Digressions&Impressions

Against (Political) Lotteries

Brexit is a turning point in the history of western democracy. Never before has such a drastic decision been taken through so primitive a procedure – a one-round referendum based on a simple majority. Never before has the fate of a country – of an entire continent, in fact – been changed by the single swing of such a blunt axe, wielded by disenchanted and poorly informed citizens.

...

Fifty years ago, we lived in a world of greater political apathy and yet greater trust in politics. Now there is both passion and distrust. These are turbulent times, as the events of the past week demonstrate all too clearly. And yet, for all this turbulence, there has been little reflection on the tools that our democracies use. It is still a heresy to ask whether elections, in their current form, are a badly outmoded technology for converting the collective will of the people into governments and policies.

We discuss and debate the outcome of a referendum without discussing its principles. This should be surprising. In a referendum, we ask people directly what they think when they have not been obliged to think – although they have certainly been bombarded by every conceivable form of manipulation in the months leading up to the vote. But the problem is not confined to referendums: in an election, you may cast your vote, but you are also casting it away for the next few years. This system of delegation to an elected representative may have been necessary in the past – when communication was slow and information was limited – but it is completely out of touch with the way citizens interact with each other today.

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But democratic fatigue syndrome is not so much caused by the people, the politicians or the parties – it is caused by the procedure. Democracy is not the problem. Voting is the problem. Where is the reasoned voice of the people in all this? Where do citizens get the chance to obtain the best possible information, engage with each other and decide collectively upon their future? Where do citizens get a chance to shape the fate of their communities? Not in the voting booth, for sure.

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People care deeply about their communities and want to be heard. But a much better way to let the people speak than through a referendum is to return to the central principle of Athenian democracy: drafting by lot, or sortition as it is presently called. In ancient Athens, the large majority of public functions were assigned by lot. Renaissance states such as Venice and Florence worked on the same basis and experienced centuries of political stability. With sortition, you do not ask everyone to vote on an issue few people really understand, but you draft a random sample of the population and make sure they come to the grips with the subject matter in order to take a sensible decision. A cross-section of society that is informed can act more coherently than an entire society that is uninformed.

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The most common argument against sortition is the supposed incompetence of the those who have not been elected. A body of elected representatives undoubtedly has more technical competencies than a body chosen by lot. But what is the use of a parliament full of highly educated lawyers if few of them know the price of bread?

Besides, the elected do not know everything. They need staff and researchers to fill the gaps in their expertise. In much the same way, a representative body chosen by lot would not stand alone. It could invite experts, rely on professionals to moderate debates and put questions to citizens. Legislation could arise from the interaction between it and an elected chamber.

The arguments put forward against sortition are often identical to the reasons once put forward for not allowing peasants, workers or women to vote. Then, too, opponents claimed it would mark the end of democracy.--David Van Reybrouck "Why elections are bad for democracy," The Guardian.

The first quoted paragraph above is the first paragraph of Van Reybrouck's essay. It's astounding hyperbole and nonsense.  Consider, for example, the implications of The Sykes–Picot Agreement and the subsequent drawing of artificial boundaries through the Middle East (which generated a century of warfare and turbulence); the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia (1914) that produced nearly forty years of war; and, given Van Reybrouck's argument, today's favorite, the Athenian's assembly decision to forge ahead with the Sicilian Expedition that ended up destroying Athenian power.  (Fill in your favorite examples--undoubtedly George W. Bush's attack on Iraq can figure in that.)  Van Reybrouck's grasp of history is shaky in other respects: "fifty years ago" we "lived in a world of greater political apathy and yet greater trust in politics" than now; yet he forgets it was the height of the Vietnam war (and Stateside the Civil Right's movement)--a period of political assassinations, massive protests and street riots, etc.

This is not to deny that the outcome of the British referendum will have serious consequences (even if you think Leave was a swell idea), but as I have been arguing this past week it was the effect of both (unnecessary) institutional innovation -- something Van Reybrouck fails to note -- and the peculiar transformations of British political-economy. It's also too early to tell how things will play out.

Van Reybrouck misrepresents the utility and justification of a "system of delegation to an elected representative." He claims it was due to slow communication and limited circulation information. Even if we leave aside subtle matters of legitimacy and representation or the mundane issues concerning defense of interests, it's quite clear that the very idea of delegation is, in part, based on the intellectual division of labor -- the representative is freed up to devote her attention to policy matters --, and this kind of specialization is just as necessary, even more necessary, when there is abundant information and massive communication. And, indeed, in the division of labor voters 'cast away' their vote in some sense. But, of course, they can stay massively involved in interest groups, participation in various campaigns, etc. That is to say, Van Reybrouck misrepresents modern democracy as much as he fails to acknowledge all those folk that have been reflecting on the "tools" that democracies use.*

But my central complain about Van Reybrouck's article is two-fold. First, he fails to acknowledge that his version of rule by lot is really a version of epistemocracy. For, in his approach it is experts that guide the randomly chosen folk. But rather than owning up to the fact that he is an epistemocrat, he pretends his main innovation is the lot. Yet, notice how the experts are necessary yet invisible in his account: "you draft a random sample of the population and make sure they come to the grips with the subject matter in order to take a sensible decision." Who and how does one "make sure"? Of course, via experts or some other privileged group (civil servants?) left off-stage in the proposal. [He does discuss the role of experts in providing advice.] And who controls these experts? We are not told. On principle, if forced to choose, I prefer the lot over experts; but if I have to choose between a disguised epistemocracy and the real thing (say Plato, Al-Farabi, or Brennan), then I'll opt for rule by known experts.

Second, while Van Reybrouck claims to be discussing known criticisms of rule by lot, he fails to acknowledge the most devastating one. It is quite evident that if the legislature is inexperienced, then either civil servants, experts, or some other group (the rich who can easily bribe) will become the dominant force behind the scene--the history of Athens offers ample evidence of this.  When term-limits are introduced (and on his proposal the lot generates very restrictive term limits), then the balance of power shifts to those who have an information or temporal advantage. The point is not that ordinary citizens are incapable of ruling -- they manifestly are --, but they end up at the mercy of the folk who 'make sure they come to the grips with the subject matter' (and who help define what is or what is not sensible.).

There is a more fundamental issue lurking here. It's a methodological point that Jason Brennan tends  to emphasize (and so this allows me to say something nice about him).  Van Reybrouck systematically fails to consider non-ideal circumstances of his preferred approach, and so compares his small-scale pilots with the real world of fallible electoral politics we're familiar with. I do not deny that there are many limitations to contemporary electoral politics -- and Van Retbrouck's comments on the misguided way it can get imposed on others is well taken --, but with friends like this 'democracy' does not need enemies. 

 

 

On the Implosion of the British Political System

For the Revolution Settlement of 1689 was not the triumph of a party, but an agreement of the chief parties to live and let live. The balance of Whig and Tory, each jealous of the other and both jealous of the Crown, served to protect the liberties of the individual Englishmen from the onslaughts of power.---George Macaulay Trevelyan (1938) The English Revolution, 1688-1689, 173-4.

 

No one seems capable of stepping forward and offering reassurance. The Leavers, who disagreed on what Brexit should look like, do not think it is their responsibility to set out a path. They reckon that falls to Number 10 (where they have appeared in public, it has mostly been to discard the very pledges on which they won the referendum). Number 10, however, seems to have done little planning for this eventuality. It seems transfixed by the unfolding chaos; reluctant to formulate answers to the Brexiteers’ unanswered questions. As Mr Cameron reportedly told aides on June 24th when explaining his decision to resign: “Why should I do all the hard shit?”--The Economist (June 26, 2016)

It's often said that whatever the real evils of a sovereign, first-past-the-post-parliament, it at least ensures stability and leadership as opposed to the kind of designed, perennial gridlock one sees Stateside and the purported instability and indecisiveness of coalition governments chosen by single-constituency, proportional parliaments. From that vantage point the past week in British politics has been quite astonishing (maybe unprecedented, but I leave that to experts).

For, the two major parties are imploding at the same time without any clear alternative waiting in the wings; the referendum has generated acute political and market uncertainty, and, despite the existence of a care-taker government, nobody can be found to trigger article 50. While it's not impossible that things will stabilize before long, the specter of an impotent care-taker government haunts British political life (at least until September when the Conservatives are supposed to replace Cameron).* This is especially so because if they could get away with it, the political and economic elites would like to find a way to nullify the referendum. While the Belgians recently managed to function just fine during "a total of 541 days of negotiations and 589 days without an elected government," and, in fact, thereby avoiding the damaging austerity politics popular in surrounding countries [it's a perfect, so-called natural experiment], the Belgians were familiar with lengthy coalition talks--it's part of their political mores.

The aftermath of the Brexit vote has really been quite extraordinary: it's peace-time, without hyperinflation, and, while many people have suffered during the last decade, there has been no general economic implosion prior to last week's referendum. The Labour party's problems may be attributed to the recent change in the way its leader is selected: it used to be a vote among its representatives in the Commons and has become a kind of primary among its (purported) membership. In effect, the Labour party's parliamentary party has used the occasion to try to undo its membership's choice. That is to say, by aiming to make the Labour party more democratic, the party has created a permanent tension between the interests and strategy of the parliamentary party and the membership's views. (While the situation is different Stateside, one may say that the Democrats' so called, super-delegates are designed to prevent exactly such an outcome. Currently the Republicans lack some such mechanism.) The Labour party's problems are, in some sense, irrelevant because they are not in power, although their internal division makes a national unity government unlikely.

The Conservatives' problems are of their own making. By this I do not just mean their long-standing internal tensions 'over Europe' that precipitated this referendum. Rather, because parliament is sovereign in the British system (and has been so since 1688-9), a referendum fits uneasily in the British system. There have been only three (national) British referenda (there have been more at the various local levels, including Scotland's recent one)--two of which involved the EU. And, as we are now learning, the British system is not well designed to handle a referendum that goes against the government. In fact, European experience could have taught the British that in countries where referenda are rare, they also become a referendum on the government or on wider cultural issues. Here the experience of the Scottish referendum is non-trivial: its campaign unleashed nationalism not just in Scotland, but also a reactive (and previously latent) narrow nationalism in England (which helped influence if not decide the last election for the House of Commons because Labour was viewed as too close to if not reliant on Scottish nationalism).

There are two underlying morals here. First, due to the increasing role for direct democracy, the old (more republican) British system in which parliamentary parties were rather powerful, is coming under strain. As a consequence, Britain is becoming more like the rest of Europe in which the 20-30% of the electorate that is nationalist-welfarist-authoritarian will be increasingly assertive and can expect to be represented more aggressively at the national level. If the United Kingdom falls apart, it is increasingly likely that given first-past-the-post, this segment of the electorate can reasonably hope to win national English elections until there is an effective coalition of more cosmopolitan and liberal elements to oppose it. 

Second, it's time to recognize, anew (see the quote from Macaulay Trevelyan) that it was not exclusively the rules/institutions and incentives that ensured the functioning of the previous system. But that shared mores and an underlying mutual trust -- at least among those in politics -- that there was a fundamental commitment to minimal unity played a central role. So, while the current care-taker Cameron government has the form that belongs to authority and can undoubtedly pass laws and handle day-to-day operations (etc.), it lacks the matter that allows genuine authority. My suspicion is that until Article 50 is triggered, this authority will be uncertain.

 

 

On Public Philosophy

Today, an invited guest post on Political Transformative Experience that I authored appeared at Daily Nous (thank you Justin and Helen--recall this post (when I called it Transformative Political Experience; do I have to settle on a stable name?); go check it out and explore the whole discussion.

By public philosophy one can mean three things:  first, interventions or participation in public debates by professional philosophers and those trained in professional philosophy. The previous sentence is still vague, but I am relying on a distinction between philosophy withdrawn from the public and geared toward fellow philosophers and would-be-philosophers (e.g., journal articles and seminar discussion are not 'public' in the relevant sense), and those philosophical utterances oriented toward a non-philosophical audience (a newspaper editorial, a television appearance, etc.). There are some tricky cases: a (taped) lecture to a university-wide audience may well drift into such public participation; expert advice to technocrats is not really public in the relevant sense, but may well influence the public. Second, a genre of writing and speaking by intellectuals, who are not professional philosophers -- and do not engage in the debates/discussions among professionals --, yet engage public(s) on philosophical topics. (Sometimes these are topics that are not much discussed by recent professional philosophy.) Both species of direct public philosophy can draw on the results/insights or distinctions of professional philosophy, but need not do so.

Both kinds of public philosophy require special skills that are distinct from those that allow one to flourish in professional context(s). These special skills involve an ability to combine communicative, accessibility (note, not clarity or simplicity) and public agenda. Much public philosophy ignores intellectual specialization within the profession in order to offer a broader narrative, even a corrective to the public speech of specialist experts, in order to promote some (or a) common good. Such public philosophy can be done by way of public unmasking of practices, by the introduction of distinctions, by clarifying conceptual entailment, and by deploying systematic narratives, etc. There are contemporary examples of philosophers who are very good at public and professional philosophy (and here I ignore the divisions between analytical and continental styles).  There are also interesting issues associated with cases of professional philosopher leveraging status (gained from the professional credit economy) within the profession in order to participate in and benefit from public philosophy (and vice versa).

I am a friend of public philosophy (although do not think it should be expected from professional philosophers) because it enriches public life, even though (a) it can be dangerous to the public and, thereby, to philosophers, and (b) give the public a false image of what philosophy is (public philosophy gets to be taken to be philosophy as such) or what the consensus of all (professional) philosophers might be.  Both (a-b) involve tough questions on both the nature of responsible, public speech that I tend to explore under the heading "Socratic Problem" (which also involves the public role of experts) as well as what I have been calling philosophical integrity, that is, the way(s) in which one's professional arguments, professional credit, and public utterances and comportment cohere.

Before I turn to the third indirect species of public philosophy, I would like to distinguish public philosophy from two closely-related activities: i) punditry and ii) advocacy by professional philosophy. Professional philosophers can be pundits (from the Hindi pandit)--opinion-makers informed by learning. I don't think professional philosophers have any special expertise as pundits (and on the whole I try to avoid it, although last week with less success). A lot of would-be-public-philosophy is really  service to a cause or a political agenda and often certain cosmopolitan preferences are taken to constitute rationality. To be sure, such partisan or service philosophy -- be it in the seminar room or in public -- is real philosophy (recall that according to Dotson this just is philosophy.) But such service does not tend to presuppose a common good--if anything it is often legitimately suspicious of the common good; it recognizes that the status quo is zero-sum and, it nobly, wishes to redress a political (economic, etc.) imbalance in the name of justice, truth, morality, etc. There is also a species of (naive) philosophy that fails to understand how its public utterances predictably facilitate the rise of injustice (we may call it disservice philosophy).

Thus, I associate the 'public' in public philosophy with a shared life or common good. That is, public philosophy so understood is committed to a form of minimal political unity--a unity that is constituted by (educational) practices, narratives, and public understandings that facilitate some dispositions conducive to minimal, political union. (In a community of angels or philosophers there would be no need of public philosophy.) Public philosophy plays (as Platonizing philosophers have long recognized) a role in the would-be-civic religion of society.

I have no doubt that many of my peers think that what I have called philosophy as 'advocacy' (or Dotson's service) just is public philosophy and that civic religion just is a bunch of lies and (if they were to comment on this post) will accuse me of a lack of warmth (if not worse) toward justice. Some of these (my closest intellectual friends), accepting as an article of faith the priority of the right over the good, are convinced that it is the duty of (public) philosophy to promote public justice and cosmopolitan morality. Allowing that there exists some such duty, I demur from accepting that is the main or only duty of philosophical speech.

So far, I have emphasized the role of individuals as public philosophers. But facilitating or enhancing social norms, public practices, and political institutions conducive to a common good can also be an indirect species of public philosophy (that is the third kind of public philosophy). For such practices can instantiate rational arrangements that make possible, perhaps, constitute a common good which I will provisionally define (recall) as mutual accommodation and modest forms of mutual receptivity such that public conversation -- not war or domination -- can be continued.

On "Brexit, Democracy, and Epistocracy"

This brings us to the central injustice of democracy, and why holding a referendum was a bad idea. Imagine, as an analogy, that you are sick. You go to a doctor. But suppose your “doctor” doesn’t study the facts, doesn’t know any medicine, and makes her decisions about how to treat you on a whim, on the basis of prejudice or wishful thinking. Imagine the doctor not only prescribes you a course of treatment, but literally forces you, at gunpoint, to accept the treatment.

We’d find this behavior intolerable. Your doctor owes you a duty of care. She owes it to you to deliver an expert opinion on the basis of good information, a strong background knowledge of medicine, and only after considering the facts in a rational and scientific way. To force you to follow the decisions incompetent and bad faith doctor is unjust.

But this is roughly what happens in democracy. Most voters are ignorant of both basic political facts and the background social scientific theories needed to evaluate the facts. They process what little information they have in highly biased and irrational ways. They decided largely on whim. And, worse, we’re each stuck having to put up with the group’s decision. Unless you’re one of the lucky few who has the right and means to emigrate, you’re forced to accept your democracy’s poorly chosen decisions.--Jason Brennan "Brexit, Democracy, and Epistocracy"

Jason Brennan can be trusted to never let a good crisis go to waste; he is using Brexit to peddle his anti-democratic sentiments and to offer up his medicine, the rule by experts (or epistocracy). Never mind that referenda are (thankfully) not the norm in liberal democracies, and that the particular referendum that occasioned his remarks was intended by the credentialed and smart (former) prime-minister David Cameron to settle an intra-parliamentary debate within the Conservative party rather than be used as a guide to policy. (Cameron never seriously contemplated losing the referendum which is clear from the fact that he deliberately avoided doing the one thing he promised to do if he lost: to invoke article 5o.) I offer three critical comments on his analysis.

First, regardless if one reflects on direct democracy (i.e., a referendum) or indirect democracy (voting for representatives) Brennan's analogy between going to a doctor and respecting the outcome of a vote is a false one. When one visits a physician the goal is not up for debate: the telos is given; it's health or restoring ordinary functioning as much as possible. Of course, there are exceptions to this (especially in cosmetic surgery and other forms of enhancement). There is a lot of room for nuance and ethical distinctions (not to mention important cases where there is no hope for restoring much of anything), but you don't go to a physician to have a good time or as leisure activity (etc.). By contrast, in democratic life, most of the ends and norms are up for debate and this debate is, in part, one of the aims of the exercise.

That is to say, we don't go to a physician in order to find out how to live and what the proper ends of one's life are. The claim in the previous sentence may be an error of modernity (although Plato's Symposium suggests it was already a problem in Ancient Athens)--maybe we should develop and train our physicians to become wise, too.The dis-analogy makes a huge difference. When ends are given, experts can guide in light of facts and constraints (means-ends rationality: "good information, a strong background knowledge of medicine, and only after considering the facts in a rational and scientific way.") When ends and the rules of the game are up for debate, the experts tend to give very partial advice. When economists tell us what is rational, they tend to assume that growth or full employment is good and they tend to ignore distributional effects, and they do not discuss all kinds of other quality of life issues and other important ends that other experts (e.g., sociologists, psychologists, ecologists, and criminologists (etc.) may focus on.

A striking fact of the British 'leave' vote is that it is concentrated in areas that benefit directly from EU spending, that is, poorer, older, and less educated areas (Cornwall, an area dependent also on tourism, has been used as an exemplar in this discussion). A lot of folk used this as evidence that leave voters are irrational (and ignorant). But that's only true if they understand themselves as aiming to increase their share of European handouts--what self-respecting voter would want that?

In his writings, Brennan simply takes it for granted that the rationality of a decision is based on an evaluation of its social "effects" and that there is agreement about the evaluation of these effects. And that such social consequences needs to be evaluated with "social scientific knowledge." Now, I am all for professional philosophers giving increased respect and hearing to social sciences (I work in a political science department). But we cannot assume that there is agreement over the desirability of effects. Lots of folk who voted 'remain' want open-borders in Europe (let's leave aside the issue of external borders). Let's stipulate that's great for the economy; it's also part of a certain life-style in which Europe's youth explore each other's countries and cultures (in part by working and studying abroad). The Cosmopolitan elites will easily slide into treating their preferences as constituting rationality. But that is not obvious. The 'leave' voters (let's stipulate) want no cross-border traffic (and no immigrants), and, let's stipulate they are harmed economically by their vote. Yet, if one introduces environmental considerations into one's analysis, then harming and reducing traffic is quite rational. (Before the Brexit campaign turned nasty there were quite a few environmentalists on the 'leave' side.)

Second, Brennan loves cherry-picking the facts on voter ignorance. Let me offer one of his favorite Memes:

Political scientists have been studying voter knowledge for the past 60 years. The results are uniformly depressing. Most voters in most countries are systematically ignorant of even the most basic political facts, let alone more the social scientific theories needed to make sense of these facts.

This is not a true state of the art in political science. In his work Brennan systematically ignores criticisms of the research he is relying on (see, e.g., Arthur Lupia) and he relies on the snobbishness of his readers (who themselves are fed a steady stream of ignorant voter stories by the press). In fact, Brennan and his readers are good at passing tests (in which one is quizzed on the "facts"). But voting is not such a test. In a representative democracy it is about selecting representatives and leaders, who are evaluated to echo Manin's Madisonian point along whatever dimension (a majority/plurality of) the electorate deems relevant. The Brexit campaign was very clearly a(n intemperate) debate about an image of Britain not primarily a debate about the facts. It is also a debate about sense-making, but not in the way Brennan uses it, but rather in a wider, diffuse sense. Whatever else 'leave' was about it was a rejection of forms of life and values that have become dominant in educated culture. And this gets me to the final, most important point.

Third, Brennan often pretends that epistocracy is somehow not existing and would be a "new system" worth trying. But many properly political decisions are farmed out to experts already: most obviously monetary and banking policy, which is run by independent central bankers and regulators--look how well that turned out. Brennan shows no interest in epistocratic failures (not to mention the evils of eugenics, etc.).

More important, across the western world, government today is the province of the educated. Long ago are the days when governments were job centers for the (well connected) uneducated. Colleges and universities are credentialing mills for bureaucracies and semi-government bureaucracies. While France may be on the extreme end in entrusting rule largely to a cadre of graduates of De École nationale d'administration (ENA), all liberal democracies are already run, in practice, by (to echo JFK) the brightest and best. These epistemocratic elites have created a two-tier polity: the credentialed are protected by the state and have lots of economic and judicial privileges; the uneducated are, well, left to fend for themselves harassed by law enforcement and technocracy.* Brennan notes that "all across the West, we’re seeing the rise of rise of angry, resentful, nationalist, xenophobic and racist movements, movements made up mostly of low-information voters." What he fails to recognize is that these are the effects of a political culture and institutions that are already highly epistocratic. Why prescribe a double dosage of a medicine that has nearly killed the patient?

 

 

The View of Brexit From the Other Side of the North Sea

Ever since the 1990s, governments of Great Britain have negotiated a whole number of European 'opt-outs' (see here for the list). Rather than solidifying support for the Union this has created a dynamic in which the UK never became fully integrated in the give-and-take of compromise of European politics and British citizens were denied a whole number of privileges and benefits the rest of Europe takes for granted or has learned to appreciate (now that they are under threat again).

Whatever else that is to be said about the Brexit vote, the strategy of Europe-a-la-carte has been a flop inside England (and Wales); it also has been strategic failure for Europe which faces many challenges: a tattered common currency, a restless and violent Russia (which supplies lots of gas), anemic growth in its periphery, rising xenophobia among its aged and less educated population, member-states that violate liberal norms, and an Islamic youth culture that rejects Liberal values. As the response to the recent refugee showed, too many of the relatively recent EU member states are flirting with an a-le-carte-Europe; too many of them (Poland, Hungary) are flirting with an illiberal trajectory inside the Union. 

To put matters simply: the EU does not have the luxury to focus on keeping a divided England, which has suffered from awful governance and an irresponsible media-landscape, inside the Union. I know I annoy and dismay my cosmopolitan and Liberal, British friends when I argue that a quick and clean divorce is the best to be hoped for until the English have worked through their national conversation on their collective future. (Some bits of the divorce will be contentious: London has been encouraged to become Europe's banker, and an England-outside-the-Union will be allowed no control over Europe's banking future.) Some of them are even working tirelessly to find legal and political means to prevent Brexit. But, as we know from the fate of French non and Dutch nee to the Lisbon treaty, to overturn a referendum of this magnitude will poison political life for a long time and only strengthens anti-democratic forces.

England has been a beacon of liberty and a calm, steady common sense for most of the twentieth century; the character of the Brexit campaign has exhibited a moral rot that runs through much of the political class, the media, and a large swath of the population. Rather than rising to the seriousness of the moment, we have seen English public life become not just undignified, but unhinged culminating in the murder of Jo Cox. It's not that continentals are inherently more civilized, but we have to prevent this from spreading.

For, the Union to become an Empire of peace (recall here and here) it needs to reform its institutions so we can end the political practice of the EU in which 'bad news' will be blamed on (faceless bureaucrats in) Brussels, and 'good news' can be credited to local politicians. We need a governance structure that allows political accountability for our collective monetary policy -- central bank independence has been the worst large scale social science experiment since the early twentieth century flirtation with eugenics -- , we need to have elected politicians in control of the Union bureaucracy not appointed commissioners, and we need to create a shared political life at the heart of the EU governance structure that permits the rise of strong, central leadership which simultaneously will have to be kept in check by a a German-style, Federal Constitutional Court.

The whole previous paragraph goes against the purported common sense of English political life, the views of its elites and media, and the purported national sentiments of the population. The English should not be allowed to slow down and veto the manifest needs of political reform of the Union. It is, thus, in the interest of the Union to let the English go (assuming the Scots and, perhaps, the Northern Irish will re-enter down the road). This will be especially painful for the Dutch, Danes, and Swedes who have relied on the British to defend their trade interests inside the Union and be a counter-balance to the French-German engine. We in Holland have many ties to England, including shared corporate governance of huge companies (Royal Dutch Shell, Unilever, Reed-Elsevier), strong academic connections, and intertwined histories [going back to (ahh) the Roman conquest of Britain (when Batavians fought alongside the Romans)] not the least of which Glorious Revolution of 1688 and Waterloo. For the Dutch, Brexit is the defeat of forty years of foreign policy.

Even so, from this side of the North Sea, there is also an upside to letting the English go. We divide the xenophobic, illiberal, and racist wings of today's Euro-skeptics* from each other and remove the country with the most mainstream Euro-abominatio. While Brexit will not destroy Europe's neo-fascist, populist parties it will be a huge strategic set-back for them (especially as the deceptions of the leave campaign become fully understood). And it will give us time to revive Europe's fortunes locally and across the Continent. The Union needs a shared mission, a collective civil religion, the revival of its economy, the protection of its founding Liberal values, and far-reaching institutional and political reforms--none of these will be possible with England inside the Union. Once we have saved the EU, we can wait for England's return with open arms. 

 

 

 

Brexit; the day after

So, I was wrong in my prediction. Leave won. My colleagues in electoral politics have a nice challenge ahead to learn to model and predict one-off electoral campaigns.

EU membership in the UK entailed, de facto, that in exchange for be(com)ing the financial capital of Europe (London), the UK had to open doors to workers from all over Europe (and EU pensioners could retire in Spain). From Western Europe it drew talent to work in finance and cultural industries (fashion, marketing, pop, etc.); from eastern Europe it drew talent to work in building and local service industries. This created a virtuous cycle of rising incomes and wealth for homeowners and capital; the Southeast part of England has been booming for nearly four decades. (It voted overwhelmingly remain.)

Along the way, London became the financial capital for the most influential citizens from countries with authoritarian regimes; this generated more virtuous cycles of rising assets, and growing services.

But rather than taxing the financial wealth and investing in the areas left behind [and, my God, there are lots of run-down, areas of England], the UK elites partied for four decades. These elites also clung to the special relationship with the United States (see, especially, the second Iraq war).

Earlier in the week I noted that absent a common, language, a common (transcendent) religion, and lacking a nationalist ethos, the EU, which is a new kind of empire of peace, ought to develop a common civic religion that can promote shared values that can inform some idea of a common good. For, right now the political practice of the EU is that 'bad news' will be blamed on (faceless bureaucrats in) Brussels, and 'good news' will be credited to local politicians. The EU governance structure does not permit the rise of strong, central leadership. That combination has proven to be a recipe for undermining the political legitimacy and popularity of the Union, especially in the context of slow economic growth and rising immigration since the Great Crash of 2008.*

I have noted that there is a significant part of Islamic youth among EU citizens that clearly does not feel inspired and recognized by the cultural, political, and economic status quo and that has rejected the modern European project. We now have learned that the least educated bit of the English (!) electorate has decided to throw their lot in with an enduring, popular idol: the nation-state, which has a shared language (and currency), control over population, and can be the conduit that channels shared aspirations if only to keep certain people and ideas out.  One can expect that Islamic Internationalism and nation-state chauvinism will clash at the expense of social harmony. To those of us who care about Liberal values (in a broad sense): the battle of ideas -- in favor of the rule of law, exchange of people, ideas, and goods, cosmopolitanism,  --  is being lost  in Europe.

 

 

On Brexit and Europe's Future

Disaffection with the EU is at historic highs, not only in your country. It is hard to imagine an EU much weaker and more on the defensive than the one we have right now. Anyone who cares about the EU’s future — and I would put myself in that camp — should not defend the status quo but cry out for change and for policies that will at long last take citizens and their concerns seriously. As a free market project, the EU has accentuated the cleavage between winners and losers of economic competition. The ill-conceived single currency has done the same. Counterbalancing initiatives for a social Europe have largely remained toothless — not for the least part due to British obstinacy.

...

What about the feared cascade of Euroscepticism? That, too, is based on the naive and dangerous idea that in principle, the EU is in good shape. That Euroscepticism all over the continent will blow over by itself. Rather than praying that the UK doesn’t rock the boat too much and otherwise stay the course, European elites should make re-engaging citizens their top priority. If that means killing some of Brussels’ political darlings — TTIP comes to mind — then so be it.--Daniel Mügge "An open letter to David Cameron"

Because I work in political science these days, I start with a prediction: the remain vote will prevail tomorrow. The leave vote will not overcome the status quo bias inherent in all electorates. In particular, in an ugly campaign, it has failed to generate a positive vision for England’s future; I use ‘England’ because everybody knows that [CORRECTED]*** leave will lead to dissolving of the United Kingdom with Scotland joining Europe. The campaign has been primarily about fear (to simplify: remain scaremongers about the economy; leave scaremongers about immigrants). But if the choice is between two kinds of fear, voters will choose the devil they know, even if she is a boring technocrat. Such status quo bias is so strong that when Scottish voters were offered a more attractive, youthful and enthusiastic campaign they could not bring themselves to jump on the train to the future.

Mügge's "Open Letter" is officially directed at David Cameron, but in reality to the "European elites."* That's part of the problem here. He is asking for leadership -- a 'leap of faith' and boldness-- from institutions that have been designed to prevent such leaps. Europe is originally a project to prevent war between Germany and France, and to prevent the democratic generation of authoritarian leadership by both curtailing the power of electorates as well as by promoting liberal economic values that help prevent zero-sum logic of modern statecraft. For, the truth is that electorates can always be tempted by projects that combine intensified nationalism and socialism, especially in periods of economic decline (and inflation) and cultural insecurity. Once electorates are so tempted, it is very hard to reverse.

That is to say, that from the start, the European Union is a moral project with a commitment to peace not war [that is not trivial--for the previous centuries European states had been imperial war-making enterprises; the United States still is a war-making machine] and the blessings that follow from shared, economic enrichment. The Union was designed to be a decisive veto on any member state's backsliding into variants of fascism. There were competing interpretations of what the previous sentence entails, but -- under the umbrella leadership of Pax Americana -- for a long time there was considerable overlap among the Christian Democratic, Social Democratic, (classically) Liberal, and even Romantic-Conservative bits of the electorates and elites over the fundamentals of this moral vision. But in recent times, the EU played nice with the would-be-fascists in its midst (Haider in Austria, Orban in Hungary, and now an increasing number of states). France has been operating under a state of emergency and not a word of protest from those that are supposed to protect our values and the rule of law. Unsurprisingly, our fascist neighbors (Putin, Erdogan) got the message.** What's needed then is a vision to renew the moral framework of the Union.

Such an moral vision is absent in Mügge's letter. This is clear from his analysis. I quote the key paragraph:

The real threat to the European project is not potential Brexit but European inability to take the bold steps that will be necessary to mend its broken economic governance. If it is to survive, the single currency will need stronger political and redistributive props. It will require much deeper democratic legitimitacy [sic] through the European parliament — the kind of sovereignty transfer that is so dreaded in the UK. All these reforms ask for a leap of faith, a commitment to make the union whole. They ask for the opposite of the grudging veto player that your country will be if Remain wins by anything but a landslide.

I do not disagree with Mügge's general sense ("depressing sight;" the lack of "pride" etc.) that there is a European malaise (recall here, here, and here, although I was struck that Mügge never mentions immigration, terrorism, and refugees). But the real threat is not broken economic governance (and it is broken); that's a symptom of the malaise not its root cause. The real problem is not the purported lack of legitimacy of the European parliament. A squabbling European parliament that ends up being filled with nationalist, mutually antagonistic euro-skeptics (with a shared loathing of immigrants and cultural elites) will not generate legitimacy or a desirable union. History teaches that parliaments earn their legitimacy by channeling the interests and powers that they represent to the greater good.

The European Union is an experiment in the formation of a new kind of multi-national empire. It was always committed to a rhetoric of progress toward a closer union. To sustain it requires not just a robust economy and the rule of law, but also ongoing moral and political education of its citizens and would be citizens. The enemies of this union know that they win if they can keep the discussion focused on (rather awful) values. That there are ‘too many foreigners’ in the UK (Holland, France, Poland, etc. even countries without statistically significant number of foreigners) taps into core values related to safety, security and identity, and fear of the unknown. To forfeit values means one cannot explain what the aim of progress would be. If we are incapable of embracing a shared transcendent religion, then a civic religion has to provide the (axiological) framework that allows us to battle the forces that promote the rise of an authoritarian, nationalist-socialist outlook that embraces violence and exclusion as central features of a unified way of life. 

Europe can survive tomorrow's results. It cannot survive its descent into hollowness.

 

When Did The President of Yale University -- Peter Salovey -- Know What About Pogge?

In an interview with the News before the open letter was published, philosophy professor Shelly Kagan, who was department chair when Pogge was hired, said what Pogge has admitted to doing is inappropriate and unprofessional. Kagan added that had accusations against Pogge been brought to his attention, he would have discussed them with the administration.-- Yale Daily News [HT Dailynous.]

At DailyNous, Justin Weinberg aptly noted:

So instead of saying “¬P,” Kagan says “P→Q.” That’s rather roundabout.

Indeed.

Kagan points to one of the central, institutional issues of the Pogge case that have not been fully explored by the media yet. There is converging evidence that some of our colleagues and administrators at Yale University had been alerted to accusations from his period at Columbia when he was being hired. (Recall: we now know he was sanctioned there.) Pogge himself has been reported as claiming that he brought it up when he was hired and that (in his words) Yale “took great pains to investigate what had happened” at Columbia. Perhaps, because of Columbia's confidentiality rules Yale never found out the whole truth about Pogge's behavior  there.

If I am not mistaken the current president of Yale University, Peter Salovey, was then, the Dean of Yale College and about to become Provost. Perhaps, it's about time somebody asks him, what he knew, and when?

Philosophy's Geoff Marcy Moment?* (On the Open Letter Regarding Thomas Pogge)

According to those who have reviewed the complaint, it includes dozens of pages of supporting documents alleging that Pogge has engaged in a long-term pattern of discriminatory conduct, including unwanted sexual advances, quid pro quo offers of letters of recommendation and other perks, employment retaliation in response to charges of sexual misconduct, and sexual assault. Included in the complaint are affidavits from former colleagues at Columbia University who attest that Pogge was accused of sexual harassment by a student in his department, and disciplined for this....

We hope that investigation of the civil rights complaint will shed further light on this matter. But bringing the complaint to resolution will be a long and complex process focused more on Yale's handling of these claims, rather than on the specific allegations against Pogge. Meanwhile, the academic community must make its own decision about how to respond in light of what has been made public. We write, then, to express our belief that the information now in the public domain — including that provided by Pogge himself in the aforementioned email correspondence — suffices to demonstrate that Pogge has engaged in behavior that violates the norms of appropriate professional conduct. Nothing is more important to our philosophical community than the trust he has betrayed. Based on the information that has been made public, we strongly condemn his harmful actions toward women, most notably women of color, and the entire academic community.--Open Letter Regarding Thomas Pogge

Has philosophy reached its Geoff* Marcy moment? I have in mind the episode about the famous astronomer who resigned once his own colleagues broke the culture of silence: 

Fellow astronomers started speaking out against his [Geoff Marcy's] behavior, while some said he wasn't welcome at an academic annual gathering.  

Twenty-four of his colleagues in the astronomy department at UC Berkeley called for him to leave and more than 2,500 academics signed an online petition, posted by Buzz Feed, to support people who were 'targets' of his 'inappropriate behavior' and those who have 'spoken publicly about it'.--Daily Mail

The Open letter Regarding Thomas Pogge was signed by at least (if I counted correctly) sixteen colleagues of Pogge at Yale as well as many other influential professional philosophers who represent many different ways of doing philosophy today. The letter relies on the fact that there is now quite a bit of evidence that Pogge's behavior has harmed both a number of women as well as harmed the professional community. One other fact that has become increasingly clear is that the behavior in question spans several decades.

 

Not unlike Geoff Marcy, Thomas Pogge 'got away with it' for so long in part because [some combination of] (i) the culture of confidentiality that universities impose on misconduct hearings (recall); (ii) the conspiracy of silence -- and let's be frank, opportunism -- that existed in the complicit profession that allowed Pogge to move jobs despite warning signs (and recall); (iii) victims find it incredibly difficult to get a fair hearing and be believed (not to mention the anonymous blogosphere that will attack them relentlessly); (iv) Pogge leveraged his status and influence so that he could generate all kinds of subtle "quid pro quo offers of letters of recommendation and other perks;" (v) a willingness to disassociate philosophical excellence from philosophical integrity (recall); (vi) an embrace of procedural conceptions of justice that leave little room for other forms of norm enforcement so that many philosophers refused to act on (increasing amount of) testimonial evidence about, or their own experiences with, Pogge's behavior; (vii) the persistence of outright sexism in higher education; (viii) the old mainstream media's unwillingness to report [contrast that with Buzzfeed and Huffpo]; (ix) in a zero-sum environment [of jobs, status, attention] the indirect, individual benefits received by non-victims [primarily male] when some talented women leave the profession or are discouraged.

 

It is quite possible to be cynical about open letters and signatures and see in them mere symbolic action by the very people that benefited and benefit from a (somewhat) corrupt status quo. The signatures do not undermine all the norms and incentives that govern and sustain (i-ix)--some of which shared with other academic disciplines and institutions. But these signatures also represent, or so I think, the impact of, say, half a decade of public and private discussions locally and collectively (in social media) initiated (for us) by MFIF (My fault, I'm female) and what's it like to be a woman in philosophy (of course they were building on other people's efforts in feminism, standpoint epistemology, and social movements, etc.). These discussions are not mere gossip or somehow orthogonal to true philosophy. For, critical reflection on the norms and practices of (professional) philosophy just is a part of philosophy in all kinds of ways (i.e., as elements of meta-philosophy, social epistemology, standpoint epistemology, the nature of intellectual virtue, etc.).

In addition, astronomers showed us how to embrace a whole bunch of (undoubtedly imperfect) norms and best practices on these matters (recall). Leaving aside the fate of Thomas Pogge, the Open Letter and these signatures continue our collective education and, thereby, help create the foundations for norm changes that will, let's hope, not betray the young women who wish to become professional philosophers; thereby we can hope to improve the quality and humanity of our collective endeavor.

 

On lack of simultaneneity: on Huygens (II); and Spinozism

I am of opinion then that every Sun is surrounded with a Whirl-pool or Vortex of Matter in a very swift Motion; tho not in the least like Cartes’s either in their bulk, or manner of Motion. For Cartes makes his so large, as everyone of them to touch all the others round them, in a flat Surface, just as you have seen the Bladders that Boys blow up in Soap-suds do: and would have the whole Vortex to move round the same way. But the Angles of every Vortex will be no small hindrance to such a Motion....Against all which there are many Astronomical Objections, some of which I touch’d upon in my Essay of the Causes of Gravity. Where I gave another account of the Planets not deserting their own Orbs; which is their Gravitation towards the Sun. I show’d there the Causes of that Gravitation, and cannot but wonder that Cartes, the first man that ever began to talk reasonably of that matter, should never meddle with, or light on it. Plutarch in his Book of the Moon above mentioned says, that some of the Antients were of opinion, that the reason of the Moon’s keeping her Orbit was, that the force of her Circular Motion was exactly equal to her Gravity, the one of which pull’d her to, as much as the Other forc’d her off from the Centre. And in our Age Alphonsus Borellus, who was of this same opinion in the other Planets as well as the Moon, makes the Gravitation of the primary Planets to be towards the Sun, as that of the secondary is towards the Planets round which they move: Which Mr. Isaac Newton has more fully explained, with a great deal of pains and subtilty; and how from that cause proceeds the Ellipticity of the Orbs of the Planets, found out by Kepler. According to my Notion of the Gravitation of the Planets to the Sun, the matter of his Vortex must not all move the same way, but after such a manner as to have its parts carry’d different ways on all sides. And yet there is no fear of its being destroy’d by such an irregular motion, because the æther round it, which is at rest, keeps the parts of it from flying out. With the help of such a Vortex as this I have pretended in that Essay to explain the Gravity of Bodies on this Earth, and all the effects of it. And I suppose there may be the same cause as well of the Gravitation of the Planers, and of our Earth among the rest, towards the Sun, as of their Roundness: a thing so very hard to give an account of in Cartes’s System.

I must differ from him too in the bigness of the Vortices, for I cannot allow them to be so large as he would make them. I would have them dispers’d all about the immense space, like so many little Whirl-pools of Water, that one makes by the stirring of a stick in any large Pond or River, a great way distant from one another. And as their motions do not all intermix or communicate with one another; so in my opinion must the Vortices of Stars be plac’d as not to hinder one anothers free Circumrotations.

So that we may be secure, and never fear that they will swallow up or destroy one another; for that was a mere fancy of Cartes’s; when he was showing how a fix’d Star or Sun might be turn’d into a Planet. And ’tis plain, that when he writ it, he had no thoughts of the immense distance of the Stars from one another...For my part, I shall be very well contented, and shall count I have done a great matter, if I can but come to any knowledge of the nature of things, as they now are, never troubling my head about their beginning, or how they were made, knowing that to be out of the reach of human Knowlege, or even Conjecture.--Christiaan Huygens, The Cosmotheoros (1698). [HT Chris Smeenk]

Last week I suggested that there was no reason for Huygens, a well known and sophisticated relativist about space and time, to posit absolute time and (my real point) absolute simultaneity of events between 'different temporal frames.' Within a temporal frame there is simultaneity (let's call that local simultaneity). A temporal frame is governed by a local equation of time, which creates a mean day that can be used to calibrate and set local clocks. When widely adopted it ensures that astronomers are using the same temporal framework with which to interpret astronomical data (see here for explanation). It's a small step to posit a temporal frame for the solar system with its equation of time. As Newton writes in the original, suppressed version of the final part of the Principia, The System of the World: demonstrated in an easy and popular manner: “That the Planets, in respect of the fixed Stars, are revolved by equable motions about their proper aces. And that (perhaps) those motions are the most fit for the equation of time”  Once the solar day is corrected by the (mathematical) equation of time, one obtains a shared temporal frame suitable for one’s physics. As Newton points out in his discussion, for the equation of time to work in practice, you need to assume that some of the background stars are fixed. So, you don't need to posit absolute time (as Newton does). So, I suggested, for Huygens the denial of absolute simultaneity is entirely possible within his physics, especially because there is no evidence he thought that motions in the universe were governed by a universal vortex which could provide the basis for a universal equation of time (which approximated absolute time).

There are really two kinds of issues at work here.

First, as I noted last week, to get the result that Huygens could have denied absolute simultaneity, one needs to posit some kind of causal isolation between different solar systems.If one understands Huygens as a Cartesian Plenist then there is no reason to assume he would allow such causal isolation (several people suggested this to me in private conversation and on facebook). Helpfully, my some-time co-author, Chris Smeenk [see this piece--I am very proud of it], called my attention to the closing lines of Huygens of the Cosmothereos. There Huygens clearly asserts the causal isolation among solar systems that are immensely apart. On his view there is a fixed æther that both holds them in place (so that the vortex does not come peeling off layer by layer)* and causally isolates them. Huygens explicitly rules out that the æther transmits motions among vortices. For present purposes we can ignore the obvious problems with positing such an æther; it shows that Huygens is committed to some significant causal isolation among solar systems and, thereby, has no reason to posit absolute simultaneity. One reason for my cautious expression in the previous sentence is that Huygens does seem to allow the transmission of light-waves through this æther. So, while Huygens would not have to be forced into positing absolute simultaneity, he could have been tempted to create a shared temporal framework by using (the finite speed of) light. 

Even so, there is as second problem surrounding absolute simultaneity that needs to be distinguished from the one(s) I have been discussing. This involves what one may call absolute regularity. To quote Katherine Brading, "We can ask: Are equal intervals of time according to the equation of time for system A *regular* compared to equal intervals of time according to the equation of time for system B? Here we need a much lower degree of isolation for the problem to arise, at least in principle." Given Huygens's understanding of the equation of time, this is a very intelligible problem; it, too, could have made him cautious about positing absolute simultaneity.

Finally, I end with a two-fold observation on the closing lines of the Cosmotheoros quoted above. First, Huygens ends the book on a note of epistemic modesty: even speculative cosmogony is out of reach. Here Huygens rejects the known options: (a) chance (as favored by the Epicureans), (b) God as first cause that generates law-governed over-determination to the present (Descartes), (c) eternal necessatarianism (Spinoza), and (d) theistic design. As we know, in Newton's General Scholium (which was published after the Cosmotheoros), Newton argued forcefully for (d): ‘‘This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets, and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being’’ (Newton 1999: 940). But Newton also admitted that there is a gap in his account in the intermediary steps between God's plan and the secondary causes that governed the process leaving the door open to somebody to offer a law-governed cosmogony. (I have argued elsewhere that Kant takes up this challenge.)

Second, Huygens's note of epistemic modesty about cosmogony fits his general, mature methodological stance. But it is at odds with his the tenor of his claims earlier in the Cosmotheoros. For, throughout the book, Huygens suggests he accepts general providence and design arguments. For example:

The Stature and Shape of Men here does show forth the Divine Providence so much in its being so fitly adapted to its design’d Uses, that it is not without reason that all the Philosophers have taken notice of it nor without probability that the Planeta[74]rians have their Eyes and Countenance upright, like us, for the more convenient and easy Contemplation and Observations of the Stars. And the Wisdom of the Creator is so observable, so praiseworthy in the position of the other Members; in the convenient situation of the Eyes, as Watches in the higher Region of the Body; in the removing of the more uncomly parts out of sight as ’twere; that we cannot but think he has almost observed the same Method in the Bodies of those remote Inhabitants.

One would think then that Huygens also embraces (d) theistic design. Yet, here at the very close of the book, Huygens explicitly denies that we can know anything about the origins of things. So, while Huygens does not rule out theistic design, his final word on the matter is that we cannot know it.**