Introduction

In this blogpost I will discuss the relation between Quine and Skinner on the issue of postulating hypothetical neural entities to explain behaviour. I will argue that Quine’s mechanistic position is at odds with Skinner’s radical behaviourism. While Skinner’s position is pragmatic and focuses on whole organism environmental relations; Quine is only interested in how we can use external behaviour as a way of guiding us towards underlying neural mechanisms. I then argue that despite situating himself in the behavioural camp Quine’s views are closer to those of contemporary cognitive scientists.

            Having discussed Quine’s relation with Skinner on the above issue I then move on to discuss an analogous debate between contextual behavioural scientists inspired by Skinner and theorists such as Eva Jablonka. This debate indicates that Quine and Skinner’s disagreement is not a mere academic debate from the history of the philosophy of science but is a live debate in contemporary evolutionary theory and behavioural science. The position of Skinner and Contextual Behavioural Scientists is a minority position in the philosophy of science. However, both Skinner and Contextual Behavioural Scientists have come up with concrete empirical results using their minority philosophy of science. It is an open empirical question whether they could have made similar discoveries using standard mechanistic philosophical assumptions.

                                                   Quine’s Mechanism

Quine was a philosopher and was primarily interested in issues in logic, epistemology, and ontology. As his philosophical world view grew, his emphasis was on explaining all these subjects naturalistically. Quine wasn’t a psychologist or a linguist. But his naturalism led him to the point where he argued that epistemology was a branch of empirical psychology. So, in working out his epistemology he needed to engage in psychological speculations as well as appeal to empirical data from psychology. Likewise, since Quine recognised the importance of language in our ability to acquire our theory of the world, he needed a theory to explain how we acquired our language. Quine described his position on these matters as behaviouristic. In psychology he argued one may or may not be a behaviourist. But in linguistics one had to be behaviouristic because in acquiring language we relied on intersubjective keying of sounds to objects as we communicated with our socio-linguistic community.

            But it is important to note that Quine’s brand of behaviourism was mechanistic. In a sense Quine’s behaviourism was closer to that of earlier behaviourists such as Watson and Pavlov who used behavioural tests to hypothesize about underlying neurological mechanisms. Whereas Skinner and the behaviourist’s who followed him in his radical behaviourist philosophy held a very different view. They were interested in prediction and control of the whole organism in a variety of different contexts. Skinner for example was critical of what he viewed as premature appeal to hypothetical neurological mechanisms by scientists like Watson. He argued that these hypothetical neurological mechanisms were premature given the fact we hadn’t done sufficient behavioural tests to understand behaviour itself.

            In fact, Skinner went further than the above he also argued that the behaviourist would become interested in physiology once it could be used as an aid in the prediction and control of whole organisms in their environment. Skinner, unlike Quine, didn’t think that the true or deeper explanation was to be provided at the physiological level. Rather Skinner believed that physiology would eventually be a relevant tool in predicting and controlling the organism when acting in its environment. Physiology would be part of the behavioural stream not its underlying detached cause.

            In his paper “Jacques Loeb, B. F Skinner, and the Legacy of Prediction and Control” (1995). Hackenberg analysed how Skinner’s views on prediction and control developed. Hackenberg nicely sums up Skinner’s views on neuroscience below:

“Until physiological events could enter into effective action via the direct prediction and control of behavior, they would remain part of what Skinner (1938) called “the conceptual nervous system” and what Loeb called “the mysticism of the ganglion cells” (Loeb, 1890/1905, p. 114).” (Hackenberg 1995 p.228).

This shows a sharp distinction between Skinner and Quine’s views on this topic. Skinner did argue that physiology would become more important once we got our behavioural facts in order. But he also argued that the behaviourist would become interested in physiology once it could be used as an aid in the prediction and control of whole organisms in their environment. Skinner, unlike Quine, didn’t think that the true or deeper explanation was to be provided at the physiological level. Rather Skinner believed that physiology would eventually be a relevant tool in predicting and controlling the organism when acting in its environment. Physiology would be part of the behavioural stream not its underlying detached cause. Skinner is very clear on his views on this subject:

“When we have achieved a practical control over the organism, theories of behavior lose their point. In representing and managing relevant variables, a conceptual model is useless; we come to grips with behavior itself. When behavior shows order and consistency, we are much less likely to be concerned with physiological or mentalistic causes. (p. 231)”[1]

As can be seen Skinner’s views on physiology are that in so far as it is a useful tool in the prediction and control of the organism, we can appeal to it. But he is less interested in postulating neurological mechanisms to explain the behaviour of organisms. Quine’s views on this topic are very different than Skinners. One of the primary reasons for this divergence is that Quine is interested in explanation of behaviour not just prediction and control.

                                            Quine on Hypothetical Entities

            Throughout his career Quine has been censorious in relation to superfluous appeals to hypothetical entities. Thus, Quine has criticized appeals to meanings, ideas, and propositions to explain linguistic behaviour. His reason for criticizing these notions is that he thinks that they are shadowy notions which distract us from looking at actual behaviour in concrete circumstances. But Quine has shown less misgivings about hypothetical structures when it comes to postulating neurological structures as an explanation of behaviour. Quine has specified on numerous occasions that the thinks that the deeper level of explanations are to be found at the neurological level not at the behavioural level.

            Quine is explicit about this when it comes to the notion of a disposition. When an organism has a disposition to engage in certain behaviours in certain circumstances Quine thinks we should aim to cash out these dispositions neurologically eventually. In the meantime, we should think of dispositions as hypothetical neurological states:[2]

“Each disposition, in my view, is a physical state or mechanism… Where the general dispositional idiom has its use is as follows. By means of it we can refer to a hypothetical state or mechanism that we do not yet understand, or to any of various such states or mechanisms, while merely specifying one of its characteristic effects, such as dissolution upon immersion in water.” (ibid p.10)

Quine’s use of the dispositional idiom set him and Chomsky at odds. Quine had defined language as a “complex of dispositions to verbal behaviour” . Chomsky rejected this definition because he argued that disposition used in the above sense meant that we could specify the probability of a word being used in a certain circumstance. And Chomsky argued that it is senseless to speak of the probability of a word being spoken on a random occasion. Quine argued that he was speaking of the probability of a word being spoken in a particular circumstance of query and assent. Language is an incredibly complex phenomenon. We still don’t have a clear understanding of the probability of a sentence being spoken in concrete circumstances. So, it may help us understand the notion of disposition in terms of a simpler organism in a tightly controlled experimental setting.

            If we take a Pigeon in a Skinner box who has the box tailor made to his size and who is typically operating at 80% of its ad lib weight (Fester and Skinner p. 29). And we put it on a fixed interval ratio schedule of reinforcement for pecking at lights of a particular hue. We will end up with curve which is predictive of the Pigeons behaviour under this schedule of reinforcement. This can be cashed out in the dispositional terms; Pigeon W in a state of deprivation X has a disposition to peck in way Y under schedule of reinforcement Z[3]. Here we have a real behavioural regularity (albeit in an artificially contrived environment), and it is instructive to think about how Quine would handle this case.

            When discussing solubility of salt in water Quine argued that this disposition of salt to be soluble in water ultimately needs to be cashed out in terms of underlying physical structures for us have a proper explanation of it. Quine would presumably make the same argument when it comes to Pigeon’s pecking behaviour under a schedule of reinforcement. Skinner’s difficulty with jumping straight to physiological mechanisms was that it was premature and was done prior to us getting our behavioural facts in order. So, for example, when theorists such as Watson were postulating hypothetical neural mechanisms to explain reinforcement they were doing so in ignorance of the distinction between operant and classical conditioning. Furthermore, they were doing so in ignorance of the distinction of various schedules of reinforcement and how they effect behaviour. So, Skinner would have argued that their hypotheses were radically premature, we would be better served by continuing to map out behavioural dispositions under various schedules of reinforcement. Rather than simply postulating a mechanism the instant we discover a regularity.

            Skinner does think that we will eventually be capable of advancing our understanding of human behaviour through neuroscience. But he argues that this will be achieved through understanding how the brain physically changes when undergoing schedules of reinforcement not through speculative hypothesis:

“The physiologist of the future will tell us all that can be known about what is happening inside the behaving organism. His account will be an important advance over a behavioural analysis because the latter is necessarily “historical”-that is to say, it is confined to functional relations showing temporal gaps. Something done today which affects the behaviour of the organism tomorrow. No matter how clearly that fact can be established, as step is missing, and we must supply it. He will be able to show how an organism is changed when exposed to contingencies of reinforcement and why the changed organism then behaves in a different way, possibly at a much later date. What he discovers cannot invalidate the laws of a science of behaviour, but it will make the picture of human action more nearly complete.  (About Behaviourism pp.236-237)

Skinner’s emphasis on “knowing what is happening inside the behaving organism”, is important. He has no problem with discoveries about the underlying neuroscience which explains the behaviour of the organism in terms of schedules of reinforcement. What he disagrees with is explanations in terms of hypothetical mechanisms.

Skinner argues that appeal to hypothetical entities to explain behaviour amount to what he calls the conceptual nervous system. His criticisms of Pavlov invariably involved chastising him for invoking conceptual analogues for the nervous system which had no neurological reality:

The subtitle of his Conditioned Reflexes is ‘An investigation of the Physiological Activity of the Cerebral Cortex,’ but no direct observations of the cortex are reported. The data given are quite obviously concerned with the behavior of reasonably intact dogs, and the only nervous system of which he speaks is the conceptual one. (Skinner, 1938, p. 427).

As we mentioned above Quine could be accused of to some degree adopting positions analogous to Pavlov’s conceptual nervous system.

            When Quine speaks of hypothetical mechanisms some of his talk would be innocuous from Skinner’s point of view. Thus, when Quine speaks of “…a disposition is a promissory note for an eventual description in mechanical terms” (The Roots of Reference p. 14), there can be little objection. All he is arguing is that dispositional states have underlying physical states. This is an uncontroversial position. But when Quine begins arguing for hypothetical mechanisms to explain perceptual similarity and receptual similarity (ibid p. 18), and claims that postulating such mechanisms is unavoidable (ibid p.24). He is moving into the realm of arguing for a conceptual nervous system. Quine argues that such hypothetical mechanisms are on a par with positing things like genes on hypothetical grounds with the aim being to discover their physical properties later (ibid p. 27).  

            Despite calling himself a behaviourist, Quine’s discussions of hypothetical mechanisms to explain overt behaviour puts him closer to positions advocated by cognitive scientists (of both a connectionist and computationalist perspective) than it does to behaviourists like Skinner[4]. This dispute between both is largely a philosophical one. It depends on the interests of the researcher. Is the prediction and control of an organism in different contexts the key to a science of behaviour or is giving a mechanistic and reductionistic account of more importance?

                                                The Sins of the Father

            In this section we will see how the contemporary disagreement with Jablonka (2018) and Dougher and Hamilton (2018) on the issue of mechanistic postulations mirrors the disagreement between Quine and Skinner. This contemporary debate indicates that the issues between Quine and Skinner are live issues in the philosophy of behavioural science.

In Dougher and Hamilton’s (2018) paper“The Contextual Science of Learning: Integrating Behavioural and Evolution Science Within a Functional Approach”[5] they attempt to integrate Contextual Behavioural Science[6] with Evolutionary science. CBS operates within the Skinnerian pragmatic whole organism philosophy which we discussed above. While scientists in CBS claim to have gone beyond Skinner in many respects empirically, their underlying philosophy is very similar to Skinner’s radical behaviourism.

Dougher and Hamilton integrate evolutionary theory and CBS in the context of learning theory. They focus on research into spatial learning, contrasting mechanistic versus functional accounts of spatial learning. They argue that mechanism was an intellectual ancestor of positivism, the hypothetic-deductive account of science, and methodological behaviourism (ibid p. 16). Following Palmer (1994) they label mechanism an inferred process approach (ibid p. 16). This approach involves using behavioural data to draw inferences about underlying neurological or cognitive mechanisms and appeal to these mechanisms as the causal factors that produce the behaviour. This approach typically involves studying groups of organisms and drawing out statistical facts about these groups to produce mechanistic hypotheses which they hold onto until some prediction fails, or experimental data refutes the hypothesis (ibid p. 16).

            Functionalism instead of looking for hypothesised learning mechanisms take the behaviour of the whole organism in relation to its historical and immediate environmental context as the subject matter to be studied (ibid p.16). They look for explanations of behaviour (defined through its antecedents and consequences) in the functional relation between the behaviour and its environmental contexts (ibid p. 16). Because of the heavy emphasis they place on prediction and control they focus their attention on behavioural studies of individuals acting in context. They achieve their generalized results through replication across participants (ibid p. 17). They parse the primary difference between both approaches as follows:

“From the dominant mechanistic perspective, learning is typically defined as changes in an organism resulting from experience…. a functional definition of learning as an ontogenetic adaptation. The emphasis here is not on the organism or its internal mechanisms but on the observed functional regularities between behaviour and environments.” (Ibid p.17)

                                              Spatial Learning

They discuss O Keefe and Nadel’s (1978) work on cognitive mapping theory of the hippocampus[7], and use this as a paradigm example of a mechanistic approach. They don’t argue that O Keefe and Nadel’s work is incorrect, acknowledging that work is still on going on the overall project. However, they point out that Hamilton, Rosenfelt, and Whishaw (2004) have done experimental work on stimulus functions which operate throughout spatial navigation trials (ibid p. 18):

“Results showed that distinct segments of navigation toward a goal location depended on different environmental stimuli, with the initial selection of a direction based on more global features of the environment and subsequent/terminal aspects of the trip based on stimuli located at or near a goal. Thus, fine grain functional relations are operating in spatial navigation.” (Ibid p. 18).

They argue even if one is a mechanist, one should be on the lookout for functional relations before automatically appealing to inferred entities.

Dougherty and Hamilton’s paper was published in Sloan-Wilson and Hayes (eds) Evolution and Conceptual Behavioural Science. And at the end of their chapter in a section called “Dialogue on Learning”, they a discussion with one of the other authors in the book Eva Jablonka. In Eva Jablonka’s paper “Classical and Operant Conditioning: Evolutionarily Distinct Strategies?” (co-authored with Bronfman and Ginsburg) she discussed evolutionary origins of operant and classical conditioning arguing that we couldn’t definitively argue that they were separate mechanisms. She argued that both operant and classical conditioning are intertwined and can be explained with a mechanism called limited association which evolved during the Cambrian Explosion and may have been responsible for the unprecedented diversity of species at that time.

When commenting on Jablonka’s paper Dougherty and Hamilton argued that the postulation of a mechanism of limited associative learning was unnecessary and instead, we should be looking for “a difference in the kind or environmental regularities that can influence behaviour” (Dialogue on Learning p. 50).

            When Jablonka pointed out that we need something in different kinds of organisms to explain how they interpreted the world. They replied when you start to identify different parts of the brain in terms of functions, you lose sight of environmental-behaviour relations (ibid p52). At this point in the discussion Steven Hayes who is the founder and lead figure in Contextual Behavioural Science discussed the concept of taste aversion in rats an argued that most experts in the field explain this as a kind of temporal distortion of classical conditioning. And Hayes notes the following:

“I would be surprised, Mike, if you think it was a bad thing to look at the underlying neurobiology of taste aversion, given this extraordinary distortion of temporal parameters.” (ibid p. 53)

The reply that Hayes gets makes it clear that the contextual behavioural scientists are only interested in the neurobiology of taste aversion to the extent that it gives prediction and control of the organism in particular contexts. It is unclear whether what precisely their views on neurological mechanisms in the brain is other than the fact they are only interested in such postulations to the extent to which they help us predict and control the organism and his environment.

            One can see from the above discussion that the debate as to whether it is advisable to postulate hypothetical mechanisms to explain the behaviour of organisms is still a live issue and isn’t limited to disagreements on the philosophy of science fifty years ago. It is fair to say that the position adopted by Quine and Jablonka would still be the mainstream position adopted by the scientific community. And those working in the radical behaviourist or CBS positions are in the minority. But obviously a philosophical disagreement cannot be decided by majority rules. And the methodology adopted by CBS while not mainstream hasn’t stopped them achieving notable success achieving experimental understanding in relation to rule-following, stimulus equivalence and relations of coordination etc. It is an open empirical question as to whether they could have achieved these results adapting a more mechanistic philosophical framework.

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[1]  B.F. Skinner: A case history in the scientific method 1956.

[2] Quine is speaking of any physical entities disposition e.g., the disposition of salt to dissolve when in water. He thinks these can be cashed out in terms of some hypothetical physical states. Here we will limit our attention to dispositions of living organisms to behave in certain ways in certain circumstances.

[3] Skinner obviously wouldn’t parse the Pigeons behaviour in the above manner.

[4] Though Quine’s positions do bear some similarities to pre-Skinnerian behaviourists such as Pavlov and Hull.

[5] This paper was printed in Wilson and Hayes (eds), ‘Evolution and Contextual Behavioural Science’

[6] Henceforth Contextual Behavioural Science will be referred to as CBS.

[7] O Keefe’s work on place cell’s role in the cognitive maps won him the Nobel Prize in (2014).

Introduction

In this blogpost I will discuss a 2001 paper by Wilson et al ‘Hume’s psychology contemporary learning theory and the problem of knowledge amplification’. The primary claim of their paper was that Hume’s speculations about how we acquire our theory of the world can be updated and made more precise using evidence from contemporary behavioural science. A barrier to using behavioural science to update Hume’s philosophy was that behavioural principles such as Operant and Classical Conditioning are shared by most living creatures and all mammals, so they don’t give us an obvious explication of human specific capacities. Wilson et al argue that the discovery of relation frames; in particular, the human specific capacity to achieve stimulus equivalence, as well as relations of hierarchy, coordination etc helps us explicate the higher reaches of human cognition, such as our capacity for verbal behaviour.

I will argue that while their project shares much in common with Quine’s earlier attempt to naturalize our epistemology there are some differences between the two projects. In particular, the pragmatist philosophy which underlies the contextual behavioural science is at odds with Quine’s more mechanistic view. Quine thinks of behaviour as evidence to be used to discover underlying mechanisms while Contextual Behavioural Scientists are primarily concerned with whole organism environmental interactions and deriving techniques to achieve prediction and control over such organisms.

Finally, I will argue that Contextual Behavioural Science offers us a more complete account of our capacity to acquire verbal behaviour than Quine managed and hence is a more complete account of how we go from stimulus to science than Quine achieved.

                 Causation, Induction and Pecking Pigeons

“There is nothing more basic to thought and language than our sense of similarity; our sorting of things into kinds. The usual general term, whether a common noun or a verb  or an adjective, owes its generality to some resemblance among the things referred to. Indeed, learning to use a word depends on a double resemblance: first, a resemblance between the present circumstances and past circumstances in which the word was used, and second, a phonetic resemblance between the present utterance of the word and past utterances of it. And every reasonable expectation depends on resemblance of circumstances, together with our tendency to expect similar causes to have similar effects. (Quine: Natural Kinds pp 116-117)

In their 2001 paper ‘Hume’s psychology contemporary learning theory and the problem of knowledge amplification’ Wilson et all’s attempted to update Hume’s epistemology with results from contemporary behavioural science. Hume had famously parsed the laws of association in terms of resemblance, contiguity in space and time, and cause and effect. Wilson et al redescribed Hume’s three criteria using traditional behavioural science. So, for example, they explained resemblance in terms of stimulus generalization. Stimulus generalization is where an organism under stimulus control also responds to stimulus that bears a formal resemblance to the stimulus. And they gave an example of a Pigeon trained to peck under the stimulus of a red light and how scientists could establish a curve in the Pigeons behaviour by altering the stimulus (fading from a red light to a yellow light). Quine had made a similar argument to this in his The Roots of Reference.

“Reception is flagrantly physical. But perception also, for all its mentalistic overtones, is accessible to behavioural criteria. It shows itself in the conditioning of responses. Thus suppose we provide an animal with a screen to look at and a lever to press. He finds that the pressed lever brings a pellet of food when the screen shows a circular stripe, and it brings a shock when the screen shows merely four spots spaced in a semicircular arc. Now we present him with those same four spots, arranged as before, but supplemented with three more to suggest the complementary semicircle. If the animal presses the lever, he may be said to have perceived the circular Gestalt rather than the component spots.” (The Roots of Reference p. 4)

One key difference between Quine’s argument and Wilson et al is that Quine used the behavioural evidence to speculate on the perceptual experience of the organism while Wilson et al eschewed this speculation. This is in keeping with differences in the philosophy of Quine and those of a Contextual Behavioural Science approach. Despite some passages which indicate otherwise; Quine is mechanist whose priority is in explaining behaviour in terms of physiological mechanisms. This mechanistic philosophy puts him at odds with the pragmatism of contextual behavioural science.

            For both Quine and the Contextual Behavioural Scientist stimulus generalization will count as a behavioural criterion for resemblance. When it comes to contiguity in space and time the Contextualist Behavioural Scientist speaks instead of contingencies. So, they are not concerned merely with close temporal paring, rather they are interested in “the relative likelihood of one event given the other, and that same event given the lack of the other” (Wilson et al. p.9).  They do note that contiguity will predict a contingency, and for most purposes stimuli which are nearby in time will be most psychologically salient (ibid p. 9). A 0.5 second interval between the onset of a conditioned stimulus and the onset of an unconditioned stimulus has been empirically shown to be optimal in for classical conditioning (ibid p.9). If stimuli are separated by time and distance conditioning doesn’t typically occur (ibid p.9).

            While Quine uses reinforcement throughout his texts, he doesn’t explicate the type of schedules which are useful for classical or operant conditioning to occur. Some schedules of reinforcement e.g., fixed interval or variable interval schedules indicate the temporal spreads which are most successful in producing conditioning. Such schedules would be relevant to giving a behavioural slant on contiguity in time. But Quine is silent on the issue[1].

            Presumably Quine was assuming that reinforcement occurred immediately after the behaviour. But as we know from Skinner’s work different schedules of reinforcement have different conditioning patterns. Quine’s silence on what schedules of reinforcement are involved in acquiring different skills makes it difficult to evaluate his speculations for truth value. Furthermore, unlike the Contextual Behavioural Scientists he has no method of replacing contiguity with contingencies.  

            Hume’s explains causation by appealing to three principles (1) Contiguity, (2) Succession, (3) Constant Conjunction. He illustrates with his famous billiard ball example. If one billiard ball hits another the other ball moves. This movement involves both balls being contiguous in space and time and one ball hitting the second ball prior to the second ball moving. But Hume notes that in this case all we can say is that one event followed another. To claim that the event caused the other event we need a constant conjunction, e.g., events of type A are constantly followed by events of type B. Wilson et all parse the idea of constant conjunction in terms of similarity “we expect similar effects from similar causes” (ibid p.10).

            Wilson et all’s characterisation isn’t quite accurate of Hume’s views. Consider the billiard ball example. Experience looking at billiards shows us that when one ball hits the other ball the second ball tends to move. Hume would parse this as constant conjunction of event of type A preceding event of type B. Whereas Wilson et all would conceive of it as when causes similar to A (one billiard ball hitting the other billiard ball), occur effects similar to B (the second billiard ball moves) occur.

            Nonetheless, Wilson et al are correct we cannot explain the constant conjunction of different classes of events without being able to categorize events as similar and dissimilar to each other[2]. And their stimulus generalization is a good behavioural indicator of how once an organisms’ behaviour becomes under stimulus control, we can extrapolate their similarity structures. And how once we switch from looking for contingencies of reinforcement instead of contiguity, we can speak of the probability of one event of kind x following another event of kind y. So, we have a behavioural account of some of the key features of our concept of cause.

Human Specific Capacities

                  They correctly note that one of the difficulties with the account provided in terms of learning theory is that these learning theoretical tools: stimulus generalization, operant conditioning, classical conditioning etc occur in all mammals. But humans have capacities which go beyond all-other animals. So, they argue we may need new principles to explain uniquely human cognitive capacities. They argue that they can explain this special sauce which only humans possess in terms of Stimulus Equivalence and Relational Frame Theory:

       To reiterate, a set of conditional discriminations may be trained wherein the two relations, given A”, pick B” and given A”, pick C” are established by direct reinforcement. In such a case a nonhuman has learned and can respond selectively to precisely these two directly trained relations. A verbally competent human, on the other hand, can respond selectively to trials encompassing A to B relations, B to A relations, A to C relations, C to A relations, B to C relations, and finally C to B relations. From an economic perspective, training two relations to a nonhuman generates two potential relational responses; whereas training two relations to a human generates six (two directly trained, and four derived). (Wilson et al p.13).

After their discussion of human specific capacity in terms of “equivalence of class” they go on to discuss the human specific capacity of “transfer of function”. This capacity has interesting psychological consequences. So, if A1 is paired with an electric shock sufficiently to establish it as an aversive stimulus, then B1 will also work as an aversive stimulus. And if the equivalence relations have been established through multi-exemplar training, then these relations will also be subject to a transfer of function.

“Thus, given A} B training and A}C training, and with C given an aversive function, a human would learn to avoid A, B, and C, whereas a nonverbal organism would require three separate conditioning procedures one for each of the A, B, and C stimuli.” (Ibid p.14)

They also note that while they have spoken of equivalence functions there are also other relational frames such as hierarchy, coordination, oppositeness, greater/smaller than, etc. Another key feature which they note is that these frames are learned through contextual cues (ibid p. 14). The key point is these experimentally derived capacities are unique to humans. Despite hundreds of experiments on dozens of non-human animals Contextual Behavioural Scientists have yet to discover the capacity of any non-human to engage in relational frames. This indicates that there is an innate component to the capacity.

            While there is there an incredible amount of behavioural evidence to support the existence of relational frames. And these frames are suggestive for being the secret sauce behind linguistic productivity. There is as of yet very little engagement with generative grammarians to construct mathematical models to see if the types of relational frames discovered can be used to construct the mathematical structures discovered in linguistics. Nonetheless, their experimental studies do take us a long way from Quine’s model of how we acquire our language and theory of the world. Quine vaguely speculated things like similarity quality spaces, and a capacity for analogical synthesis which we use to associate sentences with sentences. But he provided no details on how this was done.

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[1] Contiguity in space and time doesn’t always produce conditioning. Wilson et al. discuss the case of taste aversion in rats where through genetic changes the temporal parameters in classical conditioning were modified. This demonstrates that Quine isn’t justified in simply ignoring evidence from schedules of reinforcement when he is speculating.

[2] Quine made a similar point in his postulation of an innate prelinguistic quality space in his Word and Object.

In this blogpost I will discuss social locations and how social locations effect our experiences in the world. The focus will be on the set of social locations at the intersection of intellectual disability, being non-verbal, and coming from a family from a disadvantaged background. Social locations can be thought of as a map with intersecting points which result in the relative advantages and disadvantages, we experience as we negotiate our world. The interactions between our various social locations and how these interactions shape our life best understood in the context of intersectionality. Olena Hankivsky defines Intersectionality as follows:

“Intersectionality promotes an understanding of human beings as shaped by the interaction of different social locations (e.g., ‘race’/ethnicity, indigeneity, gender, class, sexuality, geography, age, disability/ability, migration, status, religion). These interactions occur within a context of connected systems and structures of power (Laws, Policies, state governments and other political and economic unions, religious institutions, media). Through such processes, interdependent forms of privilege and oppression shaped by colonialism, imperialism, racism, homophobia, ableism and patriarchy are created” (Hankivsky: Intersectionality 101. p.2)

 There are an incredible number of intersecting levels of disadvantage which can be experienced by a non-verbal person with an intellectual disability. I this blogpost I will explore the unique nature of these disadvantages in comparison to other disadvantaged groups. The primary focus will be on the nature of these disadvantages and techniques which can be used to overcome the disadvantages. A key focus will be on the notion of recognition and how recognition plays a large role in any distribution of funds. I will discuss current techniques which are being used which help advocate for and increase recognition for people with an intellectual disability and argues that this increase in recognition will increase the likelihood of fair distributions of funds, and that this fairer distribution will result intersectional disadvantages becoming less severe.

                   Intersecting Sets: Intersectionality and Intellectual disability

             Having a disability of any kind can result in disadvantages in accessing various aspects of society. Having an intellectual disability can result in further disadvantages; because this can result in a person having a diminished capacity to articulate and justify ones wants and needs. A non-verbal person with an intellectual disability has even further disadvantages because they cannot even articulate their needs and are reliant on others to advocate for them in society. Or at the very least are reliant on the society they are living in valuing them and hence funding research and distribution of augmentative communication devices. So, in this situation you have interconnected sets of potential disadvantages {Disability {Intellectual Disability {Non-Verbal}}}.

            A person in this state of affairs is reliant on a combination of legislation e.g., Assisted Decision Making Act, Advocacy from Family members, and state sponsored agencies such as Tusla. But there are further lairs of disadvantage that can affect a person. A non-verbal person with an intellectual disability who is put into care because their family can no longer look after him is in an even more precarious situation. In some situations, people with an intellectual disability are put in care because their parents may not have the financial resources or educational capacity to adequately care for them.

            In this situation you have a person who with a {disability {Intellectual Disability { non-verbal { working class { advocates who are unclear about structural entitlements. }}}}}. These interconnected sets of disadvantages impinge on and interact with each other. Having an intellectual disability and being non-verbal impinges dramatically on one’s ability to advocate for oneself, but if your primary advocates have poor educational and financial resources then this can lead to greater difficulties for to achieving what you want.

            The person in this situation is doubly disadvantaged. If a person is disabled, say is in a wheelchair, and lives in a society which has limited wheelchair access, they can conceptualize the difficulty and join advocacy groups, to push for change. Similar situations apply to a person of colour conceptualising and fighting racism and white privilege. Or a Gay person living in a society which is homophobic. But our non-verbal person with an intellectual disability is not in the same situation. It would be extremely difficult to explain to this person that his parents are disadvantaged and would lack the conceptual resources to advocate on his behalf in the area. Furthermore, it would be difficult to explain to him the nature of these resources, the economic factors, and legal factors that go into decisions of this nature. In this country it is policy that providers should explain these factors to service users under their care; and this is typically catered for by Speech and Language Therapists designing easy to read tools that carers can use to try and help the service users understand their rights. However, these easy read tools dramatically underestimate the difficulty of explaining abstract concepts in a non-verbal manner using pictures (Wittgenstein 1951).

            People with an intellectual disability typically have their resources controlled by outside forces (Watchman 2018). Not even knowing what factors are impinging on your wellbeing, not knowing whether you are being given a fair distribution of goods for your daily living etc. In this situation a person could be oppressed without having any conception that they are being oppressed. Their family acting as advocates may not have a full conception of the nature of such oppression. Leaving the vulnerable non-verbal person acting in a world around him with no conception of the nature of this world and his entitlements.

            There are some factors which can be useful to help people in this situation. In put from Speech and Language to help improve functional communication, augmentative communication techniques such as Lamh, PECS, Objects of Reference etc. Can give people some capacity to represent themselves and their interests. But these linguistic tools are more useful for people with practical engagement with one’s environment and aren’t tools of sufficient grammatical or conceptual power to understand and argue for ones ‘rights’, ‘obligations’ etc.

            In such cases it will fall to employees working in an organisation to advocate on behalf of the service users living in their homes. This advocacy will be constrained by legal regulations provided by external organisations such as Hiqa. Staff will have to ensure that various regulations are met such as prudent person-centred finances, regular service user meetings, and keyworker meetings, staff training is sufficient to provide care for the service users etc. Once these regulations are in place and Hiqa pass the house on their twice a year inspection then it is generally accepted that the service users have been sufficiently advocated for.

            However, we see in our daily lives that despite laws in relation to racism, sexism etc. inequality still occurs in relation to how people are treated in their daily lives. Is it not likely that similar things could happen to service users whose houses are passed by Hiqa as sufficiently well regulated? Are there inequalities between service users within an organisation who come from affluent families who are educated and who know how to use the system to achieve the best outcomes for their child, and service users whose families are poor and uneducated. It isn’t implausible that organisations will prioritise the needs of service users whose families have the capacity and the knowledge to bring litigation against the organisation and those who do not. It is possible for an organisation to meet the minimal regulatory needs of a service user but for the distribution between service users to be unequal.

            If this did indeed occur, it would be an unjust situation. You would have two sets of service users with a similar demographic: intellectual disability, non-verbal, etc. But one group would have more advantages because of the economic and political profile of their family. This would be an unjust situation and a situation the service user would be unaware of and even if they were aware they would not have the conceptual resources to fight it.

            Now a possible avenue would be for the employees within individual houses to fight the disparity. But in this situation, one would be in a state of affairs where staff or middle management would be required to make accusations of injustice against senior management and the service provider. This could be potentially a dangerous situation for staff to be in and it is not a reliable system to expect justice to arrive from staff fighting systems of power in the organisations the work in.

            We can see a three-pronged approach to try and advocate for service users who cannot advocate for themselves; (1) ensure that the service user needs are met in a person-centred manner according to policies set by Hiqa, (2) Ensuring that service users goods are distributed to all service users in the service in an equitable manner.  This involves ensuring that one group do not benefit in a manner that is disproportionate to the benefits given to the other group. (3) Ensure that service user rights are met in the same way as members of the general public’s rights are met.

            A danger in activism is that we sometimes end up erasing the people who are being advocated for. Thus, when it comes to an area such as gay rights, we want gay people at the centre of the conversation speaking about their experiences and how they feel society treats them. While CIS het people can be allies in this process, we do not want them at the centre of the process leading the way on a subject matter which they have no direct experience of. Yet in the case of non-verbal people with an intellectual disability it would appear to be the advocates who are centre stage not the people being advocated for.

The language of person-centredness is important and when adopting this philosophy, one is taking a first steps towards putting the non-verbal person with an intellectual disability at the centre of the conversation. But when it comes to more abstract concepts such as parity of economic distribution; or an issue such as having the right to go for a walk in a beech more to 5 Kilometres away from your home versus the responsibility to not spread an infectious disease during a pandemic; issues become more complex. Despite the use of things like storyboards, PECS, easy to read pamphlets on human rights etc. It is extremely difficult to try and explicate these concepts to a non-verbal person with an intellectual disability.

However, despite the difficulties we must continue to try and put in place techniques which can help the service users advocate on their own behalf. Philosopher Nancy Fraizer has noted that as a matter of empirical fact redistribution and recognition go hand in hand (Fraser, N. 2001 p.87). Service user councils are a tool which can work to give service users a voice in the shaping the role of the organisation which they live in. As I mentioned earlier it is difficult for non-verbal people to express their wishes in these councils but with augmentative communication devices it is not impossible. Furthermore, they can partake in voting for representatives and the representative will at least be a person with an intellectual disability who has direct experience of being a service user in a particular organisation. Having representatives within these organisations is a way of increasing recognition of the people with an intellectual disability. With recognition that service users can advocate on their own behalf arguments for fairer redistribution become more likely.

While having representation which leads to recognition within the organisation is important to increase recognition within the wider community. Policies in Ireland such as the new directions policy with its foundation of person-centeredness informing policies in relation to community inclusion, a right to formal education and training, right to vocational training, right to meaningful social roles etc. Are important tools in helping people with an intellectual disability access their own community and operate as valued members of society.

With being in the community whether working in a job or studying; the person with an intellectual disability becomes a recognised member of his own community. Prior to de-congregation service users were hidden away from the general public and this resulted in a state of affairs where they were not given recognition as members of our community. And as Fraizer noted when there is no recognition there will be no major push for redistribution of funds to increase the service user’s quality of life.

However, with the person-centred push to get people out into the community things are much different. The general public see on a daily basis the value people with an intellectual disability whether verbal or non-verbal can provide for the community and with this recognition it becomes an easier job to advocate for increasing funding for various different services located within the wider community.

                                   Conclusion

I have here explored people who are non-verbal and have an intellectual disability and discussed their situation from the point of view of intersectionality. The blog detailed the nested threads of disadvantage that can occur when a person is disabled, has an intellectual disability, is non-verbal and comes from a family with a disadvantaged socio-economic background. Techniques which could be used to help people in this scenario were discussed, including legislation, external auditors, advocates etc. Though despite these techniques the author argued that there is still a possibility inequal distribution of finances. To minimize the likelihood of this happening I argued using the work of philosopher Nancy Frazer that increased recognition will lead to a greater likelihood fairer distribution of funds. An outlined some concepts that serve to increase recognition for non-verbal people with an intellectual disability such as community inclusion, service user councils etc.

                                Bibliography

Fraser, N. (2001) ‘Recognition Without Ethics?’ Theory Culture and Society. 18 (2-3) 21-42

Olena, H. (2014) Intersectionality 101. The Institute for Intersectionality Research and Policy, SFU.

Watchman, K. (2018) “The Intersectionality of Intellectual disability and ageing.” Ageing, Diversity and Equality: Social Justice Perspectives. Routledge.

Wittgenstein, L. (1951) The Philosophical Investigations. Routledge.

      In this blog-post I will discuss current polices in Ireland in relation to restrictive practices in the disability sector. I will argue the fact that there not a specific policy in relation to the disability sector in relation to restrictive practices is a serious oversight which indicates a lack of concern with the disability sector, that could result in potential dangers for people who are or will be disabled.

Current policies in relation to restrictive practices in Ireland have gaps which can lead to dangers for people with an intellectual disability. A restrictive practice is defined as “the intentional restriction of a person’s voluntary movement or behaviour” (Hiqa 2019. p. 2). Different types of restrictive practices are (1) Chemical Restraints: the use of medication to modify a person’s behaviour when no medical reason to give the medicine is given (ibid p.3) (2) Mechanical Restraints: the use of devices or garments bodily movements of a person (ibid p. 3) (3) Physical Restraints: which is physical contact which is used with the intention of restricting the movement of a person’s body or a part of a person’s body. (ibid p.3) (4) Environmental Restraints: which is the intentional restriction of a person’s normal access to their environment (ibid p 3). An example of an environmental restraint would be a locked press blocking a person access to their own clothes. There is currently no policy in relation to restrictive practices in disability centres. Disability centres are asked to follow the guidelines provided in ‘Towards a restraint free environment in Nursing Homes’ (2011).

The 2011 policy is generic enough that it is possible to apply it across the disability sector. It offers the following guidance: any use of a restrictive practice must be person-centred, have staff that know the resident’s needs, comprehensive assessments are done, restraints are regularly monitored, recorded, and reviewed, and the organisation must have a policy in place in line with national policy (Department of Health 2011 p. 2). This guidance was specifically designed for nursing homes, but the advice contained in it is generic enough that it is deemed suitable to apply in the disability sector.

However, the fact that there isn’t a specific policy for restrictive practices in the disability sector is troubling given the long history of restrictive practices abuses in the sector. The history of specific abuse in the disability sector has been used as a rationale in the past to justify the creation of specific policies. For example, a criticism of the Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was that it involved unnecessary duplication since the materials contained in it were contained in Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The obvious rejoinder to this criticism was that given the history of the way people with disabilities have had their rights abused in the past, it is vital that that separate rights for people with disabilities are enshrined in international law. Analogously in the case of restrictive practices. There has been a history of abuses in relation to people with disabilities and restrictive practices. For this reason, the fact that there is not a specific restrictive practice policy in place is a major concern.

Some Context

There is no specific policy in place for restrictive practices in relation to people with disabilities. The CDRP set a precedent for rights having specific policies in the case of disability. The vagueness of the current policy creates legal problems potentially because it isn’t specific enough as to when people can consent to restrictive practices. The lack of specific policies in relation to the disability sector is troubling. While there is a policy specific to nursing homes, the lack of a specific policy for the disability sector implies that those who are disabled are less worthy of specific policies and protections than older people. Furthermore, the evidence of the rates of restrictive practices that occur in Ireland demonstrates that factors such as age, geographical location, sex, etc appear to play a role in the number of restrictive practices which are introduced (Mental Health Commission 2019 p.1). Having a policy that is specific to nursing homes and using them to govern the behaviour of providers in the disability sector means that factors such as age which may play a causal role in the likelihood of a restrictive practice being necessary won’t be captured in the relevant policies (ibid. p. 5). So, example, the Mental Health Commission 2019 noted that the majority of service users (24%) who were physically restrained were between the age of 18 and 29 (ibid p.5). A policy which gives guidance on restrictive practices and is designed for nursing homes is going be blind to the discoveries of the Mental Health Commission Report.

The government needs to look into this policy because despite the fact that there is an agreed upon philosophy in place that aims to minimise any use of restrictive practices; empirical research indicates that restrictive practices are actually increasing in Ireland (Ibid p. 7). In a society which values freedom of choice and as a universal human right, to have a system where there is an increase in the practice of deliberately restricting a person’s voluntary movement could be construed to be barbaric. However, it is in the context of a balancing of rights that restrictive practices are in place. And sometimes where a person’s life is in danger the right to life should take precedence over the right to liberty (Freeman 2015 p.7).

The current approach isn’t working because it strikes with too broad a stroke. The there isn’t enough empirical detail about specific disability related factors in the current policy. Furthermore, the current policy aims to balance the right to liberty with the right to health. To ensure that a person’s liberty is respected to the greatest extent possible, it is emphasized that we need to try and ensure that we work with people in terms of augmentative communication tools to help them express their needs and wishes as best they can. The current policy in relation restrictive practices and nursing homes has only a cursory discussion of communication and would need to be updated in light of the assisted decision-making act. Furthermore, guidance on what augmentative devices are considered reliable is needed in order to help people accurately assess whether a person is actually expressing a particular wish in relation to a restrictive practice or not.

It has been demonstrated that a key factor in reducing restrictive practices in relation to physical restraints is the introduction of sensory rooms to help service users relax (Champagne and Stromberg p. 34). These benefits can be seen in nursing homes, psychiatric units, intellectual disability centres etc. However, the type of sensory rooms that will work will vary depending on the profile of the service users. Some sensory equipment will be very useful for people on the autism spectrum, while this same equipment will not necessarily have the same effects on people in a nursing home with Dementia. The 2011 policy in relation to nursing homes does mention the importance of person-centred care and to this degree it would take into account the different types of sensory rooms that may be helpful in reducing the prevalence of restrictive practices. However, more specific guidance in a policy designed directly for those in the disability sector would be very useful in terms of instructing providers on how to reduce restrictive practices.

The 2011 policy in relation to restrictive practices belies a false objectivity in how it thinks about such practices. In her paper ‘Care Ethics and Physical Restraints in residential childcare’ Laura Steckley discusses the underlying philosophy which practitioners use to justify the use of restrictive practices and notes that justifications come from both a Utilitarian and a Deontological perspective. The Utilitarian argument is that the use of a restrictive practice can be justified if its use results in less negative consequences than would have occurred if the restrictive practice had not been imposed. While the rights-based philosophy which draws in deontological arguments is influenced by the social contract tradition. This tradition focuses on rational agents entering into binding agreements and as a result they tend to focus less on our interdependent vulnerable nature.

            Policies in relation to restrictive practice don’t explicitly state the philosophical premises which underlie their position. In practice they use a rights-based approach. Thus, some debates around implementing a restrictive practice will involve an argument which aims to balance the right to health against the right to autonomy. The advice to use the least restrictive practice, which is necessary, for the shortest possible time seems common-sensical but it doesn’t really specify enough detail to be useful. Steckley argues that reducing restrictive practices involves the following factors:

“Effective restraint reduction involves strong leadership, investment in staffing, training and development, unit culture, therapeutic relationships. There are also proven effects of alternatives to restraint including Snoezelen or Sensory rooms as alternatives to restraints” (Steckley, p.199)

Things like unit culture and therapeutic relationships are hard to measure and as we discussed above different kinds of sensory rooms will be appropriate to help reduce the need for restrictive practices for individualised service users.

The combination of advice to use the least restrictive practice necessary coinciding with discussing of the importance of therapeutic relationships and unit cultures, creates an ambiguity of scope. Things like therapeutic relationships involve a human factor, that are qualitative in nature, there is an intersubjective element to such relationships. While speaking of things such as “least restrictive practice necessary” moves into the realm of quantitative thinking. This gap between policy advice and actual day to day practice involving human relationships may be the reason why we are finding it so difficult to reduce the number of restrictive practices which are employed in Ireland currently.

Critique of Policy Options

Policies in relation to restrictive practices need to be considered in the context of the Convention for the Rights of Person’s with Intellectual Disabilities. Article 3 of the CDRP’s first principle notes the importance of “individual autonomy including the freedom to make one’s own choices” (The United Nations 2006 Article 3).  Another factor to be considered in relation to restrictive practices is the Irish constitution section forty which guarantees the rights of Irish Citizens in Law (ibid 3). Any policy in relation to restrictive practice will need to ensure that it is not contravening the rights described in the CDRP and the Irish Constitution.  

The ‘Towards a restraint free environment in Nursing Homes’ (2011), specifies that a restrictive practice is only justified if it can be demonstrated that the cost of not using a restrictive practice is higher than the cost of using it.  So, for example if a person, continually takes off their seat belt this could potentially result in the death of a service user. In this instance it could be deemed that an angel guard can be used to protect the service user from hurting themselves because of not wearing a seat belt. But before any restrictive practice can be put in place; it is necessary to get the consent of the person who may be the recipient of the restrictive practice.

            Some people with an intellectual disability may not be capable of consenting to a restrictive practice being put in place for them. On page 7 of the ‘Towards a Restraint Free Environment in Nursing Homes’, cognitive disability is mentioned when it comes to the issue of consent. The very cursory remarks do reference the importance of assuming capacity with people unless we have compelling evidence to indicate otherwise. An updated policy that was specific to the disability sector would have to refer to the 2015 ‘Assisted Decision-Making Act’. In section 3 of this Act, there is a detailed discussion on the importance of functional assessments in deciding any issues in relation to a person’s capacity to consent. And it is noted that “a person’s capacity to act is judged based on their ability to understand a decision is being made at a particular time, and to understand the consequences of the decision, in the context of available choices at the time” (Assisted Decision-Making Act p.15)

            The Assisted Decision-Making Act notes that there are four key criterion which should be met if we are to deem a person unable to make a decision. The person is unable to understand information relevant to making the decision, to retain that information long enough to make a voluntary choice, to use or weigh that decision as part of a process of making a decision, is unable to communicate his decision even through a third party or through using augmentative communication (ibid p.15).

            Any specific policy which relates to the use of restrictive practices for people who have an intellectual disability will have make use of the Assisted Decision-Making Act. But in the specific case of disability studies further criterion may be needed to specify when a person is communicating their choices through augmentative technology. The case of Anna Stubblefield an academic who was convicted of raping an adult with a profound intellectual disability warns of the dangers of ambiguity. Stubblefield argued that through facilitated communication, DJ the profoundly intellectually disabled adult she was caring for, was able to consent to having sex with her (Engber 2018 p. 2). The scientific evidence that assisted decision making is a valid technique for helping non-verbal people communicate is scant (Wombles 2014 p.5). And ultimately Stubblefield pled guilty of the rape. Nonetheless it is important that any future policy is specific about the types of technologies which are acceptable in assisted communication.

            In the case of restrictive practices, it is vital that a policy is specific about when consent can be given, and if it cannot be given, a legal definition must be in place which can specify why it is deemed that consent cannot be given. So, for example, in cases of restrictive practices, we need specific laws in place which will specify what forms of augmentative communication devices are suitable for getting consent from a service user. If our policies are not specific enough to provide guidance on this issue it would be possible for a service to use unproven techniques such as facilitated communication as evidence that consent has been given. This lax attitude could result in pseudo-consent being used as justification for draconian restrictive practices being used for service users who did not consent to the practices.

Policy Recommendations

• Create a new policy which is specific to disability and restrictive practices.
• Ensure that the policy is written in such a manner that there is less of a gap between the intersubjective relationships which occur in the disability sector and specific advice from when restrictive practices are justified according to the new policy.
• Ensure that the new policy has up to date empirical data on trends which involve increases or decreases in restrictive practices, the types of restrictive practices which are more common, have relevant data on which groups are most likely to be restricted to a restrictive practice etc.
• Ensure that the new policy is in line with specific recommendations from the Assisted Decision-Making Act.
• Ensure that the policy lists which current communication devices are deemed legitimate devices to help people with disabilities with communication issues to communicate their needs.

Concluding remarks

A new policy on Restrictive Practices which is specific to the disability sector and is updated with information from the Assisted Decision-Making Act needs to be developed. This policy needs to reflect the intersubjective and emotional nature of care work and be written in a manner that lessens the typical gap between policies This policy needs to be more explicit on what types of augmentative communication devices are deemed valid to use as a tool to try and help people give consent around issues such as restrictive practices being put in place.  If we are to try and ensure that we do not continue with the human-rights abuses which have occurred repeatedly to people who have an intellectual disability.

                                                   Bibliography

Champagne, T, and Stromberg, N. (2004) “Sensory Approaches in inpatient psychiatric settings: innovative alternatives to seclusion & restraint” Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services. 42 (9) pp 34-44.

Department of Health (2011) Towards a Restraint Free Environment in Nursing Homes.

https://assets.gov.ie/18830/9ef5610bf0814bf792263e844e0d9378.pdf [Accessed on 30/04/22]

Engber, D. (2018) “The Strange Case of Anna Stubblefield, Revisited.” The New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/05/magazine/the-strange-case-of-anna-stubblefield-revisited.html [Accessed 29/4/22]

Freeman, C. M. (2015)  “Reversing hard won victories in the name of human rights: A critique of the General Comment on Article 12 of the UN convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.” The Lancet Psychiatry 2 (9).

Hiqa (2019) Guidance for promoting a care environment that is free from Restrictive Practices: Older People’s Services.

https://www.hiqa.ie/sites/default/files/2019-03/Restrictive-Practice-Guidance%20_DCOP.pdf  [Accessed on 2/5/2022]

Mental Health Commission (2019) The Use of Restrictive Practices in Approved Centres.

https://www.mhcirl.ie/sites/default/files/2021-01/Restrictive%20Practices%20Activity%20Report%202019.pdf [Accessed 1/5/22]

Steckley, L. (2015) “Care Ethics and physical restraint in residential child-care” in M Barnes, Brannelly T,. Ward, L, & Ward, N. (ED). Ethics of Care: Critical advances in international perspective (pp. 195-206). Bristol: Policy Press.

The Irish Statute Book (2015) Assisted Decision Making (capacity) Act 2015. https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2015/act/64/enacted/en/html [Accessed on 25/04/22]

The Irish Statute Book (1937) Constitution of Ireland.

https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/cons/en  [Accessed on 1/5/22]

The United Nations (2006) The Convention on the Rights for Persons with Disabilities.

https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities/convention-on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities-2.html [Accessed 30/4/22]

Wombles, K. (2014) “Some Fads never die-they only hide behind other names: Facilitated Communication is not and never will be Augmentative or Alternative Communication.” Evidence Based and Communication based Assessment and Intervention. Volume 8. Issue 4.

Introduction

In this blogpost I will discuss restrictive practices in the disability sector from the point of view of care ethics. I will begin by outlining what care ethics is, and how it differs from traditional philosophical conceptions. I will then move on to describing restrictive practices from the point of view of policy, and how the policies rely on an implicit philosophy which misunderstands lived human experience and hence offers impractical policy advice.

Care Ethics

Care ethics is a philosophy which focuses on our dependent and relational nature as human beings. The philosophy opposes itself to the Cartesian tradition which conceives of humans as disembodied agents who make their decisions based on logical dispassionate reasoning. In her 1982 book ‘In a Different Voice’ psychologist Carol Gilligan distinguished between male and female ways of reasoning. She argued that male ways of thinking were individualistic and rationalistic while female thinking was more relational and interpersonal. She also claimed that female thinking focused more on care than male thinking.

            There has been a healthy debate on the degree to which Gilligan’s essentialist psychological speculations stand up to critical scrutiny. But I will bracket that question for the purposes of this blog-post. Whether people agree with Gilligan’s essentialist theories of human nature or not, empirical data strongly indicates that the majority of care burdens falls on women’s shoulders. And this fact clearly has had an impact on our philosophical conception on the nature of ethical theorising.

            Descartes is a paradigm example of the modern western philosopher. His atomistic emphasis on reason and his disembodied conception of the mind creates a picture of man as an isolated independent figure who uses the power of reason to deduce the nature of reality. On this Cartesian picture, the body and the mind are separate entities.

            A substantial proportion of the great philosophers in the western cannon were not family men. And those who did have families, were affluent people who relied on their wives and servants to provide the majority of care for their children. So, it is unsurprising that care wasn’t high on the philosophical agenda[1]. To the great philosophers, care was an unimportant background task performed by those, who they believed to be lesser people, primarily women. Eva Kittay puts the point cogently:

“There is a plausible explanation for why there is little in the long history of moral thought that highlights care, whether as a virtue or as the basis for right action. Very few of those who have penned moral theories have been women or had access to the experiences of women when not in the company of men. Women, moreover, have been in a position neither to make decisions in the sphere that men have dominated, nor have they been sufficiently independent of a man’s power to say what it is that they really think. The systematic moral scrutiny applied to promises, contracts, and conduct in battle and business was not applied to areas that men didn’t occupy, like care for children and the ill. (Kittay 2019 p. 166).

This lack of emphasis on the importance of care as an ethical concept feeds into the objectivist paradigm which treats humans as independent, disembodied, rational Cartesian egos.

            Care ethics with its emphasis on relationships, dependency and embodiment provides a corrective to traditional philosophy. Gilligan opposed her care-ethics to what she called the justice paradigm (Kittay 2019 p. 166). A large proportion of the justice paradigm is the social contract theory. This theory which involves a paradigm of self-sufficient individuals coming together to agree on rules they have to live by. It has been noted by critics of the social contract theory[2], that the theory leaves out people with an intellectual disability as being active agents in construction of a social contract.

            Utilitarian philosophy with its emphasis on objective context independent moral rules, and deontology with its moral obligations and universal rules are often pitted against each other as alternative ethical frameworks. While the two systems are obviously opposed to each other in terms of the importance of consequences to our ethical systems they do share one thing in common; both think that it is possible to discover context independent moral rules which can govern our behaviours.

            Care-ethics with its focus on interpersonal context dependent factors in ethical deliberation represents a different more grounded way of thinking about ethics. Policies which deal with ethical issues are sometimes vague about their underlying philosophical justifications. But despite the fact that they appeal to things like universal rights, the primary mode of policy guidance is led by a kind of crude utilitarian calculus. In the next section I will discuss this crude utilitarian calculus in relation to restrictive practice and discuss how care-ethics offers a corrective to this idealistic approach.

Social Care and Care Ethics

            In the Social Care field restrictive practices are a source of embarrassment. Official guidance is to try and drive out restrictive practices entirely. However, it is acknowledged by practitioners in the social care field that sometimes these practices are necessary. But a practice that, for example, restricts a person’s movement against their will, is a violation of their human rights. To justify these practices policies appeal to pragmatic and utilitarian considerations which in effect argue that the harm done by the restrictive practice is less than the harm that would be caused if it wasn’t implemented.

Utilitarian arguments can be used to justify draconian practices. This is something that has long been noted in other areas of ethics. It is easy to throw out justifications for draconian actions which have with blasé appeals to utilitarian considerations. Thus, people have often justified dropping a nuclear bomb during WW2 on the grounds that doing so saved countless lives. But the truth is we cannot realistically calculate how many people could have died if the bombs were not dropped.

            Likewise, in the case of restrictive practices, the pretence that we can objectively calculate that a restrictive practice is justified because of numbers assigned on a risk assessment is idealistic at best. Assigning numbers on a page gives an appearance of objectivity which my not be present. It could be argued that we can estimate the potential risk of damage, if an incident occurs, and estimate the likelihood that the person engaging in the risky behaviour, and with this data we can estimate the overall danger. With this in place if the probability of someone being seriously hurt is extremely high then a restrictive practice may be justified.

            All of this sounds reassuringly objective. However, in reality things are not that simple. When we are estimating the probability of a behaviour occurring, we can appeal to previous incidents over the last 12 months to estimate the probability of the behaviour. But the probability of a behaviour has to be specified against a set of background conditions. If I drink coffee every morning at 8am the probability of me drinking it tomorrow would be high; but if I fell into a coma the night before I won’t be drinking coffee tomorrow. On a Bayesian analysis you can also calculate the odds of me falling into a coma. And factor it into your overall analysis of the probability of my drinking coffee tomorrow. But there will always be some uncertainty.

            In the case of restrictive practice similar considerations apply. If we take the case of self-injurious behaviour. If a service-user is engaging in severe self-injurious behaviour every day that could cause them serious damage, then then the probability that they could hurt themselves tomorrow would be high. However, when you factor in background conditions, things change. In his ‘Care Ethics and Restraint in Residential Child Care’ Steckley notes that there is good empirical evidence that Snoezelen and sensory rooms can result in a reduction in the need for restrictive practices (Steckley 2015 p 200). Furthermore, he notes that things like staff training, unit culture, therapeutic approaches and primarily relationships are potent causal features of reducing restrictive practices (ibid p. 200). When one tries to factor these things into our background conditions which may change the probability of a behaviour occurring things get tricky. It is hard to assign a number to a culture changing, or to a relationship between a service user and a staff resulting in changed behaviour. And this is where the false objectivity of the implicit utilitarian calculus which is appealed to in our restrictive practice policies gets exposed. Hiqa 2019 note:

“The use of a restrictive practice is warranted when there is a real and substantive risk to a person and this risk cannot be addressed by a non-restrictive means.” ( Hiqa 2019 p. 5)

But as we have seen above despite the objective sounding language it is extremely difficult to calculate when a risk is extremely high and cannot be addressed using non-restrictive mean.

Social Care practice in Ireland is replete with concepts such as person-centred planning, community inclusion etc. And these concepts find their way into policies. But policies are also written with calculations designed to implemented in an efficient black and white manner in Capitalist market. And this black and white philosophy is not flexible enough to do justice to concepts such as person-centred care etc. The black and white philosophy may fit people who are “rational, autonomous, capable of making a choice, possessed of adequate information” (Toronto 2010 p. 159). Toronto notes that a lot of service users do not fit the above description. But the truth is we all don’t always fit the above description. As our discussion of restrictive practices above indicates we sometimes act on inadequate information and our choices aren’t always strictly rational. Holland notes that the quality of care suffers when it is considered a commodity not a process. (Holland 2010. pp. 163-166). And I think this is true in terms of policies when they are constructed according to strict utilitarian or deontological principles. The value of care ethics is that it focuses on our human and dependent nature. One difficulty with this conception is that we live in a world run according to rabid-Capitalism and this Capitalist system with its focus on the bottom line will find care-ethics with its ambiguities and focus on context a difficult philosophy to adapt.

Conclusion

In this blogpost I discussed care ethics and how it differs from traditional philosophical conceptions of ethics. The traditional conception of philosophy was contrasted with care-ethics with its focus on dependency, context and the body. To illustrate the importance of care ethics for the social care field the author discussed care ethics and restrictive practices. It was demonstrated that absolutist ethical positions written into policies cannot cope with the ambiguities of the real world while Care Ethics is much better equipped to deal with these ambiguities. However, given the current economic order we all live in Care Ethics is unlikely to make it into social care policies any time soon.

Bibliography

Gilligan, C. (1982) In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press.

Holland, S. (2010) “Looking After Children and the Ethic of Care”. The British Journal of Social Work. 40. No6 pp 1664-1680.

Kittay, E. (2019) Learning From My Daughter: The Value and Core of Disabled Minds. Oxford. Oxford University Press.

Nussbaum, M (2011) Creating Capabilities. Cambridge MA: Belknap Harvard.

Nussbaum, M (2006) Frontiers of Justice. Cambridge MA: Belknap Harvard.

Nussbaum, M (2013) Political Emotions. Cambridge MA: Belknap Harvard.

Rawls, J (1971) A Theory of Justice. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

Steckley, L. (2015). “Care ethics and physical restraint in residential childcare”. In M. Barnes, Brannelly, T., Ward, L. & Ward, N. (Ed.), Ethics of care: Critical advances in international perspective (pp.195 – 206). Bristol: Policy Press.

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[1] Kittay (2019) notes that reflection on care wasn’t entirely absent from the western philosophical cannon some philosophers such as Plato, and Heidegger did consider the concept of care however their abstract reflections don’t touch on the concrete responsibilities in relation to care that recent feminist philosophers in the care ethics tradition have been concerned with.

[2] See Nussbaum (2006, 2011, 2013)

In this blog-post I will briefly discuss chapter 6 of Buntings book Labours of Love. In chapter 6 Bunting discusses home care from the point of view of care workers, owners of home care companies, and people who are receiving home help. I will begin by describing the methodology which Bunting uses to arrive at her conclusions. And will then evaluate Bunting’s diagnosis of the current state of the social care provision before explaining some disparities in the treatment of social care and health care that Bunting noted. Because Bunting’s book is not intended to be an academic piece; she doesn’t explicitly delve into the philosophical and sociological theories underlying her discoveries. I will, therefore, interpret some of Buntings claims in light of some current philosophical and sociological theories. A key claim of this blog-post will be that a possible explanation for the disparity between the way social care and health care is treated is because of an implicit denial of our humanness and vulnerability.

                              Methodological Preliminaries

Bunting’s empirical methodology is four-fold. (1) Qualitative Data: She relies on case-studies to detail how the workers and owners experience working in the social care system in the UK. These case studies give us a phenomenological description of the lived experiences of the people working in a social care setting. Her focus includes voices from people working in social care, and people who own care homes (2) Quantitative Data in the form of studies which detail the financial arrangements of care companies. The funding available for social care in England. (3) Historical Data which aims to illustrate past trends of literary, scientific, and political perceptions of the elderly and speculation on how these views have influenced the current state of play in the UK re-social care. (4) Reports of her direct experiences when visiting the care home facility, home care provision etc. This can be best described as introspective reflections on her feelings as well as phenomenological reflections on her experiences in these centres.

          The empirical evidence Bunting provides demonstrates that social care is criminally underfunded and that this underfunding results from an underlying ethical philosophy of individualism. In chapter 6 of her book Bunting describes historical attitudes towards the elderly throughout history; demonstrating that politicians and historians viewed the elderly with distain and as a burden on society. The elderly were described as burdens on society, who were unproductive, and therefore a drain on the system. As a result of these attitudes when people became older, they were sent to dank unhomely institutes where they were stripped of their individuality and freedom.

            This general attitude towards those elderly, mirrored treatments for the mentally ill, people with intellectual disabilities. People who were deemed to be of no use to society were hidden away from the public in institutions. Given the attitudes towards the people being cared for; it is no surprise that the quality of people providing the care was not deemed an important matter.

                               The Devaluing of Care Work

            In her interviews with homecare workers, they noted that home care work was in general viewed through a negative lens. Over fifty percent of the carers Bunting interviewed noted that their friends and family looked down on the type of work they did[1]. Baker and Lynch (2012), cite further studies which indicate that Carers feel that their work is looked down on by both politicians and society.  Bunting didn’t delve into why people viewed care work as something to feel embarrassed about. On the face of it one would think that care work; a job that involves helping the vulnerable would be viewed in a positive light. However, the anecdotal reports from the care workers indicate that some people in their lives view care work as low status work. One of the care workers even said she was deeply ashamed of being a care worker (Bunting 2020 p. 205).

            Another complaint which is made by the care workers is that they are extremely poorly paid. It is difficult to isolate the causal structure in this sphere; are care workers low paid because they are not respected or does society does not respect care workers because they are poorly paid and hence are categorised in a particular socio-economic class? We can see on Buntings historical analysis that the subjects of care; the elderly and the disabled are generally viewed under the guise of an economic burden. When the elderly are described as consumers who do not produce (Bunting 2020 p. 207) they are being conceptualized in a particular manner. The language we use to describe people has effects on how we conceptualize them (Lakoff and Johnson 1980 p. 3). When thought of primarily as an unproductive economic unit, as opposed to individuals with dignity who happens to need help, the quality of help we provide will be affected.

            This viewing of people as economic units who are either productive members of society or are not; may explain the disparity between social care funding and NHS funding that Bunting notes. People who have a temporary sickness still have the potential to re-enter society and engage in productive work. Whereas on this extreme socio-economic thinking people who could no longer work were deemed a drain on society. This could explain why even arch conservatives like Thatcher were forced to safeguard the NHS but let social care become privatised. A substantial proportion of those in need of social care fell into the category of people who could not work because of disability[2], or the elderly who could no longer work. On the conservative world view such people were not productive members of society and hence were not the governments problem. The burden fell to families to care for those people in their families who needed help.

            If families were incapable of providing the necessary care they expected to try and access the care through home-care companies. Buntings’ descriptions of these companies are derived from interview with owners, care work, and admin staff. These interviews tell the story of time pressed workers moving from job to job with little time to engage with the people whom they are supposed to support.

            Buntings’ analysis points towards a severe lack of funding for Social Care in comparison to the funding available to those in the healthcare sector. This divergence in funding is on the face of it hard give a rationale for. As Bunting correctly points out people pretheoretically would expect to have social care available for a parent who has dementia in the same way they would expect to have health-care available if they had Cancer. But the reality is very different; social care funding in the UK and Ireland is severely depleted. Bunting doesn’t develop an analysis of why this divergence occurred; she merely points to the fact that Thatcher safeguarded the NHS while she privatized social care.

            As we discussed above a possible explanation between the disparity with which Thatcher treated the NHS and the Social Care system was that the NHS’s primary focus was on getting economic units back out working; it was deemed good for the economy to have a fully functioning NHS[3]. Social care on the other hand was associated with aging and disabled people, and on rabid individualism with its underlying philosophy where people were portrayed as; atomistic freely choosing agents, those who were dependent on others to meet their daily needs were deemed as radically other. These radical others were viewed the responsibilities of their families, or recipients of charity[4], not as citizens with rights owed to them by society.

            At the heart of this ideology, which leads to the poor social care system Bunting documents; is a kind of false consciousness. This false consciousness comes from the denial of our human animal nature. Dependency isn’t something that happens to others; it is a fact all human lives from the moment we are born. Eva Feder Kittay correctly notes that while independence is often valorised in our society this valorisation is very dubious:

“Is it not better to recognize and create conditions that foster relationships of dependency replete with affective bonds and a sense that each participant has received her due; relationships which can transform otherwise unpleasant intimate tasks into times of trust and demonstrations of trustworthiness, gratifying and dignifying to both caregiver and the recipient of care? A truly independent life-one in which we need no one and no one needs us-would be a very impoverished one even if it were possible. The person with an impairment who requires the assistance of a caregiver is not the exception, but a person living out a frequent occurrence in any human life, our inevitable dependency” (Kittay 2019 p 161)

Dependency is inevitable for every human at some point in their lives and a society which downplays this fact is a deeply unhealthy one.

 Philosopher Martha Nussbaum illustrates our dependent nature using references from the point of view of developmental psychology, with help from history, literature, and psychoanalysis. Nussbaum’s story begins in childhood (Nussbaum 2018 pp 17-60).  Humans, unlike most other species are born almost entirely helpless, for the first year of our lives we are entirely dependent on our mother for everything; if we defecate ourselves, we need our mother to clean us, if we are hungry, we need our mother to feed us, we are innately social and need our mother’s[5] social feedback to survive. We eventually develop the sensory motor skills to partially gain freedom from our parents but for the first ten years of our lives we are small with little power and very dependent on our parents. Post our teen years we slowly gain independence and eventually become a citizen of our society with some degree of autonomy. But no matter how free we are, at the back of our minds we still remember how vulnerable we once felt. But while our memory of our abject humility of being entirely controlled by another, implicitly terrorises our consciousness, the reflective part of our mind is looking towards another terror, the terror of future or potential present vulnerability.

Religious and philosophical fantasies may be 100% consciously believed but we know from our experiences how vulnerable our bodies are. We know from experience that people can become vulnerable through brain tumours, brain damage through a car crash, neurological disorders like MS, MMD etc. We know that at any minute we can slip from being able bodied to being disabled in the space of a few weeks. We also know that if we are lucky enough to not die young; if we are to be in the top 1% of lucky people in history, we will live to become old enough to be as disabled as we were in infancy. To steal a line from a comic movie; “run from it, deny it, there is no escaping your destiny”. The only possible escape is to die at the prime of your life.

Individuals with memories of their childhood, with the capacity to think of possible diseases, or to reflect on the limits of old age; all know we are only temporally able bodied. But we stick this fact to the back of our minds; this is probably why Superhero films are so popular; better to identify with a fantasy of being invulnerable than face the radical vulnerability. Nussbaum’s philosophy asks us to reflect on our humanness. But furthermore, she offers a corrective to the procedural views of rationalistic philosophy. Our emotional nature as humans clouds our thinking about the type of society, we want to live in.

            Individualistic philosophies such as the conservative philosophy Thatcher; inspired by Hayek, adhered to when she was privatising social care was implicitly influenced by an unconscious denial of our dependency and humanity. Once this denial is made then social care seems to be a problem for individual families instead a universal problem which faces all humans.

            This denial of our humanness and vulnerability infects all aspects of our social care provision. In Buntings case studies her subjects all complain about the quantitative nature of their work. In the top end home care provision people are given more time to provide their care (between thirty minutes and an hour). While at the lower end of the scale people are given 15 minutes to provide their care. The carers at all ends of the scale complain that they cannot always guarantee to provide sufficient care within a specific time frame. Partly this time frame is simply the result of working within a capitalist system in a privatised sector; care must be quantified into discrete measurable units to guarantee a profit.

            But it is only partly because of this capitalist system that this quantization occurs. Another, reason is a failure to appreciate the human nature of the job. When you think of care as a series of jobs that need can be quantified you are thinking of care as a series of abstract tasks. Washing could be one task, giving meds another task etc. The reality is that care tasks are not abstractions that occur in a void. Rather they are tasks that occur in the contexts of human relationships. Even when a home care worker enters a house for the first time to provide care for person whom they have never met before; as soon as they step through the door, they are immersed in a human relationship.  They are dealing with individuals with time and context specific needs and not an abstract set of tasks that must be finished within a particular time. It is through abstracting away from interpersonal relationships and humanity of people being cared for that one loses the essence of the human relationship that underlies all care work.

            Bunting’s book is extremely valuable because she puts human relationships at the centre of all aspects of her book. She notes her own feelings when caring for the extremely old and aged, she reveals the world of people in care, and relates this world to the world of people providing care. The overall tenor of the book is to exemplify the human nature of the care work and how this work is relational and human work that cannot be reduced to time sheets and fixed tasks squeezed within set periods of time.

                                             Bibliography

Baker, J, and Lynch, (2012) “Inequalities of Love and Care and their Theoretical Implications”. Social Justice Series. Vol. 12. No 1.

Bunting, M (2020) Labours of Love: The Crisis of Care. London: Granta

Fine, D. (2014) “Dependency work: A critical exploration of Kittay’s perspective on care as a relationship of power”. Health and Sociological Review.

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[1] Baker and Lynch (2012) p. 12 cites a different set of studies which supports the contention that care workers feel their work is undervalued by both employees and politicians.

[2] In the case of disability a substantial proportion of them were indeed capable of working but society didn’t deem it worth its while to make environmental adjustments which would make accessing work possible.

[3] Subsequent history has shown that health care services are less and less considered off limit as the push to entirely privatize them continues apace.

[4] Rawls social contract theory though championed by liberal philosophers similarly held the view that people with intellectual disabilities are recipients of charity not subjects of justice. See Nussbaum 2006)

[5] I am speaking of mothers feedback because it is particularly important for the first 6 months of a child’s life; particularly for things like breast feeding

In this blog I will discuss the Animal Rights Movement. The Animal rights movement is a diverse movement which goes back centuries. However, I will limit my discussion to the movement that began with the work of Henry Spira in the 1970’s. Typically when theorists discuss social justice movements, they do so in terms of raising class consciousness. The emphasis is on helping people to realise they are being exploited so that they can fight back against injustice. However, animals do not have the capacity to have their consciousness raised, and this poses terminal difficulties for any analysis of the animal rights movement in terms of class consciousness. To understand animal rights as a social justice movement the author used Sidney Tarrow’s definition of a social justice movement and will demonstrate that Spira’s movement is a social movement in Tarrow’s sense. To demonstrate that Spira’s movement meets Tarrow’s criterion I will detail the history of how his movement got started (philosophical influences), the political opposition it faced, and the successes it achieved. With this done the author will analyse some weakness with Spira’s movement and discuss the importance of framing for any social justice movement.

                           Spira’s activism as a Social Justice Movement

The animal rights movement is diverse and has a long history culminating in the antivivisectionists in the 18^th century. However, the movement only began to achieve concrete results in the 1970’s when activist Henry Spira started using a pragmatic approach to achieving narrow limited change in decreasing animal cruelty. Spira’s tactic was to pick out companies which were vulnerable in some way, and to negotiate with them first, and if the negotiation failed, he would stage escalating protests.

In his ‘Power as Movement’ Sidney Tarrow defined social movements as follows:

• “I shall argue that contentious politics emerges in response to changes in political opportunities and threats when participants perceive and respond to a variety of incentives: material and ideological, partisan and group-based, long-standing, and episodic. Building on these opportunities, and using known repertoires of action, people with limited resources can act together contentiously-if only sporadically. When their actions are based on dense social networks and effective connective structures and draw on legitimate action-orientated cultural frames, they can sustain these actions even in contact with powerful opponents. In such cases-and only in such cases-we are in the presence of a social movement.” (Tarrow: 1994 p. 16)

Tarrow’s description of a social movement offers a very specific vision. It will be instructive for our purposes to see if the Animal Liberation movement as exemplified by Henry Spira’s work matches Tarrow’s criterion.

As I mentioned above attempts of antivivisectionists to stop animal cruelty traditionally failed. With Spira’s activism this changed, and more practical results were achieved. Spira’s activism did spring from a perceived opportunity. He noted that corporations were increasingly concerned with their public image and spent millions to cultivate this image. This need for corporations to protect their public image presented an opportunity for activists. They could present evidence of the disturbing experiments being done on animals and demand that the experiments be made safer, or the evidence could be used to tarnish the reputation of the corporations.

A further material and ideological opportunity that presented itself to Spira was that the animal rights movement was beginning to have a respectable face to the general public. Novelist Bridget Brophy’s 1965 article in the Sunday Times alerted the public to the issue of animal rights and inspired philosophical debates on the nature of animal rights. Culminating in a series of academic books and articles on the topic (‘Animal Rights Movement’ Wikipedia p.2 ).

The publication of ‘Animal Liberation’ by Utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer in 1975 was a game changer. The book popularised the phrase Speciesism. Singer defined Speciesism as follows:

“Racists violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when there is a clash between their interests and the interests of those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by favouring the interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists allow the interests of their own species to override the greater interests of members of other species. The pattern is identical in each case.” (Singer 1975 p. 9)

In his book Singer detailed experiments that were done on animals and critiqued the scientific validity of the experiments. His measured arguments and lucid prose made his book popular with the public, as well as with academics. Furthermore, his book boosted the image of animal rights activism. At the time animal rights activists were portrayed as irrational dogmatists who were led entirely by emotion and who couldn’t be reasoned with. With this image prevalent before the public mind; big business could dismiss the concerns being raised by activists. Singer’s book helped change this perception. And the changed perspective created opportunities for people to get a seat at the table in negotiations with businesses that otherwise wouldn’t have taken them seriously. Spira was able to utilise this greater public reputation of activists to get himself into meetings with business who were practicing unethical experiments on animals.

On Tarrow’s analysis a key component of being a social movement involves having dense social networks that can involve sustained effective connective structures and legitimate action orientated cultural frames (Tarrow 1994 p. 16). Using these dense social networks and action orientated cultural frames gives a movement the ability to launch sustained actions against more powerful opponents (ibid p.16).

Spira used a four-fold technique to try and achieve change on behalf of the animals he was advocating for; persuasion, facilitation, bargaining, and coercion (Munro 2002 p. 175). The first three techniques were typically used by Spira when he was negotiating with business. But the fourth technique; the use of coercion, involved social networks, high connectivity, and legitimate culturally framed acts. So, in this sense Spira’s animal activism meets Tarrow’s criterion of being a social movement. To understand the social networks Spira utilised, and the actions they mandated, it will be helpful to consider some of his campaigns.

                             The Natural History Museum Campaign

Spira saw a report published by United Action for Animals about experiments being done on cats in the American Museum of Natural History. These experiments typically involved cutting out sections of the cat’s brain and measuring how this effected the Cats sexual behaviour. So, after the operation the cat was placed in a room with various animals, and the scientist would observe which animals (if any) the Cat would try to mount. Being a pragmatist by nature Spira picked the Natural History Museum because it involved a somewhat easy target. While from a logical point of view it makes no difference whether the animal being experimented on is a rat or a cat, they are both sentient creatures; from an emotional point of view, it is easier to elicit sympathy for a household pet being experimented on (Singer 1998 p, 52). Furthermore, the experiments didn’t have any immediate scientific applications that were useful in curing any diseases, so it would be easy to convince the public that the experiments were pointless as well as cruel. These experiments were also funded by public money, and it was a useful tactic to convince people that their tax money was being misused (ibid p. 53).

Spira’s pragmatic approach coheres with Tarrow’s suggestion that using emotional laden cultural packages is important in building a social movement:

“From assuming grievances, scholars of social movements now began to focus on how movements embed concrete grievances with emotion-laden “packages” (Gamson 1992), or in “frames” capable of convincing participants their cause is just and important” (Tarrow 1994 p. 26)

We can see that Spira’s tactics which focused vivisections being done on animals which are considered in our culture cute and loveable, and on vivisectionists who were getting paid to torture animals with public funds made framing the issue easier. People were being given a concrete target; and easily digestible, but emotionally laden facts, about what this target was doing wrong.

Spira began his campaign by gathering data through reading publicly available reports on the contents and results of the experiments which were being done. When he had done his research, he began by sending a letter to the Natural History Museum followed by series of phone calls (Singer 1998 p. 54). These letters and phone calls were ignored. So, he began a media campaign; he appeared on the Pegeen and Ed Fitzgerald radio talk show, got an article in published in ‘Our Town’ a Manhattan weekly paper (ibid p. 55). He also began circulating materials to other animal rights organisations. This work helped to create a connected network of actors all working towards a common purpose.

With the media and animal rights organisations to some degree involved in the campaign against the vivisections being done in the Natural History Museum, they had the numbers to protest outside the museum. These protests were supported by Society for Animal Rights, and Friends of Animals, as well as by interested members of the public who heard about the campaign through the media.

The protests went on for over a year (ibid p. 56). And of course, the protests led to more media coverage which in turn inspired more and more people to join the protests. Another tactic used was contacting the benefactors of the museum and detailing to them the nature of the experiments being performed. This tactic resulted in the museum losing substantial funding. Congressman Ed Koch, inspired by the protests visited the museum and found the experiments lacking in scientific importance and commented that the government had paid nearly half a million dollars to fund these experiments (ibid p. 60). This led to 120 members of congress writing letters to the NIH asking about the nature of the experiments. Prompting the Natural History Museum to review the experimental procedures and exonerating themselves of any wrongdoing (ibid p.58). Letters from congress, weekly protests, radio show appearances etc gave great publicity to the movement.

As a result of the increasing publicity the famous journal Science ran four-page article on animal liberation in general, and the protests against the Natural History Museum in particular (ibid p.62). The article was written by Nicholas Wade and in it he noted the low citation index for the experiments on the Cats. This led him to question the scientific importance of the experiments. This article was particularly important; scientists generally dismissed animal rights activists as illiterate lunatics, and this was the first time a scientific magazine spoke about them as reasonable people (ibid p.64). In August 1977 the museum stopped its experiments on the Cats. The Animal liberation movement had won its first battle to get experimentation stopped.

When explicating the nature of social justice movements Tarrow made the following important point:

“Contentious politic is produced when threats are experienced and opportunities are perceived, when the existence of available allies is demonstrated and when the vulnerability of opponents is exposed.” (Tarrow 1994 p. 33)

My brief description of Spira’s campaign against the Natural History Museum shows that his campaign meets all the criterion set by Tarrow for something to count as a social movement. Furthermore, Spira’s social movement was extremely successful from a pragmatic point of view.

                                              The Revlon Campaign

Spira launched a campaign against the cosmetic company Revlon. They like all other cosmetic companies used animal experiments to test their products. Spira singled out Revlon because they had a carefully honed public image which they wanted to protect. He reasoned that it was easy to make the case that their tests were frivolous and cruel (Singer 1998 p, 69). He noted that most people would agree that blinding a rabbit in the name in making a new type of shampoo was extremely cruel. The Draize test was a test performed on Rabbits by cosmetic companies which was designed to see what damage various chemical combinations would have when sprayed in the animal’s eyes. 

Spira followed a similar campaign as he did against the Natural History Museum. He adopted a pragmatic approach and didn’t demand to stop all animal testing. He just asked for Revlon to donate a percentage of their profits to finding a less cruel manner of testing. A similar pattern emerged. The company ignored them. Spira arranged protests; fund-raised for advertising that hurt the public image of the company and eventually the company gave way and submitted to the demands.

                    Was Spira’s campaigns a success?

                           Animals and Legal Rights

As we saw above Spira achieved more concrete results than his predecessors. His pragmatic approach helped him work well with businesses and get them to concede something. For Spira who was a Utilitarian; since he was reducing the percentage of animal suffering, he was achieving the ends he set himself. However, some people argued that merely decreasing a percentage of suffering wasn’t enough. Animals have rights and we need to work towards, arguing for those rights philosophically before trying to enshrine them in the law. If we could enshrine animal rights in law, then we wouldn’t need to negotiate with big business to get them to make minimal concessions. Tom Regan’s ‘The Case for Animal Rights’ (1983), which a was criticism of the utilitarian philosophy inspiring Spira, was the first step in the direction in trying to get animal rights taken seriously. These philosophical debates have moved on to more practical legal based arguments where organisations like nonhumanrights.org bring legal cases before courts in order to enshrine rights for animals in the court of law. It is an open question whether this rights-based approach will achieve more protection for non-human animals than Spira’s pragmatic utilitarian approach.

               Direct Action Group: Beyond the Law

Spira, the pragmatist and utilitarian, adopted the tactic of working with big business to try and achieve incremental change. And some rights-based approaches sought to use the law make it illegal for animals to have their rights violated by either big business or government labs. Both views are operating within existing legal systems. Direct action groups sometimes operate outside the law and break into labs and businesses to try and expose the conditions that animals currently live under. While they don’t recommend violence against humans they do engage in vandalism in labs and operate on an underground system which makes it difficult to discover who, if anyone, is in charge of the group.

Whether this moving beyond the law is justified is beyond the remit of this blog. In his ‘The Justification for Civil Disobedience’ John Rawls argued that there are four conditions which justify civil disobedience: (1) When Normal political appeals to the majority have already been made in good faith and been rejected. (2) When fundamental equal liberties are denied (minorities not being given the right to vote) (3) When the protester acknowledges that any other party subjected to a similar degree of justice has an equal right to protest in a similar way. (4) When the protest is rational and has a good rational chance of achieving our aims. (Civil disobedience would be pointless if we had no chance of achieving our aims) (Rawls 1969 p.187). I will leave as an exercise for the reader to reflect on whether animal rights organisations which break the law meet the criterion set out by Rawls.

                   Francis Power Cobbe and the Power of Framing 

As we discussed above Spira’s lasting contribution was his concrete achievements which resulted in decreasing animal experimentation. I contrasted these concrete achievements with the antivivisectionist movement which preceded him and their lack of pragmatic success. One of the explanations I gave was that philosophers like Peter Singer managed to reach a popular audience, and an academic audience with his Animal Liberation, and this helped to improve the movements image and made it more respectable to the general public. I argued that the image enhancement of the movement made possible by the likes of Singer gave Spira the opportunity (in Tarrow’s sense) to build his social movement. However, while it is true that Singer did improve the image of the antivivisectionist movement. This improved image was only necessary because of caricatures that existed in the public. Most antivivisectionists at the end of the eighteenth century were women. And one of the most prominent antivivisectionists was an Anglo-Irish lady named Frances Power Cobbe. Cobbe was an accomplished philosopher who had published dozens of books on animal rights and other philosophical topics (Frances Power Cobbe Wikipedia p.1). She was far from the hysterical illiterate caricature of animal rights activists that existed prior to Singer’s publications. Cobbe was up to date in both the best science and philosophy of her day and wrote cogent reasoned arguments against vivisectionists.

So why did it take Singer’s arguments to help animal rights activists to get a reputation for being reasonable and educated people? A possible hypothesis is that the Misogynistic society in which Cobbe and her colleagues were working in made it easy for opponents to frame a women led movement in such an unflattering manner. Certainly, there was no sensible argument to be made that could portray Cobbe as anything other than an intelligent capable activist and scholar. The fact that vivisectionists managed to paint Cobbe et all in such an unflattering and inaccurate manner demonstrates the importance of cognitive frames in any social movement.

                                                          Bibliography

Munro, L. (2002) ‘The Animal Activism of Henry Spira (1927-1988) Society and Animals, 10 (2): 173-191.

Regan, T. (1983) The Case for Animal Rights. California: University of California Press.

Singer, P. (1975) Animal Liberation. New York: Harper Collins Publications.

Singer, P. (1998) Ethics in Action. London: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

Rawls, J. (1969) “The Justification of Civil Disobedience” in Freeman, S. (EDS) John Rawls Collected Papers. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 176-190.

Tarrow, S,G. (1994) Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wikipedia. (2021) Animal Rights Movement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_rights_movement [Accessed on the 3/1/22]

Wikipedia (2021) Francais Power Cobbe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Power_Cobbe [Accessed on 3/1/22]

With the unlimited money of Disney Plus Marvel keep churning out more and more content at an uneven pace in terms of quality. Their latest attempt is an animated series called ‘What if?’ where a narrator who is a kind of multiversal celestial being talks us through a series of possible worlds where reality involves characters we are familiar from the cannon Marvel Cinematic Universe but who live different lives from the ones we know. Each episode is supposed to be a different universe and all episodes are distinct from the Marvel Universe we take as cannon.

In the latest ‘What-if?’ episode we are shown a story about Dr Strange which was very sad and moving. The story involves Dr Strange’s wife being killed in a car crash. Strange cannot cope with his girlfriend’s death and uses the eye of Agamotto (an enchanted stone which gives him some control over time), to try and change the past and ensure that his girlfriend never dies. However, no matter how many times Strange changes the past his girlfriend keeps on dying. The story unfolds with Strange obsessively trying and failing to stop his girlfriend from dying. The culmination is that Strange turns to the dark arts to bring back his girlfriend while he does end up bringing her briefly back to life, she is terrified of the abomination that he has become, and she ends up dying anyway.  Ultimately, the spell which brought her back to life ends up destroying the entire universe, except for Strange, leaving him on his own crying and bemoaning his mistakes.

As the episode ends one is left feeling some sympathy for Strange as he weeps and regrets his actions. But while an immediate sense of sympathy for a character is understandable one, it leads one to reflect on whether the sympathy is warranted. When Strange starts to try and modify time to bring his wife back it first seems to be motivated by love. But slowly it takes the form of an obsession, a dreadful need to control reality that is motivated less and less by love as the episode ends. In one sense the fact that Strange appears to be motivated less and less by love makes him a less sympathetic character. But on another level his compulsive need to control reality reveals a child like side of Strange that is both pathetic and tragic. Strange seems to want reality to unfold precisely as he wills it and one is left to feel some pity for his puerile attempts to play god. But to pity a person is not to justify their behaviour. We can pity a person who is in the depths of alcoholism who drives under the influence and ends up knocking someone down and killing them[1]. The pity can derive from the fact that the person is a pathetic figure who wasn’t fully in control of their actions. However, even if one did feel pity for the drunk driver, most people would still hold the drunk driver morally responsible for his actions. To hold a person morally responsible for their actions one needs to argue that they could have done otherwise. The drunk driver could have chosen to not drink when he was driving, or if he felt compelled to drink, he could have desisted from driving. If the drunk person couldn’t have done otherwise, then he cannot be held responsible for his actions. A determinist who argues that all our behaviours are determined by causal antecedents would hold the view that ultimately nobody is responsible for their actions.

But adopting a determinist perspective on Dr Strange’s behaviour in his fictional world may be in tension with what we know about the Marvel Multiverse. In the episode we are discussing there is a twist where we find out that the sorcerer supreme splits Strange in two (unknownst to Strange), so while one version of Strange obsessively tries to bring his girl friend back to life the other one moves on with his life and is a force for good in his universe. Indeed, the whole premise of ‘What If?’, is that there exists an infinite possible version of Dr Strange all of them living slightly different lives.  Furthermore, we know from the Marvel Cinematic Universe that there exists at least one other Strange whose girlfriend died in a crash and yet this Strange managed to move on with his life without destroying a universe. To some the fact that there are alternative versions of Strange who do not engage in his abhorrent behaviours indicate that he could have done otherwise.

In the under-described and fictional world of Marvel which appeals to magic as well as pseudo-scientific explanation in its world building; there will obviously be no matter of fact answer to whether Strange’s behaviour was determined. However, from the point of view of the real world, our world, there is no logical compulsion that possible worlds or a multiverse imply the existence of freewill. In fact physicist Sean Carroll argues that one version of the multiverse which is supported by a realistic interpretation in Quantum Mechanics is entirely deterministic:

“The right way to think about the causality is “some microscopic processes happened that caused branching, and on different branches you ended up making different decisions,” rather than “you made a decision, which caused the wave function in the universe to branch”…Quantum Mechanics is not necessarily indeterministic. Many-Worlds is a counterexample. You evolve, perfectly deterministically, from a single person now into multiple persons at a future time. No choices come into the matter anywhere.” (Sean Carroll ‘Something Deeply Hidden pp 214-218)

There is obviously no fact of the matter about whether Strange lives in a deterministic universe like our own one. Nonetheless he does make a useful thought experiment on whether we should feel sympathy for people in a deterministic universe. In this authors view a deterministic universe should elicit universal sympathy; as no agent is truly responsible for their behaviour. But responsible or not they get to live their behaviour.

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[1] Some would argue that it would be inappropriate to feel sympathy for the drunk driver that all sympathy should be directed towards the innocent victim killed by the drunken driver and the victim’s family. However, it is possible to feel some sympathy for the drunk driver even if most of your sympathy is with the victim and his family.

Below I will briefly outline the central outline of Forrester’s book ‘In the Shadow of Justice’. The primary aim of the blow will be to outline what the central arguments are she presents in each chapter. I will present a more thorough criticism of the book in my next blogpost.

Chapter 1 of Forrester’s ‘In the Shadow of Justice’, focuses on the development of Rawls Theory of Justice. Forrester portrays Rawls firmly as a man of his time who took on the concerns of his time and firmly integrated them into his political theories. In the aftermath of World War 2, with the rise of communism in Russia, western thinkers were concerned with the dangers of totalitarianism.  In Forrester’s view Rawls philosophical system was shot through with concerns of too much state control drifting towards a totalitarian state. Hence, key concern of Rawls’ Theory of Justice was to minimise state control except where necessary. Rawls two principles, (1) to maximise liberty to the degree that one’s liberty didn’t impinge on others liberty and (2) The equality principle: differences in income were only permitted if they differences benefited the least advantaged members of society, was a threadbare structure designed to ensure basic justice while minimizing state interference. Forrester’s chapter seems to be written for an intended audience of analytic philosophers who, to their detriment, sometimes focus entirely on abstract philosophical argumentation and downplay the importance of time and context in shaping theories.

            While Forrester does a good job in tracing the roots of Rawls’s Theory of Justice, she doesn’t go into much detail in evaluating the justification for Rawls’s theory. Forrester details the influence of linguistic philosophy (Wittgenstein’s, Ryle etc) on Rawls’s conception of a society being like a game which consists of rules made by people, but she never questions whether Rawls was justified in adopting this approach. She notes that Rawls attempted to constrain his conception of what a just society could look by grounding his view of human nature in facts discovered in psychology, in particular Piaget’s developmental approach to human nature. While Forrester places Rawls’s firmly as a product of his time in terms of societal trends and philosophical concerns, she fails to do so, when it comes to scientific influences on Rawls’s theory.

            While Rawls obviously cannot be faulted for scientific developments which occurred after he was writing, contemporary scientific, research indicates that Piaget’s developmental story underestimated the innate constraints on human development. Any conception of society models it on an analogy of man-made games will have to face the question of whether the type of games we can play will be constrained by our innate psychology. While Forrester does a good job of tracing the degree to which Rawls is a product of his times in most cases, she doesn’t sufficiently detail the degree to which his scientific understanding was time specific, and how this time specific scientific world-view effects the validity of Rawls’s theory of justice.

Chapter 2  ‘Obligations’ centres on Rawls and his contemporaries evolving views on our obligation to the state. The sixties in America were a time of unrest, and there were protests centred on a variety of different issues, such as civil rights issues, anti-war protests, nuclear disarmament protests etc. Forrester notes that one of the hot button issues philosophers needed to address when considering our obligations to the state is civil disobedience and when it is justified. When appealing to the notion of civil disobedience Rawls modelled it on the concept of fair play. By entering society and receiving the benefits of being a member, people acquire obligations to that society. One such obligation is to not engage in practices that are harmful to that society. A key concept for Rawls when thinking through these issues was the importance of the stability of our society. Rawls argued that if most people had agreed on the principles and constitutions for society then this limited the scope of legitimate protest. Rawls went as far as to argue that even if a person could show on utilitarian grounds that civil disobedience could do more good than harm then this would not justify the disobedience. He argued if people are part of a fair practice and receiving benefits from it then their duty of fair play bound them to abide by the laws even if they personally find them unjust. Forrester notes that Rawls did offer some scope for civil disagreement noting that if a society is deliberately disadvantaging a particular group of people, then they are no longer bound by the duty of fair play.

            Forrester does a good job of showing how philosophers writing at the time disagreed with Rawls views on civil disobedience on the grounds that it proposed a very high bar on when civil disobedience is justified. And she does a good job of situating Rawls philosophical in their historical context, which is something which isn’t always done when discussing philosopher’s philosophical views.

             The primary question discussed in this chapter is when is civil discontent justified? It is a timely question and one that is obviously pertinent today. The protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd which were screened all over the world paint a visceral reaction in most people. And people’s response to the riots have divided people in America and across the world. Rawls’s general principles seem very disembodied and abstract, but they do offer proposals for when civil dissent is justified. However, as Forrester correctly notes the bar set by Rawls for legitimate civil dissent is extremely high and does rule out a lot of dissent that citizens would argue is justified.

Chapter 3 ‘War and Responsibility’, focuses on Rawls and his fellow philosopher’s reaction to the Vietnam War. The Vietnam war raised several philosophical issues. In the wake of the war some philosophers wanted to thread a line between the extremes of Utilitarian justifications of any war crime on pragmatic grounds, and passivism which condemned any war act no matter how justified. The backdrop of these philosophical discussions were war crimes in Vietnam such as the My Lai massacre which involved the mass murder and rape of hundreds of innocent Vietnam citizens. While the My Lai massacre was an obvious case of a war crime; philosophers wanted to find a set of moral principles which could deal with more ambiguous war acts. One attempted principle was the doctrine of double effect which roughly put states that if a person does something which is morally good, but which has an unintended side effect which is bad, we can judge the persons act as ethically ok. Forrester describes Anscombe’s explication of the doctrine of double effect and outlines the responses of philosophers such as Philippa Foot, and Rawls to the argument. And she notes that Rawls found the doctrine somewhat compelling as an alternative to Utilitarianism. Furthermore, Rawls found the argument convincing as it gave him a way of avoiding the supposed extremes of passivism and utilitarianism. Nonetheless despite Rawls being impressed with the arguments for the double effect doctrine he claimed that the best way to explicate the limits of a just war was to argue from the Original Position. Thus, Rawls noted that no rational agent would opt for a genocide option when reasoning under the veil of Ignorance.

            The central focus of the chapter is on how philosophers tried to rise to the challenge of the Vietnam war and the horrific acts that occurred during the war. She notes that philosophers tried to deal with the ethical challenges raised by the war using a series of thought experiments designed to help us think clearer about the ethical issues it raised. She did an excellent job in explicating the various positions philosophers took on the ethical issues. However, the central subject of her book John Rawls played less of a role in the chapter than he did in other areas of the book. The chapter could have benefited from her going into more detail on Rawls evolving views on the ethical challenges posed by war.

Chapter 5 ‘Going Global’, details the various attempts by philosophers influenced by Rawls to deal with problems of global justice. Forrester details the responses of three Rawlsian Philosophers (Brian Barry, Charles Beitz and Thomas Pogge) to dealing with problems of global justice. Forrester outlined the fact that Singer’s 1972 paper ‘Famine, Affluence and Morality’ which was a utilitarian attempt to sketch our global duties to each other. Rawls had been very critical of utilitarian philosophy in general and his Theory of Justice was very critical of utilitarian conceptions of justice. With criticisms of Rawls Theory of Justice abounding and Singer presenting a utilitarian account of international justice; Rawlsian philosophers set out to explicate how Rawls theory could be developed to cope with problems of international justice.

            Rawls had been sceptical about whether his Original Position could be scaled up to a global scale. He thought that it was psychologically implausible that people across the international community could realistically comply with the principles. He argued that in order to realistically expect people to comply with any principles agreed to in the original position they would need to be from a shared community. Charles Beitz argued that Rawls was incorrect in this assumption and that if Rawls really accepted this assumption, then he would find it hard to explain how his Original Position would work for people who lived in large states. Beitz argued that once in the Original Position in an international arrangement people would agree that redistribution was necessary from poor to rich states.

            Beitz’s Rawlsian position was criticized from a number of directions; some philosophers noted that Beitz’s position because it abstracted from history, was guilty of being unable to handle the facts that some nations are poor because of their exploitation by other nations in the past. While others such as Brian Barry noted that Beitz’s theory had the conspicuous failing that he never told a plausible political story of how we would convince richer nations to redistribute their wealth.

            Forrester tells a story of philosophers beginning to deal with international justice in concrete terms before becoming more and more abstract and concerned with internal consistency and the world fell from view to Rawlsian Philosophers. I think she made her case very well and went into good detail in exploring the various philosophical attempts to make Rawls theory of justice cross international boundaries. However, since her ultimate focus was on how Rawlsian philosophers became so abstract in their theorizing they lost sight of the world, I think her case would have been helped by contrasting the Rawlsians with Utilitarian Philosophers who were becoming more and more concrete in their thinking at the same time Rawlsians were losing sight of the world.

Chapter 4  ‘The New Egalitarians’ tells the story of the publication of Rawls theory of Justice and its reception by his critics. Several of Rawls critics on the left argued that his conception of man in the Original Position was unrealistic and influenced by the concept of homo-economicus. They further argued that his distributive principle offered little practical advice on how to implement it. They noted that Rawls theory relies on the rich being benefactors for the most disadvantaged but does not tell us how convince rich people to depart with a proportion of their wealth and redistribute them to the poor. Having sketched a number of objections to Rawls from the left Forrester goes outline criticisms from the right in the form of Robert Nozick’s famous criticism of Rawls in his Anarchy, State and Utopia.  Nozick argued that Rawls principles of redistribution were unjust because they ignored the historical conditions in which wealth was acquired. For Nozick people have rights independent of any social contract and the historical process of acquiring one’s wealth and property gives us rights that should not be overridden by any social contract theory. Forrester argues that the challenge set by Nozick’s criticisms led to a series of philosophers self-consciously identifying as Rawlsians. Forrester claims that there are three principles that self-described Rawlsians seemed to share: (1) The importance of basic structure, (2) An egalitarian commitment (3) Lack of sensitivity to historical arguments (ibid p. 130)

            The Rawlsian argument that involved abstracting away from historical contingencies didn’t just draw ire from people on the right like Nozick, for many on the left Rawls ignoring history was very problematic. In the era of civil-rights disputes activists noted that black people had been systematically disadvantaged throughout the ages, through slavery and institutional racism. A proposed resolution for this unjust state of affairs was the notion that reparations should be paid to those whose lives have been systemically made worse because of these historical facts. Forrester notes that because of the conceptual features of the Original Position that Rawls sketches he hasn’t got the resources to deal with things like reparations and his redistribution position is blind to considerations like reparations. Overall, Forrester does a good job of outlining the reaction to Rawls book by the left and the right. And she made an interesting case that it was a reaction to Nozick’s criticisms that lead a lot of philosophers to self-consciously identify as Rawlsian philosophers.

Chapter 6 of Forrester’s ‘In the Shadow of Justice’ focuses on philosophers who were influenced by Rawls (either positively or negatively), and their attempt to understand what our ethical obligations to future generations were. After the publication of the Ehrlich’s 1968 best seller ‘The Population Bomb’, the issue of what our duties are to future generations became prominent for philosophers. Rawls 1971 ‘A Theory of Justice’ didn’t appear to have the conceptual resources to deal with the issues raised considerations of our obligation to the future.

            A key question of the original position was who was in it. Rawls had argued that subjects in the original position represented people from all areas of society. However, he argued it would be psychologically impossible to include parties from all generations in the original position. But Rawls didn’t want people in the original position think only of the present moment and to entirely discount the future. For this reason, he inserted two arguments into his Original Position (1) People behind the veil of ignorance were deprived of knowledge of what generation they were from, (2) People behind the veil were part of a family line stretching into the past and the future. Rawls believed that having people as members of family lines would make them sympathetic to people a couple of generations down the line. While not knowing what generation they were from would temper them from being too parochial in their thinking.

            Forrester details several critics reactions to Rawls attempt to deal with the problem of the future. One major criticism sprung from Hardin’s conception of the future as being one which will inevitably lead to population crises, famine etc. Rawls famous circumstances of justice made it of a criterion of the principles of justice that there is ‘moderate scarcity’ in resources. Having moderate scarcity as a criterion meant that Rawls principles of justice would not be binding an any future like the lifeboat story Hardin told where severe scarcity ruled. Forrester goes on to note that philosophers influenced by Rawls tried to handle difficulties raised by his principles of justice by focusing on different aspects of his theory to save it from criticism.

            Forrester does a good job of surveying the different reactions to Rawls theory of justice in relation to problems of duties to future generations. She also manages to clearly demonstrate how by emphasising different aspects of Rawls theory different philosophers were capable of shaping his theory for different purposes.

Chapter 7 ‘New Right and Left’ focuses on philosophical reactions to the rise of the right in both Britain and America. With Thatcher as prime minister of England and Regan as president of America the philosophy of free market capitalism was very much in vogue. This free market capitalism with its emphasis privatisation of public goods and the confident belief that the market could magically fix all ills was key belief of a substantial amount of people in power in the late seventies and throughout the eighties.

            Forrester discusses how philosophers on the left and right reacted to the above political developments. Philosophers like Dworkin reacted to the rise of the right by a social democratic theory that is decoupled from its association with the labour movement. Dworkin was cheerleading the movement of the labour party away from its leftist origins towards a more centrist position. With his thought experiment about people stranded on an island Dworkin argued for a basic structure where people would agree on trade solutions and a kind of social insurance picked from a veil of ignorance. When behind this veil of ignorance, the people do not know whether they have a disability or a marketable talent. Each person can buy insurance against the risks they take. Once out of the veil of ignorance they either win or lose depending on the level of insurance they have and the marketability of their talents. But at this stage any risks they take and whether they win or lose is up to them. Forrester notes that Dworkin’s notions of responsibility, choice and markets were ideas shared by people on the right.

            She goes on to argue that philosophers on the left began to incorporate a lot of Dworkins ideas of responsibility, choice and markets and these ideas became a kind of framework for centrist thought. She ends her chapter with a discussion of how Rawls tamed challenges to his views from Marxist perspectives and domesticated analytical Marxists to quasi Rawlsians. Ultimately, she argues that leftist politics morphed into a Rawlsian redistributive paradigm working within market forces and not really challenging them.

            Forrester does an excellent job of telling how philosophers reacted to political developments in the late seventies and eighties. It would have been interesting to tell the story from the opposite end and discuss how the market forces shaped the type of stories these philosophers felt comfortable telling.

Chapter 8 of Forrester’s book explores a sleuth of philosophers who were very critical of Rawls. She uses these philosophers’ criticisms of him to try and tell a story of how Rawls brand of liberalism fell out of favour. Forrester notes that (1) Rawls is regarded as one of the best and most influential philosophers this century, (2) He is a paradigm exemplar of liberal philosophy, (3) Liberal philosophy not very respected in contemporary political discourse by a substantial proportion of the population. A key aspect of chapter 8 is to try to explicate Rawls liberalism as a product of its time and to explain how liberalism fell out of favour.

Forrester draws on the work of a dozen critics of Rawls liberal philosophy in her chapter 8. Philosophers as diverse as Stanley Cavell, Alister Macintyre, Charles Taylor and Richard Rorty attacked Rawls liberal philosophy as relying on an aminic notion of the self and an atomised conception of the self that ignored the social world of engaged active agents.  As Rawls philosophy developed over the years, he came to stress Kantian aspects of his philosophy. To his critics Rawls views of the self with its emphasis on rules and rational agents downplayed the importance of the lived world. Forrester explicates Bernard Williams attack on Rawls rule-based conception of justice as being psychologically implausible. She also does a good job of detailing other philosophers such as Cavell and Rorty who use evidence from art and psychoanalysis to demonstrate that Rawls conception of the self and is implausible and this fact undermines the whole theory of justice which is built on this conception of the self.

            Forrester notes that there is a great irony in the criticisms levelled at Rawls in that he at times held similar views to those of his critics such as Williams and Cavel. In his 1963 ‘The Sense of Justice’ Rawls sketchs a moral psychology which he argues is consistent with the choices that would be made in the original position. While Rawls conception of the developing self is told in abstract academic tones, he does take on bord considerations from theorists such as Freud, Piaget. In short Rawls sketches three kinds of guilt (1) authority guilt, (2) association guilt, and (3) principle guilt (The Sense of Justice p.100). Rawls conception of the child developing his moral principles based on feelings of guilt tells a story of the self that is not quite as abstract and disembodied as critics like Cavel and Williams suggest.

             A major difficulty in her treatment is that because she discusses so many theorists, she doesn’t give herself enough space to delve into the argumentative structure of Rawls’ major critics. Aside from her quick treatment of Rawls critics I would argue that the narrative she was trying to tell of critics of Rawls leading to defanged liberal philosophy blinded her to liberal critics of Rawls whose views are eminently practical such as Nussbaum and Singer.