Digressions&Impressions

Covid Fellowship and Constrained Living with Invisible Disability

After last week's digression on the effects of my Covid, I was very touched by the many generous well wishes I received. Reading notes of encouragement in my darkened bedroom filled my time for a few days. Thank you.

Two kinds of responses surprised me. First, while commiserating with me, a number of people shared publicly their experiences of living with regular vertigo, tinnitus, and headaches. They did so on this blog, but also in other social media. My piece was a trigger for them to come out, as it were, and share their otherwise invisible disability in our wider professional circle.* These testimonials give a glimpse of stoic perseverance and alert us, perhaps, to quiet suffering. 

Second, a smaller, but not insignificant number of covid 'long haulers,' and their partners, privately reached out to me, to wish me well, to encourage me, and also to tell me that they recognized my symptoms. They have provided me with fellowship and support through the chat functions of social media. 

Because I find speaking quite exhausting, I am, despite my family, rather isolated during the day. But the fellowship -- as I call them to myself --, has made me feel connected to those who have a sense of what it's like. Relative to the people who died or were incubated in hospitals, we don't seem especially stricken. But we struggle in a world designed for activity.

Because I mostly lacked the canonized covid symptoms  -- fever, cough, lack of smell, shortness of breath** --, the fellowship has been reassuring. Knowing that others, too, experience the waxing and waning of dizziness/boat-rocking, fatigue, headaches, difficulty concentrating, and insomnia has given me a sense it's part of the territory. They have given me a window, a sense of familiarity, into how my experiences hang together. 

Last week, I discussed my inability to read and focus; I have withdrawn from all professional activity. In particular, classes start without me next week. Even the fellowship can't remove the dread I may never teach again. 

This week, however, I want to give a sense of the manner in which the inability to concentrate ('brain fog') manifests itself in other ways, too. The most obvious example is that three times since quarantine ended, I nearly burned down our kitchen. Each time I skipped an otherwise obvious step; e.g., pouring water into the espresso machine after adding the beans, removing the paper-towel-role or the plate from the burning stove. Each time I missed that something was burning in front of my eyes until I smelled the problem, and, eventually, registered it as a warning.  

In reflecting on my experiences I receive, I imagine, an oblique glance at the what it's like of Alzheimers and dementia (and, perhaps, other forms of consciousness in animals and AI). And  there is no difference in experience. Compared to my pre-covid self my steam of consciousness does not feel more granular or gappy. I don't have a sense, in the moment, of my blind-spots.

Thanks to Dennett's work I am familiar with the fact that even very healthy conscioussness is full of unacknowledged gappiness. Because I recall my past capacity, I recognize, after the fact, that some of my behavior exhibits less skill-full functioning, an incompetence at tasks I had once been familiar with. Since I am nearly fifty that's not a wholly new experience.

A few years ago, the work of Elizabeth Barnes on disability taught me that the human condition should be conceived as constrained living (here); (here), (and here). The gappiness of my possible blind-spots is not experienced as constraint at all. I don't feel handicapped when I walk into our kitchenette.

By contrast, while I have some recollection issues (with names, especially), I have a pretty vivid sense of my capacities before Covid. And this alerts me to a whole range of new constraints day-to-day. For example, I have learned to walk while dizzy, which involves an inattention to the sense that I might fall any minute; instead I trust in the sturdiness of my legs.

I also can't listen to any music. In fact, the only distraction I tolerate is watching already familiar films, but not musicals, or TV  (or highly episodic series). This is also familiar to the fellowship. One curiosity is that watching explosives or gun-fights on Netflix does not bother me at all, but any other background noise -- the barking of a dog in the yard, even my son singing happily -- evokes the horror of a scratch on a blackboard. 

  

On Covid Convalescing

During Winter break, I started to have intermittent dizziness and fatigue. This surprised me especially because in addition to not blogging I was also not working, that is, no research, no writing, and no class prep. This is a habit I have gotten into in order to be pleasant company during family holidays. And even though our trip abroad got canceled while we were having a PCR Covid test done, I decided to stick to the plan. But near the end of the 'family holiday' at home,' the dizziness became continuous and sleep wasn't helping. After a few days of this my wife bought a sphygmomanometer (she is a surgeon), in order to learn that my vitals were all in excellent condition. My GP listened to my story, asked a lot of questions about possible symptoms I did not have; and she decided I must have stress. I joked she would have stress, too, if she woke up dizzy in the middle of the night. Dutch physicians are not easily alarmed, so we agreed to monitor the situation, and be in touch. 

A few days later I awoke in the middle of the night with a debilitating headache of the sort I imagine people with migraine have. The headache did not go away during the day. That following evening I fell asleep with a dry cough. At that point, I felt panic and took a lot of melatonin to make sure I could sleep. Next morning, the cough was gone. But not the headache or dizziness. My wife decided to get me a Covid home antigen test. While there are concerns about those with false negatives, a positive test pretty means you have a high viral load. A few minutes later she looked at the result, grabbed her stuff and closed the door behind her. She said, 'you are in quarantined for the next ten days or two weeks.' I heard her calling the hospital, and canceling her lists for the following weeks. Interestingly enough, at no point did my family test positive before or since. 

Much to my surprise as the days passed, the dizziness, headaches, and fatigue increased even after the end of quarantine. Initially, I continued to meet people via zoom--when other people talked I could just close my eyes and recline in my chair. But after the third of these, I noticed the feeling I was on a swaying boat had only increased. So, I finally canceled or withdrew from all my meetings. I stopped being able to read novels or philosophy, or even complete reading the books I had nearly finished. I could read and even respond to short news items shared on social media. But little else. Emails that would ordinarily take me thirty seconds became ten minute efforts.

I appreciated the quarantine because it meant I didn't have to talk and wouldn't hear any background noises. The one thing I missed, and started to miss greatly, was the lack of cuddles. One day I obsessed about the cruelty of not hugging babies in a Rumanian orphanage (a story I remembered). Some days I binge-watched Netflix; on other days even deciding what movie to see felt like a Sophie's choice.

At no point have I had any of the scary Covid symptoms: no fever, no out of breath, and no loss of smell. Each morning I would welcome the intense smell of the home made espresso my wife passed through the door with enormous joy. The dry cough never returned. The dizziness was never accompanied with nausea. The strange thing about my symptoms is that they are discontinuous with sudden switches. I could feel fresh one moment and, if I didn't have a headache, doze off with almost no warning the next. And while I was always dizzy with changes of posture, not moving could also set off the gentle rocking of the boat feeling.

In our regular chats, my GP told me to go slow, and she prepared me that this could take weeks or months to recover. When I heard that my first thought was, 'you are not saying years because it's only been a year.'

I have a strange mental disability. Phenomenologically, I still think and I feel me. My son has reminded me that I still crack the same bad jokes. But I am not really me without my books and my writing. As regular readers know, I think, writing is my therapy. Books accompany me on my inner exile and suspend whatever solitude I feel.

When I was a boy one of the class-room posters said lezen is denken met andermans hoofd.  Later I have seen that quote attributed to Schopenhauer. This pleased me because I like the fact that Dutch schools tried to pass on Schopenhauer. But I don't recall reading the original. It would be pathetic if the inspirational quote were a fake; but it has always consoled me.

In my wife's family there is a man who gave up software engineering to become a gardener. As I try to project myself into wellingtons behind a mowing machine, I feel a gentle rocking of the boat. It's time to rest again.

Ernest Nagel’s Commemoration of Morris Raphael Cohen [Guest post by Joel Katzav]

[This is a guest post by Joel Katzav [University of Queensland].--ES]

Cohen did not think of philosophy as a discipline competing with the various sciences for obtaining authentic knowledge of the world about us. He did not believe that philosophy yields positive information about the primary subject-matters of the sciences, or that it possesses special sources of truth which enable it to pass judgment on the factual claims of science and to set bounds to the scope of its methods. As he conceived and practiced it, philosophy is the disciplined critical reflection upon the interpretations men place on the primary materials of their experience-interpretations which are codified in the bodies of knowledge we call the sciences, in the system of rules we designate as morals or positive law, or in the evaluations of art we label as literary and esthetic criticism. Philosophical reflection, as Cohen understood it, seeks to make explicit the logical articulation of claims to knowledge, the grounds of their credibility and validity, and the import of their content for an inclusive view of nature and man (Nagel 1957, p. 548).

Morris Raphael Cohen was one of the most prominent philosophers in America in the 1930s and 1940s. He died in 1947. Nagel, writing to commemorate Cohen, his teacher, notes that “if frequency of references to him in the current literature is a safe basis for judgment, it must be admitted that few professional philosophers continue to read Cohen or to be influenced by his ideas” (1957, p. 548).[1] Nagel laments this situation and, after doing so, explains, in the excerpt given above, that Cohen was not a speculative philosopher. In 1950s speak, Cohen was kosher.

But Nagel is–and this equally applies to the rest of the commemoration text–misrepresenting Cohen. Cohen was a passionate proponent of a pluralistic form of speculative philosophy. 1910 saw the new realists calling for a philosophical platform–roughly, a party centred around consensual truths and rigorous, logical analysis–one that would guide philosophical research in America. Cohen, among many others, objected and argued that philosophy should be inherently pluralistic and speculative. Here is an excerpt from Cohen’s 1910 plea for speculative philosophy:

A philosophy which would recognize its kinship with literature and with the social sciences would be truly humanistic. It would aim to be scientific, but it would not be afraid to go beyond science just as life and conduct must go beyond knowledge. This, however, would be only a reassertion of the old ideal of philosophy as mediating between the lebenisantschauung of literature and the social sciences, and the weltanschauung of the natural sciences. We may laugh at system building as much as we please, but some such ideal must be held up by somebody if the present anarchic tendency to overspecialization is to be controlled in the interests of sanity (Cohen 1910, p. 409).

Cohen’s pluralism about philosophy, and indeed about science, was underpinned by a form of perspectival realism, one according to which there are a variety of alternative, insightful perspectives on reality. At the base of his perspectivism was a metaphysical principle, the principle of polarity:

 [The principle of polarity] is the principle, not of the identity, but of the necessary copresence and mutual dependence of opposite determinations. It warns us against the greatest bane of philosophizing, to wit: the easy artificial dilemma between unity and plurality, rest and motion, substance and function, actual and ideal, etc (Cohen 1927, p. 679).

For Cohen, the principle of polarity underpins the goal of understanding the substantial truth in the various philosophical systems, e.g., positivism, idealism and materialism.

Nagel, to be sure, had his own metaphysics, one that acknowledges that a “manifest plurality and variety of things, of their qualities and their functions, are an irreducible feature of the cosmos” (1956, p. 7). This metaphysics superficially resembles Cohen’s. But Nagel’s metaphysics is not intended to open the door to a plurality of legitimate metaphysical perspectives; Nagel was pushing for a philosophical platform, much as the new realists were. Nor is Nagel’s metaphysics supposed to embrace the need to go beyond science and thus to be speculative. His position supposedly “articulates features of the world which, because they have become so obvious, are rarely mentioned in discussions of special subject matter” and which are “meagre in content” (1956, pp. 6-7). While Cohen admits that, as a metaphysician, he must go beyond science, Nagel denies that he must and insists that he is just articulating what we already know.[2]

One reason Nagel might have had for misrepresenting Cohen was to promote Cohen’s work to an audience of analytic philosophers. But it is hard to see Nagel’s intent as serious if this motivation is attributed to him. Nagel’s text includes nothing concrete about Cohen’s thought or achievements that might motivate one to read his work. A less obvious possible motivation is Nagel’s own reputation. For one thing, Cohen belonged to the first generation of professional American philosophers of science. Nagel’s reputation as a key source of American analytic philosophy of science may have benefited from a lack of knowledge of Cohen’s work in the field. Nagel does not do more than intimate that Cohen was a philosopher of science (Nagel does not do much better when, in his books, he mentions Cohen; Nagel’s own citations of Cohen’s work are very limited). For another thing, supporting one’s reputation in 1957 required, especially for those who, like Nagel, belonged to pre-1950s American philosophy, distancing oneself from speculative thought.

It would not have been hard to tempt some future readers into learning more about Cohen. Cohen taught quite a few of the second generation of American, professional philosophers of science, including, in addition to Nagel, Sidney Hook, Lewis Feuer, Milton Munitz, Joseph Ratner and Philip Wiener. Moreover, as Cohen’s Reason and Nature: An Essay on the Meaning of Scientific Method (1931) makes clear, his students will have found in his teaching and writing many of the issues, positions and modes of proceeding that later constituted analytic, which was perceived to be ‘logical-empiricist’, philosophy of science. If we avert our gaze from some of the sections in Cohen’s book–especially to the critique of positivism, the chapter on speculative philosophy and the treatment of ethics–we find a template for analytic philosophy of science, including a familiar understanding of the role of logical analysis in philosophy of science, of the issues it faces, of the positions to be examined and much more. Indeed, it is striking how close the topics, and order of topics, in Cohen’s book are those of Nagel’s 1961 book The Structure of Science: a general discussion of the logic of science (laws of nature, explanation, confirmation), followed by the philosophy of physical science, the philosophy of biology, the philosophy of the social sciences and the philosophy of history). Nagel’s book, of course, was one of the key textbooks of early analytic philosophy of science. Cohen and Nagel’s joint book from 1934, An introduction to logic and scientific method, is a logic textbook rather than primarily a book in the philosophy of science, but here too the formative influence of Cohen’s 1931 book is clear, e.g., in the half of the book which does focus on applied logic and the philosophy of science and in the conception of logic, which is Cohen’s and which Nagel rejects in his later work.

The People did not rush to defend Congress

We lower the boom. No civilized country can accept or allow what we saw Wednesday with the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol. This was an attack on democracy itself. That is not just a phrase. Rule by the people relies on adherence to law and process. The assault and siege was an attempt to stop the work of democracy by halting the peaceful transfer of presidential power, our crowning glory for more than two centuries.

This was a sin against history.

When something like this happens it tends to be repeated. It is our job to make sure it is not.

And so we should come down like a hammer on all those responsible, moving with brute dispatch against members of the mob and their instigators.--Peggy Noonan Wall Street Journal, January 7,

It has been much remarked during the last few days that during the attack on the US Capitol that law enforcement was, despite the great sacrifice and courage of some, not prepared to defend Congress.* By this I do not just mean the criminal lack of preparation in the light of stated and widely discussed plans of Trumpists to mass on Washington on January 6, and disrupt and overturn the tallying of the votes, but, perhaps, also not to prevent entry into the Capitol. We saw security services fraternize with the protestors who were left free to go. Presumably, as reports suggests, some of this is due to coordination. (For a nice overview that fits my own perception see Kieran Healy.) All of this fits a larger, documented pattern of law enforcement and security services being favorably disposed to Trumpism and white supremacy as distinct from the Constitution.

Less remarked are three frightful further facts about Wednesday.+ First, the people did not rush to US Capitol to defend their representatives. Perhaps this lackluster response is due to Covid or residue complacency about the stability of the constitutional order. But I suspect the deeper problem is the undoubtedly racialized disenfranchisement of the population of Washington DC reveals itself as a terrible Achilles heel of American politics. That is [updated], I am not criticizing any residents of the capital; rather, future Putschists will have noted this structural vulnerability that at the seat of American power, the people may leave the defense of Congress to the armed professionals and so cede power altogether.  

Second, and while some rose to the occasion, setting aside partisan tactics, Congress's complacency about the moment revealed itself in a time of mortal danger. By this I do not just mean the the optics of fleeing, which only emboldens the Putschists. There were no equivalents of General Gutiérrez Mellado, Adolfo Suarez, and Santiago Carrillo standing firm against the intruders. Nor do I just mean the opportunistic instigators (and I include a good chunk of the Republican membership of the House and especially Senators Cruz and Hawley here). But also, and most faithfully, rather, than seeking common cause against those that wish to undermine the experiment in self-government and government by discussion, party leaders of both sides (alas) continue to jockey for tactical advantage or to score rhetorical points against each other. If the Congressional leadership cannot work together now (see my next point) when the institution is under assault, it may be too late. And in a great perversion of language, "unity" now seems to mean, turn a blind eye toward the conspirators.

Third, the most shocking element of recent days is not the sedition in the White House, but that Speaker Pelosi revealed, publically that she called Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, "to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike." While I understand the Speaker's noble impulse to contact the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, she, thereby, continues the slide into an extra-constitutional order (as noted by Elizabeth Saunders) and reminds the military that, henceforth, it holds the keys to power.**

Even if we make it peacefully to a transition to a President Biden, nobody can be sanguine about the next year(s). What the events of the last few years, really decades (since Timothy McVeigh), have shown is an inability by American political leaders to imagine that the danger to liberal democracy comes not just from communism, but also from the violent forms of white nationalism, even fascism. This is, in fact, an effect of how the cold war "disordered" American conservatism (and exiles from various despotic countries that are understandably fearful of socialism). I am quoting from an insightful comment by Jonathan Ainslie on a longer post by Stephen Davies both worth reading.

It is tempting to focus on familiar debates (and fundraising) over the nature of free speech in light of Twitter's decision. And Biden's administration, in so far as it will be energetic at all, will be eager to focus on Covid and the economy, and project a back to normal aura. But these are not normal times. We should not let the clown-esque nature, and the comical costumes, of Wednesday lull us to the  danger.

What is not needed are new laws or new policing or surveillance powers. What is needed is rather  a swift willingness, as Ilya Somin argues, to impeach and convict the President and, thereby, not just deter future Presidents but also prevent future political office for Donald Trump whose actions clearly fit high treason. Start proceedings to expel Senators Hawley and Cruz from the Senate and cover their departure with disgrace. In both cases we can expect them to be replaced by Republicans. And, more painfully yet, what's required is to start a purge (even by way of full retirement with benefits) of law enforcement and security services in order to remove those that have expressed public sympathy for various forms of white nationalism and Trumpism. 

None of these actions would tackle the underlying causes of the rise of Trumpism (about which I speculate in my series on the crisis of liberalism). Back in December 2015, we saw a revolt within the Republican party against their own party-elites. And since 2016 it has been clear that Trump's rise represent a decaying constitutional order (recall). We have been lucky that since his 2016 victory, the cadres that worked for his Presidency were, by and large, willing to adhere to the rule of law and constitutionalism, (even if one can note that the law is often unjust and, as Timothy Snyder notes, game it for their own ends) or not repudiate it at decisive moments. And even critics of federalism must recognize that it, and the integrity of many secretaries of states and election workers (of both parties), saved election day. But if the evident weaknesses diagnosed above are not tackled, we can expect not just better organized putsches, but to see one succeed. 

I am myself not moved much generally by comparisons with Weimar (which really was a perfect storm). The focus on Weimar obscures that liberal democracies collapse more regularly. I think the comparisons with, as Richard Bellamy has noted, Italy in the 1920s, and, as Chris Bertram has noted, France in the 1930s (and 1851/2) are more apt.++ In all such cases the political right split between those that respected constitutional democracy and those that threw their lot in with plebiscite dictatorship (while underestimating the dangers of doing so). And while it is not obvious how to undo the deception of millions, we do know that fatally, in these cases, the forces that might have saved liberal democracy were unwilling to join and protect it and so fell together.

 

On the Crisis of Liberalism (VIII): Do We Stand for Civic Republicanism?

So what, exactly, are we seeking to defend? What is the character of a liberal democracy? What does it mean for a society to be liberal, rather than for a person to subscribe to liberal principles, such as the ones Paul laid out almost four years ago?

To answer this question I will discuss five broad topics that make up the core of liberal democracy: liberty, democracy, rule of law, capability, and virtue. Liberty is often called “negative liberty” to emphasize that it is freedom from interference, but I think it is most usefully thought of as the specific freedoms—such as freedom of association, freedom of speech, and property rights—which give a liberal order its dynamism. Democracy under liberalism consists of using electoral systems and mass voting as tools for accountability rather than direct governance. Rule of law is a complicated topic but in practice often boils down to the existence, for ordinary citizens, of legal remedies and actions which will by and large be honored, especially by actors in the government. Finally, a liberal society—an actual liberal democracy in which voter sovereignty is given pride of place alongside other liberal characteristics—cannot survive unless liberal values are broadly held by the electorate. The tendency to live by these values on a relatively consistent basis entails what some have referred to as “liberal virtues.”--Adam Gurri "What is Liberal Democracy?" Liberal Currents

This is the eight post (recall here (I);  here (II); here (III); here (IV); here (V); here (VI); here (VII) in an open-ended series (see also here, here, here,  here; and here) on the current crisis of liberalism (which I date to 2008/9).

One of the few glimmers of hope during the current crisis of liberalism, is that since the rise of Trump, to simplify greatly (spare me your outrage), property-loving classical liberals and  justice/redistribution-loving centrist (say, Rawlsian) liberals have rediscovered that liberalism is a lot more than meets the eye. And for a few years now, Liberal Currents has been leading the way in bringing youthful talent together to think through what liberalism might mean concretely, as worth living, into the future. (Let's hope that they fly a few years under the radar of The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine as the next big thing; we need their insouciance to cashing in for a while longer!) 

Gurri is the 'Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Liberal Currents,' and it says something of the experimental and open spirit that after four years he revisits the principles he wishes to stand for. The first few paragraphs of the piece I quoted deserve your attention, even if you have no time for what follows (so go read it). As friend of Liberal Currents, I hope I am allowed to say, 'we wouldn't be liberals if we didn't disagree over the exact meaning of liberalism'. So, today, I would like to say something about the nature of liberal society, and the values or, in Gurri's  terms, virtues in it. 

In addition to the passage quoted above, there is another paragraph  (that partially repeats the one I quoted) that I disagree with:

A liberal state staffed by people uncommitted to liberalism or to the institutions they serve will not remain a liberal state for long. And a liberal democracy in which liberal values are not broadly shared by the electorate is unlikely to remain a liberal democracy for long, nor to retain its democracy much longer than that.

So, versions of Gurri's position are extremely popular in Europe among well meaning friends of liberal democracy. It is also popular among not-so-well-meaning islamo-phobes and xenophobes. And often it is not entirely easy to distinguish the two. But the position is associated with what is called 'civic republicanism,' or (in debates over immigration/refugees) ‘civic integrationist discourse’* and so-called 'homo-nationalism'. (Gurri's position need not reduce to any of these.) Unfortunately, civic republicanism promotes, in practice, conformity and becomes a stick to make the vulnerable and inarticulate play by the rules of intolerant majorities.

Notice, too, that Gurri's position is much stronger than the Rawlsian overlapping consensus of political liberalism (and public reason), which is, at least in principle, compatible with many citizens holding many private illiberal positions.

My  view is that there is little empirical evidence for the two empirical presuppositions Gurri relies on, viz. (i) a liberal society (or, while not the same thing, liberal democracy) cannot survive unless liberal values are broadly held by the electorate; (ii) A liberal state staffed by people uncommitted to liberalism or to the institutions they serve will not remain a liberal state for long. (I call this the 'Athenian insight' -- not because Athens was liberal, it was not --, but because it trusted its citizens with education in right norms/values/virtues.) While I welcome the existence of widespread support for liberal values and virtues (broadly conceived), there is non-trivial historical experience against both. For example, in the early years of the German federal republic, there was little fondness for liberal democracy among the population, and, while there were a few ORDO, Christian Democratic and Social democratic anti-Nazis, the state was staffed by a generation of (largely unrepentant) ex-Nazi functionaries (see chapter 5 of The Denazification of Germany: A History 1945-1950).

Of the two, there is a grain of (conceptual) truth in (ii). For, on (ii) what BLM has revealed is that the liberal state, even in its core judicial/political function, is staffed by quite a few functionaries who are uncommitted to liberalism (even if we have just learned that federal judges are committed to legal principles and, perhaps, defending elections as a means of picking rulers). That's compatible with designing institutions in such a way that what these functionaries are committed to serves to protect lots of other things we care about in liberal society (property, adhering to traffic rules, etc.).+ Even in bread and butter liberal democracies a sizeable chunk of the electorate is attracted to authoritarian political practices. I first learned this from David Art's Radical Right: The Development of Anti-Immigrant Parties in Western Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2011), but I now work in a department where my comparative colleagues are world experts on this.** 

But leaving aside the empirical facts of the matter. I also think -- and this has a Mill-ian sensibility (J.S. Mill not the father), but I get it from Walter Lippmann -- the survival of a non-totalizing liberalism requires the regular confrontation with robust and thoughtful illiberal values and views within our political system, that is, in which illiberal parties and commitments/ideologies/forms of life are present to maintain, even enervate liberalism’s own vitality as a living creed and, thereby, the vitality of the whole political system. So, on my view of Lippmann (see here), in near defeat (ca 1938), liberalism simultaneously comes to endorse its own fundamental commitments and a commitment to a kind of unreasonable pluralism. 

For, the recurring challenge of both liberal emancipatory mass movements (some of which are not initially understood as liberal at all) and illiberal experiments, practices, and ideologies that helps us epistemically and politically, to figure out what we stand for, what we care about, what constitutively 'we' are (as society, polity, etc.). And this means that an open society will have to accommodate (as Kukathas has argued in Liberal Archipelago) many illiberal voluntary associations (and even parties).  

Obviously, Gurri and others are right that there is a tipping point beyond which the absence of commitment to liberalism among citizens and/or staffers makes it very vulnerable to putsches, usurpation, demagogues, and revolution (etc.). But where that point is is hard to foresee, and involves complex coordination, mobilization, and signaling among citizens. And I also do not deny that two-party duopolies (as the US is) become dangerously unstable if (a strategically important element of) one party rejects fundamentally or gradually the liberal experiment.

I do not deny (recall this post on Popper) that Liberalism, more than most other political ideologies, internalizes the idea that there are considerable uncertainties it ought not wish to eliminate. And, perhaps, we need providential hope that our liberal faith, which has been tested again this week (and may be tested the next few weeks again), will never be extinguished. But even amidst despair, we can strive while our enemies are emboldened to postpone and push back our possible defeat.

 

On Governmental Honors for Academics

I’ve largely avoided the academic open letter trend (& not gonna make a habit of this!) so a thread to explain why I signed… Substantial intellectual disputes should be settled by means of argumentation. So, e.g., with the open letter calling for the Case for Colonialism piece to be retracted, I encouraged people *not* to sign and wrote a critique of the substance… [T]he case of Stock and the OBE is not that.

This is purely a matter of what in my field receives public honours and lauding. That is to say, it is a matter of sending out a signal on what we value, what we consider especially noteworthy and positive contributions…

[G]iven what’s morally and politically at stake here, it’s worth sending out a strong counter-signal to the suggestion that Dr. Stock’s recent concerted public campaign is an exceptional philosophical contribution to higher education. If you agree, please sign!

Stock’s career and public philosophising will go on quite unperturbed by this letter. In fact, she’s thriving. Besides the OBE, keynoting the Aristotelian Society, getting a book deal, and regular media appearances, 2020 seems to have been her most cited year. So it goes…. I say that to reassure: if you’re inclined to worry about Stock being silenced you needn’t.

Open letters don’t persuade, no one who didn’t already agree will be swayed. The value of the exercise is making clear to onlookers, especially trans people considering philosophy, that many of us don’t in fact agree that what she has contributed through our field and its public role in UK life should be lauded with the highest civilian honour. Again, if you think that’s something which trans people looking at philosophy might like to know, please sign.--Liam Kofi Bright quoted at Dailynous. [The original twitter thread is here.]

My original, instinctive response to the predictable controversy over Dr. Stock's OBE was to use it as evidence for the impropriety of liberal-democratic governments to offer/convey honors at all. For, first, it is, in fact, quite natural to see them as a atavistic left-over from the hierarchy-celebrating, feudal and imperial eras. An OBE is literally an order of the British Empire award. And, second, the pattern of such honors violates all kinds of neutrality or impartiality requirements that we have come reasonably expect from liberal democracies. Third, such honors can easily become a cover for cronyism or rents and the pay-off for political services rendered (see President Trump's pattern of Medal of Freedom Medals.) 

To be sure, the conferring of honors or recognition is compatible with egalitarian versions of liberalism. But I think the more natural, liberal position is to leave such honorifics to civil society and the variety of voluntary associations (and keep the state out of this business). So, I have no problem with universities conferring academic distinctions, awards/honorifics (although as regular readers know, I think these generate complex issues [recall this post on the letter against Derrida; this post on its relationship to no-platforming; this post on the Kalven report; and many more under the influence of Jacob Levy's essay).

Interestingly, neither the open letter/petition, which I like for the comments/distinctions it makes about the character of academic freedom, nor Bright's argument quoted at Dailynous (and above) make any mention of the tension between honorifics and democratic life. I return to this below.

One reason why it is worth looking at Bright's argument is that despite his entertaining twitter persona, he is, in fact one of the world's experts on the nature and complexities of the credit economy of science/intellectual communities. And it is quite clear that he conceives of the letter as a kind of counter-signal toward those outside the profession ("onlookers," which may call 'public opinion') and, in particular, those that might become insiders one day ("considering philosophy, ") in particular "trans people." So, we can see his position as a signal about how he and his fellow-signers wish to see the future of professional philosophy.

Here professional philosophy is conceived, in part, as a relatively autonomous professional discipline. It is not treated as wholly autonomous because part of the underlying issue being debated is about how universities (which employ many professional philosophers) should associate with Stonewall a prominent LGBTQ+ rights charity and its trans-inclusive stance in particular. 

This can't be the whole story. Such an open letter is, of course, also, and perhaps, primarily, a signal to fellow insiders within the profession. As the open letter puts it, "We are professional academic philosophers committed to the inclusion and acceptance of trans and gender non-conforming people, both in the public at large, and within philosophy in particular. We write to affirm our commitment to developing a more inclusive environment, disavowing the use of professional and cultural authority to further gendered oppression." While one need not deny the earnestness of such a letter's aims to reform/improve the "public at large," and public opinion, its practical impact is mostly felt within the profession as an act of solidarity and the attempt to create inclusive norms/practices/institutions of conduct, and, as Bright emphasizes, a signal toward would be professionals who wish to join. I do not mean to suggest this exhausts it significance; it's also a mechanism to reveal support for certain norms.* But underlying Bright's argument and the one of the open letter is the idea that the professional community is also in certain respects a moral ("inclusive") community. It is no surprise, given the pluralist society we live in, that this generates debate and disagreement.

As it happens, and now I return to the opening themes of this post, as the controversy broke I was reading Michael Sonenscher's (2007) fascinating Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution. And one of the sub-themes in this dense and complex work is that the French Legion of Honor, which was instituted by Napoleon in 1802, can, in fact, be traced to the French Revolution itself! And, in particular, that this honor system was really the brainchild of the vision of Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, at the point where Sieyès helped shape some of the most egalitarian and democratic moments of the French revolution. In fact, Sonensher argues that the very idea for such a system of honors is lodged, or "first adumbrated" (78) in 1789, in What is the Third Estate?!

In Sonensher's presentation Sieyès argues, to simplify greatly, for a system of honors as a countervailing meritocratic, social hierarchy in an unequal society, where inequality of property and inequality of political power have a tendency to undermine political equality. And, interestingly, the meritocratic social hierarchy is supposed to shape and be shaped by civil service. In particular, it is also supposed to be a countervailing power to political centralization, and so ensure status and recognition (and influence) in the provinces. (It is not clear whether Sieyès would argue for a system of honors absent structural inequalities. But since he defends the right to inheritance, it is clear he does not expect equality in property/wealth.) 

Before I get to the upshot of this. Sonenscher's argument had me excited and I went back to Sieyès's seminal What is Third Estate. (which I read in an updated version of Blondel's 1963 translation).+ In one sense this was disappointing. Because I could not really find the argument I sketched in the previous paragraph (and derived from Sonenscher). What is abundantly clear is that indeed Sieyès does not call for the abolition of honors (which under feudalism generated all kind of privileges, including as Sieyès' notes different forms of public punishment).

But rather that Sieyès calls for a change in the character of honor.  In particular, he forcefully rejects the (aristocratic) idea that labor cannot be a source of honor (familiar from Greek philosophy), so he argued for widening of who may be considered for honors (nobility of birth should not be the source at all) and also the content of what should be honored. He thinks advocates for "principles of universal justice" definitely deserve public honor, once the system permits it. What this last point makes clear is that in addition to being a kind of countervailing power (in the spirit of Montesquieu as Sonenscher emphasizes), the function of public honor is as Sieyès argues "to serve the rights of citizenship." 

So, I think we now have the contours of a plausible argument why imperfect democracies may wish to promote public honors on individuals. And one can make a non-cynical, good faith argument that "services to higher education" may, in certain respects, at least indirectly, serve the rights of citizenship or principles of universal justice. (I am myself not tempted to do so.) This has to be judged on a case by honorific/honoree case basis.

Regular readers know I think scholarly activism is legitimate form of public philosophy (recall here; and here). I myself continue to think governments should not be in the business of dispensing honorifics. But given that such honorifics are compatible with a realistic interpretation of democratic life, I suspect my first two paragraphs above, even if properly spelled out and defended will convince few.

But I also think there is another (second-best) echt liberal response in the vicinity here. Rather than viewing the granting of honorifics as settling a social question. We can see it as an imperfect way of inviting debate over what society ought to honor in the name of universal justice and, more important, what the content of universal justice is.++ Even if one disagrees with Prof. Stock (as I do), her activism does speak to nature and rights of citizenship (and much more so than many other honorees). After all, in a liberal society the government's positions on a whole range of morally and ethically salient issues are contestable and (thankfully) contested. Disagreement over moral and political issues, including public recognition/honors, is the lifeblood of a free society, including philosophy. It is, in fact, a possible discovery mechanism of what we value all things considered, if there is a 'we' left after the dust has cleared.

 

28 March 1979: Foucault on Locke's World Historical Conceptual Shift (XXXVII)

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.

 

On Orphaned Papers: Haldane and the Fate of Scientific Eugenics

This paper was submitted to the Annals with an accompanying letter to the Editor, Professor Lionel Penrose, dated 17 February 1960. It has lain as item 136 of the Penrose Papers in the Manuscripts and Rare Books section of University College Library until recently brought to our notice by Dr K. R. Dronamraju, to whom we wish to express our thanks. We would also like to thank Naomi Mitchison for permission to publish this interesting manuscript of her brother’s. Lastly we gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Ms G. M. Furlong, curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books in the library of University College London. J.B.S. HALDANE (1996), "The negative heritability of neonatal jaundice,"Annals of Human Genetics, 60: 3-5. [HT: David Haig]

By an 'orphaned paper' I mean to refer to a paper accepted for publication in a volume quietly abandoned by the editor and, after years of ambiguity, it becomes unseemly to ask about its fate. Often there is no malice involved in such cases. Editors are humans, after all, and their professional activities may be interrupted for all kinds of (generally sad) reasons. Sometimes journals or presses fold or transition away from existing projects. A recent discussion on social media suggests that having some papers orphaned like this is not altogether unfamiliar to senior scholars.

My advice to younger scholars is not to show infinite patience and to pull your paper and resubmit it with an eye toward tenure clocks (and to archive it at a relevant site). And, this is why I use the language of 'orphan'; because orphans need not die still-born, and may get adopted and find all kinds of lovely homes and have lives that enrich us all. 

Haldane's paper was never orphaned in the technical sense.  For, there is no evidence it was accepted for publication when it was received by Penrose initially. (I return to this below.) Even so, I understand why Prof. Haig thought it a nice example of the phenomenon given the clear family resemblance to it. 

J.B.S. Haldane (1892 –1964), was a famous scientist and public intellectual in his day. For example, as I noted a few months ago, he was one of Ernest Nagel's targets as an anti-exemplar of "malicious" (Marxist) philosophy of science. The quoted passage at the top of  this post is, as should be clear, an editorial note attached to the paper. The paper was submitted while Haldane was at the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta (for background see here). Perhaps he thought the paper got lost in the mail or he moved on to other topics. 

The paper itself has been noticed after publication including by philosophers. So, for example, Peter Godfrey-Smith (65) cites it the make the important point that parents and off-spring may be "anti-correlated." (See also Sober, who credits learning about it from Godfrey-Smith.) More about this below.

An interesting fact about the recipient of the paper, Lionel Penrose, is that he changed the title of his chair from "Professor of Eugenics" (1945-1963) to "Professor of Human Heredity." The wikipedia entry also notes that "the "long delay" in changing this name was due to "legal problems" associated with the original donation from Francis Galton and described how Penrose simply ignored the "eugenics" element of his job title." This raises interesting questions about whether Penrose (who is the father of Roger Penrose) should have accepted the Chair in the first place (although he surely deserves our gratitude for his stance and the name change).* Be that as it may, it also tells us that UCL could have confronted its own entanglement with eugenics more forcefully already over half a century ago (rather than being shamed into incomplete and imperfect action (recall) by Dr. Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman, and others recently). 

Haldane himself clearly remained interested in eugenics. I won't attempt here to summarize seriously his views, in part because they seem to have shifted over time. He was a critic of racial eugenics of his age, because he clearly thought much of it unscientific. It is not entirely clear to me if he would have welcomed a scientifically sound racial eugenics.

And at the core of the posthumously published paper, he makes clear the connection between eugenics and his own paper:

This example will, I hope, act as a warning against the assumption that where a character is mainly determined genetically it will be more frequent in the progeny of those who manifest it than in the progeny of those who do not. This assumption is taken for granted in popular expositions of Darwinism and of eugenics. It is doubtless more often true than false. But the case here considered is not trivial. (5)

This made me wonder whether Penrose prevented publication because he wanted to downplay the association between Darwinism, human genetics, and eugenics in the mid 1960s. (One interesting fact is that no referee reports are mentioned; this makes me suspect the paper was not sent out to referees.)

So, I checked some of the works on Haldane by Dr K. R. Dronamraju, who found the paper in the archives (for more on him see here). According to him "Haldane and Penrose enjoyed a lifelong friendship that was both cordial and mutually beneficial" (Popularizing Science: The Life and Work of JBS Haldane (2017) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 249). He also emphasizes that they agreed on eugenics, "They were opposed to the sterilization of mentally defective individuals that was advocated by some eugenic groups. Both shared the belief that the science of human genetics was still in its infancy and could not justify such far-reaching decisions." (250) Oddly, he does not offer any evidence for this claim, so it is hard to say if this was always the case. Unfortunately, after an imperfect search, I have been unable to find discussion of the 1996 paper by Dronamraju anywhere. So, I view my speculation as ungrounded in evidence. 

Haldane's warning that such cases of anti-correlation are not trivial has not, as Hirsch notes by quoting the same posthumously published passage by Haldane I have just quoted, been heard by those who wish to turn eugenics into a mature science. Hirsch is scathing about the inability to confront the limitations of heritability analysis by even the most scientifically serious (and not racist) eugenicists. Hirsch's heart seems to be in the right place, but I have to admit that I feel decidedly ambivalent about the very project of improving scientific eugenics even when purged from its racialist tendencies.+

I wonder, not for the first time, if everything that advances science should be published while recognizing, with a shudder, that apparently I am willing to contemplate not treating the 'rights' of all 'orphans' alike.