Digressions&Impressions

Does Philosophy Lack Standards?

...I anticipated that it would provide a view of what the publishing elixir consists in according to journal editors and successful authors. Alas, I left that session no more enlightened than before I entered. What was particularly disorienting to me was the degree to which those in the know did not agree on basic points. Ostensibly, the session was called to address some of the problems of publication within the profession, suggesting that those in the know agree that there is a problem. But as the session progressed, and each journal editor spoke, and each of the other panelists spoke, I began to see that the parties do not agree on what the problems are, or even whether there are problems. If those who should know how things are visa-a-vis getting published don’t agree, then Houston, we really do have a problem.

Whatever the reasons, it was clear that it is hard to publish in philosophy journals....Since to my mind philosophers are in part the result of the training that they have received, if enough people don’t manage to get their work published, or to get much of their work published, then perhaps our training institutions are not preparing us to participate in our own profession.

No one responded to this portion of my question, but I think that it is an important question to ask. It is not a badge of honor that lots of smart, competent philosophers struggle to get their work published. It should be worrying for all of us.

Some of you reading this may take some of my points in a way that I don’t intend. I want to make sure that you hear what I am saying. Of course, I believe that our profession should have standards for what counts as publishable work. I certainly don’t believe that all papers sent out for consideration are publishable. But one can endorse these two principles and still think that there is a problem in need of addressing....

 

....Philosophers often talk about “good” papers. But everyone and their grandmother knows that ways of determining which papers are “good” papers are largely voodoo. Take yourselves as examples. How many papers have you read that you decided were good, but someone whom you respect takes a different attitude and judges that they are bad? I can name some names of established philosophers who for one reason or another, are not, for some people, correctly philosophical. I’ve heard that Pat Churchland’s work is not philosophy. She’s doing science, it’s said, not philosophy. There are some who say Dan Dennett’s work is just shallow, and I’ve heard that Sharon Street’s work on evolutionary ethics is creative but that it’s not good because she is wrong. I’ve had conversations with people who could not disagree with Ruth Millikan’s work more. She is WRONG about intentionality and WRONG again about biological function. I could go on. When I am in the company of people who so strongly express their disapproval, I shrivel up inside.

Look, we do not have some singular method or set of methods for determining which work is good. What we have, apart from some very basic standards, are our individual preferences and the trends in the profession: trends that are established by works that get published and from those prominently placed and highly visible in the profession. To be sure, such people have expertise, but even they have personal philosophical preferences as well: preferences that can get in the way.--Subrena E. Smith Women in Philosophy: The Words to Say It.

A few years ago I was a finalist for a nice job in a fine department without many historians of philosophy. While, there were a number of papers in contemporary philosophy that I could have delivered, I wanted to see if they could be excited about my work in history, too. I had reached the stage of my career where a job search really is a two-way affair; I want to land the job but only iff my work is felt welcome. I decided, however, that I wanted to avoid the 'why is this philosophy' question, so I presented the main reconstruction of my paper in terms of a clear (and valid) argument with numbered premises. (That's not what I tend to do in my talks; I ordinarily try to convey the excitement of discovery of new understanding of the past and thereby the present.) As  it happened, in Q&A it became clear that the paper was a bust--my audience got the argument, but thought it not worth much time.*

A bit later, I read Stoljaer's Philosophical Progress: In Defence of a Reasonable Optimism. There is much to say about the book's central contention(s), but one thing I got out of it is that in certain niches of contemporary philosophy, the key rhetorical/presentational move is to represent a topic in terms of an argument with plausible premises and an unpalatable conclusion, which, in turn, can be re-conceived as a (plausible) trilemma. The point then is to find ways to give up one of the plausible seeming premises (or find ways to make the conclusion seem less unpalatable). I haven't done a survey of recent philosophy papers [I am, after all, not Eric Schwitzgebel], so I have no idea if this is the way 'we' really all do philosophy now. I suspect not (see below). But I recognized that I had mis-calibrated my job-talk.

I was musing about these matters in light of Subrena Smith's essay. Professor Smith's comments about the failure of PhD training to enable recent graduates to participate in the professional conversation (aka publication) can be taken in (at least) two ways: (i) there is a problem in the profession such that recently minted PhDs can't participate in ways conducive to their philosophical flourishing -- I use this locution to capture the fear, anxiety, and anger expressed by Smith throughout her essay; (ii) there is a problem in the way PhDs are trained such that they are not properly launched on a flourishing career. Much of the the blog post (worth reading) is devoted to (i); in particular -- and I don't mean to be reductive --, Smith notices that her philosophical personality (or voice) is being stunted by referees who insist she must conform to some invisible disciplinary standard. Her piece raises the troubling question of how many distinct and fascinating philosophical voices we have lost by overzealous referees (who are probably just as overworked as you and I, and perhaps grumpy on entirely reasonable grounds). 

Here I want to muse a bit on (ii). Ages ago, just before the explosion of journal articles by graduate  students, I came out of a PhD department in which 'professionalization' was pour les autres. I have described (recall) how I got trained into writing journal articles during my post-doc a few years out (Larry May, bless your soul!). And I was glad to see the Cocooners level the playing field a bit by collecting and passing on best practices to junior scholars. If one understands the point of obtaining a PhD as (a) training/developing the skills for succeeding in the profession, my PhD program failed me at first. If one understands the point of obtaining a PhD as (b) landing a position, I can only be grateful to my program. There are, of course, other alternatives: (c) to develop the skills to find my own philosophical voice; (d) to develop the skills to survive in the profession; (e) to contribute to, say, philosophical progress/advance research agenda, etc; (f) to provide the skills to be a good class-room teacher (at different levels). The point is that (a-f) are not always mutually compatible and what's needed for them to work cannot always be anticipated. Of course, plenty of PhD programs now have workshops, including ones that teach aspiring professionals how to publish and teach.  

Part of the issue, and Smith is very good on this, is that while there may seem to be clear minimal standards in professional philosophy (produce valid arguments, avoid contradiction, etc.) in the abstract, that's not, in fact, how 'we' tend to evaluate in practice. Philosophical writing is a hydra with many different standards, which seem to evolve in popularity over time without any public notice. (In contrast to Stoljaer's template, I think generating fruitful distinctions and conceptions is far more important than dissolving trilemmas.) Because professional philosophy has artificially low amount of journal space (and so (recall) incredibly high rejection rates) this has predictable consequence(s); it generates barriers to entry and participation for those who are least aware that an implicit standard has shifted. And because professional philosophy has incredibly steep status/prestige/economic/personal hierarchies, it is entirely predictable that this will dis-proportionally impact those with fewer intellectual resources (time, incrowd-networks, a supervisor who disdains professional bleh, etc.) 

In fact, one suspects that philosophy's standards must remain opaque so that the status hierarchy is never questioned on intrinsic grounds. For, if there were common and clear standards then one could second-guess the decisions at the top.+ 

 

 

 

 

Invisible Cities

In Eudoxia, which spreads both upward and down, with winding alleys, steps, dead ends, hovels, a carpet is preserved in which you can observe the city's true form. At first sight nothing seems to resemble Eudoxia less than the design of that carpet, laid out in symmetrical motives whose patterns are repeated along straight and circular lines, interwoven with brilliantly colored spires, in a repetition that can be followed throughout the whole woof. But if you pause and examine it carefully, you become convinced that each place in the carpet corresponds to a place in the city and all the things contained in the city are included in the design, arranged according their true relationship, which escapes your eye distracted by the bustle, the throngs, the shoving. All of Eudoxia's confusion, the mules' braying, the lampblack stains, the fish smell is what is evident in the incomplete perspective you grasp; but the carpet proves that there is a point from which the city shows its true proportions, the geometrical scheme implicit in its every, tiniest detail.

It is easy to get lost in Eudoxia: but when you concentrate and stare at the carpet, you recognize the street you were seeking in a crimson or indigo or magenta thread which, in a wide loop, brings you to the purple enclosure that is your real destination. Every inhabitant of Eudoxia compares the carpet's immobile order with his own image of the city, an anguish of his own, and each can find, concealed among the arabesques, an answer, the story of his life, the twists of fate.

An oracle was questioned about the mysterious bond between two objects so dissimilar as the carpet and the city. One of the two objects -- the oracle replied -- has the form the gods gave the starry sky and the orbits in which the worlds revolve; the other is an approximate reflection, like every human creation.

For some time the augurs had been sure that the carpet's harmonious pattern was of divine origin. The oracle was interpreted in this sense, arousing no controversy. But you could, similarly, come to the opposite conclusion: that the true map of the universe is the city of Eudoxia, just as it is, a stain that spreads out shapelessly, with crooked streets, houses that crumble one upon the other amid clouds of dust, fires, screams in the darkness.--from Invisible Cities, by  Italo Calvino, translated by William Weaver. [HT Saar Frierling]

The day after the most talented side the Dutch had ever fielded in the world cup was humiliated by the Germans in San Siro, I bought a copy of Invisible Cities in the Feltrinelli in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele next to the Duomo. I spent the day in the Feltrinelli store because I was broke and it had excellent air conditioning; it seemed like a refuge from the turmoil in my heart. After the defeat, Peter and I had said our goodbyes at the hostel; he was going to go back all the way down to the boot of Italy, whereas I was going to try my luck scalping a ticket for the Brasil - Argentina match in Turin before heading to (recall) Sestri Levante on weightier family matters. Before leaving Milan, I solved my money problems by selling my ticket to the semi-finals to an optimistic German fan in an alley behind the train station. A few days before Peter and I had been arrested there as dangerous hooligans in front of hundreds of cameras, but now nobody seemed to care.

I read the book on a train crossing the Northern plains of Italy.  I found it contrived and later could not recall a single image from it. After the Summer when Peter's mom, who grew concerned about lack of news from him, asked me where he had traveled to after our split I had to confess that I did not recall what he had said to me; Bari, Tarente, and Lecce all seemed like plausible destinations for  him. Years later, long after he had resurfaced safely, it crossed my mind that my self-absorption made me a perfect fall guy for a murder since I could not convey knowledge of any facts that could establish a plausible alibi. 

Yet, a few days ago, nudged by a friend, I re-read the passage quoted above; it enchants me now; a true map does not just capture the relations of what it purports the represent, but also helps get you from any initial conditions or (implied) coordinate on the carpet to where you need to go. That is to say, it's not just a copy of some original, but also a teleological object that can presuppose your true ends. And when you have an image of that carpet in your mind, you are never lost in the bustling streets of Eudoxia. 

It is notable that the idea that a city could be a carpet is found in Plato's Republic (557C),  where the democratic city is compared to a garment of many colors, embroidered with all kinds of hues, a trope repeated in (recall) Al-Farabi's Virtuous City, where he claims the democratic polity/regime is "on the surface, it is like an embroidered garment replete with colored figures and dyes" and Ibn Rushd's Commentary on Plato's Republic. The name of the  city, Eudoxia, may well be a nod to Plato's friend, the astronomer-mathematician Eudoxus.* 

To mention Socrates, is to evoke Socrates's claim (recall 592ab) that there is a pattern of the best polity laid up in heaven for him who wishes to contemplate it. On my reading of Socrates, the embodied relations of the pattern can be configured differently at different times (while still being a proper copy of the heavenly pattern). So, that in each context we must explore these relations anew. 

At this point one may object and claim that for Socrates the best polity is not the democratic city and so it cannot be the true pattern, even if glittering. This connects with a more disconcerting possibility: the name of the city, Ευδοξία means 'good deeds' (Εύδοξος can mean 'good opinion' or 'good glory.') The inhabitants of the democratic city think of their own as the best and blessed by the gods, but their deeds can't justify it.

Calvino's narrator points out against the consensus of the experts, that the cosmos, which Eudoxia mimicks, may, in fact, not be teleologically organized, but one in which epicurean chaos/chance rules. This is a cosmos in which the nightly screams are not part of a vindicating theodicy, but the unanswered, lonely calls ignored by the cowardly and servile burghers who stay inside while their neighbors are deported. And while writing the previous sentence I am transported back to the dusty carriages of the Ferrovie dello Stato staring out on the quiet, industrious towns of Lombardy. 

 

Ibn Khaldun On Self-Domestication and Autonomy

Not everyone is master of his own affairs. Chiefs and leaders who are masters of the affairs of men are few in comparison with the rest. As a rule, man must by necessity be dominated by someone else. If the domination is kind and just and the people under it are not oppressed by its laws and restrictions, they are guided by the courage or cowardice that they possess in themselves. They are satisfied with the absence of any restraining power. Self-reliance eventually becomes a quality natural to them. They would not know anything else. If, however,the domination with its laws is one of brute force and intimidation, it breaks their fortitude and deprives them of their power of resistance as a result of the inertness that develops in the souls of the oppressed, as we shall explain.
...
When laws are (enforced) by means of punishment, they completely destroy fortitude, because. the use of punishment against someone who cannot defend himself generates in that person a feeling of humiliation that, no doubt, must break his fortitude. When laws are (intended to serve the purposes of) education and instruction and are applied from childhood on, they have to some degree the same effect,because people then grow up in fear and docility and consequently do not rely on their own fortitude.
For this (reason), greater fortitude is found among the savage Arab Bedouins than among people who are subject to laws. Furthermore, those who rely on laws and are dominated by them from the very beginning of their education and instruction in the crafts, sciences, and religious matters, are thereby deprived of much of their own fortitude. They can scarcely defend themselves at all against hostile acts. This is the case with students, whose occupation it is to study and to learn from teachers and religious leaders, and who constantly apply themselves to instruction and education in very dignified gatherings. This situation and the fact that it destroys the power of resistance and fortitude must be understood.
It is no argument against the (statement just made) that the men around Muhammad observed the religious laws, and yet did not experience any diminution of their fortitude, but possessed the greatest possible fortitude. When the Muslims got their religion from the Lawgiver (Muhammad), the restraining influence came from themselves, as a result of the encouragement and discouragement he gave them in the Qur'an. It was not a result of technical instruction or scientific education. (The laws) were the laws and precepts of the religion, which they received orally and which their firmly rooted (belief in) the truth of the articles of faith caused them to observe. Their fortitude remained unabated, and it was not corroded by education or authority. 'Umar said, "Those who are not educated(disciplined) by the religious law are not educated (disciplined) by God." (This statement expresses) 'Umar's desire that everyone should have his restraining influence in himself. It also expresses his certainty that the Lawgiver (Muhammad) knew best what is good for mankind.
(The influence of) religion, then, decreased among men, and they came to use restraining laws. The religious law became a branch of learning and a craft to be acquired through instruction and education. People turned to sedentary life and assumed the character trait of submissiveness to law. This led to a decrease in their fortitude.
It has thus become clear that governmental and educational laws destroy fortitude, because their restraining influence is something that comes from outside.The religious laws, on the other hand, do not destroy fortitude, because their restraining influence is something inherent. Therefore, governmental and educational laws influence sedentary people, in that they weaken their souls and diminish their stamina, because they have to suffer (their authority) both as children and as adults. The Bedouins, on the other hand, are not in the same position,because they live far away from the laws of government, instruction, and education.'--Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, Chapter 2, Section 6. (Translated by Franz Rosenthal.)

According to Ibn  Khaldun (recall) the institution of justice, which he thinks in its origin co-extensive with properly functioning royal authority, originates  only after the division of labor has generated some surplus worth fighting over; it follows from the need to prevent people from harming each other in virtue of our innate aggressiveness and tendency toward mutual harm. Aggressiveness is not all bad; the properly cultivated version (when royal authority is "kind and just") is a form of spirited-ness (akin to the greek thumos) or courage, which he calls fortitude.  

Before I continue, I must clarify that Ibn Khaldun, like his great successors (Hume, Smith, Marx) identifies (at least three) major stages of of economic and social development: (i) the necessary civilizations of nomadic tribes (who live near starvation levels); (ii) sedentary agricultural societies, which generate sufficient surplus to live comfortably; and (iii) commercial cities (which can double as seats of royal power) where, when taxes are kept low, the arts and sciences can flourish amidst luxury goods.  Originally this scheme characterizes a historical-logical, even teleological development from (i) to (iii), but in practice the three forms of society can live alongside each other at the same time and have complex modes of interaction (which can be captured in familiar patterns of development). 

Not unlike the Roman historians and their great admirer, Rousseau, Ibn Khaldun treats luxury as a source of corruption. (The story is more complicated than that sentence allows because he also recognizes that a society with arts and sciences has definite advantages, including military ones.) But what is especially notable is that Ibn  Khaldun treats the effects of civilization as a form of domestication. And that is because, according to Ibn Khaldun, it is constitutive of advanced civilization that it is characterized by a great number of influential social institutions which impose the rule of, what we may call, external law upon its subjects; these institutions shape the inhabitants of wealthy places into the compliant character types needed by the advanced division of labor. They do so with a great deal of force and generate docile population types. The force is not recognized as such because, unlike the tyrant's brutality and willful unpredictability, it is continuous and (to introduce a touch of anachronism) rule following. 

If one rejects civilization and tyranny, one may think one is left with anarchism. And indeed, ordinarily, Bedouin life is characterized by an anarchic "freedom from authority" without "subservience to authority." (Chapter 2, section 25) Again anticipating Rousseau and Adam Smith, Ibn Khaldun associates some of the noblest qualities with this kind of anarchic, savage character who is free and equal to his peers and who can endure seemingly limitless hardship.

The main problem with such anarchic freedom is that it is a barrier to joint action. To make joint action possible another species of law is needed; freely accepted religion helps solve coordination problems and supplies a shared end worth dying for. For, as Ibn Khaldun points out not all forms of law extinguish fortitude. A self-imposed law, which is the product of belief in the truth of its principles, can enhance naturally existing fortitude. When it coincides with what Ibn Khaldun elsewhere calls group feeling (mutual sympathy/co-affectation), groups animated by freely, self-imposed laws become invincible on the battlefield.* With this in place, Ibn Khaldun can explain how economically backward Bedouin Arab tribes, could defeat two ancient and numerically superior superpowers in an extraordinary short period.+ 

The point here is not just the non-trivial understanding -- recently popular thanks to Foucault's domestication and application of Nietzschean ideas -- of the embrace of civilization as a form of self-domestication and open-ended indoctrination into servitude (which gets mislabeled as 'education').  There is a more surprising and salient point lurking here; while civilized man is in chains, the (savage's) free embrace of a law that one takes to be true just is constitutive of autonomy. And so prophecy is a prerequisite for the very possibility of autonomy.  

On An Unphilosophical Legislation of Utopia.

[1] But they report (and there remains good marks of it to make it credible) that this was no island at first, but a part of the continent. Utopus, that conquered it (whose name it still carries, for Abraxa was its first name), brought the rude and uncivilised inhabitants into such a good government, and to that measure of politeness, that they now far excel all the rest of mankind. Having soon subdued them, he designed to separate them from the continent, and to bring the sea quite round them. To accomplish this he ordered a deep channel to be dug, fifteen miles long; and that the natives might not think he treated them like slaves, he not only forced the inhabitants, but also his own soldiers, to labor in carrying it on. As he set a vast number of men to work, he, beyond all men’s expectations, brought it to a speedy conclusion....

[2] They say the whole scheme of the town was designed at first by Utopus, but he left all that belonged to the ornament and improvement of it to be added by those that should come after him, that being too much for one man to bring to perfection. Their records, that contain the history of their town and State, are preserved with an exact care, and run backwards seventeen hundred and sixty years [244BC].

[3] At the first constitution of their government, Utopus having understood that before his coming among them the old inhabitants had been engaged in great quarrels concerning religion, by which they were so divided among themselves, that he found it an easy thing to conquer them, since, instead of uniting their forces against him, every different party in religion fought by themselves. After he had subdued them he made a law that every man might be of what religion he pleased, and might endeavor to draw others to it by the force of argument and by amicable and modest ways, but without bitterness against those of other opinions; but that he ought to use no other force but that of persuasion, and was neither to mix with it reproaches nor violence; and such as did otherwise were to be condemned to banishment or slavery. This law was made by Utopus, not only for preserving the public peace, which he saw suffered much by daily contentions and irreconcilable heats, but because he thought the interest of religion itself required it.--Thomas More, Utopia

While much of the narrative  of book 2 of Utopia is focused on the present, the reader also learns quite a bit about the origin of the polity. While More himself is no Aristotelian, and so may be unmoved by this consideration, an explanation is incomplete without analysis of the origin, which is of independent interest.Above I have collected the three main passages pertaining to the pre-history and founding of Utopia. 

We learn that its origin is in conquest. The original inhabitants lived on a peninsula. This peninsula was eminently defensible, but they lost their freedom for two reasons: first, they were technologically inferior to the conquerors; second, they were dis-unified due to religious disagreements. The latter is significant because it shows that the effects of religion on the dispositions conducive to unity cannot be ignored by those who wish to remain politically independent.

Unusually, the conquest is not followed by permanent subordination, slavery, or destruction of the original inhabitants by the conquerors. For the conquerors are force-ably leveled down and put to work. This has the symbolic significance that the conqueror and conquered are treated equally. It also symbolizes two further facts: first, it dignifies work and, in particular, public works.  Second, no permanent leisure or extractive renter class is permitted to emerge. More subtly, Utopus is ehibited not just as a skillful military commander, but also a kind of despot capable of forcing his own followers to do things against their will (and presumably expectation).

In the previous paragraph I used 'public work.' But the digging of the channel turns the peninsula into an island. This exhibits the control by mankind over nature aimed at in Utopia (which anticipates New Atlantis in this respect).* A further effect is to turn the society into a fortified castle. While it's not the main focus of the description of Utopia, military prowess, even imperial conquest, is not an irrelevant element of its ongoing function (recall this post too).

As an aside, it's unclear how the initial succession of Utopus was arranged. But (eventually) Utopia has evolved into an elective principality. This prince is chosen for life but can be removed if he appears to wish to become a tyrant. He has power to punish crimes, and to pardon them (because he has kept the "prerogative.") In other respects the elected prince has not much further power (except that I assume he is at the head of armed forces).

To return to the main point. Utopus's design for utopia is deliberately unfinished in various respects; it presupposes the possibility of open-ended economic and aesthetic progress ('ornament and improvement'). I am not claiming that modernity is here first invented, but it is a notable break from the more cyclical template(s) that can be found in the classical models to which More richly alludes. 

The possibility of open-ended progress can also be found (recall) in the laws of religion. This is an unusual mixture of requiring core doctrinal agreement about a few core dogmas -- in particular, that souls are immortal and will be punished/rewarded in the afterlife; that God is watchful and providential -- all of which quite clearly conducive to enforcing morality on earth, while simultaneously allowing religious innovation outside the core. However, such religious innovation is, in turn, constrained by the requirements of public order. (All of this anticipates the outlines of Spinoza's position.) The state religion is, with those qualifications, broadly ecumenical and tolerant in spirit. The underlying idea is the product of the fact that "Utopus judged it not fit to determine anything rashly; and seemed to doubt whether those different forms of religion might not all come from God, who might inspire man in a different manner, and be pleased with this variety." Underlying this is the providential idea -- often attributed to J.S. Mill --  that in the long run through the force of polite arguments truth will prevail "he imagined that the native force of truth would at last break forth and shine bright, if supported only by the strength of argument, and attended to with a gentle and unprejudiced mind.")

There is more to be said about this. But the important point is this. Utopus anticipates the Rousseau-ian legislator who introduces and sets a constitution on sound footing and then becomes dispensable. Notably, while there is room for technological and medical innovation on the island, there is little room for genuine political philosophy (or [recall] civilized philosophy) or even speculation (or school philosophy) on Utopia. Moreover, there is little evidence he was guided by such philosophy. This last point may be speculative, but it is made explicit in one of the poems (often attributed to Peter Gilles) that accompanied Utopia in its early printings.

My king and conqueror Utopus by name,
A prince of much renown and immortal fame,
Has made me an isle that once no island was,
Full fraught with worldly wealth,

with pleasure and solace.
I one of all other without philosophy,
Have shaped for many a philosophical city.
And mine I have nothing dangerous to impart,
So better to receive I am ready
with all my heart.*--probably Peter Gilles.

 My only reservation is that the judgment on the philosophical character of Utopia (the city) is incomplete without further evaluation of the blue print in light of the conversations (and the different polities) described in Book I. But that's for another time.

On Ibn Khaldun, Biblical Criticism and Spinoza and Hume

For example, al-Mas'udi and many other historians report that Moses counted the army of the Israelites in the desert. He had all those able to carry arms, especially those twenty years and older, pass muster. There turned out to be 600,000 or more. In this connection, (al-Mas'udi)  forgets to take into consideration whether Egypt and Syria could possibly have held such a number of soldiers. Every realm may have as large a militia as it can hold and support, but no more. This fact is attested by well-known customs and familiar conditions. Moreover, an army of this size cannot march or fight as a unit. The whole available territory would be too small for it. If it were in battle formation, it would extend two, three, or more times beyond the field of vision.
How, then, could two such parties fight with each other, or one battle formation gain the upper hand when one flank does not know what the other flank is doing! The situation at the present day testifies to the correctness of this statement. The past resembles the future more than one (drop of) water another. Furthermore, the realm of the Persians was much greater than that of the Israelites. This fact is attested by Nebuchadnezzar's victory over them. He swallowed up their country and gained complete control over it. He also destroyed Jerusalem,their religious and political capital. And he was merely one of the officials of the province of Fars. It is said that he was the governor of the western border region. The Persian provinces of the two 'Iraqs, Khurasan, Transoxania, and the region of Derbend on the Caspian  Sea were much larger than the realm of the Israelites. Yet, the Persian army did not attain such a number or even approach it. The greatest concentration  of Persian troops, at al-Qadisiyah, amounted to 120,000 men, all of whom had their retainers. This is according to Sayf  who said that with their retainers they amounted to over 200,000 persons. According to 'A'ishah and az- Zuhri, the troop concentration with which Rustum advanced against  Sa'd at al-Qadisiyah amounted to only 60,000 men, all of whom had their retainers.
Then, if the Israelites had really amounted to such a number, the extent of the area under their  rule would have been larger, for the size of administrative units and provinces under a particular dynasty is in direct proportion to the size of its militia and the groups that support the  (dynasty), as will be explained in the section on provinces in the first book. Now, it is well known that the territory of the (Israelites) did not comprise an area larger than the Jordan province and Palestine in Syria and the region of Medina and Khaybar in the Hijaz.--Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, Translated by Franz Rosenthal.

The quoted passage is from the Introduction to the Muqaddimah. As I have noted before (here and here) the book is embedded in a framework derived from Aristotelian science.* To say this is revealing in lots of ways, but today I want to point to some of his evidential strategies -- Ibn Khaldun calls it "probing with the yardstick of philosophy...[and]  the help of knowledge of the nature of things...speculation and historical insight" -- in which he anticipates methods we are more likely to associate with Spinoza and Hume. I have quoted the first, instructive example of the claim that "historians, Qur'an commentators and leading transmitters have committed frequent errors in the stories and events they reported." The underlying point is to show how one can do source criticism by appealing to non-demonstrative principles that, nevertheless, have the status of robust commitments or generalizations that help one constrain or interpret the data (or some causal claim, etc.). I will call such principles, practical, empirical generalizations. 

Here are some such practical generalizations.

• [A] Every realm may have as large a militia as it can hold and support, but no more.
• [B] An army has [given technological and physiological constraints] a maximum size in which it can fight as a unit.
  • The size of an army/militia is constrained by the requirements of battle-field communication;
  • The size of an army/militia is constrained by field of vision;
• [C] The size of administrative units and provinces under a particular dynasty is in direct proportion to the size of its militia and the groups that support the (dynasty),

The epistemic status of such practical, empirical generalizations is grounded in or based on historical and practical experiences, reflection on human and social nature, underlying political economy, demographics, group psychology,and principles of analogy (etc.). As Ibn Khaldun says, he will show the robust veracity of [C] in a separate chapter. I don't mean to suggest that these are only empirical generalizations. For example, [A] borders on a tautology. But the point of [A] is not to offer an a priori truth, but to make the reader reflect on the demographic, geographic, and economic, !etc.) constraints on the possible size of a militia.  And given the plausibility of such constraints [A] can, in turn, by an informed constraint on the interpretation of source material. (Hume is a master of using informed and empirically grounded constraints to sift data in his work on demographics and political economy. This works in both directions.)

In addition, in practice, [A-C] also assume a further principle of human nature:

• [D] that if military might exists, it will be used to expand territory until it gets checked by an opposing power. 

This principle, [D], is the conatus/will-to-power principle of Ibn Khaldun's historiography. In order to avoid misunderstanding, I don't mean to suggest that for Ibn Khaldun that military power is sui generis or an explanatory primitive; it is grounded in group feeling, demography, economy, leadership qualities, etc. 

Of course, some of the claims that Ibn Khaldun's source criticism relies on are not merely such practical generalizations, but they are connected to more fundamental metaphysical principles. So, for example, one of the principles he explicitly relies (again see the quote above)on is this:

• [E] The past resembles the future,

That Ibn Khaldun embraces [E] is especially notable because he also thinks an unthinking reliance on a version of [E] is simultaneously one of greatest dangers in the writing history because it can license (i) a form of anachronism that prevents understanding of the past (this is familiar enough), and (ii) also (and more interesting) a misunderstanding of the present based on familiarity with works of history. The example he offers is that the content and status of particular political and legal offices have, without changing names, dramatically shifted in character. So, he claims that in the early caliphate and also the conquest of Spain a judge was often somebody who either had the power of the sword or was very closely affiliated to the center of power (due to group feeling); in his own age the judge is more an administrative functionary.+ Contemporary readers, may misunderstand their own time, and "aspire to similar positions" if they think that judges are still at the center of political power.

The last paragraph also hints at the fact that point of source criticism for Ibn Khaldun history is not just an understanding of the past, but also a better understanding of the present. In addition, Ibn Khaldun recognizes that works of history can motivate readers to courses of action. Some other time I return to that. 

Here I want to close with a final observation because the title of this post promises something riviting than Ibn Khaldun's source criticism. In the quoted passage, Ibn Khaldun calls attention to the greatest military victory of early Islam, the battle at al-Qadisiyah. In this battle the numerically inferior Arabs defeated one of the great superpowers of the Ancient worlds, the mighty Persian Sassanid empire. It opened the 'East' to Muslim expansion. The significance of the battle would have been familiar to Ibn Khaldun's readers and a source of group pride. 

Ibn Khaldun's official point of reminding the reader of this famous battle is to undermine the plausibility of historians's reports that Moses's army turned out to be 600,000 or more. Such an army would have been the basis of world domination not the occupation of a small bit of territory. Ibn Khaldun deftly shows that this number is implausibly large.

The interest of the example is, however, not just illustrative correction of bad scholarship. There is a more important point lurking here. For the implausibly large number is (as is well known) in the Biblical source-material. Numbers 1: 45-46 states, "And all those that were numbered of the children of Israel by their fathers' houses, from twenty years old and upward, all that were able to go forth to war in Israel; even all those that were numbered were six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty." As it happens, the Quran recounts the story of exodus and the further exploits of Moses and Israelites, but without the claim to (exaggerated) exactitude of the sort the Hebrew Bible offers.

So, it is quite clear that the historians that Ibn Khaldun criticizes have embellished their account of the Biblical history re-narrated by the Quran by glancing at the Hebrew Bible (itself a sacred text familiar to Muslim scholars). The error is in the historical source not just the scholarship. What to do? After engaging in such source criticism, a pious and prudent scholar can't respond by claiming that the error "occurs only in the Torah which as is well  known, was altered by the Jews" (for reasons of self-aggrandizement, bias, etc.). Even to an Islamic scholar this response is unavailable "since custom prevents people who have a revealed religion from dealing with their divine scriptures in such a matter."

The problem is obvious, if one allows that sacred Hebrew scripture has been corrupted by interests motivated by group-loyalty one is stuck claiming that it is possible other sacred scriptures could also have been corrupted. This is the road to Spinozism. 

From the vantage point of Spinozism, Ibn Khaldun's response is disappointing. He claims that such passages have to be treated as miracles. This is not the end of the matter, of course, because one must understand what a miracle is. But that's for another time. Here I close with the observation that for Ibn Khaldun one can only speak of such miracles after engaging with source criticism. And this means that he has quietly invited us to apply his methods also to the Quran.

 

On Gardening, Communism, Eugenics and Competitive Emulation in Thomas More's Utopia.

Their buildings are good, and are so uniform that a whole side of a street looks like one house. The streets are twenty feet broad; there lie gardens behind all their houses. These are large, but enclosed with buildings, that on all hands face the streets, so that every house has both a door to the street and a back door to the garden. Their doors have all two leaves, which, as they are easily opened, so they shut of their own accord; and, there being no property among them, every man may freely enter into any house whatsoever. At every ten years’ end they shift their houses by lots.

They cultivate their gardens with great care, so that they have both vines, fruits, herbs, and flowers in them; and all is so well ordered and so finely kept that I never saw gardens anywhere that were both so fruitful and so beautiful as theirs. And this humor of ordering their gardens so well is not only kept up by the pleasure they find in it, but also by an emulation between the inhabitants of the several streets, who vie with each other. And there is, indeed, nothing belonging to the whole town that is both more useful and more pleasant. So that he who founded the town seems to have taken care of nothing more than of their gardens.--Raphael Hythloday in Thomas More, Utopia, Book II, from Open Utopia.

Echoing the plan for the guardians in Kallipolis (Republic 416ff), there is no genuine private property on Utopia. But there is some stability of possessions. For, every "ten years" they "shift their houses by lots." Sortition represents the egalitarian element of the plan of Utopia. One may well wonder why if all houses are pretty much the same, they need to be assigned by lot at all. But the geography of Utopia is not fully uniform: the city has a river and a hill. And presumably this means that not every spot is equally desirable. (Traditionally, rivers double as sewage and so less desirable to live alongside.)* The lack of permanent private and inherited property has not prevented the improvement of the housing stock. (At the founding of Utopia "their houses were at first low and mean, like cottages, made of any sort of timber, and were built with mud walls and thatched with straw.") 

The easy entry into homes reveal the lack of privacy at the core of Utopian life. Long before Bentham's panopticon, and probably inspired by Plato's Laws, the Utopians  have a society in which they all "live in full view, so that all are obliged both to perform their ordinary task and to employ themselves well in their spare hours." The lack of privacy does generate interesting questions about our understanding about Utopian domestic life because population and household numbers as well as monogamous relations are strictly regulated in Utopia; one wonders how such free access to private spaces fits into the larger scheme. 

That good-breeding is central to Utopia is symbolized by the role of the gardens. The utility and aesthetics of this institution, which we are  told has endured for all of Utopia's existence, is marked by the fact that it is part of the original design for Utopia by the king-conqueror-founder of Utopia (king Utopus). The gardens are means to create, (i) temporary local group solidarity -- at the level of a neighborhood -- and (ii) they channel competitive emulation to proper ends. The former is important because Utopia is the product of a conquest by an alien population and this regular mixing of location increases the chances that the aboriginals and the newcomers will mix and create mutual friendships. (We are explicitly told that after the conquest Utopus put victors and defeated to joint work to create a sense of such commonality.) Concern with the dangers of disunity show up in the design of other institutions, especially the religious practices (see my treatment of Utopus and religion here and here). 

Of course, unity is not the only benefit from these garden competitions. It's also one of the few ways in which the dangerous and natural desire for honor/status can be expressed. (Another is in the manner of one's death.) The desire for honor generates beautiful and fertile gardens. It teaches the virtues of local collaboration and is, thereby, useful (because it generates lots of produce and fruits). This is a nice analogy for the way production is organized in Utopia and the strength of collaborative labor. 

But the significance of these gardens is not just economic and social. The garden also represents the focus on fertility and domestic selection. With regard to fertility, I already noted that population levels are monitored strictly and maintained in static equilibrium (e.g., households are kept between 10 and 16 members); when population grows this generates an imperial and colonial impulse among the Utopians who sent colonies abroad. (The reverse is rarely the case.) On the island population numbers in towns and households are maintained at steady levels (through adoption schemes and population movements).

With regard to domestic selection, the Utopians have an unusual selection procedure (undoubtedly inspired by Laws VI 771ff). I quote the details and explanation:

in choosing their wives they use a method that would appear to us very absurd and ridiculous, but it is constantly observed among them, and is accounted perfectly consistent with wisdom. Before marriage some grave matron presents the bride, naked, whether she is a virgin or a widow, to the bridegroom, and after that some grave man presents the bridegroom, naked, to the bride....But they, on the other hand, wondered at the folly of the men of all other nations, who, if they are but to buy a horse of a small value, are so cautious that they will see every part of him, and take off both his saddle and all his other tackle, that there may be no secret ulcer hid under any of them, and that yet in the choice of a wife, on which depends the happiness or unhappiness of the rest of his life, a man should venture upon trust, and only see about a hands breadth of the face, all the rest of the body being covered, under which may lie hid what may be contagious as well as loathsome.  

The procedure is focused almost entirely on ensuring mutual bodily attraction and preventing hidden physical defects or "deformity" from souring any relationship. Given that monogamy is strictly enforced they think this procedure is required. (Mutual divorce is allowed, but discouraged.) Physical defect is associated with lack of productivity and fertility. It's no surprise that medicine is of all the sciences most honored there; they view it as "one of the pleasantest and most profitable parts of philosophy. In particular, their medicine is focused on restoring patients back to productive health.

While the Utopians explicitly do not practice infanticide (as the best regimes by Plato and Al-Farabi do), they do encourage (government and religious supervised) euthanasia for those that are suffering painfully and can't contribute to the productive economy of Utopian society: they tell such patients, that they are "a burden to themselves and to all about them, and they have really out-lived themselves, they should no longer nourish such a rooted distemper, but choose rather to die since they cannot live but in much misery; being assured that if they thus deliver themselves from torture, or are willing that others should do it."**

One can only speculate what the eugenic effects are of the particular mate selection of the Utopian mechanism. But since they are so focused on the body, it seems they expect couples to select each other on aesthetic and apparent physical grounds. (In other respects, the Utopians are prevented from letting aesthetics be a source of distinction.)  One can predict that the Utopians are voluntarily breeding an attractive -- albeit not especially bright -- and fertile population.+ That is, what collaborative, competitive emulation does for fruits in the gardens, structured individual choices do for human population. 

 

What do Hoax papers really show? (Ten theses)

(1) The refereeing institutions of philosophy are vulnerable to fraud. This is something I have  been blogging about since September 23, 2010; in one my first dedicated post for NewAPPS I wrote:

The world of Renaissance and Early Modern philosophy and scholarship has been shaken by the "Martin Stone case".... Before his fall from grace, Martin Stone was a widely admired and highly respected professor at Leuven University....I want to call attention to the rather lukewarm, if not indifferent, reaction of the editors and journals/presses that have published his work....What does not seem to have happened is a general discussion about referee-ing. It is well known that one can play the referee-process in various ways that increases chances for favorable review....The Martin Stone case suggests that the referee process is broken in rather serious fashion. Stone published in leading specialist journals and also with leading presses. It means that lots of people missed a considerable amount of plagiarism. What is even more striking is that this happened in a small-ish sub-field where folk pride themselves on learning, their languages, and scholarship.... Anyway, peer-review is not working, and we need to have an open and honest conversation about this.

Since then, by reading retractionwatch religiously for a few years, I learned that other disciplines also can't prevent serious academic fraud (google "diederik stapel") and that the reporting of it used to be seriously understated (hopefully that has changed).

Catching fraud is not the only function of referee process (and not the only known problem with the process), and since, I blogged about a number of proposals to improve philosophical refereeing (none has had any uptake). When the Tuvel/Hypatia affair broke, I wrote critically, "we are all supposed to take on trust that the review process of Tuvel's article was dandy--to best of my knowledge there is no public evidence." Echoing work by Katzav/Vaessens, and responding to the Tuvel/Hypatia affair, I also offered a proposal on how to structure the referee process for papers that may "touch a powerful nerve in scholarly disputes and be taken up in the public culture, public policy, and (alas) the culture wars." 

Of course, (2) what we don't know is how many attempted frauds get caught by existing referee practices. The latest hoax, which presents itself as a study, is not properly designed to contribute to learning that (except for telling us that some journals and fields do detect some fraud; HT Dailynous; see the discussion there.) It weirdly assumes there is no "problem with peer review itself ." Plagiarism software is increasingly normal at academic journals, but the unwillingness to change dramatically existing practices by philosophy's community of editors suggests that while publication is a big deal for individual academics (since it helps determine their career trajectory), (3) the risks associated with having bad work published are thought not worth the bother/cost to do anything about. And that's, alas, because most published papers have negligible impact on much other work and the field. 

I had come to the conclusion that papers have no impact because I had argued in one of my papers, perhaps too en passant, that it was way too easy to produce results in all kinds of social sciences. Writing journal articles about that struck me as not the right way to call people's attention to the  problem. To be sure, I do not claim to have foreseen the extent of the replication crisis in other fields, But alerted by two methodologically very astute economists, Deirdre McCloskey and David Levy, I started blogging about the problems with statistical significance in November (also or 20101 (see here)). That is, at some point the costs associated with bad publication practices may induce changes. But that point is reached when folk feel they can't rely on the best work being done not through hoaxing the system.

An impatient reader may well feel that I am missing the point today. The latest frauds were perpetrated for purportedly high minded reasons including combating urgent problems. For example, the first reason given is that some "scholars increasingly bully students, administrators, and other departments into adhering to their worldview."* Let's stipulate this problem exists. But publications don't bully. In fact, if publication ended altogether, the bullying would almost certainly still exist. So, here the means (fraud) are almost comically out of sync with the purported aims.

The second reason given is that this scholarship has a worldview that is "is not scientific." We are never told where we can do experiments on a scientific worldview, or what its identity conditions may be. 'Worldview' is itself not an especially scientific concept. It has roots in my people (Montesquieu, Hume, and Herder), but it was made popular by folk who had read Hegel and wished to turn it into (ahh) a science (thankfully Wikipedia agrees with me) and then at a later point it became central to philosophy of science (Kuhn, Goodman) via another Hegelian, Koyré. This allowed science to be turned into an object of inquiry. By which time it was ripe to be used by those who wish to raise critical questions about the role of science today. Hint: if you wish to defend the sciences against constructivists, don't appeal to constructivist-friendly notions.+ In fact, this hoax provides evidence for those that treat the sciences as an all-too-human, fallible process in which non-epistemic preferences can play a non-trivial role along the way. So, (4) taken at face value the hoax is self-undermining.** 

This is related to a further problem, the perpetrators of this hoax claim that "open, good-faith conversation around topics of identity such as gender, race, and sexuality (and the scholarship that works with them) is nearly impossible, our aim has been to reboot these conversations."  Let's stipulate this is all true. If that's the problem wouldn't the proper response be to create places and institutions that (ahh) facilitate "open, good-faith conversation around topics of identity such as gender, race, and sexuality (and the scholarship that works with them)." (5) Open and good-faith conversations among folk that disagree are not easy at all. It is, in fact, constitutive of civilization. So, it would be a genuine achievement to contribute to that goal. But it is peculiar to think that such a good-faith conversation would start well by way of disparagement and (ahh) academic fraud. Open and good-faith discussions need to be nurtured, and require delicacy, they require tact, and a willingness to recognize other viewpoints.

If you don't like the scholarship that works with gender, race, and sexuality, why not engage with the very best of it and improve the field? If you think the very best of it is not worth engaging with, start writing informed methodological critiques. If you prefer to ignore all previous existing scholarship, start your own journal and write your own seminal contributions. Of course, one may think the very topic should be ignored. By calling the intended target of the hoax, 'grievance studies,' one may come away thinking the subject is worthless. But prima facie there is nothing wrong with their 'common goal of problematizing aspects of culture in minute detail in order to attempt diagnoses of power imbalances and oppression rooted in identity.' (6) The authors give not a single reason, let alone an argument, for thinking there is anything wrong with such a goal.

Now preventing a noble goal from "corrupting scholarship," is not easy.  (Just examine medical research and its incentive structure.)What would be interesting to learn is given the nobility of the goals, what kind of institutional/incentive structure would facilitate scholarship toward the worthy goal. But the method adopted --  they call it 'reflexive ethnography' -- is ill-suited to that goal. It's not really ethnography because these days the research ethics of real ethnography of the reflexive kind would prevent hoaxing. (7) At most the adopted method can call attention to the existence of flaws in the referee process, but that's old news (no need to cite me, lots of others who have made the same point.) The idea that "peer-reviewed journals are the absolute gold standard of knowledge production" is a strange claim. They are a means to communicate that knowledge and to facilitate community discussion about it. These day this standard primarily exists, I fear, to facilitate job decisions.

At one point the authors of the hoax explain that "to make absurd theses acceptable was central to the project." The problem is (8) being permissive to making absurd theses acceptable is also a means of how scholarship can advance. So, this is not a bug, but, as Liam Kofi Bright suggests, a feature of scholarship. Undermining this principle generates (even more) status quo bias. The authors of the hoax claim that they are defending 'liberalism, progress, modernity, open inquiry, and social justice.' I suspect, but can't prove that (9) Undermining receptivity toward entertaining absurd theses is a good way to undermine 'progress, modernity, open inquiry, and social justice.' 

 The real underlying method of these hoaxes is explicitly acknowledged. It's 'sophism,' which was adopted in order to fit in with what were taken to be other sophists. with the field and then sought to bend the existing scholarship to support it. There is ingenuity and humor in these hoaxes--all the ingredients of effective satire. But the problem is, the hoaxes are not satire (see here how it should be done). By contrast, (10) if you adopt the methods of the sophists to combat the sophists, you contribute to a culture of sophistry and you become a sophist. To avoid that fate, Socrates was willing to die.   

 

(1) The refereeing institutions of philosophy are vulnerable to fraud. This is something I have  been blogging about since September 23, 2010; in one my first dedicated post for NewAPPS I wrote:

The world of Renaissance and Early Modern philosophy and scholarship has been shaken by the "Martin Stone case".... Before his fall from grace, Martin Stone was a widely admired and highly respected professor at Leuven University....I want to call attention to the rather lukewarm, if not indifferent, reaction of the editors and journals/presses that have published his work....What does not seem to have happened is a general discussion about referee-ing. It is well known that one can play the referee-process in various ways that increases chances for favorable review....The Martin Stone case suggests that the referee process is broken in rather serious fashion. Stone published in leading specialist journals and also with leading presses. It means that lots of people missed a considerable amount of plagiarism. What is even more striking is that this happened in a small-ish sub-field where folk pride themselves on learning, their languages, and scholarship.... Anyway, peer-review is not working, and we need to have an open and honest conversation about this.

Since then, by reading retractionwatch religiously for a few years, I learned that other disciplines also can't prevent serious academic fraud (google "diederik stapel") and that the reporting of it used to be seriously understated (hopefully that has changed).

Catching fraud is not the only function of referee process (and not the only known problem with the process), and since, I blogged about a number of proposals to improve philosophical refereeing (none has had any uptake). When the Tuvel/Hypatia affair broke, I wrote critically, "we are all supposed to take on trust that the review process of Tuvel's article was dandy--to best of my knowledge there is no public evidence." Echoing work by Katzav/Vaessens, and responding to the Tuvel/Hypatia affair, I also offered a proposal on how to structure the referee process for papers that may "touch a powerful nerve in scholarly disputes and be taken up in the public culture, public policy, and (alas) the culture wars." 

Of course, (2) what we don't know is how many attempted frauds get caught by existing referee practices. The latest hoax, which presents itself as a study, is not properly designed to contribute to learning that (except for telling us that some journals and fields do detect some fraud; HT Dailynous; see the discussion there.) It weirdly assumes there is no "problem with peer review itself ." Plagiarism software is increasingly normal at academic journals, but the unwillingness to change dramatically existing practices by philosophy's community of editors suggests that while publication is a big deal for individual academics (since it helps determine their career trajectory), (3) the risks associated with having bad work published are thought not worth the bother/cost to do anything about. And that's, alas, because most published papers have negligible impact on much other work and the field. 

I had come to the conclusion that papers have no impact because I had argued in one of my papers, perhaps too en passant, that it was way too easy to produce results in all kinds of social sciences. Writing journal articles about that struck me as not the right way to call people's attention to the  problem. To be sure, I do not claim to have foreseen the extent of the replication crisis in other fields, But alerted by two methodologically very astute economists, Deirdre McCloskey and David Levy, I started blogging about the problems with statistical significance in November (also or 20101 (see here)). That is, at some point the costs associated with bad publication practices may induce changes. But that point is reached when folk feel they can't rely on the best work being done not through hoaxing the system.

An impatient reader may well feel that I am missing the point today. The latest frauds were perpetrated for purportedly high minded reasons including combating urgent problems. For example, the first reason given is that some "scholars increasingly bully students, administrators, and other departments into adhering to their worldview."* Let's stipulate this problem exists. But publications don't bully. In fact, if publication ended altogether, the bullying would almost certainly still exist. So, here the means (fraud) are almost comically out of sync with the purported aims.

The second reason given is that this scholarship has a worldview that is "is not scientific." We are never told where we can do experiments on a scientific worldview, or what its identity conditions may be. 'Worldview' is itself not an especially scientific concept. It has roots in my people (Montesquieu, Hume, and Herder), but it was made popular by folk who had read Hegel and wished to turn it into (ahh) a science (thankfully Wikipedia agrees with me) and then at a later point it became central to philosophy of science (Kuhn, Goodman) via another Hegelian, Koyré. This allowed science to be turned into an object of inquiry. By which time it was ripe to be used by those who wish to raise critical questions about the role of science today. Hint: if you wish to defend the sciences against constructivists, don't appeal to constructivist-friendly notions.+ In fact, this hoax provides evidence for those that treat the sciences as an all-too-human, fallible process in which non-epistemic preferences can play a non-trivial role along the way. So, (4) taken at face value the hoax is self-undermining.** 

This is related to a further problem, the perpetrators of this hoax claim that "open, good-faith conversation around topics of identity such as gender, race, and sexuality (and the scholarship that works with them) is nearly impossible, our aim has been to reboot these conversations."  Let's stipulate this is all true. If that's the problem wouldn't the proper response be to create places and institutions that (ahh) facilitate "open, good-faith conversation around topics of identity such as gender, race, and sexuality (and the scholarship that works with them)." (5) Open and good-faith conversations among folk that disagree are not easy at all. It is, in fact, constitutive of civilization. So, it would be a genuine achievement to contribute to that goal. But it is peculiar to think that such a good-faith conversation would start well by way of disparagement and (ahh) academic fraud. Open and good-faith discussions need to be nurtured, and require delicacy, they require tact, and a willingness to recognize other viewpoints.

If you don't like the scholarship that works with gender, race, and sexuality, why not engage with the very best of it and improve the field? If you think the very best of it is not worth engaging with, start writing informed methodological critiques. If you prefer to ignore all previous existing scholarship, start your own journal and write your own seminal contributions. Of course, one may think the very topic should be ignored. By calling the intended target of the hoax, 'grievance studies,' one may come away thinking the subject is worthless. But prima facie there is nothing wrong with their 'common goal of problematizing aspects of culture in minute detail in order to attempt diagnoses of power imbalances and oppression rooted in identity.' (6) The authors give not a single reason, let alone an argument, for thinking there is anything wrong with such a goal.

Now preventing a noble goal from "corrupting scholarship," is not easy.  (Just examine medical research and its incentive structure.)What would be interesting to learn is given the nobility of the goals, what kind of institutional/incentive structure would facilitate scholarship toward the worthy goal. But the method adopted --  they call it 'reflexive ethnography' -- is ill-suited to that goal. It's not really ethnography because these days the research ethics of real ethnography of the reflexive kind would prevent hoaxing. (7) At most the adopted method can call attention to the existence of flaws in the referee process, but that's old news (no need to cite me, lots of others who have made the same point.) The idea that "peer-reviewed journals are the absolute gold standard of knowledge production" is a strange claim. They are a means to communicate that knowledge and to facilitate community discussion about it. These day this standard primarily exists, I fear, to facilitate job decisions.

At one point the authors of the hoax explain that "to make absurd theses acceptable was central to the project." The problem is (8) being permissive to making absurd theses acceptable is also a means of how scholarship can advance. So, this is not a bug, but, as Liam Kofi Bright suggests, a feature of scholarship. Undermining this principle generates (even more) status quo bias. The authors of the hoax claim that they are defending 'liberalism, progress, modernity, open inquiry, and social justice.' I suspect, but can't prove that (9) Undermining receptivity toward entertaining absurd theses is a good way to undermine 'progress, modernity, open inquiry, and social justice.' 

 The real underlying method of these hoaxes is explicitly acknowledged. It's 'sophism,' which was adopted in order to fit in with what were taken to be other sophists. with the field and then sought to bend the existing scholarship to support it. There is ingenuity and humor in these hoaxes--all the ingredients of effective satire. But the problem is, the hoaxes are not satire (see here how it should be done). By contrast, (10) if you adopt the methods of the sophists to combat the sophists, you contribute to a culture of sophistry and you become a sophist. To avoid that fate, Socrates was willing to die.   

 

Plato, Ibn Rushd, Eugenics, and Being an (Accidental) Straussian

Since for everything that has come into being destruction is appointed, not even such a fabric as this will abide for all time, but it shall surely be dissolved, and this is the manner of its dissolution. Not only for plants that grow from the earth but also for animals that live upon it there is a cycle of bearing and barrenness for soul and body as often as the revolutions of their orbs come full circle, in brief courses for the short-lived and oppositely for the opposite; but the laws of prosperous birth or infertility for your race, the men you have bred to be your rulers will not for all their wisdom ascertain by reasoning combined with sensation, but they will escape them, and there will be a time when they will beget children out of season. Republic, Book 8, 546ab, Translated by Paul Shorey.

In the quoted passage, Socrates confronts (recall here, and here) the limits of his eugenic, breeding program. I tend to describe it (somewhat anachronistically) as his recognition that sexual desire among the carefully, artificially selected beautiful-of-mind-and-body-guardians cannot be controlled and falls outside scientific cognition. At one point, fairly recently, Eric Brown, a distinguished philosopher, who I have looked up to my whole academic career, objected to this characterization as Straussian. (It was not intended as a compliment.) Rather (and I summarize informally) Socrates claims that the cause of the decline of Kallipolis is the reliance on sensation/sense perception. Brown is not alone in this--in the summary to their translation of book 8, Grube/Reeve assert that kallipolis "will decline because the philosopher-kings have to rely on sense perception in putting their eugenics policy in practice." (213) Let's call this the standard reading. By contrast, the "Straussian" reading has an unhealthy interest in sexual desire.*

And, indeed, the standard reading is well grounded in the text. But the Straussian reading is not silly because what sense perception misses is  copulation by the guardians. And what this shows that even a state carefully organized around moderation and properly cultivated dispositions (by way of indoctrination, drilling, censorship, noble lies, and eugenics, etc.) and learning flounders on a mixture of natural drives and cognitive limitations. The standard reading emphasizes these cognitive limitations, whereas the Straussian reading emphasizes the former. The standard reading does justice to the plain meaning of the text. But the Straussian reading is on this point not based on some fancy esoteric numerology+ --  in fact, it's the Socratic eugenicist-philosopher-kings who have to deploy such fancy numerology --, but a fairly straightforward interpretation of why the cognitive limitations induced by sense perception matter.**

So, my objection to the standard reading is not that it is decidedly prudish (although I think that, too, of course), but that it kind of fails to do justice to the very grounds of rejecting the true/healthy city, and to embark on the Kallipolis which is, in part, (recall and more elaborately here) grounded in what's possible for beings like us (the true city assumes we're like pigs/animals). And in analyzing the causes for its decline, it turns out there are limited to improving our human nature (cognitive limitation, sexual desire)* when we are dealing with populations (and population improvement).

As it happens, this week, I am teaching Ibn Rushd's commentary on Plato's Republic (translated from the Hebrew by Ralph Lerner; this Third Treatise 87.20ff.) Here is how he treats the issue in question:

Here the guardians are blamed for the failure of the eugenics problem in two ways: (i) they are not paying sufficient attention to the copulation (of their fellow guardians); (ii) they are not sufficiently ruthless enough in removing or -- to use a term from Al-Farabi -- weeding out the bad offspring that are the product from improper copulation. (Recall that he seems to suggest that Sharia is also offering a breeding program.)

Now, Ibn Rushd's commentary, which presents itself as an epitome that only presents the demonstrable parts of the Republic, here is offering, in one sense, a misleading summary. It's possible that this is due to the manuscript-translation of the Republic he had access to, or to a mistake in the Hebrew translator of Ibn Rushd. But I will assume that the change is deliberate. (There are other places in the commentary where the changes are evidently deliberate.) 

Ibn Rushd is frank about the significance of copulation as the proximate cause of decline (so that's like the Straussian). But what (i)-(ii) have in  common is that he puts much more emphasis on, we may say, a failure of policy, even a loss of nerve, among the guardians (who are in a sense not ruthless enough in spying and killing, that is, the kind of Straussianism associated, fairly or not, with the neocons). And the underlying sensibility is that, while the best regime is certainly not stable, it is in some sense both more attainable (recall) and also more enduring if one were willing to make one's hands dirty.

Ibn Rushd on the transition problem; On Multi-Generational Political Projects.

Someone might say: If the existence of this city [kallipolis] can only come about if people such as these happen to exist, and their existing with these qualities [is contingent on] their having grown up in this city, why then there is no way in this city can come into being. What we were laying down in speech and had then thought to be possible is [now seen to be] impossible.--Ibn Rushd Commentary on Plato's Republic, Treatise 2, 62.24, translated by Ralph Lerner.

The toughest version of the the transition problem (recall and here) is how to create an ideal political future with a population raised under bad institutions (or worse, that is, bad breeding). One of the central philosophical tasks according to Socrates (recall my treatment of Republic 592ab) is the ongoing theoretical exploration of ideal models of political orders that are humanly possible (in the sense of not violating known human nature), but de facto unavailable given the near-impossibility of solving the transition problem.

In his commentary, Ibn Rushd articulates the transition problem very nicely, but skips the paragraph (Rep 592) in which Socrates acknowledges it.*  In particular, he offers his own distinctive, solution to it. This has three features. First, and here he echoes a commitment expressed by Socrates, he allows that would-be-philosophical legislators can originate under bad circumstances (62.27). Philosophies can be cultivated, but they can also be natural flukes born anywhere.

Second, such a would-be-philosophical-legislator has pre-existing materials, including (a) not what he calls the "general common nomos;" it is not entirely clear  what he means by this, but in a note, the translator, Lerner ,plausibly suggests it is a kind of natural standard for any human association. This standard is something short of natural law, but more the kind of thing that regulates (to use a phrase of Adam Smith) "the usual strain" of in-group relations. In addition, (b) would-be legislators may be able to work with, and adapt pre-existing religious laws. This, too, fits with an import commitment of Socrates, which presupposes (recall) at the founding of the Kallipolis, a rationalized version of existing religious practices and theology (see Republic 427bc & 469a). For, (c) the pre-existing religious laws partake in some sense of the rational order that is achieved (were the transition problem solved.) Rather than seeing religion as opposed to rational political order, it is a natural stepping stone to it. (This fits in with the larger, Platonizing tendency (recall Al-Farabi) to treat religion as a politically functional, symbolic representation of the truth and indicative of the truth/rational order.)

Strikingly, Ibn Rushd explicitly asserts that these pre-conditions exist in his own time and in Sharia. I call this striking because he is also extremely critical of the political conditions and (religious) intellectuals of his time. One may understand Ibn Rushd's Decisive Treatise as the work that explains how such rationalized religion is possible within Islam.

Third, he suggests that one can build the conditions for the emergence of Kallipolis over time, when "virtuous kings" come to rule in succession, "one after another and for a long time--not ceasing to incline these cities gradually until the situation in them, by the end of time, comes to be good governance." (Again, "these cities" refer to the political situation of his own time.) Here Ibn Rushd reverses a template that is familiar both from Al-Farabi and the history of early Islam, in which a succession of second best, but good kings preserves a perfect founding absent a philosopher-king; but he uses the possibility of such a series of second bests, as a a gradual ascent toward the best city. 

Such second-best good kings, must nudge the polity toward dispositions that facilitate good beliefs and virtuous deeds simultaneously. Ibn Rushd assumes here that it is possible that political rulers are capable and willing of seeing their own rule as part of a larger architecture or plan. This is is not silly because plenty of rulers (can) understand themselves in terms of dynastic or national interests; religiously inspired rulers do not find it difficult to understand their temporary rule in terms of a providential plan/order. (Ibn Rushd is quiet to what degree such rulers would have to share their long-term plan with their subjects.) Scientists today routinely understand their own work and contributions in terms of open-ended projects that will outlive them.

The starting points of such a multi-generational political project differs in space and time. So, for example, Ibn Rushd is explicit that in his own time the inclination toward virtuous deeds is "more likely than their inclining to good beliefs," (79.5; as noted above he is very critical of the intellectual atmosphere of his own era). 

One may think that a multi-generational, top-down political project carried by a cognitive elite, and centered on their decision-making, on behalf of a very idealistic ideals is an outlandish possibility. (In response, Ibn Khaldun will argue that dynasties have natural cycles of rise and fall.) That such a proposal this does not really address the transition problem. But it is worth reminding ourselves that inspired by (recall Kant's Perpetual Peace  (who drew on a more dismal picture of human nature), the European Union has been engaged in such a project. And while it is quite possible that we will witness the collapse of it in the near future, it also also possible that it will sustain itself. The comparison with the EU is a bit fanciful, but Ibn Rushd could count on his readers to imagine such a multi-generational political project in terms of a caliphate.

 

On Supreme Court Judges and Political Aristocracy

It is often remarked that in the American system of governance, the supreme court has evolved to be a kind of super-legislature with a small number of exceedingly influential judges having life-time tenure. (If you google <"supreme court" super-legislature> yet get almost ten million hits.) If one takes the thought seriously it is kind of surprising that we don't see more politicians and party-activists on the court. I am unsure if Earl Warren was the last major politician to be on the court (he served alongside Hugo Black, who was also a politician-judge), but it's not entirely surprising that Judge Kavanaugh exhibits -- what the founders would have called -- factional tendencies and antipathies.* To be nominated to the Supreme Court one must be seen as advancing the political interests of a particular party/politician(s). 

Of course, there is a difference between interpreting the constitution in light of one's principles (political or otherwise), which may conflict with other such principles, and being partisan about one's judgments. The former is compatible with certain forms of impartiality about particular cases one is asked to judge; the latter not. In addition, the former is to be expected in a pluralist society. And in practice, the politicians (Presidents and Senators) that get to decide who gets appointed Supreme Court Judge, have embraced the practice -- which is part of a number of useful aspirational fictions that constituted the civic religion of America, say, since 1945 -- in which judges are asked about their judiciary principles as a polite proxy for advancing their interests and ideologies. This proxy is imperfect (as the case of Judge Souter taught the republicans.)  From this perspective, Judge Kavanaugh's partisanship is not so unusual; he is just unusually bad, if not shameless (I return to this below), at hiding and disguising his partisan sensibilities.*

There is another perspective to take on the evolution of the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS): it increasingly represents the meritocratic element in the US governance. This is especially striking because the (rather predictable)+ rise and effectiveness of ideological and interest based political parties  undermined the meritocratic hopes the Founders may have had for the vestiges of influence of aristocracy, Senate and electoral college. (In the twentieth centuries political parties themselves became more democratic, too.) That is, the contemporary US Supreme Court is one of the clear places where in American governance a cognitive elite gets to decide the shape of law and policy relatively insulated from democratic control but in terms of public spirit. Another such locus is, say, the Federal Reserve. While there are good grounds to be critical of such insulation (and skeptical about the existence of public spirits), it helps balance what is otherwise a polity ruled primarily by interest. 

For, SCOTUS is importantly unlike the Federal Reserve and say the Army (an institution also notable for its meritocratic spirit), because the judiciary is one of two institutions -- the other is the research intensive academy -- that is also committed to the production and establishment of truth. (I am drawing on Hannah Arendt's ideas here.) Because SCOTUS is a kind of super-legislature, its commitment to truth is, in practice, very imperfect.

Even if Judge Kavanaugh were factually innocent of sexual assault (which I doubt), it is no surprise that he has been turned into the symbol of entitled privilege and patriarchy. The philosopher Kate Manne has correctly noted that the response to Dr. Blasey's accusation has been a "pathological moral tendency to feel sorry exclusively for the alleged male perpetrator ...while relentlessly casting suspicion upon the female accusers." These are instructive and legitimate frames with which to evaluate the present political situation.

Even so, while I take human imperfection as axiomatic in my own understanding of liberal democracy, I was struck by the extent and range of his character imperfections during his hearings. He was loud, bullying, enraged, lacking in civility and self-control, and shameless in his contempt for several US Senators. This is, not unlike the President, not now a man with a warm heart for democratic mores. By speaking of his political critics in conspiratorial tones ('frenzy on the left;' 'outside left wing'), he is, in fact, rejecting the very idea of civic unity among conflicting views.  

Because I am teaching Ibn Rushd's commentary on Plato's Republic this week, I was reminded of a passage I have quoted before:

Such is the case with these virtuous natures when they grow up in these [defective--ES] cities and are badly educated. Hence the causes of the great evils in these cities are none other than these individuals...Their thought and their rulership over the cities: this indeed is the greatest of the causes for the loss of wisdom and the extinguishing its light.--Ibn Rushd, On Plato's Republic, second treatise, 63.27-64.13, translated by R. Lerner.

A student noted today that the defects of the badly educated among the would be cognitive elite are not individual, but caused by impoverished structures. In bad structural circumstances, "the seeds of the best plants will," Ibn Rushd says echoing Socrates (Republic 491), "turn into the very worst of the bad kinds." Judge Kavanaugh was educated at America's elite institutions, and the patterns of his behavior, which are being revealed, represent the debased expression of the values that are permitted to fester among them. All of us who have spent our life-time in academia, are familiar with the sexualized forms of hazing and assault that are encouraged by fraternities, defended by alumni donor networks, and often too tolerated by our college administrations.** While few would advocate the return of strict moral norms on college campuses, Judge Kavanaugh's behavior, which could not have gone unnoticed by many peers, tells us about the gross practical imperfections for what passes as education today.++ 

To be sure, those very same institutions also produced Dr. Blasey (although she did not spent any time at Yale), who spoke eloquently of her understanding of civic duty. So, I am not suggesting they must produce bad character.

Ibn Rushd -- who not unlike Plato was an unabashed epistemocratic elitist -- thought that institutions that purported to promote a meritocracy were among the most dangerous because they could pretend to offer an excellent education, while simultaneously undermining not just the very possibility of the cultivation of excellent moral character, but also (thereby) the polity. And in fact, one cannot escape the thought that President Trump has stuck with Judge Kavanaugh's nomination in virtue of his shameless viciousness and, thereby, undermine the very possibility of thinking about the court in terms of meritocratic, public spiritedness.