Digressions&Impressions

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."+

 

 

Plato, Ibn Rushd, Eugenics, and Being an (Accidental) Straussian

Since for everything that has come into being destruction is appointed, not even such a fabric as this will abide for all time, but it shall surely be dissolved, and this is the manner of its dissolution. Not only for plants that grow from the earth but also for animals that live upon it there is a cycle of bearing and barrenness for soul and body as often as the revolutions of their orbs come full circle, in brief courses for the short-lived and oppositely for the opposite; but the laws of prosperous birth or infertility for your race, the men you have bred to be your rulers will not for all their wisdom ascertain by reasoning combined with sensation, but they will escape them, and there will be a time when they will beget children out of season. Republic, Book 8, 546ab, Translated by Paul Shorey.

In the quoted passage, Socrates confronts (recall here, and here) the limits of his eugenic, breeding program. I tend to describe it (somewhat anachronistically) as his recognition that sexual desire among the carefully, artificially selected beautiful-of-mind-and-body-guardians cannot be controlled and falls outside scientific cognition. At one point, fairly recently, Eric Brown, a distinguished philosopher, who I have looked up to my whole academic career, objected to this characterization as Straussian. (It was not intended as a compliment.) Rather (and I summarize informally) Socrates claims that the cause of the decline of Kallipolis is the reliance on sensation/sense perception. Brown is not alone in this--in the summary to their translation of book 8, Grube/Reeve assert that kallipolis "will decline because the philosopher-kings have to rely on sense perception in putting their eugenics policy in practice." (213) Let's call this the standard reading. By contrast, the "Straussian" reading has an unhealthy interest in sexual desire.*

And, indeed, the standard reading is well grounded in the text. But the Straussian reading is not silly because what sense perception misses is  copulation by the guardians. And what this shows that even a state carefully organized around moderation and properly cultivated dispositions (by way of indoctrination, drilling, censorship, noble lies, and eugenics, etc.) and learning flounders on a mixture of natural drives and cognitive limitations. The standard reading emphasizes these cognitive limitations, whereas the Straussian reading emphasizes the former. The standard reading does justice to the plain meaning of the text. But the Straussian reading is on this point not based on some fancy esoteric numerology+ --  in fact, it's the Socratic eugenicist-philosopher-kings who have to deploy such fancy numerology --, but a fairly straightforward interpretation of why the cognitive limitations induced by sense perception matter.**

So, my objection to the standard reading is not that it is decidedly prudish (although I think that, too, of course), but that it kind of fails to do justice to the very grounds of rejecting the true/healthy city, and to embark on the Kallipolis which is, in part, (recall and more elaborately here) grounded in what's possible for beings like us (the true city assumes we're like pigs/animals). And in analyzing the causes for its decline, it turns out there are limited to improving our human nature (cognitive limitation, sexual desire)* when we are dealing with populations (and population improvement).

As it happens, this week, I am teaching Ibn Rushd's commentary on Plato's Republic (translated from the Hebrew by Ralph Lerner; this Third Treatise 87.20ff.) Here is how he treats the issue in question:

Here the guardians are blamed for the failure of the eugenics problem in two ways: (i) they are not paying sufficient attention to the copulation (of their fellow guardians); (ii) they are not sufficiently ruthless enough in removing or -- to use a term from Al-Farabi -- weeding out the bad offspring that are the product from improper copulation. (Recall that he seems to suggest that Sharia is also offering a breeding program.)

Now, Ibn Rushd's commentary, which presents itself as an epitome that only presents the demonstrable parts of the Republic, here is offering, in one sense, a misleading summary. It's possible that this is due to the manuscript-translation of the Republic he had access to, or to a mistake in the Hebrew translator of Ibn Rushd. But I will assume that the change is deliberate. (There are other places in the commentary where the changes are evidently deliberate.) 

Ibn Rushd is frank about the significance of copulation as the proximate cause of decline (so that's like the Straussian). But what (i)-(ii) have in  common is that he puts much more emphasis on, we may say, a failure of policy, even a loss of nerve, among the guardians (who are in a sense not ruthless enough in spying and killing, that is, the kind of Straussianism associated, fairly or not, with the neocons). And the underlying sensibility is that, while the best regime is certainly not stable, it is in some sense both more attainable (recall) and also more enduring if one were willing to make one's hands dirty.

On (Runciman on) Knowledge That Cannot be Acted On (again)

[It] was hard to know what lessons to draw. The democracies had shown their resilience in the long run. How they had done it, and what it meant for the future, was much less clear. The knowledge of their hidden strengths the democracies had been given did not translate into greater self-knowledge or self-control. Democracy was emerging victorious from the travails of the twentieth century. But was little wiser for the experience. David Runciman, The Confidence Trap: A History of Democracy in Crisis from World War I to the  Present (revised edition), p. 228.

In the preface of his distinctive book, David Runciman notes, "We know a lot more than we used to about how democracies succeed and why. What we don't know is what to do with this knowledge. That is the problem" (xxi).* Strikingly, even though we are made wiser in lots of dimensions, when it comes to answering this problem, the reader is left no wiser. We do learn what Runciman takes to be the cause of the underlying resilience: this is, that democracies muddle through. (A historicist may note that Runciman is expressing a rather English ideology!)  They muddle through. This muddle is accompanied by lots of experimentation and adaptation to changing circumstances (there is a Popperian element in this book that is not fully theorized/acknowledged).

On Runciman's reading democracies have a bias toward responsiveness to crises rather than preparing for/against them. (This entails that democracies lurch from one crisis to the next.) This bias is not a consequence of a classical-liberal desire for (policy) stability (which may prompt measures to prevent legislation), but rather political responsiveness to voter preferences (or at least those that make their interests felt). In effect, this generates huge amount of experimentation in democracies. Most of these experiments create dissatisfaction. But because democracies routinely introduce change, this means  that in a crisis, they will keep trying out new things which allows them (a) to give people hope that the crisis is being tackled, and (b) they may stumble on partial solutions to the problems that allow them to muddle through. In turn, knowing that they have  successfully muddled through in the past generates drift and complacency and this opens the door to both small crises and really big ones (etc.). For the sake of argument, I accept this picture. And, in fact,  the many apercus about democracy make the book so memorable:

• Democracies are not proud when it comes to facing up to their mistakes, largely because they make so many of them. 
• Democracies, then as now, do not like to see other democacries wriggle out of their obligations; it is one of the things that set basic limits  to international democratic solidarity.
• Democracies can't bluff.
• Modern democracies [are] more prone to military overkill than to bluster.

The book raises two challenges to the role of knowledge in democracies are they are (not imagined to be). One is the familiar one, that even when particular policy objectives are farmed out to experts (say, central banking, public health, civil engineers, etc.), they may influenced either by particular interests or the larger public (intellectual/cultural) culture and so fail at their task. (Runciman echoes the literature (recall) on intellectual/ideological capture of experts.) What Runciman adds -- and rather nicely in his treatment of the financial crisis -- is that in a democratic polity, where talk of crisis is routine, the experts may discount or ignore signs of crisis: "they grow...increasingly deaf to it." (277) The literature on expert overconfidence is by now pretty saturated, but this is a nice further addition to it. How to solve this is not so easy (but that's for another time.)

As an aside, Runciman's analysis also helps explain, in part, why climate scientists have been unable to move public opinion (even if we recognize the efforts of industries that have aimed at misleading it) into taking decisive precautionary steps.** (What follows is not in Runciman.) Democracies are both (i) inundated with crisis talk as well as have (ii) a history of success in responding to the ones that hit. The combination leads to a tendency to putting of taking precautionary measures (also because these come at a cost and hurt existing powerful interests) and overconfidence that when a crisis hit it can be handled by future policy and technology. 

The second is a more diffuse and intractable problem of political science, which here I treat not as a policy expertise, but as knowledge of democracy as such. (Of course, some political scientists also have more comparative knowledge.) Runciman's book is a history of thinkers who are aware of the by now -more-than-a century-long cycle of complacency/drift and crisis in democracies. While democracy has plenty of institutions that permit the development, testing, and dissemination (and even memory) of such knowledge, Runciman's book is one long tail at democracy's inability to harness it. Democratic incentives and the mechanisms of leader-selection make it very unlikely. In fact, a nice tragic, sub-theme is that when statesmen/women act on such knowledge they tend to produce behavior that undermines the quality of democracy. 

Obviously, readers of the previous  paragraph will not be convinced this problem exists. (Go read the book.) But I think it is plausible because I don't think it's unique to democracy (in its general form). Most academics are familiar with the fact that lots of plausible, well-tested (or historically robust) idea never receive any policy uptake. Often the ones that do require considerable effort by folk promoting them. 

I am reminded of the fact that (recall) sometimes societies know that they are heading off a cliff and also know the causes of it -- late Republic Romans had some such awareness; --, and yet can't find a way to a better path. Runciman kind of implies that because democracies try out a lot of things they have higher odds to turn away from cliffs. Yet, he clearly implies that they have no proof that they will always do so, and it follows from his analysis that sometimes, at unexpected moments in history, they accidentally will drive into a ravine that is very deep.

But that makes this book rather puzzling because it is unclear how one can act on what it is trying to teach.

  

On Disparaging Critical X Studies: A response to Joseph Heath

By evading normative theory, he attempted to draw attention to the problem of judgment. His cryptonormativism was thus not an evasion of the interrogation of his normative stance, but an answer to it. Instead of accounting for where he stood by allying himself with a theory, he turned the question back on his interrogators. ’My position,’ Foucault seemed to argue, ’is to be found in the philosophical life that I lead, in the deep commitments and integrating style that gives my work and judgment their sense and coherence, in the manner in which I have harmonized my bios with my logos.’--Niko Kolodny "The ethics of cryptonormativism: A defense of Foucault’s evasions.' p. 72

I sometimes joke that moving from philosophy into a political science department introduced me to really existing positivists and applied continental philosophy. By ‘applied continental philosophy’ I mean using and extending the concepts of French philosophers (primarily Foucault and Deleuze) or critical theory (Habermas) to make social and political phenomena visible and available for analysis and political response. A version of applied continental philosophy goes by ‘critical X studies’ (as in ‘critical security studies’ or ‘critical middle east studies’). In these fields, philosophy, discourse analysis, social science, and ethnography can be mixed. Like all hybrid practices some of it is rather messy and caught up in specialized jargon* that’s hard to understand to outsiders. But make no mistake, ‘critical X studies’ can also be quite heroic: some of my direct colleagues work with torture victims (see Vivienne Matthies-Boon) in the middle east or document (see Polly Pallister-Wilkins) the plight of refugees in the winter waters of the Mediterranean (etc.) at considerable risk to themselves. The point of these projects isn’t Indiana Jones style heroism, of course, but to describe and explain the cruelties inflicted on people with the misfortune of being born in the wrong region (with the wrong religion, skin-color, and/or gender, etc.)

These misfortunes are not natural disasters—they are man-made and often can be traced, at least in part, to the heavily moralized practices of European and North American statecraft (with ‘humanitarian interventions’ gone awry; with ‘collateral damage’ of bombing campaigns of 'militants’ and, of course, the endless arms deliveries to friendly (‘allied’) dictators (and once allied ‘babarians’), environmentally damaging oil extraction, and rising food prices due to global warming primarily caused by Western consumption.) In often dire, even dangerous circumstances, my colleagues trace individual human suffering to large(r) social causes and political decisions. And they do so with an ethic of responsible research and speech; that is, they theorize the fact that they benefit (publications, careers, etc.) from other people’s misery and they incorporate this fact into their research practices which often generates considerable moral duties on the researcher. In some (but not all) cases these duties shade into ‘activism’ or ‘mobilization’ or ‘charity’ etc. And, all too often, our very own governments are in a tacit, even explicit collusion, with the dictators and ‘barbarians’ to marginalize their attempts at making visible and offering explanations of the suffering.

For Joseph Heath, this is all ‘old-fashioned bafflegab.’ He said so in a blog-post widely and approvingly shared among my friends (both folks with a classically liberal bent and analytic philosophers) on social media. What’s notable about Heath’s post is that he completely misdiagnoses the works he criticizes. He thinks that the folk in ‘critical X studies’ do not know how to make moral arguments and are in the grip of poorly worked out Nietzschean moral perspectivism or even skepticism indebted to Foucault. (“The authors feel a passionate moral commitment to the improvement of society – this is what animates their entire project, compels them to write a book – but they have no idea how to defend these commitments intellectually, and they have also read a great deal of once-fashionable theory that is essentially skeptical about the foundations of these moral commitments (i.e. Foucault, Bourdieu). As a result, they are basically moral noncognitivists, and perhaps even skeptics.”)

Now, before I continue, it’s important to be clear about what Heath gets right: first, ‘critical X studies’ is often informed by a moral indignation (if not despair) and really does try, at least sometimes, to call us to action. And, second, it is also true – about which more below – that there is a mistrust of normative theory (and normative argument) that runs through this literature. Heath is right to remind us that Habermas coined a term, ‘cryptonormativity,’ for this phenomenon. Third, it’s not impossible, of course, that some of the authors of the books he read are really are confused neo-Nietzscheans without adequate grounding in argumentative skills and maybe (fourth) a few of them are really using ‘rhetoric and techniques of social control, such as audience limitation, as a way of securing agreement on their [un-argued for] normative agenda.’ But it is remarkable that Heath basically claims bad faith in ‘critical X studies’ and manages to be obtuse about the very reasons for the existence of cryptonormativity.

Heath overlooks the more likely explanations for the cryptonormativity he has encountered. In a seminal, but overlooked, (1996) paper, Niko Kolodny has put the essential insight succinctly: for the mature Foucault* normative “theory is risky because its practical effects are uncertain.” (67; I use Kolodny here, of course, because his analytic credentials are beyond reproach.) That is, at the heart of Foucault’s stance is a recognition of the reality of and ethical concern over inductive risk and responsible speech. For, anybody familiar with the history of the last few centuries knows (recall) that the specialized, theoretical language of moral expertise is also a fertile tool for social oppression in the hands of the powerful.

As an aside, many analytic philosophers – my people -- insulate themselves from such uncomfortable facts by both allowing themselves to be ignorant of history, sociology, and political science, or by suggesting – ‘it’s not guns that kill people but people that kill people’ -- that the use (or 'abuse') of a theory should have no bearing at all on our evaluation of the theory. This is peculiar because if normative theory and argument are meant to get us to change the status quo, or guide behavior (reform institutions, etc.), how these do so, in practice, is no accidental feature, but (shall we say) it’s core mission. (This is not to deny the beauty and uses for normative theory that is really meant to be ignored in practice.) That is, Foucault’s stance is not an expression of moral skepticism, but an expression of care for others.

The previous two paragraphs are not an argument for the rejection of normative argument or normative theory. It is also not a justification for Foucault’s approach. But the mature Foucault, took responsibility for his words and reflected on the need to address the central problem of all normative theory and that has no easy solution (so far). As Kolodny notes, the challenge of safe-guarding against the all-too-predictable abuses of political and normative theory – and I have blogged a bit about contemporary examples (recall) – led Foucault to reflect not  just on the role of good judgment and character of the theorist, but also on the ethos of theorizing and what I call the philosophical integrity of the theorist (the match between words and actions).

Now, Foucault inspired some bad academic practices. I have railed against the ‘cult of contingency’ that infects some areas of history of science (and history) and historical epistemology. And I have also found myself irritated at the lazy use of ‘neoliberalism’ to describe all of our age’s ills. But Heath’s suggestion that Foucault’s work on Chicago economics and ordno-liberalism is just so much “talk about economic ideas that he didn’t really understand,” is just bluff. Foucault’s work in the area – primarily lectures -- is pioneering and interesting. They are also wonderfully clear: I say so as (ahh) an expert on the history of Chicago economics (go read my papers!) But don’t trust me, take it from one of Foucault’s subjects of study, the Chicago Economist, the late Gary Becker’s evaluation of Foucault (see the note below).*** Of course there are details in Foucault I disagree with, even some of his major interpretations. But that’s to be expected.

Before I close let me insert an autobiographical note (you can skip the next two paragraphs). Like many analytically trained philosophers of my generation, I was thoroughly convinced that continental philosophy was bullshit (which was reinforced by some assertive opinion-makers and some irresponsible academic behavior among continental luminaries I encountered along the way). When I moved to Leiden (2006), I was baffled to discover terrific logicians who were continental philosophers (not just born in Europe, but doing, say, phenomenology); how could this be? I decided I needed to educate myself, and with the help of my colleagues started reading Husserl and Derrida (etc.).

Then one day, I was asked to be an external examiner on a dissertation by Maarten Van Dyck on Galileo and the scientific revolution in Ghent. I knew some of Maarten’s previous work on Galileo and Huygens (who I have  been studying on and off since my undergrad days with the world’s leading scholars of the history and philosophy of physics). Ghent is a provincial university; its academic staff is largely drawn from its own graduates who often spent their whole academic lives there. The philosophy department is a quirky mix of para-consistent logicians, pragmatist philosophers of science, bioethicists, and Lacanians. (Full disclosure: I was later a proud member of the department.) I started reading the dissertation, which offered a wholly fresh interpretation of Galileo drawing on the work of my teachers and, much to my puzzlement, Foucault (and other French theorists). After I finished the first chapter, I was shaken; I could not read on: there was nothing wrong with my learning, but I came to see my mediocrity: in my analysis, I had not uttered a single genuine thought. When I finally picked up Foucault – Lets mots et les choses – I was flabbergasted to discover a historiography with an awe-inspiring and necessary ambition (and grounded in insane amount of academic labor). I do not think of myself as a follower of Foucault (and warmly recommend Spivak’s criticism of less mature Foucault), but I recoil at the venom directed at him emanating from Lilliput analysts.

Okay, let me close. Heath quotes a (rather long and jargon-filled) sentence from “Métis” by Chris Andersen. (It’s the sentence that inspires Heath’s ‘bafflegab.’) I sincerely think the sentence is (while ugly) fully intelligible if you have spent some time with the relevant literature. But I am not going to waste our time by offering an interpretation of a sentence quoted out of context. Rather, Heath goes on to ask in neo-Popperian fashion, ‘can you think of an event that could happen, in the world, that would cause you to lose confidence in this claim?’ This is a fair question to ask of a social scientist (even a ‘critical X studies’ person); oddly Heath offers no argument or evidence to think that Andersen couldn’t meet the challenge. And this gets me to the nub: Heath completely misses that his own rhetoric (e.g., ‘vituperativeness and rhetorical overkill,’ ‘character assassination;’ ‘incredibly dogmatic’ etc.) is a window – no, no, not into his soul or character [I wouldn’t stoop so low!] –  into a form of academic disparagement that counts as perfectly acceptable in our circles and yet simultaneously seems a perfectly apt description of itself.

On The Mont Pelerin Society at 70; or the Transmission of the Ideals Political Freedom

At the end of the First World War the spiritual tradition of liberalism was all but dead. True, it was still uppermost in the thoughts of many a leading figure of public and business life, many of whom belonged to a generation which took liberal thought for granted. Their public pronouncements sometimes led the general public to believe that a return to a liberal economy was the ultimate goal desired by the majority of leading men. But the intellectual forces then at work had begun to point in quite a different direction. Anyone familiar, thirty years ago, with the thought of the coming generation and especially with the views propounded to the students in their universities, could foresee developments very different from those still hoped for by some of the public figures and the press of the time. There was no longer, at that time, a living world of liberal thought which could have fired the imagination of the young.

Nonetheless, the main body of liberal thought has been safeguarded through that eclipse in the intellectual history of liberalism which lasted throughout the fifteen or twenty years following the First World War; indeed, during that very period the foundations were laid for a new development.--F. Hayek (1951) "The Transmission of the Ideals of Economic Freedom" [HT Marleen Schliesser-Krieger]

Following Hayek, let's divide the history of liberalism into two unequal periods: first, the long nineteenth century, 1776-1918, which covers not just the development of political economy, the rule of law, representative democracy with increasing enfranchisement, the abolition of slavery, and the development of public opinion, but also what Hayek above calls "spiritual" liberalism.+ Then an "eclipse" which "lasted" about "twenty years following the First World War." Then the second phase between 1946-2009 (the 'neo-liberal' period), with its development of liberal welfare states, cultural emancipation, increased globalized legal and political structures, and, eventually, the financialization of the economy.

Right now, we're in a second eclipse signified by the election of the self-consciously anti-liberal Trump, Brexit, and a rising tide of intellectuals that promote nationalist, epistemocratic, and decisionist philosophies that justify the worst instincts of disgruntled electorates and elites as well as by increasingly assertive, emancipatory student movements -- confronted with staggering levels of inequality, racialized injustice, and hypocrisy over a looming environmental catastrophe --, that show contempt for the platitudes of previous generations. Mass surveillance, lack of privacy, mass incarceration, open ended warfare, indebtedness of the population, for profit media without commitment to truth (etc.) are the new normal. (All of which developed under a liberal cover.) What is most remarkable is that there has been no great war or hyper-inflation that has brought down the liberal edifice, but rather the all-to-predictable consequences of a badly botched response to the financial collapse which has undermined the sense of fairness and mutual trust that is the intangible cord of a generous liberal polity.

It is no surprise that illiberal intellectuals are the most exciting today. Their ideas are fresh and honed in long decades of opposition; they are animated by a justified sense that there are low hanging fruits to be tried for all kinds of experiments in living and policy solutions. Their embrace of what was once taboo is evidence of an enterprising spirit that acts like a magnet on donors and popular press. (The well meaning foolish demand that immoral ideas are engaged rather than ignored or vilified as if such engagement does not generate huge opportunity costs.) Where they propose the revival of once-discredited policies they can take advantage of the lack of living memory that would check any unwise adventurism. The underlying logic of most illiberal ideals is zero-sum. And because zero-sum frameworks (as exemplified by social hierarchies, national boundaries, competition over finite resources, rents extraction through patents/trademarks/monopolies, etc.) are self-reinforcing, we should not expect a spontaneous revival of liberal values and ideals. If anything, ambitious, smart, young people of good will find amply funded resources to explore illiberal solutions to the problems of our age; the bold thoughts they are encouraged to think -- [buzzwords:] bio-enhancement, complex systems, artificial intelligence, robotics, manipulating causal structures -- all tempt us to redesign the world. 

In my view, most liberals in the broad sense of the terms have not come to terms yet with the collapse of faith in liberal commitments (equality, rule of law, mutual toleration, compromise, free markets, rising tide of expectations, education as a means toward emancipation, social security, free movement of people and ideas--how quaint these terms now seem) we're living through. Horror stories at border controls (not just denial of entry, but the intrusive  inspection, even confiscation of notebooks and laptop) are still treated as incidents not as the creeping new normal. And so it will take time to see that doubling down on the old ideals (impartiality, civility, decency, forbearance) will not bring out about the revival of a humane polity, but just secure its further entrenchment into a smaller and smaller circle.

Let me come to a close. Hayek's piece was written just as the second liberal phase could be confident (thanks to Pax Americana) that it would get the space to grow. It is self-serving [because it ignores the constructive roles of social democracy, christian democracy, and  [gasp] Keynesianism, etc.] and meant to honor, that is flatter, his own teacher(s). But even so, Hayek knew what it was like to be in intellectual exile, and for all his flaws also understood what it took to lay the foundations for a new liberal epoch. For those of us who cannot yet imagine a third liberal epoch, it may be instructive to reflect on his structural suggestions. In his piece Hayek identifies eight central components that went into the intellectual re-founding of the second epoch of liberalism: (i) the training of the next generation of pupils at institutions of higher education; (ii) the exploration of the "basic philosophical questions" in a foundational way, which  form the bases of (iii) new textbooks; (iv) public dissemination; (v) ideology critique of others; (vi) involvement with practical policy questions; (vii) a willingness to tackle "the great problems of our time."

Each of these (i-vii) he associates with particular intellectuals (some of whom combined work on several of these), none of whom engaged in all seven of these functions (although Hayek himself covered many). As one would expect from Hayek, all these were done in a decentralized and ad hoc fashion based on somewhat contingent distribution of personal convictions, intellectual courage, and curiosity. With the benefit of hindsight, we can say that Hayek and his friends were a club that over-emphasized, for understandable reasons, the (market) economy in a liberal political economy and paid too little attention to the many ways in which the profit motive without the right institutional framework can undermine indirectly the norms and values that sustain the liberal edifice.

I promised an eight component. This is a bit surprising because it involves considerable, centralized (non-governmental) coordination of the fruits of the intellectual division of labor: (viii) "An integrated structure of liberal thought is required and its application to the problems of different countries needs to be worked out. This will only be possible by a meeting of minds within a large group."*

Hayek was right to call attention to these 8 components of what we may call, ideological rebirth. The world has changed since the 1930s and 40s, and so the manner of their re-development will not be the same as then. (We are inclined to think in terms of networks rather than large groups; podcasts rather than periodicals, etc.) But, perhaps, a new world of liberal thought which can fire the imagination of the young is already being developed.

Plato and Adam Smith on Eugenics (with a nod to De Gournay)

But of those who are not, such as are defective in body they will suffer to die and those who are evil-natured and incurable in soul they will themselves put to death.” “This certainly,” he said, “has been shown to be the best thing for the sufferers themselves and for the state.”--Plato, Republic 410a.

That in this state of society, therefore, a parent should be allowed to judge whether he can bring up his child, ought not to surprise us so greatly. In the latter ages of Greece, however, the same thing was permitted from views of remote interest or conveniency, which could by no means excuse it. Uninterrupted custom had by this time so thoroughly authorised the practice, that not only the loose maxims of the world tolerated this barbarous prerogative, but even the doctrine of philosophers, which ought to have been more just and accurate, was led away by the established custom, and upon this, as upon many other occasions, instead of censuring, supported the horrible abuse, by farfetched considerations of public utility... The humane Plato is of the same opinion, and, with all that love of mankind which seems to animate all his writings, no where marks this practice with disapprobation.--Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

Smith's criticism of Plato's (and also Aristotle's) support of infanticide is in the service of two philosophical points: (a) that tradition and custom can pervert not just ordinary public morality, but even the morality of the (otherwise reliable) moral experts; (b) Consequentialist arguments in defense of some practice (norm, institution) can easily be abused. This is, especially, striking because (i) Smith too tends to defend consequentialist (but not utilitarian) arguments of institutions (although he notes that these consequences cannot be used to explain their origin). Moreover, while Smith is no Burkean or Humean Conservative, he, too, is happy to have some "checks the spirit of innovation" that are traced to existing norms. And (ii) it gets the spirit of Socrates's program all wrong (as I explain below).

One can understand Smith general program in political economy as a project that is meant to combat famine, in general, and, in particular, the accompanying practice of infanticide. Smith announces this in the introduction on the opening page to the Wealth of Nations where he singles out the "miserably poor," nations, where "from mere want, they are frequently reduced, or, at least, think themselves reduced, to the necessity sometimes of directly destroying, and sometimes of abandoning their infants, their old people, and those afflicted with lingering diseases, to perish with hunger, or to be devoured by wild beasts."

Smith does not pause to note explicitly that Socrates encourages infanticide in the context of a broader program of eugenics (see also 461c). Smith's reticence is notable because the interest in the topic was not merely academic; in the (1735) Querist Berkeley had offered, with a nod to Plato (Laws) a positive eugenicist racial breeding program in his political economy (recall). Berkeley had proposed it in order to tackle (in the context of extensive institutional reform and education projects) to tackle structural, Irish poverty (including famines). In the Querist Berkeley regularly appeals to variants of public utility (or usefulness).

By contrast, the inner motive of infanticide in Socrates's luxurious city is not really the battle against famine and poverty, but the breeding of better people by killing off defective bodies. Of course, the primary program of human enhancement in the city is cultivation, drilling, education, and propaganda toward virtue, but this is worked on the most capable human bodies; such that virtue is a kind of health (444d). In this program, Socrates is more than happy to go against tradition. So, Smith, who certainly knew his Plato, seems to miss the point.

Now, recall the following three options about human nature:

1. Differentiated human nature; the differences also reflect axiological hierarchy. This seems to be Aristotle's position (say on natural slavery) in Book 1 of The Politics.
2. Differentiated human nature, but without (axiological) hierarchy among the differences. This seems to be Socrates's position in the true city (or 'city of pigs') of Book 2 of the Republic. [Recall.]
3. Analytic Egalitarianism (AE): homogeneous human nature such that we're equal for theoretical (including moral) purposes. Observed differences are due to cultural, educational, institutional factors.

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

- See more at: http://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2015/09/andersonschallengetoanalyticegalitarianism.html#sthash.C4lANu2k.dpuf

In the luxurious city (372e-451b), Socrates comes much closer to option 1 -- this is reflected in the hierarchical metaphor of folk with, silver, bronze natures (415e), but without going so far as Aristotle as claiming that there are natural slaves (recall). The hierarchical differentiation of human nature is, in turn, explained by Socrates, in part, by the ways in which the three (hierarchical) elements of a given soul are distributed within individuals in a population with only a small minority belonging to the top of the hierarchy. Socrates's and Aristotle's positions doe not exhaust the options, of course; De Gournay, for example, also allows for hierarchical (and axiological) differentiation, but insists that the distribution of talents is fairly homogeneous (recall). 

Strikingly, while, Socrates defends the superiority of men to women, he insists that the pattern of differentiation among men and women is broadly similar such that the most superior women have broadly similar natures as men do (456a) and are superior to average men (455de).  (Again, that's obviously not the only option: Van Schurman denies that the pattern is broadly similar, and implies that while women are inferior along many dimensions some women are superior along others.) As is well known, the idea is then to ensure assortative mating, especially at the  top of the hierarchy among men and women (458d);* and to use various means of birth control to prevent the bottom of the hierarchy to mate (459de). In addition, among the system of rewards and honor for the guardians in the luxurious city (recall), the right to copulate is a key reward in their incentive structure (460b). That is, Socrates's eugenics program does not merely try to control the characteristics of the population, but also their number (in light of wars, illness, etc). [I am skipping over the role of chance in generating the best natures, but will return to it when I discuss Socrates's analysis of the failure of such eugenics program.]

But there is one more wrinkle in Socrates's population theory.  Even when breeding works according to plan (and, as we'll discuss soon, there are epistemic limits to this), the very best natures produced by it can also become the most corrupted (491e). In fact, it follows from Socrates's argument that the more successful the breeding program is the more dangers are generated by it.

To return to Smith; if we take his passage in TMS against the humane Plato seriously, it entails  that Plato would not have condoned the infanticide features of his eugenics program if he had reflected on the fact that he was relying on cultural biases. This is, of course, a narrow criticism and leaves quite a bit of it untouched. Of course, Smith has many other arguments against the use of force and deception in the service of any project of breeding of the best within a society with specialized division of labor, but one of the most celebrated two sentences from Wealth of Nations tackle it head-on:

The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature as from habit, custom, and education. When they came into the world, and for the first six or eight years of their existence, they were, perhaps, very much alike, and neither their parents nor playfellows could perceive any remarkable difference.--Wealth of Nations.

The first quoted sentence suggests to many readers that Smith is an analytical egalitarian. I have some doubts about this (see also), the sentence itself allows some natural differences (and there are some other passages in Smith that also recognize morally salient natural differences). But I do agree that the passage is directed, in part, against a Socratic position. For, the second sentence insists that even if there there is natural differentiation withing a given population, we have no epistemic resources to pick out the excellent natures among young-ish children. This means that the program of cultivation and drilling (etc.) cannot target those natures destined for greatness until after a critical period.+ 

 

On Rawls and Esotericism

A more far-reaching example concerns John Rawls…A new study of his thought has shown when his A Theory of Justice (1971) is read in conjunction with his later Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (2000), as well as an unpublished manuscript containing notes for eighteen lectures on Kant and Hegel, it becomes clear that important elements of his theory derive from an elaborate and profound engagement with the thought of Hegel. But while Rawls’s enormous debts to Kant are well-known because amply elaborated in A Theory of Justice, his similar debts to Hegel – was something of a pariah in most analytic philosophy departments of that time – are virtually unknown because completely suppressed. In the six-hundred odd pages of the original edition of A Theory of Justice, there are only two fleeting mentions of his name. It would seem that, fearing the disapproval or at least the noncomprehension of his primary audience, Rawls remained silent about an intellectual relationship that is ultimately crucial for the full understanding of his thought. Needless to say, this limited act of concealment does not rise to the level of full-blown esotericism. The point, however, is that this forceful and high-minded moral philosopher, who was already safely ensconced at  Harvard, was nevertheless moved to take a real step in the direction of esotericism by conditions of “adversity” that fell very far short of genuine censorship or persecution. Once you open your eyes to it, in short, you discover that defensive esotericism is so natural a phenomenon that even in the extremely open and tolerant environments of modern liberal democracies you still come across traces of it with surprising frequency.-- Arthur M. Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing, 135. [HT Norma Thompson]

While I was preparing a post on Transformative Experience and Rawls, Scholar.google alerted me to the citation of my first adult publication on Hume's and Smith's friendship in Arnhart's perceptive, critical review of Melzer's book; Arnhart is also critical of Straussianism more generally. (I have never met Arnhart, and I was very pleased by his use of my work in criticism of Straussianism (recall).) Alerted by Thompson's review, I checked Melzer's book online for the treatment of Rawls, which I copied out above. In his footnote to the quoted passage, Melzer cites a Columbia dissertation by Margaret Meek Lange and a German book by Schaub; I was unable  to locate either (but will keep looking).+

What to make of Melzer's interpretation of Rawls?

First, liberal democracies can also generate circumstances of persecution; Rawls lived through wartime censorship during the Second World War and the McCarthy era. George Reisch's scholarship has revealed that the Cold War inhibited public engagement by analytic philosophers (in fact, he credits Rawls with re-starting analytical philosophy's renewed engagement). A Theory of Justice was written during the polarization of the Vietnam war which generated its own censorship practices and fault-lines even at Harvard (recall this post on Railton). Moreover, as Melzer correctly notes, analytical philosophy was (and is) not hospitable to some intellectual enterprises (although the targets can shift--recall this post on Priest). It is, therefore, not silly to explore to what degree such facts shaped Rawls's presentation.++ Having said that, Melzer, who writes in an age of Snowden and Wikileaks, seems a bit too eager to flatter ("extremely open and tolerant environments of modern liberal democracies") some of his intended readers.

Second, one important legacy of Rawls on analytical philosophy -- one pointed out to me by Charles Larmore -- is his citation practices (obviously Larmore shouldn't be held responsible for my other ways of approaching Rawls). Whereas Oxbridge (recall) had taught analytical philosophers to do away with most footnotes (if you didn't know whose positions were being discussed obliquely you didn't belong in the game anyway), Rawls created a sense of community by including sources and critics alike into the conversation from the generous Preface onward (with self-critical footnotes on omitted references). It does not follow, of course, from this fact that Rawls would cite everybody and everything that matters to his development or that he would not practice some forms of "suppression," but it is odd to overlook this feature of Rawls (I return to this below).

Third, as a general rule one should be cautious in reading Rawls's later Lectures back into A Theory of Justice; it should especially be avoided as a means toward discovering his "debts" to earlier sources. These Lectures have many aims (including one that Rawls does not mention: the formation of a remarkably cohesive and institutionally successful school), but the least of these is to help the student and scholars retrace Rawls's sources for A Theory of Justice. (Here's one bit of evidence: Rawls effaces his knowledge of the economists--Knight is deleted from the story, and economics is treated as an enterprise distinct from philosophy (recall).)

Fourth, on p. 314 note 16, of A Theory of Justice, Rawls tells the attentive reader (while discussing Arrow and Knight) to "see the footnotes" in Arrow and Knight on particular pages. So, Rawls's note is modest evidence that Rawls is not stating explicitly all that he thinks is relevant in the pages of A Theory of Justice. These notes do, in fact, call attention to further historical sources for Arrow and Knight, and, perhaps, too, Rawls, and help explain the way the intellectual landscape is understood. (Some other time I'll say something about Knight's notes.) In particular, in his notes, Arrow mentions Rousseau and Milton in the context of discussing the 'Idealist' tradition (which in Arrow's presentation also includes Kant and T.H. Green.)** (I return to this footnote in the sixth and final point below.)

Fifth, Hegel clearly matters to Rawls of the Lectures, and I have no doubt he wants his student-audience to understand A Theory of Justice alongside Hegel. We know that Rawls owned and read Hegel's Philosophy of Right in German in a 1955 edition.*** So it is not impossible that Hegel was a very important source to Rawls in the sixties (after all, he cites him in English translation in A Theory of Justice). Rawls is confident enough to insist in a footnote that Hegel, in turn, is indebted to Smith's Wealth of Nations. But A Theory of Justice also calls attention to sources heavily influenced by and engaging with Hegel: in addition to Knight, Marx and Bradley deserve mention. Moreover, we know that Rawls had carefully read Bosanquet, Kelsen, and Schumpeter, and he owned the great Christian Liberal Idealist, Green (with whom Rawls has considerable affinity).

Finally, already in the original preface to A Theory of Justice, Rawls had made it clear that he understood that not all readers could grapple with his "long book" in the same way. He provides several road-maps (which allow one to taste the "essentials of the theory" and the "basic parts of the book" (xviii-xix). Rawls distinguishes among his readers in virtue of them having different conceptions of freedom to follow their "preferences and to look at the problems which most concern" them (xix). This hint shows that Rawls thought himself capable of writing for a heterogeneous audience. In fact, and surprisingly enough, the hint entails that Rawls thought his most careful or patient reader(s) were those most willing and capable to suspend acting on their preferences (self-command). We learn from the part of the book that Rawls tells his reader is safe to skip that "the morality of self-command... becomes truly supererogatory when the individual displays its characteristic virtues of courage, magnanimity, and self-control in actions presupposing great discipline and training" in the service of "superior ends in a manner consistent with justice." (419)

 

 

Fear and Admiration in Analytical Philosophy: Williamson on Recent History (I)

Some others, more willing to believe that there has been progress in philosophy since 1970, still find value in engaging with Wittgenstein’s work. Nevertheless, his influenced has declined drastically over the past forty years. No doubt that  could be roughly measured by his proportion of citations in journals. But what  strikes me most forcefully is that the fear factor has gone. As a test of authority, of intellectual or other kinds, admiration tells less than fear. In the 1970s,  even non-Wittgensteinian philosophers were often afraid to speak out against Wittgenstein. They are so no longer. Another philosopher who has ceased to elicit the fear factor is Quine. Originally, he was frightening because few could match his skill with the weapons of formal logic in philosophical debate. By the 1970s that was no longer so, but philosophers were still very nervous of relying on ordinary semantic notions such as synonymy, because they were afraid of being caught out by Quine’s argument for the indeterminacy of translation. That fear too gradually evaporated in the 1970s, as Quine’s behaviourist assumptions fell into disrepute. Timothy Williamson (2014) “How Did We Get Here From There? The Transformation of Analytical Philosophy.” (28) [HT Dailynous]

During the next week or so, I’ll do a series of critical blog posts on Timothy Williamson’s entertaining, “How Did We Get Here From There?” This recent paper is, in part, an extremely illuminating (and modestly self-serving) history of decisive controversies -- presented elegantly and concisely as a series of miniature set-pieces -- in important areas of recent analytical philosophy (M&E, Mind, Language, and a bit of Logic)[1] as practiced primarily in the two Cambridges, Oxford, and Princeton.[2] It is especially impressive because Williamson is very sensitive not just to doctrinal disputes, but also to the methodological shifts and challenges along the way. The piece is, in part, a privileged memoir of the intellectual atmosphere of Oxford philosophy during the last four decades. It is, also, a polemical attempt at boundary policing. 

But before I aim my polemic at Williamson’s polemic(s) and boundaries, I warmly welcome Williamson’s newfound receptivity toward the history of philosophy (he sprinkles his piece with clever references to Leibniz, Berkeley, Kant, and even Bradley, etc.), including recent history of philosophy; it is lovely to note that he looks “forward to reading” philosophical “histories” of recent history (34). And I take it that he is signaling that the discipline should be receptive to training people who are competent enough to write such a history. In future posts, I will be critical of the fairly evident constraints he wishes to put on such history, but it cannot hurt to stress our agreement.[3] Williamson recognizes the “danger” when the history of philosophy is left to “the losers” (27). In future posts, I’ll reflect a bit more pointedly on Williamson’s choice of words, but, as an expert philosophical historian, I agree with him, from my self-serving, considered judgment, that in a zero-sum intellectual environment, it is best to keep control over the past. 

Today I call attention to a fascinating paragraph on the legacy of Wittgenstein and Quine quoted above. Williamson rightly observes that two reactive attitudes, admiration and fear, can play a non-trivial role in authority, “intellectual or other kinds” (22). Even if one does not associate these two attitudes with superstition (as, say, Hume would do) or reverence to authoritarian authority, it is a striking fact that consent or agreement are absent here. (Maudlin and I have noted Williamson's concern with authority before.) One does not freely give fear; while admiration can be consequent to one’s judgment it is more commonly its cause. That is to say, analytical philosophy, as experienced by Williamson, is less akin to an egalitarian republic of letters than a ruthless game of thrones in which people ascend and decline in “standing” (27), named professorships (I counted eight explicitly named Chairs), admiration (see also 21), and “authority” (see also 29). It’s a world of rapidly eclipsed dynasties with “rising stars” (21) and star “pupils” (17), and where the common currency is “prestige” (30; 34). In this world rightly aimed cruelty is sometimes welcomed as a “breath of fresh of air,” (describing Kripke’s critique of Davidson (21)).[4]

Williamson denies that his history lends itself to “easy morals.” (17) That’s not quite right. It would be too easy, although not misleading, to say that morals or even intellectual friendship and collaboration are absent in his perception of recent analytical philosophy.[5] He describes a ruthless world of intellectual combat in which positions and approaches can be “enforced” by superior technical skill (e.g., 9). To be clear: it’s not only a world of intellectual might makes right; while facility in technical and formal tools can give one momentary advantages, ultimately – it seems – the party of truth also avails itself of such tools. (Williamson recognizes and embraces the role of fashion (33); about this more soon.) While Williamson has apparently given up his charming project of formalizing Leibniz’s Principle of Sufficient Reason (17), he does maintain a modest providential faith that the “cunning of reason” will “extract the residue it needs from each changing fashion.” (33)

In Williamson's intellectual universe there are no official philosophical Kuhn-Losses that can accompany "progress." But he tacitly recognizes that it may take a while for philosophy to see the light: Bradley’s observation that “critiques of metaphysics themselves depend on contentious metaphysical assumptions” (11) is now common sense; it was not always so within analytical philosophy.

I close with a final observation. Williamson reveals in passing that he once enjoyed shocking people by claiming that he “found Popper more interesting than Davidson.” (23) In fact, Williamson’s embrace of the intellectual virtue of “openness” (22) is evidence of Popper’s more enduring influence on him. Even so, Popper was no friend abduction -- a key commitment not just of Quine and Lewis, but also of Williamson's scientific philosophy (24). I note the embrace of abduction, not because I am some outdated Popperian, but because Popper was keenly aware of the dangers of appeals to illegitimate authority within science and philosophy.  One may note in Popper's spirit that in fields with an abductive ethos there is a bias toward confirmation rather than Popperian stress-testing of one's theories.

In institutions in which fear and admiration are key sources of authority, it is to be expected that there are considerable patterns of exclusion: if one lacks certain tools or has the wrong personality, or connections, one and one's ideas will not have a seat at the table. Nobody said that professional philosophy would be fair, of course, but it is notable that Williamson offers no hint that he can help us point the way toward different, wiser not to mention less zero-sum norms.

Mind the Gap! (On the alarming neglect of ordinary language philosophy)

While it has been fashionable for several decades to ignore Sartre's work... .--Alan Schrift in this review.

This 'conceptual cartographical' approach (a description I prefer to 'ordinary language') has all but disappeared in Europe. More alarming, as Laugier points out, it was hardly ever visible in America.--Julia Tanney in this review.

These two NDPR reviews both lament gaps. Schrift's lament criticizes the book under review and a more general philosophical attitude. I am inclined to think that if Sartre's work is really being ignored for several decades now, we should stop calling it a 'fashion' and more a 'firm trend.' That, of course, is a matter of taste on one's preferred time-scale--cf. the famous joke by Zhou Enlai about the French Revolution, which, it turns out, was not a joke but a misunderstanding. Such trends can start as fashionable jokes, of course. The naturalist in me wondered, however, has Sartre really become passé? Judging by google Ngrams, Schrift's lament is premature: Sartre mentions in scholarship are in extremely genteel decline. What has happened, is that he has been overtaken by other luminaries, including parvenus like Derrida and Foucault (see this Ngram) A decline in relative status can feel like a reversal in fashion.

Tanney's review is in agreement with the book reviewed. It is possible that 'ordinary language' was not very popular Stateside; having said that I am pretty sure that Austin's Sense and Sensibilia was taught in my undergraduate epistemology class taught by Jody Azzouni (early 1990s) at the top-ranked MA program, and when I arrived at The University of Chicago (mid 1990s) one could take multiple graduate courses taught by folk sympathetic to Wittgenstein or Austin's American followers (e.g., Cavell). Of course, as regular readers know, I later realized that my education also facilitated a certain ignorance in some of the main trends in recent professional philosophy.  But as it turns out, bookish interest in Wittgenstein is growing (undoubtedly facilitated by the re-presentation by Kripke and the uptake of Wittgenstein in other Humanities disciplines). This even turns out to be true of J.L. Austin (at very low levels) and, shockingly, ordinary language philosophy. Obviously NGrams are coarse instruments and, for all I know, they are lagging indicators tracking -- to use Schrift's technical term -- past fashion.

Leaving aside data, let me know get to to the reason for writing this post which is my attempt to work out why it is thought 'alarming' that a 'conceptual cartographical' approach did not make the American headlines (and, thereby, become 'visible')? This is not quite clear from the review. That there are "neglected insights" lodged in a tradition is not uncommon; time and attention are scarce (even in the land of opportunity), after all. Only if one is a true believer in the efficient markets in ideas will all insights worth having been assimilated. (I hasten to add that at that moment one may as well abolish the history of philosophy as a professional philosophical enterprise!) But perhaps it is a professional deformation (I have been working in the Weberian state for a while now), I tend to see in neglected insights opportunities (to write a paper, a blog post, to propose a grant project, etc.). Of course, it would be alarming if in virtue of a neglected insight humanity were suffering (needlessly). It may even thought -- switching from the world-historical to the parochial -- to be alarming if philosophical culture were debased in virtue of the systematic neglect of certain philosophical options. There is a hint of this latter thought in the sense that ordinary language philosophy somehow has missed out on its "rightful place" in the "current debate." That is, it ought to be fashionable, but it is not.

In reading and re-reading the review I came to discern what may be the cause of "alarm." This, it turns out, is not the deflationary anti-Platonizing account of meaning (one I happen to share) that is the focus of the start of the review, but a particular conception of language (discussed at the end of  the review). I quote Tanney's review:

[Language] derives, as Austin maintains, from 'the inherited experience and acumen of many generations of men. (Austin, Philosophical Papers; cited in Laugier, 66).'

 

Language should be construed, not as a body of statements or words, but as the [inherited--ES] place of agreement on what we should say when. [Emphasis in original--ES]

This conception of language has a history (in the prudent Scottish Enlightenment) with a certain political resonance.  The conception of language is opposed to seeing language as an immediate gift from the divine as much as it is opposed to the constructivist idea that language can be made (say, by stipulation). It is one of the core ideas behind the political tradition that embraces good judgment ("acumen") of cautious wisdom against mystical insight or revolutionary fervor as much as the technocratic, scientistic expert that merely measures. It's the common law tradition against the Napoleonic code (not to mention people's tribunals). In other words, it's the philosophy of language that is proper to (slow) spontaneous order or natural law, embraced with a hungry ardor by Viennese exiles (not just Wittgenstein, but also Hayek and, I think, Popper).* (Despite Austin's manly talk of 'men' it presumably makes space for women's experience, too.)

Here, language is understood as a set of agreed norms that we submit to because it is inherited.  It turns out, then, that so understood ordinary language philosophy shares with much of twentieth century philosophy an obsession with consensus. But rather than trusting the experts, the consensus is inherited in a way that is taken to be immune from political revolt not the least because it is normative and thus immune to empirical challenge. A dictator or a revolutionary tribunal can try to control language, but it would be self-defeating to aim at abolishing it! (Who would praise the new order if we were condemned to silence?)

Let's stipulate, for the sake of argument, that this model of language is true. Is it alarming that it is (relatively) neglected? Do Americans, especially, or their philosophers, need to recover this understanding of language, which, we are told helps us see that language is 'part of experience' and that 'the speaking of a language is part of an activity or a form of life'?

The alarmist language is not in accord with the doctrine proposed. Even if the doctrine were entirely forgotten, if it is true then it is the case that language keeps on being the repository of experience and acumen of many generations, it keeps on providing the norms that constitute activities even forms of life. Thus understood, language will take care of itself, unattended by any philosophy, providing the normative ground of (a part of) lived experience. That is to say, the talk of 'alarm' betrays an anxiety not in accord with the doctrine espoused, but rather, I conjecture, with a despair that a certain form of belonging, a permanent agreement (and the quiet stewardship required of it), is not found among the cacophony exhibited today. 

What words, images, and principles are you willing to die for?

What words, images, and principles are you willing to die for?

That's the question (hereafter 'The Question') after last week's assassination of Charlie Hebdo's editorial staff and cartoonists posed to those of us -- e.g., journalists, academics, cartoonists, publicists, politicians, artists, etc. -- that live by peddling words and images to various audiences. It's not a new question; earlier in the week I called attention to the fate of Socrates, and it has been revived even in the relatively law-abiding, gun-poor environments of Northwestern Europe with the assasinations of politicians (e.g., Olof Palme; Pim Fortuyn), aspiring politicians (Utøya island massacre), and political commentators (Theo Van Gogh).* Such targets -- the victims of let's call them, 'politicized crimes' -- have in common with more ordinary terror attacks that they are 'soft,' that is, that they are relatively unprotected and that the moment of attack is relatively unexpected. But unlike ordinary victims of terror, the victims of politicized crimes draw attention to themselves by their active construction of the public sphere.+ The Question has become ever more acute with the rise of suicide bombers and other politicized killers that are very evidently willing to die for their principles.

The whole idea of legally protected freedom of expression is designed to diffuse The Question. If only the very brave or foolish participate in the public sphere then it is likely that all kinds of insights and positions never get articulated with the care and expertise required to guide the life of and constitute the polity. But this open public sphere requires not just a government to live by its own rules, but also capability and willingness to protect its own public sphere by having a monopoly on violence (and arms). While undoubtedly more can be done to secure safe participation in a public sphere, there is in governments a tendency for policing and security-measures overreach, which, paradoxically undermines an open public sphere and, indirectly, Liberal society.

An exclusive focus on security does not address the reasons why people may wish to kill (and die) for their beliefs. Political terrorists are not random natural facts; they are (if we leave aside the children among them) agents that are animated by a whole host of commitments, feelings, aspirations, and ideologies. That is to say, while undoubtedly there are many security-driven ways of preventing political attacks, these do nothing to undermine and may, perhaps, reinforce the experienced intentional world(s)** of would-be-politicized-killers.

This last point is especially important because many of the politicized killers are not strange, undercover invaders from foreign places. Rather they are home-grown; they have turned militant despite (perhaps because of) being quite familiar with the norms, aspirations, and even rewards of an arms-free public sphere. I leave it to the social scientists to help explain various social sources of militancy among a subset of those born in the European West. But part of the issue is also ideology. The nub of the matter is that evidently our Western normative and social commitments are  displaced at the level of individual psychology among part(s) of the population.

It's at this point of the analysis that nearly all commentators focus on the varieties of militant Islam, which quite evidently generates motivational power to some people to kill and die for its principles. As I noted a few days ago, Justin Smith, an eminent philosophical scholar who lives and works in Paris, has been among the most intelligent and interesting philosophical commentators on the assassination of the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo. He puts his point as follows:

it's a great shame that political Islamism today perceives an equivalence between the symbolic and the real that make an act of vengeance of this scale seem like a fair trade. I recall that one horrible, amateur film ridiculing Mohammed a few years ago; they interviewed some kid in Egypt whose reaction was: 'Well, how would you feel if we made a movie making fun of, say, Abraham Lincoln?' He sincerely didn't understand that no one would care.

Today when the assassins were fleeing toward their getaway car, they shouted: On a vengé le prophète Mohammed. On a tué Charlie Hebdo.++ One cannot help but think: there is a double confusion here. Not just one but two fictional characters have been mistaken for real people. And twelve real people have been killed as a result.--Justin Smith.

Now unlike most commentators, in his blog posts Smith is clear that Charlie Hebdo offered not just a willingness to die (Stéphane Charbonnier has been quite explicit about this), but as Smith explains (here, here, here), an alternative, life-affirming even joyous and raunchy set of commitments that challenged many forms of powers and ideology (including Islamic ones) at the level of affect as much as reason.

Even so, the passage quoted from Smith contains some missteps. Smith's "political Islam" fails to do justice to the Islamic political movements (inside and outside of Europe) that do not promote or condone (even tacitly) the killing of  folk in the European public sphere. Given that there are political movements in Europe that are extremely intolerant/hostile toward all of Islam (and Smith is clearly no fan of these movements), Smith's wording is unfortunate.

More important, there is, in fact, no opposition between the "symbolic and the real." (There is an opposition between the real and the illusory.) In particular, when we are dealing with social reality, the symbolic and the real can coincide, but need not. This connects to another, more serious misstep in Smith's analysis. Muḥammad is not a fictional character. He was a historical figure who (among other social scripts (recall)) played political and religious role(s) in his own life and thereafter. The symbolic is constituted (albeit non-exhaustively) by such roles. (It is not impossible that a fictional Muhammad could also play such symbolic roles, but that's not my concern.) The symbolic matters here because it's what animates or gives meaning to the experienced intentional world of individuals, including the would-be-killers and those that sympathize with them.

So Smith is absolutely right that the "Egyptian kid" in his example fails to understand the symbolic organization and commitments of contemporary Americans. Having said that, plenty of Americans get very upset about flag-burning; so Smith's Egyptian kid could have found a better example for his case.  The point here is not that every society has symbols it is touchy about (although it is not irrelevant); rather it misses the point to say about such a symbol, 'oh well, it's just fictional.'

Furthermore, Smith is right to note (and we can nod to Nietzsche's analysis of Lex Talionis) that in revenge-killing there is an element of trade that restores a balance within a community. Despite the fact that the killers of Charlie Hebdo's editorial staff and cartoonists do not conform to and violently transgress the laws of the land, their words, if accurately quoted, suggests that they, too, recognize, perhaps implicitly, that they belong to a community in which their victims play a symbolic (even sacrificial) role.

Much to my surprise Smith insists that contemporary Jihadists "are entirely unable to interpret the Charlie Hebdo cartoons." (His ire is also directed at professors at American universities, but I will ignore them here.) This strikes me as confused  about the nature of the symbolic. Images play multiple roles and functions in different symbolic systems/organisations sometimes simultaneously--some philosophers, of course, cannot abide multiplicity of meaning, but if they allow such a possibility cartoons would be on the very short-list. There is no true interpretation of the symbolic. (To avoid confusion: there are symbolic systems, of course, that are governed by truth.) While we can allow that the Jihadists failed to understand all the intended complexities of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, they discerned in some of these images satire (and worse) of their commitments.+++

Finally, it's possible, of course, that one can die because of a mistaken interpretation of one's words, images, and principles. That's the stuff (with a nod to Oedipus) of tragedy. If one participates in the public sphere with highly affective images and words that mistake is probably not unexpected. It is also possible -- I think this happened to Stéphane Charbonnier -- that one dies both for a principle one embraces and for a hostile interpretation of one's work that is offered from a vantage point one does not share.

(here, here, here), including satire.) a genuine alternative, life-affirming joyous even raunchy set of of commitments one that was as challenging to Islam as it was to many other ideologies and political powers.