WEBVTT 00:01.270 --> 00:06.860 PROFESSOR: So our topic today is the general question of 00:06.860 --> 00:12.620 what sort of non-rational persuasion is legitimate for a 00:12.620 --> 00:17.190 government to engage in if we're willing to accept the 00:17.190 --> 00:20.220 kind of social contract argument that we were 00:20.220 --> 00:23.990 considering in the last few weeks of the course. 00:23.990 --> 00:28.350 So you'll recall that starting with the account of justice 00:28.350 --> 00:32.510 that's offered in Plato's Republic, and continuing with 00:32.510 --> 00:36.540 the account of the state of nature that we get in Hobbes, 00:36.540 --> 00:41.390 each of our authors has suggested that it is in our 00:41.390 --> 00:45.690 self interest, in a way that we would reflectively endorse 00:45.690 --> 00:51.250 governmental structures, to give up some of our freedoms 00:51.250 --> 00:55.680 in order to guarantee a certain sort of stability. 00:55.680 --> 01:00.910 But the sorts of constraints that we considered in the 01:00.910 --> 01:06.040 earlier discussions of this concerned explicit laws. 01:06.040 --> 01:12.130 They concerned ways in which we contract into regulations 01:12.130 --> 01:17.170 that we recognize as holding upon us, and that we endorse 01:17.169 --> 01:20.659 because we see the rational reason for 01:20.660 --> 01:23.030 contracting into them. 01:23.030 --> 01:28.150 The argument that Hobbes makes appeals to the notion of The 01:28.150 --> 01:32.970 Prisoner's Dilemma, which is a paradox of rationality. 01:32.970 --> 01:38.460 It's a problem that arises when self interests conflict 01:38.460 --> 01:42.550 in particular ways and interact with incentives in 01:42.550 --> 01:44.250 particular ways. 01:44.250 --> 01:47.410 What we looked at, at the end of last lecture, and what 01:47.410 --> 01:52.360 we'll look at in today's lecture are the ways in which 01:52.360 --> 01:55.350 human beings are complex. 01:55.350 --> 01:58.130 They have, as we know from our early lectures, not only 01:58.130 --> 02:01.330 reason but also parts of their soul which are affected by 02:01.330 --> 02:03.390 things other than reason. 02:03.390 --> 02:08.630 And that, too, turns out to have implications for what 02:08.630 --> 02:11.710 political structures end up being 02:11.710 --> 02:15.420 rational for us to endorse. 02:15.420 --> 02:20.370 In particular, what we'll look at in today's lecture, is on 02:20.370 --> 02:25.680 the one hand Plato's argument that in the ideal state there 02:25.680 --> 02:30.220 would be rather radical censorship of what sort of 02:30.220 --> 02:35.540 fictional representations were permitted, and Cass Sunstein's 02:35.540 --> 02:40.910 argument that one of the duties of the government is to 02:40.910 --> 02:47.090 establish norms that affect people implicitly in how it is 02:47.090 --> 02:50.440 that they structure their behavior. 02:50.440 --> 02:53.300 So in the context of a lecture on this topic it seems 02:53.300 --> 02:57.530 appropriate to begin with a couple of stories. 02:57.530 --> 03:02.770 True stories about false stories and their effects. 03:02.770 --> 03:07.450 So in 1992, right around the time when many of you were 03:07.450 --> 03:13.660 being born, there was also born on television a young boy 03:13.660 --> 03:19.530 who was born to a television character named Murphy Brown. 03:19.530 --> 03:23.690 Now that's not in itself newsworthy. 03:23.690 --> 03:26.560 What is newsworthy is that Murphy Brown at 03:26.560 --> 03:29.370 the time was unmarried. 03:29.370 --> 03:33.630 Indeed she didn't have a long-term partner. 03:33.630 --> 03:40.890 And the then-Vice President of the United States, Dan Quayle, 03:40.890 --> 03:47.410 famously gave a speech in San Francisco in 1992 at which he 03:47.410 --> 03:51.820 said, "Marriage is a moral issue that requires consensus 03:51.820 --> 03:54.150 and the use of social sanction. 03:54.150 --> 03:59.180 It doesn't help matters when prime time television has 03:59.180 --> 04:03.610 Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today's 04:03.610 --> 04:07.720 intelligent highly paid professional woman, mocking 04:07.720 --> 04:11.880 the importance of a father by bearing a child alone and 04:11.880 --> 04:16.300 calling it just another lifestyle choice." 04:16.300 --> 04:19.630 Now in fact Dan Quayle slightly misrepresented what 04:19.630 --> 04:21.830 happened on the show. 04:21.830 --> 04:25.940 Murphy Brown, though she lacked a long-term partner and 04:25.940 --> 04:29.710 did bear a child without the support of a second adult 04:29.710 --> 04:34.550 figure, didn't call it just a lifestyle choice. 04:34.550 --> 04:40.690 But he was correct in that the show did not go on to depict 04:40.690 --> 04:45.490 in any way what the costs were to Murphy Brown's life of 04:45.490 --> 04:48.780 having to reconfigure her life in a way that 04:48.780 --> 04:51.840 she became a caregiver. 04:51.840 --> 04:55.930 What's interesting, of course, is that this is a real person, 04:55.930 --> 05:00.410 Dan Quayle, the real Vice President of the real country, 05:00.410 --> 05:04.850 the United States of America, calling into question the 05:04.850 --> 05:11.010 imaginary birth of a child who was not in fact the child of 05:11.010 --> 05:13.490 the actress who played Murphy Brown -- 05:13.490 --> 05:17.160 in such a way that he saw it as eroding 05:17.160 --> 05:20.040 values that are important. 05:20.040 --> 05:27.130 Moreover, this debate hit the news in an extraordinary way. 05:27.130 --> 05:29.240 It was on the cover of Time. 05:29.240 --> 05:32.700 It was on the cover of the New York Post. "Dan rips Murphy 05:32.700 --> 05:36.770 Brown." The New York Daily News said, "Quayle to Murphy 05:36.770 --> 05:41.950 Brown: You Tramp!" The New York Times ran an article some 05:41.950 --> 05:47.070 months later when, in an act of enormous post-modern irony, 05:47.070 --> 05:51.590 Murphy Brown the character on television responded to Dan 05:51.590 --> 05:54.090 Quayle the actual Vice President. 05:54.090 --> 05:56.500 And the New York Times offered an article that began with the 05:56.500 --> 06:00.560 paragraph, "Almost everyone who watches television is 06:00.560 --> 06:03.780 aware that Murphy Brown responds tonight to Vice 06:03.780 --> 06:07.910 President Dan Quayle, who helped push family values to 06:07.910 --> 06:12.170 the forefront of the 1992 presidential campaign by 06:12.170 --> 06:15.120 criticizing the show's leading character last spring for 06:15.120 --> 06:17.730 having a child out of wedlock." That's 06:17.730 --> 06:19.650 story number one. 06:19.650 --> 06:20.890 Here's story number two. 06:20.890 --> 06:23.370 A little more recently. 06:23.370 --> 06:31.890 In 2002 the television show 24 had depicting the President of 06:31.890 --> 06:38.910 the United States a man of African descent. 06:38.910 --> 06:43.210 In 2007 that same show depicted the President of the 06:43.210 --> 06:46.140 United States as a woman. 06:50.390 --> 06:56.720 In 2008, as all of you know, the two leading candidates for 06:56.720 --> 07:00.420 the presidential nomination in the Democratic party were a 07:00.420 --> 07:04.920 man of African descent and a woman. 07:04.920 --> 07:12.640 And the commentators who look at elections, were commonly 07:12.640 --> 07:19.690 saying things like this blog from Newsweek says. 07:19.690 --> 07:24.260 What it points out is that the availability in fictional 07:24.260 --> 07:28.640 representation of a character who served as President and 07:28.640 --> 07:32.970 was of African descent or who served as President and was a 07:32.970 --> 07:39.770 woman, played some role in allowing actual citizens in 07:39.770 --> 07:40.890 the real world-- 07:40.890 --> 07:43.820 not imaginary people on TV-- 07:43.820 --> 07:49.240 to have conceptual space available for the possibility 07:49.240 --> 07:53.590 of there being a President of that kind. 07:53.590 --> 08:00.580 Now Dan Quayle and the commentators speaking about 24 08:00.580 --> 08:05.190 were, as you know from your readings for today-- 08:05.190 --> 08:09.590 channeling our friend Plato. 08:09.590 --> 08:14.280 Dan Quayle essentially said, if we want the guardians of 08:14.280 --> 08:17.690 our city, that is the citizens who are in a position to 08:17.690 --> 08:21.050 govern and select leadership, if we want the guardians of 08:21.050 --> 08:24.520 our city to think that it's shameful to be easily provoked 08:24.520 --> 08:25.840 into hating another-- 08:25.840 --> 08:29.690 read: shameful to bear a child out of wedlock-- 08:29.690 --> 08:34.200 "then we mustn't allow stories about the gods," says Plato-- 08:34.200 --> 08:37.950 stories about attractive characters on television says 08:37.950 --> 08:39.420 Dan Quayle-- 08:39.420 --> 08:43.550 "warring or plotting against one another." That is, 08:43.550 --> 08:47.700 engaging in the activity that we want to forbid. 08:47.700 --> 08:50.590 So when Plato says "if we want the guardians of our city to 08:50.590 --> 08:53.280 think that it's shameful to be easily provoked into hating 08:53.280 --> 08:56.940 one another, we mustn't allow stories about gods warring or 08:56.940 --> 09:01.500 plotting against one another," he's making an argument that 09:01.500 --> 09:06.500 Dan Quayle picks up on 2000 years later. 09:06.500 --> 09:10.290 And to the extent that our Newsweek commentators and 09:10.290 --> 09:15.290 others in their discussion of the 2008 presidential election 09:15.290 --> 09:21.000 were pleased to see an opening up of the range of candidates 09:21.000 --> 09:24.700 who were being taken seriously as potential leaders of this 09:24.700 --> 09:30.040 nation, they too were channeling Plato, who right 09:30.040 --> 09:33.590 after the remark that we just quoted, continues by saying, 09:33.590 --> 09:36.600 "If we're to persuade our people that no citizen has 09:36.600 --> 09:39.960 ever hated one another and that it's impious to do so, 09:39.960 --> 09:45.490 then that's what should be told in our story." That is 09:45.490 --> 09:49.710 stories, fictional representations, imaginary 09:49.710 --> 09:55.190 experiences that become part of the cultural conversation 09:55.190 --> 09:57.660 can provide role models that are both 09:57.660 --> 10:01.820 problematic and inspiring. 10:01.820 --> 10:07.260 Now the puzzle that this raises if we think only in 10:07.260 --> 10:12.590 terms of rationality is the following. 10:12.590 --> 10:17.030 How can something that we know to be fictional affect our 10:17.030 --> 10:20.350 actual behaviors and attitudes? 10:20.350 --> 10:26.760 It's not as if people watching 24 thought that David Palmer 10:26.760 --> 10:31.100 was actually the president of the United States. 10:31.100 --> 10:34.980 It's not that people watching Murphy Brown thought that the 10:34.980 --> 10:37.440 character played by Candice Bergen had 10:37.440 --> 10:40.090 actually had a child. 10:40.090 --> 10:44.150 People were profoundly aware that these were fictional 10:44.150 --> 10:45.990 representations. 10:45.990 --> 10:51.310 And even young children are remarkably good at separating 10:51.310 --> 10:54.020 pretense from reality. 10:54.020 --> 10:58.760 If you engage in an imaginary tea party with a young child 10:58.760 --> 11:04.410 where you pour imaginary tea into a series of cups out of 11:04.410 --> 11:09.610 an actually empty teapot, the children are perfectly ready 11:09.610 --> 11:13.240 to agree that the cups are full in the 11:13.240 --> 11:15.990 context of the pretense. 11:15.990 --> 11:20.500 But no child who is thirsty thinks that you can actually 11:20.500 --> 11:25.770 get something to drink lifting one of those up and bringing 11:25.770 --> 11:27.670 it to your mouth. 11:27.670 --> 11:31.990 If you engage in a game with a child where you make cookies 11:31.990 --> 11:39.730 out of Play Dough, children are shocked and upset if you 11:39.730 --> 11:44.540 actually try to bite into one. 11:44.540 --> 11:49.850 And adults, too, have the capacity to determine what's 11:49.850 --> 11:54.280 merely imaginary and what's actual. 11:54.280 --> 12:01.110 Well they have the capacity with one part of their soul. 12:01.110 --> 12:05.860 The response to the puzzle that gives rise to the 12:05.860 --> 12:09.530 concerns that Plato and Dan Quayle and our bloggers 12:09.530 --> 12:16.490 articulate, is that the way that fiction causes problems 12:16.490 --> 12:20.430 is by affecting the non-rational parts of the soul 12:20.430 --> 12:25.340 in ways that are not easily subject to rational regulation 12:25.340 --> 12:27.360 or control. 12:27.360 --> 12:31.040 Now this structure is already familiar to us from our 12:31.040 --> 12:33.570 general discussions of parts of the soul. 12:33.570 --> 12:39.460 We know from our lecture in January that if I stand on a 12:39.460 --> 12:44.120 glass surface above the Grand Canyon and look down beneath 12:44.120 --> 12:48.970 me and see the roaring Colorado River, though my 12:48.970 --> 12:54.080 rationality tells me that I am safe, the non-rational parts 12:54.080 --> 12:58.300 of my soul are affected by this visual stimulus in a way 12:58.300 --> 13:01.220 that causes me to tremble. 13:01.220 --> 13:06.100 And even if I tell you and convince you that what looks 13:06.100 --> 13:10.440 to be a box of kitty litter is in fact a box containing 13:10.440 --> 13:14.370 chocolate cake covered with coconut and Tootsie Rolls, 13:14.370 --> 13:19.140 though the rational part of your soul may believe me, it 13:19.140 --> 13:24.730 has a rather difficult time regulating the other parts. 13:24.730 --> 13:29.610 So too in the series of puzzles that we looked at in 13:29.610 --> 13:34.060 the context of the heuristics and biases tradition. 13:34.060 --> 13:38.300 If I present you with a choice where you're trying to get a 13:38.300 --> 13:42.470 red ball between a bowl that contains nine white balls and 13:42.470 --> 13:47.210 one red one, or a bowl that contains 92 white balls and 8 13:47.210 --> 13:50.740 red ones, through the rational part of your soul is 13:50.740 --> 13:55.070 profoundly aware that you have a 10% chance over here and an 13:55.070 --> 14:00.080 8% chance over there, it is nonetheless the case that if I 14:00.080 --> 14:03.290 put you under cognitive load in such a way that your 14:03.290 --> 14:06.750 rational part isn't in a position to make the decision, 14:06.750 --> 14:12.360 you will be drawn towards the bowl with more rather than 14:12.360 --> 14:16.040 towards the bowl with a higher proportion. 14:16.040 --> 14:19.890 Reason isn't sufficient to regulate the non-rational 14:19.890 --> 14:21.660 parts of the soul. 14:21.660 --> 14:28.080 And again in the context of our discussion of temptation, 14:28.080 --> 14:29.030 of weakness of the will. 14:29.030 --> 14:32.220 Here's Ulysses tied to the mast -- 14:32.220 --> 14:37.300 rationally committed to making his way past the Sirens but 14:37.300 --> 14:42.300 unable to do so without either blocking his ears to prevent 14:42.300 --> 14:45.740 himself from hearing the temptation or tying himself to 14:45.740 --> 14:51.230 the mast in such a way that he's unable to act on it. 14:51.230 --> 14:55.870 Plato says roughly this when he identifies what it is 14:55.870 --> 14:59.710 that's so problematic about fictional representations. 14:59.710 --> 15:06.190 He says, "the imitative poet appeals to a part of the soul 15:06.190 --> 15:09.820 that is inferior." Recall Plato has the hierarchy 15:09.820 --> 15:12.700 reason, spirit, appetite. 15:12.700 --> 15:16.910 "He arouses, nourishes and strengthens this part of the 15:16.910 --> 15:20.060 soul and so destroys the rational one. 15:20.060 --> 15:25.190 He puts a bad constitution in the soul of each individual by 15:25.190 --> 15:29.990 gratifying the irrational part of the soul." 15:29.990 --> 15:35.470 So the fact that we know something to be fictional with 15:35.470 --> 15:40.460 the reason part of our soul isn't sufficient to prevent it 15:40.460 --> 15:44.620 from affecting us in other ways. 15:44.620 --> 15:51.220 In particular, Plato is worried about three ways that 15:51.220 --> 15:55.020 fiction can problematically affect the soul. 15:55.020 --> 15:59.850 And, importantly, willing to forgive a fourth. 15:59.850 --> 16:04.210 And looking through the details of that will allow us 16:04.210 --> 16:08.500 to get a better sense of Plato's picture. 16:08.500 --> 16:12.470 So what is it that Plato is worried about when he's 16:12.470 --> 16:15.770 worried about fiction's capacity to affect the 16:15.770 --> 16:18.550 non-rational parts of the soul? 16:18.550 --> 16:22.260 He's worried first of all about that sort of thing that 16:22.260 --> 16:24.710 Dan Quayle was worried about. 16:24.710 --> 16:28.260 That observing a particular circumstance in a fictional 16:28.260 --> 16:32.080 representation and then reasoning about it as an 16:32.079 --> 16:38.839 available way of life may lead to mischosen role models. 16:38.840 --> 16:43.770 He's worried even more profoundly when we observe 16:43.770 --> 16:47.850 something in a fictional context and because we 16:47.850 --> 16:52.890 explicitly recognize it as fictional, allow ourselves to 16:52.890 --> 16:57.290 respond to it in a way different than we would if it 16:57.290 --> 17:02.810 were actual but such that it affects us profoundly 17:02.810 --> 17:07.530 emotionally in a way that changes our attitudes of 17:07.530 --> 17:11.150 approval or disapproval. 17:11.150 --> 17:14.480 What he's not worried about-- 17:14.480 --> 17:16.420 and this will be crucial to the larger 17:16.420 --> 17:18.520 argument that I'm making-- 17:18.520 --> 17:21.740 is playful imitation. 17:21.740 --> 17:27.150 Cases where not just at the level of rationality, but also 17:27.150 --> 17:32.580 with regard to the parts of our response system that 17:32.580 --> 17:38.590 aren't subject to rational regulation, we engage with the 17:38.590 --> 17:42.960 material somehow at a distance. 17:42.960 --> 17:48.860 There is available to us, recognizes Plato, a capacity 17:48.860 --> 17:51.890 for playful imitation. 17:51.890 --> 17:55.820 And it's the contrast between this and the fourth, the thing 17:55.820 --> 17:59.280 that Plato finds most problematic, that will help us 17:59.280 --> 18:02.480 get to the heart of Plato's picture. 18:02.480 --> 18:03.580 Because what's most 18:03.580 --> 18:05.910 problematic on Plato's picture-- 18:05.910 --> 18:08.370 and we'll give some contemporary analogues of this 18:08.370 --> 18:09.840 in a moment-- 18:09.840 --> 18:16.070 are cases where imitation of imaginary figures plus 18:16.070 --> 18:21.520 habituation to that mode of behavior leads to what 18:21.520 --> 18:25.730 Aristotle warns us so profoundly against: a 18:25.730 --> 18:31.550 misguided repertoire of automatic responses. 18:31.550 --> 18:36.010 So in order to make sense of this rather subtle argument of 18:36.010 --> 18:41.160 Plato, it's helpful for us to take a step back and remember 18:41.160 --> 18:45.020 where it is situated in the argument of the 18:45.020 --> 18:47.760 Republic as a whole. 18:47.760 --> 18:52.050 So you'll remember that at the very beginning of the 18:52.050 --> 18:58.770 semester, back in January, we started off by reading the 18:58.770 --> 19:04.340 opening pages of book two of Plato's Republic in which the 19:04.340 --> 19:09.590 character Glaucon, in alliance with his brother Adeimantus, 19:09.590 --> 19:12.960 challenges Socrates to answer the question, why 19:12.960 --> 19:15.620 should we be just? 19:15.620 --> 19:20.920 And Glaucon and Adeimantus together present three kinds 19:20.920 --> 19:27.240 of arguments, three kinds of contentions in favor of the 19:27.240 --> 19:32.940 view that justice is not something that we engage in 19:32.940 --> 19:34.840 for intrinsic reasons, 19:34.840 --> 19:38.030 but only something that we engage in because as a matter 19:38.030 --> 19:41.860 of contingency it happens to be instrumentally valuable. 19:41.860 --> 19:46.130 Famously, Glaucon gives an argument categorizing justice 19:46.130 --> 19:49.910 into the kind of good that we value only because of its 19:49.910 --> 19:53.670 reputational benefits and goes on to offer something like a 19:53.670 --> 19:57.240 Prisoners' Dilemma analysis of justice being everybody's 19:57.240 --> 19:59.800 second-best choice. 19:59.800 --> 20:04.070 He then presents a fictional story -- 20:04.070 --> 20:07.620 the story of the ring of Gyges followed by the story of the 20:07.620 --> 20:09.010 pair of statues -- 20:09.010 --> 20:13.640 which is meant to persuade in a different way. 20:13.640 --> 20:18.620 And finally, Adeimantus points out a continuity between 20:18.620 --> 20:21.080 what's represented in the context of the fictional 20:21.080 --> 20:23.950 stories and what's represented in the 20:23.950 --> 20:28.230 context of common sayings. 20:28.230 --> 20:31.780 Where does the argument that Socrates 20:31.780 --> 20:35.450 provides back then begin? 20:35.450 --> 20:40.410 Does Socrates respond directly to one and two and three? 20:40.410 --> 20:43.420 To the three rather precise arguments that Glaucon and 20:43.420 --> 20:45.590 Adeimantus have presented? 20:45.590 --> 20:46.740 No. 20:46.740 --> 20:52.220 What he does is to introduce the larger framework for 20:52.220 --> 20:55.990 thinking about these questions, the analogy between 20:55.990 --> 20:58.100 the person and the city. 20:58.100 --> 21:01.600 A discussion subsequently in Book Two that we didn't read 21:01.600 --> 21:04.120 of two kinds of cities there might be. 21:04.120 --> 21:06.940 And then ultimately in the context of Book Four, he 21:06.940 --> 21:11.340 introduces the three parts of the city and the three parts 21:11.340 --> 21:12.840 of the soul. 21:12.840 --> 21:17.220 There he says that just as in the ideal city there are 21:17.220 --> 21:21.360 guardians and soldiers and workers, so too in the 21:21.360 --> 21:26.110 individual, there is reason, spirit and appetite. 21:26.110 --> 21:30.770 And you may remember back when there was so much snow on the 21:30.770 --> 21:34.820 ground that there was no way to represent humanity other 21:34.820 --> 21:39.260 than in the form of a snowman, that we looked at this 21:39.260 --> 21:41.640 parallel in some detail. 21:41.640 --> 21:45.570 We looked at the way in which the smallest directive part of 21:45.570 --> 21:48.210 the soul is reason. 21:48.210 --> 21:49.510 The middle is spirit. 21:49.510 --> 21:50.660 The bottom is appetite. 21:50.660 --> 21:56.410 And that corresponding to these auxiliaries, soldiers 21:56.410 --> 21:59.340 and guardians. 21:59.340 --> 22:05.130 Now in order to see what's going on in the discussion in 22:05.130 --> 22:09.980 Books Three and Four that we read for today about the 22:09.980 --> 22:13.680 censorship of poetry and the discussion in Book Ten about 22:13.680 --> 22:17.930 the censorship of poetry, we need to recognize something 22:17.930 --> 22:23.630 really extremely interesting about what happens 22:23.630 --> 22:26.150 next in Book Two. 22:26.150 --> 22:29.580 So remember, we have Glaucon's challenge, why 22:29.580 --> 22:31.430 should we be just? 22:31.430 --> 22:35.500 And Socrates' rather bizarre answer, which involves the 22:35.495 --> 22:40.665 invocation of the city-state analogy. 22:40.670 --> 22:47.390 What happens next is that Socrates goes on to provide an 22:47.390 --> 22:55.800 account of how it is that the guardians should be educated. 22:55.800 --> 23:01.890 And the kind of education that he is concerned with is the 23:01.890 --> 23:09.420 education of the non-rational parts of the guardians' soul. 23:09.420 --> 23:16.280 What's going on here is Plato's recognition that, 23:16.280 --> 23:22.940 given the picture he has of the state, just as "argument 23:22.940 --> 23:26.690 alone," as Aristotle would say, "is not enough to make 23:26.690 --> 23:30.790 men good:" rather we must cultivate in them certain 23:30.790 --> 23:33.300 kinds of habits. 23:33.300 --> 23:36.690 So too suggests Plato, by putting the education of the 23:36.690 --> 23:42.000 guardians immediately after the discussion of the nature 23:42.000 --> 23:47.830 and value of justice, so too is it crucial in thinking 23:47.830 --> 23:52.900 about the structure of the state to think not only about 23:52.900 --> 23:55.540 what laws look like-- 23:55.540 --> 23:58.990 that which regulates by means of reason. 23:58.990 --> 24:05.100 But also what non-rational influences look like. 24:05.100 --> 24:10.560 So, says Plato, turning to the education of the guardians, 24:10.560 --> 24:15.180 the very first question we need to ask when we think 24:15.180 --> 24:19.010 about what the ideal state looks like is the question, 24:19.010 --> 24:23.370 what does the early education, the cultivation of appropriate 24:23.370 --> 24:27.000 spirit and appetite in the guardians look like? 24:27.000 --> 24:34.010 And only once that is in place are we in a position to turn 24:34.010 --> 24:38.190 to that which is most valorized by Plato in his 24:38.190 --> 24:42.660 discussion, the cultivation of reason. 24:42.660 --> 24:45.260 So let's hear exactly what Plato has to 24:45.260 --> 24:48.010 say about early education. 24:48.010 --> 24:51.030 And in pointing this out to you, I want to remind you of 24:51.030 --> 24:55.810 something that I mentioned last lecture about the Nozick 24:55.810 --> 24:57.770 and the Rawls. 24:57.770 --> 25:01.360 You'll recall that I mentioned to you that in the entire 25:01.360 --> 25:06.500 index of A Theory of Justice and in the entire index of 25:06.500 --> 25:11.110 Anarchy, State, and Utopia, there are two 25:11.110 --> 25:14.080 references to children. 25:14.080 --> 25:19.970 There are basically no discussions of education, 25:19.970 --> 25:25.970 whereas the very first thing that Plato starts with in his 25:25.970 --> 25:30.070 discussion of the ideal state is this. 25:30.070 --> 25:33.780 For the guardians, he asks, what will their education be? 25:33.775 --> 25:38.485 "You know, don't you, that the beginning of any process is 25:38.490 --> 25:39.510 most important. 25:39.510 --> 25:42.570 Especially for anything young and tender. 25:42.570 --> 25:47.400 It's at that time that it is most malleable and takes on 25:47.400 --> 25:50.680 any pattern one wishes to impress on it. 25:50.680 --> 25:54.380 Shall we carelessly allow the children to hear any old 25:54.380 --> 25:58.240 stories and to take beliefs into their souls that are 25:58.240 --> 26:02.390 opposite to the ones we think they should hold when they are 26:02.390 --> 26:06.450 grown up?" And, this being a Socratic dialogue, his 26:06.450 --> 26:11.340 interlocutor says, "We certainly won't." And Socrates 26:11.340 --> 26:14.030 continues, "Then we must first of all 26:14.030 --> 26:17.210 supervise the story tellers. 26:17.210 --> 26:19.820 We'll select their stories whenever they are fine or 26:19.820 --> 26:23.280 beautiful and reject them when they aren't. 26:23.280 --> 26:26.940 Nurses and mothers will shape their children's souls with 26:26.940 --> 26:31.340 their stories much more than they shape their bodies with 26:31.340 --> 26:33.910 their handling." 26:33.910 --> 26:40.590 There was recently a conversation about this 26:40.590 --> 26:49.700 familiar character, Mister Cookie Monster, who, in 26:49.700 --> 26:56.110 keeping with remarks like the one Socrates just made, began 26:56.110 --> 27:03.770 singing songs like, "A Cookie is a Sometimes Thing" and 27:03.770 --> 27:11.900 began appearing in videos about healthy foods. 27:11.900 --> 27:16.050 It is the recognition that early narratives play a 27:16.050 --> 27:22.970 strangely formative role in the attitudes of young people 27:22.970 --> 27:29.750 that would lead to this sort of change. 27:29.750 --> 27:34.490 So Plato's first concern is the one that I identified. 27:34.490 --> 27:38.290 The idea that you will be presented with a role model, 27:38.290 --> 27:42.510 whom you will problematically accept as a 27:42.510 --> 27:45.620 reasonable way of existence. 27:45.620 --> 27:48.680 When the poets tell stories, he says, where "heroes do 27:48.680 --> 27:52.060 terrible and impious deeds," these stories are harmful to 27:52.060 --> 27:53.470 the people who hear them. 27:53.470 --> 27:58.840 For "everyone will be ready to excuse himself when he is bad 27:58.840 --> 28:01.010 if he is persuaded that similar things have 28:01.010 --> 28:03.020 been done by heroes. 28:03.020 --> 28:08.760 For that reason, we must put a stop to such stories lest they 28:08.760 --> 28:14.390 produce in youth a strong inclination" to do bad things. 28:14.390 --> 28:18.800 If it's available to you to say, here's a character-- 28:18.800 --> 28:20.760 real or imaginary-- 28:20.760 --> 28:26.400 who behaved in a particular way, says Plato, you are at 28:26.400 --> 28:32.850 risk of viewing your behavior through that light. 28:32.850 --> 28:39.330 Even more dangerous, however, is the fact it is possible 28:39.330 --> 28:43.350 because of our complicated relation to fiction, to 28:43.350 --> 28:50.070 respond to something imaginary in a way just different enough 28:50.070 --> 28:57.070 to distort our experience but just similar enough to affect 28:57.070 --> 28:59.680 us implicitly. 28:59.680 --> 29:05.080 "Listen and consider," says Plato famously in Book Ten, 29:05.080 --> 29:09.680 "when even the best of us hear Homer or some other tragedian 29:09.680 --> 29:13.200 imitating one of the heroes or making a long lamenting speech 29:13.200 --> 29:16.020 or beating his breast, we enjoy it. 29:16.020 --> 29:18.090 We give ourselves up to following it. 29:18.090 --> 29:21.690 We sympathize with the hero and we take his suffering 29:21.690 --> 29:27.870 seriously." And we do so, says Socrates, even when that runs 29:27.870 --> 29:32.470 counter to how it is that on reflection we think we ought 29:32.470 --> 29:33.800 to behave. 29:33.800 --> 29:36.650 "When one of us," he continues, "suffers a private 29:36.650 --> 29:39.630 loss, you realize the opposite happens. 29:39.630 --> 29:43.810 We pride ourselves if we're able to master our grief. 29:43.810 --> 29:47.720 Is it right to look at someone behaving in a way we would 29:47.720 --> 29:53.880 consider unworthy and shameful and enjoy and praise it rather 29:53.880 --> 29:59.430 than being disgusted by it?" And he goes through and runs 29:59.430 --> 30:03.250 with another series of emotions about this. 30:03.250 --> 30:08.650 He says, just as we can do this for sadness, so too we 30:08.650 --> 30:12.290 appreciate in the context of fiction buffoonish humor. 30:12.290 --> 30:16.880 We appreciate in the context of fiction certain kinds of 30:16.880 --> 30:19.120 outrageous behavior. 30:19.120 --> 30:27.110 But we are, he says, exactly the wrong distance to be safe. 30:27.110 --> 30:32.680 Our relation to fiction in this regard is paradoxical. 30:32.680 --> 30:37.330 On the one hand, there is sufficient difference between 30:37.330 --> 30:43.760 fiction and reality that we let our emotions run loose. 30:43.760 --> 30:47.450 Reason says: it's just imagination. 30:47.450 --> 30:50.390 It doesn't matter how I respond to it. 30:50.390 --> 30:52.390 This isn't reality. 30:52.390 --> 30:57.690 This isn't reflective of who I. Am But to the extent that 30:57.690 --> 31:02.460 there is sufficient similarity between the two cases, to the 31:02.460 --> 31:06.250 extent that the distancing happens only at the level of 31:06.250 --> 31:11.120 reason, there is a risk of contagion. 31:11.120 --> 31:16.020 And we can see that perhaps most profoundly by contrasting 31:16.020 --> 31:20.580 the sort of cases that Plato is worried about with the sort 31:20.580 --> 31:25.100 of cases that he is ostensibly not. 31:25.100 --> 31:30.220 So in Book Three Plato concedes that there are 31:30.220 --> 31:37.990 certain contexts in which it seems to be OK to engage with 31:37.990 --> 31:41.180 imagination, to engage with fiction. 31:41.180 --> 31:44.900 He writes, when he-- he's now speaking of the guardians-- 31:44.900 --> 31:48.450 comes upon a character unworthy of himself, he'll be 31:48.450 --> 31:51.780 unwilling to make himself seriously resemble the 31:51.780 --> 31:53.770 inferior character. 31:53.770 --> 31:59.410 Rather, he'll be "ashamed to do something like that unless 31:59.410 --> 32:06.390 it is in play." And it does seem-- 32:06.390 --> 32:08.010 and it's an extremely interesting 32:08.010 --> 32:10.640 fact about human beings-- 32:10.640 --> 32:17.100 that we are capable in some contexts of taking a genuinely 32:17.100 --> 32:19.940 play stance. 32:19.940 --> 32:26.180 In my section, when I played prisoners' dilemma games, the 32:26.180 --> 32:29.250 poor freshman who played against me-- who's seated here 32:29.250 --> 32:31.040 in the third row-- 32:31.040 --> 32:35.080 didn't understand that I was playing for play, which meant 32:35.080 --> 32:39.110 that I was playing for real, which meant that I defected 32:39.110 --> 32:42.330 every single round. 32:42.330 --> 32:45.850 And she lost a lot of money and I gained a lot. 32:45.850 --> 32:53.380 Now in so doing, it is my sense that I had removed 32:53.380 --> 32:58.780 myself from a domain where contagion was a risk. 32:58.780 --> 33:02.550 That not just at the level of thinking about my engagement, 33:02.550 --> 33:07.650 but even in the engagement itself there was a sort of 33:07.650 --> 33:10.230 ironic distance. 33:10.226 --> 33:15.756 Some fictional representations cause us to bear that to at 33:15.760 --> 33:18.980 least part of their content. 33:18.980 --> 33:23.960 In Monty Python, when you watch Sir Lancelot chop off 33:23.960 --> 33:27.650 the arms and then the legs of the Black Knight, who is 33:27.650 --> 33:31.080 leaping around bleeding, it is not-- 33:31.080 --> 33:36.710 I take it-- the case that there is even a small risk of 33:36.710 --> 33:42.000 contagion to actual cases of lost limbs. 33:42.000 --> 33:45.820 But rather that a certain kind of playful 33:45.820 --> 33:49.820 stance is being taken. 33:49.820 --> 33:55.200 At least that is until it is disrupted. 33:55.199 --> 34:01.139 I was, for very good reason, taken to task on the feedback 34:01.139 --> 34:06.349 page by one of the students in this class for presenting 34:06.350 --> 34:10.880 playfully in lecture, in the context of our discussion of 34:10.880 --> 34:16.610 punishment, an example of somebody who aimed to shoot 34:16.610 --> 34:22.890 somebody and failed or succeeded at his aim on a day 34:22.890 --> 34:27.680 after there had been a shooting in New Haven. 34:27.680 --> 34:33.430 Sometimes the reality that surrounds a situation makes it 34:33.430 --> 34:35.460 almost impossible -- 34:35.460 --> 34:40.550 because of the way in which it permeates our non-rational 34:40.550 --> 34:41.840 responses -- 34:41.840 --> 34:46.750 makes it almost impossible for us to take a playful stance. 34:46.750 --> 34:51.120 But the fact that we're able to move in and out of this 34:51.120 --> 34:55.380 attitude is, I think, one of the most perplexing and 34:55.380 --> 34:59.410 interesting facts about human beings. 34:59.410 --> 35:04.130 What's undeniable is that in addition to being able to 35:04.130 --> 35:09.370 engage in this sort of distant imitation, this sort of 35:09.370 --> 35:15.740 playful, non-habituating copying, we are also capable 35:15.740 --> 35:20.690 of engaging in imitation that gives rise to habituation. 35:20.690 --> 35:23.650 So, Plato writes, "Our guardians must imitate from 35:23.650 --> 35:27.580 childhood what is appropriate to them." Namely, people who 35:27.575 --> 35:30.885 are "courageous, self-controlled and pious. 35:30.890 --> 35:34.460 They mustn't be clever at doing shameful actions, lest 35:34.460 --> 35:36.450 from enjoying the imitation they come 35:36.450 --> 35:38.180 to enjoy the reality. 35:38.180 --> 35:42.280 Or haven't you noticed that imitations practiced from 35:42.280 --> 35:47.190 youth become part of nature and settle into habits of 35:47.190 --> 35:53.300 gesture, voice and thought?" Crazy? 35:53.300 --> 35:57.340 Well, here's an article from last week's New York Times 35:57.340 --> 36:02.810 discussing the video game Madden NFL 12. 36:02.812 --> 36:07.432 Do any of you play this online game? 36:07.430 --> 36:08.670 Excellent. 36:08.670 --> 36:15.190 So what is the feature of Madden NFL 12 that struck the 36:15.190 --> 36:18.760 New York Times as interesting? 36:18.760 --> 36:21.620 It was this. 36:21.620 --> 36:27.440 In the new version of Madden NFL 12, a player who gets a 36:27.440 --> 36:31.770 concussion is automatically eliminated from play. 36:31.770 --> 36:34.810 "Ever since the seriousness of concussions became apparent on 36:34.810 --> 36:38.220 the national scale," reads this article from April 2, 36:38.220 --> 36:40.620 "the primary message for young football players -- if you get 36:40.620 --> 36:43.110 a concussion get off the field for the rest of the day-- 36:43.110 --> 36:45.950 has been one of the most difficult for youngsters to 36:45.950 --> 36:47.770 accept and execute. 36:47.770 --> 36:52.870 That reality will soon be aided by fantasy," -- it's 36:52.870 --> 36:54.890 like it's channeling Plato -- 36:54.890 --> 36:58.730 "Madden NFL 12, the coming version of the eerily 36:58.730 --> 37:02.090 true-to-life NFL video game played by millions of gamers, 37:02.090 --> 37:04.760 will be realistic enough, not only" it says, "to show 37:04.760 --> 37:07.390 players receiving the concussions, but also to show 37:07.390 --> 37:11.420 that any player who sustains one is sidelined for the rest 37:11.420 --> 37:14.290 of the game, no exceptions." 37:14.290 --> 37:21.140 So fantasy in the aid of social regulation. 37:21.140 --> 37:24.440 Here's another example. 37:24.440 --> 37:32.310 How does the US military train soldiers for the battlefield? 37:32.310 --> 37:35.710 Some of what it does is obviously to cultivate their 37:35.710 --> 37:39.610 bodies in such a way that they have the strength and stamina 37:39.610 --> 37:42.670 to engage in certain sorts of behaviors. 37:42.670 --> 37:47.900 But one of the primary modes of training is 37:47.900 --> 37:51.480 through video games. 37:51.480 --> 37:59.160 So here is a group of soldiers playing a game that was 37:59.160 --> 38:03.150 initially just used as a part of a recruiting video for the 38:03.150 --> 38:06.440 US army, a recruiting tool called America's Army. 38:06.440 --> 38:09.620 And subsequently got developed into a training tool for 38:09.620 --> 38:11.570 soldiers themselves. 38:11.570 --> 38:14.760 Here's a group of soldiers engaging 38:14.760 --> 38:17.500 in video game practice. 38:17.500 --> 38:20.840 And here's an article in the Washington Post 38:20.840 --> 38:23.030 from a few years ago. 38:23.030 --> 38:27.880 "Virtual reality play prepares soldiers for real war. 38:27.880 --> 38:31.520 One blistering afternoon in Iraq while fighting insurgents 38:31.520 --> 38:36.550 in the northern town of Mosul, Sgt. Sinkway Sualez opened 38:36.550 --> 38:39.570 fire with his 50-caliber. 38:39.570 --> 38:43.200 That was only the second time, he says, that he ever shot an 38:43.200 --> 38:46.740 enemy, a human enemy. 38:46.740 --> 38:49.340 'It felt like I was in a big video game,' he said. 'It 38:49.340 --> 38:50.860 didn't even faze me, shooting back. 38:50.860 --> 38:53.940 It was just a natural instinct. 38:53.940 --> 38:57.160 Boom, boom, boom,' remembers Sualez, a fast-talking 38:57.160 --> 38:59.500 deep-voice, barrel-chested 29-year-old from 38:59.500 --> 39:00.730 Chesterfield, Virginia. 39:00.730 --> 39:04.490 He was a combat engineer in Iraq for nearly a year. 39:04.490 --> 39:07.050 And Sualez continues, 'the insurgents were firing from 39:07.050 --> 39:08.260 the other side the bridge. 39:08.260 --> 39:10.940 We called in a helicopter for an airstrike. 39:10.940 --> 39:13.100 I couldn't believe I was seeing this. 39:13.100 --> 39:14.830 It was like Halo. 39:14.830 --> 39:17.720 It didn't seem real. 39:17.720 --> 39:20.670 But it was real.'" 39:20.670 --> 39:26.700 And later in the article, the reporter goes on to quote an 39:26.700 --> 39:31.100 Army official from the office of Defense Modeling and 39:31.100 --> 39:35.790 Simulation who says, "The technology in games has 39:35.790 --> 39:41.750 facilitated a revolution in the art of warfare. 39:41.750 --> 39:44.400 When the time came for him"-- 39:44.400 --> 39:45.340 meaning Sualez-- 39:45.340 --> 39:49.200 says this officer, "to fire his weapon he was ready to do 39:49.200 --> 39:51.880 that and capable of doing it. 39:51.880 --> 39:56.720 His experience leading up to that time through the 39:56.720 --> 40:00.540 on-the-ground training and the playing of Halo and whatever 40:00.540 --> 40:04.510 else, enabled him to execute. 40:04.510 --> 40:07.930 His situation awareness was up. 40:07.930 --> 40:10.620 He knew what he had to do. 40:10.620 --> 40:16.570 He had done it before or something like it up to that 40:16.570 --> 40:19.170 point." 40:19.170 --> 40:28.260 So Plato's argument starts to feel like it has some force. 40:28.260 --> 40:33.290 What exactly does the argument look like? 40:33.290 --> 40:35.650 The argument that we've been considering in 40:35.650 --> 40:38.570 Plato runs as follows. 40:38.570 --> 40:42.160 Plato suggests that fiction affects the non-rational parts 40:42.160 --> 40:46.280 of the soul in such a way that they are potentially 40:46.280 --> 40:50.340 disharmonious with the rational part. 40:50.340 --> 40:54.790 That is, fiction may cause us to find appealing things that 40:54.790 --> 40:57.760 on reflection we find unappealing, or to find 40:57.760 --> 41:02.050 unappealing things that on reflection we find appealing. 41:02.050 --> 41:05.550 It may, of course, also allow us to cultivate things that 41:05.550 --> 41:09.400 are in harmony with our commitment. 41:09.400 --> 41:13.520 Therapy can use exactly the same techniques that video 41:13.520 --> 41:18.540 game training in the Army does to bring our non-rational 41:18.540 --> 41:21.950 responses in line with our rational ones. 41:21.950 --> 41:26.520 But it is certainly a risk that fiction will affect the 41:26.520 --> 41:29.370 non-rational parts of the soul in a way that renders them 41:29.370 --> 41:32.310 disharmonious with the rational part. 41:32.310 --> 41:36.310 We, says Plato, reflectively desire-- 41:36.310 --> 41:39.360 for all the reasons that we discussed in the first part of 41:39.360 --> 41:40.790 this course-- 41:40.790 --> 41:46.680 to have our souls, at least for the most part, in harmony. 41:46.680 --> 41:50.320 When we are not instinctively reacting in ways that we're 41:50.320 --> 41:55.750 reflectively committed to act, it is costly to us and 41:55.750 --> 41:58.330 undesirable. 41:58.330 --> 42:02.990 But what we might think of as the easy way out of this 42:02.990 --> 42:07.180 problem, just saying to ourselves, "it's only Halo, 42:07.180 --> 42:14.440 it's only a video game," turns out not to be sufficient. 42:14.440 --> 42:20.860 Individuals, says Plato, even the best of us, cannot 42:20.860 --> 42:23.610 regulate these effects internally 42:23.610 --> 42:26.390 through our own reason. 42:26.390 --> 42:35.060 We are not fully in control of the parts of ourselves through 42:35.060 --> 42:37.450 reason alone. 42:37.450 --> 42:42.860 Instead, he says, it is possible to regulate these 42:42.860 --> 42:48.590 effects externally by letting society make decisions for us 42:48.590 --> 42:53.800 about what we are and are not exposed to. 42:53.800 --> 43:00.550 Consequently, in an argument much like the one we see in 43:00.550 --> 43:09.680 Hobbes, Plato is suggesting in Book Ten that what rationality 43:09.680 --> 43:16.040 requires, given our recognition of limits that it 43:16.040 --> 43:21.720 hits up against, is a willingness to restrict our 43:21.720 --> 43:25.730 freedom in certain ways. 43:25.730 --> 43:30.720 Just as Hobbes argues that the coordination problem to which 43:30.720 --> 43:34.530 the Prisoner's Dilemma gives rise, means that we need to 43:34.530 --> 43:39.370 subject ourselves to a sovereign who takes control 43:39.370 --> 43:46.180 and enforces contracts, so too does Plato suggest that we 43:46.180 --> 43:55.450 need to subject ourselves to a regulation by reflection of 43:55.450 --> 43:58.890 aspects of experience that will affect us in ways that 43:58.890 --> 44:03.770 from a distance we know to be dangerous, but from up close 44:03.770 --> 44:08.510 we're unable to protect ourselves from. 44:08.510 --> 44:14.120 Now, that's not an easy argument to take on board. 44:14.120 --> 44:17.320 It raises all sorts of questions about 44:17.320 --> 44:19.340 who does the deciding. 44:19.340 --> 44:22.320 It raises all sorts of questions about whether 44:22.320 --> 44:28.410 non-rational manipulation is in fact the role of the state. 44:28.410 --> 44:32.880 But it also reminds us that if we are trying to think about 44:32.880 --> 44:37.090 what political structures need to look like for complicated 44:37.090 --> 44:42.930 creatures such as ourselves, there will, in the end, be no 44:42.930 --> 44:44.840 easy answers. 44:44.840 --> 44:51.450 And in next Tuesday's lecture, I'll begin with what I'm going 44:51.450 --> 44:53.580 to ask as the first question. 44:53.580 --> 44:57.260 Which is, what does this have to do with Sunstein? 44:57.260 --> 45:01.630 But I will, in the meantime, post the slides that are 45:01.630 --> 45:04.730 associated with Sunstein so that if you want to get a head 45:04.730 --> 45:09.470 start on that second question, about how non-rational 45:09.470 --> 45:13.060 persuasion might happen in society, you can take a look 45:13.060 --> 45:15.380 at those over the weekend. 45:15.380 --> 45:18.480 Thanks very much and I'll see those of you who are not 45:18.480 --> 45:21.080 visiting Bulldogs on Tuesday.