A follow up to our story HERE.
She has been given a 6 month sentence, but unfortunately, it is to run concurrent with her current sentence, which she is serving at a halfway house, not prison.

The prosecutor argued for serving the sentence after her current one, but the judge sided with the defense for concurrent sentencing.

Link: http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x1990774051/Woman-pleads-guilty-to-false-rape-report-in-Hopkinton

A follow up to our story HERE.
She has been given a 6 month sentence, but unfortunately, it is to run concurrent with her current sentence, which she is serving at a halfway house, not prison.

The prosecutor argued for serving the sentence after her current one, but the judge sided with the defense for concurrent sentencing.

Link: http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/x1990774051/Woman-pleads-guilty-to-false-rape-report-in-Hopkinton

By the balls: That's where your son's college has him if he's accused of sexual assault

This blog has written extensively about the Obama administration's April 4 directive to colleges that, to be compliant with Title IX, they must apply the lowest standard of proof for all college disciplinary proceedings involving sexual harassment (which includes sexual assault): a "preponderance of the evidence standard," which means that there need only be a slight probability that the offense occurred in order to hold the accused (almost always a male for sex offenses) responsible. Until the directive, the vast majority of institutions applied the "clear and convincing" evidence standard, which means that to find an accused responsible for sexual assault, the school must produce evidence that unequivocally establishes a very high probability that the alleged assault occurred.

 

Maybe that's too theoretical a concept for some folks. A prominent men's rights advocate wrote to me when we were beating the drum on this issue: "[P]eople are not going to understand this 'preponderance of evidence' thing, unfortunately." 

Great. A lot of our readers would rather talk about "game" and all sorts of other things that, all due respect, don't seem especially important to me when I've got emails from guys facing prison time for rapes they didn't commit.

Alright. Let's be more direct. Let's try a different approach and illustrate how your son is screwed if a girl at college accuses him of sexual assault. Let's say the girl files a complaint with the school and with the police at the same time. The claim is bullshit, and you hire an attorney to defend your son.

First, your son wants to file a claim with the school, a criminal complaint, and a civil action against her for filing a false rape report.  Oops. Under a lot of college handbooks, that could be considered retailiation -- a separate ground for punishing your son. http://goldenstatesociety.blogspot.com/2011/02/college-men-who-file-suit-after-being.html  So forget that.

Next, your son's criminal attorney's first instinct is to get the college hearing postponed. Why? When you're accused of a crime, you have the right to remain silent both in the police investigation and in the trial against you. That's often the best advice, because the police are looking to build a case against you and they often take what you say -- even though it may seem innocent to you -- and twist it, and pound it, and make you appear to be a liar. Or a rapist. So, as FIRE has explained: "If you have both a university disciplinary hearing and a criminal trial pending, you will almost always want to get your disciplinary hearing postponed until after the criminal matter is settled.  Holding the disciplinary hearing before the criminal trial can be very dangerous, because what you say at the campus hearing-where you have far fewer protections than in a court of law-can be used against you in the criminal case"

Well, in light of the Obama administration's April 4 directive, forget that. The directive provides that "a criminal investigation into allegations of sexual violence does not relieve the school of its duty under Title IX to resolve complaints promptly and equitably." The college might “delay temporarily the fact-finding portion” of its investigation “while the police are gathering evidence,” but the “school must promptly resume and complete its fact-finding” even before charges are resolved in the criminal justice system. So, if your son wants to defend himself by testifying in the college hearing, he runs the risk that whatever he says will be used against him by the government in the criminal proceeding, and that's usually too risky.

Nice catch-22, isn't it?  So your son's college career is finished based solely on her allegation, and he's expelled.

Then the police finish their investigation, and they determine her claim wasn't credible. In fact, they charge her for filing a false report. Does your son get reinstated at college?  Forget it. The school won't even reopen his case. http://goldenstatesociety.blogspot.com/2011/03/male-student-expelled-from-college-for.html

Your son's college -- to which you've paid tens of thousands of dollars -- has just destroyed him solely because some woman made a bullshit rape accusation against him. Maybe he'll get a job at a convenience store, but his life will never be what it should have been. 

The anti-male crusaders on our college campuses finally have your son where they want him: by the balls.  In fact, they've got 'em in a vise, and they're tightening it, slowly but surely.

Is that direct enough for you?

By the balls: That's where your son's college has him if he's accused of sexual assault

This blog has written extensively about the Obama administration's April 4 directive to colleges that, to be compliant with Title IX, they must apply the lowest standard of proof for all college disciplinary proceedings involving sexual harassment (which includes sexual assault): a "preponderance of the evidence standard," which means that there need only be a slight probability that the offense occurred in order to hold the accused (almost always a male for sex offenses) responsible. Until the directive, the vast majority of institutions applied the "clear and convincing" evidence standard, which means that to find an accused responsible for sexual assault, the school must produce evidence that unequivocally establishes a very high probability that the alleged assault occurred.

 

Maybe that's too theoretical a concept for some folks. A prominent men's rights advocate wrote to me when we were beating the drum on this issue: "[P]eople are not going to understand this 'preponderance of evidence' thing, unfortunately." 

Great. A lot of our readers would rather talk about "game" and all sorts of other things that, all due respect, don't seem especially important to me when I've got emails from guys facing prison time for rapes they didn't commit.

Alright. Let's be more direct. Let's try a different approach and illustrate how your son is screwed if a girl at college accuses him of sexual assault. Let's say the girl files a complaint with the school and with the police at the same time. The claim is bullshit, and you hire an attorney to defend your son.

First, your son wants to file a claim with the school, a criminal complaint, and a civil action against her for filing a false rape report.  Oops. Under a lot of college handbooks, that could be considered retailiation -- a separate ground for punishing your son. http://goldenstatesociety.blogspot.com/2011/02/college-men-who-file-suit-after-being.html  So forget that.

Next, your son's criminal attorney's first instinct is to get the college hearing postponed. Why? When you're accused of a crime, you have the right to remain silent both in the police investigation and in the trial against you. That's often the best advice, because the police are looking to build a case against you and they often take what you say -- even though it may seem innocent to you -- and twist it, and pound it, and make you appear to be a liar. Or a rapist. So, as FIRE has explained: "If you have both a university disciplinary hearing and a criminal trial pending, you will almost always want to get your disciplinary hearing postponed until after the criminal matter is settled.  Holding the disciplinary hearing before the criminal trial can be very dangerous, because what you say at the campus hearing-where you have far fewer protections than in a court of law-can be used against you in the criminal case"

Well, in light of the Obama administration's April 4 directive, forget that. The directive provides that "a criminal investigation into allegations of sexual violence does not relieve the school of its duty under Title IX to resolve complaints promptly and equitably." The college might “delay temporarily the fact-finding portion” of its investigation “while the police are gathering evidence,” but the “school must promptly resume and complete its fact-finding” even before charges are resolved in the criminal justice system. So, if your son wants to defend himself by testifying in the college hearing, he runs the risk that whatever he says will be used against him by the government in the criminal proceeding, and that's usually too risky.

Nice catch-22, isn't it?  So your son's college career is finished based solely on her allegation, and he's expelled.

Then the police finish their investigation, and they determine her claim wasn't credible. In fact, they charge her for filing a false report. Does your son get reinstated at college?  Forget it. The school won't even reopen his case. http://goldenstatesociety.blogspot.com/2011/03/male-student-expelled-from-college-for.html

Your son's college -- to which you've paid tens of thousands of dollars -- has just destroyed him solely because some woman made a bullshit rape accusation against him. Maybe he'll get a job at a convenience store, but his life will never be what it should have been. 

The anti-male crusaders on our college campuses finally have your son where they want him: by the balls.  In fact, they've got 'em in a vise, and they're tightening it, slowly but surely.

Is that direct enough for you?

University Women's Dept. Stirs Up Protest Against Sex Therapist Who Teaches that couples should think about the impact of sexually rejecting their partners

This is how far we've come: students at Australian National University plan to protest the appearance on campus of a controversial sex therapist who teaches views that are supposedly offensive to women.

Does this sex therapist teach that women shouldn't dress like sluts?  That they should take precautions in hooking up that men don't have to take? That they shouldn't drink around men they don't know?

None of the above. Bettina Arndt, a self-described "card-carrying feminist," teaches that "women have a right to say no, but . . ." -- wait for it -- "men and women should think about the impact of rejection on their partners, and some may choose to say yes a little more often."

Horrors! Partners should actually make sacrifices for one another?  Why it's heresy!

Bettina Arndt explains: ''My message is that some women can enjoy sex without desire and perhaps they should explore that as an option. This is an emerging area of research. Men should also make love to their partners if they are persistently rejecting them, which often happens when older men become nervous about performance.''

Until lately, to suggest that couples should practice selflessness and to make sacrifices for one another was perfectly rational to every thinking human being. Somewhere along the line, though, it became verboten to suggest that selflessness be practiced in the bedroom, unless it was just men who were being told to be selfless.

And, of course, the big student protest isn't driven some grassroots effort by disgruntled young people. It's being organized on Facebook by the ANU Women's Department. Who would have thought?

Women's officer Kate McMurtrie said Arndt's views were damaging to young people and her attitudes should not be invited or heralded at the ANU.

''The department does not believe sex should be an 'obligation' by either party in a relationship. The idea that it's a woman's responsibility to have sex with their partner is more akin to notions of proprietary interests or a chore like doing the dishes,'' she said.

Story here: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/anu-students-angry-over-arndt-sex-lecture/2179918.aspx

The real problem might be that Ms. Arndt thinks women have become self-centered. In an interview, Ms. Arndt bemoaned the fact that "women started thinking about 'me'. The Me Generation, I think, particularly applied to women, where women started looking at their lives as something other than, you know, someone's wife and someone's mother and started thinking about themselves, and that was disaster, I think, for marriage . . . ."  http://www.abc.net.au/talkingheads/txt/s1951266.htm 

Ms. Arndt's concern for fathers' rights is also something that doesn't play well among the powers-that-be, either: http://www.bettinaarndt.com.au/articles/i-want-my-daddy.htm.

So that's where we are. We've reached the point where a feminist can't suggest that men are human beings with interests worth considering without a Women's Studies department stirring up a student protest to quash that idea before it gains currency.  Spin it any way you want, it's man-hating, pure and simple. It's the type of attitude that leads young women to believe that men are predatory pigs, and that an unfavorable sexual experience is rape. And it's the reason a hell of a lot of good men who believe in equality between the sexes simply can't and simply won't join hands to work with the angry women who preach such hatred.

University Women's Dept. Stirs Up Protest Against Sex Therapist Who Teaches that couples should think about the impact of sexually rejecting their partners

This is how far we've come: students at Australian National University plan to protest the appearance on campus of a controversial sex therapist who teaches views that are supposedly offensive to women.

Does this sex therapist teach that women shouldn't dress like sluts?  That they should take precautions in hooking up that men don't have to take? That they shouldn't drink around men they don't know?

None of the above. Bettina Arndt, a self-described "card-carrying feminist," teaches that "women have a right to say no, but . . ." -- wait for it -- "men and women should think about the impact of rejection on their partners, and some may choose to say yes a little more often."

Horrors! Partners should actually make sacrifices for one another?  Why it's heresy!

Bettina Arndt explains: ''My message is that some women can enjoy sex without desire and perhaps they should explore that as an option. This is an emerging area of research. Men should also make love to their partners if they are persistently rejecting them, which often happens when older men become nervous about performance.''

Until lately, to suggest that couples should practice selflessness and to make sacrifices for one another was perfectly rational to every thinking human being. Somewhere along the line, though, it became verboten to suggest that selflessness be practiced in the bedroom, unless it was just men who were being told to be selfless.

And, of course, the big student protest isn't driven some grassroots effort by disgruntled young people. It's being organized on Facebook by the ANU Women's Department. Who would have thought?

Women's officer Kate McMurtrie said Arndt's views were damaging to young people and her attitudes should not be invited or heralded at the ANU.

''The department does not believe sex should be an 'obligation' by either party in a relationship. The idea that it's a woman's responsibility to have sex with their partner is more akin to notions of proprietary interests or a chore like doing the dishes,'' she said.

Story here: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/anu-students-angry-over-arndt-sex-lecture/2179918.aspx

The real problem might be that Ms. Arndt thinks women have become self-centered. In an interview, Ms. Arndt bemoaned the fact that "women started thinking about 'me'. The Me Generation, I think, particularly applied to women, where women started looking at their lives as something other than, you know, someone's wife and someone's mother and started thinking about themselves, and that was disaster, I think, for marriage . . . ."  http://www.abc.net.au/talkingheads/txt/s1951266.htm 

Ms. Arndt's concern for fathers' rights is also something that doesn't play well among the powers-that-be, either: http://www.bettinaarndt.com.au/articles/i-want-my-daddy.htm.

So that's where we are. We've reached the point where a feminist can't suggest that men are human beings with interests worth considering without a Women's Studies department stirring up a student protest to quash that idea before it gains currency.  Spin it any way you want, it's man-hating, pure and simple. It's the type of attitude that leads young women to believe that men are predatory pigs, and that an unfavorable sexual experience is rape. And it's the reason a hell of a lot of good men who believe in equality between the sexes simply can't and simply won't join hands to work with the angry women who preach such hatred.

Language Matters: News Anchor Bestows 'Victim' Status on Rape Accuser

Language matters. We sometimes even hold people responsible for the language they use. Well, depending on the group offended.

Male broadcasters are not permitted to refer to conservative women broadcasters as "talk sluts," as we recently observed.  Male broadcasters aren't permitted to call black members of a women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos."  Male late night comedians are not permitted to make sex "jokes" about the daughter of a former vice presidential candidate.  White male sports analysts aren't allowed to to say that blacks were "bred to be the better athlete . . . ."

Each of the men who made those remarks, and countless others, have been punished for offending members of the group who identify with the person(s) they referenced.

Other times, people get away with saying things on the air that are just wrong, but since no group is offended, the remark passes.

This morning on "The Wall Street Journal This Morning," a news broadcast that airs on stations across America, news anchor Gina Cervetti referred to the accuser of Dominique Strauss-Kahn as "the victim."  Specifically, she noted that the defense team apparently was planning to go after "the victim."  

We must assume that Cervetti, an experienced journalist, knows how to pick her words carefully.  Underlying Cervetti's use of that term is an assumption that the unnamed accuser was raped by the ex-IMF chief.

By labeling the accuser the "victim" before a single scrap of evidence has been admitted at trial, much less an adjudication of guilt, Cervetti impliedly rushed to judgment and declared the unnamed accuser's allegation to be factual.  Such a description does a grave disservice to (1) the presumptively innocent who are accused of such crimes since, by necessity, they must be guilty if their accusers are, in fact, "victims"; (2) actual rape victims, because Cervetti trivializes rape when she includes among its victims women who may or may not be actual victims; and (3) her listeners, who are entitled to accurate reporting but receive something less than that when she transforms an accuser into a "victim."

No one -- aside from his friends and, I dare say, this blog -- is going to go to bat for Dominique Strauss-Kahn.  The general consensus, whether it's true or not, is that he is part of a culture of male privilege that has, in the words of Maureen Dowd, "the sexual norms of a libidinous pirate ship." It would, of course, be much easier to buy into the general consensus if it didn't also hold that the typical American college boy -- who, truth be told, generally has minimal sexual experience of any kind, much less of the predatory variety -- holds similar sexual norms.

There are howls of protest when a male broadcaster uses a word that disparages women or blacks, and rightly so. But no one gives a damn when a broadcaster on a show that airs coast-to-coast assumes a presumptively innocent man's guilt on a rape charge in a way so casual, so matter-of-factly, that it seems perfectly natural and true.

I don't know about you, but that's chilling to me.

Language Matters: News Anchor Bestows 'Victim' Status on Rape Accuser

Language matters. We sometimes even hold people responsible for the language they use. Well, depending on the group offended.

Male broadcasters are not permitted to refer to conservative women broadcasters as "talk sluts," as we recently observed.  Male broadcasters aren't permitted to call black members of a women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos."  Male late night comedians are not permitted to make sex "jokes" about the daughter of a former vice presidential candidate.  White male sports analysts aren't allowed to to say that blacks were "bred to be the better athlete . . . ."

Each of the men who made those remarks, and countless others, have been punished for offending members of the group who identify with the person(s) they referenced.

Other times, people get away with saying things on the air that are just wrong, but since no group is offended, the remark passes.

This morning on "The Wall Street Journal This Morning," a news broadcast that airs on stations across America, news anchor Gina Cervetti referred to the accuser of Dominique Strauss-Kahn as "the victim."  Specifically, she noted that the defense team apparently was planning to go after "the victim."  

We must assume that Cervetti, an experienced journalist, knows how to pick her words carefully.  Underlying Cervetti's use of that term is an assumption that the unnamed accuser was raped by the ex-IMF chief.

By labeling the accuser the "victim" before a single scrap of evidence has been admitted at trial, much less an adjudication of guilt, Cervetti impliedly rushed to judgment and declared the unnamed accuser's allegation to be factual.  Such a description does a grave disservice to (1) the presumptively innocent who are accused of such crimes since, by necessity, they must be guilty if their accusers are, in fact, "victims"; (2) actual rape victims, because Cervetti trivializes rape when she includes among its victims women who may or may not be actual victims; and (3) her listeners, who are entitled to accurate reporting but receive something less than that when she transforms an accuser into a "victim."

No one -- aside from his friends and, I dare say, this blog -- is going to go to bat for Dominique Strauss-Kahn.  The general consensus, whether it's true or not, is that he is part of a culture of male privilege that has, in the words of Maureen Dowd, "the sexual norms of a libidinous pirate ship." It would, of course, be much easier to buy into the general consensus if it didn't also hold that the typical American college boy -- who, truth be told, generally has minimal sexual experience of any kind, much less of the predatory variety -- holds similar sexual norms.

There are howls of protest when a male broadcaster uses a word that disparages women or blacks, and rightly so. But no one gives a damn when a broadcaster on a show that airs coast-to-coast assumes a presumptively innocent man's guilt on a rape charge in a way so casual, so matter-of-factly, that it seems perfectly natural and true.

I don't know about you, but that's chilling to me.

False sexual assault leads to other charges

Two women, both of whom are underage, supplied alcohol to a group of kids under 14.

It all started when someone called to report a sexual assault, that police subsequently determined never happened.

Brianda Lopez was arrested, but it appears, based on the article, that Lauren Berry is still being sought. The odd thing here is that ten juveniles were arrested as well and charged with various offenses.

Link:
http://www.8newsnow.com/story/14686521/woman-arrested-for-providing-teens-with-alcohol

False sexual assault leads to other charges

Two women, both of whom are underage, supplied alcohol to a group of kids under 14.

It all started when someone called to report a sexual assault, that police subsequently determined never happened.

Brianda Lopez was arrested, but it appears, based on the article, that Lauren Berry is still being sought. The odd thing here is that ten juveniles were arrested as well and charged with various offenses.

Link:
http://www.8newsnow.com/story/14686521/woman-arrested-for-providing-teens-with-alcohol

Philosophy of social science today

A sign of arrival for a sub-discipline is the appearance of a handbook for the field. By that criterion, the philosophy of social science has passed an important threshold with the appearance of Ian Jarvie and Jesus Zamora-Bonilla's SAGE Handbook of the Philosophy of Social Sciences. The 750-page volume offers 37 main articles, as well as an extensive reflective introduction by Ian Jarvie and an epilogue by Jesus Zamora-Bonilla. A majority of the contributors are European, confirming an impression that the most active research networks in this field are currently in Western Europe. Germany and the Scandinavian countries are particularly well represented.

Ian Jarvie's extensive introduction does a good job of setting the stage for the volume. He is in a unique position to offer this perspective, having served as editor of the key journal Philosophy of the Social Sciences for many years. He begins by noting the heterogeneity of the field:

As a set of problems, the philosophy of the social sciences is wide-ranging, untidy, inter-disciplinary and constantly being reconfigured in response to new problems thrown up by developments in the social sciences; in short, disorderly. (1)

The orientation to the philosophy of social science represented in this volume is largely grounded in the analytic philosophy tradition. By this I mean an emphasis on rationality, an interest in generalizations and laws, a commitment to empirical methods of inquiry, and an over-arching preference for conceptual clarity. (Paul Roth describes the analytic approach in his contribution to the volume; 103ff.) But David Teira also offers an interesting contribution on "Continental Philosophies of the Social Sciences." He begins the article by writing,

In my view, there is no such thing as a continental philosophy of the social sciences. There is, at least, no consensual definition of what is precisely continental in any philosophical approach. (81)

Among these approaches he highlights Marxist, phenomenological and Foucauldian philosophies and theories of the social sciences. His finding is one that I agree with -- that one of the particularly valuable aspects of the continental traditions is the fact that thinkers in this tradition have offered large, insightful conceptual schemes for thinking about social life -- whether historical materialism, ethnomethodology, or the rhetoric of power. He writes, "I guess that if continental philosophies seem attractive to many social scientists, it is because they offer the prospect of a somewhat radical reconstruction of current research practices" (96).

Particularly interesting for me were contributions by Alban Bouvier ("Individualism, Collective Agency and The "Micro-Macro Relation"), Daniel Steel ("Causality, Causal Models, and Social Mechanisms"), Joan de Marti and Yves Zenou ("Social Networks"), Peter Hedstrom and Petri Ylikoski ("Analytical Sociology"), Chris Mantzavinos ("Institutions"), and Jeroen Van Bouwel and Erik Weber ("Explanation in the Social Sciences").

What is particularly valuable in this collection is the fact that most of the essays are not dogmatic in their adherence to a "school" of philosophical thought. Instead, they get down to the serious business of understanding the social world, and understanding what is involved in achieving a scientific understanding of that world. Chris Mantzavinos's essay, "Institutions," is a good example of this intellectual pragmatism. His contribution is a careful study of the new institutionalism and the variety of theoretical challenges that the concept of an institution raises. The essay is very well grounded in the current sociology and political science literatures on institutions, and it goes on to make substantively interesting points about these debates. "Only a theory of institutions that increases our information about the structure of social reality can provide us with the means of reorienting this reality in a direction that we find desirable" (408-9).

Many of the contributors -- probably the majority -- have taken seriously what I think is a particularly fundamental requirement for productive work in the philosophy of an area of science. This is the need for the philosopher to take up the particular theories and controversies of some current research in the social sciences as a framework and stimulus to their philosophical analysis. The philosopher needs to gain a significant level of expertise in a particular field of social science if his or her work is likely to find traction with conceptual issues that really matter. The topics for the philosophy of social science should not derive from apriori speculation about society; instead, they should be selected on the basis of careful engagement with serious empirical and theoretical attempts to explain the social world.

This is the kind of book that would benefit from a simultaneous digital edition. An affordable Kindle edition would help; but more radically, an online, hypertexted and cross-linked version would be fantastic. It would be fascinating to see a concept map linking the articles by theme or keyword; it would be illuminating to see some analysis of the patterns of citation across the articles in the volume; and it would be great for the reader to be able to click to some of the references directly. (Jarvie provides something like a map of themes in his tables representing "Principal Problems in Philosophy of the Social Sciences" and "Problematics in 14 Selected Anthologies"; 7-8.)

Philosophy of social science today

A sign of arrival for a sub-discipline is the appearance of a handbook for the field. By that criterion, the philosophy of social science has passed an important threshold with the appearance of Ian Jarvie and Jesus Zamora-Bonilla's SAGE Handbook of the Philosophy of Social Sciences. The 750-page volume offers 37 main articles, as well as an extensive reflective introduction by Ian Jarvie and an epilogue by Jesus Zamora-Bonilla. A majority of the contributors are European, confirming an impression that the most active research networks in this field are currently in Western Europe. Germany and the Scandinavian countries are particularly well represented.

Ian Jarvie's extensive introduction does a good job of setting the stage for the volume. He is in a unique position to offer this perspective, having served as editor of the key journal Philosophy of the Social Sciences for many years. He begins by noting the heterogeneity of the field:

As a set of problems, the philosophy of the social sciences is wide-ranging, untidy, inter-disciplinary and constantly being reconfigured in response to new problems thrown up by developments in the social sciences; in short, disorderly. (1)

The orientation to the philosophy of social science represented in this volume is largely grounded in the analytic philosophy tradition. By this I mean an emphasis on rationality, an interest in generalizations and laws, a commitment to empirical methods of inquiry, and an over-arching preference for conceptual clarity. (Paul Roth describes the analytic approach in his contribution to the volume; 103ff.) But David Teira also offers an interesting contribution on "Continental Philosophies of the Social Sciences." He begins the article by writing,

In my view, there is no such thing as a continental philosophy of the social sciences. There is, at least, no consensual definition of what is precisely continental in any philosophical approach. (81)

Among these approaches he highlights Marxist, phenomenological and Foucauldian philosophies and theories of the social sciences. His finding is one that I agree with -- that one of the particularly valuable aspects of the continental traditions is the fact that thinkers in this tradition have offered large, insightful conceptual schemes for thinking about social life -- whether historical materialism, ethnomethodology, or the rhetoric of power. He writes, "I guess that if continental philosophies seem attractive to many social scientists, it is because they offer the prospect of a somewhat radical reconstruction of current research practices" (96).

Particularly interesting for me were contributions by Alban Bouvier ("Individualism, Collective Agency and The "Micro-Macro Relation"), Daniel Steel ("Causality, Causal Models, and Social Mechanisms"), Joan de Marti and Yves Zenou ("Social Networks"), Peter Hedstrom and Petri Ylikoski ("Analytical Sociology"), Chris Mantzavinos ("Institutions"), and Jeroen Van Bouwel and Erik Weber ("Explanation in the Social Sciences").

What is particularly valuable in this collection is the fact that most of the essays are not dogmatic in their adherence to a "school" of philosophical thought. Instead, they get down to the serious business of understanding the social world, and understanding what is involved in achieving a scientific understanding of that world. Chris Mantzavinos's essay, "Institutions," is a good example of this intellectual pragmatism. His contribution is a careful study of the new institutionalism and the variety of theoretical challenges that the concept of an institution raises. The essay is very well grounded in the current sociology and political science literatures on institutions, and it goes on to make substantively interesting points about these debates. "Only a theory of institutions that increases our information about the structure of social reality can provide us with the means of reorienting this reality in a direction that we find desirable" (408-9).

Many of the contributors -- probably the majority -- have taken seriously what I think is a particularly fundamental requirement for productive work in the philosophy of an area of science. This is the need for the philosopher to take up the particular theories and controversies of some current research in the social sciences as a framework and stimulus to their philosophical analysis. The philosopher needs to gain a significant level of expertise in a particular field of social science if his or her work is likely to find traction with conceptual issues that really matter. The topics for the philosophy of social science should not derive from apriori speculation about society; instead, they should be selected on the basis of careful engagement with serious empirical and theoretical attempts to explain the social world.

This is the kind of book that would benefit from a simultaneous digital edition. An affordable Kindle edition would help; but more radically, an online, hypertexted and cross-linked version would be fantastic. It would be fascinating to see a concept map linking the articles by theme or keyword; it would be illuminating to see some analysis of the patterns of citation across the articles in the volume; and it would be great for the reader to be able to click to some of the references directly. (Jarvie provides something like a map of themes in his tables representing "Principal Problems in Philosophy of the Social Sciences" and "Problematics in 14 Selected Anthologies"; 7-8.)

Philosophy of social science today

A sign of arrival for a sub-discipline is the appearance of a handbook for the field. By that criterion, the philosophy of social science has passed an important threshold with the appearance of Ian Jarvie and Jesus Zamora-Bonilla's SAGE Handbook of the Philosophy of Social Sciences. The 750-page volume offers 37 main articles, as well as an extensive reflective introduction by Ian Jarvie and an epilogue by Jesus Zamora-Bonilla. A majority of the contributors are European, confirming an impression that the most active research networks in this field are currently in Western Europe. Germany and the Scandinavian countries are particularly well represented.

Ian Jarvie's extensive introduction does a good job of setting the stage for the volume. He is in a unique position to offer this perspective, having served as editor of the key journal Philosophy of the Social Sciences for many years. He begins by noting the heterogeneity of the field:

As a set of problems, the philosophy of the social sciences is wide-ranging, untidy, inter-disciplinary and constantly being reconfigured in response to new problems thrown up by developments in the social sciences; in short, disorderly. (1)

The orientation to the philosophy of social science represented in this volume is largely grounded in the analytic philosophy tradition. By this I mean an emphasis on rationality, an interest in generalizations and laws, a commitment to empirical methods of inquiry, and an over-arching preference for conceptual clarity. (Paul Roth describes the analytic approach in his contribution to the volume; 103ff.) But David Teira also offers an interesting contribution on "Continental Philosophies of the Social Sciences." He begins the article by writing,

In my view, there is no such thing as a continental philosophy of the social sciences. There is, at least, no consensual definition of what is precisely continental in any philosophical approach. (81)

Among these approaches he highlights Marxist, phenomenological and Foucauldian philosophies and theories of the social sciences. His finding is one that I agree with -- that one of the particularly valuable aspects of the continental traditions is the fact that thinkers in this tradition have offered large, insightful conceptual schemes for thinking about social life -- whether historical materialism, ethnomethodology, or the rhetoric of power. He writes, "I guess that if continental philosophies seem attractive to many social scientists, it is because they offer the prospect of a somewhat radical reconstruction of current research practices" (96).

Particularly interesting for me were contributions by Alban Bouvier ("Individualism, Collective Agency and The "Micro-Macro Relation"), Daniel Steel ("Causality, Causal Models, and Social Mechanisms"), Joan de Marti and Yves Zenou ("Social Networks"), Peter Hedstrom and Petri Ylikoski ("Analytical Sociology"), Chris Mantzavinos ("Institutions"), and Jeroen Van Bouwel and Erik Weber ("Explanation in the Social Sciences").

What is particularly valuable in this collection is the fact that most of the essays are not dogmatic in their adherence to a "school" of philosophical thought. Instead, they get down to the serious business of understanding the social world, and understanding what is involved in achieving a scientific understanding of that world. Chris Mantzavinos's essay, "Institutions," is a good example of this intellectual pragmatism. His contribution is a careful study of the new institutionalism and the variety of theoretical challenges that the concept of an institution raises. The essay is very well grounded in the current sociology and political science literatures on institutions, and it goes on to make substantively interesting points about these debates. "Only a theory of institutions that increases our information about the structure of social reality can provide us with the means of reorienting this reality in a direction that we find desirable" (408-9).

Many of the contributors -- probably the majority -- have taken seriously what I think is a particularly fundamental requirement for productive work in the philosophy of an area of science. This is the need for the philosopher to take up the particular theories and controversies of some current research in the social sciences as a framework and stimulus to their philosophical analysis. The philosopher needs to gain a significant level of expertise in a particular field of social science if his or her work is likely to find traction with conceptual issues that really matter. The topics for the philosophy of social science should not derive from apriori speculation about society; instead, they should be selected on the basis of careful engagement with serious empirical and theoretical attempts to explain the social world.

This is the kind of book that would benefit from a simultaneous digital edition. An affordable Kindle edition would help; but more radically, an online, hypertexted and cross-linked version would be fantastic. It would be fascinating to see a concept map linking the articles by theme or keyword; it would be illuminating to see some analysis of the patterns of citation across the articles in the volume; and it would be great for the reader to be able to click to some of the references directly. (Jarvie provides something like a map of themes in his tables representing "Principal Problems in Philosophy of the Social Sciences" and "Problematics in 14 Selected Anthologies"; 7-8.)

NYPD: Sex crime 'victims' often tell only part of story or 'make it up altogether'

Newsweek shines a light on how the cops in NYPD's Special Victims Division decide whether a rape claim is true or false.  The story centers on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case (the cops think he's guilty), but the more interesting comments concern rape and false rape claims in general. Please bear in mind that too many false rape reports that we chronicle here, in this blog, involve cops who initially thought a woman was telling the truth, only to find out she lied.

My comments are interspersed:

Excerpts from "To Catch a Creep" found here
  
Does a woman who claims to have been raped ask for a female detective? That’s taken as a sign of possible deception. “I am betting nine out of 10 times, when a woman asks for a female detective the story is going to be untrue,” says [Lt. Adam Lamboy, commander of the Manhattan Special Victims Squad, the unit handling the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case]. The operative theory is that women who are lying think female cops will be more receptive to their stories.

[Some police departments have women cops especially assigned to deal with rape "victims" -- the idea being that women can only feel comfortable talking to another woman.  The NYPD suggests that's the wrong approach.]
. . . .
Inevitably, some detectives sympathize with the accusers. “People with power take advantage,” says a detective in Brooklyn who is not part of the Strauss-Kahn investigation but finally couldn’t resist making a point about it. “The defense is always that those people are a target because they have money. Well, I am glad that a victim who has no power, an underdog in society, is being believed.”

[At least the cops are up-front with their biases.  People with power are assumed guilty. This includes college lacrosse players barely older than boys who happen to be completely innocent.]
. . . .
In sex-crime cases, victims often tell only part of the story. Or they make it up altogether. If they’re drunk or drugged, they often don’t remember enough to make a case . . . .

[Um, if they are "making it up," how are they "victims"?  That aside, when I write things like this, I am accused of being a rape apologizing misogynist. When Newsweek prints a cop saying it, the whole country takes it seriously.  As well they should, because it is correct.]
. . . .
The last thing any detective wants, says Lt. Robert Johnson of Brooklyn Special Victims, “is to paint someone with that rapist brush and find out they are not, because the paint never comes off.”

[Again, I make this point all the time only to be pooh-poohed by the people who dominate the public discourse about rape.]
. . . .
One afternoon last week, a Mexican immigrant arrested for sexually molesting his 7-year-old stepdaughter sat in “the box,” as the detectives call their interview rooms. He was at the same round table with two mismatched office chairs where Strauss-Kahn spent his first night in custody, and one detective asked another if he should be moved to the holding cell on the other side of the office. “Leave my perp alone,” said Liz Gutierrez, the only woman detective left on the squad.

[Liz Gutierrez's atrociously insensitive comment will not be the subject of any national outcry calling for her job, but it should be. The man is not a "perp," Ms. Gutierrez. He's a presumptively innocent human being. And you should be fired for your comment.]
. . . .
A crucial part of the picture is “the outcry,” short for the witness who is the first person the victim tells about a rape or assault. Did the outcry hear the same story the victim is telling the cops? In a recent high-profile case, Special Victims detectives grew suspicious of Heidi Jones, a local TV meteorologist who claimed she’d been raped in Central Park, when the outcry’s story didn’t match up with hers. Jones now faces charges of filing a false police report. In the Manhattan Special Victims Squad last week they were interviewing the outcry for a 14-year-old girl who’d been gang-raped by seven men and boys the day before. Unlike Strauss-Kahn’s, her case didn’t make any news.

For the maid at the Sofitel, the outcry was a hotel employee, according to law-enforcement sources not in Special Victims. The maid told the same story to everybody. Sandomir says that when he interviews a victim he tells her, “Let’s play a game: you are a camcorder.” He’s looking for a minute-by-minute, even second-by-second, account of the location, the sex acts, and not only the attacker’s appearance, but his smell—of alcohol, of dirt, of cologne, of anything that can be used as a clue. Along with the details come contradictions, and over repeated interviews the anomalies multiply if the subject is lying. “When people come in to make allegations,” says Steven Lane, the other lead detective on the Strauss-Kahn case, “they don’t realize we are going to go frame by frame.”

[All very interesting. But they make it sound too scientific. Law enforcement in general needs to do a better job with rape cases; cops are too often too quick to arrest and to destroy before the investigation is completed.]

NYPD: Sex crime 'victims' often tell only part of story or 'make it up altogether'

Newsweek shines a light on how the cops in NYPD's Special Victims Division decide whether a rape claim is true or false.  The story centers on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case (the cops think he's guilty), but the more interesting comments concern rape and false rape claims in general. Please bear in mind that too many false rape reports that we chronicle here, in this blog, involve cops who initially thought a woman was telling the truth, only to find out she lied.

My comments are interspersed:

Excerpts from "To Catch a Creep" found here
  
Does a woman who claims to have been raped ask for a female detective? That’s taken as a sign of possible deception. “I am betting nine out of 10 times, when a woman asks for a female detective the story is going to be untrue,” says [Lt. Adam Lamboy, commander of the Manhattan Special Victims Squad, the unit handling the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case]. The operative theory is that women who are lying think female cops will be more receptive to their stories.

[Some police departments have women cops especially assigned to deal with rape "victims" -- the idea being that women can only feel comfortable talking to another woman.  The NYPD suggests that's the wrong approach.]
. . . .
Inevitably, some detectives sympathize with the accusers. “People with power take advantage,” says a detective in Brooklyn who is not part of the Strauss-Kahn investigation but finally couldn’t resist making a point about it. “The defense is always that those people are a target because they have money. Well, I am glad that a victim who has no power, an underdog in society, is being believed.”

[At least the cops are up-front with their biases.  People with power are assumed guilty. This includes college lacrosse players barely older than boys who happen to be completely innocent.]
. . . .
In sex-crime cases, victims often tell only part of the story. Or they make it up altogether. If they’re drunk or drugged, they often don’t remember enough to make a case . . . .

[Um, if they are "making it up," how are they "victims"?  That aside, when I write things like this, I am accused of being a rape apologizing misogynist. When Newsweek prints a cop saying it, the whole country takes it seriously.  As well they should, because it is correct.]
. . . .
The last thing any detective wants, says Lt. Robert Johnson of Brooklyn Special Victims, “is to paint someone with that rapist brush and find out they are not, because the paint never comes off.”

[Again, I make this point all the time only to be pooh-poohed by the people who dominate the public discourse about rape.]
. . . .
One afternoon last week, a Mexican immigrant arrested for sexually molesting his 7-year-old stepdaughter sat in “the box,” as the detectives call their interview rooms. He was at the same round table with two mismatched office chairs where Strauss-Kahn spent his first night in custody, and one detective asked another if he should be moved to the holding cell on the other side of the office. “Leave my perp alone,” said Liz Gutierrez, the only woman detective left on the squad.

[Liz Gutierrez's atrociously insensitive comment will not be the subject of any national outcry calling for her job, but it should be. The man is not a "perp," Ms. Gutierrez. He's a presumptively innocent human being. And you should be fired for your comment.]
. . . .
A crucial part of the picture is “the outcry,” short for the witness who is the first person the victim tells about a rape or assault. Did the outcry hear the same story the victim is telling the cops? In a recent high-profile case, Special Victims detectives grew suspicious of Heidi Jones, a local TV meteorologist who claimed she’d been raped in Central Park, when the outcry’s story didn’t match up with hers. Jones now faces charges of filing a false police report. In the Manhattan Special Victims Squad last week they were interviewing the outcry for a 14-year-old girl who’d been gang-raped by seven men and boys the day before. Unlike Strauss-Kahn’s, her case didn’t make any news.

For the maid at the Sofitel, the outcry was a hotel employee, according to law-enforcement sources not in Special Victims. The maid told the same story to everybody. Sandomir says that when he interviews a victim he tells her, “Let’s play a game: you are a camcorder.” He’s looking for a minute-by-minute, even second-by-second, account of the location, the sex acts, and not only the attacker’s appearance, but his smell—of alcohol, of dirt, of cologne, of anything that can be used as a clue. Along with the details come contradictions, and over repeated interviews the anomalies multiply if the subject is lying. “When people come in to make allegations,” says Steven Lane, the other lead detective on the Strauss-Kahn case, “they don’t realize we are going to go frame by frame.”

[All very interesting. But they make it sound too scientific. Law enforcement in general needs to do a better job with rape cases; cops are too often too quick to arrest and to destroy before the investigation is completed.]

Most important part of the Vladek Filler case: the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine's ruling last year when it granted Filler a new trial

Vladek Filler was found not guilty on the charge of raping his wife, as we predicted.  As important as this was for Mr. Filler, the more important part was the appellate court's ruling last year that gave Mr. Filler a new trial.

As Robert Franklin explained explained at the time: "[T]he appellate court agreed with Filler and the trial court that he should get another chance to prove his innocence. But it went further than the trial court saying that, in the new trial, Filler can bring in all of the evidence about the custody matter and the fact that none of the allegations had been made until custody became an issue.  That’s obviously important to Vladek Filler, but, since it’s a ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court, it’s also important to countless other men in Maine. No more will their criminal trials on allegations of domestic abuse be marred by their inability to adduce evidence that the charges arose in the course of child custody cases."  See here: http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/?p=9950

We examined that appellate decision in detail here: http://goldenstatesociety.blogspot.com/2011/03/prosecutors-conduct-in-vladek-filler.html

Most important part of the Vladek Filler case: the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine's ruling last year when it granted Filler a new trial

Vladek Filler was found not guilty on the charge of raping his wife, as we predicted.  As important as this was for Mr. Filler, the more important part was the appellate court's ruling last year that gave Mr. Filler a new trial.

As Robert Franklin explained explained at the time: "[T]he appellate court agreed with Filler and the trial court that he should get another chance to prove his innocence. But it went further than the trial court saying that, in the new trial, Filler can bring in all of the evidence about the custody matter and the fact that none of the allegations had been made until custody became an issue.  That’s obviously important to Vladek Filler, but, since it’s a ruling by the Supreme Judicial Court, it’s also important to countless other men in Maine. No more will their criminal trials on allegations of domestic abuse be marred by their inability to adduce evidence that the charges arose in the course of child custody cases."  See here: http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/?p=9950

We examined that appellate decision in detail here: http://goldenstatesociety.blogspot.com/2011/03/prosecutors-conduct-in-vladek-filler.html

Practical mentality

How should we try to characterize the mental processes of the real human actor as he or she proceeds through life activity? One individual decides to stop by a retirement home to visit an elderly friend; another individual breaks into a car to steal a briefcase; another has an argument with her boss and decides to quit her job. What sorts of thinking go into these choices and innumerable others?

These are all actions that are to some extent deliberate and considered; and yet they are also complicated responses to shifting circumstances and events that have prudential and emotional meanings to the actors in question. Here I'm not asking the question, "What sorts of factors motivate people, and how do they process their motivations?", though these are interesting and important questions. Rather, I'm asking a more basic question: what categories and concepts should we use in attempting to analyze deliberate action in the first place? What features of mental experience need to be highlighted? Should we expect there to be a best framework of analysis of the components of practical mentality? Or is this fated always to be an open question?

Think of the range of vocabulary that is relevant to our discourse about the kinds of examples mentioned above: decision, belief, desire, emotion, fear, habit, norm, obligation, reason, impulse, weakness of will .... These terms and others constitute something like a mental ontology, a set of concepts that we attribute to the agent as he/she acts. And some of them bring presuppositions that are debatable. Take "decision," for example. Did the thief "decide" to break into the car? Or was the action an impulse, prior to thought and deliberation?

Here is one way of approaching the issue. What are the questions we would like to answer about the human actor?

• What motivated the action?
• What was the actor thinking?
• What was the actor feeling?
• What beliefs were highlighted in the actor's conscious thoughts?
• What memories played a role in the actor's decision?
• What rules of thumb did the actor make use of?
• What emotional stream occurred?
• How did the actor process emotions?
• What scripts were salient?
• What unconscious biases and impulses were operative?

Our ordinary "folk psychology" provides a range of simple theories available of the agent's mentality.

• Desire-belief-opportunity
• Emotion-dynamics of psychology-action
• Habit/practice-context-performance
• Environment scan-rules of thumb-action

And we might incorporate all these factors into a large composite model: desires, beliefs, habits, emotions, past experience, and moral conviction all play a role. But the key point is this: we need to have richer modes of representation of consciousness and agency than we currently have. Further, it seems that novelists like James Joyce or Henry James do as good a job of conceptualizing these processes as any philosopher has done.

One influential set of ideas on this question of practical agency is that offered by Pierre Bourdieu in his theory of "habitus". Here is how he describes action and habitus in Outline of a Theory of Practice (1972):

The habitus, the durably installed generative principle of regulated improvisations, produces practices which tend to reproduce the regularities immanent in the objective conditions of the production of their generative principle, while adjusting to the demands inscribed as objective potentialities in the situation, as defined by the cognitive and motivating structures making up the habitus. (78)

In practice, it is the habitus, history turned into nature, i.e. denied as such, which accomplishes practically the relating of these two systems of relations, in and through the production of practice. (78)

What I understand by this concept is a more fluid conception of thinking-experiencing-doing on Bourdieu's part than is characteristic of a more Aristotelian conception. There is a suggestion of a sort of tacit knowledge underlying activity, with action looking as much like the smooth, intelligent motions of a soccer player as a deliberative chess master. It is a less epistemic view of the human condition -- less a concoction of explicit beliefs and reasonings than a smooth coordination of tacit understandings and movements in the situation. It is less about deliberation and decision and more about intelligent doing.

This interpretation is born out in a cryptic passage a page or so later:

If witticisms surprise their author no less than their audience, and impress as much by their retrospective necessity as by their novelty, the reason is that the trouvaille appears as the simple unearthing, at once accidental and irresistible, of a buried possibility. It is because subjects do not, strictly speaking, know what they are doing that what they do has more meaning than they know. (79)

There are many uncertainties about how to think about this most intimate of human facts -- the ways our thoughts process our needs and movements. And it seems to me that the choice of ontology surrounding action -- the concepts and entities we use -- is important and difficult, and worthy of careful attention.

Practical mentality

How should we try to characterize the mental processes of the real human actor as he or she proceeds through life activity? One individual decides to stop by a retirement home to visit an elderly friend; another individual breaks into a car to steal a briefcase; another has an argument with her boss and decides to quit her job. What sorts of thinking go into these choices and innumerable others?

These are all actions that are to some extent deliberate and considered; and yet they are also complicated responses to shifting circumstances and events that have prudential and emotional meanings to the actors in question. Here I'm not asking the question, "What sorts of factors motivate people, and how do they process their motivations?", though these are interesting and important questions. Rather, I'm asking a more basic question: what categories and concepts should we use in attempting to analyze deliberate action in the first place? What features of mental experience need to be highlighted? Should we expect there to be a best framework of analysis of the components of practical mentality? Or is this fated always to be an open question?

Think of the range of vocabulary that is relevant to our discourse about the kinds of examples mentioned above: decision, belief, desire, emotion, fear, habit, norm, obligation, reason, impulse, weakness of will .... These terms and others constitute something like a mental ontology, a set of concepts that we attribute to the agent as he/she acts. And some of them bring presuppositions that are debatable. Take "decision," for example. Did the thief "decide" to break into the car? Or was the action an impulse, prior to thought and deliberation?

Here is one way of approaching the issue. What are the questions we would like to answer about the human actor?

• What motivated the action?
• What was the actor thinking?
• What was the actor feeling?
• What beliefs were highlighted in the actor's conscious thoughts?
• What memories played a role in the actor's decision?
• What rules of thumb did the actor make use of?
• What emotional stream occurred?
• How did the actor process emotions?
• What scripts were salient?
• What unconscious biases and impulses were operative?

Our ordinary "folk psychology" provides a range of simple theories available of the agent's mentality.

• Desire-belief-opportunity
• Emotion-dynamics of psychology-action
• Habit/practice-context-performance
• Environment scan-rules of thumb-action

And we might incorporate all these factors into a large composite model: desires, beliefs, habits, emotions, past experience, and moral conviction all play a role. But the key point is this: we need to have richer modes of representation of consciousness and agency than we currently have. Further, it seems that novelists like James Joyce or Henry James do as good a job of conceptualizing these processes as any philosopher has done.

One influential set of ideas on this question of practical agency is that offered by Pierre Bourdieu in his theory of "habitus". Here is how he describes action and habitus in Outline of a Theory of Practice (1972):

The habitus, the durably installed generative principle of regulated improvisations, produces practices which tend to reproduce the regularities immanent in the objective conditions of the production of their generative principle, while adjusting to the demands inscribed as objective potentialities in the situation, as defined by the cognitive and motivating structures making up the habitus. (78)

In practice, it is the habitus, history turned into nature, i.e. denied as such, which accomplishes practically the relating of these two systems of relations, in and through the production of practice. (78)

What I understand by this concept is a more fluid conception of thinking-experiencing-doing on Bourdieu's part than is characteristic of a more Aristotelian conception. There is a suggestion of a sort of tacit knowledge underlying activity, with action looking as much like the smooth, intelligent motions of a soccer player as a deliberative chess master. It is a less epistemic view of the human condition -- less a concoction of explicit beliefs and reasonings than a smooth coordination of tacit understandings and movements in the situation. It is less about deliberation and decision and more about intelligent doing.

This interpretation is born out in a cryptic passage a page or so later:

If witticisms surprise their author no less than their audience, and impress as much by their retrospective necessity as by their novelty, the reason is that the trouvaille appears as the simple unearthing, at once accidental and irresistible, of a buried possibility. It is because subjects do not, strictly speaking, know what they are doing that what they do has more meaning than they know. (79)

There are many uncertainties about how to think about this most intimate of human facts -- the ways our thoughts process our needs and movements. And it seems to me that the choice of ontology surrounding action -- the concepts and entities we use -- is important and difficult, and worthy of careful attention.

Practical mentality

How should we try to characterize the mental processes of the real human actor as he or she proceeds through life activity? One individual decides to stop by a retirement home to visit an elderly friend; another individual breaks into a car to steal a briefcase; another has an argument with her boss and decides to quit her job. What sorts of thinking go into these choices and innumerable others?

These are all actions that are to some extent deliberate and considered; and yet they are also complicated responses to shifting circumstances and events that have prudential and emotional meanings to the actors in question. Here I'm not asking the question, "What sorts of factors motivate people, and how do they process their motivations?", though these are interesting and important questions. Rather, I'm asking a more basic question: what categories and concepts should we use in attempting to analyze deliberate action in the first place? What features of mental experience need to be highlighted? Should we expect there to be a best framework of analysis of the components of practical mentality? Or is this fated always to be an open question?

Think of the range of vocabulary that is relevant to our discourse about the kinds of examples mentioned above: decision, belief, desire, emotion, fear, habit, norm, obligation, reason, impulse, weakness of will .... These terms and others constitute something like a mental ontology, a set of concepts that we attribute to the agent as he/she acts. And some of them bring presuppositions that are debatable. Take "decision," for example. Did the thief "decide" to break into the car? Or was the action an impulse, prior to thought and deliberation?

Here is one way of approaching the issue. What are the questions we would like to answer about the human actor?

• What motivated the action?
• What was the actor thinking?
• What was the actor feeling?
• What beliefs were highlighted in the actor's conscious thoughts?
• What memories played a role in the actor's decision?
• What rules of thumb did the actor make use of?
• What emotional stream occurred?
• How did the actor process emotions?
• What scripts were salient?
• What unconscious biases and impulses were operative?

Our ordinary "folk psychology" provides a range of simple theories available of the agent's mentality.

• Desire-belief-opportunity
• Emotion-dynamics of psychology-action
• Habit/practice-context-performance
• Environment scan-rules of thumb-action

And we might incorporate all these factors into a large composite model: desires, beliefs, habits, emotions, past experience, and moral conviction all play a role. But the key point is this: we need to have richer modes of representation of consciousness and agency than we currently have. Further, it seems that novelists like James Joyce or Henry James do as good a job of conceptualizing these processes as any philosopher has done.

One influential set of ideas on this question of practical agency is that offered by Pierre Bourdieu in his theory of "habitus". Here is how he describes action and habitus in Outline of a Theory of Practice (1972):

The habitus, the durably installed generative principle of regulated improvisations, produces practices which tend to reproduce the regularities immanent in the objective conditions of the production of their generative principle, while adjusting to the demands inscribed as objective potentialities in the situation, as defined by the cognitive and motivating structures making up the habitus. (78)

In practice, it is the habitus, history turned into nature, i.e. denied as such, which accomplishes practically the relating of these two systems of relations, in and through the production of practice. (78)

What I understand by this concept is a more fluid conception of thinking-experiencing-doing on Bourdieu's part than is characteristic of a more Aristotelian conception. There is a suggestion of a sort of tacit knowledge underlying activity, with action looking as much like the smooth, intelligent motions of a soccer player as a deliberative chess master. It is a less epistemic view of the human condition -- less a concoction of explicit beliefs and reasonings than a smooth coordination of tacit understandings and movements in the situation. It is less about deliberation and decision and more about intelligent doing.

This interpretation is born out in a cryptic passage a page or so later:

If witticisms surprise their author no less than their audience, and impress as much by their retrospective necessity as by their novelty, the reason is that the trouvaille appears as the simple unearthing, at once accidental and irresistible, of a buried possibility. It is because subjects do not, strictly speaking, know what they are doing that what they do has more meaning than they know. (79)

There are many uncertainties about how to think about this most intimate of human facts -- the ways our thoughts process our needs and movements. And it seems to me that the choice of ontology surrounding action -- the concepts and entities we use -- is important and difficult, and worthy of careful attention.

Gender 101: Our Children's Future

by Connie Chastain*

Recently on Facebook, quite a few of my friends (some of whom I've never met in my life) have featured photos of adorable new additions to their families. Sometimes they're a son or daughter, sometimes a grand, or a niece or nephew.

The ones posting the photos are uniformly delighted with the little bundle of joy that God has graced their family with. Judging by their comments, friends are also delighted to offer their congrats and observations about the precious little one.

I gush along with everyone else. I can't help but see babies as a blessing for mankind -- the embodiment of the future, of continuity and hope for the whole human family. A marvelous reminder that there's more to earthly existence than war, calamity and wrongdoing.

But sometimes, I wonder what awaits these little ones in the future. What does our going-crazy culture hold in store for them? Every year, a million of their generation never make it out of the womb alive -- the victims of feminist-touted "reproductive freedom."

Those who make it into the world are far from home free, though. Almost five children under the age of four die every day as a result of child abuse. Statistics gathered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics indicate that children in mother-only households are almost 4 times more likely to be fatally abused (i.e., murdered) than children in father-only households. I haven't seen this blamed on "rape culture" yet -- perhaps there are still some claims about rape culture so insane that even man-hating rad-fems will not go there. Or perhaps they know that abuse is often perpetrated by those who were abused -- regardless of gender.

If a child is destined to grow up in a family without a father, there's a real possibility of a grim future for him or her, a greater likelihood for a host of social pathologies -- poverty, dropping out of school, drug abuse, early sexual experimentation, crime and, perhaps the most sobering, suicide.

Millions of children, of course, do not grow up abused and at risk for these elements of society. For that we can be thankful. And yet, even the fortunate among the sons and daughters of our society face a future filled with risks earlier generations knew nothing about.

Daughters increasingly risk losing out on wife-and-motherhood to pursue careers that will never comfort them in their retirement years like children and grandchildren would.

And anyone who reads this blog can see what lies in wait for sons -- the possibility of being falsely accused of rape, a possibility that's increasing due to the deliberate manipulation of academia and jurisprudence by organized feminism. That possibility is joined by diminishing opportunity for education, an ever shrinking job market and the loss of children in divorce.

Is this really what the progressives of the last century -- the feminists, the champions of diversity, the share-the-wealth advocates and their fellow travelers -- really wanted? Or has their long march through the institutions of our culture resulted in a cultural calamity they could not have foreseen?

Maybe I'm just in a gloomy mood from the deadly weather outbreaks my area this spring. Or maybe it's the national debt, or the fact that I'm still suspicious that my N'Waluns-style fried-oyster po'boy is "dressed" with BP oil....

If you've just got to worry, you can always find a reason. And really, what generation has ever faced a risk-free future? None that I know of.

I just hope our culture will come to its senses and correct the mistakes we've made so those coming along behind us will have a future worth living in.

*Connie is an FRS contributor. Her personal blog is http://conniechastain.blogspot.com/

Gender 101: Our Children's Future

by Connie Chastain*

Recently on Facebook, quite a few of my friends (some of whom I've never met in my life) have featured photos of adorable new additions to their families. Sometimes they're a son or daughter, sometimes a grand, or a niece or nephew.

The ones posting the photos are uniformly delighted with the little bundle of joy that God has graced their family with. Judging by their comments, friends are also delighted to offer their congrats and observations about the precious little one.

I gush along with everyone else. I can't help but see babies as a blessing for mankind -- the embodiment of the future, of continuity and hope for the whole human family. A marvelous reminder that there's more to earthly existence than war, calamity and wrongdoing.

But sometimes, I wonder what awaits these little ones in the future. What does our going-crazy culture hold in store for them? Every year, a million of their generation never make it out of the womb alive -- the victims of feminist-touted "reproductive freedom."

Those who make it into the world are far from home free, though. Almost five children under the age of four die every day as a result of child abuse. Statistics gathered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics indicate that children in mother-only households are almost 4 times more likely to be fatally abused (i.e., murdered) than children in father-only households. I haven't seen this blamed on "rape culture" yet -- perhaps there are still some claims about rape culture so insane that even man-hating rad-fems will not go there. Or perhaps they know that abuse is often perpetrated by those who were abused -- regardless of gender.

If a child is destined to grow up in a family without a father, there's a real possibility of a grim future for him or her, a greater likelihood for a host of social pathologies -- poverty, dropping out of school, drug abuse, early sexual experimentation, crime and, perhaps the most sobering, suicide.

Millions of children, of course, do not grow up abused and at risk for these elements of society. For that we can be thankful. And yet, even the fortunate among the sons and daughters of our society face a future filled with risks earlier generations knew nothing about.

Daughters increasingly risk losing out on wife-and-motherhood to pursue careers that will never comfort them in their retirement years like children and grandchildren would.

And anyone who reads this blog can see what lies in wait for sons -- the possibility of being falsely accused of rape, a possibility that's increasing due to the deliberate manipulation of academia and jurisprudence by organized feminism. That possibility is joined by diminishing opportunity for education, an ever shrinking job market and the loss of children in divorce.

Is this really what the progressives of the last century -- the feminists, the champions of diversity, the share-the-wealth advocates and their fellow travelers -- really wanted? Or has their long march through the institutions of our culture resulted in a cultural calamity they could not have foreseen?

Maybe I'm just in a gloomy mood from the deadly weather outbreaks my area this spring. Or maybe it's the national debt, or the fact that I'm still suspicious that my N'Waluns-style fried-oyster po'boy is "dressed" with BP oil....

If you've just got to worry, you can always find a reason. And really, what generation has ever faced a risk-free future? None that I know of.

I just hope our culture will come to its senses and correct the mistakes we've made so those coming along behind us will have a future worth living in.

*Connie is an FRS contributor. Her personal blog is http://conniechastain.blogspot.com/

Girl Has Five Men Arrested on False Rape Claim, Judge Criticizes the Men

Hannah Patenall was spared jail after she had five young men arrested on a false rape claim. 

Patenall, then 17, had sex with three men, then called police and, using a fake name, claimed she had been forcibly raped. As a result, five men, ages 18 to 21, were arrested.

The police accepted Patenall's word over that of the five young men. They told detectives that Patenall had approached them in the street and offered them sex.

Two of the men spent 24 hours in police custody; three spent 13 hours, and all were asked to provide body fluid samples. They were released and on bail for five weeks.

It turns out the police arrested the men before reviewing the evidence. One of the men found a recording on his phone of his sexual encounter with Patenall which showed she had consented. In addition, police later examined CCTV footage and saw the girl walking with the men and with her arm around one and kissing one.

Despite the young men's ordeal of being falsely accused of a vile crime and wrongly incarcerated, despite the fact that Patenall apparently initiated the encounter that led to consensual sex with the young men, Judge Michael Kay had no sympathy for the young men. He said that although the five did not deserve what happened following their encounter with the girl, they were not "basking in glory" because of their "behaviour." 

The Judge further made it clear that he considered Patenall not a free moral agent who was fully capable of deciding whether to engage in a wild, albeit stupid, sexual encounter, but, in fact, the real victim here: "You were plainly vulnerable, 17 at the time and these young men were quite prepared to take advantage of the unfortunate situation."  (It is, of course, unclear what "unfortunate situation" the men were "tak[ing] advantage" of, since it appears she was the initiator.)

Her attorney told the court that she had mental health issues and was suffering from a personality disorder.  Judge Kay described the case as having elements that were "sordid, sad and distressing." 

As befitting Patenall's status as the real victim here, the judge spared her a custodial sentence. Patenall was given a 12-month sentence in a young offenders' institution suspended for two years and made the subject of a mental health treatment requirement for the next 18 months. She was also placed on supervision for 18 months.

SOURCE:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-13545644

Girl Has Five Men Arrested on False Rape Claim, Judge Criticizes the Men

Hannah Patenall was spared jail after she had five young men arrested on a false rape claim. 

Patenall, then 17, had sex with three men, then called police and, using a fake name, claimed she had been forcibly raped. As a result, five men, ages 18 to 21, were arrested.

The police accepted Patenall's word over that of the five young men. They told detectives that Patenall had approached them in the street and offered them sex.

Two of the men spent 24 hours in police custody; three spent 13 hours, and all were asked to provide body fluid samples. They were released and on bail for five weeks.

It turns out the police arrested the men before reviewing the evidence. One of the men found a recording on his phone of his sexual encounter with Patenall which showed she had consented. In addition, police later examined CCTV footage and saw the girl walking with the men and with her arm around one and kissing one.

Despite the young men's ordeal of being falsely accused of a vile crime and wrongly incarcerated, despite the fact that Patenall apparently initiated the encounter that led to consensual sex with the young men, Judge Michael Kay had no sympathy for the young men. He said that although the five did not deserve what happened following their encounter with the girl, they were not "basking in glory" because of their "behaviour." 

The Judge further made it clear that he considered Patenall not a free moral agent who was fully capable of deciding whether to engage in a wild, albeit stupid, sexual encounter, but, in fact, the real victim here: "You were plainly vulnerable, 17 at the time and these young men were quite prepared to take advantage of the unfortunate situation."  (It is, of course, unclear what "unfortunate situation" the men were "tak[ing] advantage" of, since it appears she was the initiator.)

Her attorney told the court that she had mental health issues and was suffering from a personality disorder.  Judge Kay described the case as having elements that were "sordid, sad and distressing." 

As befitting Patenall's status as the real victim here, the judge spared her a custodial sentence. Patenall was given a 12-month sentence in a young offenders' institution suspended for two years and made the subject of a mental health treatment requirement for the next 18 months. She was also placed on supervision for 18 months.

SOURCE:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-13545644

Study: Underage teen boys more likely than girls to be prosecuted for having consensual sex with underage partners

The Crime Victims' Institute at Sam Houston State University has completed a study called "Adolescent Sexual Behavior and the Law" after examining various state laws that have been adopted to protect minors from sexual abuse by adults or peers.  The study found that underage teens having consensual, close-in-age relationships are being processed through the courts and as a result often are labeled as sex offenders.  Many states have so-called "Romeo and Juliet" laws that decriminalize close-in-age adolescent sexual behavior, but many states do not. 

The study also found a disturbing gender bias when teens having sex are legally both the victim and both the offender: "In some states a gender bias in prosecuting offenders is especially prominent when both partners of a sex act are under the age of consent. . . . . it is more common to see the prosecution of only the male." (Adolescent Sexual Behavior and the Law at page 13.)

For example, the study cites an Arizona case where a 13 year old boy was convicted of having consensual sex with his older, 15 year old girlfriend.
 
http://www.crimevictimsinstitute.org/documents/Adolescent_Behavior_3.1.11.pdf