European plans to supplant the US in terms of foreign policy influence through the adroit application of soft power are now being thwarted by Iran months after Europe proclaimed success in getting Iran to sign the Additional Protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement, and to suspend uranium enrichment activities.
Much self-congratulation was in the air despite the ethereal nature of the victory. Victory over whom? Why the Americans, and their Hard Power strategy, of course. Considering that Europe would be within range of an Iranian intermediate-range missile long before America was ever threatened, we would assume that verifiable measures on the IAEA agreement and enforcement provisions would have been in the self-interest of the Europeans and a metric by which to guage success would have been a central condition of the agreement. Alas, the substance was less important than the symbolism.
The Anglo-French-German engagement in Iran has led to a sudden surge in confidence in the efficacy of European soft power and in Europe’s ability to forge a common foreign policy. This has led some to herald a far more definitive role for European diplomacy in conflict resolution. The French newspaper Liberation states: “Seen from Paris, the diplomatic efforts that helped to reach an agreement with Tehran must serve as a diplomatic strike force to seek political negotiated solutions in other regions of the world…. The European troika should, according to Paris, intervene to save the Middle East process.” Similarly, Le Point opines that the Iran initiative can serve “as a precedent in the delicate area of nuclear proliferation.”
What enforcement measures were included in the agreement? What stick will the Europeans use to encourage Iranian compliance? What harm comes to the Iranian regime if they renege on the agreement? Apparently, the Iranians felt secure in pursuing their nuclear ambitions and have breached their agreement with the IAEA for it is hard to identify the severe downside risk to them.
UN inspectors discovered designs for a centrifuge that can produce bomb fuel twice as fast as the machine the Iranians are currently assembling. The centrifuge designs were not reported by the Iranians, and constitute an apparent breach of their commitment to reveal all, although the significance of the finding is being played down by IAEA officials.
What was so compelling about the application of soft power that got the Iranians to agree to restrictions supervised by IAEA officials?
The negotiations were “very tense and difficult” and at one stage Mr Fischer threatened to walk out. The bargain struck in Tehran was that Iran would freeze its ambitious and extensive uranium enrichment activities in return for technology transfer for a civilian nuclear programme from Europe’s three biggest generators of nuclear power – Britain, France and Germany.
Well, having Mr. Fischer threatening to walk out must have put the fear of the Americans in the souls of the Iranians. Seeing how an agreement was finally reached, it seems that Mr. Fischer did come back to the table and flexed his soft power muscles. How well did he do? In exchange for a transfer of nuclear technology to Iran he got a promise from the Iranians to cease their enrichment activities.
What would be the consequences for the Iranians if they broke the promise? Why the Europeans would be upset, of course. How could anyone have foreseen the possibility of the bribed party not honoring the bribe? Perhaps the Europeans can put the genie back in the bottle and reclaim the nuclear knowledge they transferred to the Iranians. Hmm, maybe not. Perhaps, the Europeans can find solace with their phyrric victory.
One would think that after witnessing the successful negotiating strategy of Slobodan Milosevic (promise the moon, get what you want, break promise, act contrite, repeat as often as needed) the soft power proponents would have learned a few lessons.
Oh yes, the triumph of Soft Power still awaits a circumstance in which it can trump American Hard Power. This Iranian incident is a how-to guide of what not to do.
Posted by TangoMan at 10:39 PM | | TrackBack The Passion, indicators of box-office success?
The local art-house movie theater is selling advance tickets for The Passion.
This, in a town where the local bookstore does not carry Christianity Today or Christian Century, but does carry every obscure magazine about Buddhism. A town that supports 3 Jewish temples (18,000 people total). A town in the most secular state in the union. A town where I would hazard to guess that Dennis Kucinich could get 1/3 the vote.
If Hollywood is all about the band-wagon effect, let’s see after The Passion starts raking in it.
P.S. I saw the trailer before watching House of Sand and Fog, it was pretty good. No matter the theological and historical inaccuracies (yes Dienekes, they should be speaking some Greek), it seems like it has enough verisimilitude to carry you to a different time and place.
Posted by razib at 09:50 PM | | TrackBack Drop in Minority Applicants at UMich
Self-delusion is an almost universal character trait, and for many people a comfortable state to be in. I’ll opine that the prospect of confronting the reality of academic ill-preparedness is the root cause of a 23% drop-off in minority applications at the University of Michigan.
As this article points out:
The 23 percent decline in applications from blacks, Hispanics and American Indians came as the total number of people applying for space in the next freshman class dropped 18 percent, according to figures U-M released Monday.
“Obviously, we’re concerned that the applications from minority students are down more than the population as a whole,” U-M spokeswoman Julie Peterson said. Because the university still hasn’t made most of its decisions about whom it will actually admit, it’s too soon to say whether the change will lead to a less diverse class in the fall, Peterson said
Later in the article, Peterson states, “What students are worried about is, ‘Will I be welcomed and will I be going to a campus where I’m valued?’ ” I don’t see why the students wouldn’t be welcomed or valued unless they were perceived to have gotten an unfair leg up by admission through lowered standards. The unexamined question is whether the students are self-selecting against UMich because they know, in their heart of hearts, that without Affirmative Action, they won’t be admitted, so why confront the prospect of rejection. Instead the students may focus their ambitions on an institution that will admit them through a lowered standard on admission.
Also, unexamined as a cause of this decline in admission is the SES of the students. Perhaps increased fees, reduced aid, and weakened job market are disproportionately affecting minority students.
Another explanation might be sought in the success of other institutions in recruiting minority students and thus reducing the pool for the UMich. If the other institutions make the path towards admission easier, then the student will make the rational risk-minimization choice and avoid confronting their reliance on Affirmative Action.
It would be interesting to see whether the drop-off of applicants at UMich is found at other universities besides Ohio (which
also had a court mandated admission policy revision.) Is this occurring at UMich because of the AA court battle or simply as part of a larger trend?
Posted by TangoMan at 05:50 PM | | TrackBack Creation in the Schools (again…)The State Board of Education gave preliminary approval Tuesday to a 10th-grade biology lesson that scientists say could put “intelligent design” in Ohio classrooms.
Setting aside an impassioned plea from the National Academy of Sciences, the board voted 13-4 to declare its intent to adopt the “Critical Analysis of Evolution” lesson next month…LINK
Reportedly, the language for the lesson plan is coming from Wells’ “Icons of Evolution.” (Talkorigins.org site on the book here)
A lot of people on GNXP (probably rightly) see all this as a battle between good and evil. The forces of ignorance versus the forces science. The Church versus Galileo
I see it as a god-awful mess.
First of all let’s go over the problems on the Creationist side:
They’re wrong – and they want to teach their wrongness in the schools
That’s about it for them really.
Now for the problems with our side:
Science is about debate, not suppressing dissent. Practically, though, what goes on in the schools is not science, but indoctrination. Kind of goes against scientific ideals. Necessary, of course, but not all that ideologically pure.How do you reliably differentiate the kooks from the rational dissenters? That remains an unsolved problem for scientific institutions. More correctly, the practical solutions are not perfect, nor are they immune to inertia and bureaucracy. Creationists (rightly) jump on this.Consensus controls the universities (mostly) which makes consensus necessary for any widely spread scientific view not promulgated by another source. This is a practical state of affairs, but not a strictly scientific one. With religion in the mix, you have that other source promulgating the wackos.
What are the practical solutions to this mess? War with the believers in the press? Maybe. That’s what we are doing now.
Here are my personal goals for the teaching of evolution:
Make sure that anyone smart enough to understand the theory and do science with it (and who is interested in it) has access to the best arguments for evolution. And the best arguments against. They’ll muddle through, mostly.Make sure that the rest of the population does not believe anything so wacky that it negatively affects public policy
The first point, in my opinion, does not have much to do with high school. The second does. I suppose that it can be used as justification for the current Creationism v. Evolution school board wars. But frankly, I think that it is a matter of secularization levels, IQ, and literacy rates in society more than what is actually taught. IQ and literacy rates do not have much to do with public schools. Secularization can be promulgated in the public schools (and is), but I think the negative effects outweigh the positive.
Either way, the battle over lesson plans that we see now is of little consequence. Thankfully.
Posted by Thrasymachus at 07:24 AM | | TrackBack Changing the Subject…
I have long thought that there is a latent contradiction in the modern scientific world-view.
Consider the following propositions:
A. Adaptive traits of organisms have evolved by natural selection.
B. A trait can only evolve by natural selection if it affects the reproduction of organisms.
C. Any trait that affects the reproduction of organisms has causal efficacy in the physical world, that is, it makes a difference to the state of physical objects (including organisms themselves).
D. Some subjective sensations, such as pleasures and pains, are adaptive traits of organisms.
I think that most biologists would accept these propositions, but I will return to that. Assuming that they are accepted, it follows by elementary logic that:
E. Some subjective sensations have causal efficacy in the physical world.
But here is the latent contradiction in the modern scientific world-view, for that world-view includes the proposition:
F. No subjective sensations have causal efficacy in the physical world.
Propositions (E) and (F) are directly contradictory.
It may perhaps be doubted whether proposition (F) is really part of the modern scientific world-view. It is not a formula of any standard scientific theory, and there are respected scientists and philosophers of science, such as Karl Popper, John Eccles, and Roger Penrose, who have denied it.
But I believe that the predominant world-view of scientists, philosophers of science, and modern analytical (Anglo-American) philosophers would endorse proposition (F). Those, like Penrose, who reject it, rightly see themselves as challenging a prevailing orthodoxy. The majority of ‘orthodox’ thinkers can be classified in one of the following categories:
a) Radical behaviorists, who deny that subjective sensations exist at all;
b) ‘Dual aspect’ materialists, who maintain that subjective sensations are an aspect or property of physical objects, but that those objects behave purely in accordance with physical laws; and
c) Epiphenomenalists, who believe that subjective sensations are a by-product of physical events, and have no causal efficacy of their own.
All three positions imply acceptance of proposition (F). If their implications are rigorously pursued, they also entail:
G. Subjective sensations do not produce or modify other subjective sensations.
For a new or modified sensation would require a change of physical state, and it would contradict proposition (F) if this were produced by another subjective sensation.
It is worth dwelling for a moment on some of the more bizarre implications of propositions (F) and (G). Suppose that you feel a severe pain in your abdomen. You go to your doctor. You tell him that you have a pain in your abdomen. He asks you some questions about the pain and considers your replies. He palpates your abdomen and notes your reactions. He concludes, based on his training and experience, that you have appendicitis. He rings for an ambulance. The ambulance service follows his directions. The ambulance takes you to hospital, with its siren switched on. You arrive at the hospital, and are taken to the OR, where you are given an anaesthetic. A surgeon, using his surgical knowledge and his senses of sight and touch, removes your appendix. When you wake up, the acute pain has gone, but you feel a milder pain from the healing wound, which alerts you to any movements or pressures that might damage the wound and delay recovery.
On a common-sense view of the incident, subjective sensations of one kind or another have influenced the behaviour of yourself and others at every step. Most obviously, it is a subjective pain that has caused you to go to the doctor in the first place, but sensations of sight and hearing also play a major part in the story, for example in the use of a siren to warn other drivers out of the way. Memory and logical thought also seem to influence events, e.g. in forming the doctor’s judgement that you have appendicitis.
Yet on the ‘scientific’ view, as embodied in propositions (F) and (G), all of this is an illusion. Provided that all the physical events (including brain-states) were the same, then the story would run exactly as before, even if
none of the participants had any subjective sensations at all. Events would also be the same if physical states produced sensations wildy different from those we are accustomed to, for example if the sensations of appendicitis were ‘switched’ with those of sexual orgasm.
Propositions (F) and (G) therefore seem to defy common-sense, but this is not my main concern at the moment. My concern is their apparent conflict with propositions (A) to (D). Propositions (A) and (B) are themselves part of the scientific world-view. Proposition (C) is merely a terminological clarification. But proposition (D) is more debatable, and my next post will examine it more closely.
Before concluding this post, I should note that the main argument I have outlined is an old one. It is found for example in William James’s Principles of Psychology. But it seems to have been surprisingly little noticed or discussed in the literature on the ‘mind-body’ problem (for an exception see Poper and Eccles, The Self and its Brain, p. 74). I suspect that this is because until recently the great majority of philosophers have had no interest in evolution, or have been actively hostile to natural selection. This is beginning to change, and in the last decade or so there has been a great expansion of interest in ‘consciousness studies’. But from what I have read of this literature, it tends to be preoccupied with what I would call the ‘fancy end’ of the spectrum of mental events, such as human ‘self-awareness’ or even mathematical thought. I think this is the wrong place to start. But more on that later.