A Disturbing Trend of Relativism Among College Students
How “is considered to be” has replaced “is”
As a philosophy professor teaching large classes of undergraduate students, I am exposed to a lot of subpar writing. Philosophy does not lend itself to multiple choice exams, so most if not all of the grading I do is based on essays, and even at relatively good universities, like mine, the students’ writing is surprisingly bad.
Some of the poor writing is due to a simple lack of skill. Nonetheless, some of it seems to be better explained by social trends. Take for example the use of “they” to mean he or she. My hunch is that this is at least partly due to recent changes in pronoun use that are meant to avoid discrimination against trans and non-gendered folks. I respect the intention. Notwithstanding that, it is absurd when a student is writing on the “Last Man” argument and insists on using “they” to refer to the last man, who, ex hypothesis, is explicitly male and singular.
Of all the annoying habits of poor writing I have to suffer through, however, there is nothing more maddening, and disturbing, than the use of “is considered to be” in place of the copula (“is”). Here is a particularly egregious, but not atypical, example. One of my students, writing on Kant’s moral theory, states that “Kant believes that in order for an action to be considered right, it must agree with the terms of the categorical imperative.” (Italics added, of course.)
The problem with this should be obvious. The phrase “considered to be” is about people’s beliefs. To say that an action is considered to be morally right is to state a subjective fact, a fact about people’s beliefs and attitudes. Kant’s ethical theory is not a theory about what people think is morally right or wrong; it is a theory about what is morally right or wrong. Even if you are skeptical about objective moral facts, Kant certainly was not. Thus, the sentence is simply false. Kant did not think that adhering to the categorical imperative is what makes an action considered to be right.
It is possible that I encounter this convoluted verb construction so often because I teach philosophy, a field where there is little widespread agreement, even among experts. Do geography professors have students saying things like “Reykjavik is considered to be the capital of Iceland?” Do math professors have to deal with students claiming that “2 + 3 is considered to be equal to 5?” Probably not, or at least not as often.
However, it is important to understand why those sentences sound so unnatural. The fact that Reykjavik is the capital of Iceland, or that the sum of two and three is five, are facts that no one disputes. If I were to say that Reykjavik is considered to be the capital of Iceland, you would probably have some follow up questions. Considered by whom? If the author of the sentence believed that Reykjavik is indeed the capital of Iceland (as an objective fact), then presumably she would just say that. Saying that it is merely considered to be the capital expresses doubt about the matter.
I do not recall students using “is considered to be” in place of “is” when I first started teaching philosophy twenty years ago. It may have happened now and then, but not with enough frequency to indicate a pattern. These days I encounter it in at least a quarter of my students’ essays, even after I explicitly tell them not to.
So what happened during that time? What recent social trend makes students want to hedge their claims and express objective statements of fact as if there were merely subjective beliefs? The best explanation I can find is the recent development of post-truth politics, especially in the U.S. Right-wing voters no longer care about facts or truth, and right-wing politicians and pundits tell those voters what they want to hear. A prime example is when Trump’s Counselor, Kellyanne Conway, was asked, back in 2017, why the White House made false claims about attendance numbers at Trump’s inauguration. She replied that the Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, was presenting “alternative facts.” In other words, lies that we are going to pretend to believe.
I doubt that my students — the wide majority of whom are on the middle or left side of the political continuum — advocate post-truth politics or accept the legitimacy of “alternative facts.” But they inadvertently play into the hands of those who do by expressing statements of fact as mere subjective belief. It is, after all, true that Trump is considered (by 78% of Republican voters) to be the winner of the 2020 election over Joe Biden. It is a subjective fact about people’s beliefs. However, when “considered to be” is used interchangeably with “is,” we erase the difference between subjective beliefs and objective truth, between alternative “facts” and genuine facts.
Post-truth politics might not be the only factor. Wishy-washy moral relativism, motivated by a misguided desire to tolerate different belief systems, might also play a role. I have found that students are often squeamish about making objective moral claims. This is not a new phenomenon, but it might have been exacerbated over the years by the escalation of the culture wars.
When Trump praises neo-Nazi terrorists as “very fine people,” he is certainly making a subjective claim. The same is true when his AG, Jeff Session, claims that “good people do not use marijuana.” But we do not want to conclude that all moral judgments are just subjective attitudes. Doing so puts legitimate moral claims on the same level as the dubious moral claims of fascists.
We should not, for example, say that “Antebellum slavery is considered to have been a grave moral evil.” That is just the kind of unwarranted doubt that supports recent laws passed by right-wing legislators outlawing the teaching of slavery in public schools. Slavery is not just considered to have been a grave moral evil; it was in fact a grave moral evil.
Most of my students probably think I am being a stickler. It should be obvious that the student I cited earlier meant to say that the categorical imperative determines the rightness and wrongness of actions, not people’s beliefs about the rightness and wrongness of actions. However, grammar matters. There are serious, though often subtle, implications of saying one thing when you mean something different, even if it is obvious what you meant. Moreover, it is important to understand, in your own mind, the clear difference between subjective beliefs and objective facts.