Appiah on Sen's multiple identities.

Amartya Sen thinks- 

One of the central issues must be how human beings are seen.

Human beings see other human beings using their eyes. They smell them through their nose. This is not a central issue, or even a peripheral issue, for most human beings. On the other hand, if you see other human beings through sonar, like Daredevil, you may be Marvel's shittiest super-hero barring only Green Lantern. 

On the other hand, a crazy nutter may say- 'stop looking at me like I'm a giraffe! I well know that it is your dream to gain fellatio from one such majestic creature of the African Savannah. But, I will not suck you off! What's more, it is wrong for you to see me as a giraffe. I am actually a walrus!' 

Less crazy, but deeply boring and useless pedants may say 'we must stop looking at other human beings as though they are giraffes who enjoy performing fellatio. We should see our fellows not as four legged sex objects but as equal members of a plural, democratic, inclusive society dedicated to promoting equality, fraternity, and sodomy for such senior citizens as who were denied opportunities to explore their sexual identity by the conjoined forces of homophobia and not having either a dick or an asshole.' 

Sen is a pedant of this type. Appiah is another.  

Should they be categorized in terms of inherited particularly the inherited religion, of the community in which they happen to be born, taking that unchosen identity to have automatic priority over other affiliations involving politics, profession, class, gender, language, literature, social involvements, and many other connections?

Yes, unless certain legal steps have been taken such that they no longer born to the family, the religion, the country, the culture, into which they were born. Why? The answer has to do with uncorrelated asymmetries- e.g. the fact that you came out of your mummy's vagina, not that of a lady living in a distant country- which assure unique models for categorical systems. This also promotes eusocial 'bourgeois strategies'- e.g. loving your own Mummy rather than going around kissing elderly foreign ladies in the hope that they might cook you nice idli sambar. 

It is true that our 'oikeiosis' or sense of belonging may change and thus our 'uncorrelated asymmetries' may change. However, how we are categorized by others for various particular purposes may not change. I may come to decide that I am a member of the Royal Family and that King Charles should let me into Bucking Palace so I can use the toilet. Also, I wouldn't mind if he poured me a dram or two. Also if he has any comely ladies in waiting about the place- well, I wouldn't keep 'em waiting very long! if you get my drift. Sadly, the British police are keeping me from the bosom of my family. It is coz I iz bleck- just like Megan Markle. On the other hand, getting rid of that ginger freak, Prince Harry, was a smart move. 

Appiah writes that Sen's mention of, his teacher, 

 Joan Robinson's commenting that she thought Indians were “too rude”.

more particularly when they lower their pajamas and waggle their dicks at ladies.  

He offers this as a not entirely serious example of an identity stereotype that he knew he could not escape.

because he was lowering his pajamas and waggling his dick at her- right? Otherwise, Indians found it easy enough to escape that particular stereotype. They could keep their trousers on and talk in a genteel manner about the weather.  

He has also called himself an “argumentative Indian”  and it was, I suppose, this argumentativeness that Robinson was responding to.

No. Sen sucked up to her so as to get ahead academically.  

So I expect that he would prefer it if, rather than simply elucidating the many things  that I agree with in his analysis, I focus, in that argumentative way, on places where I think the analysis could be strengthened and taken further, as we struggle to make sense of these difficult and important questions. (This is harder for me than for him, I suspect: Ghana and England, where I grew up, are not nearly so happily argumentative!)

Because all Ghanaians and almost all English peeps aren't fucking bhadralok buddhijivi bores. 

I. Identity and Partitioning: ...Here is the first sketch, early on in the first chapter, of the nature of identity: A person's citizenship, residence, geographic origin, class, politics, profession, employment, food habits, sports interests, taste in music, social commitments, etc., make us members of a variety of groups.

This is false. Human identity is indissolubly linked to a particular body which has a particular DNA inherited from its parents. An imaginary person has no actual identity though they may be 'compossible' or have the potential to exist. Thus, my good friend, Giraffe Patel is an imaginary Gujarati giraffe who plays for Man United and is as queer as fuck. Sadly nothing that can be or has been corresponds to Giraffe Patel who, consequently, has no human identity whatsoever. On the other hand, I did manage to get a credit card in his name. Sadly, I am now facing fraud charges even though it was Giraffe Patel, not me, who committed the crime. This is a clear case of mistaken identity.  

Each of these collectivities … gives her a particular identity. (Sen 2006: 5)

No membership of a 'collectivity' can endow a property on a human being whose identity, however, is not altered in any way because it remains linked to a particular body. Sen confused 'predicate' with 'identity'. A thing has only one identity which is defined in spatio-temporal terms. It may have many properties.  

My particular identity, then, is fixed—or at any rate shaped—by the complete set of these memberships.

Things having the same property are members of a set (in naive set theory). Sadly, the set of all the sets of which a particular thing is an element is, speaking generally, not well defined. It is not a set. However, there are certain sorts of mathematical objects for which it is reasonable to believe that Yoneda's lemma holds- i.e. if you know all the interactions of a thing, you know the thing fully. But this is not the case for human beings. We know only a very small number of the 'collectivites' we are part of. I do know that I belong to the set of people who are 61 years old. I don't know if I belong to the set of people who will live to the age of 70. 

Now there are, as Sen says, many such “systems of partitioning” the people of the world, “each of which has some—often far‐ reaching— relevance in our lives” (10).

No. Almost all ways of 'partitioning' are wholly irrelevant. Do you really care if you, not somebody else imagined by me, refused Giraffe Patel's kind offer of fellatio? Would it keep you awake at night to think that Giraffe Patel is telling everybody you are homophobic?  It should. You are now in the same set as Sen, who has similarly turned down the fond attentions of Giraffe Patel. This means that Joan Robinson will think you very rude because, sooner or later, you will take down your trousers and waggle your dick at her. 

Partitioning, of course, is simply a matter of dividing people into sets.

 No. A partition of a set is a grouping of its elements into non-empty subsets, in such a way that every element is included in exactly one subset. Consider the set of human beings. It can be partitioned on the basis of identity- in which case each human being is assigned to a unique subset of which it is the sole element. Suppose one tried to partition the set of human beings into biologically related families. The problem here is that a member of one family may also be a member of another, or several others. Thus our granny is also the granny of all our cousins who think of herself as their granny. There are arbitrary ways to get round this problem- e.g. patriarchal rules which assign a woman to her husband's family on marriage. No doubt, at certain times, in certain milieus, this type of patriarchal thinking seemed 'natural'. But, it wasn't really.

It is, we might say, a purely logical matter.

Logic and Mathematics says Sen is talking nonsense. A set which is not well defined is not a set.  

But Sen is clear from the beginning that being a member of a group entails more than simply sharing a property. What else is required?

Whatever else is required is a property every element of the group must have in order to be a member of that group. I may say I am a member of 'British Royal Family Group'. But there is a property I lack- viz. being a legitimate descendant of a previous monarch- which excludes me from that group.  

 We could begin by looking at the sorts of examples Sen offers. 

He is at pains to insist how diverse each person's identities are; we have already seen this in the abstract characterization of the collectivities I have just quoted. And he offers us, early on, some specifics in his own case: I can be, at the same time, an Asian, an Indian citizen, a Bengali with Bangladeshi ancestry,

Sen couldn't be any of these things by virtue of any property he himself possesses. If the Indian landmass was separated from Asia, Sen could not be Asian by virtue of being Indian. But he couldn't have been Indian if his parents hadn't decided to run away from their ancestral homeland. 

On the other hand there were things Sen could do such that his personal identity acquired certain properties- e.g. 

an American or British resident, an economist, a dabbler in philosophy, an author, a San‐skritist, a strong believer in secularism and democracy, a man, a feminist, a heterosexual, a defender of lesbian and gay rights, with a non‐religious lifestyle, from a Hindu background, a non‐Brahmin, and a nonbeliever in an afterlife (and also, in case the question is asked, a nonbeliever in a before‐life as well). (19) (p.477)

These are predicates. Some we may accept- Sen is an economist. Some we may not- Sen is not a Sanskritist. He thinks the word 'Niti', which means policy, actually means Justice. 

Lest we worry about whether this list is complete, he insists that “there are of course a great many other membership categories which, depending on circumstances, can move and engage me” .

The cretin may soon claim to know Russian or be a ballet star.  

One difficulty that I want to point to is already evident, I think, in both the variety of ways in which Sen picks out the properties he is interested in

They are predicates- i.e. linguistic entities- not properties which are a feature of objects 'out there'. 

and in the diversity of the list of groups to which he says he belongs. It is a simple point, though I hope, by the end, to persuade you that it is an important one: not all of them would ordinarily be thought of as constituting identities. Let us look at the list. Asian, fine. That's a standard exemplary identity (though which identity the word “Asian” picks out is very different in, say, India, England and New England). But is Indian citizen an identity?

Yes. Indian citizens can get Identity cards. This is a property. 'Asian' is merely a linguistic description used differently in different places.  

Normally, I think, we should say that, strictly speaking, being Indian is an identity, but that being an Indian citizen is a legal status and not an identity.

There is no Indian racial or cultural identity. Indian identity is purely legal. Religion can be a factor. If your ancestors were Muslims but lived in Pakistan in 1948, you may be barred from having any official marker of Indian identity- citizenship, OCI status etc-  

There are people of Indian ancestry who are not Indian citizens (many of them in Pakistan and Bangladesh,

No. They are people of Pakistani or Bangladeshi ancestry. Pakistan was founded on the 'two nation' theory. All Muslims in the sub-continent, regardless of ancestry, belonged to a separate Pakistani nation. Hopefully, it will one day exterminate the kaffirs conquer the world. 

for example, but also in Britain, North America and the Caribbean).

To be of Indian origin does not entail being Indian. 

State institutions (inside and outside India) recognize Indian citizens and respond to that status. But in most social life in most places it is not the juridical status but the Indian identity that matters.

Nonsense! You don't see Punjabis clamoring for the company of Madrasis or Bengalis- unless they are of the same religion and, preferably, of the same caste.  

Furthermore, while citizenship matters to many Indians, their identity as Indians is likely, in their thinking, to be separable from their citizenship,

No. Sen may be stupid but he isn't so stupid as to think that he could hold Indian citizenship if he hadn't been identified as Indian at the time when his passport was first issued. Suppose his name had been 'Sheikh' not 'Sen', a passport may have been denied to him because his ancestral home was in East Pakistan. 

not least because (as Sen points out in a different case) someone who has given up one citizenship for another “may still retain considerable loyalties to her sense of” her original identity (29).

Plenty of Jews in America and Europe showed loyalty to Israel though their ancestors left the place thousands of years ago.  Indeed, many moved there to fight for, or to build up, the new country. At the same time there were African Americans who returned to the 'mother continent' out of a similar sense of loyalty. So what? The fact that a person identifies with a cause does not mean that the person's identity changes. It is not the case that if you march in a Gay Pride parade, you will end up giving in to the importunities of my friend Giraffe Patel. 

Continuing on down the list, I wonder, too, about at least four others of the groups to which Sen belongs: strong believers in secularism and democracy, defenders of lesbian and gay rights, people with non‐religious lifestyles, and non‐believers in an afterlife and a before‐life. These are, of course, in Sen's most abstract characterization, “partitions”, which—being non‐empty classes—do indeed have members;

No. They are predicates. The elements of a set must have a common property or 'intension'. But, with most predicates, this is not well defined. The 'extension' is impredicative, arbitrary or unknowable. A class is merely a particular 'large' type of set. You can't partition a thing which isn't even a set.  Sen's 'abstract characterization' is ignorant bollocks. 

but I think Sen belongs to the class of Indians in a different way from the merely logical way in which he belongs to the class of, say, people with non‐religious lifestyles.

Sen actually is an Indian citizen and thus belongs to a legally defined class or category. Suppose India adopted a Federal Income tax on the US model. Sen would have to pay it. I wouldn't. 

There is no 'class of people with non-religious lifestyles'. There is merely a predicate which may be informatively applied to Sister Agatha who has chosen to dress in street clothes and live in a secular manner for a particular purpose- e.g. so as to be able to help teenage runaways or to rehabilitate prostitutes.  

And I think that this distinction in ways of belonging is important for theoretical and for practical reasons.

Belonging is like 'oikeiosis'. There often is a juristic or customary aspect to it. Predicates however can be promiscuously applied. I could get in trouble if I said 'this Rolls Royce car belongs to me. I will sell it for you for 50,000 smackers'.  On the other hand, if I sport a badge saying 'proud Rolls Royce owner', I am merely applying a predicate to myself, not making a property claim.

Now Sen himself insists, as I say, on the distinction between merely having a property in common and sharing an identity.

I may share a predicate in common with Rolls Royce owners when I assert that my limousine is in the shop which is why I'm having to take the subway but the property 'owns a Rolls' does not apply to me because I own no such property. 

As for 'sharing an identity'- even Superman can achieve no such thing. He has a secret identity. That is all. 

He observes that “classification is cheap, but identity is not” (26).

When I was young I got paid a little money for marking A level Econ papers. I did not know the identities of the candidates. But I could grade their scripts to some useful purpose. Identity comes for free along with the objects in which it is embodied. Classification is costly 

He considers, by way of example, the case of “people who wear size 8 shoes”, pointing out rightly that there are possible stories in which this might indeed become a basis for “solidarity and identity”. (He sketches one such tale, which involves a Soviet‐style bureaucracy that allows size 8 shoes, and only size 8 shoes, to become scarce.)

Actually, imperfect competition could have the same effect. Every time I click on what appears to me a desirable product at a great price, I find my size is not available. But the website gets information about mee and then an algorithm can keep emailing me 'special offers' till I press 'buy'. In this way, my 'consumer surplus' is extracted. There can be pushback against this- e.g. a Social Media campaign by guys like me threatening to boycott the entire product range. But this is merely an example of 'countervailing power'. In America, some clever lawyer would have organized a class-action suit only to discover that there is a very sinister conspiracy which goes all the way to the White House- at any rate, this is what I fondly believe from my reading of John Grisham novels.  

As we'll see in a moment, solidarity presupposes identification,

No. When I was 14, I saw big brawny coal-miners from Wales come out in support of little Gujarati women during the Grunwick strike. It wasn't the case that these Welsh dudes started wearing sari, dancing ras-garbha, and cooking dhokla. 

so we don't need to mention the latter explicitly. So we're left with the suggestion that what makes something an identity is the fact that it's a group whose members have solidarity with one another: that partition plus solidarity equals identity. (p.478)

When I was young, the Trade Union movement had solidarity. But some Unions had lower working class members while others were white collar. The 'luvvies' from Equity were frequently as aristocratic as fuck. Yet they might all show up on the picket line. Solidarity does not by itself create an identity class. During the Second World War, Churchill showed solidarity with both Stalin and FDR. 

To make sense of this proposal we need to say a little here about what solidarity involves. Solidarity has, of course, an affective dimension; but let's focus—since the context here is one of identity as a matter of social policy—on the way in which solidarity works in decision and action. By A's acting out of solidarity with his fellow Xes we presumably mean something like this: that A, conceiving of himself as an X, is disposed to seek to assist the flourishing of other Xes because they are fellow Xes,.

That isn't how solidarity works. Coal miners did not conceive of themselves as little, Gujarati, women. Yet they showed solidarity with the women- who were striking for the right to create a Union- and joined them on the picket line. 

When I was young and a bunch of us went to the disco, I did not show solidarity with my fellow 'stags' by helping them get off with the attractive girls. Rather, I tried to cockblock them, in the hope of getting a leg over myself. 

Appiah might have noticed that Capitalism is pretty cut-throat. The guy running Pepsi wants to bankrupt Coke and vice versa. No doubt, both may show 'class solidarity' in contributing money to 'right to work' parties. But this is because they have a common political interest. It isn't the case that they are braiding each other's hair and empathizing with each other and taking turns to tenderly bum each other.  

He is disposed, for example, to do things for Xes as Xes; and to do so as an X himself.

Very true. If you are helping a blind person cross a dangerous road, you should shut your eyes very tightly.  

This double intentionality of solidarity—it involves acting both as an X and towards other Xes as Xes—would mean that having an identity would require you to conceive of yourself in a certain way, so that you could not have an identity that you did not recognize.

Appiah has described Michael Jackson who didn't get that he wasn't a little kid inviting other little kids for a sleep-over. If that is the 'double intentionality of solidarity' fuck is the serial killer in 'silence of the lambs'?  

This is a schema for acting in solidarity. It is important that Sen is unlikely to allow us to characterize this as a matter of our having a bare preference for our fellow Xes. Solidarity, as he understands it, is responsive to reason: “People see themselves—and have a reason to see themselves,” he says, “in many different ways.” So acts of solidarity are not actes gratuits: they are choices among options, for reasons, under constraints (15).

He is merely saying that solidarity is strategic or reciprocal. You may support a particular group even if they can't help you similarly but because it weakens a common enemy or establishes a superior threat point. Alternatively, there could be penalty for 'free-riders' on solidarity pacts.  

A proposal of this kind fits with the general tenor of Sen's approach. It is fundamentally methodologically individualist, by which I mean, to borrow a formulation of Thomas Pogge's (1992: 48), that it begins from the premise that “the ultimate units of concern are human beings, or persons

not fetuses then?  

—rather than, say, family lines, tribes, ethnic, cultural, or religious communities, nations, or states”.

Why worry about the Nation State? Invaders or insurrectionists may turn out to be perfectly charming. What we should concern our selves with is becoming blind transgender lesbians so as to be able to identify as blind transgender lesbians and thus show our solidarity with blind transgender lesbians by helping the cross dangerous highways. 

(I think it is a little unfortunate that the term “individualism”, which has, in ordinary usage, a whiff of unsociability about it,

unlike the word 'sodomy' 

should have come to be the technical philosophical label for this position. So it is perhaps worth saying at once that individualism of this sort is the basis for an extensive concern for others.)

provided this extensive concern consists of chopping off your balls, blinding yourself, and helping blind transgender lesbians cross dangerous highways. 

The ethical problem of identity as Sen understands it begins with the question of what roles an individual agent's identity is permitted or required to play in her choices.

Because leaving choices up to her is not an option. She does not have a dick. She is bound to get hysterical and end up choosing to eat her own poo.  

And he believes that in making our way through life—in making decisions—we are entitled to cultural liberty, to the “freedom to preserve or to change our priorities” (113).

We are also entitled to fart occasionally. Freedom of flatulence must be preserved by talking bollocks. True, it is wholly useless to do so but that what the UN is for- right?  

One of his complaints against many contemporary understandings of identity is indeed that they deny “the role of reasoning and of choice, which follows from our plural identities”.

Why do people bang on about the poor when, if granted cultural liberty, beggars could change their identity to Bruce Wayne- billionaire playboy- in between fighting crime as Batman?  

This fundamental commitment to individual liberty

is like a fundamental commitment to the planet Jupiter. It does not matter in the slightest.  

—a Millian respect for individuality —begins with the thought that it is individuals, not collectivities, that matter,

which is why we shouldn't bother with an army. Just appoint body-guards to individuals at risk. Zelensky is too stupid to understand this.  

but it adds the further idea that individuals should play the largest role in determining their own fates.

In particular they should get to decide which disease they should die of or whether they would prefer to be hit by a red or a blue car.  

This is to go beyond methodological individualism to what we might call “ethical individualism”. Sen is theoretically committed to (p.479) respect for individual agency: to “recognizing and respecting”, as he once put it, each person's “ability to form goals, commitments, values, etc.” (Sen 1988: 41)

if you respect them, you already respect their various abilities unless it is the case that there is some additional benefit in recognizing and respecting one's own ability to recognize and respect one's own ability to recognize and respect each and every persons similar ability. 

Still, it must be said, some people- notably academics like Sen and Appiah who teach vacuous shite- are justified in their fear that they are not getting any fucking recognition or respect from anybody with a high enough IQ to have the ability to grant it in a condign manner. 

(though, it's important to add, he thinks a concern for well‐being important, too; and he knows these two concerns may pull us in different directions).

In other words, we should recognize and respect Sen's ability to formulate the goal for himself of eating only dog poo. However, we should also be concerned about his health and wellbeing which may well be harmed by this choice of diet. Appiah would add that we should ourselves become Bengali blathershites so as to show solidarity with Sen and join him in his banquets.  

For these reasons, this first proposal—with its focus on individuals responding to one another for reasons—seems consistent with Sen's general approach. But, unfortunately, I don't think that it's right. Of course, not every partition of human beings—not even every partition whose members care about each other — is a membership group with which people identify.

There is only one categorical partition- that by which people identify as themselves. They don't get confused and think they are some other bloke.  

So there's certainly more to identity than mere partitioning. The problem is that that more, as I'll now try to show, isn't solidarity. II. Beyond Solidarity It is easy to see that having solidarity is not necessary for identity. There are many paradigm social identities that, far from involving solidarity, actually work against it. It is part of the point of the attitudes that homosexuals are taught to have towards themselves in a homophobic culture that they should regard themselves and each other with contempt.

Practicing homosexuals have been taught by their culture how to suck cock better. Otherwise, they will be treated with contempt by the Bishop or Imam or whoever.  

It was a significant social and political achievement to get American homosexuals in the 1960s and 1970s to come to see solidarity with each other as a possibility.

Very true. LBJ was constantly badgering buggers to stop feeling so fucking ashamed of themselves. Nixon too spent a lot of time to getting queers out of closets and into the streets as part of a Gay Pride march. This was a very significant social and political achievement for which we don't give past Presidents enough credit. I myself was supported and encouraged to practice masturbation by Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru. Hopefully, Joe Biden will team up with Chairman Xi to demonstrate the art of pooping on each other for pleasure so that those who like that sort of thing are able to hold their heads while publicly displaying their affectionate practice of shitting on each other's heads in the subway.  

Such processes are a characteristic step in the modern politics of recognition.

Which only Trump does well. We want to be told he loves us because we are poorly educated and hate every-fucking-body.  

But I don't think we can understand what happens in such cases unless we suppose the members of the group were already more than a mere partition; we must recognize that they had a shared identity before they sought solidarity with each other.

Thus, the coal miner must recognize that he was actually a homosexual prostitute as well a disabled lesbian of color who teaches Critical Theory at Amherst. Thus, it is perfectly natural for him to get together with these doppelgangers  to overthrow Neo-Liberalism by shitting on each other's heads while urging President Biden to undergo gender reassignment surgery in Gaza in a hospital currently being bombed by Netanyahu. 

Similar things can be said about other groups held in social contempt.

Like virtue signaling professors of shite subjects who rose on the basis of intellectual affirmative action. 

Consider one of the many interesting and important things that Sen says about Muslim identity in his book.

Some Muslims identify as Muslims. Some don't. Interestingly, you don't have to have a Muslim name or to tell anyone you are Muslim in order to fulfil the conditions for being a Muslim. Indeed, even a djinn- which is invisible- can become a Muslim. 

Sen can say nothing interesting or important about Islam because he is wholly ignorant of it.

He points out that some were disappointed when an “important meeting of Muslim scholars in Amman in Jordan” in 2005 declined to treat people as apostates—as no longer being Muslim, that is—so long as they believed in Allah, in Muhammad, and in the other pillars of the faith and did not “deny any necessary article of religion” (Sen 2006: 81).

This is perfectly orthodox.  

While most of these scholars might also agree that many, perhaps all, acts of terrorism are wrong, they declined to agree, in particular, that a person who carried out such a wrongful act thereby ceased to be a Muslim.

Again, this perfectly orthodox. It is obvious that a sinner is not necessarily an apostate.  

This point is important, as Sen argues, in discussions about how to approach terrorists who claim to be acting as Muslims; for reasons internal to the history of Muslim doctrine, we are not going to be able to persuade most Muslims to treat someone as an apostate solely because he is a terrorist.

No. That is perfectly possible. 'Ijma' or consensus is a source of Islamic law. If there is a consensus amongst jurists that certain terrorists- e.g. those involved in Bombay Taj Hotel attack- are apostates and don't deserve Islamic behavior- then whatever arguments were used to bring about this 'ijma' (e.g. distinction between 'fasad' and 'jihad' are the ones our 'discussions' should focus on. We should not listen to Sen or Appiah because they are vacuous, ignorant, blathershites.  

This doesn't mean they aren't bad people or even bad Muslims. It means that the commonest understanding of Muslim identity, among people who claim it, is one that

defers to the Imam or Qadi or the practice of the reputable Muslims of the neighborhood.  

defines apostasy strictly in terms of turning away from the central articles of doctrine: what's required is denying God, or the Prophet, or the other pillars of the faith, which is something you can do while being otherwise a perfectly good person, and something you can fail to do while being horribly wicked.

This is not the case. Religious observance changes you. It is foolish to think you could be perfectly good without performing ordained duties though Allah knows best.  

Now this debate actually assumes a form that is quite typical in contests over identity.

No. It is a contest over 'eligibility' for group membership ( dokimasia δοκιμασία). Nobody denies that I am me. They just don't think I am eligible to join MENSA because I iz bleck innit? 

It is about what norms of behavior are required of those who are (to count as) real bearers of the identity.

People keep coming up to Appiah and saying 'you're not really African. If you were, you'd have a bone stuck through your nose. Also you would wave a spear and say 'ooga booga' the way your Mummy does.'  

Sen's extensive discussion of Muslim  identity reflects his recognition of the ways in which identities are associated with such norms.

Even Sen knows that a Muslim dude who drinks is regarded as a 'gunahgar' not 'kaffir'.  

Thinking of people as Xes is, in large measure, thinking of them not merely as possessing whatever descriptive properties are taken to be constitutive of the class of Xes, but also as governed by norms associated with that identity. I call these “norms of identification” (Appiah 2005: 68).

Whereas what he should be calling them is 'ooga booga'.  

One difference between merely acknowledging that someone is of Polish ancestry and seeing them as having a Polish identity is that the latter requires us to think that there are things they ought or ought not to do because they are Polish.

like speaking Polish? That's okay. Obviously a guy whose great-grandfather emigrated from Poland isn't Polish though he may be very proud of his ancestral heritage. On the other hand, if he has taken the trouble to learn Polish and makes regular trips to that beautiful country, Poles would say 'he wasn't born here but he is actually more Polish than us. Well, he would be, if he stuck a bone through his nose and said ooga booga a lot because that would be fucking hilarious, mate.  

These are the Polish norms of identification. 

Which get agreeably fuzzy if you drink enough Polish vodka.  

I assume that, generally speaking, we think people ought to do things only when we think they have a sufficient reason do so:

No. Principals are free to do unreasonable things. An agent employed for a specific task may be obliged to have a 'sufficient reason' to do something else instead. 

but the “ought” doesn't have to be a moral one.

It can't be anything else.  

Most Americans think that men in this society have sufficient reason not to wear dresses and lipstick in the ordinary course of life; they think that men ought not to do so.

No. Some Americans may think that cross-dressing is immoral. But they may also think men ought to put on a dress if this is the only way to save the lives of innocent kiddies.  

But this ought is not a moral one, for most of us. We don't think it would be wicked to do it. We think it would be strange or odd.

Thus, a sufficient reason for men to put on frocks is the desire to appear strange or odd when the truth is you are as boring as fuck.  

Before going on to say more about the account of identity as normative, I want to expand briefly on a point I glossed over just a moment ago. I spoke of descriptive properties taken to be constitutive of a class. The sorts of things I have in mind are such things as this: having grown up in India is one thing that can make you an Indian; ceteris paribus, if you were raised in India, Indian is what you are. There are disputes about exactly what other things not being equal make you not an Indian. Sen mentions Cornelia Sorabji—a sari‐clad Parsee who came to law school in England from South Asia in the 1880s. There are, no doubt, people who think that her Christianity and her Parsee ancestry undermined her claim to be Indian (Sen 2006: 159).

No. What undermined it is the fact that she endorsed Katherine Mayo's shitty 'Mother India'. The 'zenana women' turned against her and so she ran away to the UK. I believe the Brits got her to tour America spreading anti-Indian propaganda. There was no coming back from that. Anyway, her law career in India hadn't been a great success.  

There are people who think that moving to America and renouncing Indian citizenship undermines it, too.

They are right.  

Is Sonia Gandhi an Indian?

Yes.  

She's an Indian citizen, certainly. But an Indian?

Indian citizens are Indian.  

This is a topic that can be debated.

Nope. The thing is 'buck-stopped' by the Courts. Obviously, anyone can say anybody else is actually from Uranus but that way silliness lies.  

The general point is that there are always conditions of a purely descriptive kind that people mostly suppose you must meet in order to have a certain identity.

True enough. At immigration control, there's a guy who peers at me as he checks that my height and weight and eye color match well enough with the description given in my passport.  I too find it useful to glance at a mirror to remind myself I'm not actually the Tamil Beyonce. 

Most of them have the form of these ceteris paribus conditions:

No. They have the form of being rough and ready or good enough for the purpose. Thus, since I look like the fat fuck described in my passport, the immigration guy lets me through even if ceteris has ceased to be paribus and Uranus is bumping uglies with Pluto. 

you're a man if you have male genitals, but only ceteris paribus, since there's androgen insensitivity syndrome, which produces people who are chromosomally male but have female external genitalia, and people disagree about how to classify them.

Unless they can't be arsed.  

You're a Catholic, if you were baptized in a church under the governance of the see of Rome, but only ceteris paribus, since you may have converted or lost your faith.

No. You are a Catholic whether or not other things are equal. It is a different matter that, under canon law, the thing may be justiciable.  What is important to note is that once a buck-stopped decision is supplied (which can be done by a Cardinal, on matters of faith) the thing is once and for all. 

But, as I just argued, there are more than these contested descriptive conditions for identity;

eligibility is not identity. The 'descriptive condition' for the latter is not 'contested'. It is bleeding fucking obvious mate. I'm an elderly fat fuck. I'm not Meghan Markle and I'm not a member of the Royal Family.  

there are normative implications to identity as well, normative implications that go beyond meeting whatever descriptive conditions there are for membership.

No. Membership may be revoked on the basis of a predicate applied to a particular personal identity. Thus, the golf club may put up a notice saying that the member who has been shitting on the putting green is hereby expelled. CCTV footage will soon enable the club authorities to establish that I meet the descriptive conditions to be the 'extension' of the relevant 'intension'.  I understand that my membership will be revoked because a particular predicate correctly applies to me. 

That, I think, is why being an Indian citizen or a secularist, or a democrat and the rest, don't count as identities of the right kind: there are no distinctive norms associated with these groups that are not simply entailed by the descriptive conditions for their membership.

Indian citizenship is a property as much as it is a predicate. It is something objective or justiciable. Niceness or being Secular are predicates merely.  

To be a democrat is just to believe in democracy:

No. A despot is not a democrat even if he believes democracy is the best form of government but will not permit it to burgeon because that might lead to his loss of power and prestige.  

the only normative constraint that places on you is acting in conformity to the norms of democracy.

Who is to say what those are? Such conformity is a predicate of a wholly subjective type. As a matter of fact, a democrat may virtue signal by incessantly bewailing his own failure to live up to the norms of democracy. Similarly, the Christian keeps banging on about how he is a ghastly sinner- very much worse than Jack the Ripper because of all the adultery he keeps committing in his heart.  

To turn this into an identity there would have to be further norms of conduct and feeling that went with being a democrat.

Very true. I was able to gain an identity as a fire-breathing dragon by elaborating further norms of conduct and feeling that went along with being a dragon.  

It is because there is a logical gap between meeting the descriptive conditions and meeting the normative (p.482) ones that there can be—and often is—a great deal of controversy over what the norms for an identity actually are.

No. It is because people have different expectations of different types of things or different types of people that there is controversy about the authenticity of identity. Appiah does not have a bone through his nose. He does not confine his remarks to 'ooga booga'. I feel he wholly lacks an African identity. On the other hand, I do affirm Erdogan's Turkish identity on the basis that he has a lot of feathers and says 'gobble, gobble'.  

Sen himself discusses in eloquent and fascinating detail the history of debates within Islam about how Muslims ought to behave.

What spoke volumes was the alacrity with which his people ran away from East Bengal once the Brits abandoned the sub-continent. Clearly they had a pretty accurate idea of how Muslims actually behave.  

But there are also norms that are pretty uncontested. Prayer, charity, making the hajj (if you can afford to): all these are uncontroversial demands recognized by Muslims.

They are not 'demands'. They are pillars of the Faith. If you omit one your Faith may be weakened. You will receive less soteriological benefit.

There are such norms for other kinds of identity, too.

A norm may be prescribed for an identity class. But it is a prescription, not a property.  

Rightly or wrongly, for example, most people not only conform to gender norms in their dress, but they expect others to do so.

An expectation is not a prescription.  

And the norms not only govern action, they govern feeling: an Indian has a reason to feel shame when the Indian administration does shameful things.

No. He has a reason to not give a flying fuck. Everybody is always doing shameful things- like not submitting to sodomy even though this is totes homophobic.  

Suppose this is right.

Then Meinongian objects exist. I may say 'a true Scotsman would be shitting himself vigorously because of all the shame Giraffe Patel is causing him by refusing to perform fellatio on him'. But there is no such true Scotsman. We have a name for a thing but not the thing itself. There is no identity here which corresponds to 'True Scotsman'. It does not alter matters to say 'True Scotsman' is not a serious identity. It is a comic persona invented by Billy Connolly after an encounter with Giraffe Patel.  

Suppose that in order for X to be a serious identity, people have to think there are normative requirements for Xes, ways Xes ought to behave— or, as we might put it, in language that echoes some of Sen's—identity‐ dependent reasons for action and feeling that Xes should respect because they are Xes. We can immediately see two things that Sen rightly insists on. First, because the descriptive conditions are ceteris paribus and contested, we often have a choice as to whether we should think of ourselves as Xes, because we have to decide whether we meet the conditions.

Does Appiah really have to decide whether he is Giraffe Patel? I think not. Descriptive conditions are not ceteris paribus. They hold on the basis of rigid designators whether or not other things are equal. It is not the case that if it is macroeconomic conditions change, then I take the place of Meghan Markle as the Duchess of Sussex.  

And second, even if we meet the conditions uncontroversially—so that our membership strikes us as given, a fact we are faced with—we still have to decide what weight to give the identity, what norms we take it to bring in its wake.

Thus, discovering our head has been chopped off,  we have to decide what weight to give to the fact that we have only one second left of life. 

As Sen puts it, “Even when the person discovers something important about himself or herself, there are still issues of choice to be faced” (Sen 2006: 39).

But the choice menu changes. You needn't bother going hat shopping if your head has just been chopped off.  

He is surely right that we have a job to do in deciding what our identities should mean to us,

if that's a job, what is wanking?  

and this requires figuring out what norms of identification we accept and what we are going to ask of our fellow Xes.

No. If there is a collective action problem and we have a clear idea of what a representative agent should do in line with the Muth rational solution to the problem, then we may get into arguments with our fellows as to whether a particular course of conduct represents 'free-riding' or else is silly or counter-productive or supererogatory. But this does not mean any identity is affected. Heterogenous individuals may still arrive at dis-coordinated Muth rational solutions to collective action problems.  It is enough that there be a Schelling focal (i.e. public signal based) solution to the underlying coordination game.

While respect for human well‐being constrains what I can reasonably accept as the normative demands of an identity on myself or on others, there will, in the end, be a wide range of reasonable places to come to, not least because we have to fit our identities together. So, for example, the norms of  identification that a person who is gay and Muslim will come to accept will probably require some sort of accommodation of one to the other, but there is unlikely to be a unique best such accommodation.

This could also be said of cats. Why drag in Islam and Homosexuality? The plain fact is, if Muslims kill Homosexuals, no fucking accommodation is required. Having a superior threat point or being able to offer a valuable contribution to a separate collective action problem may alter outcomes. But that is a matter which economics can deal with ideographically. Appiah's nomothetic approach has no content. It is not informative.  

Sen shares the Millian conviction that we ought to offer everyone a large range of freedom in choosing among the reasonable ways of making such accommodations for him‐or herself.

No. Sen doesn't believe in laissez faire. He thinks we should pursue 'Nyaya'- i.e. change outcomes directly- without worrying about 'Niti'- i.e. institutional constraints on policy. Basically, he is a Mahalanobis type Socialist seeking to camouflage himself as a Rawls type liberal. 

In speaking of the norms people accept,

we are expressing our own prejudice or ignorance or merely passing the time talking bollocks 

we don't commit ourselves to thinking that the norms are valid.

unless we do. It makes no difference. 

What norms people accept is a non‐normative question.

unless it isn't. One can make any question normative. This is what these two cretins do. The fact is there is no way to establish that compliance is acceptance or claims of acceptance are acceptance or farting vigorously isn't acceptance of the norms prescribed by Giraffe Patel.  

There is a separate and important set of normative questions about which norms they are right to accept.

These aren't important questions. Who farted? is an important question.  

Sen's discussion—and his theoretical disposition— insists on the fact that all these choices that individuals have to make require reasoning.

Sen is wrong. Important decisions are better made without any fucking reasoning but by delegation or Tardean mimetics. This means, either I outsource decisions to a smart guy or copy what he is doing.  

We may have to reason about whether we are (descriptively) an X.

But reasoning won't make us an x.  The simplest thing is to ask an x- e.g. the chair, if you yourself are a chair. In my case, chairs maintain a discreet silence. I suppose this means I am bound to be appointed Chairman of the Board even though I am currently only a janitor. 

We certainly have to reason about what that means, making up our minds what the fact that I am an X really gives me reason to do (or think or feel).

These cretins think that knowing you are a heterosexual male gives you are reason to have sex with females. The reverse is the case. The fact that you keep having sex with women while remaining coldly indifferent to the charms of your own sex is the reason you are classed as a heterosexual male. 

And we have to reason about which of our many identities are relevant in deciding our priorities in a variety of (p.483) contexts,

This is seldom the case. True, a member of parliament who happens to be homosexual and Latino and who receives support from both Gays and Latinos may have to decide whether to back one side or another in a case where their interests conflict. But, in this case, it is the identity of the politician as a guy who wants to win elections which determines his priorities. But this identity is an accident, not an essence. The guy may decide to do the right thing rather than the thing which gets him elected, in which case he may cease to be a member of parliament. Indeed, he may have to quit politics all together. In this case, it would be more proper to say that 'Gay', 'Latino', 'Member of Parliament', 'politician' etc. are predicates. Having a particular body is a property. That is what establishes identity. 

faced with different options and operating under a variety of constraints. We have also to learn how to balance their competing demands. As Sen writes: “Even when one is inescapably seen—by oneself as well as by others—as French, or Jewish, or Brazilian, or African‐ American … one still has to decide what exact importance to attach to that identity over the relevance of other categories to which one also belongs” (Sen 2006: 6).

Nonsense! A drooling cretin may be seen as a Jewish Frenchman living in Brazil. But he doesn't have to decide on anything. The same is true of people who have their own life project and don't give a fuck about how they are seen by shitheads like Appiah.  

As a result, again like Mill, Sen grasps that the fact that we have to make these decisions for ourselves does not mean we have to make them alone.

Sen didn't grasp the fact that the wife of his best friend wasn't his own wife. His decision as to where to stick his dick meant he had to run away from India.  

Indeed, if there is one central normative project in his book, it is to persuade people that they cannot reasonably ignore the diversity of their own identities, not least because in acknowledging that diversity they will be acting in ways that advance their own well‐being and, often, the well‐being of others.

Sen had a multiple identity. One was as the guy whose duty it was stick his dick in his wife. His other identity was as his best friend whose duty it was to stick his dick in a quite different lady. Thankfully, having to run away from India advanced his well-being and the well-being of others. This is because, had he remained in India, he was bound to end up on the Planning Commission where he could do great harm to the economy.  

In arguing for this, he is offering other people reasons to think about their own identities in ways they might otherwise not recognize as desirable or even possible. He is thinking with us about our identities, and so he is assuming that it is all right to make these decisions in concert with others. He urges on all of us ways of accommodating that diversity that escape the dangers of “singularism”, the view that “despite the plurality of groups to which any person belongs, there is, in every situation, some one group that is naturally the preeminent collectivity for her, and she can have no choice in deciding on the relative importance of her different membership categories” (Sen 2006: 25).

Don't be a 'singularist'. Stick your dick in your best friend's wife. After all, you might actually be him. Also, you could be the owner of that nice shiny new car over there. Why not hot-wire and drive off in it. Moreover, Putin may also be Zelensky. Thus it is right and proper for him to send his troops into Ukraine. 

Multiple identities means there can be no 'uncorrelated asymmetries' and thus no 'bourgeois strategies'- i.e. stuff like property, marriage, getting paid to do a particular job (and thus the division of labour, specialization on the basis of comparative advantage and the gains from trade), nationality, citizenship, contracts, law, governance, etc, etc. Indeed, much of language would disappear if we didn't know who we were when speaking. Thus, when Mummy tells me to do my homework and I think I am actually my mummy I might think 'homework' means cooking and cleaning. 

In the worst case the singularist thinks that there is one identity that will do for all situations;

e.g. the fact that you are you, not your Mummy or Spiderman or the Emperor Vespasian.  

but even those who recognize that different contexts make different identities relevant are mistaken if they think that, say, politics is a context in which only national identity or religious identity is relevant in deciding what to do.

Sen's parents should not have run away from East Pakistan. They should have remained there to be slaughtered.  

There are thus, on Sen's view, three dimensions that help determine the relevance of an identity: first, there is the content of the choice we are facing,

you may choose the identity of your best friend to have sex with his wife 

what our options are

having sex with your best friend's wife ought not to be an option for a decent man 

and the constraints under which we are acting; second, there are our other identities;

We have a single identity of which many different things may be predicated. At one time it was right to say 'Sen is a decent man and a faithful husband'. Then he fucked his best friend's wife and thus the predicates 'decent' and 'faithful' could not justly be applied to him. But Sen remained Sen. His identity had not changed. He had not become a potted plant or a Giraffe with a penchant for fellatio. 

and third, there are our other aims—some imposed on us by morality or reason (aims whose connection with the norms of each identity help determine whether it should be brought into play).

Sen had only one identity. He should not have fucked his best friend's wife because he had no second identity as his best friend.  

IV. Taming Identity When one identity leads people into behavior that is immoral—to intolerance, to aggression, to genocide

or running off with your best friend's wife 

—Sen suggests that one way we can try to escape these dangers is by appeal to “the power of competing identities” (Sen 2006: 4).

But no one would be guilty of any crime if they had multiple identities. They would just say 'I am not the person who stole the car. True that person occupied my body but the identity of that person is now a potted plant. Send the potted plant to jail by all means. As for me, I am actually you and thus should be fucking your wife.'  

I am not just a Hutu, I am also a Rwandan, a Christian, a human being: and the latter three identities, which unite me with most Tutsis, can give me access to a solidarity that (p.484) opposes the bellicosity of a Hutu Power identity that makes every Tutsi (and many Hutus) my enemy.

But it can also give you access to the belief that Tutsis have an identity as cockroaches. Killing such creatures is meritorious. Furthermore, you may actually be your best friend and thus entitled to sleep with his wife.  

This is one reason for insisting on the wrongness of singularism:

If singularism is wrong, who is to say that some other human being doesn't have an identity as a cockroach? Also, you may be the owner of that nice shiny car and thus should be allowed to drive away with it.  

if I only had one relevant identity, there would be no others to draw on in this way.

Which is why you would not get to sleep with your best friend's wife. 

But the fact that there is a problem to be met here should remind us of another reason why an account of identity focused on its role in solidarity is to be resisted.

If you don't have a single identity, your solidarity is worthless. When called on to display the thing you may say, the identity which pledged solidarity is now a potted plant. It will help you in any way it can.  

The connection between identity and violence is mediated as much as anything else by the fact that people

have one and only one body. That is why they are unhappy if you chop off their leg. They can't simply hop over into another two legged body.  

of one identity can be mobilized against people of another, contrasting identity.

But people with different identities, i.e. bodies, can take up useful professions and pay taxes which are used to provide a police force and an army. If aggressors are quickly caught and punished, violence diminishes. However, if people have multiple identities, it will turn out that the identity with the tax liability is now a potted plant. 

And that brings into focus a dimension of identity that we might miss if we think of identity, as I have so far, as simply a matter of partitioning plus norms of identification.

That is the wrong way to think of identity. One physical body, by reason of its spatio-temporal 'extension', has one single identity.  

For that leads us to focus on the role of an identity in the agency of individuals who bear it, attending to how those norms shape what they do.

If you don't have a body, you can't abide by a dress code. Indeed, you can't do shit.  

The norms of identification for Xes are norms to which Xes are supposed to conform.

No an X is an X even if it has capacity to conform or rebel or take up origami.  

But the expectation of conformity here is at least as important as the conformity itself. And the expectation is often the expectation not of other Xes but of people of some contrasting identity. Racial norms of identification for blacks (or whites) are kept in place by the expectations of whites as well as blacks (or blacks as well as whites).

Which is why Appiah has a bone through his nose and says nothing but 'ooga booga'.  

And once non‐Xes have normative expectations of Xes, they will rely on them in responding to Xes, and that will often have the effect of making deviation from those norms costly; indeed, both Xes and non‐Xes are likely to put pressure on Xes to conform, enforcing the norms with the sorts of social sanctions that begin with disapproval and ratchet up from there.

That's why a black man will never become POTUS. The very notion is as ludicrous as the supposition that a Hindooo might become the British Prime Minister.  

More than this, while it isn't a conceptual requirement on identities that there should be distinct norms governing the treatment of Xes by non‐Xes, it is often the case that there are.

It is even more often the case that Xes are lying when they pretend this is the case.  

So questions of power and hierarchy arise regularly in the structuring of identities;

Identity is spatio-temporal. It has no further structure.  

and these, in turn, raise important moral and political concerns.

No. They raise stupid, mendacious, concerns.  

All this is consistent with methodological and ethical individualism.

i.e. stupid shit is consistent with stupid shit.  

But recognizing the ways in which others—whether of our own or of contrasting identities— enforce on us codes of behavior for Xes, by way of expectation, enforcement or other forms of norm‐guided behavior towards us,

Whitey thinks us darkies all have bones through our noses and that we can only say 'ooga booga'. Yet my GP has refused to arrange a bone through nose procedure for me. Also I got the sack for saying 'ooga booga' rather than 'how may I serve you?['  

underlines the difficulties that face someone who wants to pursue the ethical individualist goal of shaping her life guided by her own reasons, her own identities and projects, her own ambitions.

that difficulty is money. Almost everybody needs more of it. 

Part of what Sen is asking for is that all of us should respond with toleration to others as they make their lives by way of identities and understandings of identities that we do not share.

You should tolerate people who stick knifes in you and snatch your watch and wallet.  

He is reminding us that each person's life is, in some fundamental sense, her own.

unlike each person's wife who, in some fundamental sense, may be your own 

Sen's treatment of Muslim identity in Identity and Violence—it is in many ways the central case in that book—has two major pieces of guidance for us.

Firstly, run away from Muslim majority areas. Secondly, emigrate to a place still ruled by White Christians who spick Inglis gud.  

On the one hand, he invites non‐Muslims to recognize the internal heterogeneity of the Muslim world: we are to see both that every Muslim is not just a Muslim and to see that Muslims differ along many, many other dimensions of identity.

No. They differ along the spatio-temporal dimensions of reality. It is a theological question as to whether the 'fana' of the Sufis means an extinction of individual identity.  

As a  result, responding to Muslims as they really are will never be possible if we apply a stereotypic notion of the Muslim.

Though it may be safer to run away from East Pakistan so as to remain able to respond to Muslims.  

What makes them Muslim is, from an ethical point of view, minimal enough that we can't infer much from it;

That is certainly the view taken by British or American law.  

and in any case, it is never more than a part of what they are.

Unless they insist otherwise.  

These possibilities derive from the contested nature of Muslim norms of identification

does Appiah mean that the Pakistanis are wrong to say the Ahmadiyas aren't Muslims? No. Appiah doesn't want to get into trouble with the Jamaat.  

and the existence of norms of identification that are associated with each Muslim's other identities. On the other hand, there is guidance here too—somewhat less explicitly—for Muslims. For Sen invites them, in effect, to recall the tradition of broad inclusive‐ness implicit in the view that apostasy occurs only when you deny core Muslim claims.

i.e. to reject 'takfiri'. Sadly, it appears that Pakistan is moving in the opposite direction as are parts of the MENA.  

Here again it is the minimal character of shared Muslim identity that he stresses.

But Islam, in the Global South, seems to be moving in the opposite direction.  

The advice to non‐Muslims strikes me as helpful

viz. run away from Muslim areas but pretend that Muslims are very sweet and nice so as be at lower risk of a fatwa.  

and I think the wide readership of his book in Western Europe, North America and South Asia can all profit from remembering these things.

Till we remember his Dad had the sense to run away from East Pakistan rather than wait till the mob came for him.  

But the advice to Muslims strikes me as less obviously helpful.

It is stupid. Muslims don't consider they have multiple identities and thus should treat their best friend's wife as their own. A 'minimal' Muslim of this sort may still face condign punishment for adultery under Sharia law.  

For, while Islamic communities have indeed, as a historical matter, often defined membership in the ummah in rather minimal ways,

Nonsense! Entry into the ummah, by birth, is indeed easy. But boys have to be circumcised and both sexes soon begin to observe fasting during Ramadan. Islam is a 'separating equilibrium' based on 'costly signals'. That is why it has high income elasticity- i.e. communities become more Islamic as they become richer. But even poor people benefit by becoming more observant. Look at Bangladesh which has overtaken Pakistan and parts of India. High female participation in the workforce is perfectly compatible with strict -'Fraizi' Islam.  Indeed, female education has been a driver for Islamic pietism. 

it is also true that there are plenty of contexts, certainly today, in which, for example, Sunni or Shia Muslims each deny that the other are really Muslims at all; and even if they agree that they are all Muslims, they certainly don't agree that they are all Muslims good enough for their presence and their practices to be tolerated.

There are ecumenical movements within modern Islam. Hopefully, they will prevail as the US withdraws from the region. 

Modern Salafis, in particular, regularly dispute the claim of Sufi or Alawite (or even mainstream Shia) traditions, for example, to be genuinely Islamic.

Some do, some don't. The workaround is to gradually get rid of some 'ghullat' or superstitious practices or consign them to the status of 'cultural' observances rather than religious practices. My guess is that US withdrawal from the region will boost ecumenical cooperation. Currently, Hanafi Arabs in Gaza are dying for the greater glory of Shia' Iran. Already, there are signs that Assad, an Alawi, is being rehabilitated. After all, Syria was once a 'front line' state in the anti-Israel coalition.  

Now, of course, I believe, with Sen, that it would be better for the world if these Muslim traditions were not divided in these ways, since intolerance of this sort has led to acts of cruelty and to bloodshed.

The 'War on Terror' by contrast was very sweet and kind. 1.3 million Muslims weren't killed in it. Tens of millions weren't displaced by it.  

But neither of us is a contemporary Salafi Muslim.

Neither of you is intelligent.  

And it seems to me that, for a Muslim, the question whether, say, Sufism is genuinely Islamic is a question that requires interpreting the Qur'an, the Sun‐nah, and whatever other sources of authority you recognize.

Also, it seems to Appiah that Christianity might have something to do with a bloke named Jesuz Christ. Still, it is nice to see that even Appiah can say something which isn't obviously false.  

And someone who is convinced that a conscientious attention to the approved sources entails shunning or even attacking and punishing those who do not conform to the precepts of Islam as he understands them is not likely to find in ethical individualism an independent reason to change his mind. (I need hardly add that the same applies, mutatis mutandis, to other religions.)

No one will find anything in 'ethical individualism' because it is stupid shit. It is a different matter that jurisprudence may be 'individualistic'- i.e. forbid collective punishment (e.g. killing the family of a criminal).  

A Salafi Muslim can certainly accept Sen's critique of singularism as an intellectual matter.

No. The thing is too stupid. Salafis aren't cretins.  

Muslims mostly accept that there are questions on which the traditions are silent and that on these one is free to make one's own way, trying to decide them by whatever indirect light the traditions shed and by the use of human reason and an understanding of human nature.

This is where 'ijma' comes in. When in doubt, consult the wise and if they come to a consensus then you may rely on it.  

Since identity is part of human nature,

 having a human nature may be part of identity. However, Islam recognizes that identity persists after death but the soul then does not have a human nature- e.g. it does not need to eat or take a dump. 

there is, as a result, nothing to stop a Salafi from recognizing the demands of other identities.

Identities don't make demands. Nor do they say 'my mummy needs an operation. Could you lend me some money, so I can pay the hospital? God will bless you for this.'  

But he is likely simply to deny Sen's underlying view that religious identity does not fix what one must do in large areas of life.

God does. 

My point is not that Sen has the wrong attitude here; my point is that his defense of his view is unlikely to dissuade the most dangerous of those whom he is (p.486) criticizing.

It can only persuade stupid virtue signaling blathershites that they themselves don't constitute a fucking nuisance.  

And, indeed, since he is himself a non‐believer, they are likely to see his views as unsurprisingly mistaken on these questions of practical ethics and politics, given that he is wrong on fundamental questions of theology. It will do no good, in particular, to point to those many places and times where people calling themselves Muslims have practiced toleration.

Dubai is pretty tolerant. So is Oman.  

They are likely to take the same view of the Mughal emperor Akbar's toleration, for example, that his grandson Aurangzeb did.

Neither Akbar nor Aurangazeb tolerated opponents or potential rivals. They killed them with vim and vigor. 

Sen writes, “Aurangzeb could deny minority rights and persecute non‐Muslims without, for that reason, failing to be a Muslim, in exactly the same way that Akbar did not terminate being a Muslim because of his tolerantly pluralist politics” (Sen 2006: 16).

He might have done if his own religion had gained traction. One problem was that the European Christians were fanatics. Yet, in many respects, they were more scientifically advanced. 

But all that shows is that a dispute about whose practice to follow is a dispute within Islam; it does not give Muslims a reason to favor the tolerant side.

Money. That's the only reason places become tolerant. Holland was very intolerant of Catholics, Arminians and even Calvinists till they discovered that it paid more to tolerate rich or highly productive people.  

Because most Muslims recognize that disagreement about these matters is consistent with being Muslim, the distinction that a Muslim needs is not that between Muslims and non‐Muslims but between right and wrong ways for a Muslim to behave.

No. Many Muslims believe that they should get on with their lives rather than talk, or listen to, ignorant bollocks.  

It would be a grave mistake to think that it follows from this that a Muslim must think that the norms of identification for Muslims do not fix whether one should be tolerant.

Very true. A friend of mine made this grave mistake. This caused his dick to fall off. He cried and cried.  

All that it shows is that there are debates among Muslims about what the correct norms of identification for Muslims are,

check the dude's dick. If he aint circumcised he aint a Muslim.  

and that, as I say, only makes Muslim identity like most others.

There is a Muslim religion. There isn't a Muslim identity. One may 'identify' as a Muslim. But this just means asserting one belongs to a particular religion. Still, a person who was born a Muslim and who never converted to another religion will be identified, by a Court of Law, as a Muslim. This affects inheritance rights if he dies intestate.  

It is not that I am against interventions by us infidels in these debates, if anyone is listening.

Anyone listening is laughing her fucking head off.  

But I don't have a high confidence in their efficacy. Nevertheless, I don't want to underrate the importance of giving those many Muslims seeking a place for toleration of many kinds

back then, a lot of Muslims would have appreciated NATO no drone striking the fuck out of them. 

—for other Muslims, for non‐Muslims, for homosexuals, and so on—Muslim exemplars of the past and present. Friends of toleration, Muslim and otherwise, can surely help each other; they are also more likely to get along with each other because they have a shared faith in toleration.

Appiah and Sen led protests against the War on Terror- thinks nobody at all.  

But, in the end, one reason Sen and I disagree with the contemporary propagandists for intolerance in the name of Islam is not just that we are ethical individualists who care about the well‐being of all people,

unless NATO is drone striking them 

but that we think they are wrong about matters of morals and metaphysics.

Also, if they live in a country with plenty of petroleum, God wants us to have it. In return, we will teach them about their multiple identities as Lesbian sodomites.  

And if, in the name of their mistaken convictions, they plan acts of terror or undermine the rights of women and minorities, then, in the end, we may have to meet them not with reason but with violence.

Violence costs money. Also, if you do it in a stupid way, it is your enemy- Iran, in this case- which benefits.  

Sen's insight—that violence in the name of identity usually presupposes misunderstandings of identity both descriptive and normative

this is not true. Violence costs money. It stops being done if it does not produce a profit for those paying for it.  

—cannot allow us, alas, to suppose that we can meet that violence simply by trying to correct the misunderstanding. His recognition that the post‐ 11 September war against the Taliban in Afghanistan was justified shows that he understands that sometimes justice requires the sword (Sen 2006: 78–9).

The Taliban is now ruling Afghanistan. They are grateful for the trucks and guns and ammo the Americans left behind. Justice, like Violence, requires money. If doing it does not produce a profit it stops getting done.  

So I am not claiming that his theory has no place for this possibility. But the generally hopeful tone of Identity and Violence conveys, I think, a greater faith in the power of reason than I am able to share. (p.487)

Sen is incapable of reasoning. He tells stupid lies.  

V. Beyond Reason This worry flows from a wider worry about how we should understand human psychology.

The same way we understand animal psychology. There is a game theoretic aspect to it.  

A great deal of modern work in a number of fields of experimental psychology suggests that much of what people offer by way of reasons, when asked to account for their behavior, is rationalization. They say they did A as a means to B, but in fact we can show that their behavior has a different cause. Getting the range of rationality right—one of Sen's great projects—is only going to be helpful in predicting, and thus managing, human behavior if people are in fact usually guided by these richer notions of rationality.

In important matters, they are. We outsource decision making to experts.  

In the particular case we have been exploring, the way identity leads to violence is not usually by way of a person's reflectively deciding that I, as an X, have a reason all things considered to attack some non‐Xes.

No. In the particular case of India's partition riot, a Muslim capable of killing non-Muslims and who stood to gain materially or reputationally by doing so, had a strong reason to do so provided his 'Tardean mimetic target'- i.e. the people he looked up to and wished to emulate- were also doing so. This is both 'mimetics' as well as 'Muth rationality'.  

Sen mentions the appalling treatment of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib as an instance of the pathology of identity.

It wasn't. The prisoners were thought, rightly or wrongly, to be criminals. Not being US citizens and not being on US soil, they had no legal remedy for various rights violation. One may say this was a pathology of jurisprudence. It had nothing to do with identity. 

But that sort of mistreatment of prisoners can be produced in a few days, as Philip Zimbardo (2007) showed in experiments with Stanford University students many years ago, among people whose antecedent identities were pretty much the same.

But can it be replicated? Also, what happens if you have actual criminals whose pals on the outside will rape and kill the family of prison guards?  

It may be easier for someone who behaves in these ways to tell a story about his behavior if his victims are of some obvious contrasting identity, but the identity story almost certainly doesn't explain the behavior.

What explained it was the fact that students are sheep. They act in the way they think the Professor wants them to act.  

There is a general point here, the general point that is the main burden of modern social psychology: behavior, good and bad, is often best explained by appeal to the situations people find themselves in, rather than to their distinctive thoughts or values (Appiah 2008).

It is explained by the pay-off matrix.  

Given these general truths, we should expect (as common sense would also suggest) that once a conflict begins, it isn't usually going to help to point out that you and I, though divided by the identity that has become salient in our context, are in fact also both humans, or lawyers or what not.

It does help to point out that neither of us is getting paid enough to play this lousy game.  

Sen's thought, which I have already quoted, that we can tame one identity by appeal to others may be true in the study;

Sen tamed his identity as the husband of his wife so as to gain the identity of the husband of his best friend's wife.  

in the struggles of social life it is usually not much help. His rationalist faith that if we understood that our identities involve choices, we would see that we have choices to make, is attractive; but I am not sure how much help it would be in Sri Lanka or the Middle East or Rwanda to insist upon it.

But it is also not much help to do so in New York or London. I used to be a waiter. I would hand over the menu to diners and then lecture them on how just the ability to choose a dish was itself a big blessing and thus worthy of a tip. Sadly, I could not actually fetch them the dishes they had chosen because my identity as a potted plant has tamed by identity as a waiter.

It is surely true that if the world consisted of people who always thought about their own identities in the sort of way Sen does, many of the world's violent identity conflicts wouldn't occur.

Also everybody would be fucking everybody else's wife because they have multiple identities as the husbands of attractive women married to other men.  

But even if everyone started out thinking this way, most could probably be drawn back into conflict in the right sort of context. So, for example, many of the extremely tolerant multicultural members of the Bosnian bourgeoisie would have agreed with most of what Sen says in the years before the collapse of the Yugoslav state. But faced with an economic collapse with the consequent everyday struggle for the necessaries of life, they were not all able to resist being drawn pretty quickly into ethno‐ religious identifications, conceived of in a mostly singularist fashion. 

It is certainly true that Milosevic first tanked the economy before trying to stay in power by appealing to Serbian sub-nationalism. But no one party has the monopoly of blame.  

What would have helped wasn't a better understanding of their identities, but rapid intervention to prop up the ailing economy and sustain the basic institutions that guarantee security.

We can always improve outcomes by understanding ourselves better. This is because we do things based on our knowledge base. Having more knowledge means having a better understanding and thus being able to do smarter things.  

They were victims not of mistaken theories of identity but of a situation in which morally misguided behavior was evoked from people who had more or less the same theories of identity as everyone else.

It is a fact that, ceteris paribus, having more land and resources is a good thing. There was a war over territory. Speaking generally, that's what wars are about.  

A large part of Sen's theoretical work has consisted in reformulating social analysis—especially economics and rational choice theories of social action—to include a richer understanding of the demands of reason than the one implicit in the classical model of the self‐interested utility‐maximizer.

Utility is anything a particular self is interested in. Mother Theresa was maximizing her utility by selflessly serving dying, destitute, people. She has been canonized.  

Much recent economic theory has focused instead on trying to develop modes of analysis that reflect more fully the role that unreason plays.

This is that 'nudging' shite. 

(This has been a slow process, because modern economics has been committed, by professional habit, to thinking that we can see most social patterns as the result of underlying patterns of roughly rational choice.)

Not really. Econometricians and market researchers were spotting all sorts of heuristics underlying various correlations.  

But however much you extend your understanding of reason in the sorts of ways Sen would like to do—and this is a project whose interest I celebrate—it isn't going to take you the whole way.

It is going to take you to utter imbecility very quickly indeed. 

In adopting the perspective of the individual reasonable person, Sen has to turn his face from the pervasiveness of unreason.

he turns his face towards the notion that he has a second identity as the husband of his best friend's wife.  

In insisting on this point I am making a criticism that applies to a great deal of work on identity (including, I should say, my own).

That criticism is that it is stupid shit.  

Sen has helped us in much of his work to expand our understanding of the richness of reason,

No. He has shown that Bengali professors of useless shite and useless shitheads.  

and in Identity and Violence he has taken that project into an important area of social analysis

all he is saying is 'if Muslims weren't Muslims, my people wouldn't have had to run away from East Pakistan.' This is fine. But he is also saying that Hindus should appease Muslims in India. He is happy that the Muslim population of West Bengal has gone up and is continuing to climb. Sooner or later, Hindus will have to run away from there. Still, so long as Sen gets rewarded for virtue signaling, that's what he will do.  

and offered us guidance in dealing with an important social problem.

If Islamic terrorism had created a problem, Sen offered no guidance regarding its solution. Saying Muslims also have an identity as potted plants does not help anyone.  

But

useless 

work of this kind needs to be complemented, I think, by

equally useless 

more extensive attention to the ways in which identities are engaged by human situations,

They aren't. Humans get engaged and then get married. Sadly, Sen may have an identity as the husband of their wife and start porking her. Beating Sen would prevent this outcome. Sadly, his best friend was a Bengali mathematical economist and got confused and thought he might be a potted plant. Thus Sen didn't get his teeth knocked out. Still, he had to move to London.  

not through norms and values and their rational application, but by way of other, less rational psychological processes.

e.g those which motivate adultery. 

I wish I lived in a world that could be healed simply by getting people to adopt Sen's civilizing vision.

In that world, everybody could pork your wife, drive away in your car and refuse to pay their taxes on the grounds that they are a potted plant.  

I fear, alas, that we do not

I fear, alas, that we live in a world where useless nutters like Appiah and Sen get intellectual affirmative action in return for pretending it isn't China, but the West, which has lifted the most people out of abject poverty over the last few decades.