Taking life philosophically.
12 July 2010
After two referee errors in FIFA World Cup 2010 there have been calls to begin using video technology to help football1 referees make some of the difficult and important decisions they have to make. I is argued that, like in some other sports, the referee should be able to consult a video replay before making a decision.
I am arguing against the adoption of video technology, not because I think it would harm the sport, but because I know of no good reasons to adopt it. I believe those who favor such technology are in favor of it because they see it as a way to make football more meritocratic. I also think they underestimate how many other non-meritocratic elements there are in the sport.
Unless convincing distinctions between different non-meritocratic elements are presented, adopting video technology can only be part of a larger project that may have unwanted effects on the game.
It is my understanding that the calls for use of replays are motivated by the desire to make the sport more meritocratic. There are of course many kinds of merit, and I hope to avoid discussing what merit is. What is important to my argument is that there are things that clearly do not constitute merit:
Having the referee consult a video replay after an event like these two would arguably make football more meritocratic, as it would be easier to recognize merit. And it is of course obvious that merit should be recognized and rewarded in sporting competitions. As Sigmund Loland writes,
the institutional goal of [sporting games] is to measure, compare, and finally rank the participants according to performance of athletic skills as defined in the rules of the relevant game. In other words, in sporting games, the predominant distributive norm is meritocratic.2
It is possible to come close to eliminating referee mistakes completely, but this requires more extensive use of video technology than anyone hopes for. It is generally agreed that no technology should harm the flow of the game, and therefore only important events should be checked.
If video technology is to be adopted, it will be an arbitrary decision where to draw the line between important events that should be checked from a replay and less important ones that should not be checked. Some have mentioned goals, potential fouls in the penalty zone and red cards as examples. But by the same standard, potential offsides and fouls around the penalty zones could count as well. Some of the flow would necessarily be sacrificed, and there is no obvious answer how much is too much.
In addition to the limited abilities of even the best referee, there are several other non-meritocratic elements at play. However, the existence of such elements is sometimes ignored when calling for the use of video technology.
In an open stadium, weather conditions can have a dramatic effect on the game. Imagine a match in which one team gets an early goal, and soon afterwards heavy rain erupts and continues for the rest of the match, spoiling the opponents’ chances of creating decent scoring opportunities. The meritocratic solution to this would be to move the matches indoors. This, along with the use of artificial turf, would ensure consistent and equal weather and pitch conditions.
The equipment used is a non-meritocratic element as well. There has been debate over the Jabulani ball used in the 2010 tournament, as some teams have had more experience with it. The ball has been used for example in the German Bundesliga, and it has been argued that this has given the German team an advantage. The implication is of course that the Germans did not merit this advantage.
One solution to this would be to let each team choose the ball for each half, as was allegedly done in the 1930 World Cup final between Argentina and Uruguay.
It is also an interesting question whose merit we are considering. If we are only interested in the merits of the players, the first step would be to remove coaches, or assign a random coach (or a random coaching team) to each team. A good coach gives a team an unmerited strategic advantage, and what exacerbates the issue is that the better teams often have better coaches.
If we think that the coach is a part of the team whose merit we are considering, there are still many other similar issues. For example, rich countries often have more money to spend on training facilities and tools. It would be possible to set a limit on training budgets, although the best players would still benefit from the facilities of the rich club teams they play for throughout most of the year.
No matter what we do, the conditions will never be completely equal. The question is when they are equal enough. This is what Loland thinks:
To sum up, we can say that the norm on equal opportunity to perform is met if unfair advantages due to rule violations are eliminated or compensated in the best possible way under the circumstances, and if inequalities due to uncontrollable external conditions do not exert significant and systematic influence on the outcome.3
According to this, there are two conditions that need to be satisfied. I have not heard anyone argue that whatever inequalities there may be exert systematic influence on the outcome. Nobody systematically suffers injustice in football. Therefore it is only a question of whether or not the unfair advantages are eliminated or compensated in the best possible way under the circumstances. It is an interesting but difficult question.
Those who favor the technology tend either just to assume that it would improve football, or fail to think about the matter on a general level, just reiterating the facts about referee mistakes and believing that, given those facts, the conclusion favorable to video technology automatically follows. Essentially, those who support the adoption of video technology would need to argue that such technology would make football a better game. So far I have not heard anyone make that argument.
Finally, even if we ignore all the external circumstances, much of the actual play depends on chance. For example, when it is a question of centimeters in a long-range shot, it is beyond the skills and the accuracy of even the best player: even if the goal by Lampard had stood, it would still have been a stroke of luck for him and his team, since the shot could have just as easily bounced back from the crossbar.
Even when the ball really goes in, some goals have more merit than others. When after a few good passes and a powerful shot the ball is literally in the back of the net, the goal is surely of great merit. When the opponent scores an own goal, there is less merit, and there is not much more merit when a technically awful shot barely manages to put the ball over the line. However, it is a happy coincidence that often the goals with the most merit are the ones least likely to go unnoticed by the referee. If a valid goal is not recognized, often enough it has little merit to begin with.
Thus we arrive at the paradox that with more accuracy in recognizing goals, luck may actually play a greater role because goals that are goals only barely (and the ones that therefore have less merit) are more likely to count. Loland has an example from short-distance running:
Still the victory is not based on merit alone. The chest that breaks the finishing line a few millimeters in front of a competitor is not only an outcome of a well planned race and deliberate tactics. One hundred of a second is beyond the margins within which a sprinter, perceptually and cognitively, can be in full control. The paradox, then, is that whereas the intention is to increase accuracy of performance evaluation and degree of meritocratic justice, finely tuned measurement technology seems to increase the degree of randomness.4
In the end one has to realize that football, just like many other sports, is a game of merit, but also of luck. So far, even ignoring the external circumstances, I have not heard of a good answer to the question of when it would be meritocratic enough.
In any case, when making decisions about these issues makes it unavoidable to enter the debate about which non-meritocratic elements are part of the game and which ones are not. These debates are inconclusive, and it is not necessary to enter them unless what is thought to be a problem seriously undermines the sport.
I do not think football is seriously undermined by the two incidents I mentioned. After an admittedly slow start, the 2010 World Cup offered great matches, and arguably the best teams found their way to the final games.
Unless convincing reasons are presented, it is not justified to adopt video technology as a way to make football more meritocratic while ignoring the existence of all the other non-meritocratic elements. I am not arguing that human referees are an essential part of the game, although it could be argued as well. What I am saying is that video replay technology is no different from any other method of making football more meritocratic, and if these other methods are ignored, the use of video technology should be similarly ignored. Football is fine as it is.
28 June 2010
Continuing my dialogue with the late philosopher Robert Nozick on the topic of ideology, this time I deal with the issue of extremism. The conclusions potentially apply to all kinds of extremism, from political to religious extremism. I focus in particular on how we are to distinguish extremism from having a principled position.
Nozick’s article “The Characteristic Features of Extremism”1 is a short and clear exposition of some of the typical characteristics of extremist positions and of people who hold such positions. Together they should come close to being a definition of extremism.
First of all, extremism is not extreme in any absolute sense, but only in relation to the rest of the distribution of ideas. Thus, a fascist is not an extremist in a society with a popularly supported fascist government, because in such a society fascist ideas are common and to be expected of people. However, in a liberal democracy, a fascist is more likely to be an extremist: he is opposed to several shared core principles of the society in which he lives.
Despite the fact that extremism is always relative, according to Nozick2 extremists do have much in common:
Nozick also outlines a typical extremist personality.3 For an extremist it is simple to switch to a completely different kind of extremism, as long as it is extreme. The idea is that they do not just happen to believe in ideas that just happen to be extreme, but instead they actively seek to be extreme in relation to the current distribution of views. They are often less concerned about how their views are extreme. Nozick writes:
Since extremists have come to distrust the conventional wisdom, as they call it, on the one issue that has seized their attention, they tend to conclude the conventional wisdom must be wrong on a whole lot of other issues as well.
While Nozick admits that he is not a psychologist and that this is simply a suggestion, the idea is interesting. It is a reversal of 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong, or what is called the “bandwagon fallacy” — the extremist thinks that the vast majority of people not only can be wrong but must be wrong.
I would perhaps add that this is not simply a question of psychology. Surely extremists would have reasons to support their belief, such as the idea that a degree of thought control is always necessary to maintain a stable government, and that because of this thought control the majority of people have false beliefs. But of course believing in such ideas may not be rational, and may just be a characteristic of the extremist personality.
Previously I wrote a brief defense of being ideological. What I meant is roughly what Nozick in his article calls having a principled position. He tries to distinguish extremism from a principled, non-compromising position in two ways.4
The first is that principled, non-extremist opposition to a view nevertheless tries to recognize what is good in that view, to understand it, and is also willing to listen to counter-arguments. The extremist instead labels the whole opposing view or ideology evil. Therefore dialogue is not possible with the extremist.
The second difference between extremism and principled opposition is that principled opposition lacks one of the features of extremism, that of spilling over. The extremist habitually adopts new extremist views and principles with relatively little consideration. Non-extremist opposition instead limits itself to what it considers the crucial principles.
These differences may not be as useful as they seem. Regarding the first one, it is easy enough to make thought experiments that lead into difficulties. Imagine a liberal activist jailed by a racist, totalitarian regime because of his support of free speech and because of his skin color. What kind of dialogue should the activist engage in with the regime, and which counter-arguments should he listen to? Just like it is not paranoia when they really are out to get you, it is not extremism to say that a completely immoral government really is immoral.
One option for Nozick would be to add an exception for being under the domination of a totalitarian regime, since the regime itself would refuse to participate in dialogue or listen to counter-arguments. Totalitarianism destroys the conditions for dialogue and rationality, and only naked force remains. Still, it would be preferable to distinguish those with a legitimate reason for being opposed to the regime from those who are simply extremists.
The second difference may be more helpful. Non-extremists generally have determinate convictions that are relatively few in number. They are committed to a few specific things and have no all-encompassing doctrines for how things should be done. The non-extremist has a certain economy of thought. He does not feel compelled to make his ideology answer every question or have a rule for every possible occurrence. In contrast, the views of the extremist do not form a structure with strict limits but are adopted on whim.5
The only problem with the second difference is that it requires knowledge of the personal history of the person. Unless you know how he came to adopt the views he has, you do not necessarily know if he is an extremist or not. Only in the most extreme of cases, when the extreme views are already numerous enough, would the difference become clear. It might still be difficult to recognize a principled person from an extremist only just getting started in his career of extremism.
19 June 2010
Previously I argued that ideologies cannot fail, given certain simple presuppositions. An ideology has to be at least minimally plausible, meaning that it should not be in direct contradiction with what we know about the world. An ideology could fail only in practice, as being unable to sustain a stable political regime. To fail, the ideology must have one or more core features that cause a regime representing the ideology to fail. Moral failure does not constitute failure in the sense I am talking about.
In “The Ideal and the Actual”,1 Robert Nozick argues that a “wise ideal will take account of the way it will get followed”: “if time after time an ideal gets institutionalized and operates in the world in a certain way, then that is what it comes to in the world”.2 This means that you cannot go on excusing an ideal if following the ideal has had the same bad effects every time. The ugly consequences of any ideal are not the whole story about that ideal, but they are part of that story.3
Nozick talks about ideals instead of ideologies, but I think his point becomes even stronger when we talk about political ideologies, because ideologies are more concrete and therefore leave less room for mistaken interpretations. Ideologies include ideals as well, however. I will talk as if Nozick was talking about ideologies, although naturally he might object to this.
I want to extract two ideas from Nozick’s short book chapter. The first is that an ideology that on the surface appears plausible is ultimately found to be incompatible with human nature. The idea is familiar enough: it means that something may be good in principle but does not work in practice.
I do not think the concept of human nature is useful in this respect, and Nozick does not seem to think so either. What human nature is is a matter of endless and perhaps mostly pointless debate. It is too difficult to determine exactly the absolutes involved, because (as Nozick himself acknowledges4) human nature is quite flexible and has been shown to permit many kinds of social organization, although some require more effort to maintain.
The second idea I take from Nozick is that an ideology may leave too much room for vulgarizations.5 Mistaken interpretations can then lead to disastrous consequences as people try to apply the ideology in practice. Nozick is right if he means to say that any good ideology in its explicit formulations has to minimize the unintended, harmful consequences that result from people trying to implement it in practice. A bad ideology leaves too much room for interpretations that cause significant harm. It might therefore be argued that this is a way for an ideology to fail: not being specific enough to rule out dangerously mistaken interpretations.
I need to reconsider what I wrote in the earlier entry. Although ideologies are abstract, as I wrote, I have to grant that they are not so abstract as to be innocent of the atrocities that take place under their banner. However, I am still not convinced that a serious ideology can conclusively fail. A problem with Nozick’s reasoning is that it seems that according to him, not just some but all ideologies fail: only some are more grave failures than others.
When Nozick implies that a political theorist should try to minimize the possibility of misinterpretations, I agree, but I would add that it is impossible even to come close to eliminating them entirely. And in this sense, all ideologies fail. The whole point in believing that ideologies can fail is that some of them do not fail: if all of them fail, then the criteria we use are too strict and ultimately meaningless.
I think any serious ideology is generally developed further to tackle the problems that become apparent in applying the ideology in practice. This has happened with both communism and capitalism, for example: communism (or socialism) became social democracy in Europe and capitalism became the New Deal in the US. The ideologies did not fail but adapted. Of course, after a few of such adaptations there is little left of the original ideology, which might be part of what Nozick is saying. In this sense, ideologies do not fail—but they do fade away, evolve, or get transformed into parts of new ideologies.
It is no easy thing to determine “what an ideal comes to in the world” (in Nozick’s words). Although I was too hasty in some of my earlier formulations, I still stand by my conclusion that it is more fruitful to compare ideologies in moral terms. I need to make that conclusion sharper by adding that the moral terms that I am talking about are deontological terms such as rights and obligations, since consequences are sometimes morally significant too.
5 June 2010
Niccolò Machiavelli seems to be in fashion. Great new material is appearing on the web, and two works are particularly worthy of mention: one is a translation of Machiavelli’s most famous play, and the other is a graphic novel about Machiavelli’s life.
Particularly outside Machiavelli’s native Italy, not everyone knows that the author of The Prince also wrote plays and poems in addition to political and historical works. Yet in his lifetime Machiavelli found success above all in the world of theater, as a playwright.
I have long been aware of a need for an online English translation of La mandragola (sometimes translated as The Mandrake, or The Mandrake Root), Machiavelli’s finest and best-known comedy. Apparently all the translations so far have been relatively recent and only available in book form, or whatever translation may have been freely available has not found its way to the web.
This changed when Emeritus Professor Nerida Newbigin of the University of Sydney made available her new translation of the work. It is based on Pasquale Stoppelli’s recent critical edition, and renders quite nicely even the colloquialisms of Messer Nicia and in general keeps the lively spirit of the original text.
The translation has already been useful to me personally, and I believe others will find it valuable both as a work of literature and as a research tool. For the original Italian text, please see my Machiavelli webliography.
I do not follow many web feeds myself, but this is something that I read religiously: one page at a time, Don MacDonald is posting his Machiavelli graphic novel. The complete story is around 170 pages long according to the author. Now at 29 pages, there are still lots of updates to come, and new pages are posted frequently.
Apart from the qualities of MacDonald’s beautiful watercolors, the story is also admirably well researched. Events in Renaissance history and Machiavelli’s life are seamlessly linked, and they are filtered through the relevant passages in the Florentine author’s works, including The Prince and the Discourses on Livy. And obviously the important historical characters, from the Medici to Cesare Borgia and Savonarola, appear as well.
31 May 2010
Many people think passion is an important thing in life. The idea is that you should learn to know yourself to realize what it is you want to do in life. Once you find out what you want to do you should throw yourself into it without reservation. In the end you will become very good at it, and you will be doing what you want, enjoying it and making a living doing it.
Leo Babauta of Zen Habits exemplifies this view that I will call passionalism:
I’m lucky — I’ve found my passion, and I’m living it. I can testify that it’s the most wonderful thing, to be able to make a living doing what you love.
I want to ask some critical questions about passionalism. Etymology is a good place to start. Etymology is not my main concern here, but it serves to highlight the difficulty in the passionalist view. In light of passionalism, it is surprising to find such meanings as “suffering” and “enduring” when you look at the etymology of the word “passion”. Should we suffer then, according to the passionalist view?
No. I believe that passionalists generally do not think being passionate about something means to suffer. They generally regard suffering as undesirable. What they mean is that to follow your passion is a way to realize yourself, to actualize your whole potential, to be the best you can be. There are thus two views on passion:
The difference between the passionalist view and the view of passion as suffering may not too great, however. It may be just that any kind passion motivates a person, but some people have success and others do not. The person who enjoys self-realization manages to overcome whatever difficulties there may be, while the passion of the suffering person drives him against insurmountable obstacles, and only the obstacles cause him to suffer. However, this is not a complete picture, as obviously it is also possible for suffering to be intrinsic to the passion: thus the idea of the suffering artist trying to give a form to his suffering in his art.
Whatever the full truth of the matter is, the two views or the two kinds of passion have something in common. On the passionalist view, a passion is—roughly—a strong want that moves you into doing something, and when you do it, it gives you immense satisfaction. On the second view, a passion is suffering that you have to endure. But on both views passion is something that you undergo.
On both views, there is no choice for the passionate person. You are not an active agent but an object of passion. It is not you who is in charge but the passion. The passionalist might respond that it is still your passion, but this would not be enough, as not everything that is your own is good for you, unless you think that your sweet tooth or back ache is good for you too.
With this in mind, another piece of etymological information comes as no surprise: passion is connected to passivity. In a sense, the person under the yoke of passion is a passive person. He may seem an active person in the sense that he is doing a lot of things, particularly unpleasant and heavy things. Although he does this things, he is still passive in the sense that a slave is passive: in relation to the slaveowner. Although the slave does many things, it is the slaveowner who is the active party between the two. The passionalist says you should be passive, a slave of your passion.
This reasoning is open to an objection. You can say that we never do things because we choose to, because (depending on how you want to put it) choices can only made on the basis of what we want: if a person does not want anything, he lacks the motivation to act and consequently does not act. In this you would be following David Hume, who thought that reason in itself lacks the capacity to motivate, and is only a “slave of the passions”.
You might be right in following Hume. But this would not help you defend the passionalist view. Hume’s point is a dry, philosophical point about the kinds of things that motivate us. He is only saying that all choices begin with an emotion.
The passionalist on the other hand cannot commit himself to this, because for him it is a meaningful question whether or not to follow your passion. For the passionalist, passion is about more than just emotions that you happen to have, but a normative concept. The passionalist believes that following your passion is the key to the good life. He is not saying (and in fact could not say) that we follow our passions anyway (which would be what Hume is saying)—he is recommending us to follow them.
Why is the passionalist recommending passion? I do not know. How is passion better as a source of motivation compared to other things like pleasure, wisdom and justice, for example? Is it?
The journal of Timo Laine (contact information). Cultural commentary from the perspective of a philosophy student in Helsinki.