The word 'divine,' of course, had been carefully chosen by the Bush campaign in preference to the more accurate 'discern.' The term was used repeatedly by Republican operatives, in conjunction with allusions to Johnny Carson's old "Great Carnak" schtick, and along with pictures of a slightly cross-eyed vote-counter in Florida staring earnestly and intently at a punch card. We were being intentionally manipulated. A conclusion about a matter of vital national importance was being hawked like a can of Coke, with catch phrases, and with ridicule for those who weren't buying.

But there was, in fact, no divination involved. The task in question was not notably more subjective than any of millions of other perceptual tasks performed by humans every day. Mechanics must determine whether aircraft parts exhibit excessive wear. Doctors must determine whether patients appear healthy, whether children are developing normally, whether this blotch on Smith's skin is sufficiently or insufficiently symmetrical, whether or not a bump near a pin-prick counts as a welt. In laboratories scientists must determine whether solutions have turned opaque, whether needles read 0.002 or 0.003, whether a specimen is appropriate for inclusion in a control group. All of these tasks require some degree of human judgment, but none of them is reasonably described as entirely (or excessively) "subjective." Human life--and even science itself--is in large part a matter of human beings making judgments about the objective though often partially-occluded facts about an objective and partially fuzzy world. If determining whether a chad is hanging or dented is subjective, then everything--including science--is subjective. Furthermore, if these things are subjective, then the decision to program the machines to one level of sensitivity rather than another is subjective. When the going gets tough, the crafty go Postmodern--and Baker might as well have been wearing a black beret and quoting Derrida.

Things do not change appreciably when it is human intentions that are to be discerned. Every day we make countless judgments about the intentions of others. Turn signals indicate intentions to turn, upraised hands indicate intentions to ask questions or make comments, certain well-known actions indicate a desire to catch one's attention. Some behaviors indicate an intention to do harm. Judges, police officers, military personnel, statesmen, and ordinary citizens make life and death decisions every day as a result of judgments about the intentions of others. Although sometimes difficult it is something we are quite good at. Primarily because almost all of those Homo Sapiens who weren't good at it died off long ago.

To help my students think in situations like this, I often urge them to use the "life-or-death test. In this case, it would go a little something like this: