Last week had nine new men in the group — thrilled and surprised that our PR efforts have paid off, mainly because of the support of DEP __ who now casually agreed to allow  us to have posted full poster sized posters of the poster we’d  worked up last spring (but that had so far been restricted to the nearly invisible 8″/11″ size). He also agreed to distribute the book group summaries I’d put together from our crew as a mater of course to all new incoming inmates. And no doubt the reservations some of us had expressed about doing the trek come winter if interest was so low that we could count on no more than two or three men showing up at any given time. Who knows what combo led to the uptick, but since the numbers are only now at about what they used to be regularly I am confident we can keep this level going.

One result of having many new members was that we had to backtrack quite a bit on the book’s rationale, and in particular on the sections on moral reasoning — It’s not just your opinion! Really? — and the supplemental reading assigned for two meetings ago, Catherine Elgin’s superb “The Relativity of Fact and the Objectivity of Value.” As always I like to begin with some concrete, familiar examples, in this case the story of a newly acquired rescue dog who several weeks in has bitten the house cleaner. Such an event brings out the moralist in just about everyone, and the strong views about what one must do in such a case are adamant, preached from the moral high ground, and run the full gamut from HAVE HIM EUTHANIZED IMMEDIATELY! to OF COURSE, THAT’S WHAT DOGS ARE SUPPOSED TO DO!, TO MOVE HEAVEN AND EARTH (AND BIG $$$)  TO TRAIN HIM, SOCIALIZE HIM, ETC., AND IN THE MEANTIME KEEP HIM UNDER YOUR CONSTANT PERSONAL SURVEILLANCE! We then talked about strategies for actually understanding the underpinning assumptions of the various positions (including, of course, or own), principles and reasons for and against each, all available for public, if you will, scrutiny. In the course of this lively conversation many asked excellent questions about the dog, the situation, his history, his daily life and so on. In answer to one of the questions I confess that I got the best laugh of the night when I mentioned that when the doorbell rings and the dog sees new people in the hall he shows no interest, and can’t even muster a bark. I then noted “Oh, this is probably not the crowd I should be sharing that bit of information with.”

But the really interesting moment in this early part of the conversation came when one of the new men observed that the dog must be very intelligent to have understood the first week or so, starting in the shelter, what kind of behavior would make me more likely to adopt him; that he was not just strategizing when he acted very Other Dog Friendly, but doing so in a way that would enhance his chances with me, signaling that he’d figured out something about what I’d want. This keen observation led to a discussion of the various ways scientists have tried over the centuries to draw a bright line around humans (language, culture, etc.) and the rest of animal creation, and the fairly recent discovery that even the Theory of Mind (that is, the capacity of an animal to figure out what other animals must believe or think) also falls as a candidate of something uniquely human, in fact not by a long shot, since there’s evidence that even crows — birds! — might have a theory of mind.

It was a fine, lively, discussion, with the examples and points building on one another, feeding a palpable hunger for examples, theories, ideas, concepts, research, and more.

Tried to go in last week, but somehow the call outs and gate clearance never made it through…

Started discussing the critical thinking text chapter on moral reasoning last night — a simple leap from the material on arguments from analogy, many of which were about moral matters, like the Judith Jarvis Thomson piece we discussed last time. And though I am an editor of the text we’re using I wanted to stir the pot a bit beyond the overly simplified distinctions between fact and value, judgments of taste and judgments of reason, and objectivity and subjectivity the chapter starts out with. It’s harder to convince people that values are subject to reasoned arguments than to convince them that facts are value laden and conventionally constructed. The culture has tilted, I guess, towards relativism, across the board.

But first we somehow wandered onto the topic of how background norms in a neighborhood, (etc.) affect behavior, and how the cycle can be vicious or virtuous. This in turn took us to the ancient and ever compelling conversation about the conflict between individual liberty and the common good, and likewise about how trust itself, though risky, can contribute to the conditions that make it warranted. One astute young man who’s been in both max and medium security prisons noted that in medium security prisons rules designed to promote the common good (at least in theory) are routinely flouted as long as the COs don’t enforce them: in other words a permitted violation is a permissible  violations. Example: they are allowed to use lamps with 25 watt light bulbs through 10:00 p.m. If people collectively left them on after 10:00 it would be disturbing to many (remember bars, not walls). Still, since COs look the other way on infractions many leave them on past 10:00 and point out to their cell mates that the CO’s are okay with it, so what’s the problem? At SingSing, he reports, everyone abides by those, and many other even self imposed, rules. For example, when inmates are done eating in the mess hall they hit their spoons on the table to signal that they are about to get up (so no one is alarmed about the movement). When I recounted this story to a friend after I got home last night he laughed and said, ya, because it would be too dangerous in a max not to turn off the lamp when you cell mate asks you to (ha ha)! But while it’s no doubt true that everything is more dangerous in a max, this young man instead focused on the continuity of the community in a max as at least part of the reason people respect other inmates’ rights and liberties (and space): they are mostly all in for the long haul and it’s in everyone’s interest to build community. They tend to see the collective good and individual good as more closely intertwined. So are they more moral in maxes, or does the more moral behavior in maxes reveal the selfish underpinnings of the enterprise of morality?

First, the bad news: found out after my mandatory reorientation session earlier this week that the fingerprints I’d had done at the prison looooong ago had somehow never been processed, all the stranger because I was listed as “inactive” when the entire point of getting them done was to get final clearance to get active status, an official volunteer ID, permission to run the group alone, etc., all of which had indeed gone through. Though the actual finger printing act of course took minutes, the procedure of getting in and out took hours. And now I have to do it again.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think they don’t want us volunteers in there…

And now the best news (for those of you who won’t get to the end of the post below): during the course of our opening discussion of news events one of the men, working on his high school GED, and not a particularly confident speaker, remarked that the popular response to Trump’s treatment of the “gold star” family was ORWELLIAN. Reader, you may remember that we read Orwell’s 1984 last summer, also some of Orwell’s famous essays on language, and we’d discussed the novel’s lasting effects, and the deep ways that what he had to say about the politics and metaphysics of language still resonated. And good lord that was well before Trump time. Hearing that expression trip off his tongue was simply thrilling, illuminating a shift in worldview, a novel conceptual framework, a whole new way of thinking and talking about things. And about himself as an epistemic agent. Powerful and empowering.

And luckily the missing fingerprints news was followed quickly (a day later) by a fantastic discussion in house of Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion,” as we closed out a section of the critical thinking text with seven examples from ordinary sources in which arguments from analogy were pivotal: from some short and sweet commercials and letters to the editor, to an appeal to precedent in a cool piece by the head of the ACLU *advocating* that Obama pardon the black site torturers (after the release of the CIA torture papers in late 2014), to, finally last night, the JJT article. Their first response, like that of most first readers, was something like an outraged stammering protest: But but but pregnancy is nothing like this example! But then we backed right up to the (logical) beginning: well, what exactly is the conclusion she is after? And what is her main line of argument? What ways is this new case *supposed* to be like the violinist case? What differences are relevant, and why? We always have trouble in these meetings staying on track, particularly when feeling about the topic runs high, as certainly was the case on this one, but once we got going last night, not a problem at all.

I could not love working on the logic of a position on the ground, with a group with so much at stake, more.

up and clapping for me when I came into the room. They’d heard I’d been there on our last scheduled date, and had waited around a long time to confirm that chow was too late for a yard movement to the school much before our/the universally mandated end time of 8:30.

Had a productive discussion of some real life examples of arguments from analogy — short and sweet and packing a wallop. Next time we are now ready, I think, to talk about  Judith Jarvis Thompson’s “A Defense of Abortion.” Or at least as ready as we’ll be.

Start up conversation was about Cuomo’s recent announcement of a plan to expand college course credit opportunities to more NY prisons. The young man in the group (mid 20’s) who is passionate about getting an education (and boy, will he put it to good intellectual use) has written to Cuomo asking for help getting moved into one of the new programs — the John Jay College The Prison-to-College Pipeline program, also informally called P2CP, at Otisville CF. It’s a very competitive program, and I hope I can do something to tip the scales in his favor, not least writing a letter of recommendation. 

Promised to look into transcripts of the TEDx talks done at Sing Sing. A max! How on earth did they get that initiative rolling and through when we have trouble even getting a photocopied assignment in to someone who missed a meeting? Looking in to *that* too.

Occasionally things go as planned, but my experience tonight was actually more typical. Got to prison at the appointed hour, sent back to car to get my license (the times I don’t bring it in are always the times they ask for it), and only then am told that they’re wrapping up an emergency exercise and all yard movements would be delayed for at least an hour, moreover, all rec might end up being cancelled anyway.

Why don’t I have a book in the car to wait out at least 45 minutes (which would have still given me enough time to get something done with the men)? Instead I had nothing to do and certainly didn’t want to sit and talk with the chatty lobby guard for an hour. So I left. But why was he so eager to have me go home? Why’d he stamp my hand before telling me I should not bother to wait?  I feel bad about leaving, but worse, and guiltier, about possibly having allowed myself to have been pushed to leave, as if he could chalk up a point for his team. He kept insisting that I should go home and take it easy and enjoy my being liberated. But I’m here because I want to be; I’m a volunteer, I insisted back.

I’ll see the men in a few weeks, and hear then about what actually happened on their end tonight: were they told I’d been there and strongly urged to go home?  Did the call out for them even happen?

Just put the Oakes book on Lincoln and Douglass in the car. It’s on my To Read stack, but I won’t get around to it for awhile so I can spare it.

We philosophers like to appeal to intuitions to help advance our cases against, of course, rival views. They’re the closest thing we have to data: we appeal to these pre theoretical basics to ground our positions, they function as starting points and checks alike. Much has been written in the last 30 or so years arguing that our alleged intuitions are in fact primed heavily by culture and convention (and thus not so revealing about anything basic, after all), indeed some have called into question whether there even are such things as intuitions, at least as traditionally conceived.

Prison teaching surely puts the intuition theory to the test, on the ground, so to speak. The men in my group, even those with less radically different backgrounds from mine than you might think, have been changed by their time in prison, which really is like Twin Earth in many ways, or a social sci fi world, or… you get the idea. They not only experience a radical new social order but their relationship to almost all authority has been dramatically reoriented, their presumptions about the nature of things have been called into question, and as a result the men have a much keener eye than most for the utter conventionality of so much those of us outside of prison take so totally for granted that we treat it/them like they’re laws of nature. We haven’t read Kuhn, but I am confident these men would immediately get and endorse his favorite example of the Copernican revolution ushering in a new world, with changes in the structure of knowledge reverberating all the way down to having to redefine basic concepts.

Which brings me to our recent foray into critical thinking. My traditionally aged, and mostly privileged students accept pretty readily the textbook’s distinction between the descriptive and the emotive features of words’ meaning, and resist my attempts to add more nuance to what the textbook oversimplifies. (Full disclosure: I am one of the text’s editors, and I take some pleasure in taking the quite good book to task in a few places for oversimplifying some philosophically complicated concepts. Like this one.)  The men eagerly gave example after example in which the emotive and descriptive features of words couldn’t possibly be pried apart; topping the list of course were official terms mandated in and by the system, with special attention to euphemism starting with “correctional facility,”and ending somewhat laughingly with “food” for what they are served in the mess hall. It was liberating, it seemed, for them to be able to think through and spell out how what the terms actually mean depends on a complicated system of values and goals, politics and theory, and psychology and economics.

When we moved last week to talking about inductive arguments generally and arguments from analogy in particular, they jumped on the connections to the earlier material on meaning and definition, especially when I stressed the impliative nature of analogical reasoning, and the creativity called upon to come up with powerful analogies among sometimes wildly different things. Like the proverbial lightbulb going off one man remembered having heard about the famous Judith Jarvis Thomson example in “A Defense of Abortion” of the woman waking up finding herself attached to a famous violinist. After he explained the example, like any group hearing the case for the first time, this one divided up passionately on the question of what the hooked up person (how prescient of JJT to have used that language) should or should not, must or must not do. We lost sight for the rest of the meeting of the analogical structure of the case, but I can live with that for now. I’ve sent copies of the article to the prison for our next meeting, and hope they make it through the censor so that we can look at the actual argument she makes.

We are talking about some early chapters in the text on language, meaning, and definition, and as usual the discussion turned to their relevant experience, providing excellent examples that help apply, refine, and illuminate the concepts. I am struck as ever by the intense level of engagement of this group, and their pleasure from learning, from thinking, really, and sharing ideas. They ended up rejecting the book’s simplistic distinction between the descriptive and evaluative  functions of language in favor of something more like a continuum, and came up with tons of examples of not obviously emotive language that nevertheless did far more than objectively describe (or name): for starters (and please imagine quotation marks around all of these words and expressions): guard vs. CO; inmate, prisoner, offender, convict, felon; gay marriage vs marriage equality; illegal immigrant, alien, and undocumented.

And we spent a lot of time on the use of sex and gender specific language, and unpacked the recent phenomenon of making explicit e.g. she, her hers, and what adopting that practice reflects and advances our views about sex and gender, about the public presentation of and response to it, about our problematic judgments and presumptions. One inmate: A whole world is contained in that string! One young man who has been in prison for seven years (yesterday was the actual day of the anniversary) was particularly struck by the changes in language around sexual orientation, what the ever changing world of trans language and politics means for our conception of male and female. His confinement — and highly mediated access to information — during this period of great social change on this front made me think about how small changes over a shortish matter of years can throw us into what seems to someone outside of them a dramatically different conceptual landscape. And so it is. I asked them to think about how our thinking and practices would be different if we had three categories for sex rather than two (and, harder still to conceptualize, if the third one were not defined solely in contrast to the binary).

And then there was wholly new to me different and revealing ways new inmates choose to identify the crimes they are in for. Someone who cops to having caught a body is not new to the system and — well, this is probably obvious — wants everyone to know about his hard indifference to his victim’s humanity. But not everyone uses that language, ever, and those who report their conviction as murder, also give the degree.

Some serious business, some great thinking. And, as ever, big fun and a lot of laughter.

By popular demand my group has just embarked on a model college course, using the same text I have used for a couple of years, minus the formal evaluation of their work. We will instead go over the homework problems on the spot at the end of each chapter section.

The biggest challenge – in theory – will be to cover material hot off the presses and not in the text. Using up to date material in the news not only shows the relevance and usefulness of the skills I hope to cultivate in the course, but even more to the point, allows — okay, forces — the class to apply the material, the terms, concepts, and critical strategies, to real arguments in their messy natural habitats. Anyone who has taught critical thinking knows how daunting it is to see that even students doing the best in the course, consistently acing the homework and exams, have a hard time recognizing and applying the material in out-of-class examples, even in textbook (not, I guess) instances of the concepts that all but sit up and announce themselves. You may spend two weeks on analyzing analogical arguments, then read an editorial built mainly around an analogy and also appealing to several more, which students, initially at least, just don’t see.  It’s easy to pick out which fallacy of relevance occurs in the homework problems in which each question is guilty of at least one of them. I usually do hot-off-the-presses work from day one in this class, but since I can’t bring in outside material to the meetings, I’ll instead assemble old(er) examples of real life disputes and arguments, even if they’re not from today’s news. Fun! And special thanks to the Democrats and Republicans for the endless debates this year: many riches to mail to the DSP for approval which I hope will make it to the school where if I am lucky the guards will be able to find it in the office or supply room.

In the meantime, off to a brilliant start. I asked the group of ten, including four or five new inmates (to the group) who had specifically signed up to work on this book and topic, why they were interested in working on thinking critically. Many of them have found the other books we have done lately intimidating, and rightly were reluctant to join the group mid book. Several said they wanted to be better at understanding reasoning so that they could read more challenging material, from any area of study, but especially in philosophy. I was happily taken aback: So I can get more out of Berkeley’s Dialogues! So I can answer back better to O’Brien in 1984! One man even joked that he hopes he’ll get a better grasp out of K’s favorite philosophical concept: the categorical imperative. Others declared that they want to be better reasoners, and to be better able to wade through prejudice and hearsay. I closed by saying that I hoped this work would above all help them do justice to their own positions and ideas, to get a better grasp of nothing less than the truth, and that while we would learn a handy thing or two along the way about fallacies the goal is less Gotcha! and more Aha! (It turns out that this group was in less need of that message than the average traditionally aged undergraduate.)

The most astute in the group left us with an example to take up next time (as we work on setting out the basic concepts): the battle between the US government and Apple over whether Apple should unlock the San Bernardino killers’ iphones. He’s worried that no amount of critical thinking will steer us to a single correct answer we can all agree on. He is right of course. But I hope we can come to see that not all conclusions are equally good or defensible, and why.

The poster for the book group has been out of date for over a year — it was designed by the ante-penultimate person in charge of the group, now long gone. Right now no one is charge of the group – the job has instead been rolled into a more general administrative position. I worked with the philosophy department administrator on a draft for a new poster, and the men in my group last week had a lot to say about what should go on it, and what should be left off it, including of course some surprising things. Will I ever get to the point in this work that I am no longer surprised by the differences in assumptions these men bring to the world? I hope not. There is not a week that goes by that I am not shaken out of my dogmatic slumber by something someone says in our meeting, always interesting, always provocative, though sometimes also sad or depressing. They universally rejected the language of “book group” and “book discussion” for the new poster, for the surprising reason that no one in prison would know what those things are.  And they asked me to look carefully at the old one on the entryway hall on my way out that evening and note what is distinctive about it. The old poster would have been at home on an elementary school bulletin board: cutesy font, and even the drawing of an apple worthy of a toddler’s first words book. But: “We’re reading Plato! We’re reading Dante! We are doing college level work with world renowned Hamilton professors! SAY IT ON THE POSTER!” When I demurred about the inflated self description, they chimed in about conferences I’d presented at in the previous year alone in Vancouver, D.C., and New York. So the current working model for the poster text:

DO YOU WANT TO EXPAND YOUR MIND?
W I D E N Y O U R H O R I Z O N S ?
BE A BETTER PUBLIC SPEAKER?

If you answered YES, then this group is for you! Sign up to learn about GREAT WORKS OF LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY REVIEWED BY AND DISCUSSED WITH RENOWNED PROFESSORS FROM HAMILTON COLLEGE.

Meeting time: 6:30, various days of the week.

Was it unsettling that they remember my work travels so well? No. It’s part of what is important to this group about their connection to us; they are grateful, to be sure (you’ll not work with a more actively, explicitly grateful group), and they are indeed impressed by our work lives and accomplishments. But at least as important, what matters to them is that they matter to us. It’s a virtuous circle. There is always the suspicion that people who do work like this do it because it makes them feel good, or strokes their egos, or some such combination that adds up to their real motives being basically self interested, or even selfish. No way to test/disconfirm this hypothesis (which reveals that it is more a tautological matter of faith than a belief grounded in empirical reality): the greatest satisfaction from this work comes from seeing how being taken seriously intellectually transforms these men, their self image and confidence, their own growing pleasure at mastering difficult ideas and texts, and above all else, finding their voices. There’s a social dimension to the group too: they listen to each other and in time begin to respond to each others’ intellectual identities: whether it’s teasing one one guy for his attachment to the dialogue form, or turning to another to hear what he has to say in response to an argument in the text that we have come to know he will take issue with. Lo personhood! — it is not about me. So unless you think teaching is a fundamentally selfish line of work…of course you don’t.

Now to state the obvious: the general mode and mood of prison is dark and grim, from  the disgruntled guards to the hunched over men hurrying or limping through the yard to the ancient crappy classrooms in the school (“school”?). Yet in all my years of working with this group (groups, really, since the men come and go) all but a very few meetings have included laughter, and lots of it, often enough to get the guards down the hall up off their chairs to rush down to make sure all is well. All is well.

Had not met with my group for a month — got turned away my last two visits. New program administrator + new lobby guard = no one knows what’s going on. When I was there two weeks ago I was told that there were no men in the school for the meeting, that there had been no call out. Found out last night that they *had* been there. They heard that I had come and could not get in, so it was some consolation to know that they knew that I had done my best to hold class. Also explains why when I walked in they clapped with fervor.

A very interesting conversation about the what counts as an original idea, plagiarism, academic dishonesty, ownership of ideas; one of the many times I wish I had a tape recorder to be able to do justice to the exchange of ideas, and particularly smart, biting observations flying around the room. One man remarked that one good thing, not two, about evaluating prison work must be that it is  original, both in perspective — a real life version of Plato’s cave — and because of their lack of access to the internet.  We talked about the paradoxical nature of philosophical inquiry as both detached from common sense, sometimes deliberately, as in Berkeley and Descartes, and yet at the same time practical. One man passionately defended the view that the perennial pull of philosophical questions about self and meaning and reality and other minds make it more practical than any other sort of inquiry, more easy to engage in in connection to everything else we do. Another argued that of course the fact that we’re asking the same questions could be a sign of its futility.

At the close of the two hours the most philosophically inclined of the group talked about the  differences in technique between Berkeley’s dialogues and Plato’s, and how the manner of asking the questions and guiding the inquiry affect the outcome. The person most interested in these questions is going to try his hand at a dialogue between Plato and Berkeley on … not sure what yet, possibly the nature of experience. I am eager to see it.