[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist, David Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:16] Well of course every idea sounds stupid if you describe what it is. The Queen in Oz has spoken! Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! Who are you? I'm a very good man. Good. They think deep thoughts, and with no more brains than you have.

[00:00:51] Pay no attention to anybody who can have a brain. You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, the intellectual dark web are constantly comparing themselves to classical liberals.

[00:01:22] Were classical liberals always such fucking drama queens? That's a good question. You know we don't know who is a drama queen in history because we just don't have enough like social media information about those people. Maybe they were.

[00:01:40] You could see John Stuart Mill on Twitter just having a conneption every time some like, I don't know, Oberyn and Stephen. Reeled against sushi. Remember when calling sushi cultural appropriation was the number one biggest problem in the nation? Those were the days.

[00:02:08] But they are kind of, they really do. If you just go onto their Twitter feeds and I have definitely muted a lot of them and don't really follow others, but it really seems like the end of the world. It is a different world from that picture.

[00:02:30] Okay, let's take a step back here and talk about what is going on. You have gotten in these Twitter fights. Yes. You are somebody who is held up as a possible candidate for membership in the intellectual dark web amongst some, in some mouths. I think that's over.

[00:02:49] Yeah, you seem to have had a real falling out with all of your favorite people. So first of all obviously they were never my favorite people except my stepmother who still love and Sam Harris who let's be honest, where would we be without Sam Harris?

[00:03:12] So we recorded a segment earlier like a couple weeks ago before we recorded the main segment which is two articles by Amiya Srinivasan on anger. The aptness of anger, the appropriateness of anger and we'll be talking about that in the second segment.

[00:03:36] That's something we already recorded at the same time. We recorded when I, in more of the heat of the moment our reactions to the way the intellectual dark web, those people were responding to the protests. And we were both I think pretty infuriated by it.

[00:04:00] You were cursing out most of them. I was cursing so you might hear some illusions to this anger that I was expressing in the second segment. We decided to re-record because I was really upset. I was angry, like I was very angry.

[00:04:15] We are both quite emotional and quite sort of, I don't know, it was an emotional moment where it still is damn near the whole world was coming together to express dissatisfaction over the way things have gone.

[00:04:30] And at least from my perspective, all I saw was people talking about looting being wrong. And so even in that first... Right. It was like all they were allowed to tweet about was looting and how bad looting

[00:04:45] was and why is nobody paying any attention to the looting which really wasn't like a big percentage of the protests. I would say they were relatively peaceful. Right and that's right overwhelmingly. It was like they got guidelines.

[00:05:01] They were issued guidelines what they could talk about and the sort of hypocrisy of CNN and other kind of center left outlets about like mask wearing. They were like, how come nobody cares that all these people are gathering together? Right.

[00:05:17] There was only one and only thing I wanted to get out there in this segment, Tamler was me saying then let you go off on the intellectual dark right was me saying, okay, like looting is bad. Riots are bad. Well, riots.

[00:05:31] Now, yeah, like believe me, like look a world without violence is better than a world with violence. But I just want to get that aside because I think that focusing on that aspect of what was going on was a pretty fucking disingenuous response.

[00:05:48] So if you need me to say that we shouldn't destroy property before you let me say that I believe that black people have been systematically fucked by the police, then fine, pretty please with a fucking cherry on top. Writing is bad. Let's focus on like Black Lives Mattering.

[00:06:03] Yeah, I'm not even with you on that. Like I think that this shit hasn't changed and so of course people are going to react with fury. Of course they're going to get a little violent. Of course there might destroy some property, but at the time that we recorded,

[00:06:20] like it had been largely the vast majority of the protests were peaceful and it's actually seemed like it was working. It was reaching people like some police departments were seriously considering way more than their unions usually allow them to reform. There's actually stuff going on.

[00:06:42] The fucking NFL is like, yeah, we were wrong about kneeling. Sorry about that. The NASCAR taking down Confederate, like there's just a lot, like the protests they were extending to small towns in Nebraska and Oklahoma and rural Texas.

[00:07:01] People who never would have had the phrase Black Lives Matter in their mouth before sort of having a moment, a coming to Christ sort of moment where they realize that the things that, you know, the complacency that they've had or they didn't fully realize

[00:07:18] the problem or never acknowledged it. And like, yeah, it pisses me off for this reason and we can, this leads directly to a discussion of people who consider themselves whatever the fucking IDW is. Under the guise of just reasonableness and rationality to point out the nuances of

[00:07:40] death statistics and point to articles, which I dove into the literature. We certainly not the time and place to talk about it right now. We could do it at some other point, but to like start quoting statistics about

[00:07:54] the proportionality of like, you know, Black encounters with the police as sort of evidence for there not being discrimination or there being only whatever some 300 killings of people in the last year and those numbers being too low to say that

[00:08:09] there's a problem, that to me is ignoring wide swaths of the problem that we've discussed on this podcast before. Issues about policing, issues about criminality in the criminal justice system. All sorts of issues that point to real firm, I think, clear evidence of discrimination

[00:08:28] against Black people in this country. And just bad policing, whether it's discrimination or not. Just really bad policing like police departments that are out of control and they don't have any accountability. Yeah, yeah. Look, there can obviously be discussions had about any particular

[00:08:46] set of data about whether they show, for instance, there's an interesting conversation to be had about whether or not police violence against Black people should be attributable to individual prejudice on the part of a police officer or whether it's something that's just captured in the numbers

[00:09:01] of policies that unfairly police certain areas and certain crimes, right? Like that's an interesting conversation to be had. And you know, the data can speak to that. But to be saying that now to me is it moves beyond the facts and it

[00:09:20] shows me that there's a particular sentiment, a particular defensiveness that is trying to be maintained and I don't get it. And I don't get why all of the fucking people who claim to be so free speech all of a sudden are coming out against protests.

[00:09:35] All of a sudden are coming out telling us statistics about COVID transmission. And why is it that most of the time people who are defending free speech are defending it against like attacks on people who say racist shit or sexist shit. Like I don't get it.

[00:09:50] To me, it's disappointment and it shows something about the underlying beliefs of some people that I guess I knew was there but that I don't like. Like when you're to the right, to like the authoritarian right of

[00:10:04] NASCAR and the NFL and Roger Goodell, like that's a bad sign. This isn't sushi. This isn't sushi eating. This is literally people who are living such different lives that you don't know, you don't understand, you don't know anything about. Getting harassed, getting fined to death.

[00:10:22] Whole towns are being funded by like the police going out and issuing bullshit citations. It was like and really all they're concerned about is like someone broke into a fucking target. But honestly, like this is like three weeks ago. They've they're not concerned about looting anymore.

[00:10:40] There's like breakdown of civilization that's happening right now. Let me just read you a few tweets. I made myself do this just to get myself a little fired up since, you know, I don't have that same fervor that we had last time. This is Brett Weinstein.

[00:10:56] These are not the seeds of revolution germinating in our streets. This is the energy of revolution captured by a counter revolutionary movement. And it is threatening every value and principle that binds us together. It is the American Revolution that is being opposed.

[00:11:14] Like I'm telling you, they have lost their mind. That was my initial tweet that got me into like Twitter. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about your initial tweet because you wait, can I just read you a few more of this?

[00:11:25] So Jeff Miller, while you're being distracted by riots, activists are trying to censor and fire every professor who disagrees with PC orthodoxy. Every professor, activists are trying to censor and fire like all of us. Right? You're going to get so much more shit from the rational people

[00:11:42] right now. Dozens of professors suddenly face fine. I don't care. Fuck all of you. I don't respect you. Dozens of professors suddenly face cancellation this week. This is the purge. This is the Zerg rush, which I reference I don't get. We need your support or academia fails.

[00:11:59] This is what I mean by drama queen, by the way. Eric Weinstein, we'll get to him again. The crime of driving while black has become thinking while white. Oh my God. And then Claire Lehman, your girl. I am getting inundated with messages from young people,

[00:12:17] students and young academics who are scared of the mob at their universities and feel despair for their futures. Absolute despair. Like there's such fucking cry babies. It's unreal. And here was the tweet that I initially responded to. I also responded to Claire Lehman's tweet like,

[00:12:35] oh look now we're coddling them. We could tell the story. Eric Weinstein, people calling for the abolition of police. The very same folks will ask where are the damn police when we have a white supremacist active shooter in our church targeting black people?

[00:12:51] Do you get what the intellectual dark web was now? Do you get whatever green state was now? And that's what set me off. You are comparing these historic protests, which are actually bringing about positive change to some bullshit like hyped up incident at some tiny little college

[00:13:07] that nobody had ever heard of with spoiled rich kids yelling at Brett. It's fucking unreal that that's how they react to this as this is some vindication of the intellectual dark web because some New York and DC media drama, which is honestly their whole fucking world.

[00:13:26] And that they have like a weird like a desire to be outsiders and rebels and like, you know, in a degree of just like, of inflating their importance in these cultural dialogues. But it's a very odd way of carrying oneself like making what is essentially thousands upon

[00:13:50] thousands of people telling you that their life has been poorly like badly affected by some serious problems in our criminal justice and police systems. And you saying that it's just like your brother got kicked out of Evergreen for saying like whatever the fuck it was.

[00:14:09] It's an insane, I'm not saying he is a narcissist, but it's a narcissistic claim. Like it's a people will tell us, well, what about when they come for you? I mean, I don't know. I'll deal with that when they come for me.

[00:14:24] I would rather get canceled, lose my job, all of it than be what these people are to not be able to step back comparing all this to like the fucking gulag or like 1984, which my stepmother. Why is why? I'm genuinely curious because like I am obviously all for

[00:14:43] contrary and takes a normal for protecting freedom of speech. The question isn't whether or not like I or you or we are opposed to freedom of speech. The question is why it is that usually the people who are

[00:14:58] being held up as champions of free speech are people who are saying things that are, you know, like either justifiably or non justifiably offensive to black people and women. Like it's usually race and IQ shit. I if you want to get up there and say like mitochondria

[00:15:16] is not the powerhouse of the cell and be controversial that way, no one's going to stop you. The academic academia is a bastion of free ideas. It's just these people who are saying shit, you know, maybe black people are dumber and not so many words who get

[00:15:32] in trouble then hop on this IDW like I am. I am like being oppressed, you know, black people weren't oppressed. You know who's oppressed? I'm oppressed. And it's the irony is like too obvious, Stephen point out, but they are victims. They are professional victims.

[00:15:49] They need to think constantly that the world is against them in just the same way that they always accuse, you know, women or black people or trans people of doing. That is the they are going by the playbook of, you know, exactly the people that they target.

[00:16:08] And it's not that the thing it's not that the thing that they target doesn't exist because it does. There has have been some annoying things that have gone on. I'm not in favor of cancelling people.

[00:16:20] I mean, I just like, I don't know if I have to say that, but I'm not right. But that that's not the big story here. And it's the only story when it comes to how they're reacting to what is honestly like at this point anyway,

[00:16:37] seems like this could be like a really positive moment, something where shit actually gets done. And to the extent that maybe I agree with them, although they don't frame it like this again, like narcissism is almost too generous a word for how they're responding to this.

[00:16:55] But I do think like keep your eye on the ball and the eye on the ball is police reform. I think every time you do something that has nothing to do with that and that becomes the big story, you know, like it's a stupid example,

[00:17:09] but like pulling gone with the wind or you were pissed about this, the always sunny where one of them always sunny just in black face. Yeah. Yeah. That stuff is like that's just a distraction from getting actual stuff done in what is a really,

[00:17:27] really hard problem of how to reform a massive policing system which has really strong unions in place that make it very difficult to improve the policy. Yeah. They don't give an inch to actually address that. That's where the energy needs to go,

[00:17:45] not in like scanning old television shows to see if... Yeah. Yeah. Believe me, like I... There is a policing of language that annoys the shit out of me and this has come like I've had these conversations with people who are my fellow Latinos

[00:18:02] about the use of Latin X as a term, which I think is kind of dumb. I mean, I get the sentiment, but I don't like it. I'm annoyed by a lot of tone policing, but there is, to me, it's a separate issue

[00:18:18] and one of the things that I don't understand is the tendency to attribute things like say these protests in Black Lives Matter or a focus on injustice in the criminal system and discrimination against Black men and women in this country

[00:18:36] to lump that in with this post-modern tone policing crisis. Like the people who are out on the streets are working class people who've actually suffered at the hands of these... These are people who don't know what Marxist or Neo-Marxist is. They don't think that way. This is not...

[00:18:55] It's not the same cultural force that's shaping the annoying sophomore white undergrad from telling you that you can't use the word whatever, Black or you have to capitalize it or whatever. That's different than people who are in the streets right now. That's a different thing.

[00:19:14] It's so dismissive and it's so unfair to refer to all of this movement as yet another instance of whatever James Lindsay conceptual penis concerns. And so here's the other thing that they were obsessing over is this defund the police, abolish police

[00:19:37] and here's where the real hypocrisy comes in. Now number one, when I was responding to the Weinstein tweet that entered me into this dark... We almost lost you. That was part of the tweet. It wasn't the part that I was angry about.

[00:19:51] The anger that he was claiming this was like Evergreen State and a vindication of the intellectual dark web. That was entirely messed. Everybody thought what you were talking about. About abolish police. And then to be fair, I then said, look when you actually Google abolish police

[00:20:07] there's... you find a lot of articles and you find what... or defund the police. You find what people mean by that. By and large they don't mean like overnight change to policy. There are all of a sudden no police and it's...

[00:20:18] And you know, like everyone just has... is on the honor system. They have very concrete policy reforms and a lot of them are really important and really worth taking seriously. That opened the door to this world of like IDW cultists. Including like Claire Lehman who like tweeted me

[00:20:38] a fucking screenshot of a New York Times column that said yes we do literally mean abolish the police. Yeah. And it's like first of all if you actually read the column and if you read any of the articles even the ones who are taking this

[00:20:53] more literally than most they see it as a long-term ideal. But... But... Why do they... Why is that such a problem for them? Why is it a problem that people are calling for defunding the police, abolishing police? Again, like you said, isn't that what they're all about?

[00:21:13] Like free speech? And yet they think it's the end of the world that people are trying to cut down, mitigate the power of a literal police... Not just like language police, not police in the metaphorical sense but actual police who can like brutalize you,

[00:21:31] throw you in jail, kill you. What... Why is that so offensive to them? And you know, like the answers to that question range from just stupid to like seriously troubling. Like where are they coming from really? Okay, here is what bugs me

[00:21:47] because I think that if what you want is... If you were getting together with somebody and saying what would be the best slogan to have should we say abolish the police or defund the police? I get why somebody might want to use a different term

[00:22:01] but the responses from the sorts of people who were tweeting to you and then many other cases, right? This is not just about us obviously. It was... How can you not know that using that phrase is going to misguide people and it's not gonna actually achieve the goals

[00:22:18] that you want them to achieve? So fine. Do we agree that those are the goals though? Like you clearly know, you clearly know what I mean to communicate by saying abolish the police and because the criticism that you're giving me is that other people might misunderstand

[00:22:33] what I really mean. But now you're acting like the very target of misunderstanding. You're acting as if you're just pretending that you don't understand what I'm trying to say and telling me, no pick a more effective slogan people are gonna misunderstand you. Well, you didn't.

[00:22:50] Also are they experts in how to bring about radical change or radical reform? What slogans to use? How did everyone become an expert? Maybe that is a good slogan. Maybe that will bring about significant reform in a way that a more... Just all this more moderate sounding stuff.

[00:23:08] It'll just be the same thing like after Ferguson, after Eric Garner, nothing actually changes. So maybe it is good to go out with a crazy sounding slogan and then have... I don't know. I would love some acknowledgement for some of these key figures to say,

[00:23:27] you know what? You're right. There needs to be rapid police, rampant police reform that's been so corrupt for so long. And that's the story. Yeah, now let's talk about how to go about doing that. Part of that conversation is that you genuinely

[00:23:40] want to convince me that that's a bad slogan for our public ad campaign. Then fine. But until you at least acknowledge that either just tell me straight up you think the police are fine the way they are. It's never been about the police for them.

[00:23:56] It's always about these like progressives and trying to catch them like overreaching or publicly shaming somebody that they shouldn't publicly shame. It's never been the issue for them. And that's the saddest thing. That's the thing that... Alternate disappointment or anger. Yeah, I do want to say this.

[00:24:19] If you've listened until now then thank you. Our Reddit, subreddit had actually a really good discussion about some of this stuff. It was a civil discussion and it was nice to have listeners who respectfully disagree and can actually have a conversation about it.

[00:24:37] At least a conversation about the thing that is important. Right? Like is there police bias? That's an important conversation to have because I think that it goes to what should we do about it? If the answer is yes, what should we do about it?

[00:24:50] If the answer is no, then what the fuck has been going on? Like what is the issue? If every police officer would just read white fragility. We've talked about getting either McWhorter or Coleman Hughes. People I respect, people who have well thought out views of this stuff

[00:25:11] like who might disagree with us. Like I'm totally for that conversation. This is not a kind of podcast where I'm going to be tone policing anybody who disagrees with me. Yeah, I guess the thing that I learned in my Twitter darkness which, thank God

[00:25:24] I thank God for the freedom software that I just like banned myself from Twitter for like 28 hours. Freedom needs to sponsor us. Yeah, freedom, we love you. And this is free. This is free advertising for freedom software. I was at the beach and like getting agitated

[00:25:44] by all these people. One thing that I have learned though is that Twitter is not the real world so it's probably good for us to ignore it every once in a while. It's so good to ignore it. Because then it goes away.

[00:25:58] It's not like anybody has an attention span when it comes to this shit. So you just get yourself off it for like 24 hours or 48 hours and it's over. Yeah, well now I'm going to go where my COVID mask indoors and read NeoMarxists post-modern

[00:26:16] I'm going to tone police somebody for not capitalizing brown and when we come back now it was a little more, I don't know after our last angrier segment this was a little maybe more of a better lead in but we will be talking about the appness and appropriateness

[00:26:40] of anger as a motion to articles by Amiya Srinivasan when we come back. This week's episode of Very Bad Wizards is about the course of the week. I'm going to talk about the course of the week. I didn't have any experience with it really until we

[00:27:01] started looking over the app and I got to tell you man especially during the time of COVID this has been like a wonderful wonderful app to have just to give you a little bit of understanding what this is. This is a streaming service it's really edified my education

[00:27:19] I'm like I'm not even joking right now I have started a couple of things one of them is to name a name that we just mentioned in the interest segment is a linguistics course by John McWhorter he has a whole course on language

[00:27:33] and I'm really enjoying that. What about you? Well I've already talked about how my wife and I used to take a lot of road trips and one of the things that we listen to back in the day was the cassette these Robert Greenberg courses on classical music

[00:27:51] and they taught us how to appreciate something that we really didn't understand well enough to appreciate and he has a bunch of courses that I recommend. The other thing that I'm dipping into now I have these big embarrassing blind spots in my life as a supposedly educated person

[00:28:11] and one of them is history once you get past the third century so like for example the Ottoman Empire I've heard the term I know it exists The ones who invented that thing that you put your feet up on Yeah right but I don't really have any idea

[00:28:31] how big it was, how long it lasted and so there's a whole course on it I'm very excited to get into and then for our listeners there are a couple courses on the great ideas in philosophy and in psychology that will give you sort of a baseline for

[00:28:53] understanding some of the stuff that we've been talking about There's so much there to dive into and it's great because it's curated and you know that you're getting quality shit And it's not cassette tapes anymore like you can put this shit on your TV

[00:29:07] We now have it on our Goku TV There's so much to learn about the world and you can start by signing up for The Great Courses Plus and guess what? They're offering our listeners an entire month for free but to start your free month trial

[00:29:25] you must sign up today using our special URL TheGreatCoursesPlus.com Slash Wizards An entire month, Tamela, you know what that means Coronavirus will totally be done by the time you're done with your free trial Yeah, if it's not done already Once again that's TheGreatCoursesPlus PLUS.com Slash Wizards

[00:29:49] Thank you to TheGreatCourses Plus for sponsoring this episode Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards This is the time of the episode where we love to thank our listeners for getting in touch with us for reaching out to us in different ways that you do It's been especially encouraging

[00:30:48] I would say over this last few weeks because we've had some good productive discussion emails Also, I have to say the branding community in response to our last episode ripping this one example of branding but holy shit they are the coolest group of

[00:31:12] people, they have the best sense of humor about themselves and we have gotten nothing but great feedback from the branding community about our last opening segment making fun of branding so I mean I tip my cap to you I am just going to

[00:31:32] work on our brand from now on because I just want to hang out with you guys Dude, seriously because we criticize science a lot social science, behavioral science and I would say the people who reach out to us are usually nice people but the degree of defensiveness

[00:31:52] that you still kind of get you just didn't see it in the branding people these are people who seem to be not only willing to take in on as look at what they did but join in on the problems and a few people actually made

[00:32:06] branding documents for us shout out to Olga Pope who made one of the documents for us which includes awesome artwork that I think we might use for some merchandise but yes, thank you to all of them The Pillars At least they don't pretend to be

[00:32:24] science like we do It's great so yeah, we appreciate all the stuff that you guys have sent to us Yeah, so you can email us verybadwizards at gmail.com Tweet at us at verybadwizards, at tamler, at peas you can follow us on Instagram, like us

[00:32:46] and follow us on Facebook participate in the conversation there join in the conversation on the reddit which has been very active lately and rate us on Apple Podcasts subscribe to us on Spotify and thanks to all of you because this has been a great last, it always is

[00:33:06] but a great last few months to interact with listeners Yeah, and if you want to support us in more tangible ways we really really appreciate it We not only appreciate all that moral support but the people who got it their way to go

[00:33:20] support us on Patreon which you can do by going to verybadwizards.com slash VBW support and you can see a link there to our Patreon page, we have some cool shit coming up Alright, we finally have the results of our big yearly Patreon campaign to decide, semi-yearly

[00:33:42] to decide, so do you want to announce the winner of what our listener selected episode is going to be? Yeah, it wasn't that close I predicted this although I didn't predict it would be a landslide like it was the myth of mental illness and related topics

[00:33:58] so that was the big winner over Kierkegaard over us playing a video game over us talking about a story by Lovecraft but we're going to do a lot of those things anyway Yeah, as we always do so thank you everybody

[00:34:16] not only for submitting ideas but to our $5 up supporters who actually voted for them, we really appreciate it we have dark coming up soon I'm very excited and you need to get on it because I will watch it I will watch season 3 within the first like few days

[00:34:34] so unless... I think I will too so thank you, if you cannot or do not want to donate to us on Patreon you can go give us a one-time or recurring donation on PayPal again the link is on our support page there as well we really appreciate

[00:34:52] that from you guys so thank you to everybody to our listeners, you guys are kind generous and obviously the best looking listeners in all of the podcasts by far and also should we make an announcement about oh yeah, yeah so Tamler and I have

[00:35:12] here's one of the things that we want to do often but we don't have... I think at the time where I guess the energy or maybe doesn't feel right for audience and that is to tackle a very large tone like a text

[00:35:26] and one of the ones that we've talked about many times is doing the Brothers Caramas but it wouldn't be good because it would take hours upon hours of discussion because that's a very long book so we are very happy to announce that we will be

[00:35:40] actually tackling the Brothers Caramas off for a service called Lyceum we'll have more details about this later but it is something we're very excited about we'll be doing a five part series on the Brothers Caramas off we will let you know all about it

[00:35:58] where you can find it in fact the very first episode of that series is going to be a regular episode of Very Bad Wizards so we look forward to talk about great neurotic Russian literature of the 1800s alright, so let's talk about these two essays

[00:36:16] although I think we're gonna focus on one of them more they're definitely overlapping Amiya Srinivasan she's a really good philosopher actually let me get her full title she is the She-Shell professor of social and political theory at All Souls College, Oxford

[00:36:36] she writes for the London Review of Books the Los Angeles Review of Books I believe I teach her critique of effective altruism and Will McCaskill in my intro class it's really good, she's a really good writer and the two pieces we're gonna talk about

[00:36:52] one of them is called The Appness of Anger which appeared in the Journal of Political Philosophy the other is a piece for the nation which is called Would Politics Be Better Off Without Anger both of them, but especially the nation piece is a review of the Martha Nussbaum

[00:37:14] book Anger and Forgiveness I would say the reason I think we were gonna focus more on the Journal article is because it's less about Nussbaum in particular and more about just she's making a positive case for The Appness of Anger

[00:37:36] and I have a lot of sympathy with the case although not with every detail of the argument so yeah, let's talk about it what did you think of them just as a whole before we go into the details I liked them

[00:37:48] I come from a background in the psychology of emotion and one of the things that I read early on when I was trying to graduate school especially was philosophy of emotion I mean it's obviously timely right now but she didn't write it right now

[00:38:02] so I really liked it I'm predisposed to agree with her conclusion before she even goes into her arguments and in fact after reading especially the Journal article I just have some nitpicks or maybe substantive substantive issues with the way that she gets there

[00:38:20] but even when I was disagreeing about the way that she gets this conclusion I couldn't help but think that the conclusion is the right one yeah and I also think that even when I agreed with her she made me think about it in a different way

[00:38:36] like there's more ammunition that I have now in favor of the view that anger can be justified and one of the reasons is and I think this will be true for all our listeners it's very accessible and it is tied not to

[00:38:56] as you say like a lot of the technical debates about like cognitivism versus non-cognitivism about the emotions or something like that but really tied to historical cases and real life issues and she begins with a debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley

[00:39:16] this is a couple years after Baldwin the fire next time his essay or I think it's there's a couple different essays in that text which I read fairly recently and he begins by saying that the south was built by his labor and sweat and the violation of his

[00:39:38] women and the murder of his children and no one can challenge that statement it's a matter of historical record essentially expressing his anger without having any kind of so this is what should happen or that is what should happen he is just expressing that his anger

[00:39:56] at how black people have been treated and specifically African-Americans have been treated in this country since they were brought here and then quotes F. Buckley and I'll just read the quote that she gives of his she says bitter insistence on past injustice would only result in self destruction

[00:40:18] Negroes must avoid the kind of cynicism, the kind of despair the kind of iconoclasm represented by Baldwin she's sort of summarizing but some of that is in quotes for in the end Negro anger would be met Buckley warned with white violence finally come to a confrontation

[00:40:36] a radical confrontation this is a quote then we will fight the issue not only in the Cape Bridge Union but we will fight it on the beaches on the hills on mountains and on landing ground and the way she concludes that or the way she summarizes

[00:40:50] Buckley's message here tolerance might be extended to Negroes but not to their anger fiery prophecy must give way to cool pragmatism and this is the basis of what Srinivasan calls the counter productivity critique of anger that anger is counterproductive and therefore it must be repressed if you are

[00:41:14] going to achieve certain goals that you have in the face of injustice or oppression or whatever it is that you are trying to overcome she then frames this as a more modern version of what western philosophers have been saying for a long time which is that

[00:41:36] emotions especially emotions like anger are the enemies of reason and rationality so she quotes Seneca who described anger as the most hideous and frenzied of all the emotions the other emotions having them some element of peace and calm while this one is wholly violent and has

[00:41:54] been has its being in an onrush of resentment raging with the most inhuman lust for weapons blood and punishment giving no thought to itself if only it can hurt another hurling itself up upon the very point of dagger and eager for revenge

[00:42:08] though it may drag down the avenger along with it and I don't know you know more about the ancient philosophy than I do but although I totally buy that anger that emotions have been sort of positioned as something that are in opposition to reason I don't know

[00:42:26] that the counter productivity critique of the people who make that argument are really appealing to that tradition because I think there is a specific way in which they are pointing to anger and black anger more than other forms of anger as being the thing that's

[00:42:44] counterproductive not all emotions and certainly not their own anger in many cases I agree that they're separate so I think a few things they're separate critiques I think the Seneca critique they're overlapping but I think Seneca's problem with anger wasn't just that it was counterproductive

[00:43:02] but what it did to the virtue of the person who experienced anger I think even if anger was productive in certain cases he thought it was still would still make you non-virtuous if you were the kind of person that allowed you yourself to be angry

[00:43:18] so I do think that the counter productivity critique can be distinguished A from the Seneca view and also B from the idea that anger is irrational in general right but that anger is something that is in contrast to reason and I think for the most part

[00:43:38] she keeps them separate the part about reason and emotion and the blurry line between them she focuses more on at the end of the article and towards the beginning is really focused on addressing the counter productivity critique I don't know if it's maybe for people like Buckley

[00:43:56] it's more tied to black anger but I think she gives a lot of examples like Palestinians are warned against anger against the Israeli occupation women are told not to be shrill or strident and then yeah the protesters after Ferguson and the police killing there the way she

[00:44:16] addresses this is kind of interesting it isn't to say actually this anger is productive although I think she thinks in some cases it might be and she has in the nation article she suggests that all the people and usually white people who are quoting

[00:44:34] Martin Luther King or appealing to Martin Luther King A forget that Martin Luther King was pretty hated in his time by a lot of people in spite of his commitment to non-violence and B that's not all that the civil rights movement was fueled by there was Malcolm S

[00:44:52] there was the Black Panthers and there were more riots or at least more violent riots at the late 60s than there are today she notes that but she's going to set it aside at least for the purposes of the journal article and say look

[00:45:08] even if it is counterproductive anger might still be apt or appropriate and so anybody who wants to make the counter productivity critique has to do more than just say anger is counterproductive in this case they have to say that it is so counterproductive that it actually is inapt

[00:45:26] or inappropriate under the circumstances and so then she goes through why anger might be apt or appropriate even when it may be counterproductive before we get to that I want to ask you something do you think anger in a lot of the cases that she's describing

[00:45:46] and in the current time do you think do you find it to be counterproductive I don't think most of it is so even if you go back to and she makes note of this like at the Malcolm X versus Martin Luther King debates one the anger of Malcolm

[00:46:06] the Malcolm proponents might have have been what led people to change just as a sort of threat you know in this kind of like well we don't want that so let's go with Martin but two I think that there is a mistake and assumption by the people

[00:46:22] who bring out Martin Luther King quotes to think that because he was nonviolent that he wasn't angry and I think there's plenty of evidence that Martin Luther King was pretty angry and that many of the civil rights leaders and followers of the movement and protests were driven

[00:46:42] by a frustration and an anger that was not central to the way they expressed their protest but must certainly have been central to their desire to protest but yeah their motivation to really put their lives on the line right so I don't think

[00:47:02] I mean I buy that it is in fact what is said like right now you know our first first segment as evidence and in fact the productivity debate counter productivity debate is often more focused on the violence as you say and it almost like if I have

[00:47:20] a criticism of the article we'll get to this in a bit is that she's almost willing to concede that violence is at least inappropriate if not counterproductive for moral reasons so but I think you're right that right now at least the anger

[00:47:38] I think a lot of people would concede is productive and we're certainly talking about this issue in a very different way now where again this is July sorry June 8th it's almost a hopeful time right now in terms of just how setting the IDW aside

[00:47:56] like it really feels like people are taking this issue seriously from a policy perspective in a way that they weren't before and you can't there's no way that would have happened if it hadn't been for the outpouring of angry protest

[00:48:12] and maybe at times violent protest I don't know yeah yeah there really is something to be said for like the angry black voices that start the first ones to cry out that this is injustice actually motivating people to listen in a way that they might not have

[00:48:32] had they just mourned just to respond to us so let's look at the argument setting aside whether it's counterproductive or not which I think as she notes is an empirical question and probably differs from context to context case to case she says look

[00:48:52] even if it is counterproductive that doesn't mean it's inappropriate and when we talk about this in ordinary life we always mark this distinction between intrinsic reasons to get angry or instrumental reasons to get angry and I like her example of the cheating husband who says

[00:49:10] if the wife is mad because she finds out that he's been cheating on her and he says well you shouldn't be angry at me because that'll just make me more likely to cheat on you in the future she says something like that just gives her

[00:49:24] an additional reason to be angry and it doesn't give her a reason not to be angry or it doesn't mean that the anger is inappropriate even if that's true she's introduced this term affective injustice which I really like if you try to silence her anger in that moment

[00:49:44] this is yet another form of injustice that you're piling on to the initial injustices that cause the anger in the first place so you're compounding it and she gives a bunch of examples like calling an angry black man a thug or a woman strident or a shrill

[00:50:02] you're shifting the conversation then from the intrinsic reasons to be angry to the instrumental concerns which as you say is another kind of injustice I totally buy that it's very clear that that's true in ordinary life yep yep and I you know

[00:50:24] again this is obviously an argument that is directed at the response of black Americans but it doesn't have to be for anybody who is tempted to discard arguments because of the political context here I think if you just take a moment to think

[00:50:42] what it's like to be gaslit into not being allowed to be angry because you're told it's not a prudential response that would just infuriate you more and if you constantly are told that you're not allowed to get angry and you keep getting shit on

[00:50:56] like that's just not like that it's a special kind of psychic like pain as I think he says at one point if that's okay here's where I have a couple disagreements, criticisms which is she gives an account of what makes anger apt so

[00:51:18] she's already said anger can be intrinsically appropriate even if it's not instrumentally you know it's not prudent it's not instrumentally good but then there's the question okay what when is it intrinsically appropriate and I think she gets a little too theoretical here certainly for

[00:51:38] my taste and I'd say given my knowledge of some of her other work I was a little surprised to see this it's funny okay okay this is interesting because I see why you feel that because like for instance she gets to you know she says which is something

[00:51:56] I want to ask you by the way if you think that it's true that anger she says anger what makes anger intelligible is anger and distinct from mere disappointment is that anger presents its object as involving a moral violation yeah I don't know that anger

[00:52:08] is always triggered by a moral I agree but that's an even apt anger like even apt anger that's right yeah I feel like you can very readily admit that something isn't a moral violation you know getting like your friend being late right like I don't

[00:52:24] I don't know that that's a moral violation it might be just a violation of manners but it can piss you off I get angry at my dog for peeing where they shouldn't pee like where he shouldn't pee and I don't think that's

[00:52:38] like I'm very clear in my mind that not only is that not a moral violation but he is incapable of moral violations as such right now yeah I was gonna say like my example of that is sports and I think you get angry a lot in sports

[00:52:50] and you know when Grady Little left Pedro in 2003 an anger that I still to this day have not gotten over and so we lost to the Yankees in games in game six when we would have gone to the world series that was I've never you know I've

[00:53:06] rarely been as angry viscerally in my whole life and I will die on the hill of that being appropriate anger like it's at the center of my web of belief that that was that that anger was was appropriate and and I would even say as much as

[00:53:22] as angry as I still can whip myself up to be if I start like watch it again it like it is not a moral violation right like so right and like the lines might blur right you get angry at the call of a ref

[00:53:36] there is a claim of unfairness there or you get angry like even if they make a mistake like it's if they made a mistake it's not a moral violation right like right and you would have to go through hoops to say that it's some sort of

[00:53:48] systematic error in the you know like purposefully done that's not why you're angry or like getting angry what's it called when you flip the bat is it just called flipping the bat right like where etiquette violations it's an etiquette violation like I can see why you feel

[00:54:04] disrespected and disrespect might be something but I don't think that it has to be similarly she says disappointment is is not for a moral violation but just a violation of how you wish things were and that also doesn't seem to me to be right I think

[00:54:24] you can be disappointed in a like in people for their moral violations like and I think that often and sad she didn't bring up sadness as it seems like anger is moral violation anger is a response if and only if it's

[00:54:42] a moral violation I don't think that's the case I think that sadness is often a response to a moral violation and I think it often is when there are people who are close to you that commit a moral violation you are sad or disappointed

[00:54:58] but sometimes not angry I mean you know Eliza doesn't commit many moral violations but if she does a lot of the time I am disappointed in her not angry at her and I honestly I feel about my stepmother like I don't feel angry at her as much as

[00:55:18] I just feel sad about it like I feel really disappointed like I kind of I didn't expect it and you know I'm not gonna get angry at her she's she's she's been very good to me over the whole course of my life in spite

[00:55:34] of being a wicked stepmother but I am disappointed you know right and there's a substantive difference in the kinds of response that would come from those two emotions right so in psych of emotion stuff people often say sadness is a sort of a low

[00:55:56] approach emotion like it's something where when you don't have too much control like you can feel dejected it's something is an irrevocable loss or somebody has done something that you that just when it disappoints you but you're not there's nothing really you can do about it

[00:56:12] whereas anger is a yeah anger is a strong approach emotion that is sort of directed at changing the thing that the person has done like that your object the object of your anger is to change or punish it's a high control emotion I remember

[00:56:32] I remember not feeling that angry when I was going through this the sort of the divorce the separation that I was going through being sad sad sad sad and when I felt anger it was a very different phenomenological feeling so much so that it

[00:56:50] sometimes people say it's not a negative emotion because phenomenologically it's high control like I finally felt like I could do something about it and so I responded in that way as opposed to the sadness which was also a result of the same exact situation

[00:57:04] yeah and I would say even that to me isn't like I was angry about you know Grady Little but I couldn't do anything about it so and I think disappointment if you've ever had somebody close to you be disappointed in you that is

[00:57:18] as much of a spur for change often if as interestingly because I think they feel like you sense that they've given up on you and that's like a horrible feeling they're like wow or that you really let them down and I know that I know that feeling

[00:57:34] and it is it's awful so it's sort of surprising and maybe it makes me think is this a different kind of anger that she's talking about then is it kind of a maybe is it something closer to outrage or something you know which I know some

[00:57:50] philosophers think of anger in that way is kind of moral outrage and if that's you know what what this is well then almost by definition it would be true but you know to the extent that she talks about it as anger which she does that this seems

[00:58:06] to be yeah I don't I don't buy this distinction here between anger and disappointment I also don't think it's necessary at all for her argument no it's not it's not so but the question of how you determine what is apt is

[00:58:20] sort of central to her claim and this is where you said I kind of interrupted you in in you were expressing disappointment in her getting extra theoretical and there's a sentence here where she says since anger presents its object is involving a moral violation one's anger that P

[00:58:38] is apt only if P constitutes a genuine moral violation I knew at that sentence that you would think she was getting too theoretical I actually had a kind of an opposite feeling which was that whether or not something is apt seems so central

[00:58:52] to this argument that I didn't think that she built that much of a case for when something is apt like I wasn't convinced that she had defended this notion of apnist enough well I think so here's what I

[00:59:08] I don't necessarily agree this is why I don't think it's that important to her argument I think it's it's not a necessary condition if someone has committed a moral violation or it's let's see it is a condition which is likely to make anger

[00:59:24] apt right she she gives a couple other ones that and the portionality of it right so if it's yeah in response to something that truly is a violation and it's proportional to that that violation then it seems apt and you have the right relational requirement

[00:59:38] which we can talk about because you know that's another thing we might disagree or not with her but yeah like certainly a case where anger is apt is when somebody has committed a moral violation and so like the cheating husband you know somebody who betrays

[00:59:56] you I mean I I guess maybe I think that that apt is doing more work here than maybe you think because because there are cases where I you know feels like yeah this is apt and this is not apt but I'm I'm not quite sure

[01:00:12] what apt means other than descriptively thinking it's understandable that you would be angry I think it's more than that I think it's normative like it's appropriate it's like it's normatively appropriate right but so how do you determine whether it is proportional for instance it's it's unclear and

[01:00:32] we'll get to this other claim that she makes too when she seems to think that if somebody responded without anger in some cases that it would be missing something yeah it would be missing something even if they took the same actions that one might take

[01:00:50] to improve the world but that's what I mean that it's clearly it's like a normative claim about the appropriate emotion to have you're missing something if you don't have it under certain conditions and I think a paradigm of that is certain

[01:01:08] times where you are the victim of a moral violation or you have a personal connection to somebody who is the victim of a moral violation or no I get I mean I sorry I get that she's making the normative claim I just

[01:01:20] think that it hasn't been fleshed out as to what like so she goes into a little bit of like what about what about the proximity condition on anger's right so do you have to be personally affected by a moral violation it's unclear to me that I guess

[01:01:38] you could write a whole paper on what makes something out let me read that passage so she says she's instinctively drawn to the thought that black Americans have a special additional reason to be angry when a young black person is gunned down

[01:01:50] in the street here it seems only appropriate for black Americans to cry out another one of our children has died but I am far less inclined to think that middle class white men have a special additional reason to be angry when another middle class white

[01:02:06] man suffers a harm so what do you think of that I mean my intuition is with her right but but when I flesh out the intuition there's a good reason for why this this might be the case and it's not an easy thing to defend right I feel

[01:02:22] like you have to add you have to add something rather than just say like it seems apt to me I think that if you are to make an argument like this many people might say well why why is that the case and I think that there are reasons

[01:02:38] and that they could be fleshed out but that would require maybe a whole article on what makes an apt you know on the one hand I'm saying this isn't fleshed out enough but on the other hand the people who flush all of this out would write

[01:02:52] the kinds of born articles that we were referring to earlier that wouldn't be as right so for now I'm happy to say that there is a notion of happiness that we have an intuition about and we can even say that like let's just use

[01:03:06] the paradigmatic cases where everybody would seem to have an intuition about it not these edge cases about like are you allowed to be angry on behalf of black people for instance I think that's all her argument needs is paradigm cases where the intuition is shared by most people

[01:03:20] and this is why I agree that you don't want to get too theoretical about that because it makes it bloodless and too abstract on the one hand and it will just be impossible to defend and but I think this is where the essay comes I think

[01:03:34] it becomes very insightful here is in the is in this idea of anger as a form of appreciating injustice and she compares it to a kind of aesthetic appreciation while noting that they are different and it's just an analogy but here is

[01:03:52] where she says the quote that you said that imagine a person who does everything as I were by the ethical book but who is left entirely cold by injustice feeling nothing in response to those moral wrongs I don't want to say that such a person

[01:04:06] has done anything wrong but I think it's natural to say that there is something missing in her and the thing that's missing is that they're not angry about it and she says in just the same way that somebody who doesn't appreciate a great work of art

[01:04:22] it's not that they've necessarily done anything wrong but there's something in them that is missing in terms of you know you're being confronted with something and there's an appropriate response that they don't have yeah this is the part where I start having a problem

[01:04:40] because I get what she's saying because in the course of normal human events the way that you know that somebody has appreciated it and in fact the natural, descriptively natural response to somebody really appraising the world in this way that injustice has occurred

[01:04:58] is anger and when people don't express that I think it usually does signal that they haven't really appreciated it I don't think that it's necessary though and to bring us back to what we were saying earlier like you could respond with sadness or disappointment

[01:05:12] and I don't think one could say that you this is evidence that you didn't appreciate it and I think that there could be agents who are cognitively driven who appraise it and say this is terrible and they want to do something about it

[01:05:28] and I think that it would be wrong to say that they didn't appreciate it, I think it would just be that they didn't appreciate it in the way that I know most people do. Yeah so I think that's fair I guess the issue is you know where

[01:05:42] is the burden here like I think maybe Srinivasan and we did try to have her on but the timing didn't work out I think she might agree that there are a certain other range of emotions that a person could feel that might also

[01:05:58] demonstrate an appreciation of the injustice but like you said quite often it means the lack of anger means that they that they haven't I also think that it's where she has the real problem so somebody like Martha Nussbaum who both never gets angry

[01:06:16] she's just built that way right you know that's just that's just part of her nature so okay maybe there's something missing but if she takes all the right steps and does the right things and you know that would be okay but it's in addition then criticizing the anger

[01:06:34] in others that I think Srinivasan rightly has a problem with absolutely and I think I think the only criticism I have here is that she's making the mistake that a philosopher might make in my opinion a mistake of of trying to make

[01:06:52] what I think is a super reasonable empirical claim something along the sort of Bob Frank lines that emotions signal something so reliably that in the absence of that emotion you might genuinely wonder whether or not somebody felt that thought or had that thought but I think that's just

[01:07:10] contingent upon the way that we've been built and not you know there's something that you could appreciate something even aesthetically and not have the same kind of response emotionally that somebody else might have but it would be hard to say to somebody who's not built in that way

[01:07:28] to say that you did not appreciate the injustice yeah I mean so let's, because this is the part I really thought was interesting so she says this is, she's imagining a response to her view since our hypothetical person acts impeccably without the aid of apt affect she lacks

[01:07:46] nothing and our intuition to the contrary is just an expression of our fetish the skeptic might say for emotion but then she says notice that a similar argument can be run against the intrinsic value of apt aesthetic responses and she says I want to suggest that

[01:08:02] that skepticism should be rejected as simply that a skepticism that can be broadly expanded to include anything that we intuit of intrinsic value including epistemic goods like truth justification and knowledge so I think that's sort of interesting because you know in the case of aesthetics right if somebody

[01:08:18] is left cold by a great work of art I I'm willing to say that now they haven't done anything wrong but it's just that they are built they are wired in such a way that say they can't appreciate straw dogs or to take one

[01:08:34] example or you know brothers care a lot of the but but like I still think there might be missing something even if you know you're not criticizing them as a person you are you are saying they don't have the intrinsically appropriate reaction to that thing and so maybe

[01:08:54] you could run that on somebody who is left cold by injustice it's not that they are doing anything wrong it is that they lack an appropriate response to the injustice in just the same way that somebody can't appreciate a work of art or like me

[01:09:12] with like a lot of music like I just I don't get it you know like I'm sorry like and I get but I will admit that I'm missing something there you know but there is there is I think what I'm saying is that

[01:09:24] when you like when you say that somebody is left cold by injustice what you're saying is that very thing that they didn't appreciate it and what I'm saying is that it's not clear to me that you need to have that response

[01:09:38] in order to say that you appreciated it and that's why I brought up the other emotions that you might have in response to sadness I mean to more violations but what if you didn't have any emotional response like what if you are like what we think of someone

[01:09:52] like Peter Singer or somebody like that right yeah I mean I think it would turn on like perhaps I'm not able to get into the mindset of somebody who has a cognitive appreciation so they look at something and they say

[01:10:06] no like I really am appreciating this work of art I'm just not like having like my eyes aren't watering and I'm not you know I'm not I just don't respond to their appreciation in the same way that you do which granted I think is

[01:10:20] like it's such a reliable signal that it's hard to tease apart when a human being is just not emotional about something like I find it you know I've been like I've been in situations where somebody I'm next to somebody

[01:10:34] looking at a piece of art and I feel moved and they just are looking for the bathroom and I like I don't get it I don't get it and so I think in general it's a reliable signal I just think that you know

[01:10:46] a signal of what? Like I think this is the issue that we're disagreeing about it's a reliable signal of appreciation but it's not a necessary condition for appreciation so I think it's empirically in human beings it is if I see that you are feeling

[01:11:00] emotion it seems like an honest signal that you feel like it's an injustice so I know like I have some epistemologically like that's a good road to knowing that you really are thinking of it as a violation but if you don't seem to be angry

[01:11:16] I feel like I don't I still don't know I can't conclude that you're not. So maybe the issue is what does appreciation mean in this context and I guess I have a very like I'm comfortable with a very cognitive you know definition of what it means

[01:11:34] to appreciate something so long as you are against it and you are you have a desire to see it gone and you're motivated in all of the ways that she says I think that it wouldn't be fair to say that you that you didn't respond correctly but now

[01:11:50] would you say that again about art so what if somebody takes a work of art this will be a silly example but it's one that prompts a reliable emotional reaction for from a lot of people the movie the Pixar movie up right and especially

[01:12:04] the first 15 minutes of it that leaves a lot of people and basket cases and also for me actually the end of it when they go through the little photo album and he sees that there are more photos or like Kafka or whatever if somebody says look

[01:12:22] I get that they're hitting all the right boxes here and you know this is expertly done and I can see how they are appealing to the right emotions keeping people entertained but also moved I just don't feel any of those things again it's not their fault

[01:12:40] but I think they're missing something right like and so then the question what's the disanalogy if you agree with that what's the disanalogy between that and the anger or any emotion well I guess any emotion but I mean again I think it's I think that it is

[01:12:56] just a contingent claim I think human beings often respond that way but let me give you so so what I'm saying is something I just think like there's no with the aesthetics there's no way you can appreciate it if you don't have

[01:13:06] any kind of a real emotional response to it for some works of art I guess because I mean it does turn what you mean by appreciation if you're just big you just defining appreciation as having an emotional response that's

[01:13:18] I guess that's what it feels like to me but let me give you an analogy that's not about missing an emotion but it's but it might hit at what I mean by appreciation that's not emotional so suppose that we're both looking at a film and you being vastly

[01:13:32] more knowledgeable about you know the cinephile that you are we both look at something and I am like in tears because I'm so moved by it and you're pointing out the masterful technique of lighting that this director used I don't think it's fair for me to say

[01:13:48] you're not appreciating it as much as I am I think that you have an appreciation that is like an intellectual one that is meaningful that's not dependent on whether you're you're crying or not right now because in fact you might be having a better appreciation than I am

[01:14:06] I guess though if that's all I have if the only way that I am you know responding to it is noting the kind of expert filmmaking or the techniques or the lighting or the colors or the use of sound or something and I'm not getting like just viscerally

[01:14:28] the effect of all those things I would say there's a way in which I understand you know the aesthetic value of the movie better than you but there also might be a way in which I understand it less that it's just inaccessible to me

[01:14:44] in the way that it is to you yeah I guess I don't think it's that unreasonable to think that in some cases say like watching a movie the eighth time where you're no longer having the same emotional response that you might expect somebody to have that you actually

[01:15:00] your gaining of knowledge is making you appreciate even more and you might actually be not moved in that way at all but I think that you can say I deeply appreciate it but that's parasitic of the fact that you used to have the emotions

[01:15:14] perhaps but all I want to say is that you have a novel way you have now a new way of appreciating it that is not contingent upon the emotional response right I would agree with that I think that's definitely true

[01:15:28] so I think then we can say that it might be the case that you can have is there an analogy there to moral violations like so you're so in tune with what it means to be what it means for an injustice to have occurred

[01:15:42] that you don't have that same angry response anymore what you have now is just like just like you know you're like fucking Nash in a beautiful mind you're just like you're having this mathematical you see the whole system as it's unfolding before you and you're like I

[01:16:02] think it would be fair to say you're having some sort of affective response but I don't know that not feeling anger is I don't think it's fair to say that you haven't appreciated the the moral violation so I think though again I'll just guess what she would say

[01:16:18] in response to that but I think the point is it's not that you have to feel anger every time you think about it but if you never get angry and you never got angry at the injustice then there is there's something intrinsically

[01:16:32] valuable that you lack now there may be other things like I think singer is a great example of this there's so many other things that he intrinsically has relevant to morality that almost everybody including me lack but there might be and I don't

[01:16:46] know if this is true but there might be something he also intrinsically lacks that doesn't mean it doesn't mean that overall even necessarily that like if you add up the different ways in which we appreciate injustice or you know suffering or something like that that

[01:17:02] you know the ledgers way more on Peter Singer's side than on most people's side because it probably is at the same time like that doesn't mean that there's something intrinsic that is lacking something of intrinsic value that is lacking you know I think they the only substantive disagreement

[01:17:18] we probably have is because I I think that if you are looking at human beings I think it's safe to say that if you never had some sort of emotional reaction then I then you could say that you're not appreciating it because that's

[01:17:34] just how human seem to work I think the only thing we probably disagree about is whether or not a computer could eventually appreciate something and like and and I want to maintain that like there would be a meaningful way in which a program could be said

[01:17:48] to appreciate something that doesn't match the way that we do but for all intents and purposes I don't think it takes anything away from what she's saying to say that this is just about human beings and I think we would probably both agree you're weird if you didn't

[01:18:02] respond to an aesthetic beauty effectively to begin with I would be a little suspicious of you you would call like 911 and say there's an African-American person who's not who's not moved by the spot of celli he is threatening my life oh my god so

[01:18:22] I also like I want to talk about this analogy with rape victims because I thought this was interesting and I think her true target is these anger critics right and she makes this comparison with people who blame rape victims or who give

[01:18:38] advice to rape victims that that's their response to a violation well you know you shouldn't go out late at night you shouldn't dress a certain way you shouldn't drink too much and what I think is that she agrees that that is often empirically good advice but

[01:18:54] there's something offensive about it which isn't tied to the fact that it's not good advice right like instrumentally and it is precisely that lack of appreciation of the injustice but also she says it treats the counter productivity of anger as a fixed fact

[01:19:10] rather than a largely contingent feature of social reality which is I think a little more controversial of a claim but as far as there is something deeply wrong about that's your reaction well for future times you go out to avoid being sexually

[01:19:22] assaulted here's what you ought to do it may be good advice but it's also like there's something seriously missing in how you're responding to what happened right and right before I think she says it so well in the clause right before you said which is

[01:19:36] moreover obscures the fact that this is this advice is good advice only because men in fact men do in fact rape which you can you know make this analogy to to a black man who is driving a fancy car or is out late at night and wearing

[01:19:54] you know like his hat backwards it's like yeah if I were a black parent I would give like I would school my son in all of the ways to avoid getting brutalized by cops but and this is exactly you know

[01:20:08] as much as I was arguing the opposite this is exactly what I think my my the heart of my claim in the first segment which is what kind of person are you if the first thing you point to is that looting is bad

[01:20:20] like have you not experienced the anger that would say like the reason we are looting you know is is that it is a reaction to this injustice yeah exactly and that's the thing I think that is was infuriating us about their reaction I

[01:20:36] think I might have a problem though with this idea that the counter-productivity critique at least necessarily treats the counter-productivity of anger as a fixed fact rather than a largely contingent feature of social reality and I think your example of the black parent talking to their

[01:20:52] child about how to act if they're stopped by police which they probably will be at certain points sometimes the stakes are high enough that that really is what you need to do and I don't think the black parent is denying that that this is a contingent

[01:21:10] feature of social reality they want it to be another way it isn't that way and so when you're talking about giving advice to your kid about how to handle yourself with police so this is where I think maybe the claim is a little too

[01:21:26] strong like I think that parent isn't buying into the system they're just dealing with the unfortunate reality as it is right and you know this is something that I've heard some black people saying about the responses that they've seen from non-black people of

[01:21:46] fatigue from this like all this racism where they're like yeah you're feeling it now but we haven't had the luxury of feeling fatigue but if we did feel this much fatigue every day about the injustice like it would be it would not make for a

[01:22:02] decent life like we have to step oftentimes the anger because there else we just be angry all the time and so I've had it I've had it be the case before where I you know call a friend and be like can you fucking believe this

[01:22:16] and be like yeah I mean it happens they can't spend all their time as angry now I mean I think that's right is that like I don't want to say it comes from a place of privilege to make that claim it can right I mean it can yeah

[01:22:36] but I guess my claim only is that there are times where that is appropriate like down the line right and it's just a really sad fact and I think maybe she would agree because she makes a point about why that's so doubly unjust is when you're forced to

[01:22:56] repress the anger the justified daily rage talks about Baldwin because she says Baldwin was like one of these people right who thought black anger didn't serve the interests of black people and realize that that generated a profound conflict she says indeed

[01:23:14] Baldwin here speaking I want to suggest of two kinds of injustice first the daily oppression of being a black person in the U.S. impoverishment ghettoization threat of physical attack political and social marginalization psychic degradation these are things that cause a

[01:23:28] relatively conscious black American to be in a rage almost all the time the second is what I want to call affective injustice the injustice of having to negotiate between one's apt emotional response to the injustice one situation and one's desire to better one's situation a conflict of responsibilities

[01:23:44] that are all but reconcilable and I think that so yeah she recognizes I think that there are times where you just have to do that and that's another form of injustice you know there's a we've talked about this before I think but there is also a particular injustice

[01:24:02] for black men because there might be anger as a response to all sorts of injustice that that might be forcibly suppressed but black men have like this double injustice where the expression of their anger is exactly what is threatening to a lot of

[01:24:24] people like not only are they told that they ought not feel angry that much but when they do feel angry they're taken as especially threatening because of the stereotypes of the angry black man that they're doubly forced into this this like well shit it is risky

[01:24:40] to my life to express anger right whereas often we can express anger at no it's not it's not imprudent for us to express anger both like internally psychically it's not imprudent it can be a kind of cathartic and you know we're not putting ourselves more at risk

[01:25:00] than we would otherwise and the yeah and the risk for women is a little it's may not be life threatening but it is also guest lady right where so then I think the conclusion right now is that at critics of anger who this is addressed against

[01:25:18] right they have to show that the prudential considerations against you know showing anger feeling anger outweigh other considerations like intrinsic considerations I overall by that also that there is this additional injustice or moral insensitivity which I think is a good word here of asking people

[01:25:42] to not be angry because it's counterproductive in cases where that anger is totally appropriate yeah and I think her argument is successful only to show that sometimes anger is apt in these cases where it's not prudential even in a few times

[01:26:04] I think that it's that it's will be enough to defeat this view of anger I wish she was able to come on because I would like to ask her there's a there's a section where she kind of all but concedes that violent anger is always inappropriate for moral

[01:26:26] reasons and I wonder if I mean did you take her to be saying that I you know what I took what I was reading between the lines is that it would be counterproductive to her argument to try to mount an argument for violent anger being

[01:26:48] apt I think that I don't think from reading it and from reading both pieces not knowing her obviously it seems to me that I wouldn't be a I don't think that she would have a problem saying violence might sometimes be an extension of your

[01:27:04] angry response and might be apt I think that she's being pragmatic here so here's what and I kind of maybe agree with you but she does pretty explicitly say when violence is wrong it is presumably wrong not because of its bad consequences but rather

[01:27:22] because it is categorically wrong a violation of a moral prohibition perhaps against needless physical harm when an instance of anger constituent constitutively involves violence such anger would be all things considered prohibited not because of its bad consequences but rather because of the violation of a moral prohibition

[01:27:42] thus a defense of the possibility of anger's atness need not yield the defense of angry violence so maybe what she's saying is I don't need that I don't need to also defend angry violence but maybe that case could be made but when you're just talking about anger

[01:28:02] it's unnecessary she also somewhat concedes to Nussbaum that revenge is wrong or seems to and I think maybe the idea is anger doesn't necessarily involve either revenge or violence and so you have to evaluate it as separate from those two possible consequences of it

[01:28:26] and this is where she goes through and mounts an argument for a mildly functionalist view of emotions by which she means you could argue as some have that all of the behaviors that come with anger is what constitutes anger like the things we might say are a result

[01:28:46] of anger like your angry look and your motivation to beat someone up or whatever and perhaps even the behavior that is violent that that is just what it means to be angry and she wants to step back and say no no there's a meaningful way in which

[01:29:04] like that hard view I don't want to defend because I want to be able to say that people could be angry and not be violent. Yeah and I agree with that yeah it was funny though to me which where it's like there is an

[01:29:20] empirical answer to whether or not that is right it struck me as an interesting way to say well I don't like I just want to make this I want this empirically to be the right way of seeing anger because of the argument that I want to make

[01:29:34] I mean like I think like it really depends on the person like I have friends or I remember people in college who when they got angry it was going to lead to violence that's how they were built and like it was almost like scary to see how

[01:29:50] violent their form of anger was and then otherwise they would be like really laid back almost like soft spoken but then they got angry and like somebody was going to go to the hospital so I think there are people like that then there are people

[01:30:06] like me who get angry all the time and like very rarely violent like now pretty much never violent other than to like the wall or the cupboards or something but yeah like I think that just depends on the person the culture yeah and she says that

[01:30:24] she says that much right like that it depends on the culture it's funny you know but this is a reason why like at some points especially early on our relationship we didn't it was hard to understand each other because to me like anger meant like I know

[01:30:42] our relationship is in danger here right and to you you're like no this like not you know we just get angry and then we move on it's a Israeli thing too that's a kind of like it's a real cultural thing like Israelis get angry constantly

[01:30:56] they're constantly yelling at each other and they're legitimately angry but it's just so and then it's over you know it's just a way of releasing yeah it's an interesting distinction between that and like the save the Argentinian the Latin American who's loud and argumentative

[01:31:10] but there's always like underlying positive affect like expected like that we don't expect that you're angry that you're just yelling but you're not angry angry you know maybe that's like it's probably some of the time that it's

[01:31:22] that it's like that but a lot of the time like my mom used to get seriously angry at me like yelling and I think in a lot of families that would have meant some irreversible rupture in the relationship and it was just part of daily life

[01:31:36] for me you know my right whereas my mother has I've never seen her angry and I would feel like I would just completely but my father very okay with being angry but it often meant that you were about to get a spanking and so we'd run

[01:31:54] that's why I was afraid of your anger I thought you might spank me you know I only spank you when you back when you're the opposite of anger so yeah I mean I think that teasing it apart I'm fine with that argument as well like it doesn't always

[01:32:12] lead to violence so I don't need to to talk about whether violence is apt because all I want to talk about is anger being apt the one the last thing I have to say about these two articles we've barely talked about the nation

[01:32:24] piece but one of the things that she captures in the nation piece is her disappointment with Martha Nussbaum and her recent work which I feel to not anger but it's disappointing and here is a nice line that captures that she says it's unsurprising

[01:32:42] that someone who has not experienced first hand the liberating effects of anger Nussbaum herself claims not to get angry might make such a mistake but the mistake is less understandable in someone like Nussbaum who has for decades exhorted the moral need to closely read the lived experience

[01:33:00] of others and that's very true about Martha Nussbaum it was like one of the reasons I really like her as a philosopher although more the early work is how much she would use literary examples or historical examples to really flesh out the emotional complexity

[01:33:18] and the moral complexity of what was going on and so it was a bit of a let down to see this kind of hard line stance against anger just a kind of I don't want to say a simplistic form of utilitarianism although at times

[01:33:32] that did teeter on that and first you might expect it from some people but I did not expect it from Martha Nussbaum. It's interesting because I don't remember whether it's in the nation or in the I don't know if it's which one

[01:33:44] she says it in but she talks about Nussbaum being on the spectrum of cognitiveists and non-cognitiveists about emotion that she's pretty far on the side of cognitivism which essentially a view that emotions are a result of judgments that you make so they're almost a choice

[01:34:04] on some I don't know for Nussbaum but I know that Sartre was an extreme on that end he thought that it was a choice to feel and emotion and if you have a view that is more along the lines of are you

[01:34:20] going to decide to get angry or not decide to get angry I could see why you would be a little more inclined to say you know it's maybe decide not to get angry but if you view it as less of a decision and more of a just

[01:34:36] expression of what it is that you value then it's hard to call this not you know maybe there's some disagreement there like that leads to such a drastically different view on how these emotions should play a role yeah maybe I think you could still

[01:34:56] I mean I don't know this is a new thing and we've been talking for too long I think you could be a cognitivist or a non-cognitivist and have and that not be tied necessarily at least to your views on anger is appropriateness right I

[01:35:12] kind of hate that debate so well on next step the next episode of very bad wizards cognitivism is it true my grad school friends used to make fun of me that Bob Solomon was my real father because he once dated my mom he

[01:35:30] was a cognitivist and you know he was the next after sarcher you know this gets me angry because these kinds of debates like cognitivism and non-cognitivism I love but you never you never let me talk about them on the show yeah including now because I feel

[01:35:46] oppressed we're like at two and a half fuck yeah let's wrap this up but I would I'd be into it if you like I'd like if there's a a Bob Solomon article actually might if it's not too close to home dad alright well check out these two articles

[01:36:06] and join us next time on very bad wizards

Episode 191: All the Rage