Digressions&Impressions

On Bureaucrat Philosophers

During my Summer blogging break philosophy's modern association and intertwining with bureaucracy was highlighted in two stimulating essays, which both received considerable social media attention (by philosophy standards): first, in his moving, autobiographical essay, "Two Tendencies," on what we might call the praxis and orientation of philosophy, Liam Kofi Bright articulates a kind of "dualism" in which one of the major tendencies is titled, 'Basically Pleasant Bureaucrat.' Second, while writing at DailyNous about the tensions, even incommensurable value conflicts, that may arise when one innovates in teaching in light of the values of the underlying philosophical source material, C. Thi Nguyen, distinguishes among the roles (and values associated with these roles) of "Teacher, Bureaucrat, Cop."

Now, in C. Thi Nguyen's essay the bureaucrat is explicitly associated with "fairness" in grading and (in more "authoritarian" role) the enforcement of the rules. For those of us who work in systems where the academic is a civil servant (as the Dutch system was in living memory), or where the process of how one assigns grades can be evaluated and challenged at and by exam committees (who in turn have to show evidence of due process and proper application of rules to possible appeals committees), C. Thi Nguyen's challenges of combining pedagogic or mentoring principles with bureaucratic ones are undoubtedly familiar. His lively descriptions of the conflicting considerations involved resonated with me. (Go read the essay!)

However, fairness is not really a bureaucratic principle.* Impartiality and rule-following (and, as he suggests, rule-enforcement) are. I noticed C. Thi Nguyen's emphasis on fairness because in my own Dutch context (teaching at a huge state school) students and administrators alike will use 'equality' -- in the sense of treating like alike not in the sense of giving everyone the same actual grade -- when they focus on the proper process of grading. Despite the different vocabularies, C. Thi Nguyen and my Dutch students both capture the same commitment or principle that indeed is meant to block species of judgment and discrimination, let alone prevent any measure, if that were possible, of how the soul has been turned to the good, to infiltrate one's grading practices.

Once higher education is shaped by government funding in a Weberian state, in which degrees play certain certification roles in public life (or where students can sue over their  grades), it seems inevitable that some bureaucratic principles seep into and constrain professors' evaluative or grading practices in virtue of the fact that we are functionaries of potentially huge organizations. To what degree that undermines the very possibility of a philosophical education I set aside here.

Because he is vocal admirer of Carnap, even one of our foremost exemplifications of what (the Spirit of) a Left Vienna philosophy would look like today, I was not surprised that Liam Kofi Bright embraces the cognitive division of labor and even bureaucracy. Even so his characterization of the Basically Pleasant Bureaucrat surprised me, and in order to explain that I quote the paragraph that introduces it: 

The first tendency is that which is most visible in my published work. Here the thought is that philosophy is a sort of public service work, a small part of the greater enterprise of generating knowledge that can be put to use in bettering our estate. The work is essentially service orientated (Dotson 2015) or Mohist in nature (Johnston 2010) — to work in this tendency one must be trying to find what combination of beliefs, technologies, and social practices will best foster flourishing (including, of course, refining the idea of “flourishing”). At a high level this will involve identifying and resolving social problems. These are cases wherein one finds “the failure of an organised social group to realise its group ideals, through the inability to adapt certain desired lines of action to conditions of life” (Du Bois 1898, 3). Upon finding these one must work out what needs to change — the ideals, the actions, the conditions of life, etc — and work out how these changes may be effected. However it turns out that doing this effectively requires a huge division of labour and so most of the time one will not work at that high level of abstraction, but rather on more specific technical puzzles. None the less, the essence of this tendency is to commit to this project of perpetual collaborative amelioration.

Now, one reason I admire Liam Kofi Bright is how he can find points of contact, even overlap, between purportedly different philosophical traditions. In our discipline, which values disagreement and the focused objection and sharply polices standards boundaries, this capacity to see, say, how Master Mo's ameliorative, egalitarian consequentialism anticipates (say) Carnap's without having to diminish our admiration for Carnap is lovely (and politically important). [It's also lovely how he can turn his wide reading into stimulating reflection for the rest of us!]

Now, public service is a bureaucratic value. But Liam Kofi Bright also demands the kind of initiative (e.g., "one must work out what needs to change — the ideals, the actions, the conditions of life, etc — and work out how these changes may be effected") that one does not naturally associate with bureaucratic life, so there is a latent tension here in the way the first tendency has been labelled. (I return to this below.)

But I was especially surprised by the attempted, seamless integration of the Basically Pleasant Bureaucratic perspective with Dotson's conception (recall) of service philosophy. Now, to begin to explain why, I first (with apologies) quote myself on service philosophy:

Dotson observes that the professional philosophy she encountered is incapable of being self-justifying. This is no surprise because the dominant traditions (e.g., analytical philosophy, scientific philosophy, etc.) rest on broadly consequentialist foundations that presuppose shared values. The tacit elitism that could be counted on to do the real work -- that a life of philosophy is best -- does not sit well rhetorically in a democratic culture. Genuine and secure axiological foundations are not easy to come by in an intellectual culture that is scientistic. Dotson's attractive vision turns the weakness of the recent tradition around and turns it into a virtue: philosophy is not self-justifying or autonomous, but a good tool in the service of other ends. So despite many differences in sensibility, she is, thus, not far removed from the spirit of, say, Left Vienna. (D&I, 03/24/2015)

So, one may well wonder why I act all surprised at Liam Kofi Bright's stance if I myself had already noticed what one may call the 'formal resonance' between Dotson's and his approach to philosophy in which a certain kind of consequentialism and externally given (and optative) ends combine. But, of course, sensibility matters.

For, while in practice the service philosopher may well find herself advising government and shape the bureaucracy, she explicitly receives her ends from social movements and activists and joins in their (ahh) praxis ("I have learned and continue to learn living and working as a Black feminist, epistemology-based activist.") And without wishing to romanticize either bureaucrat or activist, the activist is willing, if necessity demands it, to break rules and violate norms in a way completely orthogonal to the bureaucrat.** 

At this point one  may well object on Liam Kofi Bright's behalf that he may not be adverse to taking guidance from activists, nor abhor a revolutionary impulse. After all in the paragraph I have quoted, he quotes Du Bois, who eventually, late in life, joined the communist party because “Capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction. No universal selfishness can bring social good to all. Communism—the effort to give all men what they need and to ask of each the best they can contribute—this is the only way of human life.” (Quoted from Angela Davis.)

But when Liam Kofi Bright quotes Du Bois, he is quoting from his reformist period. And Liam Kofi Bright himself explicitly advocates "amelioration" even over many generations ("Philosophy conceived of as [the building of] la Sagrada Família.") And while amelioration and even conceptual engineering is formally compatible with some species of activism, there is a different attitude in each toward both the disciplinary and social status quo. So, even if we ignore the virtues of bureaucracy, and treat his first tendency in terms of a highly skilled, even experimental Basically Pleasant Bricklayer there is an important contrast between it and the spirit of service philosophy (relative to the status quo).

I also suspect that there is a more important difference between service philosophy and the BPB tendency. I am circumspect here because I do not self-identify with each approach and I don't have recent phenomenological access toward my speculation: but I suspect the activist philosopher can experience the spiritual satisfaction that the "alienated labour" (that, as Liam Kofi Bright reports), the sublimating BPB experiences.** 

For, while activism can be a soul destroying grind and isolating (even very dangerous), in a well functioning activist milieu, it has as a predictable side-effect the creation of communal feelings in the pursuit of a self-transcending goal that simultaneously is self-justifying. Of course, how to get to that point is no easy matter and actually require some attention to nurturing the life of the mind as part of the activist ethos. (This is a neat subtext in Zena Hitz's Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life.) But the service philosopher's attitude toward her own work would not have to be alienated. 

Let me close with a final observation. Since Max Weber there is a peculiar blind-spot that the bureaucratic life has attracted relatively little attention from philosophers this despite the outsized significance of it in the modern state and, as C. Thi Nguyen and Liam Kofi Bright remind us, to many of own own lives as professional academics. (I suspect this is partial effect of the fact that many high prestige academic institutions try to maintain (at least the fiction of) self-governance in ways that those who work as functionaries cannot maintain.) And while I have only scratched the surface of both essays, a key feature of our involvement in bureaucratic life is that our educational and research practices are shaped by rules, norms, and goals that are extrinsic to philosophy (and education). This strikes me as rather important to our self-understanding if only because it allows us to organize our thinking about the many unhealthy symptoms we often encounter and discuss (reliance on metrics, rankings, stability of hierarchies, the lengthening syllabi, etc.). And so I am grateful to both for starting this conversations.

 

Toward a Political-Moral Epistemology of Computational (process) Reliabilism for AI

Now, one way to reinterpret Goldman’s [process] reliabilism in the context of computer simulations is to say that researchers are justified in believing the results of their simulations because there is a reliable process that produces, most of the time, true beliefs about such results. We can now reinterpret computational reliabilism in the following terms:

(CR) if S’s believing p at t results from m, then S’s belief in p at t is justified. where S is a cognitive agent, p is any truth-valued proposition related to the results of a computer simulation, t is any given time, and m is a reliable computer simulation.

Let us note that the formulation of process reliabilism remains largely unmodified by computational reliabilism, as it is evidenced in (CR). An important – and rather obvious – difference, however, is that process reliabilism is no longer a general account for any p and m, but rather specified for computational undertakings. In this respect, computational reliabilism takes that p is a truth-valued proposition related to the results of a computer simulation. These could be particular, such as ‘the results show that republicans have won,’ ‘the results suggest an increase of temperature in the Arctic as predicted by theory’, and ‘the results are consistent with experimental results,’ among others. Alternatively, they could also be general such as ‘the results are correct of the target system’, ‘the results are valid with respect to the researcher’s corpus of knowledge’, and ‘the results are accurate for their intended use.’ Naturally, the reliable process m is identified with the computer simulation (see Sect. 3.2 for further differences with process reliabilism).
We can now assimilate Goldman’s process reliabilism into our analysis of computational reliabilism: researchers are justified in believing the results of their simulations when there is a reliable process (i.e., the computer simulation) that yields, most of the time, trustworthy results. More formally, the probability that the next set of results of a reliable computer simulation is trustworthy is greater than the probability that the next set of results is trustworthy given that the first set was produced by an unreliable process by mere luck (Durán 2014).-- Durán, Juan M., and Nico Formanek (2018)" Grounds for trust: Essential epistemic opacity and computational reliabilism." Minds and Machines 28.4, 654. [HT Federica Russo]*

In what follows I take Durán & Formanek's computational reliabilism (about simulations) as a baseline. This work draws on some of the best work in recent epistemology and philosophy of science, and offers a compelling framework for how to think of the strictly epistemic grounds for trust for computer simulations. In what follows I  use 'algorithmic mediation' where they use 'simulations.'1

But since the pathbreaking work by Heather Douglas, we also know these epistemic grounds are conceived rather narrowly. So, here I explore how their approach might be enhanced if one takes seriously (to use a jargon from philosophy of science) inductive risk in AI. In particular, I reflect on  the conceptualization of how one should internalize social consequences into the design and programming process of algorithms as they figure in contemporary AI.+ And in particular discussions over machine learning algorithms.

In this post I sketch three areas where this baseline must be enhanced, of which the latter two are specific to machine learning AI, when one takes seriously social consequences for the grounds of trust. The idea is to work toward Ethical Computational (process) Reliabilism (ECR).

First, when one looks at the application of a reliable process outside the lab into social context, one is not just interested in its reliability for a specific task. One would also like to know what the effects are of failure. In particular, one would like to know something about the distribution of possible or likely harms on different kinds of populations, especially if these populations have different kinds of vulnerabilities (and appetites for risk). 

So, for example, something may function reliably as designed with industry beating low failure rates; yet when it breaks, all too rarely, the artifact may still be especially dangerous for kids. Or, some safety gears work swimmingly on average male subjects, less so on average female subjects. Some medicines interact badly with pre-existing conditions in subsets of the population. Now, in many cases the harms that follow from such selective or asymmetric vulnerabilities can be internalized in the design and testing process (and often this is mandated legally or by in-house risk assessment).

Selective or asymmetric vulnerabilities can map onto socially salient issues when they map onto political or morally salient demographics. In the previous paragraph I mentioned children and sex differences. A lot of public discussion of machine learning in AI has (quite naturally) focused on its reinforcement of racial and economic injustice(s). 

How to characterize what counts as as an asymmetric vulnerability is not so easy especially because many of the ethically or politically most salient harms may only become asymmetric due to causally intersectional effects. In addition, some asymmetric harms may be due to the fact that a truthful p reinforces or entrenches a socially bad status quo. For many purposes one may wish to distinguish among such selective vulnerabilities, but here I lump together as an especially important set of unfair outcomes. So, to begin formulating a possible framework:

(ECR) if S’s believing p at t results from m, then S’s belief in p at t is justified. where S is a cognitive agent, p is any truth-valued proposition related to the results of an AI, t is any given time, and m is a reliable algorithmic mediation without generating asymmetric harms to vulnerable populations.

Here 'reliable' already presupposes an ordinary use of the reliable algorithm in an assigned task. One thing that follows from this is that in order to generate an ECR, its sources -- again following,  Durán & Formanek, 1) verification and validation methods; 2) robustness analysis; 3) feedback from trial runs and (prior) implementations; 4) expert knowledge -- must also be made to seek out and track asymmetric vulnerabilities. While this clearly makes initial R&D more expensive, it may reduce litigation costs and social harms (including withdrawal fo the product) downstream. 

Second, algorithmic mediation may generate both unintended and unforeseeable outcomes. Here, too, there are many subtleties.  Some unintended consequences may just be a matter of negligence. And these can be simply assimilated to (ECR).  Morally, legally, and politically one may  be held accountable for those if there are harms in use. As it happens because of concerns over opacity and traceability, algorithmic mediation does generate some special concerns over accountability which are especially salient in the context of informational asymmetries and asymmetric vulnerabilities (with players that range from huge transnational economic agents to dispersed individuals). I return to this before long. But it is morally and politically a very important issue.

Other consequences may be unforeseeable in detail, or their tokens unknown, even though the outcome pattern (or outcome type) may be quite predictable after a while. For example, algorithmic mediation has made financial markets move (i) at much higher speeds and (ii) has also increased the likelihood of mini and maxi flash crashes. The first (i) was entirely predictable (and desired), but the (evolution of) exact speed(s) and volume of market transactions may have been unknowable in advance. And that it would generate new kinds of financial transactions was also known, even if the exact strategies were not. By contrast, it's possible that (ii) was initially unexpected. But by now any given mini-crash may be surprising or unpredictable, but that they occur is foreseeable and so they become a 'new normal.'

That is to say, unforeseeable tokens can occur in foreseeable outcome patterns/types. If an outcome patterns has possible tokens with asymmetric vulnerabilities, these patterns should, all things being equal, be avoided and ought to be internalized in ECR. (Of course, sometimes one can compensate for downside risks, etc.) So, I propose the following modification:

(ECR) if S’s believing p at t results from m, then S’s belief in p at t is justified. where S is a cognitive agent, p is any truth-valued proposition related to the results of an AI, t is any given time, and m is a reliable algorithmic mediation without (intentionally) generating foreseeable asymmetric harm patterns to vulnerable populations.

Obviously, this leaves the prevention, accountability, and remedy of some unforeseeable asymmetric harm patterns outside (ECR). And that is for another occasion.

Third, one instance of an asymmetric vulnerability is the reinforcement of a bad status quo. For many it seems intuitive that p (which is true after all) is ethically neutral, so that p reinforces a bad status quo can elicit shrugs from many. But we should resist the shrug. Classic examples can be found, I learned this via Kristie Dotson, in the way in which crime data is presented and thereby stigmatize vulnerable demographics or promote policies which have side-effects that also harm vulnerable demographics asymmetrically. I return to such harms before long.

But a crucial feature of algorithmic mediation is (as Mittelstadt et al (2016) note) that it can affect how our social reality is conceptualized, and becomes actionable in ways that are utterly unexpected (including a reinforcement of a bad status quo). So, algorithmic mediation can generate  consequences that are not just unintended, but also unforeseeable in principle because they are transformative (Mittelstadt et al also use this terminology going back to Floridi (2014).**

Here, too, the fact that an algorithmic meditation is transformative may be intended and foreseeable. And it is possible that some of the higher order outcome-patterns including the asymmetric vulnerabilities can be predicted. And that is assimilable to (ECR). But some transformations are (ahh) transformative. And these require special treatment. To be continued.

On Foucault on 24 January 1979: On Perpetual Peace and Governmental Naturalism (VIII)

Yet another example of this appearance of a governmental rationality that has the entire planet for its horizon is the eighteenth century projects for peace and international organization. If you consider those that existed in the seventeenth century, you will see that these projects for peace were essentially based on European equilibrium, that is to say, on the exact balance of reciprocal forces between different states; between the different powerful states, or between different coalitions of states, or between the powerful states and a coalition of the smaller states, and so on. From the eighteenth century, the idea of perpetual peace and the idea of international organization are, I think, articulated completely differently. It is no longer so much the limitation of internal forces that is called upon to guarantee and found a perpetual peace, but rather the unlimited nature of the external market. The larger the external market, the fewer its borders and limits, the more you will have a guarantee of perpetual peace.

If you take Kant’s text on the project of perpetual peace, for example, which dates from 1795,4 right at the end of the eighteenth century, there is a chapter entitled “On the Guarantee of a Perpetual Peace.” How does Kant conceive of this perpetual peace? He says: What fundamentally is it in history that guarantees this perpetual peace and promises us that one day it really will take shape and form in history? Is it men’s will and their mutual understanding, the political and diplomatic devices that they will have been able to construct, or the organization of rights that they will have been able to install between them? Not at all. It is nature, just as in the physiocrats it was nature that guaranteed the good regulation of the market. And how does nature guarantee perpetual peace? It is very simple, Kant says. Nature after all has done some absolutely marvelous things, since it has managed, for example, to get not only animals, but even peoples to live in lands completely scorched by the Sun or frozen by eternal sheets of ice. There are people who manage to live there in spite of everything, which proves that there is nowhere in the world where human beings cannot live. But for people to be able to live they must be able to feed themselves, to produce their food, have a social organization, and exchange their products between themselves or with people from other regions. Nature intended the entire world, the whole of its surface, to be given over to the economic activity of production and exchange. And on that basis, nature has prescribed a number of obligations that are juridical obligations for man, but which nature has in a way dictated to him secretly, which she has, as it were, marked out in the very arrangement of things, of geography, the climate, and so on. What are these arrangements?
First, that men can have relations of exchange with each other individually, supported by property, etcetera, and this prescription or precept of nature will be taken up in legal obligations and become civil law.

Second, nature determined that men be distributed across the world in distinct regions and that within each of these regions they have privileged relationships with each other that they do not have with the inhabitants of other regions, and men have taken up this precept in legal terms by forming separate states which maintain certain legal relationships between them. This will become international law. But in addition, nature has wished that there are not only juridical relationships between these states, guaranteeing their independence, but also commercial relationships that cross the borders between states and consequently make the juridical independence of each state porous, as it were. Commercial relationships cross the world, just as nature intended and to the same extent as nature intended the whole world to be populated, and this will constitute cosmopolitan law or commercial law. This edifice of civil law, international law, and cosmopolitan law is nothing other than man’s taking up of a precept of nature as obligations. So we can say that law, inasmuch as it resumes the precept of nature, will be able to promise what was in a way already outlined in the first action of nature when it populated the entire world: something like perpetual peace. Perpetual peace is guaranteed by nature and this guarantee is manifested in the population of the entire world and in the commercial relationships stretching across the whole world. The guarantee of perpetual peace is therefore actually commercial globalization. Michel Foucault, 24 January 1979, Lecture 3, The Birth of Biopolitics. 56-58*

Foucault quite correctly inserts Kant's Perpetual Peace into the framework of eighteenth century liberalism.* But  he does so with an unusual, uncharacteristic for him misstep. On his view of the eighteenth century, perpetual peace is derived from the size of the external market, which presupposes few borders, which are, presumably sites of conflict ("the larger the external market, the fewer its borders and limits, the more you will have a guarantee of perpetual peace.") It's very much in the spirit of some such discussions. 

But this is not (recall) Kant's Madisonian position, which relies on the growing size of the internal market without or, perhaps better put, relatively minimal borders. As these internal markets expand they create continental wide spheres of peace within these federations and promote pacific relations among multiple continental-wide federations. In particular, and this draws on Addison), trade is then conducive toward peace in virtue of generating a shared legal framework and facilitating a cosmopolitan outlook.

While he is an important influence on Kant's views on federation, Smith, in turn, deviates from this narrative because he thinks, presciently, that export led growth and international trade increase the possibility of conflict when such trade is conceived in zero-sum terms (see also Paganelli & Schumacher). That is to say, and Kant mentions it explicitly in Perpetual Peace, what's required is that the pacific "spirit of commerce" (as distinct from the warlike mercantile spirit) diffuses itself through a federation. Thus, while Kant and Smith do not agree on all the details, they agree that a peace-conducive ideology or civic religion is one of the building blocks of a peaceful international system.+

Foucault's mistake makes sense because he also wants to help explain a regional consciousness that leads to a particular kind of nineteenth century imperialism. And for that narrative (pp. 54-46) growing markets external to Europe are central part of the story.

I don't mean to suggest that Foucault's interpretation of Kant is mistaken on a more fundamental level. Kant, indeed, echoes the providential literature in which the existence of trade is both explained by the post-tower-of-Babel and post Noah-ite flood spread of humans and animals, and justified by the mutual gains from trade and specialization. (I warmly recommend Joost Hengstmengel's, Divine Providence in Early Modern Economic Thought.) And, quite clearly, God's providence (which can be merely regulative) has been displaced on or is exhibited by nature, or, Nature's Order, which, in turn, becomes the source of a funny kind of normativity (in terms of precepts). Of course, in this sense Kant echoes not just Smith, but the whole strain of natural law thinking in authors as diverse as Hobbes, Vittoria, and Leibniz (Hume being the main outlyer) some of which, indeed, constitutive of international law (Francesco Suarez, Grotius, Pufendorf, etc.). 

And, indeed, we can recognize in the (quasi-Stoic) demand to live in accord to nature's precepts, which are themselves orderly, and increasingly even law-like, a guide both an ideal of peace and an ideal of law-governed-ness. To be without law is to be in the state of permanent war and to be uncivilized. The desirable contrast is a global political order of the civilized.

What Foucault recognizes about the previous paragraph is that alongside the juridical-theological conceptualizations, this is also inscribed, constitutively into science of political economy. For, and here I am drawing on my work on the afterlife of the so-called Posidonian argument (recall here; here; here; here), in this period, it is standard to assume that nature's order, now understood as a global, political order, is constitutive, a condition of possibility, on scientific progress. When this conceptualization is inscribed in the liberal art of government, Foucault calls this "governmental naturalism" (61). 

 

Omelas, Dotson, and Revealing the Souls of Readers

Perhaps it would be best if you imagined it as your own fancy bids, assuming it will rise to the occasion, for certainly I cannot suit you all. For instance, how about technology? I think that there would be no cars or helicopters in and above the streets; this follows from the fact that the people of Omelas are happy people. Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive. In the middle category, however--that of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc.--they could perfectly well have central heating, subway trains, washing machines, and all kinds of marvelous devices not yet invented here, floating light-sources, fuelless power, a cure for the common cold. Or they could have none of that; it doesn't matter. As you like it....I fear that Omelas so far strikes some of you as goody-goody. Smiles, bells, parades, horses, bleh. If so, please add an orgy. If an orgy would help, don't hesitate. Let us not, however, have temples from which issue beautiful nude priests and priestesses already half in ecstasy and ready to copulate with any man or woman, lover or stranger, who desires union with the deep godhead of the blood, although that was my first idea. But really it would be better not to have any temples in Omelas--at least, not manned temples. Religion yes, clergy no. Surely the beautiful nudes can just wander about, offering themselves like divine soufflés to the hunger of the needy and the rapture of the flesh. Let them join the processions. Let tambourines be struck above the copulations, and the glory of desire be proclaimed upon the gongs, and (a not unimportant point) let the offspring of these delightful rituals be beloved and looked after by all.--Ursula Le Guin, Walking Away from Omelas.

Before the quoted passage, the narration starts with a description of the Festival of Summer, the physical geography and architecture of Omelas, some of its political and religious institutions (although the narrator suggests lack of familiarity on both), and the happiness of (nearly all) its inhabitants. The narrator also calls attention to the fact how difficult it is aesthetically and rhetorically to convey happiness in light of (as the narrator notes just below the passage I have quoted) "modern tastes." In fact, in addition to an (incomeplete) characterization of Omelas, the main pre-occupation of the narration op to this point is (recall this post) the nature of (modern) narrative itself (and the characterization of genre).

In the quote, the narrator explicitly calls attention to (a point much emphasized by Socrates in Plato's Phaedrus and, if it is authentic, the seventh letter) the fact that a written text must accommodate itself somehow to a diversity of souls (who may be unknown, but anticipated by the author) or (if you prefer less metaphysics) to human heterogeneity in aesthetic and other engaged responses.+ The narrator doesn't merely explicitly admit she (why not!) may not be able to satisfy all her readers, but she also invites, no challenges ("rise to the occasion") her readers to use their own imagination to constitute a version of Omelas that will satisfy their image of a happy place. These are souls that assume a happy place must have technology (trained on, say, Bacon's New Atlantis) and lots of freely available sex (trained on, say, Brave New World). Of course, the narrator isn't just inviting readers to develop their own version of Omelas with accidental properties inessential to the true nature of Omelas, while simultaneously revealing that these properties may be essential to the kind of readers they are. The narrator is also calling attention to the fact that she is aware that she may disappoint some of our expectations; may, in fact, disapprove of our expectations (e.g., we want to be able to blame organized religion for the cruelty at the heart of Omelias; we want a narrative of technological progress or out of control desire and so blame these, etc.).   

The issue of the politics of readership (see this very important paper by Julie Klein) raised in the previous paragraph is not just a matter of aesthetic and intertextuality (or meta-fiction); it also bears on the nature of how to understand the psychomyth (HT John Holbo's very fine piece) that Omelas is. (Psychomyth is Le Guin's own term.) A psychomyth is a certain kind of thought experiment, which is the occasion for (to quote Williams James) “a specifical and independent sort of emotion.” For, Walking Away From Omelas, shows two kinds of characteristic responses to the cruelty at the core of Omelas. Two natures are revealed: (i) those that stay and embrace the misery of the innocent child as a necessary feature, "the terrible justice of reality;" and those that (ii) quietly leave town (that's the closing "incredible" paragraph of the story) keeping their hands clean.* 

As an aside, both (i) and (ii) do not violate the terms of the social compact that gives Omelas its social structure. (The only difference is that the group of folk that belong to (ii) refuse to go on to benefit personally from the contract.) This social compact (which almost certainly precedes the narrated time) is grounded in the opinion of all. (In this sense the social compact mimics Hobbes's unanimity requirement.)

Even so, and to return to the main argument, and as it happens, (iii) anyone could bring "the child...up into the sunlight out of that vile place"** and so destroy the social compact which is thought to bring happiness to all. Such a noble soul would have to be willing to reform society's institutions against the common understanding of happiness. That is, as the Cave analogy emphasizes (in Kristie Dotson's felicitous summary) worldviews are resilient against change.and very difficult to disrupt (especially if they characterize the truth of the phenomena). Even those that recognize the abhorrent truth have incentives to exit rather than to change the social status quo. If they are humane they may well wonder if acting on their perception of wrong isn't reckless given that the downside risk is carried by all of society and there is always a possibility that their perception is wrong. (This is why revolutionaries often seem like fanatics.)*** 

By treating the structure of the story as a reverse Utility Monster (and so the standard case), we may miss the third character as a live option. It's not a live option in the sense that one should expect to live in times when they naturally pop up. Le Guin's narrator is more plausible by effacing the very possibility. But by insisting that how we respond to the narrative says something about how we might be, we are also encouraged to cultivate in ourselves habits of thought, and, perhaps shared systems of thought, that make possible efforts to resist resigning ourselves to given options.++

 

On Public Philosophy and Transgender Rights Campaign

During the past year professional philosophers have struggled with controversies pertaining to transgender issues (recall the Tuvel/Hypatia affaire here and here; and again involving language in journal articles [recall my piece on the open letter to the editors of PPR at Dailynous here;] the debate between Talia Mae Bettcher and Kathleen Stock;[1] the language of the APA philosophy blog [see Leiterreports]), etc. These debates have intersected with wider society and have even led to campaigns to to have faculty removed from their positions in the UK. While I am no friend of calls for civility in debate (recall this post among many), the way this debate is conducted is unedifying and I have already expressed despair that even the philosophers party to the debate seem to be unable to recognize explicitly each other's vulnerabilities. 

I start this post with two preliminary comments. First, as regular readers know, I support so-called public philosophy (recall; which comes in many varieties [see here]) and philosophical activism (which comes in many flavors and in support of many different kinds of causes) of society and the profession. I have long admired the service philosophy of Kristie Dotson (recall), Hugo Bedau's activism against the death penalty, and John Corvino's work on same-sex marriage. (I am sure readers can add to this list their own favorites.)* Such cause/ideal-promoting political activism is both self-justifying and a useful means of discovery of truth. While philosophy can benefit from a measure of distance, cool reflection, and impartiality, it's also the case that engagement with the messy details of lived experience and the arguments generated by political conflict can also be a useful constraint on and source of creativity for philosophical discovery of the nature and properties of an ideal. 

However, I have  long thought that it seems unwise, or at least imprudent, when philosophers qua being philosophers support active politicians and political parties. (That's compatible with doing so qua being citizens of a particular polity). It seems best if one's pursuit of truth and the good is not sullied by and subject to the many tactical compromises and fatal injustices that accompany political life pursued by imperfect beings like us. I rarely see philosophical excellence in support of a politician or party,+ and much that I find cringe-worthy.

Second, transgender people are subject to bigotry, discrimination, harassment, and violence. This is well documented in the UK and US. The evidence also suggests that many transgender victims are also (intersectionally) members of other historically discriminated minority groups, I assume here that the violence occurs in virtue of their being transgender, and that belonging to it means one belongs to (all other things being equal) a vulnerable category of people. So,

• I wholeheartedly support the campaign for transgender rights and protection under the law.***

Regular readers know (recall this post on MLK Jr.) that I also think that human imperfection, self-interest, and bigotry often undermine enforcement of the law and can even make the most beautifully written laws a tool of oppression. What's needed is, thus, also sufficient popular support or opinion and the right dispositions in favor of such rights. Political campaigns are, therefore, crucial to generate such support.** Of course, there is something of a paradox lurking here, because where such support exists the right would not be necessary.

One important feature of new rights is that the costs and (new) down-side risks of these need not be distributed evenly on the population. That's of special concern if these fall on other vulnerable groups. I understand the present campaign against trans rights, which includes some high profile self-described feminist philosophers -- where not informed by or leaning on bigotry -- as aiming to articulate some such risks to vulnerable women, especially those in prisons and among the homeless. I think such concerns eminently reasonable, but that's because there is a reasonable fear of violence and degradation within prisons and fear of violence against the homeless (see here). But rather than fighting transgender rights, the proper response to such concerns for the very vulnerable is, I would think, to join the coalition for thoroughgoing prison reform and better/more resources and conditions for the homeless.++ 

So my preliminaries have turned into a blog post, which was prompted by my momentary reconsideration of my stance on public philosophy.+++ It's true that there is no reason to believe that philosophical activism will always be beneficial. And I am reminded of the fact that even in the pre-internet age (which, let's stipulate, can make any bad thing worse), there was and never is a golden age of civility (as those of us old enough to recall philosophical debates over abortion, LGBTQ rights, or if one pays attention to debates over Zionism/BDS, etc.)---I have often remarked upon the fact that as a discipline we have an all-too-human fondness for philosophical debates as blood-sports and the delicious take-down.

It's a familiar fact that the pursuit of a worthy cause can turn into fanaticism and unpleasant and vindictive (moral) righteousness. And it is known that friends of worthy causes will find it difficult to condemn the excesses because they do not wish to be seen as undermining the worthy cause. For, it's also all-too-common that critics of the worthy cause will use such excesses as a tactic to undermine a cause, and shift debate away from consideration of the underlying evils. Savvy intellectuals recognize the temptation they may benefit from escalation and from hyping an otherwise unworthy critic, inviting abuse from their anonymous followers, with the cycle being renewed etc. And so it can often happen that wisdom is pushed aside or found crouching unnoticed in the margins of the arresting debates. 

In light of such facts people of good will may prefer to retreat to the ivory tower, and pursue their worthy work in undisturbed quiet. Others will note that these facts are part of the eternal return of life's carnival, and will will them...one tweet at a time eternally.  

 

 

On Being Political Qua Philosopher

Factions subvert government, render laws impotent, and beget the fiercest animosities among men of the same nation, who ought to give mutual assistance and protection to each other.--David Hume.*

Unlike Hume (and like Schattschneider (recall)--a name I never encountered in professional philosophy, although he is significant in the history of political science--), I think political parties are important to the proper functioning of liberal democracy.  They do so because they can  help cultivate political talent and organize the energies, aspirations, and interest of many in the services of -- to echo and adapt Burke (recall) -- minimal national unity and some fundamental values or ideology. That is, and again, Burke noticed this first, it seems, in the long arc since the 18th century, political parties have been a  means, in part, to make philosophy worldly. On the Burkean view politicians are, in a non-trivial sense, applied philosophers or figureheads for (more hidden) applied philosophers.

As a non-trivial aside, of course, political parties can be mere vehicles for the pursuit of power and lack interest in minimal national unity and be ideology-free. That's compatible with them offering the public entertainment. Arguably, we have been turning that ever-present, ugly corner (recall my post on Justin Smith.)

Yet, while I recognize the way in which party politics and politicians can be philosophical, last week, I wrote that I happen to think (but have never argued) that attachment to party and candidate corrupts philosophers in pretty much the way Hume feared (fiercest animosities etc.). In context I offered some examples of such corruption (that is, it raises the probability of selective treatment of evidence, logical fallacies, inhumane conduct, etc.). Such corruption is nearly impossible to avoid because of the existence of partisanship (people like their side to win), rapid echo-chambers, group polarization, and self-deception. In particular, in politics, the pursuit of truth and humanity will inevitably be made instrumental to, and be sacrificed to, other ends. Politics is (as Plato, Madison, and Arendt emphasized) the realm of opinion, not truth--in part, because the mechanisms of discovery and truth-saying are lacking (recall here, and here). (That's not an encouragement to lie.)  In fact, (adhering to one's principles with) strict consistency -- a non-trivial commitment of most philosophers --is not just often a hindrance in politics, but (as one may say in the spirit of Isaiah Berlin) can easily lead to the worst tyrannies.

The whole previous paragraph is written with great deal of respect for and recognition of the importance of politics, even the very flawed politics of our times--I am all for participation in it. But my view is that philosophers should stay clear of adhering to parties (and think tanks allied strictly to them) and politicians because it is (nearly) impossible to maintain one's philosophical integrity. Recall, philosophical integrity is the way(s) in which one's professional arguments, professional credit, and public utterances and comportment cohere (recall, and here). Obviously, if one rejects such integrity, one also rejects my position.

Now it does not follow that I thereby embrace for myself or others (i) a Weberian neutrality model as the only legitimate one for philosophers.** I think such neutrality is legitimate, although, in practice, it tends to be rather awkward and it incorporates (often tacitly) considerable status quo bias. It does so because it tends to be quiet about ends, which it, in principle, leaves for others, and the means it becomes expert on and is willing to offer informed views about to others are nearly always given means. [Of course, this stance is not inevitably status quo biased.] Often such neutrality is a mere disguise for (non transparently) assumed values or values that, surprisingly enough, advance the interests of the expert all too well. (Much of my scholarship explores the complications in the vicinity.)

Yet, despite the previous paragraph, I do not (ii) endorse quietism; quietism can slide a bit too easily into complicity in the moral horrors of our age. Even so I can respect it in more principled others, especially when it is accompanied by a kind of do-no-harm principle. Moreover, I can't simply reject it because one of the great purposes of politics is to make the life of philosophy, the arts, and all the other joyful activities that ennoble our existence possible.

So, that leaves room for (iii) philosophical service on behalf of a cause or a group. The term (service) is indebted to Dotson (recall). The service ideal can encourage philosophical integrity. For example,*** if one's philosophy shows that the death penalty is immoral or the basic income moral, one can dedicate one's political life to advocating such a principle and make one's all things considered views and one's public utterances cohere. Of course, such coherence may well result in a certain, intolerant fierceness. It's all too familiar that ine may become quite zealous in one's advocacy.

That's okay, for the advocate of a principle or cause -- unlike the politician -- need not (in the intellectual and professional division of labor) balance and navigate competing priorities and interests, including national union or survival. That is the philosophical advocate is, if she is self-aware (know thyself and all that), cognizant of her limitations. For, such a unity worth having is constituted by and a product of the art of leadership that promotes practices, narratives, and public understandings that facilitate some dispositions conducive to minimal, political union. For too long humane political theorists and philosophers have neglected the significance of such political leadership--and ceded talk of leadership to (conservative) lovers of authority (or worse, neo-fascists) and to business consultants. It is an open question if an engaged philosophy can be practiced that promotes such an art and what form it would take.

Analytical philosophy as Map-making: if you don't know where you going just look at a map?

In so many areas of inquiry...philosophical argument ends up bottoming out in a mere clash of intuitions, of considered judgments. But what happens now? Because these considered judgments will help determine the content and structure of our philosophical theorizing, to determine (once and for all) what the good life is for a person...we—or so it would appear—need to settle which of these intuitions are the right ones.

To put my cards on the table, this seems like an impossible task. Indeed, it’s a task that seems (almost by definition) outside the bounds of philosophical argument. After all, if philosophical arguments (sometimes) bottom-out in intuitive bedrock—Hellraiser good!; Hellraiser bad!—that’s where the tools of philosophical argument seem most impotent. But if this task is impossible, I wonder whether philosophers really ought to conceive their overall project as one that would require it. After all, we only need to settle which intuitions are the right ones if we are in the business of deciding whether, e.g., objectivism or subjectivism about well-being is true. But there’s an alternative. Rather than seeing ourselves as answering the “big questions”, as it were, we see ourselves as exploring how to construct alternative theories, what such theories must take on board, their relations and interconnections without settling which account of the “big question” is the right one. To borrow a metaphor from Ryle (though to somewhat different effect) we might think of the product of philosophical inquiry as a map or road atlas: a clear account of which routes one might take through logical space, without settling which route is the “right one”. (This need not commit to there being no right answer—just that it’s not the task of philosophical inquiry to determine what it, in fact, is.)

Thinking of philosophy in this way has some benefits...First, it provides a more compelling account of philosophical progress....

Second, and to me most important, if we think of the philosophical enterprise in this way, the ultimate task of philosophy becomes fully collaborative. If I’m a welfare subjectivist, the success of the project at which the objectivist is engaged need be no threat to the success of my project. After all, we’re all working together to develop the most complete “atlas”. The fact that, when we reach bedrock, I go subjectivist and you go objectivist need not entail that we are philosophical adversaries.

There may be drawbacks; after all, we might be very interested in whether objectivism or subjectivism is true. Giving up the pursuit of the right answer may be disappointing. But I suggest we kick the tires on an alternative, which seems to me a natural result of reflection on the phenomenon of intuitive bedrock. But even if it isn’t, it is up to philosophers how to understand what they’re up to—indeed, up to each individual philosopher. My hope is that thinking of philosophy as a kind of atlas-drawing means that we’re better at our jobs, we see ourselves as working together, and we approach philosophical inquiry much more often in a constructive and collaborative spirit. Dale Dorsey "Intuitive Bedrock and the Philosophical Enterprise" @DailyNous.

Dorsey official offers a positive picture of (let's stipulate, analytical) philosophy in which (i) arguments are characteristic (or the tools) of philosophy. Then with (ii) division of intellectual labor in which (iii) sets of systematic entailment relations are explored; and, by so exploring (that is, by multiple theory-construction), there is (iv) philosophical progress, that, is we understand our theories (or maps) better. The negative picture is that (v) philosophy does not offer (let's call them) substantive grounds for the fundamental premises or posits in theories and so (this is the force of the example Dorsey starts with in his post at Daily Nous) can't help settle what "leading a good life" is.

Dorsey's diagnosis of (v) is that there is an insolvable clash of intuitions. But he does not note, that the clash cannot be resolved (in the context of developed, coherent theories) is a consequence of a tacit (!) democratic or individualist (moral) principle: each person's intuition is as good as another. This generates a kind of spirit of tolerance (Dorsey's "constructive and collaborative spirit"). There is also another, related reason why (i-iv) can't help settle what "leading a good life" is because arguments, while (let's stipulate) an instance of rationality, are supposed to be neutral in some sense. So, on Dorsey's picture philosophy lacks the "tools" to go beyond such neutrality. This is why philosophy can develop maps of the world, but it cannot help decide where one ought to go.

The problem with this picture is that a map without destination is pointless. Of course, a beautiful map may have aesthetic characteristics or be a collector's item--and that is not trivial. Now, on this picture, philosophy does not set ends, but aids others in navigating their way toward their ends. So, philosophy here is an instrument--again the instrument may well be beautiful and worth keeping around for all kinds of reasons. But what this account of philosophy can't do is explain the worth of any end, including (non-trivially) its own worth. That is to say, on this picture philosophy is, in its own terms, groundless. Of course, the maps may well be judged on consequentialist grounds, but what makes some such consequences better or not is a matter of convention or pragmatics. Dorsey is in good company here because, say, Carnap's proposals for conceptual or framework engineering do no better.

As an aside, you may think that (to use Kristie Dotson's perspective) philosophy as service is good enough philosophy (recall). Dotson explicitly allows, perhaps even starts, from the idea that philosophy is not self-justifying or autonomous, so must be a tool in the service of other ends. Fair enough.

But given his stated methodology, Dorsey has no right to his democratic or individualist (moral) principle: that each person's intuition is as good as another. (The previous sentence does no justice to his views on 'considered judgments,' but can be restated to do so.) After all, it's not the case that all maps have equal worth (again, Dorsey's position is more subtle because of the embrace of considered judgments.). Here he can't appeal to intuition because somebody who rejects this intuition may well reject the flat division of intellectual labor adopted by Dorsey (and may embrace a more hierarchical and less collaborative conception of philosophy). The problem, then, is not that Dorsey can't justify his own enterprise except on (somewhat ad hoc) consequentialist ground (although I think it is problematic), but rather that he also tacitly smuggles in commitments (like the democratic principle, the value of collaboration, etc.) that, in fact, despite the purported neutrality do take a partial stance on the good life without argument or justification--because it lacks the tools to do so. Something more than arguments and theories is needed, that is to say, we need a richer conception of philosophy.

 

 

 

On not using expert knowledge; Plato and Bacon's Bensalem, reconsidered.

I have read in a book of one of your men, of a Feigned Commonwealth, where the married couple are permitted, before they contract, to see one another naked. This they dislike; for they think it a scorn to give a refusal after so familiar knowledge: but because of many hidden defects in men and women's bodies, they have a more civil way; for they have near every town a couple of pools, (which they call Adam and Eve's pools,) where it is permitted to one of the friends of the men, and another of the friends of the woman, to see them severally bathe naked.--Joabin, the "Good Jew," in Francis Bacon, New Atlantis.

Hard in truth it is for a state thus constituted to be shaken and disturbed; but since for everything that has come into being destruction is appointed, not even such a fabric as this will abide for all time, but it shall surely be dissolved, and this is the manner of its dissolution. Not only for plants that grow from the earth but also for animals that live upon it there is a cycle of bearing and barrenness for soul and body as often as the revolutions of their orbs come full circle, in brief courses for the short-lived and oppositely for the opposite; but the laws of prosperous birth or infertility for your race, [546b] the men you have bred to be your rulers will not for all their wisdom ascertain by reasoning combined with sensation, but they will escape them, and there will be a time when they will beget children out of season....And this entire geometrical number is determinative of this thing, of better and inferior births. [546d] And when your guardians, missing this, bring together brides and bridegrooms unseasonably, the offspring will not be well-born or fortunate. Of such offspring the previous generation will establish the best, to be sure, in office, but still these, being unworthy, and having entered in turn into the powers of their fathers, will first as guardians begin to neglect us, paying too little heed to music and then to gymnastics, so that our young men will deteriorate in their culture; and the rulers selected from them [546e] will not approve themselves very efficient guardians for testing.--Plato, Republic, Book VIII.

One of the public goods on Bensalem, "Adam and Eve's pools," is the site of a remarkable practice. A friend can inspect a prospective life-partner naked (and under water?) for "hidden defects." The status of divorce is ambiguous; it does not go mentioned, but there is a strong hint that it may be permitted (about which below). Either way, from the perspective of a mate-seeker this practice puts considerable pressure on one's ability to discern the character of one's friends and to rely on their judgment, self-commandment, and fidelity. Presumably these friends also need to have some knowledge of basic anatomy and be capable of discerning signs of hidden defects (I return to this below).

Sadly, we learn almost nothing about the structure of such moral education on Bensalem; this is surprising because friendship is actually a non-trivial institutions on the island: "three" chosen "friends" aid the head of a house-hold in a kind of two-day family court in which family disputes (about property (recall this post), etc.) are settled just before the "feast of a family" (a kind of fertility feast [recall this post])--the central aim of marriage is, in fact, "propagation" (and, in case you missed it, the narrator repeats that with them "population is so much affected,' and such as with them it seemed to be.") This ad hoc family court provides, "direction...touching marriages," within the extended family.* It is possible that this "direction" can involve recommending divorce. So, friends are involved both in the prospective evaluation of one's marriage partner,** and in providing guidance to one's off-spring in their marriages. (These need not be the same set of friends.)

Now, some other time I'll reflect a bit more on why there would be less "scorn to give a refusal" on Bensalem (as opposed to the practice in Utopia), for in both cases there is "so familiar knowledge," and it is not obvious why one practice is more "civil" or less likely to generate conflicts than the other. Here I want to comment on a peculiarity of the Bensalemite practice.

For most scholars and students the main historical interest in New Atlantis is the account given in it of the House of Salomon, which is kind of intellectual blueprint of The Royal Society and modern institutions of scientific research with a hierarchical division of labor, etc. It's a place where basic research is practiced, and that after several centuries of research, also generates a steady supply of useful technologies and astounding medical insights. (I am really understating their achievements!) They are a bit secretive about these technologies and are cautious about "which of the inventions and experiences which we have discovered shall be published, and which not: and take all an oath of secrecy, for the concealing of those which we think fit to keep secret: though some of those we do reveal sometimes to the state and some not."

Now, its research aims to provide "knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things." That is the members of the House of Salomon are true experts on the "many hidden defects of men and women's bodies." Yet, they do not provide guidance on mate-choice, even though population growth is the central political aim on the island. That's especially odd because the members of the House of Salomon possess the kind of knowledge that eludes the Guardians in Plato's Republic: "Neither do we this by chance, but we know beforehand, of what matter and commixture what kind of those creatures will arise" (they are even capable, it seems, of preventing the destruction of living beings)!

Whatever the motives of the House of Salomon's lack of interest in a political program of breeding (eugenics), their laissez faire stance toward mate selection suggests self-restraint (from the perspective of politics and philosophy). This is surprising. For it is often said by (Heidegger-ian and neo-Thomistic) critics of technology in modernity, that the Baconian approach generates hubris and a desire to dominate nature (including humankind). That consequence may be true. But the scientific project was launched with the idea (or ideology) that the members of the priestly, scientific elite would obey norms and practices with self-imposed limits. 

Non Autonomous philosophy; Dotson on philosophy as service

I use philosophy to help support, generate and defend research, advocacy and activism that might change the current plight of Black people in the US, particularly promoting better conditions for Black cis- and trans* women, girls and gender non-conforming people. In other words, I am a Black feminist professional philosopher working in the service of Black feminist agendas.

For me, examining the discipline of philosophy itself could not answer the question, “why philosophy.” Not particularly surprising. The “why” of literary criticism is related to the existence of creative writing, even if it is not only or even primarily about its more pervasive cousin. The same might be said of art criticism and art.

The discipline of philosophy does not have this structure and, quite possibly, rightfully so. It is possible that philosophy is always in the service of something other than itself.

So the answer I have stumbled upon to “why philosophy?” is simple really.

I do philosophy because it can be engaged in and created from the position of service.--Kristie Dotson at Philosoph-her

By learning which philosophical tools (e.g., logic, feminist critique) are pertinent to which aims, we avoid reifying our philosophical culture, and are then precisely able to “speak properly and concretely on a subject of universal significance and appeal.” Multiculturalism thus shatters monoculture’s arrogance, via estrangement and self-examination. It makes us stronger.

Once we become stronger, what shall we do in a multicultural world? Circumstances (and desire?) urge us, as philosophers, to become public diplomats. Diplomacy is a worthy task for reason (Western or otherwise), as Bruno Latour (2002) argues. Reason may yet lose in the ongoing “wars of the world” conflict once the dust settles (and when will that be?), but it is only by directly facing the momentous task and violence ahead of us, that multinaturalism (many alternative ontologies, multiple philosophies of nature; Viveiros de Castro 2004) as well as multiculturalism can be negotiated, and a true peace achieved. The view here advocated on philosophy’s function as public diplomacy is perhaps less cynical, and more optimistic, than seeing philosophy as a foundational general or judge, imposing its will to power and adjudicating knowledge and morals, either through (implicit) combat or through detached and abstract rulings (e.g., interpreting philosophical political liberalism as the handmaiden of neo-liberal Western imperialism). The stakes are certainly high. Philosophy could be a commendable diplomat in the public endeavor of learning to live courageously and ethically, perhaps even peacefully, in a multicultural world.---Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther at Scientia Salon.

Dotson observes that the professional philosophy she encountered is incapable of being self-justifying. This is no surprise because the dominant traditions (e.g., analytical philosophy, scientific philosophy, etc.) rest on broadly consequentialist foundations that presuppose shared values. The tacit elitism that could be counted on to do the real work -- that a life of philosophy is best -- does not sit well rhetorically in a democratic culture. Genuine and secure axiological foundations are not easy to come by in an intellectual culture that is scientistic. Dotson's attractive vision turns the weakness of the recent tradition around and turns it into a virtue: philosophy is not self-justifying or autonomous, but a good tool in the service of other ends. So despite many differences in sensibility, she is, thus, not far removed from the spirit of, say, Left Vienna.

Even so, I would expect some readers of Dotson to recoil at her stance. Philosophy, they may think, is oriented toward and expresses the truth. If it serves anything it serves truth. This kind of  sentiment is often muttered by folk who have studied a smattering of physics or math and end up in professional philosophy. (They may even think that this is a value-neutral fact about the essence of philosophy.) They view politics as somehow exogenous to philosophy, and they look with suspicion on, say, philosophical feminism. That is, the value of truth and philosophical self-sufficiency even autonomy is taken for granted.* One knows that such folk devoured Gödel, Escher, Bach, but somehow failed to assimilate the worthy bits of Nietzsche as a teenager.

As I was mulling the implications of Dotson's position I encountered Grønfeldt Winther's "post. I am not sure who exactly is included in his repeated 'us,' but from context it seems to be philosophy and philosophers. He, too, offers a service oriented understanding of philosophy and its "tools," one that facilitates peaceful cohabitation. It is unclear what he has in mind exactly--if he (not unlike later Rawls) thinks that philosophy should engineer concepts that that make such living together possible or, more likely, if he thinks that philosophers should be messengers between cultures/civilizations/countries/peoples (etc.).

That philosophers can be useful to others is an idea as old as recorded (Western) philosophy. It is useful to see it re-imagined and re-activated in an age where lots of professional philosophers want to imagine philosophy as an explanatory or foundational (these need not be identical) enterprise, and lots of (other) public philosophers emphasize the therapeutic, self-help features of the tradition(s). Even so, if the ends of (service oriented) philosophy are given to it from without, its "agenda" is set by others. To be sure, service-oriented philosophy can and will scrutinize these ends dispassionately, so there need not be worry that some values or ends will get an uncritical, free pass. However, if philosophy is intrinsically meant to result, not just in a facilitating role of mutual coping and ongoing conversations, but in action, then it follows that there may be occasions where ongoing questioning will be untimely or a discrete, even diplomatic silence will be embraced.

Social Modality and Ideology (on Lippmann, Stanley L.A. Paul and Adam Smith)

The systems of stereotypes may be the core of our personal tradition, the defenses of our position in society. They are an ordered more or less consistent picture of the world, to which our habits, our tastes, our capacities, our comforts and our hopes have adjusted themselves. They may not be a complete picture of the world, but they are a picture of a possible world to which we are adapted. In that world, people and things have their well-known places, and do certain expected things. We feel at home there. We fit in. We are members.--Walter Lippmann Public Opinion, Chapter VII (emphases added--ES).

In ch. 5 (ms) of Jason Stanley's "How Propaganda Works," Stanley's calls attention to, and discusses the quoted passage from Lippmann's Public Opinion. Stanley's discussion is excellent, and he deploys Lippmpan's accounts of stereotypes, or in Stanley's terminology, 'scripts,' which structure expectations, to explain both how legitimation of ideology works and to explain the role of ideology in generating resistance to rational revision. (An 'ideology' is "simply a social "script" that governs one's expectations, normative and practical.) Thus, Stanley, who uses Hume and Marx (and others) to motivate his approach to ideology, meets Elster's challenge to the Marxist in Sour Grapes (recall), that is, to supply empirically robust psychological and social mechanisms that can secure a consequence explanation of ideology. (Stanley appeals to empirical work by Payne, Steele, Eberhardt, and others.) In the chapters I have read Stanley does not mention Elster, but, in effect, he helps rehabilitate (alongside work of Gendler, Dotson, Siegel, and Haslanger--all cited and discussed by Stanley) the viability of the notion of ideology.

In the passage quoted from Lippmann, there is a further feature not emphasized by Stanley (but compatible with his approach) that I emphasized above: stereotypes (or social scripts) shape (what I'll call) social modality, that is, the shape of possible experience and counterfactual expectations within it. (Stanley makes a point like this without appealing to counterfactuals and possible world language.) According to Adam Smith in a properly functioning person there is a reciprocal relationship between the habituated mental anticipations of events and sound judgment (recall my discussion here). In my book on Adam Smith (ms) I call this -- in honor of Vernon Smith (in addition a terrific Adam Smith scholar) -- 'ecological rationality.' Homogeneous communities tend to share such ecological rationality. (Recall.)

These scripts exist at the individual and social level, but also at intermediate levels of say, scientific practitioners, journalists, experts like doctors and engineers and interact among each other in complex ways to generate social modalities with individual, disciplinary, class, gendered, race (etc.) perspectives. Many such social modalities are extremely robust anchored as they are in our ordinary cognitive functioning and enduring social institutions (the law, family-structure, discipline formation, the economy, education, etc.). So, in all disciplines there is a built-in tendency toward agreement (which, say in our profession, is reinforced by an image of science that values/promotes consensus along Kuhnian lines). Social modalities also explain the existence of systematically overlooked patterns (epistemic versions of Knightian uncertainty) of the sort recently reinvigorated by L.A. Paul.

As Beiser notes in the final chapter of his wonderful book on the German Historicist Tradition, Max Weber noted that in advanced economies, and increased division of labor, value pluralism is a natural consequence (recall). Given the framework developed by Stanley, we can understand why this so: social modalities will vary in an heterogeneous environment (as the division of labor is). As Stanley notes (and this echoes Smith's move), normative expectations are not immune from this process. 

This generates all kinds of questions (about pluralism, the social ontology of intentional objects that are social modality dependent, the role of a theorist that articulates/practices her subject within a certain entrenched modality, etc.). Here I note just the following: one problem in the vicinity here is that some reasonable expectations are manifestly unjust to outsiders. (Stanley discusses how the institutions of slavery generate ideologically sanctioned legal, commercial, cultural, gendered, racialized (etc.) expectations.) But within a lot of legal and moral areas we cannot really do without some such expectations (see here for an introduction). Life and commercial plans are made within unjust institutional structures by people that are, perhaps, indirectly complicit in them but not responsible for them. (Of course, some may well be responsible or have sufficient privilege within them to generate duties.) That is to say, an intentional violation of an entrenched social modality will generate demands, perhaps some quite reasonable, to be compensated for psychological, political, and commercial losses, including counterfactual ones that will be utterly unexpected.