Digressions&Impressions

Science will not save analytical Philosophy

To make a long story short, I think the lesson of Dorsey's problem of "intuitive bedrock" is that--whenever possible--philosophy needs to move beyond contested intuitions and find real bedrock: observational facts, establishable through common experience, that support one philosophical theory over another. Such bedrock may of course be very hard to find--but, as I think the above examples suggest, science can often point us in a more promising direction, if only we choose to pay attention to it. I've suggested before that analytic philosophy has often been too a prior-istic, and that the future of philosophy is natural philosophy: philosophy firmly enmeshed with the sciences. This, in brief, is why. Without science, all we have are intuitions--and intuitions just aren't good enough.--Marcus Arvan "Dorsey on intuitive bedrock and the philosophical enterprise" The Philosophers's Cocoon

Arvan responded to Dorsey's post about the same time I did (recall). On Dorsey's account (i) arguments are characteristic (or the tools) of analytical philosophy. The (ii) division of intellectual labor allows (iii) sets of systematic entailment relations are explored; and this generates (iv) philosophical progress, that, is we understand our theories. (v) Consensus is impossible because (v*) philosophy does not offer  substantive grounds for the fundamental premises or posits in theories. As I noted, Dorsey's diagnosis of (v) is that there is an insolvable clash of intuitions. This generates a kind of spirit of tolerance in which philosophy is a kind of neutral tool to be used by people to navigate the world. So far my quick summary of Dorsey. 

 I offered two reasons to think that Dorsey's account is unsatisfactory: I noted, first, that the clash cannot be resolved is a consequence of a tacit democratic or individualist (moral) principle in Dorsey's account: each person's intuition is as good as another. Dorsey has not earned the right to this intuition given his own conception of philosophy. Second, because ends are eschewed on Dorsey's account of philosophy, such philosophy cannot justify its own practice in the way that the Athenian artisans Socrates around the marketplace cannot account for their practice. In addition, I also hinted that, third, that a focus on arguments i) may be too limited a way of understanding philosophy (leaving aside that there may be very different kinds of argument patterns).

As it happens, Arvan's response to Dorsey takes on these first two problems in Dorsey's account. First, Arvan addresses the inability to generate consensus by offering hope that substantive grounds for fundamental posits -- which he claims will be observational facts, establishable through common experience --,can be found by empirical science. The hope that this is possible follows from the example of the history of the sciences (he mentions astronomy and empirical psychology). In fact, Arvan relies on a Kuhnian picture of science, in which "mature" sciences are characterised by consensus over what counts as a phenomenon: "you don't get to assert something as a fact or observation unless it is widely--indeed, virtually universally--replicable." So, the idea is to find ways to put philosophy in position to become mature. Second, for Arvan the proper end of philosophy is truth. I discuss  these in reverse order.

Arvan does not note that Dorsey had also allowed that truth is the proper end that each theory within philosophy aims at. Dorsey just doubts that this can be achieved with the tools we have. That is to say, Arvan is in no better position to justify his appeal to (another democratic principle) common experience than Dorsey was in order to justify his individualist (moral) principle. (We might say, that Arvan and Dorsey both represent different stands within a democratic ethos.) For, common experience ignores the deviant, the excessive, the rare, etc. (Arvan recognizes this because he speaks of an experience shared by 'virtually all.') In addition, and we know this from the philosophy of social science, the way the common is constituted by an empirical practice, finds it very difficult to maintain neutrality among competing values. Arvan's normal human subject is a construct in which various values are imported under the guise of science. Sure, this construct allows for means-end analysis in the same way deploying homo economicus does, but it can't tell you which values are worth having.

And this gets me to the main problem with such Kuhnian scientism (which aims at consensus) that has become characteristic of contemporary naturalism: in human affairs truth is not sufficient to vindicate a position. And that's because a theory may be true or sincere yet still be ideological or propaganda (recall this piece on Jason Stanley; and this piece on economics). For example, a theory can have a tacit status quo bias. So, you can study a normal human subject within given institutional (or cultural, political, etc.) constraints and arrive at a great deal of knowledge about it. But if you deny yourself the means to question these constraints, you may well contribute to maintaining an ideology. A sure way to do so, is, as standpoint epistemologists have taught us, to rule out evidence that fails to confirm to the normal or what is common. So, much as I love learning from science, if given the choice, I much prefer Dorsey's spirit of tolerance and collaboration over Arvan's purported progress.

 

"you don't get to assert something as a fact or observation unless it is widely--indeed, virtually universally--replicable." - See more at: http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2016/06/dorsey-on-intuitive-bedrock-and-the-philosophical-enterprise.html#commentsSecond, Arvan also insists that truth is the proper end of philosophy. 

piece of teasing entertainment.

Philosophy and the Revolution

It would be really nice for philosophers – at least those of us who care about injustice and oppression – if what was needed was better and more careful argumentation in order to rationally persuade ourselves out of bad ideology: if we as analytic philosophers had just the right hammer for the nail. I’m not saying that philosophy has little or no effect on political reality. It’s a very difficult thing to say, after all, just how political change happens, and without knowing that, it’s hard to know what role philosophy might and should play in that change. But I fear that the thought that what we need, politically speaking, is analytic philosophy – and in particular the tools of analytic epistemology and philosophy of language – is one more legitimation myth of which we should be suspicious. After all, it would be convenient for us as professional philosophers not only if our somewhat peculiar skills turned out to be essential for the pursuit of justice, but also if it turned out that the use of those skills could render political revolution, especially violent revolution, unnecessary. For, if the revolution did come, surely many of us here would have much to lose. Amia Srinivasan Commenting on Jason Stanley's How Propaganda Works.

There are three reasons why public reviewing and commenting is important, and why I often blog about these. First, it is a way to maintain quality in a public way. Too much of the profession’s quality control is not transparent: we referee, recommend, and make hiring decisions largely behind closed doors and protected by anonymity. Editors are accountable to nobody. Most of our professional decisions are scrutinized by a handful of folk at most. So, in many ways we run our profession as a closed shop with non-transparent rules of the game. (This is also true of grant agencies.) Second, reviews and authors-meets-critics sessions give us a look under the proverbial hood: we learn about the personal idiosyncrasies, the meta-philosophical sensibilities, and the normative and psychical commitments that animate all our works and judgments. Third, they remind us of the intrinsically social nature of professional philosophy—the reviews reveal our antipathies, comradeship, emulation, friendships, and rivalries. While we are often drawn to the agonistic elements of such exchanges, we are all uplifted by genuine mutual improvement and understanding.

Srinivasan understands Jason Stanley’s book as “an internal critique of American society” that is intended to “be rationally compelling to the privileged elite.” In so doing, Stanley uses the tools of, especially, analytic epistemology and philosophy of language. There is much evidence for this interpretation in the book (and also some of Stanley’s public opinion pieces [recall and here]).

Even so it is not entirely right. (We may say that Srinivasan romanticizes the American elite, but there is no reason to think that Stanley does so.) In fact, Stanley is not really addressing the elites – the 1% -- on their own terms. Given Stanley’s evident interest in Lippmann (an interest he shares with Bruno Latour and Graham Harman) [while recognizing that Stanley has different aims], we may reformulate Srinivasan’s interpretation as follows: Stanley offers an internal critique of American society that is intended to be rationally compelling to the intellectuals (journalists, think tank types, policy advisers, judges, professors, etc.) as well as the children of the 1% and other students that help shape the opinions of the privileged without ever really questioning their more fundamental interests.*

Stanley’s engages this intellectual elite by presupposing a kind of shared commitment to a deliberative and unifying understanding of public life (recall). For example, when he appeals to Madison’s Federalist 10, he claims that "an election campaign is supposed to present candidates seeking to show that they have the common interests of all citizens at heart." Here Stanley emphasizes the ways in which elections are meant to unify, but he does not note that Madison simultaneously insists that the elected are in some sense superior to the electors.

This is not deny that sometimes Stanley is clearly also addressing fellow philosophers when he borrows our jargon to block a possible objection in, for example, his rather technical meta-philosophical use of Tarski [recall]). But in the book the tools of analytical philosophy are used to create a shared space in which, for all its knowingness, democracy becomes idealized as one of the main loci of rationality and reasonableness. That is, Stanley is (to adopt his own terminology) producing supporting propaganda in the service of certain democratic ideals that he thinks he shares with this elite. (Stanley is not secretive about this.)

Srinivasian is too polite to mention (but her presentation has already shown it) that there is no intrinsic connection between justice and the tools of analytic epistemology and philosophy of language. These tools lend themselves as much to sophistry as they do virtue; this is because the tools of analytical philosophy have no substantive commitment to the Good—the ends are given from without which is why analytical philosophy can be found in the service of technocracy as much as it can be found promoting justice. (The more familiar, legitimation myth that developed in the aftermath of the rejection of Heidegger, that analytical philosophy is an Enlightenment philosophy is also hollow—our tools are simply too esoteric.) One can recognize the truth of the previous three sentences without accepting another myth, that is, that our cherished tools are topic neutral. (I owe you a further illustration of this claim when I turn to Stanley’s treatment of concepts some day.)

Of course, the relationship between any philosophical movement and politics is a complex one. As is well known, in a famous passage in the Republic (recall my treatment of 592ab), Socrates commits himself to a very indirect participation in politics; Socrates's private self-governance is intrinsically political because it  engages in ongoing speculative political theory and his own emendation is (as it were) patterned on, and oriented toward, the heavenly political city. But the direct public expression of this politics is curtailed. As Seneca recommends, rather than trying to be philosopher-kings, the philosopher should aim to legislate for the future. Stanley deviates from this template by participating actively in our public debates of the day, while maintaining a professional profile on the edge of the research frontier.

As Srinivasan reminds us forthrightly that, unlike Socrates, contemporary (professional) philosophers have been lured into attachments of property, income, and status. (The fact that Republican, presidential candidates attack philosophy as a proxy for attacking the whole elite culture is evidence for this otherwise surprising last point.) That is to say, she suggests that our class interest aligns us with the other intellectuals that serve the 1%. It does not follow, of course, we all follow our class interest, but it is to be expected that those that deviate too far from it, by undermining it, will face professional obstacles. Of course, her official point in the quoted paragraph is that our tools are impotent to prevent the political harms that may befall us--we may imagine that we are autonomous, but we are, too, leaves that blow along with the forces of history.

An impatient reader may wonder why I am tiptoeing around Srinivasan's almost explicit suggestion that violent revolution may well be necessary in order to promote justice. (It does not follow that she advocates violent revolution because we would need to learn more about her attitude toward necessity and other ultimate ends.)  Srinivasan seems to imply that there are two roads open to us: (A) a (doomed) internal critique that aims to reform what is left of democratic elite intellectual opinion by drawing on a shared fantasy of rational democracy or (B) the acknowledgment that if the internal critique fails, a violent revolution that will shuffle the classes is a live possibility. While routine state violence is bad enough, other forms of politicized violence and rhetorics that condone these are being normalized again. Unless philosophers can develop political alternatives to (A-B), Srinivasan's words may well turn out to be prophetic.**

 

 

On Stanley on Propaganda and (Tarski style) Truth (II)

It might be thought that the theory of ideology has ideology as its subject matter, and so cannot itself contain its subject matter. But this thought too is incorrect. The logician Alfred Tarski provides a proof of the soundness of the axioms of the calculus of classes in a metatheory. But the reason the soundness proof works is that the meta-theory also has axioms that express those same principles. The meta-theory is not an attempt to provide the justifications of the propositions expressed by axioms of the theory to someone who doubts  them. Its task is different: it is to deliver important knowledge about the object theory. Similarly, the task of the theory of ideology is to yield important knowledge about ideology. Even if the theory of ideology is ideological, it can issue in knowledge. As in the metatheory for logic or set theory, a neutral stance is neither possible nor required, Jason Stanley (2015)  How Propaganda Works, 77.

Yesterday, I noted that there are three distinct features of Stanley's approach to propaganda: first, that propaganda amplifies (or reduces) ideals; second, that it does so by nonrational means; third that propaganda is also possible, even endemic, in liberal democracies (49ff). While I propose an alternative approach, Stanley is right that propaganda can be true and/or sincere.

One notable feature of Stanley's approach is that he grants (see the quote above) that his own theory of ideology cannot escape being ideological itself. In fact, I argued that his analysis presupposes a kind of deliberative understanding of public life with accompanying ideals of "fair deliberation and equal participation." This limits his approach in contexts that have very different or conflicting fundamental commitments about politics (and it is one reason why I argue for a different approach).

More subtly, Stanley's account of propaganda has, in addition to the three distinct features I noted before, a kind of consistency or integrity principle built into its exemplary definitions. Recall his definitions:

Supporting Propaganda: A contribution to public discourse that is presented as an embodiment of certain ideals, yet is of a kind that tends to increase the realization of those very ideals by either emotional or other nonrational means.

Undermining Propaganda: A contribution to public discourse that is presented as an embodiment of certain ideals yet is of a kind that tends to erode those very ideals. Jason Stanley 53 (emphasis in original).

In Stanley's hands, propaganda moves one from a status quo (in terms of an ideal) and, in so doing, moves one toward more coherence (supporting propaganda) or toward incoherence (undermining propaganda). This emphasis on consistency embodies an ideal of rationality (but by no means sole ideal of rationality), as is revealed by the very clever and surprising appeal to Tarski when he describes his approach to ideology (quoted above). Recall that in Tarski's famous paper the "proof of the soundness of the axioms of the calculus of classes" is a means toward explicating truth.

For, at a high level of generality, one can understand Tarski's explication of truth as combining in creative fashion a commitment to a correspondence theory of truth (Tarski calls it the "classical" even "Aristotelian" conception of truth [recall]) and, on the meta-level, instantiating coherence as the ideal of rationality. (Of course, Tarski's explication is compatible with deflationary and more substantive approaches to truth.) What is notable about the uptake of Tarski's explication within philosophical circles (but perhaps not eventually in logical circles) is that it left little room left for alternative explications of truth. I have reported how hard it has become, in practice, to understand and discern genuinely alternative approaches to truth. (For example, recall that in the history of philosophy we can find non-classical approaches to truth as (i) a property/quality of an object or (ii) truth as identity of an object with (well) itself.)

Now, Tarski could presuppose a high epistemic status for formal languages (including arithmetic) such that proofs in the metalanguage about the object language can be accorded (fairly or not) the honorific, 'knowledge.' Nothing analogous is in play in Stanley's theory of ideology (or propaganda). So, in Tarski the apparent unwillingness to offer "justifications of the propositions expressed by axioms of the theory to someone who doubts them" is un-problematic (when it comes to the epistemic status of the theory). But Stanley's theory of propaganda presents the phenomenon of ideology (and propaganda) as well as a theory about it. But both are contestable in ways that Tarski's are not. As Stanley notes "the facts are under dispute." (75)

So, while Stanley is undoubtedly right that in such contested and contestable matters "no neutral stance" (77) is possible, his methodological appeal to Tarski is unpersuasive. Some other time, I return to this methodological issue because the problems with it are also revealed in the theory of (social) concepts that Stanley relies on in later chapters (for relevant musings prompted by another work see here).

In this post, I have emphasized the ways in which Stanley's approach to ideology and propaganda exhibits commitment to a particular ideal form of rationality, one that values integrity or coherence between ideals and practice. But there are other more substantive forms of rationality, some of which emphasize contextual judgment, or acting from reasons, or self-legislation, etc. Some of these ideals fit well with the coherence ideal of rationality, others less so. The point is that Stanley assumes a kind of political consensus over his preferred ideal form of rationality as well as (as I noted above) the noble ideals of "fair deliberation and equal participation." Given the significant work these ideals do in his work, the lack of effort to provide substantive justification strikes me as  a reason to deny that the theory that relies on them produces "knowledge."

As an aside, I also worry that Stanley's methodological stance will reinforce the already regrettable tendency in contemporary analytical philosophy to avoid responding to foundational objections. We are supposed to spot others their foundational commitments and our criticisms are supposed to be immanent (or are otherwise thought question begging). But while this is an efficient practice, it also generates considerable moral problems -- as I learned from Amia Srinivasian and Daniela Dover (and undoubtedly I am not doing justice to their subtlety) -- when some groups can simply stipulate their commitments to an intellectual or political community while others not.

The concern I have is that when our understanding of propaganda and ideology is loaded with these ideals, we are likely to miss the occasions when precisely the firm adherence to these ideals exhibit noxious forms of ideology or propaganda. That's not a refutation of Stanley's approach (it can't be), but it suggests we should use it with caution, and we should keep exploring conceptualizations of propaganda and ideology that fit with alternative or different mix of ideals.

On Stanley on Propaganda and Truth (I)

The essence of political propaganda...is that it is a kind of speech that fundamentally involves political, economic, aesthetic, or rational ideals, mobilized for political purpose...

Supporting Propaganda: A contribution to public discourse that is presented as an embodiment of certain ideals, yet is of a kind that tends to increase the realization of those very ideals by either emotional or other nonrational means.

Undermining Propaganda: A contribution to public discourse that is presented as an embodiment of certain ideals yet is of a kind that tends to erode those very ideals. Jason Stanley (2015) How Propaganda Works, 52-3 (emphasis in original).

There are three distinct features of Stanley's approach to propaganda: first, that propaganda amplifies (or reduces) ideals; second, that it does so by nonrational means.* These first two are illustrated by the characterization of propaganda quoted above. A third distinct feature is that Stanley recognizes  that propaganda is also possible, even endemic, in liberal democracies (49ff). In fact, by Stanley's lights propaganda is endemic as such in political life. A key benefit of Stanley's approach is that propaganda can be true and/or sincere. I do not agree with Stanley's general analysis of propaganda, but he is absolutely right that propaganda can be true and/or sincere, and that this is a significant contribution to reflection on propaganda. I want to accentuate Stanley's insight that propaganda can be true and sincere. For Stanley, it is flawed ideology that facilitates the uptake of true (or sincere) propaganda and (thereby) the failure to recognize propaganda as propaganda.

In the past, I have treated some bits of empirically apt economics as an instance of ideology because it has a status quo bias built into it by presupposing existing background institutions and norms. In my view when such economics is used to motivate policy in public then we are dealing with an instance of propaganda. So, on my way of understanding propaganda it can be speech that presents itself as rational. In fact, often such propaganda insists about itself that is exemplary of rationality or impartiality. What is characteristic of such status quo bias is that certain alternatives and modalities are made invisible and not explored (in part by taking a purportedly impartial stance). And it is this suppression of alternative possibilities (sometimes by way of amplification or diminution of ideals) that is, I submit, intrinsic to propaganda (which, of course, can also be highly emotive).** It fits with my general argument against denials/suppression of uncertainty in political life, which is, in effect, a denial of alternative possibilities. Controversially, this is why I think that when mathematical and philosophical technologies are applied to generate consensus in political life, these can be viewed as instances of ideology that are being put to propagandist use. By contrast, Stanley may allow (let's stipulate) that some economics is ideology, but not thereby a species of propaganda when used to justify public policy (unless, of course, it also invokes some ideals -- e.g., freedom or markets  etc. -- and then undermines these.)

One further reason to be cautious about embracing Stanley's approach is that he presupposes that democratic politics ought to be rational. For, what makes something propaganda for him is, in part, that it (recall) "mobilizes" by "nonrational" means. He inherits this commitment from what he calls the "classical sense of propaganda" (48), which is "manipulation of the rational will to close off debate." To be sure, Stanley's account of propaganda is not identical to the "classical sense." But his account of propaganda presupposes a kind of deliberative understanding of public life with accompanying ideals of "fair deliberation and equal participation." One does not need to be an enemy of democracy to see that Stanley's account of propaganda can be rejected by those that have a different conception of the political or of democratic life (including those of us that agree with Stanley that in some non-trivial sense propaganda is intrinsic to actual, political life also in liberal democracies). The problem here is not that Stanley's account is not neutral -- tomorrow I discuss his Tarski-style defense of this --, but, rather, that we do not want to hang a "metaphysical" account of propaganda on a conception of democracy that  is itself just one of several.

A final reason to question Stanley's analysis of propaganda is that it does not facilitate the detection of propaganda. For his emphasis on the ways in which propaganda undermines (or promotes) ideals involves contested and contestable empirical facts as well as time to discern the real life pattern of consequences from propagandist speech. Stanley is very honest about this feature of his approach and acknowledges the limitations on the "political usefulness of the characterization of propaganda" that he provides. "Insofar as the facts are under dispute, so too will be many claims about what falls under the category of propaganda." (75) Now, Stanley is clear that he is offering a metaphysics (76) not an epistemology or pragmatics of propaganda, but it is a perhaps decisive, desideratum on an analysis of a social (and contestable) concept that it can be applied in real time. 

Stanley may respond that Schliesser's alternative approach to propaganda -- recall this involves suppression of alternative possibilities (sometimes by way of rational or nonrational amplification or diminution of ideals) -- also may have limited application. After all, we are not always in the position to know what the alternative possibilities that are being suppressed are. But that's okay: my approach has the virtue of unmasking any public speech that offers itself as 'inevitable,' 'necessary,' 'optimal' or 'uniquely rational or sane' (etc.) as 'propaganda.'*** That's true even if we do not know better. That is to say, one way to understand the (contested) designation of something as 'propaganda,' is to see it not as a claim that the propagandist is undermining (or promoting) ideals, but rather as a call to explore more options and not to be fooled.  

On the Economist as Physician, revisited

If all this is true, it would be as silly and immoral to "let nature take her course" as for a physician to neglect a case of pneumonia. It would also be a libel on economic science, which has its therapeutics as truly as medical science.--Irving Fisher (1933) "Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions," Econometrica (347).

Fisher wrote these lines at the height of the great depression just as the age of antibiotics was commencing and so, thereby, the possibility of reliable curative treatment of pneumonia. For, Fisher the analogy between physician and economist does not reside in a do-no-harm-principle, but rather in the moral command to "gladly share such knowledge" as will aid the patient, that is society, when one has the means to do so. That is to say, in Fisher's hands the economist-as-physician metaphor is a moral call to political action (in fact to reflate the dollar in order to stop the vicious spiral of debt-repayment and deflation/high unemployment/debt-trap, familiar to modern reader from the Greek situation).

Fisher is not the first to use the economist-as-physician metaphor. As Jason Stanley has noted in a different context, the trope goes back at least to Plato (recall). It was undoubtedly revived in the hands of the eighteenth-century physiocrats who often literally combined medical practice and being an economists (cf. Quesnay). Even so, Fisher's piece is the first modern use of the metaphor within economics I am familiar with. (To the best of my knowledge, utilitarians did not conceive themselves as physicians of society.) Obviously, I welcome correction by my readers.*

One admirer of Fisher, qua mathematical economist (bot not qua eugenicist) was Milton Friedman, who called Fisher "the greatest economist that the United States has ever produced." Friedman certainly knew  the Debt-Deflation piece well (see here), and was, thus, familiar with the passage quoted above. Perhaps it inspired him to embrace the economist as physician metaphor in his writing, including in a piece, "the cause and cure of inflation," in which he sustains the metaphor throughout. The most famous use by Friedman is offered in the context of defending his (quite modest, actually, but politically non-trivial) involvement in offering economic advice to Pinochet. (I have discussed the episode here.)

In spite of my profound disagreement with the authoritarian political system of Chile, I do not consider it as evil for an economist to render technical economic advice to the Chilean Government, any more than I would regard it as evil for a physician to give technical medical advice to the Chilean Government to help end a medical plague. (Newsweek, June 14, 1976)

Friedman implies that sharing technical, economic knowledge is always moral. Perhaps, Friedman thinks it is moral to to dispense treatment that only benefits the members of the Chilean Government (which, let's stipulate, were seriously immoral); the morality of such treatment has been explored in Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier. Friedman ignores here how the experts' incentives may corrupt his judgment. Unlike physicians, economists still do not have a code of ethics, although George DeMartino is developing the intellectual framework for it (recall).  (We philosophers are no better.) But it is more likely that the main justification of Friedman's position is meant to be the more utilitarian thought that the cure has good consequences not so much for the Chilean Government, but for the majority of Chileans citizens who suffer from bad economic policies (analogous to ending "the medical plague"). It does not follow, however, that there is always a duty to dispense treatment; Friedman does not imply, for example, that it would be wrong to neglect societies that can benefit from his cures. His use of the economist as physician metaphor is not a call to action.

 

 

On Political demagoguery: from Sophie de Grouchy to Jason Stanley

Amongst the effects of sympathy, we can count the power that a large assembly has to affect our emotions, and that of a few men to inspire opinions. Here are, I believe, a few causes of these phenomena. First, the very presence of a multitude of men acts on us through impressions created by their faces, discourse, or the memory of their deeds. Their attention commands ours, and their eagerness, forewarning our sensibility of the emotions it is about to experience, sets them in motion.  It is also perhaps the pleasure of hearing someone express what we did not dare, what we perhaps sought in vain, or only half-perceived. 

It is again, the pleasure of acquiring here and now an idea or sentiment, a pleasure which when very intense, leads us, if we accept such idea or sentiment without thinking it through, to develop a sudden admiration for the person who inspired it. Doesn't he who gives you a new idea appear to you...vested with supernatural powers? ...

Having uncertain ideas or sentiments sometimes creates a need to see them shared by others before we give ourselves over to them. An idea may strike us as true, beautiful and moving; but we worry that we are adopting too quickly: to hear it applauded reassures us, makes up our minds and we confidently give ourselves over to our first impression. Other times, this same applause brings us some idea that had previously eluded us. Our own ideas in turn have the same effect and each is then able to enjoy the shared pleasures. 

One man, by himself, fearing ridicule, danger or just because he is shy may not dare to let himself be gripped by a violent emotion: but he does dare, as soon as the emotion is shared.  

Finally, as we sympathize with others' passions, the external signs of these passions move us and can by themselves cause us to experience them. So when we already experience these passions, witnessing them in others makes them grow stronger. And, as we too affect others, it must be the case that passions will keep on growing until they reach the highest degree according to the nature of each. This is what causes the crimes and virtues of popular movements to be so powerful.  

...

One can also inspire belief and trust in one's person and ways of thinking by choosing certain opinions which are welcome more greedily because they answer to a secret desire to give oneself over to them....That we are vain about having an opinion that is out of the ordinary, seeing – even through someone else's eyes – what others did not, is a secret charm... We succeed in the same manner by rejuvenating old opinions. This wins us the support of all those who felt forced to abandon them and did not dare to defend them. These people find pleasure in minimizing the achievements of those who seek to destroy prejudices and put forward new truths, as such projects are always qualified as foolhardy by mediocre people who, for the sake of their self-esteem, seek to render them suspect, and who can never forgive them because such projects show a superiority they find humiliating.--Sophie De Grouchy (1797) Letters on Sympathy, from Letter 4, (provisional) translation by Sandrines Berges. [Translation appears with permission, but please don't quote it without checking further revisions to it.]

Jason Stanley (recall yesterday, and see here) and De Grouchy agree that  demagoguery, when it can present itself as the sincere truth, it must be thought brave (or daring) in some sense. But as I noted yesterday that may be necessary to understand modern demagoguery, it's not sufficient. Sophie de Grouchy can help us here. For one, De Grouchy adds that the daringness is not just on the speaker's side, but also in the audience's shared willingness to embrace unconventional hard truths

This brings out the key to modern political speech: that it can be massive. We respond to the responses by folk we're surrounded by (literally or in online communities), and we have many forms of pleasant anticipation when we are part of a multitude. That is to say, it can be thrilling and enjoyable to be included in a mass political speech. 

Moreover, part of the pleasure of a demagogue is the novelty of surprise, and this requires that there is always something newly shocking. (This can generate, as Jason Stanley observes in his post, an ongoing ratcheting up of new boundaries that get crossed ) This creates a kind of ongoing frisson.

Also, De Grouchy helps explain why demagogues, who tend to be true radicals, often present themselves as restorers of discarded truths; moral progress leaves people, who hold hold on to the ideas and norms they were raised in -- that is, their second nature --, permanently on the defensive. Being forced to abandon one's way of life, say, in the face of moral argument, can leave one permanently mistrustful of the force of argument/reason and is humiliating. The demagogue removes the shame and anger by restoring the once-discarded past to its illustrious worth nearly always in terms of pleasant myth.

Finally, De Grouchy helps us understand not just the pleasure, but also the subterranean anger that is often the natural accompaniment of the demagogues; she puts it in terms of the lack of forgiveness on the part of those that nurture a sense of grievance against those that have embraced progressive values. There are all kinds of excellent reasons to resist forgiving those that have hurt you, but one effect of the stance is that it prevents mutual engagement, even discussion with those that one (tacitly) takes to have hurt you. That is, if there is no forgiveness, there is no minimal community. A democratic culture can survive permanent disagreement; but it's doubtful it can survive permanent grievance.*

 

Madison and Stanley on anti-Democratic speech (I)

Liberal democratic rhetoric is supposed to unify citizens with diverse perspectives and backgrounds, and make visible previously discounted perspectives (for example, the perspective of women during the struggle for women’s right to vote). Trump’s and Carson’s comments are explicitly antidemocratic. The fact that they seem to have been rewarded — at least in immediate improvements in poll standings — confronts defenders of the American political system with...questions..--Jason Stanley

The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected.--Madison, Federalist 10.

Recently, Jason Stanley noted, while commenting on some remarks by Donald Trump and Ben Carson, in the New York Times that "There once was a facade of equal respect that required political strategists to use code words to avoid accusations of violating it."* Stanley explains their apparent popular success (among a non-trivial segment of the voters) as a rejection of political hypocrisy and the inability of politicians that defend the common interest to survive in the present media landscape. He then goes on to claim that if politicians "demonstrated their supposed honesty and sincerity by explicitly targeting groups that are disliked by the voters they seek to attract. Such open rejection of democratic values would be taken as political bravery, as a signal of sincerity." Undoubtedly, Stanley is right that there is a deep yearning for sincerity and authenticity; it is not restricted to American racists nor to voters for the new British Labour party leader, Jeremy Corbyn. It is also the ruling value of all forms of religious fundamentalism.

By drawing on Madison, Stanley thinks, by contrast, that "an election campaign is supposed to present candidates seeking to show that they have the common interests of all citizens at heart." Stanley subtly misreads Madison (who certainly did hope that the electoral process would facilitate the rise of elected aristocracy). This is obvious if we remind ourselves that Federalist 10 explicitly addresses the problem of anti-democratic values (in Stanley's sense) among the electorate. Madison calls it the disease of faction: "By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."**

Stanley somehow wishes for circumstances in which people elect folk that campaign on the "common interest" and thereby transcend their own interests. But that would demand a reform of human nature that Madison thinks unlikely; it would only be possible to get rid of factious sentiments by constraints on liberty that Madison thinks worse than the disease (Stanley implies, without mentioning Madison, that this is "excellent argument").

Stanley seems to hope that a suitably Enlightened citizenry will -- once it understands that "democratic values are not weaknesses" -- vote in the common interest. By contrast, Madison does not think one can eliminate the problem of faction, for there always remains "the latent causes of faction," one can only "control its effects." After all, "it is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm."

Madison's solution to the problem of demagoguery is to focus on institutional design: the hope is that by having fairly large electoral districts (which will require coalitions among local interests) in a continental republic will prevent, or quarantine, the spread of demagogic ideas. Moreover, even if the factious ideas dominate  in Congress, the Constitution is designed to ensure permanent gridlock among competing interests; thus a ruling faction is "unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression." Madison's position turns out to be a decent, albeit imperfect, response to the problem of faction; as the history of American democracy reveals, it also requires civil rights movements in every generation and a fairly activist judiciary to guard against the remaining excesses of faction. 

Madison notes that "the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property." It would follow that Madison ought to advocate -- in line with say Plato's scheme in the Laws -- a limitation on the extent of possible inequality of property. But he worries that this would generate more abuses than it would solve. I mention this because while Stanley mentions the role of money in politics and the role of (media) corporations, he never quite faces up to the fact that from Madisonian vantage point we should expect a lot more factionalism given the huge disparities of wealth, status, and recognition in our contemporary polity. (Given what I know of his politics, I suspect Stanley would agree with the Madisonian diagnosis.) Huge inequality is not a natural phenomenon, but the deliberate result of government policy of the last few decades; the political system is reaping the turbulence it has sown.***

Stanley is right to note that contemporary demagogues are thought sincere. But not all sincerity, or even sincere authenticity, generates winning electoral politics. So, we need an analysis of demagoguery. Here Madison is of little help because he underestimated the possibilities and dangers of mass media. So, tomorrow I'll explore the reflections of Madison's French contemporary, Sophie de Grouchy, who experienced the political effectiveness and dangers of popular demagogues up close. 

 

 

Why the Canon Fight is Different in Analytical Philosophy; on Heroworship

For a brief spell in the 80’s and 90’s, higher education was consumed by the canon wars. For those too young to remember, the canon wars were some earnest and intense battles among people who couldn’t agree on which authors needed to be taught for students to be considered properly educated.--Inside Higher Education (2013).

A year ago Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman succesfully managed to ignite discussion within professional philosophy about the status of the canon (recall my response).* Other humanists might think -- paraphrasing a quip falsely attributed to Heinrich Heine (which doesn't stop the Wall Street Journal from recycling it) -- that philosophy is the Netherlands of higher education, everything happens there three decades later. (Genuine humanists know that debates over the canon are as old as the canon itself.) While there are solid sociological-demographic reasons that help explain why philosophy remained aloof from the canon wars (the short version: professional anglophone philosophy is overwhelmingly white, male, change-averse and unreceptive toward unmasking narratives), there is also a key intellectual reason: within analytical philosophy the (Western) canon is largely irrelevant to disciplinary conversations.+ No command over the details of the text is ever presupposed. This is no surprise because analytical philosophy was founded -- self-consciously mimicking Descartes's dismissiveness toward book-knowledge -- as a revolt against historical approaches to philosophy.

While the days may be gone in which one could count on all literature professors to recite Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, Virgil, Goethe, Dante, and the other mighty dead, especially Middlemarch, from memory, to this day working knowledge of some such books provides a shared, contested frame of reference in literary and cultural studies even if nobody thinks that command of such books is a mark of civilization or even a signal of one's cultural capital. And while close reading persists in college courses, the idea that literature can replace Scripture has long been deconstructed, and De Man unmasked; I would not be surprised if it has had its brief, ironic revival prompted by a Simpsons episode.

By contrast even when I present on David Hume's Treatise to professional historians of philosophy, let alone generalist philosophical audiences, I make sure to prepare detailed excerpts of key passages. Hume is the fourth most admired philosopher in history (according to a recent poll); he is the highest ranked English language philosopher--his Treatise the acknowledged masterpiece.** Even the anti-historical logical empiricists would say nice things about Hume. My excerpts are not merely aids to memory; I know that the passages I am calling attention to are simply unknown. Professional philosophy is not a discipline in which texts from the past are internalized. (Yes, there are a few Hume scholars that have working knowledge of some texts, but even among that lovely crowd -- dominated by professional philosophers -- there are very few people that know Hume's major works really by heart.)

Even when working positions come to be known as Humean or Carnapian (etc.), odds are we are dealing with Hume* or Carnap*. It doesn't matter, really, if Hume is not a Humean. (The relationship between, say, Carnap and contemporary Carnapians is very interesting and illuminating.) While there are a few magisterial clubs within professional philosophy -- Kantians often really try to get Kant right (even at the price of introducing anachronism), Wittgensteinians even have a second-order debate whether it makes sense to get Wittgenstein right, etc. --, philosophical puzzles and controversies do not get settled by authoritative interpretation of major texts. Of course, interest in such puzzles can be started by way of some such interpretation. 

The above is not to deny that there is an image of philosophy prevalent within professional philosophy in which a limited number of historical, canonical figures are very prominent: starting with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle through Descartes, Leibniz, Hume, and Kant (etc). These folk are often, indeed, implicated in subtle and not-so-subtle forms of ideological domination (or worse). It is worth serious reflection why Gorgias's Helen is unread; why even specialist scholars are unaware of the male feminism of Toland, Mandeville, and John Millar--all eighteenth century figures that were once extremely famous. (Even world class Nietzsche scholars tend to be ignorant on the genealogy of genealogy.) It is shocking that (the first) professional interest in early modern female philosophers only commenced less than a generation ago.  

If we abolish the canon in professional (analytic) philosophy, we just give folk another excuse not to read books. This trend may be unstoppable anyway: the textbook is beloved by university technocrats who hire cheap labor to teach pre-set curriculum with well-defined (achievable) goals.

For, in addition to the image of philosophy, there are classic works, often drawn from those canonical figures that figure in the image of philosophy, which are routinely but not exclusively used to introduce students to philosophy (e.g., an intro to ethics course with Aristotle, Hume, Kant, and Mill--hopefully Sophie de Grouchy before long, too) [recall, recall, and more if you use Google]. Arguably, Nietzsche has become canonical within professional philosophy because teachers could not resist the allure of assigning him in their courses. There could be quite a bit more experimentation and innovation in the pool of such classics. In preparing a course on Islamic philosophy, I encountered Ibn Tufayl (recall) and was certainly not the first to be struck by how easily he could fit in any text-based introductory course in epistemology, philosophy of religion, and political philosophy. 

What does exist in professional philosophy is a kind of hero-worship of living authority figures and the recently deceased.* Manifestly odd views can endure because they are associated with some such hero and, more importantly, because they put (often informal, but no less tight) conceptual and methodological constraints on what is acceptable within professional discussion. Williamson describes the mechanisms involved in a recent essay: he patiently explains the fear factor that surrounded Quine for a while [recall my post]. This is why in the overthrow of such heroes we find more than argument--there is also rhetoric; Williamson describes Lewis's metaphysics as "extreme" (9) and memorably, but unflatteringly, notes that Lewis is "also known as ‘the machine in the ghost’ for his eerie computational power, mechanical diction, faint air of detachment from ordinary life, and beard from another era." (8)

This hero-worship is associated with a lot of the worst features of the discipline; the common cruelty, the lack of respect for viewpoints associated with outsiders, the willful ignorance, and the awful systematic demographic patterns of exclusion. So, if we abolish the canon in professional philosophy without ending the hero-worship not much will change about the professional practice.

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.

On the Carnap-Strawson debate and the soul of Analytical Philosophy during the Cold War

If the reader is shocked or offended by the two last-mentioned procedures, I hasten to assure him that they, occur, of course, only in the more barbarous regions, like America, where the sacrilege of tampering with the holy tradition of language is sometimes connived at.--Carnap "P.F. Strawson on Linguistic Naturalism" (937)

The distinction I used above between the way things happen in the world, and our own natures, is here, though vague, important. For it is a part of our nature that, things other than ourselves being as they are, it is natural for us to have the conceptual apparatus that we do have. But human nature is diverse enough to allow of another, though related, use of philosophical imagination. This consists in imagining ways in which, without things other than ourselves being different from what they are, we might view them through the medium of a different conceptual apparatus; Some metaphysics is best, or most charitably, seen as consisting in part in exercises of this sort...Of course, even when it can be so interpreted, it is not presented as a conceptual or structural revision by means of which we might see things differently; it is presented as a picture of thing as they really are, instead of as they delusively seem. This presentation with its contrast between esoteric-reality and daily delusion, involves, and is the consequence of, the unconscious distortion of ordinary concepts, i.e. of the ordinary use of linguistic expressions. So metaphysics though it can sometimes be charitably interpreted in the way I suggest, in fact always involves paradox and perplexities of the kind I first mentioned; and sometimes embodies no rudimentary vision, but merely rudimentary mistakes. Strawson (1963) "Carnap's Views on Constructed Systems Versus Natural Languages in Analytic Philosophy," (516; [emphases in original--ES])

Branden Fitelson wrote me a lovely, critical letter in response to viewing my lecture, "Anti-Mathematicism and Formal Philosophy" at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy available online. In it he reminded me of an exchange by Strawson and Carnap that he uses in teaching. The papers represent philosophical fireworks of the highest order--they are, as Strawson's title indicates, a debate over the very soul of analytical philosophy. The papers repay repeated re-readings, and both sides make many  insightful observations on the philosophical merits of formal philosophy (a topic I regularly post about, see here and here). In particular, one is reminded -- and this is especially noteworthy in a philosophical age in which the guide to graduate education provided by the PGR does not even consider expertise in philosophy of education as worthy of note -- that one of the central philosophical issues is the nature of philosophical education.*

As a speculative aside, prompted by some remarks by Jason Stanley, the displacement of philosophical education as worthy of any attention was, in part, due to the success of Strawson's and Carnap's students and their intellectual allies in discrediting the non-scientific wing of Pragmatism associated, say, with Dewey. Subsequently, even Plato scholarship was reconstituted as unrelated to philosophical education. (The Meno and Theaetetus are then taught as obviously belonging primarily to the history of epistemology, etc.)

To return to my main point, in his response to Strawson, Carnap construes the debate as one between (linguistic) "naturalists" (that is Strawson, although this is not Strawson's term) and "constructionists" (Carnap). This construction allows Carnap to recycle some of his anti-Quine-ean moves against an opponent that has fewer resources to respond. He then offers effective responses to most of Strawson's charges, showing that they rely on unreliable distinctions/assumptions, misrepresentations of Carnap's program, and, crucially, that even where Strawson's positive program has merit, the two programs can be mutually supportive. Now, due to Strawson's title and the way the dialectic is construed it seems that what is at stake is ultimately the respective roles of natural language (and empirical observations on use), and the role of formal languages (and the merits of explication).+ Because Carnap has the last word in the Schilpp volume, he also gets away ignoring a feature of Strawson's argument (the passage quoted above) that Strawson admittedly qualifies as not being "central," (515), but does characterize as "inportant" and "a wide field open to philosophical imagination." (516)

I have quoted Strawson's defense of the role of "imagining ways in which, without things other than ourselves being different from what they are, we might view them through the medium of a different conceptual apparatus." Now the first thing to note is that this is presented as an extremely modest enterprise. There is no sense that an alternative conception of reality might be a guide to action or generate a vision of reality worth attaining (see philosophical prophecy). Given that Strawson makes disparaging remarks ("grandiose plan of logical atomism") of Carnapian "planners," the conservative implications are deliberate here. Strawson's version of descriptive analysis and descriptive metaphysics, self-consciously leaves things alone (recall yesterday's post). No doubt there will be howls of derision from Oxford -- if they pretended to care about my digressions -- but this is (further) evidence of the ignoble effects of the cold war on philosophy's self-image.