Digressions&Impressions

Plato and Adam Smith on Eugenics (with a nod to De Gournay)

But of those who are not, such as are defective in body they will suffer to die and those who are evil-natured and incurable in soul they will themselves put to death.” “This certainly,” he said, “has been shown to be the best thing for the sufferers themselves and for the state.”--Plato, Republic 410a.

That in this state of society, therefore, a parent should be allowed to judge whether he can bring up his child, ought not to surprise us so greatly. In the latter ages of Greece, however, the same thing was permitted from views of remote interest or conveniency, which could by no means excuse it. Uninterrupted custom had by this time so thoroughly authorised the practice, that not only the loose maxims of the world tolerated this barbarous prerogative, but even the doctrine of philosophers, which ought to have been more just and accurate, was led away by the established custom, and upon this, as upon many other occasions, instead of censuring, supported the horrible abuse, by farfetched considerations of public utility... The humane Plato is of the same opinion, and, with all that love of mankind which seems to animate all his writings, no where marks this practice with disapprobation.--Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Smith's criticism of Plato's (and also Aristotle's) support of infanticide is in the service of two philosophical points: (a) that tradition and custom can pervert not just ordinary public morality, but even the morality of the (otherwise reliable) moral experts; (b) Consequentialist arguments in defense of some practice (norm, institution) can easily be abused. This is, especially, striking because (i) Smith too tends to defend consequentialist (but not utilitarian) arguments of institutions (although he notes that these consequences cannot be used to explain their origin). Moreover, while Smith is no Burkean or Humean Conservative, he, too, is happy to have some "checks the spirit of innovation" that are traced to existing norms. And (ii) it gets the spirit of Socrates's program all wrong (as I explain below).

One can understand Smith general program in political economy as a project that is meant to combat famine, in general, and, in particular, the accompanying practice of infanticide. Smith announces this in the introduction on the opening page to the Wealth of Nations where he singles out the "miserably poor," nations, where "from mere want, they are frequently reduced, or, at least, think themselves reduced, to the necessity sometimes of directly destroying, and sometimes of abandoning their infants, their old people, and those afflicted with lingering diseases, to perish with hunger, or to be devoured by wild beasts."

Smith does not pause to note explicitly that Socrates encourages infanticide in the context of a broader program of eugenics (see also 461c). Smith's reticence is notable because the interest in the topic was not merely academic; in the (1735) Querist Berkeley had offered, with a nod to Plato (Laws) a positive eugenicist racial breeding program in his political economy (recall). Berkeley had proposed it in order to tackle (in the context of extensive institutional reform and education projects) to tackle structural, Irish poverty (including famines). In the Querist Berkeley regularly appeals to variants of public utility (or usefulness).

By contrast, the inner motive of infanticide in Socrates's luxurious city is not really the battle against famine and poverty, but the breeding of better people by killing off defective bodies. Of course, the primary program of human enhancement in the city is cultivation, drilling, education, and propaganda toward virtue, but this is worked on the most capable human bodies; such that virtue is a kind of health (444d). In this program, Socrates is more than happy to go against tradition. So, Smith, who certainly knew his Plato, seems to miss the point.

Now, recall the following three options about human nature:

1. Differentiated human nature; the differences also reflect axiological hierarchy. This seems to be Aristotle's position (say on natural slavery) in Book 1 of The Politics.
2. Differentiated human nature, but without (axiological) hierarchy among the differences. This seems to be Socrates's position in the true city (or 'city of pigs') of Book 2 of the Republic. [Recall.]
3. Analytic Egalitarianism (AE): homogeneous human nature such that we're equal for theoretical (including moral) purposes. Observed differences are due to cultural, educational, institutional factors.

• Differentiated human nature; the differences also reflect axiological hierarchy. This seems to be Aristotle's position (say on natural slavery) in Book 1 of The Politics, and is revived regularly by modern Eugenicists and has a new instantiation by contemporary (smart/dumb obsessed) epistemocrats (e.g. Jason Brennan).
• Differentiated human nature, but without (axiological) hierarchy among the differences. This seems to be Socrates's position in the true city (or 'city of pigs') of Book 2 of the Republic. [Recall.]
• Analytic Egalitarianism (AE): homogeneous human nature such that we're equal for theoretical (including moral) purposes. Observed differences are due to cultural, educational, institutional factors.*

- See more at: http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2015/09/andersonschallengetoanalyticegalitarianism.html#sthash.C4lANu2k.dpuf

In the luxurious city (372e-451b), Socrates comes much closer to option 1 -- this is reflected in the hierarchical metaphor of folk with, silver, bronze natures (415e), but without going so far as Aristotle as claiming that there are natural slaves (recall). The hierarchical differentiation of human nature is, in turn, explained by Socrates, in part, by the ways in which the three (hierarchical) elements of a given soul are distributed within individuals in a population with only a small minority belonging to the top of the hierarchy. Socrates's and Aristotle's positions doe not exhaust the options, of course; De Gournay, for example, also allows for hierarchical (and axiological) differentiation, but insists that the distribution of talents is fairly homogeneous (recall). 

Strikingly, while, Socrates defends the superiority of men to women, he insists that the pattern of differentiation among men and women is broadly similar such that the most superior women have broadly similar natures as men do (456a) and are superior to average men (455de).  (Again, that's obviously not the only option: Van Schurman denies that the pattern is broadly similar, and implies that while women are inferior along many dimensions some women are superior along others.) As is well known, the idea is then to ensure assortative mating, especially at the  top of the hierarchy among men and women (458d);* and to use various means of birth control to prevent the bottom of the hierarchy to mate (459de). In addition, among the system of rewards and honor for the guardians in the luxurious city (recall), the right to copulate is a key reward in their incentive structure (460b). That is, Socrates's eugenics program does not merely try to control the characteristics of the population, but also their number (in light of wars, illness, etc). [I am skipping over the role of chance in generating the best natures, but will return to it when I discuss Socrates's analysis of the failure of such eugenics program.]

But there is one more wrinkle in Socrates's population theory.  Even when breeding works according to plan (and, as we'll discuss soon, there are epistemic limits to this), the very best natures produced by it can also become the most corrupted (491e). In fact, it follows from Socrates's argument that the more successful the breeding program is the more dangers are generated by it.

To return to Smith; if we take his passage in TMS against the humane Plato seriously, it entails  that Plato would not have condoned the infanticide features of his eugenics program if he had reflected on the fact that he was relying on cultural biases. This is, of course, a narrow criticism and leaves quite a bit of it untouched. Of course, Smith has many other arguments against the use of force and deception in the service of any project of breeding of the best within a society with specialized division of labor, but one of the most celebrated two sentences from Wealth of Nations tackle it head-on:

The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature as from habit, custom, and education. When they came into the world, and for the first six or eight years of their existence, they were, perhaps, very much alike, and neither their parents nor playfellows could perceive any remarkable difference.--Wealth of Nations.

The first quoted sentence suggests to many readers that Smith is an analytical egalitarian. I have some doubts about this (see also), the sentence itself allows some natural differences (and there are some other passages in Smith that also recognize morally salient natural differences). But I do agree that the passage is directed, in part, against a Socratic position. For, the second sentence insists that even if there there is natural differentiation withing a given population, we have no epistemic resources to pick out the excellent natures among young-ish children. This means that the program of cultivation and drilling (etc.) cannot target those natures destined for greatness until after a critical period.+ 

 

Berkeley's Racialized Economic Development and Eugenics

512. Whether our natural Irish are not partly Spaniards and partly Tartars; and whether they do not bear signatures of their descent from both these nations, which is also confirmed by all their histories?

513. Whether the Tartar progeny is not numerous in this land? And whether there is an idler occupation under the sun than to attend flocks and herds of cattle?

514. Whether the wisdom of the state should not wrestle with this hereditary disposition of our Tartars, and with a high hand introduce agriculture?--Berkeley, The Querist.

This post is inspired by a wonderful lecture by Justin Smith on the history of philosophical racism with special emphasis on the logic of living systems in the history of philosophy. In The Querist (first published in 1735), Berkeley offers an ambitious program of political, economic, monetary, educational, and cultural reform for Ireland. Berkeley revised it a few more times through the end of his life. The book has attracted modest attention from historians of economics and scholars of Ireland in the eighteenth century.

In the three queries (which are also found in the first edition) quoted above, Berkeley treats the eighteenth century native population of Ireland (as opposed to the colonial English and Scottish) as a mixture of two stock (Spanish and Tartars) with the Tartar predominating.* According to Berkeley's population theory (or assumptions), these distinct human populations have inherited, enduring dispositions that express themselves in particular behavioral manifestations and occupational traits. This theory is, in part, designed to explain Ireland's backward economic development, which remains stuck in a shepherding stage and has not moved yet to the agricultural stage (not to mention the commercial stage reached by Holland and England). In fact, in these remarks Berkeley anticipates the outlines of the so-called stadial theory of economic development more commonly associated with Hume, Smith, and Marx. Berkeley's theory is also designed to justify colonial policy, that is, to introduce forcibly ("heavy hand") agricultural practices into Ireland.

Berkeley does not explain the mechanism between the inherited "dispositions" that characterize a population stock and the external signs (or "signature") by which these are expressed (and, perhaps, recognized). But strikingly, these dispositions endure over time and after considerable mixing of populations given a certain set of institutions. Unfortunately, he is silent on the mechanism of inheritance, too.

Berkeley does not use the term "race" in The Querist, so you may think I am being not just anachronistic but misleading in the title of this post. But, first, he does use stereotypes to characterize distinct populations whose inherited dispositions and identity endures within a mixed population. Second, he does treat the then-present native, Irish population as a "lazy, destitute, and degenerate race" in his (1749) A Word to the Wise. From context, it is clear that Berkeley thinks that with different incentives and social mores/institutions the Irish could recover ancient flourishing in arts and letters.  

So, Berkeley is not a racial determinist who thinks that stereotypical traits can never be modified. Institutions can, in fact, be stronger than inherited dispositions. Moreover, he is uninterested in racial purity. (And, as we have seen, for Berkeley a race can itself be a mixture.) Rather, he advocates increased population mixing between colonists and colonized (recall). This is clear from an earlier set of Queries in The Querist:

206. Whether the Public is more concerned in any thing than in the procreation of able citizens? ...

213. Whether it was Plato’s opinion that for the good of the community, rich should marry with rich? (Laws, I.4)

214. Whether as seed equally scattered produceth a goodly harvest, even so an equal distribution of wealth doth not cause a nation to flourish?

215. Whence is it that Barbs and Arabs are so good horses? And whether in those countries they are not exactly nice in admitting none but nudes of a good kind to their mares?

216. What effects would the same care produce in families? 

According to Berkeley population management is a key policy objective of the government. It requires the same kind of skill and practice as horse-breeding. A growing population is (in addition to hard work and frugality) the "foundation" of enduring economic growth (217). Not unlike the Athenian Stranger in Plato's Laws, Berkeley is also an enemy of extreme income inequality and assortative mating. (I think Berkeley has Laws VI, [773a-f] in mind.)*** In particular, for the "good of the community," he promotes interbreeding of economic classes by way of well regulated marriage laws. In practice this means interbreeding among the (Protestant) upperclass English (and Scots) and the native (Catholic) Irish.

At this stage of The Querist Berkeley does not mention his population theory. But given that later in the text he associates the extremely poor shepherding element of the Irish population with the Tartar stock, the net effect of Berkeley's breeding proposal is to dilute the inherited dispositions that he thinks prevent economic growth.

On Blundering on the Job-Market and On Finding One's Voice

At the start of 2003, I was invited for a philosophy job-talk at Tufts, my alma-mater--then (as now) a stellar department. I adored being back on campus as a job-candidate. Even so, I gave a mediocre talk on a topic that I was thoroughly bored with (Adam Smith’s progressive political philosophy--one of the central chapters of my dissertation that I had defended a year before). That my talk was mediocre was a consequence not just of boredom but also a lack of serious preparation (I had gone on a family visit in Miami Beach just the week before and I had partied with a new fling even the day before my campus visit). Immediately after the job-talk, I could tell by their anguished looks that I had let down my former teachers. Q&A didn’t improve matters.

Not long thereafter, my dog, Saggy (a bullmastiff) died from bloat while I was away at the central APA (recall this post). During my grief I was nauseated by a particular memory of my campus visit at Tuft. Like all on-campus candidates I was shepherded past the College Dean, Susan Ernst (a developmental biologist), who had no trouble remembering me from my undergraduate days. I had been active in student government, set up a scholarship fund, and I wrote for the school newspaper; I hoped for pleasant small talk with the Dean. In fact, Dean Ernst reminded me that she had been my undergraduate pre-major mentor, and she remembered, in particular, my ingenuity at avoiding classes before Noon. So, she had a pointed question: ‘would I be willing to teach morning classes?’ I answered (truthfully) in the affirmative, and explained, with a bit of exaggeration, that since I owned a dog my sleeping patterns had changed. At the time it seemed amusing, but after I failed to land the job, I was horrified by the idea that my time at Tufts could be summed up by this exchange.

As an aside, feeling like I let down my teachers is awful because part of my motive to want to become a college professor is to emulate them and join their club of smart, rigorous, witty, and profound thinkers. Obviously, this insecure-vain motive is problematic (and it connects to a lot of bad norms in the profession), but since I have studied Spinoza and Seneca it seems less so. None of them ever said that I let them down or that my mediocre performance reflected badly on their judgment, but at the time it was an inescapable thought which helped me avoid reflecting more intensely on myself.

As it happens I cried for weeks on end. In hindsight I continue to be amazed by the generosity and warmth of my Wesleyan colleagues. But a decade later it remains hard to describe what I was exactly crying about. Obviously, I was grieving my absent dog. I was also clearly unnerved by the fact that I had prevented myself from stepping up to take hold of the job-opportunity when I had the chance. I knew that on some level that I was also mourning the failure of my first (and then only) romantic love, despite the fact that I had not seen her for seven years. (Coincidentally, the last time I had seen her was the morning of my first day with Saggy.) I was thirty-two and I could not honestly say that had I given anything my very best shot; I was living by not trying, by being incapable of really trying (recall this post).

I am not a naturally gifted teacher—I lack patience and I find it difficult to enter into the perspective of my students. I am suspicious of grand narratives, and so I have a tendency to undermine my own narratives by relentless editorializing. But I adore teaching,  too, especially because I tend feel very alive in the classroom; the performance is not a make-belief-act, but rather I magnify features of my personality that allow me to connect with the inquisitiveness, receptivity, vanity, and curiosity of my students in order to explore philosophy together.

That Spring, as I was struggling to escape the dog-death-and-job-failure induced gloom, I found my academic ‘voice’ while teaching an early modern survey course. It happened during a class lecture on Berkeley’s Three Dialogues. Berkeley’s pre-assigned role was to prepare the way for Hume and Kant, and also exhibit the ingenuity of empiricism as well as the risks of idealism. In response to a student question, I suddenly realized that Berkeley was challenging an indispensability argument (that is, the materialist appeals to the indispensable role of matter in science). I had been familiar with this type of argument since my undergraduate days as a student of Jody Azzouni, who was invested in undermining the so-called ‘Quine-Putnam Indispensability argument.’ As I was explaining to the students what the form and nature of an indispensability argument is, it struck me that such an argument is an also argument from science’s authority. I remember pointing out to my students that the very idea that science could have such authority to settle debates within philosophy in Berkeley’s age was no trivial matter. [1]

It is hard to describe the excitement of that impromptu Berkeley lecture. I was unsure if I had been the first to notice this argument in Berkeley, but it did not matter in the moment; I understood that it was the first time I did not impose a pre-existing mold (inherited from a professor, the secondary literature, or the tradition) onto a text that I was interpreting,--I had found my voice, by letting Berkeley’s words surprise me.

 

Dennett's Faustian Bargain, revisited

For several years, I have been posing the following choice for my fellow philosophers: if Mephistopheles offered you the following two options, which would you choose?

(A) You solve the major philosophical problem of your choice so conclusively that there is nothing left to say (thanks to you, part of the field closes down forever, and you get a footnote in history).

(B) You write a book of such tantalizing perplexity and controversy that it stays on the required reading list for centuries to come. 

Some philosophers reluctantly admit that they would have to go for option (B). If they had to choose, they would rather be read than right. Like composers, poets, novelists, and other creators in the arts, they tend to want their work to be experienced, over and over, by millions (billions, if possible!). But they are also tugged in the direction of the scientists’ quest. After all, philosophers are supposed to be trying to get at the truth.

When I have presented the same Faustian bargain to scientists they tend to opt for (A) without any hesitation—it’s a no-brainer for them.--Daniel C. Dennett (2013) “A Faustian Bargain” Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking, p. 411.+

Daniel Dennet was one of my undergraduate teachers, and I am pretty sure I heard him try out versions of the “Faustian Bargain” on visiting scholars. (In his book, Intuition Pumps, he describes further variants.) I mention this because at some point, while I was completing my dissertation, I articulated a descendant of the Bargain that I have tried out on some fellow historians of philosophy. It goes something like this:

(A*) You conclusively settle all interpretive problems about the relationship between the infinite and finite in Spinoza’s metaphysics (like Descartes's Circle a notorious problem) such that there is nothing left to say (thanks to you, Spinoza becomes easy, and you get a footnote in history).

(B*) You generate interest in a previously overlooked text so that it (not you) gets on the required reading list for centuries to come.   

Most scholars happily and promptly settle for (A*); that’s what we are trained to aim at. The spirit of contemporary scholarship in the history of philosophy has its origins (mediated via Quentin Skinner, perhaps) in Germanic Wissenschaft, after all. But a few respondents are, after some hesitation, tempted by (B*). For, ever since some professional philosophical historians of philosophy started to read canonical works in context, it was likely they would stumble across texts that might seem candidates for (B*). And while getting the past right is a non-trivial task, doing justice to the past and thereby shaping a better future is nobler yet.

Moreover, (B*) is also a near-self-less-act; in it one is the nearly anonymous hand-maiden to another's success. Even if it is motivated (one concludes after reading Nietzsche) by a strange kind of desire for revenge or (echoing Walter Benjamin) by a desire to speak for history's losers, it remains the case that one uses one's skill and judgment to make somebody else's previously overlooked views, insights, or arguments available for discussion. Of course, plenty of scholars are motivated by the true and the good, and (B*) might be one way to promote these. Even so, there is also something quixotic about (B*) because it is so unlikely to succeed. After reflecting on canon-formation throughout history, I suspect that enduring novelty is introduced into the curriculum and people's reading habits not by the conjoined efforts of scholars, but by the ideological and curricular needs of history's proverbial winners who write and rewrite the past to give their own commitments an air of inevitability, the so-called (to adopt a fine phrase by Michael Kremer) 'royal road to me' (recall).

A note on the Dauler Wilson Garber debate over Berkeley’s Corpuscular Scepticism

[I]t will be demanded to what purpose serves that curious organization of plants, and the animal mechanism in the parts of animals; might not vegetables grow, and shoot forth leaves of blossoms, and animals perform all their motions as well without as with all that variety of internal parts so elegantly contrived and put together; which, being ideas, have nothing powerful or operative in them, nor have any necessary connexion with the effects ascribed to them? If it be a Spirit that immediately produces every effect by a fiat or act of his will, we must think all that is fine and artificial in the works, whether of man or nature, to be made in vain. By this doctrine, though an artist hath made the spring and wheels, and every movement of a watch, and adjusted them in such a manner as he knew would produce the motions he designed, yet he must think all this done to no purpose, and that it is an Intelligence which directs the index, and points to the hour of the day. If so, why may not the Intelligence do it, without his being at the pains of making the movements and putting them together? Why does not an empty case serve as well as another? And how comes it to pass that whenever there is any fault in the going of a watch, there is some corresponding disorder to be found in the movements, which being mended by a skillful hand all is right again? The like may be said of all the clockwork of nature, great part whereof is so wonderfully fine and subtle as scarce to be discerned by the best microscope. In short, it will be asked, how, upon our principles, any tolerable account can be given, or any final cause assigned of an innumerable multitude of bodies and machines, framed with the most exquisite art, which in the common philosophy have very apposite uses assigned them, and serve to explain abundance of phenomena? Berkeley--A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Book 1, 60

[T]hat what has been objected in sect. 60 amounts in reality to no more than this:- ideas are not anyhow and at random produced, there being a certain order and connexion between them, like to that of cause and effect; there are also several combinations of them made in a very regular and artificial manner, which seem like so many instruments in the hand of nature that, being hid as it were behind the scenes, have a secret operation in producing those appearances which are seen on the theatre of the world, being themselves discernible only to the curious eye of the philosopher. But, since one idea cannot be the cause of another, to what purpose is that connexion? And, since those instruments, being barely inefficacious perceptions in the mind, are not subservient to the production of natural effects, it is demanded why they are made; or, in other words, what reason can be assigned why God should make us, upon a close inspection into His works, behold so great variety of ideas so artfully laid together, and so much according to rule; it not being credible that He would be at the expense (if one may so speak) of all that art and regularity to no purpose. Berkeley--A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Book 1, 64

There is a famous and thus far inconclusive, multi-layered debate between the two giants of early modern scholarship, Margaret Dauler Wilson (her paper) and Daniel Garber (his paper). The debate centers on Berkeley’s views on (what has been dubbed) ‘corpuscular skepticism,’ roughly, the idea that in addition to veil-of-ideas skepticism, Berkeley inherits from Locke skepticism about our ability to access to the posited to exist (real) corpuscular essences of things. One of the hermeneutic questions about Berkeley (and one that he faces with admirably forthrightness in Principles, Book 1, 60-66) is what right Berkeley has to posit such material corpuscles in his system. It is worth noting that the debate matters for the history of science (and philosophy) because in these passages, Berkeley helps promote a decisive shift in explanatory standards from an emphasis on essences to an emphasis on laws in the natural sciences. When we do not reflect on this, we tend to assume that such shift was a natural one, and perhaps already completed due to the influence of Descartes and the success of Newton’s Principia. But the shift in explanatory standards was, in fact, an eighteenth century achievement (unsettled again Lavoisier provided access to chemical essence). [See work by McMullin, Ducheyne, Downing, and your reporter.] 

But the Garber-Wilson debate and its reception has overlooked, I think, that in Principles 60-66, Berkeley is responding to an ingenious argument developed by Clarke in his (1704) Demonstration on the Attributes of the Being of God. It would be correct to label Clarke’s argument a ‘design’ one, but in doing so we also obscure the significance of Clarke’s argument. For the particular design argument that Berkeley is responding to is an argument relies on the history of empirical success of science. In particular, in Principles 60 and its restatement in 64, Berkeley is responding to a hypothetical critic that has assimilated Clarke’s particular argument (the “common philosophy”) in defense of the existence of not just general, providential “final causes,” but local design (or finality). Clarke’s argument relies on then recent and progressive, specialized (to use some anachronism) scientific knowledge. Clarke writes:

On using Earlymoderntexts.org in scholarship (with notes on translation)

There is much that could be said in criticism of this paper, but the primary reason for rejection is that the whole argument turns upon a misquotation.

The author's main claim is that the two arguments which appear on p.135 of the Penguin Classics (ed. Woolhouse) edition of the Three Dialogues (pp.185-6 of Jessop & Luce, which is the standard reference for Berkeley and it is annoying that the author does not use it) have different conclusions. The first, allegedly, concludes the falsity of ‘VII. Mind-independent sensible things have those qualities that they are perceived to have’, whereas the second the falsity of ‘VI. Sensible qualities are parts of [inhere in] mind-independent sensible things’. The author quotes the first argument at length on p.8 prior to reconstructing it, a quotation which ends ‘From all of this, shouldn’t it seem to follow that all colors are equally apparent, and that none of the ones that we see are really in any outer object?’. This text is what appears in Jonathan Bennett’s  www.earlymoderntexts.org edition of Berkeley, which does not claim to be faithful to the original and in this case is quite clearly not faithful. What Berkeley actually wrote was: ‘From all of which, should it not seem to follow, that all the colours are equally apparent, and that none of those which we perceive are really inherent in any outward object?’. Apart from the utterly outrageous sloppiness of using a paraphrastic edition aimed at undergraduates in a research article submitted to an elite scholarly journal, and the intellectual dishonesty of giving a reference to the impeccably edited Penguin Classics edition rather than the actual source of the quoted passage, this error shows the author’s argument to be simply mistaken: Berkeley takes VII, the claim about inherence, to be part of the conjunctive conclusion of the first argument.

I would be loathe to impute deliberate deception here, but it is worth noting that while both the quotations illustrating the alleged two versions of the Argument from Perceptual Relativity come from earlymoderntexts.org, the quotations from the Principles on p.1 of the manuscript do appear to come from the Penguin Classics edition, making clear the author had it or a similarly accurate text to hand and wasn’t working entirely from the Bennett paraphrastic edition."--Referee, or Anonymous.

A distinguished philosopher [Anonymous] forwarded the excerpt from the referee report s/he wrote on a recent assignment to me. I quote with permission (even encouragement). I have not read the original paper (and luckily I am not the author!) nor have I double-checked all the relevant sources, so I cannot judge how fair Anonymous is, but I would share Anon.'s irritation if I discovered that a text relied on a suppressed translation (which is known to be un-scholarly). I should mention that Anonymous is not a hyper-specialist historian of philosophy (you know who those are!), but also makes contributions to more 'contemporary' areas. In follow up exchange Anonymous suggested that there are two key issues here:

1. Someone in the profession not being able to see the dangers of using earlymoderntexts.org and what this says about (i) academic standards (why think anything less than the best scholarly edition will do*) in Philosophy as a discipline and (ii) how earlymoderntexts.org might be misleading our students about how scholarship is to be done.

 

2. Referencing a print edition when you have actually used an online source (and without checking the accuracy of the online source).

 

This behaviour would be regarded as highly unprofessional and cast doubt on someone's suitability for an academic job in other humanities disciplines, but seems to be tolerated in (anglophone?) philosophy.

I  agree with Anonymous, although I will qualify my agreement below. First, all translation is an interpretation. Translating complex philosophical texts is much, much harder than figuring out 'gavagai.' This is so, even if you have written the text yourself and are fluent in both languages. You should try translating some time; even if you are not a meaning holist, you'll discover that a lot of philosophical jargon is not stable and uniform across cultural and temporal contexts. (Surprisingly enough, this is even  true of works in the history of physics.) So, leaving aside honest mistakes, all translations involve non-trivial judgments and trade-offs with a complex interplay among style, content, jargon, sentence structure, and even argumentative structure (this list is not exhaustive).

On Moorean facts (David Lewis), and Poincaré’s Mistake

Poincaré, with all this virtue, made a serious philosophical mistake. In Poincaré’s own work, this error seems to me to have kept him from several fundamental discoveries in physics. (Howard Stein "Physics and Philosophy Meet: the Strange Case of Poincaré," 1.)

One way to describe this mistake--which I think is related to a wider philosophical tradition--is to say that Poincaré construed the function of theoretical work as essentially administrative--an activity of information-processing. The job of the theorist par excellence..-is to find the simplest and most systematic arrangement for storing scientific information--within the limits defined by those assumptions so entrenched as to function as a priori principles, i.e., as “definitions in disguise.”  (Stein, 16)

This mistake is a characteristic one in the empiricist tradition. It involves what seems to me a very odd paralogism. One recognizes--and I cannot say too strongly how right I think this is--that experience is our only touchstone of true information. One observes, with Hume, that the data of experience do not logically entail knowledge of “objective existence” or of the future. In application to the results of science, one draws sophisticated conclusions about the merely hypothetical status of the objects and agencies of scientific theory--e.g., atoms or the ether. But one neglects thereby the earlier insight--the Berkeleyan insight, which precedes Hume--that in a fundamental empiricist epistemological analysis all the objects and agencies of common sense and ordinary life have that same status. In effect, this is to distinguish, whether tacitly or explicitly, between the “reality”--or just persuasiveness--of what the ordinary processes of common sense make of the empirical data, and the reality or persuasiveness of the conclusions reached by the sophisticated processes of science. (Stein 17)

[A]n inadequacy in what may be called Poincaré’s conception of the dialectic of scientific concepts and theories, and of their relation to experiment. And that inadequacy I have earlier associated with what I called a very odd paralogism that recurs in the empiricist tradition: in effect, a double standard of epistemological critique, which occurs with some frequency among empiricist and instrumentalist philosophers of science.....

There is no warrant at all in the instrumentalist view for grading the entities of a theory in degrees of reality or fictitiousness--regarding particles as more real than the ether. This is a double standard that recurs in the empiricist tradition, (Stein, 22, and Stein quoting himself.)

Some over-sensitive historians dislike using judgments like 'mistake' in treating of the past. They mistakenly believe that such judgments are a form of anachronism or hindsight bias. Howard Stein, the greatest living philosophical historian of science,* certainly is not afraid to introduce anachronism when it suits his purposes (including in the quoted passages above). But, that's not what is going on in his judgment that a mistake has been made. Agents, except, perhaps, a divine one, can make mistakes, and worse. Even Homer nods. For, one can specify circumstances in which an agent ought to have known better (given existing best practices, regulations, etc.). Malpractice lawyers make a fine living arguing the details.