While Frank and his institute began to lose favor at the Rockefeller Foundation, increasing numbers of his colleagues in philosophy – besides Kallen and Hook, who had led the way in the 1940s – began to voice public sympathy with some of the dominant anticommunist themes and postures of Cold War intellectual life. With regard to the questions of whether and how science (or scientific philosophy) should treat matters regarding values – political, social, or ethical – two general stances were popular. The first called for disengagement and held that philosophy of science should abstain from such debates. The second held that philosophy of science should at least support the view that absolute moral and social values exist, if not also the partisan view that those of the West are plainly superior to those of the Soviets. In the early 1950s, Ernest Nagel and Martin Gardner touched on these issues and illustrated these stances.
In an obituary for Felix Kaufman, Ernest Nagel referred to “the acute issue whether questions concerning public and individual moral values are capable of being settled scientifically and objectively.” Nagel approved of Kaufman’s position, one that gingerly sided with Frank’s: If our “rules of application” of moral terms are made explicit, Nagel explained, then “moral questions are as much capable of objective decision as are questions in physics and biology” (Nagel 1950, 467). When it came to politics and the problem of international peace and stability, however, Nagel was skeptical that science or philosophy had any relevance. Reviewing a book by Lewis Mumford, in which he insisted that we must “learn to participate in a durable universal communion with the whole of humanity,” Nagel wrote in the anti-Stalinist New Leader,It is extremely doubtful whether such a reorientation by every human being constitutes a necessary condition for the disappearance of the cold and hot wars that [Mumford] so fervently desires. There are surely respectable grounds for believing that this objective could be realized within the framework of current political organizations of men and on the basis of current moral ideals.
Nagel did not accept Mumford’s utopianism because history did not support it:
Nagel agreed with Kaufman and others (including Frank, Morris, and Dewey) that science and philosophy of science could illuminate values and related questions about human conduct. But with respect to the Cold War, he was resigned to quietism and disengagement. Only political and economic restructuring, and not resources offered by philosophy, could advance a “world community” or reduce international tensions.
Martin Gardner followed Hook and Kallen more closely than Nagel. When he reviewed books in the New Leader, he urged philosophers of science take up the cause of anticommunism and not retreat to any apolitical posture. George A. Reisch (2005) How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science: To the Icy Slopes of Logic (CUP) 310-311
I was a PhD student when I first encountered Reisch's brilliant, archive based demolition of conventional wisdom and self-serving myths in the profession often based on anecdotal evidence or hearsay. His book (hereafter Icy Slopes) is one of the towering achievements of various intellectual communities (HPS, HOPOS, History of Analytic, 'the fans of Carnap' etc.) that I have self-identified with over a good chunk of my professional life. Unlike much history of analytic philosophy it unsettles comforting narratives. And like many much nobler souls, I applauded and continue to admire his intellectual rehabilitation of those that gave analytic philosophy its original moral and political purpose.
So, with an intro like that, you know I am going to disagree with Reisch.
Icy Slopes has a rise and fall structure. The passage I quoted is part of one of the key turning points in the book where the unity of science program (initiated by Neurath and left Vienna, and then still promoted by Frank) collapses. And while Nagel is not portrayed as himself a villain, he is treated as an exemplar ("illustrated these stance") of a certain retreat from more ambitious and nobler aspirations. I think Reisch misunderstands Nagel's position, and the misunderstanding is illustrative of a wider problem of his conceptual framework. But at the end of this post I am also going to suggest that in a certain sense Reisch's misunderstanding is not surprising given the way the profession evolved.
So, Reisch is absolutely right that Nagel is an anti-communist (recall; and here on his reviews of Cornforth); see also his withering 1939 review in The Nation of Haldane's The Marxist Philosophy and the Sciences which Nagel republished in Logic Without Metaphysics (1956; hereafter LWM). But it is worth noting, first, that Nagel was not just an anti-Communist. His polemical targets in this period, also include folk who may now classify as sympathetic to the right: these include not just an assortment of neo-Thomists and the obscurantism popular in Nazi Germany, but also harshly negative reviews of the realist theorist Hans Morgenthau's Scientific Man vs Power Politics (in The Yale Law Journal 1952) and (recall) the rhetorically devastating review in (1952) The Journal of Philosophy of Hayek's The Counter-Revolution of Science both re-published in LWM.
So, even in his anti-communism Nagel did not give fellow critics of Marxism a pass. In that sense Nagel does not fit the stereotype of a cold war intellectual. This gets me to second point. Reisch is, thus, a bit misleading to imply that anticommunist themes and postures shaped Nagel's thought or that he conformed to them. His philosophical politics, if we may call them that, were not centered on anti-marxism as such. Rather his anti-marxism is an expression of his underlying views about philosophy and political life.
As I have discussed (here and here), Nagel's political stance in the period echoes the liberal ideal of rule by discussion. In Nagel's case his political position was ground in and mirrors his metaphysics and, in particular his philosophy of science. While science contains differential expertise and skill, Nagel views it as an open-ended conversation responsive to public criticism and reasons and, thereby, self-corrective. Crucially for Nagel over time the norms and criteria change, even improve. Not unlike say, Polanyi, he treats this idealized conception as a useful model for a political life worth having. This is a progressive conception of the possibilities of political life that, in practice, recognizes many improvements are the consequence of local, accumulating incremental change.+
Nagel indicates something like the image I have just sketched in many places, including, I should note in the rather moving (!) memorial to Felix Kaufman quoted by Reisch! Here is a passage I have in mind:
[Kaufman] was impressed by the fact that empirical science is a potentially ceaseless process of evaluating propositions in the light of changing evidence for them. And very early in his own intellectual development he recognized as an essential feature of scientific method the tacit use of the principle he came to call the principle of permanent control, according to which no proposition dealing with matters of fact is beyond criticism and revision. He employed this principle, which admirably expresses the self-corrective nature of modern science, in his trenchant criticism of atomistic sensationalism, of philosophies of self-evidence, and of dogmatic claims to finality. The principle was indeed an expression of an essential trait of the man himself: of his native abhorrence of authoritarianism, of his readiness to receive as well as to give criticism, and of his disciplined humility in recognizing the difficulties that stand in the way of obtaining warranted knowledge...(466)
And while the point of Nagel's description is to characterize Kaufman's position, and he sometimes disagrees with Kaufman, this part, as Reisch recognizes, he clearly endorses ("admirably expresses...") I know of no reason to assume Nagel ever gave up on this.
Now it is worth noting that Nagel's view of science was less naive then it may seem now. At the time science was much smaller and the government's role in shaping science underdeveloped. In addition, while Nagel emphasizes the self-corrective nature of science (and may seem to buy into a kind of efficient market in ideas hypothesis), he is not unaware, and calls attention to the fact, that correcting for social and political bias, even in the natural sciences, is often not easy in practice (as he notes in well known material excerpted from The Structure of Science (and circulating as "the value-oriented bias of social inquiry.")*
Okay, with that out of the way, let's look at Reisch's analysis. It is notable the for Reisch the two (anti-communist) alternatives to the unity of science are (i) quietism or disengagement; (ii) extolling of objective superiority of the West and its values. This leaves a lot of alternatives unexplored.
For, the point of establishing the possibility of, and reflecting on the form of the of, objective values is not, in Nagel's hands, intended as an uncritical vindication of the status quo. They also provide the possibility of standard of criticism from which one can evaluate (and now I use one of Nagel's favorite words) the "warrant" of one's beliefs. That is to say, the question of, say, demarcation between science and not science is supposed to be able to be mirrored in social and political sphere. And, say, unlike conservative anti-communists, Nagel (and again he praises Kaufman this) firmly believes that tacit rules and commitments of our social practices, including science and induction, must be made explicit and articulated in order to allow for rational evaluation, justification, and correction/improvement.
Now if we turn to Reisch's treatment of Nagel's review of Mumford, something odd happens. A casual reading of Reisch may leave one with the impression that Mumford is a spokesperson for the kind of utopian thought we might associate with the unity of science movement. But Mumford's approach is, and now I quote Nagel himself, more consistent with being a "spokesman for one phase of intellectual and moral liberalism." (LWM 409) Mumford (who is fascinating) is as non-marxist as Nagel is (as Nagel recognizes LWM 410). And Nagel leaves no doubt he is quite familiar with Mumford's wider views.
And if we look at the passage that Reisch quotes in light of that, it is clear that they are criticized not for being politically wrong-headed. But rather that they do not help solve the (recall) transition problem from here to there and so are, at bottom, a "counsel of dark despair," (LWM 411). Such transition problems do not merely beset marxists, but as Nagel clearly recognizes, liberal thinkers too (something recently emphasized (recall) by Scott Scheall). If one's solution to the transition problem requires "wholesale and simultaneous victory over all problems" (LWM 411) then by Nagel's lights (and i am inclined to agree) that's no solution at all. (One can agree to that without always caving to demands of feasibility!) That is to say, a political philosophy that cares about changing the world is bound to confront the transition problem and take it seriously. This fits with Nagel's larger views on (recall) the "demands of responsible discourse."
For, more subtly, Nagel recognizes, thus, that a certain kind of revolutionary stance is not political at all, but a species of "moralizing exhortations." And, in fact, Nagel is explicit that the quetism is Mumford's: "He therefore proposes....the cultivation of the personal withdrawal and solitary reflection." (LWM 412, he then goes on to quote Mumford). So, the very criticism Reisch lodges against Nagel is Nagel's criticism of Mumford!
Now, Reisch and the friends of revolution, inspired by Neurath, need not agree with Nagel's incrementalist position, which embraces a "realizable process of indefinite approximation" (LWM 413, quoting Plato approvingly!) And I recognize that for some Nagel's charge that Mumford does not offer a "serious contribution to the solution of our present social dilemmas" may be unfair or unduly 'realistic' in a conservative way. But Nagel's willingness to work "within the framework of current political organizations...and on the basis of current moral ideals" (414) it is not a withdrawal from the world or a quietest, complacent stance even in international affairs.** (In 1951 the United Nations had been founded, and the Bretton Woods structure was being developed.) It is neither glorification of the American way nor antipolitical.
There is an important issue that ends up obscured by the limitations of Reisch's particular criticism (and may help explain them). One may well wonder, fairly, how Nagel's approach to philosophy of science, and the professionalism that it helped promote, may contribute to the solution of social dilemmas. And from the other end, the philosophical profession Nagel helped shape and bequeath does seem a fair target for Reisch's criticism. We may still wonder how Nagel's "convictions of a people confident that a bold but disciplined intelligence is still a creative power in the world" is actualized in a life of philosophy of science...
*I thank Anna Alexandrova for recently reminding me of it.
+But they also resurface again in his discussion of Felix Kaufman on questions pertaining to demarcation problems in "Truth and Knowledge of the Truth" (1943/44); see LWM 167-177.
**It is not beyond criticism, of course!
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