It is hard to know if a poll merits attention: past success and an oath of non-partisanship are important guides as is knowledge of what went into the poll.  Prof. Redlawsk offered four secrets of polling as a guide to evaluation. 

1. Sampling.  As a practical necessity polls draw a sample from which to generalize about the population.  There are two types of samples: random samples in which each member of the sample has an equal probability of being selected; and convenience samples such as CNN's self-selected respondents.  Random samples are more likely to be free of bias.  The larger the sample size the greater the likelihood of converging on the population mean, e.g.: for a population of 10,000, a sample of 400 will yield the mean +/- 4.9%, for 800 +/-3.5%, 1600 +/-2.45%.  Most polls use a sample of 800. 

2. Statement of Methodology.  Every good poll should report: date, sample size, population and method of sampling. Polls use landline and cell phone numbers.  People who don't answer are called again.  The poll should indicate the demography of the sample and its sampling error. 

3. Weighting of the raw data.  Because the composition of a sample rarely matches the demography of the population, responses are differentially weighted to yield a more representative result; women and oldsters are more likely to respond but with a small sample from a difficult-to-reach subset, such as young people, there is a danger of drawing from the extremes of the population. 

4. Wording of the question.  This is tricky but of crucial importance.  For example, in polling on public option vs. private insurance most people favor the former because they like Medicare but if public option is described as government run, rather than government sponsored, favorability declines.  Another example involves opinion on  same-sex marriage, gay-marriage, or marriage equality; the third wording evokes more favorable response than the other two.  Finally, Prof. Redlawsk cautioned "a poll is a snapshot in time not a prediction", its value depends upon many factors but at best it is only an estimate and one should not place too much stock in its accuracy. 

© 2011 Edith Neimark

Professor Stich was delighted to talk to an audience that did not look like his grandchildren.  For 2,500 years, from Plato to Aristotle, he told us, moral philosophers have made empirical, factual claims that moral behavior is based on character, founded on reason, swayed by emotion, that moral disagreements can be resolved, that moral knowledge may be innate in human beings, and that genuinely altruistic behavior is possible.

The great moral theorists of the past used the only sources available to them: introspection, careful observation of human behavior, and history.  These sources were inadequate to resolve the questions they were asking, so most issues in moral psychology remained unresolved.

By the last decade of the 20th century, experimental psychology and the various branches of neuroscience had developed very sophisticated techniques for testing hypotheses about the human mind.  However, as late as 1990, this work had made almost no impact on moral theory.

In the 1990s a small group of psychologically sophisticated philosophers and philosophically sophisticated psychologists began to use the data and methods of experimental psychology: neuroscience, cognitive anthropology, evolutionary biology and behavioral, experimental economics to attempt to sharpen and resolve traditional issues in moral philosophy.  Professor Stich's first goal was to persuade us that work in these sciences can indeed advance and transform these debates.  His second goal was to explain and clarify some of the issues.

Moral judgments, our total set of beliefs or rules, can be divided into two subsets: moral and non-moral.  Non-moral judgments include a whole range of aesthetic, etiquette-related, prudential, religious and scientific rules and customs.  From these, philosophers have tried to select a set of judgments that are characteristically wrong.  In 1970 "The Definition of Morality" was published, an anthology in which 13 leading figures in the field tackled the question of how morality is best defined.  As one would expect, no consensus was reached.

Philosophers care about this issue, but other people are often very puzzled as to why any particular philosopher cannot simply use the term "moral judgment" any way he or she likes.  So why is it important to define the term? Richard Joyce published "The Evolution of Morality" in 2006, in which he notes that you can't go looking for a theory about the evolution of morality unless you have some idea of what morality is.  Most of the literature to date is irrelevant, since it tries to explain the evolution of altruism, which is neither necessary nor sufficient for morality.  Most of the literature doesn't make sense without a correct definition of morality.

John Haidt of the U.  of Virginia has accused politically liberal researchers of inappropriately narrowing the moral domain to issues of harm, care and fairness, reciprocity and justice.  But morality is in fact much broader, including issues of in-group loyalty, authority and respect, purity and sanctity.  Most of the discussion to date has not been about morality as such, it has been about whether the psychology of harm and fairness is innate in human beings.

Haidt reviews norms that prevail in other cultures: rules about clothing, gender roles, food, forms of address and a host of others.  People in these cultures care deeply about whether or not these rules are observed.  The real issue in dispute is not whether rules like these exist or whether people care about them, but whether they are moral rules.  So, we need an account of what constitutes a moral rule, and the next question to ask is: Which moral rules are correct?

Moral realists maintain that most moral judgments are correct or incorrect in the same way that judgments in mathematics or history are correct or incorrect.  Moral relativists think moral judgments are like legal judgments: correct in one society and incorrect in another.  Moral skeptics disagree with both groups.  They believe no moral judgment is either true or false, even when it's relativized to a culture.  Emotivists, an influential sub-group of skeptics, think moral judgments are expressions of emotion.

Moral realism, like scientific realism, is compatible with a lot of disagreement between experts.  And everyone realizes that scientific - or factual - disagreement is a major source of moral disagreement.  Many moral arguments might be resolved if people could agree on the facts.

In trying to define a species, the way people use a word like "fish" or "mammal" can be overruled when science discovers the precise nature of the species involved.  The same applies to a moral judgment.  Elliott Muriel, a developmental psychologist, has studied so-called transgressive actions in groups, testing whether participants believe them to be wrong, if so, how seriously, whether they are authority dependent, whether the rule against them is universal in scope, and whether harm, justice, or human rights are factors.  Participants varied widely in age, socio-economic status, nationality, religion and culture, and they disagreed systematically.

Some researchers believe moral rules are a psychologically natural kind: objective, not authority dependent, general (not local) and involving somebody who has been harmed.  But this may not be true.  Some transgressions that do involve harm do not evoke the full moral transgression profile.  Experimental work on the moral/conventional task has clearly become an important component in the philosophical debate on the definition of morality.

Haidt found that three specific kinds of disgusting behavior that harmed no one all evoked disgust and censure wherever they were tested.  It seems emotions play a central role in generating moral judgments, and moral norms might be socially acquired emotion triggers.  Participants tended to make more severe moral judgments when closeted in disgusting surroundings, an argument for cleaner jury rooms.  The bottom line is: science has a crucial role to play in advancing some of the most important issues in the humanities.

© 2011 Elisabeth Hagen

In a tandem of lectures–related in general topic, but quite different in focus–the first two of our speakers on slavery, historians from down the road in Lawrenceville, shone a bright light onto the dark canvas many of us had misconceived as NJ's status in the era of Abolition.  Today's speaker will complete this month's vision of things-as-they-were started by McDonald and Hunter three weeks ago. 

First, McDonald shattered the long established concept we all had learned or misread that NJ–indeed, all the North-east states in the 19th C.–was awash in fervid desire to free all slaves and stood rock solid against slavery right into the Civil War.  The truth seems to be that although the history of slavery here–begun in the 1620s by Dutch vessels bringing in slaves trans-shipped from the Caribbean and other states rather than from the African "Middle Passage"–was tempered by the conditions and nature of the small farm economy, NJ was most congenial to the cursed institution.  English policy was to provide free land to settlers for every slave brought along and to impose no duty or tax on slave imports.  By 1680 in East Jersey there were 120 bondspersons for every 5000 inhabitants. West Jersey had a smaller slave population, but throughout the 18th C. the numbers of slaves remained level at 10% of the total population number: both multiplied six-fold from 1720 to 1770 with about 180,000 slaves in the latter year.  McDonald suggested that most in NJ were what might be called "refuse slaves"–that is, those older than 35, in questionable health unfit to work in the Southern tradition of toil in the fields.  Because of the small farm style rural economy there was no commonality for the NJ slave culture, as they were isolated from each other and ethnically not connected to the African experience or tradition.  No spirituals were sung here. 

Rebellion was always in the minds of slavekeepers, with "running away" the most common method of resistance.  Rumors of a rebellion in 1734 in nearby Somerville led to strong counteraction in which one slave was hanged and many whipped.  The Quakers, especially strong in West Jersey, began the long antislavery crusade, led by such as John Woolman, in 1754.  A powerful abolitionist tract was published by Benjamin Lay, who in 1737 in Burlington demonstrated his passion by using a long knife to slash a Bible and let spurt a geyser of sheep's blood he had inserted into the hollowed-out book.  It was great and effective theatre, modeled for us by McDonald. 

But recalcitrant NJ took a long time to officially react to the movement.  Finally in 1786 came the Abolition of Slave Trade.  Many individual slave keepers did free their bondspeople through the years, but it took until 1804 for an act to be legislated calling for "Gradual Abolition" of all slaves.  Children would be freed after serving a sex-determined 21 or 25 year period of bondage. 

© 2012 Don Sheasley

Prof. Qualls, in fine English teacher tradition, drew upon a wealth of material in illuminating the latter-day impact of Stowe's novel (how it became everyone's racist novel) as well as her motive and methods in writing everyone's protest novel.

Impact.  The novel, the best selling novel in English throughout the 19th century, led to a variety of stage shows: Tom shows, minstrel shows, black-face performances on stage and screen, that fed into and amplified a wide spread stereotype of the Negro.  In addition, the names of characters entered the language as trait characterizations: Simon Legree, Topsy, and especially, "Uncle Tom" as a pejorative for black apologists of their oppression.  To today's critics the novel is hopelessly sentimental and racist. 

Intent.  Harriet Beecher Stowe viewed slavery as a great evil and wrote her book as a tract against it in 1851-2.  The first subtitle, "The man that was a thing" was changed to "Life among the lowly" which better reflected her portrayal of slaves as the new Israelites whose narrative adventures closely reflected the book of Exodus with Tom as their Moses.  The novel tells a compelling story and interweaves many themes such as a contrast between secular and religious views of freedom and home with Eliza and her husband George typifying the secular in their flight north, and ultimately back to Africa and Tom typifying the religious in his transcendence of suffering through unwavering faith in God and heaven as his final home.  Tom is the true Christian; slave owners who call themselves Christians are not. 

Uncle Tom's Cabin achieved phenomenal success: it sold 300,000 copies in this country and was widely translated throughout the world.  Stowe attained her goal in her era.  Today the book is passing into oblivion and opprobrium.  Prof Qualls read passages from it as a taste of what it was. 

© 2012 Edith Neimark