Eric Schliesser's Blog, page 13
September 13, 2022
Foucault, Stigler, Weber, and some pre-history going back to Thomas More, Mandeville, Grouchy and even Spinoza
The cost limitation upon the enforcement of laws would prevent the society from forestalling, detecting, and punishing all offenders, but it would appear that punishments which would be meted out to the guilty could often be increased without using additional resources. The offender is deterred by the expected punishment, which is (as a first approximation) the probability of punishment times the punishment-$100 if the probability of conviction is 1/10 and the fine $1,000. Hence, increasing the punishment would seem always to increase the deterrence. Capital punishment is cheaper than long term imprisonment; and seizure of all the offender's property may not be much more expensive than collecting a more moderate fine.
Foucault quotes the Stigler (1970) article in the tenth lecture of 21 March 1979 (Birth of Biopolitics, p. 256.) It is quite natural, if you read the editorial apparatus of the Birth of Biopolitics, to think that Foucault may not have read the original source, but that he is relying entirely on Jenny, F. "La th��orie ��conomique du crime: une revue de la litt��rature." Vie et sciences ��conomique 73 (1977): 7-20. The wording of the editorial footnote (18) -- "(Foucault draws on information provided in this article.)" -- is sufficiently ambiguous to give the editors plausible deniability here. But the editors go on to imply it in a later footnote (25) when they tell the readers that "This phrase is not found in Becker���s article. Foucault relies on the synthesis of Becker���s and Stigler���s works provided by Jenny." Foucault's vexed relationship to underlying sources came up in discussion over lunch with Bruce Caldwell and Joel Isaac yesterday.
So, I was pleasantly surprised yesterday when during a hallway conversation Vincent Carret -- yes I am visiting Duke's Center for the history of political economy [hence all the name-dropping] -- informed me that there is a project, Le projet Foucault Fiches de Lecture (FFL), that is collecting and making digitally available many of Foucault's annotations on his readings which he did to prepare his lectures and books. So, when I went to check it out, I thought it made sense to use it as my first foray to see what annotations he had left on Becker and Stigler. While zero annotations would not be decisive -- after all notes get lost and re-used, maybe he relied on others for summaries and checked them against original sources -- it would naturally be taken to reinforce the editors' point.
To give a non-trivial example that a false negative is not decisive: as far as I can tell, there are no annotations on Jenny's article (or the underlying book in which it appeared). Since there are Foucault annotations on papers by Becker (here) and Stigler, that would have made a nice punchline for this digression, but I have other fish to fry! In addition, the annotations do not seem to be dated, and as far as I can tell [after a few hours of poking around on the website] the project has not yet tried to date the manuscripts. So, I am not going to try to connect Foucault's scribbling to particular passages in the lecture course. (I will leave that to a different kind of scholar.) Foucault read and made a few annotations (see here) on Stigler's "The Optimum Enforcement of Laws." That should be no surprise because Foucault had a deep interest in criminology, and its history, and Becker's and Stigler's work were creating important waves in the field. (I would be amazed if these annotations were written after the Birth of Biopolitics lectures.)
When Stigler wrote the passage I have quoted, Becker may well still have been at Columbia. (Becker returned to Chicago in 1970.) And, at first sight the passage has the aura of a senior scholar setting the young upstart straight on marginal analysis (then exactly a century old), although the real disagreement is to explain the absence of widespread and enormous numbers of capital punishment. For, while Stigler's (and Becker's) project has a normative component (Stigler is explicit about this), it's also meant to do a decent job with the empirical world.
And, in fact, Stigler's analysis ("If the thief has his hand cut off for taking five dollars, he had just as well take $5,000.") echoes pre-marginalist thinking going back to Thomas More (in part I of Utopia [recall this NewAPPS post]), and, as Foucault explicitly notes (repeatedly in the lecture), in the writings of Beccaria and Bentham (and (recall this digression on) Sophie Grouchy). This is why Foucault treats Stigler and Becker as an updated version of Benthamite utilitarianism (although as the reference to More suggests cost-benefit analysis of criminal decision making and how to create rational punishment in light of it precedes Benthamite utilitarianism).
Now, I want to close with more substantive observations. Foucault himself makes an important point in a passage (which I have quoted in passing before (recall here) in which he explicitly quotes Stigler (1970):
The regulatory principle of penal policy is a simple intervention in the market for crime and in relation to the supply of crime. It is an intervention which will limit the supply of crime solely by a negative demand, the cost of which must obviously never exceed the cost of the supply of the criminality in question. This is the definition that Stigler gives of the objective of a penal policy: ���The goal of law enforcement,��� he says, ���is to achieve a degree of compliance with the rule of prescribed behavior that society believes it can procure while taking account of the fact that enforcement is costly.��� This is in the Journal of Political Economy in 1970.30--Foucault 21 March, 1979, translated by Graham Burchell, Lecture 10, The Birth of Biopolitics, p. 256.*
The 'definition that Stigler gives' is from the first section of the essay labeled 'The Goal of Enforcement.' Stigler returns to the regulatory principle in the final (third) section labeled 'The Enforcement Agency: A Normative Approach.' Some other time I want to discuss how we should think about the normativity involved in Stigler's analysis. Foucault does not remark on it. It's worth nothing that 'Chicago' is by no means the first to think about the role of enforcement costs in law enforcement: Spinoza (in the Theological Political Treatise) and Mandeville (in the Fable) recognize that Amsterdam's practice of tolerating brothels is explicitly shaped by consideration of enforcement costs.
Now, 'the art of government' is the major theme of Birth of Biopolitics. And the phrase (and its cognates) are used repeatedly throughout the lectures. But one peculiarity of the lectures is that the phrase does not occur in the lectures on Chicago economics ('governmentality' does in case you want to play gotcha with me). And this has let commentators, I think, to miss that Chicago school does have an account of the art of government: in Friedman it's called the 'art of economics' (which is recall here and here the phrase he inherits from J.S. Mill and J.N. Keynes) and Stigler with less flair, calls it "advice on policy...[in light of] understanding of the regulatory process" in the introduction to his (1975) Citizen and the State. Now, in Friedman (and Mill, and even Adam Smith) the content of the art of government is articulated in terms of maxims or principles. Foucault echoes this language when he describes Stigler's 1970 in terms of 'regulatory principles.'**
To put my first important point simply: in the context of the modern administrative state, the liberal art of government, as understood at 'Chicago' is partially codified in terms of regulatory principles that constrain how one should think about the relationship between policy aims and fundamental liberal principles (and constitutional constraints, etc.) in light of experience with the ordinary workings of the democratic political process which is often also a market in political regulation.
The second point is that Foucault uses 'regulatory principle' as the content of the art of government in the context of the modern administrative state. This is actually confirmed or illustrated in an interview held with him (by folk who are actually confused on this) in a passage that has attracted quite a bit of critical attention (because it involves Foucault's attitude toward consensus politics), where Foucault corrects his interviewers' terminology by saying that 'X is a regulatory principle' always presupposes that X is subject to "governance" and to "be organized." (The Foucault Reader, p. 378)
And lurking here is the most important point often lost in twentieth century debates over markets vs states is that much of neoliberalism, that, as Foucault correctly recognizes, is about -- and Becker and Stigler are explicit about this -- a process of rationalization of the administrative state on liberal principles not its abolition. And so while Foucault repeatedly ties the ORDO liberal approach to Max Weber's shadow, he could have also done so with Chicago (even if Stigler got his Weber through Knight and Talcott Parsons).
*It is worth noting that Stigler would have put it (and does put it) in terms of "marginal return equals marginal cost."
**Foucault introduces this terminology in his earlier treatment of Ordoliberalism (pp. 146-147 of Birth of Biopolitics.) In an earlier footnote (note 35), the editors suggest while (following Foucault's lead in connecting Eucken to neo-Kantianism especially because Foucault treats Walter Eucken's father as a prominent neo-Kantian) that the use of 'regulatory principles' reflects this neo-Kantianism: "The link Foucault suggests with neo-Kantianism no doubt refers to the Kantian distinction between ���constitutive principles��� and ���regulatory principles��� in the Critique of Pure Reason, trans.
Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1978) 1st Division, Book 2, ch. 2, section 3 (���Analogies of Experience���) pp. 210���211." (Birth of Biopolitics, p. 154.) What's odd about this claim is that the note is attached to a passage where Foucault does not use 'regulatory principle' at all, but 'regulatory action'! And second, Foucault uses 'regulatory principles' as in contexts far removed from neo-Kantianism.
September 9, 2022
Milton Friedman's Belated Public Choice Art of Economics
In trying to influence policy, economists have typically adopted a public interest view of government. They have written as if government officials, whether elected or appointed, were selflessly dedicated to achieving the public's welfare and as if the role of economists were simply to figure out how to do so--to decide what is the right to do and to persuade people dedicated to the public interest that it is the right thing to do....I'm no exception to my generalization about the typical approach of the economist in dealing with public policy.--Milton Friedman (1986) "Economists and Economic Policy" Economic Inquiry 24.1: 1-2. [HT Scott Ashworth]
The art of economics, also known as the 'art government,' is presented here as presupposing public interested economists and public interested government officials or statesmen, both serving the public's welfare, or 'salus populi' in Cicero's (and Locke's) famous phrase. Let's call this 'the standard view' of the art of economics.
It's worth noticing, of course, that on the standard view it is by no means obvious what counts as the public's welfare and how it is related to knowledge the economists may possess. It's also worth noting that the standard view presupposes skill in the art of rhetoric because it requires skill in persuading those government officials that serve the public interests that what the economist advices is indeed "the right thing to do." By using 'rhetoric' I don't mean to suggest the standard view disparages science communication. But rather to suggest that government officials are not expected to become expert economists on the standard view.
As an aside, I don't think it's a rhetorical trick (in the bad sense) that Friedman includes himself as past adherents of the standard view (which he associates with J.M. Keynes). In the 1986 essay, he gives examples of his past behavior, and the standard view is also espoused (recall my recent post) in his famous (1953) "The Methodology of Positive Economics" (which goes curiously unmentioned). The standard view is characteristic of the Benthamite, radical-utilitarian tradition (which often models the public official as a 'philanthropist').
In 1986, Friedman claims to have rejected the standard view under the influence of public choice (he explicitly mentions Anthony Downs' (1957) An economic theory of democracy and Buchanan & Tullock's (1962) Calculus of Consent.) One insight Friedman takes from public choice is that decision-makers are also self-interested in the same way businesspeople are (and for Friedman this is no criticism).
But, and this is a crucial point, for Friedman the public choice perspective does not mean that public officials are busy lining their own pockets or even consolidating individual power. But rather that public officials conceive of the public interest, in part, in terms of the interests of the institutions they serve. My point is not about the stipulated absence of pecuniary motives in some public officials. But rather that in Friedman's thought there is a shift from self-interest understood as individual advancement toward self-interest understood as one's institutional advantage; it is quite explicit but goes unremarked by Friedman (who spent some time in government): in trying to shape public policy, "[economists] are dealing with human beings," Friedman writes, "who pursue their own interest whether they be politicians whose self-interest is to get re-elected, or members of bureaucracies whose self-interest is to have the bureaucracy bigger and more powerful." (4)
My interest here is not to deny that some bureaucrats identify strongly with the agencies they serve (say, in virtue of esprit de corps, or an enlarged conception of their selves/identity). All I note it is odd that the politician's self-interest is theorized in terms of re-election (and, not say, advancement in the party) or the interests of the body they serve, whereas the official's interests are not theorized in terms of advancement through the government bureaucracy but rather the agency they work in. The slide among such perspectives is not uncommon in the reception and development of public choice theorizing. I return to this at the end of the post.
Be that as it may, the public choice perspective does seem to change the character of the art of economics. For now it has, as Friedman notes, to presuppose the interests of those who are to be persuaded. It is worth adding here (with the help of Foucault's Birth of Biopolitics) that there is a sense in which this revisionary understanding of the art of economics/government is simultaneously also a return to the art of government of the 18th century which appealed to the self-interests, properly understood, of that element within the ruling classes whose interests naturally align with the public's (in Adam Smith and Benjamin Constant this is the propertied class).
Given this public choice perspective, Friedman posits three ways that economists can practice the art of government:*
Drawing on near unanimity among professional economists, where it exists, to persuade the general public of some general principles of economics (free trade, tariffs are bad, etc.). (p. 5) Friedman leaves unexplained why this Enlightenment move would follow from the public choice perspective, but it follows naturally from the idea that politicians are elected by the public (in democracies). This assumption also operates in the next way:
Studying institutional arrangements that can promote the general welfare and advocate those to the general public (e.g., a constitutional amendment that prevents a tariff). Friedman offers different kind of examples: (i) the example of a constitutional amendment appeals to Friedman because it involves a singular public opinion 'crusade' and then government policy is tied by it (and so the topic is removed from political life). Others involve the imposition of policies that change or remove the interests of bureaucrats and elected officials. An example of the former is (ii) to persuade officials to cut agencies in order to cut functions from the government. Friedman recognizes that this is, in non-trivial ways, less efficient than cutting government budgets modestly across the board. But such budget cuts that leaves bureaucratic lobbies intact. (p. 6) An example of the latter is (iii) a balanced budget amendment changes part of the interests of elected officials, who now must seek re-election not just by increasing spending on their constituents, but also by negotiating complex trade-offs with many other elected officials.
It is to wait for moments of "crisis" to advocate changes that serve the public interests. The underlying idea is that bad political circumstances open the way toward the acceptance of good economic policies. (Friedman's favorite example is the breakdown of Bretton Woods and the acceptance of floating currencies with flexible exchange rates.) The point is not that during a crisis economists suddenly become more persuasive to office holders or the public (Friedman explicitly denies it). But rather that during a crisis "drastic action" (7) may be required. (It is worth noting, given the recent association of his name with 'crisis capitalism,' that Friedman's example does not involve the overthrow of governments!) Friedman here implies that the job of the economists is to work out the details of possible institutional arrangements on sound economic principles in advance of their adoption which may only occur once the political time is ripe. (This is very much anticipates the dynamics of reason of Michael Friedman in which philosophers of science anticipate Kuhnian crises and help imagine future science.) Such anticipatory economics is not empirical but a kind of model world building (of the sort that Stigler advocated back (recall) in 1965).
Now anyone who is reflected a bit on public choice of philosophy of science, will note that these three ways leave aside the interests of the economists. (In Gordon Tullock's (1966) famous example, some economists get bought to argue for tariffs.) At the close of the article, Friedman addresses the issue as a kind of 'paradox' of economists (in terms that are about two decades behind the then research frontier).
Here, and this picks up my earlier argument above, it is worth noting that Friedman treats economists as a class with shared professional interests not as individual celebrity or Hscore seekers. (Friedman does not use 'class!') And he suggests that this shared interest or interest in the advancement of the profession, leads to the advocacy of policies that establish the value to governments of hiring economic expertise (the example he offers is of antitrust policy requiring economic expertise for its implementation and he also notes that Keynesian tax policy also requires such expertise).
Friedman does not solve this 'paradox'. And his response to it is not especially sophisticated. His main response to the 'paradox' seems to be a kind of transparency requirement--namely to state the enlarged incentives of the theorist, as members of a professional class or discipline, when advocating public policy. This kind of disclosure is not an especially far-reaching requirement on professional economists. But it is also worth noting that, unlike by now some standard conflict of interests disclosures, it is by no means a norm to remind the public of such enlarged interests when one pleads one's case to it (think of all public health interventions of our age) and this makes me suspect that it is worth trying it as a policy.
*He also mentions a fourth way (involving the abolition of the military draft), but while he describes it in depth he undertheorizes it (in part because it turns on charismatic leadership). And so I leave it aside in this post.
September 8, 2022
The Culture Wars, the Contradictions of our Age, and the Liberalism of Reparations.
Once upon a time the United States of America was a de jure racist society. As was much of the world beyond its borders, controlled as it was by racist European empires. There was a broadly understood and explicitly codified and enforced racial organisation of who could live where, of how individuals could interact, of what sort of jobs were appropriate for whom, of how law and order would operate ��� or wouldn���t (Wells-Barnett 1895). The science (Morris 2015), sport (Rogosin 2007), and artistic culture of the day (Cooper 1892), were largely carried out in conformity with, if not support of, racist norms. Gross or subtle as it may have been in any given instance, the colour line ran through everything and one crossed it only at great personal peril (Du Bois 1904, 530).
But mountains crumble and rivers disappear, new roads replace the old, stones are buried and vanish in the earth. Time passes and the world changes. So it was that eventually this de jure racist system went the way of all things. The civil war overthrew the slave regime. Racial immigration laws were repealed. The civil rights act made various sorts of explicitly racist laws and practices impermissible. By the latter half of the 20th century it was clear an officially endorsed de jure racial caste system was no longer to hold sway in American life. Likewise abroad the great European empires fell, and in their place sprang up a plethora of nations governed by formerly colonised peoples. All things considered, the 20th century saw de jure racism suffer a world-historic defeat...
Whatever else changed, the people who have the stuff still tend to be white, and blacks must still sell our labour to them if we are to get by.
In this way American domestic politics mirrored the broader global trends of a post imperial world (T����w�� 2022a, ch.2). The European empires despoiled and depopulated nations (Davis 2002, Marschal 2017). What they left in their wake were often under-developed economies (Rodney 1972) and institutional structures ripe to be taken over by local elites who could simply continue the pattern of authoritarian wealth extraction (Fanon 1961, ch.3; Acemoglu & Robinson 2012). But the end of formal colonisation did not generally lead to reparations. For the most part agents based in the former colonial metropoles retained ownership of key resources and even infrastructure (Nkrumah 1965), and if anything inefficiencies in the credit market have led to a net capital flow from the former colonies to the former colonisers (Picketty 2015, 58). Neither domestically nor internationally did a change in cultural attitudes and legal permissions correlate with a change in racial patterns of ownership. As such, many of the material patterns of inequality from the bad old days of de jure racist regimes have survived the demise of their former ideological superstructure.
Returning to the US, these persistent material inequalities have consequences for occupational inequality....
And the political intelligentsia are still largely white, which has arguably affected the content and focus of their work (Mills 2017). This then is where history has placed us. The maddening ambiguity of our position is what leads to the titular white psychodrama. One cannot reconcile oneself to this society because it constantly pulls in two directions - it presents one with an ideological narrative that speaks of equality, and a material structure that witnesses rank inequality. At some level this society just does not make sense to itself, its own ideology out of whack with the plain facts of its own existence. There are those who are tempted to focus only on the positives, and see in this a story of triumphant progress towards racial justice or a post-racial future. And there are those who are inclined to see in it a story of eternal recurrence, racism ever reinventing itself. But both of these perspectives are too tidy to capture the phenomenon. For this story is of a world and a nation in contradiction with itself.
Kofi Bright introduces his paper (with nods to Hegel and Rawls) with a methodological aspiration: "One might hope that [i] philosophy could reconcile ourselves to our social world and [ii] each other. To entertain this as plausible is to think [iii] there is some perspective one could reach via philosophical inquiry that [iv] shows our life and society to be as they are for good reason, [v] allowed us to see it all as in some sense rational." (Numbers added to facilitate discussion.) And while I have a growing self-awareness that many of these digressions are modest impressions on or an occasional, recalcitrant modest 'yes but' to Liam Kofi Bright's evolving oeuvre, I have never thought of philosophy as a means to [i-v]. Maybe I am too angry or vain to become identical with such a thought, but neither 'reconciliation' nor 'rationality' ever become applied to my conceptualization of our lives and society. And this, alongside my close vicinity to (if not outright membership in) the "political intelligentsia," makes me suspect with growing dread that I may well be (one of the minor cogs that is) the subject matter of "White Psychodrama."
The methodological aspiration that introduces the paper is partially echoed in the question that closes the block quote at the top of this post (which is the culmination of a section titled, "A Narrative Of How We Got Here.") But there philosophy and 'us' are absent. So, lurking in Liam Kofi Bright's paper is a soft opposition, perhaps it's just a matter of degree, between the orientation characteristic of philosophy and that of the political intelligentsia. Both are thought to reconcile themselves to the world, but only in philosophy can we come to understand the world as rational. That is to say, lurking in Liam Kofi Bright's analysis is a traditional (familiar from Plato, Al-Farabi, Smith, Madison, Arendt, etc.) distinction between the opinions (or ideology) of the political intelligentsia and the episteme (or theodicy rationalizations) of the philosophers.
I don't mean to suggest that Liam Kofi Bright engages in the fallacy of the overlooked alternatives. He recognizes "there may not be such a perspective. Perhaps to see the world aright is to recognise it as a jumbled mess, with no progressive tendency towards greater coherence, and no satisfaction to be had in achieving superior insight. Perhaps there is no good end we are collaboratively working towards, no possible reconciliation with each other; maybe we are perpetually on the brink of descending once more into a Hobbesian nightmare." But what's important about this explicit recognition is that it suggests we're in a high stakes context: the inability to even conceptualise reconciliation is to be some way down a slippery slope toward murderous anarchy. Despite the British spelling, there is no option of mere muddling through (or exiting to a desert island) in his set up. Given that the explicit background is slavery, empire, and genocide, this may be fair enough.
Of course, the way the methodological aspiration is formulated might suggest a quietist attitude. But that would be misleading, Liam Kofi Bright also emphatically claims, "We ought then make the social world worthy of reconciliation." Let's call this the 'revolutionary impulse' in his argument. And, perhaps, my alertness to this impulse is my occasion to highlight the claim that the world and nation is in contradiction with itself. In material dialectics such a diagnosis of self-contradiction is, of course, the funnel toward certain kind of revolutionary action. As he puts it (echoing MLKjr's comments to Harry Belafonte, but unusually in a paper dense with references without citation,) "We cannot and ought not reconcile ourselves to a society wrapped up in its own contradictions, no more than we should seek to integrate into a burning house."
Now at this point one may well suspect that one is listening in on a conversation that may not include everyone as agents in the earlier 'we'. I don't think that's right, but it is worth quoting the full passage to see how easy one can misread the essay:
Here I am interested in how our peculiar socio-economic conditions shape the contours and possible points of resolution in the cultural debate around issues of race. It shall be seen that characteristic responses to our social order, which I shall describe through stylised character archetypes, make it impossible for any lasting reconciliation to be had for participants in the culture war. Instead our responses both generate and constitute a kind of racialised psychopathology, that I describe as white psychodrama. Given this analysis of the social order and its sources of psychic incoherence, I will suggest a way forward. My hope is that this will at least help people of colour caught in the midst of this work towards a world we can live in, and by seeing ourselves as so working reconcile ourselves to our actual present social activities. We cannot and ought not reconcile ourselves to a society wrapped up in its own contradictions, no more than we should seek to integrate into a burning house. But we can come to see ourselves as knowingly and self-consciously working to resolve those contradictions, quenching that fire, and laying the foundations for a better structure that we may all live comfortably therein.
One may well think that the intended audience of 'we' here, is "people of colour" or "the PoC intelligentsia." And, if one reads hastily, one may well wonder if all of this isn't just a call to burn it all down.
But I don't think it's the only audience or that the content of revolution here is destructive. After all, Kofi Bright is not advocating letting the fire consume the house, rather he is explicit in calling for the fire to be quenched. And that quenching and rebuilding is only possible, if I understand him correctly, after reparations.*
Now, at this point -- knowing my bourgeois, liberal proclivities -- you may suspect I will denounce the revolutionary ardor of Kofi Bright. But I don't view reparations or compensation for injustices suffered as a illiberal, a category error, or a radical step too far. After all, (recall) the Federal Republic of Germany, then governed by (relatively conservative) Ordo-liberals explicitly recognized the ideal of reoperations as the start of a proper response to the genocidal atrocities of Nazism and to make living in a common home, however imperfectly, possible. From the liberal perspective, reparations are the ground zero for massive historical injustices in order to make non-zero-sum interactions available to all of us.+
As an aside, Rawlsianism and (even more) utilitarianism have a tendency to privilege forward-looking theorizing and to encourage a kind of forgetting of the past. (This is a feature not a bug in much liberal philosophy.) And this leads them to the familiar sophisms that block reparations in their analyses; that the status quo provides the solid foundations for the future.
So, clearly there is a possible task for the white political intelligentsia lurking in Kofi Bright's analysis and rhetoric: that is, it is to reject the Repenter stance (who leaves structures alone and only focuses on individual racial improvements) as much as the Represser stance (who would like racial bygones to be bygones). Now, from a Marxist perspective this is an invitation to be a race traitor. (There is no doubt that successful revolutions require them.) And one may well suspect that there are many incentives that despite the effectiveness of Liam Kofi Bright's rhetoric prevent the move from Repenter/Represser to pro-reparations (and "to realise racially egalitarian group ideals.")
But to make integration in the same house possible is, as Lea Klarenbeek (building on Haslanger's ideas) has shown, a two-way process. This process is, thus, much easier when the pie that is to be divided is being enlarged (and so liberalism and markets get a toe-hold back in). How to do so without worsening the climate crisis is a real challenge technologically, economically, and politically. But the task of the bourgeois intelligentsia is not to be a source of diversion, but to articulate the real social problems and to amplify the solutions that experts and social movements devise which will strengthen the survival of democratic self-government and rule of law.
So, while I agree that my kind is primarily engaged in "a conflict over how to psychologically manage the results of living in a materially deeply unequal society," I view reparations as the right thing to do and a sine qua non reformist move to make such stress much better manageable. Material and political inequalities are, I suspect, part of the human condition, but partially repairing the past as a means to more solid foundations is in our power, even now. And if advocating reparations is treated as Repenter-on-steroids-syndrome, I accept the moniker.
*"But in any case, redirecting the conversation, practices, and ultimately resources, involved in how we deal with reparations towards specific climate ends requires powers we do not presently have, and a mixture of skills and dispositions that are rare. Indeed even thinking about things this way is often very contentious (see e.g. T����w�� & Talati 2022). However it is exactly the sort of shift in mindset and practice we will need if we are to carry out the Non-Aligned project of striving to actually resolve our material inequalities."
+Obviously, there is a cynical approach to reoperations that sees it as a cost of doing business. So, I don't mean to suggest writing checks is sufficient here.
September 5, 2022
Two Dogmas of The Image of Science
An image of science (recall these posts on Hume, Williamson, Spinoza) contains a list of characteristics that function as short-hand for representing science when these characteristics are used in debates where one side (or more) appeals to the (epistemic) authority of science to settle debate. Images of science can circulate within the sciences, in public discussion, and even in philosophy. Here are two dogmas in the contemporary image of science:
(1) While science may be a complex network of collaboration and competition, it also involves a self-correcting and free exchange of ideas.
(2) Consensus is the natural effect of a proper functioning mature science.
Within philosophy, these two dogmas are familiar from Thomas Kuhn's work. Within economics and formal decision theory the dogmas are linked (at least since Aumann (1976), where (1) helps generate (2)).
In some contexts such consensus within science is a species of higher order evidence and generally a cue to defer to the science. And this reinforces how science can settle debate, and thereby open space for public action (assuming that prior to action there is public debate). Lurking in the previous two sentences is the idea that science can provide (some) authority to public policy based on it. So it is no surprise that governments promote institutions that help discover or articulate such consensus. In practice, governments and science, while distinct from each other (and sometimes at odds), frequently lend each other (some) authority by presupposing and reinforcing the two dogmas.
So far so good.
But because settled science is so important to authoritative action [and consensus such an important proxy of it], this also creates incentives to generate or organize the appearance of consensus. And there is conceptual space for such organized consensus. For even if one grants that consensus is the natural effect of a proper functioning mature science, this is compatible with consensus also being the effect of malfunctioning science. Let's call the agreement that is the product of malfunctioning science 'ersatz consensus.' (And I'll use 'real consensus' when I distinguish a naturally occurring consensus from the ersatz type.)
It's worth noting that, despite the way I have phrased it in previous paragraph, participants in malfunctioning science need not have the intent to produce an ersatz consensus. By this I mean two things: first, some strategic agents may well intentionally wish to promote deliberate confusion such that there does not seem consensus at all (think of the tobacco industry on the relationship between smoking and cancer; or the energy industry and man-made global warming, etc.). Second, sometimes an ersatz consensus is the product of the absence of proper exchange of ideas in science (because of bad replication or publication practices, or because of temporary embargoes on circulation of ideas [not uncommon in medical and defense sciences]). So, sometimes ersatz consensus is the effect of top-down organization, and sometimes it's the effect of bottom-up failures of process.
It's not surprising that for outsiders it's incredibly difficult to distinguish between an ersatz consensus and a real consensus, especially if the science is incredibly esoteric and/or interdisciplinary. But sometimes it is very difficult for insiders to know whether the consensus view is real or ersatz in their own science. There need not be anything nefarious about this; all that's needed is that because of say extensive cognitive division of labor even insiders may be unaware (of the nature and extent of) that the process that shapes the exchange of ideas within their own science is malfunctioning.
Even though I have well known skeptical leanings, I don't want to exaggerate the claim in the previous two sentences. There are forensic techniques that provide signals about such matters. In addition folks in adjoining sciences may have the skill set to notice communicative problems I am hinting at. (In a way that's the story of how the replication crisis got tackled.) But it may take time to sort such things out.
Notice that so far I have not touched the two dogmas of the contemporary image of the science (although I have hinted that (1) may be an idealization). What I have done is extrapolate some of their mutual entailments.
As an aside, even without governments nudging us to accept a scientific consensus is authoritative, (2) has very deep roots in the intellectual culture. The Stoic sages and the Spinozistic wise are said to agree, and I am sure you can list a whole number of other examples. But -- pace Kuhn -- it is worth noting that there were scientific periods where within science persistent disagreement over many important issues was not taken to be embarrassing (I think this was common view of late nineteenth century physics if you go look at Poincare, Duhem, Hertz, Mach, etc.).
For, it is worth noting however that (2) is not self-evident in all contexts. Sometimes different scientific research groups within the same scientific community rely on different auxiliary assumptions or computational shortcuts to generate (say) agreed upon predictions (go check out real-life examples of Quine-Duhem thesis). So even though at one level of description there may be consensus, at another level of description (including the auxiliaries) there is not. I suspect this situation is endemic in a lot of sciences. (Again, over time this may well be sorted out if the auxiliaries start to matter for some reason.)
In addition, in a very neat recent paper, Kevin Dorst has argued (on the Bayesian terrain of Aumann) -- in the context of trying to provide a mechanism for group polarization -- that if evidence is ambiguous we should not expect consensus. (He has a neat scientific example, so go read it.) My view is that in sciences with incredibly robust and mathematically refined background theories (and instruments) such ambiguity of evidence may well be rare, but that in many sciences ambiguity of evidence and, thus, lack of consensus is to be expected and rational.
Let me stop here for now.
September 2, 2022
Canon formation within Analytic Philosophy
One of the perennial complaints of philosophy teachers has concerned the dearth of readily accessible and worthwhile reading material in modern philosophical analysis. As a first step toward improving this situation we have prepared the present volume of selections. Our idea was this: In the tremendous bulk of the periodical literature of recent decades, there is a small percentage of articles definitely worthy of reproduction in an anthology. This material required only proper grouping to provide a usable text for intermediate and advanced courses or seminars.
The project in preliminary form was presented by circular letter to about ninety teachers of philosophy in this country and in England. We asked for responses to our proposed selections, that is, endorsements or rejections of titles contained in a list of about 130 items. We also asked for recommendations of valuable material that we might have overlooked. We are pleased to acknowledge with sincere gratitude the enthusiastic and most helpful reactions received from an impressive majority of our correspondents. Because of the limitations of space we had to exclude, with a heavy heart, several excellent articles by authors from whom we had already obtained permission for reprinting.
With the exception of a very few cases in which it seemed clear from the beginning that an article belonged in our collection, we have pondered our choices seriously and long. In many instances it was extremely difficult for us to make up our minds. The exclusion of any article which was either on our original list or had been recommended by our friends was painful; and here, as everywhere, to choose is to exclude. Recognizing in the end that it would be impossible to make our choices coincide with the valuations of all prospective users of this book, we can only plead that within the given aims and limitations we have selected what, after countless considerations, comparisons and consultations seemed the most suitable body of material available for reprinting.
We have been guided in our selections on the whole by the reactions and suggestions of our correspondents. Since some of our own articles met with a very favorable reaction, we felt it would not appear presumptuous to include them. Generally our tendency was not to concentrate exclusively on the work of the great and the famous thinkers, but rather to select on the basis of didactic effectiveness. Clarity, pertinence, incisiveness of presentation, intelligibility independent of too high a degree of technical knowledge, integration into the total pattern of the contents���these were the essential criteria for our choices.
The conception of philosophical analysis underlying our selections springs from two major traditions in recent thought, the Cambridge movement deriving from Moore and Russell, and the Logical Positivism of the Vienna Circle (Wittgenstein, Schlick, Carnap) together with the Scientific Empiricism of the Berlin group (led by Reichenbach). These, together with related developments in America stemming from Realism and Pragmatism, and the relatively independent contributions of the Polish logicians have increasingly merged to create an approach to philosophical problems which we frankly consider a decisive turn in the history of philosophy.
Although it is realized that there are no sharp lines of demarcation between this and other contemporary schools, we could not possibly have attempted to represent them all. Since the clearest and most helpful formulation of an idea is not always the first in order of time, or historically the most representative, we have paid relatively little attention to originality as a condition for inclusion. It was rather the penetration, the finesse, and the challenge of the work which counted most. In some instances we succeeded in grouping together divergent and mutually incompatible contributions around controversial subjects. We have tried to avoid definitely obsolete material. Certainly up-to-date-ness in any significant sense is not a mere function of date of publication. Frege, one of whose contributions we included, and Peirce, whose work is not represented because it is so amply available, have more to say to us than many who are writing today....
Courses and seminars in Principles of Philosophy, Contemporary Philosophy, Philosophical Analysis, Theory of Knowledge, Logical Theory, Philosophy of Language, etc., should find ample material for reading and discussion in this anthology. Although some basic articles in Philosophy of Science, Modern Logic, and Theoretical Ethics have been included, we can conceive of additional volumes of selections, very much needed, in these special fields. We express the hope that others will consider work on anthologies along those lines. May we assure them that such work, while arduous, is at least intrinsically rewarding.--"Preface" by Feigl, H., and W. Sellars. in Readings in Analytic Philosophy." New York (1949), pp. v-vi. [HT Alan Richardson]
An informal social media exchange with Jason Stanley got me thinking about canon formation within analytic philosophy. In particular, I started to reflect on the (temporary, but not trivial) dominance of philosophy of language within analytic philosophy such that many analytic programs organized proseminars for entry level PhD students around familiarity with certain classics of that field (which also includes semantics and some bits of philosophical logic).
While I don't want to claim that the dominance of such philosophy of language was a contingent fact, it's worth noting that as this dominance developed others who were recognizably influential at the time within analytic philosophy, were pushing for, say, philosophy of science as first philosophy (e.g. Ernest Nagel), and one can easily imagine some others to have pushed epistemology in a foundational role (and certainly in some a background empiricism or sense-data theory does play a non-trivial authoritative role). The reason I deny it is wholly contingent is that, for example, axiology or aesthetics cannot have been, then, the dominant core.
Alan Richardson suggested that it would make sense to look at the textbooks of the 1948-53 period as formative. In particular, it is worth noting that, as Alan reminded [Leonard was one of my teachers] me, Leonard Linsky's (1953) Semantics and the Philosophy of Language, A Collection of Readings, clearly anticipates much of the early canon of the philosophy (of language centered) proseminar. Linsky's book is not the definitive canon -- it lacks "On Denoting" (and has no Frege at all) --, but I hope to discuss it some other time.
But first I want to focus on the Feigl and Sellars text-book, which explicitly sets the agenda for the other textbooks, and simultaneously helps consolidate, roughly, what counts as analytic philosophy (or in modern philosophical analysis) and not. And, pertinent for my present purposes, they do so by using a kind of partial, snowball sampling method to create a canon of texts worthy of inclusion.+
To be sure, their grouping of who is included in the "decisive turn" -- (i) the Cambridge movement, (ii) the Vienna Circle, (iii) the Berlin group, (iv) American Realism and Pragmatism, and (v) the Polish logicians -- is not original. We find this nearly exact combination already in 1936 in Ernest Nagel's two-part essay on "Impressions and Appraisals of Analytic Philosophy in Europe."* And certainly there is some contingency in what gets passed on. They themselves note that Peirce would naturally fit their agenda, but with the benefit of hindsight, we see that as time passes on the opportunity costs to find a way to include Peirce into the fold grows so great that effectively -- with the exception of some of his informal essays in the philosophy of science -- he ends up terra incognita for analytic philosophers.
The influential textbooks of the period are nearly all American. Presumably they were created there not just because it was at the time the wealthiest place around, but also because of the sudden demand due to expansion of Higher Education there. Feigl and Sellars are clearly anticipating fine-grained "courses and seminars in Principles of Philosophy, Contemporary Philosophy, Philosophical Analysis, Theory of Knowledge, Logical Theory, Philosophy of Language" etc.! (And note these are not intended as introductory courses, but "intermediate and advanced courses or seminars.")
One interesting claim that Feigl and Sellars make is that they selected "on the basis of didactic effectiveness. Clarity, pertinence, incisiveness of presentation, intelligibility independent of too high a degree of technical knowledge, integration into the total pattern of the contents���these were the essential criteria for our choices." This is a rare admission that the canon of analytic texts does not reflect originality, or historical priority, but didactic or pedagogic suitability. To be sure, I am not claiming this remains the case in analytic canon formation once analytic philosophy is suitably securely dominant (relative to "other contemporary schools"), but it is prominent at the start.
And it is worth remarking that several of the features they explicitly mention are de facto rhetorical in character (e.g., "incisiveness of presentation, intelligibility independent of too high a degree of technical knowledge.") That is to say, these are the texts that will persuade students of many different grades of competence of the pertinence of analysis. Of course, it's left vague what counts as pertinence (or clarity, which by no means (recall) means the same in, say, Quine, Carnap, Nagel, or Stebbing).
One may suspect that the previous paragraph is written in the spirit of unmasking. But that's not the case. It is essential to our self-understanding that we recognize that many of the standard intellectual virtues we associate with analytic philosophy almost as our second nature are originally pedagogical in character. And that is, of course, to be expected of an intellectual school. To what degree their origin in pedagogical (and recruitment) needs generates intellectual problems today, if any, is something I shall consider an other time.
+It would be marvelous if an archive rat could find and publish this correspondence and the mutual judgments of their circle of friends. One also suspects lots of gendered patterns of exclusion got entrenched hereby.
*Nagel does not really emphasize American Realism. For details on this episode, see my "Philosophic Prophecy"
September 1, 2022
Friedman and Mill on the Art of Economics (with some J.N. Keynes)
IN HIS admirable book on The Scope and Method of Political Economy John Neville Keynes distinguishes among "a positive science ... [,] a body of systematized knowledge concerning what is; a normative or regulative science . .. [,] a body of systematized knowledge discussing criteria of what ought to be... ; an art . .. [,] a system of rules for the attainment of a given end"; comments that "confusion between them is common and has been the source of many mischievous errors"; and urges the importance of "recognizing a distinct positive science of political economy."--Milton Friedman (1953) ���The Methodology of Positive Economics��� in Essays on Positive Economics, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, p. 5. [The ellipses are in Friedman. Hereafter: Friedman 1953
According to Milton Friedman the art of economics is a system of rules for the attainment of a given end. Implied in Keynes��� definitions is a division within the art of economics into two: first, if the given ends follow from normative economics then the art of economics is the system that generates normative policy. This way of putting it stipulates that the art is ��� like a deductive logic ��� moral truth preserving from input to its output. The implied nature of the second part of this division within the art is left unclear. For, unless normative science is completed, it is possible, of course, that a given end is moral but not part of a body of systematized normative knowledge. In fact, when one starts musing on it, more combinations between given ends and the output of an art are possible (from a-moral ends to moral output; from a-moral ends to a-moral output, etc.) One can even entertain the possibility that an immoral given end (say, state enforced birth-control) may lead to welcome policy results. So, it is by no means obvious what the status of the output of the art is when the given ends do not follow directly from normative economics.
Much of Friedman essay is devoted to the nature and defense of the possibility of positive economics and, while less important, how it contrasts with normative economics. In fact, the art of economics seems so little pertinent to Friedman���s essay, that in a (1992) paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, David Colander comments, ���Friedman placed Keynes' tripartite distinction in the open and then he lost it.��� (p. 192)
But, as Colander notes, Friedman does address the art of economics at least once more in his 1953 essay. It is worth quoting the passage in full:
Normative economics and the art of economics, on the other hand, cannot be independent of positive economics. Any policy conclusion necessarily rests on a prediction about the consequences of doing one thing rather than another, a prediction that must be based-implicitly or explicitly-on positive economics. There is not, of course, a one-to-one relation between policy conclusions and the conclusions of positive economics; if there were, there would be no separate normative science. Two individuals may agree on the consequences of a particular piece of legislation. One may regard them as desirable on balance and so favor the legislation; the other, as undesirable and so oppose the legislation.
I venture the judgment, however, that currently in the Western world, and especially in the United States, differences about economic policy among disinterested citizens derive predominantly from different predictions about the economic consequences of taking action-differences that in principle can be eliminated by the progress of positive economics-rather than from fundamental differences in basic values, differences about which men can ultimately only fight. (Friedman 1953: 5)
Friedman treats the art of economics as dependent on empirical science. For it���s this science that provides the knowledge that constitute at least part of the rules of how one gets from given ends to proper outcomes. That is, the dependence of the art on positive science is epistemic in character.
This dependence claim can also be found in the relevant chapter of J.N. Keynes��� (1891) book, but he argues for it slightly differently (than Friedman does): ���it is both possible and desirable to discuss [positive] economic uniformities independently of [normative] economic ideals, and without formulating economic precepts [of the art], although the converse cannot be affirmed.��� From this quote it is not quite clear in virtue of what the art is dependent on positive science, but Keynes claims elsewhere that the dependence is ���logical���for we cannot satisfactorily lay down rules for practical guidance expect on the basis of knowledge of facts.���
Of course the passage just quoted from J.N. Keynes is rather important: for Keynes consensus over facts is eminently possible, but elsewhere it may be ���prevented by conflicting ideals, as well as by divergent views as to the actual and possible.��� (Keynes 1891: 51.) And so, on Keynes��� view, conflict over given ends and disagreement over feasibility will prevent consensus over the art of economics according to Keynes. A view like this ��� there is natural value conflict but relatively easy agreement over facts and theory -- we also find in Keynes��� colleague Sidgwick and a generation later in Robbins, and is used to argue for a disciplinary distinction between economics and ethics.
By contrast, and strikingly, on Friedman���s picture, rather than disagreeing about the given ends that are the inputs of the art of economics, it is likely people will disagree about the outputs of the art. And that is because Friedman presupposes that in the context he is writing (���the Western world, and especially in the United States,���) there is kind of basic value unanimity over the given (major) ends while there is disagreement over what science predicts.
Because the main aim of Friedman���s essay is to explore ���whether a suggested hypothesis or theory should be tentatively accepted as part of the "body of systematized knowledge concerning what is,"��� (Friedman 1953: 3) while Friedman assumes consensus over the input of the art of economics and treats its output as dependent on empirical/positive science, he does not really pause to reflect on the contents of the art. Colander seems to think this is due to a lack of interest. But there may be a rather obvious reason for Friedman���s silence (which also points to an important difference with Colander).
If we reflect a bit on the form of the art of government, which (when we plug in Keynes��� definition as quoted by Friedman) just is a rule ���for the attainment of a given end;��� this is highly reminiscent of Robbins��� famous characterization of the nature of positive economics, which just is ���a relationship between [given] ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.��� So, if in the context of consensus over given ends, one takes this relationship between ends and means to be known, as supplied by positive economics, then a fortiori there is no further fact of the matter that enters into the rule of the art of government.
That is to say, on Friedman���s account there is no substantive difference between positive and the art of economics. For the art of economics is then just a proper subset of its science restricted in scope by a more limited set of given ends and dependent on the development of the relevant positive science! So, for example, Friedman explicitly affirms ���there is an underlying consensus on the objective of achieving a "living wage" for all, to use the ambiguous phrase so common in such discussions.��� (Friedman 1953: 5.) And it is pretty clear he thinks there is a similar consensus over the importance of economic growth as one of the main ���long run objectives.���(���Monetary and Fiscal Framework for Economic Stability��� in Friedman 1953: 133. He tends to ignore disagreement over distribution!)
Colander does not offer the reconstruction of this second passage I have just given, but I suspect he does recognize something like the position I have ascribed to Friedman. Because he writes,
I hedge my interpretation of Colander because he also claims that Friedman���s lost the art of economics. Whereas it is more accurate to say, as an interpretation of Friedman, that he differs in his understanding of what the content of the art of economics is from Keynes (and Colander), and that for Friedman [Thesis A] the art of economics just is a subset or extension of positive economics. Or to be more precise, in societies with a fundamental consensus over ends, the art of economics is a subset or modest extension of positive economics. Friedman tacitly denies there is a significant difference between applied economics and economic science.
I mention this for two reasons. First, Colander���s analysis has been influential on those that notice Friedman mentions an ���art of economics. For example, while citing Colander, Thomas Mayer writes that ���in stressing the positive���normative distinction Friedman furthered the unfortunate tendency to ignore a third category of economics, J. N. Keynes���s (1891) art of economics, that is the knowledge required to apply positive and normative economics in a way that results in successful policies.��� (Emphasis added.)
Second, Friedman's account of the art of economics matters because while it would be wrong or misleading to treat Friedman as a kind of rational choice theorist in the way familiar from Becker & Stigler 1977, I want to suggest that by implying that [Thesis A] the art of economics just is a subset or extension of positive economics, Friedman does give voice here to ��� and now I am stipulating -- a distinctly and broadly agreed upon Chicago understanding of the art of economics as continuous with its (positive/empirical) science.
An anticipation of Friedman's position can, indeed, be found in Keynes��� Scope an Method. When the ���end at which the art of political economy aims��� at is agreed upon (as Friedman stipulates, recall, is the case among disinterested citizens in the ���Western world���) ��� say, ���simply the increased production of wealth��� ��� ���its scope is certainly definite.��� (Keynes 1891: 76.) And in such cases statements of positive science in the ���indicative mood��� can be transformed into statements ���in the imperative.��� Colander is right to suggest that Keynes does not accept this position in his own voice because Keynes denies such unanimity over ends in the wider context of the passages I have just quoted. But the position does have an important earlier advocate: J.S. Mill.
In the final Chapter XII of (the final) Book VI of Mill���s Logic, after distinguishing between a science and art, Mill writes:
the reasons of a maxim of policy, or of any other rule of art, can be no other than the theorems of the corresponding science.
The relation in which rules of art stand to doctrines of science may be thus characterized. The art proposes to itself an end to be attained, defines the end, and hands it over to the science. The science receives it, considers it as a phenomenon or effect to be studied, and having investigated its causes and conditions, sends it back to art with a theorem of the combination of circumstances by which it could be produced. Art then examines these combinations of circumstances, and according as any of them are or are not in human power, pronounces the end attainable or not. The only one of the premises, therefore, which Art supplies, is the original major premise, which asserts that the attainment of the given end is desirable. Science then lends to Art the proposition (obtained by a series of inductions or of deductions) that the performance of certain actions will attain the end. From these premises Art concludes that the performance of these actions is desirable, and finding it also practicable, converts the theorem into a rule or precept.
So, unlike Keynes (and Friedman), Mill includes the setting of ends within the art. But as it happens, the end (growing a nation wealthy) the art of political economy pursues is treated as given in the fifth essay of some Unsettled Questions. But anticipating Friedman, Mill treats the art and science as sharing content. And while Friedman and Mill have slightly different conceptualizations of what an economic theory is and Mill surely should not, I think, be treated as a proto rational choice theorist, Mill, too, endorses [Thesis A]. (As an aside, while my argument for this conclusion is wholly distinct from Foucault���s, at a high level of generality the position echoes Foucault���s understanding of Chicago economics as a kind of radicalization of the radical-Benthamite tradition. )
Mindful of inductive risk, Mill is cautious to remind the reader that what I have called '[Thesis A]' presupposes a mature science. Imperfect or incomplete science will generate bad rules: ���If, in this imperfect state of the scientific theory, we attempt to frame a rule of art, we perform that operation prematurely.��� (Mill 1882: 654) Of course, one may not know that one���s science is incomplete or one must act on imperfect knowledge. So, for ���a wise practitioner, therefore, rules of conduct will only be considered as provisional.��� (Idem) As an aside, for Mill, then, there is also no difference in kind in the art of political economy and the of government. In the Logic, in the very next paragraph, Mill goes on to offer a sketch of the art of political science.
That Friedman appeals to the existence of (an idealized) ���disinterested citizen��� as a theoretical posit may be surprising given that the rest of his paper argues for the legitimacy for positing firms that behave as if they are maximizing returns. (Friedman 1953: 21.) And since later Chicago economics became associated with a theory of rent-seeking, it might seem odd to see him posit a disinterested citizen. In addition, that the disinterested citizen agrees over values is by no means obvious if one thinks that modern society is intrinsically pluralist.
But it���s clear that in the 1940s and 50s, the idea circulated among Chicago economists with reference to J.N. Keynes. For example, in the context of a polemical exchange with Samuelson over the new welfare economics, Friedman���s friend, George J. Stigler wrote a decade earlier:
Parsons attributes the claim to Durkheim, who, on Parsons��� view, advocated ���moral conformity.��� (To be sure with a minimal use of compulsion.) Even in the passage quoted by Stigler it���s clear that Parsons is contrasting Durkheim with a position one might associate with the liberal interpretation of Mill for whom increasing moral ���diversity��� is an ���increase in happiness��� not social instability. So what follows may be a bit counter-intuitive because I claim that in addition to both embracing [Thesis A] Friedman���s position is itself in in the ambit of Mill���s philosophy in more ways than one here.
To the best knowledge, J.N. Keynes would never posit the existence of a kind of value unanimity among citizens. But the ���disinterested citizen��� that Friedman appeals to is an entity that is posited, as a normative ideal, in Mill���s Utilitarianism, where ���as between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator.��� In general, Mill praises disinterestedness.
In addition, Friedman clearly is presupposing a conception of progress such that in the ���Western world��� there is a moral consensus and possibility for disinterestedness conception of citizenship. The implied contrast are communist states and less developed countries, of the sort that Mill infamously thought (temporarily) lacking in capacity for self-rule. I don���t mean to suggest Friedman agrees with Mill���s imperial policies. But Friedman does embrace a model of development. (Friedman 1953: 202.)
Now, ordinarily, among liberal interpreters, Mill is usually not associated with moral consensus. He is considered the great advocate of individuality, spontaneity, and authentic experiments in living that see moral conformism as oppressive. Nothing I say undermines that reading.
But some conservative critics of Mill take him to be an advocate of a revisionary moral consensus to be propagated initially by the clerisy, and eventually adopted by the disinterested citizen. The two interpretations of Mill are, incidentally, not necessarily in conflict with each other if the experiments in living are treated as a means toward the discovery of moral truth and so a new consensus. And I do not mean to suggest this interpretation is exclusive to conservatives. For example, late in life, Rawls seems to have understood Mill as advocating a ���comprehensive philosophical and moral doctrine��� that involved ���a society united on a form of utilitarianism.��� I do not want to suggest that Friedman must be echoing Mill here.
In the fifth essay of some Unsettled Questions, Mill contrasts sharply between the science and art of economics. And according to Mill,
These two ideas [of science and art] differ from one another as the understanding differs from the will, or as the indicative mood in grammar differs from the imperative. Science is a collection of truths; art, a body of rules, or directions for conduct. The language of science is, This is, or, This is not; This does, or does not, happen. The language of art is, Do this; Avoid that���An art would not be an art, unless it were founded upon a scientific knowledge of the properties of the subject-matter���Rules, therefore, for making a nation increase in wealth, are not a science, but they are the results of science. Political Economy does not of itself instruct how to make a nation rich; but whoever would be qualified to judge of the means of making a nation rich, must first be a political economist. The one deals in facts, the other in precepts.
In context, with an appeal to Adam Smith, the ends of political economy are taken as given (that is, growing a nation rich). This pretty much anticipates the material Friedman quoted from Keynes.
I think Friedman uses ���admirable��� because he appreciates the robust defense of the possibility of a positive economics in J.N. Keynes. This is also the aim of his 1953 essay.
Unless I otherwise note, I quote from the first edition J.N. Keynes (1891) The Scope and Method of Political Economy London (and New York): Macmillan and co, this quote is from p. 36.
Keynes 1891: 39.n1. This has to be distinguished from the historical dependence of the positive science on the art which influences ���the actual course of economic development,��� (Keynes 1891: 44-45). Of course, Keynes��� use of ���logical��� (familiar from, say, Mill���s Logic) is not far removed from the more modern use of ���epistemic,��� so I don���t want to suggest there is a gap between Friedman and Keynes here.
This is a feature not a bug of Keynes��� approach because the main point of his book is that a positive science of economics is possible without reference to normative or art of economics. Keynes 1891: 64. See also, Su, Huei-chun. "Beyond the positive���normative dichotomy: some remarks on Colander's Lost Art of Economics." Journal of Economic Methodology 19.4 (2012): 377.
Robbins certainly did not posit it: ���it is a case of thy blood or mine���or live and let live, according to the importance of the difference, or the relative strength of our opponents.��� For background: Schliesser, E. "The Separation of Economics from Virtue: A Historical-Conceptual Introduction." Economics and the Virtues: building a new moral foundation Oxford: Oxford University Press (2015): 141-164.
Lionel Robbins (1st edition 1932) Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science London: Macmillan and Co: 15.
Thomas Mayer ���The influence of Friedman���s methodological essay��� in The Methodology of Positive Economics: Reflections on the Milton Friedman Legacy. Edited by Uskali M��ki (2009) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 123-124. M
Stigler, George J., and Gary S. Becker. "De gustibus non est disputandum." The American Economic Review 67.2 (1977): 76-90.
I do not mean to suggest this is the end of the matter. A fuller discussion would include the significance and content of Harberger, Arnold C. "Three basic postulates for applied welfare economics: an interpretive essay." Journal of Economic literature 9.3 (1971): 785-797.
This statement does not occur in the first edition. It���s a later footnote that I have found in the fourth (1917) edition that I consulted of the Macmillan edition on p. 79 n.1.
John Stuart Mill (1882: eight edition) A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive New York: Harper & Brothers: 653-654
To be precise, ���there is need of a set of intermediate scientific truths, derived from the higher generalities of science, and destined to serve as the generalia or first principles of the various arts.��� Mill 656. These intermediate scientific truths may (to adopt a phrase from recent philosophy of science) may termed gross generalities.
George J. Stigler, ���The New Welfare Economics,��� American Economic Review 33(1943): 358; he quotes from Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1937), 395. I discuss the context in "The Separation of Economics from Virtue: A Historical-Conceptual Introduction," (2015), op cit.: 141-164.
Parsons 1937: 395 n1.
Parsons 1937: 396. (Mill is not named, but the position is treated as both liberal and utilitarian.)
Not everyone that diagnoses this reading of Mill endorses it. Hayek treat���s Mill���s embrace of authenticity as very dangerous to responsibility and, so, freedom. Judge Bork treats Mill as advocate of licentiousness.
Cowling, Maurice. Mill and liberalism. Cambridge University Press, 1990 [1963].
See, especially, Rawls, John. "The domain of the political and overlapping consensus." NYUL Rev. 64 (1989): 235.
Later in life Friedman he did read Cowling���s interpretation of Mill and quoted it approvingly in a different context (1977).
Emphasis in original. J.S. Mill (1854) Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy, London John W. Parker, p. 124.
August 31, 2022
On Freedom of the Press, Constant and Condillac, Spinoza, and the Road to Serfdom Schema
If you apply this experience of the last three centuries of history to the present state of human intellection, you will readily be convinced that the annihilation of press freedom, that is to say, of intellectual progress, would have results today even more fatal than those we have recounted. The monarchies whose progressive withering and retrograde movement we have described, deprived of the free use of printing from its inception, felt this deprivation only in a dull, slow, imperceptible way. A people deprived of freedom of the press after having enjoyed it, would experience the initial pain of this loss more sharply, followed by a more rapid degradation. The thing which debases men is not lacking a right but having to give it up. Condillac says there are two sorts of barbarism, the one which goes before enlightened centuries and the one which succeeds them. In the same way one can say there are two kinds of servitude, the one preceding liberty and the one replacing it. The first is a desirable state of affairs compared to the second. But the choice of these is not left to governments, because they cannot annihilate the past.
Imagine an enlightened nation, enriched by the works of a number of studious generations, possessing masterpieces of all types, having made immense scientific and artistic progress, and having got to this point by the only way that can lead there, the enjoyment, assured or precarious, of freedom of publication. If the government of that nation put such constraints on that freedom that it became every day harder to elude them, if it did not allow the exercise of thought except in a predetermined direction, the nation could survive for a while on its former capital, so to speak, on its acquired intelligence, on habits of thinking and doing picked up earlier; but nothing in the world of thought would renew itself. The reproductive principle would have dried up. For some years vanity might stand in for the love of learning. Sophists, remembering what glamour and esteem literary works used once to bestow, would give themselves over to works of ostensibly the same genre. Their writings would combat any good effects which other writings might have had, and as long as there remained any trace of liberal principles, there would be in such a people���s literature some kind of movement, a sort of struggle against these ideas and principles. This very movement, however, this struggle, would be an inheritance of a now-destroyed liberty. To the extent that the last vestiges, the last traditions, could be dispelled, there would be less acclaim and less advantage in continuing these more and more superfluous attacks. When all had been dispelled, the battle would finish, because the combatants would no longer perceive even the shadow of their foes. Conquerors and conquered would alike keep silence. Who knows if the government might not reckon it worth imposing this? It would not want anyone to reawaken extinguished memories, or stir up abandoned ideas. It would come down hard on overzealous acolytes as it used to on its enemies. It would forbid even writings taking its own line, on the interests of humanity, as some pious government once forbade talk of God, for good or ill. Thus a career in real thinking would be definitively closed to the human spirit. The educated generation would gradually disappear. The next generation, seeing no advantage in intellectual occupations, or indeed dangers therein, would break off from them for good. You will say, in vain, that the human spirit could still occupy itself with lighter literature, that it could enter the service of the exact or natural sciences, or devote itself to the arts. When nature created man, she did not consult government. Her design was that all our faculties should be in intimate liaison and that none should be subject to limitation without the others feeling the effect. Independent thinking is as vital, even to lighter literature, science, and the arts, as air is to physical life. One could as well make men work under a pneumatic pump, saying that they do not have to breathe, but must move their arms and legs, as hold intellectual activity to a given object, preventing it from preoccupying itself with important subjects which give it its energy because they remind it of its dignity. Writers strangled in this way start off with panegyrics; but they become bit by bit incapable even of praise and literature finishes up losing itself in anagrams and acrostics. Scholars are no more than the trustees of ancient discoveries which deteriorate and degrade in manacled hands. The source of talent dries up among artists along with the hope of glory which is sustained only by freedom. By a mysterious but incontestable relationship between things from which one thought oneself capable of isolating oneself, they no longer have the ability to represent the human figure nobly when the human spirit is degraded.
Nor would this be the end of the story. Soon commerce, the professions, and the most vital crafts would feel the effects of the death of thought. It should not be thought that commerce on its own is a sufficient motive for activity. People often exaggerate the influence of personal interest. Personal interest itself needs the existence of public opinion in order to act. The man whose opinion languishes, stifled, is not for long excited even by his interests. A sort of stupor seizes him; and just as paralysis extends itself from one part of the body to another, so it extends itself from one faculty to another.--Benjamin Constant (1810?) Principles of Politics Applicable to Government, translated by Dennis O'Keefe., Book VII (On Freedom of Thought), Chapter 5
Recall (here) that at a high level of generality, a road to serfdom thesis holds that an outcome unintended to political decisionmakers is foreseeable to the right kind of observer and that in addition the outcome leads to a loss of political and economic freedom over the medium term. I use ���medium��� here because the consequences tend to follow in a time-frame within an ordinary human life, but generally longer than one or two years (which is the short-run), and shorter than the centuries��� long process covered by (say) the rise and fall of civilization. Crucially for a road to serfdom thesis, along the way, in order to ward off some unintended and undesirable consequences, decisions are taken that tend to lock in a worse than intended and de facto bad political unintended outcome (lack of freedom or, as Constant emphasizes, loss of rights). It's worth noting that a foreseeable, unintended outcome that is taken to be good is not a road to serfdom thesis. So the fall of feudalism due to luxury spending as diagnosed by Hume and Smith, is not, in their hands, a road to serfdom thesis (even if a social hierarchy leaning theorist of feudalism could present it as such).
The previous paragraph provides a schema for understanding when we're dealing with a road to serfdom thesis. In his (1944) The Road to Serfdom Hayek credits Belloc's (1912) The Servile State with articulating a road to serfdom thesis recall (here and here), although Hayek (and Wikipedia) suggest that the title was inspired by Tocqueville. For (recall) in Book 4, chapter 1, of Democracy in America, Tocqueville claims that the principle of equality generates a 'road to servitude.' But while the phrase seems to have inspired Hayek, and Tocqueville's account fits the schema nicely, it would be a mistake to treat Tocqueville's version of the road to serfdom as providing the template for Belloc and Hayek (and Mises). For Tocqueville is not diagnosing the effects of a welfare state socialism, central planning, or state capitalism. Instead I suggested that Chapter IV ("Laissez Faire") of Hobhouse's (1911) is the progenitor of Belloc's and Hayek's competing road to serfdoms. (I call them competing because they have different normative ideals.)
My schema points to an important feature of road to serfdom theses. They imply that political agents or society could and should have known better than embarking on the fatal action. As Constant implies, while drawing on Condillac, what makes a road to serfdom thesis so shocking is that barbarism can follow from enlightened times not through external conquest but through internal actions. There is, of course, an interesting question lurking in the vicinity here -- one that is highly salient in an age of of scientifically diagnosed man-made climate crisis -- how an age that makes colossal political mistakes can really be called enlightened.
As should be clear by now I think Constant diagnoses a road to serfdom thesis in his account of how restrictions on freedom of publication lead to ruin. The writings of Constant were well known to Tocqueville, Hayek and R��pke (who claimed some priority for a road to serfdom thesis), so there can well be a direct influence.
But I want to close with a quite different set of observations. Since Mill we are trained to understand freedom of speech as an engine of discovery that puts us on the road to truth maybe even make it inevitable we reach it (recall Carl Schmitt and Kalven). Constant, by partial contrast, emphasizes that it is a "reproductive principle." It helps society reproduce itself by being truth preserving . I think this is in many ways a more plausible thesis than the engine of discovery one.
Be that as it may, in his analysis, Constant isn't merely thinking of factual preservation of truth as a collection of statements. He is also interested in the spirit of truth. I used 'partial' in the previous paragraph, because Constant does think that freedom of speech is conducive to discovery, but more as a kind of background, enabling condition than the engine itself: "Independent thinking is as vital, even to lighter literature, science, and the arts, as air is to physical life....You will say, in vain, that the human spirit could still occupy itself with lighter literature, that it could enter the service of the exact or natural sciences, or devote itself to the arts." (There is more than a touch of Hume in these lines [go re-read "Of Commerce," and Montesquieu, of course].)
There is, thus, lurking in Constant, as in Hume, and later the historicists, a kind of substantial unity of culture thesis in organicist terms in which freedom of publication is one of the animating principles of that culture (even if due to freedom of speech that culture appears pluralistic even chaotic). It is worth asking to what degree such unity of culture is really true. Even quite tyrannical cultures have had produced eminence in science, after all.
Above, I mentioned Hume, but I could equally have mentioned Spinoza. And, in fact, we get more than a hint that we should be thinking of Spinozism here. While it is completely unnecessary for his argument, Constant adds the sentence, "When nature created man, she did not consult government." This is about as Spinozist one can get. (Constant explicitly mentions Spinoza in a footnote near the end of the book.) Yes, the next sentence discusses nature's purposes, but the purpose is to be an integrated organism that preserves itself! The nod to Spinoza makes sense here because in this chapter, Constant's argument for freedom of speech in terms of the "reproductive principle" is thoroughly pragmatic and conducive to preserve and help flourish the social status quo. The argument is, thus, as it is in Spinoza, an appeal to the enlightened self-interests of the rulers.
August 30, 2022
Covid Diaries: Good Enough Professing
It's time for another entry in my Covid Diaries. (For my official "covid diaries," see here; here; here; here;here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here, here; here; here, here; here; here; here; and here). Finally, I can report some modest, good news. Without any evident explanation, I suddenly improved greatly from the start of August onward. I found swimming enjoyable again, my writing picked up, and I had the impression I was becoming less noise sensitive. I went to the opera at Glyndebourne with my better half. (That's annual tradition for us, but she went without me earlier in the year.) It's a long drive in both directions, but we decided to try it because intermission is a leisurely picnic. I adored it, and except for a few minutes while the orchestra was tuning and the audience buzzing with anticipation at the start of the second act, which triggered my noise sensitivity, it was marvelous. (Well, I loved the music and the performances, but the production was awful.) More recently, I attended a department (management) meeting for ninety minutes, and have even ventured out to enjoy lunch and coffee in outdoor terraces. So, I am participating in life more fully again!
Long covid is a roller-coaster -- 'coaster corona' -- with changing symptoms and often false starts and sudden setbacks. But this past month feels qualitatively different. I started using anti-inflammatories (basically extra strength Aleve) a few months ago, and I finally have figured out when to use them and what the so-called minimally effective dosage is in order to prevent the weird head fatigue and headaches. In the Spring I was averaging about six headache days per months and now it's really zero. (I do sometimes get headaches in the middle of the night, but with meditation and melatonin I tend to sleep those off.) And as the first paragraph indicates, I have grown bolder trying to manage meetings or conversations without meds and being alert to the onset of symptoms.
The other big news is that since yesterday I am formally off Dutch disability (and so '100% healthy' again)! [I wondered if I should put a sly reference to that info into yesterday's digression!] My occupational physician and I were working towards this decision for about a half year now. Incrementally reducing my 'disability percentage.' The decision became much easier once I had a Fall research leave Stateside lined up (thank you family, Duke, Arizona, and department!), and the sudden improvement this past month. It also helps that my spring teaching is relatively light: only one massive lecture course I have tough before. (I basically cased in a year and half of "over-hours.'') So, the real 'work test' will only occur Fall 2023, a year from now, when I have to start teaching a full load again, including discussion heavy seminars (which was so difficult last Fall).
I am by no means recovered to where I was in all kinds of un-expected ways, but I do sincerely expect that I can actually do most of the activities expected from me in my position. After ''good enough parenting" this should be "good enough professing" (GEP)! Hopefully by this time next year I have continued to improve, and so I can be confident about being a solid GEP.
Earlier in the month, Shelley Tremain published an interview with me (big reveal!) at Biopolitical Philosophy here. I mention it because, due to space constraints, we had to cut a paragraph that, after the fact, I thought rather important. During the interview I explain how much my chronic illness prevents me from participating in professional activities and triggers a withdrawal from the world. But I added a qualification. Here's paragraph we cut:
I don���t mean to suggest my life is primarily an adjustment to limitations by narrowing the range of activity. While that���s undoubtedly true ��� I have had to give up on lots of activities, especially social ones. But it���s also opened up new ones. I had to give up cycling around Amsterdam (because I am native born that���s really a second nature there). I started to walk to work or to the supermarket. And on foot one moves so more slowly that one really has time to take in the astonishing beauty, even sublimity of the place. Because my agenda was much less cluttered, I would also work with time to enjoy my surroundings. I started to take pictures of my walks on my mobile phone; and I found that these, in turn, connected me with all kinds of people; amateur photographers, folks that share my aesthetic, old friends, etc. And it's been such a thrill that amidst non-trivial solitude I felt a sense of community.
That seems like a good place to end this post.
August 29, 2022
On Bureaucrat Philosophers
During my Summer blogging break philosophy's modern association and intertwining with bureaucracy was highlighted in two stimulating essays, which both received considerable social media attention (by philosophy standards): first, in his moving, autobiographical essay, "Two Tendencies," on what we might call the praxis and orientation of philosophy, Liam Kofi Bright articulates a kind of "dualism" in which one of the major tendencies is titled, 'Basically Pleasant Bureaucrat.' Second, while writing at DailyNous about the tensions, even incommensurable value conflicts, that may arise when one innovates in teaching in light of the values of the underlying philosophical source material, C. Thi Nguyen, distinguishes among the roles (and values associated with these roles) of "Teacher, Bureaucrat, Cop."
Now, in C. Thi Nguyen's essay the bureaucrat is explicitly associated with "fairness" in grading and (in more "authoritarian" role) the enforcement of the rules. For those of us who work in systems where the academic is a civil servant (as the Dutch system was in living memory), or where the process of how one assigns grades can be evaluated and challenged at and by exam committees (who in turn have to show evidence of due process and proper application of rules to possible appeals committees), C. Thi Nguyen's challenges of combining pedagogic or mentoring principles with bureaucratic ones are undoubtedly familiar. His lively descriptions of the conflicting considerations involved resonated with me. (Go read the essay!)
However, fairness is not really a bureaucratic principle.* Impartiality and rule-following (and, as he suggests, rule-enforcement) are. I noticed C. Thi Nguyen's emphasis on fairness because in my own Dutch context (teaching at a huge state school) students and administrators alike will use 'equality' -- in the sense of treating like alike not in the sense of giving everyone the same actual grade -- when they focus on the proper process of grading. Despite the different vocabularies, C. Thi Nguyen and my Dutch students both capture the same commitment or principle that indeed is meant to block species of judgment and discrimination, let alone prevent any measure, if that were possible, of how the soul has been turned to the good, to infiltrate one's grading practices.
Once higher education is shaped by government funding in a Weberian state, in which degrees play certain certification roles in public life (or where students can sue over their grades), it seems inevitable that some bureaucratic principles seep into and constrain professors' evaluative or grading practices in virtue of the fact that we are functionaries of potentially huge organizations. To what degree that undermines the very possibility of a philosophical education I set aside here.
Because he is vocal admirer of Carnap, even one of our foremost exemplifications of what (the Spirit of) a Left Vienna philosophy would look like today, I was not surprised that Liam Kofi Bright embraces the cognitive division of labor and even bureaucracy. Even so his characterization of the Basically Pleasant Bureaucrat surprised me, and in order to explain that I quote the paragraph that introduces it:
The first tendency is that which is most visible in my published work. Here the thought is that philosophy is a sort of public service work, a small part of the greater enterprise of generating knowledge that can be put to use in bettering our estate. The work is essentially service orientated (Dotson 2015) or Mohist in nature (Johnston 2010) ��� to work in this tendency one must be trying to find what combination of beliefs, technologies, and social practices will best foster flourishing (including, of course, refining the idea of ���flourishing���). At a high level this will involve identifying and resolving social problems. These are cases wherein one finds ���the failure of an organised social group to realise its group ideals, through the inability to adapt certain desired lines of action to conditions of life��� (Du Bois 1898, 3). Upon finding these one must work out what needs to change ��� the ideals, the actions, the conditions of life, etc ��� and work out how these changes may be effected. However it turns out that doing this effectively requires a huge division of labour and so most of the time one will not work at that high level of abstraction, but rather on more specific technical puzzles. None the less, the essence of this tendency is to commit to this project of perpetual collaborative amelioration.
Now, one reason I admire Liam Kofi Bright is how he can find points of contact, even overlap, between purportedly different philosophical traditions. In our discipline, which values disagreement and the focused objection and sharply polices standards boundaries, this capacity to see, say, how Master Mo's ameliorative, egalitarian consequentialism anticipates (say) Carnap's without having to diminish our admiration for Carnap is lovely (and politically important). [It's also lovely how he can turn his wide reading into stimulating reflection for the rest of us!]
Now, public service is a bureaucratic value. But Liam Kofi Bright also demands the kind of initiative (e.g., "one must work out what needs to change ��� the ideals, the actions, the conditions of life, etc ��� and work out how these changes may be effected") that one does not naturally associate with bureaucratic life, so there is a latent tension here in the way the first tendency has been labelled. (I return to this below.)
But I was especially surprised by the attempted, seamless integration of the Basically Pleasant Bureaucratic perspective with Dotson's conception (recall) of service philosophy. Now, to begin to explain why, I first (with apologies) quote myself on service philosophy:
Dotson observes that the professional philosophy she encountered is incapable of being self-justifying. This is no surprise because the dominant traditions (e.g., analytical philosophy, scientific philosophy, etc.) rest on broadly consequentialist foundations that presuppose shared values. The tacit elitism that could be counted on to do the real work -- that a life of philosophy is best -- does not sit well rhetorically in a democratic culture. Genuine and secure axiological foundations are not easy to come by in an intellectual culture that is scientistic. Dotson's attractive vision turns the weakness of the recent tradition around and turns it into a virtue: philosophy is not self-justifying or autonomous, but a good tool in the service of other ends. So despite many differences in sensibility, she is, thus, not far removed from the spirit of, say, Left Vienna. (D&I, 03/24/2015)
So, one may well wonder why I act all surprised at Liam Kofi Bright's stance if I myself had already noticed what one may call the 'formal resonance' between Dotson's and his approach to philosophy in which a certain kind of consequentialism and externally given (and optative) ends combine. But, of course, sensibility matters.
For, while in practice the service philosopher may well find herself advising government and shape the bureaucracy, she explicitly receives her ends from social movements and activists and joins in their (ahh) praxis ("I have learned and continue to learn living and working as a Black feminist, epistemology-based activist.") And without wishing to romanticize either bureaucrat or activist, the activist is willing, if necessity demands it, to break rules and violate norms in a way completely orthogonal to the bureaucrat.**
At this point one may well object on Liam Kofi Bright's behalf that he may not be adverse to taking guidance from activists, nor abhor a revolutionary impulse. After all in the paragraph I have quoted, he quotes Du Bois, who eventually, late in life, joined the communist party because ���Capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction. No universal selfishness can bring social good to all. Communism���the effort to give all men what they need and to ask of each the best they can contribute���this is the only way of human life.��� (Quoted from Angela Davis.)
But when Liam Kofi Bright quotes Du Bois, he is quoting from his reformist period. And Liam Kofi Bright himself explicitly advocates "amelioration" even over many generations ("Philosophy conceived of as [the building of] la Sagrada Fam��lia.") And while amelioration and even conceptual engineering is formally compatible with some species of activism, there is a different attitude in each toward both the disciplinary and social status quo. So, even if we ignore the virtues of bureaucracy, and treat his first tendency in terms of a highly skilled, even experimental Basically Pleasant Bricklayer there is an important contrast between it and the spirit of service philosophy (relative to the status quo).
I also suspect that there is a more important difference between service philosophy and the BPB tendency. I am circumspect here because I do not self-identify with each approach and I don't have recent phenomenological access toward my speculation: but I suspect the activist philosopher can experience the spiritual satisfaction that the "alienated labour" (that, as Liam Kofi Bright reports), the sublimating BPB experiences.**
For, while activism can be a soul destroying grind and isolating (even very dangerous), in a well functioning activist milieu, it has as a predictable side-effect the creation of communal feelings in the pursuit of a self-transcending goal that simultaneously is self-justifying. Of course, how to get to that point is no easy matter and actually require some attention to nurturing the life of the mind as part of the activist ethos. (This is a neat subtext in Zena Hitz's Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life.) But the service philosopher's attitude toward her own work would not have to be alienated.
Let me close with a final observation. Since Max Weber there is a peculiar blind-spot that the bureaucratic life has attracted relatively little attention from philosophers this despite the outsized significance of it in the modern state and, as C. Thi Nguyen and Liam Kofi Bright remind us, to many of own own lives as professional academics. (I suspect this is partial effect of the fact that many high prestige academic institutions try to maintain (at least the fiction of) self-governance in ways that those who work as functionaries cannot maintain.) And while I have only scratched the surface of both essays, a key feature of our involvement in bureaucratic life is that our educational and research practices are shaped by rules, norms, and goals that are extrinsic to philosophy (and education). This strikes me as rather important to our self-understanding if only because it allows us to organize our thinking about the many unhealthy symptoms we often encounter and discuss (reliance on metrics, rankings, stability of hierarchies, the lengthening syllabi, etc.). And so I am grateful to both for starting this conversations.
*Despite Rawls linking fairness firmly to justice, it is by no means reducible to principles associated with justice (cf. fair play). Why it can't be a bureaucratic principle is by no means easy to state but we can gesture at it: fairness doesn't rationalize the world, but does point to substantive commitments that are orthogonal to bureaucratic life. I do agree with C. Thi Nguyen that in some cultural contexts fairness is a "pedagogical value" in the classroom (just as equality is). And why this is so is an interesting topic I hope to explore some other time.
+This paragraph, about relative attitudes toward the status quo, draws on a comment by Liam Kofi Bright in private correspondence. "I think BPB just evaluates which discipline serves good ends then joins in. There's a question I think whether a BPB could ever be a field founder, since that seems so hopeless For generating change? Whereas I think a Dotson person could if that's what activists demanded of her." (August 20, 2022) That is PBP is not a Kuhnian legislator whereas a service philosopher might be.
**"sublimating individual interests and beliefs to this greater goal, taking time to develop technical skills necessary for interdisciplinary collaboration, and the mental discipline necessary to accept these tasks even where they are contrary to my own inclinations." I have some unease with the terminology of 'alienation' describing this. Not because of some commitment to Marxist orthodoxy or terminological purity, but I can't really explain why. But if we attend to the other tendency, "the sexy murder poet," its "central goal of this tendency is transcending the self, or overcoming the barriers to my full integration in the world." My suggestion would be that this spiritual longing is meeting a different need than absence caused by alienation.
July 29, 2022
Covid Diaries: Attention Deficits
I interrupt my usual Summer blogging break with a new entry in my Covid Diaries. (For my official "covid diaries," see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here, here; here; here, here; here; here; and here). And, as is depressingly familiar, the situation is a mixed bag.
First, the interesting news is that earlier this week I saw a clinical neuro-psychologist through a referral from the NHS long covid clinic. Curiously enough, when my Dutch GP and Dutch occupational physician tried to refer me to one a year ago (!), my Dutch neurologist and the wider group of the occupational physician blocked it! It's against protocol in the Netherlands, where long covid is treated by occupational therapists (unless there are serious lung or heart symptoms). So after the covid induced migraine was diagnosed by my UK neurologist, my Dutch neurologist admitted it had never occurred to him as a possible diagnosis. This was a bit bitter for me because during my first visit with him I had an intolerable headache which he somehow kept discounting. (Mind you I am a male academic with lots of cultural capital in the Netherlands.)
As an aside, I am not entirely convinced I have a real migraine because, as I have noted before, my symptoms are very well managed by anti-inflammatories (basically extra strength Aleve--this is not available over the counter in the UK), and in my view the triptans are less effective against them. I return to this below.
The clinical neuro-psychologist is a young lad, who called me 'Professor' when he looked for me in the corridor outside of his office. (I was not used to that in this contexy so it took me a while to realize he was calling me.) I later learned he is also getting a PhD in cognitive science with a specialization on frontal lobe functioning. (I hope I have not outed him.) He had a two-volume copy of William James The Principles of Psychology on his shelves which immediately endeared him to me. Anyway, after the 110 minutes (!) of testing, he could reassure me there is nothing wrong with my frontal lobe or any of my cognitive functioning. However, I do have rather striking attention issues; so, once the information comes in I process it okay, but certain kinds of information (white middle aged male faces, long digits of numbers, and domestic images) are often screened out. Whereas words and geometric objects go in just fine--so I should still manage okay with the Principia!
On the whole the results are not surprising (although I found my inability to manipulate medium length strings of digits really disconcerting) because they chime in with the reasons why I was interested in this referral in the first place. As an aside, I did wonder if I would do better with women's faces. But then I remembered a disconcerting conversation with one of my lecture course students this past Spring, where after polite small talk in the hall way where she studied next to my office (in which I asked her name, who her favorite theorist we discuss is, etc.), I suddenly had the good sense to ask, 'we have had this conversation before, right?' And she said, it's the fourth time.
The really good news lurking here is that the patterns he found are very dissimilar to what they find in early stages of Alzheimer, dementia or stroke. (On the way home I did wonder what I would do with my life if there were signs of the first two.) Anyway, he didn't know what kind of label to put onto me (I think he is leaving that to the neurologist), except to say that I have a weird kind of attention deficit now (but nothing like ADHD he emphasized). In addition, he was pleased to note that once in my cognitive functioning is okay, "superb" even. He and I both regretted there is no pre-Covid baseline to compare me with.
Second, earlier in the month we had a long family holiday on Paros. There I learned that I am still incredibly hyper-sensitive to sound and that social interactions (which exhaust me) have to be planned very carefully. It seems nearly every restaurant plays some background music, and even the kite-surf shack (where my family spent a lot of time without me) on the beach, which does not have running water or a kitchen, does have music playing. I was reminded of my graduate school dog park friend, Matthew Crawford's second book, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction. In it he points out that in modern life we're surrounded by music and images that try to attract us or distract us, and that the airport lounges of the very wealthy are very quiet. (But I bet these, too, have a soft background music that barely register unless you are me.) Our public or communal spaces are not allowed to be still.
That's to say, the first week of holiday was a bit of a struggle to find the right balance for the three of us. Somewhat annoyingly, whereas during most of my long covid swimming has been a source of enduring pleasure, on holiday I noticed that I found it exhausting (which had also been true ahead of our trip). The really annoying thing of long covid is that my symptoms keep switching slowly after every three or four months or so (more below). Anyway, I do swim most mornings just to stay active. Even played some pick-up basketball with my son in the (rather warm) Greek evenings, which felt like a precious moment I would not have expected a year ago, but still wasn't wholly pleasant (because my head felt so strange).
Luckily, extra strength Aleve (500mg naproxen) is available and cheap over the counter in Greece, so I stacked up on it.:) And the really good news is that most of my symptoms (weird head fatigue, headaches) are very well managed with anti-inflammatories. I haven't had a real headache day in months. Sometimes I am very aware my body and even my head registers I was socially too active, but because of the Aleve I don't have any pain. So, on the whole I am much better than, say, six months ago because I really suffer less.
The bad news is that I have clearly stagnated; I continue to be hypersensitive to sound if there is more than one source in the area and all my social activities, including with my family, have to be carefully planned. This puts considerable hardship on my family, even on days where I think things are going okay. I have also noticed since I returned from holiday that when I spent hours on end in the library, my head starts to feel fatigued; this has never happened to me before not even during long covid (much to the bewilderment of my occupational therapists who all assume that anything work related must be stressful and exhausting). So, I take more breaks now. (The British Library is actually well designed for that.)
As a total aside, this year I submitted two co-authored papers that originated in my pre-covid days but where completion had to be postponed due to my illness. The first got rejected with decent reports (ref 1 fair; ref 2 a bit silly) and the second a major revise & resubmit, and while neither is tremendous news, it did make me feel almost like a normal academic again. This week I also completed a long draft of my review of Neil Levy's Bad Beliefs (which you should read his book that is, well also my review!:)).
I should close, but one pet-peeve. There is increasing evidence that weight loss helps manage long covid symptoms. And so lots of folk send me press releases on this and nudge me to 'consider losing weight.' Now, ever since I probably had a mini stroke/TIA a decade ago, I pay attention to my weight. And it is very clear that because of long covid I have gained weight; not just because I probably exercise less and eat more from stress/emotional need, but also because when I do 'diet' (basically a low carb diet), I don't lose weight as quickly as I used to. It's pretty annoying to be told 'consider doing X' while you are 'doing X.' (Beccy Lucas has a hilarious sketch on that if you are into that kind of thing.)
Anyway, while I dislike the social norm that we must exude optimism, I do feel very blessed that I have a forthcoming Fall (unpaid) research leave. I feel grateful my family found a way to make it work for them, and lucky that the folks at Duke and Arizona are willing to host me (with some funding). Recently I bought my ticket and found housing, and it's suddenly starting to feel very real. Anyway, with that I return to my customary Summer blogging break.
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