Digressions&Impressions

Second Order Monitoring and the Possibility of Credit/Political Representation

There may also be a second obstacle that is equally important and that is less frequently recognized--it may be prohibitively costly to maintain intensive form of political representation...If the literature on corporate finance emphasizes that allowing monitoring increases access to finance, it also emphasizes that engaging in monitoring may be costly.

In the historical context that  I am considering, where travel and communication costs were substantially higher than they are today, there is ample there is ample reason to believe that geographic scale could be a fundamental obstacle to lenders exercising a control right. If lenders are geographically dispersed then there may be substantial costs involved in sending representatives to an assembly. Even if these costs could be overcome, for example, by paying representatives and by sharing this cost among a large number of people, there would remain the issue of monitoring the representatives. As long a s representatives are subject to moral hazard, say because then can be bribed by the executive, then monitoring of this sort will be necessary.--David Stasavage (2011) States of Credit: Size, Power, and the Development of European Politics, p. 8. [HT Deborah Boucoyannis]

By 'second-order monitoring' I mean the monitoring of monitors. I introduce the idea to talk about the problem (what Stasavage here describes as) of monitoring the representatives. The problem also shows up in problems related to accountancy, rating agencies, government agencies which need to regulate pharmaceutical companies or protect the environment, and peer review (etc.) Second-order monitoring is, thus, pervasive issue. Despite the absence of 'monitoring' or 'second-order monitoring' in its (otherwise excellent) index, it is also central to Stasavage's argument. For his model predicts, first, that "observed interest rate on government debt should increasing in c, the cost for representatives of monitoring the executive;" and second, "that an executive will be more likely to create a public debt when the cost for representatives of monitoring the executive is low." (77)

There are, roughly, three ways to organize monitoring: 

• Make the monitors neutral and objective spectators
• Let the incentives of monitors be interested such that they represent the interests on whose behalf they are monitoring 
• Let monitoring be an aim or by-product of some other institution (e.g., a market)

Second order monitoring is no different, although it opens the door of, say, an infinite regres (of neutral and objective spectators) or the existence of hybrids (voters and markets monitoring representatives).

I have discussed Stasavage's brilliant book before (recall), but then I ignored its main argument and its ongoing relevance. What follows sounds more critical than it is; all I will be doing is making some of its key insights available for further discussion. It's a bit of a shame that Stasavage does not sharply distinguish between first order and second order monitoring in his model (second order monitoring is just treated as a higher costs), because the very existence of the problem of second-order monitoring meant, in practice, that city-states developed state debt two centuries before territorial states! And, as Stasavage notes, it also meant that city-cites could borrow at systematically lower costs for centuries even after territorial states had followed their example.

Now, one may well wonder how city-states solved the problem of second-order monitoring. Because while geography makes such monitoring more costly, it's not as if local representatives cannot be bribed or intimated. A city-state is not a perfect panopticon. One central way they solved it is by giving monitors a vested interest in the very thing they were monitoring. One of the most remarkable facts in Stasavage's book is that in debts contracted by self-governing city-states, a sufficiently high number of the creditors (i.e., mostly merchants) were often also the debtors (political oligarchs)!* Having sufficient number of interested parties on both the creditor and debtor side of a loan is, in fact, the origin of state debt in modern European politics!   

So, second order monitoring became less necessary because the monitors were the interested parties. (Strikingly, Stasavage shows that when cities became less oligarchic they had less access to cheap credit!) I don't mean to suggest that it was anybody's intention to solve the second-order problem. Presumably self-governing city states were already oligarchies. And the reason why merchants supplied the credit is that they had wealth that could be quickly transformed into wages for soldiers or builders of public works/fortifications in times of emergency. This was less costly and more efficient than raising taxes. I don't mean to suggest that this was always voluntary: Stasavage  very usefully points out that some of these original state debts were imposed on the creditors. One can see why: it's not always obvious one's own side will win an imminent war! (A certain loss may be worse than being plundered.)

I close with two observations. First, and, this is really an aside, it is notable that war or threat of war helped overcome the Christian prohibition on usury for a class of individuals. Of course, war was ever-present. But what we see in these (reasonably) self-governing city-states, is that the very possibility of political (and possibly individual) extinction, having no self-rule at all, was  sufficient to trump concern with entry into heaven. .

Second, in Stasavage's model, as transportation and communication costs go down, monitoring also becomes less costly. That's sensible for his project and probably true for monitoring. But when we focus on second-order monitoring (today), we can also see that as these costs go down interference in the monitor-second-order-monitor relationship gets less costly, too. This interference need not be deliberate (Putin-esque-style). It may also be a consequence of the amplification of noise as news, or the blurring of the line between information and entertainment.+ 

 

On More Urgent Liberalism: Shklar's Liberalism of Fear reconsidered

To those American political theorists who long for either more communal or more expansively individualistic personalities, I now offer a reminder that these are the concerns of an exceptionally privileged liberal society, and that until the institutions of primary free­dom are in place these longings cannot even arise. Indeed the extent to which both the communitarian and the romantic take free public institutions for granted is a tribute to the United States, but not to their sense of history.  Too great a part of past and present political experience is neglected when we ignore the annual reports of Amnesty International and of contemporary warfare. It used to be the mark of liberalism that it was cosmopolitan and that an insult to the life and liberty of a member of any race or group in any part of the world was of genuine concern. It may be a revolting paradox that the very success of liberalism in some countries has atrophied the political empathies of their citizens. That appears to be one cost of taking freedom for granted, but it may not be the only one.--Shklar "Liberalism of Fear" 

Yesterday, I used Judith Shklar's famous essay for my own ends. I did so because I share her diagnosis of most of the alternatives to her "liberalism of fear" and with her I am made uneasy by the historical-amnesia and complacency of much what passes for political theory and philosophy in wealthy countries. While there is quite a bit of alarm about recent political trends, it is not entirely clear that our intellectuals, who have suddenly become good at warning against fascism, have really started the painful reflection required. The friends of democracy need to confront the fact that the people may well prefer their own subordination, the friends of markets need constant reminders that these are non-moral  and often immoral in their effects, the friends of expert-rule that these create insufferable hierarchies, the critics of crony capitalism a reminder that non-crony capitalism never exists (unless, perhaps, everybody is moral and Finnish), the friends of anarchism be offered a free trip to Somalia, and the friends of religious nationalism need to be offered a ticket to Saudi Arabia. And most dangerously of all, humans may well freely choose the politics of demagogic entertainment and conquest in relatively stable, but apparently boring, times. 

Unlike the quietist conservative, Shklar offers a minimalist liberal program that mitigates the worst evils. Of course, and this her key point, in many contexts her program is not minimal at all. And, in fact, even in good times, few states really avoid the worst: even the most generous social democratic welfare state, seems to require some outsiders, newcomers, or illegals to work on or occupy the margins, or it creates this category of being by policing immigration or by un-flexible categorization of bodies. Why this can't be avoided, is not entirely clear (and I have read and re-read my Foucault). But there are always everywhere people who live with fear of a knock, of detention, deportation, etc. 

But I also signaled my disagreement with her minimalism yesterday. So, if I accept Shklar's diagnosis, why don't I sign up for her program? And my response is essentially that such a minimal liberalism of fear is not a viable political program (yesterday I called this a 'tactical' problem). That is to say, in her essay Sklar, too, is strangely complacent about the requirements of politics and the role of ideas (and rhetoric) in it.+   

It's not that she fails to recognize the problem. In the quoted paragraph she does not merely attack the "communitarian and the romantic" theorists, but also the citizens. But her program fails to address this moral apathy.* (And in a democracy a criticism of citizen attitudes is not rhetorically very effective.) In fact, her program tacitly presupposes either state education in the horrors of history -- but she rejects the educational state -- or an adequately functioning press that somehow delivers the horrors of the world as horror, not profitable entertainment and spectacle (recall) not to mention the forces that manufacture amnesia about historical evils. 

My point is that being right is not a sufficient political program. Politics is, in part, the realm of longings, even irrational ones. Liberalism must offer something to address the noble longings that animate the green movement, the sense of justice and divinity that animates the religious, the sense of national mission that animate the nationalist, etc. Yesterday, I mentioned that liberals can remain liberal and offer a program of joint flourishing (although I was deliberately vague about the content); that is to to say, liberals must address the "longings" that animate many of the critics of liberalism.** And, in fact, the successful liberal strategy historically is not as our socialist friends say to throw our hands in with the owners of capital and oppress the masses, but rather  -- I owe the point to Alfonso Vergaray -- always to acknowledge human longings and design institutions that can either re-direct them to proper ends (or at least to avoid summum malum) and then to claim that such ends are worth having.++

 

  

 

On the Crisis of Liberalism (II)

Regular readers know (recall) that I believe the second wave of liberalism+ has ended and that it may not survive the present darkness. (In brief: first long wave: 1776-1914; second wave: 1945-2009. Some readers will say, good riddance, and to you I say, I hope you do better.) The present crisis is much visible in our daily politics (and headlines), shifting public norms, and the rising confidence of regimes and thinkers who, again, openly espouse hierarchical, ethnic, zero-sum, eugenic, and violent solutions to present conflicts.* While there is much urgent, practical work to be done to salvage institutions that may be at the core of a renewal, some reflection away from daily politics is also required. This also requires attention not just because we need polities that make minimal decency possible,** but also because we need (or so I assume today) properly functioning liberal institutions to meet humanity's great challenges -- environmental disaster, genetic engineering, ethnic conflict, -- ahead.  To reflect on our shortcomings is a means of being liberal as well as a path toward its possible renewal. This is the second post (recall) in an open-ended series (see also here, here, and here).

What follows, then is the start of an attempt to display the existential challenges to liberalism that arise from within. I do not offer solutions to these challenges and so invite readers to chime in. In earlier posts, I discussed self-inflicted wounds such as (i) For profit media; and (ii) the financialization of the economy.

Today i focus on (iii) the Embrace of Revealed Preferences/The Rejection of a Philosophy of Life. One striking feature of the second half of the second wave of liberalism is that its most prominent advocates were economists and ('ethics first') political philosophers (or both). Jointly, their prominence conveyed the message that the point of a liberal project is protecting rights in order to make and re-distribute money. Of course, making money is not the end of the story, it is taken to be an instrument for the pursuit of one's private welfare and the embrace of (what a Rawlsian may call) private, nonpublic values and individual life-plans. Liberalism was seen as an important political and economic doctrine, not a philosophy of life.+ This has two important consequences, first, liberals embrace state-neutrality with respect to fundamental values/goods; and, second, we have a tendency to promote the idea that public speech and justification must be articulated in terms of public reason (with respect for fairness, principles of freedom, equality, and justice, etc.). 

By contrast, critics of liberalism appeal to shared, action-guiding projects: the health of the nation, submission to the divine plan, a green future, a post-revolutionary communist/socialist paradise, social harmony, traditional values, etc. Obviously, these projects are often incompatible with each other. And liberals are often tempted to argue from the pluralist reality of conflicting values in societies with advanced division of labor (and so conflicting interests) and a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds to the prudential idea that state neutrality is required. We may even add that conflicting values are epistemically fruitful in preventing the dogmatic and premature embrace of any ideology.

But this stance generates a tactical and a philosophical challenge.  The tactical challenge is that critics of liberalism are left to articulate profound shared action-guiding projects, while liberals are left to point to statistics of rising GDP. Now, one may argue that the rejection of shared projects is a feature of liberal political ideology not a bug. And one may claim that rising GDP is often a sign of the removal of famines, the reduction of poverty, increased life expectancy, lower crime, etc. So, it's not as if the liberal's pointing to such statistics is morally worthless. But tactically, the liberal is left with uninspiring politic projects, especially in a context where by historical standards modern societies are already fairly wealthy and not very likely to suffer famine or violent crimes. (Yeah, go read your Pinker!)

The philosophical challenge is the articulation of a liberalism worth having that is both a shared, action-guiding project and does not violate core liberal commitments (the harm principle, the avoidance of cruelty, individual autonomy, non-dogmatism, freedom, justice, etc.). For, shared visionary projects are action-guiding (recall this post critical of Jacob Levy). The articulation of such shared projects, means rejecting a relatively recent, second-wave liberal dogma, nicely articulated by Shklar, "liberalism does not have any particular positive doctrines about how people are to conduct their lives or what personal choices they are to make." (Again, I pick Shklar because in many ways she is least like the problematic version of liberalism I am rejecting.) I think this claim is a mistake, even if I grant Shklar and her followers that creating political conditions and institutions in which cruelty is avoided a crucial and difficult enough task as it is.

The first sentence of Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments, asserts, as an axiom, that flourishing of others is necessary to us.** He goes on to describe how such flourishing is possible and what objective conditions for it are. In particular, he draws a sharp contrast between what people imagine is worth attaining and what are true means toward flourishing. The liberal enterprise is, thus, from the beginning concerned with articulating shared projects, the institutions that may facilitate them, and an embrace of ideas that imply that people's flourishing is an objective state of affairs.++  

Now, one may worry -- as Shklar evidently did -- that if one asserts that joint flourishing is an objective state of affairs worth promoting that one then may provide "public authorities the unconditional right to impose beliefs and even a vocabulary as they may see fit upon the citizenry." This is a reasonable fear and most of the critics of liberalism who promote a shared project do so to some degree (even if some will abhor an unconditional right). But Shklar and modern liberals ignore, that there is a half-way station between imposing approved beliefs/vocabulary and being neutral.+++  

What matters is that (again echoing Smith) individuals have the security, capabilities, dispositions, and options to make meaningful choices of the sort that will allow them to flourish jointly. Today, in the context of this post, I do not offer a substantive program (which would have to draw on more recent social science and moral psychology). (Such flourishing will probably involve good health, mutual recognition, lack of fear, the opportunity for love, capabilities for meaningful choices, cultural development, etc.)  Rather, all I point out here is that within constraints, the state can promote indirect incentives conducive to joint flourishing and virtue, while generating strong, indirect disincentives that prevent mutual misery while not encroaching on people's individual freedoms.*** What such a liberalism worth having is, is something that, for now, I must leave -- and this is a political invitation, my dear reader -- to your imagination.

 

 

 

On Presidents

THERE is an idea, which is not without its advocates, that a vigorous Executive is inconsistent with the genius of republican government. The enlightened well-wishers to this species of government must at least hope that the supposition is destitute of foundation; since they can never admit its truth, without at the same time admitting the condemnation of their own principles. Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy. Every man the least conversant in Roman story, knows how often that republic was obliged to take refuge in the absolute power of a single man, under the formidable title of Dictator, as well against the intrigues of ambitious individuals who aspired to the tyranny, and the seditions of whole classes of the community whose conduct threatened the existence of all government, as against the invasions of external enemies who menaced the conquest and destruction of Rome.

There can be no need, however, to multiply arguments or examples on this head. A feeble Executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.--Federalist 70, Publius (Hamilton).

One of the amazing elements of Hamilton's argument in favor of a unitary and vigorous president is that he treats the "refuge in the absolute power of a single man" as a good feature. The Romans recognized that exceptional circumstances (primarily military emergencies) could require a mechanism that stood, in some sense, outside their ordinary form of government. Inspired by (recall) Livy's treatment of Cincinnatus and his admiration of decisive action by Johan de Witt, Hume, in turn, proposed to regularize the mechanism and internalize it in his constitution for an ideal government. If political life is one state of emergency after another, if indeed the "community" is routinely threatened by "foreign attacks" and there is a permanent danger of "seditions of whole classes of the community," then Hamilton's move is the logical culmination of constitutional improvement.

Of course, one may well wonder why someone as perceptive as Hamilton could argue for an elected dictator as a bulwark against "tyranny" and miss that such a dictator could also be an electoral route to tyranny. And, in fact, he is aware of the problem and raises it as follows:

The idea of a council to the Executive, which has so generally obtained in the State constitutions, has been derived from that maxim of republican jealousy which considers power as safer in the hands of a number of men than of a single man. If the maxim should be admitted to be applicable to the case, I should contend that the advantage on that side would not counterbalance the numerous disadvantages on the opposite side.

So, rather than lodging power of the unitary executive in a single man (which it recognizes could lead to tyranny) the tradition of republican thought advises to lodge power in a number.  Hamilton's cost-benefit response is striking: he acknowledges the risk of tyranny, but thinks that risk is worth taking given the advantages that follow from a unitary executive with power lodged in a single person. (Here I ignore discussion of those benefits.) What is notable about Hamilton's response is that he is not tempted to argue naively that separation of powers or an electoral college are adequate safeguards against tyranny from a dictatorial executive. It evidently is not. Instead he offers an ingenious argument inspired by De Lolme (whose work I have not read yet):

But I do not think the rule at all applicable to the executive power. I clearly concur in opinion, in this particular, with a writer whom the celebrated Junius pronounces to be "deep, solid, and ingenious,'' that "the executive power is more easily confined when it is ONE''; that it is far more safe there should be a single object for the jealousy and watchfulness of the people; and, in a word, that all multiplication of the Executive is rather dangerous than friendly to liberty.

A little consideration will satisfy us, that the species of security sought for in the multiplication of the Executive, is not attainable. Numbers must be so great as to render combination difficult, or they are rather a source of danger than of security. The united credit and influence of several individuals must be more formidable to liberty, than the credit and influence of either of them separately. When power, therefore, is placed in the hands of so small a number of men, as to admit of their interests and views being easily combined in a common enterprise, by an artful leader, it becomes more liable to abuse, and more dangerous when abused, than if it be lodged in the hands of one man; who, from the very circumstance of his being alone, will be more narrowly watched and more readily suspected, and who cannot unite so great a mass of influence as when he is associated with others. The Decemvirs of Rome, whose name denotes their number, were more to be dreaded in their usurpation than any ONE of them would have been. No person would think of proposing an Executive much more numerous than that body; from six to a dozen have been suggested for the number of the council. The extreme of these numbers, is not too great for an easy combination; and from such a combination America would have more to fear, than from the ambition of any single individual. A council to a magistrate, who is himself responsible for what he does, are generally nothing better than a clog upon his good intentions, are often the instruments and accomplices of his bad and are almost always a cloak to his faults.

Before I get to the details of this argument, it is worth noting that Hamilton ignores the possibility of a unitary executive whose support is lodged in a majority of the "numerous legislature." He is not tempted by what we would call a parliamentarian system. My own view is that parliamentarian systems with proportional representation are a much more solid bulwark against tyranny than Hamilton's proposals. In such parliamentary systems coalition formation is a natural obstacle to the usurpation of power by any figure. In a Presidential systems the people explicitly vote for their (temporary) leader; the habit of thought and dispositions created by voting for a leader undermine the very ideal of republican (understood as non-domination) government.  

Be that as it may, the Hamiltonian argument is that in virtue of the fact that the executive is unified in one person, monitoring costs are reduced. The argument assumes that the people would not elect a tyrant willingly and are in a position to monitor.* In addition, it assumes that a president who develops tyrannical ambitions cannot sustain sufficient popular support and "unite a great a mass of influence" because he would be held responsible by the people. Hamilton's willingness to bet on such faith in the people is touching. What Hamilton misses is that an elected dictator without reverence for constitutional government can work to prevent the recurrence of free and fair election and  be admired for it by many of the people. 

I wish our Brazilian friends much wisdom, and luck.

 

 

Philosophy of Science in The Nobel Prize (Economics) Lecture by Stigler

I propose on this occasion to address the same kinds of questions to an entirely different market: the market for new ideas in economic science. Most economists enter this market in new ideas, let me emphasize, in order to obtain ideas and methods for the applications they are making of economics to the thousand problems with which they are occupied: these economists are not the suppliers of new ideas but only demanders. Their problem is comparable to that of the automobile buyer: to find a reliable vehicle. Indeed, they usually end up by buying a used, and therefore tested, idea.--George Stigler (1982)  Nobel Lecture (Economics), Stockholm.

As regular readers know, the Nobel (Chicago-economist), George J. Stigler, had a lifelong interest in the philosophy, and sociology of science. I have remarked in the past that this interest was not entirely disinterested; it's clear that Stigler's work also aimed at influencing the discipline (for example, encouraging consensus-aiming practices that would allow one to ignore criticisms) and I have argued here that he was rather successful at doing so and so is worth paying attention to how philosophical ideas shape scientific practice.

Somewhat surprisingly and unusually Stigler chose to structure his prize lecture around his interest in the sociology/philosophy of economics. I call it unusual because he won the prize for his "seminal studies of industrial structures, functioning of markets and causes and effects of public regulation," and ordinarily the Nobel lecture is an elegant discussion of and introduction into the material that generated professional recognition often  accompanied with polite recognition of folk who did not get the prize, but paved the way to it. Stigler deviates from the precedent. It's not that he does not discuss these topics at all -- and one could argue that he is discussing the functioning of the markets in ideas -- , but they are all framed by his sociological interests in science. These interests are long-standing, and they were shaped not just by his teacher, Knight, but also his encounters with Merton (a colleague at Columbia) and Talcott Parsons (probably a colleague at Stanford), and his early readings of Kuhn. 

As an aside, Stigler was a world-class historian of economics, even long after that had become professionally non-fashionable. This lack of fashion was itself a consequence, in part, because he would (while echoing Kuhn) tell folk that a sign of scientific maturity was that disciplinary history became of little interest to the puzzle solving economists (thus providing justification for the elimination of history of economics from graduate curricula).

In fact, the previous paragraph is not really an aside. The Nobel lecture relies explicitly on [A] a distinction "between prescientific and scientific stages of a discipline." (This is quoted from the abstract.) It also relies (more implicitly) on a [B] distinction between those (the few) that supply "new ideas" -- akin to Kuhnian legislators --  and those ("most") that "demand" ideas to be applied to the determinate problems with which they are occupied (the Kuhnian worker-bees, or puzzle-solvers). (The quoted material is the second paragraph of the lecture.)

It turns out however that the few are, from Stigler's perspective, unusual characters, I quote the relevant paragraph before I comment:

Those economists who seek to engage in research on the new ideas of the science to refute or confirm or develop or displace them are in a sense both buyers and sellers of new ideas. They seek to develop new ideas and persuade the science to accept them, but they also are following clues and promises and explorations in the current or preceding ideas of the science. It is very costly to enter this market: it takes a good deal of time and thought to explore a new idea far enough to discover its promise or its lack of promise. The history of economics, and I assume of every science, is strewn with costly errors: of ideas, so to speak, that wouldn't run far or carry many passengers (530)

Kuhnian legislators have two roles: being [C] developers of new ideas and, unless they have disciples willing to do the work, [D] persuaders of others to accept them. [D] means there is a need for scientific entrepreneurs and the art of rhetoric in science. It turns out that [E] there are high barriers to entry to become a Kuhnian legislator both because (i) it requires a lot of effort and time to be on top of existing science and develop new ideas, as well as (ii) the risks involved of producing ideas that do not pan out. Some of the costs involved, are (iii) investments in prior social infrastructure of science ("the machinery of intellectual exchange-journals, learned societies, and conferences"(535)) that make a "large expenditure of time, intelligence, and research resources" possible (536). Notice that such ideas may well be true, but if there is no uptake (recall [D]) and so no "prestige, reputation, and income" (530) worth having, then this, too, will be treated as failure.*

Famously, Kuhn divides the immature and mature stage of science in terms of consensus or lack thereof. Stigler had used such a measure, too, in the past. But in the Nobel lecture he offers a different criterion: the pre-scientific stage "is characterized by absence of a set of interacting practitioners who are devoting a large part of their lives to the accumulation of knowledge, and hence it is characterized by the absence of cumulative progress." (530) There are really two claims here: [F] in the scientific stage a science is progressing. More important, [G] a science is characterized by the presence of practitioners who (i) recognize each other as fellow travelers/scientists, who (ii) are professionals (in the sense that science is their main occupation), and (iii) who form a communicative community. It's not always clear if he thinks whether [G] causes [F] or [G] is a symptom of [F.]

One interesting feature of the absence of progress and lack of a scientific community in the pre-scientific stage that Stigler notes is that descriptions of it often (a) "almost totally lack a time dimension." In pre-scientific stages it makes little difference in what order doctrines are discussed. An interesting feature of the presence of a scientific community is that (b) detected errors will be refuted, and "only the detected errors of unimportant economists are spared a prompt reputation." (531)

Another criterion he offers between the pre-scientific and scientific eras, is that in the pre-scientific era the problems of a would-be-science are shaped by the (often practical needs of the) environment. While Stigler does not deny that "new circumstances" (political and technological changes) can spur interest in some questions and even innovation, but at bottom his view is that "an empirical science such as economics is to provide general understanding of events in the real world, and ultimately all of its theories and techniques must be instrumental to that task. That is very different from saying, however, that it must be responsive to the contemporaneous conditions and problems of the society in which it is situated." That is, Stigler [H] denies what in earlier work he had called “environmental theory.” And, in fact, it is accompanied by a further claim  that [I] "A science requires for its very existence a set of fundamental and durable problems." (534) One may say that these problems are part of the identity conditions of the science and the ones that Kuhnian legislators help illuminate.+ But in the moment it's very difficult to distinguish between fruitful ideas and dead-ends. And this means [J] that all sciences will be subject to fashions that after the fact prove illusory in fruitfulness.

Because Stigler treats mature science as a fairly efficient communicative community, the [K] new ideas that will prove to be fruitful must in some sense be a natural and small enough, discrete extension from existing practices ("science also progresses through time without making large jumps" with an explicit nod to Darwin's Natura non facit saltus. ) This commitment follows quite naturally from the way demand in economics is conceived. For [L] any idea to have uptake it most (and Stigler credits his Chicago colleague,  Gary Becker) be deploy-able by applied practitioners (who have specific human capital) with little extra cost and more potential reward (and who are risk averse). It also follows that given the structure  of the market of economic ideas that there is a bias against novelty from the majority because their "capital would be reduced if [their] knowledge were made obsolete by the general acceptance of a new theory. Hence, established scholars should, in their own self-interest, attack new theories." (538) That is to say, [M] there is considerable status quo bias in any scientific discipline that also (and Stigler does not point this out) helps stabilize the boundaries and the identity conditions of the discipline.

In fact, [N] often novel ideas will be subject to controversy, although Stigler points to the uptake of his own work in the economics of information as an exception (there was little controversy). Stigler thinks this was due to the fact that "no established scientific theory was being challenged by this work." (539) So there are for Stigler [O] two kinds of new ideas: those that extend a theory or apply a known tool in a new area (relatively little controversy) and those that challenge existing practices. The latter can form the basis of a true challenge to the status quo [P], "it takes a theory to beat a theory." But Stigler admits that [Q] a true test is rare because it is rare that "a theory in economics has a well-defined domain of applicability." (542) Instead theories are tested indirectly for "fertility,"  by deploying them to "explore a variety of problems." Such [R] indirect tests take time and a theory can linger for a long time before it is ultimately discarded.

Stigler explicitly recognizes that there may be more other interesting factors. But we can treat [A]-[R] as the main factors of Stigler's public choice model of science. (He credits Downs, Buchanan, and Tullock, but seems to have been unaware of Tullock's The Organization of Inquiry, which (recall) anticipates many of his own views.

Because I have gone on too long for a blog post, I will not offer critical commentary today. I just note one final feature of Stigler's philosophy of science. For, Stigler, thus [Q] a science is characterized by fundamental Knightian uncertainty about its own development ("No one can describe the precise characteristics or content of a new piece of scientific work that will find ready and eager reception from the scientists of a period." (538))** This commitment to Knight's ideas is especially notable because he rejects the thought (which he explicitly associates with his teacher Knight) that the subjects studied by economists are mistake prone and do not grasp the effects of their policy choices (recall also my treatment of his Tanner lectures).

 

On Author Meets Critics

Most of us in philosophy receive very little in the way of of extended critical responses to our publications. This is true for even famous scholars, who may rack up a lot of citations, but still much of what they publish may in practice be ignored. Of course, no need to feel sorry for such scholars; they get invited for colloquia and may have many willing commentators on circulated drafts of their work  and so may still receive a lot of very useful feedback. While I defend the value of publishing (regardless of response) -- each publication is a mile-stone in one's development --, the structural lack of critical response to one's work, the utter lack of feedback mechanism between one's effort and the judicious judgment of one's intellectual community, is one of the more dispiriting elements of our profession. It is one of the reasons why I lament the decline of the review article.* 

One lovely institution that we have in the profession/academia, is the Fest--a celebration of another's academic career. There is no finer possibility, I think, to have the measure taken of one's academic life. The problem with the Fest as an institution, is that because it occurs at the end of one's career and in ripe old age, it reinforces the extreme sense of delayed gratification. In addition, the point is festive, and so it's not a good occasion for fundamental criticisms or polemics.  

Now, writing a book is an exercise in very much delayed gratification. One can easily spent a few years to half a decade on a book manuscript. (My Adam Smith monograph is really the product of twenty years reflection and false starts.) One possible good-making feature of publishing a book is receiving book reviews from folk you may have never met (or heard of). I can't tell ycou how much I enjoy reading and re-reading these reviews. Even the critical reviews, where insightful (that happens!), while no fun on some gut level, are still exhilarating: somebody gets it and has made an effort to show otherwise.

Another institution which is a good-making feature of book publishing is the so-called author meets critics session (and special issue). Not to put to fine point on it, but even if you are a card-carrying curmudgeon, it is incredibly difficult to be sad if you see some scholars you admire (or come to admire during the session) looking at their detailed notes on copies of your book around a table.+ When I started reflecting on the experience -- after feeling kind of silly for waiting so long for publishing my first monograph --, I noticed an overwhelming feeling of gratitude (to my hosts and critics).** 

Now sometimes author-meets-critics sessions are major, day-long events with multiple speakers at a high cost. (These are kind of Fests, but then in media res and more critical.) But it's quite possible to have author-meets critics sessions to be low-budget events that are contained in time (90-120 minutes). The latter are still swell by being personally and intellectually satisfying. 

Moreover, it's fun and instructive for the critic, too. For, you get to try out your responses to and ideas about a work, which you may well have had to read anyway, with the person (nearly always) most qualified to engage with you on them. These exchanges can become source of new research. How neat is that?  

And so this post is a plea for a lot more author meets critics style events. (I see no reason to restrict those to books, by the way.) By this I don't just mean we need to find funding and venues for them, but we need to reward them professionally. They are a great way to facilitate structured intellectual conversation. So, if you know somebody that belongs to the pro-civility-police and who laments the decline of western civilization and just happens to be bankrolled by a major foundation, get them to fund this academic institution.

Rawls, Carnap, and Quine on Explication

In his (1971) Theory of Justice, Rawls explicitly follows Quine's Word and Object on the nature of explication; he treats explication as a form of elimination: "we start with a concept the expression for which is somehow troublesome; but it serves certain ends that cannot be given up. An explication achieves these ends in other ways that are relatively free of difficulty." (95 citing Word and Object, in the original edition pp. 257-262).

Quine (1960), who treats such explication as synonymous with 'analysis,' attributes this version to Wittgenstein, and explicitly contrasts it with Carnap. Quine understands explication as a means toward dissolving problems (hence the nod to Wittgenstein); for him explication is a form of elimination. Along the way, he (Quine) makes fun  of ordinary language philosophers for failing to see that the introduction of technical vocabulary is a means  of circumventing the problematic parts of ordinary language and show that apparent problems are merely verbal ones. 

By contrast, the Carnapian notion of explication was first articulated in his 1945 "The Two Concepts of Probability" (with a nod to Langford 1942), and then elaborated in Logical Foundations of Probability (1950). I very much like (recall) Hannes Leitgeb's summary: "For Carnap, an explication is the construction of a new concept C′ that replaces a given, often pre-theoretic concept C of philosophical interest, so that the extension of C′ coincides with that of C in the clear-cut and uncontroversial cases but C′ is permitted to, and indeed ought to, improve upon C in terms of exactness, fruitfulness, and simplicity in all the unclear or fuzzy cases." My only addition to this is that for Carnap the new concept C' is constructed in an artificial language. And for Carnap the utility of this new concept C' is (at Leitgeb notes) within science (and not ordinary life; I have discussed some of the tricky issues with this here).*

It turns out, however, that early Rawls used a notion of explication that was distinct from both the Carnapian and Quine-ian version.** In fact, early Rawls explicitly contrasted his notion of explication with analysis (see 3.4 below). I quote from Rawls'(1951) "Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics." 

3.2 The term "explication" is given meaning somewhat graphically as follows: Consider a group of competent judges making considered judgments in review of a set of cases which would be likely to arise in ordinary life. Then an explication of these judgments is defined to be a set of principles, such that, if any competent man were to apply them intelligently and consistently to the same cases under review, his judgments, made systematically nonintuitive by the explicit and conscious use of the principles, would be, nevertheless, identical, case by case, with the considered judgments of the group of competent judges. The range of an explication is specified by stating precisely those judgments which it is designed to explicate, and any given explication which successfully explicates its specified range is satisfactory.

3.3 The next objective, then, in the development of the present method is to discover and formulate an explication which is satisfactory, by and large, over the total range of the considered judgments of competent moral judges as they are made from day to day in ordinary life, and as they are found embodied in the many dictates of common-sense morality, in various aspects of legal procedure, and so on. If reasonable principles exist for deciding moral questions, there is a presumption that the principles of a satisfactory explication of the total range of the considered judgments of competent judges will at least approximate them. On the basis of this presumption the explication of these judgments is designed to be a heuristic device for discovering reasonable principles. Therefore, while explication is an empirical inquiry, it is felt that it is likely to be a way of finding reasonable and justifiable principles in view of the nature of the class of judgments which make up its range.

3.4 Since the concept of an explication may not be clear, I shall try to clarify it by stating some of the things that an explication is not. First, an explication is not an analysis of the meaning of the ethical terms used in the judgments constituting its range. An explication attempts to do nothing more than that explicitly stated above, and in no way concerns itself with the sense of ethical expressions or with their linguistic meaning. Second, an explication is not concerned with what people intend to assert when they use ethical expressions or make moral judgments in particular cases....Finally, there is only one way of showing an explication to be unsatisfactory, and that is to show that there exist considered judgments of competent judges on specifiable cases for which it either fails to yield any judgments at all or leads one to make judgments inconsistent with them. Conversely, the only way to show that an explication is satisfactory is to evidence that its explicit and conscious application can be, or could be, a cause of the judgments in its range.

3.5 Having noted some of the things that an explication is not, I consider some positive features thereof. First, an explication must be such that it can be applied intelligently by a competent judge; and since a competent judge is not required to have a special training in logic and mathematics, an explication either must be formulated or formulatable in ordinary language and its principles must be capable of an interpretation which the average competent man can grasp. Second, an explication must be stated in the form of principles, the reason for this demand lying in the use of explication as a heuristic device. The typical form of a considered judgment is as follows: since A, B, C,..., and M, N, 0,...., are the facts of the case and the interests in conflict, M is to be given preference over N., O . .. A considered judgment does not provide any reasons for the decision. It simply states the felt preference in view of the facts of the case and the interests competing therein. The principles of an explication must be general directives, expressible in ordinary language, such that, when applied to specific cases, they yield the preferences expressed in considered judgments. Finally, an explication, to be completely successful, must be comprehensive; that is, it must explicate, in view of the explication itself... all considered judgments; and it is expected to do this with the greatest possible simplicity and elegance. The requirement of simplicity means that, other things being equal, an explication is more or less satisfactory according to the number of principles which it uses; and although this demand is difficult to state precisely, it is clear that nothing is gained if we require a separate principle for each case or for each class of cases. Rawls, 1951, 184-186.

In context (3.1; see also 3.3), Rawls is clear that explication is a "heuristic device" to generating "reasonable and justifiable principles" from considered judgments of competent judges. (This is different from the 1971 procedure; see here for some inchoate reflections on it.) Crucially, explication itself is an "empirical enquiry" (3.3). Another striking contrast of the early Rawlsian form of explication with the Carnapian and Quine-ean notions of explication is that it must be "formulated or fumulatable in ordinary language;" it is not a species of language engineering at all. And, in fact, Rawls adds for good measure that its principles "must be capable of an interpretation which the average  competent man can grasp" (3.5)

Explication is, thus, the generation of reasonable principles which deliver judgments of cases alike to those of the intuitive judgments of competent judges making considered judgments. The point, to put it informally, is to create an objective realm grounded in principles that can deliver judgments and, thereby, eliminate a subjective element in ethics. 

This is not the place to explore the uses of such a heuristic and Rawls's decision procedure and how it was transformed in his later work in slightly different decision procedures. (It is interesting though -- see 3.6*** -- already in 1951 Rawls is inching his way toward (recall) a representative agent approach that instantiates at least an ideal of consensus.) It should be clear, however, that early Rawlsian explication is a different beast than the competing Carnapian and Quine-ian (and TJ Rawlsian) notions of explication. Even though, and this is the main point, the early Rawlsian version of explication shares with its rivals the aim of displacing and eliminating an element of ordinary experience that prevents as it were automated or algorithmic judgments

For, early Rawls' explication  is part of a piecemeal approach (and so shares some sensibility with  Carnap's): "We should expect satisfactory explications of but delimited areas of the considered judgments. Ethics must, like any other discipline, work its way piece by piece." (4.4) And, in fact, Rawls suggests his method of finding reasonable ethical principles "is" (as Delaney emphasized) analogous to the method used to establish the reasonableness of the criteria of inductive logic." The comparison is not accidental because for early Rawls "succesful explication" can be thought of as "representing the invariant in the considered judgments of competent judges."+

 

 

On Tariffs and Speaking to the Public

We economists have traditionally made innumerable criticisms of the inefficiency of various policies, criticisms which have often been to their own (and my own) utter satisfaction. The meager success of these criticisms in changing these policies, I am convinced, stems from the fact that more than narrow efficiency has been involved in almost every case- that inexplicit or incomprehensible goals were served by these policies and served tolerably efficiently. Tariffs were redistributing income to groups with substantial political power, not simply expressing the deficient public understanding of the theory of comparative costs. We live in a world that is full of mistaken policies, but they are not mistaken for their supporters.--GJ Stigler (1980) Economics or Ethics, The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, p. 155.

A few months ago, an open letter (organized by the national taxpayer union) with 1100 signatures by economists and 15 Nobel laureates (maybe more now) was released. Most of the letter consists of a block quote from (yet) another letter dating from 1930,when "1,028 economists urged Congress to reject the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act." It is a tempting occasion to start lamenting the folly of the world and the eternal return of the lack of respect for the wise and virtuous or expert opinion. The temptation is strong to lecture readers on the truism that our own times are less distinctive than we, who are living it, may well imagine. 

Even so, I won't succumb to temptation today, because I was struck by two questions: (i) why repeat a speech act that failed miserably the first time? (ii) Had economics (or the consensus within it) not advanced such that no new arguments could be articulated at all?* The central claim of the new letter is "not to repeat" the "mistake" of the past.  Below I re-print the bits copied of the 1930 letter.

The idea that economists are doomed to live in "mistake-prone world" is deeply ingrained in the DNA of the profession; it is useful to my present purposes that it was already mocked relentlessly in Stigler's (1980) Tanner lectures. (Stigler, a Nobel laureate, was one of the leading Chicago economists of the previous century.) He makes two arguments: first, the claim presupposes that the economists and the politicians (and their supporters) share the same goals/values (that is, efficient use of resources, etc.); second, that politicians (and supporters) do not grasp the consequences of their actions.  Drawin on ideas developed in public choice (and his own work on regulatory capture), Stigler makes mince meat of the second claim. It is notable that he does not pause the reader to inform them he had defended the first claim (recall that  a consensus of ends among economists and society is presupposed in economics). 

The idea that we live in a mistake-prone is relentlessly promoted by those that see President Trump as a dangerous fool (or worse). I have no doubt that he is badly informed on lots of things, but he is also a very shrewd politician. Tariffs have foreseeable income effects, and the President is making a calculated bet that these will help those he wishes to help among his well-organized supporters and friends. (The previous sentence is compatible with the further thought, which I have relentlessly emphasized (recall here and here), that he thinks of the world in zero-sum terms.) 

Unsurprisingly, the letter by this generation's economists has had little more influence than their esteemed (but Nobel-free) predecessors. What is most remarkable about both these letters is that they refuse to name the fact that there are political winners from tariffs and, more important, to name who these may be. (That's most remarkable because the economists are the experts who can tell us this!) I mention this because that's the politically salient fact that gets ignored by both letters.** 

I am not suggesting that the economists would be more effective if they told us what we needed to know to understand our own political situation better. But they can hardly be less effective than they are now.

 

We are convinced that increased protective duties would be a mistake. They would operate, in general, to increase the prices which domestic consumers would have to pay. A higher level of protection would raise the cost of living and injure the great majority of our citizens.

Few people could hope to gain from such a change. Construction, transportation and public utility workers, professional people and those employed in banks, hotels, newspaper offices, in the wholesale and retail trades, and scores of other occupations would clearly lose, since they produce no products which could be protected by tariff barriers.

The vast majority of farmers, also, would lose through increased duties, and in a double fashion. First, as consumers they would have to pay still higher prices for the products, made of textiles, chemicals, iron, and steel, which they buy. Second, as producers, their ability to sell their products would be further restricted by barriers placed in the way of foreigners who wished to sell goods to us.

Our export trade, in general, would suffer. Countries cannot permanently buy from us unless they are permitted to sell to us, and the more we restrict the importation of goods from them by means of ever higher tariffs the more we reduce the possibility of our exporting to them. Such action would inevitably provoke other countries to pay us back in kind by levying retaliatory duties against our goods.

Finally, we would urge our Government to consider the bitterness which a policy of higher tariffs would inevitably inject into our international relations. A tariff war does not furnish good soil for the growth of world peace.

 

Huxley on Wider Teleology.

Nevertheless it is necessary to remember that there is a wider Teleology, which is not touched by the doctrine of Evolution, but is actually based upon the fundamental proposition of Evolution. That proposition is, that the whole world, living and not living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed. If this be true, it is no less certain that the existing world lay, potentially, in the cosmic vapour; and that a sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the properties of the molecules of that vapour, have predicted, say the state of the Fauna of Britain in 1869, with as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the vapour of the breath in a cold winter's day.
“Consider a kitchen clock, which ticks loudly, shows the hours, minutes, and seconds, strikes, cries "cuckoo!" and perhaps shows the phases of the moon. When the clock is wound up, all the phenomena which it exhibits are potentially contained in its mechanism, and a clever clockmaker could predict all it will do after an examination of its structure.
If the evolution theory is correct, the molecular structure of the cosmic gas stands in the same relation to the phenomena of the world as the structure of the clock to its phenomena.
Now let us suppose a death-watch, living in the clock-case, to be a learned and intelligent student of its works. He might say, ‘I find here nothing but matter and force and pure mechanism from beginning to end,’ and he would be quite right. But if he drew the conclusion that the clock was not contrived for a purpose, he would be quite wrong. On the other hand, imagine another death-watch of a different turn of mind. He, listening to the monotonous ‘tick! tick!’ so exactly like his own, might arrive at the conclusion that the clock was itself a monstrous sort of death-watch, and that its final cause and purpose was to tick. How easy to point to the clear relation of the whole mechanism to the pendulum, to the fact that the one thing the clock did always and without intermission was to tick, and that all the rest of its phenomena were intermittent and subordinate to ticking! For all this, it is certain that kitchen clocks are not contrived for the purpose of making a ticking noise.
“Thus the teleological theorist would be as wrong as the mechanical theorist, among our death-watches; and, probably, the only death-watch who would be right would be the one who should maintain that the sole thing death-watches could be sure about was the nature of the clock-works and the way they move; and that the purpose of the clock lay wholly beyond the purview of beetle faculties.
“Substitute ‘cosmic vapour’ for ‘clock,’ and ‘molecules’ for ‘works,’ and the application of the argument is obvious. The teleological and the mechanical views of nature are not, necessarily, mutually exclusive. On the contrary, the more purely a mechanist the speculator is, the more firmly does he assume a primordial molecular arrangement, of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences; and the more completely is he thereby at the mercy of the teleologist, who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial molecular arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe. On the other hand, if the teleologist assert that this, that, or the other result of the working of any part of the mechanism of the universe is its purpose and final cause, the mechanist can always inquire how he knows that it is more than an unessential incident–the mere ticking of the clock, which he mistakes for its function. And there seems to be no reply to this inquiry, any more than to the further, not irrational, question, why trouble one's self about matters which are out of reach, when the working of the mechanism itself, which is of infinite practical importance, affords scope for all our energies?-- from Huxley, T. H. 1896. The genealogy of animals.  [HT: David Haig]

In context, Huxley is claiming there are two kinds of teleology. The narrow kind (local final causes) is about the functionality of particular mechanism or body-part/limb. He thinks Darwinism effectively displaces theistic explanations of those narrow ones. But there is another kind of teleology that has more cosmic reach (general final causes). Huxley allows that evolution is silent on the possibility of, and compatible with, say, the existence of a Laplacian demon (''sufficient intelligence").

And, in fact, echoing a point of Leibniz, he discerns that when it comes to wider teleology, the Darwinian is in no position to make any claims about the purposes of nature as such. (I return to this below.) But she can raise the bar on any wider teleological explanation. For, whenever some feature is held up as being evidence for such wider teleology, she can argue that this phenomena may be a byproduct of the fact that the world is law-governed. Huxley's own main point is that the debate over wider teleology cannot be settled (by Darwinism), and (here speaks the Humean) that the debate is of no practical significance; it's (to honor David Haig's research) sterile. In addition, there are opportunity costs to focusing on the nature of wide teleology, while so many scientific problems remain unsolved.

As an aside, Huxley's claim that the nature of wider teleology has no practical significance can be read in two ways: first, one may see in it the assumption that religious and metaphysical doctrines over the purpose of creation/nature are motivation-ally inert. (We find hints of such a position in Hume.) When treated as an empirical claim this is manifestly false. When treated as a normative claim (that is, they should be inert), it presupposes something non-trivial. To see that, we need to see that the second reading of Huxley's claim about the nature of wider teleology seems to assume an answer to a widely debated question (in the reception of Spinoza and Bayle) whether a (minimally decent) society of atheists is possible (recall this post on Voltaire). For those that assumed that belief in the afterlife or God's providence were required to stability this-worldly-morality and social coordination, Huxley would seem to be begging the question.

Let me close with a final observation. It may be thought prima facie puzzling that he accepts that there is a stand-off over wider teleology. One may have thought that his reliance on a Laplacian demon would have made it seem plausible that the world is deterministic and so that behind the order of nature's laws, there is just (a version of Spinozistic) brute necessity. I think I can explain why this is not treated as a live  option. A few weeks ago I attributed the following 'Posidonian' argument to Darwin:

(I) A necessary condition of the possibility of (an (intended)) successful scientific representation or concrete model of (a region of) nature is that (a region of) nature is orderly;

(II) (A region of) Nature’s hidden order could not be the product of mere chance [as suggested by Epicureanism]* or mere necessity [as suggested by Spinozism], but only by an Ordering God/Very powerful/infinite mind or Natural Selection.

(III) [It’s possible that] Science produces successful representations and successful concrete models of (a region of) nature.

(IV) ∴ There is a God (of order) or Natural Selection.

That Huxley is in the ambit of the Posidonian argument is revealed by two facts: first, he uses the characteristic Posidonian heuristic (a time-keeper that also tracks the heavens) to motivate this argument (recall, e.g. here; here; here; and here). Second, his explicit embrace of (IV; and, less surprising, III). It is no surprise, then, that (as David Haig pointed out to me) Huxley coined the term 'agnostic.'

To be sure, one may well think that Natural Selection is itself an effect of the operations of necessity. And Huxley leaves the door open to that possibility. (So this post-Darwinian version of the Posidonian argument is really of little use to an ardent Theist.) But there is an important distinction between appealing to Natural Selection and necessity. Natural Selection can explain observed particular variety (that is it can block arguments that start from local teleology); an appeal to necessity explains -- as Clarke noticed in his debate with Spinoza and Toland* -- nothing about local variations (and it even raises the question why there is any variation at all--having to treat initial conditions as mysterious brute facts). 

One post-script, I had always assumed that the Posidonian argument died with Darwinism. Even when I encountered it in Darwin, I assumed it primarily served a rhetorical purpose. But seeing it in Huxley makes me suspect that the Posidonian argument really only went out of fashion when an appeal to ultimate brute facts became philosophically respectable, that is, only after people like Russell started the reject the PSR . 

 

Omelas, Dotson, and Revealing the Souls of Readers

Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all. For instance, how about technology? I think that there would be no cars or helicopters in and above the streets; this follows from the fact that the people of Omelas are happy people. Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive. In the middle category, however--that of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc.--they could perfectly well have central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinds of marvelous devices not yet invented here, floating light-sources, fuelless power, a cure for the common cold. Or they could have none of that; it doesn't matter. As you like it....I fear that Omelas so far strikes some of you as goody-goody. Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don't hesitate. Let us not, however, have temples from which issue beautiful nude priests and priestesses already half in ecstasy and ready to copulate with any man or woman, lover or stranger, who desires union with the deep godhead of the blood, although that was my first idea. But really it would be better not to have any temples in Omelas--at least, not manned temples. Religion yes, clergy no. Surely the beautiful nudes can just wander about, offering themselves like divine soufflés to the hunger of the needy and the rapture of the flesh. Let them join the processions. Let tambourines be struck above the copulations, and the glory of desire be proclaimed upon the gongs, and (a not unimportant point) let the offspring of these delightful rituals be beloved and looked after by all.--Ursula Le Guin, Walking Away from Omelas.

Before the quoted passage, the narration starts with a description of the Festival of Summer, the physical geography and architecture of Omelas, some of its political and religious institutions (although the narrator suggests lack of familiarity on both), and the happiness of (nearly all) its inhabitants. The narrator also calls attention to the fact how difficult it is aesthetically and rhetorically to convey happiness in light of (as the narrator notes just below the passage I have quoted) "modern tastes." In fact, in addition to an (incomeplete) characterization of Omelas, the main pre-occupation of the narration op to this point is (recall this post) the nature of (modern) narrative itself (and the characterization of genre).

In the quote, the narrator explicitly calls attention to (a point much emphasized by Socrates in Plato's Phaedrus and, if it is authentic, the seventh letter) the fact that a written text must accommodate itself somehow to a diversity of souls (who may be unknown, but anticipated by the author) or (if you prefer less metaphysics) to human heterogeneity in aesthetic and other engaged responses.+ The narrator doesn't merely explicitly admit she (why not!) may not be able to satisfy all her readers, but she also invites, no challenges ("rise to the occasion") her readers to use their own imagination to constitute a version of Omelas that will satisfy their image of a happy place. These are souls that assume a happy place must have technology (trained on, say, Bacon's New Atlantis) and lots of freely available sex (trained on, say, Brave New World). Of course, the narrator isn't just inviting readers to develop their own version of Omelas with accidental properties inessential to the true nature of Omelas, while simultaneously revealing that these properties may be essential to the kind of readers they are. The narrator is also calling attention to the fact that she is aware that she may disappoint some of our expectations; may, in fact, disapprove of our expectations (e.g., we want to be able to blame organized religion for the cruelty at the heart of Omelias; we want a narrative of technological progress or out of control desire and so blame these, etc.).   

The issue of the politics of readership (see this very important paper by Julie Klein) raised in the previous paragraph is not just a matter of aesthetic and intertextuality (or meta-fiction); it also bears on the nature of how to understand the psychomyth (HT John Holbo's very fine piece) that Omelas is. (Psychomyth is Le Guin's own term.) A psychomyth is a certain kind of thought experiment, which is the occasion for (to quote Williams James) “a specifical and independent sort of emotion.” For, Walking Away From Omelas, shows two kinds of characteristic responses to the cruelty at the core of Omelas. Two natures are revealed: (i) those that stay and embrace the misery of the innocent child as a necessary feature, "the terrible justice of reality;" and those that (ii) quietly leave town (that's the closing "incredible" paragraph of the story) keeping their hands clean.* 

As an aside, both (i) and (ii) do not violate the terms of the social compact that gives Omelas its social structure. (The only difference is that the group of folk that belong to (ii) refuse to go on to benefit personally from the contract.) This social compact (which almost certainly precedes the narrated time) is grounded in the opinion of all. (In this sense the social compact mimics Hobbes's unanimity requirement.)

Even so, and to return to the main argument, and as it happens, (iii) anyone could bring "the child...up into the sunlight out of that vile place"** and so destroy the social compact which is thought to bring happiness to all. Such a noble soul would have to be willing to reform society's institutions against the common understanding of happiness. That is, as the Cave analogy emphasizes (in Kristie Dotson's felicitous summary) worldviews are resilient against change.and very difficult to disrupt (especially if they characterize the truth of the phenomena). Even those that recognize the abhorrent truth have incentives to exit rather than to change the social status quo. If they are humane they may well wonder if acting on their perception of wrong isn't reckless given that the downside risk is carried by all of society and there is always a possibility that their perception is wrong. (This is why revolutionaries often seem like fanatics.)*** 

By treating the structure of the story as a reverse Utility Monster (and so the standard case), we may miss the third character as a live option. It's not a live option in the sense that one should expect to live in times when they naturally pop up. Le Guin's narrator is more plausible by effacing the very possibility. But by insisting that how we respond to the narrative says something about how we might be, we are also encouraged to cultivate in ourselves habits of thought, and, perhaps shared systems of thought, that make possible efforts to resist resigning ourselves to given options.++