Eric Schliesser's Blog, page 20

Long Covid Diaries: On Victim Blaming

This past week, I started two new treatments: at the advice of the UCLH long haul clinic (in London), I started a nightly round of Famotidine. It's mostly used to treat acid indigestion (and related ailments). And when my Dutch pharmacist dispensed to me, they started to explain its use to that end. She was surprised I was prescribed it to treat my long covid. (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; and here). My Dutch GP, who is kept abreast of my treatment plans at UCLH long haul clinic by me thanks to a wonderful patient centered app the UCLH hospital used, commented that she thought the evidence was rather thin for the effectiveness of Famotidine in long haul. Since I had presumably looked at the very same studies as she had, I had to agree. When the physician at UCLH had suggested Famotidine to me, she said they were doing new trials -- I had been excluded from these because of a too recent booster -- had claimed they were finding that Famotidine was improving cognitive functioning by 20% or so. While a part of me was supremely curious about the measurement of that number, at over fourteen months of illness, I took a modest amount of hope over no hope of improvement. The underlying idea was that my immune system was generating some kind of inflammation.  I wondered whether the anti-histamine of Famotidine might help control the effects of my chronic sinusitis. 

In response to my very kind Dutch GP, I pointed out that the referral she had just written at behest of my occupational physician to start treatment with a 'neuro-psychologist' specializing in long covid, was for a treatment that had no known clinical efficacy for long covid. For, I was under the impression I was being referred for a cognitive behavior therapy (CBT). My view was this was unlikely to help my particular symptoms, but I decided it was worth a try since (i) it might benefit me in other ways, and (ii) it was a good idea to be a cooperative patient of my occupational physician (who so far had been reliable ally). After my intake meeting with the 'neuro-psychologist' a few weeks ago, I was a bit puzzled because she warned me that treatment might last for one or two years; I always assumes CBT was favored by society because it was relatively brief (and so cheap). But this past week, I realized that CBT would be a minor part of my treatment--one might call it a fa��ade for insurance purposes, but to do so would get someone in trouble. 

The underlying idea of Dutch occupational physicians is that long covid is primarily the effect of a stress system that is out of control. And this, in turn, an effect of pre-existing conditions or life-style of those hit by long covid. (Since the Dutch university system is chronically underfunded and burn out a systemic problem in it, we should be hit by massive wave of long covid!) It's best tackled by a range of low key interventions like learning patients how to madidate (via an app offered for free by a Dutch medical insurance company) and to re-acclimatize the brain to filtering out various noises. While undoubtedly earnestly felt by those who propagate it -- and a nice cover for complete unwillingness to research long covid by Dutch medical researchers --, it often comes across as victim blaming. (I first learned about it from a fellow long hauler, a high school friend, who is one of the most successful people in the Dutch art scene now, who was not amused.) My neuro-psychologist makes a great show not to blame me -- in fact she repeatedly praises me for life-style changes made during the first year of the pandemic --, but points out my problem is effect of the accumulated stress of many years showing. I have decided that the best thing about learning mindfulness is to be steeled against this kind of talk, and that after all the British won WWI with a terrible theory of airplane flight (go read David Bloor's classic).

Anyway, my treatment is fairly straightforward: I have to meditate three times a day. One of these times should be after a ten minute period in which I try to work/read with some kind of noise or music in the background. This is to start getting my brain used to filtering out noises. In addition, I am not allowed to wear my noise canceling head-sets while walking about town. (We compromised that before my three remaining lectures I can do it.)  I am also trying to reduce cortisol production, so I should avoid exercise that leaves me drained. (Luckily my kind of mellow lap swimming is permitted.) At my own initiative -- surely successful entrepreneurism improves well-being --, I have started to drink black teas, especially Lapsang Souchong, which has the best name and odor in Tea-land. Daily, I thank the heavens that my sense of smell is fine.

In reflecting on existing sources of stress, it occurred to me that that the possibility of an accidental nuclear war and, more prosaically, my uncertainty over my job future might not be trivial. But after meditating on it, I was also reminded of the hard work I had to put in to get some medical reimbursements -- the blood tests I discussed in my last covid diary still hasn't been paid yet --  and to get my university to pay up in various ways. At some point someone in HR decided that given European jurisprudence, the university was required to pay my vacation days in full. (Since I went on partial disability, they had been paying me in pro-rated fashion.) But unaccountably they decided they only had to do so in 2022 and not in 2021. Some correspondence with my chair and various people in HR ensued. I decided to consult my union and read up on the European and Dutch jurisprudence. Somewhat fascinatingly, vacation is treated as a human right in European labor law now, and so employers have to pay out vacation days in full. The union lawyer told me that Dutch jurisprudence had been settled on this quite a while now, and that their practice  is  to demand full pay-out once an employee can't continue in their job. I wrote a fine letter to HR, and eventually my chair informed that my asking for reasons had apparently caused a change in policy. (I should expect some modest back-pay in a month or two.)

Because I strictly control how many bureaucratic battles I fight per week, I have left the insurance claim for next week. I also have another bone to pick with the university because they refused to commit to paying any balance between what my insurer will cover for the neuro-psychologist and what she will charge. (They cover 100%, but that's 100% of the rate they want to cover.) I was surprised the university was unwilling to do so because the money involved would be modest, and we often pay for all kinds of coaching, mediation, and training (including stress management). And since the neuro-psychologist was prescribed by their own occupational physician, I thought my case would be strong. But I decided to wait with a new letter to HR until it's clear to me how much extra money we're talking about.

That's a let of set-up for the main business of this 'diary.' I have taught ten sessions now of my huge lecture course. I still have trouble falling asleep and sleeping after the lecture, but out of ten sessions, I have had real headaches only four times the next day. Most of the weirdness in my head is gone by the next afternoon. Since all restrictions have been lifted, the auditorium is now filled with students. They kindly wear masks on my behalf on the first three rows, and they send me super sweet messages of encouraged and gratitude. In turn, I adore performing my act for them, and while a part of me is horrified that I have become a figure of entertainment, I soak up the applause after each lecture. I'll be curious to see the evals, but I think it's probably the best cycle of the lecture course I have taught; because I don't try to entertain myself (and so avoid most of improv shtick), I follow the outline of my slides carefully--I have never received so much recurring feedback on how clear I am. If I wrote a private diary, I would have had an entry by now on how I became an analytic philosopher through long covid. Anyway, the good news is I am clearly much better than a few months ago, and I can imagine teaching more even with my current limitations.

I decided to go to London last week-end and visit my family who I had not seen for a month. Nobody had told my teenage son (who is decidedly taller than his mom now and only an inch smaller than I am), and the surprise and joy on his face when I opened the door was followed by a fantastic bear hug. While it was a sweet visit, I  learned that I am still fairly easily drained by non-stop interactions. By 'drained,' I mean I get my characteristic head-fatigue (from the nose up) and the start of a headache. So, I withdrew a few times into the bedroom and simply laid on the bed.  That helped.  At night I slept deeply and calmly alongside my better half.

Yesterday, I started the experiment with ten minutes of concentration alongside background noise. I went to my favorite espresso bar, and decided to read a book outside. Next to me was a guy talking loudly through his earbuds while I was trying to reach a paper I was supposed to referee. I have to admit the guy's talk drove me batty. I lasted about eight minutes, and the nausea only dissipated after a half hour amble and walk in the part. Even there the city's noises are never distant. With my noise canceling headsets therapeutically left at home, I already miss the quiet.

Liberalism after Ukraine, Part 1: two kinds of nationalism and a new cold war

Don���t turn a blind eye on this...Come out and support Ukraine as much as you can...

If we fall, you will fall,...

And if we win, and I���m sure we���ll win, this will be the victory of the whole democratic world, this will be the victory of our freedom, this will be the victory of light over darkness, of freedom over slavery...

And if we win we will become as blossoming as Europe and Europe will be flourishing more than ever.--Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy (March 4, 2022)

I am writing this in a protectorate under the umbrella of Pax Americana, which I understand as empire with liberal characteristics. It is imperial because it fundamentally relies on a hegemon who holds the strings of military and economic power, and benefits from having the world's reserve currency. Some of its protectorates fall under NATO or AUKUS umbrella, others have more direct effective security guarantees (Japan, South Korea, Israel, Taiwan, Singapore, etc.) In some cases it's not entirely clear how wide the freedom of independent movement in foreign policy is for countries under Pax Americana. But anyone who has followed the development of a new sanctions regime on Russia during the last two weeks would have noticed that this empire is capable of rapid coordination and consensus building even when non trivial economics interests are at stake.

I use 'liberal characteristics' because within the empire it is broadly governed by public rules, by mutual consultation, and commitment to free-ish markets in goods and capital, and Pax Americana functions most smoothly when the protectorates themselves approximate liberal democracy. It is not wholly liberal (as restrictions on movements of peoples testify), and it lacks a federative structure (although some sub-units have it) among other obvious shortcomings (including non-trivial rights violations of populations in non-trivial number of places). It is also not wholly liberal in its approach to the world, especially when it comes to energy supply, Islamic rejectionists of Pax Americana, and revolutions that are taken to be anti-capitalist in character. 

One interesting feature of Pax Americana since 1989 is its ability to accommodate a modus vivendi with would-be-competitors (China, Russia, and even to some degree India) who reject liberalism or American hegemony (or both). The motives for this accommodation have, as in most statecraft, been varied: ranging from nuclear deterrence and from economic opportunism (including legalized graft with American and European elites being bought by foreign interests), to a liberal faith that drawing states into win-win rule-governed trade and cultural/scientific relations will transform would be competitors into would be collaborators. This has also meant ignoring and soft-pedalling, even appeasing, all kinds of military aggression and local/regional rights violations. More insidiously, it has meant that the red lines of Pax Americana became fuzzy to its enemies and, more dangerously yet, to its own rulers (with former President Trump going so far as repeatedly signaling acquiescence in the dissolution of Nato and its network of treaties). 

By contrast, I understand China and Russia, for all their differences, as mercantilist, nationalist dictatorships (hereafter MNDs). By 'Mercantile' I mean an approach to trade designed primarily to increase state power and to serve the economic interest of relatively narrow ruling elites. Under mercantilism war is profitable to the elites and the state, and so always a live option. By putting it like this I don't mean to ignore wholly the fascist elements in contemporary Russia (not the least the willingness to use thugs to enforce obedience), or the ways in which Christianity (in its orthodox variety) has become an instrument of state, and the significance of one-party nominally Marxist rule in China. I also don't mean to deny that war is quite profitable for some elites in liberal empire.

I don't mean to suggest only China and Russia (etc.) are nationalist. It's fair to say that neither nationalism nor war has been banished from Europe. That's sad, but not unexpected. But the reactions to the (2022) Russian invasion of Ukraine also reveal that there really are two kinds of nationalisms competing for influence at the moment, and surprisingly hostile to each other. The first kind is a nationalism that instinctively leans toward authoritarianism & strongmen. It may well be democratic (as in majoritarian rule), but it dominates local minorities, and has a distrust of pluralism and open borders. If given the opportunity such nationalism may well grow into imperialism. These authoritarian nationalists are cheering on Putin (or are quiet now).

The second kind of nationalism is stimulated by a foreign enemy, and need not be authoritarian at all. The nation is a means toward independence and freedom that's compatible with cosmopolitan desire to join up with other independent nations while protecting minority rights. The second kind of nationalism can be found in folk cheering on Ukrainian nationalism (which, in practice, may not always be so pluralist). The ideal type of this kind of nationalism is Scottish civic nationalism. And when President Zelenskyy addresses European crowds and heads of state he is very much drawing on a shared understanding of this more cosmopolitan nationalism centered on a common idea of a free and peaceful Europe. If one wishes to avoid confusion one can call the second kind of nationalism -- with a nod to Kant [8:291] -- 'patriotic.'

Historically, during the nineteenth century especially, liberalism has made common cause with nationalism of both varieties. (Roughly: before 1871 the second kind; after 1871 the first kind.)  The escalated attack on Ukraine, which is being attacked in part because it wishes to participate in and taste the fruits of Pax Americana and join the EU, has clarified for many that they do not wish to be fellow travelers of the first kind of nationalism. And even for those that often naturally embrace the first kind of nationalism (e.g., the leadership of Poland, Hungary, and, perhaps, Turkey), see in Pax Americana a lesser evil than Russian expansion.

A lot of friends of cosmopolitanism and pluralism have a natural distrust of intense nationalism, especially because its loudest advocates are natural authoritarians. So, the revival of a more civic and cosmopolitan nationalism to balance it is not altogether unwelcome even to those who keep a distance of patriotism and national identity. And Ukrainian heroisms will strengthen the prestige of patriotic nationalism. For, Putin's recent escalation of his eight year war on Ukraine and patriotic Ukrainian heroism has  induced re-armament of European liberal democracy, has increased its willingness to arm Ukraine, and has ended European appeasement of Putin. 

By focusing on Putin's regime's mercantile-nationalistic character (and downplaying its Christian-fascist tendencies), I want to facilitate a sober discussion of its escalating aggression, especially amongst those liberals (of classical free market and egalitarian types), who naturally and quite humanely recoil from the current sanctions regime which falls asymmetrically on innocents and the less well connected in Russia, and is likely to entrench the existing regime because now its elites have more opportunity for rents, bribery, and smuggling. It is foreseeable that the sanctions and policy of isolation strengthen the repressive apparatus and reduce the likelihood of regime change in the short run because they undermine the (relatively weak, alas) opposition in Russia. The war and sanctions also hurt poor people the world over, especially because it is to be expected that food and energy prices will increase. 

MNDs are not easy to defeat; often the best one can hope for is gradual mitigation and internal evolution. And while this is not heroic, it is always to be wished for. And, if in its foreign policy, China remains as cautious as it presently is it will remain a viable competitor to Pax Americana while simultaneously being enriched and enriching (economically, scientifically, and culturally) those that fall under Pax Americana.* And, perhaps, in its rivalry it will even occasion further renewal of liberalism. (As regular readers know, during last decade or so, I have come to believe that the survival of liberalism in its traditional Anglo and European heartlands cannot be taken for granted and that it exhibits malaise and drift through financial recession, pandemic, Brexit, and a 'war' on terror that jointly have made authoritarian, nationalist-mercantilist leadership increasingly seem more attractive to non-trivial parts of electorates.)

But MNDs can be defeated. Liberalism both grew out of mercantilism and, where joined to nationalism, has defeated some MNDs before. And it has done so by bankrupting them while maintaining military supremacy. The most notable example is, of course, the implosion and bankruptcy of the French monarchy over a thirty year period after the Seven Year's war.

I argued last week that while sanctions and isolation are lousy policies, the alternatives are worse. In my view the justification of the present sanctions and policy of isolation and disinvestment toward Russia is to reduce its war-making capability, to increase its internal coordination costs, and to end the enrichment that has made its aggression toward its neighbors so easy. The present plans to accelerate decoupling from Russian hydrocarbon sources fit this strategy, too. The asset freeze on the Russian central bank has induced a financial implosion and will, I suspect, end ruble convertibility. And while I worry that Ukraine is being armed and financed just sufficiently and cynically to maintain itself in a war of attrition with Russia without any hope of acquiring the kind of arms that could see it reverse Russian gains, such a war of attrition will also bankrupt Russia (and/or make it a client state of China which, I argued last week, is probably the best to be hoped for by outsiders in present circumstances).+

But while it is unlikely that Putin will change his policies or be unseated by sanctions and isolation, these also make it unlikely that his regime can survive his demise (he is almost 70 now). Maintaining the unity of the Russian federation with its ageing population will be a herculean task once foreign cash is absent. More important the battle-field in Ukraine and the more visible economic stagnation and relentless propaganda will sap its slogans from whatever vitality they might once possess; its military victories, if any, will take on an increasingly pyrrhic character. And he has gifted Europe's liberal democracies the greatest gift of all: a population re-alerted to what is at stake in political life, and nearly united, patriots and cosmopolitans alike, in rejecting Putin's poisoned chalice.   (To be continued.)

 

 

*It seems silly to call it the 'West' since the economic center of gravity of Pax Americana is moving toward the Pacific.

+The less cynical explanation is that Nato wishes to avoid further escalation because of Russia's nuclear deterrence. But such deterrence has never prevented proxy-warfare before.

On Fire, Civilization, and Religion (via Goudsblom): a hypothesis for Cognitive Science of Religion (pt. 1)

That human beings have managed to learn to handle fire at all I regard as an outcome of their living together in societies. Everywhere the use of fire and caring for it require certain social arrangements and individual adjustments. Fire exerts inexor��able constraints to which people respond by developing commands and prohibitions and forms of self-restraints. The control of fire is always part of a system of social control and self-control; in this respect its development may be regarded as a 'civilizing process' in Norbert Elias's (1978, 1982) sense of that concept. 
The physical effects of fire have not changed during human history. Its direct contact with the skin causes burning almost im��mediately, at all times. What has changed, however, are the kinds of fire with which people are confronted and the ways in which they react to it. As the human capacity to control fire has increased, people have generally come to depend more and more upon social arrangements regarding fire, such as the supply of fuel and safe��guards against fire-risks.--Jaap Goudsblom "The Domestication of Fire as a Civilizing Process. "Theory, Culture & Society. 1987;4(2-3): 458-459 

Before the war in Ukraine started, I read Goudsblom's fascinating Fire and Civilization in Dutch (as Vuur en Beschaving (1992)). The war distracted me from the substantive posts I wanted to do about his book,* and also the sliding doors of life that meant I never met Goudsblom (1932-2020) despite ample opportunity and being fairly close to people who were very close to him. But an idea that occurred to me while reading the book stayed with me, and I want to try it out briefly here and perhaps it will inspire others to explore it more fully. I quote from the 1987 paper to give a sense of his views because I left my copy at the office. And so rather than offering copious quotes and references, I'll write from memory and a general sense of what I take to be Goudsblom's views. (If you want you can treat all of this as Goudsblom*.)

As noted in the quoted passage, Goudsblom is building on Norbert Elias (although a case can be made he goes beyond Elias). To avoid confusion, by 'civilizing' Goudsblom does not want to activate the Enlightenment contrast between barbarism/civilization. 

The core of Goudsblom position can be discerned in the quoted passage: he views the control of fire as presupposing a system of social control that also generates further self-control, even self-domestication (the "civilizing process") among the members of the community that controls fire. This will be important for my purposes. A related point Goudsblom makes is that in general the control of fire by a community also generates dependence on fire as the division of labor expands. Along the way, the centrality of fire in our lives is masked -- it is almost literally put under the car hood -- such that we end up treating it as something worth controlling by specialists with esoteric knowledge. 

The previous paragraph does not do justice to the many provocative claims and sensitive readings of works of history and literature that Goudsblom offers.  But here I focus on the significance of a point Goudsblom uses to frame his discussion: all known people are familiar with fire and are capable of controlling it. To use language he eschews, the control of fire is a universal social kind. (Some think the domestication of fire goes back a very long way in hominoid pre-history.) And it shares this with language, the upright thumb, tool use, and religion. I don't mean this list to be the end of the matter. Regular readers know, that I have been intrigued (recall) by Graeber's claim in Debt: the first 5000 years, that anthropologist have discovered some other invariances about human nature.**

Anyway, Goudsblom is quite clear that fire involves self-domestication in at least two related ways: (i) individuals of a community have to learn to control their behavior around fire in non-trivial ways and (ii) the community has to develop mechanisms of social control that reinforce and police individual self-command around fire. And clearly there is for Goudsblom a kind of mutual bootstrapping between (i) and (ii) and various coordination mechanisms that maintain a kind of balance between (i) and (ii) in light of other social and environment constraints and scaffolding.

Now, in his analysis Goudsblom notes that fire plays a non-trivial role in many religions. Lots of temples and altars involve the control of fire and the duty to maintain a fire without interruption. In addition, Goudsblom notes that many religions have imagery related to fire. And as he notes (also in the paper I quoted above), "stories relating how 'man' came to obtain fire have a prominent place in the mythologies of many peoples (see Frazer, 1930). These stories show how long people all over the world have continued to consider fire as something very special to which a divine origin is ascribed." (Goudsblom 1987: 458) I take the significance of fire in religion as a useful hint of what I am about to propose which is in the spirit of Goudsblom's analysis. 

Cognitive science of religion (CSR) "brings theories from the cognitive sciences to bear on why religious thought and action is so common in humans and why religious phenomena take on the features that they do." On my view of CSR, it is methodologically resolutely pluralist (it's not only about putting people into a FMRI scanner)." And a key question in CSR is the origin of religion. Recall this post on Hobbes. 

What if the origin of religion its rituals, its prohibitions, its original belief systems is, in part, to be found as one of the mechanism of the civilization process surrounding fire, that is, its function as facilitating self-domestication and the coordination mechanism that help society monitor and promote such self-domestication. I don't mean to suggest religion is reducible to a list of dos and donts -- which is at least non-trivial part of the control and manipulation of fire and simultaneous self-domestication --, but it does provide such lists with significance (and incentives to comply and advance them) and a place in communal life.

In order to avoid confusion, I don't mean to suggest that the known religions with fire imagery played a role in the early domestication of fire and self-domestication of humans. As Goudsblom notes the recorded material we have is actually characterized by an absence of detailed descriptions of how to treat fire. Rather, I take these religions as a kind of symbolic after life, a means to convey a cultural memory (can you tell I just Wengrow & Graeber?) and a way to teach about the significance of earlier events (not technical fire handling manuals or rituals to be followed in order to safely engage with fire). 

But if early religion was indeed a mechanism for facilitating the domestication of fire in virtue of aiding individual self-control and for reducing the costs of social control of such self-control, then it could have provided either a biological or cultural selection advantage (or both). And this can help explain why religion is so widespread, after all. (If you don't like the Darwinism here, I think you can drop it w/o loss.)

I have more to say about the exact details about what early religion might have looked like to play a role in (i)&(ii). But I'd like to do that when I have my copy of Goudsblom nearby, so I can take advantage of some of the hints he provides in this endeavor and show that this hypothesis can also enrich his argument. To be continued.

 

 

 

 

*In particular, I was struck that he embraces not just unintended consequence explanations, but also relies on a soft-cultural-group-selection arguments at various points (w/o embracing explicitly Darwinian theory.) Some of the most vivid passages in Fire and Civilization are about the role fire might have played in human control over animals and the competition between homo sapiens and other hominoids.

**Recall:

When humans transfer objects back and forth between/among each other or argue about what other people owe them the same fundamental moral principles will be invoked everywhere and always (see the passage above).
Humans have a sense of justice that grounds sociality.
Mutual sociality grounds all peaceful social relations (p. 101)

On Sanctions, and Realism

One unexpected benefit of teaching a large lecture course in English to students who are overwhelmingly non native English speakers is that ambiguities in (my) English are noticed by them. So, for example, one student was confused by my use of 'sanction' a few weeks ago (in the context of a comment I made on Chinese political philosophy). For, 'sanction' has two standard meanings that are, in their valences, the opposite of each other: it can either mean something like 'official permission for an action' or it means 'a penalty for disobeying a rule.' And, after my exchange with one of my students I remembered a disagreement with a colleague a few years ago that turned on a mutual confusion in what sense the other was using 'sanction.'

As regular readers know, I thought last week that the call for expelling Russia from Swift would have largely symbolic effect. I did not anticipate that there would also be a (much more potent) central bank asset freeze. The jury is out on how effective these and related sanctions will be (a lot will turn on the details of enforcement and the way exceptions are allowed, as well as on Russian skill in patching together alternatives). One fears that by the time sanctions are enforced many oligarchs have moved assets out of reach. But what I did not foresee at all is that these sanctions would promote a classic bank-run, and that Russia risks a financial meltdown. In addition, it's quite clear that lots of other countries one could have expected to ignore these sanction have joined in, and that many important companies (in energy, microchips, and transportation), sports federations, and art organizations have been nudged into actions that effectively isolate Russia in financial and cultural ways.

Of course, sanctions are not the only source of pressure on Russia. There is an increasing supply of weapons being sent to Ukraine. Most of these weapons are defensive in character (anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft missiles), but there has been talk of some older fighter jets being shipped to  the Ukraine by the EU (this is important for EU's future). As long as the Polish-Ukrainian border is in hands of the Ukrainian government these kind of shipments may well reach Ukraine's defense forces in an effective manner. But, this kind of support tends to be limited, in practice (and mostly symbolic), because nobody wants to get entangled in a shooting war with Russia, which has a major Nuclear arsenal.  What may happen is that outsiders will support proxy wars (as they have done in lots of conflicts during the last few decades).

In general, sanctions tend to enrich the well-connected in the country being sanctioned because they tend to have new forms of rents and can gain in all kinds of ways from new forms of smuggling (through bribes and monopoly profits). They also tend to be a form of collective punishment on the rest of the population, who are thereby impoverished and for whom ordinary life becomes much more challenging (not the least because they will be asked for a lot more bribes), and so hard to justify. In general, they also tend to be not very effective if the goal is regime change or to induce changes of behavior. In fact, they tend to strengthen the repressive apparatus directly (or indirectly by providing an excuse for more repression) and to enrich it, and so seem self-undermining.

Before I get to my own view of the matter it is worth distinguishing conceptually three kinds of critics of sanctions because they come at it from different angles (even if these can overlap in practice and even if they embrace the claims in the previous paragraph). First, one kind of critic has a liberal sensitivity and thinks that isolation is a sure route to permanent conflict. This kind of 'liberal' can be the classical liberal who praises markets and soft-war power of culture, or the more Kantian liberal who likes internal treaties and organizations (there is, of course, partial overlap in these ideal types.)* They may even note that such a course of action will drive Russia into the hands of the (rather illiberal) Chinese, which is thought undesirable for western interests or world peace (etc.). So, faced with Russia's invasion of Ukraine the liberal critic of sanctions and isolating Russia has to accept facts on the ground and/or support the mostly symbolic military assistance to Ukraine. 

In general my own sympathies are liberal and I often sign up for the kind of views expressed in the previous paragraph. But it is fair to say that such liberalism is unwilling to acknowledge that integrating Russia into the global order has been a failure if the goal was to pacify Russia after the collapse of its empire. In effect globalization has allowed Russia to enrich itself and thereby become more menacing to others. During the last few decades, Russia has been almost constantly at war. Several of the wars involved the reconquest and pacification of breakaway regions, but a few of them also involve(d) sovereign states, including Georgia and since 2014 Ukraine. So, the liberal who wants to double down on the path of mutual interdependence is revealing a touching faith in the light of cold facts. In a future post, I return to what liberalism can take away from this going forward.

The other kind of critic (who may also have liberal commitments) is a self-described realist. Such a realist will emphasize that Russia has legitimate security concerns and interest and these have been threatened by NATO expansion. And that, in fact, self-congratulatory sanctions in the past and the new ones in the present are themselves a cause of conflict (here's part of the overlap with some liberals). 

Now, as I hinted last week, I have some sympathy with the realist critique of Zelensky (who is otherwise hugely admirable and heroic). Once it became clear to Ukraine that NATO and EU were unwilling to help defend Ukraine (after 2014), despite the occasional and reckless lipservice to the contrary, he should have aggressively sought out other allies. And, in fact, it's pretty clear that Ukraine tried to develop Chinese support, and that this was torpedoed by Trump during his presidency (recall my link last week). What is puzzling is that there seems to have been little success and/or effort to return to the Chinese after Biden's victory or to interest Turkey and Israel into supporting Ukraine independence with military aid. And given how badly western countries have treated their nominal allies in Afghanistan and Iraq (Vietnam, etc.) it is puzzling why any state would count on them if they are not a member of Nato or covered by American nuclear deterrence. 

For, one oddity of the purportedly realist 'Putin/Russia has legitimate security concerns over Nato expansion' trope, is that the security concerns of Russia's neighbors are constantly belittled, discounted/ignored, and/or trivialized. This has two perverse effects: First, it privileges great power interests over the others. This is a feature not a bug of such purported realism, for such realists will probably say something like, ''it's only natural that great power interests matter more than other powers." What's odd about this (in realist terms) is that it fails to account for the efforts at balancing and coalition forming against great powers by smaller and other powers (which is what the realism that does not victim blame ordinarily suggests). This matters because the underlying logic of realist thinking requires such balancing/coalition forming and also requires a willingness by outsiders to balance and if necessary contest aggression on the battle-field.**
 
Second, because doctrines have effects in the world (they can be performative or be causes of actions), the doctrine that is biased toward great power interests over smaller power interests effectively legitimizes aggression by greater powers against the smaller powers while masking as an explanation. I don't mean this as a criticism of realism as such, only the realism that is not serious about the security interests of smaller fish. A lot of such realists are blabbering about 'Ukraine neutrality with security guarantees,' while ignoring that these guarantees have been worthless for the last few decades (and as was clear (recall) by 2014). Such realists tacitly assume that Russia is a status quo power rather than revisionary/revanchist. And these victim blaming pretend realists are really ignoring the facts of the last few decades. (That's compatible with the thought that liberal democracies have been irresponsible in all kinds of ways, including the speaking in split tongues and the unwillingness to help check Russian expansion as some realists should have urged.)
 
Some realists suggests that Ukraine should have pursued a neutrality course familiar from Sweden, Switzerland, Jordan, and Finland. All these countries had assets that Ukraine lacked (not the least non-trivial military capacity and willingness to fight) and had outside countries who had a clear stake in their continued existence as a buffer or neutral services. Ukraine's neutrality would have been more like Dutch neutrality at the start of WWII; nice if it's respected, useless otherwise. But again, it is pretty rich for people who call themselves 'realist' to suggest that Russia would have respected such neutrality given the evidence of the last few decades.
 
Again, I am not criticizing real realism here. I am critical of those who pursued their perceived interests (and so left Ukraine out to dry in return for Russian energy, legalized graft, and being a gateway for money laundering) in the name of realism without paying attention to the need to balance and check Russian power or to help Ukraine create its own security coalition. As it is, such purported realists seem to have no place for the heroic national defense by the Ukrainians of their homeland, and so in a way misunderstand the facts on the ground (even if Ukraine is successfully occupied or carved up, it is clear that the Russians cannot keep their hold on it without enormous costs downstream) . 
 
There is also a third kind of critic of sanctions, who worries that it is foreplay to Armageddon. This too comes in two kinds of flavors. First, there are those who worry it's possible that sanctions and military assistance to Ukraine lead to a kind of tit for tat escalation that turns this into WWIII and/or nuclear Armageddon. I think the risk of this is fairly low because Russia and the US have considerable experience in proxy warfare that they always manage to contain during the last few decades. The other worries that isolation and sanctions of Russia (alongside a drawn out conflict in Ukraine) lead to the implosion of Russia. This, in turn, can be a civil war, destabilizing of other countries, or, again, nuclear Armageddon (if Putin feels very threatened). I grant this is is uncharted territory and a real concern. 
 
So, let me wrap up. I personally hope and advocate that the sanction regime can be improved such that ordinary, individual Russians don't have to carry an enormous burden through it. So, with the more symbolic sanctions (say sports boycotts), I  think it's completely legitimate to boycott national teams (of Russia and Belorussia) and anything involving Gazprom sponsorship, but would urge a reconsideration for individual athletes (and artists, educators etc.) It would be good if face-saving mechanism to help de-escalate were developed, but these must also involve non-trivial roll-back of Russian expansion (and so I do not expect this to happen).
 
A policy of far-reaching sanctions that isolate Russia ought to be pursued in large part because the alternatives have so clearly failed, and because they do raise the cost of aggression (even at the expense of one's own economic welfare). It's the least bad of the existing options and can be expected to fall short of triggers that might lead to world war. It also buys time to wean oneself off energy dependence on Russia. A foreseeable effect of this is that Russia (with structural population decline and all the problems of imperial overreach) will become increasingly dependent on China (with whom it shares an enormous border and where it has strategic vulnerabilities). While the circumstances are very bad, this dependency would itself not be a bad outcome because (i) it can forestall Armageddon; (ii) and, while China, too, is a nationalist dictatorship which treats its own citizens shabbily and with design on some of its neighbors, it has repeatedly signaled its eagerness to play by global rules and it has shown far more restraint in pursuing its international aims. And in fact, China has more capacity to restrain Russia when the latter is a client state of it.*** Okay, let me stop here and explore the implications of the new political realities for liberalism, and its relationship to nationalism and federalism, in a future post.+ 
 

 

*Regular readers know I don't identify with either calling myself a 'skeptical liberal.' 

**In fact, the real problem with realist thinking is that it risks promoting open-ended war in the name of protecting interests and balancing others. 

***Some realist worry that pushing Russia into the hands of China in the context of great power rivalry between the US and China tips the balance of power toward China. But given Russian structural weakness, and some natural conflicts of interest between Russia and China, the opposite seems more likely.

+I thank Aris Trantidis and Stephen Davies for discussion on social media

On Irresponsible Science Journalism: No, those studies do not show that a market in Wuhan was the source of the Coronavirus

International scientists on Saturday released two major studies which one participant said made it ���extraordinarily clear��� a market in Wuhan, China was the source of the coronavirus which fueled the Covid-19 pandemic ��� and not a Chinese government laboratory, a theory championed in the US by rightwing campaigners, columnists and politicians.

The question of where Covid-19 came from and how it spread has proved divisive...

In August last year, a US intelligence review of the issue proved inconclusive.

The New York Times first reported the new studies, which it said had not been published in any journal.--"Coronavirus came from Wuhan market and not Chinese lab, twin studies say"--The Guardian, 26 February, 2022. 

For those who may read my blog for the first time, I am not a rightwing campaigner.  I have been a critic of former President Trump since 2015. I am also not a virologist or epidemiologist, however, I am a philosopher of science and my original interest in the field is evidential arguments. I will suggest below that the claims in The Guardian and in The New York Times are examples of irresponsible and sloppy science journalism. Before I get to explaining why I think that, here is a flavor of The New York Times reporting:

The studies, which together span 150 pages, are a significant salvo in the debate over the beginnings of a pandemic that has killed nearly six million people across the world. The question of whether the outbreak began with a spillover from wildlife sold at the market, a leak from a Wuhan virology lab or some other event has given rise to pitched debates over how best to stop the next pandemic.

���When you look at all of the evidence together, it���s an extraordinarily clear picture that the pandemic started at the Huanan market,��� said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona and a co-author of both new studies.

Several independent scientists said that the studies, which have not yet been published in a scientific journal, presented a compelling and rigorous new analysis of available data. "New Research Points to Wuhan Market as Pandemic Origin" The New York Time, updated 27 February, 2022

One of the papers with the suggestive title "The Huanan market was the epicenter of SARS-CoV-2 emergence," is the main source of the claims reported by the The Guardian and The New York Times that I will argue are examples of irresponsible and sloppy science journalism. The paper, which I downloaded on February 27, and that I will be discussing can be found here. I heard about the paper through a tweet by Marion Koopmans shared by my colleague John Grin (since unshared after learning of my concerns below). Dr. Koopmans is a leading virologist and public health scientist in the Netherlands. Professor John Grin and I both work in a political science department; he is a former physicist, who works in public policy on issues related to transition economy. I consider both high quality sources of science related material. And so when I decided to read the paper, I assumed I would be convinced by the findings.

Michael Worobey (the lead author of the paper) and his colleagues have dome some impressive modeling and statistical analysis to argue that the source of the spread of the pandemic is probably to be found in the Wuhan market. The paper has, however, a peculiar step, which deserves some scrutiny, and which weakens the claims by the media that this article rules out a lab leak.

As is clear from the suggestive title of the paper and the media reporting I have quoted above, the political significance of this paper is it that it is presented as ruling out that the virus leaked out of the lab of the Wuhan CDC. Since outside access to it has been denied (here is the Guardian's reporting; here's the New York Times), this has generated concerns over a cover up.

What the media reporting fails to remark is that this possibility is addressed in only one sentence shown in a picture below.* 

So, naturally, I was curious to see what source (9) is. It's the Chinese CDC! (See the other picture.)

[image error]

Now, clearly the authors of the report treat the Chinese CDC as a reliable source, and they may well have good reasons to do so. Both papers rely heavily on data from it, it seems.

But, if the point is to rule out a lab leak (and, hence, a cover up), this line of reasoning will not do at all. For, rather than testing whether the data they do rely on can distinguish empirically between the evidence for the Wuhan market and against a lab leak, the paper rules out a lab leak by fiat on the authority of those whose impartiality is questioned by critics of China. So this paper does not settle the matter at all.

Notice that I am not claiming this is poor science. The paper uses what it calls "spatial analyses" to "show that the earliest known COVID-19 cases diagnosed in December 2019 were geographically distributed near to, and centered on, this market." And this it undeniably does compellingly and with interesting techniques. And so the paper may well be published after proper peer review.

But in the media Michael Worobey's paper is presented as settling the politically salient issue (lab leak vs market). And his own comments seem to contribute to this perception in the context in which they are presented. I assume he consented to this because in my experience science journalists tend to be careful with their scientific sources in checking how they are presented. Yet, for the purposes of the controversy (lab leak vs market), the underlying logic of the paper  is something like this, "given that we assume on authority of an interested party that the lab cannot be the origin, we will study how data on the initial spread relates to the Wuhan market." 

I really hope I have missed something and that I am wrong about this because I do not want to contribute to the undermining of trust in science reporting of quality media. But even leaving aside the part of the story that has made it a central issue in our contemporary culture wars, there are many public health reasons to get clear on what the source of the original problem is. And it is a mistake to consider and irresponsible to claim that it is settled based on these studies. 

 

 

*The sentence occurs on p. 19 of my downloaded copy of the paper. Somewhat unusually the document does not have page-numbers. Reference 9 can be found on p. 65 in the "Supplementary references."

On appeasement today

���Our sanctions are not designed to cause any disruption to the current flow of energy from Russia to the world,��� Daleep Singh, a deputy national security adviser, told reporters Thursday.

Since Russia produces one out of every 10 barrels of oil the world consumes and up to a third of Europe���s natural gas supplies, the petroleum card gives it strategic leverage well beyond its nuclear arsenal. That is the same card that members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries once played.--New York Times, Feb. 27, 2022,

Since the implosion of the Soviet Union, Russia has been almost constantly at war. Several of the wars involved the reconquest and pacification of breakaway regions, but a few of them also involve(d) sovereign states, including Georgia and since 2014 Ukraine. The latter is notable because in 1994 it gave up an enormous stockpile of nuclear weapons in return for a commitment to its territorial integrity from Russia, the USA, and the UK (the Budapest Memorandum).  In 2014, after the Russian occupation of Crimea, I wrote that is shows that "security guarantees by the USA/UK are ultimately worthless if the aggressor is another nuclear power."*

In addition, anyone who compares, say, the Iranian relatively frank response to its accidental shooting down of the civilian airliner PS752 to the Russian continued stonewalling and propaganda responses in the aftermath of the shooting down of MH17, can only conclude that the Russian regime is villainous. To this day, the Russian government fabricates lies, and has prevented a resolution of the case in an effort to cover up involvement of its key military personnel. The lack of generosity to innocent foreign victims should not surprise given the Russian government's treatment of its own citizens not the least the assassination of journalists and politicians, and the violent intimidation of critics of the regime. 

The response of the liberal democracies to the Russian regime during the last thirty years has been one of appeasement fueled by a demand for Russian energy (here), and lubricated by legalized graft of European politicians (think Gerhard Schr��der, Wolfgang Sch��ssel,Karin Kneissl, etc.)* and capital from Russian financial elites invested in property, football, and art. In addition, in the background is Russia's gigantic nuclear weapons' capacity which has generated understandable caution. 

During the last few weeks, US intelligence was extraordinary accurate about Russia's invasion. Unusually, the Biden administration, including the President himself, have been quite forthright publicly about sharing their knowledge. But this forthrightness has not been matched by robust policy response. There have been only minor arms shipments to Ukraine without much urgency before the invasion. The current sanctions will not scare Putin; as long as, say, Gazprom and Gazprombank are left untouched they are mostly symbolism. Even banning Russia from Swift -- the great false symbol of true resolve this week -- while a great inconvenience, will not cripple its sources of income or war-making capacity. European energy consumers are pretty much funding Russia's war on Ukraine, and would continue to do so after removing Russia from Swift.

As I write this on the third day of the invasion, an energy blockade of Russia is not on the table. That politicians in liberal democracies fear high domestic energy prices is not news: it also prevents a rational response to the unfolding climate crisis, and has contributed to disastrous policy toward Iraq and Saudi Arabia. And because Pax Americana is so successful, the vast majority of Europe's politicians and public inside NATO do not truly fear Russian aggression, and so perceive little reason to either change energy consumption or to re-arm significantly. (The exceptions live in some of the former Warsaw Pact countries, and perhaps Finland.) Stepping back: it's notable that before the shooting starts, foreign affairs are invisible in European media and play almost no role in elections. This reflects, in part, the continued success of the EU of depoliticizing much intra European politics, and in part the effect of being de facto protectorates of the USA which has made political decision-making narrower and irresponsible. The latter is especially noticeable in the recurring temptation to pretend after 2014 that NATO membership was in the cards for Ukraine, despite the well known vetoes over it.** 

Thus, it's fair to say that the inexperienced President Zelensky has played a bad diplomatic hand badly. Put simply: Ukraine tilted far to the Western alliance without receiving much military benefit from it. To what degree this was perceived as a genuine threat to Russia, I leave to others. But it is worth noting that US policy has prevented military integration between the Ukraine and China, and this has left Ukraine without real allies to deter Russia. Even so, it is difficult not to admire his integrity, heroism, and moving rhetoric of the last few days. Perhaps, Ukrainian nationalism will save him. 

I used 'appeasement' not to suggest that Putin (for all his fascist tendencies) is Hitler. But rather that the liberal democracies are adrift, and that worse may well to come: China's unwillingness to condemn the invasion, and its refusal to join in with even minimal sanctions against Russia, is a sign that it is unwilling to defend the principle of sovereignty as such or defend the current system of international law. (Something similar, albeit less consequential, is the case of India.) If the world's great powers look away from each other's unprovoked aggression, they give themselves a free hand for their own actions, as we have already seen in Hong Kong (recall here; here), and may expect in Taiwan one day.**

One need not romanticize really existing liberal democracy, to believe that even when imperfect and malfunctioning it's preferable over the existing alternatives if one values the many varieties of freedom, and the hope that anyone can contribute to collective improvement. (That's compatible with a long list of evils, alas.) That so many authoritarian-leaning politicians within liberal democracies loudly cheer on Putin's invasion suggests that they instinctively recognize that it weakens the more cosmopolitan and democratic forces in their own countries. The bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan has projected weakness, and these politicians sense that the forces that brought Trump to power are not fully overcome yet. For authoritarians everywhere any defeat anywhere of the ideals of the open society is a domestic victory.

Liberal democracies are more secure when other countries are liberal democracies. This is not primarily because of the idea that liberal democracies don't attack each other (although if it were true, that's very helpful), or because they can mutually enrich each other. But rather because they need each other to keep each other reasonably honest, to learn from each other's experiments in living, and to secure each other in the faith that a people's self-government is enduring and that the lure of authoritarian strongmen, so tempting in insecure times, can be resisted. If Kiev falls it will not end our civilization, but if the drift continues it will be a nail in our coffin.

 

+ I also predicted a new age of Nuclear arms proliferation which has turned out to be less than I expected at the time.

*I am leaving aside Trump's entourage but for a useful summary see here. 

**There is a deeper charade here. The US does not need NATO or any of its allies to provide real security guarantees. By occasionally promoting NATO membership it effectively passes the back to others for policies it does not really wish to pursue.

Even in a Welfare State Being Sick Is Expensive and Trying to get Care draining (Covid Diaries)

In January 2021 (recall), after I tested positive for covid-19 in London, I contacted my GP in Amsterdam. She was gracious in acknowledging that her initial diagnosis (stress) of my symptoms was mistaken. (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, and here). On the phone she urged me to get a blood-test to establish some base-lines for my disease (amongst other reasons). Because I was not part of the NHS (yet), I found a private provider who came to my home. Much to my amazement there were numerous providers of blood tests in London who cater to the very large ex-pat community. Within 24hrs, in the middle of a lockdown and stories of long lines of ambulances waiting to deliver urgent care patients, I had my test results and a hefty bill. I paid the bill. After consulting with my travel and health insurance companies, I decided to submit (via a nice app) to my Dutch medical insurance. The insurance company specializes in medical care workers (since my better half is a surgeon), and I have always been very happy with them. When a few weeks later, I checked on its status, I noticed it was declined. I contact the insurance company which informed me that I needed a proper referral from my GP. 

I contacted my Dutch GP -- where the practice was, of course, also groaning under Covid restrictions and added volume of care --, and explained the situation. Thankfully my GP had good notes, and it was agreed to provide with a referral for the insurance company. I was then introduced to the secured email system they use to communicate sensitive information to patients, and I was reminded that I could use the (less secure) web portal for communications with the GPs while I was in London. In the year since, I have become very familiar with the quirks of both software systems (but about that some other time), but they have also made life much much easier (especially as my brain fog developed).* So, a few weeks after submitting the initial declaration, I resubmitted it. 

I think most regular readers realize that my family lives in London, whereas I work and have a place in Amsterdam. (I eventually joined the family GP in London, and so entered the NHS system.) In fact, I bought my 1BR in the Fall of 2019. This was, in fact, the first bit of property that I owned in my life. And as 2020 developed, travel between London and Amsterdam became increasingly cumbersome. And just before it became nearly impossible, my Chair suggested I head to London as we were transitioning to remote teaching. (Subsequently, I negotiated a teaching leave during the Fall because I accumulated a lot of extra hours.) So, for most of 2020 and 2021, the final book boxes remained unemptied in my living room. That Fall (2020), because I didn't have a home office space, and the British Library was closed, I subscribed to one of those office companies so that I could get some research done and have a quiet please for contact with my colleagues and PhDs.

Okay, back to that insurance claim. Early last year I forgot about it because I had more important things on my mind: like not burning down the house accidentally while making lunch, figuring out how to coordinate the exams for a massive lecture course from my sick-bed in another country, and, say, my inability to walk more than fifteen minutes with my family. But 300��� is a lot of money even in good times, so eventually I remembered, especially when, under ordinary social security rules my salary started to be cut after nine months of illness (at the start of October 2021). This amounted to a 15% salary cut. Not huge, but noticeable in a two-household single family with a school-going kid. At that point, I took a sober look at my expenses, and made some non-trivial cuts: I gave up my US phone-number (after thirty years or so), paused my habit of collecting antique books, didn't renew a whole bunch of subscriptions to learned journals and magazines, and stopped my habit of ordering out when alone and took up cooking again (at which time I was less likely to burn down the house). During the early phase of my illness I also eventually remembered to halt my office subscription. None of these decisions felt like hardship, and whatever stress I had about my illness, I am blessed that I am not especially worried about my financial future. 

So, in the Fall of 2021 I contacted my insurance company which suddenly became much harder to reach due to their service agents working from home, the heavy volume increase in claims (by folk like me), and, I assume, increased sick leave (some of this information comes from the message they repeatedly provide you with while whiting for an agent). And because I was not feeling so well during this period, I invariably gave up after waiting after endless periods on hold.  I return to the claim below.

Now, the insurance claim is not the only such extra expense I have encountered. And I will spare you the many examples. Unlike in the American system where these kind of things can be catastrophic, the extra expenses per occasion amount to 10-20��� at a time. In the Dutch context this is primarily due to the fact that many individual, specialist care providers in the Dutch system are opting out of direct contracts with insurance companies, so that they can charge slightly higher rates. (The rates have a mandated ceiling to them, but they like to charge near the ceiling.) And at the urging of my occupational physician I have tried out some of these care providers (some of which providing highly experimental care). In most cases, I have simply swallowed the cost, but I have also tried to get my university to pay for some of the additional costs (the margin between what my insurer will pay and the amount I will pay), and much to my frustration the university declined to do so (even though the care is being undertaken at the urging of the occupational physician). Don't get me wrong I don't feel arm-twisted by the occupational physician; I am happy she is on the look-out for care that might help.

As an aside, you may wonder why I bother with the Dutch health care system, if I am now part of the NHS (where nearly everything is free except for some modest co-payments for prescription drugs). The simple answer is that the wait-periods for non-urgent care -- and long haul is not considered urgent -- is really extraordinarily long in the NHS. (There is a lot of quiet suffering in the UK!) Obviously, this is partially the effect of switching resources and people to treat urgent Covid-19 care, but it is also function of structural underfunding of NHS, and the way its referral procedures and prescriptions function. It's quite amazing really that a few weeks delay in the Dutch lead to modest apology, and it would be treated as a miracle of efficiency in the NHS. (In a nearby possible world, I would do comparative health care spending research by now.) So, I keep my Dutch GP informed of my treatment and consultations with the long haul clinic at UCLH, and she helps coordinate my Dutch care. So, I try to get the best of both worlds, but it is exhausting to get care for myself.  (I will ignore in this post the many things that make it infuriating including the fact that many Dutch specialists treat long covid as a life style burn out or as primarily a lung disease.)

Last week, I needed to call my insurer again to figure out reimbursement on a new health care provider and in particular how to make the insurance codes match on her bills to me and my claim submissions. The wait was short, and I got a wonderful agent on the phone. And after we solved that problem (it would cost me, I guess, 10-20���/visit), I decided to ask her about the blood test claim of January 2021. Thanks to the app, it was easy to hunt down all the information in her system, and after, putting me on hold, and looking through the claims, she admitted it was unclear to her why I was not paid out. But she couldn't make the decision, the claims department had to do it. And then she informed that she did not get priority with the claims department, but that she would also be put on hold and that the wait would be long. Would it be okay if she called me back next week? I noted and wrote down her name, and happily agreed to these terms. I also noticed I had gone well beyond the 30 minutes I can handle phone-conversations. And so went to bed to give my head a rest.

Fast forward to the present. I just got off the phone with another kind insurance agent who had no record of my conversation ever happening last week. He never doubted that it did happen. He and I went through the case again, and he agreed with his colleague's evaluation that it was odd I was not paid yet, but formally this was a decision of the claims department. This time, I asked if he could send me an email or a letter that we had had this conversation. He agreed. And he also suggested that the company would only contact me if they declined to pay. If the claims people sign off, I would get the usual notice on my app, and the money. I happily agreed to those terms. When we hung up I noticed the conversation I had lasted 27 minutes and 5 seconds. It was time to make another espresso.

Now, to reiterate, none of this is catastrophic American style. I don't have the risk of collecting agency breathing down my neck, eviction, etc. But it has given me a glimpse of the ordinary struggles that poor people with chronic diseases have even in reasonably well functioning welfare states. (And, of course, Dutch recent history -- google 'toeslagenaffaire' or 'Dutch childcare benefits scandal' -- suggests it does not work so well for poor people who have a migration background.) Expenses accumulate in open-ended fashion just as the source of income is reduced. It eats up energy to keep track of these, and to try to get claims paid out. This is alongside the emotionally draining aspect of trying to get oneself (or loved ones) the care they need, and navigating complex bureaucratic systems and the not infrequent passive aggressiveness of overworked care workers who may not be able to help you at all. (The ones that clearly think they may be able to help you tend to be much nicer!) As a male professor, I have a lot of social capital, and I have non-trivial number of connections in medicine. My rule of thumb is, if the whole process is difficult for me, it must be agonizing for folk with much fewer social and financial resources.

So, if your underlying disease makes it difficult for you to concentrate and have modestly long conversations, trying to get care (while partially working and being a dad/husband/son/brother/uncle, etc.) actually undermines one's heath and sanity. And it's a peculiar social fact that when your expenses increase due to need, your income gets cut. Meanwhile, that blood test remains un-reimbursed.

 

 

*The NHS, by contrast, uses a standardized portal for GPS that is cumbersome and time-consuming, and actually likely to lead more errors.    

Huizinga on Schmitt and the Collapse of the Whole System of International Law

    Though there may be abundant traces of play in domestic politics there would seem, at first sight, to be little opportunity for it in the field of international politics. The fact, however, that these have fallen to unheard of extremes of violence and dangerousness in political life among nations does not in itself exclude the possibility of play. As we have seen from numerous examples, play can be cruel and bloody and, in addition, can often be false play. Any law-abiding community or community of States will have characteristics linking it in one way or another to a play-community. A system of international law is maintained by the mutual recognition of certain principles and maxims which, in effect, operate like play-rules despite the fact that they may be founded in metaphysics. The explicit acknowledgment of the pacta sunt servanda principle is a de facto recognition that the integrity of the system rests on a  willingness to play along. Once a party withdraws from the rules of the system, the whole system of international law must, if only temporarily, collapse unless the outlaw is banished from the community as a "spoilsport." 
   The maintenance of international law has always been dependent on the [continued] validity of principles such as honour, decency, and good form. An important part of European rules of warfare developed, after all, out of the code of honour proper to chivalry. International law tacitly assumed that a defeated state would behave like a gentleman and a good loser, even if it seldom did. The duty to declare war officially, though often violated, belonged to the good form of warring states. In short until quite recently modern European war included and still retained the ludic elements of war, which we have uncovered in all archaic eras, and on which the absolutely binding character of the rules of war in large part rested. 
   A common phrase in German speech speaks of the entry of war as "Ernstfall". In strictly military parlance the term is correct. Compared with the sham fighting of manoeuvres and drilling, 'real' war is undoubtedly what seriousness is to play. But it's altogether different when he term "Ernstfall" is understood politically. It would entail that foreign policy has not attained its full degree of seriousness, her real effectiveness, until the state of war is reached. This view is confessed by some. [In the Dutch, but not English, there is a note to Huizinga's (1935) In the Shadows of Tomorrow.] For them all diplomatic intercourse, insofar as it moves in the paths of negotiation and agreement, is only a preface to war or a transition between two wars. It is logical that its adherents, who regard war and its preparations as the sole form of serious politics, should deny that war has any connection with contest [Huizinga uses 'wedkamp' here which as he notes earlier, signals the rolling of betting in legal and athletic contests--ES] and hence with play. The agonistic factor, they tell us, may have been powerfully operative in earlier eras, but contemporary warfare is elevated above the old contest. It is based on the "friend-enemy" principle. All real political relationships among nations and states, so they say, are dominated by this principle. [Here Huizinga cites Schmitt's Der Begriff der Politischen in Dutch and English editions.]** The other group is always either your friend or your enemy. Enemy, of course, is not to be understood as inimicus or ������������ (echtros), i.e. personally hated, or though wicked, but only as hostis or ����������������, i.e. the stranger, who is in your group's way or about the stand in its way. Schmitt refuses to regard the enemy even as a rival or adversary. He is according to him just an opponent [tegenstander] in the most iteral sense and is thus to be liquidated [uit de weg ruimen]. If ever anything in history has corresponded to this gross reduction of the idea of enmity, which turns it into an almost mechanical relationship, it is precisely that archaic antagonism between phratries, clans or tribes where, as we saw, the play element was of considerable significance, and from which the growth of culture has carried us beyond. In so far as there is a glimpse of correctness in Schmitt's inhuman delusion, the conclusion has to be: war is not the 'Ernstfall,' but peace is. Only by conquering that pitiable friend-enemy relationship will humanity lay claim to the recognition of her dignity. With everything that evokes or accompanies it, war always remains ensnared in the daemonic witchcraft of the game.--J.H. Huizinga (1949 [1944]) Homo Ludens: A Study in the Play-Element in Culture, London Routledge pp. 208-209. {With corrections by Eric Schliesser in bold.}*

Homo Ludens appeared in Dutch in 1938. After the Von Leers incident (recall), Huizinga was effectively black-listed in Nazi-Germany (see Gossman's "Afterword" to Otterspeer's article). Somewhat amazingly the English translation was translated from the German edition, which, according to the English translation,  is supposed to have appeared in Switzerland in 1944. But, in fact, Huizinga was also pretty effectively black-listed in neutral Switzerland. The book first appeared in German with Pantheon (a small press) in Amsterdam in 1939. Pantheon, which was not a Jewish firm, continued operation during the war. In Switzerland, the book was finally republished by Burg-Verlag in Basel, including a 1944 edition, which seems to have been a source of the English translation. I write 'a source' because the (anonymous to me) English translator appended the following note to the book:

THIS edition is prepared from the German edition published in Switzerland, 1944, and also from the author's own English translation of the text, which he made shortly before his death. Comparison of the two texts shows a number of discrepancies and a marked difference in style; the translator hopes that the following version has achieved a reasonable synthesis. (vii)*

While it is tempting to turn swiftly to Huizinga's argument against Schmitt, it is worth noting that in Dutch the sub-title of the book is, "Proeve Eener Bepaling van het Spel-Element der Cultuur." In contemporary Dutch, a 'proeve' primarily means a 'tasting,' but in the past it is often used in terms of a 'trial' or 'assaying' (or 'essay'). It shares a root with the English 'proof'. And if you read the book, it's pretty clear that Huizinga intents to convey that the book involves taste and assaying. The first word ("Essai") of the sub-title French translation ("Essai sur le fonction sociale du jeu") captures these resonances by using 'Essai', although interestingly enough the rest of the sub-title is rather over-interpretive (even reductive). But I also suspect, as (also) passages that I quoted above from near the end of the book imply, Huizinga means to suggest that in his own day the play-element of culture is being challenged if not in danger of collapsing (a proeve in the sense of a beproeving--an ordeal or test).

Okay, with that in place let's turn to Huizinga's argument. It is no surprise that writing in an age of the collapse of the League of Nations into farce that Huizinga would have thought that the system of international law was rather fragile--that a single defection could make it collapse unless the rest is strong enough to banish the rule-breaker altogether from the system. We now know that this is need not be the case. The international system can survive considerable rule breaking by even its vital and leadings members and, what is more amazing, can maintain many of its norms with important rule-breakers while they are knowingly violating international law. So, for example, even while countries are putting sanctions on Putin's regime, Russia participates in an enormous range of international commercial and technical practices that are regulated by international law that nobody will consider revoking. Obviously, there is a tipping point where that may not be true anymore.

One way to understand Huizinga's diagnosis of Schmitt's position is that according to Huizinga (and I have a distinct feeling that this anticipates Foucault's interpretation of liberalism), and in a reversal of Clausewitz's famous dictum, Schmitt treats ordinary politics and diplomacy as a continuation and extension of war. It's in this fact that, according Huizinga's Schmitt, the paraphernalia of diplomacy and politics have their true significance.   

Now, the position attributed by Huizinga to Schmitt that ordinary politics and statecraft are just the continuation of war and preparation for it implies that on the Schmittian picture there is no escape from the Hobbesian state of nature at all. So, it is worth noting that Huizinga converges on a crucial agreement with Strauss's criticism of Schmitt: (recall) that Schmitt remains, despite his own self-understanding, in the Hobbesian ambit. (I have no evidence that Huizinga was familiar with Strauss' reading of Schmitt.)

In addition, Huizinga attributes to Schmitt an ideal of progress. (Again, this is accord with Strauss, who discerned the existential providentialism in Schmitt, who is for all his rejection of liberalism a committed modernist.) But according to Huizinga, Schmitt's idea of progress presupposes the overcoming of the ludic and agonic ideals that were once inherent in the conceptualizations of war. And, on Huizinga's account this makes modern warfare the true barbarism because it mechanically promotes the killing of enemies.

Here, Huizinga echoes the practice -- from Thomas More forward, but reaching its peak in Enlightenment thought -- of treating modern Europeans as the true barbarians. And this is supposed to meet Schmitt on his own terms because according to Schmitt it's those very humanitarian ideals -- which turn the enemy into a inhumane monster -- that lead to total war. 

At first sight, it might seem that Huizinga misses in his analysis of Schmitt is that enemies are symmetrical to each other: that there is a moment of existential choice in which some are recognized as friends to which one belongs and other social unities as enemies. This parity is absent in social domination and subordination. So, something of the agonic element is maintained even in Schmitt's analysis. And, in fact, I think this is Huizinga's position ("war always remains ensnared in the daemonic witchcraft of the game"), although it's unclear if Huizinga also thinks this is an immanent critique of Schmitt.

Be that as it may, while it's true that there is a sense in which Huizinga's response to Schmitt is question-begging (humanity is not common ground), it is not silly, and strikes me as coherent.+ In particular, Huizinga promotes the idea that the overcoming of the friend-enemy distinction is a real possibility and once this overcoming is associated with humanity's dignity (there are Kantian deals lurking here) a worthy ideal. In this, Huizinga echoes Ortega Y Gassett (recall) and he anticipates Popper's argument (recall). This is something that cannot be denied by Schmitt because the enemy-friend distinction itself presupposes an existential choice; and so could be otherwise. (Again, Strauss who parts ways with these liberals had noticed that Schmitt shares common ground in such matters with his liberal opponents.) Huizinga's position does not deny that politics plays a role in culture or in games, but rather that such activities, even when fully immersed in them, can reach beyond themselves to something ethical (or sittlich in a soft-Hegelian sense).

Huizinga does not claim that all of culture is play. In fact, he invites us to consider the renewal or development of a political art in all seriousness: this is the art of peace, how to achieve it and how to maintain it. (And given the Kantianism, this is really the art of world-federation.) And Huizinga claims here (and at the start of Homo Ludens) explicitly the authority of Plato's Laws 803:  "It is the life of peace that everyone should live as much and as well as he can." And matching Schmitt's Christian political theology, with Plato's, we learn that in order to be serious about the art of peace, we must learn to understand ourselves, looking up, as God(s)'s playthings. 

 

 

*My corrected translation is based on the 1951 Dutch third edition. It's possible, of course, that Huizinga's own translation provides authority for the English translator's choices. (It would be interesting to learn if the manuscript still exists.) But, as my corrections suggests, and as can be established by comparing it to the English printed version, the (1949) English translation deviates significantly from the original Dutch.

**The Dutch translation also cites the 1927 version not just the 1933 version.

+Some (e.g., Lambrow 2020) have claimed that Huizinga has an unpolitical conception of culture/play or that he effaces the politics of culture by insisting on the autonomy of play.

On When the Rector (Huizinga) canceled a Nazi

The rector [Huizinga] reports that he has been informed that Dr. J. von Leers, leader of the German delegation to the current ISS Congress, is the author of a pamphlet entitled "Forderung der Stunde, Juden 'raus!" [The call of the hour: Out with the Jews!], which was reprinted in March 1933 and in which can be found a passage on the ritual murder of Christian children. The passage in question concludes that this popular belief should he consid��ered an urgent threat from which there is need for protection even today. In the event that the report proves to be true, the committee believes the Senate should make its views known unequivocally and discuss possible further measures. Finally, it was agreed that, through Professor van Wijk, Dr. von Leers should be invited to discuss the matter with the rector in the Senate Chamber, in the presence of the Clerks, at which point he will be asked whether the report is correct. If he denies that it is correct, a protocol to that effect will be drawn up, to be  signed by him. If he admits this is correct, the Senate will communicate its disgust by requesting char he no longer avail himself of the hospitality of the university, and by reserving the right to rake further measures.--Quoted from Otterspeer, Willem. "Huizinga before the Abyss: The von Leers incident at the University of Leiden, April 1933." Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27.3 (1997): 396. Translated by Lionel Gossman and Remier Leushuis 

I recently read Huizinga's Homo Ludens. I was surprised that it closes on a profound criticism of Carl Schmitt's views on the friend-enemy distinction. (Huizinga explicitly cites Der Begriff der Politischen.) I intended to write a blog post about it, and decided to look at some secondary literature. I found two very stimulating papers on their wider exchange (see here Geertjan de Vugt 2017; and here Alexander Lambrow 2020.) The Lambrow paper confirmed the existence of a 'Von Leers incident' mentioned on the Wikipedia page devoted to Huizinga. Lambrow referred me to Otterspeer's study which is very much worth reading (not the least for its dry commentary). The passage quoted above is from the Archives of the Leiden University Senate, and are the minutes of its meeting. The date of the the event is April 11, 1933.

The ISS Congres was an opportunity for students from Germany, France, England, and Holland to meet. The Congress was hosted by Leiden university and had been opened by Huizinga. In 1933, Von Leers (the leader of the German student delegation) was not a student anymore. He had been added to the delegation, presumably by the new regime in Germany. The meeting between Huizinga nd Von Leers was quickly arranged, and Von Leers confronted with his writings. I quote some of the minutes:

When the incriminating passages were read out, he had admitted the possi��bility that they might be his own words, with the proviso, how��ever, that the passage might turn out to be a quotation. With that same proviso, the rector had expressed the Senate's "tiefen Abscheu und tiefe Verachtung" deep revulsion and deep con��tempt-in German in the text], had added that he reserved the right to take further  measures, and that he requested that Dr. von Leers no longer avail himself of the university's hospitality. Dr. von Leers had noted first that the reproved opinions were shared by the Reichs Chancellor and other high officials...Since the conversation seemed likely to become needlessly painful, [Huizinga] had put an end to it, observing chat he could no longer shake hands with Dr. von Leers. (396-7)

Now, Huizinga was already a famous scholar for his Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen (1919), translated as Herbst des Mittelalters (1924), and as The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924). And he was by no means a Marxist, Socialist, or Positivist. In fact, Huizinga had been invited to the Lippmann colloquium in 1938, so during the period he was viewed as potentially sympathetic to liberalism. In the article, Otterspeer, himself an accomplished scholar, suggests that he is "what we would now call a conservative liberal, and in his version of that posi��tion, he expressed the values of a petit-bourgeois elite." (413) I don't think this is false, and it is certainly worth noting, as Otterspeer does, that Huizinga had expressed some skepticism about parliamentarianism (especially in its mass form (415-416)). But it is also worth noting that Huizinga was astutely sensitive to what we now call 'cultural' even 'agonistic pluralism' (anticipating Lippmann's own views) and that's a view we don't tend to associate with what in the low countries passes for conservative liberalism. In addition, Huizinga was not especially known for philosemitic views.

I used a cognate of 'canceling' in this the title of this post not just as click-bait. (Von Leers really was a Nazi.) As the passages reveal, Huizinga revoked the university's hospitality while Von Leers was in Leiden. (This led to the conference ending prematurely amongst other consequences.) In addition, he used the occasion to formally express the "deep revulsion and deep con��tempt" of the university to Von Leers and this is symbolically reiterated by the refusal to shake hands. What is especially notable about this, is that all reports suggest that Von Leers remained polite throughout. And that while Von Leers had expressed anti-Jewish sentiments at the conference, the desire to take action did not come from any student participants, but from the rector, that is, Huizinga, who had been informed that Von Leers was the author of an anti-Semitic pamphlet which espoused blood libel.*

Now, as it happens some members of the board of governors, who had been exposed to German complaints about Huizinga's decision, were not happy with Huizinga's actions. It's not entirely clear if their lack of approval is due, as seems most likely, their sense that Huizinga over-stepped his authority and took a decision which he should have run by the board first, or whether they thought it was imprudent to make enemies out of the new German government. It's also possible they thought he made the wrong decision on substantive grounds (although Otterspeer offers no evidence of substantive criticism). Much remains unclear to me about the subsequent interaction between the Board and Huizinga.** 

It seems to have been self-evident to Huizinga that somebody who expressed blood libel as an imminent danger to the German people in print had no place at a serious university. This also means he didn't really formulate the principles on which he was acting. Otterspeer thinks that Huizinga decided to act in order to defend "the honor of the university" which embodied so many of his ideals. (p. 417) What this amounts to Otterspeer explain near the end of his paper:

Von Leers's transgression seems rather to be of nonprofessional conduct-not playing by the basic rules of the scholarly or academic game. For Huizinga evidently assumed that as an educated man, von Leers knew that the popular stories about ritual murders or Christian children by Jews were unfounded and had been shown to be so by historical scholarship. In other words, von Leers had cynically sought to manipulate public opinion by presenting palpably false statements in the guise of historically valid ones. He had only played at playing the scholarly game; in fact, he had shown no respect for any partner nor observed any rules. (324; this interpretation is endorsed with some elaboration by Lambrow 2020: 827)

Otterspeer's account also fits with the argument that Huizinga was to develop in Homo Ludens. But in the absence of direct evidence, it must be treated cautiously as informed speculation.

Having said that, what I like about Otterspeer's suggestion is that Huizinga intuits an important distinction between scholarship and ersatz scholarship as an ideal worth policing at a university. And that it is unbecoming to universities to welcome those that promote ersatz scholarship to the public. For all involved in the dispute it is telling that Von Leers seems to think that the approval of the Reichs Chancelor is at all salient to the matter at hand. Why this is so is worth articulating.

Otterspeer makes clear that Huizinga's expulsion of Von Leers should not be merely interpreted as Huizinga seeing Von Leers as a spoilsport. (These can be useful sometimes according to Huizinga.) Rather, it is Von Leers' aims that are very much part of the problem. (And this is where Otterspeer himself connects the issue to Huizinga's later polemic with Schmitt--some other time I return to this.) "He had betrayed," Otterspeer writes," "and undermined the game, had ''played" at playing, for the sake of no higher principle, no prin��ciple at all nothing but the elimination or all obstacles for the untrammeled exercise of power." (429)+ This must be met by contempt and expulsion.

Clearly, Huizinga's position as attributed to him by Otterspeer, presupposes a willingness to make two kinds of substantive judgments: first, that some agent is involved in ersatz scholarship; second, that this ersatz scholarship does not serve a proper aim or principle. And, in fact, the approval of the Reichs chancelor is not a proper aim of scholarship. And whatever else one can say about Huizinga, he was not deluded about the nature of National Socialism in 1933.++

Huizinga's position cannot be defended under freedom of speech and seems to go against the ordinary norms of hospitality, but it is wholly intelligible in terms of academic freedom. For, academic freedom recognizes that scholarly speech is rule-bound (and evidence/method-bound) in lots of evolving ways, and that it presupposes judgments of quality on a regular basis. And engaging in ersatz scholarship disrespects the scholarly community and its members. In addition, Huizinga's position presupposes that once a determination of ersatz scholarship has been made, there is a willingness to judge the ends it is serving. And it is pretty clear that these ends are in this case not just incompatible with commitment to truth, but also what we may call the spiritual authority of a university--it must not be seen as a mere servant of power. It is surely not a coincidence, that mere weeks after Hitler acquired dictatorial powers, Huizinga didn't treat Von Leers' past writings as an insignificant curiosity.

Now, Huizinga's stance is not an easy position to defend. It's notable that Huizinga was not being critical of what Von Leers said at the conference (where he was plainly anti-semitic, as Otterspeer notes), but of his previous published writings. But it can help explain the particular animus shown to some scholars who present themselves as scientific authorities, but avoid (say) the normal practices of scholarly peer review and scholarly give and take, and who seem to welcome the protests they generate as good for business or  the political ends they serve. I have come to think this is characteristic of, say, the work of Charles Murray (recall here for evidence; here), but fill in your favorite example. Of course, such judgments can and must be defeasible. (Notice, that Huizinga makes a real effort to establish whether Von Leers is the author of what's attributed to him.) Of course, once one has established that someone is engaged in ersatz scholarship, it is very difficult to treat their ends as somehow redemptive. 

I perfectly grant that a lot of apparent and real contemporary canceling is not like this on contemporary campuses. So, I don't want to suggest Huizinga anticipates all the versions of canceling and the excesses of our age. I also think that it is perfectly legitimate for universities to invite despicable characters in order to facilitate mutual understanding among hostile groups (which is what ISS was trying to promote). Some celebrated universities today have friends of torture and other war criminals on faculty, after all. 

But in virtue of Huizinga's willingness to take academic life seriously, and the fact that his academic achievements were not insignificant (and, for all the limitations we have discovered in them by now, still worth engaging with), I do wish to treat him as a kind of exemplar. Huizinga was rather cautious about involvement in political affairs, and for most of his life he kept his distance from politics. Huizinga's role in the Von Leers incident challenges many common preconceptions about the significance of canceling not the least the claim that the policing of academic speech is somehow extraneous to academic life or motivated by political ideologies or partisanship of various sorts. Unlike those that conflate academic freedom with freedom of speech, Huizinga recognizes that academic speech is governed by rules and an ethos that need to be enforced. And to respect these rules and that ethos, one most be willing to discriminate and judge, and hold some agents accountable for their words such that they are unwelcome on campus. Its incumbent on each academic community to figure out if they are willing to live by such demanding ideals.

 

*It's unclear to me who informed Huizinga of this. When he confronted Von Leers he had not seen or read the pamphlet yet. He read the pamphlet after the conference.

**The Chair of the Board was Adriaan van de Sande Bakhuyzen, who was the mayor of Leiden at the time and the son of an important Leiden astronomer. This was not someone who would naturally defer to the rector, even one as eminent as Huizinga.

+Lambrow ignores this about Otterspeer's article.

++In a fascinating recent essay, Liam Kofi Bright has discussed the significance of cultural theory capable of judging one's own age. It is by no means easy to be a discerning and impartial judge of one's own age. And certainly partisan polarization makes it very difficult to be impartial about these matters. But Huizinga's practice as a cultural historian seems to have facilitated his good judgment in 1933.

How to Fix the Referee Crisis in Professional Philosophy

It has come to the point that the most suitable referee(s) for a paper are almost never available. It takes us so long to find reviewers, sometimes a month, six weeks or more (this situation is also exacerbated by the fact that many people don't respond to referee requests at all). This lengthens the span of time even more for the total review process. All sorts of small fixes don't work anymore, e.g., shortening the time that people get to review, asking for alternatives (this is still very much appreciated, but unfortunately alternative referees are just as unavailable). 

Of course, it could be that my editorial experience is atypical--I'm just one scholar.

But it is my strong suspicion that the peer review system is finally broken beyond reasonable repair. We've seen a slow worsening of the situation and the pandemic has finally broken the system. People are burnt out and overburdened, job candidates increasingly desperate.--Helen de Cruz "Seems like the peer review system has given up the ghost" @The Philosophers' Cocoon

De Cruz's piece has generated a huge discussion, not just among the Cocooners, but also (here) at Daily Nous. The situation she describes has been a long time coming (and for once I can claim I partially predicted it (recall here; here)). There are a number of major interlinked reasons for the current status quo (extreme referee shortage): (i) an extreme scarcity of decent tenure track jobs relative to number of PhDs minted. This is a major source of anxiety throughout the profession. (ii) The unreasonably low acceptance rate of philosophy journals such that perfectly competent papers have to be refereed multiple times by a fixed number of referees. (iii) The perceived role that prestige and quality of publications play in hiring. And, perhaps, (iv) the relative ease of free-riding in the current system. The real free riders are universities (who outsource quality control without rewarding it internally--my own university never even asks to list refereeing anywhere) rather than particular individuals. In what follows, I take for granted that the low acceptance rates are functional, that is, maintained in order to produce prestige (recall this post). And the combination of (i-iii) has generated a veritable arms race in publication. In addition, (v) the long delays in refereeing time, have made it prudent to have multiple papers under review at the same time, thus, exacerbating the underlying problem.

In what follows, I take for granted that the norm of regular publication has been good for professional philosophy. Reasonable people can disagree about this. But in my view it has allowed for more fine-grained discussion and for specializations to emerge that have improved quality. Yes, it risks generating hyperspecialized echo-chambers with lowest common denomination salami publications, but these, in turn, generate arbitrage opportunities for people who read widely or who practice what I call synthetic philosophy.

I also take for granted that (i) is entrenched in the political economy of modern universities. I am complicit in it, if you find a way to create a revolution, good for you. But what we can do, as a profession, is to cut the ties between prestige, journal publication, and hiring decisions and so reduce the need for referees. And we can do that if we destroy the role of pre-eminence of journals in manufacturing prestige, and restore them to the role of disseminators of knowledge and sites of discussion. This can be achieved in two steps: first, all the major philosophy journals should commit to publishing, say, 25% of articles received. That's considerably higher than the status quo (Phil Quarterly, publishes just 4% of over 850 papers received.) This will have six obvious effects: it will reduce the load on referees; it will end the excessive role of chance in where your paper is published; it will reduce (but not eliminate) the steep prestige hierarchy of our current journal system; it will reduce the excessive delays in getting work into print caused by the difficulty of finding referees; it will turn most major journals into paper mills; it will increase citation rates within the profession.

One may worry that once journals can't play the role of extreme prestige generators, then it's entrenches the roles of PhD granting departments. I agree, and that would be bad. So, and this is the second step: another institution has to take its place. Luckily, such a practice already exists in neighboring disciplines and is present in incipient form in ours: the article (and book) prize. What we need is a proliferation of prizes in philosophy: conference prizes (which are pre-publication); professional association prizes (of the major and smaller societies); best article prizes by journals themselves; and we need more versions of The Philosopher���s Annual.:) In fact, as Don Ainslie reminded me, there should be more prizes on different grounds too: philosophy has far too few of these, which in turn impacts success in interdisciplinary competitions (e.g. national scholarly societies, grant competitions, etc.).+ 

At this point one may worry that such prizes are easily shaped by politics, and that our time will be spent adjudicating prizes rather than refereeing. On the former, I don't see how politics can be removed from the equation entirely (as it is, the journal system has a major 'trust us' component recall). I do not deny that genuine masked review, when it happens, is a real potential equalizer. And notice that on my proposal, we don't eliminate that. People who come from non prestigious intellectual backgrounds can still use journal publication to become noticed. (But the initial signal's power may well be reduced.) And one can use masked review also in prize committees. Over time prizes that show a good track record in their judgment will become more prestigious, and so complement journals in prestige generation and quality control. 

In a way, my proposal is a variant on, and complements, the post-peer crowd review advocated by Marcus Arvan, Liam Kofi Bright, and Remco Heesen which they have defended in print and at Daily Nous (here),* and the ideas promoted by Katzav and Vaessen in a paper in Philosopher's Imprint. (Recall also my post here during the Hypatia controvery, but I had limited the idea for work that might be controversial in various ways and in order to internalize political considerations in a transparent and fruitful way in the review process.) Using prizes is a mechanism to solve the coordination and collective action problem inherent in such proposals, and to assuage worries that non-experts may overwhelm the wisdom of our own crowds.

On the latter concern, this is undeniably true. But I suspect it's more fun to evaluate papers that have already been published -- and so have undergone non trivial quality and editorial control. Also, while writing a prize report is a non-trivial exercise, it's only required for the winning paper(s).  So, on balance I would expect it should reduce the load on those in the profession that are the back-bone of our current referee-system.** 

 

 

+This comment was added after initial publication of the post.

*I also suspect my proposal solves an objection against those that think Condorcet jury theorem is not apt here, because prize awarding is standard setting not discovery of truth. But that's for another time.

**I thank Helen de Cruz and Neil Levy for discussion.