Digressions&Impressions

Al-Ghazali's Genealogy of Philosophy and Natural Religion

29. Know that the philosophers, notwithstanding the multiplicity of their groups and the diversity of their doctrines, can be divided into three main divisions: Materialists, Naturalists, and Theists.
30. The first category, the Materialists, were a group of the most ancient philosophers who denied the existence of the omniscient and omnipotent Creator-Ruler. They alleged that the world has existed from eternity as it is, of itself and not by reason of a Maker. Animals have unceasingly come from seed, and seed from animals: thus it was, and thus it ever will be. These are the godless in the full sense of the term.
31. The second category, the Naturalists, were men who devoted much study to the world of nature and the marvels found in animals and plants; they also were much taken up with the dissection of animal organs. In these they saw such marvels of God Most High’s making and such wonders of His wisdom that they were compelled, with that in mind, to acknowledge the existence of a wise Creator cognizant of the aims and purposes of all things. Indeed, no one can study the science of anatomy and the marvelous uses of the organs without acquiring this compelling knowledge of the perfect governance of Him Who shaped the structure of animals, and especially that of man. 

32. However, it appeared to these philosophers, because they had studied nature so much, that the equilibrium of the mixture of humors had a great effect on the resulting constitution of the animal’s powers. Hence they thought that man’s rational power was also dependent on the mixture of his humors and that its corruption would follow the corruption of the mixture of his humors, and so that power would cease to exist. Once it ceased to exist, they alleged that bringing back the nonexistent would be unintelligible. So they adopted the view that the soul dies, never to return. Consequently they denied the afterlife and rejected the Garden and the Fire, the assembly and the Recall, and the Resurrection and the Reckoning. So in their view there would be no future reward for obedience, and no punishment for disobedience. Therefore they lost all restraint and abandoned themselves to their passions like beasts. These were also godless men, because basic faith is belief in God and the Last Day — and these men denied the Last Day, even though they believed in God and His Attributes.
33. The third category, the Theists, were the later philosophers, such as Socrates, the master of Plato, and Plato, the master of Aristotle. It was Aristotle who systematized logic for the philosophers and refined the philosophical sciences, accurately formulating previously imprecise statements and bringing to maturity the crudities of their sciences. Taken altogether, these refuted the first two categories of the Materialists and the Naturalists. Indeed, by the arguments they advanced to lay bare the enormities of the latter, they relieved others of that task: “And God spared the believers from fighting (the unbelievers)” (33.25) by reason of the unbelievers’ own infighting.
34. Then Aristotle refuted Plato and Socrates and the Theists who had preceded him in such thorough fashion that he disassociated himself from them all. Yet he, too, retained remnants of their vicious unbelief and innovation which he was unsuccessful in avoiding. So they all must be taxed with unbelief, as must their partisans among the Muslim philosophers, such as Ibn Sina and al-Farabi and their likes. None, however, of the Muslim philosophers engaged so much in transmitting Aristotle’s lore as did the two men just mentioned. What others transmitted is not free from disorder and confusion and in studying it one’s mind becomes so muddled that he fails to understand it — and how can the incomprehensible be rejected or accepted?--Al-Ghazali Deliverance from Error.

In Deliverance from Error (recall and here), Al-Ghazali conceives the origin of philosophy as a atheist revolt against a natural form of theism, one that posits an omniscient and omnipotent Creator-Ruler of the sort that naturally accompanies sovereign kingship [in which the political ruler understands himself as a God, the mirror image  of the cosmic Creator-Ruler). We are not told much else about the natural form of theism, but (given the stringent denials of the original philosophers), we can infer it posited a providential creation story. (I return to this below.) By contrast (on the hostile interpretation of Al-Ghazali) the first philosophers -- one can recognize a stylized picture of the atomists in it -- posit a cosmic order of eternal return without meaning. 

Al-Ghazali is careful not to name any of these original philosophers nor to characterize the natural theism they reject. But they both precede Socrates. There is, in fact, a peculiarity here in that Al-Ghazali ignores the pure forms of Greek polytheism. The natural form of theism is closer to Judaism and (perhaps more likely on his mind) Zoroastrianism; and original philosophy a revolt against it.  

Al-Ghazali's 'naturalists' are a kind of empirical, natural philosophers. (It's a bit surprising he does not mention medicine in this context, but there are hints of Galen throughout the piece.) These find evidence of functionality and design everywhere, there are led, inductively to a theistic designer. But they view a soul as something emergent from or grounded in physical processes and so mortal. Because they deny an afterlife (and resurrection), they become practical atheists. 

It's no surprise that Al-Ghazali sees a tight connection between beliefs about the nature of the soul and, perhaps, more important the existence of judgment day and  observed behavior. (Let's stipulate he is right about observed behavior.) But it is a bit surprising that the charge of immoral behavior is only lodged against the so-called naturalists and not the earlier materialists (a point repeated in paragraph 33!)

I called Al-Ghazali's narrative a 'genealogy.' But it would have been better, perhaps, to call it a 'natural history.' The achievement of the (Socratic) Theists is not just to refute the materialists and naturalists theoretically and to show why the behavior of the latter was truly immoral, but to turn an immature practice into a mature fields ("accurately formulating previously imprecise statements and bringing to maturity the crudities of their sciences.") To put Al-Ghazali's narrative in Kuhnian terms, Socrates is the start of a revolution in philosophy that culminates in Aristotle's achievements.

In the analysis of the after-effects of Aristotle's achievements, Al-Ghazali notices that even theistic philosophy inherit the "remnants of...vicious unbelief and innovation" of the naturalists and materialists relative to the original religion. This entails that Al-Ghazali treats the original religion as a species of (what we may call along with the tradition) true religion. Not for the first time (recall), I notice that Al-Ghazali suggests that that while Muhammad's revelation is instrumentally useful, it is not itself necessary for the existence of true religion. 

 

Darwin's (meta)-Philosophy of Science In The Origin of Species (and a note on his subtle Spinozism and debts to Smith)

The belief that species were immutable productions was almost unavoidable as long as the history of the world was thought to be of short duration; and now that we have acquired some idea of the lapse of time, we are too apt to assume, without proof, that the geological record is so perfect that it would have afforded us plain evidence of the mutation of species, if they had undergone mutation.

But the chief cause of our natural unwillingness to admit that one species has given birth to other and distinct species, is that we are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps. The difficulty is the same as that felt by so many geologists, when Lyell first insisted that long lines of inland cliffs had been formed, and great valleys excavated, by the slow action of the coast-waves. The mind cannot possibly grasp the full meaning of the term of a hundred million years; it cannot add up and perceive the full effects of many slight variations, accumulated during an almost infinite number of generations.

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume under the form of an abstract, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as the `plan of creation,' `unity of design,' &c., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject my theory. A few naturalists, endowed with much flexibility of mind, and who have already begun to doubt on the immutability of species, may be influenced by this volume; but I look with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality. Whoever is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously expressing his conviction; for only thus can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.--Charles Darwin The Origin of Species, Chapter 14.

Yesterday (recall), I remarked that Darwin likes to bookend/frame his arguments in terms of the ignorance of savages (recall also here). In later editions (from the third onward) of Origin this is accompanied by a further framing: in An Historical Sketch, Darwin gives an informed (albeit potted) history of the "progress of opinion on the origin of species" leading up to "the publication of the edition of the work." The book closes with a kind "prophetic glance into futurity"* in which Darwin sketches a trajectory for the reception of his book which I have quoted above. Of course, the rhetorical point of both (the historical sketch) and the quoted passage above is to promote and influence the uptake of Darwin's theory (and, perhaps, to reward him with  proper credit for the relevant bits of it).

Ever since the work of D.T. Campbell (on 'evolutionary epistemology' a term coined by him in Popper's (1974) Schilpp volume) and David Hull (with his evolutionary approach to development of Science) the idea of applying evolutionary ideas to knowledge has been thoroughly worked out and covers many different kinds of projects. The SEP article by Bradie and Harms suggests that Dewey and the pragmatists were the first to to do so. But I am convinced that evolutionary ideas about knowledge precede Darwin and may well have influenced the development of his views in biology (that's for another time). Even so, the purpose of the present post is to look at how Darwin conceptualizes the sociology of knowledge. 

1. The first sentence above suggests that ideas in biology are influenced by ideas about or dependent on cosmogony/cosmology. That's no surprise because as Darwin is at pains to emphasize, his theory requires an almost unimaginable lengthening of the age of the Earth. For those steeped in Christianity that's a problem; but even among christian deists there was a steady increase in the possible age of the Earth from the seventeenth century onward. Spinozists, of course, had no trouble allowing that the age of the Earth extended backward into infinity (as space was infinite).  That is to say, Darwin is acutely aware that the uptake of his ideas about the living world are influenced by what is taken to be possible and reasonable in other domains of inquiry.

2. The second sentence, which restates an important evidential objection against Darwin's theory, reinforces that first point and recalls his ninth chapter which was devoted to refuting the objection. His response there is really three-fold: the geological record has not been exhausted yet; the geological record will always be incomplete (due to constraints on fossilization, and the submersion of previous lands into oceans, etc.); the study of the geological record is itself influenced by the recent "the revolution in our palaeontological ideas." That is, while Darwin is a gradualist about the evolution of species, Darwin conceives of development of disciplinary knowledge as capable of revolutions in thought. I am convinced this idea is indebted to Smith's History of Astronomy.+ Despite the existence of such revolutions, his own 'historical sketch' suggests that there is progress in knowledge. So Darwin is using 'revolution' not in the old-fashioned sense of a circular understanding of knowledge (time, orbits, etc.) but more in the modern sense of a dramatic change, which can (but need not) be an important advance,

Incidentally, as an aside, my mention of Spinozism is not innocent; in that ninth chapter he also writes, "During each of these years, over the whole world, the land and the water has been peopled by hosts of living forms. What an infinite number of generations, which the mind cannot grasp, must have succeeded each other in the long roll of years!" While I am happy to concede to a skeptic that all Darwin needs to be saying here is that there has been a very huge number of generations beyond the mind's possible conception, his use of 'infinite' is politically dangerous--because that implies there need not have been a start at all.** This infinity is repeated in the passage quoted above. 

3. In the second quoted paragraph Darwin then offers a non-epistemic, but psychological error-theory for why a community of enquirers, may be resistant to the uptake of his theory. He claims it is a psychological fact that we require to see intermediate steps before we grant the existence of a great change. And if those steps are not easily visible, we are "always slow" in admitting any "great change." The psychology here is indebted to Smith's psychological-epistemic account (see my book) of how gaps prevent the mind to go along with any claim (and even generate the  painful emotion of wonder--which prompts us to further inquiry). We recoil from such gaps. 

4. This is related to a further psychological point which closes the second paragraph: from the vantage point of the minds of individual epistemic agents, the claims made in geology and in Darwin's theory are fundamentally hard if not impossible to grasp. The point is a quirky one, but can be understood if we take the idea of gaps seriously. It is impossible to inspect visually or manually, as it were, each step in an (unfolding) infinite series. Even if we avoid Zeno style paradoxes here, there is simply no time or resources to do so. The would be knower here, has to allow a form of abstraction that jumps over any would be gaps.++

5. Darwin then closes with a now familiar thought (often attributed to Planck -- "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it --) that scientists who grew up with different conceptual framework are likely to resist to come around to his theory. The epistemic significant point is that Darwin again expresses the idea that background ideas influence the uptake of new theories. In this case the background ideas are deeply entrenched in alternative paradigm. 

6. In addition, Darwin points out that there are really two main kinds of stances toward a theory: (i) one can have a disposition" to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties; (ii) and a disposition that attaches more weight "to the explanation of a certain number of facts." The first (i) is a skeptical disposition; the second (ii) is a confirmatory disposition. The interesting point here is that Darwin recognizes that (i) is a legitimate position and that he does not try to argue against it. But it's clear he thinks that this is nonthreatening because such characters may well find even more problems with other theories.

7. Darwin assumes that the community of knowers is populated with epistemic agents that have different epistemic characters. For in addition to (i-ii), it turns out that (iii) flexibility of mind, and (iv) young age (which he claims is correlated with impartiality) may also impact the uptake of new theories. (I don't mean to suggest there can't be hybrids of i-iv for Darwin.) That is, not unlike his theory of plants and animals, Darwin assumes natural variability within epistemic communities. 

8. Okay, this is a long-ish blog post now. So, one closing observation. The selection mechanism here, which is a kind of bottleneck, is the mind and its  disposition of the epistemic agent. So, it strikes me that Darwin is edging close to a theory of cultural evolution of which his meta-philosophy of science is an example.

A Minor Debate: Kripke vs Dennett

As will be seen immediately, inversion in this sense is a devise for reversing priorities. William James summarized his famous theory of emotions (The Principles of Psychology)...by the assertion, "...the...rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry...not that we cry...because we are sorry. (p. 450). Many philosophies can be summed up crudely (no doubt, not really accurately) by slogans in similar form: "We do not condemn certain acts because they are immoral; they are immoral because we condemn them." "We do not accept the law of contradiction because it is a necessary truth; it is a necessary truth because we accept it (by convention." "Fire and heat are not constantly conjoined because fire causes heat; fire causes heat because they are constantly conjoined" (Hume). "We do not all say  12+7-19 and the like because all grasp the concept of addition; we say we all grasp the concept of addition because we all say 12+7=19 and the like" (Wittgenstein).

The device of inversion of a conditional in the text achieves the effect of reversing priorities in a way congenial to such slogans. Speaking for myself, I am suspicious of philosophical positions of the types illustrated by the slogans, whether or not  they are so crudely put." Saul Kripke (1982) Wittgenstein on Rules, pp. 93-4 note 76. [HT Jody Azzouni]

In the "preface" to Wittgenstein on Rules, Kripke informs the reader "with "emphasis" that "in this piece of writing" he does not "attempt to speak'" for himself, "or, except in occasional and minor asides, to say anything about" his "views on the substantive issues." (ix) Thus, the present topic is perfect for a Digression.

The quoted passage is a footnote to a restatement (and elucidation) by Kripke of an interpretation he has just given of a politically salient element of Wittgenstein's view as understood by Kripke. (At this point of the overall 'argument' Kripke is presenting Wittgenstein's 'skeptical solution' to the rule following  'paradox.') A deviant individual may be "judged a madman" by the community if his responses do not accord with the community's in enough cases. To be mad by the community's lights is to be (thought) to follow "no coherent rule at all." And then it excludes him from some transactions "such as the one between the grocer and the customer." (93)  On this view, ordinary commercial life presupposes, for example, being a member in good standing of a community.* Somebody whose behaviors can be relied upon.

An impatient reader may be annoyed that I call the discussion 'politically' salient here. On this picture of communal life, from within the community there is almost no difference between the madman, the outlaw (recall this post on Azzouni's aesthetics), the dissident, and the political revolutionary (until she usurps power successfully). A philosopher at odds with her own community better remain silent.

To return to the main point, or better Kripke's footnote, Kripke treats inversion as a device to shift attention and "reverses our priorities." (94) It is notable that Kripke, speaking in his own voice, strictly for himself (and, one may hasten to add, on nobody's authority) does not treat inversion as explanatory at all. Not to put too fine point on it, and to speak crudely for a moment, Kripke sees himself as unmasking a louche gimmick that is widespread in philosophy--William James is famous for some such trick, and so are Hume and Wittgenstein.** 

As it happens, James's version of the inversion is Spinozistic in character: "Our natural way of thinking about these standard emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called the emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. . My thesis on the contrary is that the bodily changes follow directly the PERCEPTION of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion." (I am not claiming that James is committed to attribute-parallelism here.) And it is notable that the one of the unnamed slogans [we do not condemn certain acts because they are immoral; they are immoral because we condemn them] is also Spinozistic (and Hobbesian).+ What James and Spinoza have in common is a willingness to treat our natural way of thinking as something that can be shown to be illusory even if there is also a sense in which this way of thinking, a manifest image of sorts, can not be eliminated fully from ordinary life. 

One reason why Kripke is unmoved by the inversion, is that he sees in it merely a logical point, after all "a conditional is equivalent to a contrapositive." (94) (P--> Q); (-Q --> -P).  In such instances, to treat the contrapositive as special and more worthy of our attention seems (ahh) crude no better than a slogan. (Of course, a slogan may well be true!) 

But, that's not the end of the matter. Another influential reader of Wittgenstein, Daniel Dennett, treats such inversions as potentially explanatory. And that's because he does not treat them as merely logical. For we can represent how Dennett thinks of the inversions in the following way:

1. You may naturally think that some basic property X is required for the explanation of (observed) properties Y.
2. Where X exhibits some intelligence/mindedness/intentionality and Ys typically do not.
3. But in reality properties Y are needed to explain X.

Throughout his writings of the last decade, Dennett attributes some such strange inversion of reasoning as a key moment in Darwin (natural selection), Turing (computing), Hume (causation), and David Haig (content). It is undoubtedly the case that Dennett has a tendency to say, 'don't look there, look here.' And philosophical critics often trouble themselves with understanding what the point of Dennett's writings are. (Kripke does not mention Dennett, so if you are the sincere type, you can treat the title of my post as click-bait.)

But in Dennett (and James, Hume, etc.) the shift of attention is not the end of the matter, but a heuristic toward a better explanation of the thing (mind, computers, emotions, morality, natural selection, causation, etc.) we're trying to understand. And a key step is to give up, or forego, a natural way of thinking about the issue at hand. To do so frequently is indeed mad. But the first step to a better understanding may well require a willingness to be thought mad by one's community/peers. 

 

It's not Kant, it's norms/incentives/institutions on Kuhn & Politics

But while Einstein won—and would continue to win—all the logical battles, Bohr was decisively winning the propaganda war. The Copenhagen doctrine of the completeness of quantum theory and the inescapability of fundamental chance spread, enforced by Bohr and Heisenberg and the rest of the Copenhagen school. Behind the scenes, the Copenhagenists did not agree with each other, but to the world they presented a unified front. Meanwhile, Einstein and Schrödinger both rejected Bohr, but they also bickered with each other.

Here is Einstein’s own description of Copenhagen: “The theory reminds me a little of the system of delusions of an exceedingly intelligent paranoiac.” Philosopher Imre Lakatos gave this later assessment:

In the new, post-1925 quantum theory the ‘anarchist’ position became dominant and modern quantum physics, in its ‘Copenhagen interpretation’, became one of the main standard bearers of philosophical obscurantism. In the new theory Bohr’s notorious ‘complementarity principle’ enthroned [weak] inconsistency as a basic ultimate feature of nature, and merged subjectivist positivism and antilogical dialectic and even ordinary language philosophy into one unholy alliance. After 1925 Bohr and his associates introduced a new and unprecedented lowering of critical standards for scientific theories. This led to a defeat of reason within modern physics and to an anarchist cult of incomprehensible chaos.

Strong words. It is Becker’s burden, and Becker’s triumph, to show that every word is true.

The story has twists and turns: John von Neumann’s purported mathematical proof (1932) that quantum mechanics is complete and one could not add anything more to it and retain its successful predictions; the philosopher Grete Hermann’s detection in 1935 of the fatal flaw in von Neumann’s proof—and the complete disregard of her work; the elaboration of Einstein’s reasoning into the famous Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) argument; Bohr’s incomprehensible response to EPR; Schrödinger’s reaction, including his eponymous cat. Surely, one thinks, this mess must have been cleaned up eventually! But it never was. It persists to this day. And we are only through the first third of the book.

Robert Oppenheimer is reported to have said, ‘If we cannot disprove Bohm, then we must agree to ignore him.’

The middle third of Becker’s book adopts a somber tone in the stories of three renegades who bucked the system in the 1950s and ’60s, after the Copenhagen mysticism had congealed into an icy command: shut up and calculate! Work on the foundations of quantum theory was effectively forbidden, with one’s career and future at peril. The first renegade was David Bohm, a bright and dutiful Copenhagenist until he met the aging Einstein and recanted. Bohm rediscovered the pilot wave theory that Louis de Broglie had presented at Solvay in 1927. The theory slices through the enigma—wave or particle?—like Alexander’s sword through the Gordian knot: the answer is wave and particle. The wavefunction becomes a pilot wave that guides the particles along their paths. The theory is completely deterministic—no playing dice—and recovers all the predictions of standard quantum mechanics. One would think Einstein would love the theory, but he did not. The dreaded nonlocality had not been exorcized. Indeed, it was even more striking.

Bohm’s theory put the lie to von Neumann’s impossibility proof by direct counterexample. Contra Bohr, the particles are visualizable even at microscopic scale. In short, the theory demonstrates beyond all doubt that the Copenhagen interpretation is nonsense. But Bohm’s work was ignored and effectively suppressed.

A political leftist, Bohm had refused to testify at the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was dismissed from his job at Princeton and went into exile in Brazil. His U.S. passport was revoked. He eventually found his way to Birkbeck College in London, but never received the recognition that was his due. In a notorious episode, Robert Oppenheimer is reported to have said, “If we cannot disprove Bohm, then we must agree to ignore him.”

The second renegade was a graduate student at Princeton not long after Bohm left in 1952. Also rejecting Copenhagen, Hugh Everett took Schrödinger’s evolving wavefunction and removed the collapse. He argued that rather than an incomprehensible smear resulting, as Schrödinger’s neither-alive-nor-dead cat suggested, a multiplication of worlds results. Schrödinger’s cat ends up both dead and alive, as two cats in two equally real physical worlds. Today this approach is called the many-worlds interpretation.

Everett’s thesis advisor, John Wheeler, had great enthusiasm for Everett’s innovation. But he insisted that Everett get the nod of approval from Bohr. Bohr refused, and Wheeler required Everett to bowdlerize his thesis. Everett left academia and did not look back. His work lay in obscurity.

The last and greatest renegade was John Stewart Bell. Spurred by Bohm’s papers, Bell queried whether Einstein’s dreaded spooky action at a distance could be avoided. Copenhagen and the pilot wave theory had both failed this test. Bell proved that the nonlocality is unavoidable. No local theory—the type Einstein had sought—could recover the predictions of quantum mechanics. The predictions of all possible local theories must satisfy the condition called Bell’s inequality. Quantum theory predicts that Bell’s inequality can be violated. All that was left was to ask nature herself. In a series of sophisticated experiments, the answer has been established: Bell’s inequality is violated. The world is not local. No future innovation in physics can make it local again. The spookiness that Einstein spent decades deriding is here to stay.

How did the physics community react to this epochal discovery? With a shrug of incomprehension. For decades, discussion of the foundations of quantum theory had been suppressed. Physicists were unaware of the problems and unaware of the solutions. To this day, they commonly claim that Bell’s result proves Bohm’s theory to be impossible and indeterminism to be inevitable, while Bell himself was the staunchest advocate of Bohm’s deterministic theory. Even now, the average physicist has no understanding of what Einstein argued in the EPR paper and what Bell proved.

The last third of What Is Real? could hopefully be titled “Slow Convalescence.” Gradually the worst excesses of Bohr’s influence are mitigated as Bell’s work inspires a new generation to look into foundational issues. We meet a new cast of characters, and the overall atmosphere is mildly optimistic. But there is a long way to go, and this very book could prove to be a watershed moment for the physics community if it faces up to its own past and its present. Or, following the fate of Einstein, Bohm, and Everett, Becker could just be ignored. But if you have any interest in the implications of quantum theory, or in the suppression of scientific curiosity, What is Real? is required reading. There is no more reliable, careful, and readable account of the whole history of quantum theory in all its scandalous detail.--Tim Maudlin reviewing What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Adam Becker in Boston Review. [HT: Liam Kofi Bright]

In his review, Maudlin (recall) makes clear that he thinks that in the history of quantum mechanics epistemic considerations have been thwarted by political machinations in the physics community. I want to make an impure three-fold distinction: 1. Some of the political machinations are connected to external politics--e.g., the reception of Bohm's theory really suffered due to his leftism. 2. Some of the political machinations are internal to science--including debates over resources and, let's say, conceptual hegemony (which often creates better access to resources). For example, Bohr and his students/admirers turn out to be very good at turning conceptual hegemony into resources. 3. And some of the political machinations are connected to underlying philosophical commitments (about nature of explanation, about what counts as intelligible, action at a distance, etc.)

The problem is that 2-3 also often involve debates over what counts as proper epistemic considerations.  (Let's stipulate that 1 is really unconnected to epistemic considerations.) But Maudlin, a word class philosopher of physics, is unabashed in taking sides here and suggesting that the scientific community has not merely made mistakes about philosophy (as philosophy arises in research), but also failed to make all possible epistemic progress in some sense.

It's worth noting that Maudlin here does not consider the possibility that the conceptual and theoretical confusions in the physics community (which are response of politics in all three senses) may have  been fruitful to the epistemic progress physics has made. This is not my own view in this case, but that's because I don't consider myself an expert on the history and philosophy of quantum mechanics. Even so, the older I get, the more receptive I am to the idea (I associate it with Bill Wimsatt) that too much conceptual clarity can sometimes hinder progress (for example, ambiguity can be useful). 

One important implication of Maudlin's analysis is that even in a field that is central to much of science, attracts widespread interest, and which is broadly international in scope, one cannot assume an efficient market in ideas in science. Regular readers know I think (recall for example) too much philosophy and science, decision-theory, and epistemology tacitly relies on such a free market in ideas in its image of science (but that's changing among students of Kevin Zolman and folks with a Ghent connection).

It is notable that Maudlin aims to end (the review of Becker) on an optimistic note about the future of quantum mechanics (and cosmology). But it is notable that he offers no ground for this optimism. For, he (Maudlin--I have not yet read Becker) never confronts what norms and institutions are responsible for the thwarting of epistemic considerations. (We do get mention of some big personalities --  Bohr, Feynman --, but that is not sufficient explanation.) I mention this because in some way the epistemic grounds of contemporary particle physics have narrowed considerably: there are a few big and very expensive particle accelerators and a few very very expensive instruments  that probe space (and so back in time); access to these machines is a political (in the second sense) affair; they are controlled by committees funded by big grant agencies. And their publications are committee work (sometimes huge  number of 'authors'). This is big science, big data, big statistics,* big software and big committees. It would be a miracle if politics became less under these circumstances.

Maudlin himself holds Kant and Kantian philosophy responsible for the mess in physics (and Kuhn). Really: "The hand of Kant lies behind both Bohr and Kuhn." I think it is undeniable that neo-Kantianism is important for understanding both the early debates in the reception of quantum mechanics and (mediated via Max Weber) as background to Kuhn's philosophy. Much as I like holding philosophers responsible for mucking things up in the world, but I really doubt that Kantianism is responsible for the state of affairs diagnosed by Maudlin/Becker. I do suspect that the decline of philosophical education and wider cultural literacy in the larger culture of science education impacted the decline of conceptual clarity and philosophical discussion within physics. I suspect this because we see something similar in the development of twentieth century economics (often recruited  from physicists), who also show such a decline. But that's just a hypothesis.

I close with a final reflection. The peculiarity of Maudlin's larger review is that the first half of the review really vindicates let's call it the empirical basis of Kuhn's philosophy of science. (I leave aside here incommensurability.) The internal life of science is, in part, governed by politics in various senses. That was part of the scandal Kuhn caused. It does not follow it is wholly so governed, and so I am not suggesting Kuhn's whole philosophy is thereby vindicated.

 

 

 

On Philosophical Expertise, Systematicity, and Coherence

...The puzzle presupposes that we ought to defer to experts.  But that only makes sense if we've reason to expect that expertise in a domain sufficiently increases epistemic reliability, i.e. the likelihood of true beliefs.  That's certainly the case for many domains -- it's why we should defer to scientific experts, for example.  But it arguably isn't so for philosophy in general.

Philosophical expertise seems compatible with being completely off the rails when it comes to the substantive content of one's philosophical views.  And this is to be expected once we appreciate that (i) there are many possible internally coherent worldviews, (ii) philosophical argumentation proceeds through a mixture of ironing out incoherence and making us aware of possibilities we had previously neglected, and so (iii) even the greatest expertise in these skills will only help you to reach the truth if you start off in roughly the right place.  Increasing the coherence of someone who is totally wrong (i.e. closer to one of the many internally coherent worldviews that is objectively incorrect) won't necessarily bring them any closer to the truth.

Publish

To put a more subjective spin on it: One's only hope of reaching the truth via rational means is to trust that your starting points are in the right vicinity, such that an ideally coherent version of your worldview would be getting things right.  So we've only got reason to defer to others if their verdicts are indicative of what our idealized selves would conclude.  Often, we can reasonably judge that other philosophers have views so alien to our own that it's unlikely that procedurally ideal reflection (increasing internal coherence) would lead us to share those views.  In such cases, we've no reason to defer to those philosophers, however 'expert' they may be.

(Terminological variant: If you want to build into the definition of a subject-area 'expert' that deference to expert judgement is mandatory, then you should restrict attributions of expertise to those whose starting points are sufficiently similar to your own.)

tl;dr: We should only be epistemically moved by peer disagreement (and related phenomena) when we take the other person's views to be evidence of what we ourselves would conclude upon ideal reflection.  Philosophical intransigence is thus often justified, insofar as we can justifiably believe that an improved version of our view could be developed that is at least as internally coherent as the opposing views. This remains true even if we judge that the defenders of the opposing views are (in purely procedural terms) smarter / better philosophers than we are ourselves.--Richard Yetter Chappell@Philosophy, et cetera, "Philosophical Expertise, Deference, and Intransigence" [HT: Liam Kofi Bright & Dailynous.]

I like that in his post, Yetter Chappell does not simply assume that philosophical expertise is like scientific expertise in all the relevant ways.* In particular, he claims that the are very important differences between science and philosophy when it comes to "epistemic reliability, i.e. the likelihood of true beliefs." Drawing on work of Jason Brennan, he assumes that philosophical methods are not sufficient for generating true beliefs (recall also Katzav's skepticism). Let's spot him the thought, for the sake of argument, that scientific communities have methods that generate true beliefs in some specialist domain. (It is not un-problematic as the history of scientific revolutions and belief change suggests.) So, Yetter Chappell rejects (i) the post-Quine-ian (naturalist) tendency to assume that philosophy and science are continuous, and (ii) the popular move that we can use Kuhnian ideas about mature science as the exemplary ideal in our (arm-chair sociology of philosophy and) meta-philosophy. (So, if Kuhn is relevant at all, it's his views on immature, non-paradigmatic science.)

Before one objects that he does not mention Kuhn at all, it is worth noting that Yetter Chappell conceives philosophy as being involved in the generation of "coherent worldviews." (And the idea of a worldview is very Kuhnian.) That philosophers aim at the generation of coherent worldviews is not silly--it is a ruling ideal in the early modern period and in post-Kantian philosophy in the nineteenth century. This way of understanding philosophy finds its most beautiful (soft-Hegelian) expression in Alexandre Koyré's From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe. But while Koyré undoubtedly influenced Kuhn his impact on analytic philosophy is negligible.

For, analytic philosophy is (with a few notable exceptions) fundamentally anti-systematic. (To be sure: by this I do not mean it embraces incoherence!) Rather it embraces an ideal of philosophy (depending on one's sensibility) that is focused on arguments, solving (carefully circumscribed) puzzles, or dissolves apparent paradoxes. This is no surprise: since Russell embraced decomposition or analysis this is part of the disciplinary ethos. (Even philosophers who wish to avoid conceptual confusion tend to do so by way of conceptual distinctions and decomposition.) Of course, there are more ambitious projects (such as L.A. Paul's conception of philosophy as modeling), but few embrace what we may call a kind of synthetic ideal.** There is a lot to be said for the virtues that are consequent of the analytic self-conception and practice. [Even if in another context (recall my series of posts on Nagel's Mind & Cosmos) I have tried to exhibit the costs of such lack of practice in systematicity.]

As an aside, I hinted there are exceptions to the rule. For example, it's true that David Lewis does have a systematic philosophy; but his is unusually modular. (Another exception is Jody Azzouni, who also is systematic, but his approach has little uptake so far and routinely receives hostile reviews.) In his cost-benefit analysis, Lewis does explicitly suggest, in fact, that "making a theory more systematic" is on the benefit side. But if it is not ignored altogether, in metaphysical practice among Lewisians, this condition/virtue/benefit is reduced to considerations of scope.

Okay, let me return to the main argument. It's clear that even Yetter Chappell is not really describing systematicity. This is clear from his diagnosis that philosophical expertise "will only help you to reach the truth if you start off in roughly the right place." That's obviously true if it's okay if one's axioms or foundational concepts are treated as primitive (the favored move these past few decades) or spotted for the sake of argument. But otherwise that's really not true.

What makes systematic philosophy more than mere coherent-ism is that a systematic philosophy has the further burden of having to anchor or ground (etc.) those starting points in bits of reality. This is also why for systematic philosophies more systematicity is (defeasible) evidence that they are getting closer to the truth.

That is to say, I agree with Yetter Chappell that philosophical intransigence is often justified; but I do so in virtue of the fact that so much contemporary philosophy relies either on unquestioned primitives (and/or shared background commitments) or abduction/inference to the best explanation. For in the popular philosophical methodologies today the starting points and conclusions are not themselves really being stress tested (even if one allows that the method of counterexamples does some of that).+

Now one may object that I have said nothing about explaining what the concept of 'conceptual stress testing' means here. Due to constraints on time and space in this post, I will acknowledge that that it is a fair objection and that I have left it very vague. But note that there are bits of science where it is the norm to only accept, say, 'five-sigma results;' this corresponds to a probability of 1 in 3.5 million that it is the result of chance. If one were permitted to transfer this kind of talk to philosophy, one can say that no philosophical abduction has this kind of probability; no argument with (by philosophical standards) modestly contestable premises can aspire to it.

 

On the Significance of an Anonymous Review of Newton

The work of M. Newton is a mechanics, the most perfect that one could imagine, as it is not possible to make demonstrations more precise or more exact than those that he gives in the first two books on lightness, on springiness, on the resistance of fluid bodies, and on the attractive and repulsive forces that are the principal basis of Physics. But one has to confess that one cannot regard these demonstrations otherwise than as only mechanical; indeed, the author recognizes himself at the end of page four and the beginning of page five that he has not considered their Prin­ciples as a Physicist, but as a mere Geometer.
He confesses the same thing at the beginning of the third book, where he endeavors nevertheless to explain the System of the World. But it is [done] only by hypotheses that are, most of them, arbitrary, and that, conse­quently, can serve as foundation only to a treatise of pure mechanics. He bases the explanation of the inequality of the tides on the principle that all the planets gravitate reciprocally toward each other ... But this supposi­tion is arbitrary as it has not been proved; the demonstration that depends on it can therefore only be mechanics. In order to make an opus as perfect as possible, M. Newton has only to give us a Physics as exact as his Mechanics. He will achieve this when he substitutes true motions for those he has supposed.---Anonymous, Journal des Scavans (2 August 1688), pp. 153 sq., translated by Alexandre Koyré, Newtonian Studies, p.115. [see also here]

The 1688 review was the first public continental response to Isaac Newton. It is often taken to be the expression of a (neo-)Cartesian rejection of the Principia along the lines of Huygens or Leibniz. This is undoubtedly influenced by Koyré suggestion (he's not the first) that the reviewer was probably the Cartesian Regius. On the now standard reading the reviewer is rejecting action at a distance and asking for an explanation in terms of colliding bodies. I now think this standard reading does not do justice to the details of the review. I was prompted to re-think the review by a fascinating paper, "Beyond the “Continental Translation” of Newtonian Mechanics: The Beginnings of Rational Mechanics Reconsidered" (forthcoming in a OUP Handbook on Isaac Newton edited by Smeenk & Schliesser) by J.B. Shank (who has independent grounds to think the reviewer is Varignon).+

There are two oddities in the review that are incompatible with the reviewer being a standard neo-Cartesian-mechanical philosopher: the author of the review (i) rejects hypotheses; and s/he (ii) insists that knowledge of "true motions" of the planets is possible. But, as Huygens affirmed in his introduction in the Treatise on Light and Discourage on Gravity (which includes his published response to Newton's Principia) the mechanical philosophy was a hypothetical philosophy, relying on reduction to intelligible models, and it insisted that motions of the planets were too complex to be fully known with certainty. (Descartes himself had thought the motions of planets could only be known with rough approximation.) They were, in fact, in no position to complain about a science grounded on hypotheses or suppositions--that was, in fact, Newton's complaint about them. (They could, of course, claim that different hypotheses than those adopted by Newton's were preferable, but not that they were hypotheses.) In fact, for the first time since the Copernican hypothesis had errupted, Newton's Principia gave genuine hope that the true motions of the planets and their causes could be found and were within possible reach.

But the anonymous reviewer is attacking Newton from a more rationalist side: action at a distance is criticized for being (a) arbitrary and (b) un-grounded in indubitable foundations (that track the causal structure of the world).* In the Preface to the Principia, Newton himself had allowed that his foundations were, in an important sense, provisional: "the principles set down here will shed some light on either this mode of philosophizing or some truer one." Unfortunately, the reviewer does not explain what the starting points or standards of an exact and certain physics look like.

There is a sense, in fact, in which the reviewer can be read as a disappointed Newtonian. For, in the early 1670s, in his early lectures and correspondence on color, Newton had grown infamous for his assertion that his mathematical science of optics could be certain. The claim was watered down in print such that Newton granted Hooke that "the absolute certainty of a science cannot exceed the certainty of its principles." In fact, one can discern in the anonymous reviewer somebody who, after all the high flowing rhetoric of the 1670s (say), had expected from Newton more certain principles than the ones he had supplied in the Principia.

If I am right about this then one can say that rather than representing the informed response of a leading figure in an old paradigm, the 1688 review expresses the perspective of a new possible paradigm, what we may be dub -- with a glance ahead toward Émilie du Châtelet -- Newtonian-rationalism.

On what is Philosophy

For several reasons, then, effective criticism requires the creation of novel theories. To define philosophy in terms of its critical spirit is not, then, to miss its  constructive side; it is to require it. It should, of course, be said, that not all philosophers go in for criticism and construction in equal proportions. Some-perhaps Russell-do; some-such as Nietzsche- are more knockers-down than standers-up; and some of the great  system-builders-perhaps, Spinoza-are more standers-up than knockers-down. As ever with work, there may be a certain division of labour-just as there are theoreticians and experimentalists in physics. Moreover, some philosophers may well be more interested, subjectively, in constructing their own system of thought than in using it to criticise others-just as some theoretical physicists may be more interested, subjectively, in developing the mathematics of their own theory than in putting it to the test. So it can look as though creating systems of thought is an independent part of the philosophical enterprise. But if the argument I have just given is right, it is not. Objectively, its existence is a corollary of the critical nature of philosophy.--Graham Priest (2006) "What is Philosophy" (p. 206).

For Priest, philosophy is a "critical spirit;" it "is precisely that intellectual inquiry in which anything is open to critical challenge and scrutiny." (202) In her famous (2013) response to, and elaboration of, Priest (not just Priest), Kristie Dotson points out that on Priest's view, philosophy is 1) subversive, 2) unsettling, and 3) of universal import (Priest 2006, 202-203). As the first sentence above makes clear, Priest relies on a distinction between effective and (let's say) not-so-effective criticism. Unfortunately, he does not quite explain what he means by it, but from his use we can infer some of the things he he has in mind.

One sense is intellectual (and this is the one that Priest emphasizes): the criticism becomes more (i) intelligible/sensible and even (ii) visible in light of alternative theory (206). To become intelligible and visible are not the same, and Priest does not treat them as such. This does not exhaust the uses of alternative theories in making criticisms effective. But here I just want to note also the sociological sense: (iii) to offer effective criticism means one cannot be ignored. So, if one cannot produce a rival theory one's criticism is ineffective (one may as well keep quiet). Priest does not really discuss this sociological feature, but it hovers in the background because Priest motivates his account through copious and generous quotation of Kuhn's (and Laudan's) philosophy of science (recall this post). That is, the inability to produce a constructive, rival theory is a stepping stone to the silencing or making ineffective of one's criticism. (Obviously, Dotson alerted me to the significance of this.)

As an aside, it is worth noting that Priest seems to imply that effective criticism with older/discarded/unfashionable theories is also not effective. I suspect, but can't prove, that this, too, is a sociological claim. It presumably relies on the idea that old theories were discarded for good reasons and so can't really be revived. (There is, here, then, a kind of rationality assumption akin to efficient market in ideas about the institute of philosophy; the community rejects/discards theories for solid, in the sense of durable, epistemic reason.)

Now, I don't wish to imply that Priest (the philosopher) is especially keen on silencing folk. His work is notable for its ecumenical, inclusive spirit. (The inaugural lecture I am quoting from has a serious engagement with Derrida's views.) But the demand that a criticism has to be couched in a rival theory has the effective effect of making most criticisms impotent. Of course, Priest would allow that in a colloquium talk (during Q&A) or in a seminar one could raise criticisms without absent a novel theory. (He is very good on the norms that govern such settings.)*

The position also makes it much harder to permit reductio as a legitimate form of philosophy if one ends up in skeptical aporia. This anti-skeptical sensibility is quite clear in his criticisms of Rorty's Derrida:

Are Derrida and Rorty playing with us? I doubt it; but if they are, we have no reason to take them seriously, any more than I have to take seriously the things that you tell me if you area musing me with riddles-'As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives ...' This is, in fact, just a special case of a well-known bind that was first observed as long ago as Plato's Theaetetus (171a4-c7). Someone who claims that there is no appropriate notion of truth to which assertion must answer can say anything they like. There is therefore no reason to believe them. They have argued themselves out of the game. (200)

I leave aside here, Priest's rejection of play (recall this post; or Derrida's category of frivolity). But it is not quite right (I was about to say 'true') that "Someone who claims that there is no appropriate notion of truth to which assertion must answer can say anything they like." That really depends on their conception of responsible speech. (And here one may well think there are crucial differences between Rorty and Derrida.) So, for example, if you know that somebody's conception of speech is ethical -- that they care about the prevention of harms, that they recognize the capacity of language to be itself a source of oppression, that they think their words create and bind their selves --, one may well have excellent reason to find their utterances  trustworthy (I almost said 'believable' and 'credible') despite the fact that they are disinclined to invoke truth. This may well require contextual and contrastive judgments of character; of course, such judgments may be inefficient or themselves corrupted.

Either way, Priest's rejection of Derrida is too greedy here, even if it is sociologically effective. Most of Priest's readers will come to his text already agreeing with him that Derrida is not worth taking seriously (even if Priest clearly thinks otherwise). As Dotson implies, once one recognizes that there may be more than one game in town, we may also pay more attention to how the rules of the game we're playing may rule out moves on grounds that narrow the playing field too (ahh) narrowly.

 

On Understanding Without Mathematics and the Slums of Sociology

I must confess that my own first reaction to the General Theory was not at all like that of Keats on first looking into Chapman's Homer. No silent watcher, I, upon a peak in Darien. My rebellion against its pretensions would have been complete except for an uneasy realization that I did not at all understand what it was about. And I think I am giving away no secrets when I solemnly aver-upon the basis of vivid personal recollection-that no one else in Cambridge, Massachusetts, really knew what it was about for some 12 to 18 months after its publication. Indeed, until the appearance of the mathematical models of Meade, Lange, Hicks, and Harrod there is reason to believe that Keynes himself did not truly understand his own analysis.
Fashion always plays an important role in economic science; new concepts become the mode and then are passé. A cynic might even be tempted to speculate as to whether academic discussion is itself equilibrating: whether assertion, reply, and rejoinder do not represent an oscillating divergent series, in which-to quote Frank Knight's characterization of sociology-"bad talk drives out good."
In this case, gradually and against heavy resistance, the realization grew that the new analysis of effective demand associated with the General Theory was not to prove such a passing fad, that here indeed was part of "the wave of the future.--Paul Samuelson (1946) "Lord Keynes and the General Theory," Econometrica. 187-188.

As I noted yesterday, an invited comment on Backhouse's biography of Samuelson has had me take a second look at Samuelson's biographical sketches and obituaries. It's testimony of Samuelson's confidence and rhetorical abilities that his lack of initial understanding of the General Theory is treated as a problem of the General Theory (and even Keynes). It is notable that he does not consider the obvious alternative suggestion that Cambridge, MA, was a relative intellectual backwater in 1936 (the year the General Theory appeared) and so unfamiliar with the new thinking developing in Cambridge England. (To his credit, in the rest of his essay, Samuelson provides some evidence for the latter half of that claim.)

As an aside, it is a bit peculiar to see a low estimation of sociology attributed to Frank Knight, the man most responsible of generating initial interest in (and translation of) Weber Stateside. One wonders if, perhaps, Samuelson's memory is failing him and that he is importing his own negative characterization of sociology (recall) into his memory of Knight's acerbic wit. My evidence for this suggestion is that when in a different obituary, he discusses Jacob Viner's ferocious use of the Socratic Method (indebted to the Harvard economist Taussig), Samuelson adds that graduate students who did not meet Viner's exacting standards "had no choice but to drop out or to transfer to the slums of political science or sociology." (JPE, 1972: 6) It's not impossible that the low estimation of sociology was more common among economists in Chicago, but we know from Stigler's citation practices that some read sociology and social theory rather seriously, and that it even influenced Milton Friedman's methodology. 

Some other time I'll explore the significance of the proto-cyclical-equilibrium model of scientific fashions, a model that would certainly have some significance (recall) for professional philosophy (where the idea that ideas cycle in and out of fashion is itself a recurring fashion.)* I mention it here because the whole obituary is framed in proto-Kuhnian terms in which Keynes generates a scientific revolution (and in which differential response to the revolution is explained in terms of generational differences.) Later in the piece, Samuelson notes that textbooks break the cycle: "most important from the long-run standpoint, the Keynesian analysis has begun to filter down into the elementary textbooks; and as everybody knows once an idea gets into these, however bad it may be, it becomes practically immortal." (189) Samuelson was just finishing up his mega-influential textbook. (Luckily, in philosophy textbooks are not the dominant mode of instruction yet.)

Okay, let me get to the main point. Samuelson claims here that mathematics is the language in which by way of a model one understands an analysis. (The previous sentence is compatible with the further thought -- pressed by Samuelson's ironic critic -- that mathematics may well be many languages.) This is true not just of the readers of the General Theory, but also its author. Samuelson emphasizes the point later: "In it the Keynesian system stands out indistinctly, as if the author were hardly aware of its existence or cognizant of its properties."** Now, to be sure, there are two important truths lurking in Samuelson's position: first, that the meaning of a text may well escape or go beyond an author (and sometimes even may be so intended by an author)--I made that same point when discussing the debate between Plantinga and Hazony over biblical meaning. Second, sometimes, maybe often, an analysis in non-mathematical language is fuzzy or unclear or equivocal in ways that are only made transparent by a mathematical model. (A claim Samuelson would repeat regularly later in his rejection of verbal economics as opposed to mathematical economics.)*** Only later in life (1972), when discussing Viner's significance (he calls him both the "greatest neoclassical economist" and a "great eclectic"), does Samuelson relent on the point: "Jacob Viner was a respecter of mathematics, but also both critical and defensive about it. Let me make clear that Viner possessed in superlative degree what might be called native mathematical ability....But I now realize in retrospect that the subject of economics gained from having Viner concentrate upon those areas of wisdom and erudition for which he had a unique comparative advantage, and that more mathematical facility might merely have diverted him from his appointed task."

Samuelson does not consider an alternative interpretation: that in different ways,  Meade, Lange, Hicks, and Harrod may have offered models inspired by the General Theory, but  in their very formulation changed the meaning of the 'Keynesian' analysis.+ One can recognize the previous point while allowing that the new models may have had all kinds of uses (teaching, policy, transferring knowledge, etc.) made difficult by the General Theory. To argue that case is not my present charge (and I would have to re-familiarize with all the relevant models), although I have already suggested that Keynes's insights about the nature of true uncertainty were lost in the way his views got formalized. (I made some such point in a different context when discussing Carnapian explication.) 

Strikingly enough, and Samuelson often buries his most important points in footnotes, he adds the following observation:

8 Indeed only in connection with Frank P. Ramsey's "A Mathematical Theory of Saving"...does he show interest in an esoteric theoretical problem; there he gave a rather intricate interpretation in words of a calculus-of-variations differential-equation condition of equilibrium. His reasoning is all the more brilliant -- and I say this seriously! -- because it is mathematically unrigorous, if not wrong. The importance which Keynes attached to this article is actually exaggerated and can be accounted for only in terms of his paternal feeling toward Ramsey, and his own participation in the solution of the problem. (196)

An uncharitable reading of Samuelson may suggests that he is committed to the idea that wrong mathematical reasoning is better than no mathematical reasoning (even if not wrong). A more charitable reading would suggest that he recognizes that sometimes insight does trump a wrong mathematical formulation, especially -- and this is not meant as criticism -- if it takes a Samuelson to discern the kernel of insight.

 

On The Sociology and Philosophy of Science in and by Economists

Just prior to Hayek's departure from post World War II mainstream economics came what must be hailed as his greatest important contribution to economic science. It can be well understood if I make reference to the famous debate between Lerner–Lange and Ludwig von Mises (1935) over the role of the supply-and-demand mechanism in a socialist state. Lerner (1934), as well as Lange and Taylor (1938) quasi-independently, suggested that playing the game of parametric supply–demand auctioning could optimally organize a socialist society that had evolved beyond historic capitalism.

Arguably this general notion might be traced back to Adam Smith's legendary Invisible Hand, which led society unconsciously to achieve the maximal “general good.” Individual avarice, under market checks and balances, achieved this happy state. A more sophisticated version of the same idea came in the 1890s from Pareto (1896–97) and Barone (1908), long before Arrow-Debreu breakthroughs. Pareto deduced the mathematical theorem that the determinative equations of Walrasian general equilibrium mimicked exactly the maximizing welfare conditions for utopias.

By contrast, Mises in his polemics prior to Lerner–Lange, had contended that only under actual capitalism could one even define a post-Bentham welfare economics. Autobiographically, I can testify that most economists born after 1910 at that time would have voted Lerner and Lange to be the debate winner, with Mises as the prime loser. (Even my Harvard mentor Schumpeter saw some merit in the Lerner–Lange conjectures.¹)

In the 1940s Friedrich Hayek in an invited Harvard lecture introduced a new dynamic element into the debate. Call it “information economics.” The broad competitive markets, Hayek proclaimed, were the recipients of heterogeneous idiosyncratic bits of individuals’ information. Playing for matches rather than for real money or blood was as different an economic dynamics as night is from day.

I was not at all the only one to be converted to the view that, as between Abba Lerner, Oskar Lange and Ludwig von mises, Friedrich Hayek was actually the debate's winner. (After the U.S. State Department persuaded Lange to go back to Stalinesque Poland, Lange reportedly lost his lust for auction markets.)

The jury of history judges innovators not by adding linearly their plus and minus contributions. Hayek's 1974 Stockholm Nobel Prize was importantly won for him by his notions about decentralized information economics discussed that day in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Never mind that Hayek over-praised the optimality of individualistic spontaneity. Charles Darwin's genius long earlier had eclectically enumerated both the plusesand minuses of individualistic natural selection.

I do not know how much George Stigler had ever been influenced by Hayek when later Stigler's work on information economics helped bring him his Nobel medal. Senior Robert K. Merton, as sociologist, historian and philosopher of history of science, taught us again and again that great things come in pairs and triplets. Darwin had his Wallace. Newton had his Leibniz. Leibniz had his Newton. Thomas Kuhn documented the case that the fundamental Law of Conservation of Energy had a dozen different fathers. Although what each had discovered was not precisely the same thing, maybe at most one of the dozen did understand all the nuances.--Paul Samuelson (2009) "A few remembrances of Friedrich von Hayek (1899–1992),"  Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.

Two long-running themes of my blogs on the philosophy and history of twentieth century economics, are (a) that ideas from the philosophy of science played a big role in cutting edge discussions among leading economists, and (b) that some ideas we associate with philosophy of science were developed or articulated within economics. On (b) I have primarily focused on the role of Kuhnian ideas within economics (between 1870-1960) [for an overview see here]. One reason to mention Kuhn is to note the otherwise peculiar fact the leading and influential ,professional economists of the age (Samuelson, Stigler, Buchanan, -- all Nobel laureates --) were serious and leading historians of economics, while simultaneously arguing for and writing textbooks with a conception of a professional economist that left little relatively room for the history of economics inside the discipline. 

Because, yesterday, I was asked to comment on a précis of Roger Backhouse's first part of his biography of Paul Samuelson, the aptly titled, Founder of Modern Economics: Paul A. Samuelson, I returned to some of Samuelson's many biographical sketches of others. He excelled in the genre, in which he mixed personal memory, character sketches, and a kind of summing up of theoretical significance. In one of his earliest contributions to genre, his (1946) obituary of Keynes, he pretends as if the significance of a biographical sketch is merely short term: "The personal characteristics of the scientist can only be captured while memories are still fresh; and only then, in all honesty, are they of maximum interest and relevance." Yet, he closes the 1946 obituary with a footnote (#15) in which he writes, " should like at this point to pass a clue on to the future historian of economic
thought." What follows is a rather clever suggestion of the influence by Keynes on Joan Robinson 1933--the effect of which is to diminish the originality of Robinson and, thereby (because Samuelson is a canny operator) to diminish her would be future influence. Because Keynes is dead, he can't set the record straight on her behalf (if he would have been so inclined). So, in stroke he has undercut one of the sharpest operators of his time.  Even if you don't agree with my interpretation of the footnote, the wording of the footnote shows that is also playing a long game in the service of posthumous fame and score setting.

Samuelson exhibits here the marks of a Kuhnian legislator, who can operate at multiple dimensions, short term and long term, but also bring together different kinds of concerns (recall this post on Samuelson's biographical sketch of Viner). This ability to play chess on multiple boards at once is characteristic of Samuelson's command of the discipline even at a young age. (He  was 31 in 1946.) While Samuelson pioneered many techniques, his greatest skill was, in my opinion, to write the paper that would help the rest of the economics discipline understand what the issues were on any topic. He did this time and again, and his citation score is monstrously large.   

As an aside, Samuelson's biography of Keynes is full of gems, but the most revealing about Samuelson is this one:  Keynes, who became a celebrity outside academia with the Economic Consequences of the Peace, "met the practical men of affairs on their own ground and won the reputation of being an economist who knew how to make money." Samuelson would become a celebrity and wealthy with his textbook and trading success.

Okay, let me now turn to the final paragraph I quoted above from the Hayek biography. If we ignore the interpretation of Adam Smith (and the amusing and not wholly false proposal that Smith is the founder of Socialist Utopias as opposed to the Stalinist kind),* the comment on the context and significance of Hayek's greatest contribution to economics is judicious. But it is a bit surprising to see Samuelson take yet one more pot-shot at George Stigler (who had died in 1991). Now, you need to know that Samuelson and Stigler knew each other from the The University of Chicago of the mid 1930s, where Samuelson was a precocious undergraduate and Stigler one of the leading graduate students. They were both greatly influenced by Frank Knight and Jacob Viner. But Samuelson developed into the leading 'centrist' (his own words in the biography of Hayek) technocrat, whereas Stigler became one of the leading lights of the Chicago school. (As Samuelson makes clear Hayek pretty much left professional economics after 1945.) I have repeatedly explored their debate that originated in the status of welfare economics (see here, and follow the links back) in 1943.

But Samuelson does not merely suggests that Stigler won the Nobel for not quite original, cutting edge work. He also introduces the great sociologist of science Robert K. Merton to reinforce his point. Now, Merton had been a colleague of Stigler's at  Columbia and (together with Talcott Parsons) a great influence on Stigler's conception of science (recall also this post.) Stigler loved to quote Merton in his methodological papers, and there is no doubt that when Stigler wrote Kuhn just after Structure appeared to inform Kuhn that Kuhnian ideas were developed by economists like himself, they had drawn on Mertonian insights. But the plot thickens (as Backhouse gently reminded me yesterday) because Merton was also the father of the economist Robert Merton (and another Nobel laureate which he won for his contribution to the famous option price formula named after Black and Scholes). Merton and Samuelson wrote an important and widely cited text  from the "perspective of a model in which agents can revise their decisions continuously in time." 

It's quite clear that Stigler, who was something of an attack dog, is being treated as the lesser light and being likened to Wallace (and that Hayek is more akin to Darwin). And then for good measure, the reader is reminded that there are good odds that neither Stigler nor Hayek truly understood what they had contributed: there can be only one who understands all the nuances, and that's Samuelson.

 

On The Nature of Philosophy and The Principle of Continuity In Godfrey-Smith

It's possible to progress...by charting the evolution of the senses, bodies, and behavior. Somewhere in that process lies the evolution of the mind. So this is a philosophy book, as well as a book about animals and evolution. That it's a philosophy book does not place it in some arcane and inaccessible realm. Doing philosophy is largely a mater of trying to put things together, trying to to get the pieces of very large puzzles to make some sense. Good philosophy is opportunistic; it uses whatever information and whatever tools look useful. I hope that as the book goes along, it will move in and out of philosophy through seams that you won't much notice. Peter Godfrey-Smith (2016) Other Minds: The Octopus and The Evolution of Intelligent Life, p. 12. [Emphasis in original--ES]

I warmly recommend Godfrey-Smith's book, which revisits and extends the best from the tradition of natural philosophy. It's accessible and insightful at once. It has that rare quality of articulating features of reality that seem obvious once stated (my favorite: the "dual role" of light as a source of energy and a source of information), but that surely eluded your recognition before reading it. 

Other Minds is a masterful introduction to three different topics: octopus and squid cognition; human cognition; and modern understanding of evolution by natural selection.* Mercifully, it avoids the pitfall of much popular science writing, which tends to teach us more about the author (and his view of himself), or some privileged interlocutor, than the subject matter. This is not to deny we get a below the surface, as it were, peak of how science works: we hear, en passant, about scientists switching research topics and withholding papers from each other until publication; we learn about prestige hierarchy in science and how the significance of neglected papers can be discovered much later; the non-trivial role of non-scientists in marine biology; the ways in which background theory informs interpretations of experiments, and the ways philosophers can be constructive participants in science, etc.

When I first read the passage quoted above, I mistakenly thought Godfrey-Smith (hereafter PGS) was promoting a Kuhnian puzzle-solving image for philosophy. But while PGS certainly is working within a Darwinian paradigm, he is really doing something different than normal science in two ways: first, he is not, in fact, solving micro-puzzles within the paradigm, but rather bringing different elements together to create a coherent whole. The puzzle he is solving is, as it were, at the macro-level. Second, while, along the way, PGS draws on existing mechanisms and various strands of Darwinian argument, he is, as he is saying, opportunistic about the tools he uses and the evidence he calls attention to. It's not really conceptual analysis, but it is scientifically informed philosophy that brings  together a wide diversity of scientific findings that cohere, not so much with PGS's armchair, but his own experience under water. 

Now, interestingly enough, Other Minds has an epigraph from William James:

The demand for continuity has, over large tracts of science, proved itself to possess true prophetic power. We ought therefore ourselves sincerely to try every possible mode of conceiving the dawn of consciousness so that it may not appear equivalent to the irruption into the universe of a new nature, non-existent until then.--William James The Principles of Psychology 

PGS interprets James as saying that "we need a theory [of consciousness] based on continuities and comprehensible transitions; no sudden entrances or jumps." (11) That is, PGS understands James as agreeing with, and anticipating, Dennett's methodological demand for cranes, not sky-hooks (recall Darwin's Dangerous Ideas--PGS  does not use this tterminology, but he does graciously acknowledges his debt to Daniel Dennett.)

But PGS may also have something further in mind, "like James, I want to understand the relationship between mind and matter, and assume a story of gradualism is the story that has to be  told." (11) Here gradualism can also be understood as a rejection of, say, Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium. And, in fact, PGS's story is one of deep time, longue durée, where many of the key moves take places hundreds of millions of years ago and accumulate slowly over time. While PGS's story is, in principle compatible with the Baldwin effect and other evolutionary cranes that accelerate evolution, on the whole he is not much interested in such moves (that connect human intelligence to environmental pressures and learned evolution).**

Now, PGS recognizes explicitly, in a note, that his own theory of consciousness is not like James's. But he does not explore the details of James's Darwinian theory. (That's okay, of course.) I am no James scholar, but if one reads the chapter from which  PGS quotes, it's clear James ends up with a theory that looks a bit like Spinoza's, and, especially Leibniz's--where consciousness is a natural correlate of matter from the start of deep time.+ That is to say, there are two ways to understand the denial of irruption: (i) one is, in the explanation of X, to demand a gradual growth of X from bits of Ys (with only cranes doing the work); the other (ii) is to build X into the nature of Y, or a permanent byproduct of Y, in some sense or another. James finds the nineteenth century theories of the former (i) unpersuasive and so opts for the latter (ii). Godfrey-Smith can be understood as providing the framework to make (i) seem less mysterious and so as to avoid having to adopt (ii).*

One final thought, James is explicitly echoing Leibniz's principle of continuity, “Nothing takes place suddenly, and it is one of my great and best confirmed maxims that nature never makes leaps.” (A VI vi 56/RB 56) As Branden Look comments, this law or principle implies that any change passes through some intermediate change and that there is an actual infinity in things." This is, in fact, a Platonic principle (creatively re-interpreted by Leibniz) that in the nineteenth century got reinterpreted, in turn, that every possible species niche would be occupied (Nietzsche has a version of this in his treatment of the will to power). It is an image of boundless (even infinite) nature with endless possibility. I don't think that's Godfrey-Smith's image of nature, but since he treats the body of the octopus "as pure possibility," it's clear he is tempted by it.