Digressions&Impressions

On Narrowing of One's Professional Soul

Surprising negative: how narrow and incurious many philosophers are (and how conventional and unimaginative much work in philosophy is). Philosophy would be (I thought) the place that people went because they wouldn’t drop awkward and insistent questions that didn’t fit into disciplinary constraints. I expected philosophers to be open-minded explorers of ideas.

I think I can explain the phenomenon. Philosophy is immensely challenging. All of its parts relate to one another and, of course, to all of the different disciplines to which philosophy responds. Yet no one can expect to master them fully, so a defensive reaction is natural. When people meet something outside their background that is potentially challenging the reaction too often is: “If it doesn’t fit in with what I know and work on it, can’t be significant.” Still, it continues to be extremely disappointing.--Michael Rosen commenting at Leiter Reports.

 

Then I graduated, hit the job market, and moved to different temporary jobs (UBC and Tampa) twice. And from that time (6+ years ago) until now? It occurred to me: I have literally done nothing else than try my darnedness to get a tenure-track position. Aside from listening to iTunes, I have no hobbies. I have no close friends. I have literally ate, drank, lived, and slept philosophy (and sometimes, not even slept!). Were it not for my wife, who gives my life love, some liveliness, and grounding (our friends are her friends), and my dog, who never fails to put a smile on my face, I would pretty much have one thing, and one thing only: philosophy.

In some respects, this ain't so bad. I love philosophy...I wonder sometimes if this is how it should be--if the way in which professional incentives today can (and do) lead people to focus on academic philosophy above just about all else, we not only compromise ourselves as persons but also as philosophers. Let me explain why.--Marcus Arvan Philosopherscocoon.

Once I had been invited to give a talk on Newton at a conference; but since a lot of very good Spinoza people had been invited, too, I talked the conference hosts into letting me present new work on Spinoza—a philosopher I had not published on yet and had been teaching for a few years alongside my other research commitments. I lucked out because Michael Della Rocca was assigned  to be my commentator. It turned out my paper was a bit of a mess; hyper-ambitious and not quite clear on the main issues. Michael’s comments were helpful and generous, and down the road I published some of the still, imperfect material in an edited volume.[1] It was an exhilarating experience, and I hoped that folk could see that the underlying approach was promising. But I also sensed that I had not impressed my specialist peers. Most, tactfully, simply avoided comment on my paper. One bumped into me in the coffee-line during the break, and I had the following exchange:

[Big deal peer:] “You're so broad.”

[Me:] “Ahh...thank you, I guess.”

It's true that I take a vain delight in my broadness, especially since I have moved to Europe where the compartmentalization within departments and their specialist research chairs (around Systematic, Practical, and Historical groups) feels very pronounced. Even so, I know that being thought broad is not always thought a good thing in research circles. (It may help, perhaps, in landing a teaching oriented position.) It can be thought charming and endearing, but generally 'broad' is code for unclear, uninteresting, non-core, safely to be ignored, etc. Like all properties in a zero-sum status hierarchy, it can be inverted at the top, so that for some -- very special -- philosophers a certain kind of bravura, broadness (nod to Veblen or Bourdieu here) adds to the hip-factor. I have never been hip, alas. (Don't cry for me.)

Of course, there are a lot of inquisitive, fascinatingly broad folk among professional philosophers, and they are undoubtedly over-represented among you, my dear Impressionable reader. (Flattery works if it is plausible, after all.)* But even so it's very hard to keep one's interest fairly broad through a career in professional philosophy. I find that I use my (undergraduate) teaching to keep reading widely. But there are curricular limitations to this (and sometimes one discovers a displeased territorial colleague along the way). Even so, Rosen's explanation (quoted above), while correct, is incomplete psychologically. It also ignores some professional and disciplinary dimensions.  On the psychological side, it ignores the joyful feeling one can obtain in the control over, and understanding of, an ordered whole (nod to Nietzsche here). Often such control is only acquired by treating the target-puzzle as a relatively isolated system (Spinoza's "Letter on the Infinite" is an early criticism of this). 

On the disciplinary side, in particular, a conceptual-puzzling-solving ethos -- as is broadly embraced within analytical philosophy -- encourages one to focus narrowly on the issue at hand; one learns to discard irrelevant and distracting detail; one peels away layers of cultural and empirical accretion that jam clarity of focus in order to isolate the conceptual core of an issue. There is a suspicion of cultural artifacts that thrive on polysemy, while there is a fondness for assertion.

Recently Tim Maudlin defended this ethos in noble fashion against ignorant physicists. But I was struck that Maudlin closed his essay with a rousing quote from Einstein in which Einstein went well beyond Maudlin's defense by suggesting, in addition, that the history of thought/theorizing/use is also non-trivial part of conceptual articulation and conceptual isolation. ("It is by no means an idle game if we become practiced in analyzing the long commonplace concepts and exhibiting those circumstances upon which their justification and usefulness depend, how they have grown up, individually, out of the givens of experience.") That is to say, in practice, as Maudlin's example shows, we tend to focus on analysis and not on the cultural/historical/political/social contexts of conceptual articulation and development (and some of us harbor a suspicion that such activity may reveal a genetic fallacy or a failure to distinguish between the history of pragmatics vs semantics).+

Moreover, professionally, (soul-narrowing) specialization pays; that's the best strategy within the intellectual division of labor. Analytical philosophy, suspicious of great men as gurus, embraced specialization from the start and so flourished in the modern, twentieth century research university. (Yes, I am familiar with countervailing tendencies -- Wittgensteinian fondness for depth over technicality, etc. -- including local hero-worship.) So, on the whole, the hedgehogs outperform the foxes in our zero-sum environment--again, there are interesting and subtle exceptions to this rule. This pattern is worsened by the administrative duties that start to increase as one transitions from graduate student to tenured faculty (even in a research friendly environment).** 

I don't have easy solutions (see Arvan's beautiful piece for one approach). I continue to be inspired by the wonderful intellectual friends I encounter within the profession and, by embracing the history and philosophy of X, that is, working across disciplinary divides, in other disciplines. There are also tactical opportunities away from the beaten path that allow one to use one's professional activities as a means toward life-long learning; more about that some other time. But one can understand these Digressions as the curricular vitae counterpart to my professional self. 

On (religious) freedom in Locke and Hume on Agricola,

But what if the magistrate believe such a law as this to be for the public good? I answer: As the private judgement of any particular person, if erroneous, does not exempt him from the obligation of law, so the private judgement (as I may call it) of the magistrate does not give him any new right of imposing laws upon his subjects, which neither was in the constitution of the government granted him, nor ever was in the power of the people to grant, much less if he make it his business to enrich and advance his followers and fellow-sectaries with the spoils of others. But what if the magistrate believe that he has a right to make such laws and that they are for the public good, and his subjects believe the contrary? Who shall be judge between them? I answer: God alone. For there is no judge upon earth between the supreme magistrate and the people. God, I say, is the only judge in this case, who will retribute unto every one at the last day according to his deserts; that is, according to his sincerity and uprightness in endeavouring to promote piety, and the public weal, and peace of mankind. But What shall be done in the meanwhile? I answer: The principal and chief care of every one ought to be of his own soul first, and, in the next place, of the public peace; though yet there are very few will think it is peace there, where they see all laid waste.--John Locke A Letter Concerning Toleration (translated by William Popple).

In the final quoted line Locke echoes -- as the editor (Mark Goldie) of the volume that I use in my teaching also notes -- if not plagiarizes, the famous, spirited speech by the to-be-vanquished-Galgacus in Tacitus Agricola (recall this post). As I noted a year ago, Hume rejects Tacitus's treatment of Galgalus.

I still think Hume's reasons for ignoring Tacitus use of Galgacus have to do with his defense of empire and Union and his rejection (as the distinguished scholar, Aaron Garrett, noted in his comments) of Jacobite cause. Even so, it's also possible that Hume is sensitive to Locke's use of Galgacus. For, Hume thinks it is important that the state maintains tight control over religion. At his most visionary, Hume argues for tight state control over religion: "The [state] council of religion and learning inspects the universities and clergy." (Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth) While Locke does not go so far as Adam Smith, and argue for complete dis-establishment, Locke is quite clear that the state should try to minimize interference with and control over religion. For, as he notes "there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotions, and that is oppression." (In context, Locke is thinking of religious oppression, but he is also clear the point generalizes.) That is to say, while Hume likes some freedom, especially the commercial ones, he prefers his freedoms constrained by lawful authority; Locke agrees, of course, but his embrace of Galgacus suggests he tends toward a more Liberal position.

Financial Risk, Uncertainty, and Heuristics

Mainstream economics and finance is dominated by models of decision-making under risk. Modern macroeconomics has its analytical roots in the general equilibrium framework of Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu (Arrow and Debreu (1954)). In the Arrow-Debreu framework, the probability distribution of future states of the world is known by agents. Risk can be securitised and thereby priced and hedged. 

Modern finance has its origins in the portfolio allocation framework of Harry Markowitz and Robert Merton (Markowitz (1952), Merton (1969)). This Merton-Markowitz framework assumes a known probability distribution for future market risk. This enables portfolio risk to be calculated and thereby priced and hedged.

Together, the Arrow-Debreu and Merton-Markowitz frameworks form the bedrock of modern macroeconomics and finance. They help explain patterns of behaviour from consumption and investment to asset pricing and portfolio allocation. This has been a well-trodden path for the past 50 years.

The path less followed has been to study optimal choice under uncertainty – the inability to form priors on the distribution of future outcomes – rather than risk (Knight (1921)). Neither the Arrow-Debreu nor Merton-Markowitz frameworks admit such uncertainty. Instead, modern macro and finance has been built on often stringent assumptions about humans’ state of knowledge and cognitive capacity.

For the past 40 years, the most popular of those informational assumptions has been rational expectations (Muth (1961)). That, too, has dominated modern macro and finance for a generation. In its strongest form, rational expectations assumes that information collection is close to costless and that agents have cognitive faculties sufficient to weight probabilistically all future outturns.

Those strong assumptions about states of knowledge and cognition have not always been at the centre of the economics profession. Many of the dominant figures in 20th century economics – from Keynes to Hayek, from Simon to Friedman – placed imperfections in information and knowledge centre-stage. Uncertainty was for them the normal state of decision-making affairs.--Andrew G Haldane and Mr Vasileios Madouros (2012) "The dog and the Frisbee." (1-2) [HT Lisa Herzog]

At the time of the speech Haldane was the "Executive Director, Financial Stability, Bank of England" (he is now "Chief Economist at the Bank of England and Executive Director, Monetary Analysis  and Statistics."; Madouros is now "a Senior Manager in the Financial Stability area of the Bank of England.")  Given the centrality of London's financial service industries to the financial system, their views are very important.

Models of decision-making under risk have dominated economics, finance, and epistemology for much of the second half of the twentieth century. Their limitations as (a) guides to evaluating systemic risk have been exposed during the financial crisis of 2007-9 (and its aftermath). Moreover, during that same crisis (b) they failed to hedge individual firms against potentially catastrophic losses.* While (a) and (b) are distinct in 1996 "commercial and regulatory risk judgements" became more or less identical when the bank regulators started to rely on "the acceptance of banks’ own models." (6-7; with references to the "Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.")+

One response to these events has been (I) to double-down on models of decision-making under risk with ever more subtle model-selection techniques, feeding them more data, and crunching these with ever more powerful computers. Haldane and Madouros note the main problem with this approach: "collecting and processing the information necessary for complex decision-making is costly, perhaps punitively so." (3) It's not clear how to internalize this cost to the modelers. So, in reality, the relevant information is likely to stay outside the modeler's perception. Moreover, in practice, there is also a tendency of over-fitting. (5) One may add that in the real world lots of agents have strong incentives not to be forthright about their strategies and positions, so it is an open question if all the relevant information will ever be available to the right agents in real time. Even if one were to grant, heroically, that all the relevant information is contained in relative prices (and their movements), it is by no means obvious that the modelers will recognize it in a timely and cost-efficient fashion. While simulations may help to reveal some salient information, it is by no means obvious that even when individual firms (and agents) can take precautionary measures, their joint measures will not make systems more fragile.**

Haldane and Madouros offer a second response to the failure models of decision-making under risk: (II) move to simple heuristics to regulate complex firms in highly uncertain environments. They argue in favor of this approach based on ideas inherited from Herbert Simon and developed more fully by  Gigerenzer, who is cited copiously in their essay (and whose work gave it its catchy title). Moreover, in support of this approach they use data from the crisis to test in various ways performance of firms and various decision rules. A further argument is that the non-trivial compliance costs to regulation under simpler rules could be reduced. (10)

While I have considerable sympathy for approach (II), it is noteworthy that Haldane and Madouros do not reflect on possible shortcomings of this approach. One is fairly obvious: that one is relying on the wrong simple rule(s) which worked well in the past, but turn out to be less than robust in new or very different environments. This is a known problem for psychological heuristics (which have evolved under considerable trial and error). A hint of another such a problem is mentioned, but not really discussed in the paper. Financial agents will try to exploit weaknesses in and discrepancy among regulatory systems by so-called 'regulatory arbitrage.' One way to prevent this is to have universal regulatory regime, but that day has not arrived yet.

I'll mention one further problem with (II). This one is ad hoc because it is a bug of Haldane/Madouros's approach not a general feature of working with heuristics. In passing, they also embrace regulatory transparency (17). The problem is, it has not been shown that such regulatory transparency actually aids in making the simple heuristics/rules more robust in practice. In fact, Haldane/Madouros partially and tacitly recognize this problem because they advocate more supervisory discretion (14-15). But they never explain how such discretion is compatible with either a (simple) rules based framework nor transparency about such rules. When economists talk about rules-based frameworks they intend to reduce discretion, so more work is needed here.

Finally, it is worth noting that neither (I) nor (II) aim, what I would argue ought to be part of our focus: (III) to change the ethos and norms within the financial system such that collective learning and collective responses to unfolding crises are possible. So, unless we are willing to treat financial crises as natural events outside the scope of control, ultimately handled by tax-payers, we need to create a set of practices and generate incentives in which some measures of market stability or health are monitored and adjusted to by market participants and regulators (recall here and here, for background here, and here). About such utopian proposals more before long.

 

On Adding a Discipline...

Originally this post was titled, On Leaving Professional Philosophy.

I have accepted a Professorship in Political Science at the University of Amsterdam. While the Chair is Political Theory (that's almost philosophy, I tell myself), I am discovering that most of my new colleagues, even the most theoretically sophisticated, are (unsurprisingly) either very empirical or policy oriented (or both). While the work they do has philosophical significance (about which more before long), the implied audiences are very different. For example, several of my new colleagues are on government advisory boards and advising activist organizations. When they talk about the important academics in the field, I do not recognize the names. From the moment I was approached to accepting the position has all gone very quickly; but enough time has passed that I have caught myself thinking multiple times, When is the last time I thought of myself as a political theorist?

Is this what imposture syndrome feels like?

I have learned that the narrative one tells oneself before, during, and after a voluntary departure from a professional position (it's my fourth such occasion) shifts subtly over time. This narrative also differs in non-trivial fashion from the multiple public versions that I share with others. After the fact one can construct a history in which agency is preserved and the outcome pre-ordained. I connect the dots, and suddenly Newton becomes an extended means chosen to figure out, as it was when I enrolled in George Smith's class back in 1991, on learning how science really works in order to improve social science, and I morph (back) into the student of Charles Larmore and Martha Nussbaum. The politics of expertise is a good topic, after all. The trick does not last long because I receive the cc from my co-editor, Chris Smeenk, on details pertaining to (forthcoming) The Oxford Handbook on Isaac Newton.

Last year I had what I will call an academic-mid-life crisis. It caught me by surprise (ha, ha, he thinks they sometimes don't?) because I had assumed I would have one after my minor stroke (a year earlier). My wife noticed it first that I was musing regularly about going to law school in order to become an advocate of refugees. Society's have-nots could use some help.

Teaching philosophical skills to young minds is an ennobling activity (recall) because these aid in their personal development and make them better citizens (recall). While these skills can be abused, and I wish more of my peers would take this possibility more seriously, I have long thought that professional philosophy is among the best occupations to live by a do-no-harm-principle. It is also satisfying to inquisitive minds. But since fatherhood, I have increasingly felt the urge to-do-something-to-stop-the-rot. Professional philosophy's social impact is so manifestly indirect (yes, I am familiar with the wonderful work of the late Hugo Bedau, Lori Gruen, Lisa Guenther, John Corvino, etc.) that while it allows plenty of scope for local heroism (recall here, here and here), I found that I was wondering if I could really justify my privilege and luck to myself.

You're bored, she said. (No, I am not! I love what I do.)

The  truth is I have surpassed my professional aspirations. Between 2003 and 2015, I published about thirty journal articles and twenty book chapters (who can read all of that?); I edited half a dozen volumes with splendid presses. After a rocky start as a PhD supervisor, I note that my PhD students are visibly improving philosophically and, as our Flemish pay-masters desire, they are publishing up a storm in fantastic journals (lesson learned, 'get out of their way and don't try to micro-manage.') I bring in an above average number of grants (without being greedy). The only professional skill I have not mastered is the monograph. But has the world been improved by my fifty papers? And then I fell into blogging, and I discovered that I could be more philosophical in my Digressions than in my journal articles. And I realized that I started to see my official publications as work (they pay the bills) that almost nobody reads.

But after talking to my sister over our traditional, celebratory Peking Duck (apologies to the vegetarians), I realized that despite the change of disciplinary postal address, I am not really planning on leaving professional philosophy. I discern that I have a deep-seated (but psycho-analytically boring) mental script in which I leave (home, country, work...) But that's only my partial reality. 

I still love attending professional talks and reading my students' draft dissertation chapters; while I am about to submit my first paper to a political science journal (yikes), I am planning at least a dozen new philosophy papers and have agreed on editing a special issue in philosophy, etc. Early modern philosophy is being revolutionized with new figures being studied systematically; as the Kantian syllabus (Empiricism vs Rationalism) is being displaced, this is a fantastic time to be a philosophical historian to help create the future's philosophical history populated with previously unfairly overlooked women and diverse cultural voices--Ibn Tufayl is more exciting than Locke; Sophie de Grouchy can challenge Bentham. Even the story about triumphant social contract theory is being undermined by the security state and neo-liberalism; suddenly Swift's Modest Proposal and the spies that populate More's Utopia and Bacon's New Atlantis do not strike my students as far-fetched fantasy, but urgent reality.

On my hopeful days I fully expect to be transformed as a philosopher while working in a political science department. I hope to share some Impressions on the philosophies that I have encountered and will encounter there. And I am looking forward to the challenge to help connect philosophy to policy science while recognizing I am nowhere near the first to do so. 

So, the real title of this post should be: On leaving Professional Philosophy; On Adding a Discipline, but I can't make the font work in the title above.

A Heuristic on How to Read an Opaque Philosophical Text (A Case Study with The New Atlantis)

There are yet hid greater things than these and we have seen but a few of his Works.--Ecclesiasticus 43:32.

And for the country of Bensalem, this man would make no end of commending it, being desirous by tradition among the Jews there to have it believed that the people thereof were of the generations of Abraham, by another son, whom they call Nachoran; and that Moses by a secret cabala ordained the laws of Bensalem which they now use; and that when the Messias should come, and sit in his throne at Hierusalem, the King of Bensalem should sit at his feet, whereas other kings should keep a great distance. But yet setting aside these Jewish dreams, the man was a wise man and learned, and of great policy, and excellently seen in the laws and customs of that nation.--Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis.

Not all philosophical texts come with a handy thesis statement. Some texts that lack a thesis statement do not pose special interpretive problems because the intentions of the author are pretty transparent (e.g. Berkeley's Three Dialogues) because, say, the main argument (or set of arguments) are well marked in the text. But as David Lewis observes, not all philosophy is argument. For, there are some philosophical texts that (a) lack a clear  thesis statement and (b) where the main drift of how the arguments, if any, are supposed to add up is not entirely transparent. I call such texts (that exhibit (a-b)) Opaque Philosophical Texts (or OPT). Some Platonic dialogues, Seneca's Letters, More's Utopia, Bacon's New Atlantis , Nietzsche's Zarathustra are paradigmatic instances of Opaque Philosophical Texts.

Interpreting an Opaque Philosophical Texts sends novice readers and more advanced students to editor’s introductions and authoritative reference sources. But this merely pushes the problem back by putting us at the mercy of the judgment of another. Even when such secondary sources exhibit good judgment, it is often left opaque what really grounds it (an infinite regress looms here), and in reading such resources one is often struck by the flimsiness of the interpretive evidence: an author, say, gets slotted into a pre-existing historical framework (X is an empiricist, therefore Y) or feeble biographical evidence is mined for hints (Z visited the Queen, therefore A), etc. Sometimes an author's life can be very revealing, but, say, More's Utopia only gets more confusing once one knows details of his life.

One more respectable trick scholars often use to guide interpretation is to look at the contextual reception of an OPT. This can be very helpful. Polemical responses can be very illuminating to bring out what is at stake. But polemics have limitations too: (i) they often distort the text they attack and (ii) they tend to focus on a limited aspects of a work. More interestingly, a polemic is made possible by shared, often tacit (religious, political, theological, etc.) commitments that are opaque to later generations. Even when, say, students write to honor their teacher, or to gain authority by their association with the revered memory of their teacher, they have a tendency to reveal more about their own aspirations (relative to, say, other of the master’s students) than the author’s intentions.

But while I reject strict rules in the history of philosophy (recall and here), there are useful heuristics. For example, while sola scriptura is an unreasonable demand for texts written by mortals, there is a heuristic that respect its spirit and that can be applied to an OPT: find an interpretation of (an apparently important theme of) the text proposed by a character within the text. I have not invented this self-referential, presentational heuristic—it’s common among literary and film critics. (In an opaque movie look for a scene in which art represents something or an artist at work tries to represent something.) The heuristic is especially useful to get interpretation started without reliance on other guides—for one lets the text be the guide. What follows is a case-study of such a heuristic. 

Joabin the Jew is called “wise” by the narrator (a European visitor to Bensalem). As it happens he reports an enduring Jewish oral tradition about the legal-political founding of Bensalem: its founder was Moses. Now, the idea that Moses should be seen as a political founder is not unique to New Atlantis, of course. Machiavelli suggests the idea in The Prince, and Spinoza works it out in great detail in the Theological Political Treatise.[1] Given that the tradition reported by Joabin does not report that Moses actually visited Bensalem and there is no reason to think we are to think this, it is more likely that that this suggests that either the Hebrew Bible, or some of its sources, The Book of the Cove­nant or the Book of the Law of God (see Spinoza, Theological Political Treatise, 8:22-24, relying on Exodus 24:4,7 and Joshua 24:25-26), guided the political founding of Bensalem according to Jewish legend.

In fact, we know from other textual details that Hebrew Scripture and works lost to the Christian West are said to be known in Bensalem at the time of its legal re-founding: a civil servant informs the European visitor that “we have some parts of [the biblical King Salomon’s] works which with you are lost; namely, that natural history which he wrote of all plants, from the cedar of Libanus to the moss that groweth out of the wall; and of all things that have life and motion.” This legal re-founding of Bensalem is said to occurred around 1,900 years ago, that is, around 300BC by King (confusingly) Solomana, who is esteemed “the lawgiver” of Bensalem according to the public narrative as repeated by a local public servant, who doubles as a “Christian priest.” (Not all the main public officials are also clerical.)

So, these bits of evidence suggest that the existence of the Jewish community on Bensalem predates the political re-founding by Solomana. This is no surprise because prior to Solomana’s policy of isolation, Bensalem was a thriving commercial (and militaristic) society with trade all over the world and that led to immigrants from (again quoting the publicly sanctioned narrative) “almost all nations of might and fame resorted hither; of whom we have some stirps and little tribes with us at this day.”

Possibly King Solomana was Jewish, but, more likely, he was inspired by Mosaic law. (This is not unprecedented in real history.) After all, among his acts “was the erection and institution of an order, or society, which we call Saloman’s House…in ancient records, this order or society is sometimes called Solomon’s House, and sometimes the College of the Six Days’ Works.” Even the informative local public servant/priest believes the king learned from Hebrew Scripture “that God had created the world and all that therein is within six days: and therefore he instituted that house, for the finding out of the true nature of all things.” The key Biblical text is Ecclesiastes (which itself implies it was written by King Solomon) and, which together with Biblical King Solomon's example, plays a central official, justificatory role in Bacon's Advancement of Learning.

Thank you, Peter Ohlin and Oxford University Press

The last and crowning article is Smith's "Closing the Loop: Testing Newtonian Gravity, Then and Now". At over eighty pages, few journals or edited collections could or would have found space for it. It is to the editors' enormous credit that they published this important and rich article in its entirety.--Katherine Brading, reviewing Zvi Biener and Eric Schliesser (eds.), Newton and Empiricism, Oxford University Press, 2014.

One public footnote to Katherine Brading's generous review of Newton and Empiricism. I am very pleased to be associated with George Smith's "Closing the Loop." When I was an undergraduate, more than twenty years ago, George taught me my first philosophy class (a year long course on Newton's Principia), and since I have enjoyed witnessing the development of the views that culminate in "Closing." Even so, academic editors of edited volumes do not always get their way as I learned in trying to get "Closing" published. So, I take the opportunity to redirect the credit to our publisher, Peter Ohlin at Oxford University Press, and the press, who, in an age in which income for such volumes is hard to come by, were willing to take a chance on this project.

Magnanimous David Lewis, Exemplar

As to the market: The reader thinks that the likely readership is limited to those who have the expertise and fancy true contradictions, plus a few who find the formal development interesting in its own right. I think this is quite wrong. And not just because there are many who do not now fancy true contradictions but might readily be persuaded to. I think that there are many reasons for an implacable opponent of true contradictions—such as myself—to take great interest in what Priest and his allies are doing.4

If the book is a commercial success, as I think it might be, here is the form I think its success might take. The immediate, ready made market does indeed consist of the sympathizers, and is indeed small. After that, the book makes its own market. Some outraged defender of classical virtue (I have in mind here the very man for the part, but let me not name him) hears of this new heresy and decides to squash it once and for all—and it is apparent to all that his attempt is question-begging and worthless. Others set out to do the job properly: of course we all know that Priest is wrong, but you have to refute him this way. No, that won’t work, it has to be this way . . . Then the difference splitters: you have to grant Priest this much but then you can hold the line here . . . In short: a snowballing, complicated debate among opponents about how the paraconsistent position might best be resisted—and of course the paraconsistent manifesto is required reading for participants in the debate. The increasingly obvious disarray of the opponents helps Priest to gather converts who themselves pitch in. . .

I premise this scenario on two beliefs. (1) Many people will think that it is an easy thing to refute Priest’s position, decisively and in accordance with customary rules of debate. It is not an easy thing. I myself think that it is an impossible thing: so much is called into question that debate will bog down into question-begging and deadlock. (On this point, Priest disagrees with me: he thinks that shared principles of methodology might provide enough common ground.) I think this calls in question the very idea that philosophy always can and should proceed by debate—itself a heretical view, likely to be vigorously opposed.5 (2) Many philosophers hold an unprincipled and unstable position: they have been persuaded by Quine and Putnam that logic is in principle open to revision, they are prepared to contemplate revisions of logic that seem to them to require only small and esoteric changes, yet they still think it absurd to countenance true contradictions. Give these folks a good shaking, and I suppose we’ll see a lot of conversions—some souls saved for staunch classicism, some lost to Priest, and doubtless some novel positions as well.--David Lewis quoted by Graham Priest In Contradiction (Preface to the Second Edition, xix),

Franz Berto called my attention to the Preface to the Second Edition of Priest's book. I had heard the story about Lewis's noble intervention in getting a book -- with which he disagreed on a fundamental level --, that was being rejected by lots of publishers, published. Disciplinary gate-keepers repeatedly prevented the publication of a book whose technical skill they could admire, but whose position they abhorred. It turns out that not so long ago it's easier to publish defenses of infanticide than defenses of true contradiction.

But I don't want to use Lewis's extraordinary letter to rail at the way too many professional philosophers have internalized the worst feature of Kuhn's philosophy: that one can legitimately ignore alternatives to one's own. In the letter Lewis shows that he believes that this is serious mistake intellectually. And as Priest notes in a footnote, this did led the magnanimous Lewis to reflect in print on how hiring practices in times of scarcity should be organized (and are organized) by a tacit treaty.* Rather, Lewis's remarks reveal somebody who is a true master of what one might call philosophical politics.+

First, as Priest notes in his footnote comment on the quoted passage,  there is Lewis's remarkable prescience. It turns out that Lewis truly understands the "market" of philosophical ideas. He has a firm grasp of the sociology of the profession in his own time as revealed by his successful (qualitative) prediction of the manner of the uptake of Priest's work.

Second, he carefully distinguishes between those philosophers that react to genuine novelty from understanding and those ("the many") that react from prejudice. The latter are those that think it will be easy to refute Priest. Their response also reveals their lack of understanding of the limitations of existing methods. It is not that Lewis expects agreement among those that understand--he notes that Priest and he disagree over the extent and potential fruitfulness of existing methodology. In light of the fact that meta-philosophy and debates over methodology have become so common in the 'core,' we can say that Lewis was more in the right on the strength of then existing philosophical methods.

Third, Lewis reveals himself as capable of functioning with great success in the profession while himself holding "heretical views." The heresy itself is, of course, extremely interesting. Philosophical progress is not achieved solely by argument and debate (and presumably score-keeping on a balance-sheet) alone.  Readers who ignore this aspect of Lewis miss his other philosophical skills (which they may even not understand as philosophical).

Fourth, Lewis also sees the strategic utility of promoting Priest's position. I mean strategic in two senses. For (i) the responses to Priest will decisively exhibit the instability at the core of the Quine-Putnam edifice. Even if Lewis does not agree with Priest, this is a welcome result to him. (As an aside, this is one way in which his philosophical skill is revealed; he recognizes that his own tools can not undercut the Quine-Putnam edifice as decisive as the debate over Priest will do.) Lewis can play philosophical chess on multiple boards at once (while also famously seeing very deeply into particular positions).  Moreover, (ii) he thinks it's a good thing to open up certain philosophical "conversations." He appears to think this is healthy for the discipline and, more likely, he thinks these conversations will take us closer to philosophical truth.  He clearly thinks that some existing consensus can be "unprincipled;" conversations (over controversies) reveal the tacit, shaky commitments that hold the existing consensus together. 

 

 

Herzl's Political Economy, and Politics

We have no flag, and we need one. If we desire to lead many men, we must raise a symbol above their heads.

I would suggest a white flag, with seven golden stars. The white field symbolizes our pure new life; the stars are the seven golden hours of our working-day. For we shall march into the Promised Land carrying the badge of honor.--Herzl, The Jewish State.

Herzl never loses sight of the reality of Antisemitism. He takes it as an enduring empirical fact that where Jews show up in considerable numbers antisemitism will follow in its wake. He has no faith that advances in Liberalism, or Civilization, will stop this.+

But he does not dwell on antisemitism and its causes. Rather, he wishes to construct a non-Messianic Zionism (for the distinction between negative Zionism and Messianic Zionism recall here). So, he focuses on practical details. In fact, not to put too fine point on it, economics is one of the engines that drives the machinery of his vision inside (1896) Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State).* In fact he seems to think that his relentless focus on political economy distinguishes his project from Messaianic Zionism modeled on Thomas More's Utopianism. Right at the Introduction of the pamphlet he writes, "It is astonishing how little insight into the science of economics many of the men who move in the midst of active life posses." Herzl's conceit is, in part, that he can supply such insight in which a rational organization of society and the hope for a decent living with a modest number of working hours a day (even today seven hours is not a very long work-day) can animate a realistic future.

His political economy does not fit now familiar categories. He defends the value of private property and individual entrepreneurship, but he does so within a Corporatist framework centered on a corporation, Die Jewish Company, that sets tight constraints on economic activity at least in the initial stages of development. It does so in order to reduce risk and produce steady returns and that this may attract what we might call responsible capital (Herzl's treatment is very sophisticated on this point).

There is quite a bit more to say about Die Jewish Company, but its key mission is this: to transform European Jewish economic wealth, including human capital (his treatment of this is quite notable), into concentrated Zionist landholding. This land will be bought at a cheap price. Then by developing the land for commercial use with relatively cheap and skilled labor (initially), Die Jewish Company will become wealthy as the value of the land it develops increases. It's very much a demand-side driven economics. As he puts it, "travellers do not produce railways, but, conversely, railways produce travellers."

If one re-reads The Jewish State from the vantage point of Zionism's three enduring strategic failures -- (recall here and here), that is, (i) its failure to establish permanent borders for the state of Israel; (ii) to settle what kind of political entity Israel should be (so that it can end its near-permanent war-footing and occupation of hostile populations); (iii) (the perception of) Israel's dependence on America's political, military , and cultural support, which ties Israel to America's strategic interests and electoral politics --, Herzl's text suggests that first strategic failure (i) is an original sin of Zionism not just the result of tactical decisions (and embrace of strategic ambiguity) along the way. He famously wavers between "Palestine or Argentine," and in neither case does he worry much about local populations. (He notes as an advantage that Argentina is sparsely populated, but does not reflect on the fact that Palestine is not.)  While he rejects a militarized society and open-ended conflict, his failure of imagination here leads to it.

While Herzl opts for temporary great power support as means to establish a Jewish state, the intended future of the Zionist project is economic and military independence [uns dann aber möglichst bald selbstständig machen]. Not by autarchy, but by commercial trade. So, Herzl's vision avoids part of the third strategic failure (iii). Having said that, he seems not very interested in a common culture and spiritual growth; and he defends the "federation of tongues" (that is multiple languages) on the grounds that "We shall remain in the new country what we now are here, and we shall never cease to cherish with sadness the memory of the native land out of which we have been driven." This suggests a nostalgic, backward looking cultural politics. (For an opposing interpretation, see Hazony.)

As the design of the national flag of the future Jewish state implies, economic fruits are meant to occupy pride of place in the hopeful part of the national rescue mission.+ To be sure, Herzl does not reduce human psychology to economic needs and incentives; if the masses are to be led (Wenn man viele Menschen führen will), they need to be inspired by not just their economic hopes (i.e., seven hour work day), but also by other desires, especially, purity and new beginnings.**

I quoted the flag passage because it also reveals something of Herzl's elitist or aristocratic sensibility. I mean this in two senses: (a) the book is meant, in part, to appeal to ambitious readers who wish to have a manual for leadership in action; (b) Herzl's political order is meant to be aristocratic in spirit ("Politics must take shape in the upper strata and work downwards" [Politik muss von oben herab gemacht werden])--in this book he has little faith in the future of Jewish liberal democracy. (Among the most notable features of his book is his notion of a Gestor.) But while Herzl leaves some details to the future, it is clear that Herzl's vision would have escaped the internal tensions between Liberal and National values that plague Israel today.++

 

Why the Canon Fight is Different in Analytical Philosophy; on Heroworship

For a brief spell in the 80’s and 90’s, higher education was consumed by the canon wars. For those too young to remember, the canon wars were some earnest and intense battles among people who couldn’t agree on which authors needed to be taught for students to be considered properly educated.--Inside Higher Education (2013).

A year ago Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman succesfully managed to ignite discussion within professional philosophy about the status of the canon (recall my response).* Other humanists might think -- paraphrasing a quip falsely attributed to Heinrich Heine (which doesn't stop the Wall Street Journal from recycling it) -- that philosophy is the Netherlands of higher education, everything happens there three decades later. (Genuine humanists know that debates over the canon are as old as the canon itself.) While there are solid sociological-demographic reasons that help explain why philosophy remained aloof from the canon wars (the short version: professional anglophone philosophy is overwhelmingly white, male, change-averse and unreceptive toward unmasking narratives), there is also a key intellectual reason: within analytical philosophy the (Western) canon is largely irrelevant to disciplinary conversations.+ No command over the details of the text is ever presupposed. This is no surprise because analytical philosophy was founded -- self-consciously mimicking Descartes's dismissiveness toward book-knowledge -- as a revolt against historical approaches to philosophy.

While the days may be gone in which one could count on all literature professors to recite Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, Virgil, Goethe, Dante, and the other mighty dead, especially Middlemarch, from memory, to this day working knowledge of some such books provides a shared, contested frame of reference in literary and cultural studies even if nobody thinks that command of such books is a mark of civilization or even a signal of one's cultural capital. And while close reading persists in college courses, the idea that literature can replace Scripture has long been deconstructed, and De Man unmasked; I would not be surprised if it has had its brief, ironic revival prompted by a Simpsons episode.

By contrast even when I present on David Hume's Treatise to professional historians of philosophy, let alone generalist philosophical audiences, I make sure to prepare detailed excerpts of key passages. Hume is the fourth most admired philosopher in history (according to a recent poll); he is the highest ranked English language philosopher--his Treatise the acknowledged masterpiece.** Even the anti-historical logical empiricists would say nice things about Hume. My excerpts are not merely aids to memory; I know that the passages I am calling attention to are simply unknown. Professional philosophy is not a discipline in which texts from the past are internalized. (Yes, there are a few Hume scholars that have working knowledge of some texts, but even among that lovely crowd -- dominated by professional philosophers -- there are very few people that know Hume's major works really by heart.)

Even when working positions come to be known as Humean or Carnapian (etc.), odds are we are dealing with Hume* or Carnap*. It doesn't matter, really, if Hume is not a Humean. (The relationship between, say, Carnap and contemporary Carnapians is very interesting and illuminating.) While there are a few magisterial clubs within professional philosophy -- Kantians often really try to get Kant right (even at the price of introducing anachronism), Wittgensteinians even have a second-order debate whether it makes sense to get Wittgenstein right, etc. --, philosophical puzzles and controversies do not get settled by authoritative interpretation of major texts. Of course, interest in such puzzles can be started by way of some such interpretation. 

The above is not to deny that there is an image of philosophy prevalent within professional philosophy in which a limited number of historical, canonical figures are very prominent: starting with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle through Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant (etc). These folk are often, indeed, implicated in subtle and not-so-subtle forms of ideological domination (or worse). It is worth serious reflection why Gorgias's Helen is unread; why even specialist scholars are unaware of the male feminism of Toland, Mandeville, and John Millar--all eighteenth century figures that were once extremely famous. (Even world class Nietzsche scholars tend to be ignorant on the genealogy of genealogy.) It is shocking that (the first) professional interest in early modern female philosophers only commenced less than a generation ago.  

If we abolish the canon in professional (analytic) philosophy, we just give folk another excuse not to read books. This trend may be unstoppable anyway: the textbook is beloved by university technocrats who hire cheap labor to teach pre-set curriculum with well-defined (achievable) goals.

For, in addition to the image of philosophy, there are classic works, often drawn from those canonical figures that figure in the image of philosophy, which are routinely but not exclusively used to introduce students to philosophy (e.g., an intro to ethics course with Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and Mill--hopefully Sophie de Grouchy before long, too) [recall, recall, and more if you use Google]. Arguably, Nietzsche has become canonical within professional philosophy because teachers could not resist the allure of assigning him in their courses. There could be quite a bit more experimentation and innovation in the pool of such classics. In preparing a course on Islamic philosophy, I encountered Ibn Tufayl (recall) and was certainly not the first to be struck by how easily he could fit in any text-based introductory course in epistemology, philosophy of religion, and political philosophy. 

What does exist in professional philosophy is a kind of hero-worship of living authority figures and the recently deceased.* Manifestly odd views can endure because they are associated with some such hero and, more importantly, because they put (often informal, but no less tight) conceptual and methodological constraints on what is acceptable within professional discussion. Williamson describes the mechanisms involved in a recent essay: he patiently explains the fear factor that surrounded Quine for a while [recall my post]. This is why in the overthrow of such heroes we find more than argument--there is also rhetoric; Williamson describes Lewis's metaphysics as "extreme" (9) and memorably, but unflatteringly, notes that Lewis is "also known as ‘the machine in the ghost’ for his eerie computational power, mechanical diction, faint air of detachment from ordinary life, and beard from another era." (8)

This hero-worship is associated with a lot of the worst features of the discipline; the common cruelty, the lack of respect for viewpoints associated with outsiders, the willful ignorance, and the awful systematic demographic patterns of exclusion. So, if we abolish the canon in professional philosophy without ending the hero-worship not much will change about the professional practice.

Citation as Status Signaling

I concluded also upon further reflection on analytical citation practices the following:

• Low citation rates of others create an illusion of originality; 
• low citation rates of others create and participate in historical effacements and cover-ups;
• low citation rates of others make one's background commitments opaque and, thereby, creates barriers to entry to outsiders;
• if citation is a scarce good it becomes a valuable commodity to be given as either a form of (aspirational) tribute or a rare act of generosity.

That is to say, citation within analytical philosophy is primarily a form of status signaling (recall). It tells the reader what peer group the author belongs or aspires to. 'Peer group' is a polite way of saying faction.--Digressionsnimpressions (2/27/2015)

In other words, it looks like if you are from a small college or foreign unranked university, almost no one will cite you even if you publish in Mind or Phil Review.

Although these prestige effects are not entirely unsurprising, these data suggest to me that perhaps "letting one's work speak for itself" is not all it's cracked up to be--particularly if you are an author from a small college or foreign university. Maybe some self-promotion, indeed, is in order.--Marcus Arvan at the Cocooners.

My post on the antinomies will have to wait a day. First the good news: you can be outside the Gourmet ecology (recall) and publish in two top journals not exactly known for their professional, impartial reviewing practices (Mind and The Philosophical Review during the period of 2005-2009). I happen not to be surprised by this because I have local friends that have succeeded at doing so, too.  Second, one reason why the papers that come from "small colleges or foreign unranked universities" did not garner citations may, in fact, be connected to the long delay between submission and print at these journals (at the time). For a decade ago sharing pre-published papers online was far less common than it is today.  By the time papers appeared in print the informal discussion at -- what the scientific technocrats call -- 'the research frontier' (often found in departments with leading figures and critical mass of PhD students and visitors) had moved on. I have, in fact, argued that as European grant agencies encourage publication in English language (ranked) journals we should expect a lot more 'me 2 research' and low citation rates of papers by scholars writing in English on the periphery of the ecology (recall).

Third, Marcus's new findings are also compatible with my preferred explanation of these matters. Analytical philosophers tend to use citations as status signaling. In effect, citations express the community one wishes to belong to. On the whole, one appears to wish to be in the clubs dominated by high status peers. It would be interesting to see if in areas of specialization that were once or still are fairly marginal, or have a sense of grievance (fill in your favorite example), one is more or less likely to cite lower status peers.  It would also be interesting to see which high status dudes (recall the Healy data) violate the status game and systematically cite lower ranked peers.*

Surprisingly enough, the 'halo effect' provided by the journals seems to be fairly minimal. This does not claim there are no such halo effects in absolute (total average citations) or relative terms: in Europe publication in some such journal helps in grant-making and Stateside it may help in obtaining tenure or moving into jobs at the key departments of the ecology. Given that the effect Marcus finds is pretty big for the short time that has lapsed, his data seems to rule out an alternative hypothesis: that people cite primarily what they have been taught in graduate school (which is what I used to think).

Undoubtedly, somewhere somebody is thinking that Marcus's data are also compatible with the efficient market in ideas and jobs hypothesis: obviously the community's judgment as expressed in relative citations and job placement are a very reliable proxy of quality.  It must be lovely to have faith in some such theodicy.