So, most of you will now be aware that the jurors in the Urewera 4 trial were unable to come to a unanimous or majority verdict over the charge of being involved in organised criminal activity. This means that neither the Crown showed, beyond reasonable doubt, that the 4 were part of a criminal group and the Defense failed to undermine the Crown’s case. There is very little else we can say at this stage; given that we don’t know how the jurors reasoned or how the jury was divided, it’s important not to jump to interesting but unsupported (by the evidence) conclusions.

Of course, we can say that the Crown, in some sense, failed to persuade 10 jurors good and true to accept that the Urewera 4 were part of an organised criminal group, and that’s a relatively good outcome for the defendants (although I was really hoping we might get a “Not Guilty” verdict, so it’s not an ideal outcome, to my mind) but it does mean we are going to get a lot of speculation as to whether we can truly say this is really a de facto “Not Guilty” verdict and what the Crown should do next.

Consider this: a majority verdict in this case would have required 10 out of the 11 jurors to agree on a verdict. So, we can assume that at least 2 jurors dissented from the majority. This means 9 jurors might have believed that the Crown showed, beyond reasonable doubt, that the Urewera 4 were part of a criminal group, or it might mean that the Defense showed there was reasonable doubt and 9 jurors felt they should say “Not guilty” but there were two dissenting voices. Not knowing which of these two stories is the more plausible, we can’t then go on and say “The Crown failed!” or “Good work, pro bono defense lawyers!”

Of course, it might be that the jury was split 5/6 or 4/7 or whatever. Each ratio changes the kind of story we might tell from “The Crown’s case was pretty good [9 jurors were persuaded!]” to “The Crown’s case was okay… [Only a bare majority were persuaded!]”

Another case, of course, is that we might have 3 kinds of jurors; those who accept the Crown showed beyond reasonable doubt, those who thought the Crown failed to show beyond reasonable doubt and those who weren’t persuaded either way. So it might be a 3/4/4 split between those jurors who were convinced by the Crown’s case, those who were persuaded by the Defense case and those who don’t know. Suddenly, in this possible version of events, the Crown and the Defense did badly.

Change the ratios, change the result. This, arguably, is why majority (and I’m thinking all the jurors here) verdicts are instrumentally useful as well as epistemically good (and possibly just).

So, all things considered, without inside information about how the jurors felt about that aspect of the case, it’s hard to know what to infer from the fact there was a hung jury with respect to the charge of organised criminal activity. Whilst the defendants have not been found guilty of such a charge, they also weren’t found not guilty. The Crown will be mulling its case and wondering whether another jury might come to a different conclusion.

Interested Parties,

Tomorrow, we will commence this semester’s Philosophy Graduate Seminar Series! As usual, the series will run from 4-6 p.m. on Wednesdays in the Pat Hanan Room (Arts 2), with speakers presenting from 4-5 p.m., followed by a Q&A period from 5-6, with a short break in between. As philosophizing often makes one hungry, I have made reservations (at least for this week) at the Kiwi Music Bar for pizza and further informal discussion — please feel free to join us for a bite after the talk!

This week’s presenter is Matthew Dentith. Here is an abstract for his talk:

THE TRUTH, THE PARTIAL TRUTH AND SOMETHING LIKE THE TRUTH: SELECTIVE EVIDENCE AND EXPLANATIONS

The contrast between official and conspiracy theories, post 9/11, has become increasingly blurred. Many of the officially endorsed and recognised explanations of events, like the British and American invasion of Iraq, have been labelled, if not conspiratorial, at the very least conspiracy-like.

I will argue in this paper that a number of explanations ranging from seemingly warranted official theories to plausible conspiracy theories are examples of what I will call Selective Evidence Explanations. These are explanations that use carefully selected pools of evidence to make some explanatory hypothesis looked warranted. Some of these selective evidence explanations are used to defraud the public whilst others might be offered by people who are not a relevant authority in a discipline salient to the topic.

Using the example of the competing narratives about the (so-called) October Terror Raids of 2007CE, I will argue that such selective evidence explanations should be treated with suspicion, as they are a pathology of the normal process of inferential reasoning. I will argue that these kinds of explanations are not just part and parcel of modern political discourse but are rife in other disciplines as well and are not just much more pervasive than we might (like to) think but that they also raise interesting issues as to who we can trust.

Someone (i.e. me) went out drinking for six hours last night, but that’s okay, it was academic drinking. Academic drinking can be heavy (and in this case it was) but its work-related: when academics talk shop over drinks it takes a long time (in part because the drinking encourages long rambling sidebars which may or may not be relevant to the conversation at hand). So, today might be hard, because, well, I’ve only had four and an half hours sleep and I might still be drunk (I suspect this because I don’t, yet, have a hangover).

I will skip over Mark Woodward’s presentation, in part because I don’t really have anything interesting to say about. This is no reflection on the material; I just don’t have any comment. Instead, let me move on to the whole “Working Group” thing and what I ended up thinking about the process of the workshop in general.

I went to Kuching with brave doubts about not just my utility in such an environment but also questions as to whether anything useful would come out of the experience for any of us. I can say that, now, I was too pessimistic going on: there were some interesting proposals that were put forward in the final session and I can see just how useful a philosopher can be.

That being said (famous last words), there were issues.

1. We never really defined what a “social fringe” is, which meant that we did an awful lot of talking at cross-purposes.
2. Each day we had a working group, which ran for two hours, and then we had to produce a presentation about what we had talked about and worked on. These working groups were fairly structured, in that we were told broadly what we should talk about and how we should report back. The problem was that after each report we would have a round of questioning. This, I think, was a bad idea. Normally, when you give a presentation, you are talking about a subject you have worked on for a considerable amount of time; questions are suitable after such a presentation because you should be somewhat wedded to the content and able to work with your interlocuters. However, when what you are presenting is something that you only came up with an hour ago and may not be something you are particularly enamoured with (or can even claim ownership over), academic-style questions really seem like a very bad idea. I think a roundtable discussion after all the working groups had reported back would have been a better way to do things.
3. Once we were put into our working groups, that was it, really, when it came to cross-pollinisation of ideas. Whilst there was some mixing and matching on the last day and people did have the opportunity to talk over lunch and drinks, I think something, like a daily roundtable discussion could have been done to encourage more interaction between delegates.

My working group was the “Commitment and Sustainment” group. We had several social pyschologists, some area experts from the Middle-East and Indonesia and me, the philosopher. On the first day I was all about trying to get some decent definitions of key terms in play, whilst on the second day I showed off my historical literacy. The third day I emphasised just how useful a good taxonomy would be for allowing us to move from talk of specific cases to a more general theory. In each case, I had some, but not much, sway over proceedings. This was to be expected; I was very much the junior academic in the room and also the person who doesn’t usually get his hands dirty with empirical data. Still, I was disheartened to some extent by how little interest some of the participants had in what I take to be core analytical problems; decent definitions that take into account interesting border cases and well thought out taxonomies really are some of the most useful things a person like me can bring to the table.

Now, I’m not saying I wasn’t heard and I’m also not saying that people were ignoring spectacular arguments on my part; I did contribute and some of my ideas did have traction. All I saying is that in a philosophical working environment these ideas would have been central (and possibly never answered satisfactorily) while at the working group they were not considered to be paramount.

It turns out that the rumours are right; philosophers are not treated like gods by other academics.

I’m not going to say anything about what we produced for the time being. I’m currently a little sleep-deprived and in transit. When I get back to Auckland and can do a little decompressing, perhaps I’ll be in the right state of mind to talk shop one last time.

Yesterday, being a ten hour academic session, plus dinner and drinks on a boat, was a long day. Consequently, I am pretty much the personification of the slightly tired. Today is dubious tourism day, but first, a presentation and then a working group. Let’s go.

Nora Fisher Onar – From Periphery to Centre: The Rise of ‘Ottomanism’ in Contemporary Turkey

Nora’s talk was a fascinating discussion of Turkey’s move from a pro-secular to a pro-religious state, a move which is mostly due to an economic boom (basically pro-religious business people have encouraged pro-religious moves). However, it’s a mistake to think that Turkey is turning its back on the West: Turkey is a political actor in the West, in the East and as the crossing over point between East and West. Looking at Turkey’s history over the last 1100 years and the way that the story of Turkey, its Empires and its religious status tells us a useful story about the trajectory of Turkey as a political force today.

Nora’s framework is based around collective memory, which takes from the psychoanalytical, truth and reconciliation, the neuro-biological and socio-historical literature. Talk of memory in general is rooted in these kinds of talk, especially the significance of the role memory plays in forming identity and, perhaps arguably, the identity of the group/country you belong to. Think of the official historical narratives that get taught in schools, which can be used to present a hegemonic and monolithic story of what the national identity is and is constituted by.

The new Turkish state, post WWI, was a secular state, which did not necessarily sit well with some of the population, so with the punctuated change, along with military coups, there has been a quite distinct neo-Ottoman trajectory to state politic. The history and teaching about the Ottoman Era was suppressed by the national narrative but certain members of Turkish society have tried to bring it out and into the national narrative. The Ottoman Empire is now seen as the source, for some, of what Turkish identity should be.

Day One

After a light, milk-less breakfast, the day began.

And what a day it was: ten hours of academics trying to grapple with what would seem to be a very simple concept: “fringe groups.” The problem: no one could agree what kind of thing a “fringe group” is meant to be.

We tried our best: Ken Boff, the principal behind the workshop and a jovial fellow to boot, started off proceedings by talking about just how vague the descriptions and constituations of these “fringe groups” are in the literature. This is a problem, he went on to say, because not knowing what these groups are and how they function (in general terms) means that we can’t make claims about their future behaviour, how they develop and suchlike. It seems like we should just intuitively know the definition of a “social fringe group” but as we don’t, it means we might (and we did) talk at cross purposes. For example, I can claim that the CIA and MI5 were fringe with respect to the WMD rationale for the invasion of Iraq, but is the kind of definition other people operate with?

To use a terrible term, we need a consensus “going forward.”

After a round of introductions, where I learnt that the military personnel here are highly qualified individuals, and that the most common research interest appeared to be on issues of trust and how trust is established and breaks down, we got on to the first of our three seminars of the day.

Arie Kruglanski – From Mainstream to Rsdical Fringe: How Ordinary People Become Terrorists

I wasn’t sure about some of Arie’s talk, because it seemed like he might have been conflating radicalism with terrorism. The problem is trying to work out the causal connection between being a radical (like me) and being a terrorist. So, for example, arguably the US military engage in terror activities in the Middle East, but are the US military radicals? I can see an argument as to how they might be, but maybe they are not: if you buy an argument about the latter, then terrorists are not necessarily radicals.

He also cited an interesting example to do with how Hizbollah and Eta use socialisation to encourage children to join the fight. This was put forward as an example of how groups radicalise a section of society, but surely most more Western liberal cultures do this to some extent as well? We present the military life as a noble one and we celebrate their sacrifices. Perhaps we don’t quite focus on giving up your life for the cause, but it’s part of the story. Before I was able to raise the question someone else asked about the role armies play in our cultures. His response was that Western ideologies are not destructive, but that it just avoiding the issue: by defining Western activity as non-terrorist rather than grappling with the issue you have a definition which seems to carve out a conceptual space that seems quite controversial.

Axel Gelfert – Rumour, Gossip, and Co.: Communicative Pathologies or Cases of Epistemic Dependence

Axel was going to talk about conspiracy theories as well as runours and gossip, but in order to tell a finessed story about how rumours might be reliable, he skipped over issues to do with conspiracy theories and told people to talk to me.

Not that anyone has, as of yet.

Axel and I are basically on the same page when it comes to social epistemology, so my notes on this ttalk aren’t particularly interesting. I liked the talk of “coverage-reliability” and “epistemic routines” as an explanation of how we, as limited epistemic agents reliant on external sources for information, get our knowledge of the world from newspapers, blogs and the like: we have routines for gathering information and have a wide array of sources to ensure that we get all the information we think we need. We can sum this up as a coverage heuristic: If things were different from what I believe them to be, then I would have heard about it by now.

However, this is only as good as our coverage environment, so this explains how people might legitimately not know or accept some claim that other people take to be plausible.

I wasn’t quite so taken with Cass Sunstein’s work on rumours: I wasn’t impressed by his book at all, but that’s a matter for another time.

James Liu – From Indigenuous Rights to Estonian Street Riots to Islamic Terrorism: Representations of History and Religious Ideology as Warrants of Legitimacy for Fringe Groups

James’s talk was about how we finesse warrants of legitimacy. He started out by talking about how governments derive their legitimacy and then how this warrant affects feelings of social deprivation and how this then results in particular kinds of political action. It was a fairly complex model and whilst I understood the gist of it, I can’t really think of a way to describe it at this very moment in time. In essence, there are at least three kinds of warrant operating in society: an appeal to history, an appeal to religion and an appeal to a social contract. He used examples of how these warrants affect political activity. Part of his story concerned Indonesia and how a religious warrant of legitimacy gives ardent theists a different, not necessarily psychotic, rationale for their actions. If they sincerely believe the world is broken, then they will try to fix it. As he said:

“You have a corrupt secular world. How do you save it? Sharia law.”

The Working Groups

After the seminars we were divided up into our four working groups to discuss the research issues that Ken and his team had identified as important for developing an idea of how to deal with and talk about Fringe groups. I’ll save talking about the working group sessions for now; there are still two to go and I think I need to see where we end up before I can tell a story about how each one went.

So, the first really big question: why am I here? Or, to put it in a way that will make sense to those of you who haven’t just read the collected bios of all the attendees, why was barely qualified, not particularly accomplished little me invited to attend this workshop.

I mean, really, the people here are so highly qualified and well-connected that I, with a really tiny number of articles under my belt, a very recently defended PhD in hand and a radio segment every week, look like the pity candidate, the person you let in to fill a quota (or something like that).

Now, bios are a great way to showboat a person and possibly the people here aren’t as great as they appear on paper (although the number of senior, former military personnel are still going to have a certain amount of prestige, even if, like me, you think the military and its intelligence arm are just a little suspicious – no offence to the attendees who are reading this. I’m sure you are great); I certainly showboated myself in my bio, what with talk of a TV show and all (which, at the time, at least looked likely, but I believe the people at Topshelf decided not to present it to TVNZ for some of that precious, precious charter monies), but still, even my showboating pales in comparison to nearly all the other people who are here.

But, and I must keep on reminding myself of this, I did not plead or beg to attend this workshop: I was invited. Someone, somewhere, thinks I am going to be a useful voice in the discussions of the next few days.

And what a next few days it is going to be. Here are the objectives:

But before then, there is a meet-and-greet with cocktails and food stuffs. I am reliably told they have put on food that I can eat and if there is whisky at the bar, you can guarantee that I will be partaking. Hilton Kuching, do not fail me now!