Digressions&Impressions

On JPP, Wiley, Prestige Production, and Game Theoretic Modeling

[I will phase out D&I at typepad. This post was first published at:  digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]

As Leiterreports (and here; here) and Dailynous reported, Wiley (a commercial publisher), got rid of Robert Goodin (a prominent political philosopher) as editor of the Journal of Political Philosophy (JPP), which is (one of) the leading journals in political philosophy in good part thanks to Goodin's long stewardship.  It is no surprise that most of Goodin's fellow editors and board resigned in protest. There has been a lovely closing of ranks.

Because I am going to be rather (sternly) critical of the ranks, I want to stress that Wiley's explanation was ridiculously and scandalously vague. More important, the manner in which they fired Goodin also suggests unwarranted editorial interference that actually risks endangering academic freedom. So, resignation was the right thing to do.

But as the resigning editorial board members' comments started to appear in public, it seems that folk in the know believe that the cause of Wiley's decision is that it wanted to increase the number of published papers rather rapidly up to a tenfold more (see here; here). Immediately one started to read on social media that pursuit of profit is undermining quality. (This show up in the threads I have already linked to above, but also in discussions elsewhere.)

However, a major reason why Wiley is nudging many presses to expand journal space is that universities, libraries, and grant agencies have contracted with them to do so in the context of expanding open access. From the perspective of grant agencies and universities this makes a lot of sense: they are funding research that, if of sufficient quality, needs an outlet. (For those who work in a grant system the absence of slots often becomes visible only after acceptance when one discovers that a journal has no more slots available in a given year!) I am not a fan of these contracts because they basically show what happens when well-connected corporations take advantage of well-intentioned policy shifts: they capture the financial rents. Yet, it doesn't follow that open access or expanding journal space (and so increasing acceptance rates) is a mistake. And in what follows I focus on the latter.

For, as is well known, academic philosophy has incredibly low acceptance rates in its flagship journals (often under 5% acceptance rates).* I couldn't find a recent number for JPP, but it seems to be around 5% and I wouldn't be surprised if it were lower. A quick count suggests, JPP publishes 24 articles a year (give or take). Another leading journal, P&PA "has historically published 12-16 articles per year." And it does not get much better at a journal like CRISPP (about 20). [I make the relationship between slots and acceptance rates more precise below.] The situation is not much better in most areas of professional philosophy (but see below).

I have noted in the past that these acceptance rates only make sense, epistemically, if philosophical activity had enormous inductive risk to society. Nobody believes that as Tim Crane argued in an important essay in TLS (back in 2018; see here for ungated version). Tim helpfully suggests that the real explanation is that "publication in one of these journals may no longer be that sole decisive achievement that will get you that job or grant." That's clearly true, but not wholly right not just because I would add promotion to his list. As Anna Stilz, whose comments were highlighted by Justin Weinberg, notes, publication in these journals is a "signalling device that validates the importance of someone’s work when they go up for tenure and promotion."

However, as should be well known, compared to other disciplines, including the sciences, professional philosophy's acceptance rates is especially low (recall Justin Weinber's discussion). And other disciplines also hire and promote people. Thus, I suggest the real function of such very low acceptance rates is the felt need for prestige production in professional philosophy among the circle entrusted to run leading journals.+ Before I get to the attempt to conflate such 'prestige' or 'importance' with 'quality' that insiders often make, it is worth noting that the needs of such signaling are not evidently co-extensive with the pursuit of truth (leaving wisdom aside) or progress in the field. In fact, they clearly can come apart.

For, there are some (quite predictable and also widely discussed) side-effects of the very low acceptance rates: very fine papers need to be shopped around to many journals before they find a home. This has overburdened the supply of referees, and it has put tremendous pressure on editorial process at many journals. We are a discipline that is familiar with moratoria on submission and backlogs from acceptance to publication at quite a few journals. There is also often a huge delay between submission and verdict. And consequently overall a huge delay between research and actual publication for too many papers. Thus, as organized, prestige generation slows down whatever rate of progress one might hope for in the field. (Yes, I am a skeptic about philosophical progress, so I use 'progress'  here relative to a research frontier or relative to how competent judges in a field would describe it.)** 

The problem with this state of affair is not merely epistemic. It also generates huge additional anxiety for people who are or expect to be on the job market and who are up for promotion. (This is also true in other fields, of course.) With acceptance rates so low, they basically face a (weighted) lottery whether their papers are accepted in a time frame needed. This state of affairs probably reinforces all kinds of structural injustice, again not only relative to other disciplines. The fact that many leading journals have, sometimes for decades on end, been entrusted to a 'safe pair of hands' (a distinguished, often male, philosopher) probably increases the bottlenecks and the risks of such structural injustice, but -- like the fact that we see so little experimentation with journal form (and kinds of review) [something I strongly advocate] -- I leave that aside here.

Now, I am not claiming editors are gaming acceptance rates directly. But they do clearly view number of issue/volume slots or pages as a hard constraint (perhaps regulated by an implicit willingness to let publication not be delayed for more than a year or two after official acceptance). But notice that restricting supply of slots is not the same as selecting on quality. If one really selected on quality alone one would allow the supply of slots/pages to be flexible. So, in what follows (and above) I use 'low acceptance rates' as a proxy for limiting the number of publication slots, or selectivity.

Above I noted that prestige generation trade-offs with progress at the low rates of acceptance in professional philosophy. We don't need to model that. (It gets more complicated as acceptance rates rise significantly because there may well be an inflection point where too much ease of publication undermines progress.) But we need some modeling to help understand that prestige generation or selectivity and quality can come apart significantly.

Luckily for me (and the quality of discussion) I was sent a pre-print of a paper, "Academic journals, incentives, and the quality of peer review: a model," by K. J. S. Zollman, J. Garcıa, and T. Handfield conditionally accepted at Philosophy of Science that has a game-theoretic model exploring possible trade offs between aiming for quality and (you guessed it) for low acceptance rates, in contexts where selectivity is taken to be a measure or proxy for quality. The paper should be publicly available fairly soon. But my discussion won’t turn on technical details and its possible lack of robustness. (I call incentive-alert philosophy of science, ‘public choice philosophy of science.’) In their model quality is an effect of peer review which is costly. And somewhat worrisome they conclude that "journals incentivized by selectivity have strong incentives to maintain worse peer review than those incentivized by their quality." I claim this nicely describes well what happens in professional philosophy. 

Now, they note that aiming for low acceptance or selectivity creates an incentive among editors to discourage "self-selection because a paper which is not submitted cannot be rejected. This results in a strange process whereby journals make peer review worse in an attempt to induce bad papers to submit, but maintain sufficiently good peer review to ensure that a large proportion of those bad papers will probably be rejected." And somebody may well object that referee quality at our leading journals is -- despite the boorish incivility and rudeness -- actually qualitatively great. Let's assume there is a lot of correct testimony to this effect.

One can explain such testimony in light of Zollman/Garcia/Handfield model, if we pay attention to the role of desk rejects (something they ignore.) Let's return to JPP; it is especially famous for two interrelated features: it offered quick (even helpful) desk-rejects (often/always by Goodin) to the vast-majority of initial submissions and then stellar review process on the papers sent out to reviewers which help improve the final publications. (I know important scholars who almost only review for JPP.) And this creates (now quoting Zollman et al) "the appearance of high standards."

One may think that JPP has, thus, hit on a fine equilibrium between balancing peer review costs and quality; and that it actually is a good way to aim for selectivity and quality at once. And people do like to point to the quality of the papers appearing in JPP. (In 2021 its impact factor was according the journal's website 1.881--quite respectable for philosophy standards, but not especially noteworthy. Something fans of selectivity tend to ignore.) Fair enough.

But, of course, desk-reject even by an impartial and distinguished and unrushed editor is a very coarse-grained (and very cheap) peer review system. And the Zollman et al. model explains that this does reduce quality. Obviously, this presupposes that among the desk-rejects are sufficiently many papers that with (costly) peer review would have been as good as the papers that JPP did publish. That's obviously true, but that's because among the papers published in very selective peers of JPP and even slightly less selective journals there is very little difference in overall quality. But the nice thing about working with a game-theoretic model like Zollman et al.'s is you don't have to trust my judgments, it's a predictable effect of the incentives -- artificially limiting supply! -- shaping decisions. Of course, the model may not be robust so here I have used it solely to help think through the issues. But notice that when multiple journals aim to be selective it becomes much costlier to provide adequate peer review because referees get overworked (and perhaps bored by seeing the same papers multiple times).

Now, I am not against prestige in professional philosophy or higher education (although one does wonder if excessive selectivity in admissions to top colleges actually is conducive to society's needs). But from the perspective of the epistemic (and social) needs of the discipline and profession, it is a mistake to have excessive selectivity in philosophy journal publication help produce or coincide with that prestige. It slows down research and, as the model suggests, plausibly hurts quality. (It probably does so by reducing intellectual diversity and increasing risk aversion.) 

So, from my perspective, while the publishers should respect editorial independence and not use heavy-handed practices, nudging our leading journals to accept more papers is the right thing to do even if the motive -- profit -- or honoring flawed open access contracts need not be so. We need such a regime change.

Of course, the increase should be gradual and not tenfold at once. The critics of Wiley have a point! As should be clear most arguments that conflate incredible selectivity and quality in defense of the status quo seem bogus and, I say this politely (these are my friends, after all), seem generally self-serving not the discipline's interest.

Tom Hurka suggested that such selectivity allows one to "keep abreast of important new developments and contributions in the field without having to wade through dozens or hundreds of published pieces." This was very true before the age of scholar.google and philpapers. But less so now. I do think we need more outlets like (as Ingrid Robeyns suggested in context) Philosophy Compass that (especially with the disappearance of review chapters in dissertations) give opinionated surveys of recent developments, but that's orthogonal to the present discussion.

Finally, I don't want to claim that increasing, even doubling slots or reducing/halving selectivity (to say 10-20% acceptance rates) solves the profession's social problems. Undoubtedly, if journal publication in particular venues is seen as key, then we cannot prevent an arms race among job candidates and tenure seekers to publish in such journals. And maybe the gains to the referee process will be ephemeral or temporary--only time and experience will tell. But my argument for the epistemic gains from increasing slots remain.

Academic disciplines do need high quality signals for quality in publication for institutional and epistemic reasons; excessive selectivity is a bad mechanism to produce such a signal and it perniciously confers prestige that reinforces all the bad effects of the very steep disciplinary prestige hierarchies. I hope the scholars who nobly and correctly resigned in protest also work to change this bad status quo.

• This first appeared at: <On JPP, Wiley, Prestige Production, and Modeling Quality: (substack.com)> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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*I am going to ignore the pervasive editorial unaccountability and deviations of best scholarly practices that also show in these journals.

**Of course, the salience of significant work seeps out to well connected insiders, but that just strengthens my argument.

+Some field specific journals within philosophy that actually presuppose considerable technical expertise (in the sciences or ancient languages) have much higher acceptance rates without corresponding loss of prestige. I think this is due to the fact that the prestige is already sufficiently accorded to the expertise (and that editors in these fields can focus more on keeping the discussion going aright).

 

On the latest controversy in the philosophical blogosphere.

[Over time I plan to phase out this blog at typepad. This post was first published at  digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]

At Leiterreports (here; here; here) and DailyNous another 'philosophy controversy' is playing out. I am sure most of my readers know that it was triggered by an autobiographical essay in Quillette accusing OUP, widely regarded as the leading press in English language professional philosophy [humble-brag: that's where I publish my stuff], of irregular editorial practices with a monograph and handbook chapter on one of the central topics in the contemporary culture wars. (The author has already found new homes for both works.) As has become clear, the handling editor was Peter M., who is widely regarded as the most prestigious philosophy editor within the field. (No, I work with the other Peter, O.) The author of the autobiographical essay is a senior professor at MIT, Alex Byrne.

Nearly all the people crying 'foul' now are people that happily participate in a system that is opaque, riddled with systematic conflicts of interests, editorial unaccountability, and that usually apparently does not cause them any friction. For, when I read Byrne's essay in Quillette, I was stunned by his surprise that he received 'bizarre' referee reports that do not substantiate their claims and that are uncivil. And that, after a life-time in the profession, he sincerely claims "a reviewer is expected to give reasons for her verdict." The tone of referees has been a widely discussed problem in professional philosophy (including in a thoughtful piece unrelated to culture wars in TLS by Tim Crane not so long ago.)

I was bemused to read in Byrne (and some commentators in the blogosphere) that "publication is practically guaranteed" for a handbook article. Twice in the last decade a handbook chapter drafted by me was rejected: once with the suggestion that one of the co-editors could rewrite it with me (I pulled that article and it became chapter 1 of my monograph), and once because my work was not deemed up to par and the editors decided there was too little time for me to improve it. While that stung, for all I know the editors were right about that latter call because another version of that paper was rejected in another special issue. (I can't hate the essay because it was my successful job-talk paper.) I certainly agree with Byrne that receiving editorial word via Twitter is seriously odd; it's probably still marginally better than the time the Monist canceled a special issue with one of my accepted papers without informing me! (We eventually published the paper in Metaphilosophy, where it was published after a year and half (including a mysterious delay because of an editorial mix-up.)) Yes, I did publish a subsequent paper with the Monist. None of my experiences are newsworthy because they are so common and they do not involve the culture wars (although some of my anonymous referees single out my blogging for special ire).

More than a decade ago, I was galvanized into blogging because of a massive plagiarism scandal involving a senior scholar that I sometimes collaborated with that exposed lackadaisical refereeing and publishing practices in an adjoining field. Recently that very same field was rocked by a second major plagiarism scandal (involving a more junior scholar), and dropped the ball in its response in lots of ways. In fact, shortly after NewAPPS was founded several controversies involving Synthese unfolded (we had a 'Synthese Affair' tab): one triggered by a special issue on intelligent design involving editorial improprieties that even made it to the New York Times and one involving inappropriate pictures on a course website by one of the very editors involved in that scandal. A few years later another special issue by Synthese exploded into the news when its guest editor suggested that logical pluralism and homosexuality are linked. This produced a moratorium on special issues at Synthese.

As an aside [feel free to skip to the next paragraph], after the moratorium ended, I co-edited a special issue for Synthese. My very own contribution to that special issue did not make it through the revamped referee process.  So, I can attest that Synthese has learned its lesson. (It's chapter 13 of my 2017 OUP monograph now.)

I don't mean to leave you with the feeling that professional philosophy has a Synthese problem, or that this journal was/is especially badly managed, or that controversy always only involves then-culture-war issues.  Some of the purportedly best journals in professional philosophy, Nous and PPR went through a phase when they had to put moratoria on submissions for extended periods, in part because they had been edited by the same highly respected editor, who also edited Philosophical Issues. In that very same period, another highly respected long-time editor of Philosophical Studies resigned after 25 years because he was unhappy about how a fellow editor handled a paper critical of a paper (by Byrne) thar he had published in the same journal. (Okay that also involved culture war issues.) After the resignation, stories surfaced that this very editor did not always practice double-anonymous reviewing when it suited him. 

Even when proper refereeing procedures are followed a journal can screw up post publication. By the time the 'transracialism controversy' (which also made the New York Times) had played out, the editorial team, many of the associate editors, and many of the governing board had resigned or been nudged out from the feminist journal Hypatia. (I wrote lots of earnest, widely read blog posts about this case none of them made it into the wikipedia entry.)

The previous paragraphs hint at the proverbial tip of the ice-berg. For much of the post WWII period, analytic philosophy has been characterized by a concerted effort at journal capture and then these journals were subsequently run in a clubby fashion that disproportionally served the interests of people in the network of these journals, which have absurdly low acceptance rates, in a discipline that is characterized by incredibly steep economic and prestige hierarchies. It is, in fact, not uncommon to receive incredibly uncivil referee reports, which, if they do materialize, often are slow in coming. At many journals editors de facto farm out the decision by effectively giving a single, sometimes idiotic referee veto power.

It's not just journals. When I was still very junior a highly respected editor at one of the other leading philosophy presses forced a paper out of the volume I co-edited because one of his/her/their referees was incensed over a footnote in one of the papers (never published) that re-litigated a conference dispute (between the referee and the chapter’s author) decades earlier. The referee revealed himself to me and wisely recused himself, but the editor felt loyalty to the referee and insisted that the chapter be withdrawn. (The author refused to submit a different paper.) I thought it very odd that the editor (with no expertise in the field) took sides in a professional dispute. It didn't stop me from working with this editor again, of course. And when I look into my soul, I recall times that as an editor I was involved in decisions that may have seemed badly motivated to some of the rejected authors.

If we step back from the details of any controversy, such controversy is only to be expected: academic philosophers are humans not sages, who have few reliable measures to navigate a very scarce job environment and informational overload while norms of quality and professional conduct are constantly contestable (and, more slowly, shifting). While there are a lot of truth-guided and earnest people in the profession, whenever we get a glimpse under the hood of how confidential consequential decisions (e.g., publication, admission, appointments) are really made irregularities seem to proliferate. (That is compatible with the vast majority of decisions being defensible on intrinsic and/or procedural grounds.)

Moreover, in each controversy, a very senior figure will gravely and shamelessly intone that other scholars are afraid to speak up because they fear for their careers. It somehow never registers that the structural, cultural, intellectual, and economic conditions that generate such -- let's stipulate -- real fear (sometimes even co-produced by said senior figure) also existed in some shape or another in the lost golden age they cherish, but that then they were on the right side of history in which the people in their network could count on obliging editors, referees, and appointment committees (just ask continental philosophers, or anyone working in other margins of the field).

In our collective behavior we reveal that professional philosophy is, in part, a (modest-in-the-long-term-scheme-of-things) spoils system because during each controversy we go through the same charade sincerely felt debates and sophisticated and laughable arguments (including by world class experts on argument, the working of evidence, inductive risk, deliberative democracy, and ethics, etc.), but we never really risk changing the system and incentives -- our role in a wider political economy of credentialing and knowledge production -- that produce these kinds of controversies (and the many less noticed irregularities that they hint at) so frequently.

The predictability, frequency, and manner of these controversies makes me suspect that such controversies serve a social function. It would be nice if they represented the birth-pangs of a new, healthier intellectual age. But I doubt they are truth-functional because they are characterized by what Mill called ‘vituperative’' speech; I used to think the function was still epistemic: to signal a shift in norm, practice, or attitudes. I increasingly suspect they recur because they drive people without a taste for cruelty and combat away from the discipline (and thereby reduce competition over jobs and prestige, and rid ourselves of sources of dissent) and help entrench the same type of enduring professional hierarchy, even if the tokens at the top move around a bit.

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Hayek on Liberal Utopia, the Long Game, and Weberian Politics

[Over time I am plan to phase out this blog at typepad. This post was first published at  digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>]

In response to my recent suggestion, in my celebration of Chandran Kukathas, [see also this nicely edited reprint in Liberal Currents] that, not unlike other liberal thinkers, "Hayekians" are profoundly anti-political (even suspicious of politics), I was redirected to Hayek's (1949) "The Intellectuals and Socialism" by the doyen of Hayek studies, Bruce Caldwell. In that paper, Hayek argues that liberal intellectuals should focus on the long game and develop what Hayek calls, "liberal utopia." Contemporary neo-Hayekians -- I am thinking of people not unlike Caldwell and Kukathas, but also Pete Boettke (whose writings [see, for example here] first alerted me to the significance of the passage I am about to discuss) -- seem to be  inspired by the following passage as articulating the task of liberal intellectuals:

What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a program which seems neither a mere defense of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is not too severely practical and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible. We need intellectual leaders who are prepared to resist the blandishments of power and influence and who are willing to work for an ideal, however small may be the prospects of its early realization. (F.A. Hayek (1949) "The intellectuals and socialism," p. 432; emphasis added).

Somewhat sadly most critics of Hayek and what is now known as 'classical liberalism' or 'neoliberalism' do not take this passage seriously at all. They are quick to associate Hayek with Reagan, Thatcher, and Pinochet and all kinds of (dirty) practical politics. Such critics find it hard to believe that the argument's effect on Hayekian intellectuals has been to urge them to keep their hands politically clean and to focus primarily on the noble task of contributing to articulating the elements of a liberal utopia unhindered by short-term feasibility.

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In a creative (2022) paper, Mikayla Novak plausible treats Hayek's pre-WWII proposal for interstate federation as a kind of exemplar of the sort of liberal utopian thinking, which she treats as an instance of heterotopia, Hayek may council. In an important article, Caldwell himself points to Hayek's theorizing in The Constitution of Liberty (1960) and Law, Legislation and Liberty (1973-79) as other examples of such utopian theorizing. The function of a liberal utopia is not to guide day-to-day policy based on a blueprint (that's there error of the so-called 'man of system' derided by Adam Smith), but to offer an ideal (even a social theory) that may mobilize others in the long term and that also may be useful in interpreting reality. In fact, in Law, Legislation and Liberty Hayek puts the point as follows: "It is not to be denied that to some extent the guiding model of the overall order will always be an utopia, something to which the existing situation will be only a distant approximation and which many people will regard as wholly impractical. Yet it is only by constantly holding up the guiding conception of an internally consistent model which could be realized by the consistent application of the same principles, that anything like an effective framework for a functioning spontaneous order will be achieved." And in context, it is clear that Hayek treats Adam Smith's impact on the development of British free trade as the exemplar to be emulated.

However, if we look again at the passage quoted from "The intellectuals and socialism," it is worth noting that a liberal utopia is also called a "program" (Foucault picks up on this) and that in his choice of words, 'truly liberal radicalism,' Hayek is evoking the Philosophical Radicals, the politicians who were inspired by Bentham's program. The natural implicature in light of Hayek's relentless criticism of the constructivism of Bentham, which is thus a false liberal radicalism, is that Hayek is trying to generate a program that involves both an intellectual revolution and eventually actionable legislation of the sort we find in the circle of Bentham's political admirers in the 1820s and 30s. Since Hayek (and other neo-liberals of the period) was in dialogue with Dicey's Lectures on the Relation between Law and Public Opinion (recall; also here; and here), and Dicey describes the significance and impact of the Benthamite program, it stands to reason Hayek was inspired to offer an alternative.

Now, I admit that the claims of the previous paragraph rests on slender evidence. But the liberal utopia passage is preceded by another one on the previous page that motivates my reading:

"The difficulty of finding genuine and disinterested support for a systematic policy for freedom is not new. In a passage of which the reception of a recent book of mine has often reminded me, Lord Acton long ago de-scribed how "[a]t all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has been sometimes disastrous, by giving to opponents just grounds of opposition..." More recently, one of the most distinguished living American economists has complained in a similar vein that the main task of those who believe in the basic principles of the capitalist system must frequently be to defend this system against the capitalists-indeed the great liberal economists, from Adam Smith to the present, have always known this. --Hayek "The intellectuals and socialism." (p. 431).

The point of this paragraph is not that the true liberal must restrict herself to devising a new utopia, but that in addition they must seek out ("finding"/"associating themselves") political coalition partners. To be sure, this is not ad hoc policy. It has to be a 'systematic policy' -- that is based on a program -- that can promote freedom. In fact, this is so in the full expectation that these others will not share in Hayek's liberal ideals and may be motivated by much less lofty goals.

In fact, both Acton & Hayek recognize that coalitions with others will involve judgment, including judgements one may turn out to be truly mistaken or "sometimes disastrous." (Just ask the critics of neo-liberalism's occasional flirtation with transitional dictatorship.) And the risks involved include that one must also be willing to speak truth to potentially powerful friends (capitalists), and take on vested interests (unions) that are also dedicated to helping the people whose freedom one claims to promote. This all echoes Weber's account of the sometimes tragic choices facing a “politician with a sense of vocation.”

As an aside: I don't think that Hayek is here anticipating the fusionism (between truly liberal radicalism) and conservative thought that became so characteristic of actual American politics on the right. But that it occurred need not surprise after the fact. What Hayek shows is that political life involves aligning oneself with those, who may share quite different commitments, to make possible one’s goals. This is, in fact, very much like my own view,* and this is why I spoke of 'Hayekians' and not Hayek in my piece.

Now originally, I thought Caldwell understands Hayek to be advocating a kind of political dis-engagement by the intellectual who prepares the way for later generations. But he called my attention to a set of recorded remarks by Kukathas on the 'dilemma' that the liberal, who might exercise power, faces. In his five minute remarks, Kukathas rejects the path of avoiding political life and the path of realism, but advocates restraint and forbearance in power and to stick to liberal principles, especially as ground in the core value of toleration. (The remarks start around 1 hour and 13.) I take it Caldwell thinks this is more principled than the one I endorse. I agree that Kukathas' position is rather noble, it follows (to quote Weber) "the maxim of an ethic of ultimate ends-that is, in religious terms." But this one sided political stance, is not Hayek's.

For, I doubt Hayek believes that when one associates "with auxiliaries whose objects" differ from one's own, one can always stick to one's liberal principles in political life (be at coalition building or power holding). For, if one could stick to one's principles in political life then there wouldn't be any danger or risk of disaster. That's to say, Hayek is, as Foucault discerned, a Weberian in ways that many contemporary Hayekian intellectuals are not.

• Over time I am plan to phase out this blog at typepad. This post was first published at  digressions.impressions.substack here. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber at <digressionsimpressions.substack.com>

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*Recall I wrote: "So, from this perspective, any program of reform must include a constituency or coalition that can promote the policy effectively. Obviously, the promise here is that this may increase the chances of uptake; it also often makes all liberal proposals much more status-quo friendly. Sometimes the concession to feasibility makes the liberal program appear as a handmaiden to conservatism or common sense morality."

On Tasioulas, Conceptual Inflation, and Public Reason

Hélène Landemore enthusiastically shared a piece, “The Inflation of Concepts,” published at Aeon by John Tasioulas (who she describes as her “Oxford colleague”). Appealing to the work of Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls, Tasioulas focuses on a “threat to the quality of public reason” (which he claims) “tends to go unnoticed. This is the degradation of the core ideas mobilised in exercises of public reason.” And, in particular, what he has in mind is ‘conceptual overreach’. This “occurs when a particular concept undergoes a process of expansion or inflation in which it absorbs ideas and demands that are foreign to it.”

At this point I kind of expected Tasioulas to suggest as an example ‘democracy’ but he initially focuses on “human rights or the rule of law” [he is a legal philosopher] which “is taken to offer a comprehensive political ideology, as opposed to picking out one among many elements upon which our political thinking needs to draw and hold in balance when arriving at justified responses to the problems of our time.” Near the end of his essay he does focus on democracy (which he thinks of as a more “contestable” example!) and while drawing on the excellent work of Joshua Ober, he complains that some people mistakenly use ‘democracy’ and ‘liberal democracy’ interchangeably. (Our reading habits are clearly different because most of the conflations I see involve ‘democracy’ and whatever views a theorist expects/wishes to see approved by their imaginary demos.)

In all three of his main examples, a clear concept is developed by the intellectual class in order to add new features to it, including some that thereby muddle it. Now, Tasioulas does not object to this on the grounds that may tempt what we may call a ‘conceptual purist analytic philosopher’ that true conceptual change is impossible (for the conventional wisdom in the corner of analytic philosophy in which I grew up was that concepts are what they are, eternally). For Tasioulas allows for “the possibility that a given concept might legitimately come to incorporate new demands over time without this constituting a form of conceptual overreach.”

So, lurking in Tasioulas is a kind of consistency requirement that only additions to the content of a concept are legitimate that are compatible with its original identity and, to use a vaguer terms its spirit (this to capture Tasioulas’ examples and his notion of ‘foreign’). Those political agents that inflate concepts beyond the possible limits of intra-conceptual coherence, are conceptual polluters.

I put it like that because Tasioulas shares with his sometime Oxford Colleague, Neil Levy (whose very fine book Bad Beliefs: Why They Happen to Good People I reviewed here [open access]), a kind of fantasy that that the public sphere can remain unpolluted and (this is the public reason part) should remain unpolluted. Of course, if it is a fantasy, then (ought implies can) the duty to keep foreign elements out disappears and one can welcome conceptual hybridization (perhaps even inflation).

Before I explain why it is a fantasy, it is worth noting that the concepts Tasioulas focuses on are also paradigmatic cases of ‘essentially contested concepts’ (in Gallie’s sense) and so one might think that his purist approach to them does not get off the ground. Tasioulas hints at his awareness of this hypothetical objection (not just with his use of ‘contestable’ in the context of his democracy example, but also ) because -- while tacitly invoking the concept/conception distinction that has been used by public reason scholars to domesticate the possibility of ‘essentially contested concepts’ --, he acknowledges that his position “is further complicated by the fact that there might be various equally acceptable ways of specifying the meanings of a range of important concepts.” But it is important to see that for Tasioulas these acceptable ways cannot, in principle, reveal or express internal, latent contradiction(s) or foreign-ess within the concept.

Interestingly enough, and to his credit, Tasioulas does not disguise the elitist commitments in his version of public reason. Alongside the “craving for simplicity,” he fundamentally blames “elite actors and institutions,” “special interest groups,” and “dialectical gambits” by political agents who wish to deprive their “political opponents of a conceptual place on which to stand.” And so in the final paragraph he closes with the claim that the “responsibility” for maintaining a relatively pure conceptual public sphere “falls on all of us, but especially on the wielders of great public and private power.” And this fits his diagnosis at the start of his essay that conceptual inflation is the effect of “the utterances of elite actors, such as bureaucrats, lawyers, politicians and representatives of international organisations and NGOs.”

What’s ironic about all of this is that usually (left) critics of public reason (like my brilliant former teacher Iris Marion Young) tend to point to the elitist presuppositions of public reason (comparing its norms to that of a genteel seminar room) to discredit it and that these norms leave out many other (quite intelligible) forms of contestation and argumentation. By contrast, Tasioulas basically blames the very people who ought to be all in on public reason for not living up to its demands for public speech.

With that in place let me acknowledge that I recognize that communication and decision-making might seem a lot easier if people stuck to a shared notion of particular concepts and that any extensions of these should remain sufficiently pure and avoid what Tasioulas calls inflation. I use ‘seem’ because Tasioulas ignores all the ways in which strategic ambiguity makes peace, collective decisions, coalition-building, and even agreeing to disagree possible.

To be sure, I too am tempted by worry over the confusion and lack of clarity that might follow from conceptual hybridization and inflation, and it can be terribly frustrating to see the mis-use of concepts in public. (I am often happy to die on the mole-hill that Trump was an attempted usurper between January 2-6, 2021, but did not attempt a coup d'état.) And I often see ‘violence’ used in ways that I think inflated. It is part of the analytic philosopher’s political faith that if the concepts are clarified, social life can be in a much better state (this is actually visible in Carnap and, as I have argued in, Ernest Nagel). Nothing I say here undermines that faith, or the purported utility that follows from conceptual engineering, conceptual clarification, or conceptual amelioration. After all, I have appealed to the work of a philosopher’s conceptual coining ‘essentially contested concept’ here! (Some time I return to the odd status of Gallie within professional philosophy.)

Now, above, I used ‘fantasy,’ for three reasons. First, Tasioulas ends up having to tell a mythic stories about concepts that originally are (relatively) pure and then are corrupted by (even well intentioned) strategic actors. (It shares quite a bit of elements with standard accounts of the Fall.) The story is mythic because the temporal and conceptual proper base line Tasioulas appeals to in each case is always drawn arbitrarily by him such as to make the concept do the work Tasioulas wants.

This can be seen even the case of the ‘rule of law.’ Tasioulas writes “Traditionally, this refers to a range of formal and procedural requirements that enable people to comply with the law.” (emphasis added) Because ‘traditionally’ is so vague it is hard to contest this on historical grounds (hence my use of ‘mythic,’ although it helps knowing that Tasioulas is an admirer of Raz!) I was a bit taken aback by this understanding of the rule of law because I don’t tend to think of it in such functional terms (that it enables compliance with the law).

For, it is worth noting that Dicey, who is ‘standardly’ (see what I did there?) credited by conservatives and liberals alike in the Anglo-world for giving the central formulation of the rule of law, describes its first principle as "no man is punishable or can be lawfully made to suffer in body or goods except for a distinct breach of law established in the ordinary legal manner before the ordinary Courts of the land.” This makes clear that the rule of law is understood as a kind of constraint on the exercise of power.

My modest point here is not to argue in favor of Dicey as the proper baseline (why him and not Aristotle or Cicero or Blackstone etc?), but just to suggest that in all his explicit examples Tasioulas is engaged in cherry picking to promote his own favored understanding of a concept as the baseline and then to treat deviations from it that he disapproves of as conceptual inflations. This is essentially arbitrary, and even where I happen to agree politically with Tasioulas, one should not expect wider agreement. I happen to think this is part of the human condition because conceptual inflation just is a strategy that is always available to political agents, but nothing I say requires you to accept that.

However, because it is always going to be somewhat arbitrary, conceptual inflation is always going to be a charge that itself will be contestable. And so functionally one can expect that if there is uptake of ‘conceptual inflation’ as a term of abuse, that rather than focusing on the issues under dispute, it shifts dispute to a more meta-level (about the origins and proper use of a concept). This may be good for the business of analytic philosophy (it’s our area of expertise), and other elite intellectuals, but it will neither cure us of the phenomenon (Tasioulas’ professed aim) nor solve the underlying disputes (although they may displace them which can be preferable sometimes).

Second, even by Tasioulas’ own lights his proposal to keep concepts in “good repair” is likely to fail. Because he does not address the grounds, institutions, or incentives that by his own lights give rise to conceptual inflation (This is why I mentioned Neil Levy’s book, which at least begins the important conversation what would be required to keep the political environment relatively unpolluted.) So, even if Tasioulas could establish a duty to avoid conceptual inflation, it seems defeasible in practice (because obeying it would undermine other important morally salient political aims).

Let me close by assuaging a possible worry that I am making a category mistake, and that I am sneakily trying to undermine commitment to public reason on empirical grounds. But that’s not what I am doing here (even though it’s probably true that I lack warmth toward public reason as a project). Rather, third, it is Tasioulas who mistakenly assumes (with appeal to Habermas and Rawls) that adherence to public reason is existing common ground. And if that were true then indeed he could remind participants in it (like a seminar leader) that they are violating shared norms and all would be well. But, unfortunately, contemporary elites (the ones he appeals to) quite clearly do not believe this, their actions (alongside their utterances) belie it.

• This first appeared at: <https://digressionsimpressions.substack.com/p/on-tasioulas-conceptual-inflation> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

   

Monographs > Journal articles (hear me out)

Here are three well founded truisms:

1. Most monographs in professional philosophy would be best left as the journal article from which they originate. Arguably many could even be a long read blog post; but I would say that, wouldn't I?
2. Once you have a foot in the door it's easier to publish a monograph than an article in professional philosophy, all things being equal (which they are often not).
3. In most sub-fields of philosophy it's (drafts of) journal articles that set the agenda or demarcate the research frontier. If you referee a lot or are in thorough research networks the journal article is the vehicle to stay abreast of developments.

In addition, a well crafted Analysis article is highly nourishing brain candy. Even so, and despite the fact that reading a book is a far greater time commitment than reading an article, I find reading monographs far more satisfying than reading journal articles especially as I grow older and want to explore and be informed about areas outside my own expertise/specialization. (And by reading a monograph I don't mean downloading a chapter from Oxford scholarship online.) Here's why. 

First, the writing tends to be (aesthetically) more pleasant. I believe this is primarily due to the fact that in journal articles papers get made referee/objection proof (recall truism 2). But I also suspect that people writings books have modest fantasies of grandeur and hope to appeal to a wider audience than their immediate peers and their students. 

Second, for all the ingenuity and dazzling brilliance that goes into most of the arguments in our journal articles, they tend to stand and fall by the common ground that is assumed in the premises of the argument. In most cases that common ground shifts after a few years -- it's philosophy after all. We notice this less in papers that become field defining because in their case their premises end up anchoring the common ground of the field. But unless one is in the field and fully committed to those paradigmatic commitments those premises look weird to outsiders. 

Meanwhile because of the modest fantasies of grandeur associated with a monograph, the argument tends to be articulated in terms of a broader horizon with a set of commitments that are, all things considered equal, not merely reflecting the research frontier (in fact they may well be trailing by the time the book is published). I don't mean to suggest that the premises we find in a monograph are always more plausible, but there is more space to anchor them in a wider range of evidence and commitments. So, the book tends to provide a richer picture of how a position or arguments hang together with a wider range of commitments.  Especially when I am reading outside my area of expertise, this is very helpful.

Third, and even if the premises remain the same (recall truism 1), they are often better supported in a monograph.  Just because there is more space to bring more evidence to bear on them. In papers we often stipulate a lot of commitments for the sake of argument, or we are permitted to treat things as primitive. (As you can tell, I am not a fan of treating key concepts as primitive in monographs.)

Fourth, books tend to try to motivate the project in ways that appeal to a slightly broader audience. This is completely unnecessary in a journal article which reflects ongoing debate and can take its own urgency for granted. And if it motivates the project it is either through short-hand or through the existing common ground of the sub-specialty. But I actually find it incredibly helpful to know and understand what is motivating a project fundamentally before I evaluate the arguments and the position.

Finally, I am not claiming that because books germinate a bit longer -- authors, even 'have to live with' the manuscript for extended periods -- they must be better than journal articles because I suspect a lot of books are either glorified dissertations or exist primarily because of sunk cost fallacies or opaque tenure requirements. (And just before you google my CV, I am a lot better at finishing articles than books.)

The Great Endarkenment, Part I

Perhaps eventually an overall Big Picture will emerge—and perhaps not: Hegel thought that the Owl of Minerva would take wing only at dusk (i.e., that we will only achieve understanding in retrospect, after it’s all over), but maybe the Owl’s wings have been broken by hyperspecialization, and it will never take to the air at all. What we can reasonably anticipate in the short term is a patchwork of inference management techniques, along with intellectual devices constructed to support them. One final observation: in the Introduction, I gave a number of reasons for thinking that our response to the Great Endarkenment is something that we can start working on now, but that it would be a mistake at this point to try to produce a magic bullet meant to fix its problems. That turns out to be correct for yet a further reason. Because the approach has to be bottom-up and piecemeal, at present we have to suffice with characterizing the problem and with taking first steps; we couldn’t possibly be in a position to know what the right answers are.
Thus far our institutional manifesto. Analytic philosophy has bequeathed to us a set of highly refined skills. The analytic tradition is visibly at the end of its run. But those skills can now be redirected and put in the service of a new philosophical agenda. In order for this to take place, we will have to reshape our philosophical pedagogy—and, very importantly, the institutions that currently have such a distorting effect on the work of the philosophers who live inside them. However, as many observers have noticed, academia is on the verge of a period of great institutional fluidity, and flux of this kind is an opportunity to introduce new procedures and incentives. We had better take full advantage of it.--Elijah Millgram (2015) The Great Endarkenment: Philosophy for an Age of Hyperspecialization, p. 281

There is a kind of relentless contrarian that is very smart, has voracious reading habits, is funny, and ends up in race science and eugenics. You are familiar with the type. Luckily, analytic philosophy also generates different contrarians about its own methods and projects that try to develop more promising (new) paths than these. Contemporary classics in this latter genre are Michael Della Rocca's (2020) The Parmenidean Ascent, Nathan Ballantyne's (2019) Knowing Our Limits, and Elijah Millgram's (2015) The Great Endarkenment all published with Oxford. In the service of a new or start (sometimes presented as a recovery of older wisdom), each engages with analytic philosophy's self-conception(s), its predominate methods (Della Rocca goes after reflective equilibrium, Millgram after semantic analysis, Ballantyne after the supplements the method of counter example), and the garden paths and epicycles we've been following. Feel free to add your own suggestions to this genre.

Millgram and Ballantyne both treat the cognitive division of labor as a challenge to how analytic philosophy is done with Ballantyne opting for extension from what we have and Millgram opting for (partially) starting anew (about which more below). I don't think I have noticed any mutual citations.  Ballantyne, Millgram, and Della Rocca really end up in distinct even opposing places. So, this genre will not be a school.

Millgram's book, which is the one that prompted this post, also belongs to the small category of works that one might call 'Darwinian Aristotelianism,' that is, a form of scientific naturalism that takes teleological causes of a sort rather seriously within a broadly Darwinian approach. Other books in this genre are Dennett's From Bacteria to Bach and Back (which analyzes it in terms of reasons without a reasoner), and David Haig's From Darwin to Derrida (which relies heavily on the type/token distinction in order to treat historical types as final causes). The latter written by an evolutionary theorist.* There is almost no mutual citation in these works (in fact, Millgram himself is rather fond of self-citation despite reading widely). C. Thi Nguyen's (2020) Games: Agency as Art may also be thought to fit this genre, but Millgram is part of his scaffolding, and Nguyen screens off his arguments from philosophical anthropology and so leave it aside here.

I had glanced at Millgram's book when I wrote my piece on synthetic philosophy, but after realizing that his approach to the advanced cognitive division of labor was orthogonal to my own set it aside then.++ But after noticing intriguing citations to it in works by C. Thi Nguyen and Neil Levy, I decided to read it anyway. The Great Endarkenment is a maddening book because the first few chapters and the afterward are highly programmatic and accessible, while the bulk of the essays involve ambitious, revisionary papers in meta-ethics, metaphysics, and (fundementally) moral psychology (or practical agency if that is a term).  The book also has rather deep discussions of David Lewis, Mill, and Bernard Williams. The parts fit together, but only if you look at them in a certain way, and only if you paid attention in all the graduate seminars you attended.

Millgram's main claim in philosophical anthropology is that rather than being a rational animal, mankind is a serial hyperspecializing animal or at least in principle capable of hyperspecializing serially (switching among different specialized niches it partially constructs itself). The very advanced cognitive division of labor we find ourselves in is, thus, not intrinsically at odds with our nature but actually an expression of it (even if Millgram can allow that it is an effect of economic or technological developments, etc.). If you are in a rush you can skip the next two asides (well at least the first).

As an aside, first, lurking in Millgram's program there is, thus, a fundamental critique of the Evolutionary Psychology program that takes our nature as adapted to and relatively fixed by niches back in the distant ancestral past. I don't mean to suggest Evolutionary Psychology is incompatible with Millgram's project, but it's fundamental style of argument in its more prominent popularizations is. 

Second, and this aside is rather important to my own projects, Millgram's philosophical anthropology is part of the account  of human nature that liberals have been searching for. And, in fact, as the quoted passages reveal, Millgram's sensibility is liberal in more ways, including his cautious preference for "bottom-up and piecemeal" efforts to tackle the challenge of the Great Endarkenment.+

Be that as it may, the cognitive division of labor and hyperspecialization is also a source of trouble. Specialists in different fields are increasingly unable to understand and thus evaluate the quality of each other's work including within disciplines. As Millgram notes this problem has become endemic within the institution most qualified to do so -- the university -- and as hyper-specialized technologies and expertise spread through the economy and society. This is also why society's certified generalists -- journalists, civil servants, and legal professionals -- so often look completely out of their depth when they have to tackle your expertise under time pressure.** It's his diagnosis of this state of affairs that has attracted, I think, most scholarly notice (but that may be a selection effect on my part by my engagement with Levy's Bad Beliefs and Nguyen's Games). Crucially, hyperspecialiation also involves the development of languages and epistemic practices that are often mutually unintelligible and perhaps even metaphysically incompatible seeming. 

As an aside that is really an important extension of Millgram's argument: because the book was written just before the great breakthroughs in machine learning were becoming known and felt, the most obvious version of the challenge (even danger) he is pointing to is not really discussed in the book: increasingly we lack access to the inner workings of the machines we rely on (at least in real time), and so there is a non-trivial sense in which if he is right the challenge posed by Great Endarkenment is accelerating. (See here for an framework developed with Federica Russo and Jean Wagemans to analyze and handle that problem.) 

That is, if Millgram is right MacAskill and his friends who worry about the dangers of AGI taking things over for rule and perhaps our destruction by the machine(s) have it backwards. The odds are more likely that our society will implode and disperse -- like the tower of Babel that frames Millgram's analysis -- by itself. And that if it survives mutual coordination by AGIs will be just as hampered by the Great Endarkenment, perhaps even more so due to their path dependencies, as ours is.

I wanted to explore the significance of this to professional philosophy (and also hint more at the riches of the book), but the post is long enough and I could stop here. So, I will return to that in the future. Let me close with an observation. As Millgram notes, in the sciences mutual unintelligibility is common. And the way it is often handled is really two-fold: first, as Peter Galison has argued, and Millgram notes, the disciplines develop local pidgins in what Galison calls their 'trading zones.' This births the possibility of mutually partially overlapping areas of expertise in (as Michael Polanyi noted) the republic of science. Millgram is alert to this for he treats a lot of the areas that have been subject of recent efforts at semantic analysis by philosophers (knowledge, counterfactuals, normativity) as (to simplify) really tracking and trailing the alethic certification of past pidgins. Part of Millgram's own project is to diagnose the function of such certification, but also help design new cognitive machinery to facilitate mutual intelligibility. That's exciting! This I hope to explore in the future. 

Second, as I have emphasized in my work on synthetic philosophy, there are reasonably general theories and topic neutralish (mathematical and experimental) techniques that transcend disciplines (Bayesianism, game theory, darwinism, actor-network, etc.). On the latter (the techniques) these often necessetate local pidgins or, when possible, textbook treatments. On the former, while these general theories are always applied differently locally, they are also conduits for mutual intelligibility. (Millgram ignores this in part.) As Millgram notes, philosophers can make themselves useful here by getting MAs in other disciplines and so facilitate mutual communication as they already do. That is to say, and this is a criticism, while there is a simultaneous advancement in the cognitive division of labor that deepens mutual barriers to intelligibility, some of this advance generates possibilities of arbitrage (I owe the insight to Liam Kofi Bright) that also accrue to specialists that help transcend local mutual intelligibility.** So, what he takes to be a call to arms is already under way. So, let's grant we're on a precipice, but the path out is already marked. 

 

 

On the New Alexandria

This is where I believe we are in analytic philosophy. Contrary to the scholastic charge analytic philosophy is not really characterised by formalised debates around niche propositions got from pernickety yet rigorous deductions from esoteric and ultimately pointless theories. For one thing I think the rigour of analytic deductions is much overstated. For another it just misses what has been apparent about analytic philosophy for a number of years, it is an outdated stereotype of the field from a time (perhaps in its recent past, late 20th century for instance) when the field was quite insular and self-satisfied. But nowadays it is apparent that widespread naturalism and the practical turn have each in their own way broke down those doors. Analytic philosophers nowadays are typically very keen to show their work is in good scientific standing, and will have practically interesting consequences for the pressing issues of the day. And what that means is syncretising.

Our political and ethical theories often involve drawing on a mish-mash of sources. First, there is the pertinent philsophical tradition. In analytic philosophy this usually means at least one of Rawls or some other great liberal, Rawls' students, or their students; feminist theory of the recent past; or, in some quarters, libertarian thinkers whose connections to Pinochet were, we are assured, much overstated. These are shown to be able to accommodate or refine views that are taken from the vanguard of very online downwardly mobile frequent social media users ("activists", as academics will refer to them), the common sense of the Euro-American middle class, salient results from legal theory or social psychology, and increasingly nowadays maybe AI or machine learning in its more socio-politically salient aspects. Along the way one may well get some argument or deduction of one part of the framework for the other -- but the energy, the impetus, comes really from the fact that bourgeois common sense, comprehensible bits of social science, shouty people online, and the recent philosophical tradition of one sort or another, are all felt to be authoritative. The payoff is the reconciliation, the sense that one can have one's cake and eat it.

I have a very similar sense for contemporary epistemology and metaphysics. Once again we admit bourgeois common sense, pertinent sciences - again sometimes psychology, but here also linguistics, statistics, physics, biology (more rarely chemistry I do not know why) - and the authoritative works of highly respected recent philosophers, typically Lewis or Kripke, increasingly Carnap, more rarely Wittgenstein, Brandom, or McDowell. Once again arguments can sometimes be had, but they are really in the service of proving coherence rather than anything akin to deduction from accepted first principles. The emotional pay off is, I believe, the achievement of synthesis. We are in a syncretic age.

And I believe that is why we will soon be forgot. The common sense of the bourgeois (which may not even be that common), social science that shan't survive the replication crisis, AI and machine learning (and thus statistical and reasoning capacities) that are manifestly in their infancy, and the theoretical works of people who happened to be good at placing their students in the latter quarter of the 20th century? I just see zero reason to predict that anyone will care what we make of this. It matters to us - we may well have reason to continue to try and organise it, this is our zeitgeist and anyway attempts to make it make sense will probably reveal its weaknesses and thus generate real progress. But we are a syncretising era working with elements whose nature and interrelations no-one shall care about within the space of a generation. 

This is more hopeful than the polemical claim that the present age is scholastic. I think there is more room for creativity in this activity. The attempt to rationalise new socio-ethical movements in the face of decaying empire mean that we join the Alexandrites in trying to provide comfort to a time that needs it. The failures and frictions of our attempts to syncretise will no doubt reveal anomalies that are worth attending to. But I think it is less likely to be of lasting interest than ambitious derivations from first principles. These sort of projects are designed to gain attractiveness from the inner plausibility of their premises, and thus gain a sort of independence from the immediacies of their age. Descartes, Hume, and Spinoza have far more secure places in history. I think this will be felt as a loss because for whatever reason lasting influence does seem to be sought after.--Last Positivist "The New Alexandria" January 28, 2023

If you are not laughing when you learn inter alia that we are a repetition of an out of Africa episode, the joke is on you. But if you are only laughing you may be missing some of the bite here. Before I get to that, I agree with Bright that it is time to retire a whole bunch of external critiques (that we are scientistic and/instrumentalizing, scholastic, deneutered cold war puppies, or speech policing servants of the carceral state) that stem from an unwillingness to read the much more thoroughgoing self-indictments of analytic philosophy (or so I argue).

It is quite natural that on social media the claims about syncretism, scholasticism, and historical memory past and future received much attention. But I call attention to three unpleasant aspects of Bright's analysis: first, our cultural or intellectual world is doomed. For, while we like the Alexandrians may have "hope of righting course" and not yet despair despite the "clear signs of turning for the worse," if the analogy is strict enought, the game is up (and one worries for the fate of our Hypatia). This makes it puzzling why anyone would accept the "zeitgeist;" any "real progress" we generate will be futile. I return below to consider how we should treat this rhetoric.

Second, there is a ludicrious mismatch between our self-image as fearless aimers for truth (or, as Bright allows, fighters for social justice) who follow the argument come what may  and our unwillingness to pay a price for it: in our reflective equilibrium we become reconciled to, even consoled by, our world, but this is no better than a stale confirmation bias if you are bourgeois (or adapted preferences if you are from another class.) While twentieth century continental philosophy was too addicted to the smells and sights of decomposing corpses in the imagery of Baudelaire, we are, in reality, the true decadents who reconcile ourselves by our inability to see our own corpse ahead.

Now, it is quite possible that this is all intended as sober diagnosis. But it is worth noting that there is a subtle connection between these two aspects. The more doomed we are in reality the more our self-imposed aspirations our out of touch with it. We lack, that is, third, self-knowledge. History repeats, as farce only.

Now, it's possible that Bright is preaching quietism in light of our fate; maybe we should keep our heads down and achieve the progress we can. But, this rhetoric can also be a call to arms -- or philosophical prophecy -- in two ways: first, he is baiting us to find within our umwelt the paths that lead to our equivalent of  St. Augustine. That is, some of us must throw our lot in with africana philosophy. (Another route goes to Al-Farabi, and the East). This is The Dream of Scipio as retold by Iain Pears. 

The other possibility is to rebel against our fate and that we really change course and unlearn the many bad intellectual habits that are diagnosed by him; a painful emendation of the mind. For, the intellectual revolution that the moment requires is, if we take his diagnosis seriously, the overthrow of our common sense. And in so far as our intuitions are shaped by our material conditions and practices of social recruitment this is a call to arms to destroy the modern research university, of at least philosophy's place in it. 

Not unlike MacAskill, one wishes to say, Bright is playing the long game for high stakes. But rather than betting the farm on engineering the right sort of population (human or robotic) given existing institutions and philanthropy by the wealthy, Bright is hinting at a different approach less beholden to Mammon. After all, I can't help but notice that his narrative echoes rather neatly Friedrich Engels' variations (see here; and here) on Bauer on the rise of Christianity. We might say, then, that the last waltz is about to be played.

Why is Hume important to foucault?

It is here that knowledge breaks off its old kinship with divinatio. The latter always presupposed signs anterior to it: so that knowledge always resided entirely in the opening up of a discovered, affirmed, or secretly transmitted, sign. Its task was to uncover a language which God had previously distributed across the face of the earth; it is in this sense that it was the divination of an essential implication, and that the object of its divination was divine. From now on, however, it is within knowledge itself that the sign is to perform its signifying function; it is from knowledge that it will borrow its certainty or its probability. And though God still employs signs to speak to us through nature, he is making use of our knowledge, and of the relations that are set up between our impressions, in order to establish in our minds a relation of signification. Such is the role of feeling in Malebranche or of sensation in Berkeley; in natural judgement, in feeling, in visual impressions, and in the perception of the third dimension, what we are dealing with are hasty and confused, but pressing, inevitable, and obligatory kinds of knowledge serving as signs for discursive kinds of knowledge which we humans, because we are not pure intelligences, no longer have the time or the permission to attain to ourselves and by the unaided strength of our own minds. In Malebranche and Berkeley, the sign arranged by God is the cunning and thoughtful superimposition of two kinds of knowledge. There is no longer any divinatio involved - no insertion of knowledge in the enigmatic, open, and sacred area of signs - but a brief and concentrated kind of knowledge: the contraction of a long sequence of judgements into the rapidly assimilated form of the sign. And it will also be seen how, by a reversal of direction, knowledge, having enclosed the signs within its own space, is now able to accommodate probability: between one impression and another the relation will be that of sign to signified, in other words, a relation which, like that of succession, will progress from the weakest probability towards the greatest certainty.

The connection of ideas does not imply the relation of cause and effect, but only of a mark or sign with the thing signified. The fire which I sec is not the cause of the pain I suffer upon my approaching it, but the mark that forewarns me of it.

The knowledge that divined, at random, signs that were absolute and older than itself has been replaced by a network of signs built up step by step in accordance with a knowledge of what is probable. Hume has become possible.--Michel Foucault The Order of Things (1970) {1994, Vintage Books Edition} Translated by Alan Sheridan* (original Les Mots et les Choses, 1966), 59-60 [Emphases in original]

When confronted by Foucault's argument here it is natural to scrutinize each of the steps and try to figure out how they correspond to, say, the underlying material in Malebranche and Berkeley. But here I wan't ask a different question: why does Foucault want to emphasize that [the philosophy of] a certain definite individual has become possible? This is peculiar because the strength of Foucault's general argument does not rest in the analysis of individual philosophers, but rather in showing a kind of higher order similarity, a style of thought, or a set of structural and conceptual constraints on an era's production of knowledge in, and that only becomes visible by the study of, different fields (including a kind of linguistics and a kind of political economy and so on) alongside each other. And these constraints make all the folk in an era possible (in Foucault's sense). This is why, for example, in context, he uses the language of a "single network of necessities" and gives us a string of individuals "Hobbes, Berkeley, Hume, or Condillac." (63; see also, p. 117, where this list returns, and p. 65, where Condillac seems to be key figure in the network, and p. 70, where Hume has equal billing with Condillac. Foucault uses a different list to represent the "Classical age" -- "Locke and Linnaeus, Buffon and Hume" -- at p. 162.)

So, why single out Hume on p. 60? Now part of the answer is clear from one of my posts earlier in the week (here). Hume becomes exemplary, for Foucault, to show that while similitude/resemblance loses its central significance in its characterization of the nature of a sign, resemblance does not disappear but resides, as Foucault puts it in Humean terms, mutely 'below knowledge' acting as a natural relation behind the scenes as it were constraining our mind (see p. 68). In that post, I argued that Foucault ends up misreading Hume (and suggested that Foucault ends up misrepresenting what he calls the classical age.) I don't mean to relitigate that claim. Rather, to restate my question: why is Hume exemplary for this argument (since it is by no means obvious Foucault went back to Hume to analyze him carefully, yet simultaenously offers numerous examples that draw on Hume)? 

Part of the answer is that Hume plays a role in the self-understanding of the philosophical status quo, (Husserlian) phenomenology, that Foucault is reacting to. In this self-understanding Hume's critique is the source of the "transcendental motif" of Kant. In this self-understanding this transcendental motif gets merged with "the Cartesian theme of the cogito," and so produces Husserl's revival of "the deepest vocation of the Western ratio." (325) So, in this narrative Hume is a kind of steppingstone. Familiarity with this narrative and this Hume is often presupposed in Foucault's narrative in The Order of Things (see especially, the role of Hume in representing "radical doubt" (162)).*

It is worth noting that Foucault contests the self-understanding of phenomenology and also how it fits in the West.+  He reinterprets phenomenology as exhibiting the very "great hiatus" that Foucault has diagnosed (in the book) in the "modern episteme at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries." (325) As it happens Foucault's analysis of Hume's friend, Adam Smith, is central to understanding the nature of that hiatus (see pp. 224-225). In Foucault's account Smith articulates a principle of order that is not reducible to the analysis of representation that Foucault thinks characteristic of the classical era. (225) How to make sense of this is a topic of interest to me, but about that some other time more. 

So, let me sum up. Hume plays a triple role in The Order of Things. First, alongside a number of other familiar philosophers his works are treated as illustrations for Foucault's claims about the nature of representation and knowledge in the classical episteme. In such cases Foucault assumes considerable knowledge about Hume (and these other thinkers) among his implied audience. That Foucault can do so is explained by the second role Hume has, that is, of being a familiar steppingstone in a narrative that undergirds the self-understanding of phenomenology (which is treated as the ruling philosophical status quo by Foucault). This narrative is Foucault's target.

The main argument against this self-understanding of the past does not turn on a single philosopher -- although Adam Smith is central to the argument but on a more general reconfiguration of what the human sciences (and philosophy) were (recall this post that tries to illuminate by comparing Kuhn and Foucault).

However, and this is the third role, in characterizing the distinctive nature of the classical age, Foucault does single out Hume. And this is so because he can both assume familiarity with Hume (given the familiarity of Foucault's audience with Hume as a steppingstone in their standard narrative) as well as render Hume unfamiliar in virtue of his retelling of the story of early modern philosophy. As my post earlier in the week suggests, Foucault's analysis of Hume cannot withstand close scrutiny. This problem, if I am right, raises serious concerns about the status of his whole project [since the leading representative of the classical age by Foucault's lights does not conform to his template), although it goes beyond my remit (even pay-grade) to adjudicate the significance of this to his debate with phenomenology. But as should be clear, when Foucault revisits Hume in his lecture of  28 March 1979 in The Birth of Biopolitics his understanding of Hume is (recall here); and here) much more text-sensitive than it was in the earlier book. 

A rant on FTX, William MacAskill, and Utilitarianism

Philosophy goes through self-conscious, periodic bouts of historical forgetting.* These are moments when philosophical revolutionaries castigate the reading of books and the scholastic jargon to be found in there, and invite us to think for ourselves and start anew with a new method or new techniques, or new ways of formulating questions (and so on). When successful, what follows tends to be beautiful, audacious conceptual and even material world-building (in which sometimes old material is quietly recycled or reinterpreted). Hobbes, Descartes, Bentham, Frege, and Carnap are some paradigmatic exemplars of the phenomenon (that has something in common with, of course, religious reformations and scientific revolutions). There is a clear utility in not looking back.

What’s unusual about utilitarianism is not that it’s a nearly continuous intellectual tradition that is more than two centuries rich. Even if we start the clock with the pre-Socratics that’s not yet a very old tradition by the standards of the field. But rather that it has become so cavalier about curating and reflecting on its own tradition. In one sense that’s totally understandable from within the tradition: the present just is the baseline from which we act or design institutions or govern society (etc.). Spending time on the past just is opportunity costs foregone or, worse, a sunk-cost fallacy. Worrying about path dependencies and endowment effects prevents one from the decisive path forward.

Of course, the previous paragraph is too crude: some active utilitarians write with sensitivity and care about the less savory parts of tradition’s past (I think of Bart Schultz); And certainly Julia Driver has shown that moral complexity can be fruifully discussed in the tradition. Yet, most of what’s produced about the past from within the tradition is either very narrowly focused or the product of people who don’t really develop the tradition forward. (This claim becomes more evident if you look at the practice of Kantianism, Humeanism, and the variety of virtue ethics out there. Even within formal philosophy there is better curating of their own past.) Nothing has matched Halevy’s The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism in the century since it has appeared in richness and insight (and philosophically it is by no means without problems). Obviously, too much looking back stalls progress (one may think that this what happened say, within, phenomenology or Austrian economics at one point or another), but never checking the rearview mirror also generates certain known risks.

In fact, there is a clear recruiting advantage to this march-forward stance. The barriers to entry are very low, the fundamental principles are well developed and clear enough, and one can start making progress within utilitarianism or applying it to sets of problems rather quickly. And while that’s a gross simplification for areas where there has been lots of existing utilitarian activity, it remains true in the large. If you are earnest and want to improve the world, utilitarianism gives you ready-made tools to think about doing so!  And what tools–elegant, systematizing, and action-guiding! That they risk flattening things is a virtue not a bug. And because the baseline is given, a side effect has been that working within existing institutions is seen as more efficient and more promising to contribute to improving the world –say by making lots of money trading in crypto-currency — than by tackling some of the opaque, entrenched structural injustices through the political processes that got us here.

That’s to say, within utilitarianism there is a curious, organic forgetting built into the way it’s practiced, especially by the leading lights who shape it as an intellectual movement within philosophy (and economics, of course), and as a social movement. And this is remarkable because utilitarianism for all its nobility and good effects has been involved in significant moral and political disasters involving not just, say, coercive negative eugenics and – while Bentham rejected this — imperialism (based on civilizational superiority commitments in Mill and others), but a whole range of bread and butter social debacles that are the effect of once popular economics or well-meaning government policy gone awry. But in so far as autopsies are done by insiders they never question that it is something about the character of utilitarian thought, when applied outside the study, that may be the cause of the trouble (it’s always misguided practitioners, the circulation of false beliefs, the wrong sort of utilitarianism, etc.).

In my view there is no serious study within the utilitarian mainstream that takes the inductive risk of itself seriously and – and this is the key part – has figured out how to make it endogenous to the practice. This is actually peculiar because tracking inductive risk just is tracking consequences and (if you wish) utils. It is especially odd because there is, within utilitarianism, a continuous return to the question — which in a way is crying out for an inductive risk analysis — of how much lying and deception of the public is permissible, or to be precise, “the possibility of esoteric morality.” (I also find it odd that this literature is part of the public, credit economy rather than an oral tradition. But what do I know about esotericism?)

For example, the best example I am familiar with that has really started to do something like what I propose within philosophy (within economics I warmly recommend work by David M. Levy, Sandra Peart, and Thomas C. Leonard), from someone who at least gives utilitarianism all the benefits of the doubt, Allen Buchanan’s (2007) “Institutions, Beliefs and Ethics:  Eugenics as a Case Study” ends up arguing that “ethics must incorporate social moral epistemology, the systematic comparative evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of social institutions in producing, transmitting and sustaining the beliefs upon which our moral motivation, judgment and reasoning depend.” This paper has received fewer citations that some of my papers on long dead figures, so it is fair to say it has not generated a major discussion fifteen years on. UPDATE: It has received little scholarly attention.** The most serious response I found suggests (by De Volder, who I admire greatly) basically that ‘this time is different’ (because liberal eugenics does not involve coercion—a claim that is not scrutinized). Maybe I have missed the utilitarian that has taken it seriously, but if it’s out there it has not generated a real debate or uptake.

Notice that Buchanan simply denies the autonomy of ethics. But even if one accepts that diagnosis (and this helps say, guard, against expert over-confidence and misplaced trust in other experts) this does not exhaust the inductive risk. And while in some philosophical theories downstream consequences are shrugged off within utilitarianism today long distance, downstream consequences are the opiate of several projects (including, of course, longtermism). In wider historical context, this unwillingness to take seriously inductive risk of philosophy, in a project that aims to reshape the world, is also odd because the father figure of philosophy, Socrates, was executed, in part, in virtue of the perceived negative effect he had on his students.

Don’t get me wrong utilitarianism is a beautiful, systematic theory, a lovely tool to help navigate acting in the world in a consistent and transparent matter. When used prudently it’s a good way to keep track of one’s assumptions and the relationship between means and ends. But like all tools it has limitations. And my claim is that the tradition refuses to do systematic post-mortems on when the tool is implicated in moral and political debacles. Yes, somewhat ironically, the effective altruism community (in which there is plenty to admire) tried to address this in terms of, I  think, project failure. But that falls short in willing to learn when utilitarianism is likely to make one a danger to innocent others.

This present rant — feel free to check out my more judicious scholarship and blogging about this topic — is obviously triggered by the failure of FTX and the subsequent public comments by William MacAskill, who quite naturally seems angry that he was lied to (although how sincere he is in light of the possibility of esoteric morality I leave to others), and correctly outraged on behalf of the victims that the benefactor of his movement probably committed significant fraud and theft. And if you do not believe me that massive historical forgetting is at play here, at one point in his twitter thread MacAskill writes, “I know that others from inside and outside of the community have worried about the misuse of EA ideas in ways that could cause harm. I used to think these worries, though worth taking seriously, seemed speculative and unlikely.”  As if to think such harms had not already occurred in the past!

I close with one final criticism of MacAskill (who in some ways is a victim of the stories utilitarians tell themselves). When it comes to his own role in the FTX debacle — and the story has been told in many media (in the context of his book launch) — about how he encouraged  Bankman-Fried to embrace “earning to give” over a by now mythical lunch in Cambridge, about that no word in his thread. (Just to be sure, I am actually a fan of effective altruism, albeit a critic of long-termism.)

By framing the problem as Mr. Bankman-Fried’s “integrity” and not the underlying tool, MacAskill will undoubtedly manage to learn no serious lesson at all. I am not implicating utilitarianism in the apparent ponzi scheme. But Bankman-Fried’s own description back in April of his what he was up to should have set off alarm bells among those who associated with him–commentators noticed it bore a clear resemblance to a Ponzi.+ (My regular readers know I am no enemy of markets.) Of course, and I say this especially to my friends who are utilitarians; I have not just discussed a problem only within utilitarianism; philosophy as a professional discipline always assumes its own clean hands, or finds ways to sanitize the existing dirt.

On the Modernity and Popularity of Public Philosophy by Academic Philosophers, and some Foucault on Kant

I sometimes suspect that advocates of public philosophy by academic philosophers [sometimes: PPAP] are (tacitly) are committed to at least two of the following three following propositions.

1. PPAP is a relatively recent invention.
2. Public philosophy is not new at all, it just is (the extension or renewal of) Dewey-ian style pragmatism.
3. Socrates, or the public gadfly, is a good model for PPAP.
4. Public philosophy is the dissemination or making accessible of existing (but otherwise esoteric to the public) philosophical knowledge.

Obviously, this does not exhaust all the possibilities. I want to make two comments about this list. First, those committed to (1.), tend to be analytic philosophers (of the sort that do not tend to understand themselves as intellectual descendants of Dewey--so that can include all kinds of pragmatists). My suspicion for thinking this is that this tribe (my own) has been going through a process of interest and valorization of public philosophy during the last (say) decade. I could point to a lot of blog posts or social media commentary to suggest this (including my own). But this thought also fits with the popularity of the 'icy slopes of logic' thesis (articulated by Reisch) that suggests that analytic philosophy retreated into the ivory tower due to the cold war.

Of course, if the icy slopes of logic thesis were true (which I have been known to doubt), then it follows, almost by definition, that 1 is not true. For, the left wing of Vienna was committed to PPAP. Let's grant that Neurath and Carnap were committed to PPAP before their forced exile. It does not follow that one couldn't say something in the spirit of 1.

One might argue, for example, that as an aspiration PPAP is not recent. But one might say, while reflecting on the fate of the Vienna Circle, that the social conditions to do it right, without danger to oneself (or society, were one takes inductive risk of philosophical praxis seriously) are relatively rare and recent. It's only when what we might call a Mill-ian ethos takes hold of elite/juridical/political institutions (even if grudgingly) and has sufficient popular acceptance then (1.) holds. And we, oh moderns, are blessed with times in which we may think what we like, and say it. Let's call this self-congratulatory stance the Millian Ethos Thesis.

For those who recognize their Spinoza or Hume (or Tacitus) in the previous paragraph, neither were professional academics. Hume famously did not get the job at Edinburgh, Spinoza prudently declined a position at Heidelberg. This failure is especially notable in the case of Hume who starts his Treatise with the express aim to 'to try the taste of the public.'

That such an ethos relatively recent achievement may be illustrated by the fate of (the otherwise well connected) Bertrand Russell, who was sacked from his position at Trinity for his public pacifism during WWI and later was denied a position at City University (for his views on sexual morality and his atheism).* I use Russell here not to argue for the suggestion that PPAP only exists when there is no limitation on what can be said in public, but rather to remind the reader the range of topical constraints that existed until quite recently on the very possibility of PPAP. (There is a real contrast between the way, say, Noam Chomsky has been treated and Russell.)

Second, Socrates is a terrible example of PPAP for mass societies like ours. By this, I don't just mean that he was not an academic and his life ended badly, but also we don't reach anything like 'the public' if we go around a popular spot in town and have elenctic conversations with the folk. (I don't diss the activity, by the way.)  Implicitly this is understood because usually when people talk about public philosophy for our kind, they talk about editorials, TV, podcasts, You Tube channels, etc. These have in common that, with luck, they reach a very wide audience. They also tend to presuppose commitment to (4.) more than (3.), and are often nudged along by grant agencies and administrators.

Of course, when people mention Socrates or Diogenes the Cynic, they really mean something like 'being a gadfly of society.' The problem with a gadfly model is that it often presupposes a kind of persistent challenge to the social and political status quo. Almost no academic has time for that alongside our teaching, publishing, and service obligations. And I know of no modern example that fits the case when one ignores PR machines and looks at the facts dispassionately. (Feel free to offer your examplars.)

These impressions were triggered by reading the following passage in a lecture by Foucault, who was, of course, a significant public philosopher in his own right, to a French group of professional philosophers:

In this definition of the Aufklärung, there will be something which no doubt it may be a little ridiculous to call a sermon, and yet it is very much a call for courage that he sounds in this description of the Aufklärung. One should not forget that it was a newspaper article. There is much work to be done on the relationship between philosophy and journalism from the end of the 18th century on, a study ... Unless it has already been done, but I am not sure of that ... It is very interesting to see from what point on philosophers intervene in newspapers in order to say something that is for them philosophically interesting and which, nevertheless, is inscribed in a certain relationship to the public which they intend to mobilize. And finally, it is characteristic that, in this text on the Aufklärung, Kant precisely gives religion, law and knowledge as examples of maintaining humanity in the minority condition and consequently as examples of points where the Aufklärung, must lift this minority condition and in some way majoritize men. What Kant was describing as the Aufklärung is very much what I was trying before to describe as critique, this critical attitude which appears as a specific attitude in the Western world starting with what was historically, I believe, the great process of society's governmentalization. Michel Foucault (1978) "What is Critique" translated by Lysa Hotroch, reprinted in The Politics of Truth, edited by Sylvere Lotringer, p48. (Ellipses in original)

In the works collected in The Politics of Truth, Foucault expresses similar views, so this is something he clearly reflected on in the last decade of his life. What's neat for our present purposes is that Foucault calls attention to the fact that in "What Is Enlightenment?" Kant engaged in public philosophy, in the sense we tend to use the term today (and as assumed in this post), while also reflecting on the manner of it (and its limits).  Famously, Kant thought that in one's functional role (as professor, cleric, civil servant, etc.) one must be (passively) obedient to authority, while one simultanously one had a duty or at least the freedom to educate the public, including criticism of the authorities without adverse consequences (if one does so in a way that does not undermine now quoting Kant) "the stability of the community."

To what degree such stability really can be reconciled with the mobilizing function Foucault ascribes to Kant's conception of the public use of reason is no easy matter to settle. But it is worth noting that even a hardnosed thinker like Machiavelli (carefully read by both Foucault and Kant) praises the epistemic and social features of Rome's willingness to endure quite a bit of social rowdiness and mobilization as a means toward stabilizing the community (and the evolution of social practices.)+ As an aside, Kant here is at odds with our modern conception of academic freedom, which precisely creates some zone to be critical of one's authorities (and the authorities, and their dogma's) in one's teaching.

What's important to my present purposes is the violation of (4.) in Foucault's treatment of Kant as an exemplar. For while Kant's own view of the free use of public reason, as presented by Foucault (in non-controversial way) sounds something like (4.), the manner in which Kant defends the view is (to quote Foucault) "philosophically interesting." In fact, in a different essay, "What is Enlightenment?" Foucault starts with a contrast between Kant's age of Enlightenment and ours, favorably to the past, in which he describes the present attitude toward in which in public speech/utterances, "there is not much likelihood of learning anything new." This makes our public intellectual life rather boring, as Foucault suggests. (Of course, I am not discussing YOUR contributions to public intellectual life, my dear sophisticated readers.) Even if one suspects that Foucault may be romanticizing the past here, he is right in noticing that commitment to (4.) tends to part and parcel of what we may call the repetitionof the known. Of course, that may still be an important public service (and I am a friend of philosophy as service of the sort Dotson engages in), but the philosophy part is underserviced by it. 

I could stop here because I think it's pretty clear now why I think 1-4 are all false, or undesirable. But I want to close with two final (related) observations on the triggering passage I quoted from Foucault. First, what he says about  governmentalization is undoubtedly obscure if you don't read the wider lecture, and/or lack familiararity with the lectures he gave in that period at College de France. To simplify, it's a species of statecraft (including the art of governing without states or their apparatus). But for present purposes, we can leave it a bit obscure. But I do want to note the connection to Kant, Foucault asserts just before (in discussing developments since the 16th century in "Western Europe) the following:

And if we accord this movement of governmentalization of both society and individuals the historic dimension and breadth which I believe it has had, it seems that one could approximately locate therein what we could call the critical attitude. Facing them head on and as compensation, or rather, as both partner and adversary to the arts of governing, as an act of defiance, as a challenge, a way of limiting these arts of governing and sizing them up, transforming them, of finding a way to escape from them or, in any case, a way to displace them, with a basic distrust, but also and by the same token, as a line of development of the arts of governing, there would have been something born in Europe at that time, a kind of general cultural form, both a political and moral attitude, a way of thinking, etc. and which I would very simply call the art of not being governed or better, the art of not being governed like that and at that cost. I would therefore propose, as a very first definition of critique, this general characterization: the art of not being governed quite so much. (44-45)

Kantian critique then is, on this view, not some esoteric philosophical doctrine, but the outgrowth of a much wider European ethos that itself has a considerable development. And while there is in philosophy, perhaps, a lot more to critique then the idea that one 'not be governed like that' -- the rejection of permanent immaturity -- this is its central idea. It is to be sure, no anarchism. But it is an embrace of a kind of limitation on being governed. I think it is no surprise then that in the following year, Foucault explored at great length the liberal art of government (and Kant's role in developing it) because it just is the tradition that, warts and at all, embraces the art of not being governed quite so much.

My second remark is-- and this is based not just on the quoted passages like these alone (but a more wider reading in Foucault) - that Foucault embraces the Millian Ethos thesis in its Eurocentric fashion; a version that actually embraces European/Western (cultural) exceptionalism.** But let me stop here.