A Little TV or a Misapplication of the Principle of Charity

As I finished dinner and sipped my coffee, I flipped the dial of the TV. Actually, I played with my TV remote, and found myself watching as I often do, Rachel Maddow. Just another night of TV, yet tonight, I found it somehow revealing. (I actually began writing this Thursday, August 29th)

Again, Rachel Maddow, as do all TV commentators, was attempting to make sense of what is happening in the world today, specifically, what the Trump Administration is attempting to do and why. All very fascinating, and yes a very much in-vogue hobby for many. Tonight, however, was more than that. Tonight, I had a glimpse of what drives the various stories reported on.

When I say I glimpsed something, what I am suggesting is that  I grasped briefly a thought process that could allow one to act in the ways the Trump Administration does. Now much of what the Trump Administration does is driven by business interests. They acknowledged that from the start. From their first days in office they held that business interests have been ignored and treated unfairly, and that their administration is changing this.

Protecting business interest is one of their primary concerns. That concern is not what I glimpsed tonight. That concern is not what I want to point to here. What I saw is a complementary belief. Perhaps it facilitates, and allows for that interest in business. In short, what I saw was a view of the world and of ourselves that basically condones or even promotes the pursuit of business. Perhaps, it was almost an an epistemic offering, but now I am stretching. I would argue though that a philosophical point can be inferred from what was glimpsed, entailing moral, ethical and epistemic positions. That is what I want to explore here or at least hint at.

Going back for a moment to what was on the TV, to what Maddow was reporting; it was basically was three stories. The first being the Administration's announced plan to rollback regulations relating to methane released in fracking. Number two was the opening of Alaska's Tongass National Forest to mining, logging and oil drilling, And the third is Maria Isabel Bueso.

The first is simply the elimination of regulations regarding the release of Methane. Methane must be dealt with in fracking and the drilling for natural gas. Today, the methane release, like much of the fracking process is regulated. Today, you cannot just release it into the atmosphere. It contributes to global warming. It is a pollutant. The release of methane into the atmosphere is not a good thing. Regardless, with the elimination of regulations regarding its release, natural gas producers will not have to ponder such.

The second involves the Tongass National Forest. The President has requested his Agriculture Secretary open large parts of the 16.7-million acre forest up to logging, oil drilling, and mining. For those who believe in global warming that is controversial and dangerous. Logging and drilling for oil in such a place is simply upsetting. It is simply a pristine wilderness whose beauty demands that we leave it untouched.

Lastly, there is Maria Isabel Bueso, a young woman who since birth has suffered from a disfiguring genetic disease. At the age of seven she was invited by medical researchers to join a clinical trial in the US. She is originally from Guatemala. Today, Maria is in her twenties and considers going to grad school. The trials she participated in were a success. She continues to live, but needs routine treatment for the disease. Treatment is still only available in the US. Guatemala does have such medical offerings today.

Despite this fact, the Trump Administration informed her recently that she must leave the country or be deported. And apparently she is not the only one with such a life threatening illness, who has been asked to leave the US and return to their country of origin. Regardless of their health conditions and the lack of treatment available to them in their countries. Basically people with life threatening illnesses who have only found treatments in the US are now being asked to leave the US. Basically, being asked to die?

So, we are left with this unsettling question of how the Trump Administration can act in such ways. How can they disregard the cost and damage caused by methane? How can they suggest the destruction of a National forest? How can they send a young woman to her death?

And that is my intent here - to better understand how one can arrive at such actions. The profit motive and the protection of American lives and American interests can only go so far. And I want to believe it is really not stupidity, greed or racial animus that drives any of these. There is I believe something more.

As I said, I saw or heard a glimpse of something that I believe could hold the key to my question, and to the answer I search for.  Maddow's show started with a reference to when Dick Cheney shot a man, accidentally, while quail hunting. That happened back in 2006. It happened on the Armstrong Ranch in TX. It is a ranch owned by the Armstrong family, which is integral to Republican politics in TX.

That influence can be seen today in the fact that Anne Idsal, who hails from the Armstrong family, will possibly become responsible for Clean Air policy enforcement at the EPA. This is despite the fact that she has little knowledge of environmental issues much less any scientific background relating to such. She is a political appointee. I am not wanting to challenge such things. Granted her family's history it is to be expected.

What I am intrigued with is a quote from her during the course of an interview, which Maddow proceeded to play and repeat at least once. It is this quote that drives this essay, and offers a view of something more.

“I think it’s possible that humans have some type of impact on climate change,” she said. “I just don’t know the extent of that.” (I found the quote in Grist.org. I believe it is the same one as Rachel offered up. And I must confess I never heard of grist.org before)

We hear such claims routinely from conservative pundits, politicians, and so forth. It is this quote, however, that I want to look at. It is this quote that allows us see what justifies the destruction of massive forests, the release of toxins into our environment, and even the death of a young women. Perhaps it does not justify such actions, but it can reveal a thought process that brings you to such actions. I want to forget the various political intrigues and focus on that one quote and where it leads.

In short, what I try to do here is embrace what I call the "principle of charity". Whether you read Augustine, Alfred Tarski, Donald Davidson, or even Richard Rorty, you encounter it. I find hints of in Aristotle. In a nut shell, the principle of charity asserts that to interpret another's sentence or belief which we do not understand requires us to consider their other utterances and beliefs, many of which they share with us. Through such an exercise we often can make sense of something we at first did not grasp.

Now the ideal is to converse with the individual. This is perhaps the method of an anthropologist. This method is, however, time consuming and requires the other person be willing to engage. If that person is missing or you simply have no time, then you infer. You assume they share a great deal of your beliefs and infer their motives from what you believe.

This is a much more tenuous game. We do it all the time, and in some cases it works, others not. The phrase, "They all but said it." entails such a process. In a court of law, such a suggestion would be seen as circumstantial. Are there things that only the murderer can know? Such things make for a good crime drama. When trying to make sense of others and what they believe and what they actually mean when they speak or act, inference from our own beliefs is often all we got. Yet, it is still tenuous.

When we consider the above, regarding the sentence "“I think it’s possible that humans have some type of impact on climate change,” she said. “I just don’t know the extent of that.” offered up by a person who just became responsible for the administration of a key EPA office, you start with just understanding the role and function of the EPA. The EPA is the nexus of science, regulation, business, industry, and local communities. All of these converge at the EPA.

The EPA is basically responsible for the enforcement of  environmental law in the US. Further, the Supreme Court over ten years ago asserted that the Clean Air Act was broad enough to entail global warming and that emissions of green house gases such as carbon dioxide and methane are pollutants that should be properly regulated by the EPA, That decision has survived several challenges. It seems from those court decisions that global warming, regardless of the actual scientific case for global warming, has been largely settled in the US.

We go from that legal position offered up by the US Supreme Court, to the scientific data, which has been coming in for the last fifty years. It continues to come in, and from a range of scientific sources and domains. All of it basically reinforcing and confirming the theory that the planet is warming and that this is a man-made phenomena. The theory of global warming appears to be true.

From these two considerations, you wonder how it is that a person that is uncertain about the role of human activity in global warming came to be responsible for EPA enforcement efforts. The tension here is obvious. To make such an assertion required that she ignore decisions by the US Supreme Court and 50 years of science. She is still uncertain regarding whether human activity plays a role in such.

My question again is how does one not only ignore such but get such a job despite such beliefs? The expectation is that a person employed by the EPA would acknowledge decisions of the US Supreme Court. Likewise, considering the technical and scientific nature of the EPA, they would respect the scientific data indicating that global warming is a man-made phenomena.

Today, however, Anne Idsal is a Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator of the EPA. So if we want to make sense of this we need to review our assumptions. Typically, most stop here. We just encounter such instances and we stop and we shake our heads and do not know how to proceed. How do we deal with the nonsensical?

Pat Travers of guitar playing fame, however, encourages us to go on. He offers up in his song that we stop, and we smile, and we try it again.

So again, we look at the assertion. We again consider that despite ignoring precedents established by the US Supreme Court and likewise what the scientific data embraced by the court and the EPA, she has a key position in the organization. How? Again, it is not due to stupidity, It is not from a pure obsession for profit. It is something more. If not these, then what?

Now I had introduced the "principle of charity" earlier. It was in part through an application of it that I raised the issue of US law and scientific research. These are just two basic elements commonly associated with the EPA, Yes, it is typically accepted as fact that the EPA is derived from US law and science. What I want to stress here is not that this is fact, however, but rather that these are commonly held beliefs that are held to be fact. They are facts that most believe. The goal here is to not understand facts, but rather to understand the belief system of one who does not subscribe to such beliefs and who does not see them as facts.

And that is the next piece of this puzzle. A person who makes such a claim who is in such a position at the EPA  probably does not hold the above assertions to be true. They probably do not hold to be true that the EPA enforces the law of the land regarding environmental issues. Further, they do not hold as true that the Supreme Court has ruled that global warming falls under the Clean Air Act. Likewise, a person in such a role at the EPA who makes such claims probably does not hold science to be true. At the very least they have doubts about all of the  above.

This is a common theme in the principle of charity literature, certainly that is the case for Donald Davidson. To determine what another believes is to determine what they hold to be true. To believe something is to hold it as true. Further, the large set of truths that we can agree upon culminates in a shared language. All those little phrases that we use to navigate everyday life are held to be true, and they are for the most part shared. Truths such as fire is hot and ice is cold, or that the night is dark and the day is light. It is from such basics that we start. We proceed from what is seen as the common or the obvious to those sentences that do challenge, where there is disagreement. That is the thought.

So from a comment regarding uncertainty regarding human involvement in global warming coming from a senior official at the EPA, I arrive at the following: That such a comment from such a person probably entails skepticism regarding the science of global warming. Further, that person is probably likewise skeptical regarding the role of the EPA in the enforcement of environmental law. Lastly, they are skeptical of the EPA being responsible for the Clean Air Act, relating to domains relevant to global warming. They do not affirm such things as true.

Now let us be fair here. We know much of these talking points already. If she were pushed she probably would concede that the EPA is responsible for environmental law including the Clean Air Act. She may even concede that the Clean Air Act today is seen as legally relevant to responding to global warming, just that the science is not completely in on that. She would concede that the Supreme Court has ruled on this but perhaps prematurely. She again can stress here that we really do not know. Skepticism provides some space for such. Despite fifty years of research.

We are with our skepticism introducing a range, or a continuum of options. Despite her inability to say such things are true, she is likewise unable to say they are false. So I would like to go a step further. Imagine replacing truth and falsity with a numeric scale. 0 being false and 1 being true. We now have a range of decimal values as opposed to either a 0 or 1, including .25 or .5 or even .8.  The closer to 1 we get, the more certain we are that it is true. Those that we are more skeptical of are closer to 0.

I offer the above scheme only to illustrate that we value some sentences more than we do others, and perhaps likewise are more certain about them. We are more committed to those we value and believe to be true. Likewise if we are skeptical we are less committed. No doubt truth is probably not the only way to value a sentence but the point perhaps is that certain sentences and beliefs are more highly valued than others. Further, the tension or conflict comes not from the belief or sentence, but the value placed in the belief or sentence.

We have already surmised that she is skeptical of the Supreme Court and scientific research in relation to global warming. With a set of values it is now feasible that though she does not grant truth she is not ruling them false. Rather she just lowers their value in relation to other beliefs that she values more. She holds them as closer to truth than the others. The things we say and believe betray our values.

The game now truly becomes one of speculation. Again, we are trying to understand what allows for people to eliminate methane regulations, destroy pristine forests, and force people out of the country who due to that order, will most likely die. Why engage in such actions? What values drives such actions?

Up to this point we have been exploring the language and perhaps the beliefs of Anne Idsal, one EPA Administrator. Let us agree this is not about Ms Idsal. Not at all about her really. I used her one comment and her position at the EPA to arrive at the point that someone like her who has such a position who makes such comments probably does not value certain findings in science, nor certain Supreme Court rulings. Nor, ultimately certain policies at the EPA.

We now must broaden our scope. If not Ms Idsal, then who? Now it does not have to be someone from the EPA. Yes the EPA is responsible for the regulations regarding methane releases in fracking, but they are not responsible for Alaska's Tongass National Forest. The agency responsible for the Tongass is the USDA. and likewise, neither the EPA nor the USDA are responsible for the removal of Maria Isabel Bueso. That is the domain of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. So this is not a particular policy unique to a particular agency or group.

Rather, we are looking for something that cuts across these domains. A set of beliefs that informs decisions in each of these agencies and domains. We assume a certain coherence or continuity among the various agencies making up the administration. They are all part of one government. They are all actions of one administration.

Ultimately, these become not issues of a particular agency, but political positions of a particular administration and President. The earlier numeric value relating to each sentences's truth now becomes a set of values, largely but not exclusively political values. And they are not only the values of a particular President and his administration. They are the values and beliefs of the people who voted for him. The question now becomes: How do we determine these values from one statement regarding the role of science and the Supreme Court in relation to global warming along with the above actions that we have listed multiple times now?

The proper way is to dialogue. Engage. That is the ideal. As this is a hypothetical, a fiction, we will simply infer from my own beliefs assuming that many of these are shared.

What I arrive at is a dismissal of science regarding global warming. A dismissal of scientists and researchers as they too have an agenda. Their research is not to discover truth, but to maintain a career, a livelihood. Such beliefs regarding the work of scientists and researchers certainly can lead to skepticism regarding their work. It seems sufficient to not grant truth. Such skepticism allows us to ignore their concerns regarding methane. It allows us to not be concerned with the lose of such a forest. The destruction of such a forest becomes only an unfortunate aesthetic issue.

Further there is the issue of profit, of capitalism. . . greed, what we pointed to at the beginning. To discount such science does allow us as a nation to thrive. To not have to be concerned with such research and scientific concerns allows us to focus on those things that simply bring a better return. To frack for natural gas and log trees just has much more concrete visible returns versus the returns of limiting methane or protecting distant forests.

Further, our businesses, our nation, our communities thrive in the harvesting of natural gas and the mining of minerals. Such allows for out nation, our communities, our families to continue. Likewise, science and research offer no alternative. They only warn us of long-term consequences. They provide us with no alternative method of survival much less growth.

There is something to the idea of nation, community, and family working towards common goals here. Coworkers, business partners, vendors, family are all tied together in these ventures. And science does challenge or even threatens all of that. It challenges that whole web of belief. In the regulation of methane and its protection of forests, science limits and does harm to our economic system. It does harm to our communities.

Again, science offers nothing of value. It simply limits and curtails our actions, and we are uncertain as to why. It says nothing regarding actual long-term goals such as the raising and providing for children. On such topics, science and researchers are mute. It regulates methane and denies us access to a forest. Nothing more. It does not calculate the actual cost of such.

So yes these actions, at least the elimination of methane regulation and the embrace of logging and mining in a large pristine forest is driven by the profit motive but let us be clear, this also entails thriving communities, personal achievement, and simply accomplishing life's dreams. To simply say profit driven is to abstract away from the benefits of and reason for profit. And such activities, as logging, mining, oil drilling have been engaged in for a long time. All have histories and all have thrived in the US. They are largely what put us on the map.

So, some sense can be made of such beliefs, yes?

Which leaves us with the deportation of a very sick young woman who can only get treatment in the US. Her removal does not build community, nor provide us with personal achievement. There is no profit to be lost. So what value is there in such an action? She could be a cost. She could be taking a bed from an American child. She in fact is not as she is participating in clinical trials involving an extremely rare disease. The researchers have covered all of her cost so as to have her available for the research. Without her, this research could not be done. All is paid for.

Regardless, the perception is there. A deathly ill child from from Guatemala, brought to America to save her. Why do we have to rescue deathly ill children from elsewhere? There are deathly ill children right here in the US. True.

Regardless, are we really ready to deport her to her likely death? Is this who we have become? So we have some glimpse of this, but not the depth of it. Are we ready to kill for this? Or did we just not realize the consequent of removal? Maybe we just did not think this through?

Is it possible that this is in fact a message to the scientists and researchers, and those who support such,"Screw your research. We do not need to go out and cure each and every rare illness out there. We can't and we won't." Is that what is being said here?

In short, the removal and possible death is not only another removal of an immigrant, but it is also a repudiation of science. It is basically saying,"We do not care. We do not really need this."

Science, reason, the deep state. . . big government. All are not needed. With their fear and worries regarding methane and their desire to preserve every forests and rescue every sick child, they destroy our communities, our way of life, who we are and what we do. And all of it is at the cost of the American people. In the process of regulating methane, and preserving trees, we lose our jobs, our livelihoods, and squander our fortune, our wealth. Perhaps it is from sentiments such as these that we arrive at a willingness to allow a young woman to die? That is where I arrive.

Anyway, all of this from a few words, a sentence, perhaps two, and an application of the principle of charity. Perhaps more an abuse of that principle, but with it, we still arrive here. We arrive at the conclusion that the actions we are trying to understand originate from a sense of community, a feeling of betrayal by government, and science. There is a frustration regarding what is regulated, what is put off limits, and what we are attempting to achieve. All of which comes at a cost to us. And that costs until now has been ignored. And for what? What is the goal? In short, why do we need regulation, the preservation of forests, and cure all diseases, if the last can even be done? It all defies common sense.