Digressions&Impressions

On Ellsberg's defense of Knightian Uncertainty, Arrow, and Ambiguity (II)

In most of this literature, the term ‘ambiguity’ has been treated as a synonym for what Knight called ‘uncertainty’ namely the fact that relative likelihoods are not characterized by well-defined numerical probabilities. The standard method of dealing with ambiguity in decision theory is to endow the decisionmaker with multiple priors as in Gilboa and Schmeidler (1989). This approach may be combined with a variety of preference models, notably including the maxmin model of Gilboa and Schmeidler (1989) and the smooth model of Klibanoff et al. (2005).
For a non-specialist this is puzzling; there is no obvious link to the ordinary meaning (or meanings)1 of ambiguity as a characteristic of propositions with more than one interpretation. In its normal usage, ambiguity is a linguistic concept, but in decision theory it is typically treated as a property of preferences.
The now-standard usage is quite different from that in Ellsberg’s (1961) original article. Ellsberg treated ambiguity, not as a property of preferences or relative likelihoods, but as a property of the information on which judgements of relative likelihoods might be based.

“Responses from confessed violators [of the expected utility (EU) axioms] indicate that the difference is not to be found in terms of the two factors commonly used to determine a choice situation, the relative desirability of the possible payoffs and the relative likelihood of the events affecting them, but in a third dimension of the problem of choice: the nature of one’s information concerning the relative likelihood of events. What is at issue might be called the ambiguity of this information, a quality depending on the amount, type, reliability and ‘unanimity’ of information, and giving rise to one’s degree of ‘confidence’ in an estimate of relative likelihoods.”

---Simon Grant, Ani Guerdjikova, John Quiggin "Ambiguity and awareness: a coherent multiple priors model." (17 April, 2020) [quoting p. 657 of Ellsberg's (1961) "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axiom]

In Yesterday's post I noted that while writing in defense of Knight, Ellsberg (1961) innovatively identified Knightian uncertainty with a class of decisions that can be specified precisely as empirical violations of the (Ramsey-)Savage axioms.* In particular, in such instances (when the formalization is violated) there is "no way to infer meaningful [subjective] probabilities for those events from their choices, and theories which purported to describe their uncertainty in terms of probabilities would be quite inapplicable in that area." (646; [parentheses added].) This identification was an innovation made possible and intelligible by formalization.  

As I remarked, Ellsberg noted that it is possible to treat the very same formalization as a [A] normative standard for a certain kind of ideal/idealized agent or [B] as a device to make predictions about agents. Ellsberg recognizes that Savage was (primarily) tempted by the normative interpretation whereas Ellsberg was primarily focused on the empirical interpretation. In particular, he wanted to identify classes of choice circumstances in which the possible rationality (669) of one's decision could not be articulated in or explained by reference to the Savage axioms. 

The Savage formalization allows the attribution to agents of precise subjective probabilities about distributions in the world. That is, in certain choice circumstances, the formalism allows for an interpretation of behavior that reveals if not inner states than at least structures that are compatible with such inner states. (It may be useful to compare this with the Samuelsonian strategy of revealed preference.)

With that in place, let's turn to ambiguity. As Grant/Guerdjikova/Quiggin note, in much of decision theory 'knightian uncertainty' is treated as synonymous with 'ambiguity' and has come to mean the absence of well-defined quantitative probabilities.+ And as they correctly note this is not quite what Ellsberg had in mind (and about that more in a second). Before I get to Ellsberg and ambiguity, it is worth noting that the absence of well-defined quantitative probabilities is indeed what Knight meant by uncertainty in the contrast between risk and uncertainty.

However, what the literature means by the absence of well-defined quantitative probability is (and now I quote Gilboa and Schmeidler (1989)) circumstances in which one "considers a set of priors as possible." (emphasis in original). It is important that this set is limited. Now, this is not quite what Knight, generally, intended to mean  by the contrast between risk and uncertainty.  In paradigmatic cases of uncertainty for Knight (and Keynes), we really have no right to make claims about the priors let alone treating them as well defined possibilities.

As an aside, this is not to deny that, as Richard Pettigrew noted to me, that "there are situations in which your evidence and/or current stage of scientific theorising is not going to deliver a unique probability assignment over the states you consider" but in which one has reasons to limit one's subjective probabilities to a set of possible distributions. And if forced to choose one may well come to think of your own (again quoting Pettigrew) as "your best subjective probabilities and use those while knowing that it would be equally compatible with your evidence to adopt an alternative set of probabilities."** If you and the other involved are experts in more or less the same situation, we can call this situation 'reasonable expert disagreement.' In fact, Savage himself noted (without having to contemplate violations of his axioms) that that “we must be prepared to find reasoning inadequate to bring about complete agreement.”  (1954 [1972]:7; see also 3, 67ff.) This is not trivial in the historical context, as I have noted elsewhere, in which the very idea of science involves the arrival of expert consensus. 

Now, as Grant/Guerdjikova/Quiggin note, Ellsberg thought ambiguity something else: namely it is a property of the "nature of one’s information."  And throughout the paper, Ellsberg goes on to deny that this feature "cannot be conveniently described in terms of a sample distribution." (659) Rather the point of using ''ambiguity" is to try to describe circumstances "when there are questions of reliability and relevance of information, and particularly where there is conflicting opinion and evidence." (659) So, one measure , but it is only one such measure, that one's information is ambiguous in Ellsberg's sense is the kind of reasonable expert disagreement [that is, situations one knows an expert's subjective probability about a distribution is compatible with another expert adopting an alternative set of probabilities.] But it is only one such measure because ambiguity itself cannot (to repeat) be reduced to and articulated in one distribution or another. As Ellsberg noted (660), Savage (57-60), too, had tried to characterize the nature of such ambiguity; Savage had explicitly acknowledged that formal theories known to him lacked resources to do so in satisfying ways.

Now, so for Ellsberg ambiguity is a "subjective variable" (660) about the nature of one's information. But the circumstances under which it arises can be characterized objectively. The proxy he uses to characterize these circumstances are violations of the Savage axioms can be predicted to occur and, perhaps, thought (somewhat) reasonable.

But that is not all of it (and this connects to Gilboa/Schmeidler).*** In circumstances of ambiguity one has, according to Ellsberg, some subjective grounds to "eliminate" some "possible distributions," but not all such possibilities. (661) For, Gilboa/Schmeidler (and the Bayesian literature) that is treated as the occasion to look for solutions to decision problems in terms of sets of priors as opposed to unique priors. In so doing, they end up echoing what I have called the displacement strategy of Knightian uncertainty. 

It is worth noting that there is an interesting difference of emphasis between trying to characterize an optimal decision strategy (in the manner of Gilboa/Schmeidler), say because one must choose or wish to guide policy-makers, and between wishing to promote understanding of how to think about or study one's information about possible distributions. (I have jokingly called the latter modal economics.) Ellsberg is clearly less interested in the former, and more interested in the latter.  Ambiguity in Ellsberg's sense does influence choice (664); yet Ellsberg is interested in finding out when and how, and to create "testable propositions" about such states [669], not to tell you what strategies to use in choice.

That is to say, Knight thought of uncertainty in terms of not knowing the (range and nature of) possible distributions. Ellsberg thinks we can develop rigorous thought  about what a theorist taught me to call intermediate circumstances in which we have some information about the possibilities. Somewhat surprisingly, according to Ellsberg -- and here he refers also to Chipman's experiments++ -- this thought has to be developed not from normative first principles, but rather experimentally ((655) within what in reviewing Donald Davidson, Suppes, and Siegel, he calls (in 1957) "the new field of experimental economics;" (1009). Of course, Ellsberg soon got preoccupied by different concerns. But that's really for another occasion.

So, Ellsberg has been remembered as generating a "paradox" in subjective expected utility theory. (This seems to be due to Harry V. Roberts.) This way of thinking about him says more about the economists' attitude toward their own past than Ellsberg. We have seen that alone among the responses to Knight that are still acknowledged by contemporary mathematical economists, Ellsberg wrote to vindicate Knight.+++ But he did so by using the canons of rational decision-making to specify when some circumstances of true uncertainty might occur. We could call them Ellsberg circumstances. These Ellsberg circumstances are characterized by constrained decision options in which information about world has the character of what he called ambiguity. In Ellsberg circumstances one grasps, we might say, the possible contours of the underlying distributions. Whether, in Ellsberg circumstances, it might pay to take bets on these contours is a tough challenge (one may well be in context of what he called "treacherous possibilities." (666)) He then opened the door not to better decision rules, but rather to the epistemology of information, which uniquely he thought ought to be explored experimentally.  

 

 

 

Rawls, Carnap, and Quine on Explication

In his (1971) Theory of Justice, Rawls explicitly follows Quine's Word and Object on the nature of explication; he treats explication as a form of elimination: "we start with a concept the expression for which is somehow troublesome; but it serves certain ends that cannot be given up. An explication achieves these ends in other ways that are relatively free of difficulty." (95 citing Word and Object, in the original edition pp. 257-262).

Quine (1960), who treats such explication as synonymous with 'analysis,' attributes this version to Wittgenstein, and explicitly contrasts it with Carnap. Quine understands explication as a means toward dissolving problems (hence the nod to Wittgenstein); for him explication is a form of elimination. Along the way, he (Quine) makes fun  of ordinary language philosophers for failing to see that the introduction of technical vocabulary is a means  of circumventing the problematic parts of ordinary language and show that apparent problems are merely verbal ones. 

By contrast, the Carnapian notion of explication was first articulated in his 1945 "The Two Concepts of Probability" (with a nod to Langford 1942), and then elaborated in Logical Foundations of Probability (1950). I very much like (recall) Hannes Leitgeb's summary: "For Carnap, an explication is the construction of a new concept C′ that replaces a given, often pre-theoretic concept C of philosophical interest, so that the extension of C′ coincides with that of C in the clear-cut and uncontroversial cases but C′ is permitted to, and indeed ought to, improve upon C in terms of exactness, fruitfulness, and simplicity in all the unclear or fuzzy cases." My only addition to this is that for Carnap the new concept C' is constructed in an artificial language. And for Carnap the utility of this new concept C' is (at Leitgeb notes) within science (and not ordinary life; I have discussed some of the tricky issues with this here).*

It turns out, however, that early Rawls used a notion of explication that was distinct from both the Carnapian and Quine-ian version.** In fact, early Rawls explicitly contrasted his notion of explication with analysis (see 3.4 below). I quote from Rawls'(1951) "Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics." 

3.2 The term "explication" is given meaning somewhat graphically as follows: Consider a group of competent judges making considered judgments in review of a set of cases which would be likely to arise in ordinary life. Then an explication of these judgments is defined to be a set of principles, such that, if any competent man were to apply them intelligently and consistently to the same cases under review, his judgments, made systematically nonintuitive by the explicit and conscious use of the principles, would be, nevertheless, identical, case by case, with the considered judgments of the group of competent judges. The range of an explication is specified by stating precisely those judgments which it is designed to explicate, and any given explication which successfully explicates its specified range is satisfactory.

3.3 The next objective, then, in the development of the present method is to discover and formulate an explication which is satisfactory, by and large, over the total range of the considered judgments of competent moral judges as they are made from day to day in ordinary life, and as they are found embodied in the many dictates of common-sense morality, in various aspects of legal procedure, and so on. If reasonable principles exist for deciding moral questions, there is a presumption that the principles of a satisfactory explication of the total range of the considered judgments of competent judges will at least approximate them. On the basis of this presumption the explication of these judgments is designed to be a heuristic device for discovering reasonable principles. Therefore, while explication is an empirical inquiry, it is felt that it is likely to be a way of finding reasonable and justifiable principles in view of the nature of the class of judgments which make up its range.

3.4 Since the concept of an explication may not be clear, I shall try to clarify it by stating some of the things that an explication is not. First, an explication is not an analysis of the meaning of the ethical terms used in the judgments constituting its range. An explication attempts to do nothing more than that explicitly stated above, and in no way concerns itself with the sense of ethical expressions or with their linguistic meaning. Second, an explication is not concerned with what people intend to assert when they use ethical expressions or make moral judgments in particular cases....Finally, there is only one way of showing an explication to be unsatisfactory, and that is to show that there exist considered judgments of competent judges on specifiable cases for which it either fails to yield any judgments at all or leads one to make judgments inconsistent with them. Conversely, the only way to show that an explication is satisfactory is to evidence that its explicit and conscious application can be, or could be, a cause of the judgments in its range.

3.5 Having noted some of the things that an explication is not, I consider some positive features thereof. First, an explication must be such that it can be applied intelligently by a competent judge; and since a competent judge is not required to have a special training in logic and mathematics, an explication either must be formulated or formulatable in ordinary language and its principles must be capable of an interpretation which the average competent man can grasp. Second, an explication must be stated in the form of principles, the reason for this demand lying in the use of explication as a heuristic device. The typical form of a considered judgment is as follows: since A, B, C,..., and M, N, 0,...., are the facts of the case and the interests in conflict, M is to be given preference over N., O . .. A considered judgment does not provide any reasons for the decision. It simply states the felt preference in view of the facts of the case and the interests competing therein. The principles of an explication must be general directives, expressible in ordinary language, such that, when applied to specific cases, they yield the preferences expressed in considered judgments. Finally, an explication, to be completely successful, must be comprehensive; that is, it must explicate, in view of the explication itself... all considered judgments; and it is expected to do this with the greatest possible simplicity and elegance. The requirement of simplicity means that, other things being equal, an explication is more or less satisfactory according to the number of principles which it uses; and although this demand is difficult to state precisely, it is clear that nothing is gained if we require a separate principle for each case or for each class of cases. Rawls, 1951, 184-186.

In context (3.1; see also 3.3), Rawls is clear that explication is a "heuristic device" to generating "reasonable and justifiable principles" from considered judgments of competent judges. (This is different from the 1971 procedure; see here for some inchoate reflections on it.) Crucially, explication itself is an "empirical enquiry" (3.3). Another striking contrast of the early Rawlsian form of explication with the Carnapian and Quine-ean notions of explication is that it must be "formulated or fumulatable in ordinary language;" it is not a species of language engineering at all. And, in fact, Rawls adds for good measure that its principles "must be capable of an interpretation which the average  competent man can grasp" (3.5)

Explication is, thus, the generation of reasonable principles which deliver judgments of cases alike to those of the intuitive judgments of competent judges making considered judgments. The point, to put it informally, is to create an objective realm grounded in principles that can deliver judgments and, thereby, eliminate a subjective element in ethics. 

This is not the place to explore the uses of such a heuristic and Rawls's decision procedure and how it was transformed in his later work in slightly different decision procedures. (It is interesting though -- see 3.6*** -- already in 1951 Rawls is inching his way toward (recall) a representative agent approach that instantiates at least an ideal of consensus.) It should be clear, however, that early Rawlsian explication is a different beast than the competing Carnapian and Quine-ian (and TJ Rawlsian) notions of explication. Even though, and this is the main point, the early Rawlsian version of explication shares with its rivals the aim of displacing and eliminating an element of ordinary experience that prevents as it were automated or algorithmic judgments

For, early Rawls' explication  is part of a piecemeal approach (and so shares some sensibility with  Carnap's): "We should expect satisfactory explications of but delimited areas of the considered judgments. Ethics must, like any other discipline, work its way piece by piece." (4.4) And, in fact, Rawls suggests his method of finding reasonable ethical principles "is" (as Delaney emphasized) analogous to the method used to establish the reasonableness of the criteria of inductive logic." The comparison is not accidental because for early Rawls "succesful explication" can be thought of as "representing the invariant in the considered judgments of competent judges."+

 

 

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 Linguistic Narrowness in Philosophy

If you want to read most philosophical classics it is sufficient to master Middle Egyptian, Greek, Latin, Chinese, Arabic,  Aramaic, French, German, English, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali, Korean, Japanese,  and maybe a dozen more languages that contain multiple written philosophical classics.* A few such languages are not really living anymore. Because I am ignorant of most philosophical traditions, I am happy to revise that number upwards (for my Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, and Italian friends), and to let you, my dear reader, decide what "philosophy'' and "classics" mean. Allowing for partisan voting, I bet we end up with around 50-100 languages, or so. Regular readers know I am a partisan of the claims by those that profess rustic wisdom (and here) so I am not suggesting that being written down is a mark of philosophical distinction or any other sign of moral excellence.

Now consider that "of the currently listed 7,099 living languages, 3,866 have a developed writing system." Let's stipulate that the vast majority of the writings in these writing systems involves accounting and mating/family matters. Even so, that's a lot of living writing systems in which people can muse about, say, reality, the point of it all, the nature of value, or social order, or beauty, etc. I feel extremely confident in saying that these writing systems and the non-living ones pretty much go un-surveyed by the vast majority of most professional philosophers (for some quantitative evidence see this work by Eric Schwitzgebel, Linus Ta-Lun Huang, Andrew Higgins, and Ivan Gonzales-Cabrera). In addition, there exist many oral philosophical cultures (and many more that are presumably extinct). That is to say, we behave, by and large, as if we are operating in an efficient market in philosophical ideas, insights, and arguments. This state of affairs is, while intelligible and even rational in some sense, just bizarre. 

Before I continue, a qualification: of course, my use of 'we' in the previous paragraph is problematic (it always is). Not everybody is really fooled by the state of affairs least of all, one presumes, those working in or on philosophical traditions not well represented in today's scholarly lingua franca(e).  There are times, when even thinkers in the politically (economically, etc.) dominant cultures are aware that they lack access to crucial texts.  For example, Ibn Rushd, writing in what we would call Islamic Spain, notes the significance of his lack of access to (a translation of) Aristotle's Politics. (It influences his decision, he says, to write on Plato's Republic instead.) Of course, lack of access to a text is not only a linguistic issue: Ibn Rushd's mentor, Ibn Tufayl, who is self-aware that he is writing in the periphery, and who knows that not all texts of his own intellectual tradition -- he mentions Al-Farabi's amongst others -- have circulated to his (Western) part of the Islamic world. Even today, in an age of Google, books and journal articles are expensive and not easy to acquire for those on, say, academic salaries and working in underfunded institutions in many parts of the world. 

When I started drafting the first sentence, I consulted, as the first note below shows, a few experts because it dawned upon me that I had literally no idea in what language some of the Buddhist and Dao (etc.) classics, whose names I was familiar with, were originally written in. It was a moment I allowed myself to recognize my own ignorance about pretty basic facts. And this alerted me that my normal state of affairs is that my own ignorance about my ignorance is my ordinary state of affairs. Now, obviously, -- time is short -- it's okay to be ignorant of lots of non-salient facts. It is clear that the would-be-salience of the very wide linguistic diversity to philosophical thought is not something  I contemplate much, despite the fact that in my scholarly life I bump up against my linguistic limitations all the time. If we allow -- following Samuelson -- that mathematics is a language, then this is, I say this without pride, a near daily occurrence. 

A few days ago I noted that without translator-advocates even superb philosophical texts written in small languages can become, as it were, cul-de-sacs. My use of 'markets' above makes it tempting, if one were to model this, to treat translator-advocates as sources or agents of arbitrage.** The relative lack of translator-advocates, and the relative lack of interest in their significance, suggests that our profession does not incentivize the sometimes onerous efforts of translation and advocacy, and the even more laborious efforts to seek out wisdom and insight in linguistically hard to get to places. This is why one often hears, about translations, that they are a labor of love.  

In earlier times, in the philosophical traditions of European early moderns, the search for occult or hidden knowledge also involved the seeking out of linguistically and temporally distant works. Sometimes (Newton, Locke, etc.) this is relatively narrowly centered on original Hebrew sources that may illuminate the pristine true religion, sometimes (Newton, Locke), this is narrowly focused on esoteric, alchemical wisdom (which involves purpose-made codes), but sometimes -- Leibniz and Bayle come to mind -- one senses an omnivorous hunger that is fueled by an awareness there is always more to learn. (The previous does not mean to suggest that the motives of the omnivore are pure.) This omnivorous hunger is not part of our professional DNA, because for every Leibniz, there is a Descartes or a Carnap, alas, who proudly announces that other traditions are irrelevant and -- this is what I find so remarkable -- the temptation they offer, of willed self-ignorance, is at bottom more seductive and alluring.*** 

 

 

On the role of Systematicity in an Impure Theory of a (Pluralistic) Liberalism worth Having

The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it.--Adam Smith (1790) The Theory of Moral Sentiments

The quoted passage from TMS is one of the epigraphs to Jacob T. Levy's (2015) Rationalism, Pluralism & Freedom (RPF). The other is to a passage from Mill's (1862) Centralization, in which Mill warns against local despotism. Levy's inspiring book, which is both a mitigated defense of the significance of intermediaries to a liberalism worth having as well as a fascinating re-visionary history of liberalism* in which the tradition of reflection on the so-called 'ancient constitution' is an independent stream, is framed by the often competing dangers and aspirations emanating from the so-called 'man of system' and the 'bussybodies.' The man of system represents the rationalistic impulse that in the name of justice and efficiency tends toward homogenization, (Weberian) rationalization, and a controlling, strong central government suspicious of local powers. Levy's discussion is useful to the scholar because he nicely brings out the ways in which Smith is clearly indebted to Montesquieu (and joins him in defending the significance of intermediaries) and especially astute about the ways Smith diagnoses the dangers of both central power(s) and local elites. Levy's book is so good that I regret not reading it before I completed my own, while  recognizing that if I had down so (it appeared when mine was under review) it would have caused lengthy delay.+

Before I get to a critical digression, I want to make two preliminary comments. One personal pleasure in reading Levy's book is that it provides a nice background to Levy's more general views familiar to regular readers of his essays (which often inspire me to figure out what I think); Levy has that rare capacity to speak to the political moment in an intellectual fashion with a distinctive, moral compass without falling victim to partisanship. While reading the book I felt I was visiting a friend in his home environment showing me his study and, thereby, allowing me to connect some dots about him. Second, Levy's book is self-consciously a contribution to impure political philosophy (a term borrowed from Williams). It is, thus, worth reflecting on RPF as an exemplar in that genre (not unlike Sabl's Hume's Politics). Some other time, I'll say more about Levy's contribution to the nature of such impure theory. What follows is a kind of indirect comment on that topic, too.

As noted above, Levy draws generous inspiration from Smith's critique of systematicity. He returns (66) to the passage from TMS quoted at the top of this post, and quotes it (alongside Montesquieu) more fully:

The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. 

Levy rightly resists the hungry temptation (familiar from those inspired by Hayek) to turn Smith into a mere critic of social planning. Smith here is defending not just gradualism, but also the political dangers in trying to eliminate intermediaries, that is, "the great interests." In the paragraphs just before the one that Levy quotes, Smith discusses these in terms of "the great orders;" the core upshot of that discussion can be summarized as follows, "The man whose public spirit is prompted altogether by humanity and benevolence, will respect the established powers and privileges even of individuals, and still more those of the great orders and societies, into which the state is divided" (emphasis added). As Levy correctly notes Smith's political theory is both a great critique of the moral abuses of intermediaries (including guilds, imperialistic monopolies, state religions, etc.) and aims at defending the rights of these. Social intermediaries are worth preserving and are, in fact, not simply reducible to the the desires and interests of those that compose them (recall)--they have a principle of motion of their their own (that is also resistant to outside imposition).** While I would emphasize more (than Levy does) the significance of aesthetics (apparent "beauty") to the "madness" of fanaticism that is a danger in Smith's "man of system," so far so good.

But Levy's analysis of Smith and the nature of systems is also partial. I say this not to deny that for Smith "love of system" tends to generate not just fanaticism or expert-overconfidence. But that Levy omits something important starts to become clear if we also quote the closing sentence of the paragraph, which Levy fails omits:

If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.

Here we see that what Smith is after, and this is something that Levy explicitly recognizes  (when discussing Montesquieu): that social reformers are more likely to succeed, and less likely to generate dangerous, political "disorder," if their reforms work with the "grain" of society, that is, the interests and commitments of intermediaries (and individuals). Social reform is not left to the market or only to bottom up processes; it can be influenced and guided by the center if it (the center) is capable of understanding its own limitations and taking into account the interests and aims of social actors.

In addition, the center must be guided by a system. For Smith claims, in the first sentence of the next paragraph, that “some general, and even systematical, idea of the perfection of policy and law, may no doubt be necessary for directing the views of the statesman.” Such a system allows it to avoid acting in ad hoc fashion and also be able to grasp which compromises are worth accepting and which undermine its moral and political aims. That is, a system is required to guide (not control) long-term planning and to allow trade-offs to be modeled and foreseen. For, while “the judgments of mankind [can be] perverted by wrong systems,” Smith actually explicitly defends systematicity--this should come as no surprise because throughout his life, Smith called attention to (a) the systematicity of his own works (say, here and here) and (b) he refers to his own project as a "system of natural liberty." More important, Smith thought that (c) a proper, (aestheticized) “love of system” can activate the most “noble and magnificent” political and philanthropic projects and the right sort of “public spirit.” In particular, a system-inspired public spirit can even compensate for an absence of the love of humanity or “pure sympathy” in a political agent.++ (Smith is often treated as a sentimentalist, but throughout his writings rules and the reflections of reason can compensate for lack of feeling.) For the a system that can or does generate such “public welfare” is a system worth having. (An important element in a right sort of system is Smith's concern to address inductive risk, but about that another time more.)

Let me wrap up. Levy's book attunes the reader to the the frequent dissonances between the "freedom to associate"" and the "freedom within (or from) group life."  (I write "frequent" because Levy is is equally astute about the ways such freedoms can reinforce each other.) Levy is, however, a skeptic about the ability of a normative and impure system that can do full justice to such dissonances. I think this is due to the fact that the most influential systems we have either rationalize these away (toward one side, often favoring the state or justice at the expense of other important liberal commitments) or contain non-trivial (Rawlsian) "wobbles" from  the point of view of coherence and reason. But what makes Smith especially notable today, or so I argue in my book, is that he is an exemplar in offering such a system without the (one-sided) rationalization or the wobble. That's not because Smith squares a theoretical circle (overlooked by Levy and the tradition), but because he embraces deviations from reason and coherence as an endemic feature of social life and internalizes it in his system (or so I argue). This generates its own tensions, of course, but about these another time.

A Theorist (Arrow) Does History as a Moral Enterprise, and Therapy

Like Schumpeter, Marshall saw himself in a very superior position in the whole world of economics, and even towards his hero, Ricardo, there is more than a touch of condescension. Ricardo is given to an excessive love of abstraction, no doubt, says Marshall, the result of Ricardo's "Semitic" heritage. great biological developments of the nineteenth century had their dark side in the use of science to justify racism, and this example is far from the only one in Marshall.) (3)

...

Keynes did not confuse an antiquarian interest in seeing Sraffa produce a good edition of Ricardo with any excessive respect for an obstacle to what he saw as correct thinking. His understanding of past economists was primarily dictated by their consistency with his current thought. (6)

...

It would be too far from the aim of this essay to examine whether or to what extent the criticism of Ricardo by his successors was motivated, consciously or unconsciously, by the fear of giving aid to the enemies of capitalism. Like any historical inquiry, it would have to be conterfactual, and it is not very clear what would count as relevant evidence.

Instead let me make a few remarks about the fundamental character of Ricardo's system, as I see it. I am a practicing theorist, not a scholar in the history of economic thought, and my reactions are no doubt influenced by my own views. Indeed, it is hard to write intellectual theory and, for that matter, any kind of history, without framing the past through the perspective of the present. It can justly be remarked about history that it is as revealing about the time when it was written as about the time which is its ostensible subject matter. Nevertheless, it is morally incumbent on us to try as far as possible to put ourselves in a position contemporary with that of our author. (8) K. Arrow , "Ricardo's Work as Viewed by Later Economists,"

The great theorist, Arrow (recall yesterday and last week, and here), treats the writing of history as, in part, a moral exercise. He does not explain why he thinks this, but it's clear that he believes that what economics is about is, in part, not just focused on ideas or theories, but also the evaluation of authors. Throughout the essay, Arrow shows an interest in authors' (and their critics') motives, which are linked up to their political, ideological, and even racist commitments. Even in the quoted passage above, where Arrow self-consciously does not explore the motives of the critics of Ricardo, he makes a point of mentioning them anyway. But the core historical method he embraces is that qua historian, we have to "try as far as possible to put ourselves in a position contemporary with that of our author." Note that Arrow is not claiming that we have to put ourselves in the shoes of the author, but rather we have to take up a kind of counterfactual position that makes us a kind of contemporaneous observer when we evaluate the quality of an author's thought. But in so doing we bring along, as it were, our knowledge.

Arrow, in  fact, exhibits this methodological stance throughout the essay. He is very careful to avoid Whiggish criticism (and criticizes others for doing so), but he always takes up two perspectives while writing the past: he shows the strengths and limitations of an author's thought both (i) from the hypothetical then contemporary perspective (noting what could have been criticized and appreciated with the technical tools at hand) as well as (ii) from the present perspective in which the implications of some tools are better known or new concepts have been introduced to make theoretical relations more  transparent.*

As an aside, Arrow is frank about the fact that the counterfactual that goes into (i) is really itself a kind of art: it is, after all, (a) "not very clear what would count as relevant evidence." He does not note another problem with his stance toward (i); it is not entirely clear (b) what counts as contemporary -- how long is the present? -- especially, if there is not a historical agent that can be connected to the perspective. It is worth noting that the complications involving (b) especially have been explored by critics of Quentin Skinner in recent (!) discussions about the methodology of the the history of philosophy (see, e.g., Laerke and my observations on Koen Vermeir).

Arrow recognizes that (ii) runs the danger of generating a superior position that is to be avoided. He does not explain how this is done, and he recognizes, remarkably (recall also my post on Marshall's criticism of Ricardo), that science itself can be a source of -- let's say -- unjustified or unearned feeling of elevation. (It's allied to expert-overconfidence, and mistaken self-understand as magnanimous but not the same to each.) Presumably by engaging in the practice of (i), one can learn to avoid the hubris associated with (ii) or (iii) the kind of sectarian yet Whiggish interest in the present that Arrow associates with Keynes's treatment of the past (see the quote above).

Often, when one reads the other two great historians of economics who also were Nobel-laureates, Samuelson and Stigler, one gets the sense that they recognize that maintaining control over history matters (in ways Kuhn has described) for the identity of the present paradigm. (They were both intimately familiar with Kuhnian ideas before Kuhn wrote Structure [see here and here])** It's not impossible that Arrow also thought this. But I wish to entertain another speculation.

Strikingly, Arrow does not treat being a theorist in such moral terms. Yesterday, I noted that Arrow has a tendency to treat theorizing, in part, as a form of intellectual combat in which opposing views are destroyed. (That's perfectly compatible with him being a generous and kind person in all kinds of ways.) One may speculate (and Arrow explicitly recognizes the legitimacy of such speculation) that for Arrow writing and teaching history of thought was, in part, a kind of intellectual therapy to guard against his own intellectual vices. (Recall also my exchange with Susan James.) As he himself noted the historian's craft can also be quite revealing "about the time when it was written" as well as its author.

 

On Being On To Something

Professor Kenneth Arrow died on February 21, 2017, at the age of 95. He was widely regarded (along with Paul Samuelson, John Hicks and possibly --- depending on tastes --- John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman and Gary Becker) as one of the greatest economists of the 20th century. He also happened to be my favorite economist of all time.    

Professor Dipak Banerjee, my teacher, introduced me to Kenneth Arrow in 1974, who appeared (much in the manner of Hindu god[esses]s for whom my mother had special reverence) in the form of a small yellow paperback. I acquired Social Choice and Individual Values from Dasgupta and Co. of College Street, and still have it. I was a first year undergraduate. That little book was a repository of the most profound logical thought. I had never seen anyone distill what appeared to be an abstract question in political economy into a theoretical device that cut sharply, and cut deep.

What was the question? Briefly, it was well known from the so-called Condorcet paradox that majority voting could produce nasty cycles in choices, even when the individual preferences involved in that voting process were perfectly reasonable.  That led to the question: was there any political system that could “reasonably” aggregate individual preferences? Now think about the question for a second: we know what majority voting is, but there is in principle an infinity of other systems. How could one ever formulate such a problem, let alone attempt to answer it? The very formulation — as axioms placed on an abstract mapping that connected individual preferences to their social counterpart — was sheer genius. But the apparatus was not only beautiful: it could also speak. It argued that under the minimal desiderata placed on the aggregator, there was no way of putting together individual preferences into a satisfactory social ordering; one that was cycle-free.

Arrow had received the Nobel Prize just two years before this encounter with him. He was just 51 years old, by far the youngest Laureate then (or since) in Economics. I ran off to the National Library in Calcutta to dig out the Nobel citation, excitedly anticipating a homage to my beloved Impossibility Theorem. Yet oddly, the The Nobel citation mentions Arrow’s monumental theorem only at the very end, and almost in passing. It focused instead on Arrow’s (and Hicks’s) contributions to general equilibrium theory:

“[Arrow] provided the basis for a radical reformulation of the traditional equilibrium theory. Through this reformulation, which was based on the mathematical theory of convex sets, the general equilibrium theory gained both in generality and in simplicity… The model presented in this paper became the starting point for the major part of further research in this field. Among Arrow's many important contributions should also be mentioned his development of the theory of uncertainty and its incorporation within the frame of general equilibrium theory and, furthermore, his analysis of the possibilities for decentralized decisions in a society where the price system is fixed by the central authority… As perhaps the most important of Arrow's many contributions to welfare theory appears his ‘possibility theorem,’ according to which it is impossible to construct a social welfare function out of individual preference functions.”

This was disappointing as far as my current passion was concerned. But it was also exhilarating: because there was more! (Later, I realized just how much more.) Back I went to Professor Banerjee. I wanted to know why general equilibrium was not just a question of several equations in the same number of unknowns, and what all this was about “the mathematical theory of convex sets.” In response, Dipak-babu helpfully produced another small tome by Gerard Debreu. This was based on the work with Arrow. Though certainly more mainstream this time in its questions, the techniques went way over my 17-year old head....

As a graduate student, reading all this in late 70s and early 80s, I viewed Arrow as a thinker who could both ask the deepest questions in economic and political philosophy, and at the same  time use mathematical arguments with ease and utility to answer them to a substantive degree. This was someone who could put past accomplishments into perspective, leave them behind, and seek to look beyond to newer and more difficult concerns. Such were the nature of his forays into questions of incomplete information, pervasive externalities, increasing returns and interpersonal equity. There was just one word for it: inspirational. The inevitable reaction was not long in coming: I wanted to be like Ken Arrow. Surprise surprise, that was not destined to happen. But something else did: I had the immense good fortune to become his colleague at Stanford.

I was at Stanford on a job flyout, at the very beginning of 1982. I had been warned about the meeting with Arrow. Apparently, all I had to do was tell him the assumptions of my model and then, before I could get any further, he would proceed to tell me all the results that could conceivably be proved from those assumptions. This was unnerving news. But nothing of the sort happened.

I walked into his office. It was small and cluttered, full of books that went up high. It had a vertical rather than horizontal feel. Arrow himself gave the opposite impression. He was shorter than I had expected, strong, rooted to the ground. The man seemed to be in constant motion. He was both brisk and welcoming. He was wearing brightly colored suspenders, and there was an immense bicycle helmet on his desk. (I did not then realize that these, along with the perennially flipped pencil at seminars, would be an intrinsic part of my later memory of him.) I began talking about my work. It was a bit of an out-of-body experience; I could see myself talking to him. Arrow listened very closely. There was an intensity of gaze that never wavered, except when he would start speculating, during which he would look up at the ceiling and back to me. He asked questions non-stop. He talked very fast, the words tripping over one another, the tone uneven, the sentences clearly struggling to keep up with the flow of thoughts. He didn’t exactly anticipate my results. But after 15 minutes, I had a second eerie sensation: that I was talking to someone who  had thought about my problem for a very long time. This was a weird feeling that I came to associate with Arrow over the next few years.

....

Less enthusiasm was shown [by Arrow] towards the neo-Ricardians. Once I had mustered up enough courage, I would talk with Arrow with complete freedom, and before long I had told him that I had once spent an entire day with Piero Sraffa at Cambridge, and that he had given  me a signed copy of his book ...I told [Arrow] that I admired the book for its apparent demonstration that the distribution of income across labor income and profit could not be fully pinned down by economics — that some reference to the political system was needed. Arrow looked at me with a mix of irritation and pity: “I’ll get you out of that soon enough.” And of course he did convince me that Production of Commodities By Means of Commodities had an extra degree of freedom in it that generated a fake indeterminacy, though I still harbor a sneaking suspicion that Sraffa was on to something.--Debraj Ray "Kenneth Arrow, 1921-2017"

Of the quick, first round of obituaries of Arrow, the one by Ray, himself a leading economist (recall that I have remarked on his criticism of Piketty), stands out for its excellence mixing intellectual, psychological, and sociological observations on the significance and nature of Arrow's scholarly life as seen by professional economists today. It's worth reading in full (including the stuff on the scale and content of some of Arrow's many contributions to economics as well as Arrow's relationship to socialism) not the least for acquiring a flavor of the anecdotes that circulate around Arrow's life. One other reason why I quote so much of it -- despite some names and issues being obscure to philosophers -- is that Ray's manner of evaluation is so familiar to us professional philosophers (genius; deepest questions; out-of-body experience; intensity of gaze; talking to someone who  had thought about my problem for a very long time, etc.) They reminded me of the tenor of the recent remarks about Derek Parfit (who, to be sure, published much less than Arrow and was probably slightly less central to the disciplinary formation in philosophy than Arrow was in economics).

In the final sentence of the quoted paragraph (which is not the end of the obituary), Ray allows himself one very modest reservation: "I still harbor a sneaking suspicion that Sraffa was on to something." Now, in context, Ray is remarking on the fact that Arrow (then already very famous) "was teaching History of Economic Thought" and that among the history covered Arrow favored Cournot.* Ray is reporting on a series of exchanges with Arrow some time in the early 1980s (so more than thirty years ago). Even then Sraffa's work was not setting the agenda and conceptual framework for professional economics (in the way that Samuelson and Arrow did and to some extent still do). Even if we allow historical distortion, Arrow's irritation at the interest of his younger, talented colleague in a by then discarded project is notable.+

As an aside, as it happens in 1991,** Arrow published (inter alia) about Sraffa's role in the (Marxist leaning) reception of Ricardo, which influenced the way Keynes was assimilated, especially at Cambridge (and especially by Joan Robinson). In the paper, "Ricardo's Work as Viewed by Later Economists," Arrow self-describes himself as "a practicing theorist, not a scholar in the history of economic thought." Yet, Arrow shows great command over the historical material and the history of Ricardo reception.** One criticism of Sraffa by Arrow is that Sraffa is "indifferent to [Ricardo's] the full employment hypothesis, though one would have thought a position on this question to be basic to the formulation of a coherent model." Another (more implicit) criticism of Sraffa is that "the possibility of diminishing returns was dropped by Marx and equally by Sraffa and Joan Robinson."

To return to my main point. Ray reports his own "sneaking suspicion that Sraffa was on to something" despite being exposed to (presumably conclusive) proof that Sraffa's attempted formal "demonstration that the distribution of income across labor income and profit could not be fully pinned down by economics" was incoherent or unsupported. Lurking in the background is not just the question of the role of politics in determining economic outcomes, but also the question of disciplinary autonomy and closure. One would have liked to hear more about Ray's suspicions here -- Ray is the editor of the American Economic Review so he plays a non-trivial role (among many others) as gate-keeper and standard setter in the profession.++ 

But leaving aside the question of Arrow's criticism of Sraffa, I think the phenomena that Ray puts his finger on is more widespread (and also prevalent in philosophy): often the technically superior person will refute a theory Y -- and let's stipulate these are not straw-man versions of Y --, and [this matters] will do so in ways such that new recruits will not drift toward Y or variants of Y, and yet the insight (u) that gave rise to Y may not have been adequately handled.*** This is due to the fact that the relationship between (u) and Y is not a tight mapping. Much formalization in economics (recall my piece on the criticism of Harberger by MA. Khan) and all explication (recall my post on Leitgeb, Carnap, and Tarski) have some degrees of freedom and judgment about the way in which a would be Y captures (u), especially if (u) is interesting. After the refutation of Y, the partisan of (u) is often told to keep quiet until she can offer a successor to Y  that is not prone to the fatal flaws exposed of Y (by technically superior person). [This is even so in circumstances where Y could handle stuff in ways that no other present theory does, as in cases of Kuhn loss (recall).]

If (u) is something non-trivial, even important, it can be problematic that a discipline avoids working on developing successors or replacements of Y. And so, ideally, one would wish that the refutation of Y would be accompanied by some theoretical articulation that does justice to the significance of (u). [Notice that this is true of formal and non-formal theories of Y.] But currently the incentives and norms of many disciplines work against this and we are not encouraged to reflect on how this might be improved.

 

Zadie Smith On Being a Teacher and Student

The novels we know best have an architecture.  Not only a door going in and another leading out, but rooms, hallways, stairs, little gardens front and back, trapdoors, hidden passageways, etcetera. It's a fortunate rereader who knows half a dozen novels this way in their lifetime. I know one, Pnin, having read it half a dozen times.--Zadie Smith, "Rereading Barthes and Nabokov," in Changing My Mind, 41.

A rereader [recall] can come to inhabit (p. 43) a limited number of novels. Time is scarce, so it's no surprise that we learn the architecture of only a few novels, although some of us may be surprised to learn how few we learn. Smith does not explain the the upper limit (half a dozen), and is discretely silent on how many rereadings are required to come to know a novel's architecture. As it happens, she provides evidence that she required at least five such re-rereadings; Smith decided to inhabit "Pnin," which is a minor scenic attraction en route to the canyon Lolita," (42) and later in the essay she admits that only during the "most recent rereading" (that is sixth time she read it) that she thinks "to kneel in front" of her "desk, place a glass of water at eye level and a position a comb, on end, behind it. Zebra cocktail! Nabokov saw it--now I do. And it's beautiful. Gratitude does not seem out of place." (54)

As it happens, on re-reading Smith's essay, I noticed that in between her analysis of Nabokov and Barthes, and the nature of writing and reading, she weaves two other analyses on subjects close to my troubled heart: first, that of the constitution of meaning (which I will largely ignore here); second, that of teaching (which I will focus on). Near the end of her essay, Smith notes that "Whether one quite approves of it or not, it's a Nabokovian assumption that if you work to give him back what he has given to you, this should be reward enough (for you). His students learned this soon enough." (54) Smith then adds a footnote (13) with quote from Nabokov: "My method of teaching precluded genuine contact with my students. At best they regurgitated a few bits of my brain during examination." (54 n. 13). 

On Smith's rendering, Nabokovian teachers demand from their students a mastery of detail both of the subject matter studied (e.g., novels) and the matter taught (the lectures about these novels, etc.). There is no surplus to be generated by the student; she aims to master all, but no more than the subject studied and the lectures taught about the subject. The Nabokovian teacher is godlike, and the student's attitude qua student is a form of gratitude to the teacher for his gifts (recall this post). The student acquires (quite partial) mastery of a subject, and that is its own reward for a certain type of student.

I don't think Smith means to endorse Nabokovian teachers. For, earlier in her essay, she had remarked (i) that there is more than one type of student, and (ii) that the teacher need not force the students into a particular kind of mold (and i-ii are at odds with Nabokovian position):

To observe these two natural, unschooled reactions is fascinating [qua teacher]: they reveal within the famous ideological debate a more intimate and important question of character, into which a teacher should not necessarily intrude. Why not allow each student to find out for himself what kind of rereader he is? No bad blood need to be spilled over it (as it was when I was in college). After all, you can storm the house of a novel like Barthes, rearranging the furniture as you choose, or you can enter on your knees, like the pilgrim Nabokov thought you were, and try to figure out the cunning design of the place--the house will sand either way. (43)

I am a bit suspicious of the idea that the two reactions she describes -- (A) "to those students who have a tendency to feel humbled before the act of writing, [Barthes'] 'The Death of an Author' is a perverse assault on the privileges of authorship, on the possibility of fixed meaning, even upon 'Truth' itself'  and (B) those students who "are excited to to add to the text's indeterminacy, their own indeterminacy as well" (42) -- are natural and unschooled. Perhaps, they are natural to "writing students" at elite colleges. (For those that like traditional schemas, (A) stands for authority loving types and (B) stands for the freedom-loving types. [Smith tells us she is naturally drawn to (B; 43; see also 49)]) That we teach to multiple souls at once is also a familiar fact of life to teachers who teach in some non-selective environments.

Smith advocates a kind of restraint in which the teacher allows the student to find out for herself what kind of rereader the student is. The problem is that it is not entirely clear that the restraint Smith advocates on the side of teachers also permits the discovery by students of being (say) a kind of Nabokovian rereader. That is to say, it's quite crucial to Smith's advocacy that certain ways of responding to texts are natural and unschooled. But her own text undermines this thought because to become a Nabokovian rereader one must also be schooled by Nabokov or some other teacher that shares in his "vision of total control." (55) This Nabokovian teacher does not permit the existence "of a secondary power directing and diverting," (55)* and so cannot allow a student unschooled nature to remain unschooled inside his classroom.

There is evidence that, Smith recognizes the point of the previous paragraph. Above, I suggested that Smith recognizes two souls. But that's not quite right. She also recognizes a third, educated soul which recognizes that the relationship between author and reader is a "partnership" which is "far more hesitant and delicate than" Barthes's (or Nabokov) allows. In this partnership, author and reader are "stumbling towards meaning simultaneously, together." (56) Smith does not say much to explain that 'simultaneously'--it can't mean what it means either in special relativity or in ordinary common sense. Against Barthes, Smith wants to hold on to the idea that the Author completes the text before the reader reads it. Both writing and reading can be intentional activities, but the meaning of/produced by the text is something that exceeds the Author's intentions, even though she must be willing to (decide to) live with the meaning so unfolded. (An Author can always press delete and restart until the text is submitted.) So, I suspect she means that for Author and reader the meaning of the text is something unfolds as the text unfolds. There is more to be said about her notion of meaning (but that's for another time).

The partnership is a "connection" between the reader and "a consciousness other than" her "own." That is, to read is to connect with bits of somebody else's mind. It is based not on an implicit or explicit contract, but on the reader's "cautious faith." (56) By contrast, writing is an imposition of one's thoughts on imagined/unknown others: "in many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It's an aggressive, even a hostile act. You can disguise its aggressiveness all you want..." (55 n. 7 quoting Joan Didion)** Smith is clear that these 'many ways' don't exhaust the act of writing, but they are necessarily a part of it (while also exploring this act simultaneously in her novels [recall here and here]).

To reach the point of allowing for some such partnership, one must be taught to be schooled in reflexes that correct or transform the unschooled natural responses. Frustratingly, Smith is not very elaborate on the ways one is taught to become a hesitating (I have used stuttering) rereader (although it's clear that in her case, it means a giving up an exclusive embrace of freedom). But we can discern at least two ingredients: first, the very practice of rereading is a necessary step in such an education. It's only then that you learn that while you can get nearer and nearer, so to speak, to reality; but you never get near enough because reality is an infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms, and hence unquenchable, unattainable, (46, quoting Nabokov). That is, one must become accepting of failure in one's life (51), while not resting in it. Mastery of detail is an indirect means toward recognizing this end.

But second, and this is something that Nabokov does not seem to permit, one must be allowed to recognize that one's loneliness is an original and enduring impulse in reading about another "individual's experience of the world through the unstable medium of language." (56) There is, of course, a lot to be said about all the words in the previous sentence. But here I just want to note that if Smith is right, this requires as a duty on teachers to make space for the recognition of the existence of such loneliness by students (without of course drawing attention to their particular loneliness in front of other students--after all, a a teacher should not necessarily intrude nor embarrass) and then orient this recognition not to their (vain teacherly) selves, but to the thoughts of other worthy, individuals.

 

Containing Risk (toward Modal Economics with Samuelson)

Thinkers have naturally questioned whether the phenomena of uncertainty can be usefully handled by the quasi-mathematical notions of `probability.' Certain subsets of uncertainty those dealing with risks, gambling, insurance, repetitive inventory and quality control of production, and even with tactics of repeated investing are thought to lend themselves better to useful employment of probability procedures.--PA Samuelson Foundations of Economic Analysis, (1983) enlarged edition [pp. 503-504].

'anti-mathematicism' to characterize those thinkers with reservations about the high prestige of applications of mathematical techniques - See more at: http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2014/12/three-cheers-for-anachronism.html#sthash.aZfF3H8A.dpuf

By anti-mathematicism I characterize expressed reservations about the high prestige, utility, and (either/or) epistemic authority of applications of mathematical techniques in (some areas of) philosophy and the sciences. The idea presupposes a distinction between pure and applied mathematics that I will not question for present purposes. Here's a canonical statement of the idea (from Hume): "in all demonstrative sciences the rules are certain and infallible; but when we apply them, our fallible and uncertain faculties are very apt to depart from them, and fall into error." (Treatise 1.4.1.1)

The first edition (1947) of Samuelson's Foundations self-consciously ushered in the formal revolution in economics. In it, he assumed "a world involving no transaction friction and no uncertainty.” (123.) This helped facilitate what I call a whole-sale displacement strategy in which (epistemic and metaphysical) uncertainty just is treated as measurable risk within economics. This strategy simply denied the validity of a distinction widely embraced by an older generation of economists (including Knight and Keynes,) between unmeasurable uncertainty and measurable risk. (As I noted, Arrow did much of the heavy-lifting against the distinction, but the strategy does not originate with Arrow.) 

The passage quoted above from the appendix to the enlarged edition of Samuelson's Foundations [HT MA Khan] is more measured, even ironic (it's ironic because Samuelson had treated gambling and repeat investment jointly, see here). In it Samuelson deploys what one might call a containment strategy in which the successful application of mathematical technique is restricted only to some (limited) domain (that is, "gambling, insurance, repetitive inventory and quality control of production, and even with tactics of repeated investing"); it does not include the whole of economic life. Moreover, Samuelson (who is a very careful writer), treats the nature and scope of this containment strategy itself not as a settled fact, but as a matter of dispute or, to be more precise, -- Samuelson knew his Quine -- opaque context ("are thought").

That is to say, Samuelson recognizes  that the deployment of probability procedures in models of a sub-set of reality ("gambling, insurance, repetitive inventory and quality control of production, and even with tactics of repeated investing") should be treated with caution. (One wonders how Samuelson, who died in 2009, responded to the crisis of 2008 in which probabilistic risk-models fared badly.) One is not permitted to treat the modal universe of these models as identical to those of wider economic reality.

Of course, Samuelson's containment strategy does not rule out the application of other formal techniques in wide domains of economic life beyond "gambling, insurance, repetitive inventory and quality control of production, and... tactics of repeated investing." So, the passage should not be read as a limitation on the formal revolution. But it is an acknowledgment that reliably connecting decision-rule-generating-mathematical-economics to bits of economic reality is harder than he may have believed when he was a young revolutionary.

On Meaning More Than Is Intended (on Plantinga, Hazony, and Prophecy)

[T]he principal author of the Bible—the entire Bible—is God himself. Of course each of the books of the Bible has a human author as well; still, the principal author is God. This impels us to treat the whole more like a unified communication than a miscellany of ancient books…. [T]he fact that the principal author of the Bible is God himself means that one can’t always determine the meaning of a given passage by discovering what the human author had in mind…. [W]e can’t just assume that what the Lord intends to teach is identical with what the human author had in mind; the latter may not so much as have thought of what is, in fact, the teaching of the passage in question.[6][--Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief]

[In Warranted Christian Belief,] Plantinga thus moves from the identification of Scripture as revelation—that is, as a communication from God—to the view that the entire corpus of biblical works, both Jewish and Christian, are to be viewed as essentially a “unified communication” since they have only one “principal author,” which is God himself. The fact that the different works in the biblical corpus were written over a period of many centuries, often arguing with one another and seeking to advance points of view that are at odds even on central issues, is not something that Plantinga is unaware of.[7] But he deals with this problem by proposing that what the biblical authors—Moses or Jeremiah, say—believed to be God’s word to them is not always “in fact, the teaching of the passage in question.” Indeed, the “meaning of a given passage,” which is “what the Lord intends to teach,” may well be something that Moses or Jeremiah “may not have so much as thought of.” For this reason, we may be seeking in vain for the biblical teaching if we are trying to “determine the meaning of a given passage by discovering what the human author had in mind.”

...

Now, this view—and similar views that one finds among Jewish writers[10]—works systematically to undermine the possibility of what I have been calling the philosophy of Hebrew Scripture. For on the view that I have proposed, what should be of interest to us when we take up the study of the Bible is precisely “what the human author had in mind” (or, if this is deemed impossible, then what the human final editor had in mind) in creating the text that we now have before us. Indeed, the whole aim of my book was to persuade readers that we should be at least as concerned to reconstruct what Isaiah or Jeremiah “had in mind” as we are to reconstruct what Parmenides or Plato “had in mind.” This, I suggest, is because Isaiah and Jeremiah were towering figures in the history of ideas, whose works deserve our respect and consideration. We should wish to recapture the unique ways in which they understood God, man’s nature, and the moral and political realm. We should wish to properly assess the impact and influence of their ideas, and to seek the relevance of their insights to our own lives and world today. And we should desire this not a whit less than in the case of the early Greek philosophers who came centuries after them, upon whom academic scholarship has lavished such a prodigious intellectual effort--Yoram Hazony, Jerusalem Letters: What is Revelation? [Recall also Friday's post.]

I have already noted that Hazony's position is in a certain limited respect not far removed from Spinoza. They both allow that the Hebrew Bible can be taken to express a unified point of view ultimately rooted in the intentions of the "human final editor." For Hazony this editor has allowed an unfolding of different political and moral perspectives in a search for a politics grounded in ethics as well as a shining through of the presence of distinctive (even philosophical) individual voices (e.g., Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc.) [see also this].+ Leaving aside Hazony's views on the nature of revelation, his insistence that the Hebrew Bible has a unity and integrity of its own puts him on a collision course with Christian (and Islamic) teachings that insist that its (that is, the Hebrew Bible's) meaning/teaching is (re-)shaped by a larger unity of which it is thought to be a part.

At first sight Hazony's interpretive stance on inferring meaning from authorial intent echoes Quentin Skinner's (1969) hermeneutics, although Hazony is more willing than Skinner originally was to extract enduring lessons from the original meaning of the text. But Hazony's position is a bit unstable because he cannot fully object to Plantinga's principle that a Biblical passage's teaching may transcend what the author of the passage had in mind because even the Hebrew Bible is sometimes based on and contains bits of texts whose authors' intentions are almost certainly left opaque (e.g., the Book of Jashar (recall); the Book of the Wars of the Lord, etc.). Even Hazony allows that the meaning and aim of the Hebrew Bible as a whole can transcend at least some of the intentions of some of the authors of some of its texts; according to him the whole is an "artful compendium," which includes diverging, more parochial "viewpoints." (Hazony, p. 41) So his disagreement with Plantinga is not wholly about hermeneutics nor only about the status of a purported distinction between reason and revelation, but also about what counts as the proper unity (for teaching/meaning purposes): the Hebrew Bible as such or the "entire Bible."* (For Plantinga on such unity, see p. 385.) Obviously, there are connections among the disagreements between Plantinga and Hazony because one may be tempted (as Plantinga seems to be) to treat revelation as a source of authority in settling what counts as the proper unity.

While I have considerable affinity with Hazony's enterprise, I have already noted that I am doubtful that, as is, he has the resources to insist that the Hebrew Bible is the sole proper unity to which the texts that compose it belong. Moreover, against a critic, who insists that the whole Bible has a “principal author” who “is God,” it is not sufficient to show that such a critic’s views are not in accord with the manifest (or inferred) teaching of the Hebrew Bible (as Hazony does, for example, with Swinburne’s account of revelation).** For, even if one denies the existence of such a principal author or the identification of the principal author with God, if the Hebrew Bible can be included in (if not superseded by) a larger unity, then Hazony's arguments, even if they exhibit -- as I think they do -- the philosophical fruits of the Hebrew Bible, do not wholly succeed against the critic (yet). 

It is, thus, always possible that a later text can incorporate an earlier text into a larger, shared unity and thereby change the meaning and significance of the earlier text (even if for various purposes we can still try to study, for example, the earlier text on its own terms); such a new unity is not inevitable, of course, and it may be contested. That is to say, I agree with Plantinga (as well as the mathematical economists Khan and Schlee) that a text can say more than its (human) author intended to say; this principle forms the basis for what I call "philosophical prophecy."