Digressions&Impressions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Aspiration (II)

In all the liberal and ingenious arts, in painting, in poetry, in music, in eloquence, in philosophy, the great artist feels always the real imperfection of his own best works, and is more sensible than any man how much they fall short of that ideal perfection of which he has formed some conception, which he imitates as well as he can, but which he despairs of ever equalling. It is the inferior artist only, who is ever perfectly satisfied with his own performances. He has little conception of this ideal perfection, about which he has little employed his thoughts; and it is chiefly to the works of other artists, of, perhaps, a still lower order, that he deigns to compare his own works. Boileau, the great French poet (in some of his works, perhaps not inferior to the greatest poet of the same kind, either ancient or modern), used to say, that no great man was ever completely satisfied with his own works.--Adam Smith The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 6.3.26, p. 248

Last week, I noted that Agnes Callard's inspiring Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming left some intertwined problems because her analysis seems to require that the normativity of aspiration is not grounded in the intentions of the aspiring agent. (I called this the problem of aspirational normativity.) More subtly if such normativity exists at all it seems to have to be grounded in a counterfactual self that (prospectively) has a very limited identity with the aspiring agent. (I called this the problem of counterfactual strangers.) The two problems are distinct, but in what follows I sketch a proposal that may resolve them simultaneously.

Counterfactual agents are a staple of impartial spectator theories, and play different roles in them. For present purposes, I am going to stipulate that in Adam Smith's theory any impartial spectator is always a counterfactual agent with complex identity profiles.* The ways of being of such agents are complicated, but I am going to skip over that issue right now. Here I am primarily interested in one feature: namely the role of an impartial spectator theory by which the norms of our actions would be judged; these norms "express" in the felicitous phrase of Samuel Fleischacker, "the feelings of an impartial spectator." These norms express the feelings of an impartial spectator because in Smith's theory, it's the impartial spectator that sets meta-ethical standards ("that precise and distinct measure can be found nowhere but in the sympathetic feelings of the impartial and well-informed
spectator" TMS 7.2.1. 49, p. 294).**

Impartial spectator theories do not fit easily into the current taste for monistic meta-ethical systems, so I accept (for the sake of argument) that they have considerable weaknesses in meta-ethics. But as it happens they are especially suitable to explaining the normativity of aspiration. Because whatever normativity aspiration has it inherits from (i) the worthiness of the activity it is aspiringing toward, and (ii) the aptness of the process by which aspiration is fulfilled. Both of these involve the kind of contextual judgments that are a strength of Smithian impartial spectator theories. 

More subtly, while prospectively the aspirant lacks -- to adopt Callard's terminology -- the intrinsic rational ground to justify her aspiration, she can point to exemplars who extrinsically inspire or guide her path; some of these (exemplars) may well act as mentors along the way. Callard has little to say about exemplars, but mentors play a key role in her account.+  

As an aside, I do not mean to suggest that (i-ii) exhaust the relevant conditions; perhaps the impartial spectator would also make contextually salient judgments about (iii) the fitness of the aspirant for the aspiring activity; and (iv) the suitability of the adopted exemplars (and mentors). 

Okay, as it happens Smith's moral philosophy is especially fruitful when it comes to reflecting on the normative grounding and standard-setting of exemplars within practices it is worthy to aspire to. I do not mean to suggest Smith's account explains especially well why particular practices are worth aspiring to (and if Callard is right such an account can only become available to the aspirant after the aspiring activity has been completed for the greater part), but rather if we accept that such practices exist and that they are worthy of aspiration, Smith offers (even if we note his gendered biases/examples) a useful account of how his impartial spectator account can function and help articulate the standards within such worthy-of-aspiration practices.  In fact, Smith thinks we have a good enough grip on the existence and tropes surrounding the reality of standards within such worthy-of-aspiration practices that he uses these, as he does in the larger context of the quoted passage at the top of this post, to illuminate his meta-ethical account of the role of standards in moral life.

So, here's my suggestion, in order to tackle the problem of aspirational normativity and the problem of counterfactual strangers, we need to introduce an impartial spectator theory. This theory posits a counterfactual agent with which one shares partial identity through which one can endorse the exemplary standards of an aspiring-worthy-activity. This counterfactual agent with which one shares partial identity will be the source of normativity for one's proleptic reasons to aspire to become like, in certain crucial ways, the exemplar that is guiding one's aspiring activity. 

If one is unfamiliar with Smithian impartial spectator theories, the previous paragraph will probably seem outright mysterious. (Even if one is uninterested in reading my book on Adam Smith, one could do worse with one's time than read The Theory of Moral Sentiments.) But if one is familiar with these, the previous paragraph should provide the discerning reader with a how-possible sketch to explain the normative ground of proleptic reasons. Of course, lurking in here is also a problem of teleology: how can proleptic reasons gain a justifiable grip on an agent?

Now it is tempting to answer that question by saying 'all of us have access to the judgments of the impartial spectator' at any given time (see Adam Smith's TMS). But that answer may seem to skip over the particularly teleological nature of the problem. So, let me grant that before that answer can seem fully compelling, I need to offer an account of naturalistic teleology. I leave that to a future post.

 

 

Ón Callard's Aspiration (I)

On an aspirational account of self-creation, the creator does not determine, choose or shape the created self; rather, she looks up to, imitates and seeks to become the created self. The source of normativity lies at the end of the process, rather than at the beginning.(p.13)....

skeptics may worry that an account such as mine succumbs to the basic error Nietzsche is describing: in positing the normatively prior self as temporally posterior, I am presenting a teleological account of (a species of) self-directed agency. Is such teleology naturalistically suspect—does it rest on some notion of backwards causation, or causeless effects? I argue that these suspicions are themselves predicated on a conceptual error: a confusion between two kinds of grounding relation...

The primary task...is that of giving an account of how one set of norms—the norms governing S1—is related to another set of norms—the norms governing S2. ... If we want to know whether those very desires and representations succeed or fail, we must assess them with reference to the as-yet nonexistent S2.
In aspiration, it is the created self who, through the creator’s imperfect but gradually improving understanding of her, makes intelligible the path the person’s life takes. Aspiration is that form of agency in which one acts upon oneself to create a self with substantively new values. One does this by allowing oneself to be guided by the very self one is bringing into being.--Agnes Callard Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming, (p. 182-3)

I read Callard's Aspiration with a reading group at Chapman. The members of it (let me know if you want to be named) are to be blamed for my mistakes.:)* On my interpretation, aspiring in Callard's sense is a species of acting under Knightian uncertainty (which goes unmentioned in the book) closely analogous to L.A. Paul's transformative experience (which is discussed carefully; recall here and here). I agree with Callard that aspiring is a real phenomenon, and that it invites further reflection. In a series of posts, I want to diagnose at least three conceptual issues (and make aspirational, baby steps toward resolving them). 

First, the distinctive proleptic normativity of an aspirational action cannot be grounded in the prior intentions of the agent. For, some (of a Kantian bent) this is just bat-shit crazy. But I think normativity can be ungrounded in such intentions.  As Callard notes the agent that grounds the normativity is a future self. That is to say, to explain the problem of aspirational normativity one must solve (a) the teleological way such a (b) posited future self can ground the normativity of proleptic actions toward it. Once (a) and (b) are solved, one can make progress on the problem of aspirational normativity. I take these in turn, in reverse order. 

Second, accounting for the normatively grounding, posited aspirational self is more difficult than it may seem at first. For, on Callard's account -- and I endorse this feature -- genuine aspiring can fail and some purported aspiring can turn out to be wrongheaded. In the first case (of failed aspiration) the posited aspirational self (who is supposed to ground the normativity of one's proleptic reasons toward it) never materializes. Whatever the identity of this imagined self, there is a sense in which it is merely an ideal version of a possible you.  In the second sense (the wrongheaded aspiration) the posited self could never be you. So, how can counterfactual selves -- one tangentially related to your identity, the other unrelated to you -- ground the normativity of your activity?

In fact, the problem also is generated in circumstances where the aspiration was warranted and turned out a success (by whatever criteria internal to aspirational tasks). For, even if we leave aside questions of teleology, wne may well wonder how successful aspiration can ground one's present action when the future (post aspirational completed) self is in-non-trivial ways a different identity from the present, aspiring self. It still looks as if a counterfactual identity distinct from one's identity is grounding the normativity of your agency. So, to put the problem starkly, aspirational created selves are, in non-trivial ways, counterfactual selves with which one shares (prospectively) only partial identity.  (As Callard notes repeatedly, one cannot claim identity with this future self because prospectively one has little ground for such identity claiming.) While teleology is part of the problem, the real problem is how counterfactual or created selves can proleptically generate normativity to agents that are, in non-trivial ways, (partial) strangers. Let's call this the problem of counterfactual strangers.

Third, I do not mean to suggest that teleology is no problem at all. As Callard puts it, "it is the end that provides the normative standards for assessing what comes before it" (209); and the end is unknown, unknowable to the agent until the end is reached.  In fact, working through Callard's book in the company of decision theorists, it is notable how much of the standard machinery of rational choice agency presupposes a kind of billiard ball model of agency in which efficient causes of push and pull (beliefs, credences, intentions, expectations, etc.) do all the work. The question is how can one insert proleptic reasons, which are distinctly teleological into a standard  decision-theoretic picture that plays by naturalistic rules. Let's call this the problem of teleology. Luckily, I know how to make progress on the problem of teleology because (recall here and here) I just read the ms of David Haig's brilliant book, From Darwin to Derrida: Selfish Genes, Social Selves, and the Meanings of Life which vindicates a naturalistic version of echt-teleology.

I don't think any of the problems I have identified are truly articulated in Aspiration. But I think Callard has identified, or (to do justice of her treatment of Plato) recovered, a genuine feature of our existence. And that she has offered us enough of a mountain to climb, to make it worth it to reach higher vistas.  

Stay tuned.

On Analysis

Seven or so years ago, near the beginning of my analysis, I explained to my analyst, after some frustrating experiences, how important it was to me that they always engage with the actual content of what I was saying. I took a huge amount of care in expressing myself – choosing exactly the right words, multiplying distinctions in order to communicate with laser precision – and I didn’t want to be ‘interpreted’ before the letter of what I was saying had been fully attended to....Those seven or so years ago, when I implored my analyst to take me at my word, it was, almost needless to say, only the first way, according to which it contrasts with “spirit,” that I had in mind. Two or three years after that, well into the analysis, I was becoming more comfortable and more curious. The tight control over my words – the only real power I could exert to protect myself and ensure the analysis did not unleash anything too scary – came to feel constricting, even suffocating...

 At the end I exclaimed “I’d like to go back to that injunction I made right at the start. Please make an effort to engage with the letter of what I am saying before trying to hear what is unsaid.” To which they replied, with some, subsequently confessed, hyperbole: “You do realize that is literally the exact opposite of what I’m supposed to be doing?!” (One reason to think that the designation of psychoanalysis as “the Jewish science” may be misleading.) In some sense, of course, what they said is obvious. They are listening for what is unconscious, which is unlikely to be found in the obsessively-controlled language that I wield almost like a weapon. But it startled me nonetheless and I decided to write this post to help work through it.--Simon J. Evnine "For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life"

One recurring fascination is the common root of 'analysis' in analytical philosophy that it shares with the 'analysis' in psychoanalysis. I sometimes wonder why analyse and its cognates had such pull over late nineteenth and early twentieth century (Viennese and Cambridge) minds. I was reminded of this by Simon Evnine who regularly calls my attention to his blog, "The Parergon." I hope he does not mind too much being the trigger occasion for these impressions. I treat him here as the everyman of analytic philosophy in which all of us can be substituted into his place, opaque contexts be damned!

It is noticeable that Simon treats his precision and "care in expressing" in terms of a "weapon." Even when used in self-defense, weapons are explicitly designed to hurt others.* I have noted before (recall) the analytic philosopher's tendency to describe the toolkit of her  craft in terms of surgical (and laser-like) instruments, but in those instances the instruments are meant to heal. Of course, Simon's intent is not to hurt others, but self-protection ("the only real power I could exert to protect myself.")+ 

I do not know a better expression of the fragility at the root of much analytic philosophy. Any badly formulated phrase is a misstep of monumental proportions. The robustness of the whole collapses with the weakest link. This fragility is fueled by "frustrating experiences." Once primed by psychoanalysis, it's hard not to discern the dependent child here. 

I do not mean to suggest that the analytic philosopher's attitude toward rigor  and clarity only expresses fragility. One may as well -- and here I am inspired by Simon's "extravagant letteralism" -- read it as pure holiness (recall here on Carnap). After all, a Torah scroll is disqualified if even a single letter is added or a single letter is deleted. Every sign must be correct. 

A few days ago a lovely blog post by Liam Kofi Bright inspired me to reflect a bit on what the norms of analytic philosophy would have to be if we "conceived of conceptual engineering as a means to enter into lifeworlds of others." I asserted that the non-dominating way of doing so requires a willingness to be transformed by the experience. What I missed saying explicitly then, and I suspect this omission (recall) is part of my professional deformation, is that one cannot (non-dominatingly) enter into the the lifeworld of another without, as Simon shows without saying, being vulnerable.

On Al-Ghazali The Pre-History of Ibn Tufayl and Transformative Experience

103. The first thing created in man is the sense of touch: by this he perceives certain classes of existents such as heat and cold, wetness and dryness, smoothness and roughness, etc. But touch is definitely unable to perceive colors and sounds: indeed, these are, as it were, nonexistent with respect to touch.
104. Next the sense of sight is created for man, by which he perceives colors and shapes: this is the most extensive of the “worlds” of the sensibles.....

109. Now if a man born blind did not know about colors and shapes from constant report and hearsay, and were to be told about them abruptly, he would neither understand them nor acknowledge their existence. But God Most High has brought the matter within the purview of His creatures by giving them a sample of the special character of the prophetic power: sleeping. For the sleeper perceives the unknown that will take place, either plainly, or in the guise of an image the meaning of which is disclosed by interpretation.
110. If a man had had no personal experience of dreaming and someone were to tell him: “There are some men who fall down unconscious as though they were dead, and their perception, hearing, and sight leave them, and they then perceive what is ‘hidden’,” he would deny it and give apodeictic proof of its impossibility by saying: “The sensory powers are the causes of perception. Therefore one who does not perceive such things when his powers are present and functioning a fortiori will not perceive them when his powers are suspended.”
111. This is a kind of analogy which is belied by factual experience and observation. Just as the intellect is one of man’s stages in which he receives an “eye” by which he “sees” various species of intelligibles from which the senses are far removed, the prophetic power is an expression signifying a stage in which man receives an “eye” possessed of a light, and in its light the unknown and other phenomena not normally perceived by the intellect become visible.'--Al-Ghazali, Deliverance of Error

For Al-Ghazali (recall) prophecy is a form of guided intuition (an inner faculty (or "eye" beyond reason), which makes otherwise unknown phenomena available. According to Al-Ghazali truth-apt prophecy is not entirely uncommon: it also occurs, for example, in the context of scientific discovery, when scientific theories (that go beyond the direct empirical data) are developed. I argued that Al-Ghazali's main argument is abductive.

In the context of discussion of prophecy, Al-Ghazali introduces the man born blind as a thought experiment. This person has no sense experience of colors.* Notably, this blind man also does not accept the authority of testimony. (Anachronistically: the blind man is a hard-core empiricist.) The blind man stands for those of use who lack first hand knowledge of prophecy and who may doubt testimony about it.

We are, however, given indirect access to the plausibility of prophecy by the existence of dreams which foretell the "unknown...either plainly, or in the guise of an image the meaning of which is disclosed by interpretation." I ignore here how plausible this really is. By analogy, if dreaming were in color perhaps we are supposed to understand that the blind man would then accept the testimony about the existence of colors on faith (or treat it as evidence). What is notable is that Al-Ghazali does not return to the blind man despite the significance of vision metaphors and analogies in his overall discussion.  One could stop here and just remark that Ibn Tufayl saw better what to do with the underlying idea. 

That unperceived colors stand for a potential vision of reality is, of course, not wholly original with Al-Ghazali. In fact, it has been developed by one of his explicit targets. For, when, Al-Farabi explains the role of the active intellect in human life, he writes the following in the Political Regime:

The status of the active intellect with respect to the human being is that of the sun with respect to vision. For the sun gives light to vision so that, through the light procured from the sun, vision becomes actual viewing after having been potential viewing. By that light, it views the sun itself, which is the cause for it having vision in actuality. Moreover, the colors that were potentially seen become seen in actuality, and the vision that was potential becomes actual vision. Similarly, the active intellect provides a human being with something it traces on his rational faculty, the status of that thing with respect to the rational soul being the status of light with respect to vision. (Par 9), translated by Butterworth.

Without the active intellect we are like men in the dark, or like a blind; either way, colors are merely potentially visible. Now, as I have noted before, according to Al-Farabi one may call the active intellect that "it is the trustworthy spirit and the holy spirit." (Political Regime 3) And when a great soul joins the active intellect, and thereby founds the laws that guide society, "he is the one of whom it ought to be said that he received revelation." (Recall also here.)

So, perhaps Al-Ghazali decided not to develop the example of the blind man because it would have brought him a bit too close to his target.** 

On Grounding Identity

Like Beethoven's late works, Freud's Spätwerk is obsessed with returning not just to the problem of Moses's identity - which, of course, is at the very core of the treatise — but to the very elements of identity itself, as if that issue so crucial to psychoanalysis, the very heart of the science, could be returned to in the way that Beethoven's late work returns to such basics as tonality and rhythm..... Above all, late style's effect on the reader or listener is alienating — that is to say, Freud and Beethoven present material that is of pressing concern to them with scant regard for satisfying, much less placating, the reader's need for closure. Other books by Freud were written with a didactic or pedagogic aim in mind: Moses and Monotheism is not. Reading the treatise, we feel that Freud wishes us to understand that there are other issues at stake here — other, more pressing problems to expose than ones whose solution might be comforting, or provide a sort of resting-place....

As to whether Moses can be said to be "foreign" to the Jews who adopt him as their patriarch, Freud is quite clear, even adamant: Moses was an Egyptian, and was therefore different from the people who adopted him as their leader - people, that is, who became the Jews whom Moses seems to have later created as his people....

More bold is Freud's profound exemplification of the insight that even for the most definable, the most identifiable, the most stubborncommunal identity — for him, this was the Jewish identity — there are inherent limits that prevent it from being fully incorporated into one, and only one, Identity. Freud's symbol of those limits was that the founder of Jewish identity was himself a non-European Egyptian. In other words, identity cannot be thought or worked through itself alone; it cannot constitute or even imagine itself without that radical originary break or flaw which will not be repressed, because Moses was Egyptian, and therefore always outside the identity inside which so many have stood, and suffered - and later, perhaps, even triumphed Edward Said (2003), Freud and the Non-European, 28-29 &35

Nothing seems more trivial than, A=A. Let's call it (that is, 'A=A,') 'clean identity.' 

Said has Freud say that in human circumstances, that first 'A' (of 'A=A') is not self-grounding. (Freud resists the Spinozist solution of an infinite chain of As.) It's not that Said is wrong that Freud thinks leader and people co-constitute each other (much the way David Hume constitutes his public), but as Jacqueline Rose perceptively notes in her invited commentary on Said's lecture, Said understates the way in which Freud argues that violence is presupposed even constitutive of any form of identity. (I wish I had read her before writing this post a few years ago.) For, when he turns to his political solution to the problem of Zionism, Said posits a kind of heterogeneous even besieged identity as political ideal, but then fails to name the violence required to sustain partial identities. 

Be that as it may, Said's lecture (recall my post), suggests that any clean identity claim (at least in political contexts) is both more than meets the eye and less. More in that it presupposes (not just violence, but also) symbolic forms that make possible its intelligibility and stability. Less because the impurity of the ground infects the purity of the terms in the clean identity. Each 'A' in clean identity is itself a composite of As and not As.* Yet, ordinarily the not As' elements in 'A' are effaced. 

In the lecture, Said spends quite a bit of time on how Zionist scientific activities (archaeology) facilitate such effacement when it comes to Jewish identity.+ That is, in fact, compatible with individual archaeologists being motivated by the purest moral motives and acting with may be thought best individual epistemic practices. (I would argue the problem is rooted in the structure of the community and its relationship to society.)

In so doing, Said ignores the symbolic ways in which not wholly As can become purified into As. Judaism has many rituals that act as such forms of purification (bathing, washing, fasting, etc.). My friend and one-time-co-author (and less hesitant Zionist than myself) Yoram Hazony audaciously notes that one such species of purification is itself the embrace of the moral law.** (His exemplar (recall) is the compassionate daughter of Pharaoh who saves baby Moses.) The thought is, through some transformative process, one can become essentially 'A' in clean identity.++ 

One may be tempted to respond that such purification is a cheat. I have some sympathy for the complaint. As regular readers know, I am no friend of baptismic accounts that somehow fix identity. But a Freudian (or even a Humean) can't use this line of objection because on her view such symbolic cheating just is, like tonality and rhythm, the essential ingredient of living.  

On Games and Society: On Iain Banks' The Player of Games, reflexivity and transformative experience.

Gurgeh never ceased to be fascinated by the way a society's games revealed so much about its ethos, it's philosophy, its very soul.--Iain M. Banks (1988) The Player of Games, p. 30. 

The Player of Games is a clever science fiction novel, but here I want to treat it as a contribution to Socratic Political Theory (recall here and here). The action starts in an imperial, utopian somewhat anarchic (there are few laws) society with little scarcity (nor money) and not much death full of semi-clever drones that serve and keep humans alive. This intergalactic human society is surrounded by an, in part, hidden machine-culture in which super smart machines and networks reveal consciousness and intelligence that outstrip anything we are capable of. Jointly these two societies inhabit the Culture, which is extremely powerful in the galaxy. Its ruling ideology (it's called a 'philosophy' by themselves) is 'Strength in depth; redundancy; over-design." (239) This is an ideology of precautionary principles. In this volume of the series, we never learn what keeps the machines from killing the humans they outsmart. Perhaps the humans are thought the useful redundancy of the Culture.

The Culture is committed to a Whorfian thesis about language, and its language has been designed to facilitate the flourishing of the Culture. The Culture itself is governed by the ruling machines in the manner of Government House utilitarians. The humans kind of know this, but they can never be quite sure what the machines are up to. This turns out to be an important, structural element in the novel. The Culture is resistant to creative innovation (at least among the  humans). 

Prior to the start of the narrative of the novel, the Culture encounters another technologically skillful civilization, the Empire of Azad. This is a militant and hierarchical meritocracy.  This society has not solved the problem of scarcity, and so it is based on property (or "ownership" 114); it both needs conquest abroad and material inequality, which has severe consequences for the quality of life of those at the bottom of the hierarchies. (It has abolished formal slavery -- something they are said to be proud of, but there is wage-slavery.) Part of the fun of the novel is that the Empire of Azad seems a lot more familiar than the Culture to us readers, but that the representatives of the Culture finds it disorienting and (despite all the glitter and color) inferior.

The meritocracy of Azad has two important characteristics. A game, conveniently also called 'Azad,' (which means 'machine, or perhaps system' [76]) is the main selection mechanism of status within the hierarchy. The game (Azad) reflects (like a "model" (76)) the social reality of Azad, "whoever succeeds at the game succeeds in life; the same qualities are required in each to ensure dominance." (76) But because the game, Azad, is such an important social institution, it also structures social reality: "such is the pervasive nature of the idea of the game within the society that just by believing that, they make it so," (77; emphasis in original.) It is to Banks's credit that he does not merely characterize such reflexivity, but also shows the ways such reflexivity can be both extremely robust (the game Azad and the Empire so structured have co-evolved for a long time) and quite fragile--if the idea can be undermined in the right way the whole society can collapse rapidly. Interestingly enough, from the point of view of political philosophy, is the observation that in such a (partially hereditary meritocracy), the opinion of the people is still vital to the survival of the hierarchy--propaganda precisely consists in giving the people what they want to hear.  

The second characteristic I just mention, but deserves fuller discussion. The Empire of Azad has three sexes: males (with testes and penis), and two kinds of females: one with a reversible vagina and ovaries and one just with a womb (74). This sexual division of labor facilitates a social hierarchy with the first kind of women on top and the other on the bottom. The novel was first published in 1988, and one can see that Banks has thought through some of the potential implications of surrogacy and genetic engineering which were then becoming common among our wealthy.   

The novel is structured around a subtle distinction between a mere game player and a game player that is a 'true gambler.' (21) The former, presumably, enjoys play and the thrill of winning, and does not concern us here. However, the latter "needs the excitement of potential loss,even ruin, to feel wholly alive." It is not obvious one needs to be a true gambler in order to be a great or greatest game player. In fact, the novel is most interesting on this very point. The main protagonist (Gurgeh), who is the best game player of the culture and also among its leading game-theorists, discovers that he is such a true gambler.* There is a revealing, seemingly unconnected detail that illuminates this point. Gurgeh's sexual and personal identity is remarkably un-fluid given the society he inhabits. (Sex changes and sexual preferences are very fluid.)  He is one of the very few in his society who has not never changed sex, or (being a man) has slept with a man (24). That is, it's clear his identity is tied up with both extreme loss aversion and treating loss as existential. But in the right circumstances the true gambler is willing to risk all. 

As an aside, the narrator of the novel, who turns out to be one of the super-smart drones who are part of of the machine network that runs the Culture, explains at one point that in the ruling ideology, dubbed 'dynamic (mis)behaviorism' (a species of consequentialism) that identity is less important than humans think: "We are what we do, not what we think. Only the interactions count." (231) The logical problems such a view encounters are not confronted. 

But it turns out the fluidity of identity in another sense also accompanies the true gambler (who is both risk averse and eager for existential games). For, as it happens to be a true gambler, and to know it about oneself, involves playing games that one knows may change who one is--a so-called transformative experience: "he would change; he would be a different person at the end of it; he could help but change, take on something of the game itself; that would be inevitable." (82) That is, if a true gambler plays a game in which one can suffer great, existential loss  (and I am leaving that un-defined in this post) then by definition she can know in advance of the game that she can come out transformed without knowing the content of the transformation. The point of playing the game is not to be transformed, it's feeling the thrill of being alive in the right sort of way; but the transformation is a known  by-product if and only if one survives. (Of course, this is compatible with the existence of all kinds of other transformative experiences.) The game of Azad can also generate transformative experiences for those players who don't expect it.

Let me wrap up, Gurgeh has been trained up, we may say, on playing many different kind of games throughout his life. Even so, in his game playing he represents the Culture. As it turns out, however, this is sufficient to beat the very best folk in Azad at their own game. He is more adaptable than they are and this somehow represents a feature of the Culture. However, it turns out, as he gradually becomes aware, that he himself was a pawn -- even a pawn that could be sacrificed -- by the  machine-network that runs the Culture. It is worth reflecting on this momentarily.

In the Culture, something we learn early, the study of game theory and the study of philosophy are sharply distinguished (p.15)  This is significant, as I hope to suggest in (closing in) what follows. Gurgeh is very good at the former. We only get hints of the game theory, but among the humans of The Culture it seems to be a mixture between the craft involved in the study of positions in the matter of say Chess and Go, and the more formal kind of apparatus we find in say our (Earth) game theory used in economics or political science. 

Again, Gurgeh is notable for being good at playing games and theorizing about it. He also recognizes that games and society are intimately linked. But strikingly his contributions to game theory is all about games one can play and not the society in which they are embedded and (can) model.* This lacuna in his theory, perhaps even a consequence of the way the discipline of his culture is structured [recall the Whorfianism], is especially striking in virtue of the fact that his very own game theory involves a metaphysics in which "reality is game" because "physics at its most fundamental, the very fabric of our universe, results directly from the interaction of certain fairly simple rules, and chance." (41) 

So, one of the indirect points of the book is that only the insertion of what I have been calling Socratic Political Theory, a meta-theory in which the games and structures of societies are analyzed in comparative fashion [More and Le Guin (recall) are astoundingly good at this], completes the proper union of philosophy and game theory. (That's an ideal game theory.) We learn that Gurgeh is fascinated by the subject matter (see the quote above), but that he lacks skill in it. Absent such political science one is, for example, slow to recognize, as Gurgeh is, that one can be a pawn in a game played by hidden powers behind the scenes, that is, the invisible ruling powers of the Culture.

 

 

Martin Luther King, Imperfect Human Beings, The Rule of Law, and (Paul Bloom on) the defense of Empathy

The ultimate solution to the race problem lies in the willingness of men to obey the unenforceable. Court orders and federal enforcement agencies are of inestimable value in achieving desegregation, but desegregation is only a partial, though necessary, step towards the final goal which we seek to realize, genuine inter-group and interpersonal living. Desegregation will break down the legal barriers and bring men together physically, but something must touch the hearts and souls of men so that they will come together spiritually because it is natural and right. A vigorous enforcement of civil rights laws will bring an end to segregated public facilities which are barriers to a truly desegregated society, but it cannot bring an end to fears, prejudice, pride, and irrationality, which are the barriers to a truly integrated society. These dark and demonic responses will be removed only as men are possessed by the invisible, inner law which etches on their hearts the conviction that all men are brothers and that love in mankind’s most potent weapon for personal and social transformation. True integration will be achieved by true neighbors who are willingly obedient to unenforceable obligations....

What is needed today on the part of white America is a committed altruism which recognizes this truth. True altruism is more than the capacity to pity; it is the capacity to empathize. Pity is feeling sorry for someone; empathy is feeling sorry with someone. Empathy is fellow feeling for the person in need — his pain, agony, and burdens. I doubt if the problems of our teeming ghettos will have a great chance to be solved until the white majority, through genuine empathy, comes to feel the ache and anguish of the Negroes’ daily life.---Martin Luther King, Jr. "Racism and the White Backlash" in (1967) Where Do We Go From Here. 106-7. [HT: Lionel McPherson]+

One central problem for those, like me, who defend the impartial rule of law is that the rule of law is often too partial. There are two central ways in which this becomes so: first, the law is itself the product of politics and, more often than not, promotes some partial interest or another. This is so because politics itself expresses the wishes of the more politically powerful. Second, even when the law itself is appropriately impartial, law enforcement, juries, and judges may well apply it partially or (recall MLK, Jr) simply abuse -- "the  license...our society allows to unjust officials who implement their authority in the name of justice to practice injustice against minorities" -- their authority. On the other hand, the removal of discretion from police and judges altogether seems to result in barbarous law (as exemplified by the role of misdemeanors in California's Three Strikes Law). Such discretion is often also a judicious, countervailing force against the partiality and lack of expertise of politics.

In addition to often involving racial prejudice against the politically weak, the two central ways involve the problem of faction or in-group bias. In group-bias is often the product of too limited sympathy, or in modern terms, empathy. Empathy with all is generally thought impossible. As Paul Bloom puts it in a famous essay [HT L.A. Paul], "Empathy is biased...[and it] is insensitive to numerical differences and statistical data. " And one may well think that the solution to this problem is blocking the deployment of empathy.  Here's Bloom:

Our public decisions will be fairer and more moral once we put empathy aside. Our policies are improved when we appreciate that a hundred deaths are worse than one, even if we know the name of the one, and when we acknowledge that the life of someone in a faraway country is worth as much as the life a neighbor, even if our emotions pull us in a different direction. Without empathy, we are better able to grasp the importance of vaccinating children and responding to climate change. These acts impose costs on real people in the here and now for the sake of abstract future benefits, so tackling them may require overriding empathetic responses that favor the comfort and well being of individuals today. We can rethink humanitarian aid and the criminal justice system, choosing to draw on a reasoned, even counter-empathetic, analysis of moral obligation and likely consequences.

Let's stipulate, for the sake of argument, that Bloom is right about this and that his (perhaps utilitarian) impartial consequentialism is indeed the morality worth having. Yet, Bloom's position also seems to beg the question: it simply assumes that the way we frame our challenges, the solutions we articulate, and the institutions which we are meant to tackle them are not populated by imperfect beings. Bloom is here like the advocate for the impartial rule of law while forgetting the role of faction/bias and politics in the framing and execution of laws. The very solution he offers presupposes that the underlying problem has been wished away. Moreover, while empathy may be biased, at least it is motivating.  As Leslie Jameson puts it (in her response to Bloom), "Specificity is what makes empathy so powerful."

Bloom recognizes that he needs something in between impartiality and the bias of empathy. He calls it "non-empathetic compassion—a more distanced love and kindness and concern for others." The terminology is revealing of the conceptual problem: when the Romans had to invent technical terminology for philosophy, compassio was a literal translation of sympathy (συμπάθεια); both (can) mean fellow-feeling.* Leaving aside this awkwardness, Bloom wants a form of action-guiding "kindness or altruism" without the biased feelings for particulars. As he writes, "recognizing the misery caused by starvation, [and] be motivated to act accordingly." One can recognize this is possible, but there is no reason to think it is very likely. Bloom here is like the Kantian who wants us to be like an angel with a pure will acting from principle or duty, but can't really explain why we should expect this given the human nature we have.

The critics of empathy are right in their criticism, but there solution tends to assumes that the problem of faction/bias/empathy has been solved (and somehow disassociated from it). Lynn E. O'Connor and Jack W. Berry see all this clearly, and note that "The wiring for empathic reactions that allow us to form attachments is the foundation of compassion extended to both in- and out-group members." The problem is, and they are frank about it, that getting it extended to out-groups is costly and slow: it "may take years of practice."

In the essay I quoted above, King confronts such problems head-on without shrinking from articulating the extent of their tenacity. (The essay connects these with many relevant issues, including reflection on the enduring significance of the genocide of native Americans, and the role of intellectuals in promoting a racist ethos, etc.) At the end (partially quoted) King draws a distinction between an enforceable obligation -- roughly the public law-code and norms -- and unenforceable obligations, which concern "inner attitudes" and "expressions of compassion." As King's examples in context make clear (a father's love for child or affection of wife), the unenforceable obligations are both partial and (in a certain  sense) non-material/spiritual (King draws a contrast with providing bread for the family). Not to put too fine a point on it, King believes that the problem of too much faction and institutions inhabited by the imperfect++ requires a spiritual transformation: we must become true Christians.**

In the passage, King's emphasis is primarily on brotherly love. And one may well think that King's solution fares no better than Bloom's. But that's not the extent of his prescription. Earlier in the essay, King had noted that a "sound resolution of the race problem will rest with those white men and women who consider themselves generous and decent human beings." That is to say, that before one can have the right sort of compassion, King thinks one needs the right sort of self-conception and this self-conception must have motivational efficacy. King goes on to argue that love provides such a motivation, but that it is a love that "must satisfy justice."+++ It is tempting to resist King on this point. Thinking of oneself as generous and decent is too often an act of self-delusion which covers over our complicity with and reinforces our inaction in the face of injustice(s). So, it is peculiar for him to advocate it precisely when he is most radical in his economic and policy prescriptions and un-blinkered about white opposition to his program.

Even so, I am reminded of one of the strangest passages in Adam Smith, which in the first instance may be thought to deviate from King's position, but I think illuminates it: "It is not the love of our neighbour, it is not the love of mankind, which upon many occasions prompts us to the practice of those divine virtues. It is a stronger love, a more powerful affection, which generally takes place upon such occasions; the love of what is honourable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters." (The Theory of Moral Sentiments.)  Smith, who is very concerned with sympathy-induced biases, here makes clear that neither duty nor (the injunction to) love (of) one's neighbor is sufficient; rather we need an elevated self-image to do the right thing for others.*** Rather than being a critic of this from the perspective of self-interest or efficiency, Smith is an advocate of developing incentives and social institutions/education that can cultivate such properly self-regarding selves. Selves, who are willing to uphold unenforceable obligations, can be trusted to uphold impartial law and do what is 'natural and right' and fight the inner demons which make each of us indifferent to the effects of our ordinary partiality. Paradoxically, in order to battle our too partial feelings for others we should become more partial to a transformed version of ourselves.****

 

 

On Creativity and Philosophical Trade-Offs (Musings inspired by Michaela McSweeney)

    What topic do you think is under explored in philosophy? 

Let me answer a different question, which is what I don’t want us to lose sight of while nobly pursuing underexplored areas of philosophy. I think that recent pushes towards public and social philosophy are so, so important: we really need to be engaging with the public, and we really need to be addressing the (incredibly depressing) social and political issues that we are faced with.

At the same time, though, I think of philosophy as partly a creative process and discipline, and I think it would be a tremendous shame if we lost sight of that part of things. I love metaphysics in part because it is one of the parts of philosophy that allows for some of the most creativity; there are fewer rules (or at least, there should be fewer rules—turns out that sadly there are lots of rules for what kinds of things will get published), for the very same reason that many people think metaphysics is worthless: it’s unclear what “the data” are, or whether there are any data, that we are theorizing about, and also unclear what the correct methodology is. I don’t think these kinds of worries are actually particular to metaphysics, because I think they carry over to basically all of human inquiry; and I don’t think they de-value human inquiry. When I think about what I value about human inquiry, an awful lot of that is about what it tells us about our relationship to our world, and what it tells us about us, and also that it is often really beautiful and fascinating and incredibly complex. In the end, I think that super abstract, theoretical philosophy can and does help inform the more obviously applicable-to-real-life parts of philosophy, but I also think it is valuable for its own sake, in the same way that other arts are. "APA Member Interview: Michaela McSweeney"by Skye Cleary

The interview with McSweeney is worth reading because it is full of wisdom about graduate school and (also) a rare occasion for somebody 'successful' in the profession acknowledging how awful graduate school can be. In addition the interview expresses succinctly one of my core commitments: "my sense is that people who think that longstanding, or oft-discussed, philosophical problems have clear answers probably need to do more philosophy." (This is especially true of our overconfident peers who insist they have solved them. Nearly always they have just moved the problem around.) Finally, I think she is right to call attention to the fact that we need to "figure out how to allow (and encourage) people to be decent, good, authentic people instead of making it seem like the only way to succeed in philosophy is to give up certain core values (often, the right values, and ones which we need more of in the philosophical community) that we might have" (emphasis in original). Go read the whole thing!

Even so, I would like to invite more from McSweeney about the nature of philosophical creativity. (Given that she is being interviewed any lack of clarity is due to the format.) At first she implies a contrast between the 'most' creativity of (pure) metaphysics and the lesser creativity of ('applied') social and political philosophy. I say 'at first' because a few lines down she seems to imply that all "human inquiry" is pretty much in the same boat.  In what follows I want to reinforce this last/latter point by using her comments as a starting point of a digression on the nature of creativity as well as the nature of 'applied' philosophy (and the role of 'pure' in it). 

Now McSweeney understands creativity in terms of the lack of rules and and lack of clarity about methodology and the content of the subject matter. Let's call this a romantic conception of creativity. It is worth noting it's not the only kind of creativity: a more classical conception of creativity (associated with the name Goethe) is that creativity is a consequence of working within and with constraints.* The previous two sentences are rather coarse-grained because in philosophical practice (and McSweeney knows this better than I do) we can (if we adopt the classical conception) be constrained in very different ways: if one is addressing the nature of (say) space, there is a big difference if one is constrained by some image of naturalism (or physicalism) or the actual findings of recent science; and there is a big further difference if one is constrained by other elements of one's system or (let's be go back to the future) some version of the principle of sufficient reason, etc.

There is a very different kind of creativity, again, if one feels one must answer to the history of a problem or (say) somehow feels the pull of continuing one's philosophical tradition. On this last point, to understand oneself as the next step in a pre-existing series (Y) about (X), while simultaneously re-ordering the nature of that series (Y*) about (X*) is yet another form of creativity. Sometimes it's very hard to see X from the vantage point of Y*. This sounds very abstract, but I have described how after Tarski certain explications of truth were naturally thought classical, and others (say, Spinoza's) became barely intelligible. I call this historical creativity. 

I don't think social and political philosophy are less creative in the romantic, the classical or the historical sense. If one designs, say, a utopia there is a sense in which the rules of the genre are laid down by Plato (what I call Socratic political theory). But, of course, the rules are not explicit in Plato, and they may only be partially stabilized by the time Ibn Tufayl, More, Bacon, Godwin, or Le Guin come around.  Part of the creative joy of the genre is that there is both historical creativity and an  'answering to' new existing social and technological relations/developments as well as a creative projection into an impossible, yet (apologies for the appearance of paradox) possible non-present. I don't mean to suggest utopias are only about imagining the future; one of my best students, Hannah  Lingier, taught me that many have a non-trivial function (by way of idealization) in isolating and revealing (in image and speech) how non-trivial existing social mechanisms work. Either way, the rules of the genre are not immutable. 

Obviously, most professional philosophers who work in public philosophy or in social and political philosophy do not aim to write the next New Atlantis.  But there are some non-trivial features that complicate (ahh) our** lives, even if one is only interested in getting a publication in a decent journal. For, it is actually very challenging to work with normative concepts that (a) are purportedly descriptively accurate in some sense  or another; (b) do not reinforce or contribute to bad status quo; (c) do not privilege the perspective of the theorist at the expense of folk who do not attend our seminars; (d) that accommodate the reality of social change; and (e) that are coherent with other commitments, and (f) are not silly in light of recent social science, nor (f) cause embarrassment when a hostile media get hold of them. 

I need to close. But I want to comment on the hint of anxiety that I detect in McSweeney's "it would be a tremendous shame if we lost sight of that part of things." I don't think that McSweeney is expressing concern over (the possible) reality in which metaphysicians can't get jobs because political and social philosophers are getting all of them. I think the anxiety is rather -- and again I may be wrong about this -- that topics she loves will not be of interest to our (future) peers. I recognize this concern; every time somebody (like me, alas) pushes for the significance of comparative philosophy, I reflect on the possibility that poor Berkeley will be unknown in the 23rd century. (Since he is a eugenic racialist, I am not too bummed.) 

As it happens, I think 'we' need a lot more metaphysics in social and  political life in order to do such work 'better'!  The previous sentence is not meant to be radical now that Sally Haslanger and L.A. Paul and their students are already revolutionizing (in very different ways) social and political philosophy.  The point is social and political life are suffused with very complicated issues of modality (and probability, non-determinate and overlapping boundaries, etc.). The reason I am confident of that claim is that continental metaphysics (Deleuze, Foucault, etc.) has enormous uptake in empirical social science. Those of us working in social and  political philosophy would welcome more attention by analytic metaphysicians if (and perhaps only if) the metaphysicians didn't think of the topics as merely applied (and, again, I don't think McSweeney thinks that); for, I bet we could also improve metaphysics if more time was spent thinking about the very hard problems of social and political life and then feed that experience back into our most general reflections about the nature of (ahh) reality. 

 

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.