Hugo de Garis

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Hugo de Garis
Born	1947 (age 72–73) Sydney, Australia
Occupation	AI expert

Hugo de Garis (born 1947, Sydney, Australia) is a retired researcher in the sub-field of artificial intelligence (AI) known as evolvable hardware. He became known in the 1990s for his research on the use of genetic algorithms to evolve artificial neural networks using three-dimensional cellular automata inside field programmable gate arrays. He claimed that this approach would enable the creation of what he terms "artificial brains" which would quickly surpass human levels of intelligence.

He has been noted for his belief that a major war between the supporters and opponents of intelligent machines, resulting in billions of deaths, is almost inevitable before the end of the 21st century. He suggests AI systems may simply eliminate the human race, and humans would be powerless to stop them because of technological singularity. This prediction has attracted debate and criticism from the AI research community, and some of its more notable members, such as Kevin Warwick, Bill Joy, Ken MacLeod, Ray Kurzweil, and Hans Moravec, have voiced their opinions on whether or not this future is likely.

De Garis originally studied theoretical physics, but he abandoned this field in favour of artificial intelligence. In 1992 he received his PhD from Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. He worked as a researcher at ATR (Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, 国際電気通信基礎技術研究所), Japan from 1994–2000, a researcher at Starlab, Brussels from 2000–2001, and associate professor of computer science at Utah State University from 2001–2006. Until his retirement in late 2010 he was a professor at Xiamen University, where he taught theoretical physics and computer science, and ran the Artificial Brain Lab.

Evolvable hardware

From 1993 to 2000 de Garis participated in a research project at ATR's Human Information Processing Research Laboratories (ATR-HIP) which aimed to create a billion-neuron artificial brain by the year 2001. The project was known as "cellular automata machine brain," or "CAM-Brain." During this 8-year span he and his fellow researchers published a series of papers in which they discussed the use of genetic algorithms to evolve neural structures inside 3D cellular automata. They argued that existing neural models had failed to produce intelligent behaviour because they were too small, and that in order to create "artificial brains" it was necessary to manually assemble tens of thousands of evolved neural modules together, with the billion neuron "CAM-Brain" requiring around 10 million modules; this idea was rejected by Igor Aleksander, who said "The point is that these puzzles are not puzzles because our neural models are not large enough."

Though it was initially envisaged that these cellular automata would run on special computers, such as MIT's "Cellular Automata Machine-8" (CAM-8), by 1996 it was realised that the model originally proposed, which required cellular automata with thousands of states, was too complex to be realised in hardware. The design was considerably simplified, and in 1997 the "collect and distribute 1 bit" ("CoDi-1Bit") model was published, and work began on a hardware implementation using Xilinx XC6264 FPGAs. This was to be known as the "CAM Brain Machine" (CBM).

The researchers evolved cellular automata for several tasks (using software simulation, not hardware):

• Reproducing the XOR function.
• Generating a bitstream that alternates between 0 and 1 three times (i.e. 000..111..000..).
• Generated a bitstream where the output alternates, but can be changed from a majority of 1s to a majority of 0s by toggling an input.
• Discriminating between two square wave inputs with a different period.
• Discriminating between horizontal lines (input on a 2D grid) and random noise.

Ultimately the project failed to produce a functional robot control system, and ATR terminated it along with the closure of ATR-HIP in February 2001.

The original aim of de Garis' work was to establish the field of "brain building" (a term of his invention) and to "create a trillion dollar industry within 20 years". Throughout the 90s his papers claimed that by 2001 the ATR "Robokoneko" (translation: kitten robot) project would develop a billion-neuron "cellular automata machine brain" (CAM-brain), with "computational power equivalent to 10,000 pentiums" that could simulate the brain of a real cat. de Garis received a US$0.4 million "fat brain building grant" to develop this. The first "CAM-brain" was delivered to ATR in 1999. After receiving a further US$1 million grant at Starlab de Garis failed to deliver a working "brain" before Starlab's bankruptcy. At USU de Garis announced he was establishing a "brain builder" group to create a second generation "CAM-brain".

Past research

de Garis published his last "CAM-Brain" research paper in 2002. He still works on evolvable hardware. Using a Celoxica FPGA board he says he can create up to 50,000 neural network modules for less than $3000.

Since 2002 he has co-authored several papers on evolutionary algorithms.

He believes that topological quantum computing is about to revolutionize computer science, and hopes that his teaching will help his students to understand its principles.

In 2008 de Garis received a 3 million Chinese yuan grant (around $436,000) to build an artificial brain for China (the China-Brain Project), as part of the Brain Builder Group at Wuhan University.

Hugo de Garis retired in 2010. Before that he was director of the artificial brains lab at Xiamen University in China. In 2013 he was studying Maths and Physics at PhD level and over the next 20 years plans to publish 500 graduate level free lecture videos. This is called "degarisMPC" and some lectures are already available.

Employment history

de Garis's original work on "CAM-brain" machines was part of an 8-year research project, from 1993 to 2000, at the ATR Human Information Processing Research Laboratories (ATR-HIP) in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. de Garis left in 2000, and ATR-HIP was closed on 28 February 2001. de Garis then moved to Starlab in Brussels, where he received a million dollars in funding from the government of Belgium ("over a third of the Brussels government's total budget for scientific research", according to de Garis). Starlab went bankrupt in June 2001. A few months later de Garis was employed as an associate professor at the computer science department of Utah State University. In May 2006 he became a professor at Wuhan University's international school of software, teaching graduate level pure mathematics, theoretical physics and computer science.

Since June 2006 he has been a member of the advisory board of Novamente, a commercial company which aims to create artificial general intelligence.

The Artilect War

Hugo De Garis believes that a major war before the end of the 21st century, resulting in billions of deaths, is almost inevitable. Intelligent machines (or "artilects", a shortened form of "artificial intellects") will be far more intelligent than humans and will threaten to attain world domination, resulting in a conflict between "Cosmists", who support the artilects, and "Terrans", who oppose them (both of these are terms of his invention). He describes this conflict as a "gigadeath" war, reinforcing the point that billions of people will be killed. This scenario has been criticised by other AI researchers, including Chris Malcolm, who described it as "entertaining science fiction horror stories which happen to have caught the attention of the popular media". Kevin Warwick called it a "hellish nightmare, as portrayed in films such as the Terminator".

In 2005, de Garis published a book describing his views on this topic entitled The Artilect War: Cosmists vs. Terrans: A Bitter Controversy Concerning Whether Humanity Should Build Godlike Massively Intelligent Machines.

Cosmism is a moral philosophy that favours building or growing strong artificial intelligence and ultimately leaving Earth to the Terrans, who oppose this path for humanity. The first half of the book describes technologies which he believes will make it possible for computers to be billions or trillions of times more intelligent than humans. He predicts that as artificial intelligence improves and becomes progressively more human-like, differing views will begin to emerge regarding how far such research should be allowed to proceed. Cosmists will foresee the massive, truly astronomical potential of substrate-independent cognition, and will therefore advocate unlimited growth in the designated fields, in the hopes that "super intelligent" machines might one day colonise the universe. It is this "cosmic" view of history, in which the fate of one single species, on one single planet, is seen as insignificant next to the fate of the known universe, that gives the Cosmists their name. Hugo identifies with that group and noted that it "would be a cosmic tragedy if humanity freezes evolution at the puny human level".

Terrans, on the other hand, will have a more "terrestrial" Earth-centred view, in which the fate of the Earth and its species (like humanity) are seen as being all-important. To Terrans, a future without humans is to be avoided at all costs, as it would represent the worst-case scenario. As such, Terrans will find themselves unable to ignore the possibility that super intelligent machines might one day cause the destruction of the human race—being very immensely intelligent and so cosmically inclined, these artilect machines may have no more moral or ethical difficulty in exterminating humanity than humans do in using medicines to cure diseases. So, Terrans will see themselves as living during the closing of a window of opportunity, to disable future artilects before they are built, after which humans will no longer have a say in the affairs of intelligent machines.

It is these two extreme ideologies which de Garis believes may herald a new world war, wherein one group with a "grand plan" (the Cosmists) will be rabidly opposed by another which feels itself to be under deadly threat from that plan (the Terrans). The factions, he predicts, may eventually war to the death because of this, as the Terrans will come to view the Cosmists as "arch-monsters" when they begin seriously discussing acceptable risks, and the probabilities of large percentages of Earth-based life going extinct. In response to this, the Cosmists will come to view the Terrans as being reactionary extremists, and will stop treating them and their ideas seriously, further aggravating the situation, possibly beyond reconciliation.

Throughout his book, de Garis states that he is ambivalent about which viewpoint he ultimately supports, and attempts to make convincing cases for both sides. He elaborates towards the end of the book that the more he thinks about it, the more he feels like a Cosmist, because he feels that despite the horrible possibility that humanity might ultimately be destroyed, perhaps inadvertently or at least indifferently, by the artilects, he cannot ignore the fact that the human species is just another link in the evolutionary chain, and must become extinct in their current form anyway, whereas the artilects could very well be the next link in that chain and therefore would be excellent candidates to carry the torch of science and exploration forward into the rest of the universe.

He relates a morally isomorphic scenario in which extraterrestrial intelligences visit the earth three billion years ago and discover two domains of life living there, one domain which is older but simpler and contemporarily dominant, but which upon closer study appears to be incapable of much further evolutionary development; and one younger domain which is struggling to survive, but which upon further study displays the potential to evolve into all the varieties of life existing on the Earth today, including humanity, and then queries the reader as to whether they would feel ethically compelled to destroy the dominant domain of life to ensure the survival of the younger one, or to destroy the younger one in order to ensure the survival of the older and more populous domain which was "there first". He states that he believes that, like himself, most of the public would feel torn or at least ambivalent about the outcome of artilects at first, but that as the technology advances, the issue would be forced and most would feel compelled to choose a side, and that as such the public consciousness of the coming issue should be raised now so that society can choose, hopefully before the factions becomes irreconcilably polarised, which outcome it prefers.

He also predicts a third group that will emerge between the two. He refers to this third party as Cyborgians or Cyborgs, because they will not be opposed to artilects as such, but desire to become artilects themselves by adding components to their own human brains, rather than falling into obsolescence. They will seek to become artilects by gradually merging themselves with machines and think that the dichotomy between the Cosmists and Terrans can be avoided because all human beings would become artilects.

The transhumanist movement are usually identified as Cyborgians.

His concept of the Cyborgians might have stemmed from a conversation with Kevin Warwick: in 2000, de Garis noted, "Just out of curiosity, I asked Kevin Warwick whether he was a Terran or a Cosmist. He said he was against the idea of artilects being built (i.e., he is Terran). I was surprised, and felt a shiver go up my spine. That moment reminded me of a biography of Lenin that I had read in my 20s in which the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks first started debating the future government of Russia. What began as an intellectual difference ended up as a Russian civil war after 1917 between the white and the red Russians".

Posthumanism

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Posthumanism or post-humanism (meaning "after humanism" or "beyond humanism") is a term with at least seven definitions according to philosopher Francesca Ferrando:

1. Antihumanism: any theory that is critical of traditional humanism and traditional ideas about humanity and the human condition.
2. Cultural posthumanism: a branch of cultural theory critical of the foundational assumptions of humanism and its legacy that examines and questions the historical notions of "human" and "human nature", often challenging typical notions of human subjectivity and embodiment and strives to move beyond archaic concepts of "human nature" to develop ones which constantly adapt to contemporary technoscientific knowledge.
3. Philosophical posthumanism: a philosophical direction which draws on cultural posthumanism, the philosophical strand examines the ethical implications of expanding the circle of moral concern and extending subjectivities beyond the human species.
4. Posthuman condition: the deconstruction of the human condition by critical theorists.
5. Posthuman transhumanism: a transhuman ideology and movement which seeks to develop and make available technologies that eliminate aging, enable immortality and greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities, in order to achieve a "posthuman future".
6. AI takeover: A variant of transhumanism in which humans will not be enhanced, but rather eventually replaced by artificial intelligences. Some philosophers, including Nick Land, promote the view that humans should embrace and accept their eventual demise. This is related to the view of "cosmism", which supports the building of strong artificial intelligence even if it may entail the end of humanity, as in their view it "would be a cosmic tragedy if humanity freezes evolution at the puny human level".
7. Voluntary Human Extinction, which seeks a "posthuman future" that in this case is a future without humans.

Philosophical posthumanism

Philosopher Ted Schatzki suggests there are two varieties of posthumanism of the philosophical kind:

One, which he calls 'objectivism', tries to counter the overemphasis of the subjective or intersubjective that pervades humanism, and emphasises the role of the nonhuman agents, whether they be animals and plants, or computers or other things.

A second prioritizes practices, especially social practices, over individuals (or individual subjects) which, they say, constitute the individual.

There may be a third kind of posthumanism, propounded by the philosopher Herman Dooyeweerd. Though he did not label it as 'posthumanism', he made an extensive and penetrating immanent critique of Humanism, and then constructed a philosophy that presupposed neither Humanist, nor Scholastic, nor Greek thought but started with a different religious ground motive. Dooyeweerd prioritized law and meaningfulness as that which enables humanity and all else to exist, behave, live, occur, etc. "Meaning is the being of all that has been created," Dooyeweerd wrote, "and the nature even of our selfhood."

Both human and nonhuman alike function subject to a common 'law-side', which is diverse, composed of a number of distinct law-spheres or aspects. The temporal being of both human and non-human is multi-aspectual; for example, both plants and humans are bodies, functioning in the biotic aspect, and both computers and humans function in the formative and lingual aspect, but humans function in the aesthetic, juridical, ethical and faith aspects too. The Dooyeweerdian version is able to incorporate and integrate both the objectivist version and the practices version, because it allows nonhuman agents their own subject-functioning in various aspects and places emphasis on aspectual functioning.

Emergence of philosophical posthumanism

Ihab Hassan, theorist in the academic study of literature, once stated:

Humanism may be coming to an end as humanism transforms itself into something one must helplessly call posthumanism.

This view predates most currents of posthumanism which have developed over the late 20th century in somewhat diverse, but complementary, domains of thought and practice. For example, Hassan is a known scholar whose theoretical writings expressly address postmodernity in society. Beyond postmodernist studies, posthumanism has been developed and deployed by various cultural theorists, often in reaction to problematic inherent assumptions within humanistic and enlightenment thought.

Theorists who both complement and contrast Hassan include Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, cyberneticists such as Gregory Bateson, Warren McCullouch, Norbert Wiener, Bruno Latour, Cary Wolfe, Elaine Graham, N. Katherine Hayles, Benjamin H. Bratton, Donna Haraway, Peter Sloterdijk, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, Evan Thompson, Francisco Varela, Humberto Maturana, Timothy Morton, and Douglas Kellner. Among the theorists are philosophers, such as Robert Pepperell, who have written about a "posthuman condition", which is often substituted for the term "posthumanism".

Posthumanism differs from classical humanism by relegating humanity back to one of many natural species, thereby rejecting any claims founded on anthropocentric dominance. According to this claim, humans have no inherent rights to destroy nature or set themselves above it in ethical considerations a priori. Human knowledge is also reduced to a less controlling position, previously seen as the defining aspect of the world. Human rights exist on a spectrum with animal rights and posthuman rights. The limitations and fallibility of human intelligence are confessed, even though it does not imply abandoning the rational tradition of humanism.

Proponents of a posthuman discourse, suggest that innovative advancements and emerging technologies have transcended the traditional model of the human, as proposed by Descartes among others associated with philosophy of the Enlightenment period. In contrast to humanism, the discourse of posthumanism seeks to redefine the boundaries surrounding modern philosophical understanding of the human. Posthumanism represents an evolution of thought beyond that of the contemporary social boundaries and is predicated on the seeking of truth within a postmodern context. In so doing, it rejects previous attempts to establish 'anthropological universals' that are imbued with anthropocentric assumptions.

Recently, critics have sought to describe the emergence of posthumanism as a critical moment in modernity, arguing for the origins of key posthuman ideas in modern fiction, in Nietzsche, or in a modernist response to the crisis of historicity.

The philosopher Michel Foucault placed posthumanism within a context that differentiated humanism from enlightenment thought. According to Foucault, the two existed in a state of tension: as humanism sought to establish norms while Enlightenment thought attempted to transcend all that is material, including the boundaries that are constructed by humanistic thought. Drawing on the Enlightenment’s challenges to the boundaries of humanism, posthumanism rejects the various assumptions of human dogmas (anthropological, political, scientific) and takes the next step by attempting to change the nature of thought about what it means to be human. This requires not only decentering the human in multiple discourses (evolutionary, ecological, technological) but also examining those discourses to uncover inherent humanistic, anthropocentric, normative notions of humanness and the concept of the human.

Contemporary posthuman discourse

Posthumanistic discourse aims to open up spaces to examine what it means to be human and critically question the concept of "the human" in light of current cultural and historical contexts. In her book How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles, writes about the struggle between different versions of the posthuman as it continually co-evolves alongside intelligent machines. Such coevolution, according to some strands of the posthuman discourse, allows one to extend their subjective understandings of real experiences beyond the boundaries of embodied existence. According to Hayles's view of posthuman, often referred to as technological posthumanism, visual perception and digital representations thus paradoxically become ever more salient. Even as one seeks to extend knowledge by deconstructing perceived boundaries, it is these same boundaries that make knowledge acquisition possible. The use of technology in a contemporary society is thought to complicate this relationship.

Hayles discusses the translation of human bodies into information (as suggested by Hans Moravec) in order to illuminate how the boundaries of our embodied reality have been compromised in the current age and how narrow definitions of humanness no longer apply. Because of this, according to Hayles, posthumanism is characterized by a loss of subjectivity based on bodily boundaries. This strand of posthumanism, including the changing notion of subjectivity and the disruption of ideas concerning what it means to be human, is often associated with Donna Haraway’s concept of the cyborg. However, Haraway has distanced herself from posthumanistic discourse due to other theorists’ use of the term to promote utopian views of technological innovation to extend the human biological capacity (even though these notions would more correctly fall into the realm of transhumanism).

While posthumanism is a broad and complex ideology, it has relevant implications today and for the future. It attempts to redefine social structures without inherently humanly or even biological origins, but rather in terms of social and psychological systems where consciousness and communication could potentially exist as unique disembodied entities. Questions subsequently emerge with respect to the current use and the future of technology in shaping human existence, as do new concerns with regards to language, symbolism, subjectivity, phenomenology, ethics, justice and creativity.

Relationship with transhumanism

Sociologist James Hughes comments that there is considerable confusion between the two terms. In the introduction to their book on post- and transhumanism, Robert Ranisch and Stefan Sorgner address the source of this confusion, stating that posthumanism is often used as an umbrella term that includes both transhumanism and critical posthumanism.

Although both subjects relate to the future of humanity, they differ in their view of anthropocentrism. Pramod Nayar, author of Posthumanism, states that posthumanism has two main branches: ontological and critical. Ontological posthumanism is synonymous with transhumanism. The subject is regarded as “an intensification of humanism.” Transhumanist thought suggests that humans are not post human yet, but that human enhancement, often through technological advancement and application, is the passage of becoming post human. Transhumanism retains humanism’s focus on the homo sapien as the center of the world but also considers technology to be an integral aid to human progression. Critical posthumanism, however, is opposed to these views. Critical posthumanism “rejects both human exceptionalism (the idea that humans are unique creatures) and human instrumentalism (that humans have a right to control the natural world).” These contrasting views on the importance of human beings are the main distinctions between the two subjects.

Transhumanism is also more ingrained in popular culture than critical posthumanism, especially in science fiction. The term is referred to by Pramod Nayar as "the pop posthumanism of cinema and pop culture."

Criticism

Some critics have argued that all forms of posthumanism, including transhumanism, have more in common than their respective proponents realize. Linking these different approaches, Paul James suggests that 'the key political problem is that, in effect, the position allows the human as a category of being to flow down the plughole of history':

This is ontologically critical. Unlike the naming of ‘postmodernism’ where the ‘post’ does not infer the end of what it previously meant to be human (just the passing of the dominance of the modern) the posthumanists are playing a serious game where the human, in all its ontological variability, disappears in the name of saving something unspecified about us as merely a motley co-location of individuals and communities.

However, some posthumanists in the humanities and the arts are critical of transhumanism (the brunt of Paul James's criticism), in part, because they argue that it incorporates and extends many of the values of Enlightenment humanism and classical liberalism, namely scientism, according to performance philosopher Shannon Bell:

Altruism, mutualism, humanism are the soft and slimy virtues that underpin liberal capitalism. Humanism has always been integrated into discourses of exploitation: colonialism, imperialism, neoimperialism, democracy, and of course, American democratization. One of the serious flaws in transhumanism is the importation of liberal-human values to the biotechno enhancement of the human. Posthumanism has a much stronger critical edge attempting to develop through enactment new understandings of the self and others, essence, consciousness, intelligence, reason, agency, intimacy, life, embodiment, identity and the body.

While many modern leaders of thought are accepting of nature of ideologies described by posthumanism, some are more skeptical of the term. Donna Haraway, the author of A Cyborg Manifesto, has outspokenly rejected the term, though acknowledges a philosophical alignment with posthumanism. Haraway opts instead for the term of companion species, referring to nonhuman entities with which humans coexist.

Questions of race, some argue, are suspiciously elided within the "turn" to posthumanism. Noting that the terms "post" and "human" are already loaded with racial meaning, critical theorist Zakiyyah Iman Jackson argues that the impulse to move "beyond" the human within posthumanism too often ignores "praxes of humanity and critiques produced by black people", including Frantz Fanon and Aime Cesaire to Hortense Spillers and Fred Moten. Interrogating the conceptual grounds in which such a mode of “beyond” is rendered legible and viable, Jackson argues that it is important to observe that "blackness conditions and constitutes the very nonhuman disruption and/or disruption" which posthumanists invite. In other words, given that race in general and blackness in particular constitutes the very terms through which human/nonhuman distinctions are made, for example in enduring legacies of scientific racism, a gesture toward a “beyond” actually “returns us to a Eurocentric transcendentalism long challenged”.

Posthumanist scholarship, due to characteristic rhetorical techniques, is also frequently subject to the same critiques commonly made of postmodernist scholarship in the 1980s and 1990s.

 

Antihumanism

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Not to be confused with Misanthropy.

In social theory and philosophy, antihumanism or anti-humanism is a theory that is critical of traditional humanism, traditional ideas about humanity and the human condition. Central to antihumanism is the view that philosophical anthropology and its concepts of "human nature", "man" or "humanity" should be rejected as historically relative, ideological or metaphysical.

Origins

In the late 18th and 19th centuries, the philosophy of humanism was a cornerstone of the Enlightenment. Human history was seen as a product of human thought and action, to be understood through the categories of "consciousness", "agency", "choice", "responsibility", "moral values". Human beings were viewed as possessing common essential features. From the belief in a universal moral core of humanity, it followed that all persons were inherently free and equal. For liberal humanists such as Immanuel Kant, the universal law of reason was a guide towards total emancipation from any kind of tyranny.

Criticism of humanism as being over-idealistic began in the 19th Century. For Friedrich Nietzsche, humanism was nothing more than an empty figure of speech – a secular version of theism. Max Stirner expressed a similar position in his book The Ego and Its Own, published several decades before Nietzsche's work. Nietzsche argues in Genealogy of Morals that human rights exist as a means for the weak to constrain the strong; as such, they do not facilitate the emancipation of life, but instead deny it.

The young Karl Marx is sometimes considered a humanist, as he rejected the idea of human rights as a symptom of the very dehumanization they were intended to oppose. Given that capitalism forces individuals to behave in an egoistic manner, they are in constant conflict with one another, and are thus in need of rights to protect themselves. True emancipation, he asserted, could only come through the establishment of communism, which abolishes private property. According to many anti-humanists, such as Louis Althusser, mature Marx sees the idea of "humanity" as an unreal abstraction that masks conflicts between antagonistic classes; since human rights are abstract, the justice and equality they protect is also abstract, permitting extreme inequalities in reality.

In the 20th century, the view of humans as rationally autonomous was challenged by Sigmund Freud, who believed humans to be largely driven by unconscious irrational desires.

Martin Heidegger viewed humanism as a metaphysical philosophy that ascribes to humanity a universal essence and privileges it above all other forms of existence. For Heidegger, humanism takes consciousness as the paradigm of philosophy, leading it to a subjectivism and idealism that must be avoided. Like Hegel before him, Heidegger rejected the Kantian notion of autonomy, pointing out that humans were social and historical beings, as well as Kant's notion of a constituting consciousness. In Heidegger's philosophy, Being (Sein) and human Being (Dasein) are a primary unity. Dualisms of subject and object, consciousness and being, humanity and nature are inauthentic derivations from this. In the Letter on Humanism (1947), Heidegger distances himself from both humanism and existentialism. He argues that existentialism does not overcome metaphysics, as it merely reverses the basic metaphysical tenet that essence precedes existence. These metaphysical categories must instead be dismantled.

Positivism and "scientism"

Positivism is a philosophy of science based on the view that in the social as well as natural sciences, information derived from sensory experience, and logical and mathematical treatments of such data, are together the exclusive source of all authoritative knowledge. Positivism assumes that there is valid knowledge (truth) only in scientific knowledge. Obtaining and verifying data that can be received from the senses is known as empirical evidence. This view holds that society operates according to general laws that dictate the existence and interaction of ontologically real objects in the physical world. Introspective and intuitional attempts to gain knowledge are rejected. Though the positivist approach has been a recurrent theme in the history of Western thought, the concept was developed in the modern sense in the early 19th century by the philosopher and founding sociologist, Auguste Comte. Comte argued that society operates according to its own quasi-absolute laws, much as the physical world operates according to gravity and other absolute laws of nature.

Humanist thinker Tzvetan Todorov has identified within modernity a trend of thought which emphasizes science and within it tends towards a deterministic view of the world. He clearly identifies positivist theorist Auguste Comte as an important proponent of this view. For Todorov "Scientism does not eliminate the will but decides that since the results of science are valid for everyone, this will must be something shared, not individual. In practice, the individual must submit to the collectivity, which 'knows' better than he does." The autonomy of the will is maintained, but it is the will of the group, not the person...scientism has flourished in two very different political contexts...The first variant of scientism was put into practice by totalitarian regimes." A similar criticism can be found in the work associated with the Frankfurt School of social research. Antipositivism would be further facilitated by rejections of scientism; or science as ideology. Jürgen Habermas argues, in his On the Logic of the Social Sciences (1967), that "the positivist thesis of unified science, which assimilates all the sciences to a natural-scientific model, fails because of the intimate relationship between the social sciences and history, and the fact that they are based on a situation-specific understanding of meaning that can be explicated only hermeneutically ... access to a symbolically prestructured reality cannot be gained by observation alone."

Structuralism

Structuralism was developed in post-war Paris as a response to the perceived contradiction between the free subject of philosophy and the determined subject of the human sciences. It drew on the systematic linguistics of Saussure for a view of language and culture as a conventional system of signs preceding the individual subject's entry into them. In the study of linguistics the structuralists saw an objectivity and scientificity that contrasted with the humanist emphasis on creativity, freedom and purpose.

Saussure held that individual units of linguistic signification - signs - only enjoy their individuality and their power to signify by virtue of their contrasts or oppositions with other units in the same symbolic system. For Saussure, the sign is a mysterious unification of a sound and a thought. Nothing links the two: each sound and thought is in principle exchangeable for other sounds or concepts. A sign is only significant as a result of the total system in which it functions. To communicate by particular forms of speech and action (parole) is itself to presuppose a general body of rules (langue). The concrete piece of behaviour and the system that enables it to mean something mutually entail each other. The very act of identifying what they say already implies structures. Signs are not at the service of a subject; they do not pre-exist the relations of difference between them. We cannot seek an exit from this purely relational system. The individual is always subordinate to the code. Linguistic study must abstract from the subjective phsyical, physiological and psychological aspects of language to concentrate on langue as a self-contained whole.

The structuralist anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss proclaimed that the goal of the human sciences was "not to constitute, but to dissolve man". He systematised a structuralist analysis of culture that incorporated ideas and methods from Saussure's model of language as a system of signifiers and signifieds. His work employed Saussurean technical terms such as langue and parole, as well as the distinction between synchronic analysis (abstracting a system as if it were timeless) and diachronic analysis (where temporal duration is factored in). He paid little attention to the individual and instead concentrated on systems of signs as they operated in primitive societies. For Levi-Strauss, cultural choice was always pre-constrained by a signifying convention. Everything in experience was matter for communication codes. The structure of this system was not devised by anyone and was not present in the minds of its users, but nonetheless could be discerned by a scientific observer.

The semiological work of Roland Barthes (1977) decried the cult of the author and indeed proclaimed his death.

Jacques Lacan's reformulation of psychoanalysis based on linguistics inevitably led to a similar diminishment of the concept of the autonomous individual: "man with a discourse on freedom which must certainly be called delusional...produced as it is by an animal at the mercy of language". According to Lacan, an individual is not born human but only becomes so through incorporation into a cultural order that Lacan terms The Symbolic. Access to this order proceeds by way of a "mirror stage", where a child models itself upon its own reflection in a mirror. Language allows us to impose order on our desires at this "Imaginary" stage of development. The unconscious, which exists prior to this Symbolic Order, must submit to the Symbolic Law. Since the unconscious is only accessible to the psychoanalyst in language, the most he or she can do is decode the conscious statements of the patient. This decoding can only take place within a signifying chain; the signified of unconscious discourse remains unattainable. It resides in a pre-signified dimension inaccessible to language that Lacan calls "The Real". From this, it follows that it is impossible to express subjectivity. Conscious discourse is the effect of a meaning beyond the reach of a speaking subject. The ego is a fiction that covers over a series of effects arrived at independently of the mind itself.

Taking a lead from Brecht's twin attack on bourgeois and socialist humanism, structural Marxist Louis Althusser used the term "antihumanism" in an attack against Marxist humanists, whose position he considered a revisionist movement. He believed humanism to be a bourgeois individualist philosophy that posits a "human essence" through which there is potential for authenticity and common human purpose. This essence does not exist: it is a formal structure of thought whose content is determined by the dominant interests of each historical epoch. Socialist humanism is similarly an ethical and thus ideological phenomenon. Since its argument rests on a moral and ethical basis, it reflects the reality of exploitation and discrimination that gives rise to it but never truly grasps it in thought. Marxist theory must go beyond this to a scientific analysis that directs to underlying forces such as economic relations and social institutions.

Althusser considered "structure" and "social relations" to have primacy over individual consciousness, opposing the philosophy of the subject. For Althusser, individuals are not constitutive of the social process, but are instead its supports or effects. Society constructs the individual in its own image through its ideologies: the beliefs, desires, preferences and judgements of the human individual are the effects of social practices. Where Marxist humanists such as Georg Lukács believed revolution was contingent on the development of the class consciousness of an historical subject - the proletariat - Althusser's antihumanism removed the role of human agency; history was a process without a subject.

Post-structuralism

Post-structuralist Jacques Derrida continued structuralism's obsession with language as key to understanding all aspects of individual and social being, as well as its problematization of the human subject, but rejected its commitment to scientific objectivity. Derrida argued that if signs of language are only significant by virtue of their relations of difference with all other signs in the same system, then meaning is based purely on the play of differences, and is never truly present. He claimed that the fundamentally ambiguous nature of language makes intention unknowable, attacked Enlightenment perfectionism and condemned as futile the existentialist quest for authenticity in the face of the all-embracing network of signs. The world itself is text; a reference to a pure meaning prior to language cannot be expressed in it. As he stressed, "the subject is not some meta-linguistic substance or identity, some pure cogito of self-presence; it is always inscribed in language".

Michel Foucault challenged the foundational aspects of Enlightenment humanism. He rejected absolute categories of epistemology (truth or certainty) and philosophical anthropology (the subject, influence, tradition, class consciousness), in a manner not unlike Nietzsche's earlier dismissal of the categories of reason, morality, spirt, ego, motivation as philosophical substitutes for God. Foucault argued that modern values either produced counter-emancipatory results directly, or matched increased "freedom" with increased and disciplinary normatization. His anti-humanist skepticism extended to attempts to ground theory in human feeling, as much as in human reason, maintaining that both were historically contingent constructs, rather than the universals humanism maintained. In The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault dismissed history as "humanist anthropology". The methodology of his work focused not on the reality that lies behind the categories of "insanity", "criminality", "delinquency" and "sexuality", but on how these ideas were constructed by discourses.

Cultural examples

The heroine of the novel Nice Work begins by defining herself as a semiotic materialist, "a subject position in an infinite web of discourses – the discourses of power, sex, family, science, religion, poetry, etc." Charged with taking a bleak deterministic view, she retorts, "antihumanist, yes; inhuman, no...the truly determined subject is he who is not aware of the discursive formations that determine him". However, with greater life-experience, she comes closer to accepting that post-structuralism is an intriguing philosophical game, but probably meaningless to those who have not yet even gained awareness of humanism itself. In his critique of humanist approaches to popular film, Timothy Laurie suggests that in new animated films from DreamWorks and Pixar "the 'human' is now able to become a site of amoral disturbance, rather than – or at least, in addition to – being a model of exemplary behaviour for junior audiences".

 

Zero tolerance

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_tolerance

A zero-tolerance policy is one which imposes a punishment for every infraction of a stated rule. Zero-tolerance policies forbid people in positions of authority from exercising discretion or changing punishments to fit the circumstances subjectively; they are required to impose a pre-determined punishment regardless of individual culpability, extenuating circumstances, or history. This pre-determined punishment, whether mild or severe, is always meted out.

Zero-tolerance policies are studied in criminology and are common in formal and informal policing systems around the world. The policies also appear in informal situations where there may be sexual harassment or Internet misuse in educational and workplace environments. In 2014, the mass incarceration in the United States based upon minor offenses has resulted in an outcry on the use of zero tolerance in schools and communities.

Little evidence supports the claimed effectiveness of zero-tolerance policies. One underlying problem is that there are a great many reasons why people hesitate to intervene, or to report behavior they find to be unacceptable or unlawful. Zero-tolerance policies address, at best, only a few of these reasons.

Etymology

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the first recorded use of the term "zero tolerance" was in 1972. It was originally used in politics in the United States.

An earlier use of the term came in the mid-1960s, in reference to an absolute ban of the pesticide heptachlor by the United States Food and Drug Administration; for example, in an article that appeared in the June 1963 issue of Popular Mechanics, it is stated that "Heptachlor, though, is even more toxic and has been given a 'zero tolerance' by the FDA; that is, not even the slightest trace of heptachlor is permitted on food."

History

The idea behind zero-tolerance policies can be traced back to the Safe and Clean Neighborhoods Act, approved in New Jersey in 1973, which has the same underlying assumptions. The ideas behind the 1973 New Jersey policy were later popularized in 1982, when a US cultural magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, published an article by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling about the broken windows theory of crime. Their name for the idea comes from the following example:

Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside. Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants.

According to scholars, zero tolerance is the concept of giving carte blanche to the police for the inflexible repression of minor offenses, homeless people, and the disorders associated with them.  A well-known criticism to this approach is that it redefines social problems in terms of security, it considers the poor as criminals, and it reduces crimes to only "street crimes", those committed by lower social classes, excluding white-collar crimes.

On the historical examples of the application of zero tolerance kind of policies, nearly all the scientific studies conclude that it didn't play a leading role in the reduction of crimes, a role which is claimed by its advocates. On the other hand, large majorities of people who are living in communities in which zero tolerance policing has been followed believe that in fact it has played a key, leading role in reducing crime in their communities. It has been alleged that in New York City, the decline of crimes rate started well before Rudy Giuliani came to power in 1993, and none of the decreasing processes had particular inflection under him and that in the same period, the decrease in crime was the same in the other major US cities, even those with an opposite security policy. But the experience of the vast majority of New Yorkers led them to precisely the opposite conclusion and allowed a Republican to win and retain the Mayor's office for the first time in decades in large part because of the perception that zero tolerance policing was key to the improving crime situation in New York City. On the other hand, some argue that in the years 1984–87 New York already experienced a policy similar to Giuliani's one, but it faced a crime increase instead.

Two American specialists, Edward Maguire, a Professor at American University, and John Eck from the University of Cincinnati, rigorously evaluated all the scientific work designed to test the effectiveness of the police in the fight against crime. They concluded that "neither the number of policemen engaged in the battle, or internal changes and organizational culture of law enforcement agencies (such as the introduction of community policing) have by themselves any impact on the evolution of offenses." They argue that crime decrease was due not to the work of the police and judiciary, but to economic and demographic factors. The main ones were an unprecedented economic growth with jobs for millions of young people, and a shift from the use of crack towards other drugs.

An alternative argument comes from Kelling and William Bratton, Giuliani's original police chief, who argue that broken windows policing methods did contribute to the decrease in crime, but that they were not a form of zero tolerance:

Critics use the term "zero tolerance" in a pejorative sense to suggest that Broken Windows policing is a form of zealotry—the imposition of rigid, moralistic standards of behavior on diverse populations. It is not. Broken Windows is a highly discretionary police activity that requires careful training, guidelines, and supervision, as well as an ongoing dialogue with neighborhoods and communities to ensure that it is properly conducted

Sheldon Wein has set out a list of six characteristics of a zero tolerance policy:

1. Full enforcement (all those for whom there is adequate evidence that they have violated the rule are to be identified)
2. Lack of prosecutorial discretion (for every plausibly accused person, it is determined whether the person has in fact violated the policy)
3. Strict constructivist interpretation (no room for narrow interpretation of the rule)
4. Strict liability (no excuses or justifications)
5. Mandatory punishment (not under a mandatory minimum penalty)
6. Harsh punishment (mandatory minimum penalty is considered relatively harsh given the nature of the offence).

Wein sees these points as representing "focal meaning" of the concept, namely, that not each one need be met literally, yet that any policy that clearly meets all six of these conditions would definitely be seen as a case of a zero tolerance policy.

Applications

Bullying in the workplace

Various institutions have undertaken zero-tolerance policies, for example, in the military, in the workplace, and in schools, in an effort to eliminate various kinds of illegal behavior, such as harassment. Proponents hope that such policies will underscore the commitment of administrators to prevent such behavior. Others raise a concern about that use of zero-tolerance policies, a concern that derives from analysis of errors of omission versus errors of commission. The reasoning is that failure to proscribe unacceptable behavior may lead to errors of omission, and too little will be done. However, zero tolerance may be seen as a kind of ruthless management, which may lead to a perception of "too much being done." If people fear that their co-workers or fellow students may be fired, terminated, or expelled, they may not come forward at all when they see behavior deemed unacceptable. (That is a classic example of Type I and type II errors.) Too stringent a policy may actually reduce reports of illegal behavior.

Narcotics

In the United States, zero tolerance, as an approach against drugs, was originally designed as a part of the War on Drugs under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, ostensibly to curb the transfer of drugs at the borders. Law enforcement was to target the drug users rather than the transporters or suppliers under the assumptions that harsh sentences and strict enforcement of personal use would reduce demand and strike at root cause of the drug problem. The policy did not require additional laws; instead, existing law was enacted with less leniency. Similar concepts in other countries, such as Sweden, Italy, Japan, Singapore, China, India, and Russia have since been labeled zero tolerance.

A consistence of zero tolerance is the absolute dichotomy between the legality of any use and no use, equating all illicit drugs and any form of use as undesirable and harmful to society. That is contrasting to viewpoints of those who stress the disparity in harmfulness among drugs and would like to distinguish between occasional drug use and problem drug use. Although some harm reductionists also see drug use as generally undesirable, they hold that the resources would do more good if they were allocated toward helping problem drug users, instead of combating all drug users. For example, research from Switzerland indicates that emphasis on problem drug users "seems to have contributed to the image of heroin as unattractive for young people."

More generally, zero-tolerance advocates holds the aim at ridding the society of all illicit drug use and that criminal justice has an important role in that endeavor. The Swedish parliament for example set the vision a drug-free society as the official goal for the drug policy in 1978. The visions were to prompt new practices inspired by Nils Bejerot, which were later called zero tolerance. In 1980, the Swedish attorney general dropped the practice of giving waivers for possession of drugs for personal use after years of lowering the thresholds. The same year, police began to prioritize drug users and street-level drug crimes over drug distributors. In 1988, all non-medicinally prescribed usage became illegal, and in 1993, the enforcement of personal use was eased by permitting the police to take blood or urine samples from suspects. The unrelenting approach towards drug users, together with generous treatment opportunities, has received UNODC's approval, and it is cited by the UN as one of the main reasons for Sweden's relatively low drug prevalence rates. However, that interpretation of the statistics and the more general success of Sweden's drug policies are disputed.

Driving

The term is used in the context of driving under the influence of alcohol to refer to a lower illegal blood alcohol content for drivers under the age of 21. In the US, the legal limit in almost all states is .08%. Utah is the exception, with .05% being the limit. For drivers under 21, the prohibited level in 16 states is .01% or .02%, which is also true in Puerto Rico, despite its drinking age of 18.

In Europe, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, and Sweden have zero-tolerance laws for drugs and driving, as opposed to the other main legal approach in which laws forbidding impaired driving are enacted instead. Legislation varies in different countries that practice zero tolerance on drug use for drivers. Only a limited set of (common) drugs is included in the zero-tolerance legislation in Germany and Belgium, but in Finland and Sweden, all controlled substances fall into the scope of zero tolerance unless they are covered by a prescription.

In Argentina, the Cordoba State Highway Patrol enforces a zero-tolerance policy.

In Asia, Japan also practices zero-tolerance, and people will receive a fine and can be fired for DUI, even the next morning if there are still traces of alcohol. Foreigners may even be deported.

In schools

Zero-tolerance policies have been adopted in schools and other education venues around the world. The policies are usually promoted as preventing drug abuse, violence, and gang activity in schools. In schools, common zero-tolerance policies concern possession or use of drugs or weapons. Students and sometimes staff, parents, and other visitors, who possess a banned item or perform any prohibited action for any reason are automatically punished. School administrators are barred from using their judgment, reducing severe punishments to be proportional to minor offenses, or considering extenuating circumstances. For example, the policies treat possession of a knife identically, regardless of whether the knife is a blunt table knife being used to eat a meal, a craft knife used in an art class, or switchblade with no reasonable practical or educational value. Consequently, the policies are sometimes derided as "zero-intelligence policies".

There is no credible evidence of zero tolerance reducing violence or drug abuse by students.

The unintended negative consequences are clearly documented and sometimes severe: school suspension and expulsion result in a number of negative outcomes for both schools and students.

Although the policies are facially neutral, minority children are the most likely to suffer the negative consequences of zero tolerance.

The policies have also resulted in embarrassing publicity for schools and have been struck down by the courts and by Departments of Education, and they have been weakened by legislatures.

Criticism

Some critics have argued that zero-tolerance policing violates the Law Enforcement Code of Conduct passed by the International Association of Chiefs of Police: "The fundamental duties of a police officer include serving the community, safeguarding lives and property, protecting the innocent, keeping the peace and ensuring the rights of all to liberty, equality and justice". The code requires that police behave in a courteous and fair manner, treat all citizens in a respectable and decent manner, never use unnecessary force. As Robinson (2002: 206) explains:

Zero-tolerance policing runs counter to community policing and logical crime prevention efforts. To whatever degree street sweeps are viewed by citizens as brutal, suspect, militaristic, or the biased efforts of "outsiders," citizens will be discouraged from taking active roles in community building activities and crime prevention initiatives in conjunction with the police. Perhaps this is why the communities that most need neighborhood watch programs are least likely to be populated by residents who take active roles in them.

Critics say that zero-tolerance policing fails because it destroys several important requisites for successful community policing; police accountability, openness to the public, and community cooperation (Cox and Wade 1998: 106).

Zero tolerance violates principles of health and human services and standards for the education and healthy growth of children, families and communities. Even traditional community service providers in the 1970s aimed for "services for all" (such as zero reject), instead of 100% societal exclusion (zero tolerance). Public administration and disabilityhas supported principles that include education, employment, housing, transportation, recreation, and political participation in the community. Which zero-tolerance groups claim are not a right in the US.

Opponents of zero tolerance believe that such a policy neglects investigation on a case-by-case basis and may lead to unreasonably harsh penalties for crimes that may not warrant such penalties in reality. Another criticism of zero-tolerance policies is that it gives officers and the legal system little discretion in dealing with offenders. Zero-tolerance policies may prohibit their enforcers from making the punishment fit the crime.

It also may cause offenders to go farther since they know that if the punishment is the same for a little or a lot. That phenomenon of human nature is described in an adage that dates back to at least the 17th century, "might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb". Until 1820, the English law prescribed hanging for stealing anything worth more than one shilling, whether it was a low-value lamb or a whole flock of sheep.

In the kids for cash scandal, Judge Mark Ciavarella, who promoted a platform of zero tolerance, received kickbacks for constructing a private prison that housed juvenile offenders and then proceeded to fill the prison by sentencing children to extended stays in juvenile detention for offenses as minimal as mocking a principal on Myspace, scuffles in hallways, trespassing in a vacant building, and shoplifting DVDs from Walmart. Critics of zero-tolerance policies argue that harsh punishments for minor offences are normalized. The documentary Kids for Cash interviews experts on adolescent behaviour who argue that the zero-tolerance model has become a dominant approach to policing juvenile offences after the Columbine shooting.

Recently, argumentation theorists (especially Sheldon Wein) have suggested that, frequently, when people advocate adopting a zero tolerance policy, they commit what he has called the "zero tolerance fallacy". Subsequently, Wein has proposed standards which arguments for zero tolerance policies must meet in order to avoid such fallacious inferences.

Law and order (politics)

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In modern politics, law and order, also known as tough on crime and the War on Crime, is demands for a strict criminal justice system, especially in relation to violent and property crime, through stricter criminal penalties. These penalties may include longer terms of imprisonment, mandatory sentencing, three-strikes laws, and in some countries, capital punishment. The War on Crime has been credited with facilitating greater militarization of police and contributing to mass incarceration in the United States.

Supporters of "law and order", generally from the right-wing, argue that incarceration is the most effective means of crime prevention. Opponents, typically left-wing, argue that a system of harsh criminal punishment is ultimately ineffective because it self-perpetuates crime and does not address underlying or systemic causes of crime.

To differing extents, crime has also been a prominent issue in Canadian, British, Australian, South African, French, German, and New Zealand politics.

Political issue in the United States

Both the concept and the exact phrase "Law and order" became a powerful political theme in the United States during the late 1960s. The leading proponents were two Republicans, the governor of California Ronald Reagan and presidential candidate Richard Nixon. Nixon targeted, among others, working class White ethnics in northern cities to turn against the Democratic Party, blaming it for being soft on crime and rioters.

Previously, political demand for "law and order" has been made much earlier before, by John Adams in the 1780s and 1790s. It was a political slogan in Kentucky around 1900 after the assassination of Governor William Goebel. The term was used by Barry Goldwater in his run for president in 1964.

Flamm (2005) argues that liberals were unable to craft a compelling message for anxious voters. Instead, they either ignored the crime crisis, claimed that law and order was a racist ruse, or maintained that social programs would solve the "root causes" of civil disorder, which by 1968 seemed increasingly unlikely and contributed to a loss of faith in the ability of the government to do what it was sworn to do—protect personal security and private property. Conservatives rejected the liberal notions. "How long are we going to abdicate law and order," House GOP leader Gerald Ford demanded in 1966, "in favor of a soft social theory that the man who heaves a brick through your window or tosses a firebomb into your car is simply the misunderstood and underprivileged product of a broken home?"

Flamm (2005) documents how conservatives constructed a persuasive message that argued that the Civil Rights Movement had contributed to racial unrest and President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society had rewarded rather than punished the perpetrators of violence. Conservatives demanded that the national government should promote respect for law and order and contempt for those who violated it, regardless of cause. In January, 1965, Johnson himself called for a "war on crime", and with Congressional approval of the Law Enforcement Assistance Act of 1965 and Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 directed federal funding to local police.

The number of prisoners tripled from 500,000 in 1980 to 1.5 million in 1994. Conservatives at the state level built many more prisons and convicts served much longer terms, with less parole. The paradigm asserts that prisoners serving longer sentences would be much older upon release, thus reducing the probability of subsequent offences.

Riots

Although the Civil Rights Act of July 2, 1964 forbade all discrimination on the basis of race, in 1965 police brutality towards a Black man during a traffic stop resulted in a major riot among the Black community in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, the government's response to which is considered by many to have been a failure. Indeed, every summer from 1964 through 1970 was a "long hot summer", though 1967 is particularly called that since 159 riots occurred that year. Additionally, after the April 4, 1968 murder of Martin Luther King, a new wave of riots broke out in over 100 cities, with nights of violence against police and looting and burning of local white-owned businesses. The inner neighborhoods of many major cities, such as Detroit, Los Angeles, Newark and New York, were burned out. National Guard and Army troops were called out. At one point machine gun units were stationed on the steps of the Capitol building in Washington to prevent rioters from burning it down.

Crimes

Secondly there was a dramatic rise in violent street crime, including drug-related murders, as well as armed robberies, rapes and violent assaults. Inner city neighborhoods became far more violent and people tried to move out to safer ones. The number of violent crimes more than tripled from 288,000 in 1960 (including 9,110 murders) to 1,040,000 in 1975 (including 20,510 murders). Then the numbers levelled off.

In response to sharply rising rates of crime in the 1960s, treatment of criminal offenders, both accused and convicted, became a highly divisive topic in the 1968 U.S. Presidential Election. Republican Vice Presidential candidate Spiro Agnew, then the governor of Maryland, often used the expression; Agnew and Nixon won and were reelected in 1972.

Notorious crimes by released murders occurred in the 1980s and 1990s, are often credited with influencing politics along "law and order" lines. Most notably the release of the murderer Willie Horton who committed a rape and a rampage of severe violence when he was released, is generally credited with favoring the election of President George H. W. Bush over the man who released him, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis. Whatever the cause, Bush beat Dukakis by a margin of both popular and electoral college votes that has not been surpassed since 1988. Also, the release of the murderer Reginald McFadden, who went on a serial murder and rape spree,  by the acting governor of Pennsylvania, Mark Singel, may have been a contributing factor in the 1994 election of Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, in which Ridge defeated Singel by a margin of 45% to 39%.

Results

Advocates of stricter policies toward crime and those accused of crime have won many victories since the issue became important. Highlights include stringent laws dealing with the sale and use of illicit drugs. For example, the Rockefeller drug laws passed in New York state in 1973—and later, laws mandating tougher sentences for repeat offenders, such as the three-strikes laws adopted by many U.S. states starting in 1993 and the re-legalization of the death penalty in several states.

Opponents of these and similar laws have often accused advocates of racism. Civil rights groups have steadfastly opposed the trend toward harsher measures generally. The law-and-order issue caused a deep rift within the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and 1970s, and this rift was seen by many political scientists as a major contributing factor in Ronald Reagan's two successful presidential runs in 1980 and 1984. In both elections, millions of registered Democrats voted for Reagan, and they collectively became known as "Reagan Democrats". Many of these voters eventually changed their party registration and became Republicans, especially in the South.

Though violent crimes are the primary focus of law-and-order advocates, quality-of-life crimes are sometimes also included under the law-and-order umbrella, particularly in local elections. A tough stance on this matter greatly helped Rudy Giuliani win two terms as mayor of New York in the 1990s, and was also widely cited as propelling Gavin Newsom to victory over a more liberal opponent in San Francisco's mayoral election of 2003.

Richard Riordan also became Los Angeles' new mayor in 1993 for the first time in 20 years after Tom Bradley retired.

Platt (1995) argues that the intensity of law-and-order campaigns represents a significant shift in criminal justice that involves modernization and increased funding for police technology and personnel, privatization of security services and surveillance, higher rates of incarceration, and greater racial inequality in security and punishment.

The phrase was used repeatedly by Donald Trump in his acceptance presidential acceptance speech, which Salon interpreted as an intentional reference to Nixon's use of the term. Politico reported that the rhetoric was at odds with the crime rates being at 50-year lows in the country.

Criticism

Critics of law-and-order politics commonly point to actual and potential abuses of judicial and police powers, including police brutality and misconduct, racial profiling, prison overcrowding, and miscarriages of justice. As an example, they argue that while crime in New York City dropped under Mayor Giuliani, reports of police brutality increased during the same period. This period included the fatal shootings of Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell, and the Abner Louima incident.

In extreme cases, civil unrest has broken out in retaliation against law-and-order politics, as happened in London's Brixton district in 1981, Los Angeles in 1992, France in 2005, and Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.

In 2009, Pennsylvania juvenile court judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan pleaded guilty in the "kids for cash" scandal, of taking kickbacks from private prison industry officials in exchange for sentencing over 1,000 youths to prison terms for minor offenses.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a role model of tougher sentencing campaigners for his hardline corrections policies, was investigated by the FBI – starting in 2009 – for alleged abuses of power and intimidation of dissenting officials, among other controversies.

A United States Supreme Court ruling in 2011 ordered the State of California to cut its inmate population, citing prison overcrowding to be in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

Order without law

In a limited number of cases, it can be argued that order can be maintained without law. Robert Ellickson, in his book Order without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes, concludes that it is sometimes possible for order to be maintained without law in small, close-knit groups. Ellickson examines rural Shasta County, California, in which cattle openly roam and sometimes destroy crops. He finds that since social norms call for the cattle owner to pay for the damaged crops, the disputes are settled without law. According to Ellickson, not only is the law not necessary to maintain order in this case, but it is more efficient for social norms to govern the settling of disputes.