why the humanities could never be automated

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Sometimes, we want to answer questions to accomplish practical outcomes. For example, we want to know whether a vaccine works so that we can decide whether to use it. Or we may seek basic insights about viruses so that we can develop vaccines in the first place.

Sometimes, we want to know things because we are simply curious. It is hard to justify a lot of astronomy (for example) on the basis of its practical implications. But we want to understand the universe.

And sometimes, we want to understand people–and perhaps animals–because we are in relationships with them. When you ask friends how they’re doing, your motive may not be to solve a problem, nor mere curiosity, but care. You should give your friend your attention. The benefits are psychological, ethical, or spiritual–a change in one’s mind and in the relationship with the other person.

Friends may tell you things that you should believe for practical reasons or to satisfy pure curiosity. Someone might tell you that a vaccine works, so that you will take it, or that all the planets in our solar system could fit between the earth and the moon, because that’s kind of interesting to know. Paying attention means taking such claims seriously. But the main point of learning what other people think is not to find out what is objectively true; it is to know the other people. In fact, exploring the beliefs and values of a wide range of people can shake our confidence in beliefs, in general, and hence our feelings that we can and must get our own beliefs right.

Attending to a text or an artifact from a distant time or place is a little different from an ordinary conversation. For one thing, you cannot directly benefit long-dead or faraway authors by giving them your attention. Although we have ethical obligations to the dead, the influence is basically one-way. However, reading, listening to music, and viewing art are similar to regular conversations in important ways. They too are practices that develop compassion and reduce our attachment to our own prejudices and concerns.

While Michel de Montaigne’s married friend Diane de Foix was expecting a child, he sent her advice about education. He recommended foreign travel and conversation with peers. A youth should listen and appreciate, he said, not try to form and share beliefs.

And so should adults. Montaigne told de Foix, “In this school of human interaction, I have often observed this vice: instead of getting to know others, we only strive to give ourselves and are more concerned with using our own goods than with acquiring new ones. Silence and modesty are qualities very well suited to conversation.” A passage in the same letter could stand as a justification of Montaigne’s whole way of life:

This vast world, which some think is just one species in a larger genus, is the mirror in which we must look to truly know ourselves. In short, I want [our world] to be my student’s book. The variety of moods, sects, judgments, opinions, laws, and customs teach us to judge our own people soundly and teach our judgment to recognize its imperfection and natural weakness: which is no small apprenticeship.

If the purpose of the humanities–the disciplines that interpret texts and artifacts–is not to determine truth but to attend to other people, then we cannot outsource this thinking to machines or even to other human beings. The point is the experience, not the outcome.

Here is a complication: professional scholars in the humanities do pursue the answers to questions. At one extreme, they may seem much like scientists when they establish the date and provenance of a painting or correct a primary text. At the opposite extreme, they may offer highly creative or even counterintuitive interpretations, but usually they still claim to be telling us something valid about an object in the world. We can ask whether they are right or wrong, persuasive or unconvincing.

I think scholarship is very valuable, but it ultimately contributes to the humanities as experience. The point of watching or reading Shakespeare is to get out of one’s own head by attending to the author and his characters. The point of philological, historical, or interpretive scholarship about Shakespeare is to enrich performances and readings of the works.

Some of the scholarly labor can be assigned to machines. Because I cannot read Pali but I am interested in classical Indian philosophy, I have been very carefully using ClaudeAI to give me dictionary-type definitions of all the Pali words in select passages. This is an algorithmic task. Claude is probably using published Pali-English dictionaries, plus previous translations made by people who used the same dictionaries. A dictionary is also an algorithmic device, a kind of machine that generates a range of words in one language for each word in the other language. I believe that the first dual-language dictionary (Sumerian-Akkadian) was written more than 4,000 years ago.

Thus there is nothing fundamentally new about creating devices that automatically assist readers, listeners, and viewers of human artifacts. In addition to lexicons and dictionaries, we might mention grammars, concordances, indices, card catalogues, provenance lists for artworks, search functions for digital texts, and many other scholarly resources. LLMs can often do these things better.

The difference is that we were never tempted to view the tools as ends in themselves. They were meant to assist a reader in a practice that would enrich that person’s mind. Because the LLM’s speak in the first-person and purport to interpret and explain texts, it is tempting–and I feel this temptation–to imagine that they can do our reading for us. To use a simile that is becoming a cliché, that would be like getting a machine to lift barbells to save us the effort. This would not count as exercise.

Source: Montaigne, vol. 1, essay :26 (“Of the instruction of children”). I follow Screech in interpreting “que les uns multiplient encore comme especes soubs un genre” to mean that our world is one species in a greater genre of worlds.

See also: the worlds we can lose when intelligence becomes artificial; the difference between human and artificial intelligence: relationships; the design choice to make ChatGPT sound like a human; against using the humanities instrumentally; Bernard Williams on truth as a virtue of the humanities

from the spring summit on civics in higher education

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On April 10, the Tisch College of Civic Life, the Alliance for Civics in the Academy, and GBH (formerly WGBH-Boston) organized a national summit on civics in higher education. Some outputs from that summit are now public.

Joanna Kenty kindly published a version of my opening remarks in The Renovator, under the heading “What was civic education, and what can it become?” My whole original talk is also available as a video.

Videos of the conference’s main panels are on GBH’s webpage. These sessions discussed three major categories of civic work in higher education today: 1) community engagement, 2) curricula focused on civics, and 3) research in support of democracy:

GBH also presents the opening remarks of Jonathan Holloway, a historian who is now the president of the Henry Luce Foundation and previously served as the president of Rutgers. And they present a talk by Eboo Patel, the founder of Interfaith America, on treating diversity as part of civic education.

An Instagram reel records an interview with UCSD’s Fonna Forman during the summit. Fonna is a leader of a remarkable set of community engagements in the San Diego/Tijuana metropolitan area, which (among other accomplishments) won the 2026 National Design Award.

GBH also interviewed my former advisee Seona Maskara (Tufts 2026) at the summit, to give a student’s perspective.

comparing the EU, the UK and the USA

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I’ve seen several recent comparisons of the economies and the general quality of life on each side of the North Atlantic. Sometimes the “hook” for an article is the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Europeans in the USA for the World Cup. Other articles comment on the 10th anniversary of the Brexit vote, which could be interpreted as an attempt to shift the UK away from the EU and toward the USA.

In making these comparisons, it’s better to avoid four sources of bias:

  1. If you identify with the USA, the UK, or an EU country, you may be prone to defend your homeland or–if you’re like me and many Americans I know–to find reasons to criticize your own country. It’s worth trying to be relatively independent and dispassionate.
  2. It’s tempting to use the evidence about these countries to score points in a left-right ideological debate, assuming that the EU is left of the UK, and the USA is right of the UK. But that simplification can be misleading. The USA has a slightly higher marginal tax rate that Sweden, and about three points higher than the UK. The USA has set a lower national minimum wage than most European countries (measured by purchasing power parity), but then again, Denmark has no statutory minimum wage at all. Most European countries organize their schools using what we would call a “charter school” model, which is rare in the USA and often presented as a conservative reform here. These are examples of how policy choices vary independently of the left-right spectrum.
  3. We all have personal preferences for how to live. For example, I do not drive but like to live in our dense urban neighborhood, abutting restaurants and a dentist’s office. Some people prefer a lawn and a two-car garage with a basketball hoop over the door. I could try to argue for my preferences on relatively objective ethical grounds. For instance, urban living consumes less carbon. But let’s face it, my family also benefits from exclusive zoning rules. If we drop the moral comparisons and acknowledge that people value different things, then a person’s preference for life in the USA or in Europe may seem subjective.
  4. It’s worth separating-short term and long-term assessments. Many public goods–and ills–accumulate. For example, much of the beautiful and convenient Paris Metro system was built during the first decade of the 1900s. Its construction boosted French GDP in those years, but not now, even though Parisians still ride the Metro. In short, it is possible to live relatively well because of accumulated economic activity in the past, or to experience rapid growth now while dealing with deficits and liabilities.

I suppose my bottom line would be that some aspects of human development are better in the EU than in the UK, and in the UK compared to the USA, but a surprising number of such comparisons are quite close. At the same time, the USA has seen substantially stronger annual economic growth during the 21st century. One can argue for a steady-state economy (or at least criticize GDP growth as a measure of success), but the actual political and economic systems–on both sides of the Atlantic–currently depend on annual growth. Thus the EU faces a current challenge that is mitigated by its accumulated investments.

To elaborate:

Life expectancy in the US is about two years lower than that in the UK and the EU.

The intentional homicide rate in the US is five times higher than that in the UK and 5.7 times that in the EU.

Educational attainment/investment varies widely within the EU. The average number of years of formal education in both the USA and Germany is 13.8; in the UK, 13.2; and in Italy, 10.

On the most popular measure of income inequality (GINI), the USA ranks worse than the UK, which ranks worse than the EU. (The respective scores are 39.6 for the USA, 34.2 for the UK, and 29.4 for the EU.) There is wide variation within the EU zone, but the least equal European countries–Portugal, Spain, and Italy–are more equal than the UK.

By the overall measure of the Human Development Index, the USA comes in just ahead of Britain, which is just ahead of the EU. (I show France below because the HDI website won’t generate a line for the EU, and France is at the EU mean right now.) However, HDI includes per capita income, which is much higher in the USA. Europe’s HDI is pushed higher by life expectancy and education. To put it another way, EU countries achieve similar health and educational outcomes as the USA with much less wealth.

Meanwhile, here is a comparison of economic growth (change in real gross GDP) for the USA, the United Kingdom, and the EU. I’ve set each trend-line at 100 on the Millennium, so that you can compare relative change since then in each of these markets.

(On a per capita basis, GDP has been quite different all along, reaching about $94k in the United States, $61k in the United Kingdom, and $51k the EU in 2026.)

Although I remain convinced that Brexit was disastrous for the UK, it is interesting that the UK economy has grown more than the EU has since 2020.

The sharp contraction caused by COVID was worst in the UK, although their recovery was larger than the EU’s. The COVID contraction was distinctly smaller in the USA. We lost four years of GDP in 2020, whereas the UK temporary lost 15 years of growth at the nadir of the pandemic.

Since 2020, the US has seen substantial growth: steady increases except for one quarter in early 2021. The line is basically straight through Biden and Trump II. Both the UK and EU pulled out of COVID and then experienced basically a plateau.

This doesn’t mean that life is worse in the EU. Europe is much less violent, and the amenities and public goods that I value are more plentiful there. But the lack of growth poses a challenge, given the logics of the EU’s political and economic systems.

See also: Brexit: a personal reflection (2019); the UK in a polycentric Europe; reflections on modern Granada (Spain); the international variation in COVID-19 mortality etc.

honor, shame and Southern Christianity

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In 1946, the pioneering anthropologist Ruth Benedict introduced a distinction between guilt cultures and honor-shame cultures in her book about Japan, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, which was based on research that she had conducted for the U.S. Office of War Information during WWII. I have no basis for assessing whether she was insightful about Japan. However, the distinction has been applied in other settings: for example, to characterize the US South. I will return to that application shortly.

A key passage is on p. 222:

True shame cultures rely on external sanctions for good behavior, not, as true guilt cultures do, on an internalized conviction of sin. Shame is a reaction to other people’s criticism. A man is shamed either by being openly ridiculed and rejected or by fantasying to himself that he has been made ridiculous. In either case it is a potent sanction. But it requires an audience or at least a man’s fantasy of an audience. Guilt does not.

People constrained by guilt ask whether they are violating a rule or principle. This makes them inflexible but also self-regulating. People constrained by shame measure their worth according to current prevailing norms, which can change (p. 170). Benedict adds that early American (Puritan) morality was all about guilt. The only observer who ultimately mattered was God. “But shame is an increasingly heavy burden in the United States and guilt is less extremely felt than in earlier generations” (p. 223).

For what it’s worth, I would resist reifying any culture–treating it as an entity that causes people to think and act in certain ways. I would rather define cultures as networks of ideas and practices. Each person’s network is unique, but we can statistically generalize about the ideas and behaviors of populations. Then we would not see shame-honor as something that affects people, but as one way of generalizing about populations. A norm may prevail in a population because many individuals actively teach and model it, but there will usually be exceptions to any view, and the causal pathways go from persons to persons (e.g., from parents to children), not from a culture to many people.

David French is a Southern Christian with center-right political credentials who is concerned about the far right in the South. He applies Ruth Benedict’s notion of honor-shame cultures to his own region and faith tradition to explain the rise of MAGA.

To get a flavor of this analysis, consider the vast torrent of opinion online. There are always examples of Northern or Coastal liberals who make demeaning remarks about Southerners, Christians, or Trump and his supporters. For someone who identifies with any of those categories and who uses an honor-shame framework, any statement of this kind brings shame. It doesn’t work to say that the offended person holds a secure (or even favored) social position, that the insult is unrepresentative, or that a good person turns the other cheek. Those responses imply a guilt framework instead of honor-shame. Honor-shame demands revenge.

I can imagine that someone who identifies with MAGA might be insulted by my use of this framework to characterize him. But it’s not coming from me. I learned it first from David French. Then I used Google, Google Scholar, and DuckDuckGo to search for “shame honor” and “southern.” I found a rich and thoughtful conversation.

This discussion is not taking place in academia or in secular circles. Even the general concept of “honor shame culture” yields strikingly few recent references on Google Scholar, suggesting that it is not much used by academic anthropologists nowadays. The people who use it are evangelical Christian pastors and missionaries.

They write thoughtful essays criticizing honor-shame as an obstacle to Christian ethics and belief. I find it plausible that New Testament Christianity makes explicit arguments for guilt instead of honor. (In that case, Ruth Benedict’s analysis of Japan may have been rooted in Christian thought.) One of many relevant Biblical texts is Galatians 1:10: “For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.”

It appears that the recent discussion was instigated by Jayson Georges’s 2016 book, The 3D Gospel: Ministry in Guilt, Shame, and Fear Cultures, which I have not read. Google Scholar finds citations to this book in 157 publications. They are definitely scholarly, but not what I would call (acknowledging my own bias) “mainstream.” Instead, almost all of the citations are in missionary studies or Christian education journals.

For what it’s worth: I would not treat honor-shame as an underlying causal factor that explains Southern Christian culture or MAGA (because I would not interpret any cultural phenomena as causal in that way). But I can believe that honor-shame notions are relatively prevalent in the US South, drawing on old traditions yet coexisting and conflicting with other ideas and impulses. I would also explore how whites’ honor-shame is connected to racism throughout the USA.

Further, I do not like honor-shame. Although guilt has its own problems, it is better to try to live according to principles than to feel shame and a need to respond whenever others criticize you. Although not a Christian, I can see a principled and attractive Christian theological argument against honor-shame. After all, it really is better to turn the other cheek.

Finally, people who criticize White Southern Evangelical politics from within–from a principled, theologically based position–may be well placed to combat tendencies that are causing trouble for the rest of us.

This is one of many examples of how actual participation in White Evangelical Christianity can promote challenging moral conversations that yield nuance and self-reflection, whereas merely identifying as a White Christian without seriously participating in the religion is related to antidemocratic and illiberal tendencies.

See also: individuals in cultures: the concept of an idiodictuon; the prospects for an evangelical turn against Trump; active church membership may counteract problematic religious messages; church attendance, religious identity, and politics (revisited).

effortful attention and moral responsibility

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When are we responsible for what we do, or for what we think and feel?

Some connect responsibility to the will and ask whether the will is free. In any given situation, a person (or a group, a non-human animal, or a machine) either has a will that is free or does not; this is a binary distinction.

Applying this distinction, we might think that some of our thoughts and actions reflect our free will, while others do not. Or we might decide that the free will is a myth, because it would be a magical exception to natural laws. Or we might think that everything we do represents our will. That is one way (but not the only way) to interpret Matthew 5:27-28: “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”*

Here is an alternative that avoids discussing a will at all. It is not original, but I have come to it by my own winding path.

We attend to things to greater or lesser degrees. Our attention represents more or less effort. We are morally responsible for how we allocate our effortful attention.

To continue the example from the Sermon on the Mount, if you happen to feel a private sexual response to someone, that is not your responsibility. Your mind is not under your control. But if you continue to think about the person in a lustful fashion, this sustained or repeated attention is your responsibility. And if you commit adultery, that reflects even more attention as well as more responsibility.

There is no binary here; the degree of effortful attention is a continuum. This also implies that there is no binary distinction between human persons and other creatures. I can hold my dog somewhat accountable (with appropriate allowances, and in a forgiving mode) for how he allocates his attention. When he is distracted by the sight of a passing squirrel, that just happens. But when he gives a lot of thought to stealing and ingesting a sock, that is on him.

Just as we can be held increasingly accountable for thoughts and actions as they consume more of our effortful attention, so we can be blamed for failing to attend to things that we should care about, such as others’ sufferings and injustices.

The advice that follows from this theory is familiar but, in my opinion, valid. When you have a thought or feeling that is morally wrong (aggressive, jealous, spiteful, lustful, or otherwise), let it go. Do not interpret it as a sign that something is wrong with you. That is just a way of giving unwarranted attention to the thought that happened to arise in your mind. As Gerard Manley Hopkins advises himself, “call off thoughts awhile.” But also — don’t fan the embers. If you dwell on a bad thought, your responsibility for it will begin to rise.

*Believers in predestination interpret such passages differently, saying that free will is incompatible with divine omnipotence, yet we are sinful by nature. I suspect the Gospels predate such concepts entirely.

See also: people as clusters of attention; freedom of the will or freedom from the will? (comparing Harry Frankfurt and Buddhism). The latter is from 2020, and I would not write the same now.