Digressions&Impressions

On Olaf Stapledon, Technology induced Extinction Risk, and the Awesome new Atomic and AGI power

 The First Industrial Revolution was almost entirely dependent on coal, oil and falling water, which sources occur only in certain localities. Scientists have been exploring the possibilities of deriving industrial power from the tides, from differences of temperature (which means ultimately from sun-light) and from the disintegration of atoms. It is impossible to say yet what success will be attained in these ventures. But it seems probable that the result will be at least a far wider distribution of the sources of power. It may well be that the perfected production of atomic power will involve a vast and complex enterprise undertaken under a world-wide authority, and the universal distribution of electric current derived from atomic generators. As it is certainly probable that the transmission of power in the form of electricity is going to become very much cheaper and more efficient, ample power will be available everywhere. Each village throughout the world will either tap a high tension grid or generate its own power. As to atomic energy, its frightful dangers are obvious. It is not inconceivable that the belt of minute planets, the Asteroids, between Mars and Jupiter, is the wreckage of a world which its inhabitants accidentally destroyed by the unwise use of atomic energy. It would be a pity to turn our planet into another belt of Asteroids. But atomic energy, though dangerous, promises fabulous source of power in comparison with which coal and oil are quite insignificant. It opens up the possibility of transforming the whole face of the planet according to man's needs. It could , for instance, easily render the Arctic islands and the Antarctic Continent warm and habitable. And atomic power for industrial purposes, we are told, is already “in the offing.” Meanwhile the danger of atomic warfare is increasingly frightful. Short of exploding the planet, atomic energy used as a weapon might do so much damage that the present war, in comparison, would seem an affair of flint arrows and axes. The abolition of war becomes more urgent as man's power increases.--Olaf Stapledon (1946) Youth and Tomorrow, pp. 74-5

Olaf Stapledon (1886 –  1950) is known only to aficionados of science fiction now (Last and First Men and Star Maker are classics that shaped the genre throughout the twentieth century, and arguably kept Spinozistic ideas alive in a positivist age), but in his writings he also helped invent 'futurology' and 'transhumanism.'  I hasten to add, in case you are are of more discerning taste, J.L. Borges was an admirer of Stapledon. Stapledon obtained a PhD in philosophy from University of Liverpool under Alexander Mair (hitherto unknown to me). Stapledon's first book (1929), A Modern Theory of Ethics: A Study of The Relations of Ethics and Psychology, was clearly based on his PhD. Judging by citations, it made no impact on the scholarly world of his day. 

The quoted passage is from a short book written in preparation of a post (second) world war age. In the book, Stapledon is  committed to renewed internationalism (he clearly regrets the failures of the League of Nations) and a form of democratic socialism that can avoid dictatorship (even though Stapledon is clearly very impressed by achievements of the Soviet Union). About his politics some other time more.

The passage caught my attention because it entertains the possibility of technology induced human/species extinction of the species that deploys a new technology. This extinction possibility is in the news again thanks to the (recall) impact of Parfit's writing on longtermism and (the publicity surrounding) rapid developments in AI/AGI. 

Contemplating civilizational collapse or the extinction of species are not new thoughts in the history of philosophical writing or social theory. As I have noted (recall), in book 3 of Plato's Laws, (677a-678a) Plato's Athenian stranger entertains the possibility that the Earth has experienced frequent catastrophic natural events (he explicitly mentions massive floods and pandemics, but it's easy to imagine he also assumes earthquakes and perhaps even meteorite impacts) that have wiped out whole populations of humans and other species of animals, and has set-back the technological capability of civilizations for millennia. (We know from the Hebrew Bible account of the flood and other ancient writings that Plato is not unique in this.)

It's also not new to think that civilizational collapse is endogenous to civilizational life. Arguably this is one of the the natural ways to understand the Hebrew Bible's account of the scattering after the tower of Babel; in (recall) The Great Endarkenment, Elijah Millgram suggests that the linguistic diversification and differentiation (and subsequent cultural implosion and scattering) is itself the effect of the advanced division of labor that makes the building of the tower possible. (This is the great set-piece that opens Millgram's (2015) book.) Social theory going back to Ibn Khaldun is rife with cyclical, civilizational processes in which the key drivers of expansion and success also become self-undermining.

It's also not wholly unusual to recognize the potential civilizational collapse that is endogenous to one's own civilizational life. The writings of a number of elite authors of the final century of the roman republic are pretty clear on the fact that endurance of the roman republic is threatened by its own past history of success (due to conquest imported habits of luxury and/or empowered generals to aim for political power). Of course, often the point of recognizing the potential of civilizational collapse is to create a call to political arms, or a philosophical prophecy, to prevent the collapse from occurring (we can see hints of this in Plato's story of Atlantis). But sometimes the doom is inevitable or fated (as some of the Roman authors clearly came to think).

But, as Parfit de facto notes in Reasons and Persons, there is a non-trivial difference between foreseeing civilizational collapse of one's civilization and the collapse of one's whole species. Now, absent a certain kind of ethical or axiological cosmopolitanism, it seems obvious to me that most authors of the past lamented the possible collapse of their own civilization and showed remarkable indifference to the possible collapse of larger humanity. (This is an option that Parfit does not consider, but if he had he would clearly have suggested that this shows a clear error in their implied axiology.)

Now, Stapledown's writings suggest he is a cosmic cosmopolitan. And in this respect, he clearly fits in a philosophical tradition tracing back to Fontenelle, Huygens, and Kant.  So, it's no surprise he contemplates the possibility of endogenous technologically induced extinction among aliens as an example worth avoiding in the harnessing of atomic power. There are some hints in Youth and Tomorrow that it was written during wartime, and interestingly enough he does not mention the use of atomic weapons. But just before the passage quoted at the top of this post, he claims that "the manufacture of atomic bombs necessitates organisation of production on a national scale and the danger of the misuse of these terrific weapons forces world-wide organisation upon us." (p. 73; emphasis added)

It's a bit unfortunate that Stapledown does not clarify what he means by 'misuse' of atomic weapons here. (He was a pacifist during World War I, but not during the second world war.) Does he mean their deployment, or does he worry about them falling in the hands of rogue states/actors, or does he worry about nuclear world war? But he clearly thinks that atomic power isn't merely a technological problem, but also a political problem on a global scale. After all, he thinks that a world-wide organization is required to handle it.

In the quoted passage at the top of this post, Stapledon is discussing what we now call the 'Kuiper belt' (or Edgeworth-Kuiper belt') [UPDATED: see Ken McLeod's comment below.] But was only then recently proposed by K.E. Edgeworth in a 1943 paper in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association. It would be worth trying to figure out if Stapledon knew Edgeworth personally. In Edgeworth there is no mention of an alien civilization. I am not claiming that Stapledon is the first to propose the hypothesis that the asteroids are themselves the effect of a technologically induced existential collapse, but given this timeline he has to be among the first.* Clearly the function of Stapledon's hypothesis is to alert us to avoid this fate (not, perhaps, to create a testable hypothesis for planetary explorers of the solar system).*

It is, of course, an open question to what degree global institutional control of atomic power mitigates risk or accelerates existential risk. But since this post is long enough as is, I close with the following observation: the possibility of technology induced (endogenous) extinction is, thus, not new with the possibility of AGI. Our society has lived with the possibility of technology induced (endogenous) extinction of humanity for almost eighty years now. To say that is not to underestimate the existential risk that follows from the introduction of new technology. But it is worth noting that we have a history of living with, and perhaps managing, such risk, and perhaps we can learn from this history. For, while it would be nice if there were a technological fix to the existential extinction risk of AGI, it's more likely than not we'll need institutional and social mitigation of such risk. 

 

On Covid Insomnia and Vulnerability

One of the oddest symptoms of my Covid is insomnia. What makes it especially odd is that I can't sleep even when I feel very fatigued.  This has, in fact, been one of the few constant symptoms during my illness (recall here). I don't have much trouble falling asleep at night unless I have a headache or extreme dizziness. But I often wake after four to six hours sleep (regardless of needing a pitstop or not), and then I cannot fall back asleep. It makes little difference whether I have taken a (mild) sedative or not.*

Now in my earlier posts (here), I tried to capture what it's like to experience the granularity of thinking that characterizes 'brain fog.' In contrast, during my insomnia, I feel like my brain speeds up, as if I am having manic episodes or experiencing the side effects of (recall) a prednisone treatment. But this mania does not inspire action; I don't feel the need to write (which I doubt I could). I just lay there, catatonically, yet ardently wishing to fall back asleep, my mind racing often prompted by an inchoate desire to understand my unusually vivid and action packed dreams and then moving on madly from topic to topic even though I really want to sleep.

There is one other feature that is odd about my insomnia. I do not actually have much memory of the content of these thoughts other than that they feel so rapid. It's as if the mind is spinning, trapped inside my lethargic body, but no traces are being registered in memory. 

When I initially contacted my GP, now more than a month ago, before it was clear I was suffering from Covid, I mentioned the insomnia to her and she thought I might be suffering from stress. I have had ample time to reflect on her suggestion. When I am stressed I do sleep badly. But often then my thoughts turn obsessively to the cause of my nerves or some conflict that, with little extra reflection, is clearly a way not to deal with the underlying sources of anxiety. My current insomnia is nothing, or almost never, like that. (I use 'almost never' because I have, as I have noted before, a low-level panic I may never be able to teach or read seriously again.) 

When I shared my insomnia with members of my covid 'fellowship'--other 'long haulers' within the profession that reached out to me quietly and that have been generous confidantes and sources of support--it sounded familiar to several of them. But a few also reported that the spinning mind was accompanied by their racing, even palpating heart. (That would scare me.)

The contrast between the blurry days of fatigue and dizziness, alternated with headaches, and the endless hours of sad, fast-paced noctural noths could, I imagine, descend into delirium. Luckily the presence of my family creates a sense of rhythm and structure by sharply marking night and day. 

A part of me would like to understand the bio-chemistry that creates such disjointed cognitive and neurological effects on me. One of the few books I managed to read during my illness was a novella, All Systems Red, which revolves around a robot, Murderbot, that senses it malfunctions and knows it has malfunctioned before. The mood of that bot, which when not called upon feats I can barely imagine doing while healthy, passes the day watching serials, is not far removed from my own.  

I wrote most of this post yesterday, which was one of the best days I have had since I was diagnosed with Covid. Compared to two weeks ago -- which was clearly the nadir -- things are looking up. This past week, I have had several day-time periods in which I did not have any noticeable symptoms at all despite the unceasing insomnia. It is difficult to feel genuinely optimistic because good periods are not enduring. Yesterday my intention had been to use the structure of this post for some reflections on the nature of disability and vulnerability within professional philosophy/academy. (Because I have been replaced within my lecture course with videos of last year's lectures, I had watched a video recording of myself lecturing.) But today is not one of the best days, so I won't go on and leave that for another time. 

Seneca on Freedom (Letter 51)

I have set freedom as my goal [Libertas proposita est]; and I am striving for that reward. And what is freedom, you ask? It means not being a slave to any circumstance, to any necessity [necessitati], to any chance; it means compelling Fortune to enter the lists on equal terms. And on the day when I know that I have the upper hand, her power will be naught. When I have death in my own control, shall I take orders from her?--Seneca, Letter 51, Translated by Richard Mott Gummere (with minor corrections).

When, in a moment of sadness, I decided to return to Seneca, I was hoping for wisdom. My first response in reading Letter 51 is disappointment. The letter understands itself as a polemic/litigious [litigavimus]; and it is clearly written by a man out of sorts, in deep turmoil. We are informed near the start of the letter that he left the luxury resort town, Baiae, the day after he reached it. More importantly, for an author, he can't even keep straight who he has been reading "Messala, – or was it Valgius." And his inner turbulence is matched/echoed by the description of the near omnipresence of volcanoes, "many regions belch forth fire" [cum plurima loca evomant ignem]. 

We don't have to be Freud to discern Seneca is aware his time is nearly up (see also the quoted passage above suggests). There are lots of hints in the letter that he is holding up the modesty of Scipio in political defeat/exile as exemplar to himself. And the reader is left to wonder in what sense Seneca understands his own political retirement as leading to suicide or death. There is, in fact, an interesting historical question, hinted at by Plutarch, whether Scipio committed suicide (admittedly Livy gives no hint of it).*

We know that Seneca found it very difficult to give up his luxury. For some this marks him as a hypocrite. I don't think I am engaging in himpathy when I say that I find more interesting the fact that his inability to live up to his ideals does not make him change his ideals; and his struggles with adhering to his ideals -- the rapid succession of arrival and departure from Baiae are comic and tragic at once -- allow him also to be instructive even persuasive about the challenges to achieve them. The best witnesses against vice are not the saintly preacher, but (as most rehab centers recognize now) former alcoholics. 

And yet, above I quote the more philosophical passage. Is freedom really a kind of inner state or, better yet, a disposition? A disposition that allows one to be immune from even necessity (that is, death). I recognize that immunity from external causes is an attractive thought during a pandemic. 

When I connect the threads of the letter, it's clear that Seneca is trying his hand at inner exile (political and emotional), and aware he is failing. And failing badly; his travel habits and his inner emotional life (those bursting flames) tell another story.+ This gives the start of the letter -- "Quomodo quisque potest" translated by Gummere as 'everyone does his best'; I think I prefer 'each according to his abilities'  -- a double-edged sword. He is falling, and it gives his teaching a harsh quality. 

It is not easy to write these lines, recognizing my own teaching fails. And yet, it is difficult to feel compassion for Seneca, the stern lecturer of the worldly-successful Lucilius; Seneca, the exorcist of pleasures.  

Looking back at the sentence before the one quoted at the top of this post,** what's lacking is not Seneca's desire for pleasure or his fear about his political fate. No, what's missing in the description of Seneca's inner exile is the acknowledgment of his sadness or, if it that is too modern, of his disappointments his frustrated ambitions. This is mirrored in his treatment of Scipio's downfall/ruin [ruina], which is centered on Scipio's management of his manly honor/nobility [honestius].

Of course, the modern desire for psychological realism bumps up against the ancient rules of decorum. It is too easy, perhaps too lucrative, to turn Seneca into self-help or compassion with his sadness; he is quite clear that "if any vice rend your heart, cast it away from you; and if you cannot be rid of it in any other way, pluck out your heart also."

I wanted to stop there, but I noticed on re-reading that this evisceration of the self is a kind of second-best (perhaps third-best) therapy. In fact, Seneca suggests that in order to destroy the vices, passion needs to be set against passion ("Above all, drive pleasures from your sight. Hate them beyond all other things,"). To eliminate (or strangle [strangulent]) the pleasures, they, or their objects, must be hated; and to habituate such self-betterment, this killing off of bad temptations, location matters. 

And just before I press 'publish,' and, think how Christian Seneca sounds, I ask myself why is he reading "Messala...or Valgius?" These are, after all, in addition two significant authors, also two great political survivors of the turmoil of the late republic and early empire. Messala, in particular, was adept at adapting to changed circumstances.

I don't mean to suggest that we should read Seneca's use of freedom in republican terms here. But rather to remark that if freedom is a disposition that allows one to be immune from all circumstance (etc.), it does not follow that one has to be passive in the face of changing fortunes and retreat into an untouchable (and sadness denying) inner citadel. And while it is foolish to think one can escape death (necessity), one may well be able to influence its circumstances and other goods of fortune. I linger on the thought; maybe Scipio is an anti-exemplar here.

It would be a sublime comedy if the very text that is assumed to teach a form of resignation, the killing off of last remnants of pleasures, is really a manual for political survival by a man still hoping for reversal of fortune. Oddly, this cheers me up.   

 

 

 

14 March 1979: Foucault on Programming Human Capital (XXVIII)

I would like to bring out some aspects of American neo-liberalism, it being understood that I have no desire and it is not possible to study it in all its dimensions. In particular, I would like to consider two elements which are at once methods of analysis and types of programming, and which seem to me to be interesting in this American neo-liberal conception: first, the theory of human capital, and second, for reasons you will be able to guess, of course, the problem of the analysis of criminality and delinquency.
First, the theory of human capital. I think the interest of this theory of human capital is that it represents two processes, one that we could call the extension of economic analysis into a previously unexplored domain, and second, on the basis of this, the possibility of giving a strictly economic interpretation of a whole domain previously thought to be non-economic.
First, an extension of economic analysis within, as it were, its own domain, but precisely on a point where it had remained blocked or at any rate suspended....Starting from this criticism of classical economics and its analysis of labor, the problem for the neo-liberals is basically that of trying to introduce labor into the field of economic analysis. A number of them attempted this, the first being Theodore Schultz, who published a number of articles in the years 1950–1960 the result of which was a book published in 1971 with the title Investment in Human Capital. More or less at the same time, Gary Becker published a book with the same title, and then there is a third text by Mincer, which is quite fundamental and more concrete and precise than the others, on the school and wages, which appeared in 1975.--Michel Foucault, 14 March, 1979,  translated by Graham Burchell, Lecture 9, The Birth of Biopolitics, 219-220.

Perhaps, some other time I return to neoliberal history of classical economics that Foucault summarizes in the part I skipped in this quote. And in what follows I also ignore Foucault's acuity in grasping the inner meaning, as it were, of intellectual trends in a different rather technical discipline in real time. 

In the first quoted paragraph, Foucault introduces the central theme of the lecture and, perhaps, of the whole book without alerting his audience (or himself) that he has done so. There are features of American neo-liberalism (in his discussion he mostly confines himself to Chicago economics) that are "methods of analysis and types of programming." That papers and books in economics contain methods of analysis is no surprise. But Foucault insists, without initially making a big deal about it, that they are simultaneously types of programming. And so the question is what (or who) is being programmed and what counts as a program in this context?

While Foucault uses programming (and its cognates) throughout the lecture, Foucault only offers his answer in the final two sentences of lecture nine: "programming of policies of economic development, which could be orientated, and which are in actual fact orientated," toward the development of human capital. (233) So, it is humans and, perhaps, whole societies that are to be programmed. The purpose of this programming can be varied. For, example the focus on developing human capital is to stimulate economic development (locally and internationally) from which many things may follow. (The analysis of delinquency may serve other ends.) 

I do not know if in the 1970s, a French audience, would have heard 'programming' as the thing we do to write software or make computers and robots run. Perhaps, they heard it terms of scheduling. Or perhaps they heard it as an ironic counterpart to the programmatic political projects ordinarily associated with five year social planning. But it is quite clear that Foucault treats these economists not merely as offering (who?) new kinds of descriptions of society, but also offering a new kind of praxis. 

Foucault's claim here sits uneasily with the self-understanding of many Chicago economists of the period; they, following Milton Friedman's lead , generally claim that they make a sharp description between the descriptive ('positive') and prescriptive ('normative') elements in their work; while leaving practice ('art') largely to the side. So, for example, 

THE new economic approach to political behavior seeks to develop a positive theory of legislation, in contrast to the normative approach of welfare economics. The new approach asks why certain industries and not others become regulated or have tariffs imposed on imports or why income transfers take the form and direction they do, in contrast to asking which industries should be regulated or have tariffs imposed, or what transfers should be made.
Both the normative and positive approaches to legislation, however, generally have taken enforcement of laws for granted, and have not included systematic analyses of the cost of enforcing different kinds of laws. In separate studies we recently formulated rules designed to increase the effectiveness of different laws. We proposed that offenders convicted of violating laws be punished by an amount related to the value of the damages caused to others, adjusted upwards for the probability that offenders avoid conviction. Gary S. Becker & George J. Stigler. "Law enforcement, malfeasance, and compensation of enforcers." The Journal of Legal Studies 3.1 (1974): 1.*

Stigler and Becker (both Chicago Nobels eventually) present themselves as doing something on the 'positive'/descriptive side of things. In their work they explore the costs of enforcements. Yet, even if one grants that their work is firmly grounded in empirical analysis, it is not so odd that Foucault thinks they are doing what he calls programming. For, they offer a rule of punishment intended to decrease 'cost' of punishment and increase the 'effectiveness' of these. To an outsider that does seem prescriptive.  Why do Becker and Stigler not call that normative analysis? To an outsider this seems like obscurification. 

The beauty of Foucault's treatment in lecture 9, is that he shows that part of the confusion stems from the way Robbins' definition of what economists do gets (ahh) operationalized in economics. I quote Foucault (initially quoting Robbins):

“Economics is the science of human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have mutually exclusive uses.” You can see that this definition of economics does not identify its task as the analysis of a relational mechanism between things or processes, like capital, investment, and production, into which, given this, labor is in some way inserted only as a cog; it adopts the task of analyzing a form of human behavior and the internal rationality of this human behavior. Analysis must try to bring to light the calculation—which, moreover, may be unreasonable, blind, or inadequate—through which one or more individuals decided to allot given scarce resources to this end rather than another. Economics is not therefore the analysis of processes; it is the analysis of an activity. So it is no longer the analysis of the historical logic of processes; it is the analysis of the internal rationality, the strategic programming of individuals’ activity. (222-223)

Economics stops being the large scale study of historical processes. Rather, economics becomes the study of the scarce means given ends. As Foucault notes in the passage I quoted at the top of this post, this definition is topic neutral. And facilitates what (already (recall) back in 1934) Talcott Parsons called 'economic imperialism' (that is, "the extension of economic analysis into a previously unexplored domain, and second, on the basis of this, the possibility of giving a strictly economic interpretation of a whole domain previously thought to be non-economic.") The setting of ends is treated as normative or prescriptive activity. And so when one studies means in light of scarcity one is doing descriptive work.

So, in the just quoted passage, the rules offered by Stigler and Becker are rules that govern the means, but not the ends criminal laws are supposed to serve. They are a form of instrumental rationality or conditional/hypothetical rationality. 'Programming' is an excellent term to capture what is going on here because these 'rules' offered by Becker and Stigler are, in fact, supposed to be legally binding on subjects.

Now, a critic may well worry about the immaculate conception of the ends. Who decides what they are? And by what right do Stigler and Becker assume them as given? (Answering these questions has informed my own work on them.) But Foucault, however notices or is interested in something else. (I think this is really spectacular.) I continue with Foucault's analysis of human capital theory:

This means undertaking the economic analysis of labor. What does bringing labor back into economic analysis mean? It does not mean knowing where labor is situated between, let’s say, capital and production. The problem of bringing labor back into the field of economic analysis is not one of asking about the price of labor, or what it produces technically, or what is the value added by labor. The fundamental, essential problem, anyway the first problem which arises when one wants to analyze labor in economic terms, is how the person who works uses the means available to him. That is to say, to bring labor into the field of economic analysis, we must put ourselves in the position of the person who works; we will have to study work as economic conduct practiced, implemented, rationalized, and calculated by the person who works. What does working mean for the person who works? What system of choice and rationality does the activity of work conform to? As a result, on the basis of this grid which projects a principle of strategic rationality on the activity of work, we will be able to see in what respects and how the qualitative differences of work may have an economic type of effect. So we adopt the point of view of the worker and, for the first time, ensure that the worker is not present in the economic analysis as an object—the object of supply and demand in the form of labor power—but as an active economic subject. (223)

To put the point as a paradox: the very theory that seems to objectify humans as capital and that is often accused of treating citizens as optimizing paws in engineering problems, is in fact a theory that treats humans as subjective agents. Now, as my former colleague John Davis has shown in a number of books, as this theory gets developed (in ever more subtle mathematical ways), it becomes difficult to see where, in the effervescent moments of a second derivative, agency ends up being located. But that's for a different time.

Admittedly, the cognitive content of such agency is reductive in character because human motivation is treated in fairly simple fashion. Quoting Foucault again,

People like Schultz and Becker say: Why, in the end, do people work? They work, of course, to earn a wage. What is a wage? A wage is quite simply an income. From the point of view of the worker, the wage is an income, not the price at which he sells his labor power. Here, the American neo-liberals refer to the old definition, which goes right back to the start of the twentieth century, of Irving Fisher, who said: What is an income? How can we define an income? An income is quite simply the product or return on a capital. Conversely, we will call “capital” everything that in one way or another can be a source of future income. Consequently, if we accept on this basis that the wage is an income, then the wage is therefore the income of a capital. Now what is the capital of which the wage is the income? Well, it is the set of all those physical and psychological factors which make someone able to earn this or that wage, so that, seen from the side of the worker, labor is not a commodity reduced by abstraction to labor power and the time [during] which it is used. Broken down in economic terms, from the worker’s point of view labor comprises a capital, that is to say, it as an ability, a skill; as they say: it is a “machine.”And on the other side it is an income, a wage, or rather, a set of wages; as they say: an earnings stream.
This breakdown of labor into capital and income obviously has some fairly important consequences. First, if capital is thus defined as that which makes a future income possible, this income being a wage, then you can see that it is a capital which in practical terms is inseparable from the person who possesses it. To that extent it is not like other capitals. Ability to work, skill, the ability to do something cannot be separated from the person who is skilled and who can do this particular thing. In other words, the worker’s skill really is a machine, but a machine which cannot be separated from the worker himself, which does not exactly mean, as economic, sociological, or psychological criticism said traditionally, that capitalism transforms the worker into a machine and alienates him as a result. We should think of the skill that is united with the worker as, in a way, the side through which the worker is a machine, but a machine understood in the positive sense, since it is a machine that produces an earnings stream. An earnings stream and not an income, precisely because the machine constituted by the worker’s ability is not, as it were, sold from time to time on the labor market against a certain wage. In reality this machine has a lifespan, a length of time in which it can be used, an obsolescence, and an ageing. So that we should think of the machine constituted by the worker’s ability, the machine constituted by, if you like, ability and worker individually bound together, as being remunerated over a period of time by a series of wages which, to take the simplest case, will begin by being relatively low when the machine begins to be used, then will rise, and then will fall with the machine’s obsolescence or the ageing of the worker insofar as he is a machine. We should therefore view the whole as a machine/stream complex, say the neo-economists—all this is in Schultz is it not—it is therefore a machine-stream ensemble, and you can see that we are at the opposite extreme of a conception of labor power sold at the market price to a capital invested in an enterprise. This is not a conception of labor power; it is a conception of capital-ability which, according to diverse variables, receives a certain income that is a wage, an income-wage, so that the worker himself appears as a sort of enterprise for himself. Here, as you can see, the element I pointed out earlier in German neo-liberalism, and to an extent in French neo-liberalism, is pushed to the limit, that is to say, the idea that the basic element to be deciphered by economic analysis is not so much the individual, or processes and mechanisms, but enterprises. An economy made up of enterprise-units, a society made up of enterprise-units, is at once the principle of decipherment linked to liberalism and its programming for the rationalization of a society and an economy. (224-225)

So Foucault understands human capital theory as a theory focused on agents, which are simultaneously programmable machines, that is, as possible generators of income streams. Given the recent focus on risk and uncertainty, and the many social and political challenges (pandemic, climate, financial instability) which lay in the future, it is natural to wonder about how we should think of possible income of these machines with, as the logicians teach, necessarily finite time spans. And this is also natural because Foucault (correctly) treats Chicago economics as a return to the radical utilitarian program of Bentham (248) and given that utilitarianism is as a technique of decision-making resolutely oriented toward the future (and spectacularly useful to forget crimes from the past).

Even so, agents don't fall like manna from heaven ready to produce income streams; they need to be educated and cultivated, and constituted by norms and institutions. Capital-ability is the product of history, and the machine-stream ensemble is built over time in society. So, lurking in this theory is a complex analysis relating past and (possibly discounted) future time. And while from one perspective wages merely reflect supply and demand at a given time, in other perspective they become a way to connect individual decisions over time to larger social ends (e.g., development). And as Foucault recognizes, the irony is that a relatively libertarian, intellectual community with distrust of collective planning, pioneers a set of analytical techniques by which policy-makers may come to shape (if not program) human agents toward collectively imposed ends.  

 

On Liberal Transition Problems: Popper, Lippmann, and Scheall's Hayekian Political Epistemology (I)

First, there are those epistemic burdens that, starting from a relatively illiberal context, would-be liberalizing policymakers must overcome in order to realize an effective liberal order. From a political-epistemological standpoint, a complete defense of liberalism (indeed, of any political system) requires more than establishing the relative epistemic simplicity of policymaking within such a system; it must be shown that a political system of the relevant kind can be realized through some combination of deliberate policymaking and spontaneous forces. Without such an argument – which Austrian economists and liberals more generally do not have – the case for liberalism (or whatever) is left ungrounded. In effect, the Austrians are left in the same position with respect to an effective liberal order as their socialist rivals are with regard to an effective centrally planned economy: with few reasons for thinking such a system a practicable, real-world possibility. That policymaking is less epistemically burdensome in more liberal contexts is immaterial if there is no reason to think such contexts can be realized, because policymakers’ epistemic burdens are too heavy for, and extant spontaneous forces inadequate to, their realization. Liberals need a theory of liberal transitions, that is, a theory of how more liberal contexts can be realized starting from relatively illiberal circumstances through a combination of deliberate policy action and spontaneous forces.
Second, there are those epistemic burdens that policymakers within liberal orders must overcome in order to maintain the effectiveness of the existing order. I suggest that the long-term effectiveness of a liberal order hinges on policymakers acquiring the know-how necessary to maintain in perpetuity the rule of law, one of the fundamental institutional conditions of an effective liberal order; however, those who succeed in acquiring wealth and power in an institutional environment of the rule of law, private-property rights, and competitive markets are often able to abrogate the rule of law in their own favor, while those less successful and less powerful remain subject to it, a circumstance that quite naturally fosters resentment and undermines belief in such institutions among the latter classes and tends to eventually lead to calls for the replacement of liberal social institutions with less liberal ones. In order to sustain an effective liberal order, policymakers must surmount the epistemic burden of acquiring the know-how necessary to avoid this outcome.
I argue that Austrians have not paid adequate attention to these epistemic burdens.  Indeed, it is not clear that Austrian economists have yet recognized just  how burdensome policymaking of the liberalizing and liberal order-sustaining varieties can be. However, the fact that the Austrians’ political-epistemological approach is applicable to the liberal political systems they themselves prefer and thus suggests a lacuna in their case for liberalism is no argument for illiberal government. If the problem of policymaker ignorance is a problem for liberals, it is no less a problem for defenders of other political systems, within which policymakers’ epistemic burdens are necessarily much heavier, because of the more extensive and more difficult objectives they are charged with deliberately realizing in less liberal contexts. Scott Scheall (2020) F.A. Hayek ad the Epistemology of Politics, Routledge 76-77

Scheall offers an excellent, philosophical immanent critique of what is now known as 'classical' liberal political philosophy (or Austrian political economy) and, thereby, renews it. And while some bits involve a creative interpretation of Hayek in context, it would be a shame if only Hayek-friendly folk read this; the book is fruitful to a wider audience interested in both low level public policy and more significant political transitions. This is so, even though at times the fact that it is an immanent critique means it fails to engage with already existing discussions in other parts of political philosophy.* And he lacks discussion of research in public administration. 

In particular, I am thrilled that Scheal puts transition problems at the heart of theorizing about political life. Recall that (here, here, and here), I understand the transition problem, as [I] how to move from an unjust status quo to an ideal (or vastly improved) state and, in particular, with a population raised under bad institutions. In fact, as (recall) Serene Khader taught me, there are (at least) three species of the problem: the first version [A] really turns on the challenge of finding or developing the right sort of people (with the right education or dispositions, etc.) to get us from here to there and then to have the skills and temperament to make the new circumstances work out well. The second version [B] is to create mechanisms such that the incentives of policy-makers line up with the goals to be pursued and the true interests of people/constituents. The third version is [C] that a population raised under bad institutions may rationally prefer a bad status quo if getting to the better state involves high costs to them.

Perfectionists, including many illiberal types (Plato, Al-Farabi, etc.) tend to be focused on [I]. The liberal tradition, inspired by Machiavelli, has focused primarily on [B] and judging by recent Nobel prizes in economics is still going strong. And progressives/feminists (including liberal progressives/feminists) focus on [C]. Scheall himself is responding to folks focused on [B] (and he ignores the other versions of the transition problem). But in it he is also very sensitive to the fact that [II] at each step of the way from an imperfect status quo to a better destination involves a transition problem and that [III] even maintaining a status quo over time is, in some respects, similar to a transition problem (in the sense of [II]).+ And this point generalizes to all transition problems.**

Okay with that set up, I can state that Scheall's core claim is that the problem of policy-maker ignorance has logical priority to aligning policy-maker incentives with her constituents or society's needs. The core argument is summarized as follows:

[O]n the assumption that some principle like ought implies can is true and practically useful as a guide to action, then the word “can” in such principles must mean deliberately can. Other candidate meanings for the word “can” render such principles practically useless. Thus, by reductio, “can” in ought implies can (and related principles) means deliberately can. But, by definition, deliberately can just means knows enough to. Therefore, ought implies knows enough to: nothing that we cannot know enough to deliberately realize can be an obligation. The nature and extent of our ignorance place brackets around our potential obligations. Epistemic burdens are logically prior to other normative considerations. Since this is a general fact about human decision-making in all contexts, it follows that ignorance is logically prior to incentives in specifically political contexts. (3; Emphases in original).

Before I get to meat of today's post, two qualifications: (a) I don't think Scheall is right to assume that ought implies can applies to all policy contexts. Some policy decisions and ends are not normative nor obligations, and not understood as such by decision-makers. (Pick your favorite pork-barrel spending!) So, the way feasibility enters into these decisions may be more like other forms of instrumental reasoning (with cost-benefit analysis, opportunity costs, etc.). In addition, (b) it may at times make sense to pursue infeasible/utopian ends in virtue of the fact that in some environments aiming too high is better than aiming at a target within reach. But notice that in (a) and (b) epistemic burdens do not disappear (although how to think about (b) is not trivial). So, let's leave these aside.

Now, I will return to Scheall's set up, but today I close with one line of criticism. Throughout the book Scheall assumes that if policymakers lacks the knowledge to pursue an end, they shouldn't pursue it. For, when, the "do-nothing policy is aimed at no particular end, it bears no epistemic burden." (98) [I am not sure this adheres to his own insight [III] unless we sharply distinguish between do-nothing policy aimed at status quo and aimed at no particular end.] But that raises the problem that we might never discover what works.

Here's a version of what I have in mind. Let's say one agrees with Popper that policy should be informed by the spirit of or guided by trial-and-error. I pick Popper because Hayek and Popper have claimed to be kindred spirits on these matters.++ That is to say, only if errors are permitted can policy-makers and policy-scientist discover empirically what works, what are unexpected side-effects, and make mid-way adjustments. The more subtle point here is that Scheall tends to think of each policy-decision as a one-off: if you have the knowledge (ceteris paribus) you may act for an otherwise moral end, if you lack the knowledge (ceteris paribus) you may not.

But a Popperian treats public policy as many decisions extended over time. And by doing so a public policy is conceived as learning both what the means are and (but some other time more argument) what the ends are. That is to say, and this is in the spirit of Scheall, Popperian public policy treats much policy-making as instances of [II].

One final point,  Scheall's approach as articulated has very little space for policy-makers that learn over time. And that's in part because he tends to think of them as elected politicians/officials/assemblies with short time-spans and lots of epistemic burdens. But the modern state has tried to address this: it is full of bureaucracies and dedicated research agencies that are, if institutional memory is allowed to be built up, capable of learning over time.*** This is why some kinds of cutting government can be self-undermining.

And it's not just bureaucrats. Popper was a careful reader of Lippmann. And as Lippmann noted (recall) one benefit of the 'revolving door' is that it would create a kind of permanent circulation of college graduates from universities into government; and technical, government bureaucrats returning regularly to train and teach at universities, etc. Now, it's true that this, in turn, raises other familiar problems (rent-seeking, how to decide which experts to trust), but this is why Scheall's work on [II-III] is so important. To be continued.

 

On Callard on Taste, and Badness-promotion

We tend to think of aesthetic disputes as reflecting the least substantive differences between people—you like vanilla, I like chocolate, there’s no arguing over taste, let’s move on. But that point of view may be infected by the wishful thinking of backwards argumentation: given that there is no arguing over taste, those differences had better be unimportant. What if some of them are not?

Consider the fact that the most passionate friendships—those of youth—tend to coalesce around aesthetic passions: movies, music, comics, games. When you meet a stranger and you “click” with them, isn’t it very often because you liked the same book, or movie, or fell in love with the same city or language or artist? Consider real gift-giving, which involves pre-selecting the recipient, by contrast with the self-selection of “whoever might pass by and want it.” Meaningful, personalized gifts tend to succeed precisely when there is some shared aesthetic between the giver and recipient.

...It is striking that Socrates lumps together ethics and aesthetics as the two sources of strife.

The history of ethical thought is a record of the attempt to insert a wedge between those last two kinds of judgments. In both cases, we’ve worked to turn down the heat, but in the aesthetic case it’s by agreeing to disagree, whereas in the moral one it’s by way of the conceit that some kind of unified moral theory—be it Kantianism or Consequentialism—can serve as backdrop for adjudicating all disputes. We can just “weigh” the reasons and see who is “objectively” right and who is “objectively” wrong. In aesthetics we don’t need objectivity and in morality we can have it: strife solved.

I believe there is no scale that resolves all moral disagreements, and that it is not always possible to agree to disagree about the beautiful and the ugly. These claims are not unrelated to one another, or to the fact that the aesthetic and the moral are not as separate as we would like to believe.

I find guns ugly; the gun enthusiasts I know find them beautiful. I find meat delicious; many vegetarians I know have a distaste for it. Whether the ethics drives the aesthetics or vice versa, once they have fused it is to be expected that some of the recalcitrance of a person’s ethical “intuitions” will be due to the fact that they are also visceral aesthetic responses. We pick our friends as much by the contents of their playlists as the contents of their characters—perhaps because we see the contents of their playlists as a not insubstantial part of the contents of their characters.

It is, of course, ridiculous of me to hate the person who gave me that silly bowl, just as it is ridiculous of you to hate the bearded hipster, or the backwoods redneck, or the sleek businessman, or the unwashed hippie, or whichever “type” of person strikes you as having contemptibly bad taste. When political disputes fall along cultural and geographic lines, as they do in our country, it’s hard not to suspect that the divide is as much about aesthetics as about ethics.

The fact that at some fundamental level we remain on the same page—life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, etc.—is not necessarily cause for much optimism. When it is in the aesthetic dimension that people drift apart from one another, the rift between them is not very amenable to rational persuasion. We Americans have become multiple nations in taste.

An aesthetic divide between two human beings is not trivial; it obstructs their ethical relations. The earth-mother aesthetic encoded in the belly bowl ran counter to my vision of parenting a newborn, which involved no breastfeeding, no cloth-diapering, no co-sleeping. If I leave that bowl in the entryway, I am doing so with the hopes of establishing an ethical connection—benefaction—to someone solely on the grounds of a fundamental aesthetic divide. The person who picks up such a bowl is a “different kind of person” from me. I have no doubt that, were I to meet her, I’d find some common ground, but one thing that can’t serve as that common ground is the fact that my trash is her treasure. Or so I saw it.

Ben saw things more amicably. While granting to me the existence of aesthetic divides so profound as to occasion moral offense, he didn’t think the tackiness of the bowl qualified. He asked me to take a step back: surely I wouldn’t want to live in a world of monolithic aesthetic taste. The plurality of aesthetic points of view is a product of the genuine diversity between human beings, and the fact that they are free to judge for themselves what appeals to them. It should occasion respect, not contempt.

But there is a fine line between respecting others’ right to their bad taste, and opting to participate in it. Ben saw that participation from a bird’s eye-view, as autonomy-promotion: helping people enjoy whatever they might like. I saw it from the ground-up, in terms of badness-promotion. The question here is the degree to which peoples’ inability to see eye-to-eye is itself something they can see eye-to-eye about. Is there a way to adjudicate this disagreement between Ben and me? Or is it a difference in taste?--Agnes Callard "Do you want my garbage?"  @The Point. [HT Dailynous]

Agnes Callard is a distinctive and ambitious, fresh voice writing for a wider audience without pandering to the "many." Since there are few of these in the profession, this is very welcome. I use 'ambitious' because she is willing, as the post above suggests, to present herself as speaking to and on behalf of a much larger national 'we' even if, perhaps, especially when, she is being a contrarian. This latter feature was on display in one of her other pieces this past week, which appeared in the New York Times, and (alas) got lots more attention (see for example here).

I thought her NYT piece conflated the pure (politics free) form of philosophy with the institution of professional philosophy where (what I call) a species of philosophical politics is inevitable even as a means to improve philosophy (for, an example, recall this post on David Lewis). In it, she also stipulates (without argument) that philosophical teaching/influencing is about bringing other "people to believe only what they, by their own lights, can see to be justified."  

Now, one feature of professional philosophy I am attracted to emotionally is our freedom to criticize. And when I reflected on today's Digression the nuggets in the previous paragraph where going to be its fuel. But I have come to think that our professional practices overvalue criticism and discourage us to seek out the lovely and handsome in other philosophers.* And, in fact, the part of me that admires Callard is not her persuasiveness, rhetorical or argumentative, if any, but her ability to raise significant questions in a playful-serious way.+ And she does so in virtue of her clear willingness not to see certain alternatives. 

Take, for example, the gun case. This will illustrate both what I mean by a willingness not to see (in this case, it's my limitation), and something about her ruling out. I can find guns aesthetically pleasing objects. The aesthetic involved is one my eighteenth century teachers would call 'fit.' Often it is not solely fit; the beautiful guns draw on other aesthetic features (including speed, a certain kind of faux sexuality, and shininess, precision, etc.). I do so by taking a certain stance toward guns; the one that screens off the gruesomeness of the effects. There is nothing ennobling about hunting or killing people. But I think it's possible, genuinely possible, to admire guns and wish to see them banned. Quite clearly, if I allowed myself to see the gruesomeness of the effect(s), the aesthetic valence of guns might, gestalt-like, change as it clearly does for Callard. But it is not impossible that the gruesomeness would (if one has a Goth sensibility) enhance the aesthetic value. After all, sometimes a joke is funny because it is, in part, in bad taste (for more reflections on that issue see here).

It is possible that the last two sentences reflect, as I imagine Callard would say, a defect of character (in me).  And what I like about her public persona is this very puritanical strain in her [to be contrasted with the amicable], which can be grounded in her sensibility of disgust (read the full essay to grasp what I am talking about it) and then seeks to justify the actions that follow from this sensibility (without, I note, trying to come to grips with her disgust).** I tend to find such sensibility comical in one off situations, yet when others aim to live up to it consistently (and so exhibit integrity), admirable, too. I think we can be plastic about our evaluative criteria depending on extremely minor variations in context. (So, yes, one can value another's integrity, while being a situationist oneself.) 

Of course, she may think the flaw in position may not be of character at all. She may think I mistakenly keep distinct, aesthetic and ethic, that are simply intertwined. (But my appeal to the aesthetic quality of the gruesome is meant to illustrate that I do no such thing.)

Even so, my preference for Callard is not just aesthetic, it's also substantive. She is right to call attention to the significance of aesthetics in our lives, our friendships, and our politics. For example, one cannot understand the grip Trump has on his followers if one ignores aesthetics (recall here and here).++  

She is right that the unwillingness to discuss taste is no evidence for its lack of significance in our lives. But it is surprising she does not note that the silence on difference of taste functions like a taboo (recal and here). As she recognizes it clearly prevents social conflict. And since she grants that it is very possible that aesthetic matters themselves are foundational, these conflicts could not be adjudicated by any arbiter. 

Or at least she invites us to consider that possibility. I am struck, amazed really, by the felt need of adjudication. If Ben and Agnes were in the situation in which a collective decision was necessary, then, indeed, adjudication would be required. But I don't see why one would have to force a decision, and not allow further discussion. 

What Callard does not seem to allow, perhaps cannot see, is that talking about differences in taste, to keep that conversation going despite one's differences (recall here and here) is itself, or can be, a joyful exercise. Adam Smith in presenting the exemplary nature of Hume's life, whose philosophical views he predicted would fail to persuade many, called this, with a nod to Addison and agreeing with Pope, a 'gaiety of temper.' It's an open question for me -- no really this is not an objection! -- if such a temper can facilitate Callard's wish to participate in badness-promotion. 

Rawls, Carnap, and Quine on Explication

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

On Catching up with Revolutionary Thoughts

I am, however, discussing with you troubles which concern us both, and sharing the remedy with you, just as if we were lying ill in the same ward. Listen to me, therefore, as you would if I were talking to myself. I am admitting you to my inmost thoughts, and am having it out with myself, merely making use of you as my pretext.--Seneca, Letter, 27.

I was re-reading Emerson* and trying to figure out why, despite finding regular nuggets of insight and wisdom in his essays, his authorial persona is so grating to me. Take for example, the following paragraph, which is the third one in the opening essay, of his first collection of his Essays:

This human mind wrote history, and this must read it. The Sphinx must solve her own riddle. If the whole of history is in one man, it is all to be explained from individual experience. There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages and the ages explained by the hours. Of the universal mind each individual man is one more incarnation. All its properties consist in him. Each new fact in his private experience flashes a light on what great bodies of men have done, and the crises of his life refer to national crises. Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind, and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era. Every reform was once a private opinion, and when it shall be a private opinion again it will solve the problem of the age. The fact narrated must correspond to something in me to be credible or intelligible. We, as we read, must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner; must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly. Emerson (1841)  History

Emerson's underlying metaphysical commitments -- as expressed in the first sentence(s) of the essay, "THERE is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same." -- are familiar enough from the Plotinian, Idealistic strain in Spinoza and Leibniz; they are expressed, with a kind of overflowing urgency, which echoes the emanation from the divine, that ought to be appealing. For, unlike those worrying types, who, in the face of One and Unity, despair that any particular individual is ephemeral and fleeting and only perceive the risk of dissolving into the one and only acosmic substance, Deus sive Natura, which has metaphysical umphyness, Emerson grasps that each of us has, thereby, direct access to everything including the whole of history.+

As an aside, for all the aura of elitism that Emerson often displays, this is a truly democratic thought. He expresses it in a lovely image: "all that Shakspeare says of the king, yonder slip of a boy that reads in the corner feels to be true of himself. We sympathize in the great moments of history, in the great discoveries, the great resistances, the great prosperities of men;—because there law was enacted, the sea was searched, the land was found, or the blow was struck, for us, as we ourselves in that place would have done or applauded." Each of us can be a hero and our greatness and heroicism can be expressed in infinite number of ways. (Emerson certainly is capable of taking the thoughts of girls seriously, but it is notable that his favorite image of possibility is boyhood.)

Be that as it may, much of the time this direct access to infinite thought has to be triggered by or mediated through encounters with others. And Emerson's writings are dense with allusions and references not just to the familiar Eurocentric canon of philosophy and religion; he assumes an encyclopedic, universal library in his audience. I find this endearing and his urgent even hectoring call to make our individual experience the touchstone of all we encounter inspiring. 

Of course, Emerson understands the risk -- endemic in Whiggish history -- , that all we encounter in our engagements with others is the familiar self; that we become disaster-scene-tourists, who ends up reassured with the familiar contours we see in the mirror each morning. But Emerson's writings call us to new possibilities: every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind.

And this, not the hectoring, is, I sense, the trouble. Emerson is so enthralled by the creative possibilities inherent in us -- the Romantic cult of pre-meditated, divine creativity --, and so right in demanding of us complete, sympathetic identification with those we encounter in history and books "there is properly no history, only biography....every mind must know the whole lesson for itself,—must go over the whole ground," that he does not allow that, quite often, the revolution comes first and that thought plays catch up. By this I do not mean to hurl at Emerson a romantic-fascistic decisionism; rather I merely alert us to the equally familiar experience that so many of our reasons are post hoc interpretations of others and ourselves. (I have been reading Sperber and Mercier's The Enigma of Reason--more about that some other time).

Seneca captures something of this last fact by artfully displaying himself as a vulnerable authorial persona. Like a clever magician he pretends to give away a secret: that he is self-medicating and that, in this vulnerability, he is no better than his audience. Death is necessary for us all, after all. But he also needs his audience, not to receive his gifts, nor to have spectators to his vulnerability, but to occasion, as it were, the articulations that follow the re-cognitions.

 

On Being a Non-Vegetarian

I am unsure when I realized that the moral arguments against eating meat and fish are compelling. It was some time after my period of being a practicing vegetarian (being in a relationship with a vegetarian). I would not be surprised if reading and teaching Coetzee's novels moved me decisively.

Thus, I admire the vegetarians.

As a non-trivial aside, I am no fan of European animal rights's movements that have for very obvious political reasons focused on ritual slaughter of animals -- practiced by unpopular, weaker, and often disadvantaged minorities -- as some of the main means of getting the message out  (as opposed to taking on the much more powerful agricultural-industrial-killing complex) and thereby entrenching other very serious systematic patterns of exclusion. I am not claiming hypocrisy. But one often gets the impression that among animal welfare advocates there is not just contempt for religious minorities, but also that one happily takes advantage of other people's xenophobia in the service of noble ends. This is not to excuse cruelty toward animals, if any, practiced by religious minorities and also not to deny that religious thinkers and authorities ought to have ongoing reflection on reforming their own practices.* 

Despite knowing it's wrong, I continue to eat meat and fish, albeit -- as a good bourgeois citizen -- the more expensive 'biological' and 'humane' stuff sold in the upscale farmer's market and specialty stores (with exclusive labels, etc.). I have wondered if I should describe my behavior in terms of weakness of will, or the power of (Humean) habit. Undoubtedly a bit of both. My behavior is certainly not some kind of rejection of morality or the feelings that might animate it; the idea of eating my (now long deceased) pet dog continues to horrify me. I am inclined to think, however, that my continued immoral behavior also reveals something else: that I tend to experience the pull of morality alongside other normative and non-normative pulls; some of which revolve around meals as a shared experience -- admittedly that sounds better in principle than the practice of trying to ensure that an overtired kid gets to be put to bed on time -- in which well prepared meat and fish add aesthetic, emotional, and sensual lustre to a meal. Unlike today's philosophical fashion, I am inclined to think that morality does not trump all other normative realms, so maybe my behavior is consistent with my larger normative commitments. (I am leaving aside here issues of health.) Of course, even if one were to grant my normative pluralism, it does not follow that my behavior ought to be excused.

I sometimes worry that knowing that it's wrong to eat, say, steak contributes to my pleasure of eating steak. There are guilty pleasures, after all, and it strikes me that -- given my occupation -- such guilty pleasures compensate for the cultivated tendency to 'over-think' quite a bit. I suppose akrasia can be a consequence of guilty pleasure, so maybe this should be my all things considered (that is self-deceptive) self-diagnosis. But I note that this akrasia is, then, in part philosophically induced and, oddly enough, that contributes to the pleasure.

Of Four Kinds of Writer's Block

In the imagination there is no daylight and,                                              

Like Wallace Stevens, I know the dark is crucial.                                         

I sing, I grieve in it, I dream what haunts each night:                                                       

These bodies, even lynched, still are thinking.                               

Nothing is final, I’m told. No man shall see the end—

But them, my fathers, lifted into fire, like tongues.--Rickey Laurentiis.    

 

Poetry is a finikin thing of air

That lives uncertainly and not for long

Yet radiantly beyond much lustier blurs.--Wallace Stevens.

I am often teased by my peers that I write so much;* I frequently answer truthfully that I am no perfectionist and that I have always worked with low (and very low) teaching loads with courses that directly (or indirectly) fed into my research. So, I may be utterly unqualified to write about writer's blog -- 'look who thinks he is nothing!' --, but I am intimately familiar with four kinds of staring at a blank page:

1. I have nothing to say despite (or, perhaps, because) having embraced the image of being a poet or philosopher. No, no (you suspicious mind) not so much from some purported high status that is derived from these venerable terms 'poet,' ('philosopher'), nor with the idea that if I wear black and smoke Gitanes, some beautiful woman will whisper her phone-number into my ear while I babble on about Rilke and Sartre.  No, it's because I regularly have sensory overload, where each pleasure and each pain has an exquisite and hitherto ignored delicacy so that I assume that the world requires me to channel the cosmic fire into words. Even so I stare at blank pages recognizing the painful truth that, perhaps as of yet, I have nothing to say of enduring consequence (few do I learn over the years, but that offers little consolation). Professional philosophy solves this problem by after considerable education, inserting us into a tradition that either embraces the intellectual division of labor, which bequeaths each of us open-problems, or  that allows us to re-tell the same historical story with minor, corrective variations in both cases advancing 'the discussion.' It's possible that if one is 'productive' enough, or mesmerized by chasing the next career step (dissertation, a job, tenure, etc.), one forgets this kind of writer's block.** I have speculated that the existence of  this kind of half-forgetting helps explain some of the professional bullying we encounter.

2. I lack skill. At some point half way through my graduate education and a few years out after the PhD, I could spot problems in what I read and I could sense that an alternative might be philosophically more satisfying, but I didn't know how to start organizing my thoughts. Sometimes the blank space would be filled with extensive notes, and long copiously footnoted excerpts from others (many of my dissertation chapters started like this), but even so I would be unable to find a path from the complexity I perceive (and that I think eminently worth sharing) to something that might count as intelligible to an outsider. Within analytical philosophy, this problem is solved by decomposing the complex mess to something that one can take a stance on, a thesis, (and then argue for while recognizing and incorporating a sub-set of  the innumerable objections one might discern.) In addition, there are tacit templates for journal articles that help set further constraints. At some point, practice, repeated feedback from more skilled others, and, eventually, repeat 'success,' evaporated this kind of writer's block. I re-encountered a version of this kind of writer's block, when I started to write for non-professional audiences or new formats (e.g., newspaper editorials, interdisciplinary venues, blogging, etc.), but without accompanying panic (hence, the past-tense in this paragraph): decomposing and practicing in the new genre always removed the writer's block over time.