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by Anne Tiernan
In a president, character is everything. A president doesn't have to be brilliant: Harry Truman wasn't brilliant, and he helped save Western Europe from Stalin. He doesn't have to be clever; you can hire clever… But you can't buy courage and decency, you can't rent a strong moral sense. A president must bring those things with him…
– Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's speechwriter
OVER THE COURSE of my career, I have learnt that democratic institutions I thought resilient and strong are in reality quite fragile. To a far greater extent than many realise, our system of governance depends on people – their ability and willingness to do the right thing. To perform their duties professionally, with integrity and public purpose – in accordance with longstanding traditions and conventions, often in the absence of laws or written rules. I have long been interested in public administration as a 'craft' and in the multi-faceted responsibilities that accrue to political leaders. We rely on them to safeguard our public institutions and political processes over the long term. And yet too often, they are failing to demonstrate leadership or ensure appropriate standards of behaviour – including and egregiously in Parliament House. An increasing number of political insiders, including some of the most senior, seem entirely focused on power, showing little understanding or concern for the long-term detriment to constitutional norms that provide the guardrails for effective governance.
Character matters in all facets of our lives, but seldom is it more consequential than in politics and political leadership. Even before the rise of Donald Trump, there was a widespread consensus in American politics that presidential character was just as important as intellect, organisational and policy capacity, media and presentational skills, and a vision for the nation's future. Respected presidential studies scholar James Pfiffner argues character is critical because no one can predict the situations that will confront a president once in office. If, like sport, politics reveals rather than builds character, it is important for citizen voters to 'select an individual who will apply a sound set of principles and values in unexpected circumstances'.
Of course, Australians don't choose their political leaders, their parliamentary party rooms do – as has been demonstrated by the removal of a succession of prime ministers over the past decade, beginning with Kevin Rudd in 2010 and ending – for the time being at least – with Malcolm Turnbull's replacement by Scott Morrison in October 2018. This, and the fact that there is no equivalent of a primaries process through which a prospective candidate might be scrutinised and become better known to voters, should make attention to the character of political leaders – but also to the members of parliament and senators who ultimately choose them – even more salient in the Australian context. Instead, and particularly now, we find ourselves reaping the bitter harvest of our collective failure to care enough about the calibre of the people we choose to represent us and to be vigilant in monitoring their fidelity to the awesome privileges and responsibilities of public office.
In the before times – when a leader-centric approach was less entrenched than it is now in the era of 'permanent campaign', when elected representatives served longer parliamentary apprenticeships and adhered less to talking points issued by unelected partisans in leaders' offices, and when policy was debated within and outside the parliament, including inside large, more vigorous and representative political parties and through the agency of more robust and diverse media – in those times, voters could develop a clearer sense of who leaders and senior ministers were and what they stood for. Leaders' potential to influence and shape their advisory arrangements makes it important to also pay attention to the character in the courts of loyalists who surround them, including party strategists, and the characters of those whom they appoint to leadership and other roles across government and the public sector. Character is revealed in the culture and values that political leaders cultivate and how they treat others, as earlier essays in this series and the recent Jenkins Review into Commonwealth Parliamentary Workplaces – among so many recent analyses – make clear.
CHARACTER IS A nebulous concept, often deployed negatively to attack a politician's conduct in their public and private lives, their motives or their standing. This is done in the service of damaging their reputation or otherwise raising doubts about their suitability to lead. Former Canadian Liberal leader and academic Michael Ignatieff argues standing – who a politician is, their right to democratic respect – 'has become the primary area of combat in modern politics'. Witness misogynistic attacks on Julia Gillard and numerous other female politicians. Witness concerns raised about Tony Abbott's – and, more recently, Dominic Perrottet's – traditional Catholicism. Witness concerns raised about Scott Morrison's Pentecostal faith. These various slings and arrows aim to damage a politician's reputation or otherwise raise doubts about their suitability to lead, but they engage little with matters of substance.
While inevitably imprecise, commonsense and popular-usage definitions of character include ideas of trustworthiness, fidelity, respect for others, willingness to accept responsibility, self-restraint and compassion. Trustworthiness alone is a multifaceted thing; it encompasses, at its heart, honesty – Pfiffner notes that one of the most devastating criticisms of a politician or indeed any person is being labelled a liar. This observation seems almost quaint given daily evidence that we now live in a post-truth era. Trustworthiness also includes integrity and reliability (does this leader keep their promises?) and loyalty. But loyalty can be double-edged, particularly if a leader is seen to afford special treatment to their friends, as is widely perceived to be the case with public grants and government contracts. Responsibility, the willingness to be accountable for one's actions and to own the results of decisions and policies, be they good or bad, is another dimension of good character. Leaders who shirk responsibility or develop a reputation for claiming credit while deflecting blame to others can expect to be marked down in the character stakes.
Other desirable traits in a person of good character include the ability and willingness to exercise self-restraint as well as compassion and empathy. As Kevin Rudd and Scott Morrison have found to their cost, flashes of anger raise red flags about temperament. Another commonly desirable aspect of character is vision and purpose – perhaps this is 'conviction' in the Australian parlance. Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's speechwriter, notes that 'a vision is worth little if a president doesn't have the character – the courage and heart – to see it through'. Pfiffner argues citizens have a duty to look at the evidence of a leader's character and to make their own judgments. In a week that saw the Prime Minister and senior Coalition figures openly criticise the Independent Commission Against Corruption over its yet to be completed investigation into former NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and LNP Member for Dawson George Christensen appear on a US conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' online show to urge anti-Covid restriction protests outside Australian embassies, it seems timely to focus on character.
What then should Australians expect, and indeed demand, of people seeking election to public office in our country? Like anyone, a politician's character is shaped by their background, personality, influences and experiences. We elect leaders to represent and exercise power on behalf of – and in trust for – all Australians, and this makes their formative experiences things to care about. Citizens should scrutinise a candidate's understanding of the job they are seeking – be it local MP or senator, minister or prime minister. They should critically assess a candidate's capacity and commitment to perform in the long-term public interest, including the purpose that has motivated them to public service.
What has shaped a candidate's character? How has it been demonstrated on the journey towards seeking preselection or higher office? Are these people institutional thinkers who see themselves as part of something bigger, with responsibilities to preserve Australian democracy and to foster connection, belonging, confidence and shared purpose? Do they understand and accept the duties and obligations that accompany power, including the need to exercise it with restraint? Or have the institutions of representative democracy – in this country or in other Western democracies – become merely vehicles for their personal ambitions and ideological agendas?
Conservative scholar Yuval Levin attributes political polarisation and the crisis of isolation, mistrust and alienation currently experienced by many of his fellow Americans to the weakening of its institutions, which he defines as 'the durable forms of our common life…the frameworks and structures of what we do together'. From the family to business, government, the professions, the media, religious and community organisations, Levin traces a shift in thinking about institutions from being moulds 'that shape people's character and habits towards seeing them as platforms that allow people to be themselves and to display themselves to a wider world'. This shift of emphasis from the collective to the individual and from the 'formative to the performative' has brought 'a gradual replacement of a culture of integrity with something more like a culture of celebrity, in which achievement is measured by prominence and legitimacy by affirmation'. It is accompanied by the rise of connectivity at a previously unseen scale and speed through the confluence of social media platforms and the 24-hour news cycle. And it is also accompanied by the rise of 'outsiderism', where people seek the benefits of institutional positions (for example, the presidency or a seat in the Congress) while wilfully disregarding the obligations that these positions impose and require. In fact, instead, they often use that platform itself to scorn the institution of which it forms a part. Not surprisingly, as Levin argues:
This process undermines our confidence in institutions from two directions. On the one hand, people outside the institution – people who need it, or interact with it, or observe it – lose respect for the institution as they come to think of it mostly as a means for the personal promotion of those within. On the other hand, people within the institution forget the value of whatever constraints it might impose on them and come to understand it as a platform for themselves. From one direction we find a loss of respect for authority, process, integrity and expertise, and from the other, a loss of responsibility, restraint and regard for a code of conduct. Each magnifies the other.
In a column for The Washington Post, journalist Robert Kagan notes 'ambition is a powerful antidote to moral qualms', citing the extraordinary failure of the Republican establishment to criticise Donald Trump, despite 'their known abhorrence for everything [he] stood for'. They not only came to Trump's defence 'but fashioned political doctrines to justify his rule, filling in the wide gaps of his non-existent ideology with an appeal to "conservative nationalism" and conservative populism'. Having purged dissenting voices, they have since used their institutional power to shield Trump and his followers from the consequences of January 6. Kagan makes a powerful case for 'a national unity coalition' for the purpose of saving American democracy, and yet he too wonders 'whether modern American politicians, in either party, have it in them to make such bold moves, whether they have the insight to see where events are going and the courage to do whatever is necessary to save the democratic system'.
WHILE AUSTRALIA'S DEMOCRACY is under challenge, we must have the courage to ensure that as in previous times of uncertainty and political conflict in Australia's history, our system will prove resilient. That it will bend but not break. As then, this will require leadership and a willingness among political combatants to step back from the brink.
Performativity and outsiderism have become the twin scourges of Australian politics too. At all levels of government, our politics is replete with examples of people seeking individual gain along the spectrum from dishonestly and dissembling to rorts and other abuses of power such as those documented by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins in the Set the Standard report and those delineated elsewhere in this series. It is replete, too, with people such as George Christensen, who use their visibility and their status to spread misinformation and breed cynicism, whether that's by challenging the legitimacy of the legislatures in which they were elected to participate, or Scott Morrison, who insisted that 'the rule of law' apply to Christian Porter but who cynically undermines an independent statutory body in a state-based jurisdiction for political gain.
These developments have been largely facilitated and enabled by the professionalisation of politics as a career – or an industry – and the emergence of a career structure. In the latter case, this will often see student politics provide a direct pathway to preselection via publicly funded parliamentary or ministerial staff positions or other roles directly related to politics – perhaps with a union, or in government affairs, or as a party official. This has created a 'political class' on both sides of politics, comprising political professionals whose entire careers have been spent in a political environment, with politics at the centre of their lives. It should come as no surprise their concerns seldom align with those of 'ordinary Australians', the great imaginary conjured through the prism of polling and focus groups, whose approval they so assiduously seek to cultivate.
If professionalisation is one driver of these increasingly narrow and self-referential politics, another is the 'quite unnatural life' and the 'uncomfortable combination of celebrity, conflict, power and risk' that becoming a modern politician entails. Don Russell, who has worked with politicians at all levels of Australian government and internationally for more than four decades, argues that the people who find themselves in this profession are categorically 'different':
As a class they tend to be risk-lovers, which explains why they do so many inexplicable things. They wear scars from a highly adversarial working environment where they are continuously subjected to savage criticism, and a career structure where the pathway to success depends on the regard of their colleagues. It is a warrior's profession, where all are surrounded by enemies – some external, and some within their own party or faction, where bitter rivals masquerade as colleagues. Some are better at hiding it, some try not to engage, and some are naturals, but as with all fighters exposed to continuous battle, the risks can take a heavy toll.
Little wonder that politicians tend to be self-selecting. Former Independent Member for New England Tony Windsor is fond of saying that 'the world is run by those who turn up'. In recent decades, those who have turned up in Australia's democratic institutions have been prepared to ply the professional pathway and to submit to sclerotic, unreformed political parties where factional warlords distribute spoils among their loyalists while blocking the path of the genuinely well-motivated and talented people keen to serve the Australian public. We've seen this toll in the haemorrhaging of talent from Australian parliaments and the replacement of a generation of parliamentarians who were capable of occasional displays of bipartisanship with extremists or cynics who relish the game. The toll has also fallen on voters and democratic institutions, who have been collateral damage in the continuous battle over not very much. From the climate wars to the culture wars, for the past decade Australian politics has been an interminable war of attrition, while political tactics have hardened on all sides.
So it is encouraging that in electorates across Australia, community groups and people who have never engaged in politics are mobilising around independent candidates. Non-aligned 'Voices' groups in seats such as Goldstein (Vic), Mackellar (NSW), Hughes (NSW), Wentworth (NSW) and Groom (Qld) have preselected accomplished professional women with diverse experience, community connections and broad networks to run at the 2022 poll with the hope of growing a crossbench of centrist women in the next parliament. Many of these candidacies have been inspired by former Member for Indi Cathy McGowan, founder of the Community Independents Project to support community-led campaigns that model a 'new kind of politics' and seek to attract supporters who have become alienated by the partisan fray – and her successor in the federal division of Indi, Helen Haines. Though local communities determine their candidates' priorities in these new preselections, most have nominated climate action, integrity and gender equality as their top three issues. When former foreign correspondent Zoe Daniel, who will contest the seat of Goldstein as a community independent, spoke to The Age about the realisation that she needed to step up and get involved, she said: 'If not us, then who? And if not now, when?' Her remarks captured the wider sense of disillusion being felt about the parlous state of our politics. My motivation to pen this series was prompted by a similar sense of urgency that has only intensified in the past few weeks.
Beyond the horrors laid bare in Jenkins' Set the Standard report, the prevailing atmosphere of tribalism and partisan conflict that pervades the atmosphere of Australia's parliaments – and the characters they attract – has created perverse incentives. Former Federal Senate President Scott Ryan laments the loss of the capacity to debate, to discuss and to compromise, all of which are critical to governing and fundamental to democratic legitimacy. He argues that 'an essential piece of our political system is in trouble' and that if we don't rediscover the skills of negotiation and practical compromise, 'we will face deepening gridlock'. He notes that 'politics can't just be war by other means. It must be the resolution of conflict by all possible means'.
It is one thing to discuss the character of our politicians, the character of our leaders, the character of those attracted to the current system and those whom its awfulness repels. But it is equally critical to emphasise and insist on the importance of the character of the voting public itself. Our democratic character is revealed by our commitment to the institutions that matter to us most. Are we the people who will allow our fates to be determined by a tiny portion of swing voters who can be easily distracted, bought and swayed by cynics who undermine our institutions in order to vandalise them?
My efforts to imagine a way out of our current malaise have been influenced and shaped by writers whose nations are further along the trajectory of populist authoritarianism and democratic dysfunction than afflicts Australia. From One Nation's flirtation with the National Rifle Association to Craig Kelly's and George Christensen's entreaties to the far right – with their colleagues' tacit approval – make it clear that we are not immune. The consensus among those writers – Anne Applebaum, George Packer, Yuval Levin, Robert Kagan and others – is that bipartisanship, active citizenship and engagement with our institutions are truly our last best hope. Each in different ways urges us all to take action, from wherever we are and however we can. As Levin notes, 'We don't have to figure out how everyone might do this; we just have to do it ourselves. You and I. We can do it in small ways – in thinking about how to use your time and energy, how to pursue our goals, how to judge success and failure, how to identify ourselves when people ask us who we are, how to measure our responsibilities.' Many of us feel overwhelmed by the scope and scale of the challenge that confronts us, by the seemingly bottomless, shameless nadir that our politics has reached. But this should not and must not deter us, because there is something small we can all do to start. Right now. Today.
Levin, Yuval, A Time to Build, Basic Books, 2020.
Noonan, Peggy, 2002, 'Character Above All: Ronald Reagan', PBS Newshour, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/spc/character/essays/reagan.html
Perkins, Miki, 'Former ABC reporter Zoe Daniel to fight Liberals on climate and integrity', The Age, 25 November 2021, https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/if-not-us-then-who-former-abc-journalist-zoe-daniel-announces-tilt-at-blue-ribbon-seat-20211125-p59c5y.html
Pfiffner, James P, The Character Factor: How We Judge America's Presidents, Texas A&M University Press, 2004.
Russell, Don, Leadership, Monash University Press, 2021.
Ryan, Scott, Challenging Politics, Monash University Press, 2021.
Tiernan, A and Weller, P, Learning to be a Minister: Heroic Expectations, Practical Realities, MUP, 2010.
To read more from Anne Tiernan's series Five things to care about, please click here.
Active citizens, constructive answers
IN THE DAYS after Labor's unexpected defeat at the May 2019 federal election, a social media storm raged. 'What the hell is wrong with Queensland?' was a common starting point ahead of calls for the state to be excised from the rest of Australia. In response, two Griffith University colleagues and I wrote an article... Read more


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Gambling: Crash Course Games #27
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Today we're going to talk about gambling. Now, gambling is interesting because it could be argued that gambling doesn't even have anything to do with games. It's usually about making money after all - which makes it much closer to work. But gambling definitely has a gaming component from its uncertain outcomes to rules of play, and gambling has had a huge impact on the more traditional games we see today. So let's take a look at gambling's not-so-certain history all the way from antiquity to the present, and maybe along the way we'll try to figure out why we like playing these "games" so much anyway.
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Hi, I'm Andre. This is Crash Course Games, and today we're going to take a chance on talking about something a little different than the board games and video games we've focused in the rest of the series. We're going to bet it all on the hope that lots of people want to watch an episode about gambling.
(Intro)
Gambling is kind of an outlier in the world of games. In fact, there's some pretty solid arguments that gambling doesn't even have anything to do with games. I'd argue that some gambling very clearly falls in the realm of games, and even when gambling isn't really a game, the two still frequently go hand in hand. In the most basic sense, gambling is the playing of games for money, and that broad definition can be a little problematic, as we'll see people in general like to gamble and will bet on just about anything.
When we talk about pure gambling though, there are essentially three types: wagers, lotteries, and games of chance. A wager is a bet on the outcome of an event. Wagers are things like bets on sporting events, horse or dog races, an election, and even a coin toss. You can wager on just about anything, and people do this all the time. I once made a bet about how long the national anthem was going to be sung in a football event. I won it, too. While wagers are often related to games, like a bet on a sports game, wagering itself isn't often thought of as a game itself.
Lotteries and games of chance have some things in common. According to the text book on internet gaming law, creatively titled Internet Gaming Law, lotteries and games of chance depend on the generations of random numbers through set parameters. At their most basic level, lotteries and casino games rely on a random number generator. That generator could be a drum full of numbers, like with a lottery, or it could be a deck of card or a pair of dice, like in casinos games. Lotteries are pretty simple, a player chooses a group of numbers or has numbers assigned to them randomly, and wins if the matching numbers are spit out of the number generator. The lack of player agency in a lottery means it's not much like a game, either.
Games of chance are more interesting, because they rely on giving the player an illusion of control. In reality, a pair of dice, or roulette wheel, or deck of cards is just as much a random number generator as a lottery drum. Almost all the games in a traditional casino, like blackjack, roulette, craps, baccarat, and slot machines, are all considered pure games of chance. These are games where the players skill can improve their chances, but the house always has statistical advantage. That's why these games are always backed by the casino or whoever is running the game. The casino or other game operator understands the odds of these games very well, and sets up the rules of each one so that even the most skillful player is at a slight disadvantage to the house. But, when players are allowed to throw the dice themselves, or place the ball in the roulette wheel, or cut the cards, they get a sense they're influencing the outcome of the game. In effect, they're not, but it's still leads them to bet more. Casinos usually keep that advantage relatively small though. If people didn't win frequently at casinos, they wouldn't have fun and they wouldn't want to come back. So some of these casino games, like blackjack or craps, only give the casino a very small advantage, and the players are able to place the best bets. But even if a casino is keeping five percent of bets on average, it still adds up to a lot of money over millions and millions of bets.
And then there's poker, the one casino game that many will argue is a game of skill, and in a lot of ways it is. The way the cards fall is still subject to the randomness inherent to casino games, and the player can do nothing to influence the quality of their hand. The skill comes in the reading of one's opponents, and the use of strategic betting to either force opponents out of the game or lure them into betting when you have a stronger hand.
But, no matter what kind of gambling we're talking about, there's no doubt that people have been gambling for a long, long time. Probably for as long as there have been people. Maybe one prehistoric guy bet another guy that he could throw a rock over a tree or something, and he lost his cow. Next thing you know, we got casinos all over the world. There were probably a few steps in between there though.
Actually, we've got plenty of non-speculative historical and literary evidence of gambling throughout history. The Rigveda from India includes the gambler's lament, written around the twelfth century BCE. It's a story about a gambler who loses it all. The poem reads, "My wife holds me aloof, her mother hates me: the wretched man finds none to give him comfort. As of a costly horse grown old and feeble, I find not any profit of the gamester." And the narrator advises other gamblers, to quote, "Play not with dice: no cultivate thy corn-land. Enjoy the gain, and deem that wealth sufficient. There are thy cattle, there thy wife, O gambler. So this good Savitar himself hath told me."
There are also references to gambling in the ancient poetry of China, dating as far back as eleven hundred BCE, and gambling appears in Greek and Roman antiquity, and the Christian Bible as well. After Christ's crucifixion, Roman soldiers "divided up his garments among themselves by casting lots." The casting of lots shows up in many early references of gambling, which grew out of the ancient tradition of cleromancy, predicting the future or understanding the will of gods by interpreting random distributions of stuff they've thrown around. These lots eventually evolved into the dice we know today, and became much more secular.
Playing cards emerged in China around the ninth century C.E.. We've covered the history of cards pretty extensively in our card games episode, so we don't need to get into that much again.
Card and dice games were prevalent from antiquity onward, and casino gambling first appeared in Italy in the seventeenth century. By the middle of the nineteenth century, there were casinos all over the continent that would still be recognizable today. During the same period, gambling made its way to North America. Lotteries were used to fund all kinds of things in colonial America, and all thirteen colonies used official government lotteries. In fact, fundraising by lottery was used to help initially fund a bunch of the first American universities, including Yale, Harvard, and Princeton.
Most gambling involving games of chance with cards and dice was more informal, and was happening in taverns, parlors, and riverboats all over the New World. The legends of exploitative card sharks and cheaters in the nineteenth century American imagination contributed to the changing attitudes about gambling.
Let's go to the thought bubble.
As the reform-minded progressive movement, the temperance movement, and a changing perception about gambling and corruption all took hold toward the end of the nineteenth century, legislators moved to ban lotteries in all the states, and games of chance and wagering were widely outlawed as well.
Believe it or not, making gambling illegal didn't end the practice; it just drove it underground where it eventually became an important stream of revenue for the organized crime syndicates that were springing up all over the country to take up the booze business after the prohibition of alcohol by the 19th Amendment.
The prohibition of gambling, like the prohibition of alcohol, was pretty short-lived. Gambling started to make a come-back. Betting on horse races was re-legalized in several states, including in California and New York during the 1920s, and casino gambling was re-legalized in fits and starts. Nevada started to allow it in 1931, but it was slow to take off, largely because of the state's small population and because gambling was still widely considered morally questionable.
The prohibitions against gambling outside Nevada continued to play out in surprising ways. One common device that was caught up in anti-gambling legislation was the pinball machine. In the 1940s, pinball was considered a game of chance, only suitable for gambling. The police raided pinball parlors and destroyed the machines. Over time, pinball machines evolved into games of skill that people played solely for entertainment, and they were legalized in 1976, as attitudes toward gambling began to change.
New Jersey legalized casino gambling in Atlantic City in 1978. By the 1990s, attitudes towards gambling had shifted, and casino gambling began to be legalized in many states, starting with Iowa in 1989. Today, twenty states allow commercial casino gambling.
Thanks, thought bubble.
Now, lotteries also started to make a comeback in the 1960s when New Hampshire created a state lottery to increase school funding. Over the next few decades, that became commonplace, and today, 44 states have government sponsored lotteries. Legalization of casino gambling was pushed in much the same way. States that legalized gambling promised to tax casinos, and use the revenues to fund services. This leaves states and municipalities addicted to gambling revenues in order to continue providing services, and as legal gambling expanded in the United States, a lot of people have taken it up.
One study by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found that 86% of adults in the United States reported gambling at some point in their life, and 52% of adults reported participating in the lottery in the last year. These gamblers bet a lot of money, and lose a lot of money. And, I mean a lot. According to The Economist, the world's gamblers lost a total of 440 billion dollars in 2014. American gamblers lost the most, giving up 119 billion dollars in legal wagers. And, those numbers are just for casinos and other wagering business. If you count the money spent on lotteries, some estimates of world wide legal gambling loses are as high as 10 trillion dollars a year!
So, if you lose so much money, why do we keep gambling? Well, people gamble so much, because it triggers our brains' reward system. When we do something that feels good, like eating a good meal or beating a video game, our brain rewards us with a little bit of dopamine, which makes us feel really good. We want to engage in that behavior again, no matter what the consequence might be. Humans can get addicted to gambling in the same way they can get addicted to opiates and cocaine. Drugs, like heroin and cocaine, triggers the same reward system, and, as it turns out, gambling wins do, too. In fact, compulsive gambling was classified as an addiction in the American Psychiatric Association update in its diagnostic manual in 2013. Surveys indicate that there are about 2 million problem gamblers in the United States, but addiction can't account for the vast amounts of money that are being wagered and lost.
What accounts for all those other gamblers? Sure, their limbic reward system gives them some sweet dopamine for playing, but why do they continue to play if they aren't actually addicted? It turns out there are a couple of ways that people tend to think that keep them at the casinos. Behavioral economist David Ewing identified one mechanism as the Gambler's Conceit. The idea is that people who are gambling tend to believe that they can stop taking risks, even while they continue to take risks. A person sitting at a blackjack table, having lost hundreds of dollars, can very often convince themselves that they'll quit as soon as they win their money back. That doesn't often work as planned. The games are designed so that the house has an advantage, and the player is, in aggregate, unlikely to win those losses back. But the player is also unlikely to quit if they do win the money back. They have little incentive to quit while they're winning.
Another concept that keeps people gambling is the Gambler's Fallacy. Remember that illusion of control we mentioned earlier? This is kind of similar. The Gambler's Fallacy is the idea that a player can predict what's going to happen during the game based on what has already happened in a game. Remember, these are games of chance and they're all based on random number generators. Some of them are more purely random than others, but they're random for a reason. So that players can't predict what happens. The Gambler's Fallacy is nicely illustrated by the game of roulette. Players assume that because a certain number has not appeared in a while, it will be more likely to appear in the future. Nope! Or that since a certain number has appeared frequently, it is unlikely to appear again. Also, nope! That logic is flawed because the odds are reset with every roll, and the past doesn't influence future rolls. A lot of casinos play into this fallacy though, by posting a board by the roulette table showing the last several rolls, which can "help" players predict future spins.
So gambling has been with us for millennia, all the way from the ancient casting of lots to the modern practice of playing tic-tac-toe against chickens. And the basic wiring of human brains, and the ways that risk and reward affect us will ensure that we'll be gambling for millennia to come. So, be sure to quit while your're ahead (if you can).
In the end, we can only paraphrase America's foremost expert on gambling, country music legend Kenny Rogers, and admit we're in no position to advise on when you should hold them, or when you should fold them, when to walk away, or when to run. I will suggest you quit counting that money while you're sitting at the table. There'll be time enough to do that when the video is done. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next week. Or will I? Take a bet!
Crash course games is filmed in the Chad and Stacey Emigholz Studio in Indianapolis, Indiana, and it's made with the help of all these nice people. If you'd like to keep Crash Course free for everyone, forever, you can support the series at Patreon, a crowdfunding platform that allows you to support the content you love. Speaking of Patreon, we'd like to thank all our patrons in general, and we'd like to specifically thank our High Chancellor of Knowledge, Morgan Lizop, and our Vice Principal Michael Hunt. Thank you for your support.
Don't to be awesome

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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I Started Using a Menstrual Cup and It Totally Changed My Life
Olivia Muenter
Olivia Muenter is a contributing writer for Byrdie with over six years experience in the digital media space.
Menstrual Discs Menstrual Cups The Experience
The Benefits The Learning Curve The Bottom Line
One of the unexpected upsides of changing my career and working from home has been the way I've rethought my day-to-day consumption of goods. Without the daily stress of a frustrating commute, tons of meetings, and everything else that goes along with working in an office, I spend more time in my home than anywhere else. That means when it comes to what I use on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, I take notice of how long things last me and how often I'm running to the pharmacy or convenience store to buy more. And as it turns out, you go through a lot more paper towels and toilet paper when you're not at an office (or commuting to/from said office) for 12 hours a day. Something else you notice how quickly you go through, if you happen to have a period? Tampons.
When I started working from home and no longer had access to an office with an endless supply of period products, I somehow found myself in the same predicament each and every month. I would end up rushing to the pharmacy in an emergency, usually a few hours before my period came, stocking up on the cheapest box of tampons I could find.
Menstrual Discs
After seeing someone on Instagram talk about menstrual discs, though, I was intrigued. Unlike tampons, you could wear discs for up to 12 hours before changing them. You still disposed of them every 12 hours, though, unlike a menstrual cup, which you reuse again and again. As someone who was terrified and overwhelmed by the idea of a menstrual cup, discs seemed like the perfect alternative. Not quite as sustainable as a cup, but hey, it was a start.
Though it took a bit of trial-and-error to get used to them, I eventually replaced tampons with discs altogether. The pros? I could change them less often and I experienced fewer leaks than with tampons. The cons? On the first day or two of my period, I'd almost always have a leak after a few hours. Also, there was still the issue of waste (even if it was less than with tampons). After a few months of using discs, though, I found myself less intimidated by the concept of a cup — and I was curious, too. If I could have the same experience as I had with discs (occasional leaks and all) but with zero waste to deal with, it would be perfect. So I ordered a Saalt cup on a whim, boiled it (to sterilize it), read the instruction manual, and waited patiently for my period to arrive.
By the time my period did show up, I was fairly confident that this whole process would be a piece of cake. I had been through the hit-and-miss adjustment period for inserting and removing a disc—how could this be any different? So I re-read the manual, folded the silicone cup up, and after a few fails, managed to insert it in what I hoped was the correct way. It was about 12 hours before I had to remove it, and I was impressed that it was totally comfortable when inserted. In fact, I couldn't feel it at all. Everything was fine... until I tried to remove it.
Consider this a warning: The first time you go to take out the cup, it may be a little panic-inducing. I briefly thought that I wouldn't be able to get it out at all, but after trying a few different squatting positions, I figured it out just fine. This process can also be a bit messy when you're first getting used to it, but again: practice makes perfect. By day four of my period, I felt like a pro—and I was also convinced that I would never, never use anything but a menstrual cup ever again. Aside from a minor one on the first day of my period, I haven't experienced a leak a single time. Not once. But the best part? There is no waste. Zero. No wrapping discs or tampons in wads and wads of toilet paper. No smells. Nothing. Plus, I will never, ever again be in the situation of running out of tampons or discs. The concept of never having to pay for either of those things again (or at least not for many, many years)? Pretty amazing.
How to Make Sure Your Period Cup Doesn't Leak: A Guide
But while I tried out a menstrual cup in an effort to make my everyday routines more sustainable and less complicated, there are other benefits to menstrual cups to consider, too. "Another advantage of the cup is that it can hold more blood than other options such as the pad or tampon so it can be changed less frequently. It is recommended that the cup be replaced every 6-12 hours, depending on how heavy your flow is," Dr. Jodie Horton, MD and Love Wellness advisor says. "The cup is also more cost-effective when compared to other feminine hygiene products even if replaced once a year. This is particularly important for those who experience period poverty or have inadequate access to menstrual products."
Dr. Yvonne Bohn, Cystex Chief Medical Correspondent and OB/GYN, shares that menstrual cups also come with less risk of Toxic Shock Syndrome as compared to tampons and tend to produce less odor because the blood is never exposed to air, unlike tampons.
While most experts I spoke to agree that there are many benefits to using a menstrual cup, they also agree that the main con of cups is the learning curve. It can take some practice and time to figure out how to insert, remove, and change out the cups and some women can find it frustrating. It's also very important to find the correct size (when it doubt, start with the smallest size).
"When a menstrual cup is too large, it prevents or delays the bladder from emptying fully. This retained urine creates a higher risk for UTIs because its bacteria can grow and multiply. UTIs are preventable with the proper cup size and by checking that urine flow isn't slowed or obstructed by the cup, " Dr. Bohn shares.
Though I would agree that there is a brief learning curve, I already know that switching to use a menstrual cup will be one of the best decisions I've made in a long, long time. I would encourage everyone with a period to, if nothing else, at least give a cup a try for a cycle or two. Because never spending money on tampons ever again? What could be better than that?
These Menstrual Cups Give You Total Period Protection
Everything You Need to Know About Using the Flex Menstrual Disc For Period Cramps
Yes, There's a Right Way to Shop for Tampons (and Other Period Products)
I Drastically Reduced My Beauty Waste With These 7 Simple Swaps
11 Stories of Women and Their Birth Control, Because Talking About It Is Helpful
Every Question You've Ever Had About Lash Extensions, Answered
5 Honest, Personal Stories From Women Who Have Gotten Abortions
We Can't Keep the Best Products We Tried This Month a Secret Any Longer
This Is What Happens When You Try to Eat Like Gisele
The Best Sustainable Period Products That Are Mindful of Our Planet
Here's the Truth About Birth Control Implants, Straight From Gynecologists
The Tampon Alternative Transforming the Way We Think and Talk About Periods
Is It Possible to Naturally Cure a UTI? We Asked the Experts
You Know Your Vaginal pH Matters—But Here's Exactly Why
Periods Are Uncomfortable (We Know) But These 10 Tampons Are Not


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Australian Women in Religion Bibliography
This page will eventually provide access to a comprehensive bibliography of resources related to Australian Women in Religion. An example of the type of bibliography that will be created on this site can be viewed on the website of the Network for New Media, Religion and Digital Culture Studies.
Resources will be combined from a number of existing bibliographies and new items will be added over time.
AWR Bibliography
Religious Orders Bibliography
Institutes of Women Religious in Australia Bibliography
Author, Mary Rosa MacGinley
Australian Women in Religion (Course Reserves)
Individual Biographies
Religious Orders
And the dance goes on : an anthology of Australian Catholic women's stories by Commission for Australian Catholic Women
The Australian dictionary of evangelical biography by Brian Dickey, editor
Believing in Australia : a cultural history of religions by Hilary M. Carey
A history of religious practice in Australia from Aboriginal religions to New Age cults.
Claiming our rites : studies in religion by Australian women scholars by edited by Morny Joy and Penelope Magee
Deliver Us from Eve : essays on Australian women and religion by Thiering, Barbara Elizabeth (ed.), and Australian Council of Churches. New South Wales State Council. Commission on the Status of Women.
The Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia by James Jupp (Editor) Australia is a country rich in religious diversity. While constitutionally-speaking Australia is a secular society, waves of immigration over its short history have had a large impact on its religious and cultural make-up. The Encyclopedia of Religion in Australia is the first major work of reference to describe the beliefs, practices and organisation of religion in Australia. It examines religion in several different ways: historical development, belief systems and controversies, as well as the social role each faith plays in modern Australian society. This comprehensive volume includes entries on indigenous spirituality, Scientology, hillsong, and atheism, and features all of the major religions. Richly illustrated, it includes a section dedicated to current debates and issues in modern-day Australia, such as the place of religion in politics, fundamentalism, religious education and social cohesion.
Enduring Lives : living portraits of women and faith in action by Carol Lee Flinders
In this companion volume to her best-selling Enduring Grace, Flinders profiles the lives of four contemporary women of faith. Contending that her modern subjects are spiritual heirs to saints and mystics she draws parallels between her modern subjects and their historical predecessors.
God's Willing Workers : women and religion in Australia by Anne O'Brien Examines the ways religious beliefs and institutions have shaped the lives of women in Australia over 200 years. It looks at Catholic nuns, Protestant missionaries, deaconesses and laywomen. Importantly, it looks at women at home as they grappled with church teachings on sexuality, marriage and family, gender roles, work and education.
Heralding a renaissance : women & leadership in the Catholic Church by Christine Cameron
My place by Sally Morgan
Towards a feminist theology : papers and proceedings from a national conference called together by MOW, National WATAC, Women-Church, 18-20 August 1989, Collaroy Centre, Sydney by Elaine Lindsay ; illustrations by Bernice Moore ; photos by Helen Leonard
Women authoring theology : papers and proceedings from a national conference called together by MOW, National WATAC, Women-church, Feminist Uniting Network, 24-26 May 1991, Strathfield, Sydney NSW by Elaine Lindsay
Women in Purple: Women Bishops in Australia by Muriel Porter
Catherine Mcauley and the Tradition of Mercy by Mary C. Sullivan
The Correspondence of Catherine Mcauley, 1818-1841 by Kevin L. Hughes; Mary C. Sullivan
Eileen O'Connor, for the poor and the poor only by T.P. Boland
Irene, 21.8.38-21.5.91 by Margaret Le Breton
Mother Xavier Maguire : a woman of faith and vision by Helen Delaney
Not forgotten : Australian Catholic educators 1820-2020 by Edited by Anne Benjamin & Seamus O'Grady
Our own Matilda : Matilda Jane Evans, 1827-1886 : pioneer woman and novelist by Barbara Wall
A saviour of living cargoes : the life and work of Caroline Chisholm by Carole Walker
Swifty : a life of Yvonne Swift by Edmund Campion The extraordinary story of how a devoted nun became an equally devoted campaigner for justice - as a successful criminal defence lawyer. When Yvonne Benedicta Swift entered the Sacre Coeur convent in Rose Bay in 1938, she was determined to dedicate herself to religious life. But in the 1970s she did something unusual: retrained as a lawyer, established her own practice and defended some of Sydney's most notorious criminals. In her legal practice she took on clients who she believed had been wronged, especially by the legal system itself.
Three women of faith : Gertrude Abbott, Elizabeth Anstice Baker and Mary Tenison Woods by Margaret Press
Unfeigned love : historical accounts of Caroline Chisholm and her work by Rod Stinson
Ursula Frayne : a biography by Catherine Kovesi Killerby
Ursula Frayne : a woman of mercy : themes and resources by Anne Walsh
A woman sings of mercy by Mary C. Bourke
An acorn grows among the gums : the Presentation Sisters, Tasmania, 1866-2006 by Noela M. Fox
Adventure in faith : the Presentation sisters by Kathleen Dunlop Kane
The Australian Daughters of Mary Aikenhead : a century of charity, 1838-1938 by John H. Cullen
A bridge between : Spanish Benedictine Missionary women in Australia by Katharine Massam
The Brigidine Sisters' Contribution to the Catholic Church in Victoria 1886-1986 by Morna Sturrock
The challenge of change : Mercy and Loreto Sisters in Ballarat 1950-1980 by Heather O'Connor
A Dynamic of Hope : institutes of women religious in Australia by Mary Rosa McGinley
From humble beginnings : the story of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart in Victoria, 1890-2009 by Jill Barnard
The Good Sams : Sisters of the Good Samaritan 1857-1969 by Margaret Walsh
The Josephite story : the sisters of St. Joseph ; their foundation and early history 1866-1893 by Marie Therese Foale
The labourers' friends : Sisters of Mercy in Victoria and Tasmania by Maree G. Allen
The land that I will show you : history of the Institute of Sisters of Mercy of Australia 1981-2011 by Berenice M Kerr
Loreto in Australia by Mary Ryllis Clark
A seed is sown : the history of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart, 1890-1920 by Joan Ryan
The Sisters, Faithful Companions of Jesus in Australia by M. Clare O'Connor
This land of promise : the Ursuline order in Australia, 1882-1982 by Pauline Kneipp
Valiant women : letters from the foundation Sisters of Mercy in Western Australia, 1845-1849 by Geraldine Byrne
The wheel of time : a brief survey of the ninety-six years' work of the Sisters of Mercy in Victoria, 1857-1953 by Sister Mary Ignatius
With grateful hearts! : Mary MacKillop and the Sisters of St Joseph in Queensland, 1870-1970 by Margaret M. McKenna
Women of Strength, Women of Gentleness : Brigidine Sisters, Victorian Province. by Morna Sturrock
Coco, Angela (1991) Women and the Australian Church Part A
Coco, Angela (1991) Women and the Australian Church Part B
This thesis examines the Christian feminist group, 'Women and the Australian Church', (WATAC). WATAC's aim was to raise the consciousness of women on Christian feminist issues in order to facilitate 'a change in the understanding of the role of women in their participation in the Australian Church and the broader society'. Funding from hierarchical bodies was received until 1988. The national level organisation and communication, which had been created by nun women, ceased in 1989. Since August 1989, WATAC membership and communication has floundered as women, mostly laity, sought to continue the activities which had begun under the WATAC name. The history and development of this group provides a situation in which to examine, from a feminist perspective, the kind of processes and stresses that may aid or abet women's attempts to gain equal recognition for themselves in the Australian Church. This study analyses the relationships between nun women and lay women, and between each of these groups and the Catholic Church hierarchy. The result of this research indicate that structural and attitudinal characteristics inherent in the stereotypical definitions of lay women's and nun women's place in the Australian Church are still operative. They have inhibited WATAC women's attempts to work together to bring about change in the perceptions of women's role in Catholicism. The radical potential of the group was quelled as a result of nun women's hierarchical position in the relations of power.
Hogan, Carol (2007) Eucharistic metamorphosis : changing symbols, changing lives
DMinStud, Melbourne College of Divinity, 2007
https://divinity.on.worldcat.org/v2/oclc/271775888
Sturrock, Morna (1994) The Brigidine Sisters' contribution to the Catholic Church in Victoria 1886-1986
MTheol, University of Divinity, 1994
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Alumnus Bio Page: Rachel Martindale
Rachel Martindale
Martindale in the 2019 WPIAL Class 6A Championship Game.
(Wexford, PA – Jan. 1, 2023) Rachel Martindale, a multi-sport athlete, helped the North Allegheny girls' basketball team to two WPIAL championships and four title game appearances, along with one appearance in the PIAA championship in Hershey. In 2019, she spearheaded the North Allegheny softball team's efforts in reaching the WPIAL championship for the first time since 2015.
On the hardwood, Martindale averaged 13.7 points and 5.2 rebounds per game in the 2018-19 season. She totaled 1,373 points, 267 3-pointers, 270 assists and 205 steals in her North Allegheny career. The Tigers amassed a record of 105-11 during her four year-tenure. Among a bevy of accolades, Martindale was named all-state three times by the Pennsylvania Sports Writers along with back-to-back laurels on the Trib 10 and Post-Gazette's Fab Five lists.
Photo courtesy of University of Akron Athletics.
Due to a knee injury suffered in the 2018 WPIAL Class 6A girls' basketball championship game, a contest the Tigers won, Martindale missed the rest of the state playoff run and the entire 2018 softball season. She showed no rust upon her return to the basketball court or the diamond. On the softball field, Martindale posted 101 career hits to go along with a career .470 batting average, 14 home runs, 70 RBI and 96 runs scored in just three seasons. She had received post-season recognition as the Trib Live HSSN's Class 6A Player of the Year and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette softball Player of the Year for the 2019 season. She was also North Allegheny's and the Post Gazette's female athlete of the year in 2019.
Currently, Rachel is continuing her basketball career with the Akron Zips where she is completing her senior season.
Live Broadcast Tonight @ 7:30pm
Girls Basketball: NA vs. Norwin
Full Broadcast Schedule »


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Download "Experience and Foundationalism in Audi s The Architecture of Reason"
Gregory Carr
1 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LXVII, No. 1, July 2003 Experience and Foundationalism in Audi s The Architecture of Reason WALTER SINNOTT-ARMSTRONG Dartmouth College Robert Audi s The Architecture of Reason is a magnificent consolidation of decades of original work by a masterful philosopher. Its scope is impressive, as it covers both theoretical and practical reason in a slim volume. More impressive yet is its coherence, for Audi reveals a unified structure shared by what many philosophers assume to be disparate fields. In this short comment, I will focus on just a few aspects of Audi s primary analogies between theoretical and practical reason. He argues that reason, conceived as a general human capacity, is, as Kant thought, unified. It is unified above all by its grounding, directly or through belief, in experience, sensory, introspective, memorial, and reflective. (233; cf. ix, 16, 80, 222) Audi s structural thesis, then, is that good reasoning always has some foundation. His substantive thesis is that the foundation is always some experience. Hence his subtitle, The Structure and Substance of Rationality. 1 - Experience Audi admits some differences between theoretical and practical reason, but he claims that none of them undermines the main analogies. (193) It is not clear what it takes to undermine an analogy. Still, his main analogy regarding substance depends on a wide concept of experience, so his analogy seems problematic if his notion of experience is not adequately unified. One striking difference between the experiences that are said to ground theoretical reason and those said to ground practical reason concerns time. In Audi s own examples, as the justification of my belief that there is paper before me is grounded in my visual experience of paper, the rationality of my intrinsically wanting to listen to Beethoven s Appassionata is grounded (at least partly) in my enjoying my doing so. (216; cf. 7) Notice that my visual experience of paper does not justify me in any belief about that paper before I have that experience. If I have not yet seen the paper there, then I am not yet justified in believing that the paper is there, assuming that I have no other source of information about it. In contrast, my enjoyment in listening BOOK SYMPOSIUM 181
2 to Beethoven s music is said to ground my desire to listen to it, even though that desire becomes rational before the experience of enjoyment. It can be rational for me on Tuesday to want to hear Beethoven s music on Wednesday, even if this desire gives me no pleasure on Tuesday, and even if I have never heard any similar music before then. Thus, practical attitudes (such as wanting) can be well-grounded in future experiences, whereas future experiences alone are not enough to ground or justify theoretical attitudes (such as beliefs). To restore the analogy, Audi seems to need desires and valuations to be grounded on some experience before or at the same time as those desires and valuations. One possibility is a special experience of wanting or valuing. (cf.224-5) However, I do not seem to have any special valuational experience. While I lick my ice cream cone, I experience pleasure, and I believe it is good. I do not seem to have any separate experience of the value of the pleasure. But that is what Audi seems to need if some experience is to ground not only my belief that I am feeling pleasure but also my belief that this pleasure is good. Similarly for wants and desires. Sometimes it is rational to want (or to fear) things that neither I nor anyone else has ever experienced, possibly because they have never existed. Even when the object of my desire does exist, there often does not seem to be any distinctive experience of wanting it at the time when I want it. Audi makes the important point that desires often lead to negative experiences when frustrated, but that does not show that they are accompanied by any distinctive grounding experience at the time of the desire, so this cannot reinstate the analogy with theoretical reason. Another possible ground for valuational beliefs is the same kind of reflective experience that is supposed to ground justification in mathematics and logic. (16, 233) In previous works, Audi has written insightfully about reflection as a process, procedure, or method that may be as brief as simply focusing clearly on the proposition, or... may require many sittings, possibly spread over many years. It is hard to see how a single experience could span many disjoint sittings or years, so reflective experience cannot be an experience one has throughout reflection. That can t be what Audi meant. But then what is reflective experience? Audi explains reflective experience by contrasting it with perception, memory, and introspection, but he also insists on a commonality: It is important to see that a kind of expe- l Notice also that few moral philosophers have qualms about postulating imaginary cases to justify their views or to refute their opponents. What if a doctor cut up one patient for organs needed to save five other patients? Most people would not hesitate to agree that such acts are immoral, even if nobody has ever had any experience of any situation like the imagined one. Robert Audi, Intuitionism, Pluralism, and the Foundations of Ethics, in Moral Knowledge? New Essays in Moral Epistemology, eds. W. Sinnott-Annstrong and M. Timmons (New York; Oxford University Press, 1996), p WALTER SINNOTT-ARMSTRONG
3 rience, in the sense of mental activity or conscious awareness, occurs in both cases. (16) The problem here is that reflective experience could be a mental activity or conscious awareness, even if it were a kind of belief. However, Audi needs to contrast experience with belief in order to defend his foundationalism. For example, in response to Sellars argument that experience needs justification because it is conceptual, Audi responds, The conceptual, as opposed to the doxastic (the belief-constituted), need not admit of justification. (17) This response is not available, Audi seems to admit, if so-called reflective experience is belief-constituted. That possibility is not excluded by Audi s point that reflective experience is mental activity or conscious awareness. So Audi needs to tell us more about why reflective experience is not subject to Sellars argument and, more generally, about its relation to belief. I have canvassed only three kinds of experience-future, valuational, and reflective-that might ground practical reason. None of them seems to play the role Audi needs. But additional possibilities abound. I just want to invite Audi to tell us more precisely what kind of present or past experience he has in mind as the ground of practical reason and when he refers to reflective experience. 2 - Foundationalism The other aspect of Audi s theory is structural. In opposition to both coherentism and skepticism, Audi endorses moderate foundationalism, whose central claim for theoretical reason is that some beliefs are non-inferentially justified, and they provide the foundation for all other justified beliefs. (viii, 30, 232) What makes Audi s foundationalism moderate is that a belief can be noninferentially justified without being infallible or indefeasible or indubitable (certain) or underivable (strongly axiomatic) or self-evident. These negative points, however, do not provide any positive account of what does make a belief justified non-inferentially. In Audi s usage, to call a beliefjustified is to describe its status, not any process. (14, 18, 28) This status is well-groundedness of a rather fullblooded sort, which requires an adequate ground. (19) Such justifiedness is inferential when the ground or its adequacy positively depends on inferences. Thus, to say that a belief is justified non-inferentially is to say that its grounds are adequate without positive dependence on any inference. Audi s moderate version of foundationalism admits that such grounds can be defeated by overriding or undermining inferences, so he allows negative dependence on the absence of defeating inferences. However, this absence gets classified as an enabling condition rather than a source. (26) Just as the absence of too much carbon dioxide enables a match to light but is not a BOOK SYMPOSIUM 183
4 source of fire, so the absence of defeating inferences can enable a belief to be justified without being a source of its justifiedness. It is notoriously difficult to distinguish some enabling conditions from sources and, hence, negative from positive dependence. To clarify this distinction, Audi tells us, A source provides both a genetic explanation of where a thing comes from and, often, a contemporaneous partial explanation of why it is as it is; enabling conditions, by contrast, provide neither. Taken together, they explain its possibility, but not its genesis or its character. (26) However, insofar as explanation is pragmatic, it is often unclear what counts as part of an explanation. Since no fire would occur if a match were struck on glass, scientists might cite friction as part of the source of fire when someone strikes a match, although common people rarely mention friction in their explanations of the same fire. Such examples suggest that what counts as a source or as an enabling condition might vary with the concerns of the person giving the explanation. I think Audi wants to avoid this hnd of relativity; but, to do so, he needs either a non-pragmatic account of explanation or an explanation-independent way to distinguish sources from enabling conditions and negative from positive dependence. More importantly, even if Audi shows why inferences are not sources of some justified beliefs, inferences still might be indispensible (26) or necessury for those justified beliefs. If so, whether the inferences are sources or enabling conditions (26), whether the necessity is consequential or constitutive (47-48), and whether the dependence is positive or negative, the belief is still not justified without the inference. This makes it hard to see how the belief can be justified when the premises in the inference are not justified. But requiring the premises to be justified seems enough to start the classic skeptical regress. If so, Audi s moderate foundationalism is inadequate as a response to skepticism if all Audi claims is that inferences are not sources or constitutive conditions of some justified beliefs, which do not depend positively on inference. To avoid the regress, Audi must make the stronger claim either that no inference is necessary for justified belief or that the inferences that are necessary need not have justified premises. In any case, I want to invite Audi to tell us why his distinctions matter to the skeptical regress. The goal of stopping the skeptical regress also affects the kind of inference that foundationalists must claim to be positively independent of justified belief. If every inference is a conscious mental operation (viii) whose premises are conscious beliefs, then some grounds do seem positively independent of any such inference. Seeing a red bird seems to justify me in believing that the bird is red without running through any actual conscious inference from conscious beliefs. I don t, needn t, and can t bother to formulate every inference explicitly. 184 WALTER SINNOTT-ARMSTRONG
5 However, coherentists and skeptics can accept that much independence. For example, Bonjour (in his coherentist days) held that justified belief always depends on inferences, but those inferences could be tacit or implicit in such a way that the believer does not bring them explicitly to mind and indeed would normally be unable to do so even if explicitly challenged. 13 Justified belief could positively depend on such tacit inferences, as coherentists claim, even if it does not positively depend on conscious inferences. Skeptics can also agree to independence of conscious inference, since that independence is not enough to stop the skeptical regress. If justified belief positively depends on tacit inferences, then the premises of those tacit inferences presumably need to be justified, which starts the regress. Thus, foundationalism cannot play its traditional role as a response to skepticism unless it makes the stronger claim that some beliefs are justified by grounds that do not positively depend on tacit inferences. The same goes for dispositions to infer, abilities to infer, and even mere brain process[es] (viii). If justified belief depends on any inference at any level, then the premises of the inference would seem to need to be justified, which leads to the skeptical regress. Much to his credit, Audi recognizes this. He allows unconscious beliefs (242n22) as well as dispositions to believe (114, 174) and abilities to infer. (25, 198, 238n23) He even admits that unconscious but presuppositionally available beliefs can ground some inferentially justified beliefs (33; cf. 48), that inferentially justified beliefs might depend on a disposition to believe the principles of inferences one uses (207), and that having justification for a proposition that one does not actually believe can defeat the rationality of my belief. (207) So tacit beliefs and inferences exist and have some epistemic force. Nonetheless, Audi denies that justified belief positively depends on any of this. He claims that certain kinds of experience by themselves are sufficient to ground justified beliefs: justification-of some degree-from one of the four standard sources does not wait upon corroboration from other sources. (22)4 The four standard sources are perception, introspection, memory, and reflection. Audi s claim, thus, implies that, when I see a red bird, my visual experience can be enough to make me justified in believing that the bird is red, even if I do not believe (consciously or unconsciously) that my eyes are reliable at detecting color in such circumstances, and even if I have no disposition or ability to infer the bird s color from my experience plus the Laurence Bodour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Cambridge; Harvard University Press, 1985). p. 152; cf. 20, This claim cannot be just that, for example, memory in general need not be corroborated by some source other than memory. Instead, Audi claims that some particular memorial beliefs are justified without corroboration either from any other memory or from anything outside memory. BOOK SYMPOSIUM 185
6 reliability of my experience. Since most of us know from past experience when our eyes are reliable or unreliable, the crucial test case would be someone who is blind or colorblind from birth but suddenly starts to experience colors. Suppose this person does not believe that his new experiences are reliable indicators of colors. Nor does he believe that they are unreliable. He wouldn t hazard a guess, because they are new to him. Yet he sees a bird, experiences its color, and believes that it is red. He does not confirm this belief either by checking other experiences or by asking people who have seen colors longer. Audi s theory implies that this person is justified in believing that the bird is red. This claim, even if correct, is surely controversial, so Audi owes us some reason why such experience alone is enough without even any ability to back it up in any way. Audi hints at one response when he claims that visual experience (as distinct from belief) need not admit of justification. (17) Maybe the point is that what does not admit of justification by inference cannot need justification by inference. If this is the point, then it should apply to every kind of experience that is not belief-constituted. However, Audi writes, It appears that the four standard sources of justification are the only sources of it that do not need to earn their justificational credentials, as extrasensory perception presumably would, by correlation with one or another kind of ground already taken to generate justification. (19; my emphasis) But why does extra-sensory perception have this need for corroboration? Audi already said, Perception is not necessarily tied to the five senses. It could occur through some other causally sensitive modality associated with the right sorts of experiential responses. (18) He also does not exclude the possibility that religious experience counts as a kind of perception and qualifies as a basic source whose justificatory power is non-derivative. ( 18; cf. note 11 on 237) But, if we allow religious experience to be basic, then why should we require corroboration of extra-sensory perception? If Audi is to allow some experiences but not others as foundational sources of justified belief, he needs to tell us why some experiences do not require corroboration and also why the others do. One possible response is that some sources are reliable but others are not. Most readers probably assume that extra-sensory perception is not reliable and that vision is. This cannot be Audi s answer, however, because he rejects such externalism for justified belief (48-49). Moreover, if reliability is what makes memory experience need no corroboration, then, to justify his claim that memory experience needs no corroboration, Audi would have to show that memory is reliable without relying on memory itself. That wouldn t be easy. So it is hard to see how his crucial claim could be justified. Audi might respond that we know by reflection which sources do or do not need corroboration. But it begs the question to hold that we know by 186 WALTER SINNOTT-ARMSTRONG
7 reflection that reflective experience needs no corroboration. Besides, different people reach different conclusions when they reflect on extra-sensory percep tion and religious experience, so why trust some reflection more than any other reflection? In some passages, Audi might seem to suggest that common practice explains why the standard sources do not need backup by inference, but extrasensory perception does. For example, he writes, There is no reason to think that any other sources play the same role in the notion of justification that operates in the standad descriptive and critical practices of normal adults. It appears that the four standard sources of justification are the only sources of it that do not need to earn their justificational credentials. (19) If the first sentence gives Audi s reason for the second sentence, then he infers a normative epistemological conclusion about what is needed from a description of standard... practices. (Compare also 73, 220, and note 21 on 269.) However, I doubt that this is really Audi s view. In later passages, he rejects genetic relativity (176) and emphasizes that theoretical and practical rationality a~ not mere products of culture (188). But then he needs something outside culture or standard... practices to explain why standard sources need no corroboration, but extrasensory perception does. This, then, is my final question for Audi: What creates the need for inferential corroboration in some sources but not others? Is this just a prejudice in favor of the familiar or is there some rational basis for the standards that Audi accepts along with the rest of us? BOOKSYMPOSIUM 187
Robert Audi, The Architecture of Reason: The Structure and. Substance of Rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Pp. xvi, 286.
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Bill Cosby Calls Himself "America's Dad" & Marijuana Pepsi Defends Her Name: This Week's Winners & Losers
Folks had major guts these last few days...some good, some bad.
Written By: Royce Dunmore
@nianoelle
Nia Noelle's media career has spanned two decades, beginning as a Media TV Spokesperson at Norman High School, to her formal training at The William Fulbright School of Arts in Broadcasting Journalism at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, doing TV and radio, to her professional career. This professional career has taken her to Fayetteville, North Carolina, Huntsville, Alabama, and finally to her home state, Columbus, Ohio Nia Noelle came to Columbus as midday host for Power 107.5 and stayed on the airways for 8 years before moving over to Magic 95.5 where she hosted on middays for several years. Nia can now be heard every Saturday 12-5pm. Nia serves as the Program Director for Fashion Week Columbus, she also enjoys volunteering at many organizations around town including Dress for Success. Nia can be seen around town hosting various events and enjoying the 614 because she always "has her stiletto out the door!" @nianoelle
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Tyre Nichols' Brutal Arrest Video Released, His Mother Doesn't Want Children To Watch
Source: DON EMMERT / Getty
Things were all about timing this week. Some people had landmark events just in time for a changing world, while others had completely OFF timing and received the necessary backlash. Check out Winners for the week below, then hit the flip for the Loser!
1. Marijuana Pepsi
Marijuana Pepsi is out here THRIVING.
The Black scholar was gifted the um…."unique" name at birth, and despite the taboos around names sounding "too Black" or "too ghetto" for the professional world, Marijuana stuck by her name with love.
"I'm going to be called Dr. Marijuana Pepsi!" she declared.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Marijuana's proclamation came true when she earned her Ph.D. in higher education leadership from Cardinal Stritch University in the Milwaukee area.
You might be wondering what's the last name of Marijuana Pepsi…
It used to be Jackson, then later Sawyer, and now it's Vandyck. The 46-year-old married her husband, Fredrick Vandyck, in 2017 and they live on a 3-acre hobby farm with chickens and pigs in Pecatonica, Illinois.
Marijuana's road to success hasn't been a crystal road, however, especially with her name.
"People make such a big deal out of it, I couldn't get away from it," she said.
Marijuana's mom, Maggie (Brandy) Johnson, picked out her name and foreshadowed that it would take her around the world. Meanwhile, Marijuana's older and younger sisters got basic names like Robin and Kimberly.
Marijuanna said her whole life she always got heat for her name, not just from classmates, but from teachers and bosses. Some folks even refused to call her by her name and they urged her to go to court to change it.
Marijuana Pepsi was like naw.
She embraces her name as proof that you can prevail over every obstacle in life…no matter what you're called. Marijuana even made her dissertation topic "Black names in white classrooms: Teacher behaviors and student perceptions."
Bloop!
Marijuana, stay winning.
2. Ta-Nehisi Coates
In the week of Juneteenth, reparations was a major topic thanks to a House Hearing on Wednesday speaking on the H.R. 40 bill. According to USA Today, the legislation would create a commission to study the generational effects of slavery and the implementation of reparations.
Some politicians are totally against the bill, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said:
"I don't think reparations for something that happened 150 years ago for whom none of us living are responsible are a good idea."
Well the author of the 2014 article "A Case For Reparations," Ta-Nehisi Coates, had some words for Mitch, and they were epic. He basically broke down how slavery and systematic racism played a part in the stripping of Black wealth, and how it is, in fact, America's responsibility.
You can check out his powerful spiel above.
Bill Cosby Calls Himself "America's Dad" & Marijuana Pepsi Defends Her Name: This Week's Winners & Losers was originally published on globalgrind.com


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AirAsia flight QZ8501: China offers to send aircraft, ships to help in search
Dec 29, 2014, 12:33 pm SGT
http://str.sg/hBd
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has offered to send aircraft and ships to help in the search for a missing AirAsia flight which vanished on Sunday flying from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing said on Monday.
"The Chinese side has already said to Indonesia that it is willing to urgently send aircraft and ships to participate in search and rescue, and will provide other aid according to Indonesian needs," the ministry said in a statement.