Digressions&Impressions

On The Demands of the Past

“[T]hat the crux of a philosopher’s doctrine is to be found in those passages where he defends an unpopular thesis; his defense of accepted theses has no informational value,”—Attributed to Malebranche by Catherine Wilson [Wilson’s Dictum]

 

There is a point of diminishing returns in efforts to unearth or to reconstruct a philosopher's views about matters that he or she does not address directly and at some length. Such efforts may display impressive learning about the books a philosopher is likely to have read, about the ideas that were in the air when he or she wrote, but they generate conclusions that must be regarded as highly tentative. That is because the philosophers who demand our attention are precisely those who do not simply absorb influences and transmit them to posterity.—Matthew Stuart, (p. vii)

 

A discordant note creeps into an otherwise generous review by Ben Hill of Matthew Stuart, Locke's Metaphysics (Oxford 2013): “Stuart is also disappointingly dismissive of contextualist analysis…Stuart's analyses would have benefited in several places from paying more attention to the historical context…” Hill then attaches a footnote to the paragraph from Stuart’s text quoted above. I have not yet read Stuart’s book. Intrigued, I wrote Hill and he responded with material that I quote below (with permission). 

 

Now, in context, the quoted paragraph from Stuart is intended to defend the choice of topics and he uses a proportionality thesis: “I devote my attention proportionally to the topics to which Locke devotes his.” (vii) Hill is not objecting to this proportionality thesis. The proportionality thesis is reasonable, but it may in some cases show a lack of judgment for (at least) two reasons: (i) contemporary or future readers might benefit from disproportionate attention to some topics rather than other topics. That is to say, slavish adherence to the proportionality thesis avoids making judgments about one’s own philosophical landscape; so, it is curious to see somebody defend the idea that there are philosophers that “demand our attention,” but then pretend that acceding to this demand is disconnected from our interests and judgments.

 

There is a second, more significant reason to reject the proportionality thesis. It is often a terrible guide to the relative historical significance of the material under review even by the lights of the author that “demands” one’s attention. As Wilson’s Dictum (see the epigraph above) suggests, what matters is when an author defends an unpopular thesis. If the thesis is really unpopular she may do so very briefly. This is not esotericism; Wilson’s Dictum applies to the explicit text. Of course, some positions are deservedly unpopular, but if an author under study is willing to embrace an unpopular position this is, especially when one deals with a systematic thinker, often very telling about a whole range of other commitments. In fact, sometimes a historical author calls attention to his awareness that the proportionality thesis may be misleading; here’s Adam Smith: “Seneca, though a Stoic, the sect most opposite to that of Epicurus, yet quotes this philosopher more frequently than any other,” (The Theory of Moral Sentiments)!

Classical Metaphysical Indeterminacy

As regular readers of my blogs know I am interested in epistemic and metaphysical versions of uncertainty in economics.  A chance encounter with Jessica Wilson a few years ago made me realize that there is a live topic (in analytic metaphysics) on metaphysical indeterminacy. I am blown away by a paper by Elizabeth Barnes & Robert Williams (hereafter B/W), "Theory of Metaphysical Indeterminacy." I never expected to see an elegant account of metaphysical indeterminacy in terms of a "fully classical and bivalent logic and semantics." (2) [Recall this and this.]

To see how they respect such a 'classical' approach, here's one important feature of how they handle metaphysical indeterminacy: "When p is metaphysically indeterminate, there are two possible (exhaustive, exclusive) states of affairs—the state of affairs that p and the state of affairs that not-p—and it is simply unsettled which in fact obtains." (9) Now, to avoid misunderstanding: the unsettledness they speak of here is not epistemic. (Below I return to this.) Note, too, that they rely on modality ("possible"); this is not accidental: they rely on insights from work on modality. In fact, their approach opens up fascinating perspectives on modality. They spell out the modal moves as follows:

[P]ossible worlds are abstract objects which represent (classically complete) ways the world might be...there is a single world which is actualized. The actualized world is the abstract object which represents things exactly as they are in the reality consisting of us and our surroundings.

Once we have the set of all the abstract possible worlds in place, we can carve it up in various ways...What we want to do here is introduce another division amongst the worlds that will single out a new modality—the worlds which are precisificationally possible...There will be more than one world in the space of precisifications just in case there is indeterminacy in reality. (9-10)

Big-shot Ivy League professors, Pretty Young Women, and Institutional Norms

When economists are bought directly by Wall Street interests (cf. Inside Job) or -- more subtly -- indirectly by lucrative private and government contracts, astute observers recognize that even when there are very transparent conflict of interest disclosures (which is not the norm in professional economics) that the discipline as a whole may well have lots of structural and tacit biases in which it handles evidence and what questions it considers worth asking. Ideology functions most slyly when presented in the language of science. We philosophers think we are better than this (and some of us even specialize in teasing out the methodological and normative commitments that make the ideology of economics hidden from many of its own practitioners).   

Yet, the dirty secret of professional philosophy is that one can make a fine career promoting justice. That may seem swell. Yet, in practice this amounts to the fact that one can make stellar careers promoting changes in others. There is now an established discourse, which crosses over from the seminar room to the public media, in which one can speak empty words of condemnation about rich people’s lifestyles in the name of global justice, while knowing that the only real world consequences of one’s moralizing will be felt by folk in countries far away. One can do so while (a) being a distasteful character; we philosophers have accepted a methodological stance in which arguments are evaluated, disembodied from a person’s moral worth. Moreover, (b) many philosophers allow on similar methodological grounds that global justice can be promoted while ignoring ‘private sphere’ justice and ‘justice within the profession.’ [Obviously, there are also people that apply concerns over global justice reflexively to themselves.]

That is to say, one can become a “hero” to others by being a “moral philosopher.” One’s career can become so cherished by others because they discern in you “political” causes worth promoting, even if you turn out to be scumbag in your personal life. I am quoting from an anonymous essay -- [HT Feministphilosophers; after first linking, Leiterreports removed the link] -- that has, human nature being what it is, inspired speculation into the author's identity and the "big-shot Ivy League professor" described in it. I have no idea who the author is;* her account rings true to my experience of what goes on in the profession and I have some suspicions about the identity of the big shot. Even so, here I want to focus on a feature of the essay that may well be ignored because of the all-too-human ways in which sexual politics get played out (especially in online fora). The essayist writes:

De Gournay's Criticism of Political Christianity

Consequently, it is clear that, by conceding women this faculty for administering baptism, [the Fathers of the Church]  considered them worthy of that office, and that they forbade them to administer the other sacraments simply to maintain the scope of men's authority for all time, either because they themselves were male or, rightly or wrongly, in order to maintain peace between the two sexes by the incapacity and repression of one of them.--Marie Le Jars De Gournay ("The Equality of Men and Women" translated by D.M. Clarke, p. 69)

In the quoted passage, De Gournay (1565-1645), who wrote a generation (or two) before Hobbes and Spinoza, interprets church teachings and practice politically. By using 'politically' I have three or four things in mind: (1) most obviously, church practice has political consequences: (a) this practice creates "the repression" of women, and (b) it ensures this repression in perpetuity by creating circumstances in which women remain incapable of equality. (2) She attributes to the church political motives: (i) male solidarity;  (ii) the desire to solve a pre-existing political problem. (3) She presupposes that prior to the political establishment of Christianity, there is a natural battle between the sexes; (4) this battle is settled by the political imposition of Christian mores. According to De Gournay, it's because the church is political (in the senses described) that it ignores it's own understanding of the equal worth of men and women. In context she implies that Christianity has been regressive political force for women because prior to the establishment Christianity "all nations used to admit women and men without distinction to the priesthood." (69)*

As mentioned a few weeks ago De Gournay returns to the natural battle of the sexes near the end of her argument. When she addresses the need to foster "peace within marriages." (73) Ideally, men and women “should” use “rational discussions” and not force (73). The reader is left to wonder if this is also true for settling political authority generally. In context she implies that rational agreement is not to be expected “because” of “the common frailty of human minds.” (73) However, as we have seen above, she had already argued that woman's incapacity is due not to some innate defects, but rather due to their political and marital oppression. So, she strongly implies that women would be capable of more rational participation under an alternative institutional framework with a better political theology (in context she is critical of Scriptures' advocacy that "the husband is the head of his wife." Ephesians 5.21-2)* She is explicit about this by citing the 'divine' Plato approvingly for his assigning "to women the same rights, faculties, and offices in their republics and everywhere else." (56)

On Unhappy Philosophers

[Nobody] can live a happy life [beate], or even a tolerable [tolerabiliter] one life, without the study of wisdom; you know also that a happy life is reached when our wisdom is brought to completion, but that life is at least tolerable even when our wisdom is only inchoate [inchoata].--Seneca, Letter 16.

It is imprudent to go around telling people that they are unhappy. Yet, sometimes it is the right thing to do. To this day I remain grateful to a college friend, Angela Finney, who told me at the end of a long talk at a party, "You know, Eric, one is allowed to be happy in romance; and you are not happy now in yours." It was a revelation to me. Yet, these things do not always end well: in a moment of Dutch frankness, I once told a high school friend that she seemed unhappy with her fiancee--she told me to walk the walk or shut up. I had not foreseen that response; our friendship was never the same again, alas.

If I am irritated, telling me that I am angry, tends to annoy. I recall once being very frustrated by an encounter with scientology proselytizers who told me that I was unhappy; at the time, I was a teenager, and undoubtedly not quite at ease with myself. Even so, I thought, 'who are they to tell me...'  

Few professional philosophers would be willing to defend any of Seneca's claims above. Least of all would we be willing to defend the idea that without philosophy a tolerable life is impossible. It would be implausible for us to do so because there is considerable evidence that professional philosophy deforms our reactive attitudes (recall here and here), and given the routine meanness and bullying we tolerate (recall here and here), it stands to reason there is quite a bit of unhappiness among victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. So, we are in a bad position to lecture anybody else. Of course, these facts do not undermine Seneca's claims because professional philosophy is so far removed from what he has in mind that he might even cite these facts as evidence for his position.

David Hume on What Philosophers Can Learn from Poetry and how to be Poetic Philosophers

There is an old quarrel between philosophy and poetry (Plato Republic 607b)

Poets themselves, tho’ liars by profession, always endeavour to give an air of truth to their fictions; and where that is totally neglected, their performances, however ingenious, will never be able to afford much pleasure. David Hume Treatise 1.3.10.5

This inclination [to personify], ’tis true, is suppress’d by a little reflection, and only takes place in children, poets, and the antient philosophers...In poets, by their readiness to personify every thing: David Hume Treatise 1.4.3.11

At first glance it seem that in his Treatise, Hume sides with Plato against the poets: poets are "liars by profession." So, it should not surprise us that Hume compares poetry to madness. (Treatise 1.3.10.10) In context of the second of the quoted passages, Hume basically accuses poets of promoting superstition by projecting human features onto inert things. But a moment's reflections makes one realize the situation must be more complicated: for (a) in the quoted passage ancient philosophers are also superstitious, and (b) as I noted before sometimes Hume also links his own philosophizing to a form of incurable madness ("delirium"). So, there is little to distinguish poets from  philosophers. In fact, Hume suggests that philosophy and poetry are both guided by 'taste and sentiment: "Thus all probable reasoning is nothing but a species of sensation. ’Tis not solely in poetry and music, we must follow our taste and sentiment, but likewise in philosophy." (Treatise 1.3.8.12)*

There might be a genuine tension in Hume's thought here. Rather than attempt to resolve it today, I focus on what Hume thinks can be learned from poets. For, even though poets are professional liars, they do sometimes convey the truth. In fact, sometimes they do so on topics where philosophers partake of the false:

On Servility in Professional Philosophy

[Typepad was experiencing technical difficulties during the last few days.--ES]

Prima facie, there appears to be a great deal of similarity between metaaesthetics and the much more developed field of metaethics. Just as metaethics addresses questions about the objectivity of moral judgements, the existence of moral properties, and the semantics of moral claims, metaaesthetics addresses these kinds of question concerning aesthetic judgements, properties and claims. Further, these kinds of questions also arise with respect to other subject matter, such as epistemic modals, future contingent propositions and knowledge ascriptions.

Work in these different fields would benefit from increased dialogue. First, some of the most sophisticated forms of realism and antirealism have been developed outside of aesthetics; most notably in metaethics, but also in the context of other philosophical issues, such as modal discourse and propositions about the future. Second, there is a tendency among philosophers who develop antirealist theories with respect to other kinds of discourse to take aesthetics to be susceptible to a similar treatment. Aestheticians could benefit from exchanges with philosophers working on realism and antirealism in other domains, while philosophers in these other domains could benefit from a more detailed understanding of the data in aesthetics.-- A British Society of Aesthetics Connections Conference, (Cambridge).

Shared prejudices that are not (yet) contested reveal themselves in apparently innocent ways; they can be discerned in omissions or casual evaluative judgments, and they may appear in the stories we tell ourselves. The consequences of such prejudices can be small or they can generate systematic patterns of exclusion. They tend to facilitate informal hierarchies in which patterns of evaluations track, say, friendships, status, and jobs. One such prejudice is sometimes visible in the ways in which professional philosophers have come to talk about what is ‘core’ in recent analytical philosophy [HT Marcus Arvan]: this 'core' is often identified with philosophy of language, metaphysics & epistemology, and philosophy of mind [see Cogburn on LEMM].*

Given the near-impossibility of establishing doctrinal and methodological commonalities in analytical philosophy, the very idea of a ‘core’ is itself a means to facilitate the operation of shared prejudice.+ This is why the exclusion of other traditional areas of philosophy – e.g., logic, ethics, political philosophy, and aesthetics, etc. -- from the ‘core’ is impossible to justify on substantive grounds;** the implicit and sometimes complex hierarchies between the core and the non-core fields form the silent ideology/ideologies that operate at the margins of our consciousness when we make routine judgments of merit among professional philosophers. The idea of a ‘core’ operates within the context of an intellectual division of labor, in which professional philosophers understand themselves and their discipline in terms of areas of specialization. In effect, the idea of a ‘core’ privileges some such areas and particular philosophers over others without having to offer an argument to do so.

Ideologies work most perniciously at the edges and the bottom of social hierarchy, especially when the lesser privileged use it to dominate the lowest castes. Meta-ethics is not in the official ‘core,’ even though its practitioners often speak of ‘value theory,’ but the way it is practiced makes it feel familiar to those trained within the ‘core’ and familiar with its themes and methods (for example, realism/anti-realism is an evergreen within the ‘core’). The conference announcement quoted above helps the reader to draw the relevant analogies between metaethics and ‘core’ topics (i.e., “in metaethics, but also in the context of other philosophical issues, such as modal discourse and propositions about the future”).  

On Disagreeing with My Supervisor.

Yesterday, my one time supervisor (Garber) was the external examiner of a PhD in my department (I was not on the committee). After, at the festive reception, I had the distinctive pleasure of introducing him to my first and most advanced PhD student (Van Strien); her public defense is scheduled in September. (He will not be involved in that.) Just as my dissertation had been partly on the edge and largely beyond my supervisor's area of expertise, her project covers territory that goes beyond stuff I would (or could) publish on. The advantage of such projects is that there is no competition between student and supervisor; it also means one can be very receptive because one is really learning from one's student. The obvious danger is that one risks missing some problems obvious to experts. One also has to navigate a supervisor's potential lack of interest. My supervisor did not expect his students to keep track of his publications (or drafts); the one seminar I took with him turned out to be on material he was teaching himself and that to the best of my knowledge he has not really published on.

Even so, through a funny kind of osmosis (written comments, reading groups, shared public space at workshops/talks, etc.), social mores and intellectual commitments get transmitted. With hindsight, it's clear to me that in my first efforts at publishing after I came out of graduate school, I was a 'contextualist' historian of philosophy, which treated natural philosophy as an integral part of its history. From the reactions of others, I inferred that, in fact, I was (legitimately) perceived as my supervisor's student. Ironically enough, a few years out of graduate school, after I realized that I might disagree with some of my supervisor's most important methodological commitments and the complex ways of characterizing the relationships between physics and metaphysics in the early modern period, I started reading his work with great care and in detail. It was, in fact, exhilarating to present the product of my engagement to audiences that included him. In my image of myself at the time, this involved 'finding my own voice.'

On Speakers and Commentators

[This post is dedicated to Irem Kurtsal Steen.--ES]

Over a decade ago, I was a commentator on a paper by fellow junior scholar in the margins of a conference organized by the American Philosophical Association (APA). We were both just out of graduate school; I was moving between positions, while the person I was commenting on had just landed a tenure track position at a nice, but otherwise undistinguished college in the Midwest. When I looked at the program and saw some 'big name' scheduled at the same time, I realized we would have a very small audience. Even so, one never knows who will show up, and I had an earnest desire to contribute my part to the advancement of learning. I received the paper on the late side (but as I later learned no later than common in the profession), and I dutifully wrote up and emailed my rather telling, I thought, criticisms bracketed by faint, polite praise at the start and at the end of my comment. I was genuinely curious how the speaker would respond, and I was looking forward to a serious discussion.

At the appointed hour, the official chair of the session showed up to inform us that he was going to the famous person event. I effortlessly moved into the dual-role of Chair and Commentator. To my pleasant surprise a familiar face from graduate school showed up in the audience, which never went beyond five people. Two minutes or so into the speaker's presentation, I realized that he had changed the paper in light of my comments without acknowledging my contribution. I literally heard one of my critical observations presented as evidence in favor of the speaker's position.

Then and now, I am officially committed to collaborative research, and so probably should have appreciated the implied compliment toward my contribution. But I was furious. (In writing this, I rediscover my anger.) Also, I had no idea what to say when it would be my turn to comment. Explaining my situation to the audience seemed, well...tacky, and also would reveal the depth of my anger--I wasn't eager to show the speaker how annoyed I was. As the minutes glided by, I started to get ever more anxious. While I was staring at my now worthless comments, the answer to my predicament stared me in the face.

Sometimes Luck Really Makes a Difference (On Mentors, and Senior Scholars)

Some senior scholars have an annoying tendency to pretend as if the new kids on the block simply do not exist. I found it hard to keep spirits up when I was struggling to find a permanent position and I was unsure about even belonging in the field; I found it shattering that people, whom I admired, and whom I knew had read (say because they had explicitly commented on) my work, refused not just to engage my material when dealing with the same subject, but couldn't even cite it in a passing footnote in their latest publication. There was also always a nagging suspicion that they were also the hostile referees that slowed down publication altogether. (I could go into a lot more infuriating detail, of course.) The sad thing is that such behavior is then emulated by others, more junior and the cycle continues.

There are alternative ways of being senior. In September 2001, after I returned from Las Vegas, where I had been stuck due to travel cancellations after 9/11, Warren Samuels -- a wonderful economist and a giant scholar on the history of economics -- forwarded me (without permission) some papers by Leonidas Montes, then a PhD student at Cambridge University (in economics, I think) with the suggestion to get in touch with Montes. Now even before we met, Warren had praised my research in a keynote he gave at a conference, and he became a wonderful encouraging mentor. At the time I was in the closing year of my PhD, which was on the reception of Newton by Hume and Smith. My research had taught me that my main thesis was ill-conceived, and I was struggling to make the material (including some stuff on Rousseau, modern Libertarianism, etc.) cohere. I had learned to listen to Warren's suggestions.