Digressions&Impressions

Hannah Arendt (and Chomsky) Predicted How Our Epistemocracy (almost) leads to Donald Trump

Daniel Bell is cautiously hopeful because he is aware that scientific and technical work depend on "theoretical knowledge [that] is sought, tested, and codified in a disinterested way" (op. cit). Perhaps this optimism can be justified so long as the scientists and technologists remain uninterested in power and are concerned with no more than social prestige, that is, so long as they neither rule nor govern. Noam Chomsky's pessimism, "neither history nor psychology nor sociology gives us any particular reason to look forward with hope to the rule of the new mandarins," may be excessive; there are as yet no historical precedents, and the scientists and intellectuals who, with such deplorable regularity, have been found willing to serve every government that happened to be in power, have been no "meritocrats" but, rather, social climbers. But Chomsky is entirely right in raising the question: "Quite generally, what grounds are there for supposing that those whose claim to power is based on knowledge and technique will be more benign in their exercise of power than those whose claim is based on wealth or aristocratic origin?" (Op. cit., p. 27.) And there is every reason to raise the complementary question: What grounds are there for supposing that the resentment against a meritocracy, whose rule is exclusively based on "natural" gifts, that is, on brain power, will be no more dangerous, no more violent than the resentment of earlier oppressed groups who at least had the consolation that their condition was caused by no "fault" of their own? Is it not plausible to assume that this resentment will harbor all the murderous traits of a racial antagonism, as distinguished from mere class conflicts, inasmuch as it too will concern natural data which cannot be changed, hence a condition from which one could liberate oneself only by extermination of those who happen to have a higher I.Q.? And since in such a constellation the numerical power of the disadvantaged will be overwhelming and social mobility almost nil, is it not likely that the danger of demagogues, of popular leaders, will be so great that the meritocracy will be forced into tyrannies and despotism?--Hannah Arendt (1972) "On Violence,"note XVI, in Crises of the Republic, pp. 196-7

The note quoted above is attached to a paragraph that treats Bell's analysis of a then-new phenomenon in history: the rise in importance of a credentialed technocratic class (of scientists and engineers, but also bureaucrats) that is indispensable in securing the open ended economic growth of modern (liberal) political economies. While Bell treats technocrats as a new species of disinterested agents, Chomsky and Arendt know better: as the social rewards of technocracy grow, the special ethos that governs an intellectual credit economy gives way among technocrats to mores more apt to political rule (and, in turn, this infects the academy).*

Since Bell, Chomsky, and Arendt discussed these issues, this credentialed class has increasingly secured the economic gains from its own contributions and is steadily supplying the political and economic elite (perhaps also the military elite). Along the way this class also rigged the system in its own favor, by permitting a rent-seeking financial elite to secure private gains at the expense of social costs since the great financial crisis  (in 2008), and by making patents and copy-rights ever more protected.** Thus what was only a speculative thought in the 1960 has become reality: we live in an epistemocracy, or (if you think our modern credentials are spurious) we live in a credentialed elite that purports to be meritocratic.*** Obviously, it is not a perfect epistemocracy (the elites’ self-selection mechanisms are imperfect), but we are heading there.

In an earlier piece on meritocracy, I noted it is very annoying to be told that one deserves to lose. It is worse, I think, if one is told repeatedly and frequently by a whole society's morality and shared commitments that the systematic pattern of outcomes in which one always end up on the losing side is morally just and due to your cognitive, physical, psychological, aesthetic (etc.) flaws, especially, perhaps, if it all seems true. [Note that the true can be ideological if it presupposes a status quo bias [recall]; it can also be a form of supportive propaganda in Stanley's sense [recall]] I would now add that the worst feature of a meritocracy is that the ruling elites treat their own values as constituting rationality.

It is very hard to combine an epistemocracy with democracy because as Arendt notes", in the counterfactial limit the numerical power of the disadvantaged will be overwhelming and social mobility almost nil. Even if the meritocracy is run in accord with Rawls' difference principle and the rising tide of prosperity benefits the least advantaged materially, there is no reason to expect that the majority will accept being second-class forever (even if its accorded all the procedural trappings of democratic participation). Obviously, Arendt smuggles in an assumption of considerable heritability of intelligence, and we may well think (with a nod to plasticity) that ceteris paribus there will be open-ended progress in improving intelligence via social/cultural/educational factors and, thereby, with clever social engineering constant renewal of the elites. But other things are not equal: those will money and influence will nudge the system in their offspring’s favor.

Because rationality and facts are, by (social) definition, on the side of the credentialed elites, the disadvantaged are susceptible to demagogues. And, in fact, if one thinks that power is a genuine end, as it must be in politics, then it is quite rational by the majority to turn to demagogues. While Arendt correctly notes the murderous traits of a racial antagonism that accompanies this turn to demagoguery she mistakenly assumes that its primary target is the credentialed elite rather than members of low status groups that are advancing in relative status due to economic success (I call this the enduring ‘Jewish problem’).

And so we can distinguish between two kinds of demagogues: (i) the ones [Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, etc.] that on the whole leave the credentialed elites pretty much alone and re-direct the majority's energies at scapegoats (immigrants, refugees, dark-skinned citizens, etc.), and (ii) those demagogues that channel the anger at the credentialed elites. It turns out that (i) is can be a serious nuisance to epistemocracy (as the disruption caused by Brexit shows) and harm some of its members (especially if they beling to targeted scapegoat communities), while only (ii) is lethal to credentialed elites as such. Credentialed elites are able to accommodate themselves to (i); from their vantage point Donald Trump is ultimately mere entertainment. We see this calculation at work, first, in the favorable media coverage Trump garnered and, second, because Trump is not being treated as an existential threat to the status quo by those that have most to lose from it.

Once a demagogue along the lines of (ii) arises democracy is finished because the credentialed elites will not defend it. For, they have no attachment to democracy as such: already 'ignorant voters' are treated as a self-evident fact by many of the most ardent epistemocrats; there is increasing fondness to use arguments from complexity to favor either markets or experts. Rather, as Arendt suggests the credentialed will desert the democratic cause, and defend their power against the more egalitarian impulse in the name of a moral cause: merit. 

Obviously these outcomes are not inevitable. It is possible liberal democracies muddle on. It is notable that there is a huge atmosphere of crisis that permeates Arendt's writinsg from the late 1960s and early  70s. There was a genuine crisis that was arguably worse than what's being faced now, but for all of our many imperfections liberal democracies have not imploded since. In particular, it is more likely that external threats (fill in your favorite: climate change, violent Jihad, China, etc.) will allow the construction of some kind of unity that will involve some compromise between the principle of merit and the principle of equality.

 

 

On Living in an Epistemocracy: or Why the Collapse of Neoliberalism Did Not Produce a Progressive Revolution

'Neoliberalism' has been a key concept used by progressive intellectuals to analyze and understand a whole bunch of political developments associated with the rise of Thatcher and Reagan and the subsequent, purportedly market friendly policies adopted in the Western world during the last thirty years. (In this narrative Jimmy Carter never receives the credit he deserves for his advocacy of deregulation.) In particular, the critique could point to the deployment of the principles of 'new public management,' which entailed that ideas from the private sector (competition, metrics, decentralization, etc.) were used to displace public sector values within the public public sector (in areas of education, healthcare, justice, welfare, etc.). In this (somewhat Marxist) narrative capital was winning at the expense of labor with unions under attacked and weakened by globalization and less favorable labor laws. With steadily rising equity and housing prices, the middle classes were turned into capitalists, too, and so sided with capital against the lower classes left behind. 

The 2008-10 financial crisis bailed out capital at the expense of other (middle-class) taxpayers. It was a classic case of rent-seeking (private gain, social cost). It also undermined the myths about fair gains that underwrote the neoliberal consensus; it generated huge amount of anger and resentment. But nearly a decade later, with the hollowness of neoliberal policies exposed, it is notable that the aftermath of the great financial crisis did not realign voters to a truly progressive left (with the exception, perhaps, of Greece, which is a special case). If there has been a turn away from liberal values, it has not been -- despite Bernie Sanders's or Jeremy Corbyn's efforts -- toward socialism, but rather toward a nationalist-authorian-welfarist-right and, among some of our youth, toward International-militant-Islamism. Perhaps, that's because the modern left is too cosmopolitan for today's dispossessed.

But  the truth is simpler and more depressing. Modern political economies have stacked the decks not just in favor of the already-rich-and-powerful (that's quite normal), but in favor of the educated (that's somewhat unusual in the history of mankind). Our economies reward the educated with employment and income (there are some national differences because of tax policies). In fact, the whole political-economy that is described as neoliberalism is run by the educated for the educated and those that wish to bribe the educated. (Hilary Clinton's education proposal which subsidizes the education of entrepreneurs is a nice example of this mind-set.) Universities are the gateways to social and professional success.

The previous paragraph is as true in China and France as it is in England and the United States. The interests of so-called human capital is promoted and protected by laws that insist on credentialing in the professions (medicine, accounting, academia, law, finance, etc.), that reward patents and trade-marks, and that allows various kinds of cartels to flourish in which complex financial instruments are sources of income, insurance and banking (too big too fall, etc.).  That is to say, during the last thirty years the educated have been rent-seeking at the expense of the uneducated. It is no surprise, then, that the most technocratic institution of our age -- the central bank -- has never been so powerful.

Thus, our neoliberal status quo would be more aptly described as a (rent-seeking) epistemocracy--rule by experts for experts who use the instruments of state to protect their interests. The emblematic professional of an epistomocracy is the consultant [a brain for hire], who never suggests to fire management, but always recommends more salary for management and more contracts for, well, other consultants. 

In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, much has written on the racism and ignorance of the average 'leave' voter (who, in some narratives, is victimized by media manipulation and outright lies). It's been noted that s/he is also on average less educated than the remain voter. The wisdom of allowing such voters a direct policy say (via a referendum) has been questioned, again,* from the 'right' (e.g. Jason Brennan) by those who wish to give voting rights only to educated and from the 'left' (Van Reybrouck) who wish to promote rational deliberation by having lotteries pick a few citizen-legislators who can be guided by experts to reasonable policy outcomes.

That is to say, what is new in our times is not that liberal societies that allow immigrants (and previously marginalized) to compete economically have generated a xenophobic and anti-Liberal response. As I have noted in reflecting on the roots of nineteenth century Zionism this is an endemic problem to Liberalism. What may be new is that the intellectual class that understands itself as speaking for the oppressed and against power, and -- in its romantic branch -- is waiting for, if not urging, the revolt of the masses, is, in fact, the power that must be destroyed if our epistemocracy should come to an end. When that end arrives is anybody's guess.

 

 

 

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?

 

 

On the "presumptive grounds for killing abortion doctors and bombing abortion clinics"

When people target abortion doctors, or bomb abortion clinics, pro-choice people exclaim, “See how extreme the pro-life crowd is! They’re insane!” But, no, if abortion = baby murder on par with murdering adults (or five-year-olds), and if there are no effective non-lethal means to stop these murders, then there seem to be very strong presumptive grounds for killing abortion doctors and bombing abortion clinics, according to the commonsense moral doctrine of killing in defense of others. The main normative dispute should really be about the moral status of the fetuses. Otherwise, the dispute would just be over whether killing is necessary (are there equally effective non-lethal means?), or whether the proper targets are being killed (e.g., abortion clinic bombers must avoid killing innocent people when they rightly kill abortion doctors).--Jason Brennan "Abortion and Killing in Defense of Others."

I agree with Jason Brennan that it is a mistake to claim that those that kill abortion doctors and bomb abortion clinics "are insane!" I also agree with Brennan that the moral status of fetuses is one of the central normative issues.  I would, in fact, welcome learning why Brenann thinks "that abortion (or, at least early abortion) is" not "baby murder." The post that I have quoted from above (it's the concluding paragraph) is based on the supposition (which Brennan rejects) that "for the sake of argument the anti-abortion crowd [is] correct" that abortion is murder. So, while Brennan does not himself encourage killing abortion doctors and bombing abortion clinics, the conclusion of his argument is that there would be such encouragement if one came to think that abortion is baby murder.

The two-fold engine of Brennan's argument is (i) "the doctrine of defensive killing, a doctrine enshrined into common law. By default, killing is presumed wrong. However, a person can become liable to be killed by performing certain wrongful or unjust actions." And (ii) "the common law tends to be a reliable guide to people’s moral intuitions. The doctrines of self-defense and defense of others are doctrines that developed through the common law process that embody centuries of experience regarding how best to discourage violence and resolve violent disputes."

For those of us who do not live within a common law tradition the (moral) truth of (ii) is not self-evident, and Brennan's embrace of (ii) may also be viewed as a kind of useful fiction within a civic religion or, more cynically, an ideology that enshrines a certain, moral-juridical status quo bias (with the bias toward those powers capable of influencing and shaping the inherited legal status quo). [We also ignore to what degree post-Revolutionary America can really be understood as a common-law.] Given that the common law was, for example, for a very long time not very favorably disposed toward abortion, it's not clear, in fact, on what grounds Brennan thinks we could have morally innovated away from the tradition of banning abortion. (This is a familiar objection to any such normative, spontaneous order theory of the law.)

But here I want to focus on a further claim embedded within (ii); Brennan also claims (iii) that common law is also a kind of cumulative wisdom on how to "discourage violence and resolve violent disputes." It is by no means obvious that judged by this standards the common law as practiced Stateside is all that successful; by most empirical metrics America is notoriously more violent country than other advanced Liberal Democracies. But even if we ignore such inconvenient empirical facts, it is by no means obvious that to "encourage killing abortion doctors and bombing abortion clinics" in the name of the doctrines of self-defense and defense of others is a way to discourage violence. Perhaps it's because in Europe the memories of religious wars (associated with many decades of warfare: Thirty-years, Eighty-years, etc.) are taught in school, but it seems more likely to me that such an encouragement will only generate more violence so long as the main normative dispute is not settled.

That is to say, history suggests that when the doctrines of self-defense and defense of others are embraced and promoted in the context of fundamental moral disagreement, they (these doctrines) are a recipe to return us all to the state of nature of religious warfare. At that point the recipe of following the common law would become self-undermining.

On Elizabeth Anderson's Challenge to Analytic Egalitarianism

Consider, in this light, two of the theoretical virtues that Longino identifies as among those that may properly guide theory choice for feminists. One is "ontological heterogeneity." This is a preference for "splitting" over "lumping"-for emphasizing the qualitative diversity and individuality of subjects of study and the distinctions among properties commonly classified together. One purely cognitive motivation for this is to seek fine-grained descriptive accuracy. Barbara McClintock's revolutionary discovery of genetic transposition, which was based on close observation of the cytological differences among individual seeds on com cobs, demonstrates that such a focus can yield huge theoretical advances. But there are political reasons for emphasizing heterogeneity as well. Ideologies that purport to scientifically demonstrate the inevitability of male dominance often appeal to theories that assimilate disparate phenomena under vague, global classifications.--Elizabeth Anderson (1995) "Knowledge, Human Interests, and Objectivity in Feminist Epistemology."

Upon re-reading the quoted passage in Anderson's classic article, I had a mild panic attack: is my commitment to analytic egalitarianism an instance of an "ideology" that ends up demonstrating "the inevitability of male dominance"? After all, analytic egalitarianism is committed to the theoretical homogeneity of agents. Before I answer this pressing question, let's distinguish among three theoretical positions:

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

More positions are possible, of course, but these tend to be unstable. As I noted last week, Thrasymachus, for example, is an inconsistent analytic egalitarian because he does not include himself (and others 'in the know') inside his model (and so is unable to argue his case fully). Hobbes, by contrast, is consistent in this way. At first glance, Anderson's position is like Socrates' in Book 2 of the Republic (option 2). She insists there is human difference, but these differences (in one's theorizing) serve a kind of moral (and political) equality.

In fact, the original proponents of analytic egalitarianism, the economists David Levy and Sandra Peart, are strongly opposed to positing heterogeneous agents in part because after extensive engagement with the shared history of economics and philosophy, which is full of eugenicists and over confident experts, they are suspicious of models that posit hierarchy and thereby justify a hierarchical social organization.  So, the difference between the second (Anderson's) and third theoretical option (AE) may be understood in two, not necessarily competing ways: (a) which approach allows us to do better modeling?; (b) In terms of inductive risk (see this important paper by Heather Douglas): which approach is more likely to generate (to use an euphemism) 'unpleasant' moral and political consequences? Both are empirical matters.

Note that my (a-b) have a resemblance to (but are not identical with) Anderson's "dual justification" approach to theoretical classification:

They must satisfy some standards of epistemic significance: there must be clear empirical criteria for determining when phenomena fall under a classification, some phenomena must actually meet these criteria, the classification must figure in some explanation or some causal or empirical regularity. Such classifications must also pass scrutiny from the standpoint of contextual interests and values. They must track the underlying contextual values accurately; that is, they must group phenomena together that share a common relation to these interests. And the contextual values themselves must be justified from an ethical point of view. (47)

For while I agree with Anderson's argument for this dual justification approach (although I note that the arguments from under-determination may become rhetorically less effective in this post-Quine-ean, 'knee-jerk' realist age), I also would suggest that we need to look at the inductive risks of a model as a further, third dimension of evaluation.

Here I cannot settle the (implicit) debate between Anderson and Levy/Peart. But it is worth noting that some of the most telling examples in her paper may also be thought to support AE, too. For, advocates of AE agree with the feminist criticism of "gender polarized classification schemes." (48) Analytic egalitarians do so on principled, not ad hoc, grounds because we reject human difference. If there are gender differences  (a) they need to be discovered empirically and, if these are, found then (b) these pose the question what institutions, practices, and research methods generate such differences.  The method is, then, self-critical.+ That is to say, AE method guards, in large part, against inductive risk.

Let me close with a final observation. At one point Anderson comments (on feminist criticisms of "theoretical classifications that presuppose the legitimacy of sexist and androcentric values"):

The changes in conceptual schemes for psychological research into gender that feminist normative criticism has recommended are not just window dressing. They open up opportunities for exploring human potentialities that were foreclosed under more rigid conceptual schemes. (Anderson, 47)

I welcome the feminist successes in advocating changes in conceptual schemes for psychlogical research. But I would claim that the problem here, then, is not rigidity as such (for AE is rigid, too), but the foreclosing of exploring human potentialities. AE is designed, precisely, to explore rigorously human potentiality under different institutional (cultural, educational, etc.) regimes. If it is an ideology, then it is a salutary one until, of course, the empirical evidence suggests otherwise.

 

 

On the Philosophical Free Speech Warriors

About twenty five years ago, at my elite Amsterdam high school, Vossius Gymniasium, I received a final exam from our popular history teacher, Jan Blokker, in which we were asked to analyze a blatantly anti-semitic passage from Hitler's Mein Kamp. For complex legal reasons Mein Kamp is not easily available in the Netherlands (there is a de facto ban on publishing it), but I recognized the passage at once because I had read it before in my own copy (which I had bought Stateside). We had not been warned this might happen, and after the exam I wrote an editorial for our school newspaper, Vulpes, in which I criticized Blokker's decision. (I also unfairly noted the fact that Blokker's dad was a famous polemicist who enjoyed comparing his impressions of visiting Israel to Nazi concentration-camps.) I believe he wrote a response explaining his pedagogical choices, and that was the end of the local matter.

Now, I grew up in a local Jewish community full of Holocaust survivors; my choice for a secular (non Jewish) high school was, in part, motivated by a desire to escape the constant threat of terrorist attacks at our heavily guarded Jewish schools and the more general, claustrophobic environment in which a low-grade panic and persecution-complex were part of the background DNA of daily life. (This vibe exists to this day: recently a group of kids were discouraged from playing in the team colors of Germany's die Mannschaft [the reigning world champions] at the annual local, Jewish soccer competition.) But while I was upset by having to confront unexpectedly blatant antisemitism during an exam (which is not exactly a moment for shared intellectual inquiry), that was, with the benefit of hindsight, not my main reason for objecting to Blokker's decision. What really irritated me was the thought that the latent anti-semitic views of my class room peers -- who grew up to become the educators, novelists, journalists, bankers, and civil servants that help constitute the evolving public sphere -- might be encouraged or normalized not because they would imitate Hitler's views, but because their own prejudices, which I had discerned over the years, would be thought benign and modest in comparison despite a very partial overlap of commitments.

When I wrote my high school editorial words like 'trigger warning' and 'micro-agression' did not exist yet and the Dutch public sphere was less antagonistic toward minorities than it is now. At the time, Holland prided itself on its history of tolerance and there was a public culture in which any criticism of ethnic minorities was thought unwelcome in our free press alongside equally strong taboos on, say, discussion of Dutch war crimes in Indonesia or the role of Dutch farming in destroying the environment; you can imagine being the most perfect society ever created if you systematically ignore all local, social ills.

My memories were prompted by the fact that the philosophical blogosphere has witnessed the sudden growth of an alliance in defense of freedom of speech between our self-proclaimed Marxist, Brian Leiter, who is polemicizing against what he calls (a) "the New Infantilism," and my friends at Bleedingheartlibertarians who decry (b) the New Campus Censorship™ and (c) the "debate over so-called “microaggressions.""  On (c) there has been a spirited response at Feministphilosophers, While (a-b) seem to amount to the same thing, here I focus primarily on Brennan's position because he has made a more thorough effort to articulate it.

One of the oddities of the current polemic is that the so-called philosophical defenders of free speech are recycling Memes developed to prevent government interference in speech in a context in which there are student campaigns to address how universities handle (i) faculty incapable of sexual self-restraint (and a lot worse) with students; (ii) campus cultures in which students may be sexually violated by their peers; and (iii) curricula that seem to aestheticize and glorify rape and various forms of domination.

Ít is odd to characterize responses to (i-iii) as "students hiding from scary ideas," (Brennan) when it is primarily student movements that are are putting these issues on the agenda in a context of an existing culture of confidentiality that, in practice, has served the interests of administrators and perpetrators far more than victims. These students are promoting campus discussions and debates about uncomfortable facts (including the pattern of indifference of too many local police departments and university administrations to victims of sex crimes); true educators ought to be proud of facilitating endurance performance art efforts (like those by Emma Sulkowicz), and they ought to be welcomed by those that defend freedom of speech. When Swift offered his modest proposal (recall) he was criticizing the abuse, poverty, and famines of the poor by a feudal and religiously oppressive  colonial power. By contrast Brennan offers his modest proposal to defend tenured professors from (ahh) critical students.

In each case that has made the media, complex contextual and conceptual issues are at play, and it is by no means obvious how universities balance being in loco parentis (and Stateside they charge hefty dollars to be so understood), foster inclusive intellectual environments, secure academic excellence, and promoting inquiry (not to mention complying with government regulations). The proper response to these challenges is not, 'be like me,' -- for the person advocating that stance gets by just fine without putting issues like (i-iii) on the agenda -- or the ridiculing without qualification of student movements, but genuine local experimentation with norms and practices. (I would think that is the proper Libertarian response?)

Brennan, who actually does offer something like a trigger warning on his syllabi (about which below), reports that his (presumably self-selected) students "are shocked to discover how many empirical and normative premises they share with Adolf Hitler." It is by no means obvious what his students' mature views are going to be once the shock has worn off. A lot probably depends on individual developments as well as personal, social and intellectual contexts that are hard to predict and are out of a teacher's hands. But it is by no means obvious that such shock therapy is always and everywhere the best form of education.

Brennan reports that his trigger warning includes this statement (bold and italics in original): "Finally, it requires that one experience and overcome, rather than flee from, serious intellectual discomfort." Now, as it happens I find Brennan's course aspirations exciting (I may also start using his trigger warning) and I would love to audit his class it if I ever get a chance to spend a sabbatical at Georgetown. But it is by no means obvious that experiencing and overcoming serious intellectual discomfort is a necessary condition for (A) "the pursuit of truth" (which he thinks "the classroom and the university is a forum" for) or even (B) "the pursuit of responsible ideology." (By "Responsible ideology" he means "putting in the hard work to be justified in one’s political views. It requires a synthesis of humanistic and social scientific methods. It requires that one understand and, in a sense, can “get inside the head” of views entirely foreign to one’s own.") To be clear: (A) and (B) are not identical epistemic ideals if only because it is quite clear that responsible ideology (or justified political views) can fall short of truth.

On (A): a lot of known truth is pursued successfully without experiencing and overcoming, despite the presence of various epistemic and personal barriers, such discomfort. So, the pursuit of truth cannot be used as a blanket justification for promoting discomforting experiences in students. One also often hears that 'in the outside world' students will encounter awful views so it is best to expose them to these. This argument is just silly. There are a lot of injustices and scandalous features of the world that are wholly inappropriate for the class room or the university, which in its best moments has always understood itself as community with higher standards than the fallen world we inhabit. Brennan's own argument against 'safe spaces is in the spirit of this bad argument; he has great fun ridiculing the idea of 'safe spaces;' without noticing that the very idea of a safe space is a secular adaptation of what was once known as a Shining City on the hill (promoted by President Ronald Reagan among others). 

On (B): I have non-trivial sympathy for Brennan's position; it is possible that we can only have justified political views if we have really grappled with views entirely foreign to our own. It follows from this that we ought to be committed to a life-time of learning, but that due to constraints on time and opportunity costs, in practice we always fall short of holding a responsible ideology (presumably his syllabus is not the right place to announce this).

But it is worth noting that in Brennan's writings on these campus debates, he makes no public effort whatsoever to get inside the head of the proponents of the views he opposes. He also describes his opponents as 'new infants,' without doing justice to any of their arguments. Rather, he proposes norms that may work fine in an ideal theory, but that fail to do justice to the messy reality he writes about. He embraces an idealization -- the "traditional college model in which every idea, no matter how repugnant, can be discussed in an intellectual way at any time," -- and confuses it for reality. Universities and scientific/philosophical communities have always been places where some ideas get explored in careful detail while simultaneously policing the limits of legitimate speech and keeping quiet about their own unjust practices. 

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 heroes and courage

A hero–as we use the term in typical English discourse–is someone who voluntarily engages in rightful service to others, even though that service puts him at risk of harm, and who does so out of benevolence rather than a desire for personal gain. So, to assess whether soldiers are heroes, we’d need to know 1) what their motives are, 2) the degree to which they were at risk of harm, 3) whether they were rightfully serving others. The qualifier “rightfully” is important. After all, Nazi soldiers and Gulag guards served others, but they don’t serve the right ends, and they didn’t conduct their service in a morally permissible way...

Whether you think the typical American soldier is a hero or not will depend a great deal on your view of American foreign policy. Some American wars are beyond the pale; no reasonable person could believe them to be justified: e.g., the various wars fought to exterminate and uproot Native Americans, the Mexican-American War, and the Spanish-American war. What about other wars and military incursions? I’ll lay my cards on the table and say that I think hardly any US military actions have been justified according to the correct theory of just war. I didn’t think the invasion of Iraq was justified, and so far, it’s been a disaster. While the Taliban was of course an illegitimate regime, invading Afghanistan seemed like a terrible idea, and so far, it has been. It’s far from clear that US military actions over the past 15 years have done anything to promote or protect Americans’ freedom, though it is clear that these actions have wrought death, suffering, and destruction upon many innocent foreigners.--Jason Brennan, Bleedingheartlibertarians. [See also his follow-up.]

I have been a fierce critic of Jason Brennan in the past. But I have to recognize that given that Brennan is, in addition to being a professional philosopher, also, in part a public philosopher, it takes considerable courage to express the sentiments he does. Brennan risks hurting a promising career as a media pundit and other careers in public service by reminding Americans of some of the worst features of their history.

Unlike Brennan, I would argue that one can be courageous, even a hero, serving non-rightful ends. To oversimplify, the criteria for heroicism are spectator-relative. This is why the exemplary deeds recounted in Greek poetry remain heroic despite changing views on the laws of war and morality more generally. For, as the dictionary definitions remind us, a hero is admired. In fact, as Hume and Adam Smith both emphasized, even distant admiration of the dazzling hero is possible and co-existing with (subdued) moral disapproval.+ (Brennan's approving treatment of the quiet, everyday, dazzle-free heroicism the "local auto mechanic or your neighborhood tailor" is remniscent of Hutcheson's approach [recall]).

So, it's very hard for us to recognize our enemies as heroes, even if we, in our better moments, recognize their courage. That is, there are objective facts of the matter (ability as well as willingness to confront danger, fear, etc.) that make somebody's actions courageous and these are independent of morality. We are repeatedly told that suicide-bombers are cowardly, but this is just propaganda. If they attack, say, armed soldiers, we may abhor their tactics, but we would be foolish to fail to recognize their courage.*

Libertarians and those Dumb Voters (on Conflict Resolution)

In choosing between various political parties and programs for the commonwealth’s social and economic organization most people are uninformed and groping in the dark. The average voter lacks the insight to distinguish between policies suitable to attain the ends he is aiming at and those unsuitable. He is at a loss to examine the long chains of aprioristic reasoning which constitute the philosophy of a comprehensive social program. He may at best form some opinion about the short-run effects of the policies concerned...But in buying a commodity or abstaining from its purchase there is nothing else involved than the consumer’s longing for the best possible satisfaction of his instantaneous wishes. The consumer does not—like the voter in political voting—choose between different means whose effects appear only later. He chooses between things which immediately provide satisfaction. His decision is final.| (L. Von Mises "Profit and Loss," 18-19 [HT David Gordon])

As recounted last week, these were remarks first delivered at the Mont Pèlerin Society in 1951 at the zenith of Von Mises's public influence. Economics was taking a formal turn toward technocratic self-understanding, and Von Mises had a gift of antagonizing his allies so now he is mostly remembered for his influence on Libertarian thought. Unlike many others so influential, Von Mises was no eugenicist (a disease that also infected plenty of Progressives) and an enemy of racism (see Sandra Peart and David Levy). He thought economists should necessarily assume that all agents are equally capable of rationality, and I am unfamiliar with any text in which he expresses fondness for either rule by experts or rule of an enlightened dictator. 

Even so, in his defense of markets (against Communist/Socialist criticism), he generates a Meme about the dumb voter that has been enduringly popular among those that pine for variants of expert rule (Jason Brennan) or those that wish to introduce the rule of Fortune (David Van Reybrouck). Let's stipulate that voters (not just average types) are badly informed not just for the idiosyncratic reason that Von Mises stipulates (namely ignorance of his approach to economics), but because the world is a complicated place, there are many unintended consequences of one's actions, and there are a wide variety of extremely detailed/fine-grained bits of expertise that enter into any serious policy decision. In addition, lots of folk have incentives to generate false information, not to mention that elected politicians behave in ways that are hard to control and predict. So, when a voter enters a polling booth with limited choices to pick from, she is in a terrible epistemic situation. This much is agreed.

On Obama and the Libertarians

It's probably because I was raised in Europe that I find Libertarianism so fascinating; there is -- despite some shared roots in anarchism -- really nothing like it in Europe. So, I have been a faithful reader of Bleedingheartlibertarians since March 2011. Kevin Vallier is among my favorite BHLers, and I never miss his contributions.  

The government isn’t us because it’s not a plausible expression of the viable and attractive ideal of a general will. We don’t need to do away with Rousseau’s fundamental political concepts to avoid the Rousseau-Obama conclusion.--Kevin Vallier, at BleedingheartLibertarians.com.

Unlike most Libertarians I know, Vallier accepts a subtle version of the idea of a general will. This deserves more reflection. But here I focus on Vallier's effort to link Obama to features of Rosseau. For, Vallier's post is response to a claim by President Obama:

Well, the government is us. These officials are elected by you. They are elected by you. I am elected by you. I am constrained, as they are constrained, by a system that our Founders put in place. It’s a government of and by and for the people.

Of course, Obama is not quoting Rousseau at the Denver Policy Academy; Obama is quoting, in part, the closing sentence of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (recall):

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.*

Moreover, in the passage quoted by Vallier, Obama mentions "the founders" not Rousseau. What he has in mind is undoubtedly the first sentence of the US Constitution: 

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. 

So, Obama is invoking an authentic, American political tradition going back to the Founders as mediated by Lincoln that has a tendency to blur the distinction between the people, the union, and the government. Let's call this the "Founders-Lincoln-Obama strand." While I am open to the idea that Lincoln re-imagined the nature of the union ("new birth of freedom") and the founders, by contrast, envisioned a more limited government, their emphasis on 'general welfare' goes beyond the minimalist conceptions they were familiar with during the eighteenth century.