Digressions&Impressions

Stigler's Scientific Revolution

Economists generally share the ruling values of their societies, but their professional competence does not consist in translating popular wishes into an awe-inspiring professional language. Their competence consists in understanding how an economic system works under alternative institutional frameworks. If they have anything of their own to contribute to the popular discussion of economic policy, it is some special understanding of the relationship between policies and the results of policies. The basic role of the scientist, therefore, is that of establishing the costs and benefits of alternative institutional arrangements. (Stigler, Presidential Address at the AEA, The American Economic Review, 1-2)

George J. Stigler was a Chicago-economist who won the Nobel prize (1982) "for his seminal studies of industrial structures, functioning of markets and causes and effects of public regulation." But this citation does not quite capture what he become known for in the economics profession. In addition to an acerbic wit and a very robust defense of markets, he "deserves a great deal of the credit for getting economists to look at data and evidence." (The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics) Moreover, the entry on Stigler continues,"one could examine the actual effects of regulation, and not just theorize about them. Stigler devoted his entire 1964 presidential address to the American Economic Association to making this point. He argued that economists should study the effects of regulation and not just assume them."*

Yesterday, I noted the significant afterlife for the idea that "economists generally share the ruling values of their societies," which is a core assumption for the technocratic political ideal. Here I focus on the fact that that Stigler really is one of the economists that turned economics from relying on "the telling anecdote," (Stigler, 12) into a data-driven discipline (although his presidential address notes non-trivial predecessors on this score).** While Stigler may not have been able to foresee the extent to which economics would become data-mining, Stigler himself declared that "it is a scientific revolution of the very first magnitude-indeed I consider the so-called theoretical revolutions of a Ricardo, a Jevons, or a Keynes to have been minor revisions compared to the vast implications of the growing insistence upon quantification." (Stigler 17; the Kuhnian language is no accident--in fact, Stigler had theorized about scientific revolutions before Kuhn, and warmly welcomed Kuhn's Structure.) This declaration, he claims, "is prophecy, not preaching." (Stigler 17)

The technocratic Conception of Politics: Milton Friedman, Stigler, and Rawls

Many countries around the world are today experiencing socially destructive inflation, abnormally high unemployment, misuse of economic resources, and, in some cases, the suppression of human freedom not because evil men deliberately sought to achieve these results, nor because of differences in values among their citizens, but because of erroneous judgments about the consequences of government measures: errors that at least in principle are capable of being corrected by the progress of positive economic science. (Milton Friedman, Nobel Lecture, [1976] 1992, p. 268).

[the] preferable interpretation: that tastes neither change capriciously nor differ importantly between people. On this interpretation one does not argue over tastes for the same reason that one does not argue over the Rocky Mountains--both are there, will be there next year, too, and are the same to all men….that one may usefully treat tastes as stable over time and similar among people is the central task of this essay. ” (Stigler & Becker, "De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum," AER (1977), 77) 

Friedman's Nobel lecture was given in a highly charged, political context resulting from his visit to General Pinochet in Chile a few years before, and shortly after Friedman's most important critic -- the chilean economist Orlando Letelier -- had been assassinated by the Chilean secret police. Even so, it is notable that in the sentence quoted above, Friedman entirely denies the significance of value disagreement in explaining political conflict. That is, in the Nobel lecture Friedman embraces a technocratic conception of politics, which is characterized by the ideal that with knowledge and its progress, political disagreement can be eliminated. 

Friedman's Nobel lecture does not explain the role of the technocratic conception of politics in ordinary (bread and butter) economic inquiry. To the best of my knowledge Friedman never does so (although I have argued that the Nobel lecture resonates with his other methodological writings). To understand that, one must turn to Stigler and Becker's famous essay (1977) "De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum," which is very clear on how "one searches, often long and frustratingly, for the subtle forms that prices and incomes take in explaining differences among men and periods." One does so "by a generalized calculus of utility-maximizing behavior." So, in the mid 1970s 'Chicago economics' officially adopted a technocratic conception of politics. To the best of my knowledge their (Keynesian) rivals at MIT, the Cowles Commission, and Cambridge never did so explicitly, although one might well argue that 'Chicago' was merely catching up with their practice.

Self-loathing in Philosophy

Under no circumstances should this department sponsor or be affiliated in any way with an event that includes alcohol. (Report  on  Site  Visit Conducted  by The  American  Philosophical Association  (APA) Committee  on  the  Status  of  Women  (CSW), p. 12.)

Last night I was reminded of the passage above. I heard a story about a prominent philosopher that I admire, who had groped a graduate student while under the influence of alcohol. I wondered if there was a pattern or a one-off. A few weeks earlier, before the Peter Ludlow story hit the media, the philosopher Abe Stone, asked on his facebook page, "why do philosophers drink so much alcohol in professional contexts?...Even if this had no bearing at all on the issue of sexual harassment (though clearly it does have some!) it would be something we ought to discuss." I think Stone is right about the phenomenon: there is a problematic, drinking culture in philosophy. In some departments it is passed on from one generation to the next. I always found it remarkable that my supervisor preferred Chinese food over beer.  (I am pretty confident that was one of the many subtle reasons why I gravitated toward him.)

This is no surprise, of course. There is a lot of drinking in the societies in which professional philosophy is embedded. But the problem is notable in professional philosophy because it has extremely fluid boundaries between work and not work. (This is a field that has, of course, low tolerance for the very intelligibility of ontological vagueness.) So, even if one were to ban alcohol from all sponsored events (not just the Boulder department, the APA smoker, etc.), the alcohol related problems, including sexual harassment, would not disappear in professional philosophy. (This is no criticism of the CSW Report at Boulder!) For, alcohol is one of the social glues of our profession (which, after all, has a legitimate professional fondness for conversation). For example, I edited a volume where in his acknowledgments, my co-editor promised me a drink.

On Necessity and Smithian Social Explanation

[This week I am in Minnesota to hang with the excellent faculty and students (and give some talks) at Macalester College, UMN Mankato, and UMN Twin Cities.  So, I may blog less frequently.--ES]

Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (hereafter WN) starts, as the Aristotelian sounding title promises, with a (tentative) causal claim: "THE greatest improvements in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is any where directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour." (WN 1.1.1) According to Smith, a single cause has a variety of effects, including -- strikingly enough as Craig Smith has emphasized -- on our cognition ("judgment").  After a fuller description of these effects (including the famous pin-factory example), Smith's second chapter, turns to descriving the cause(s) of the division labor:

THIS division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another. Whether this propensity be one of those original principles in human nature of which no further account can be given; or whether, as seems more probable, it be the necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and speech, it belongs not to our present subject to inquire. (WN 1.2.1)

Now, there is a lot to be said about Smith's account of human propensities (and his bracketing of the further question), but here I focus on the nature of explanation that Smith offers. For, in it we find the template of the dominant form of explanation in Smith's social theory. According to Smith social phenomena (e.g., division of labor), which have social utility,* can be explained by the unforeseen (and unintended) necessary workings of human propensities over time. Stated at this level of generality this will not surprise. Smith thinks that given our original and immediate instincts the propensity to barter and truck will arise eventually (it is “the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence.”) Much ink has been spilled over Smith as a theorist of unintended consequences (and invisible hands, here and here).

W.E.B. Du Bois, economist, philosopher, true lover of humanity

I have told you of those seventy-five landholders in Lowndes County--owning $25,000 worth of land, building new and better houses and working steadily and saving. And yet, gentlemen, not a single one of those men under the new constitution of Alabama has the right to vote: they cannot say a word as to the condition of the roads that pass their farmers, the situation of the schools, the choice of teachers, the kind of county officers or the rate of taxation. They are just as absolutely disfranchised as the worst criminal in the penitentiary and as I am in Georgia. You can twist this matter up and down and apologize for it and reason it out--its wrong, and unjust, and economically unsound, and you know it. (Du bois, 1906 "The Economic Future of the Negro," 242)

During the nineteenth century, philosophy, political economy, and moral sciences were overlapping disciplines that remained in fruitful, albeit increasingly fractured, conversation through the first half of the twentieth century. As philosophy became professionalized (as a species of scientific philosophy), it lost all memory of this; John Rawls educated himself into these matters and was the last to have a deep and wide knowledge of the issues. The oldest generation of active economists (who were still required to take history of economics in their graduate education) are the last disappearing store of knowledge about any of this.

One myth about the shared history of philosophy and economics is the idea that the historical overlap between the two is essentially constituted by utilitarianism.* W.E.B. Du Bois was no utilitarian, yet at the start of his career he was a distinguished economist trained in Berlin in the German historical school, then led by Schmoller and Wagner.** The passage above is, as Prasch suggests (320), directed at the economist John Bates Clark -- whose name is still remembered in professional economics because of the very influential medal named after him --, who had argued that economic development had to be prior to expansion of the franchise. Du Bois points to the enduring moral and economic truth: economic activity is embedded in (developing) political frameworks, which play a non-trivial role in generating patterns of economic outcomes.

On the Modern origins of the Epistemocracy

The subject is surely the most worthy curiosity of any the wit of man can possibly devise. And who knows, if this controversy were fixed by the universal consent of the wise and learned, but, in some future age, an opportunity might be afforded of reducing the theory to practice, either by a dissolution of some old government, or by the combination of men to form a new one, in some distant part of the world?--Hume "Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth"

David Hume's political thought, which councils "reverence to what carries the marks of age," is often and understandably treated as a species of Conservatism.*  As Jonathan Israel puts it, "his was a 'moderation' apt only to underpin prevailing usage." (Democratic Enlightenment, 226) In fact, Israel is so keen to contrast Hume with more radical (Spinozistic) approaches, that in drawing on the Natural History of Religion, he reads Hume as a Newtonian providentialist, reinforcing "acquiescence in divine governance of the world." (Israel, 211)

Oddly enough for an author focused on rehabilitating the significance of political ideas in political events, Israel entirely overlooks Hume's essay on a Perfect Commonwealth. According to Hume identifying the "most perfect" "form of government" is the subject of the essay. While the topic is treated as  "speculative," it is not belittled--on the contrary, it "surely" is "the most worthy curiosity of any the wit of man can possibly devise." That is, it is most important subject in philosophy. Hume is also explicit in the passage quoted above that he is trying to identify a "system of government" that could be put in practice after, say a revolution or a new founding. So, while Hume is not advocating revolution (that would be sedition), his project is not merely speculative. In fact, rather than setting the ideal in some imaginary place (and he is explicit about the contrast with Utopia and Oceana), he locates it in "Great Britain and Ireland." (Along the way he also insists that the idea that "no large state, such as FRANCE or GREAT BRITAIN, could ever be modelled into a commonwealth," is false.)

On Academic Bullies

Scientists are apologetic because the scientific establishment or its political leadership is apologetic and the scientific establishment is apologetic in its effort to justify its very existence by an erroneous hypothesis; the erroneous hypothesis identifies the intellectual or scientific establishment with the intellectual or scientific leadership. This way our culture in general and particularly our science is debased: the false equation of the scientific establishment with the scientific leadership automatically justifies the fact that such scientists as Barbara MacClintock are not recognized for decades. (Agassi, "The Politics of Science," [emphasis added--ES] 36).

[P]retending, especially to our students, that we are ideal, even pretending that we always try hard to become ideal, is very harmful. It forces on our students either the view that they are much inferior to their teachers, or, alternatively, the dreadful observation that their leaders, too, have clay feet. And training them to try to be ideal is not training them to live in an imperfect world and control their own imperfection and the imperfection of the general situation. When they grow up and face their own imperfections they get terrified, do not know what to do, and in a desperate effort to cope get swept into the intrigues that they find all around. (Agassi, "The Politics of Science," 39; [emphasis added]) [HT Joel Katzav]

Agassi's 1986 paper is barely cited by others. One explanation for this, is that it is anecdotal and not rigorous according to acccepted standards. A more subtle reason is that it doesn't cite others, although it mentions a few (high status) fellow travelers.  It would be nice to think that it was ignored because people realized that Agassi was basically rediscovering Gordon Tullock's (1966) point about how academic disciplines become a "racket." While Tullock's book has very decent citations, it's primarily cited in works at the intersection of public choice theory and philosophy of economics. My amusing (and partial) experience with referees suggests, it is not well known in philosophy. Perhaps, Agassi's piece was ignored because Agassi is rather combative in print. (I have never met the man; maybe he is sage-like in person.) But in philosophy that has never prevented attention.

Here I want to explore the possibility that Agassi's piece was ignored because its truths hit too close to home. By this I do not mean that people would really honestly deny that there is politics in academic disciplines. Rather, the point is that we are en-cultured into a set of practices and norms that exact terrible costs on our psyches, especially, perhaps, for the most successful among us. To be clear: I do not introduce this topic to diminish the suffering of the adjuncts, the exploited, and the disadvantaged. (In what follows, I'll stick to professional philosophy because that's what I know best.)

On Fortune

For it is our Stoic fashion to speak of all those things, which provoke cries and groans, as unimportant and beneath notice; but you and I must drop such great words, although, heaven knows, they are true. [Omittamus haec magna verba, sed, di boni, vera]--Seneca, Letter 13.

Seneca signals that he is capable of switching between two linguistic registers. The truth (Stoa) with great words.  And another, more loquacious -- it's a relatively long letter at 993 words -- milder register, which is proper for dealing with psychic turmoil [torquent]. The milder form is proper for the council that Seneca dispenses to his (somewhat recalcitrant) pupil. But Seneca does not say if he will always signal the switch between the two registers.

Now, Seneca does not explain the epistemic status of the un-great register. It's clearly a more worthy register than the axiological framework that governs the values established in the market,  (recall Letter 1; Letter 2) and politics (letter 3), that is, uncertain popular opinion. But the un-great register is fit to describe the consequences, which arise "from uncertainty...delivered over to guesswork and the irresponsible license of a frightened mind," and to offer many practical remedies against it, including the outlines of a rational decision theory in the face of great epistemic uncertainty.  But, oddly enough, Seneca does not claim that the un-great register with its practical advice is itself true or the truth.

On Sleeping with One's Students

The great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.--Adam Smith The Theory of Moral Sentiments

[Professor Jane Gallop] draws on her own experience of sleeping with two professors on her dissertation committee to suggest that students, rather than being automatically debased and demeaned by such relationships, can "feel powerful because they seduced their teachers". Contrary to the image of the lecherous professor, she notes, it is usually students who initiate sexual advances.

Her one-night stands with the two men, she writes, intensified her desire to learn and her desire to excel. "I desired and I ****ed my teachers. And they taught and challenged me, criticised and praised me; they let me see them as men and never stopped taking me seriously as a student. I felt that in their eyes I was both a desirable woman and a serious scholar."--The Times Higher Education [HT Petra Van Brabandt]

A sub-set of my European friends, male and female, tend to view concern over sexual harassment as instances of American Puritanism. The feminists among these share Professor Gallop's sense that acting on desire can be empowering and can motivate the further desire to "learn and excel." As a fact about moral psychology this is undeniably so. And it is also undeniably so that a classroom without hunger for knowledge and eagerness to learn is no better (and, perhaps, worse) than a receipt's office of a state bureaucracy.

Let's stipulate, first, that Professor Gallop's seduced professors did see her as "a desirable woman and a serious scholar." But by acting on her desire, and their own, they also opened the door to changing the nature of their relationship. The scholarly and professional gifts they were bestowing on (the future) professor Gallop now also include a sexual transaction. One of their gifts in their transactions with her is, in fact, allowing her to see herself as initiator. That is a gift the more powerful can bestow on the less powerful in any transaction.*

Unknown unknowns and Deleuze's virtual

Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know.— Donald Rumsfeld [wikipedia]

A great philosopher creates new concepts: these concepts simultaneously surpass the dualities of ordinary thought and give things a new truth, a new distribution, a new way of dividing up the world.--Deleuze

But the virtual is not the same thing as the possible--Deleuze

We must understand that the virtual is not something actual but is for that no less a mode of being,--Deleuze

There are three general ways of thinking about the possible: (i) we take the present world as kind of a baseline, from which we project alternatives; (ii) we create a maximally plural list of 'worlds' available to, say, an omniscient being, and distinguish among these; (iii) we treat the possible as a species of quantitative probability ranging from impossible (zero probability) to necessity (probability 1) [and lots of permutations of these three]. There are, of course, ways to treat (ii) and (iii) as intimately related; and it is possible to recover (i) as a special case of (ii).

Now, Rumsfeldian unknown unknowns do not contradict any of the three approaches to probability sketched above. Even so, none of these three approaches is especially useful to help us think about unknown unknowns. For, in practice, it's our imaginations and the features of our formal machinery that constrain what enters the list of the (metaphysically/logically) possible. Logical analysis may be useful to make transparent hidden assumptions about the possible, it will not reveal an unknown unknown--genuine epistemic or metaphysical uncertainty is hard to model in it. For, all three ways of thinking about the possible have a kind of this-world bias built into them; to say this informally, while it's easy to prove the existence of God in some modal logics, it's actually pretty hard, despite the presence of monsters, to get really crazy; that is, the possible always has some resemblance to the actual.