To simplify things, and somewhat arbitrarily, I will start, as from a given, with English empiricism and the theory of the subject which is in fact put to work in English empiricist philosophy, with the view that—once again, I am making a somewhat arbitrary division—the theory of the subject in English empiricism probably represents one of the most important mutations, one of the most important theoretical transformations in Western thought since the Middle Ages.
What English empiricism introduces—let’s say, roughly, with Locke—and doubtless for the first time in Western philosophy, is a subject who is not so much defined by his freedom, or by the opposition of soul and body, or by the presence of a source or core of concupiscence marked to a greater or lesser degree by the Fall or sin, but who appears in the form of a subject of individual choices which are both irreducible and non-transferable. What do I mean by irreducible? I will take Hume’s very simple and frequently cited passage, which says: What type of question is it, and what irreducible element can you arrive at when you analyze an individual’s choices and ask why he did one thing rather than another? Well, he says: “You ask someone, ‘Why do you exercise?’ He will reply, ‘I exercise because I desire health.’ You go on to ask him, ‘Why do you desire health?’ He will reply, ‘Because I prefer health to illness.’ Then you go on to ask him, ‘Why do you prefer health to illness?’ He will reply, ‘Because illness is painful and so I don’t want to fall ill.’ And if you ask him why is illness painful, then at that point he will have the right not to answer, because the question has no meaning.” The painful or non-painful nature of the thing is in itself a reason for the choice beyond which you cannot go. The choice between painful and non-painful is a sort of irreducible that does not refer to any judgment, reasoning, or calculation. It is a sort of regressive end point in the analysis.
Second, this type of choice is non-transferable. I do not mean that it is non-transferable in the sense that one choice could not be replaced by another. You could perfectly well say that if you prefer health to illness, you may also prefer illness to health, and then choose illness. It is also clear that you may perfectly well say: I prefer to be ill and that someone else is not. But, in any case, on what basis will this substitution of one choice for another be made? It will be made on the basis of my own preference and on the basis of the fact that I would find someone else being ill more painful, for example, than being ill myself. In the end the principle of my choice really will be my own feeling of painful or not painful, of pain and pleasure. There is Hume’s famous aphorism which says: If I am given the choice between cutting my little finger and the death of someone else, even if I am forced to cut my little finger, nothing can force me to think that cutting my little finger is preferable to the death of someone else.
So, these are irreducible choices which are non-transferable in relation to the subject. This principle of an irreducible, non-transferable, atomistic individual choice which is unconditionally referred to the subject himself is what is called interest.What I think is fundamental in English empiricist philosophy—which I am treating completely superficially—is that it reveals something which absolutely did not exist before. This is the idea of a subject of interest, by which I mean a subject as the source of interest, the starting point of an interest, or the site of a mechanism of interests. For sure, there is a series of discussions on the mechanism of interest itself and what may activate it: is it self-preservation, is it the body or the soul, or is it sympathy? But this is not what is important. What is important is the appearance of interest for the first time as a form of both immediately and absolutely subjective will.--Michel Foucault, 28 March, 1979, translated by Graham Burchell, Lecture 11, The Birth of Biopolitics, 271-273
Because most of lecture 11 is a brilliant analysis of the history of criminology and the (sometimes overlapping) significance of Gary Becker's redefinition of homo oeconomicus, it is easy to miss how Foucault embeds his analysis in a narrative in which the least genius of the tradition, Locke, is a world-historical -- "one of the most important mutations, one of the most important theoretical transformations in Western thought since the Middle Ages"* -- figure (in Nietzsche's sense). In my last post (episode 36), I had already observed that lecture 11 is tied by Foucault to the start of the lecture series and Locke's conception of the liberal art of government.
As an aside, it is striking how conventional Foucault's philosophical categories (e.g., 'Western thought;' 'British Empiricism;' 'Middle Ages' etc.") can be sometimes. But as we know, artistic genius in this convention is characterized by the virtuosity of playing with the given constraints. And as Foucault teaches in this very lecture (recall), that fits the definition of rational agency.
The way I understand Foucault's conceptual analysis of the empiricist agent, the subject of interest, is that he reveals the thin conceptual pre-conditions that ground the nature of homo oeconomicus that figure into the importantly different definitions of economics (say offered by Robbins ("the optimal allocation of scarce resources to alternative ends") and Becker (the "science of the systematic nature of responses to environmental variables")). Recall that inscribed in the Birth of Biopolitics, is a natural history of the changing conceptions of homo oeconomicus: (i) in the Smithian period he is the man of exchange (224); in the (ii) classical period starting with Ricardo he is man the consumer in terms of satisfaction/pursuit of needs (p. 225);+ (iii) in the neoliberal period, especially in the (recall) ORDO senses, "he is the man of enterprise and production." (147, lecture 6). And (iv) at Chicago he is also "an entrepreneur," but now, especially, "an entrepreneur of himself," who develops and produces/maintains his own human capital as a source of earnings (226), even a possible earning stream into the future (230).
And what Foucault notices is that this agent has properties that in so far as there is agency at all, cannot conceptually be reduced to other properties (that's the irreducible element and that cannot be exchanged (or traded)--that's the non-transferable property. Now, I want to pause at this second feature.
For, to be a subject with interest, one that at the start of liberalism is capable of trading commodities with others (and to be held accountable, etc.), requires that one is constituted by (I use Hume's phrase) elements that themselves are irreducible and that cannot be traded. (This raises interesting questions on the natural limits of economics as a totalizing science.) And so the liberal tradition is founded by a conceptual distinction between entities that can be traded (by subjects of interest) and entities that compose/constitute agents and (at least when they are doing such grounding) cannot be traded as such.* And this conceptual bifurcation between these two kinds of entities survives through the other transformations of the natural history of homo oeconomicus. What does happen is that the manner in which the subject capable of interest is conceptualized shifts. The agents of the contemporary prisoner dilemma or in an agent-based simulation do not need to have Humean impressions and ideas, etc. But they do have these two features that ground their irreducible interest.
As an aside, perhaps far from Foucault's thought, the Lockean/Humean subject of interest with its irreducible elements is a monster from the perspective of (principle of) sufficient explanation. Because in them explanation bottoms out without a proper ground. As Michael Della Rocca has shown, Hume was clearly aware of this feature of his own theory. What this tells us is that well before the arbitrary initial conditions of natural science were treated as a standing problem for adherence to sufficient reason, the (liberal) subject with an interest was so.
Let me close with a critical observation. It is somewhat unfortunate that Foucault treats the subject of interest as 'atomistic individual.' Even leaving aside the conventional categories he is playing with, and Hume's "famous aphorism," it is kind of natural for him to use this terminology because it seems that the two elements that help constitute a subject of interest are, like Robinson Crusoe, isolatable (in modelling terms) from other subjects of interest. So, there is a sense in which what he says is unobjectionable. And, to be sure, in so far he is thinking, as he is, of Becker (and we would include the effective altruists) for whom the welfare of others (especially in the family) can contribute greatly to our individual utility, he is not unfair.
But as is made transparent by Adam Smith, building on Hume's philosophy, our (social) feelings, even without "judgment, reasoning, or calculation" incorporate irreducibly and inescapably the (imagined or inherited) judgments or perspectives of others (in my book I call these "social feelings" or "derived passions").** That is, others are an in-eliminable part of, and help constitute, our identity. As we know (recall) J.S. Mill made this, perhaps somewhat too greedily (and without sufficient clarity), a firm foundation of his version of utilitarianism. To be sure this Smith-Mill tradition (revived by the humaneconomics of Vernon Smith and his students) is distinct from the Becker tradition. So, there is another sense in which Foucault reinforces a misleading trope about the possibilities of liberalism. It is unusual for him to do so. And it is worth keeping in mind as we explore Foucault's final arguments.
+At times (p. 147 & 175) Foucault conflates (i) & (ii).
*To be sure, one can divide such agents temporally and model them as trading with future/past selves.
**That this is so is no surprise because Locke, Hume, and Smith all wished to reject Hobbes' atomistic individual.
I see neoclassical utility theory as flawed, not only in accounting for and modelling human sociability (See Smith & Wilson, Humanomics, 2019), but in providing a satisfactory theory of price formation in markets. This is one of the themes in our book, Market Economics, (Sabiou Inoua and Vernon Smith in process for MacMillan).
To suppose that utility maximizing individuals choose quantities to buy (sell) contingent on given prices and income is to pose a consumer demand and supply problem without a price-determining solution. This neoclassical problem formulation imposes (1) given prices, (2) price-taking behavior, and (3) the law of one market clearing price, on markets before prices can have formed. Hence, unexplained prices are presumed to exist before consumers arrive in the market. If such conditions are hypothesized to characterize markets, the theoretical challenge is to show that they follow from a theory of how markets function. Hence, neoclassical economics did not, because it could not, articulate a market price formation process.
The classical economists suffered none of these logical inconsistencies. (see for example Adam Smith, 1776, book 1, chapter VII) They articulated a coherent theory of price formation and discovery based on operational pre-market assumptions about the decentralized information that buyers and sellers brought to market, their interactive behavior in aggregating this information and simultaneously discovering prices, and contract quantities in the market’s end state. Buyers (sellers) were postulated to have pre-market max willingness to pay (min willingness to accept) value for given desired quantities to purchase (sell) that bounded the price at which each would buy (sell) as each sought to buy cheap (sell dear). We articulate a mathematical theory of this classical price formation process, its connections with Shannan information theory, and the unexpected role of the early market experiments in using designs and reporting results consistent with classical theory.
Posted by: Vernon Smith | 01/06/2021 at 12:41 AM
Dear Vernon, thank you for the comment and the advance notice of your work with Sabiou Inoua, which I look forward to reading and discussing with you! I know your interest is not Foucault, but it is striking -- despite his clear familiarity with Hayek -- he has little interest in price formation and so does not explore that angle at all in his analysis of the history of liberalism here. (That's in part because he is interested in the liberal art of government.)
Posted by: Eric Schliesser | 01/06/2021 at 08:04 AM