another way, giving time more strongly reinforces the moral self, compared to giving money, according to the researchers, who call time aversion a ‘socio-psychological malady.’

̽��ֱ��study, entitled “I don’t want the money, I just want your time: how moral identity overcomes the aversion to giving time to pro-social causes”, has just been accepted for publication by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

“ ̽��ֱ��study has significant implications for how charities and other good causes recruit volunteers for time-giving tasks,” says co-author Eric Levy, of Cambridge Judge Business School. “We found that there is a strong connection between moral identity and the willingness to donate time.”

One key finding was that when the cost of giving time rises, people with a high moral identity may be more motivated to give their time, and those with a low moral identity are more averse to giving their time. Conversely, in low-cost situations, those with a high moral identity are less apt to give their time than are people with low moral identity.

This suggests that charities need to consider levels of ‘moral salience’ in their promotional material and other outreach to potential time-givers.

According to the study, if charities wish to recruit volunteers for low-time-cost tasks they may be better off targeting individuals whose moral identities occupy a less central role within their self-concept. Conversely, if they wish to recruit volunteers for tasks with a high time cost they may do well to target individuals whose moral identities occupy a more central role in their self-concept.

̽��ֱ��research paper comprises four separate studies. ̽��ֱ��first finds that moral identity can make giving time appear less costly; the second and third find that a ‘moral cue’ reduces time aversion even in unpleasant situations (such as emptying dirty hospital bedpans) and when time appears to be scarce (by enhancing a perceived connection between the time-giver and the beneficiary of the time donation); the fourth accounts for the real costs of time, finding that the ‘chronic salience of moral identity’ especially lessens time aversion when giving time becomes increasingly costly.

̽��ֱ��study was co-authored by Americus Reed II of the Wharton School, ̽��ֱ�� of Pennsylvania; Adam Kay, a doctoral student at the ̽��ֱ�� of British Columbia; Stephanie Finnel, a marketing support services specialist at BAYADA Home Health Care; Karl Aquino of the Sauder School of Business at the ̽��ֱ�� of British Columbia; and Eric Levy of ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Judge Business School.

Adapted from a Cambridge Judge Business School story.

Charities want your time and not just your money: new study identifies factors that lessen ‘time aversion’ in charitable giving.

There is a strong connection between moral identity and the willingness to donate time

Eric Levy

Bio Blitz

Tony Smith, volunteer naturalist, talks to students from Brislington Enterprise College

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Immorality and invention: the “great stem cell debate”

lw355 — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 09:32:44 +0000

Human stem cell research is a thriving field of science worldwide – holding promise for treating diseases such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease, as well as for furthering our understanding of how we develop from the very earliest stages of life.

But using human embryonic stem (ES) cells to improve the health of other humans has also been the subject of comment, criticism and even court cases. Time magazine dubbed the “complexity and drama” surrounding these cells as the “Great Debate”.

Most notably, the field witnessed the 2001 restriction on funding for ES cell research in the USA by President Bush and the lifting of the ban in 2009 by President Obama. Then in 2011, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) banned the patenting of inventions derived from human eggs or their equivalent on the basis that they were human embryos, the commercial exploitation of which “would be contrary to… morality.”

While religious bodies and green lobbyists use patent law to elevate the status of the embryo, scientists argue that doing so threatens research that might benefit the health of millions.

International law permits states to refuse patents where necessary to protect morality in their territory. “Yet, how does a patent examiner or a court assess whether an invention is immoral to the point that, unlike other inventions, it can’t be patented? That is a particularly difficult question,” said Dr Kathy Liddell from the Faculty of Law. “It is a conundrum that runs headlong into the complex intersection of law and morality, intellectual property and philosophy.”

It is precisely this intersection that a new research centre in the Faculty will investigate. ̽��ֱ��new centre – funded by the Hatton Trust and the WYNG Foundation – will focus on medical law, ethics and policy relating to controversial issues such as patenting inventions involving DNA and body parts, the regulation of medical research and technologies, assisted reproduction and surrogacy, and the governance of ‘big data’ in the medical field, as well as the regulatory and legislative issues that stem cell research is likely to meet en route from the lab to the clinic.

“These areas need to be considered not as a post hoc rationalisation of events that have already happened, but alongside and ahead of technological advances,” said Liddell, who is centrally involved in the new centre, as well as being Deputy Director of the Faculty’s Centre for Intellectual Property and Law. “To complement the extraordinary science that is happening, we need to consider the ramifications of biomedical advances in a thorough and timely way.”

Liddell’s own research interests relate to the pathway that leads from the research bench to clinically effective treatments. She sees the law’s role as facilitating and supporting this pathway in morally responsible ways.

ES cells are useful because they are at the earliest point of human development and possess the full ‘regenerative toolkit’. In other words, they can develop into any type of cell in the human body. Although stem cells found in the adult human also retain the self-renewing ability to develop into specific tissues, they cannot develop into all the tissue types needed for regenerative medicine; the genetic information needed for some developmental pathways has already been shut down.

“ ̽��ֱ��CJEU was very reluctant to engage with the ethical and public policy debates surrounding human embryos. So it ended up answering the patent law questions with very little reasoning,” added Liddell.

“For me, this was the biggest problem with the judgment. ̽��ֱ��Court has to have the courage, skills, wisdom and accountability to face up to the degree of judicial activism and policy shaping that is inevitable in these controversial areas. Likewise, citizens, researchers and NGOs have to accept that judges have to make difficult ‘calls’ in the face of moral and scientific uncertainty. They simply can’t please everyone in a morally pluralist society.”

Julian Hitchcock, a specialist in life science intellectual property at London law firm Lawford Davies Denoon, who advises government and the Wellcome Trust on stem cell law, agrees: “ ̽��ֱ��problem I see is that the CJEU’s decision sends the message that scientists engaged in stem cell research are immoral. Moreover, the CJEU’s decision is being used to attempt wider assaults on research, such as in a Citizens’ Initiative called ‘One of Us’ which suggested that the principle of human dignity applies from the point of conception. Had this initiative succeeded, not only would it have undermined research funding, but it would also have impeded the fulfilment of urgent Millennium Development Goals.”

Meanwhile, the great stem cell debate continues, with a recent challenge in the High Court by the International Stem Cell Corporation over a decision by the Patent Office that unfertilised human eggs that have been stimulated to divide (turning them into so-called parthenotes) be included in the term ‘human embryos’. ̽��ֱ��implication is that parthenote inventions would also fall within the CJEU’s zone of unpatentable inventions. ̽��ֱ��High Court referred the issue to the CJEU and, in July this year, the Court was advised to reject part of the decision by the Advocate General.

“It’s a very complex area of the law – both highly technical and highly controversial. By supporting people to develop expertise in the life sciences and the law, we can better respond to these important discussions,” said Liddell.

Hitchcock added: “Formulating laws and policies that are responsive to the needs of research, and which carry the support of the public, requires a deep understanding of the ways that biology and law intersect, as well as imaginative thinking, powerful advocacy and the courage to fight an often embattled corner.”

“ ̽��ֱ��quintessential justification for patent protection has always been that it’s important for protecting investment in research and commercialisation,” said Liddell.

“We have yet to see whether the lack of patent protection for inventions involving human embryos has had a chilling effect on the transition of ideas to clinical realities, or whether it has nudged research in new, but similarly effective, directions that avoid the moral dilemmas and legal uncertainties of using embryos. We may never know – it is very difficult to gather this sort of empirical data. But for society to benefit properly and fully from medical advances, we do know that we need to be ready to enter any and all debates that wrestle with their ethical and moral implications.”

Inset images: Human embryonic stem cells via Wikimedia; Dr Kathy Liddell

Human stem cell research holds promise for combating some of the most recalcitrant of diseases and for regenerating damaged bodies. It is also an ethical, legal and political minefield.

How does a patent examiner or a court assess whether an invention is immoral to the point that, unlike other inventions, it can’t be patented? That is a particularly difficult question

Kathy Liddell

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Looking for the good

amb206 — Sun, 03 Aug 2014 07:00:00 +0000

In the early 1990s, Professor Joel Robbins spent more than two years living with the Urapmin, a group of people in the far western highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG). He was a graduate student in anthropology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Virginia and it was his first extended experience of a culture strikingly different to his own. He slept in a house made of local bush materials, ate taro and sweet potato for every meal, hunted marsupials (“with notable lack of success”) and learned to speak the Urap tongue, a language with only about 400 speakers. It was, he says, a profoundly stimulating experience.

His time living in the Urapmin community prompted Robbins to ask a series of questions that have guided his inquiries ever since. ̽��ֱ��experiences he had in PNG set him on a trajectory that has led him to propose new theoretical frameworks for anthropology that look beyond older ways of understanding cultural differences and making comparisons. He first turned to the question of how to understand radical cultural change, and he has more recently worked to identify cross-cultural variation in deeply embedded moral and ethical codes. He calls this latter approach 'the anthropology of the good'.

Described in simple terms, anthropology is the study of humans, and the fascinatingly complex ways in which we live, both now and in the past. Robbins, who arrived in Cambridge last year to take up the Sigrid Rausing Chair of Social Anthropology, is a sociocultural anthropologist. He has become increasingly interested in the path that anthropology has taken over the past 20 years in its study of people and how its changing focus reflects shifts in our collective preoccupations.

Until the late 1980s, anthropologists typically studied ‘the other,’ concentrating their attentions on people whose cultures appeared radically different from their own. Famously, the American anthropologist Margaret Mead returned from Samoa to report that adolescence was handled in ways that contrasted sharply with those observed in the West. Television documentaries focusing on encounters with remote communities perpetuate the image of the anthropologist as intrepid traveller, risking life and limb to document exotic tribal societies in action.

̽��ֱ��anthropological study of such “others” was based on an assumption that culture is something deeply rooted in people and acts as enduring glue through generations – especially so in the remote and exotic parts of the world that acted for so long as magnets for anthropological fieldworkers. What Robbins observed as a young anthropologist in PNG challenged these assumptions in a way that fired his curiosity and set him on course to study the tricky question of cultural change.

“ ̽��ֱ��Urapmin are a remote community - even by PNG standards. There’s no road connecting them to the nearest town or even to their closest neighbours. They have no electricity and they participate very little in the market economy. Because they are so hard to reach, and because so few people speak the Urap language, Western missionaries did not make attempts to convert them,” said Robbins.

“However, in the late 1970s the Urapmin joined a charismatic Christian revival movement that was sweeping through PNG. Within a year, the entire population had converted and since 1978 the Urapmin have seen themselves as a completely Christianised community in which their traditional religion has no role to play. Achieving salvation in Christian terms became one of their most important collective aspirations.

”In embracing Christianity, the Urapmin transformed many aspects of their culture. In the space of just a few months, they rejected their highly elaborate traditional religious system and abandoned the taboos that had for generations shaped most aspects of their daily lives. They tore down their cult houses, threw away the ancestral bones that had been at the centre of their ritual life, and began to pray. ̽��ֱ��Christian code they adopted was singularly strict, demanding a high level of emotional and moral self-regulation.

“One of the questions I began to ask myself was: what can we learn about the nature of both culture and cultural changes by studying in detail such processes of dramatic transformation,” said Robbins. “This led me to engage deeply with anthropological theory, questioning long-standing assumptions about the enduring nature of traditions.”

On his return from PNG, Robbins wrote a number of works that argued that although newly converted, the Urapmin were deeply engaged with Christian ideas and ways of living. He went on to help make a name for the anthropological study of Christianity, a religion that the field had largely ignored because, familiar to most Western researchers, it lacked the difference factor anthropologists looked for.

Pursuing his interest both in Christianity and in cultural change, Robbins began carrying out comparative, literature based research on Pentecostal communities in South America and Africa. Along with Asia and the Pacific Islands, both these regions have seen a rapid growth of Pentecostalism which is fostering everywhere the kinds of dramatic cultural changes it brought about in Urapmin.

Given the moral strictness of Pentecostal churches, and of Urapmin Christianity in particular, Robbins has also had a long-standing interest in the anthropology of ethics, a major strength of Cambridge anthropology. This has formed the basis of his most recent theoretical work.

̽��ֱ��late 1980s saw a shift take place away from the older anthropology focused on 'the other' or 'the exotic’ – away from an anthropology focused on striking cultural differences. In its place has arisen an approach that Robbins describes as the ‘anthropology of the suffering’ in which researchers focus their inquiries on people who are in some sense victims – the poor and dispossessed, refugees and migrants, oppressed and marginalised communities – and whose plight and pain connects them to anthropologists and their readers in ways that are understood as a universal part of the human condition.

Robbins has recently argued that this anthropology of suffering needs to be complemented with an anthropology of the good that returns to questions of cultural difference, though this time focused on differences in the ways people define and try to accomplish what they see as valuable.

It’s significant that Robbins has chosen to concentrate on the good – a concept that’s notoriously elusive. “If you ask people to define what is bad, most will agree that certain actions – with murder and torture and a few others at the top of the list – are the opposite of good. Consensus about what constitutes good, and how we separate this from bad, is harder to pin down,” he said.

“What I have seen emerging in recent anthropology is a focus on such topics as value and morality, well-being and empathy as well as hope, time and change. Research in these areas helps us to understand the wide cross-cultural diversity in understandings of the good. ̽��ֱ��shift to studying such topics has coincided with worldwide concern about human rights and with an explosion in NGOs seeking to foster their own versions of the good in various places.”

Researchers in the arts, humanities and social sciences are increasingly asked to demonstrate the value of their work to society. What does anthropology offer that benefits the world? “Until recently anthropology was a discipline that saw its critical mission as demonstrating that people lived differently in different places. It used those differences to unsettle people’s assumptions that their own ways of life were the only natural and valuable ones – it sought to broaden our worldview,” said Robbins.

“Now we are beginning to see the emergence of new ways of thinking about cultures and I am working to develop an approach to anthropology that encourages a comparative study of how different societies conceive the good. NGOs, for example, have sets of values which they seek to apply in societies which may have moral codes to their own. In attempting to identify these differences, anthropology can make a valuable contribution to global discussions of what should count as pressing social problems and about how to find practical solutions to them.”

To illustrate his point about the benefits of understanding the values that lie beneath cultural practices, Robbins returns to his study of the Urapmin. “When someone dies in Urapmin, the people who lived with the deceased go to a great deal of trouble to present relatives who have been living elsewhere with a major gift of bows, arrows, hand-woven string bags, cash and local shell money. ̽��ֱ��recipients do not take everything that’s offered to them but choose only those items for which they can quickly supply a precisely matching return gift. Then a week later, they invite the original givers to a feast and present them with equivalent gifts,” he said.

“This is only one example of the occasions when the Urapmin make a major effort to give each other the same things with little or no delay. Savvy now about the market economy, Urapmin are quick to point out that these exchanges make no ‘profit’. Asked why they invest so much time and energy in reciprocation of matching items, their explanation involves the notion that these kinds of exchanges develop and deepen relationships, particularly in the face of events like death or dispute that threaten to destroy them.”

We might say, Robbins suggests, that creating new relationships and strengthening existing ones is one of the primary ways in which the Urapmin seek to foster what they define as the good.

“ ̽��ֱ��challenge is how to expand our own notions of the good so that they can encompass such possibilities as the emphasis the Urapmin put on the value of relationships. ̽��ֱ��anthropology of good is in its nascent stages. It can be supported by many kinds of anthropological research already being undertaken from a range of other theoretical perspectives,” he said.

“Were it to realise its promise, the hope is that anthropology might not only broaden our understandings of the diverse kinds of lives people live in different places, but that it might also help to expand our ways of thinking about such topics as development and justice that do so much to organise contemporary approaches to the wider world.”

̽��ֱ��image accompanying this story is taken from Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society by Joel Robbins, published by Berkeley: ̽��ֱ�� of California Press (2004).

Anthropology looks at human differences in its study of the ‘other’ and at human commonalities in its more recent focus on the ‘suffering’. In identifying ways that anthropology can contribute to solutions for world problems, Professor Joel Robbins proposes an approach he calls the ‘anthropology of the good’.

If you ask people to define what is bad, most will agree that certain actions – with murder and torture at the top of the list – are the opposite of good. Consensus about what constitutes good, and how we separate this from bad, is harder to pin down.

Joel Robbins

An exchange taking place between the Urapmin people, Papua New Guinea

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EX-TRA-PO-LATE! Moral philosophy and the Daleks

bjb42 — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 00:01:03 +0000

It shouldn’t work, but somehow it does. Ever since Doctor Who first aired in 1963, the series has been internationally recognisable thanks to one of the most ridiculous space-creatures ever conceived; a master race of intergalactic pepperpots, armed with a sink plunger and an egg whisk, who (according to popular mythology), are hell-bent on conquering anywhere, provided it doesn’t involve stairs.

But don’t let that fool you. For more than 45 years, the Doctor’s arch-enemies, the Daleks, have been striking fear into young viewers with their chilling war-cry of “Exterminate!”. Like the Doctor himself, they have become an icon of British culture. For many, hiding behind the sofa when they appear is virtually a rite of passage.

Now, with the new season of Doctor Who nearly upon us, a Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� academic has turned his mind to what makes the Daleks so terrifying. Writing in a new paper, Dr Robin Bunce – normally a researcher in intellectual history – explores why these unlikeliest of sci-fi foes bettered the rest, and became the most menacing alien ever to invade the small screen.

His answer has nothing to do with their often-cited, non-human appearance, nor their weird, electronic voices. In fact, Dr Bunce believes that the Daleks succeed because they offer us a moral lesson in what it means to be human in the first place. They terrify us because the evil they represent is a more precise definition than that of philosophers stretching from Socrates to Kant. They are chilling, he argues, because they are a vision of what we ourselves might become.

“ ̽��ֱ��reason the Daleks are evil is because we recognise that they were once better,” Dr Bunce explained. “They are the nightmare future we dread.”

“According to their back-story, once they were capable of genuine emotion and real moral good. Now they are sexless, heartless brains, shut up in machines incapable of intimacy, who have forgotten what it means to laugh and no longer think of themselves as individuals. We recognise the Daleks as evil because they have lost all that we hold most dear.”

̽��ֱ��Daleks are perhaps Doctor Who’s greatest success. After their first appearance, they boosted ratings and turned the show into a national phenomenon. “Dalekmania” became a common term and “Dalek” itself now commands its own entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Almost half a century later, their popularity shows little sign of subsiding. A 2008 survey by the National Trust found that while only 53% of children could identify an oak leaf, nine out of 10 could identify a Dalek. In 2010, readers of the science fiction magazine SFX voted the Dalek as the all-time greatest monster, beating both Godzilla and Gollum from ̽��ֱ��Lord Of ̽��ֱ��Rings.

Dr Bunce, a bye-fellow at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, decided to explore what it is that makes these villains so villainous in the first place. He returned to the original 1963 script for “ ̽��ֱ��Daleks”, in which they first appeared, which was written by their creator, Terry Nation. In the story, the Doctor and his companions arrive on a post-apocalyptic planet, Skaro. They encounter both Daleks and the more peaceful Thals.

His paper concludes that the Daleks are a more powerful representation of evil than most of their extra-terrestrial competitors. ̽��ֱ��fact that they are so morally repugnant is, he suggests, what makes them both frightening for viewers and (as a result) an enduring success. This stems from a very modern take on the idea of evil.

Nation’s script stresses the Daleks’ lack of humanity as the essence of their evil nature. This in itself is nothing new – since time immemorial evil people have been described as animals, because animals are not rational. Socrates had a similar view, arguing that reason and knowledge make humans good.

Daleks are different, however, because they are more rational than humans, but also far more evil. Instead of losing their capacity for rational thought, they have lost their ability to feel. As the plot of ‘ ̽��ֱ��Daleks’ unfolds, we discover that after an apocalyptic “Neutronic war”, they retreated into metal shells in which their emotions withered. ̽��ֱ��fact that they were once better, Bunce says, makes them horrifying: “We dread becoming like them.”

For viewers in 1963, living shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis, some of the connotations in Nation’s original script would have been more relevant than they are today. ̽��ֱ��surface of Skaro resembles contemporary ideas about how Earth might look after a nuclear war. ̽��ֱ��“Neutronic War” refers to the spectre of the neutron bomb – which could emit more radiation than an atomic bomb, but with a lower blast. As a result, it was more selective in wiping out humans and animal life, but not buildings and infrastructure. ̽��ֱ��Daleks represented the consequences of these very real nightmares at the time.

In the 21^st century, Bunce suggests that they embody a more general fear, about the triumph of technology and science over humanity. Once creatures like us, they have mutated into something far more sinister. Inside their metal shells, they have oversized brains representing the dominance of scientific reason, at the expense of shrivelled bodies. This fear about what we might become, through scientific advancement, has existed since Victorian times. Like the Daleks, it shows little sign of abating today.

Bunce considers the Daleks a lesson in moral philosophy: “ ̽��ֱ��final lesson is that moral progress is achieved by enlarging the moral imagination, not by increasing our knowledge or becoming more rational,” he said.

“Empathy is the key. We are more likely to act well when we understand that our enemy, however different they may seem, is part of a community who will grieve if they are harmed. ̽��ֱ��Thals are good because they love each other. ̽��ֱ��Daleks don’t and that’s why they’re evil.”

A peculiar breed of evil, in fact, which has also made them a terrific success.

̽��ֱ��study appears in the book, Doctor Who and Philosophy, which is published by Open Court Books: http://www.opencourtbooks.com/books_n/doctor_who.htm

They’ve had viewers cowering behind the sofa since ‘Doctor Who’ began – but what exactly is it that makes people so frightened of the Daleks? A new study by a Cambridge researcher claims to have the answer.

̽��ֱ��reason the Daleks are evil is because we recognise that they were once better. They are the nightmare future we dread.

Dr Robin Bunce

M. Seckington from Flickr

Dalek

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Rethinking eccentricity

bjb42 — Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Since the 18th century, English culture has been associated (both by the English themselves and by continental observers) with unusual tolerance towards unconventional and peculiar individuals. Even today, eccentricity is often seen as an obligatory component of the English national character. ̽��ֱ��eccentric is typically portrayed as a harmless and amiable figure, someone who provides others with a pleasant diversion from the tedium of everyday life.

But how historically representative are these received ideas of eccentricity? This question has formed the basis of my research and the subject of my recent book, which seeks to investigate more sceptically the cultural and ideological functions of eccentricity.

My research starts from two sets of assumptions: first, that eccentricity is neither timeless nor universal; second, that it is by no means always harmless and absurd. Eccentricity is, instead, a historically relative and context-dependent term, which must be situated within the broader histories of individualism and deviance. Eccentricity often elicited violent and conflicting responses, and was associated with potentially disturbing figures such as the insane, social marginals, human ‘monsters’ and the tempestuous Romantic genius. Beliefs about eccentricity varied widely across European national traditions, and were underpinned by complex assumptions about gender and class.

I chose 19th-century Paris as the focus of the study precisely because its culture was significantly different from English culture. ̽��ֱ��modern concept of eccentricity had crystallised in 18th-century England, a culture increasingly interested in poetic and psychological originality. Pre-Revolutionary French culture, by contrast, was markedly hostile to both originality and individual difference. It asserted that elegance was timeless, upheld rigid ideals of good taste and decorum, and stressed the need for social conformism. It was precisely the initial strength of French resistance to the values of eccentricity, I suggest, which make its reception after 1830 so revealing of tensions in French cultural identity.

Ambivalent emotions

Breaking with convention aroused highly ambivalent responses in 19th-century Parisian readers, writers and spectators. Eccentricity was debated in a wide range of sources, including etiquette manuals, fashion magazines, newspapers, novels, plays, political pamphlets, and scientific and psychiatric treatises. On the one hand, the scandal of ‘standing out’ evoked the aspirations of the bourgeoisie, namely its dreams of freedom, creativity and individuality. On the other, it symbolised the deepest anxieties of this class, the threat of madness, monstrosity and sin. Eccentricity was therefore simultaneously desired and feared, incorporated into and rejected from bourgeois identity.

Why were the French so ambivalent towards eccentricity? ̽��ֱ��French Revolution in 1789 inaugurated a century of unprecedented social and political instability, generating a strong desire in the French elite to create social cohesion and order. An orderly society entailed the suppression of any challenges to social norms. At the same time, however, the influence of Romanticism led to an increasing desire for individual freedom and fulfilment, whilst the bourgeoisie had strong faith in social and intellectual progress. ̽��ֱ��latter tendencies inevitably led to many norms and traditions being called into question, and 19th-century Parisian culture was at the forefront of attempts to probe the fragile boundaries between conformism and eccentricity. Three cultural fields in which this is most evident are fashion, bohemia and science.

Followers of fashion

Eccentricity in Paris of the 1830s was linked to flamboyant new fashions and the seductions of commodity culture. ̽��ֱ��values of fashion, including novelty and bizarreness, were diametrically at odds with the traditional values of French politeness and etiquette. Eccentric styles epitomised the intoxicating dangers of modernity, and were championed by a range of unconventional figures, including male and female dandies and the aristocratic figure of the lionne or lioness. ̽��ֱ��lionne rejected the fragility and hysteria associated with respectable women, and engaged instead in energetic ‘masculine’ pursuits such as horse-riding and smoking. But increasingly, such eccentricity was linked to demi-mondaines and courtesans, who, it was feared, were corrupting the morality and health of the social elite.

Bohemian culture

After Napoleon III’s coup d’état of 1851, the social position of the writer and artist became more problematic. Eccentricity was associated with the artists, social marginals and urban poor who inhabited ‘the unknown Paris’. This murky underworld fascinated bourgeois observers as much as it horrified them. Writers and journalists documented their ambivalent responses to exhibitions of human freaks in the fairground and to the half-mad visionaries of bohemian street culture. They were uneasily aware that they too failed to conform to bourgeois norms and that some eccentrics might be unrecognised geniuses.

Scientific theory

̽��ֱ��popularisation of medical theories of national decline after 1851 led to increasing moral panic. Eccentricity was interpreted as a symptom of insanity and concealed deformity, and eccentrics were often portrayed as a dangerous social menace which psychiatrists and legislators struggled to contain. Despite this, many writers, including Gérard de Nerval, Jules-Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly, Charles Baudelaire and Jules Vallès, championed ‘pathological’ and ‘monstrous’ forms of eccentricity. Their writing constitutes an act of symbolic resistance to a culture which defined normality, virtue and health in increasingly restrictive and unimaginative terms.

A contemporary debate

In charting the history of eccentricity, one conclusion I arrived at was that beliefs about precisely how much individuals are permitted to diverge from social norms differ considerably between cultures in response to very specific socio-historical factors. Gender appears to be central to the imagination of deviance in this period since what was deeply eccentric for women was often considered quite normal for men, and vice versa. Ultimately, the experience of ambivalence is inseparable from European modernity: eccentricity represents one compelling set of values (novelty, freedom, individuality) which clashed significantly with other, equally compelling values (stability, order, community). In many ways, this type of clash is central to debates in contemporary moral and political philosophy about the plurality of values and goods.

̽��ֱ��interdisciplinary focus of the project continues to develop, as it traces the migration of concepts and metaphors between literature, popular culture and science. Continuing to emphasise the ways in which social and psychological categories are implicitly shaped by values and norms, my research is now focusing on a cultural history of paranoia and suspicion in French modernity.

For more information, please contact the author Dr Miranda Gill (mfg24@cam.ac.uk) at the Department of French, in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages.

Miranda Gill traces shifting 19th-century perceptions of eccentricity, from its association with the intoxicating lure of modernity and fashion to the murky underworld of circus freaks and half-mad visionaries.

Eccentricity is, instead, a historically relative and context-dependent term, which must be situated within the broader histories of individualism and deviance.

by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

Rethinking

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