Hate speech

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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

Hate speech is a term with varied meaning and has no single, consistent definition. Cambridge Dictionary defines hate speech as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation". The Encyclopedia of the American Constitution states that hate speech is "usually thought to include communications of animosity or disparagement of an individual or a group on account of a group characteristic such as race, color, national origin, sex, disability, religion, or sexual orientation". Hate speech can include incitement based on social class or political beliefs. There is no single definition of what constitutes "hate" or "disparagement". Legal definitions of hate speech vary from country to country.

There has been much debate over freedom of speech, hate speech, and hate speech legislation. The laws of some countries describe hate speech as speech, gestures, conduct, writing, or displays that incite violence or prejudicial actions against a group or individuals on the basis of their membership in the group, or that disparage or intimidate a group or individuals on the basis of their membership in the group. The law may identify protected groups based on certain characteristics. In some countries, a victim of hate speech may seek redress under civil law, criminal law, or both. In the United States, what is usually labelled "hate speech" is constitutionally protected.

Hate speech is generally accepted to be one of the prerequisites for mass atrocities such as genocide. Incitement to genocide is an extreme form of hate speech, and has been prosecuted in international courts such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

History

Early hate speech laws were enacted in the 1820s in France and 1851 in Prussia.

Starting in the 1940s and 50s, various American civil rights groups responded to the atrocities of World War II by advocating for restrictions on hateful speech targeting groups on the basis of race and religion. These organizations used group libel as a legal framework for describing hate speech and addressing its harm. In his discussion of the history of criminal libel, scholar Jeremy Waldron states that these laws helped "vindicate public order, not just by preempting violence, but by upholding against attack a shared sense of the basic elements of each person's status, dignity, and reputation as a citizen or member of society in good standing". A key legal victory for this view came in 1952 when group libel law was affirmed by the United States Supreme Court in Beauharnais v. Illinois. However, the group libel approach lost ground due to a rise in support for individual rights within civil rights movements during the 60s. Critiques of group defamation laws are not limited to defenders of individual rights. Some legal theorists, such as critical race theorist Richard Delgado, support legal limits on hate speech, but claim that defamation is too narrow a category to fully counter hate speech. Ultimately, Delgado advocates a legal strategy that would establish a specific section of tort law for responding to racist insults, citing the difficulty of receiving redress under the existing legal system.

Internet

Main article: Online hate speech

The rise of the internet and social media has presented a new medium through which hate speech can spread. Hate speech on the internet can be traced all the way back to its initial years, with a 1983 bulletin board system created by neo-Nazi George Dietz considered the first instance of hate speech online. As the internet evolved over time hate speech continued to spread and create its footprint; the first hate speech website Stormfront was published in 1996, and hate speech has become one of the central challenges for social media platforms.

The structure and nature of the internet contribute to both the creation and persistence of hate speech online. The widespread use and access to the internet gives hate mongers an easy way to spread their message to wide audiences with little cost and effort. According to the International Telecommunication Union, approximately 66% of the world population has access to the internet. Additionally, the pseudo-anonymous nature of the internet imboldens many to make statements constituting hate speech that they otherwise wouldn't for fear of social or real life repercussions. While some governments and companies attempt to combat this type of behavior by leveraging real name systems, difficulties in verifying identities online, public opposition to such policies, and sites that don't enforce these policies leave large spaces for this behavior to persist.

Because the internet crosses national borders, comprehensive government regulations on online hate speech can be difficult to implement and enforce. Governments who want to regulate hate speech contend with issues around lack of jurisdiction and conflicting viewpoints from other countries. In an early example of this, the case of Yahoo! Inc. v. La Ligue Contre Le Racisme et l'Antisemitisme had a French court hold Yahoo! liable for allowing Nazi memorabilia auctions to be visible to the public. Yahoo! refused to comply with the ruling and ultimately won relief in a U.S. court which found that the ruling was unenforceable in the U.S. Disagreements like these make national level regulations difficult, and while there are some international efforts and laws that attempt to regulate hate speech and its online presence, as with most international agreements the implementation and interpretation of these treaties varies by country.

Much of the regulation regarding online hate speech is performed voluntarily by individual companies. Many major tech companies have adopted terms of service which outline allowed content on their platform, often banning hate speech. In a notable step for this, on 31 May 2016, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter, jointly agreed to a European Union code of conduct obligating them to review "[the] majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech" posted on their services within 24 hours. Techniques employed by these companies to regulate hate speech include user reporting, Artificial Intelligence flagging, and manual review of content by employees. Major search engines like Google Search also tweak their algorithms to try and suppress hateful content from appearing in their results. However, despite these efforts hate speech remains a persistent problem online. According to a 2021 study by the Anti-Defamation League 33% of Americans were the target of identity based harassment in the preceding year, a statistic which has not noticeably shifted downwards despite increasing self regulation by companies.

State-sanctioned hate speech

Main article: Hate speech actions by country

A few states, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Rwanda Hutu factions, actors in the Yugoslav Wars and Ethiopia have been described as spreading official hate speech or incitement to genocide.

Hate speech laws

Main article: Hate speech laws by country

After World War II, Germany criminalized Volksverhetzung ("incitement of popular hatred") to prevent resurgence of Nazism. Hate speech on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity also is banned in Germany. Most European countries have likewise implemented various laws and regulations regarding hate speech, and the European Union's Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA requires member states to criminalize hate crimes and speech (though individual implementation and interpretation of this framework varies by state).

International human rights laws from the United Nations Human Rights Committee have been protecting freedom of expression, and one of the most fundamental documents is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) drafted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948. Article 19 of the UDHR states that "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

While there are fundamental laws in place designed to protect freedom of expression, there are also multiple international laws that expand on the UDHR and pose limitations and restrictions, specifically concerning the safety and protection of individuals.

• The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) was the first to address hate speech and the need to establish legislation prohibiting inflammatory types of language.
  • The CERD addresses hate speech through the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and monitors its implementation by State parties.
• Article 19(3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) permits restrictions on the human right of freedom of expression only when provided by law, and when necessary to protect "rights or reputations of others", or for "protection of national security or of public order (ordre public), or of public health or morals".
• Article 20(2) of the ICCPR prohibits national, religious, or racial hatred that incites violence, discrimination, or hostility.

Most developed democracies have laws that restrict hate speech, including Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, South Africa, Sweden, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The United States does not have hate speech laws, because the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that they violate the guarantee to freedom of speech contained in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Laws against hate speech can be divided into two types: those intended to preserve public order and those intended to protect human dignity. The laws designed to protect public order require that a higher threshold be violated, so they are not often enforced. For example, a 1992 study found that only one person was prosecuted in Northern Ireland in the preceding 21 years for violating a law against incitement to religious violence. The laws meant to protect human dignity have a much lower threshold for violation, so those in Canada, Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherlands tend to be more frequently enforced.

Criticism

Several activists and scholars have criticized the practice of limiting hate speech. Kim Holmes, Vice President of the conservative Heritage Foundation and a critic of hate speech theory, has argued that it "assumes bad faith on the part of people regardless of their stated intentions" and that it "obliterates the ethical responsibility of the individual". Rebecca Ruth Gould, a professor of Islamic and Comparative Literature at the University of Birmingham, argues that laws against hate speech constitute viewpoint discrimination (which is prohibited by the First Amendment in the United States) as the legal system punishes some viewpoints but not others. Other scholars, such as Gideon Elford, argue instead that "insofar as hate speech regulation targets the consequences of speech that are contingently connected with the substance of what is expressed then it is viewpoint discriminatory in only an indirect sense." John Bennett argues that restricting hate speech relies on questionable conceptual and empirical foundations and is reminiscent of efforts by totalitarian regimes to control the thoughts of their citizens.

Civil libertarians say that hate speech laws have been used, in both developing and developed nations, to persecute minority viewpoints and critics of the government. Former ACLU president Nadine Strossen says that, while efforts to censor hate speech have the goal of protecting the most vulnerable, they are ineffective and may have the opposite effect: disadvantaged and ethnic minorities being charged with violating laws against hate speech. Journalist Glenn Greenwald says that hate speech laws in Europe have been used to censor left-wing views as much as they have been used to combat hate speech.

Miisa Kreandner and Eriz Henze argue that hate speech laws are arbitrary, as they only protect some categories of people but not others. Henze argues the only way to resolve this problem without abolishing hate speech laws would be to extend them to all possible conceivable categories, which Henze argues would amount to totalitarian control over speech.

Michael Conklin argues that there are benefits to hate speech that are often overlooked. He contends that allowing hate speech provides a more accurate view of the human condition, provides opportunities to change people's minds, and identifies certain people that may need to be avoided in certain circumstances. According to one psychological research study, a high degree of psychopathy is "a significant predictor" for involvement in online hate activity, while none of the other 7 potential factors examined were found to have a statistically significant predictive power.

Political philosopher Jeffrey W. Howard considers the popular framing of hate speech as "free speech vs. other political values" as a mischaracterization. He refers to this as the "balancing model", and says it seeks to weigh the benefit of free speech against other values such as dignity and equality for historically marginalized groups. Instead, he believes that the crux of debate should be whether or not freedom of expression is inclusive of hate speech. Research indicates that when people support censoring hate speech, they are motivated more by concerns about the effects the speech has on others than they are about its effects on themselves. Women are somewhat more likely than men to support censoring hate speech due to greater perceived harm of hate speech, which some researchers believe may be due to gender differences in empathy towards targets of hate speech.

Ethnocentrism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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

Polish sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz is believed to have coined the term "ethnocentrism" in the 19th century, although he may have merely popularized it

Ethnocentrism in social science and anthropology—as well as in colloquial English discourse—is the application of one's own culture or ethnicity as a frame of reference to judge other cultures, practices, behaviors, beliefs, and people, instead of using the standards of the particular culture involved. Since this judgment is often negative, some people also use the term to refer to the belief that one's culture is superior to, or more correct or normal than, all others—especially regarding the distinctions that define each ethnicity's cultural identity, such as language, behavior, customs, and religion. In common usage, it can also simply mean any culturally biased judgment. For example, ethnocentrism can be seen in the common portrayals of the Global South and the Global North.

Ethnocentrism is sometimes related to racism, stereotyping, discrimination, or xenophobia. However, the term "ethnocentrism" does not necessarily involve a negative view of the others' race or indicate a negative connotation. The opposite of ethnocentrism is cultural relativism, a guiding philosophy stating that the best way to understand a different culture is through their perspective rather than judging them from the subjective viewpoints shaped by one's own cultural standards.

The term "ethnocentrism" was first applied in the social sciences by American sociologist William G. Sumner. In his 1906 book, Folkways, Sumner describes ethnocentrism as "the technical name for the view of things in which one's own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it." He further characterized ethnocentrism as often leading to pride, vanity, the belief in one's own group's superiority, and contempt for outsiders.

Over time, ethnocentrism developed alongside the progression of social understandings by people such as social theorist Theodor W. Adorno. In Adorno's The Authoritarian Personality, he and his colleagues of the Frankfurt School established a broader definition of the term as a result of "in group-out group differentiation", stating that ethnocentrism "combines a positive attitude toward one's own ethnic/cultural group (the in-group) with a negative attitude toward the other ethnic/cultural group (the out-group)." Both of these juxtaposing attitudes are also a result of a process known as social identification and social counter-identification.

Origins and development

The term ethnocentrism derives from two Greek words: "ethnos", meaning nation, and "kentron", meaning center. Scholars believe this term was coined by Polish sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz in the 19th century, although alternate theories suggest that he only popularized the concept as opposed to inventing it. He saw ethnocentrism as a phenomenon similar to the delusions of geocentrism and anthropocentrism, defining Ethnocentrism as "the reasons by virtue of which each group of people believed it had always occupied the highest point, not only among contemporaneous peoples and nations, but also in relation to all peoples of the historical past."

Subsequently, in the 20th century, American social scientist William G. Sumner proposed two different definitions in his 1906 book Folkways. Sumner stated that "Ethnocentrism is the technical name for this view of things in which one's own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it." In the War and Other Essays (1911), he wrote that "the sentiment of cohesion, internal comradeship, and devotion to the in-group, which carries with it a sense of superiority to any out-group and readiness to defend the interests of the in-group against the out-group, is technically known as ethnocentrism." According to Boris Bizumic, it is a popular misunderstanding that Sumner originated the term ethnocentrism, stating that in actuality, he brought ethnocentrism into the mainstreams of anthropology, social science, and psychology through his English publications.

Several theories have been reinforced through the social and psychological understandings of ethnocentrism including Adorno's Authoritarian Personality Theory (1950), Donald T. Campbell's Realistic Group Conflict Theory (1972), and Henri Tajfel's Social identity theory (1986). These theories have helped to distinguish ethnocentrism as a means to better understand the behaviors caused by in-group and out-group differentiation throughout history and society.

Ethnocentrism in social sciences

William Graham Sumner

In social sciences, ethnocentrism means to judge another culture based on the standard of one's own culture instead of the standard of the other particular culture. When people use their own culture as a parameter to measure other cultures, they often tend to think that their culture is superior and see other cultures as inferior and bizarre. Ethnocentrism can be explained at different levels of analysis. For example, at an intergroup level, this term is seen as a consequence of a conflict between groups; while at the individual level, in-group cohesion and out-group hostility can explain personality traits. Also, ethnocentrism can help us to explain the construction of identity. Ethnocentrism can explain the basis of one's identity by excluding the outgroup that is the target of ethnocentric sentiments and used as a way of distinguishing oneself from other groups that can be more or less tolerant. This practice in social interactions creates social boundaries, such boundaries define and draw symbolic boundaries of the group that one wants to be associated with or belong to. In this way, ethnocentrism is a term not only limited to anthropology but also can be applied to other fields of social sciences like sociology or psychology. Ethnocentrism may be particularly enhanced in the presence of interethnic competition, hostility and violence. On the other hand, ethnocentrism may negatively influence expatriate worker's performance.

A more recent interpretation of ethnocentrism, which expands upon the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, highlights its positive dimension. Political sociologist Audrey Alejandro of the London School of Economics argues that, while ethnocentrism does produce social hierarchies, it also produces diversity by maintaining the different dispositions, practices, and knowledge of identity groups. Diversity is both fostered and undermined by ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism, for Alejandro, is therefore neither something to be suppressed nor celebrated uncritically. Rather, observers can cultivate a 'balanced ethnocentrism', (individual self worth) allowing themselves to be challenged and transformed by difference whilst still protecting difference.

Anthropology

The classifications of ethnocentrism originate from the studies of anthropology. With its omnipresence throughout history, ethnocentrism has always been a factor in how different cultures and groups related to one another. Examples including how historically, foreigners would be characterized as "Barbarians". These trends exist in complex societies, e.g., "the Jews consider themselves to be the 'chosen people', and the Greeks defend all foreigners as 'barbarians'", and how China believed their country to be "the centre of the world". However, the anthropocentric interpretations initially took place most notably in the 19th century when anthropologists began to describe and rank various cultures according to the degree to which they had developed significant milestones, such as monotheistic religions, technological advancements, and other historical progressions.

Most rankings were strongly influenced by colonization and the belief to improve societies they colonized, ranking the cultures based on the progression of their western societies and what they classified as milestones. Comparisons were mostly based on what the colonists believed as superior and what their western societies have accomplished. Victorian era politician and historian Thomas Macaulay once claimed that "one shelf of a Western library" had more knowledge than the centuries of text and literature written by Asian cultures. Ideas developed by Western scientists such as Herbert Spencer, including the concept of the "survival of the fittest", contained ethnocentric ideals; influencing the belief that societies which were 'superior' were most likely to survive and prosper. Edward Said's concept of Orientalism represented how Western reactions to non-Western societies were based on an "unequal power relationship" that the Western world developed due to its history of colonialism and the influence it held over non-Western societies.

The ethnocentric classification of "primitive" were also used by 19th and 20th century anthropologists and represented how unawareness in cultural and religious understanding changed overall reactions to non-Western societies. 19th-century anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor wrote about "primitive" societies in Primitive Culture (1871), creating a "civilization" scale where it was implied that ethnic cultures preceded civilized societies. The use of "savage" as a classification is modernly known as "tribal" or "pre-literate" where it was usually referred as a derogatory term as the "civilization" scale became more common. Examples that demonstrate a lack of understanding include when European travelers judged different languages based on the fact that they could not understand it and displayed a negative reaction, or the intolerance displayed by Westerners when exposed to unknown religions and symbolisms. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a German philosopher, justified Western imperialism by reasoning that since the non-Western societies were "primitive" and "uncivilized", their culture and history was not worth conserving and thus should welcome Westernization.

Franz Boas

Anthropologist Franz Boas saw the flaws in this formulaic approach to ranking and interpreting cultural development and committed himself to overthrowing this inaccurate reasoning due to many factors involving their individual characteristics. With his methodological innovations, Boas sought to show the error of the proposition that race determined cultural capacity. In his 1911 book The Mind of Primitive Man, Boas wrote that:

It is somewhat difficult for us to recognize that the value which we attribute to our own civilization is due to the fact that we participate in this civilization, and that it has been controlling all our actions from the time of our birth; but it is certainly conceivable that there may be other civilizations, based perhaps on different traditions and on a different equilibrium of emotion and reason, which are of no less value than ours, although it may be impossible for us to appreciate their values without having grown up under their influence.

Together, Boas and his colleagues propagated the certainty that there are no inferior races or cultures. This egalitarian approach introduced the concept of cultural relativism to anthropology, a methodological principle for investigating and comparing societies in as unprejudiced a way as possible and without using a developmental scale as anthropologists at the time were implementing. Boas and anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski argued that any human science had to transcend the ethnocentric views that could blind any scientist's ultimate conclusions.

Both had also urged anthropologists to conduct ethnographic fieldwork to overcome their ethnocentrism. To help, Malinowski would develop the theory of functionalism as guides for producing non-ethnocentric studies of different cultures. Classic examples of anti-ethnocentric anthropology include Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), which in time has met with severe criticism for its incorrect data and generalisations, Malinowski's The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia (1929), and Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture (1934). Mead and Benedict were two of Boas's students.

Scholars generally agree that Boas developed his ideas under the influence of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Legend has it that, on a field trip to the Baffin Islands in 1883, Boas would pass the frigid nights reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. In that work, Kant argued that human understanding could not be described according to the laws that applied to the operations of nature, and that its operations were therefore free, not determined, and that ideas regulated human action, sometimes independent of material interests. Following Kant, Boas pointed out the starving Eskimos who, because of their religious beliefs, would not hunt seals to feed themselves, thus showing that no pragmatic or material calculus determined their values.

Causes

Ethnocentrism is believed to be a learned behavior embedded into a variety of beliefs and values of an individual or group.

Due to enculturation, individuals in in-groups have a deeper sense of loyalty and are more likely to follow the norms and develop relationships with associated members. Within relation to enculturation, ethnocentrism is said to be a transgenerational problem since stereotypes and similar perspectives can be enforced and encouraged as time progresses. Although loyalty can increase better in-grouper approval, limited interactions with other cultures can prevent individuals to have an understanding and appreciation towards cultural differences resulting in greater ethnocentrism.

The social identity approach suggests that ethnocentric beliefs are caused by a strong identification with one's own culture that directly creates a positive view of that culture. It is theorized by Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner that to maintain that positive view, people make social comparisons that cast competing cultural groups in an unfavorable light.

Alternative or opposite perspectives could cause individuals to develop naïve realism and be subject to limitations in understandings. These characteristics can also lead to individuals to become subject to ethnocentrism, when referencing out-groups, and black sheep effect, where personal perspectives contradict those from fellow in-groupers.

Realistic conflict theory assumes that ethnocentrism happens due to "real or perceived conflict" between groups. This also happens when a dominant group may perceive the new members as a threat. Scholars have recently demonstrated that individuals are more likely to develop in-group identification and out-group negatively in response to intergroup competition, conflict, or threat.

Although the causes of ethnocentric beliefs and actions can have varying roots of context and reason, the effects of ethnocentrism has had both negative and positive effects throughout history. The most detrimental effects of ethnocentrism resulting into genocide, apartheid, slavery, and many violent conflicts. Historical examples of these negative effects of ethnocentrism are The Holocaust, the Crusades, the Trail of Tears, and the internment of Japanese Americans. These events were a result of cultural differences reinforced inhumanely by a majority group who thought of themselves as superior. In his 1976 book on evolution, The Selfish Gene, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins writes that "blood-feuds and inter-clan warfare are easily interpretative in terms of Hamilton's genetic theory." Simulation-based experiments in evolutionary game theory have attempted to provide an explanation for the selection of ethnocentric-strategy phenotypes.

The positive examples of ethnocentrism throughout history have aimed to prohibit the callousness of ethnocentrism and reverse the perspectives of living in a single culture. These organizations can include the formation of the United Nations; aimed to maintain international relations, and the Olympic Games; a celebration of sports and friendly competition between cultures.

Effects

A study in New Zealand was used to compare how individuals associate with in-groups and out-groupers and has a connotation to discrimination. Strong in-group favoritism benefits the dominant groups and is different from out-group hostility and/or punishment. A suggested solution is to limit the perceived threat from the out-group that also decreases the likeliness for those supporting the in-groups to negatively react.

Ethnocentrism also influences consumer preference over which goods they purchase. A study that used several in-group and out-group orientations have shown a correlation between national identity, consumer cosmopolitanism, consumer ethnocentrism, and the methods consumers choose their products, whether imported or domestic. Countries with high levels of nationalism and isolationism are more likely to demonstrate consumer ethnocentrism, and have a significant preference for domestically-produced goods.

Ethnocentrism and racism

Ethnocentrism is usually associated with racism. However, as mentioned before, ethnocentrism does not necessarily implicate a negative connotation. In European research, the term racism is not linked to ethnocentrism because Europeans avoid applying the concept of race to humans; meanwhile, using this term is not a problem for American researchers. Since ethnocentrism implicated a strong identification with one's in-group, it mostly automatically leads to negative feelings and stereotyping to the members of the outgroup, which can be confused with racism. Finally, scholars agree that avoiding stereotypes is an indispensable prerequisite to overcome ethnocentrism; and mass media play a key role regarding this issue. The differences that each culture possess causes could hinder one another leading to ethnocentrism and racism. A Canadian study established the differences among French Canadian and English Canadian respondents based on products that would be purchased due to ethnocentrism and racism. Due to how diverse the world has become, society has begun to misinterpret the term cultural diversity, by using ethnocentrism to create controversy among all cultures.

Effects of ethnocentrism in the media

Film

As the United States leads the film industry in worldwide revenue, ethnocentric views can be transmitted through character tropes and underlying themes. The 2003 film "The Last Samurai," was analyzed to have strong ethnocentric themes, such as in-group preference and the tendency to show judgement towards those in the out-group. Similarly, the film received criticism for historical inaccuracies and perpetuating a "white savior narrative," showing a tendency for ethnocentrism centered around the United States.

Social media

Approximately 67.1% of the global population use the internet regularly, with 63.7% of the population being social media users. In a 2023 study, researchers found that social media can enable its users to become more tolerant of other people, bridging the gap between cultures, and contributing to global knowledge. In a similar study done regarding social media use by Kenyan teens, researchers found that when social media is limited to a certain group, it can increase ethnocentric views and ideologies.

Problem of other minds

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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

The problem of other minds is a philosophical problem traditionally stated as the following epistemological question: "Given that I can only observe the behavior of others, how can I know that others have minds?" The problem is that knowledge of other minds is always indirect. The problem of other minds does not negatively impact social interactions due to people having a "theory of mind" – the ability to spontaneously infer the mental states of others – supported by innate mirror neurons, a theory of mind mechanism, or a tacit theory. There has also been an increase in evidence that behavior results from cognition, which in turn requires a brain, and often involves consciousness.

It is a problem of the philosophical idea known as solipsism: the notion that for any person only one's own mind is known to exist. The problem of other minds maintains that no matter how sophisticated someone's behavior is, that does not reasonably guarantee that someone has the presence of thought occurring within them as when oneself engages in behavior. Phenomenology studies the subjective experience of human life resulting from consciousness. The specific subject within phenomenology studying other minds is intersubjectivity.

In 1953, Karl Popper suggested that a test for the other minds problem is whether one would seriously argue with the other person or machine: "This, I think, would solve the problem of 'other minds'....In arguing with other people (a thing which we have learnt from other people), for example about other minds, we cannot but attribute to them intentions, and this means mental states. We do not argue with a thermometer."

Philosophers such as Christian List have argued that there exists a connection between the problem of other minds and Benj Hellie's vertiginous question, i.e. why people exist as themselves and not as someone else. List argues that there exists a "quadrilemma" for metaphysical consciousness theories where at least one of the following must be false: 'first-person realism', 'non-solipsism', 'non-fragmentation', and 'one world'. List proposes a philosophical model he calls the "many-worlds theory of consciousness" in order to reconcile the subjective nature of consciousness without lapsing into solipsism.

Caspar Hare has argued for a weak form of solipsism with the concept of egocentric presentism, in which other persons can be conscious, but their experiences are simply not present in the way one's own current experience is.  A related concept is perspectival realism, in which things within perceptual awareness have a defining intrinsic property that exists absolutely and not relative to anything, of which several other philosophers have written reviews. Vincent Conitzer has argued for similar ideas on the basis of there being a connection between the A-theory of time and the nature of the self. He argues that one's current perspective could be "metaphysically privileged" on the basis of arguments for A-theory being stronger as arguments for both A-theory and a metaphysically privileged self, and arguments against A-theory are ineffective against this combined position.

Ethics of uncertain sentience

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_of_uncertain_sentience

Debate continues over whether crustaceans, such as lobsters, are sentient and can experience pain. A 2021 UK review reported that evidence for sentience in lobsters is "substantial but not strong".

The ethics of uncertain sentience is an area of applied ethics concerned with decision-making when it is unclear whether a being is sentient, understood as capable of subjective experience, feeling, or perception. The issue arises prominently in animal ethics, especially for invertebrates such as crustaceans and insects and for fish, where the possibility of pain is contested; it also features in debates in environmental ethics, the ethics of artificial intelligence and neuroethics.

Proposed responses in the literature include decision rules, with the precautionary principle most commonly invoked, alongside incautionary and expected-value approaches (including probabilistic variants); virtue-ethical arguments for attentiveness and caution toward possibly sentient animals; and assessment frameworks in animal welfare science. Ongoing discussion considers evidential standards, potential regulatory and economic costs, and the scope of moral consideration across diverse biological taxa and computational substrates.

Animal ethics

Invertebrates

Crustaceans and cephalopods

See also: Pain in crustaceans and Pain in cephalopods

David Foster Wallace's 2004 essay "Consider the Lobster" describes the Maine Lobster Festival and poses the problem of inferring pain across species. It notes evidence of nociceptors in lobsters alongside uncertainty about endogenous opioids, and reflects on the ethics of killing and cooking animals alive; building on this, Robert C. Jones's chapter "The Lobster Considered" engages Wallace's essay and argues that current evidence supports treating lobsters as capable of pain and thus as morally considerable. Jones reviews neurophysiological and behavioural work on nociception and opioid systems, distinguishes moral considerability from degrees of moral significance, and concludes that, given residual uncertainty, a precautionary approach is warranted toward practices that risk causing pain to crustaceans.

A 2021 UK government-commissioned review by the London School of Economics evaluated 300 studies and concluded that cephalopods and decapod crustaceans should be treated as sentient, grading the evidence as "very strong" for octopods, "strong" for most crabs, and "substantial but not strong" for squid, cuttlefish, and lobsters; it recommended best-practice transport, stunning, and slaughter and said lobsters and crabs should not be boiled alive, informing debate on the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act.

Insects

See also: Insect cognition and Welfare of farmed insects

A modular cricket farm. The sentience of crickets is uncertain; commentators note that farming insects involves killing significant numbers of individuals.

In 2016, Shelley A. Adamo reviewed philosophical, neurobiological, behavioural, robotic, and evolutionary lines of evidence on insect pain and concluded that the question remains unsettled: insects clearly show nociception and complex learning, but similar pain-like behaviours can arise from simpler mechanisms and can be engineered in robots, so argument-by-analogy to human pain is weak without a clear account of the neural architecture needed for subjective experience. She contrasts Morgan's canon with the precautionary principle, noting that they point to opposing policy responses and that precaution has research and economic costs; she nonetheless urges careful handling to avoid stress for methodological and ethical reasons.

In an article for Vox, Dylan Matthews examines the question of insect sentience in proposals to scale entomophagy, reporting limited evidence on whether farmed insects feel pain and on the welfare impact of common slaughter methods (e.g. freezing and shredding). He cites estimates that around 1 trillion insects are raised and killed annually, with about 79–94 billion alive at any time, and argues that if insects can suffer the ethical implications of expanding insect farming would be substantial.

Fish

See also: Pain in fish

Maximilian Padden Elder argues that contemporary evidence warrants treating fish as potential sufferers within animal ethics. He distinguishes nociception from conscious pain and contends that teleosts possess nociceptors and display behaviours consistent with affective states. Objections that fish cannot suffer because they lack a neocortex, or because they do not exhibit human-like pain displays, are described as anthropocentric; Elder notes subcortical processing and behavioural data that weaken neocortex-based dismissals and cautions against using human responses as the standard for other species. He also discusses cultural and psychological factors that reduce empathy for fish and thereby lower concern for their welfare.

Given remaining uncertainty, Elder advocates a precautionary approach that shifts the burden of proof to those whose actions risk harm. He cites policy analogues (the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act, UK protection of cephalopods, and EU uses of the precautionary principle) and points to scale as a reason for priority, noting estimates of roughly 1–2.7 trillion wild-caught fish annually and tens of billions of farmed fish slaughtered in a single year. He draws out implications for commercial and recreational fishing and questions the coherence of moral pescetarianism in light of possible fish suffering.

Decision principles and frameworks

In the 2015 essay "Reconsider the Lobster", Jeff Sebo quotes Wallace's discussion of the difficulty of establishing whether an animal can experience pain. Sebo calls the question of how to treat individuals of uncertain sentience, the "sentience problem" and argues that this problem which "Wallace raises deserves much more philosophical attention than it currently receives." Sebo asserts that there are two motivating assumptions behind the problem: "sentientism about moral status"—the idea that if an individual is sentient, then they deserve moral consideration—and "uncertainty about other minds", which refers to scientific and philosophical uncertainty about which individuals are sentient.

In response to the problem, Sebo lays out three different potential approaches: the incautionary principle, which postulates that in cases of uncertainty about sentience it is morally permissible to treat individuals as if they are not sentient; the precautionary principle, which suggests that in such cases we have a moral obligation to treat them as if they are sentient; and the expected value principle, which asserts that we are "morally required to multiply our credence that they are by the amount of moral value they would have if they were, and to treat the product of this equation as the amount of moral value that they actually have". Sebo advocates for the latter position.

Jonathan Birch proposes a practical framework grounded in the precautionary principle for assessing animal sentience and argues that it is consistent with established practice in animal welfare science.

Simon Knutsson and Christian Munthe argue that from the perspective of virtue ethics, that when it comes to animals of uncertain sentience, such as "fish, invertebrates such as crustaceans, snails and insects", that it is a "requirement of a morally decent (or virtuous) person that she at least pays attention to and is cautious regarding the possibly morally relevant aspects of such animals".

Environmental ethics

See also: Environmental ethics

Kai Chan advocates for an environmental ethic, which is a form of ethical extensionism applied to all living beings because "there is a non-zero probability of sentience and consciousness" and that "we cannot justify excluding beings from consideration on the basis of uncertainty of their sentience".

Ethics of artificial intelligence

See also: Ethics of artificial intelligence

Nick Bostrom and Eliezer Yudkowsky argue that if an artificial intelligence is sentient, then it is wrong to inflict it unnecessary pain, in the same way that it is wrong to inflict pain on an animal, unless there are "sufficiently strong morally overriding reasons to do so". They also advocate for the "Principle of Substrate Non-Discrimination", which asserts: "If two beings have the same functionality and the same conscious experience, and differ only in the substrate of their implementation, then they have the same moral status."

Soenke Ziesche and Roman Yampolskiy coined the term "AI welfare" and outlined the new field of AI welfare science, which is derived from animal welfare science.

Neuroethics

See also: Neuroethics

Adam J. Shriver argues for "precise, precautionary, and probabilistic approaches to sentience" and asserts that the evidence provided by neuroscience has differing relevance to each; he concludes that basic protections for animals should be guided by the precautionary principle and that although neuroscientific evidence in certain instances is not necessary to indicate that individuals of certain species require protections, "ongoing search for the neural correlates of sentience must be pursued in order to avoid harms that occur from mistaken accounts."

Ethnocentrism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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

Polish sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz is believed to have coined the term "ethnocentrism" in the 19th century, although he may have merely popularized it

Ethnocentrism in social science and anthropology—as well as in colloquial English discourse—is the application of one's own culture or ethnicity as a frame of reference to judge other cultures, practices, behaviors, beliefs, and people, instead of using the standards of the particular culture involved. Since this judgment is often negative, some people also use the term to refer to the belief that one's culture is superior to, or more correct or normal than, all others—especially regarding the distinctions that define each ethnicity's cultural identity, such as language, behavior, customs, and religion. In common usage, it can also simply mean any culturally biased judgment. For example, ethnocentrism can be seen in the common portrayals of the Global South and the Global North.

Ethnocentrism is sometimes related to racism, stereotyping, discrimination, or xenophobia. However, the term "ethnocentrism" does not necessarily involve a negative view of the others' race or indicate a negative connotation. The opposite of ethnocentrism is cultural relativism, a guiding philosophy stating that the best way to understand a different culture is through their perspective rather than judging them from the subjective viewpoints shaped by one's own cultural standards.

The term "ethnocentrism" was first applied in the social sciences by American sociologist William G. Sumner. In his 1906 book, Folkways, Sumner describes ethnocentrism as "the technical name for the view of things in which one's own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it." He further characterized ethnocentrism as often leading to pride, vanity, the belief in one's own group's superiority, and contempt for outsiders.

Over time, ethnocentrism developed alongside the progression of social understandings by people such as social theorist Theodor W. Adorno. In Adorno's The Authoritarian Personality, he and his colleagues of the Frankfurt School established a broader definition of the term as a result of "in group-out group differentiation", stating that ethnocentrism "combines a positive attitude toward one's own ethnic/cultural group (the in-group) with a negative attitude toward the other ethnic/cultural group (the out-group)." Both of these juxtaposing attitudes are also a result of a process known as social identification and social counter-identification.

Origins and development

The term ethnocentrism derives from two Greek words: "ethnos", meaning nation, and "kentron", meaning center. Scholars believe this term was coined by Polish sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz in the 19th century, although alternate theories suggest that he only popularized the concept as opposed to inventing it. He saw ethnocentrism as a phenomenon similar to the delusions of geocentrism and anthropocentrism, defining Ethnocentrism as "the reasons by virtue of which each group of people believed it had always occupied the highest point, not only among contemporaneous peoples and nations, but also in relation to all peoples of the historical past."

Subsequently, in the 20th century, American social scientist William G. Sumner proposed two different definitions in his 1906 book Folkways. Sumner stated that "Ethnocentrism is the technical name for this view of things in which one's own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it." In the War and Other Essays (1911), he wrote that "the sentiment of cohesion, internal comradeship, and devotion to the in-group, which carries with it a sense of superiority to any out-group and readiness to defend the interests of the in-group against the out-group, is technically known as ethnocentrism." According to Boris Bizumic, it is a popular misunderstanding that Sumner originated the term ethnocentrism, stating that in actuality, he brought ethnocentrism into the mainstreams of anthropology, social science, and psychology through his English publications.

Several theories have been reinforced through the social and psychological understandings of ethnocentrism including Adorno's Authoritarian Personality Theory (1950), Donald T. Campbell's Realistic Group Conflict Theory (1972), and Henri Tajfel's Social identity theory (1986). These theories have helped to distinguish ethnocentrism as a means to better understand the behaviors caused by in-group and out-group differentiation throughout history and society.

Ethnocentrism in social sciences

William Graham Sumner

In social sciences, ethnocentrism means to judge another culture based on the standard of one's own culture instead of the standard of the other particular culture. When people use their own culture as a parameter to measure other cultures, they often tend to think that their culture is superior and see other cultures as inferior and bizarre. Ethnocentrism can be explained at different levels of analysis. For example, at an intergroup level, this term is seen as a consequence of a conflict between groups; while at the individual level, in-group cohesion and out-group hostility can explain personality traits. Also, ethnocentrism can help us to explain the construction of identity. Ethnocentrism can explain the basis of one's identity by excluding the outgroup that is the target of ethnocentric sentiments and used as a way of distinguishing oneself from other groups that can be more or less tolerant. This practice in social interactions creates social boundaries, such boundaries define and draw symbolic boundaries of the group that one wants to be associated with or belong to. In this way, ethnocentrism is a term not only limited to anthropology but also can be applied to other fields of social sciences like sociology or psychology. Ethnocentrism may be particularly enhanced in the presence of interethnic competition, hostility and violence. On the other hand, ethnocentrism may negatively influence expatriate worker's performance.

A more recent interpretation of ethnocentrism, which expands upon the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, highlights its positive dimension. Political sociologist Audrey Alejandro of the London School of Economics argues that, while ethnocentrism does produce social hierarchies, it also produces diversity by maintaining the different dispositions, practices, and knowledge of identity groups. Diversity is both fostered and undermined by ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism, for Alejandro, is therefore neither something to be suppressed nor celebrated uncritically. Rather, observers can cultivate a 'balanced ethnocentrism', (individual self worth) allowing themselves to be challenged and transformed by difference whilst still protecting difference.

Anthropology

The classifications of ethnocentrism originate from the studies of anthropology. With its omnipresence throughout history, ethnocentrism has always been a factor in how different cultures and groups related to one another. Examples including how historically, foreigners would be characterized as "Barbarians". These trends exist in complex societies, e.g., "the Jews consider themselves to be the 'chosen people', and the Greeks defend all foreigners as 'barbarians'", and how China believed their country to be "the centre of the world". However, the anthropocentric interpretations initially took place most notably in the 19th century when anthropologists began to describe and rank various cultures according to the degree to which they had developed significant milestones, such as monotheistic religions, technological advancements, and other historical progressions.

Most rankings were strongly influenced by colonization and the belief to improve societies they colonized, ranking the cultures based on the progression of their western societies and what they classified as milestones. Comparisons were mostly based on what the colonists believed as superior and what their western societies have accomplished. Victorian era politician and historian Thomas Macaulay once claimed that "one shelf of a Western library" had more knowledge than the centuries of text and literature written by Asian cultures. Ideas developed by Western scientists such as Herbert Spencer, including the concept of the "survival of the fittest", contained ethnocentric ideals; influencing the belief that societies which were 'superior' were most likely to survive and prosper. Edward Said's concept of Orientalism represented how Western reactions to non-Western societies were based on an "unequal power relationship" that the Western world developed due to its history of colonialism and the influence it held over non-Western societies.

The ethnocentric classification of "primitive" were also used by 19th and 20th century anthropologists and represented how unawareness in cultural and religious understanding changed overall reactions to non-Western societies. 19th-century anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor wrote about "primitive" societies in Primitive Culture (1871), creating a "civilization" scale where it was implied that ethnic cultures preceded civilized societies. The use of "savage" as a classification is modernly known as "tribal" or "pre-literate" where it was usually referred as a derogatory term as the "civilization" scale became more common. Examples that demonstrate a lack of understanding include when European travelers judged different languages based on the fact that they could not understand it and displayed a negative reaction, or the intolerance displayed by Westerners when exposed to unknown religions and symbolisms. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a German philosopher, justified Western imperialism by reasoning that since the non-Western societies were "primitive" and "uncivilized", their culture and history was not worth conserving and thus should welcome Westernization.

Franz Boas

Anthropologist Franz Boas saw the flaws in this formulaic approach to ranking and interpreting cultural development and committed himself to overthrowing this inaccurate reasoning due to many factors involving their individual characteristics. With his methodological innovations, Boas sought to show the error of the proposition that race determined cultural capacity. In his 1911 book The Mind of Primitive Man, Boas wrote that:

It is somewhat difficult for us to recognize that the value which we attribute to our own civilization is due to the fact that we participate in this civilization, and that it has been controlling all our actions from the time of our birth; but it is certainly conceivable that there may be other civilizations, based perhaps on different traditions and on a different equilibrium of emotion and reason, which are of no less value than ours, although it may be impossible for us to appreciate their values without having grown up under their influence.

Together, Boas and his colleagues propagated the certainty that there are no inferior races or cultures. This egalitarian approach introduced the concept of cultural relativism to anthropology, a methodological principle for investigating and comparing societies in as unprejudiced a way as possible and without using a developmental scale as anthropologists at the time were implementing. Boas and anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski argued that any human science had to transcend the ethnocentric views that could blind any scientist's ultimate conclusions.

Both had also urged anthropologists to conduct ethnographic fieldwork to overcome their ethnocentrism. To help, Malinowski would develop the theory of functionalism as guides for producing non-ethnocentric studies of different cultures. Classic examples of anti-ethnocentric anthropology include Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), which in time has met with severe criticism for its incorrect data and generalisations, Malinowski's The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia (1929), and Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture (1934). Mead and Benedict were two of Boas's students.

Scholars generally agree that Boas developed his ideas under the influence of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Legend has it that, on a field trip to the Baffin Islands in 1883, Boas would pass the frigid nights reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. In that work, Kant argued that human understanding could not be described according to the laws that applied to the operations of nature, and that its operations were therefore free, not determined, and that ideas regulated human action, sometimes independent of material interests. Following Kant, Boas pointed out the starving Eskimos who, because of their religious beliefs, would not hunt seals to feed themselves, thus showing that no pragmatic or material calculus determined their values.

Causes

Ethnocentrism is believed to be a learned behavior embedded into a variety of beliefs and values of an individual or group.

Due to enculturation, individuals in in-groups have a deeper sense of loyalty and are more likely to follow the norms and develop relationships with associated members. Within relation to enculturation, ethnocentrism is said to be a transgenerational problem since stereotypes and similar perspectives can be enforced and encouraged as time progresses. Although loyalty can increase better in-grouper approval, limited interactions with other cultures can prevent individuals to have an understanding and appreciation towards cultural differences resulting in greater ethnocentrism.

The social identity approach suggests that ethnocentric beliefs are caused by a strong identification with one's own culture that directly creates a positive view of that culture. It is theorized by Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner that to maintain that positive view, people make social comparisons that cast competing cultural groups in an unfavorable light.

Alternative or opposite perspectives could cause individuals to develop naïve realism and be subject to limitations in understandings. These characteristics can also lead to individuals to become subject to ethnocentrism, when referencing out-groups, and black sheep effect, where personal perspectives contradict those from fellow in-groupers.

Realistic conflict theory assumes that ethnocentrism happens due to "real or perceived conflict" between groups. This also happens when a dominant group may perceive the new members as a threat. Scholars have recently demonstrated that individuals are more likely to develop in-group identification and out-group negatively in response to intergroup competition, conflict, or threat.^[4]

Although the causes of ethnocentric beliefs and actions can have varying roots of context and reason, the effects of ethnocentrism has had both negative and positive effects throughout history. The most detrimental effects of ethnocentrism resulting into genocide, apartheid, slavery, and many violent conflicts. Historical examples of these negative effects of ethnocentrism are The Holocaust, the Crusades, the Trail of Tears, and the internment of Japanese Americans. These events were a result of cultural differences reinforced inhumanely by a majority group who thought of themselves as superior. In his 1976 book on evolution, The Selfish Gene, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins writes that "blood-feuds and inter-clan warfare are easily interpretative in terms of Hamilton's genetic theory." Simulation-based experiments in evolutionary game theory have attempted to provide an explanation for the selection of ethnocentric-strategy phenotypes.

The positive examples of ethnocentrism throughout history have aimed to prohibit the callousness of ethnocentrism and reverse the perspectives of living in a single culture. These organizations can include the formation of the United Nations; aimed to maintain international relations, and the Olympic Games; a celebration of sports and friendly competition between cultures.

Effects

A study in New Zealand was used to compare how individuals associate with in-groups and out-groupers and has a connotation to discrimination. Strong in-group favoritism benefits the dominant groups and is different from out-group hostility and/or punishment. A suggested solution is to limit the perceived threat from the out-group that also decreases the likeliness for those supporting the in-groups to negatively react.

Ethnocentrism also influences consumer preference over which goods they purchase. A study that used several in-group and out-group orientations have shown a correlation between national identity, consumer cosmopolitanism, consumer ethnocentrism, and the methods consumers choose their products, whether imported or domestic. Countries with high levels of nationalism and isolationism are more likely to demonstrate consumer ethnocentrism, and have a significant preference for domestically-produced goods.

Ethnocentrism and racism

Ethnocentrism is usually associated with racism. However, as mentioned before, ethnocentrism does not necessarily implicate a negative connotation. In European research, the term racism is not linked to ethnocentrism because Europeans avoid applying the concept of race to humans; meanwhile, using this term is not a problem for American researchers. Since ethnocentrism implicated a strong identification with one's in-group, it mostly automatically leads to negative feelings and stereotyping to the members of the outgroup, which can be confused with racism. Finally, scholars agree that avoiding stereotypes is an indispensable prerequisite to overcome ethnocentrism; and mass media play a key role regarding this issue. The differences that each culture possess causes could hinder one another leading to ethnocentrism and racism. A Canadian study established the differences among French Canadian and English Canadian respondents based on products that would be purchased due to ethnocentrism and racism. Due to how diverse the world has become, society has begun to misinterpret the term cultural diversity, by using ethnocentrism to create controversy among all cultures.

Effects of ethnocentrism in the media

Film

As the United States leads the film industry in worldwide revenue, ethnocentric views can be transmitted through character tropes and underlying themes. The 2003 film "The Last Samurai," was analyzed to have strong ethnocentric themes, such as in-group preference and the tendency to show judgement towards those in the out-group. Similarly, the film received criticism for historical inaccuracies and perpetuating a "white savior narrative," showing a tendency for ethnocentrism centered around the United States.

Social media

Approximately 67.1% of the global population use the internet regularly, with 63.7% of the population being social media users. In a 2023 study, researchers found that social media can enable its users to become more tolerant of other people, bridging the gap between cultures, and contributing to global knowledge. In a similar study done regarding social media use by Kenyan teens, researchers found that when social media is limited to a certain group, it can increase ethnocentric views and ideologies.