Review of Amartya Sen's "Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny"

This book is interested in the question of human identity, its inherent multiplicity, and the choices that we make in regard to aligning ourselves with certain identities over others. We all have multiple identities, which Sen repeatedly points out. For example, he says of himself that "I can be, at the same time, an Asian, an Indian citizen, a Bengali with Bangladeshi ancestry, an American or British resident, an economist, a dabbler in philosophy, an author, a Sanskritist, a strong believer in secularism and democracy, a man, a feminist, a heterosexual, a defender of gay and lesbian rights, with a nonreligious lifestyle, from a Hindu background, a non-Brahmin, and a non-believer in an after-life" (p. 19). To what extent do these identities compete with one another? And in which ways are our senses of self and community vitiated when, instead of recognizing the fullness of all of these aspects, we recognize just one or two (for example, religion or nationality)?

Seeing the world as just sets of different religions imposes a "divisive power of classificatory priority" on the world which distorts and misshapes understanding of the people in it. When we point out that a terrorist is Muslim (or overemphasize that aspect of their identity), we fall into a trap of identify someone by just one identity - often the most inflammatory, controversial one. Suggesting that "not all Muslims are violent," which sounds like a helpful corrective measure, commits the same fallacy of associating one aspect of someone's identity - their religion - with their behavior. This is one of the fundamental mistakes that Samuel Huntingdon makes in his influential book "Clash of Civilizations." In referring to various regions as "the Christian world," "the Muslim world," or "the Hindu world," his conclusions are largely drawn from skewed perceptions of one aspect of a community's identity.

While Sen hardly touches on this explicitly, it is obvious that this can have important consequences for how the media covers news. In a time where even the most important stories get only a few minutes of coverage on a national broadcast, it is easy to see how the complexities of both individuals and communities are ignored. Historical misunderstanding can result just as frequently, as when the tradition of democracy, or religious toleration, is identified solely with Europe or the Occident. Sen discusses some of these just before the book starts to go into an irrelevant tailspin at approximately its halfway point.

These ideas are important. However, there isn't a lot here that most intelligent people who have considered these things couldn't have concluded for themselves. It's already more than a little obvious how detrimental this for people who consume a lot of news - which is what probably spurred many thoughtful people to think about this issue in the first place. Also, this book is about twice as long as it needs to be. The last sections of the book, about globalization and multiculturalism, are tangentially related to the book's thesis but really need another book of their own. Sen said early on in the book that he would emphasize the role of choice-making in the book, so more on social choice theory would have been appreciated, instead of the aimless wandering from topic to topic that is all the second half of the book provides. This would have been a good, if uncontroversial, article aimed at a more scholarly audience. There was no practical use in doubling its length to make a book. Unfortunately, this seems to be a common trait in Norton's "Issues of Our Time" series, as Kwame Anthony Appiah's "Cosmopolitanism" suffers from similar shortcomings.

Review of Hilary Putnam's "The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays"

[The above video is mostly a reading of the text below, with an occasional aside thrown in for good measure as they strike me as relevant.  I welcome questions, comments, or concerns about the material contained in this video.]

The first essay establishes that the fact/value distinction (a later incarnation of Hume’s “you cannot derive an “is” from an “ought” thesis) rests on a dubious positivist definition of “fact” that derives from sense impression. In the second, Putnam explains that the values that science assumes aren’t necessarily moral or ethical ones, but epistemic ones. Epistemic values like “coherence” and “simplicity” are assumed in the scientific pursuit, yet science continues to be thought of as wholly objective. John Mackie argued that words like “cruel” and “just” were simply words that described “natural facts,” instead of realizing that they cannot be used intelligibly without employing some kind of evaluative judgment. 

The third essay transposes this debate into the world of classical economic theory. This same debate found itself transposed into the field of economics ensconced within the framework of a Benthamist moral calculus, but were removed by the empiricist is/ought distinction (later, the work of the positivists.) Amartya Sen’s project is to reintroduce ethical concepts and norms (once so lauded by Adam Smith, but since having been forgotten) back into the discourse on classical economics without losing any of its original rigor. Sen realizes that people are motivated by non-self-interested motives, as well. In its place, Sen posits a capabilities approach which emphasizes a plurality of human rights, freedoms, and goals, instead of the poverty of utilitarian ethical monism.

Throughout the three lectures, Putnam carefully picks apart one of the most enduring shibboleths of modern philosophy. Like Rorty, with whom he shares many intellectual affinities, he has an explicit, self-conscious relationship with the analytic tradition. Unlike Rorty, however, he has not wholly eschewed that tradition. While he disagrees with many of its conclusions, he is able to use some of its assumptions and to break outside of the box of morally bankrupt positivism. 

The last part of the book contains five essays of in tangential relation to the three main lectures. “On the Rationality of Preferences,” one of the essays included in the collection, but not one of the three original lectures, is Putnam’s answer to an interlocutor who made a curious criticism of the paper that he presented. Putnam’s presentation considered a person who had two choices before them, A and B, neither of which the chooser preferred. Would it matter, he asks, if, instead of the chooser making the decision simply tosses a coin or gets a random person to make the decision for him? After all, they don’t have a preference, right? Most classically trained economists would assert that it didn’t matter who made the decision. In fact, that’s what the interlocutor pointed out. However, this essay, Putnam’s response, is a brilliant response defending the idea that, even though one might not prefer A to B, the ability to choose one’s own option engenders a kind of “dignity of the self” which economists have heretofore ignored.