Nathan Rein › Comments

"submitted by reddit to blog." - Nathan Rein

"I'd be interested to see an example of a progressive who fits this description, i.e., someone who sees change for its own sake as a good thing. I've never met one." - Nathan Rein

"Ron Hendel's "Farewell" is posted to his own Academia.edu website, at http://j.mp/uGnZSk , for anyone who wants to read it" - Nathan Rein

See more in my Dopplr profile. - Nathan Rein

"Bauerlein's has some idiosyncratic methods for his citation counts (according to the PDF linked above, pp. 9ff.). I wonder how reliable his numbers really are." - Nathan Rein

I'll be there from November 17th until November 22nd. See more in my Dopplr profile. - Nathan Rein

"Great piece. I would suggest that the idea of "WebMD Catholicism" is part of a long trend -- going way back before the Internet -- towards "Protestantization" of North American Catholicism. By Protestantization, I mean the idea that tradition and institution count for very little next to the fact that anyone can pick up and read the "authoritative" primary texts on his or her own.  To me, this is a very Protestant ("sola scriptura") idea. (I realize these texts aren't scriptural, but my impression is that the sola scriptura idea has gradually bled over into other texts too. For many people, if something is written down, it automatically assumes a kind of fixed and static authority that seems to trump what any mere person might say, regardless of the fact that those texts originate with persons, traditions, and institutions themselves.)" - Nathan Rein

"Re: roppenheimer's last comment: "[S]orry, two spaces is right regardless of what anyone else says." Quod erat demonstrandum, I suppose. And to think this was a discussion that began with insisting on taking the trouble to cite things properly!" - Nathan Rein

"I don't think the article is arguing that people shouldn't cite. Rather, I think the point is that we (professors) shouldn't be overly concerned with formatting. As I understand it, the point is that students should recognize the difference between the technicalities of citation style (boldface or italics? first names or initials? etc.) and the principles and concepts that underlie responsible citation. Teaching students that they should focus on the format -- i.e., the "recipe," so to speak -- of a citation rather than the real meaning of the citation is a poor allocation of pedagogical energy. At least, that's my reading of the piece." - Nathan Rein

"Indeed ... Many people learned back in typing class that you need two spaces following the end of a sentence, but that doesn't necessarily make it right. The MLA style guide, the Chicago style guide, and the APA style guide all prescribe one space following a period in typeset-quality text (i.e., anything your computer produces). Want links? Here they are: http://www.chicagomanualofstyl... http://www.mla.org/style_faq3 http://blog.apastyle.org/apast... And if you're not too snobby for Wikipedia and blogs, these pages have some useful background and links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... http://grammar.quickanddirtyti..." - Nathan Rein

"Hey, you're right -- if there's one thing I want in a future leader, it's a grasp of MLA citation style!" - Nathan Rein

"It's pretty astonishing, given that most of the Chronicle's readers are probably academics of one stripe or another, how many people responding in these comments have completely misunderstood the article. It's not saying we shouldn't teach our students to cite things properly. Rather, it's saying that citation FORMAT needn't be as high a priority as the author thinks it usually is (whether he's right or not is naother question). The point is, we should expend more pedagogical energy on getting students to read attentively and thoughtfully than on getting them to follow some precise formatting checklist. What's ironic is that the people taking issue with the article and defending precise attention to citation format seem to be making exactly the mistake the author decries in student writing, i.e., obsessively focusing on mechanics but failing to comprehend the real point of the argument." - Nathan Rein

See more in my Dopplr profile. - Nathan Rein

I'll be there from September 29th until October 3rd. See more in my Dopplr profile. - Nathan Rein

"Could you explain why you expect a picture to convince me of something that you don't want to give rational reasons for?" - Nathan Rein

"My point is, my feeling of repugnance at the Holocaust proves nothing to a person who doesn't share that feeling. If I want to make an argument, I need to show WHY -- using rational, articulate reasons -- my repugnance is should be legitimate and significant for anyone else. That's not a game. The point is that just naming a feeling isn't really enough to convince anyone of anything." - Nathan Rein

"In other words, it all comes down to the assertion that a fetus is a person. If you're talking to someone who doesn't accept that premise, what do you say to convince them you're right other than your own insistence?" - Nathan Rein

"I want to make sure it's clear that I haven't taken a position on the issue here, merely stated that you haven't yet adequately defended yours. Can you make a little more explicit the connection you're drawing between Jews and Blacks and the current discussion? I don't see it. With regard to the last sentence of your comment, are you suggesting that prior to four or five weeks of gestational age, when the heart begins to beat, abortion is morally permissible?" - Nathan Rein

"Presumably you recognize that not everyone agrees that a fetus is a human being, and that if you reject that premise, all your other arguments pretty much fall apart. If your response to that objection is simply to accuse your opponents of relying on "reasons of convenience," what you're essentially doing is demonstrating the impossibility of having a reasoned debate on the subject." - Nathan Rein

"So your point is that these arguments don't need to be rationally defensible? They just need to "feel" right?" - Nathan Rein

"That's my point. If you frame it in terms of ending a life, then it's repugnant. Reasonable people can disagree as to whether that's an accurate characterization, as I'm sure you realize." - Nathan Rein

"Actually, I think I understand your point perfectly. You're saying that not all "repugnances" are equal. You're saying that, first, some kinds of repugnance are legitimate (yours, of course) and some are not (Hitler's); and second, that repugnance is a matter of degree, and that some kinds of repugnance are greater in significance (abortion or the Holocaust) and some are relatively minor (a flasher). That sounds like common sense, and I agree with you. However, the point I'm trying to make, which I still don't think you've grasped, is that once you distinguish between "genuine" repugnance (i.e., repugnance from which it is actually possible to draw a correct moral intuition) and illegitimate repugnance (e.g., Hitler's, which provides no reliable moral intuitions), you've added a second criterion. In your comment you call it "assessing what is labeled as repugnant and putting it into context." Presumably what you mean is that simply finding something repugnant doesn't really mean..." - Nathan Rein

"If the fact that a child finds something repulsive represents the "truest" moral barometer, then I think we've got a problem. Lots of kids are repulsed by, say, albinism or severe handicaps. Or, on a more mundane level, by warts. Or by the idea of dropping a bomb on a civilian target. And I suspect that the level of repulsion you're seeing in response to your description of abortion has a lot to do with the terms you use to frame it." - Nathan Rein

"Manny, you missed my point. Of course I think the Holocaust is repugnant. The point was that if Leon Kass can invoke repugnance to reject, say, cloning (which he does elsewhere), Matt Emerson can invoke repugnance to reject "selective reduction" (I think that's the sanitized medical term for the form of abortion he's describing), a jock at a frat party can invoke repugnance to reject homosexuality, and nineteenth-century Southern politicians could involve repugnance to reject the mixing of races, well, then Hitler can invoke repugnance to reject pacifism and Jewish culture. The same "argument," if you want to call it that, is being made in each case, which I think should alert us to the fact that something is wrong with the notion of repugnance as a source for moral intuitions." - Nathan Rein

"Okay, you got me. I've only read a few of Kass's essays, mostly either in popular publications or in connection with his work on the President's Commission on bioethics. Maybe there's a real argument underlying the repugnance theme. However, I still stand by my point that repugnance, in and of itself, tells you nothing other than that someone is repulsed at something. It's a great mechanism for stirring up a strong emotional response, but the widespread existence of repugnance is a sociological and cultural fact, not a moral one." - Nathan Rein

"I don't mean to suggest that it wasn't an experience of real loss. It was. It was pretty awful, and it took some time to recover from. That night, though, as it was happening, it would never have occurred to me to think that what I was witnessing was a person, dying, and to me it still seems very strange to describe it that way." - Nathan Rein

"Thank you both for your frank responses. It's striking to me that such a range of feelings on the subject exists. My wife and I went through a miscarriage as well. I don't think of myself as the father of two living children and one dead child; I think of myself as the father of two children, period, and my wife feels the same way. The same is true of everyone else I've spoken to in my circle of friends. It's interesting how subjective these things can be." - Nathan Rein

"So if you meet someone who's been pregnant twice and had two miscarriages in the first trimester, she's also the mother of two dead children?" - Nathan Rein

"It's very wonderful, zmama, that your daughter's life has turned out so much better than it would have if she had been less lucky and, say, ended up a ward of the state and stuck in foster care. And it's also very wonderful that you have lived up to your principles so admirably. However, what does Kristin's track record in adoptions have to do with the validity of the argument she's making?" - Nathan Rein

"As has been pointed out by many of Kass's critics, the "argument from repugnance" is precisely the same argument that Hitler used in Mein Kampf to reject pacifism, which he attributed to Jewish influence. This is not to suggest that Kass is a Nazi, and I hope I won't be glibly dismissed with a reference to Godwin's law for mentioning it. The point is, people find lots of different things repugnant, and reasoning on the basis of strong emotion can be used to justify all sorts of things that I -- and presumably many other readers -- would not accept. Here's the relevant quotation: "[H]ow little true idealism has to do with playful flights of the imagination can be seen at once if we let the unspoiled child, a healthy boy, for example, judge. The same boy who feels like throwing up when he hears the tirades of a pacifist 'idealist' is ready to give his young life for the ideal of his nationality. Here the instinct of knowledge unconsciously obeys the deeper necessity of the preservation..." - Nathan Rein