Digressions&Impressions

Adaptive Preference(s) and Status Quo Bias

A diagnosis of adaptive preferences is licensed only when preferences are directed toward something suboptimal. We don't, however, make decisions about what is subotimal from Plato's heaven (or from our armchair). We observe, we evaluate, and -- crucially -- we listen to testimony. The problem with the adaptive preference model is that it allows us to dismiss certain kinds of testimony as irrational or misleading. And so the adaptive preference model can quickly become a way of defending the moral status quo. (135)

Insofar as it justifies in discounting first-person testimony, the adaptive preference model can be a way of preventing this kind of progress. Misapplied, the adaptive preference model can simply entrench pre-existing biases. Elizabeth Barnes (2016) The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability (137)

Yesterday's Impression (recall) was inspired by passages in which Barnes criticizes certain applications of an adaptive preference model to discount testimony. But that post otherwise ignored her account of adaptive preferences which is the subject of today's Digression. As the quoted passages reveal, Barnes appeals to a notion of moral progress. This appeal to moral progress (and an accompanying presupposed moral community between Barnes and her sympathetic reader) is quite important in her overall argument, and in a future post I will be critical of the role it plays in her treatment.

But I don't think the idea of moral progress is central to her critique of certain uses of adaptive preferences model. Nothing substantial (as opposed to rhetorical) is lost if we rewrite the last quoted sentence from p. 135 as follows, And so the adaptive preference model can quickly become a way of defending the status quo as understood by expert. And the first sentence from p. 137 can be rewritten as follows, Insofar as it justifies in discounting first-person testimony, the adaptive preference model can be a way of preventing moral understanding of victims of testimonial injustice. This is not to deny that moral progress plays an important role in Barnes's presentation--to motivate some of her arguments, she appeals to her readers willingness to grant that prior discounting of the testimony and preferences of women and gays as adaptive was obviously wrong (134-6).+

For, in fact, Barnes cleverly applies the growing insights of the literature on (Fricker's) testimonial injustice and (Dotson's) testimonial smothering to undermine over-reliance of adaptive preference model (especially in the capability literature inspired by Nussbaum and Sen) to ignore first person testimony of disabled people.* (I am assuming here some familiarity with these concepts.) As she writes, "whether being disabled is somehow bad or suboptimal is precisely what's up for debate." (133)+  To be sure, Barnes allows that there are occasions one can still diagnose adaptive preferences in others, especially when there are fundamental conflicts between what a person says about herself and other factors of her well-being (but the discussion is a bit brief, see 140-1).

To understand the historical significance of Barnes's critical treatment of the misapplication of the adaptive preferences model it is worth briefly reminding ourselves of the rule it played in Elster's (1983) Sour Grapes, which formulated the modern conceptual apparatus of adaptive preferences (recall). (Barnes also mentions Sour Grapes.) He did so, in part, to combat certain perverse implications of utilitarianism (see chapters III.3-4 especially). What interests me here is that in Elster's account, one role for the invocation of adaptive preferences is to combat a certain form of status quo bias when one takes (historically conditioned) given wants or subjective preferences for granted (say in one's utility calculations in evaluating some policy or another). By giving a principled justification for discounting (some) existing preferences, the theorist who relies on the adaptive preferences model can propose normative improvements.

As an aside, this is not to deny that there is not some status quo bias built in Elster's approach. Elster takes political orders and regimes largely for granted and, while he allows changing of wants by “rational and public discussions,” (140 referring back to I.5 and its discussion of the political “transformation of preferences rather than aggregation” of preferences, (35)) his notion of “collective rationality” (42) has no space for the radical, even violent, transformation of institutions. Moreover, he embraces a further status quo bias by insisting that, while acknowledging that intuitions may be “culturally relative,” we “must require of a theory of justice that it does not strongly violate our ethical intuitions in particular cases” (137—emphasis added; to be sure, Elster is less optimistic than Rawls about possibility of consensus). As Michael Della Rocca taught me, this reliance on the method of reflective equilibrium has considerable status quo bias built into it.

By contrast, Barnes shows that there are two predictable risk of (moral and economic) experts relying on an adaptive preference models. First, and this is the one she emphasizes, is that (a) they put themselves in a situation of defending an imperfect status quo (that they themselves understand as moral) while, simultaneously, (b) discounting evidence that could correct the status quo. That is to say, the adaptive preference model does not generate methodological and conceptual incentives to self-correct. Second, and this is strongly implied by her treatment, the down-side risks of (let's stipulate, well-intentioned) application of the adaptive preference model is primarily born by often vulnerable member of society.

Given that the research ethics that I propose in light of methodological analytical egalitarianism is especially critical of approaches where the down-side risk of use/application by non-expert vulnerable, one might expect me to be very critical of the adaptive preferences model (as another danger of expert over-confidence in their own model [justness, etc.]). Strikingly, the adaptive preference model was, in part, designed to address the needs of the most vulnerable in the context of the history of oppression.

Not unlike Barnes, I don't think experts should never rely on an adaptive preference model. But experts and policymakers that rely on it should also be alert for the two foreseeable risks in the approach. As noted above, Barnes supplies us with a further test in application: do the preferences expressed by particular subjects cohere with other features of  the subjects' lives. (For example, if a victim of abuse says they're flourishing, but otherwise has lots of symptoms of depression.) This is an empirical question and requires considerable and careful contextual judgment(s). I would add, in addition, corrections to the very theory of adaptive preferences to account for the foreseeable and known cognitive and status quo biases of experts and policymakers alike. But that's for another time.

 

 

On "Brexit, Democracy, and Epistocracy"

This brings us to the central injustice of democracy, and why holding a referendum was a bad idea. Imagine, as an analogy, that you are sick. You go to a doctor. But suppose your “doctor” doesn’t study the facts, doesn’t know any medicine, and makes her decisions about how to treat you on a whim, on the basis of prejudice or wishful thinking. Imagine the doctor not only prescribes you a course of treatment, but literally forces you, at gunpoint, to accept the treatment.

We’d find this behavior intolerable. Your doctor owes you a duty of care. She owes it to you to deliver an expert opinion on the basis of good information, a strong background knowledge of medicine, and only after considering the facts in a rational and scientific way. To force you to follow the decisions incompetent and bad faith doctor is unjust.

But this is roughly what happens in democracy. Most voters are ignorant of both basic political facts and the background social scientific theories needed to evaluate the facts. They process what little information they have in highly biased and irrational ways. They decided largely on whim. And, worse, we’re each stuck having to put up with the group’s decision. Unless you’re one of the lucky few who has the right and means to emigrate, you’re forced to accept your democracy’s poorly chosen decisions.--Jason Brennan "Brexit, Democracy, and Epistocracy"

Jason Brennan can be trusted to never let a good crisis go to waste; he is using Brexit to peddle his anti-democratic sentiments and to offer up his medicine, the rule by experts (or epistocracy). Never mind that referenda are (thankfully) not the norm in liberal democracies, and that the particular referendum that occasioned his remarks was intended by the credentialed and smart (former) prime-minister David Cameron to settle an intra-parliamentary debate within the Conservative party rather than be used as a guide to policy. (Cameron never seriously contemplated losing the referendum which is clear from the fact that he deliberately avoided doing the one thing he promised to do if he lost: to invoke article 5o.) I offer three critical comments on his analysis.

First, regardless if one reflects on direct democracy (i.e., a referendum) or indirect democracy (voting for representatives) Brennan's analogy between going to a doctor and respecting the outcome of a vote is a false one. When one visits a physician the goal is not up for debate: the telos is given; it's health or restoring ordinary functioning as much as possible. Of course, there are exceptions to this (especially in cosmetic surgery and other forms of enhancement). There is a lot of room for nuance and ethical distinctions (not to mention important cases where there is no hope for restoring much of anything), but you don't go to a physician to have a good time or as leisure activity (etc.). By contrast, in democratic life, most of the ends and norms are up for debate and this debate is, in part, one of the aims of the exercise.

That is to say, we don't go to a physician in order to find out how to live and what the proper ends of one's life are. The claim in the previous sentence may be an error of modernity (although Plato's Symposium suggests it was already a problem in Ancient Athens)--maybe we should develop and train our physicians to become wise, too.The dis-analogy makes a huge difference. When ends are given, experts can guide in light of facts and constraints (means-ends rationality: "good information, a strong background knowledge of medicine, and only after considering the facts in a rational and scientific way.") When ends and the rules of the game are up for debate, the experts tend to give very partial advice. When economists tell us what is rational, they tend to assume that growth or full employment is good and they tend to ignore distributional effects, and they do not discuss all kinds of other quality of life issues and other important ends that other experts (e.g., sociologists, psychologists, ecologists, and criminologists (etc.) may focus on.

A striking fact of the British 'leave' vote is that it is concentrated in areas that benefit directly from EU spending, that is, poorer, older, and less educated areas (Cornwall, an area dependent also on tourism, has been used as an exemplar in this discussion). A lot of folk used this as evidence that leave voters are irrational (and ignorant). But that's only true if they understand themselves as aiming to increase their share of European handouts--what self-respecting voter would want that?

In his writings, Brennan simply takes it for granted that the rationality of a decision is based on an evaluation of its social "effects" and that there is agreement about the evaluation of these effects. And that such social consequences needs to be evaluated with "social scientific knowledge." Now, I am all for professional philosophers giving increased respect and hearing to social sciences (I work in a political science department). But we cannot assume that there is agreement over the desirability of effects. Lots of folk who voted 'remain' want open-borders in Europe (let's leave aside the issue of external borders). Let's stipulate that's great for the economy; it's also part of a certain life-style in which Europe's youth explore each other's countries and cultures (in part by working and studying abroad). The Cosmopolitan elites will easily slide into treating their preferences as constituting rationality. But that is not obvious. The 'leave' voters (let's stipulate) want no cross-border traffic (and no immigrants), and, let's stipulate they are harmed economically by their vote. Yet, if one introduces environmental considerations into one's analysis, then harming and reducing traffic is quite rational. (Before the Brexit campaign turned nasty there were quite a few environmentalists on the 'leave' side.)

Second, Brennan loves cherry-picking the facts on voter ignorance. Let me offer one of his favorite Memes:

Political scientists have been studying voter knowledge for the past 60 years. The results are uniformly depressing. Most voters in most countries are systematically ignorant of even the most basic political facts, let alone more the social scientific theories needed to make sense of these facts.

This is not a true state of the art in political science. In his work Brennan systematically ignores criticisms of the research he is relying on (see, e.g., Arthur Lupia) and he relies on the snobbishness of his readers (who themselves are fed a steady stream of ignorant voter stories by the press). In fact, Brennan and his readers are good at passing tests (in which one is quizzed on the "facts"). But voting is not such a test. In a representative democracy it is about selecting representatives and leaders, who are evaluated to echo Manin's Madisonian point along whatever dimension (a majority/plurality of) the electorate deems relevant. The Brexit campaign was very clearly a(n intemperate) debate about an image of Britain not primarily a debate about the facts. It is also a debate about sense-making, but not in the way Brennan uses it, but rather in a wider, diffuse sense. Whatever else 'leave' was about it was a rejection of forms of life and values that have become dominant in educated culture. And this gets me to the final, most important point.

Third, Brennan often pretends that epistocracy is somehow not existing and would be a "new system" worth trying. But many properly political decisions are farmed out to experts already: most obviously monetary and banking policy, which is run by independent central bankers and regulators--look how well that turned out. Brennan shows no interest in epistocratic failures (not to mention the evils of eugenics, etc.).

More important, across the western world, government today is the province of the educated. Long ago are the days when governments were job centers for the (well connected) uneducated. Colleges and universities are credentialing mills for bureaucracies and semi-government bureaucracies. While France may be on the extreme end in entrusting rule largely to a cadre of graduates of De École nationale d'administration (ENA), all liberal democracies are already run, in practice, by (to echo JFK) the brightest and best. These epistemocratic elites have created a two-tier polity: the credentialed are protected by the state and have lots of economic and judicial privileges; the uneducated are, well, left to fend for themselves harassed by law enforcement and technocracy.* Brennan notes that "all across the West, we’re seeing the rise of rise of angry, resentful, nationalist, xenophobic and racist movements, movements made up mostly of low-information voters." What he fails to recognize is that these are the effects of a political culture and institutions that are already highly epistocratic. Why prescribe a double dosage of a medicine that has nearly killed the patient?

 

 

Trump Panic; On "the Breakdown of Trust between Elites and Base..."

One thing is certain: If the Republican party had the same rules in 2015 as it did in 1915, Donald Trump would not be a problem. His entire candidacy is premised upon the breakdown of the relationship between the elites and the base, whose mutual accord has been central to the effectiveness of the postreform rules. For all its defects, the old nomination process, which placed power exclusively in the hands of the state and local organizations, would have dispatched Trump's candidacy with ruthless efficiency...

After this cycle, the Republican party desperately needs to reform its rules. This does not mean tinkering at the margins, playing with delegate allocation formulas and debate schedules, as the Republican National Committee did after 2012. The 1970s reforms allocated power within the party based on a premise of mutual trust and respect between the voters and the establishment. Without that foundation, the rules are a liability and need to be substantially redrafted. The real danger is not that a clownish demagogue like Trump will win the nomination this cycle, but that a demagogue who is not so much a clown eventually will.---Jay Cost, The Weekly Standard,

The mixture of democracy and free markets (and free movement of people) is unstable. This is due to the fact that markets are inherently disruptive, given that they aggregate the the constantly bombarded preferences of (thereby?) fickle consumers,  and that (democratically established and/or enforced) existing rules skew the outcomes toward those with political clout. As I noted before this instability can become toxic if, in the context of heterogenous populations, the status quo generates reasonable expectations that get violated--as they must given the way markets generate uncertain outcomes. In times of stagnation, increasing inequality, and huge gains for well-protected (rent-seeking) insiders, it is to be expected that populist appeals can be mapped onto some us/them distinction that allows some us to be the authentic, united people -- even a moral community -- that excludes elites and would be (inauthentic -- e.g., immigrants, wrong religions, 'inferior' ethnicities, etc. --) members of the people.* The electoral and political success of populism, and (more important) accompanying polarization and destabilization of the familiar status quo, in turn makes some of the elites mistrustful of democracy.

One such mistrust, familiar from libertarian circles (recall) with mistrust of redistribution and rent-seeking, sees in democracy a potent moral danger in which in the polling booth the uneducated, whom cannot grasp complex phenomena, make bad decisions in the voting booth that turn out to have immoral consequences. Such libertarians prefer either markets or experts (or both, but with preference for markets) over democracy (sometimes they prefer lots as a species of democracy). Of course, it is not just libertarians that may prefer expert rule--as I have noted the European Union is a technocratic enterprise in which, thanks to the fate of Weimar and the instability of Third Republic, democratic 'input' is kept to a minimum.

There is also a longstanding conservative mistrust of democratic, popular sovereignty (going back to Burke). The impact of the Donald Trump is re-activating this trope the Republican party. What makes Jay Cost's analysis noteworthy is not that he is openly calling for an end to the accessible, primary system of picking the party-standard bearer, but rather his analysis that what makes intra-party democracy possible is a kind of tacit social compact involving  mutual trust and respect between (party) 'base' and (party) 'elite.' This trust facilitates a structure in which "The [Republican] party voters possess the formal power to decide, but there is a vast infrastructure of donors, strategists, and insiders—an elite establishment—whose job is to control informally the people's decision." The intra-party success of populism (which is directed against the elite(s)) undermines that trust and respect (etc.).

As an aside, Goldwater-Reagan style conservativism was, itself, a successful, popular and (in its race-baiting moments, populist) revolt against moneyed, East coast elites (and the 'culture' of welfare/hand-outs, etc.).  This conservative movement fizzled out, after forty to fifty years of success, in the second term of G.W. Bush (Iraq, Wall Street, etc.). (Trump is clearly a very different kind of populist.)

Cost, who calls for a return to a more heavy handed (formal) elite-managed selection procedure to maintain the integrity and longevity of the institution, does not reflect on the causes of the breakdown of trust between base and elite (which has been manifested, in part, by successful electoral challenges to (powerful) Republican incumbents). In fact, Cost is merely expressing the elite side of the breakdown of the trust. One important way in which trust breaks down if (tacitly) agreed upon expectations are systematically violated. (This is why there is a close connection between justice, trust, and stability.) The conservative movement has always been a coalition between cultural and Christian conservatives with (a much smaller group of) libertarians (who tended to represent, sometimes uneasily, business interests). While this is not always and everywhere a natural coalition, it is not entirely strange: markets and open borders generate permanent disruptions, and, for all the benefits these may bring, the subsequent dislocation feeds a desire for cultural and social stability (and slowing down of change).

Cost names a real danger: that a demagogue who is not so much a clown (but still a bit!) eventually will win the nomination and, thus, have a shot at the Presidency. He does not name the other danger (exhibited by his piece, but prevalent in Europe, too): that the "vast infrastructure of donors, strategists, and insiders" -- the rich, the highly educated, and the technocrats -- will give up on  democracy as an end, and only see it as as a, dispensable, tool.

On Knowing We are Doomed, and Not Being Able to Act on It (social ἀκρασία)

The thesis that luxury had destroyed ancient European civilization actually originated from the ancients themselves, who were capable of formulating the best theoretical accounts of their own demise. This was not an explanation after the event, it was a prediction that had come out true. Whatever the problem with ancient societies, it was not their lack of theoretical understanding. Their problem was not actually with theory but with practice...Ultimately they went down altogether, while still remaining fully aware of their mistake...According to Rousseau...[t]he ancient failure was not because the theory was false but because the ancients did not follow their theory in practice. Istvan Hont Politics in a Commercial Society, 89-90. [In context, Hont is describing Rousseau's response to the so-called 'luxury debate' (recall yesterday's post.)]

According to Hont's analysis, Rousseau is not describing a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is, according to Merton, "in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the original false conception come true. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error." (Only if Rousseau's social theory were false, then it could be possible that the ancients suffered the consequences from a self-fulling prophecy.) I mention a self-fulfilling prophecy because it can generate a species of practical impotence; if one does not stop the effects/impacts of a self-fulfilling prophecy early enough (i.e., when it's description is still false-ish), then it becomes nearly impossible (i.e., once its description is true).

Rousseau is also not describing a species of fatalism, that is, "the view that we are powerless to do anything other than what we actually do." By Rousseau's lights (a) the ancients could have done otherwise [in some sense], and (b) they believed they could do otherwise. (Again, this is not to rule out the possibility that Rousseau is wrong about (a) or (b).) According to Omri Boehm's reception of Spinozistic fatalism (recall), fatalism naturally slides into nihilism (which is indeed a plausible disposition accompany a species of practical impotence.) On (b): the ancients articulated their theoretical knowledge in order to change a foreseeable, but not inevitable outcome. On (a): reflection on Rousseau's recipe for change (build new institutions and habits in which a society can act on knowledge) in light of ancient experience (and his social theory), suggests that the nature of 'this could have done otherwise' is a bit tricky given their institutions and practices. 

So, Rousseau is describing a kind of social akrasia (from the Greek ἀκρασία), that is, the possibility of a society acting against its better judgment and, thereby, demising. (A mortal collective action problem, as it were.) Of course, -- unless one is an economist who thinks all revealed behavior just is optimal, that is, with a tacit belief in theodicy -- non-lethal forms of social akrasia are not un-common (which is why I specified the 'demise' part)--fill in your favorite examples (American sugar subsidies, Dutch housing policy, etc.). To be clear, not all societies always value (earthly) survival; so if people are knowingly willing to die for a way of life (a God, a culture, philosophy, etc.) then, even if outsiders find their behavior delusional or akratic, it does not count as social akrasia. Obviously, there are complex cases where societies are in denial about the truth (or their good) -- say, during war fever, or bubble economies -- which may count as akratic, despite, perhaps, not meeting the standards of the definition. 

Now it's easy to take for granted that the presence of certain institutions will prevent (excessive)  social akrasia: modern (and independent) science, free speech/press, accountable and replaceable government, educated elites, and, even, knowledge about how to tackle collective action problems. But what makes the case(s) contemplated by Rousseau so interesting, is that he is describing (oligarchic) societies where the political, economic, and intellectual elites overlap greatly. So, where social akrasia is not caused by a kind of disunity among rulers, but rather by mistaken, downright foolish behavior.*

Only a fool will assume that purportedly advanced or developed (or civilized) societies cannot act foolishly.

 

On Casual Cruelty in Philosophy

I have sat in philosophy seminars where it was asserted that I should be left to die on a desert island if the choice was between saving me and saving an arbitrary non-disabled person. I have been told it would be wrong for me to have my biological children because of my disability. I have been told that, while it isn’t bad for me to exist, it would’ve been better if my mother could’ve had a non-disabled child instead. I’ve even been told that it would’ve been better, had she known, for my mother to have an abortion and try again in hopes of conceiving a non-disabled child. I have been told that it is obvious that my life is less valuable when compared to the lives of arbitrary non-disabled people. And these things weren’t said as the conclusions of careful, extended argument. They were casual assertions. They were the kind of thing you skip over without pause because it’s the uncontroversial part of your talk.

Now, of course, no one has said these things to me specifically. They haven’t said “Hey, Elizabeth Barnes, this is what we think about you!” But they’ve said them about disabled people in general, and I’m a disabled person. Even just thinking about statements like these, as I write this, I feel so much – sadness, rage, and more than a little shame. It’s an odd thing, a hard thing, to try to take these emotions and turn them into interesting philosophy and careful arguments.—Elizabeth Barnes, writing at Philosoph-her [HT Meena Krishnamurthy]

I sometimes fall into despair and think that my professional community, analytical philosophy, -- in which I have invested so much of my life and identity -- cannot be redeemed. It’s one thing to note, echoing Ruth Chang (recall and here), that our intellectual reflexes and moral sentiments are deformed by our disciplinary education; it’s another thing to note that as professionals in a zero-sum institutional environment we often lionize bullies (recall and here & here) and exhibit a party-line attitude toward those that approach philosophy from alternative viewpoints and with different sensibilities. But Barnes, who is one of my favorite metaphysicians, reports something far worse: our “casual assertions” exhibit much cruelty, even inhumanity, qua philosophers.

For, in analytical philosophy, “talks” are carefully prepared because we know that audiences are unforgiving—and that our intended discussion can easily be derailed by zealous scrutiny of details, even our throw-away remarks. (This explains how common it still is to encounter fully read papers.) We pride ourselves on our clarity, rigor, and care, after all, and we prepare focused talks. So, according to the self-image we embrace, we don’t let anything into these talks without some reflection and scrutiny. Barnes’s report reminds us that in the intellectual air we breathe, in the uncontroversial-background-assumptions that we collectively take for granted, there are noxious, even poisonous humors that are fully compatible with civility, politeness, and embracing S5 as the true modal logic.

I saw Barnes’s post widely shared with approval and admiration at blogs and facebook; even so, I puzzle over the lack of sympathetic shame, even embarrassment over our practices. For, Barnes’s experience(s) qua disabled person are not isolated. The history of philosophy is one long record of casually expressed norms of superiority (e.g., recall and here), and there is little reason to think that we do better than earlier generations (because our training is not geared toward preventing it).

As a sociological aside, Barnes notes that she had deferred her work on "social and feminist philosophy – especially philosophical issues related to disability" until after "having established a certain amount of professional security." That Barnes has achieved such security is a great achievement. But her frank admission suggests how deplorable the state of the profession is given that her calculation about deferring such work is -- given existing norms and incentive/reward structures -- eminently rational. We have, as a discipline, undoubtedly missed out on more voices that have never achieved the kind of security Barnes has and, thereby, have missed out on lots of arguments. This suggests that the intellectual status quo is probably more fragile than folk realize because its commitments have not been stress-tested against the best possible arguments. 

Some other time I hope to return to a key theme in Barnes's post, which is about the bind she found herself in because she can't express her justified anger ("you are angry and sad about what is being said about your disability or how you are being treated because of your disability") without further professional cost or more engagements that generate anger and sadness (etc.). But here I want to focus on a feature of the passage quoted at the top of this post. 

Barnes allows, perhaps for rhetorical purposes, that some cruel thoughts are less reprehensible if they would be “conclusions of careful, extended argument.” I am less sure. Arguments are tools at the service of practical reasoning, theoretical rationality, and perhaps, even the path toward truth; they are not, even the "careful, analytically rigorous" ones, self-vindicating in virtue of being “careful arguments.”[1] (Barnes does not suggest this, so we may agree here.) There may be nothing more comical within professional philosophy than witnessing purported hyper-caution about one’s premises and inferential steps that are conjoined with an utter lack of judgment about, say, the nature of the issue at hand. Odds are that if cruelty is the consequence of a careful, extended argument then something has gone wrong somewhere; the lack of reserve in sharing the argument is a further sign that something is amiss.*

Now, most folk don't knowingly exhibit cruelty (one assumes, although sometimes I wonder). But it is not uncommon that when somebody is confronted with the impact of his/her casual cruelty (or carefully argued for cruelty) one often does not encounter a dispassionate attempt at exploring previously accepted norms of superiority, but one receives eloquent statements on the evils of 'political correctness,' the importance of 'freedom of speech,' or the deplorable state of 'call out culture' (or unwillingness to tolerate satire, hypersensitivity, etc.). To be called to account for the unintended, perhaps, consequence of one's (casual) remarks (or careful argument) is no fun, especially if it happens somewhat publicly, and so some defensiveness is to be expected. But it is noteworthy that such a response entails a further lack of recognition of the victim, of the harm(s) done, and even of one's own role as an agent within a variety of moral communities. There is an additional source of shame lurking here; for while Plato and Aristotle restricted the origin of philosophy to wonder, as Barnes more correctly notes, other painful emotions, including "sadness, rage, and more than a little shame," as well as, perhaps, despair, can also be the starting place for true philosophy.

On Diminished Support for Universities

Just a personal note to you, beyond the standard leftist ideologies that you support, do you also welcome ideologies that you reject?  Is it analytical ideology you like or your political team's winning? As someone who doesn't share your politics but benefits from the nonideological portion of your writing, I usually turn off during your political chest beating and fist pumping.  Why don't you interrogate the dominant leftist ideologies that actually control the universities? Getting a sense of how overwhelmingly monolithic university politics actually are might help you to understand why the outside political coalition for supporting universities full of committed ideologues is diminishing. Who wants to fund institutions dedicated to ridiculing and despising them? Thanks again for your insights and writing (especially the nonideological bits!)--Anonymous.

My comments policy has reduced my stress level compared to when I was moderating comments at NewAPPS. I get fewer comments, relatively fewer obnoxious comments, and I can make snap decisions on what to accept without second thoughts. Not surprisingly, when people's views are connected to their public identities they tend to be more cautious, especially when they suspect -- correctly or not -- that their views may hinder things they value, too, like friendships, professional advancement, and reputation (etc.). The benefits of moderation should not be underestimated, but obviously it may also generate a status quo bias. Even if the status quo is very pleasant (at least to those that benefit) this also reduces the opportunity of learning. Balloonists are happy to take the high ground but I recognize that other blogs may have other interests -- some noble (inclusivity, openness and experimentation) and some less so (drive traffic and advertising numbers) -- and will encourage anonymous comments. Anyway, it's nice to be informed so kindly that some of my readers are willing to keep reading me even when they do not agree with my purported ideological positions.

I welcome analytical ideology studies because it is developing useful conceptual tools that will facilitate better analysis of political events and movements; it is also regenerating analytical philosophy as such. This is useful because analytical philosophy had grown too comfortable with technocracy and too quietest in light of major social upheavals. Regardless of the ideological orientation of those most prominent within analytical ideology studies, it is foreseeable that the tools they are developing will be used to analyze many kinds of ideologies and ideological stances, including ones cherished by those active in it today. Analytical philosophy does not have the intellectual resources to prevent this.

It is amusing to note the lack of irony among those (including my anonymous commentator) that applaud the use of state power in order to curtail or prevent the lefty political orientation of university professors. Leaving aside irony (which gets tiresome), American elite universities thrive in insanely competitive global markets. Yes, there are subsidies in all kinds of ways, but the existing patterns of outcomes are a consequence of lots of free and responsible individual choices within the market for higher education among students, their parents, university administrators, and faculty all in light of global developments, changing job markets, and public opinion. For good or for ill the very best public universities quite clearly emulate the elite private ones (Cf. my imitation of Veblen). I welcome ideological competition and it is good that within philosophy some programs self-consciously steer non-standard ideological courses (e.g. Arizona), just as it is great that within the philosophical blogosphere there are different options (recall).

This is not to deny that philosophers and professors more generally can take the political for granted. It is, in fact, to be expected that contestable and controversial values will be contested by political forces--I blog about this in terms of the Socratic Problem. My own read for why "the outside political coalition for supporting universities" has diminished is subtly different than the one proposed by my interlocutor: it has more to do with a decline of a certain form of civic religion in the American heartland much indebted to late 19th century Protestantism in which education is valued alongside dramatic demographic and economics shifts such that the rich can expect to exit safely from local institutions (including public universities). You can help destroy Madison if you expect your kids and grandkids to go to Yale (where they can be taught how to think carefully about ideology). 

I do not deny the claim that there is considerable group-think even among those that pride themselves on independence of thought. I know of tenure cases that strongly appear to be decided on ideological grounds. Like all human institutions, we find sources of corruption within professional philosophy and the academies that support it. We are, I fear, also in the midst of a newfound receptivity toward rule by the intellectual and educated elite among the wealthy and highly educated and an increasing distrust of popular democracy. Ironically, the most vocal supporters of this trend are on the Libertarian right (e.g. Jason Brennan), but in Europe the technocrats are playing with the idea of substituting lotteries for ballot boxes, and the novelists imagine submission to a form of political Islam. Undoubtedly, Stateside, Liberals were too fond of appealing to the sophisticated judgment of elite judges when they could not win elections and, unsurprisingly, we have seen Conservatives emulating their practices: good tricks get emulated which is why the first one to do so bears a heavier responsibility, if history knows any morality.

On Self-Undermining Skepticism

A few days ago, I attended a fascinating talk by Susanna Rinard in which she engages with an external world skeptic. I don't reveal much by saying that she aims to show that such a position is self-undermining. As she noted when she introduced the paper, her debunking strategy of skepticism is an alternative to the recent consensus that the skeptic is best ignored and to be left to his own devices (recall my criticism of Williamson on exactly this point). While I have some sympathy with the idea that some positions really do not deserve the time of day, and I also understand why one prefers to avoid engaging with folk who do not seem to engage in good faith (and with charity, receptivity, etc.), it would be very odd if philosophers simply gave up on reflecting on skepticism--it's a topic on which science is silent and no other intellectual discipline seems capable of addressing it. Yet, it is an enduring philosophical position.

A skeptic ought not be very moved by strategies that focus on how skepticism is rationally self-undermining. I first encountered this strategy, I think, in Putnam's Reason, Truth, and History, and I thought it not a winning approach. For, in particular, a whole strand of skepticism is motivated by recognition that reason has a general tendency to be self-undermining (Hume  exhibits this in action in the Treatise). So, rather than seeing this as a problem for the skeptic, a skeptic will understand it, perhaps melancholically, as a hard-won mature insight into the human condition. Each time a skeptical argument is shown to be self-refuting, the skeptic will say, 'of course!' After all, the skeptic might say, 'this insight that our reason is self-undermining, is on par with the embrace of fallibilism in the sciences. Perhaps these insights are at bottom the same.'

To avoid misunderstanding, in the previous paragraph I do not have in mind those that, say, embrace the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR). For, one can also be driven to a skepticism about reason if one thinks that too much of experience is founded on brute facts that are incompatible with the PSR.

So, do I then secretly agree with those that think that skepticism is best ignored? No. First, exploring the ways in which skeptical arguments are self-undermining always illuminates the philosophical land-scape. It generates the same kind of benefits as exploring conceptual relations in impossible (or idealized) worlds. Second, I do allow that skepticism can be refuted, but just not by showing that it leads to formal contradiction. That is to say, for a skeptic any argument is dispensable. Rather, one has to vindicate reason's ability as such. It is obvious why professional folk who urgently want to get on with professional projects prefer to avoid such a daunting and, perhaps, circular task. But those that understand philosophy as a slow amble, and who embrace her detours, may have something to teach us something firmer, too.

On Civilization

"Do you know who . . . I am?'' Tyson asked in disbelief when Ayer urged him to desist: ''I'm the heavyweight champion of the world.'' ''And I am the former Wykeham professor of logic,'' Ayer answered politely. ''We are both pre-eminent in our field. I suggest that we talk about this..."--Quoted in The New York Times.

We, however “we" are constituted, must draw on ourselves through an inward look, of picturing something that we cannot see, of making a composite and being satisfied with a rough outline that allows us to cope and carry on.--M.A. Khan.

Civilization is no more than the art of keeping conversation going. If this much is right, then it should not necessarily be identified with prowess in technology or the sciences or particular social organizations emanating from Europe. Rather it is a skill that promotes mutual accommodation and modest forms of receptivity. It may also involve a species of courage, as when Freddy Ayer confronted Mike Tyson, but in well-ordered societies this courage would be rarely required.

One might think that in the previous paragraph I have just projected my preference for useless talk and transformed it into a fundamental good. If you have a sense of humor, and are familiar with my fondness for quoting Hume, you may quote Hume against me:

The Bramins [sic] assert, that the world arose from an infinite spider, who spun this whole complicated mass from his bowels, and annihilates afterwards the whole or any part of it, by absorbing it again, and resolving it into his own essence. Here is a species of cosmogony, which appears to us ridiculous; because a spider is a little contemptible animal, whose operations we are never likely to take for a model of the whole universe...And were there a planet, wholly inhabited by spiders, (which is very possible) this inference would there appear as natural and irrefragable.--David Hume.*

There is some truth to the charge that like a spider's fondness for spiders, I am merely equating civilization with philosophical activity. Even so, my ilk, professional philosophers, are not really committed to civilization; here I don't have merely those, who seem to care mostly about winning debates, in mind. Rather, I am primarily thinking about the more kindly ones that are committed to the idea that conversation can be halted by truth, knowledge, agreement, or consensus, and, further, that, in fact, our inquiries and activities aim at these. So, while civilization can be philosophical (I return to this below) not all philosophy is, despite the presence of other virtues, civilized.

To be civilized has a bad reputation: first, it stands accused of hypocrisy by those familiar with the conjunction of 'European' (or 'American,' 'Judeo-Christian,' etc.) and 'Civilization,' while noting that the track-record of such societies includes genocide, slavery, colonialism, pillage, and an infinite variety of other forms of oppression, etc. Second, from another side it is presented as accommodationist and naive for its refusal to draw steadfast lines in the sand between them and us. By contrast, even if when forced to recognize the existence of enemies, the civilized insist -- to paraphrase Dayan**--  that if one wants to make peace, one doesn't talk to one's friends. One talks to enemies even if they hold a gun in their hand. That is to say, by understanding civilization as a political and social skill, we recognize that it aims at ending and preventing the state of war; from the vantage point developed here, 'the clash of civilizations' is a contradiction in terms. 

The first charge is based on equivocation. From the vantage point of true civilization, there is no excuse for domination. So, while civilization does not require equality or mutual respect, it requires mutual accommodation. One might worry that this just entrenches unfairness or, worse, status quo biases and so civilization is just an expression of self-interest of the powerful. There is an element of truth to this (third) charge, but it is generally even more in the interest of the weak to be part of the conversation. Either way, a defense of civilization should not be confused with a theory of justice (which may also be in the interest of the powerful).

The previous paragraph reminds us that civility is not an intrinsic part of civilization. To be civil is to conform to norms that govern a community of equals (originally citizens). It is intrinsic to civility that there are insiders and outcasts. This is why even though civility may be a means toward keeping a conversation going, the demand for civility can be so easily abused as a tool of oppression.+

Above I suggested that philosophy and civilization are not necessarily mutually antagonistic. I can now state philosophy's role in civilization: it is to teach the skills and develop the concepts that allow conversations to be continued++ or, alternatively, the state of war to be held at bay.

What words, images, and principles are you willing to die for?

What words, images, and principles are you willing to die for?

That's the question (hereafter 'The Question') after last week's assassination of Charlie Hebdo's editorial staff and cartoonists posed to those of us -- e.g., journalists, academics, cartoonists, publicists, politicians, artists, etc. -- that live by peddling words and images to various audiences. It's not a new question; earlier in the week I called attention to the fate of Socrates, and it has been revived even in the relatively law-abiding, gun-poor environments of Northwestern Europe with the assasinations of politicians (e.g., Olof Palme; Pim Fortuyn), aspiring politicians (Utøya island massacre), and political commentators (Theo Van Gogh).* Such targets -- the victims of let's call them, 'politicized crimes' -- have in common with more ordinary terror attacks that they are 'soft,' that is, that they are relatively unprotected and that the moment of attack is relatively unexpected. But unlike ordinary victims of terror, the victims of politicized crimes draw attention to themselves by their active construction of the public sphere.+ The Question has become ever more acute with the rise of suicide bombers and other politicized killers that are very evidently willing to die for their principles.

The whole idea of legally protected freedom of expression is designed to diffuse The Question. If only the very brave or foolish participate in the public sphere then it is likely that all kinds of insights and positions never get articulated with the care and expertise required to guide the life of and constitute the polity. But this open public sphere requires not just a government to live by its own rules, but also capability and willingness to protect its own public sphere by having a monopoly on violence (and arms). While undoubtedly more can be done to secure safe participation in a public sphere, there is in governments a tendency for policing and security-measures overreach, which, paradoxically undermines an open public sphere and, indirectly, Liberal society.

An exclusive focus on security does not address the reasons why people may wish to kill (and die) for their beliefs. Political terrorists are not random natural facts; they are (if we leave aside the children among them) agents that are animated by a whole host of commitments, feelings, aspirations, and ideologies. That is to say, while undoubtedly there are many security-driven ways of preventing political attacks, these do nothing to undermine and may, perhaps, reinforce the experienced intentional world(s)** of would-be-politicized-killers.

This last point is especially important because many of the politicized killers are not strange, undercover invaders from foreign places. Rather they are home-grown; they have turned militant despite (perhaps because of) being quite familiar with the norms, aspirations, and even rewards of an arms-free public sphere. I leave it to the social scientists to help explain various social sources of militancy among a subset of those born in the European West. But part of the issue is also ideology. The nub of the matter is that evidently our Western normative and social commitments are  displaced at the level of individual psychology among part(s) of the population.

It's at this point of the analysis that nearly all commentators focus on the varieties of militant Islam, which quite evidently generates motivational power to some people to kill and die for its principles. As I noted a few days ago, Justin Smith, an eminent philosophical scholar who lives and works in Paris, has been among the most intelligent and interesting philosophical commentators on the assassination of the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo. He puts his point as follows:

it's a great shame that political Islamism today perceives an equivalence between the symbolic and the real that make an act of vengeance of this scale seem like a fair trade. I recall that one horrible, amateur film ridiculing Mohammed a few years ago; they interviewed some kid in Egypt whose reaction was: 'Well, how would you feel if we made a movie making fun of, say, Abraham Lincoln?' He sincerely didn't understand that no one would care.

Today when the assassins were fleeing toward their getaway car, they shouted: On a vengé le prophète Mohammed. On a tué Charlie Hebdo.++ One cannot help but think: there is a double confusion here. Not just one but two fictional characters have been mistaken for real people. And twelve real people have been killed as a result.--Justin Smith.

Now unlike most commentators, in his blog posts Smith is clear that Charlie Hebdo offered not just a willingness to die (Stéphane Charbonnier has been quite explicit about this), but as Smith explains (here, here, here), an alternative, life-affirming even joyous and raunchy set of commitments that challenged many forms of powers and ideology (including Islamic ones) at the level of affect as much as reason.

Even so, the passage quoted from Smith contains some missteps. Smith's "political Islam" fails to do justice to the Islamic political movements (inside and outside of Europe) that do not promote or condone (even tacitly) the killing of  folk in the European public sphere. Given that there are political movements in Europe that are extremely intolerant/hostile toward all of Islam (and Smith is clearly no fan of these movements), Smith's wording is unfortunate.

More important, there is, in fact, no opposition between the "symbolic and the real." (There is an opposition between the real and the illusory.) In particular, when we are dealing with social reality, the symbolic and the real can coincide, but need not. This connects to another, more serious misstep in Smith's analysis. Muḥammad is not a fictional character. He was a historical figure who (among other social scripts (recall)) played political and religious role(s) in his own life and thereafter. The symbolic is constituted (albeit non-exhaustively) by such roles. (It is not impossible that a fictional Muhammad could also play such symbolic roles, but that's not my concern.) The symbolic matters here because it's what animates or gives meaning to the experienced intentional world of individuals, including the would-be-killers and those that sympathize with them.

So Smith is absolutely right that the "Egyptian kid" in his example fails to understand the symbolic organization and commitments of contemporary Americans. Having said that, plenty of Americans get very upset about flag-burning; so Smith's Egyptian kid could have found a better example for his case.  The point here is not that every society has symbols it is touchy about (although it is not irrelevant); rather it misses the point to say about such a symbol, 'oh well, it's just fictional.'

Furthermore, Smith is right to note (and we can nod to Nietzsche's analysis of Lex Talionis) that in revenge-killing there is an element of trade that restores a balance within a community. Despite the fact that the killers of Charlie Hebdo's editorial staff and cartoonists do not conform to and violently transgress the laws of the land, their words, if accurately quoted, suggests that they, too, recognize, perhaps implicitly, that they belong to a community in which their victims play a symbolic (even sacrificial) role.

Much to my surprise Smith insists that contemporary Jihadists "are entirely unable to interpret the Charlie Hebdo cartoons." (His ire is also directed at professors at American universities, but I will ignore them here.) This strikes me as confused  about the nature of the symbolic. Images play multiple roles and functions in different symbolic systems/organisations sometimes simultaneously--some philosophers, of course, cannot abide multiplicity of meaning, but if they allow such a possibility cartoons would be on the very short-list. There is no true interpretation of the symbolic. (To avoid confusion: there are symbolic systems, of course, that are governed by truth.) While we can allow that the Jihadists failed to understand all the intended complexities of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, they discerned in some of these images satire (and worse) of their commitments.+++

Finally, it's possible, of course, that one can die because of a mistaken interpretation of one's words, images, and principles. That's the stuff (with a nod to Oedipus) of tragedy. If one participates in the public sphere with highly affective images and words that mistake is probably not unexpected. It is also possible -- I think this happened to Stéphane Charbonnier -- that one dies both for a principle one embraces and for a hostile interpretation of one's work that is offered from a vantage point one does not share.

(here, here, here), including satire.) a genuine alternative, life-affirming joyous even raunchy set of of commitments one that was as challenging to Islam as it was to many other ideologies and political powers.

On Philosophy’s search for the ‘naturally articulate’ victim; ‘White men saving brown women from brown men.’

Our Indian government need not proselytize to offend the religious feelings of the people, for when confined to its most strictly civil functions it will do so equally. And so it has been found already in the few feeble efforts that have made to establish civil justice. Our mistake has lain, not in making these efforts, but in fearing to make them with a high hand. We have indeed been playing a double game. In our treatment of the Sepoys – first in raising them from the highest case, and allowing them (as well as the Zemindars) to ill-treat and oppress the people of lower caste, second in cherishing their idolatry – we have governed like heathens, while in abolishing the burning of widows, and allowing converts to inherit property, we have governed like Europeans, and have even sometimes let in a little Christianity by the back door. It is this appearance of two-facedness especially which conveys the notion of weakness to the native mind, while at the same time it evokes that murderous feeling of suspicion, which in conquered nations and Orientals is the parent of internecine war.—T.H. Green "British Rule and Policy in India" (undergraduate essay, ca 1857), in Miscellaneous Writings, Speeches and Letters" (edited by Peter Nicholson), p. 24.

Outside (though not completely so) the circuit of the international division of labor, there are people whose consciousness we cannot grasp if we close off our benevolence by constructing a homogeneous Other referring only to our own place in the same of the Same or the Self…It would also question the implicit demand, made by intellectuals who choose a 'naturally articulate' subject of oppression…This benevolent first-world appropriation and reinscription of the Third World as an Other is the founding characteristic of much third-worldism in the US human sciences today." Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,(1988) "Can the Subaltern Speak?" 84 (see also: the "ferocious standardizing benevolence of most US and Western European human-scientific radicalism (recognition by assimilation.)" (90))+

Derrida is hard to read; his real object of investigation is classical philosophy. Yet he is less dangerous when understood than the first-world intellectual masquerading as the absent nonrepresenter who lets the oppressed speak for themselves."--Spivak (87)

A very youthful Green (recall yesterday's post) is writing in the context of the 1857 Indian Revolt.* While he is very critical of the manner of British Imperialism (the "double game" and "two-facedness"), which facilitates enhanced oppression of non-favored castes, in this youthful piece he does not question the fact of of British rule. On the contrary, there is an undeniable hierarchical ethnocentrism (European vs backward 'native' minds)—the "Orientals" seem to have essentially "murderous feeling of suspicion." If anything, the piece proposes better government for India by reforming it toward a "European" style of government with impartial rule of law and more room for Christian proselytizing (and, more offending of "the religious feelings of the people" and less "cherishing" of "idolatry"). If we only focus on Green's embrace of imperialism and ethnocentrism, we might miss the benevolent and humanitarian impulse; after all he takes great pride in "abolishing the burning of widows;" that is to say, we might easily imagine, if we could resurrect Green, him responding (anachronistically) that, perhaps, as things turned out British rule was all things considered bad, but that we should not ignore the ways in which the cause of, say, universal human rights (including freedom of religion) had been promoted by colonial attempts to spread 'civilization.' After all, Green is proudly calling attention to the ending of – and I turn to Spivak's description -- the practice in which the "Hindu widow ascends the pyre of the dead husband and immolates herself upon it…the abolition of this rite by the British has been generally understood as a case of 'White men saving brown women from brown men.'" (Spivak, (93)) Green's remarks are notable today, in part, because 'Western' intellectuals and governments have not lost their appetite to impose their 'benevolent' views on others, and, in part, that our governments, international organizations, and even many NGOs continue to support policies that, promote sometimes with the most noble intentions, the "double game" throughout the world (see this commentary by Saba Fatima on the Nobel award to Malala Yousafza).

Spivak's "Can the Subaltern Speak?" challenges, among many other things, the human and common philosophical impulse among the educated to take upon oneself the task of theorizing and speaking on behalf of others; to be an advocate is a noble task, of course. But it can easily slide into noxious paternalism, or 'the expert knows best,' where one's own incentives and complicity (in the division of labor) are happily obscured. This is a familiar enough to reflective people; yet, there continue to be impatient improvers who think that it is fine for others, especially, to pay some price of their humanitarianism as long as the net benefits work out nicely [by their chosen measure(s).] Since these are themes in my own analytical egalitarianism, it is no surprise to regular readers that I note Spivak as a fellow-traveler (she got there first)!

Spivak also diagnoses the danger of privileging what she calls "'a naturally articulate' subject of oppression." In what follows, I limit myself to a reflection on how (professional) philosophy is implicated in such a danger. While my self-limitation does not do full justice to Spivak's paper, this is also part of the point of her piece, which, notably, is also a defense of Derrida (and a sustained criticism of the "prophets" Deleuze and Foucault).