Image by: Susan Cook
A Citizen's Guide to The Limiting Principle that Makes Buying Health Insurance Different
From: Susan Cook
Series: The River Is Wide
Length: 06:45
A Citizen's Guide to the Limiting Principle that makes Buying Health Insurance Different
-Susan Cook-
You don’t need to be a Supreme Court justice to know that sometimes lawyers say stupid things. I am grateful for the Supreme Court justice who introduced the word stupid into the current debate about the Affordable Care Act. He said that young people are not stupid and will buy insurance when they need it which is why they do not need a law requiring them to buy health insurance- along with everyone else. By using the word stupid, he stumbles on the Limiting Principle that makes buying health insurance different than buying broccoli and why the Affordable Health Care Act requirement that everyone have health insurance is acceptable. Young people- may not be stupid- but they frequently do not use logic.
Legal stupidity is defined as lawyers applying logical reasoning to situations where it doesn’t work. And when is that? First, we have to look at the limits of logical thinking (also known as legal reasoning) explaining what human beings will do- who - by the way- are like the Mariana Trench- not well understood.
A French psychologist, Gisella Labouvie-Vief- has written at length about the limits of logic applied to real life. She calls this Post-formal operational thinking. Formal operational thinking is the kind of reasoning lawyers try to do: where they use logic and the legal precedents that have piled up out of it to make decisions. Dr. Labouvie-Vief says that there are many situations in which human beings throw their ability to reason out the window.
Here is an example of when people throw logic away:
1)Bob is an alcoholic.
2)His wife told him: If you get drunk one more time, I am leaving you.
3)Bob goes to a party and gets drunk. Does Bob's wife leave him?
It is in their early 20’s that young people begin to abandon their proudly acquired ability to use logic to prove flaws in arguments. When presented with this example of the application of logical thinking, Dr. Labouvie-Vief found they say that Bob's wife would not leave him.
Logic does not explain what Bob's wife do. For some Mariana Trench reason, Bob not leaving is more important to her than logical reasoning.
Another explorer of the depths of logic was the great Swiss genetic epistemologist Jean Piaget. Piaget studied the development of children's ability to use ideas to make sense of the world, also known as logic. In one of his studies, Piaget attempted to trace logical thinking applied to children's understanding of the meaning of family.
When Piaget asked very young children for the meaning of family, he said- they did not give definitions that are independent of time and place. This means , he said, that very young children give meanings of family as the people they are with at the moment- not people they are connected to beyond the moment. And - I am not making this up- that it is not until late childhood that children can see how 2 ideas at the same time effect each other and thus give a meaning of family that is "independent of time and place."
This is an example of the Limiting Principle of applying logic to human experience. Any lawyer who has observed a three year old in utter distress because the father has left them at day-care knows that three year old’s have a meaning of family as existing beyond time and place. Family does not become the people they are with in the moment, which is why the child wails against Dad leaving and at the end of the day- anticipates his return.
In my Harvard dissertation, like Piaget, I explored how children use logic to understand the world . In 4 different studies- one of which was longitudinal. I asked children between the ages of 6 and 18, a group of which I studied until they were in their early 20's, that prime time for application of logic - according to the Supreme Court Justice: "Does a family ever stop being a family?" “When you’re in your fifties, will you still be a family?“
Guess what ? Exit logic when applied to real life . When I re-interviewed children that I first talked to when then were 7 in their early 20's, they tenaciously hung onto the meaning of family that they graciously struggled to articulate at age 7 or 8. Even if their families had broken into a million barely recognizable tiny creatures, they told me- without knowing what they had said at age 7 or 8, that families do not stop being families, no matter what.
This is the Limiting Principle where logic applied to human experience falls into a deep Mariana Trench, where logic does not explain action. It is also where lawyers start say stupid things about what they "think" young people will do when when buying health insurance: their logic does not explain what people will do. The application of logic to real life where lawyers can hold their own is this one:
1) Bob does not have health insurance.
2) It is illegal in the United States to not carry health insurance.
3) Bob will face legal sanctions for not having health insurance.
Will Bob buy health insurance?
Yes. That's not stupid. That is logic. That’s why the Affordable Health Care requirement that people buy insurance is not stupid.
Cook, Susan. "A Sense of Belonging, A Sense of Place: The Child in The Family and the Perspective Taken", Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, Harvard University, 1986.
Cook, Susan (June 3, 1993). Children's Recognition of Context in FamilyRelationship. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Jean Piaget Society. Philadephia, Pa.
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Related Pieces
Piece Description
A Citizen's Guide to the Limiting Principle that makes Buying Health Insurance Different
-Susan Cook-
You don’t need to be a Supreme Court justice to know that sometimes lawyers say stupid things. I am grateful for the Supreme Court justice who introduced the word stupid into the current debate about the Affordable Care Act. He said that young people are not stupid and will buy insurance when they need it which is why they do not need a law requiring them to buy health insurance- along with everyone else. By using the word stupid, he stumbles on the Limiting Principle that makes buying health insurance different than buying broccoli and why the Affordable Health Care Act requirement that everyone have health insurance is acceptable. Young people- may not be stupid- but they frequently do not use logic.
Legal stupidity is defined as lawyers applying logical reasoning to situations where it doesn’t work. And when is that? First, we have to look at the limits of logical thinking (also known as legal reasoning) explaining what human beings will do- who - by the way- are like the Mariana Trench- not well understood.
A French psychologist, Gisella Labouvie-Vief- has written at length about the limits of logic applied to real life. She calls this Post-formal operational thinking. Formal operational thinking is the kind of reasoning lawyers try to do: where they use logic and the legal precedents that have piled up out of it to make decisions. Dr. Labouvie-Vief says that there are many situations in which human beings throw their ability to reason out the window.
Here is an example of when people throw logic away:
1)Bob is an alcoholic.
2)His wife told him: If you get drunk one more time, I am leaving you.
3)Bob goes to a party and gets drunk. Does Bob's wife leave him?
It is in their early 20’s that young people begin to abandon their proudly acquired ability to use logic to prove flaws in arguments. When presented with this example of the application of logical thinking, Dr. Labouvie-Vief found they say that Bob's wife would not leave him.
Logic does not explain what Bob's wife do. For some Mariana Trench reason, Bob not leaving is more important to her than logical reasoning.
Another explorer of the depths of logic was the great Swiss genetic epistemologist Jean Piaget. Piaget studied the development of children's ability to use ideas to make sense of the world, also known as logic. In one of his studies, Piaget attempted to trace logical thinking applied to children's understanding of the meaning of family.
When Piaget asked very young children for the meaning of family, he said- they did not give definitions that are independent of time and place. This means , he said, that very young children give meanings of family as the people they are with at the moment- not people they are connected to beyond the moment. And - I am not making this up- that it is not until late childhood that children can see how 2 ideas at the same time effect each other and thus give a meaning of family that is "independent of time and place."
This is an example of the Limiting Principle of applying logic to human experience. Any lawyer who has observed a three year old in utter distress because the father has left them at day-care knows that three year old’s have a meaning of family as existing beyond time and place. Family does not become the people they are with in the moment, which is why the child wails against Dad leaving and at the end of the day- anticipates his return.
In my Harvard dissertation, like Piaget, I explored how children use logic to understand the world . In 4 different studies- one of which was longitudinal. I asked children between the ages of 6 and 18, a group of which I studied until they were in their early 20's, that prime time for application of logic - according to the Supreme Court Justice: "Does a family ever stop being a family?" “When you’re in your fifties, will you still be a family?“
Guess what ? Exit logic when applied to real life . When I re-interviewed children that I first talked to when then were 7 in their early 20's, they tenaciously hung onto the meaning of family that they graciously struggled to articulate at age 7 or 8. Even if their families had broken into a million barely recognizable tiny creatures, they told me- without knowing what they had said at age 7 or 8, that families do not stop being families, no matter what.
This is the Limiting Principle where logic applied to human experience falls into a deep Mariana Trench, where logic does not explain action. It is also where lawyers start say stupid things about what they "think" young people will do when when buying health insurance: their logic does not explain what people will do. The application of logic to real life where lawyers can hold their own is this one:
1) Bob does not have health insurance.
2) It is illegal in the United States to not carry health insurance.
3) Bob will face legal sanctions for not having health insurance.
Will Bob buy health insurance?
Yes. That's not stupid. That is logic. That’s why the Affordable Health Care requirement that people buy insurance is not stupid.
Cook, Susan. "A Sense of Belonging, A Sense of Place: The Child in The Family and the Perspective Taken", Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, Harvard University, 1986.
Cook, Susan (June 3, 1993). Children's Recognition of Context in FamilyRelationship. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Jean Piaget Society. Philadephia, Pa.
Transcript
A Citizen's Guide to the Limiting Principle that makes Buying Health Insurance Different
-Susan Cook-
You don’t need to be a Supreme Court justice to know that sometimes lawyers say stupid things. I am grateful for the Supreme Court justice who introduced the word stupid into the current debate about the Affordable Care Act. He said that young people are not stupid and will buy insurance when they need it which is why they do not need a law requiring them to buy health insurance- along with everyone else. By using the word stupid, he stumbles on the Limiting Principle that makes buying health insurance different than buying broccoli and why the Affordable Health Care Act requirement that everyone have health insurance is acceptable. Young people- may not be stupid- but they frequently do not use...
Read the full transcript
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