Eric Schliesser's Blog, page 36
October 1, 2020
Newton, Spinozism, and mind/body interaction
Every sentient soul, at different times and in different organs of senses and motions, is the same indivisible person. There are parts that are successive in duration and coexistent in space, but neither of these exist in the person of man or in his thinking principle, and much less in the thinking substance of God. Every man, insofar as he is a thing that has senses, is one and the same man throughout his lifetime in each and every organ of his senses. God is one and the same God always and everywhere. He is omnipresent not only virtually but also substantially, for active power [virtus] cannot subsist without substance. In him all things are contained and move, but he does not act on them nor they on him, experiences nothing from the motions of bodies; the bodies feel no resistance from God's omnipresence.---Newton, "General Scholium" Principia, translated by Cohen & Whitman (1999), 941-942
The first three sentences of the quoted paragraph were inserted into the third (and final) edition of the Principia (while the rest was added to the second edition). They have become subject of intense scholarly scrutiny because of the light they might share on the constraints on any possible explanation of the cause of gravity. So, for example, my good friend Andrew Janiak thinks that in the quoted passage there is a hidden premise that 'a substance cannot act where it is not substantially present' and this reinforces his argument that Newton (always) rejects unmediated action at a distance (Hylarie Kochiras has also argued this; in context my work is one of their targets.) Here I want to bracket that debate (but will return at the very end to it), and reflect a bit on Newton's underlying metaphysics of mind and mind-body interaction.
In context, in the last sentence of the previous paragraph, Newton has just asserted that God is eternal and omnipresent ("will not be never or nowhere," (941)) And in the paragraph following the one just quoted he claims that "the supreme God necessarily exists, and by the same necessity he is always and everywhere." (942; emphasis in original) That is to say, Newton's God is immanent in the universe. Quite a few more remarks in the General Scholium suggest this.
And, in fact, as 'the same necessity' suggests Newton's God's relationship to space and time is very tight (I would say an internal relation). Rather than creating space and time, by an act of will, they exist when he exists in virtue of the same necessity. How to think of Newton's modal metaphysics here is no simple matter (and I have devoted some space to it recall here; here; here). In an early text, De Gravitatione, Newton had tried to characterize this relationship in terms of an emanation doctrine, and there, too, it signals that space and time are not created (or so I argue here).
It's crucial to Newton's general argument that space and time are not nothing or merely ideal or useful conventions. (In De Gravitatione he makes a point of emphasizing this. In the General Scholium it's treated as self-evident.) And it follows from this that there are structural features of the universe (space and time) that are as infinite and eternal as God is. My interest is in trying to characterize one of the relationships between sentience and this spatial-temporal structure.
Now, a few paragraphs before Newton had explicitly denied, and he added a second denial to the third edition, that God is a world soul (940). But a natural reading of the quoted passage at the top is that God is sentient with a soul. (I return to this below.) And such ensouled sentience makes a person. But unlike say, in Descartes' metaphysics, Newtonian ensouled sentience can be spread out in space and time. Yet, like a Cartesian soul, such a Newtonian ensouled sentience does not, despite existing in space and time, itself have parts or is even divisible.
As an aside, my own view is that Newton is a substance monist. For Newton, a substance is a directed source of activity, that is an agent.* (Janiak and I agree about this. But we differ on the monism.) And that the only truly active agent in his metaphysics is God. I grant that Newton uses the plural 'substances' (942) in order to deny, in Lockean fashion, that we have knowledge of their essences (and even less of God's essence). But when he uses 'substances' he means it in the more innocent sense of a 'material entity' not an 'agent.'
Now, an obvious way to make sense of the contours of Newton's position on ensouled sentience in the General Scholium is that he thinks sentience is a kind of emergent property of matter immanent in nature. And so Newton articulates a kind of property dualism.+ This works well for what he says about human persons.
In fact, Newton returns to the question of ensouled sentience in his fascinating closing paragraph of the General Scholium:
A few things could now be added concerning a certain very subtle spirit pervading gross bodies and lying hidden in them; by its force and actions, the particles of bodies attract one another at very small distances and cohere when they become contiguous; and electrical [i.e., electrified] bodies act at greater distances, repelling as well as attracting neighboring corpuscles; and light is emitted, reflected, refracted, inflected, and heats bodies; and all sensation is excited, and the limbs of animals move at command of the will, namely, by the vibrations of this spirit being propagated through the solid fibers of the nerves from the external organs of the senses to the brain and from the brain into the muscles. But these things cannot be explained in a few words; furthermore, there is not a sufficient number of experiments to determine and demonstrate accurately the laws governing the actions of this spirit. (943-944)
As Dempsey has argued, building on I.B. Cohen's interpretation of some draft manuscripts while Newton was developing a response to Leibniz (published in 1715 Account), Newton explicitly refers to experiments done by Hauksbee. Here it looks like Newton is sketching how sentience itself is ground in a powerful, "very subtle spirit" that pervades bodies. In particular, the presence of this spirit helps explain the exciting of sensation in beings like us. Now ''spirit" is a fluid (we use it in that sense when we describe liquor as 'spirits'). And for Newton a kind of (subtle) matter. So, this fits with the emergentism I attribute to Newton. (To be sure, I agree with Stein (2002) and Dempsey that Newton viewed this as a research program because we simply know to little about the nature of mind--so my claim is not meant to be doctrinaire, although Newton is an adamant critic of some positions he rejects.)
In particular, Dempsey calls attention to a passage, "if this spirit may receive impressions from light and convey them into the sensiorium & there act upon that substance which sees & thinks, that substance may mutually act upon this spirit for causing animal motions���" (quoted by Cohen in Newton 1999: 282) I agree with Dempsey that Newton thinks this spirit is a key element in mental causation. But the most natural reading of the passage is, I think, that this subtle spirit is a mechanism by which mental causation takes place. It is not obvious that this spirit also helps constitute or ground the substance which sees and thinks.
Interestingly, Dempsey argues it is likely that Newton is "not here endorsing the independent existence of the mind, but rather is distinguishing it from the organs of sense and the brain. What is more, one straightforward explanation of the natural interaction of this spirit and the mind is precisely that the mind and the spirit with which it interacts are quite similar in nature." (Dempsey 2006: 438) And this fits very nicely with my own emergentist reading. But as I note this very monistic interpretation of Newton's metaphysics of mind is rather speculative.
In fact, I often read Newton in Spinozistic fashion in which God is the one and only substance. (This is, in fact, Clarke's position in 1704, which is what made him a juicy target for Leibniz.) And the universal quantifier in the first sentence of the quoted paragraph, seems to suggest that what Newton says about human minds must fit also God's mind: "Every sentient soul, at different times and in different organs of senses and motions, is the same indivisible person." And if this 'every' includes God, this suggest that God is not just immanent nature, but also material (e.g., "motions").
But I have always hesitated about this because in the General Scholium Newton rejects, as I noted above, the idea of God as a world soul and he writes shortly hereafter that God "totally lacks any body and corporeal shape" (942). So, I think it is not obvious that God's sentience is an emergent property of matter. For (a) God's sentience cannot be grounded in such matter, and (b) in various places, Newton seems to suggest that conceptually and temporally God precedes matter. (In the General Scholium that is not explicit, but it is a kind of implication of his claims about the designed nature of the visible universe.) And so if this is right God's sentience and personhood is not ensouled. But something altogether mysterious.
The passage in which I take him to reject God as the world soul reads as follows:
But, in looking again He rules all things, not as the world soul but as the lord of all. And because of his dominion he is called Lord God Pantokrator. [Newton adds a note: 'that is, universal ruler.'] For "god" is a relative word and has reference to servants, and godhood is the lordship of God, not over his own body fas is supposed by those for whom God is the world soul, but over servants. (940)
Drawing on early work by Dobbs, Rudolf De Smet & Karin Verelst have convincingly argued that here (and in a few other places of the General Scholium) Newton is echoing Lipsius's attack, inspired by Philo, on the old stoic notion of anima mundi. The effect of this Lipsian reading is that God remains immanent to nature, but is not ground in body.
In re-reading the passage, it is not obvious to me anymore that Newton rejects conceiving God as the world soul as such. Rather, he is rejecting analyzing God's rule in terms of the world soul because it does not capture the hierarchical nature of God's dominion.
Even so, it seems unlikely that we're supposed to read Newton as claiming that God's sentience is ground in, and emergent of a, subtle electric (etc) spirit. So, I don't think it is correct to treat God's sentience in terms of emergent properties (in the way, say, Spinoza's parallelism encourages).** Even though Newton and Spinoza agree that thought is a something like an attribute of substance.
So, where does this leave us? First, rather than seeing Newton as relying on a principle of local action, he is articulating an account of the relationship between sentience and body. For human sentience this is ground in a kind of emergent quality of body, especially a subtle fluid. Second, God is immanent in nature, and features of his existence can be derived from the study of nature. Ordinarily,** bodies are not hindered by his presence, and "he does not act on them nor they on him." In so far as God does interact with the bodies and spirits in nature this is fundamentally mysterious, as mysterious as his substance. Third, rather than positing a principle of local action, Newton is developing an account of sentience that may be illuminated by experiments on electricity.
*I use 'directed' to distinguish it from natural principles that are active, but have no self-directed teleological orientation in their activity.
+In a very paper, Geoff Gorham argues that an De Gravitatione all minds are "absolutely incorporeal and indivisible substances." And so that Newton is a kind of substance dualist (just not a Cartesian one). See my alternative here. Crucially, mind is necessary for, and co-extensive with, activities in the body and, simultaneously, body is intrinsically perceptible by minds.
**A famous passage in the queries to the Optics suggests to many that Newton thought God could intervene in restoring the planetary motions.
September 29, 2020
The European Union and Hobson's Nationalist Imperialism
Yet, when Professor Pearson passes from a society of individuals to the society of nations, which we call humanity, he insists upon retaining the older, cruder, irrational method of securing progress, the primitive struggle for physical existence. Why? If it is profitable and consistent with progress to put down the primitive struggle for life among individuals with one another, the family and tribal feuds which survive even in fairly developed societies, and to enlarge the area of social internal peace until it covers a whole nation, may we not go farther and seek, with hope, to substitute international peace and co-operation, first among the more civilised and more nearly related nations, and finally throughout the complete society of the human race? If progress is helped by substituting rational selection for the struggle for life within small groups, and afterwards within the larger national groups, why may we not extend the same mode of progress to a federation of European States, and finally to a world-federation? I am not now concerned with the grave practical difficulties besetting such an achievement, but with the scientific theory.
Although a certain sort of individual efficiency is sacrificed by repressing private war within a tribe or nation, it is rightly judged that the gain in tribal or national unity and efficiency outweighs that loss. May not a similar biological and rational economy be subserved by substituting government for anarchy among nations? We admit that a nation is strengthened by putting down internecine tribal warfare; what finality attaches to the arbitrary social group we term a ���nation��� which obliges us to reverse the economy applicable to tribes when we come to deal with nations?...
But to ascribe finality to nationalism upon the ground that members of different nations lack ���the common experience necessary to found a common life��� is a very arbitrary reading of modern history. Taking the most inward meaning of experience, which gives most importance to the racial and traditional characters that mark the divergences of nationality, we are obliged to admit that the fund of experience common to peoples of different nationality is growing with great rapidity under the numerous, swift, and accurate modes of intercommunication which mark the latest phases of civilisation. It is surely true that the dwellers of large towns in all the most advanced European States, an ever-growing proportion of the total population, have, not merely in the externals of their lives, but in the chief formative influences of their reading, their art, science, recreation, a larger community of experience than existed a century ago among the more distant members of any single European nation, whether dwelling in country or in town. Direct intercommunication of persons, goods, and information is so widely extended and so rapidly advancing that this growth of ���the common experience necessary to found a common life��� beyond the area of nationality is surely the most markworthy feature of the age. Making, then, every due allowance for the subjective factors of national character which temper or transmute the same external phenomena, there surely exists, at any rate among the more conscious and more educated sections of the chief European nations, a degree of true ���like-mindedness,��� which forms the psychical basis of some rudimentary internationalism in the field of politics. Indeed it is curious and instructive to observe that while some of those most insistent upon ���like-mindedness��� and ���common experience,��� as the tests of a true social area, apply them in defence of existing nationalities and in repudiation of attempts to absorb alien nationalities, others, like Professor Giddings, apply them in the advocacy of expansion and Imperialism.
After yesterday's digression on Hobson's imperialism, David Gordon called my attention to a short, biting (1963) essay by Gordon Tullock, who had then just published The Calculus of Consent. The piece anticipates my point that Lenin's reading of Hobson has clearly shaped Hobson's reception. Oddly, Tullock does not remark on the rent-seeking argument that drives Hobson's analysis (or so I claimed.) Tullock is wrong to treat Hobson as an anti-capitalist. But Tullock's main point is spot on: "Thus the fact that Hobson attacked the empires of the capitalistic nations of his day cannot he used as evidence that he op��posed empires in general, any more than Kipling's harsh words about the Russian empire proved that he opposed all empires." (160)
But given Buchanan's genuine interest in European federation (recall here; and here) it is a bit odd that Tullock says nothing about the content of Hobson's vision of empire. For, Hobson promotes a European federation, which, mid-twentieth-century, when Tullock was looking back at the reception of Hobson was not utopian anymore.
To see what Hobson is getting at it is important to recognize that Hobson distinguishes between different kinds of nationalism. His positive conception of a "genuine nationalism" is explicitly indebted to J.S. Mill (recall also). It is pacific in nature and it is ground in mutual solidarity of people (recall) "united among themselves by common sympathies," which Hobson quotes. This good kind of nationalism, which anticipates (recall) Hazony's conception, can generate a form of colonialism that Hobson endorses. But by 'colonialism' he means what the ancients meant, "migration of part of a nation to vacant or sparsely peopled foreign lands, the emigrants carrying with them full rights of citizenship in the mother country, or else establishing local self-government in close conformity with her institutions and under her final control, may be considered a genuine expansion of nationality, a territorial enlargement of the stock, language and institutions of the nation." (Introduction) This Tullock noticed. The key point here is 'vacant or sparsely populated.' Hobson, perhaps naively, thinks such settler ("genuine") colonialism need not become the genocidal and inhumane practice he denounced. As I noted yesterday, and as Tullock anticipates, it is not obvious Hobson's proposals have the resources to block the bad things from occurring.
As an aside, long before the 1619 project, Hobson was -- not unlike Las Casas -- completely forthright about the genocidal nature of much European imperialism. Hobson repeatedly and critically calls the reader's attention to deliberate policy of extermination of peoples who stood in the way of European expansion. This is, for him, the effect of bad nationalism. (He also recognizes an aggressive form of nationalism that is more defensive in character.) This is the reason why Hobson could become the hero of some anti-imperialists (which Tullock mocks). Hobson does so in a chapter that seems to embrace the superiority of Europeans, and the need for a kind of soft eugenic policy.+
With that in mind, let me now turn to Hobson's proposal of a European federation of pacific nations which includes at least some of its colonial projects. Hobson echoes Kant's call for a "federation of European States," as preparatory to "a world-federation." Now, as any reader of Kant's Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim will notice, colonialism and fondness for European federation are not incompatible. And, in fact, as Chris Brooke loves reminding me when the European Union was founded in the 1950s it still contained an imperial hinterland. (Long before Brexit, Algeria and various once Dutch possessions left the Union.) That is to say, Hobson anticipates Hayek's vision of European federalism (recall) in which great European powers maintain some trappings of empire.*
That Hobson proposes a European federation follows naturally from his liberal analysis of the sources of imperialism. Tariffs, protectionism, and rent-seeking all cause and reinforce imperial projects in states with the economic development and resources to do so. And so a federated free trade region would simultaneously undermine imperial interests, reduce friction among the federated, and be more prosperous and so have resources to invest in public goods (including elements of a welfare state). In this sense Lenin is right that Hobson does really anticipates Kautsky's more social democratic vision for Europe.
Let me close with a final remark. Hobson thinks that under modern conditions nations develop and peoples far apart have increasingly similar lives. And he thinks that while modern economies and technologies help intensify national feeling they, simultaneously, create more like-minded nations and so the possibility of a different kind of sympathetic process. That World War I proved, what theorists of sympathy already knew, that such like-mindedness can intensify the nature of mutual conflict, does not refute Hobson's insight. It just reminds us that even the grounds for optimism about a pacific, federated internationalism committed (recall) to liberty must be tempered by a sense of its fragility.
*Some other time I want to look more closely at Hobson's ideas about the relationship between 'super' and 'lower' peoples.
+There is an irony here; in that Hobson kind of anticipates Mises interest in projects of trusteeship, but simultaneously offers the arguments why that is likely to fail.
Hobson, and the Liberal explanation of Imperialism
By the late 1890s, he became convinced that the ���new��� imperialism, unfolding mainly in Africa and Asia, represented an overriding danger to British democracy. It threatened ���peace, economy, reform, and popular self-government,��� catalyzing instead militarism, reaction, and jingoism. Imperialism presented a multicausal explanation for the emergence of the ���earth hunger��� that had gripped the imperial powers since roughly 1870. Its ���leading characteristic��� was competition between great capitalist empires.
I was directed to Hobson by the following remark by Perry Anderson (recall) in his famous (2019) NLR review of Adam Tooze's Crashed: "Durand���s answer [in Fictitious Capital] is that they represent an updated version of Hobson���s vision of the future at the start of the twentieth century: namely the extraction of high levels of profit from investment in production in zones of cheap labour on the periphery of the system, above all in Asia. If this is so, the ���enigma of profits without accumulation��� would dissolve, because firms are indeed investing; not in their domestic economies, where growth, employment and wages stagnate, but in overseas locations, where they have secured very high rates of return." In Anderson's argument the mention of Hobson is, at first sight, a mere aside.
In Durand's Fictitious Capital (2017; originally appeared as Le capital fictif in 2014), Hobson's concerns about the rise of a "new financial aristocracy" in light of (now quoting Durand) China's insertion into the circuits of world capitalism, are presented as "strangely prophetic" (140-141). Durand, in turn, is explicitly echoing Lenin (see here), whom he cites as his source on Hobson. Now Durand -- who is a trained economist -- goes on to summarize Hobson as follows:
The World Hobson describes is characterised by three elements: 1) ���a financial oligarchy��� dominates the rich countries; 2) the workers of these countries are employed in ���personal services��� or ���minor industrial services���; 3) the centre draws a ���tribute��� from the peripheral countries in the form of both profits and industrial and agricultural products. We can translate this system of relations into contemporary terms: the financial profits that feed the upward concentration of income in the rich countries are founded on the exploitation of industrial labour and natural resources in the countries of the global South. Industrial activities that have become redundant in the countries of the centre are reduced to their bare bones, with the result that workers in such areas find themselves limited to support or service activities with little added value (personal services in particular), which cannot be traded at the level of international commerce. Durand's Fictitious Capital, p141 (emphasis added)
Now, Bell and Durand give a good sense of Hobson's overall argument. And neither of them can be said to misrepresent Hobson's (1902) Imperialism. Even so, I think they both end up failing to convey Hobson's underlying argument. (I return to Lenin below)
For, the existence of a "financial oligarchy" that oversaves, and a mass of workers that under-consumes, is for Hobson not a natural fact as it might be taken to be if one thinks it is the ordinary effect of monopoly capitalism. But Hobson is quite clear that such over-saving, "which is the economic root of Imperialism is found by analysis to consist of rents, monopoly profits, and other unearned or excessive elements of income, which, not being earned by labour or by head or hand, have no legitimate raison d'��tre." In particular, as he explains on the previous page, such monopoly profits are not themselves the effect of market-forces, but the consequence of "trust[s] or other combine[s]." (Quoted from Chapter VI) In addition, monopoly profits are fueled by tariffs; this is why, for Hobson it is axiomatic that "Imperialism repudiates Free Trade, and rests upon an economic basis of Protection." (Quoted from Chapter V) Why does this matter?
So, rather than seeing Imperialism as a natural outgrowth of the ordinary development of capitalism, Hobson takes imperialism to be the effect of a political corruption of capitalism: it's the imposition of tariffs and the failure to secure proper antitrust law* that create the economic conditions for imperialism.** For, without tariffs and other anti-competitive policies, profits would be lower and wages higher. (Hobson's argument is entirely Smithian.) Once the state has been captured by protectionist interests, which generates high profits, but underconsumption, a military-financial-evangelical complex (a parasatic class) can easily promote Imperialism. Lenin sums up Hobson's point very nicely, "in its economic essence imperialism is monopoly capitalism.... monopoly arose out of the concentration of production at a very high stage. This refers to the monopolist capitalist associations, cartels, syndicates, and trust." (Lenin, 1916 Imperialism, Chapter 10. I return to Lenin below.)
Now, for Hobson imperialism is the effect of political decisions that are reversible if only Great Britain returned to Liberal projects. He thinks that in reversing imperial projects, the working poor of Great Britain will be wealthier, resources for public investment (in a public education, public goods, and perhaps a welfare state) will be opened up; the nation much richer, and also that it would open the door to less dangerous forms of nationalism, even the possibility of pacific international federation. (Something I return to soon.) I don't mean to suggest that Hobson has no interest in colonial (as distinct from imperial) projects or that he is free from an interest in racism/anti-semitism and eugenics--there are plenty of passages that may well have him canceled today. But at bottom Hobson's economic analysis of imperialism is rooted in political economy of a sort that anticipates the ORDO-liberal interpretation of the political dangers of economic concentration.
As I noted, Lenin does justice to Hobson's analysis. But at one point he differs, and I think this helps explain the reception of Hobson I started this post with. After Lenin writes:
At the beginning of the twentieth century, monopolies had acquired complete supremacy in the advanced countries, and although the first steps towards the formation of the cartels were taken by countries enjoying the protection of high tariffs (Germany, America), Great Britain, with her system of free trade, revealed the same basic phenomenon, only a little later, namely, the birth of monopoly out of the concentration of production.
For Lenin monopoly capitalism just is the natural byproduct of being economically "advanced." And rather than being the exception, Great Britain, with its history of free trade, confirms the rule by also exhibiting monopoly capitalism despite having a different starting point. From Lenin's perspective this is converging evidence. So, if one takes the Leninist diagnosis for granted one need not mention the political conditions that generate a "financial oligarchy" that oversaves, and a mass of workers that under-consumes; it just is the natural condition of developed capitalist economies!
My interest here is not to settle the debate between a putatively Marxist and putatively liberal interpretation of the rise of imperialism. Rather, from my skeptical liberal position, what the confrontation shows, is that there is a challenge, one that has not gone away, that one might formulate toward the liberal position: how does one prevent anti-competitive state capture that serves already existing, powerful economic interests, if these interests benefit or are enriched from such capture? For, it is no good to say that normatively desirable liberalism would not generate imperialism, if really existing liberalism cannot prevent it.+
*The claim about antitrust law is not explicit, but it follows naturally from his argument.
**Hobson also thinks that inherited aristocratic land privilege is a problem. But his (more Georgist) argument seems to me distinct from the one I am presenting here.
+Hobson himself seems to suggest it was due to elite failure.
September 25, 2020
Beattie on Hume's Imperialism, Christianity, Moderation
I wonder at those men who charge upon Christianity all the evils that superstition, avarice, sensuality, and the love of power, have introduced into the Christian world, and then suppose, that these evils are to be preyented, not by suppressing criminal passions, but by extirpating Christianity, or weakening its influence. In fact, our religion supplies the only effect��a�� means of suppressing these passions, and so preventing the mischief complained of; and this it will ever be more or less powerful to accomplish, according as its influence over the minds of men is greater or less; and greater or less will its influence be, according as its doctrines are more or less firmly believed: It was not because they were Christians, but because, they were covetous, and cruel, that the first invaders of America, perpetrated those diabolical cruelties in Peru and Mexico, the narrative of which is insupportable to humanity. Had they been Christians in any thing but in name, they would have loved their neighbour as themselves. No man who loves his neighbour as himself, will ever cut his throat, or roast him alive; in order to get at his money.--James Beattie, postscript, 1778 (1770) An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (sixth edition) p. 460
ln his response to Hume's infamous racist footnote, Beattie notes, among other arguments, that "The empires of Peru and Mexico could not have been governed, nor de metropolis of the latter built after so singular matter, in the middle of a lake, without men eminent both for action and speculation." (427) I assume Beattie is here referring to Tenochtitlan the capital of the Aztec empire. In noticing Beattie's use of 'metropolitan,' I wondered whether he was the first to use it in this sense. But it was, according to the OED, not unusual by his time. Not unlike (recall) Descartes, perhaps, Beattie assumes that great imperial cities, or perhaps empires, grow according to some plan. It is notable that Beattie does not imagine the possibility of an Aztec women facilitating the rise of Tenochtitlan.
As can be seen in the quoted passage above, in the postscript, Beattie returns to the empires of Peru and Mexico. And here he is addressing the great, post-Spinozist debate (recall here) of the eighteenth century whether a polity of atheists is possible. This is, in fact, central to the purposes of his book. Beattie de facto grants that it such a society is possible, but asserts that if so it will engage in inhumanity and "diabolical cruelties." And he treats the conquest of the Americas as an example of this.
There is no sign in his Essay (but perhaps elsewhere) that Beattie thought that the conquest of the Americas is any sense providential, or (as Las Casas hoped) itself an opportunity of spreading the gospel, or (as Adam Smith suggested) an opportunity for mutual gain. It's pretty clear he thinks conquest was a disaster for the locals. As I have noted before, it's not entirely clear that Hume rejects the violent extension of civilization.
Now, Beattie asserts that Christian "religion supplies the only effect��a�� means of suppressing these passions," (emphasis added) that lead to violent conquest. That claim is compatible with two further facts Beattie acknowledges: (i) that many self-described Christians are not true Christians in this sense; and (ii) that even Christians who do not engage in imperial projects and have sincere faith can become so dogmatic in their Christianity (he offers as an example Valla and Scaliger (p. 451)) such that they become inhumane partisan sectarians and develop what he calls a "persecuting spirit" (p. 125).
So, while genuine adherence to Christian doctrine is necessary to suppress the acquisitive passions it is not sufficient for a humane and pacific temperament. There has to be what we may call a 'principle of moderation' such that true Christianity is possible in those that are sincere doctrinal Christians. And it is pretty clear that Beattie thinks that despite presenting himself as a friend of moderation, Hume's skeptical philosophy undermines this very principle of moderation (p. 448; and p. 125).
Even if we were to grant, and not everybody will, Beattie his criticism of Hume (recall also yesterday's post), Beattie does not seem to explain in the Essay how to cultivate the principle(s) of moderation in would-be-true-Christians beyond getting doctrine right (which he admits is insufficient). This is a shame because it might have benefited the would be reader, even a would-be-humanitarian legislator.
September 24, 2020
A long simmering polemical disquisition, and freedom of speech (On Beattie): (I)
Few men have ever engaged in controversy, religious, political, or philosophical, without being in some degree chargeable with misconception of the adversary's meaning: That I have never erred in this way, I dare not affirm. But I am conscious of having done every thing in my power to guard against it. The greater part of these papers have lain by me for several years. They i have been repeatedly perused by ��ome of the acutest philosophers of the age, whom I have the honour to call my friends, and to whose advice and assistance, on this, as on other occasions, I am deeply indebted. I have availed myself all I could of reading and conversation; and endeavoured, with all the candour I am master of, to profit by every hint of improvement, and to examine to the bottom every objection , that others have offered, or myself could devise. And may I not be permitted to add, that every one of those who have perused this essay, has advised the author to publish it; and that many of them have encouraged him by this insinuation, to him the most flattering of all others, That by so doing, he would probably be of some service to the cause of truth, virtue, and mankind? In this hope he submits it to the public. And it is this hope only that could have induced him to attempt polemical disquisition: a species of writing, which, in his own judgement, is not the most creditable; which he knows, to his cost, is not the most pleasing; and of which he is well aware that it will draw upon him the resentment of a numerous, powerful, and fashionable party. But, If these pages, which he hopes none will condemn who have not read, shall throw any light on the first principles of moral science; if they shall sugge��t, to the young and unwary, any cautions against that sophistry, and licentiousness of principle, which, too much infect the conversations and compositions of the age; if they shall, in any measure, contribute to the satisfaction of any of the friends of truth and virtue; his purpose will be completely answered and he will, to the end of his life, rejoice in the recollection of those painful hours which he, passed in the examination of this most important controversy.--James Beattie [1770] 1774 (fifth corrected edition) An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism, Introduction 26-28
Beattie's response (recall) to Hume's racist footnote has been in the news recently (see this fine editorial by Robin Mills.) It is worth noting that Beattie's response to the infamous footnote is introduced as a "short digression" (p. 462 in the fifth edition) in which Beattie illustrates that he is "no blind admirer of antiquity." This digression occurs near the very end of the book (p. 483; in my edition there is also a formal postscript dated november 1770, which sheds much light on Beattie's thinking.) And in context, of the digression, Hume is treated as a kind of misguided modern metaphysical scholastic in this sense as misguided as Aristotle. All of this occurs in a chapter that defends the idea that metaphysics is "something worthy of contempt or censure" (p. 396); and, after discussing Spinoza, Berkeley, and Mandeville, the main charge against Hume is that "every part of philosophy becomes metaphysics in his hands." (407) Since Hume has been successfully and repeatedly re-branded and presented as the fiercest and best critic of metaphysics for over a century now,* we should not expect Beatie's argument to be intelligible at once to any of us. But about Beatie's short digression some other time soon more.
Rather, here I want to call attention to the fact that Beattie introduces his Essay as a polemic ("polemical disquisition"). The quoted passage above are the closing lines of the introduction. And in fact, from what he says this polemic simmered for a long time ("have lain by me for several years"). In reading these lines by Beattie, I realized that I tend to think of polemics as of the moment and (thereby) intemperate. And in recognizing a species of writing as polemical, I am willing to discount certain argumentative short-cuts, rhetorical flights of fancy, or even a well-placed intellectual dagger. In my initial estimation, polemics are like crimes of passion than careful (ahh) scientific treatises, or principles.
But Beattie is explicit that a polemic can be well crafted, and re-crafted ("repeatedly"), and nursed over time in light of informed criticism by esteemed others. Now, the official aim of Beattie's Essay is to shed light on the "first principles of moral science" and to instruct the young away from sophistry and skepticism. And at this point the reader already knows that Beattie's target is Hume, whom he grants is an "excellent politician, financier, and historian." (17-18) And yet, Beattie also believes strongly, that "his philosophy has done great harm." (19) And the
Polemic is probably derived from ������������������, warlike/hostile. And the grounds for Beattie's hostility, the intellectual and moral grounds for his willingness to draw intellectual blood, his willingness to suffer a bad reputation, too, become clear throughout his Essay. He really thinks that Hume is an irresponsible philosopher who helps perpetuate and generate great moral harms in the world.
But as Beattie must have felt these moral and political reasons for Beattie's polemic do not explain it. And by it, I mean the long simmering, carefully crafted, and polished nature of the work, which, after all, succeeded in eliciting from Hume, who momentarily dropped his mask of calm politeness, a vehement non-response. For, in the postscript, Beattie adds the following thought: "My design in the his book was, to give others the very same notions of the sceptical philosophy that I myself entertain." (507) And it is pretty clear that he "detests" the skeptical writings and "despises" their authors' "talents." But that's not all of it.
Beatty is a warm defender of "liberty of speech.' (p.513) And he is quite explicit long before Mill that banning even the most pernicious speech will do more "hurt than good," predictably benefitting the "party" that is being suppressed. (513) But Beattie thinks that one may oppose genuinely pernicious speech with other speech that intends to make the pernicious writings "detestable in the eyes of others." (515) And this is demanded from us as "good citizens." (p. 515)*Beattie recognizes there is a complex line between making writings detestable and making an author of such writings detestable. He prefers the former, but knows that involves something of the latter.
Let me wrap up. It's possible that Beattie is rationalizing or reconstructing his motives for writing his polemical, Essay. But his words ring true to me and explain, I think, some of his rhetorical and presentational choices (including his treatment of Hume's racism). I think he really does try to make Hume's position destable (whatever from some principle as a citizen or a deeper personal "disgust" (424).) In philosophy, Beattie's reputation has -- thanks to Kant's chiming in -- not fared well because of this until, perhaps, last week; because we now recognize he really spoke up against racism. (It's not ad hoc; he has a distinct argument about the role of modern philosophy in facilitating imperialism--about that some other time.)
But here I want to leave you with a question: is he right that the institution of free speech can only be sustained if we see it as our duty not just to refute pernicious and false opinions, but to make them detestable to others? And if the answer is yes, we must craft within liberty of speech a space for a kind of war.
*Hume himself calls his own philosophy a 'true metaphysics;' in recent times Don Baxter, and Stefanie Rocknak; Don Ainslie (amongst others) have done important work in treating Hume as a metaphysician.
September 23, 2020
Polanyi (Karl), Adam Smith, The Great Transformation, and Credit.
The presence or absence of markets or money does not necessarily affect the economic system of a primitive society-this refutes the nineteenth-century myth that money was an invention the appearance of which inevitably transformed a society by creating markets, forcing the pace of the division of labor, and releasing man's natural propensity to barter, truck, and exchange. Orthodox economic history, in effect, was based on an immensely exaggerated view of the significance of markets as such. A "certain isolation;' or, perhaps, a "tendency to seclusion" is the only economic trait that can be correctly inferred from their absence; in respect to the internal organization of an economy, their presence or absence need make no difference.
The reasons are simple. Markets are not institutions functioning mainly within an economy, but without. They are meeting place of long-distance trade. Local markets proper are of little consequence. Moreover, neither long-distance nor local markets are essentially competitive, and consequently there is, in either case, but little pressure to create territorial trade, a so-called internal or national market. Every one of these assertions strikes at some axiomatically held assumption of the classical economists, yet they follow closely from the facts as they appear in the light of modern research.
The logic of the case is, indeed, almost the opposite of that underlying the classical doctrine. The orthodox teaching started from the individual's propensity to barter; deduced from it the necessity of local markets, as well as of division of labor; and inferred, finally, the necessity of trade, eventually of foreign trade, including even long distance trade. In the light of our present knowledge we should almost reverse the sequence of the argument: the true starting point is long distance trade, a result of the geographical location of goods, and of the "division of labor" given by location. Long-distance trade often engenders markets, an institution which involves acts of barter, and, if money is used, of buying and selling, thus, eventually, but by no means necessarily, offering to some individuals an occasion to indulge in their propensity for bargaining and haggling.--Karl Polanyi (1944) The Great Transformation, p. 61-62
Polanyi's official target here is the "nineteenth century myth," treated as "Orthodox economic history," of the "classical economists" in which money causes the creation of markets and so facilitates the division of labor. This nineteenth century myth, in turn, adopts a theory of human nature theory, which includes the "propensity to barter, truck, and exchange," a reference to Smith's account of the origin of the division of labor. And this propensity can (finally) express itself in the developing markets (and division of labor).
The chapter I am quoting has been enormously influential in economic sociology, generating, somewhat ironically as Jens Beckert argues, a huge scholarly literature on embeddedness, and a certain kind of soft-marxist and republican political economy now fashionable again. I cannot tell you how often I read purported refutations of Adam Smith, classical economics, or liberalism more generally that echo Polanyi. I find this amusing because the story Polanyi tells after the "true starting point" is pretty much David Hume's account of the rise of commercial society in "Of Commerce" (except that Hume is more focused on the causes of productivity and adopts a kind of labor theory of value) and (recall) Smith's own account of Europe in Book III of Wealth of Nations (which, admittedly, Smith calls "retrograde" and does not rely on a labor theory of value.) But my interest today is not in defending the Enlightened Scots.
Polanyi's theory of the great transformation treats the development of markets as an imposition of the mercantile national and nationalizing state on towns and country that resisted this.* And this imposition inverted a kind of natural or at least better order of things: "Instead of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system." (60) And where markets arise, they are hemmed in by local restrictions, such that "Local markets are, essentially,
neighborhood markets, and, though important to the life of the community, they nowhere show any sign of reducing the prevailing economic system to their pattern." (66) In other words, prior to the great transformation, markets are tamed by political life and serve community needs. And this story has an enormous pull on communitarians, social democrats, christian democrats and others partially nostalgic for a lost world. (Marxists tend to play a double game here: promoting the disaffection of the nostalgics, but accepting capitalism's destruction as needed for a better future.)
Now, when liberals confront the Polanyi style story, in response they sometimes note that the taming of markets also involves repeated acts of violence, but generally they tend to trot out the sudden upward curve of growing prosperity (wealth and consumption) since the industrial revolution. And the more insidious liberals may even justify colonialism and imperialism because those born late (including the descendents of surviving natives) benefit greatest from the creative destruction that follows from the spread of markets embedded in this curve.+ So, rather than addressing the roots of nostalgia generated by the present status quote, these liberals offer a consequentialist account about the status quo in terms of the good-making features of submitting to forces beyond most community's control (a great financial power, perhaps, excepted). Despite my (skeptical) liberal sympathies, it is obvious that the liberal response won't persuade. (That point is compatible with the further fact that most nostalgic folk are unwilling, in practice, to give up the comforts of modern life.)
Polanyi had kind of anticipated the response. For, Polanyi pre-market societies are characterized by a different fundamental motive than market societies: the "transformation implies a change in the motive of action on the part of the members of society; for the motive of subsistence that of gain must be substituted." (43-44) And while Polanyi does not say this explicitly, a society based on gain is in no sense properly reciprocal. (Here Polanyi cheats a bit because he relies on the reader to view gain as zero-sum not mutual.)
In the few words remaining in the Digression, I can't settle the debate. But in returning to Polanyi, I noticed a curious absence in Polanyi's argument. He completely misses that the primitive economies of medieval europe were suffused with debt; as a leading authority puts it, "it was an important part of medieval life."** People had to make "many deals on credit to allow consumption." (Christine Desan Making Money, 214) Now, Graeber has much of interest to say, also to philosophers, about the role of virtual money in such credit/debt patterns (and perhaps being the original form of money). But here I just want to note an important effect, that a society characterized by mutual credit/debt relations was enmeshed in open ended mutual acrimony and litigation (Desan 218ff.).
So, the social relations that embed pre-market society, if there is such a thing, is one of open ended mutual score-keeping (of mutual loans) and mutual promises of repayment that themselves are potentially precarious, and potential open-ended conflict about trying to call in outstanding debts. And while, if Desan is to believed, it is true that matters were worse in medieval England - because of the English policy of making low denomination coinage scarce --, medieval England is the source of the beginning of the great transformation (recall this post on Adam Smith's account on the origin of capitalism) and so highly relevant to evaluating Polanyi's argument (Desan also names him as one of her targets early in her book).
That is to say, one way to understand the great transformation is that it liberated ordinary people from being routinely in each other's debt, that is, a suffocating embrace of unsteady and stifling mutual obligations that could be called in at the worst possible moments. And in particular, because these credit obligations predictably generated lots of mutual conflicts, they created an opportunity for authorities to settle conflict. This may have helped develop the rule of law in the very long run, but it is pretty obvious in the interest of the powerful to have the not so powerful be in regular conflict with each other and need their mediating/legal services to settle conflict among ordinary people. This form of social embeddedness undoubtedly helped ensure the long-term stability of this mode of governance.
*See here: "Deliberate action of the state in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries foisted the mercantile system on the fiercely protectionist towns and principalities. Mercantilism destroyed the outworn particularism of local and intermunicipal trading by breaking down the barriers separating these two types of noncompetitive commerce and thus clearing the way for a national market which increasingly ignored the distinction between town and countryside as well as that between the various towns and provinces." (68-69)
+Okay, I can't find an example now, but I am sure I have read it once. [Help me out!]
**In fact, a simple word search suggests that for Polanyi debts are only of interest in that they are international/foreign in character in the age of imperialism (or about relationships among medieval towns (p. 283)).
September 22, 2020
Newton and Passivity of Matter
The above remarks square nicely with Newton���s denial that motion results from qualities that are inherent to matter itself and with his belief that for their motions bodies require divinely governed secondary causes, which serve as the immaterial sources of activity and motion. Steffen Ducheyne, "Newton on Action at a Distance." Journal of the History of Philosophy 52.4 (2014): 691-692
As I noted yesterday, inspired by, and partially correcting, Howard Stein, according to my interpretation of Newton, as Newton developed the ideas of the Principia in the 1680s, Newton came to the following position: a body has (at least) two dispositions: (i) a ���passive��� disposition to respond to impressed forces which is codified in the second law of motion; (ii) whereas an ���active��� disposition to produce gravitational force is treated as a distinct interaction codified in the third law of motion. And the ���cause��� of the action is ���the conspiring nature of both��� bodies. For the ���conspiring��� to occur, the bodies must share a ���nature.��� (For the full defense of these ideas see here and here.) And I argue that for Newton the disposition to gravitate is a universal, albeit contingent, relational quality of matter. Despite grounding my views in a textial analysis Treatise of the System of the World (a work that appeared shortly after Newton died), my view has not generated consensus.
Among my critics, Ducheyne is most inclined to draw on archival material. And the passage quoted above is especially important to his (2014) attempt to refute my position. He refers back to it twice more (on pp. 692-693). The reason why it is important to Ducheyne's argument is that it seems to give him the smoking gun he needs. It's one of the few places where Newton explicitly says that matter is passive.
Now, I had already (in 2011) responded to this passage, in a (2009) criticism of Hylarie Kochiras (who had criticized an early version of my argument). (Looking back, I am quite amazed by how polemical we all were!) I wrote (now quoting myself): "Yet, the published version of the Opticks, is agnostic on this matter. In Query 31 he contrasts the ���passive principle by which the bodies persist in their motion or rest, receive motion in proportion to the force impressing it, and resist as much as they are resisted��� with ���active principles, such as are the cause of gravity, by which planets and comets keep their motions in their orbits, and bodies acquire great motion in falling; and the cause of fermentation,��� and so on. Shortly thereafter, he lists ���gravity, and that which causes fermentation, and the cohesion of bodies��� among the ���active principles��� (Newton, 1952, pp. 400���401)."
My response to Kochiras clearly did not convince Ducheyne (who cites Kochiras' exchange with me, so he is aware of it). So, normally I would now throw up my hands and leave it to others to figure out who gets the better of the burden shifting. But two distinct new, additional arguments occur to me. The first argument would be to concede Ducheyne's (and Kochiras's!) reading of this passage, and fall back on the acknowledgment that Newton changed his mind and that after 1700 he was more inclined to accept the passivity of matter as the draft suggests. This response would be open to me because officially I am primarily committed to attributing to Newton the view sketched above to the mid 1680s (as he was drafting the Principia). In the Principia itself he is explicitly agnostic, after all--and this is agreed by everybody.
This (first) concessive response fits would also allow me to take on board some of Ducheyne's arguments about the theological significance of embracing the passivity of matter; or at least recognizing that Newton actively distanced himself from being taken to embrace active matter after the initial reception of the Principia. These theological issues and the question of the nature of mature are related to the challenge to Newton being taken as a kind of neo-Epicurean (and Kant and Adam Smith hint) or a(adherent of "blind fate") crypto-Spinozist (as Leibniz suggested at the start of his correspondence with Clarke). I have explored this connection in various places; see here & and forthcoming.
But as Ducheyne correctly notes in his paper, I have been greedy; I have also used other passages from different periods in Newton's life as converging evidence for my interpretation of his view in the mid 1680s. And so I have kind of suggested that except for when Newton toys with ether theories, my reconstruction of his dispositional account of gravity is Newton's fall-back position. And so now I would have give up on that material.
However, another position, is not to be concessive at all. So, second, I can also simply deny that in the unpublished draft version of what was to become Query 31, Newton is presenting his own view about the passivity of matter at all. For it seems to me that one can read the italicized passage (the italics are Ducheyne's [here is an image of the manuscript; [here is a transcription] as Newton simply reporting or summarizing the Cartesian position on matter. Before I explain that let me quote a wider version of the passage (with a lot of editorial markings removed--Newton obsessively corrected his own texts):
Qu. 23. By what means do bodies act on one another at a distance. The ancient Philosophers who held Atoms & Vacuum attributed gravity to Atoms without telling us the means unless perhaps in figures: as by calling God Harmony & representing him & matter by the God Pan & his Pipe, or by calling the Sun the prison of Jupiter because he keeps the Planets in their orbs. Whence it seems to have been an ancient opinion that matter depends upon a Deity for its laws of motion as well as for its existence. The Cartesians make God the author of all motion & its as reasonable to make him the author of the laws of motion. Matter is a passive principle & cannot move it self. It continues in its state of moving or resting unless disturbed. It receives motion proportional to the force impressing it. And resists as much as it is resisted. These are passive laws & to affirm that there are no other is to speak against experience. For we find in our selves a power of moving our bodies by our thought Life & will are active Principles by which we move our bodies, & thence arise other laws of motion unknown to us.
So, Newton here is taking on the question of action at a distance. And he first describes the innate gravity position of the ancient atomists. He also calls attention to the possibility that they used esoteric and figurative speech to explain the mechanism behind their position. (This sentence inspired one of the most famous papers by McGuire and Rattansi in contemporary Newton scholarship.) He sums up his treatment of the ancients by suggesting they thought God was needed to account for the laws of motion and the existence of matter.
As an aside, something of this view of the Ancients survives in the General Scholium added to the second (1713) edition of the Principia. Against the evidence of the Ancients, who freely speculated about to what degree God/Gods are dispensable to the Epicurean natural philosophy (and who claimed that the Gods were introduced to modify larger population), Newton reads them here as natural philosophical theists of a certain sort. My own view is that he is doing this in order to try out saying that the a-typical epicureanism people are attributing to him need not be "Atheists" in character. (And he may have even sincerely thought that this was a solid reading of the Epicureans.) That fits a lot of other material in this manuscript (which offers a robust assertion, inter alia, for the reality of final causes in experience).
He then moves on to describing the cartesian position. Now on the reading advanced by Ducheyene (and Kochiras) the description of the cartesian position is a sentence: "The Cartesians make God the author of all motion." This would attribute to the Cartesians, in effect, Malebranche's interpretation of Descartes (or at least his own preferred position) being a kind of occasionalists such that God is the author of all motion. But there is an equally respectable Cartesian interpretation in which occasionalism is not the proper Cartesian position, but rather that God is responsible (or the author of) the laws of motion, that's the next half of the sentence ("its as reasonable to make him the author of the laws of motion.")
And on the reading advanced by Ducheyne and Kochiras, Newton then moves on to state his own view. But it is equally plausible, and in fact, I think more plausible (yes, really), that here Newton gives a summary of the Cartesian metaphysics of nature: "Matter is a passive principle & cannot move it self. It continues in its state of moving or resting unless disturbed." So, pace Ducheyne and Kochiras, I think the natural reading here is that what they take to be Newton's position is really just Newton giving a quick and dirty summary of the Cartesian natural philosophy he rejects!
To be sure, I do not mean to deny that in this manuscript Newton does shift to explaining features of his own position--he regularly invokes the authority of experiments. And where exactly he does that is a matter of judgment. But at the same time he also keeps shifting toward describing alternative views he rejects.
So, if we read the manuscript in the way proposed by Kochiras and Ducheyne then Newton draws a sharp contrast between entities with minds, who can be active, and passive entities that lack such power. In fact, Kochiras and Ducheyne end up treating Newton by implication as a property dualist (with living things being the only kind of entities that can be substances).
But Newton himself is much more cautious than that in the manuscript quoted. He makes it clear that all living things are active. And it is, for Newton in this very document, an open question whether (as the Stoics thought) all of nature is alive in that relevant sense: "We find in our selves a power of moving our bodies by our thoughts ] & see the same power in other living creatures but how this is done & by what laws we do not know. We cannot say that all Nature is not alive. not know her laws or powers any further then we gather them from Ph��nomena." (Emphasis added.) Nobody has doubted that this is Newton's own position. And this suggests to me that Newton is much more agnostic about the nature of matter in this document than Kochiras and Ducheyne have allowed. Because Newton allows (as Spinoza did) that there may be as of yet undiscovered principles and laws that can explain the materiality of living things. On my reading, these would also be laws and principles of matter.
What Newton does explicitly deny is that vis inertia can explain the generation of (new) motion: "vis inerti�� they continue in their state of moving or resting & receive motion proportional to the force impressing it & resiste as much as they are resisted, but they cannot move themselves; & without some other principle hen the vis inerti�� there could be no motion in the world." For reasons I do not fully understand Ducheyne thinks this shows that for Newton matter is passive. But that's not right. For even I assert -- and this also follows naturally from the second law of motion -- that vis inerti�� is a passive principle, but does not constitute the whole of Newton's matter theory in the Principia.
September 21, 2020
Does Newton's The Treatise of the System of the World rule out Metaphysics? [Hint: No!]
To ascribe to Newton what I have called robust action at a distance, is to miss out on significant features of his methodology, namely his desire in De mundi systemate to remain neutral with respect to defining ���a species or mode of action, or a physical cause or reason [modum actionis causamve aut rationem physicam].���... Furthermore, there are clear indications that Newton thought that De mundi systemate contained no speculations or hypotheses on the cause of gravitational interaction. Newton wrote, for instance, that he wanted ���to avoid all questions about the nature or quality of this force, which we would not understood to determine by any hypothesis��� (Newton, A Treatise of the System of the World, 4;]--Steffen Ducheyne, "Newton on Action at a Distance." Journal of the History of Philosophy 52.4 (2014): 690 and note 95 (on p. 690).
In a classic paper, quoted above, Steffen Ducheyne went through then quite recent, renewed scholarly recent debate over the physical and metaphysical underpinnings of law of gravitation in the Principia. It was then, I think, agreed by all parties to the debate that in the Principia itself Newton intended [A] to be agnostic about its underlying cause. That is compatible with four other claims: (i) that Newton's early readers attributed all kinds of non-agnostic positions to Newton; (ii) that the Principia itself constraints any possible physics and metaphysics of the law of gravitation; (iii) that there is evidence of Newton's own views on the physics and metaphysics of the law of gravitation in his other writings that may either bear on (ii) or explain (iv) what Newton himself held about the physics and metaphysics of the law of gravitation, but did not print in the Principia.
In a number of papers, I have tried to contribute to debates over (i-iv). In particular, following (2002) work by Howard Stein, I claimed [and this bears on (ii)-(iii)-(iv)] that Newton's discarded original draft of the system of the world (which ended up being book 3 of the Principia), the so-called Treatise of the System of the World (published shortly after Newton died) --offers evidence for attributing to Newton the idea that, while drafting the Principia, he thought that gravity was the effect or manifestation of a two-fold disposition, a non-intrinsic relational quality of matter. And so lurking in the Principia is a kind of matter theory (something Katherine Brading, Zvi Biener and Chris Smeenk have argued on different, more (ahh) solid grounds.)
On my view A body has two dispositions: a ���passive��� disposition to respond to impressed forces which is codified in the second law of motion whereas an ���active��� disposition to produce gravitational force is treated as a distinct interaction codified in the third law of motion. And the ���cause��� of the action is ���the conspiring nature of both��� bodies. For the ���conspiring��� to occur, the bodies must share a ���nature.��� (For the full defense of these ideas see here and here.) In my argument, and again following Stein, I relied on passages like the following:
For all action is mutual, and makes the bodies mutually to approach on�� to the other, and therefore must be the same in both bodies. It is true that we may con��ider one body as attracting, another as attracted. But this di��tinction is more mathematical than natural. The attraction is really common of either to other, and therefore of the same kind in both.
Now, confronted by my interpretation of this passage, Ducheyne wants to argue that Newton's language is "rather loose, and without aiming at ���speculatively metaphysical��� conclusions." (689-690) And Ducheyne's evidence for this is the following passage he (partially) quotes in the footnote above:
But our purpo��e is only to trace out the quantity and properties of this force from the ph��nomena, and to apply what we di��cover in some simple cases, as principles, by which, in a mathematical way, we may estimate the effects thereof in more involved ca��es. For it would be endle��s and impossible to bring every particular to direct and immediate observation.
We said, in a mathematical way, to avoid all questions about the nature or quality of this force, which we would not be understood to determine by any hypothesis; as it is a force which is directed towards some center; and as it regards more particularly a body in that center, we call it circum-solar, circum-terre��trial, cir cum - jovial, and in like manner in respect of other central bodies. (Treatise pp. 4-5; emphasis in original)
And I certainly agree with Ducheyne that this passage seems to be a problem for my interpretation. It seems that when Newton composed the Treatise System of the World, he had the same methodological stance of the Principia, that is [A]. In context, it is clear that "this force" refers to the force that keeps planets in orbits. And Newton discusses and rejects a number of hypotheses (solid orbs; vortices, principle of impulse or attraction, etc.) which he attributes to Ancient and seventeenth century thinkers.
Now, I think Ducheyne misreads the the significance passage. But let's first assume Ducheyne gets it right. Notice that on Ducheyne's reading of the passage, Newton's mathematical way avoids discussion of the ontology and metaphysics of forces, that is, avoids speculation.
Now, if we go back to the first paragraph of the Newton passage I quoted above, in light of Ducheyne's emphasis on the mathematical way, we notice something fascinating:
For all action is mutual, and makes the bodies mutually to approach on�� to the other, and therefore must be the same in both bodies. It is true that we may con��ider one body as attracting, another as attracted. But this distinction is more mathematical than natural. The attraction is really common of either to other, and therefore of the same kind in both.
Newton explicitly offers a contrast here between the "mathematical" and natural way. And he treats the natural way as what "really" is. So, here Newton explicitly violates the injunction Ducheyne attributes to Newton. And Newton does so in terminology that evokes the passage Ducheyne offers as evidence against this happening.
One way to handle this is to claim that Newton is contradicting himself in the Treatise. (Nobody has suggested that, as far as I know.) Another, which is Ducheyne's approach, is despite the rather technical description, to treat the passage on pp. 38/39 as loose talk. But this means that Ducheyne must explain away Newton's invocation of the very contrast that grounds Ducheyne's original interpretation and he has not done so. Another way, which is the one I preferred, is that Newton means what he says and says so explicitly.
But does that leave me attributing to Newton a singular violation of his own methodological principle [A]? I don't think so. Because I deny that Newton holds [A] in the Treatise.
For, the point of Newton's mathematical way is to use it as a means to infer stuff about the nature of reality (including that Copernicus is true, etc.). This becomes clear if we look at what Newton does after he has explained the nature of centripetal forces. For example, he then goes on to "infer" that "That there are centripetal forces actually directed to the bodies of the Sun, of the Earth, and other Planets." (p. 10) In fact, Newton argues from "astronomical experiments" it "follows by geometrical reasoning, that there are centripetal forces, actually directed (either accurately or without con��iderable errour) to the centers of the Earth, of Jupiter of Saturn , and of the Sun." (12; emphasis added. Yhe nature of an astronomical experiment is of interest, but I leave it aside here)
So, it is misleading to use Newton's claims about the mathematical way as ruling out the possibility that Newton is making claims about the nature of reality. Rather, Newton treats them as a means to infer all kinds of things about what actually or really is the case. That is to say, the mathematical way is a mechanism to make inferences from theory-mediated measurements and (astronomical) experiments to the nature of reality.* Of course, to say that is not to do justice to the nature of Newton's inferential arguments (see Smith 2014).
That Newton does not treat the passage on pp. 38-39 as loose talk is also evinced by his illustrative claim directly following it that the "action betwixt the load-stone and iron is single, and is considered as single by the philosophers." (40; emphasis added) In fact, it is no coincidence that Newton draws attention to magnetism because his treatment here (of the analogy between magnetic and gravitational action) evokes, as I have argued in work unfamiliar to Ducheyne, Gilbert's (1651) De Mundo. That is to say, Newton draws attention to the fact that the very conceptual apparatus he is deploying is one used by other philosophers (including the expert on magnetism). That would be very odd if he were merely talking loosely.+
Of course, my position does entail that Newton came to see that his way of putting things in the Treatise was likely to be thought a kind of speculative talk he was ruling out when he rejected the explanatory demands (the "hypotheses") of the mechanical philosophers to put all explanations in terms of the size, figure, and motion of colliding bodies.
*I thank Marius Stan for urging this on me.
+Obviously, the argument of this post is compatible with the further claim (also defended by Ducheyne) that I misrepresent Newton's metaphysics.
September 18, 2020
The Case Against Hume (I)
The king, sensible that nothing kept alive the ideas of military valour and of ancient glory, so much as the traditional poetry of the people, which, assisted by the power of music, and the jollity of festivals, made deep impression on the minds of the youth, gathered together all the Welsh bards, and from a barbarous, though not absurd policy, ordered them to be put to death.--David Hume History of England
Edward I's mass murder of the socio-cultural leaders of the Welsh in 1284 is called 'barbarous,' but not absurd. It's not absurd because Hume recognizes the significance of what one might call a 'civic culture' -- poetry of the people...assisted by the power of music, and the jollity of festivals, -- for possible future (national) political resistance. That is to say, Hume recognizes the instrumental rationality of the English king's pacification of the Welsh which requires forceful methods to succeed.
That despite finding Edward's policy intelligible from the perspective of (Machiavellian) statecraft, one might well naturally think that Hume also condemns Edward's mass murder, even cultural genocide because he calls it 'barbarous.' And it is certainly case that the sociological contrast between barbarous and civilization, which is an important empirical distinction in Hume, is also normatively laden. For Hume, to be civilized is to be normatively better, more advanced, than to be barbarous. So, the natural thought is not silly here. I return to this below.
Yesterday, Mauricio Su��rez called my attention to an article in The Scotsman, where academics protested the removal of David Hume's name from a university building at the University of Edinburgh. At first sight the critics are correct to suggest that Hume did not get honored belatedly by the university (which infamously refused him a post while living) in virtue of his racism, but for other ���great and locally relevant [intellectual] achievements.��� Let's stipulate this is true (although below I make an important qualification). It is also an interesting and tough question (recall Neil McArthur -- himself a distinguished Hume Scholar - here) how much imperfection one can tolerate in a scholar before certain academic honors for genuine intellectual achievements become off-limits. Jacob Levy (here; here) has done important work on this topic, which has influenced my own evolving sense.
Since I am a Hume scholar -- even got my first lucky intellectual break to write on Hume for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy --, you may expect me to be sympathetic to the critics and worry about my reputation. But, in fact, Hume scholarship has tried hard to confront Hume's racism (and I discuss some of this scholarship in my book on Smith). Anyway, my concern here is not with the reputation of Hume scholars, but with how to think about Hume's legacy.
I agree with the critics that the University of Edinburgh has done itself a disservice by it's unintellectual and uninformative explanation for its decision (here, so you can make up your own mind; ht Dailynous). But it does not mean the critics are right that there is no case here. As I have explained here, that infamous footnote occurs in a text which is also quite clearly anti-semitic. Hume's attitude toward the Jews (which sometimes could be more sympathetic) contrasts strongly with (say) Toland's advocacy of Jewish emancipation (a generation earlier).
In addition, Hume's views on the Irish (in his History) are not exactly sympathetic. I think (and will argue another time) that Adam Smith's one real fight with his close friend, Hume, involved Hume's prejudice toward the Irish (where Hume takes the side of the English, recycling its propaganda) in his treatment of the Irish (1641) rebellion. But today, I link you to Clare Moriarty's tweet which presents another's testimony. (Moriarty is a scholar of Berkeley's mathematics, who has called attention to his eugenic interests, anti-Irish prejudices, and slave-owning in the past.)
So, it is not true that in Hume's age, Hume's racial views were uncontroversial. Philosophers are endlessly taught, on the authority of both Hume (���that bigoted silly fellow")* and Kant, that James Beattie was a philosophical idiot. But whatever the merits of this claim against Beattie's arguments on causation, Beattie was also a fierce critic of Hume's racism (and may have even influenced Hume to moderate his racism).
So, the scholarly critics of the University of Edinburgh, rely on a flawed modern historicist defense of Hume which itself presupposes moral progress, where we know better and the mythical past was uniformly bigoted, as I have argued here (one of my better blog posts--go read it!) And while Hume was a critic of (ancient) slavery, his views on race were (predictably) used by contemporary defenders of slavery (recall here) and fiercely debated by English abolitionists.**
So, the case against Hume is that his racism is not a minor aberration in his thought, but a significant element of his larger views. In my view this is so not because Hume was especially animated by cultural prejudice or racism, but rather because he was a proponent of civilization -- which he associated with being governed by rule of law, commerce, humanity, and progress -- and thought it okay, on balance, if civilization was spread, even by force. And this returns me to his comment on Edward I. For, while if we only look at the passage above, it might seem Hume condems Edward's brutal policy of pacification, Hume himself offers the following summing up a bit later in the History:
The enterprizes, finished by this prince, and the projects, which he formed and brought near to a conclusion, were more prudent, more regularly conducted, and more advantageous to the solid interests of his kingdom, than those which were undertaken in any reign either of his ancestors or his successors. He restored authority to the government, disordered by the weakness of his father; he maintained the laws against all the efforts of his turbulent barons; he fully annexed to his crown the principality of Wales; he took many wise and vigorous measures for reducing Scotland to a like condition; and though the equity of this latter enterprize may reasonably be questioned, the circumstances of the two kingdoms promised such certain success, and the advantage was so visible of uniting the whole island under one head, that those who give great indulgence to reasons of state in the measures of princes, will not be apt to regard this part of his conduct with much severity. But Edward, however exceptionable his character may appear on the head of justice, is the model of a politic and warlike king: He possessed industry, penetration, courage, vigilance, and enterprize:
Here Hume quite clearly suggests that Edward I was the best king England ever had before or since ("any reign either of his ancestors or his successors"). And one of the reasons for this is the very brutal annexation of Wales and the model it provided for the subduing of Scotland. And while Hume grants that from the vantage point of equity and justice Edward can be criticized, the consequences of this brutality are so excellent that the means justify the ends (the expansion of civilization). It is a very natural reading of Hume's History -- which was the source of his initial fame -- that brutal conquest in the name of reason of state is fine as long as you promote and secure the rule of law. This is a consequentialist argument.
Notice that Hume is not shy about judging characters of the past as exemplars worth emulating or not. Hume would reject the historicist argument of his defenders.
And while I have no doubt that British (racialized) imperialism in the name of civilization would have happened without Hume, Hume did help give this ideology (which goes back to earlier times [cf Petty's conquest of Ireland]) extremely wide currency and respectability (despite Adam Smith's and his student Millar's attempts to undo it). So, while this ideology does not influence the problem of induction, I do think it ties together many elements in Hume's moral and political philosophy and defense of commercial society. And I sometimes fear that despite Hume's scepticiam and irreligion (which made him ineligible for a university position), it is this proto-imperialist ideology that made Hume so widely and publically highly regarded (assuming most were uninterested in his metaphysics and the fine points of his epistemology). That's compatible with the claim that there are resources in his philosophy to combat this ideology.
Let me close. I do not think the case against Hume is simple or without complexity. And I do not wish to suggest that one cannot paint a better picture of Hume than I did today. (I have done so myself and will do so again.) But the case against Hume is wider and more relevant than his defenders realize. And ignoring that case means we do not confront the complicity of our heroes in justifying really important evils that ought to be repaired if we still can.
*For a nice paper on Beattie's reception see Robin Mills.
**One interesting feature of Dark Side of the Light: Slavery and the French Enlightenment a fascinating polemic by Louis Sala-Molins is that it is unsparing of Condorcet (who was a critic of slavery) in part because Condorcet (whose stance anticipates Mill) could does not live up to the (imperfect) standards set by Las Casas (recall here) and 18th century 'English' abolitionism. The same, and worse, is true of Hume.
What follows is greatly indebted to Jos�� A. Benardete sadly neglected, Greatness of Soul: In Hume, Aristotle and Hobbes, as Shadowed by Milton's Satan, a book I helped edit and see through press. Benardete is not especially critical of Hume's admiration of Edward I.
It is not entirely clear how to make this cohere with Hume's very high praise for Alfred I.
September 17, 2020
Financial Crises, Lisa Herzog on Iris Marion Young on Systemic Harm/Structural Injustice
Can one ascribe individuals a responsibility to address systemic harms? I draw on arguments developed by Young (2011) in order to show that this is indeed possible. Young develops her notion of forward-looking responsibility in the context of a broader account of ������structural injustice.������ One can understand the imposition of systemic harms as a form of structural injustice: it puts some people into positions of privilege, e.g. because they benefit from risky investment strategies, while others are put into situations of disadvantage, as they are exposed to increased risks and volatility. It is, however, unlikely that individuals can overcome the problems of systemic harms by themselves. Nor can they be held individually responsible in the sense of backward-looking responsibility. In order to understand the responsibility to prevent such injustices or harms, Young argues that we should understand responsibility not only according to the ������liability model������ of accountability for harm done by specific individuals, but also as a ������forward-looking������ notion (2011, p. 92). We have a responsibility to care about the institutions within which we live and act, ������watching [them and] monitoring their effects to make sure that they are not grossly harmful������ (2011, 88). This notion of responsibility is ������essentially shared������ and ������can be discharged only through collective action������ (2011, p. 105). In Young���s words: one has an ������obligation to join with others who share that responsibility in order to transform the structural processes to make their outcomes less unjust������ (ibid.).
Thus, it suggests itself to turn to existing collectives that could carry these responsibilities. These should be the groups of those who can jointly take steps to prevent systemic harms. Young argues that factors that help determine who should be ascribed responsibility include the power to address the problem, the fact that agent benefits from existing injustices (or harms)���and are hence under a special obligation to do something about them���, and the fact that there are already organized entities that can take action (2011, 144ff.). These factors all point to bankers as addressees of such responsibility. Even if they are not personally guilty of misbehavior, they have a responsibility, as members of the profession, to take steps to prevent systemic harms, or at least to minimize the risks of their occurrence.--Lisa Herzog ([2017] 2019) "Professional Ethics in Banking and the Logic of ������Integrated Situations������: Aligning Responsibilities, Recognition, and Incentives" J Bus Ethics, 536
Lisa Herzog is one of the leaders of a developing field in the ethics and political theory of finance.* And I often find it very useful to think my way to my own views by grappling with hers. The paper partially quoted above argues, by using what Talcott Parsons' called ������integrated situations,������ for a significant role for professional associations of folk working in finance to help confront the ethical failures of bankers and to help create the right mix of regulation, incentives, recognition, and norms to tackle a whole bunch of systemic harms that follow from financial crises in particular. While I like the spirit of Herzog's proposal -- which echoes ideas about the significance of intermediary societies I tend to ascribe to Michael Polanyi --, I am a bit skeptical about the possibility of turning finance workers/traders/bankers (etc.) into professionals of the relevant sort (which is why I proposed, once, recall (here; here and here; for background here) regular drilling and simulation-games by regulators and traders/managers, etc.). But about that some other time more. Here I want to focus, more narrowly, on the backbone of Herzog's normative argument which relies on increasingly important work by Iris Marion Young Young on structural injustice.**
Let's stipulate, for the sake of argument, that Young's argument for forward-looking responsibility is sound and convincing.+ The question, challenge, I wish to pose today whether it is right to think of the systemic harms of the sort generated by financial crises as species of structural injustice? (And my answer is, no.) To be sure, and not unimportantly, I fully grant that the policy responses to financial crises, often, in recent times, exhibit patterns of outcome that are well interpreted as structural injustice in many instances shockingly so. That is, the moral hazard involved in privatizing gains and socializing losses from the financial industry is indeed an instance of structural injustice due to rent-seeking and a kind of political blackmail. (I return to that below.) And so what follows is, perhaps, more of academic than of political interest.
It is natural to assume that members of the financial community are relative wealthy. But even the UK, which has a permissive bonus culture and a large financial sector (and, by European standards, higher political tolerance for inequality), average pay for a banker is ��39,412. Since averages can hide huge distributional variance, it is likely this means means that the vast majority of bankers really should not be thought of as wealthy (by advanced economy standards). Folk working in brokerage securities as a trader make, on average, ��60,000, but they do average 30K in bonuses. Obviously that's compatible with some making a lot more than this.++ And this puts traders above average, but net yet among the structurally privileged (for an economy like the UK).
In addition, bankers and traders can lose their jobs when their firms go bankrupt as happened with Lehman--in the UK alone this led to 4000 people losing their jobs. Less high profile, in the collapse of Northern Rock, an once important British mortgage bank, about 2,500 jobs were lost. So, absent political decisions, bankers and traders do have real skin in the game when their firms go bankrupt. There are also more complex issues pertaining to pension coverage.
The previous two paragraphs suggest that it is by no means obvious that we should think of the average member of the financial industry as especially privileged or immunized from the fall out in a financial crisis. That does not rule out that Herzog's argument would apply to some of the better paid members of the industry.
As an aside, I do not mean to deny that various forms of, say, deposit insurance, also involve de facto a hidden subsidy to bankers in times of crisis. But since these forms of insurance prevent systemic harms I leave them aside.
In addition, and more important, the systemic harms that accompany a major financial crisis -- characterized by liquidity crisis, bank-runs, bank-collapses, inability to complete trades at any price, the regular, automatic (etc.) imposition of circuit breakers, etc. -- are not intrinsically re-distributive from poor to privileged. As Piketty shows, en passant, in Capital, left to its devices, a financial crash, and its aftermath, tends to be a great leveller (because financial assets deflate across asset classes).1 It's only recent central bank policy -- which we can describe as the so-called Greenspan put -- and the way bailouts are now acted and priced in that has changed this historical correlation.
Now a skeptical reader may think that here I am playing the government failure card a bit easily in suggesting that the imposition of systemic harms as a form of structural injustice are a consequence of government policy and not financial crises as such. I do recognize an exception to my claim, and that is, in fact, cases where a government cannot repay its debts in the context of a financial crisis. It's quite clear that restructuring, budget cuts, and devaluations that accompany such government debt crises can frequently involve cases of structural injustice even when, in executing austerity or a devaluation the government avoids (as it often does not) targeting the poor, vulnerable, and pensioned. (In practice, we have seen shockingly large forms of structural injustice in the Greek debt restructuring where Northern European banks were bailed out at the expense of the Greek poor.)*** For, in general citizens have very ineffective control over Government debts, while the investment banks, debt market makers/specialists, and treasury officials do.
To sum up, in practice it is good to have an eye toward structural injustice given how policy de facto, alas, works. In my view this can only be solved if we end the effective blackmail of the financial industry of policymakers since Lehman and the practice of using quantitative easing as our major, almost only, policy response to financial collapses--these do have enormous redistributive effects from the underprivileged to privileged in practice. (So, we need to develop alternative policy responses.) But I also suspect that the initial harms that follow from financial collapses, while systemic in character, are not forms of structural injustice. And so these require a different kind of normative argument than the one offered by Herzog.
*Full Disclosure: Herzog is on the advisory counsel of a NWO grant on which I am a PI.
**There is a related argument, derived from Stephanie Collins, that requires the collectivization of urgent moral tasks. Herzog leaves unspecified what an urgent moral task is and so why we would have to apply Collins' argument in cases of financial crises. So I leave it aside here.
+I so wish Young, who would have been only 71 now, could live to see the significant impact of her work. But I also regret not being able to tease her that she of all people has made noblesse oblige salient again.
++I am open to the suggestion that there are selection effects in the PayScale data-base, so that for some professions (like traders) high net worth folk are left out.
1: updated note: for the present argument I do not need the strong claim of levelling. All I need is that the systemic harm of a market collapse itself does not reward pre-existing privilege. I thank Jens van 't Klooster for discussion.
***And because the Greeks opted to stay in the Euro, this has the effect of protecting the relative living standards of those who cold on to salaried income.
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