An hour with Kwame Anthony Appiah

from kansas union ballroom at the university of kansas k pr presents an hour with kwame anthony appiah i'm kay mcintyre kwame anthony appiah is a philosopher essayist princeton professor and author of among other things detective novels happy as lex or making a sense of moral conflict was featured as part of the humanities lecture series sponsored by the hall center for the humanities at the university of kansas his remarks were recorded on march first things so i hope i'm not about to spoil it in the world after nine eleven everyone's aware of the seriousness of the disagreements across that it's about what its right to do but you don't need to go abroad to have disagreements about questions about you know surely american families where the parents think first

trimester abortions are bad for both mother and fetus but should be legal the children think they're killing a fetus isn't as bad as killing a full ground though and the grandparents think that all abortion is murder it went along to take a moral conversation between people across society is urging that we should we must expect such disagreements awful conflicts about values are extremely various in part because all the cavalry evaluation is itself very multifarious sometimes good bad right wrong are as philosophers sometimes said roberts then they express approval or disapproval at their application is otherwise pretty unconstrained good soil that though good argument that idea good guy bad

guy willie's doesn't tell you much about how you should apply it what about language and evaluation is however much thicker than this divided concept of rudeness for example you have to think of the actual criticizing as a breach of good manners or is lacking the appropriate concern for the feelings of others when notions of right and wrong or actually put a work ethic liam action the complications of particular social contexts in that sense as the state was criticized mr michael wilson affair is michael walzer says morale these thoughts outfit it's only when you're trying to find plants of agreements with others that you sought to pull out the faint on sentence that may underlie the fake ones are the same concepts same to be roughly universal we all the only people of the concepts of right and wrong with

that every society it seems as forceful and concepts something like these concepts these thin basic terms of the valuation even think of concepts like weakness and courage a once that you can find pretty much everywhere but there are even think of concepts that really are distinctive of particular societies is an example people everywhere have ideas about irresponsible response but his children but who are the children that you're responsible for which children are responsible for i grew up in to society's the conceit of family and rather different ways in part because the society's a kansas it gonna country the english world of my mother's west country in england da because the saudis have been in touch with one another for several centuries the differences are diminishing but important contrast from a sentence into the account concept of the atmosphere this is a group of people

of common ancestry who have relations of love and obligation to one another the closer and time you shed ancestors roughly speaking the stronger the bombs why didn't i just say family well there's an important difference between and it was a family where membership in the answer depends only on who your mother is your father is a relevant you don't get any family members from your father if your woman and your children are in europe and so are the descendants of your daughters and their daughters on to the end of time so membership in the other staff are those of us either that united is shed light mitochondrial dna it passes only three women so i'm in the same jobs as my sister's children but not in the same one as my brother's children and says i'm not related to my father threw a woman he's not a member of my

ideas down either side of the same as my father so to ensure the concept of all of the family in the camp culture is one of the older school maker to kneel they sold out before anybody knew anything about want hundred years ago the most lives your mother's brother you'll see on the town uncle the word is what fire would have to play for you wrote a father would have been expected to play in england he was responsible with your mother of course but making sure that his sister's children there's a word for that too or fussy were safe and educated many married women lived with her brother's visiting their husbands on a regular turntable in part because their husbands my would've had more than one wife because a matter that impresses children but his obligations to his children and this to him were relatively less demanding like being an english uncle mac so these are different ways of

organizing family life which one makes sense to you will depend good measure on the concepts of that you grew up i vote to really make sense of them as long as it has a way of a signing responsibilities for the nurture children that works it seems to me that would be all to say but one way was the right way of doing it and all the others were rather we feel rightly that follows delinquent in his child support payments is doing something wrong then is sending people would feel the same about a delinquent wolf i was looking after his nephews nieces once you understand the system i think you'll be likely to really it will be because you've given up any of your basic commitments they're a fan universal values here those of caring for children but there expression is particular to particular societies vaguely a mashed with local customs and expectations

and the facts of social arrangement but there are no local bands that scares the car stalled anything but i think you will recognize my father for example wouldn't eat animals killed in the forest this included venison and used to tell us that one study at by accident in england his skin broke out in a rash the next day but he would also like i wouldn't eat bush meat he went into said that he was allergic to it he would have told you if you thought it was an area of your business that it was a true idea for him because he was of the boy scout camp now that i'm a logically this word actually i mean something like a thing you turn your back or and if you had to guess is a translation of it would presumably suggests the knowledge with a taboo that's of course a word that came into english from a police in

anchorage where it was used to refer to things because certain groups were obliged to avoid strenuous and now i don't play you got to and it means indeed it pretty much cross other with the disease on the basis of what i felt already and if you don't i want to redefine the quirks of captain or a snack tray who wrote about the shanty as british government of the boldest nevertheless this is an idea that takes place in the idea that there's any role i suspect in your actual thinking their acts that you were for a thing that you might rather loosely call to get into the prohibition of incest for example is often referred to as it but you don't really think incest is to be avoided because it's the blue your thought is exactly the other way around is to do because there are very good reasons to avoid it the prison they're on like what we would think of as moral values in at

least for us first it was applied everybody only members of the boy scouts have the obligation to avoid bush meat second you're policing if you break it to do even if you do it by accident so whereas with an offense against morality i didn't mean to do it counts of the things we will have a substantial difference with them vacate breaking reply must be it doesn't matter what you meant to do your polluted you need to clean up their act ii the us was no better off for having broken incest and knowing that he didn't know she was his mother a final difference between tibetans and now the mayans is that breaches of them believed mostly you they all fundamentally about how you should treat other people there about how you should keep yourself literally clean about or around the world many people believed in something like that you have the air and the analogies terms of blue orb is certainly a powerful part of

historical events of language and in many places it's not about language today but it is nowadays well the words of the blues is still important to people it is invisible and i think as even as many other sorts of riders that's partly because well we just have to reduce pollution that pollution and usually the ritually cleansed armed the most passionate for orthodox jews in a country like this to a big incident is important and so as a commitment to obtain them if you can if you break and accidentally however the right thinks the deal is not built there are plenty of other occasions to guilt for orthodox jews but the culprit ritual form of purification marla fences theft assault murder on the other hand i'm not expiated by ritual purification now there are historical trends of help explain why a

concern that these plays a small apartment every life in my hometown that i did when my father was one of the many reasons that the forms of identity membership in the bush got placards awful with which they're associated i just a good deal less significant than they used to be equally importantly i think most people in my hometown now know that our to lose our local that strangers do not know what is and is not to do and that if they do they have to lose of their own so increasingly people think of today's as things we do and the step from what we do to what we happen to do to be a small one and then you can come to think of these practices as a sort of quaint local custom that one observes without much enthusiasm and in the end only when it doesn't cost about fosse so that you it is i can imagine all sorts of costumes and actually use for

example the existence of irascible ancestors and trying goes in one of his recordings that will be punished by the ancestors of you to bridge differences and one response to such it and that is is of course just dismissed them as primitive an irrational but if that's what they are and the primitive and irrational all pervasive is too it gave a sense of the apartments that underlies abuse is surely universal that's one reason why you don't find it hard to grasp many americans each base but what the cat's it would be hard to make the case that cats are either this year or more intelligent than face most american meat eaters who refused to read cats have only the defense of the very thought of it fills them with disgust some things you touch make you feel polluted and this he put him in your mouth would make you feel

nauseous you run off to wash your hands or wash out your mouth you come into contact with a muslim and they have these responses we defend them as if we thought the rational cockroaches are not in line with the mouse and rats which we're not going to touch except specially prepared white ones other people's saliva vomit do actually carry diseases we say cats and dogs taste horrible but these reactions are not really explain why the store's window flies carry most of the same risk as cockroaches but usually they have produced the same sense of pollution people are disgusted by the idea of drinking orange juices have a corporate it even if i know that the cockroach was rigorously also play to cleanse it of all bacteria people are reluctant to eat chocolate shaped like goat feces even if you tell them that that's exactly what it is

the psychologist michael resin he's done a lot of this recession into this capacity for discusses the fundamental human trait one that of all the last because the washington talking between what you will and where you want to eat is in in cognitive tasks for an omnivorous species like iran this gas goes with nausea because it's a response that developed to deal with food that we should avoid that if possible expel that plastic to discuss whether other natural capacities can be built on by culture is it the same capacity to make some men in many cultures spill polluted women earn african hands with immense resume woman or that makes most americans squirm in disgust at the thought of incest i don't think we really know we don't really fully understand the psychology here but the pervasiveness of these to blues and our responses to them does suggest that they've drawn something deep in human nature now in this country both secular and religious think are the heavies

of some of their contemporaries certain sexual acts masturbation on sex for instance or even consensual adult incest possibly thousands of tibetans found many cultures around the world and the so called holiness coated the end of leviticus for example easy animals that have died of natural causes requires you to watch yourself when you're close and even then you will the unclean digger says until the evening priests the sounds of arab atoll that if they touch people or any swarming thing that is polluting they must race and wait until sunset before any sacred donations the same chapters prescribe the consuming of plot and seeing various ones relatives make it while describing the totals certain kinds of sacrifice the most modern christians these regulations are parts of jewish law of christ freed people from what the famous prescription of a man's lying with a man as with a woman other be found alongside these

passages along with demands to avoid incest bestiality but most christians still indoors sunday people out of excess now that others don't feel about things we know that they may have their own and most importantly these local values of nautical stop us from recognizing as we do kindness generosity and compassion or cruelty stinginess and inconsiderate this postseason vices that i recognize widely across human societies so too scattered among the various abominations and that as we come across some time to time appeals to values that are universal and that discipline but the moms my brother to use the biggest nineteen commands us to leave her share of our crops for the poor to avoid lying and dissembling fraud and theft not to speak ill of the death or put a stumbling block in the way of the blind not to slumber our relations their values here that not all of us recognize that there are

many who do the possible let myself suppose that all human cultures have enough overlap in the cavalry a devaluation and that i didn't talk to begin a conversation that we don't suppose like some investors that we could all come to agreement if only we had assigned to cameron for instance and others like most towns of the jews and by says the military action would cruelty are what philosophers call up and textures two people who both know what they mean can reasonably disagree about whether they applied in a particular case grasping what the words mean doesn't give you a rule that will definitively decide whether it applies in every case that comes along the urban texture of it which is even more is actually operates seven into several years ago and its national parliaments a religious leaders insisted what they called a universal declaration of a global age

the exhortations industry there have the quality of those horoscopes seeing wonderfully precise well being paid enough to suit all comers we must not commit any kind of sexual morality a fine sentiment this didn't agree about what counts of sexual immorality was put us behind us all forms of domination and abuse but society is that by our lives subject when into domination of the us are likely to recognize themselves in that description they convinced that they're protecting for example a woman's honor of chastity and so it goes with all my social values is a cruel to spank children in order to teach them how to behave very words thanks jess isn't it if i said it's a cruel to be killed in order to use a lot of it might respond differently the point is not that we couldn't argue our way one position or the other on the issue it's only to say that when we

disagree it won't always be because one of us just doesn't understand that has its day it's because of my terms to new cases requires discretion indeed it's often part of our understanding of these terms of their applications are meant to be argued that they ought to use analogies of the loss was jargon essentially contestable many concerts as tevye the galley wrote in introducing the expression essentially contestable for many concerts probably use inevitably involves and there's disputes about their proper use on the party uses violence and language of interesting a statement the star asked about thoughts about feelings when we describe cossacks with words like courageous cowardly cruel or kind we're shaking up people think and feel about what was done and shaping our own understanding of amara language at the same time because our language is open texted and essentially contestable even people who share a moral vocabulary

have lots to argue about lost the fight over there's another third way i think of disagreeing about that is even if we share a very language that even if we agree on how to apply that particular cases we can disagree about the ways to give to different values confucius for example in the outlets recommends that the sun should respect his parents urchin stew or as it sees itself that it gentlemen should be generous to those who have done well by him and avoiding that most of those who've done an injury he should avoid ever it's not that self interest get in the way of doing what's right you should be courageous and wise keep his words summarize in this know that simplistic way computers can sound uncannily like polonius and people even our survival self be true but the fact that we share these that is

within doesn't mean that we will always agree with him about what we ought to think and feel and you just a great deal more weight on obedience to parental authority for example the most of you weren't even if your parents the result is that someone confucius is a sometimes contentious quickly respond to the demands of the many venues we all recognize in different ways from us would be because we didn't recognize the balance that we would be because we laid them differently such conflicts among shared values can take place within a single society indeed within a single human hearts they are famously said that how did it involves a clash between good and evil but between two goods by demanding almost a longer the recount may have to choose between the interests of the trojan expedition and his devotion to his wife and daughter of good things but he had

to choose between them suster levels are a mainstay of imagined depiction of clashes among our own values it's usually less grand than those in the attics are an everyday occurrence a criminal punishment no reasonable person thinks that it's a good thing to punish innocent people but we all know that human institutions are imperfect knowledge is always valuable the juries are not free from prejudice so we know that sometimes innocent people will be punished that would seem like an argument for abandoning criminal punishment but of course we also think it's important to punish the guilty not least because we fear that there'd be a lot more crimes we didn't here again we may be unable to agree on how to start a balance between avoiding the injustice of punishing innocent and other veterans even though we agree about the other values that altered state security people and

property justice retribution has a long list of things about the soviet state this is one i think of the sources of disagreement about capital punishment the legal scholar thomas bak argued that what he called caprice in the statements are inevitable in capital trials and that killing an innocent person was to hold a mistake to arrest many opponents of capital punishment believe it's important to punish those who deserve to die important enough in fact we must direction except that it was sometimes do a great role of executing the innocent not to do the right thing in the cases where we personally that that would be a greater role so you can find people on either side of the capital punishment debate who share the same values but are weighing them differently so identified three kinds of the scream of the bands we can fail to shower camera valuation we can give the same to the cabin very different interpretations and they can give a sign that is

different weights italy's problems seems more likely to rise of the discussion involved people from different societies lesley we share that language with our neighbors you might think and now to that valuation is as i said essentially impassable the range of disagreement would usually be why don't want it when people from different places and trying to come to her shed evaluation baby you and i won't always agree about what's polite still at least it's politeness were disagreeing about how the saudis will have words that they've roughly like that would light them all have something roughly like the idea of good manners but an extra level of difference will arise from the fact that their fix the cadre of evaluation is in the embedded in a different way of life and finally we know that one way which side is different is that they do put different ways all different values in the arab world and much of central in south

asia their societies in which many believe that all that is tied up with a chastity of their sisters their daughters and their wives now may here in the us to feel ashamed and the song that if their wives or daughters or eight but unless they come from one of those on the basis that is there are likely to think that the solution is to punish the women so you might conclude that cross cultural conversations about values about to end in disagreement indeed you might fear that they would inflame conflict rather than creating understanding i think there are three problems with that conclusion first we can agree about what to do even when they don't agree about why to do it second we exaggerate the role of reasoned argument and regional failing to reach agreement about that is their uncertainty and third most

conflicts arise from warring values in the first place i was a little bit about each of those points among my house and the people he would be glad to hear now about incest between brothers and sisters liz schott also between parents and children you can agree with and i sadly that it's wrong even if you don't accept an explanation of why namely that it's a true idea if my interest isn't discouraging fact i needn't worry that one person might refrain from threat because she believes in the golden rule another because of her conception of personal integrity and a third person because it says so in the ten commandments i said the body language helps shape common responses of thought action of the late twenties he was well to do different is that what we think and feel and sometimes fall away we know from our own family lives that conversation doesn't start with agreements of the level of principle who would someone in the

grip of a terrible theory would want to insist on an agreement on principles before deciding which movie to go to what to have for dinner or what time to go to bed actually who presented her with eerie or five year olds are political co existence depends on being able to agree about practices while disagreeing about their shared justification for other justifications for many long years in medieval spain under the moors and later in the autumn and their east germans and crescent they're christians are there as the nominations lived on the muslim rule this modus vivendi was possible only because the various committees did not have to agree on a set of universal right in seventeenth century holland starting off limits on rembrandt's the sephardic jewish community began to be increasingly well integrated into greased and society and it was a great deal of intellectual as well as social exchange between christian jewish communities kristin toleration of jews didn't depend

on the express agreement on fundamental values indeed these historical examples of religious toleration these early experiments at multiculturalism trip remind us of one obvious fact about our own society americans share a willingness to be governed by the system set out in the us constitution by and large but that doesn't require anyone to reach a particular claims of weapons the wrights tells us congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof but we don't need to agree on what values underlie our acceptance of the first amendment's treatment of religion is it religious toleration as an end in itself is a protestant commitment to the sovereignty of the individual conscience is it produce would recognize the tribe force were just informed young people only leads to fighting already skepticism but any religion as it right is it to protect government from religion or to protect religion

from government is it some combination of these or other reasons as some say they might legal scholars written eloquently that our understanding of cars do solo is a set of what he calls incompletely theorized agreements people will mostly agree that it would be wrong for congress to pass laws prohibiting the building of mosques well but they wouldn't must agree about why many of us would know that mention the first amendment even though we don't agree about exactly what theory correct theory of the first amendment is about as the ground their judgment not any particular goal but in the conception save democracy or in legal citizenship of muslims neither of which is explicitly mentioned in the constitution there's no agreed upon answer and the point is that doesn't need to be we could live together without agreeing on what the values are that they could go to live together we could agree about what to do in most cases without agreeing about why it is right

i know one of his latest sign that either widely said that is that help americans live together in amity but we certainly don't live together successfully because we have a shared theory of value or shed story as to how to bring all of that is that back in every case robert each of us has a pattern of life we're used to the neighbors who apply lot is the last so long as they settle patent has not seriously disrupted the world worry too much about whether our fellow citizens agree with us or about their theories about how to live we can't have in some abroad a liberal reaction when we do hear about are other about fellow citizens doing something that we would do us all so we mostly think it's not our business and not the government's business either it's not surprising then but what makes conversation across boundaries worthwhile isn't that will likely to come to a recent agreement about the reason that you worried about what the boundaries are on that

matter i don't say that we talk change minds with arguments of the reasons we exchanged our conversations was seldom do much to persuade others who don't share our fundamental values of judgments already and by the way the same goes for factual judgments this is not just like this one about jobs that it had just been the particular when we also gotten soft roll it's really because we have applied well thought out principles to a set of facts and abuse and answer our efforts to justify what we've done though we plan to do are typically made up after the event rationalizations of what we decided intuitively was the right thing to do and a good deal but we take intuitively to the right we tend to be right just because it's what we're used to if you live in a society where children respect you would probably spend your children you believe it is a good way to teach them right from wrong and that despite the temporary suffering caused by beating they will end up better off for it you will point to way which children and say saucer

budget that their parents don't know how to discipline them you will mean that they don't beat them enough and you will say no doubt recognize that there are people who beat their children too hard or too often say will recognize that being a child can sometimes be cruel faced with someone who thinks that every spanking is wrong you're likely to be simply flummoxed i'm not celebrating this argument to the us are not happy about the poverty of reasoning much discussion within them across cultures but let's recognize this simple fact a large part of what we do we do because roughly speaking it's what we do you get up in the morning at eight says it why last time that you could set the alarm clock do it in seven or eight thirty five and live pretty much the same life you have coffee and cereal

why not t and porridge you send the kids to school why not do some of you have to work why that goal riesling by which i mean the public act of exchanging share justifications comes in not win by going all in the usual way that when we're thinking about changing and when it comes to change what moves people he's often not an argument from a principal of a long discussion about values but just gradually acquired new way i've seen things just a couple of generations ago and most of the industrialized world's most people thought that middle class women were ideally the house wives and mothers if they had time on their hands if they would engage in charitable work or entertainment are a few that might engage in the arts writing novels painting performing in music theatre and dance but there was little place to them and they learned profession's as lawyers or doctors priests or rabbis and if they would be academics that would teach young women

probably remain unmarried they were not likely to make their way in politics except perhaps at the local level and they were not made welcome in science how much of the shift away from these assumptions is the result of arguments is a significant part of it just the consequences are getting used to new ways of doing things the arguments that kept the old pattern in place where not to put it mildly terribly good if the reasons for the all sexist ways of doing things have been the problem the women's movement could have been done in a couple of weeks there are still people i know think of the ideal life for any woman who's making and managing a home there are more who think that it is an honorable option still the vast majority of westerners would now be upholding the idea of trying to force women back to these roles alone arguments message for the women who made them

women's movement in them and the response to them to i don't mean to deny that but their greatest achievement has been to change our habits our habits including our habits of mind in the nineteen fifties wanted to go to lure business grow and what your response was why now the natural response would be why not consider another example in much of europe or north america and places where a generation ago the sex was the social outcast i wasn't so let's work illegal as many gay couples are increasingly being recognized by their families by society and by them all this is true despite the continued opposition the major religious groups as significant and assisting on the current social disapproval both sides make arguments some good some bad if you live in the fall because then the reasoning that you are the social scientists was produced as james they will rightfully not start with a story about people exchanging arguments they will give you a historical accounts that concludes with a sort of post that

title shift the increasing presence of openly gay people in social life in the media has changed our habits of reaction over the last thirty or so years instead of thinking about private activity of gay sex many americans have started thinking about the public advocate a gay people even those who continue to think of the sex with discussed now find it hard to deny these people or respect i'm concerned that some of them have learned as we did with our own parents that it's better not to think too much about other people's sex lives anyway i don't deny that at every stage of this process people were talking giving each other reasons to do things accept your children stop teaching on sexuality is a medical disorder disagree with your church is still the short version of the story is basically this that people don't use the lesbians and gay people i'm urging that we should learn about people in other

places take an interest in their civilizations their arguments that era's their achievements law because that will bring us agreement that because it will help us get used to one another if that's the aim and the fact that we have only competent is the disagreement about values shouldn't put us off understanding one another maybe hard it could certainly be interesting that doesn't require that we come to agreement example and you led the resistance to the british empire and the british and indian born south african lawyer trained in the british courts whose name was gandhi and indian names america it will sell roses and distorted to an english boarding school where he met my mother and muhammad ali joined the founder of pakistan who joined lincoln's in london and became a barrister the age of

ninety independence movements of those nineteen forty five world led the end of europe's african nation of us were driven by the very record that have guided the allies struggle against germany and japan democracy freedom equality this was not a conflict between values it was a conflict of interests couched in terms of the very same values the pulitzer prize was not within the west as elsewhere americans disagree about abortion sometimes vehemently we can trace the conflict in a language of conflicting values we all pro life or pro choice but this is a dispute that makes sense only because he'd say i recognize is whether they'll have that on our the very that is the other side is insisting upon their disagreement is about a significant both sides expect something like the sanctity of human life they disagree about such phases why human life is so precious and where begins whatever you want to call these disagreements system to stay

within that either side doesn't recognize the value at stake here and the same is for the chinese americans are not divided about whether it's important to allow people women and men to make them at major medical choices about their own bodies their divided about questions like whether an abortion involves two people that is a fetus and the mother about it just three people getting in the father only one another and furthermore no sane person on either side thinks that saving human lives or lived the political autonomy are the only two things that matter even though that into things we talk about openly discussing this question what makes these graphics are intense years ago battles over the meaning i think of the saying that is not that they oppose one another health experts at one venue held exclusively by one side with another held exclusively by their antagonists it's in part because we have shared horizons of me because these are the basically people who share so many

other venues and so much else in the way of belief inhabit that there are shocked and painful as they are when the disputes about abortion gay marriage for that matter the divide americans but really most of all because we share the society and the government we are neighbors but more importantly we offer their citizens and what we're discussing our laws that will govern all of us what's at stake are our bodies and our mothers are aunts our systems our daughters are wives or has been our friends brothers and the dead fetuses couldn't be enough children are our children's friends we should remember this when we think about international human rights treaties allow or even though they're week at the national level when we say to embody our concern for strangers in human rights law and we urge our government to enforce it was a need to change the world of will in every nation on the planet we outlawed slavery not just

domestically but international law and doing so we've committed ourselves at a minimum to the desirability of its eradication everywhere now this is no longer a controversial issue in the capitals of the world no one defends incitement but international treaties to find slavery in ways that it would include for example debt bondage and debt bondage a significant economic institution in parts of south asia africa now i'm not going to defend their bondage but we shouldn't be surprised if people losing candidates out of life depends upon it are angry given that we have neighbors even if only a few who think that the fact that abortion is the images in the other states turns the killing of the doctors who perform them into an act of terrorism we shouldn't be surprised that they are strangers if an issue whose anger turns them the violence against us i don't fully understand the popularity among islamist movements in egypt algeria iran pakistan the

high octane anti western rhetoric but i do know one of its roots it is to use it to real fashion language the woman question they're all muslims many of them young men who fail that forces outside there's a certain forces are they might think of as weston sometimes sometimes american or pressuring them to reshape relations between women and men part of that pressure they think comes from our media ourselves and our television programs are crammed with indescribable indecency a fashion magazines chairwoman without modesty women whose presence on many streets in the muslim world would be a provocation i think presenting an almost irresistible temptation to bad behavior on the part of a man those magazines influence publications in their own country is pulling them inevitably in the same direction we admit women to swim almost naked with strange men which is our business but it's hard to keep the news of these acts of modesty

from muslim women and children watch protect was the man from the temptations they inevitably create as the internet spreads it'll get even harder and their children especially their girls will be attended to ask for these freedoms to worst they say we are now trying to force our conception of our women should behave upon them we speak of women's rights we make treaties in trying these riots and then we won't let governments to enforce them now like many people in many nations i support the street is i don't believe that women like men should have the right to be entitled to work outside their homes to be protected from the physical abuse of men including their fathers brothers and husbands i also know that the changes that these freedoms will bringing bold change the balance of power between men and women in everyday life how do i know this because i've lived most of my adult life in the west as it has gone through the latter phases of just this

transition and i know that the process is not yet complete here the business in america shows that decided that radically changes attitudes and more importantly according to my view it's habits about jesus's over a single generation but it also suggests but some people will stay with the old attitudes and that the whole process will take time russia's of the men and women of obstructions they're part of the intimate texture of our everyday lives we have strong feelings about them and we have inherited many received ideas above all we have the debates about gender a man and a woman go out on a date the habit in many places is that even if the woman offers the man plays a man and a woman approach an elevator door the man's steps back a man and a woman kissed in a movie theater there one takes a second look to men walk hand in hand in the highest and people are

embarrassed that their children don't see they don't know how to explain it to them most americans are against gay marriage conflicted about abortion an amazing uphold the saudi woman can get a driver's license my guest is that they're not as opposed to gay marriage mostly as they were twenty years ago maybe twenty years ago most americans probably just before the idea completely ridiculous on the other hand as opposed to do today on the other hand those americans who are in favor of recognizing gay marriages probably couldn't give you a simple set of reasons why it's just come to seem right to them just in the way that it just seems are all those who disagree and probably the people or our favorite i'm not thinking about abstract things they're thinking about jim and all or gin and jay leno the younger they are the more likely it is that this is just a bowling fact that i think gay marriage is

fine and if they don't it's probably because they've had religious objections reinforced through life in a church a mosque or temple and a philosopher i believe in reason still awful years but i've learned that i like a university teaching and social even the cleverest people are not easily shifted by reason alone and that can be true even in the most several rounds of one of the great salsa the post war era drawn from my mom likes to say mr to say that quote in mathematics didn't understand things you just get used to them and allow the world outside the academy people don't even care whether they seem reasonable conversation as i said it's hardly guaranteed to lead to agreement about what they think and feel it we go wrong and we think that the point of conversation is to dissuade and imagine that proceeding is a debate in which point cisco to the proposition that the opposition often enough

as i've said and the beginning is that the practices and not principles are what enable us to live together in peace conversations across boundaries of identity with a national rehearsal something else again with the sort of imaginative engagement you get when you read a novel oh what a movie or tends to work about that speaks from someplace other than your own the conversation doesn't have to lead the consensus about anything especially not values it's enough that it helps people to get used to some leaders to the moon comments about those in the anti american sentiment and i think you call high octane anti american rhetoric businesses example of

on the bikini swim where swimming almost like it was with a strange man it seems to me the money that i did i live in a very old community but it seems to me that the bikini is winning over the over the burqa in terms of exerting pressure on local society still it's again this is a local perspective the reasons that women are more likely to cbs news on tv and want it be able to wear it and then to see workers on tv and be able to switch to that mike my question i'm thinking in terms of their conversation metaphor here my question is do you agree with that without assessment and is it because the bikini appeals to universal our taste in a way that america doesn't or is it because the bikini the frequency of the bikini in these conversations is so much higher in kiev so much more airtime today that influences the norms wherever it seems that to some extent that

process essentially oh well we can't you know in talking about things we can't talk about it as it were the attitudes of this is that we couldn't talk about the evidences of sectors and often individuals it's true there are many women in many muslim countries including for example the most populous muslim country in the world art who are wearing a bikini is some push back at the moment because of the worldwide worry about islamic charity i was like to think yes but that's the problem that's the thing that it raises the people who think they should be where it that it's that this practice which is a union in which is to the extent it is encouraging parents by people from outside in their understanding how easy winning with the one in that they

don't want to be worried because this as to us their costs from seoul and you know michael is we need to change our habits in such a way that it turns out that it's the woman who won twenty games get to be allowed to do that if they want to and try to get them to have and that that's what i want you to be very hard to figure out whether it's really really want in a society where our coercive pressure is put on women don't conform and that's how the elders example here's something like are the sort of thing that the great movie cause somehow not about the london about an afghan girl consummate which shows how under the taliban when you agree would not be unveiled now we're forced back and they were forced that essentially by threats of violence in the world so

so i do think that but the things you're pointing to the fact that song not the sort of some man in these societies want to behave in these ways that regard is on silent about the were upset by that's how the problem is whether their range they feel that they have with their societies going a direction that they dislike and the reason it's going to get the match direction has to do with people from the outside no other analogies here i think with the attitudes of some christian america's involvement of the same sort of fate in a field of the values that they believe in on the threat from people outside the liberal media articles and so they feel that they're that they are in control of their lives because the shape of their lives being changed in these suspects and they don't seem to have any control over and that's what makes the math bomb i mean that i felt like a five i saw the

world that way what i don't understand the case of the sega raw somewhere where there are many people who would like to fight back against they are fundamentalists is the intensity also focused hostility on people outside the society since i think the thing about moses isn't actually what we do is what's happening in their own society you just heard a lecture given by professor anthony appiah recorded march first two thousand seven at the campus union ballroom at the university of kansas there was a presentation of a half an hour for the humanity and forty five francis and floyd for with reporting assistance was provided by k u media services i'm kenny macintyre keep your prisons is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas

tiger got its stripes how the rhinoceros guidance for how the bacteria and not just with joe this is the level of explanation that exists trying to explain complex biochemical machines in a darwinian fashion next time on k pr presents michael b he one of the best known critics of darwinian evolution joined us eight o'clock sunday night on kansas public radio for michael b who says that most of us have only heard half of the story about evolution claimed that there are darwinian explanations for complex systems is an urban legend when you go to track it down that it fades even good darwinian evolution overwhelmingly degrades genes causes trouble messes up apr presence mightily sunday night at eight o'clock and kansas public radio

it's been the

pipe fb it's both he kept the peace banks

thanks bill