“In particular, they rely on an exercise in three-card monte in which the surpluses Social Security has been running for a quarter-century don’t count — because hey, the program doesn’t have any independent existence; it’s just part of the general federal budget — while future Social Security deficits are unacceptable — because hey, the program has to stand on its own.”

His second point is that raising the retirement age to 70 (It’s already gone from 65 to 66 and is scheduled to rise to 67) might make sense for white collar workers (”the people who need Social Security the least”), but for the rest of America, the prospects of manual labor until age 70 may be a matter of life and death. Moreover, although “life expectancy at age 65 has risen a lot at the top of the income distribution,” lower-income workers have not seen the same rise. In other words, the changes being proposed to Social Security are likely to eliminate benefits for those who need them the most.

Given our research setting, several recent articles caught my eye. In “Plagiarism Is Not a Big Moral Deal,” Stanley Fish argues that stealing someone’s words is hardly the moral equivalent of stealing someone’s property, such as their car. Rather, “plagiarism is [a] breach of disciplinary decorum, not a breach of the moral universe.” In other words, plagiarism is a “learned sin,” one that “is learned in more specialized contexts of practice entered into only by a  few.” It is “an insider’s obsession,” where the insiders are mostly journalists, academics and scientists. Nonetheless, as Fish notes, for these insiders the consequences of plagiarism can be quite serious.

At the same time, another article in the New York Times suggests that plagiarism has become quite ubiquitous among students. It appears that authorship and originality are no longer all that meaningful to many students. Of course, as Foucault demonstrated in his essay “What Is an Author?,” the notion of an author “constitutes the privileged notion of individualization in the history of ideas, knowledge, literature, philosophy and the sciences.” As such, plagiarism depends upon an Enlightenment ideal of the individual, and a Western conception of intellectual property rights. By comparison, Ms. Blum “contends that undergraduates are less interested in cultivating a unique and authentic identity… than in trying on many different personas, which the web enables with social networking.”

In other words, a huge tension exists — between the “learned sins” of academic insiders and the “mashup” culture of self-expression now prevalent among many students. And yet, despite these tensions — or perhaps because of them — colleges and universities appear to be redoubling their efforts at curbing and controlling plagiarism. For instance, “To Stop Cheats,” the University of Central Florida has built a state of the art testing center — or what Foucault might have called a panopticon. Recently, the associate dean in charge of the center boasted that of 64,000 exams administered, only 14 cheating incidents were suspected.

Perhaps we should be relieved, or perhaps we should consider just what kind of society is required for such values work to remain dominant. As Foucault asked in Discipline and Punish: ”Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?” (p. 228).  He concluded it is not at all surprising: “The power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating” (p. 303). “It functions as a normative power… The judges of normality are present everywhere. We are in the society of the teacher-judge, the doctor-judge, the educator-judge, the social worker-judge… [E]ach individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects to it his body, his gestures, his behavior, his aptitudes, his achievements” (p. 304).

In short, values work is everywhere, calling out for heightened attention. “We must hear the distant roar of battle… of the power of normalization and the formation of knowledge in modern society” (p. 308).

The book consists of six lectures: four on “ethics without ontology” and two on “enlightenment and pragmatism.” Given my various research interests, I found the most profound and interesting parts of the book to be in essays 1, 4, and 5.

Essay 1: “Ethics Without Metaphysics.” This essay sets up Putnam’s next three essays.  On p. 24 he brings in Levinas: The foundation of ethics is my immediate recognition, when confronted with a suffering fellow human being, that I have an obligation to do something. No me, no ethics. No other, no ethics.  Thus, we can say that ethics is both personal and relational. To not feel the obligation is to not be ethical.

On p. 28, building on Dewey, he introduces the concept of “practical problems.” He interprets Dewey: Solving practical problems is the concern of ethics.

From here he turns to the issue of “controversiality” (pp 29-32). Solutions to practical problems are controversial — unless they are put into practice and succeed to the satisfaction of all those involved. In other words, problems cannot be solved in principle, only in practice, and even then, the solutions may “fail.” Indeed, even when a practical problem is successfully solved, there is still controversy as to whether the successful solution can be generalized to the next problem that seems similar. Even the “similarity” between problems is typically controversial!

Essay 4: “Ontology: An Obituary.” On p. 74 Putnam reprises quite quickly the “collapse of the fact/value dichotomy.” Valuings do not contrast with descriptions. There is an overlap between the class of valuings and the class of descriptions. As with solutions to practical problems (which are always ethical), ethical claims (i.e., valuings) are frequently controversial. But so are questions of fact (p. 75). In short, factual, descriptive and ethical valuings are controversial.

Some ethical questions are such that agreement is unlikely until such time as it can be demonstrated that we agree (p. 76). [Note the performative quality to ethical controversies.] And even in the case of success — i.e., cases where the problem is solved for now — questions may arise as to whether the same thing would work again the next time, or in the next case, etc.

If we try something in connection with a social problem and it works well, meaning to the satisfaction of those involved, those who object to such a solution in another situation are unlikely to concede that it will work again (pp. 76-77). In short, it is impossible to “verify” that something is the right thing to do, even when the success criteria are agreed upon, unless you have actually done it, and it has worked to everyone’s satisfaction. But even then, questions may remain about its ongoing applicability. This is a general feature of practical problems, that is to say, a general feature of ethical problems.

Essay 5: “The Three Enlightenments.” Lengthy quote from Dewey on the “common good” (p. 97). In short, the common good is only possible when it involves those whose benefits are intended. Again, more interpretation of Dewey as positing a kind of participatory democracy as integral to resolving social problems (pp. 99-100).

Although not invoked, recall Levinas’ ethics as implicating a me-other relationality. From this Putnam concludes that contra to Kant, Hobbes, etc., there can be no morality prior to sociality (p. 101). That is to say, moral beings do not confront the social world. Rather social beings confront the moral world, or perhaps, moral worlds. Although Putnam has supposedly done away with ontology, clearly he is saying there is a primacy of sociality over ethicality. But if that is the case, if I am social before I am ethical, then there are bound to be ethical lapses in social life. My capacity for ethical living grows out of my social life. The ethical response is a response to the confrontation of the other.

Today I finally decided to see if it could be fixed. It turns out Google has addressed this problem. First, read this Gmail blog post. For most users, this should be enough. However, in the case of my Penn State account, it took some digging to find the settings. In particular, for Penn State you will need to use authsmtp.psu.edu (and not smtp.psu.edu) as your outgoing mail server. Also, use port 587. However, contrary to the instructions in the Penn State knowledge base, do NOT check the box for SSL encryption.

For instance, Louisiana’s Republican Governor Bobby Jindal, normally an outspoken critic of government intervention, lately has been complaining he’s not getting enough support — “resources” in his terminology — from Washington. It seems in this case more government, not less is what’s needed.

At the same time, frustrations over BP’s inability to stop the flow of the oil led to a series of stories about the prospects of the government “firing” BP. However, talk of such a plan seems to have been largely silenced after Admiral Thad Allen observed “To push BP out of the way, it would raise a question: Replace them with what?” In other words, the government needs private industry too. In this case, without BP the prospects of stopping the flow of oil becomes even more bleak.

And so, we have a bizarre triangle. Local citizens need the government to save them from BP. The government needs BP to help them. Thus, BP is both the cause of the problem, and one hopes, part of the solution.  In other words, in the gulf we find that even a government-industry hybrid is incapable of either containing or stopping the spill. One lesson: suggestions that what the world needs is less government or less industry is to suggest that in the future we would be even less capable of responding to crises and disasters such as the spill. Of course the second lesson is largely an echo of the financial crisis. Regulation matters. And clearly different regulatory regimes are likely to result.

But in which direction should we go? Stepping back, what the BP oil spill seems to suggest is that the acid test for regulatory reform is not whether it strengthens government at the cost of industry or vice versa, but what is the effect on the entire hybrid and its configuration. Good legislation is not legislation that punishes business or rewards it, or strengthens government or weakens it. Good legislation requires reconfiguring the institutional arrangements in such a way that will strengthen the entire government-industry hybrid network. To merely trade off or shift between either government or industry as having the upper hand is to miss the point. Like the financial crisis, the BP oil spill suggests that what is needed is greater hybrid strength, resilience and coordination, not less. This is one more place where a sum zero game means we all lose, no matter which side wins.

Separate from these planned capacity additions, PJM already has 165 GW of generation capacity available. Coal, natural gas and nuclear power are the three largest sources, whereas wind is a minuscule 2.3 GW of the current capacity.

The first bargain was the Whitehall Lane 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley (California). Whitehall Lane is a perennially good cabernet. Normally it retails for between $35 and $45 a bottle, and so, for obvious budgetary reasons has not made too many appearance in my wine cellar since becoming a Ph.D. student. However, discounted to $19.99 a bottle, it is an absolute steal. Although 2004 was not a crowning achievement for Whitehall Lane, there is nothing disappointing about this wine. Expecting it would be worth every penny, I splurged and picked up a case — we have not been disappointed.

In some ways, my second bargain was both a bigger leap into the unknown, and yet, an even safer bet. The Rolf Binder 2004 “Hales” Shiraz Barossa Valley (Australia) normally retails in the $25 to $30 range, though you can find it discounted for $18 to $22. However, the state store was offering it for $7.99 a bottle. Robert Parker rated the wine 90 points, and described it as:

An outstanding wine of exceptional complexity and character. It was aged for 12 months in French and American oak; 10% of the latter was new. It offers an enticing bouquet of wood-smoke, earth, bacon, and blueberry. Supple-textured, plush, and friendly, it has gobs of flavor, excellent grip and length, and enough structure to evolve for 2-3 years. Drink it through 2016. (Source: Wine Advocate, August 2008 as cited on WiredForWine.com)

A Robert Parker 90 point wine for $8!?!? Despite never having tasted other vintages of Rolf Binder, I settled on 2-1/2 cases — enough in case it was good, not too much in case it wasn’t all that. Suffice to say I should have bought more like 5 cases. This is an amazingly complex and well integrated wine. It has a very lush mouth feel, a long finish, and lots of fine tannins. For $8!?!? Amazing. Also, as I know some people who are not huge fans of shiraz, it is worth mentioning that this wine feels more like a cabernet than a shiraz.

Cheers!