Digressions&Impressions

On The End of History and the Displacement of Logic

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Because we understand ourselves as forward-looking problem-solvers, and recognize with the sciences that through inevitable progress today's ruling views will seem quaint when the research frontier has shifted (as it will), analytic philosophers have no major investment in curating themselves as a tradition. It has a sponge-like character in assimilating doctrines and techniques from without, and, as seen from a distance, appears to reinvent itself continuously. Because it is such a moving target external critics often seem comically out of date to knowing insiders whereas internal critics often end up being domesticated by subsequent generations (without, alas, getting credit for it). That it is a tradition is the effect of intellectual and sociological path dependencies that express themselves in certain aesthetic (clarity, transparency, rigor, etc.) and epistemic values, and the existence of bits of post Frege-Russell-Whitehead logic as a kind of (often tacit) lingua franca long after developments within logic stopped being a source of major disciplinary excitement or much utility elsewhere. 

The move from a logic requirement to a 'formal methods' in Yale University's graduate curriculum [see here at Dailynous; here at Leitterreports] tracks and, as it will be copied, shapes a much larger set of shifts in professional philosophy. In what follows, I, first, say something about how this constitutes the discipline going forward, and, second, I close -- as the previous paragraph hints -- at what predictably will be lost. The shift to 'formal methods' is often articulated in (broadly consequentialist) terms of what is useful to PhD students in their actual research or employment possibilities. It's anodyne to suggest that this actual work is interdisciplinary (with STEM/Social Sciency disciplines) in character in some sense. 

What it (really) is are three different projects (at a certain level of abstraction): (i) the projects that I have called 'synthetic philosophy' which, while using a particular technical/formal model/theory, brings together insights, knowledge, and arguments from the special sciences with the aim to offer a coherent account of complex systems and connect these to a wider culture or other philosophical projects (or both); (ii) the projects one can subsume under 'conceptual explorative research,' which amounts to developing concepts and techniques (including formal) that either are generative of scientific or social projects or help explain/understand perceived foundational problems in them; (iii) the continuous working out of inherited-as-philosophy puzzles. Presumably all three of these projects will involve collaboration with AI as coupled (human/machine/network) systems. With new base-lines, progress is possible. To be sure, the practice of wisdom does not require academic philosophy.

These three projects are at this level of generality not always at tension with each other, and because the fruits can be felt in disciplines outside of philosophy are not always zero-sum (job-wise). But we should expect near continuous hybridization and splitting and reconfiguration among such projects until a new political hegemon reconfigures higher education in the service of new ideals. (I am hinting at the fickleness of student-demand or donors as instruments of permanently shaping the discipline.) What I am, thus, stipulating -- perhaps rashly -- is that we should not expect hegemonic intellectual schools to re-emerge except temporarily. 

At this point one may object that 'argument' is missing in the previous paragraph. Perhaps, it will remain as constitutive element of philosophy. I am pretty skeptical about this possibility once formal logic is displaced from the intrinsic DNA of our professional formation. Yes, there are statistical arguments, but the skill one acquires is not argumentative, but something distinct. (What that is may be beyond my expertise, but I am inclined to say it is a skill at spotting differences that make a difference.) To be sure, I am a pluralist about the nature of 'argument' so it may be safer to predict that what will count as a paradigmatic argument will shift.

Now, before I mention some of the predictable 'losses' that follow from the shift under way, I want to prevent the misinterpretation that I somehow mourn the end of analytic philosophy (in the sense described by Liam Kofi Bright). I see nothing wrong in the fact that the half dozen departments (and the ones that mimic them) that train the influential PhDs of the next generation do not want to defend the intellectual path that got them there. The end of the unfolding history of analytic philosophy turns out to be a historical whimper. So I am using 'loss' analogously to or in the sense of 'Kuhn-loss'--the systematic forgetting of certain results and insights.

Second, it's predictable, for example, that as logic disappears as a (tacit) lingua franca much of the history of analytic philosophy will seem like strange territory and unmotivated to future students, and will become near unreadable. All kinds of moves that seemed obvious or intelligible -- think of the uses of regimentation, or Tarski's account of truth, bound variables, etc. -- will stop being self-evident. I had a glimpse of this when I read Quine's Word and Object a decade ago with Dutch undergraduates who were simply bewildered. 

In addition, I suspect that lacking such a tacit lingua franca, the three kinds of projects I mentioned will become increasingly at least partially estranged from each other and will, thereby, reflect the underlying social pluralism of our societies. That is compatible with each sharing in structural commonalities (including some that may well turn out to be politically or socially problematic). Unfortunately, that will imply that metrics and measures that are orthogonal to (intrinsic) philosophical worth, if there is such a thing, will be increasingly used for purposes of evaluation and advancement. 

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Russell and Kant on World Peace

Before the end of the present century, unless something quite unforeseeable occurs, one of three possibilities will have been realized. These three are:

I. The end of human life, perhaps of all life on our planet.
II. A reversion to barbarism after a catastrophic diminution of the population of the globe.
III. A unification of the world under a single government, possessing a monopoly of all the major weapons of war.

I do not pretend to know which of these will happen, or even which is the most likely. What I do contend, without any hesi­tation, is that the kind of system to which we have been ac­customed cannot possibly continue.--Bertrand Russell (1950) "The Future of Mankind" reprinted in Unpopular Essays, (1950) [all references to the 2009 Routledge reprint], p. 33.+

This is the second post on Russell's Unpopular Essays (recall here). I don't quote this to make fun of Russell as prognosticator, or to use it as an example of the fallacy of overlooked alternatives, although it is amusing that such an admirer of Hume misses the option of muddling through altogether. Or more accurately he finds it wholly unattractive: for, unlike the better dead than red crowd, Russell thinks "world empire of either the US or the USSR is preferable to the results of a continuation of the present international anarchy." (37) This reminds us that those who lived through and survived the first half of the twentieth century had every reason to expect more disastrous, political upheaval. For example, while illustrating the scenario that can lead to option I, Russell expects a "next world war" sooner or later. (The extent of the spread and use of atomic weapons is the key variable in this option.)

While illustrating possibility II, Russell sketches a scenario that anticipates A Canticle for Leibowitz:

Imagine each side in a position to de­stroy the chief cities and centers of industry of the enemy; imagine an almost complete obliteration of laboratories and li­braries, accompanied by a heavy casualty rate among men of science; imagine famine due to radio-active spray, and pesti­lence caused by bacteriological warfare: would social cohesion survive such strains? Would not prophets tell the maddened populations that their ills were wholly due to science, and that the extermination of all educated men would bring the mil­lennium? Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery, and in such a world hopes could only be irrational. I think the great states to which we are accuston1ed would break up, and the sparse survivors would revert to a primitive village economy. (34-35)

But most of "The Future of Mankind" is not given over to such gloomy prognostications. Russell's heart is in envisioning the "establishment of a single government for the whole world." (35) And the "most hopeful" scenario he advocates is "an alliance of the na­tions that desire an international government, becoming, in the end, so strong that Russia would no longer dare to stand out." (35) As is well known, Russell was not fond of the Soviet Union, and the "Future of Mankind" explains his reasoning for preferring world domination by America over Russia. His view is not based on an uncritical fondness of the USA (even if, as noted above, he is willing to live with either Russian or American world empire).* 

Strikingly, from our perspective, he thinks there are then "only two fully independent states, America and Russia." (42) And so according to Russell all other states are protectorates, vassals, or dominions of these two in some sense. While for us it is easy to note that he missed the long-term significance of Mao's (1949) victory,  it is especially striking that he understood, what the British government of his own age did not yet, that full British independence had ended (they would discover it in 1956).

His preference for an American empire is rather Millian in character and is instructive about Russell's fundamental values: freedom of speech, academic freedom, experiments in living (etc.). It is not a preference for capitalism over socialism. But he thinks the absence of liberty has turned Russia into an extreme oligarchy.* 

The first step-and it is one which is now not very difficult -is to persuade the United States and the British Common­wealth of the absolute necessity for a military unification of the world. The governments of the English-speaking nations should then offer to all other nations the option of entering into a firm Alliance, involving a pooling of military resources and mutual defense against aggression. In the case. of hesitant na­tions, such as Italy, great inducements, economic and military, should be held out to produce their co-operation. (41)

As I learned from (recall) Or Roisenbom's The Emergence of Globalism: Visions of World Order, and a number of Duncan Bell's writings including (recall)  Reordering the World: Essays on Liberalism and Empire, and especially,  the more recent Dreamworlds of Race: Empire and the Utopian Destiny of Anglo-America proposals for union between the US and the British Commonwealth were quite prevalent in the 1930s.  And Russell was very much aware of these developments. Many of these proposals had a strong imperial flavor with commitments to racial or civilizational (Anglo-Saxon) superiority. Russell's echoing of such proposals is notable because he is cosmopolitan critic of existing empires, and a critic of racial superiority (e.g. "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish" (82-85) "Ideas that Have Harmed Mankind" (152-153)).

Even so, because of the History of Western Philosophy (1947), it's easy to establish that Russell was also familiar with and admired Kant's Perpetual Peace.** Kant's federalism involved pacific regional (growing) federations of commercial liberal democracies (Kant uses 'republics' but he means, as Russell notes in the History, states with separation of powers).** In Kant, too, the main point is to pool military resources and make foreign aggression unlikely and to eventually creative a world state with a monopoly on violence. And not unlike Kant, Russell wants this to lead to a world in which "laws to control international relations" are "effective." (43) That is, backed up by power and possibility of violence. A world army would then be "like a municipal force." And while one might flinch at the conflation of military force and policing, the underlying point is rather Kantian, I think. The point of the monopoly of force

is a means to the growth of a social system governed by law, where force is not the prerogative of private individuals or nations, but is exercised only by a neutral authority in accordance with rules laid down in advance. There is hope that law, rather than private force, may come to govern the relations of nations within the present century. If this hope is not realized we face utter disaster; if it is realized, the world will be far better than at any previous period in the history of man. (43)

Now, I want to close with four observations about Russell's position. First, when Russell wrote this he cited public opinion in the United States in favor of such a project. (37) But in contrast to the American public, which foresaw "friendly negotiations" as the means to such an imperial federation, Russell -- who had been a heroic pacifist in World War I --, he believes "the use of force, or the threat of force, will be necessary." That Russell is willing to advocate the use of force, given his prior commitments, suggests how seriously he takes the likelihood and disastrousness of the threat of options I-II.

Third, earlier in the essay, Russell, recognizes that world empire might well be world domination. But he assumes that in the absence of foreign enemies, a world elite would eventually soften "freed from fear." (37) And so "gradually more good-natured and less inclined to persecute." (37) He has the Roman example in mind, an he calls attention to their practice of extending citizenship to those they conquered. And it's not difficult here to discern her the Victorian (romantic) understanding of the Romans he would have encountered as a kid.

Finally, and most importantly, I am struck by the fact that Russell tacitly assumes the abolition of politics with world empire. In this, even Russell is very much a man of his own age. Notice that there is no middle term between force and law. But somewhere, somebody has to lay down the "rules...in advance." And presumably this will involve the play or clash of competitive interests; and since the context is a concentration of power, one may well wonder how impartial or unbiased these rules will be. That is, while it is possible that the laws will be administered impartially, a 'neutral authority' seems perhaps a lovely hope, too far.

 

Russell, Locke and Order without Authority

There is, of course, imperialistic commerce, where men are forced to buy at the point of the sword; but this is not the kind that generates Liberal philosophies, which have flourished best in trading cities that have wealth without much military strength. In the present day, the nearest analogue to the commercial cities of antiquity and the middle ages is to be found in small countries such as Switzerland, Holland, and Scandinavia.
    The Liberal creed, in practice, is one of live-and-let-live, of toleration and freedom so far as public order permits, of moderation and absence of fanaticism in political programs. Even democracy, when it becomes fanatical, as it did among Rousseau's disciples in the French Revolution, ceases to be Liberal; indeed, a fanatical belief in democracy makes democratic institutions impossible, as appeared in England under Cromwell and in France under Robespierre. The genuine Liberal does not say "this is true," he says "I am inclined to think that under present circumstances this opinion is probably the best." And it is only in this limited and undogmatic sense that he will advocate democracy.
    What has theoretical philosophy to say that is relevant to the validity or otherwise of the Liberal outlook?
    The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment. This is the way in which opinions are held in science, as opposed to the way in which they are held in theology. The decisions of the Council of Nicaea are still authoritative, but in science fourth-century opinions no longer carry any weight. In the U.S.S.R. the dicta of Marx on dialectical materialism are so unquestioned that they help to determine the views of geneticists on how to obtain the best breed of wheat, though elsewhere it is thought that experin1ent is the right way to study such problems. Science is empirical, tentative, and undogmatic; all immutable dogma is unscientific. The scientific outlook, accordingly, is the intellectual counterpart of ·what is, in the practical sphere, the outlook of Liberalism.

    Locke, who first developed in detail the empiricist theory of knowledge, preached also religious toleration, representative institutions, and the limitation of governmental power by the system of checks and balances. Few of his doctrines were new, but he developed them in a weighty manner at just the moment when the English government was prepared to accept them. Like the other men of 1688, he was only reluctantly a rebel, and he disliked anarchy as much as he disliked despotism. Both in intellectual and in practical matters he stood for order without authority; this might be taken as the motto both of science and of Liberalism. It depends, clearly, upon consent or assent. In the intellectual world it involves standards of evidence which, after adequate discussion, will lead to a measure of agreement among experts. In the practical world it involves submission to the majority after all parties have had an opportunity to state their case...

    I conclude that, in our day as in the time of Locke, empiricist Liberalism (which is not incompatible with democratic social­ism) is the only philosophy that can be adopted by a man who, on the one hand, demands some scientific evidence for his beliefs, and, on the other hand, desires human happiness more than the prevalence of this or that parry or creed. Our con­fused and difficult world needs various things if it is to escape disaster, and among these one of the most necessary is that, in the nations which still uphold Liberal beliefs, these beliefs should be whole-hearted and profound, not apologetic towards dogmatisms of the right and of the left, but deeply persuaded of the value of liberty, scientific freedom, and mutual forbear­ance. For without these beliefs life on our politically divided but technically unified planet will hardly continue to be pos­sible.--Bertrand Russell (1947) "Philosophy and Politics" in Unpopular Essays (1950),  p. 14-20

Because George Reisch's (2005) How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science: To the Icy Slopes of Logic is so beautifully written and so carefully argued its thesis has become part of the lore about our intellectual fathers and (fewer) mothers that after a brief flowering of socially relevant philosophy in Red Vienna, they retreated (cowed like little schoolboys--I exclude Anscombe here) into the ivory tower where they could contemplate their crystal clear arguments about minutiae. I suspect this lore is peddled in part by continental philosophers, who after having lost the war,  can feel that they are now on the right side of history, and in part by our kewl kidz who, in order to climb academia's greasy pole, have to burry the previous generation--and better yet if it buries the boring liberalism of Pax Americana.

I exaggerate, of course, but as regular readers know, I think Reisch's book didn't quite capture properly the mainstream liberal alternative (as articulated by Ernest Nagel) to the Sturm und Drang of Neurath and Carnap, and so obscured the political nature and political aims of the disciplinary choices (see here for the scholarly argument). As it happens Reisch mentions the significance of Russell's politics  -- as an important representative of "the anti-Stalinist left" (158) -- throughout his book, and has a whole section on the The Russell Affair, but he does not actually say much about Russell's political theory such as it was and when he does, he treats him as a pacifist and socialist (50). Now Russell's pacificism was heroic, and there is no doubt that Russell's mature heart was a species of socialism (see here for a fine essay).

As the quoted passages above reveal, Russell's socialism was of a kind that is very much part of a broader liberal tradition. And it is worth noting that the essay I quote contains true praise of Popper's Open Society and its Enemies. (This is something one wouldn't expect in light of Reisch's treatment which treats The Open Society as a target of the folk he admires.) Now, Popper's views are also compatible with a kind of liberal, tempered social democracy, so I don't think Russell's admiration is a coincidence. 

But few socialists can bring themselves to write so admiringly of Locke as Russell. And few would be so open about their reservations about democracy, and their "limited" support for it. And so something also goes off track if one merely calls Russell a 'socialist.'

At the start of his then recent, History of Western Philosophy, Russell treats Locke as the representative of a "half-way compromise philosophy, the doctrine of liberalism, which attempted to assign the respective spheres of government and the individual." (I mention the book in part because Russell self-plagiarizes from it in the essay!)* And later in the book, when he introduces Locke, he says, "The first comprehensive statement of the liberal philosophy is to be found in Locke, the most influential though by no means the most profound of modern philosophers."  I don't mean to suggest Russell only admires Locke. My favorite passage in the History is this one: "No one has yet succeeded in inventing a philosophy at once credible and self-consistent. Locke aimed at credibility, and achieved it at the expense of consistency. Most of the great philosophers have done the opposite." And while Russell is critical of Locke going all in on the defense of property, he thinks Locke's political philosophy is the least worst (in the History) or the last one standing ("Philosophy and Politics").

Now, unlike Nagel, for whom his liberalism is intrinsic, even constitutive of his philosophy (including his philosophy of science), Russell's political writings are often treated, not the least by Russell, as non-philosophical. And, speaking as a historian, that is not wholly without merit--his political essays are often unlike the works that established his philosophical credentials. Russell himself acknowledges in the "preface" to Unpopular Essays, that his essays "may seem flippant." And they certainly do not seem to belong to what professional philosophy was becoming in the age (under the influence of Carnap and Nagel). But Russell once quite rightly described his "life" -- in a self-authored "obituary" that is, in fact, in dialogue with Hume's little autobiography -- as having "a certain anachronistic consistency, reminiscent of that of the aristocratic rebels of the early nineteenth century." (p. 171) And, crucially, he claims that his principles "governed his actions." That is to say, as these essays articulate these principles are philosophical by the lights and standards of that earlier epoch. And this is the use of 'philosophy' in the final paragraph quotes above (e.g., empiricist Liberalism is the only philosophy).

Order without authority is, of course, an excellent summing up of liberalism,+ even if, too often, there is more than a hint of violence supporting that order. And not unlike the more classically liberal Michael Polanyi, Russell insists that science and liberalism are kind of mirrors of each other (another version of this idea can be found in Ernest Nagel as I argued.) I intend to return occasionally to the character and content of Russell's liberalism (in which there is plenty to criticize). 

But here I want to close with an observation on Russell's claim that "The genuine Liberal does not say "this is true," he says "I am inclined to think that under present circumstances this opinion is probably the best."" Now, there is a natural, epistemological reading of this such that the 'present circumstances' just refers to the evidence supporting it. (This is, in fact, Nagel's version of pragmatism in the era.) And what I am about to say is not meant to contradict the natural reading. But I also think one could read "present circumstances" as referring to the political and social circumstances of the age--that strikes me as quite plausible in light of the argument Russell is putting forth. And that suggests that the social significance or social effects (including inductive risk) of an opinion enter into its evaluation. And this puts Russell's account into the realm of responsible speech (just like Nagel's political defense of analytic philosophy).

If the previous proposal is plausible, then for Russell a liberal's views are sensitive to political circumstances. So, say, one's defense of democracy is sensitive to the particulars of one's age or place and one's considered judgment how 'human happiness' can be promoted. And so while the non-liberal will see lack of consistency in first order judgments, the liberal will see merely different tactics while aiming for order without authority in the service of happiness. 

 

On the Polemics against Religious Philosophy in Analytic Philosophy

The views which have been noticed thus far attempt to limit the scope of scientific methods on the basis of considerations that are at least nominally scientific in character. The criticisms of science to which attention must next be directed do not even pretend to adduce scientific grounds for their claims, and are frankly based upon explicit theological and metaphysical commitments for which no experimental evidence is invoked. The chief burden of their complaints is that science offers no ‘'ultimate explanation” for the facts of existence; and their chief recommendation is the cultivation of “ontological wisdom” as the sole method for making “ultimately intelligible” both the order of the cosmos and the nature of the good life.

Some citations from recent writers will exhibit more clearly than would a paraphrase the unique mixture of pontifical dogmatism, oracular wisdom, and condescending obscurantism which seems to be the indispensible [sic] intellectual apparatus of this school of criticism. Ernest Nagel (1943) "Malicious Philosophies of Science" reprinted in Sovereign Reason, 37.

One of the sad spectacles of our age is to see otherwise mild-mannered and virtue-seeking religious philosophers cheer on the at times intemperate polemics of, say, Anscombe, Geach, and Plantinga. To say that it not to deny their philosophical contributions and skill in many contexts. And since I am not a stranger to polemics (and willing to grant I make fewer contributions to philosophy), even ill-tempered ones on the role of religion in philosophy, I am not casting stones that couldn't be thrown harder at me! 

It took me a long time to recognize that the championing of philosopher-brawlers (which is still endemic in wider analytic philosophy despite moves toward niceness), and the not infrequent closing of factional ranks, was itself a reflection of the sense of beleaguered-ness. And the reason I found it so hard to enter into that mind-set is that it seemed so self-evident to me that in the wider culture, Stateside, Christianity was by no means going extinct. But in riper age, I have come to recognize that behind all the aggressive political bluster, Christianity today exhibits all the signs of a world-historical implosion in the wealthier parts of the world. (That's compatible with phenomenal growth of Christianity elsewhere on the Planet.)* If I were Hegelian, I would say that the recent joyous flowering of analytic Christian, metaphysics is a sign of this! 

But I am not Hegelian. One oddity, however, is that if one goes over the classics of analytic philosophy, there is little explicit engagement with the status of theology and the role of religion in philosophy. Even Russell, who clearly was no friend of organized religion, claims, in a surprising moment of candor (not the least for the willingness to admit to an esoteric/exoteric distinction), that were he "speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God." ("Am I An Atheist Or An Agnostic? A Plea For Tolerance In The Face Of New Dogmas," 1947.)

And while I do not deny that verificationism undoubtedly also had an anti-Christian element to it, it was, as philosophical doctrines go, short-lived. Even so, it may well have reflected a broader climate that was very slow to disappear. One telling data-point for this thought, and to get a sense of that philosophical climate, it is notable that Gödel never published his ontological proof even after safely ensconced at the Institute for Advanced Studies. 

Okay, with that in place, I return (recall) to Nagel's "malicious philosophies of science." (See also, this post on the role of its companion piece, "Recent Philosophies of Science," in the displacement of dialectical materialism.) The role of 'malicious' in the title of the paper, gives a sense of its tenor. 

Nagel's paper itself has many virtues. He shows that many philosophical discussions -- which are still familiar -- about the purported gulf between mind and world; or how to make the qualitative nature of experience compatible with the purportedly mathematical character of modern science; or  the ways in which mechanistic (and/or deterministic) and physicalist science are taken to be incompatible with an orientation toward (emergentist) life or mind, all tend to rest on impoverished conceptions of the nature of science and the practice of experimentation in which much of science is rooted. 

But, it is notable, in the quoted passage above, that Nagel simply assumes that "experimental evidence" is required to ground or justify "explicit theological and metaphysical commitments." And while one can grant Nagel that science itself need not offer "ultimate explanation" for the "facts of existence" -- and, perhaps, in his day wisely does not try to do so [modern cosmology is frequently not so self-limiting] --, it follows straightforwardly from the undeniable possibility that experimental evidence may not settle all philosophical questions.+

The previous paragraph is not to excuse pontifical dogmatism or oracular wisdom. It's Thursday, and I carry my analytic membership proudly today. Nagel goes on to quote a number of eminent neo-Thomists (Gilson, Maritain and, although no neo-Thomists, Whitehead). I have to admit I do not find what they say especially puzzling or obscure. (But you may disagree.) What these positions have in common is a demand for (i) forms of explanation that go beyond efficient causes; (ii) an ultimate ground for existence beyond experience; (iii) and some connection between (i-ii) that conforms to cannons of intelligibility and a PSR.

The more interesting point I wish to make is that when Nagel shows, correctly, that science itself often goes beyond efficient causation, and even offers answers to 'why' questions, he himself notes that these (tentative) scientific answers are not themselves based on direct experiment: "in science the answer to the question "why" is...always a theory, from which the specific fact at issue may be deduced when suitable initial conditions are introduced." (SR: 29) And Nagel grants that these initial conditions are going to be arbitrary or brute in some sense on so at odds with (iii). (In addition, the theory may well go beyond the experimental evidence that helped generate and confirm it.)

That Nagel recognizes the significance of (iii) is itself made clear when he insists that the appeal to causa sui is itself "mystery." (SR 30) And while I have some sympathy with Nagel's point -- which echoes, in a curious reversal, Clarke's Newtonian response to Spinoza -- that there is something unsatisfactory, especially to those familiar with science's ability to explain surprising difference makers in the world, about the fact that "no matter what the world were like, no matter what the course of events might be, the same Ultimate Cause is offered an "explanation,"" (SR 30) it is a mistake to charge this 'explanation' with mystery. That something is relatively bad at explaining particulars does not make it oracular or mysterious. 

I do not mean here to re-litigate Nagel's polemics. But it is easier to understand that in an intellectual milieu dominated by ideas like, and presumably influenced by, Nagel's a certain kind of counter-polemic may have been welcome. 

Now, so far I have done little to make the animus behind Nagel's position intelligible. But there is no mystery there. Nagel fundamentally objects to two ideas: first, that "only one conception of spiritual excellence is valid." (SR 33) And Nagel clearly believes, not without reason, that his targets promote such (ahh) spiritual monism. And, second, he rejects the dogmatism about such spiritual monism ground in a kind of intellectual hierarchy. The second point is more implied (but see what he says about Maritain).

For, Nagel the two ideas he rejects have no standing because they are not "based upon objective measures of well-being." (SR 33) And such measures must, according to Nagel be ground in careful experimental practice. To be sure it is in virtue of his commitment to this that he lets the reader grasp that shares with the neo-Thomists a rejection of the utilitarian tendency toward eugenics (SR 32). So, unlike many friends of science and experimental practice, Nagel does not deny that science is implicated in many contemporary problems. But he believes that a kind of anti-scientism, "rejects the one instrument from which a resolution of these difficulties may reasonably be expected." (SR 33)**

Of course, even somebody sympathetic to Nagel, like myself, may note that he has no experimental (or historical/conceptual) ground to suppose there is just "one instrument" that can offer such a resolution. He smuggles a lot into what is 'reasonable' to expect. 

Let me wrap up. So while Nagel's heart is in the right place -- after all in line with (recall) his pluralism, he is defending the diversity of spiritual excellence! --, Nagel's argument goes off the rails because he thinks that the neo-Thomists (and other fellow travelers" unfairly take advantage of the fact that in "“in the midst of actual and impending disaster” and in “period of social crisis, when rational methods of inquiry supply no immediate solution for pressing problems” people are to listen to those that disparage or stress the limitations of the sciences. (SR: 18; see also “the mounting economic and political tensions of our age,” further down the page). That is to say Nagel echoes the epicurean and Humean polemic against superstition that it takes advantage of fear. But we don't need to be Yoda, to recognize that countering polemic with polemic is no path to wisdom.

 

 

 

Ambedkar on Bertrand Russell

The laws of consumption, it may be noted, are simply certain deductions from the economic doctrine of the utility theory of value Formulated, as a reaction to the classical theory by Cournot, Gossen, Walres [sic]Menger and Jevons, it no longer thinks of utility as a quality inherent in the objective thing or condition but as dependent upon the capacity it possesses to satisfy human wants. This being so, the utility of an object varies according to the varying condition of the organism needing satisfaction. Even an object of our strongest desire like food may please or disgust, according as we are hungry or have over-indulged the appetite. Thus utility diminishes as satisfaction increases. In other words as satisfaction is the pleasurable activity of a particular organ or a group of them, the curve representing the relation of the organ to the object of its satisfaction varies inversely with the condition of the organ.
If Mr. Russell had carefully gone into the implications of this psychological analysis, he would certainly have avoided the misconception in question. For what does the psychological analysis really mean ? Why does the utility of an object tend to be zero or even negative ? This takes place it may be argued either (1) because at some point in the process of satisfaction the particular organ irritated ceases to derive any further satisfaction by feeding itself on the object of its craving or (2) because other organs needing a different kind of satisfaction clamour against the over-indulgence of some one organ at their expense. Prof. Giddings holding the latter view says “ if the cravings of a particular organ or a group of organs are being liberally met with appropriate satisfactions, while other organs suffer deprivation, the neglected organs set up a protest, which is usually sufficiently importunate to compel us to attempt their appeasing. The hunger of the neglected parts of our nature normally takes possession of consciousness, and diverts our attention and our efforts from the organ which is receiving more than its due share of indulgence”.13 Of the two alternative explanations that of Prof. Giddings is probably the more correct. Having regard to the behaviouristic hypothesis, of the organism as an active entity, it is but proper to suppose that there does exist this hunger of the entire organism for a varied satisfaction appropriate to each of its organ which would engender such a protest. It is this protest that compels obedience to what is called the law of variety in consumption. If this is a fact it is difficult to understand how one organ by perpetual dominance can mutilate the whole organism. On the other hand, though one at a time, all the appetites have their turn. Human nature is, thus, fortunately, provided by its very make-up against a one-sided development leaving no doubt as to its promise for an all-round development in a congenial environment. Whether it will be able to obtain the miscellaneous food-material, intellectual or spiritual it craves for is a matter beyond its control. If it is mutilated by the lack of variety of food, it will be through social default and not its own. B.R. Ambedkar (1918) "Mr. Russell and the Reconstruction of Society," in Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches: Vol. 1 Compiled by Vasant Moon, 490-491

A moment of google enhanced, idle speculation -- would Russell and Ambedkar have known each other? -- prompted by a fascinating essay by Meena Krishnamurthy on Ambedkar's early writings (1916) on caste that I had recently edited brought knowledge (see here) of the existence of Ambedkar's review of Russell's (1916) The Principles of social Reconstruction. (also known as Why Men Fight).The review was initially published in the Journal of the Indian Economic Society in 1918.* 

Ambedkar is that rare world-historical figure -- among his many legacies one can single out the authorship of the Indian constitution -- who, as one starts to read his writings, turns out to be a serious intellectual, too. So, I was thrilled to see he wrote on Russell. And while it is, perhaps, true to say that Russell's star is fading within professional philosophy -- I doubt he is much taught or studied outside of history of analytic -- in virtue of being the rhetorically most gratifying founder of analytic philosophy who shaped our ways of thinking, returning to him always is rewarding. When he wrote the review he had just obtained two MAs at Columbia University, and was on leave from the LSE back in India while writing a dissertation in economics (conferred by UCL after the war). His learning shines through the review despite the orientation of, and self-limitation on,  the "review...meant for an economic journal" is a focus on Russell's analysis of the institutions of property and the modifications it is alleged by Mr. Russell to produce in human nature." (484)

Despite this self-limitation, there is plenty of (political) philosophy in the review (Nietzsche and Dewey are discussed cleverly). And, in fact, one of his main polemical targets, which he discusses while treating Russell's philosophy of war, is the idea that Indian identity is (or ought to be) tied up with "the gospel of quieticism and the doctrine of non-resistance." (486; I am not an expert on these matters, but I do note that Gandhi had returned to India a few years before, although was not yet leader of National Congress.) Ambedkar wishes to decouple Russell from pacifism. And he treats Russell approvingly, I think, as a liberal reforming advocate of (what we may call) non-violent agonism as the key to social progress (see, especially, p. 487). Some other time I hope to return to this.

Okay, let me turn now to the bit I quoted from the review at the top of the post. The target of Ambedkar's argument is Russell's claim (itself partially influenced by James) that love of money in human nature mutilates itself by stimulating one appetite at the expense of all others. Ambedkar has the following passage in mind (which he quotes partially):

It is the worship of money that I wish to consider: the belief that all values may be measured in terms of money, and that money is the ultimate test of success in life. This belief is held in fact, if not in words, by multitudes of men and women, and yet it is not in harmony with human nature, since it ignores vital needs and the instinctive tendency towards some specific kind of growth. It makes men treat as unimportant those of their desires which run counter to the acquisition of money, and yet such desires are, as a rule, more important to well-being than any increase of income. It leads men to mutilate their own natures from a mistaken theory of what constitutes success, and to give admiration to enterprises which add nothing to human welfare. It promotes a dead uniformity of character and purpose, a diminution in the joy of life, and a stress and strain which leaves whole communities weary, discouraged, and disillusioned. Chapter 4. [emphasis in original]

Now, Russell here echoes Hobson's view that conditions of modern life homogenize. But in a clever inversion of Adam Smith -- who famously claimed that it was excessive division of labor on the factory floor that mutilates our nature -- Russell thinks this homogeneity is an effect of widespread avarice, which in turn, is the effect of the consequence of market and especially property owning society more generally even if (Russell goes on to contrast the United States and England on this point) how this general avarice manifests itself, and is motivated, may be culturally conditioned.  

Ambedkar tackles Russell's claim from both the production side and the consumption side (to which the passage quoted above this post). What's noteworthy about Ambedkar's argument is not his psychological interpretation of the law of diminishing marginal returns. But rather that he takes this law itself to be caused (most likely) by a kind of internal balancing/competition among organs of the organism (the whole human). And the appetites and desires of the general organism, and its direction/orientation, is  caused by the relative strength of the various internal organs subject to this internal balancing/competition. 

Ambedkar's model was derived from Giddings, who he probably encountered at Columbia.** Giddings himself is notable figure because he is a key figure in American early social science. The model anticipates, in rough outline, the mathematical models of decision making (with utility curves) as an internal to our brains/nervous system conflict over resources in the brain made popular by behavioral and neuro-economists in the 1990s or so.  

The interesting twist Ambedkar gives to Giddings' model (perhaps it is in Giddings) is that by denying that homogeneity is normal, he can claim that if one does observe one-sided mental development this is the effect social environment. One may think this just is Russell's point. But Ambedkar had already denied (from the production side) the plausibility of Russell's claim on other empirical grounds. (To summarize and simplify: Ambedkar thinks that all things being equal, the richer one becomes the more risk averse one becomes.) But the upshot of Ambedkar's argument is that if one does encounter a homogeneous society all one needs to do, if society has the resources, is to provide an outlet for, and satisfaction of, diversity of human passions; then a rich human diversity will reassert itself. 

 

On Cancel Culture and the Implosion of The Civic Religion of Freedom of Speech

Debates about free speech on American campuses today suggest that the rival concepts of isegoria and parrhesia are alive and well. When student protesters claim that they are silencing certain voices—via no-platforming, social pressure, or outright censorship—in the name of free speech itself, it may be tempting to dismiss them as insincere, or at best confused. As I witnessed at an event at Kenyon College in September, when confronted with such arguments the response from gray-bearded free-speech fundamentalists like myself is to continue to preach to the converted about the First Amendment, but with an undercurrent of solidaristic despair about “kids these days” and their failure to understand the fundamentals of liberal democracy.

No wonder the “kids” are unpersuaded. While trigger warnings, safe spaces, and no-platforming grab headlines, poll after poll suggests that a more subtle, shift in mores is afoot. To a generation convinced that hateful speech is itself a form of violence or “silencing,” pleading the First Amendment is to miss the point. Most of these students do not see themselves as standing against free speech at all. What they care about is the equal right to speech, and equal access to a public forum in which the historically marginalized and excluded can be heard and count equally with the privileged. This is a claim to isegoria, and once one recognizes it as such, much else becomes clear—including the contrasting appeal to parrhesia by their opponents, who sometimes seem determined to reduce “free speech” to a license to offend.--Teresa Bejan "The Two Clashing Meanings of 'Free Speech" (2017) The Atlantic,

The present critics and defenders of cancel culture are the children of a relatively recent civic religion that valorized an expansive conception of freedom of speech under the first amendment Stateside. A century ago (e.g., Timlan Act of 1907), the US banned all monetary campaign contributions. About half a century ago, campaign contributions were normalized, and in a string of legislation and judicial rulings, corporations gained the right of pretty much unlimited political spending under the first amendment. Until about thirty years ago, using Texas vs Johnson (1989) as baseline, flag burning (or desecrating) was illegal in nearly all US states. Until about half a century ago, using Miller vs California (1973) as a landmark, much pornography was de facto illegal. 

One of the gravest political right under a regime devoted to liberty, to speak against war, was denied by the Espionage Act of 1917, and was upheld by the Supreme Court after the war had finished. (The ruling -- applying a "clear and present danger" doctrine to an argument against the use of force! -- was penned by Oliver Wendell Holmes.) Thankfully it was repealed. For every era in which the pentagon papers can be published there are many more where each and every war brings a new curtailment of speech.

Eighty years ago Bertrand Russell never got to teach at CUNY; he was prevented from doing so by a court, in part, because he was taken to hold immoral views regarding sexuality. This is a good reminder that the relatively robust, but at times quite fragile, defense of academic freedom in the US itself is a relatively recent phenomenon dating back to that era, in part a consequence of changing views promoted by Dewey as a response to this case. 

Undoubtedly the expansive understanding of the first amendment was a consequence of the experience of the McCarthy era, increasing religious diversity, the needs of modern capitalism with proliferating technologies and platforms, and a better educated and increasingly heterogeneous population. Feel free to offer other intellectual and sociological explanations.

I believe the expansive understanding of the first amendment only developed in the 1960s. Since it became a kind of civic religion taught in schools and presumably sincerely believed and promoted by its own high priests (lawyers, judges, professors, etc.), including crucially businesses. It provides a social glue in a country that has a dynamic form of capitalism and many latent political conflicts. This civic religion also become, itself, a steady source of profit and influence.

As a depressing aside, arguably the Supreme Court started to develop a more expansive conception of freedom of speech in 1969 not to protect civil rights protestors, or Vietnam protestors, but when it allowed that the Klan's advocacy of violence was protected speech (under the first amendment) because the speech did not call for “imminent lawless action” (Brandenburg v. Ohio.; see also Virginia v. Black (2003)) Perhaps, it is smart politics to protect everybody's rights by protecting the racists first.

But despite this expansive understanding of freedom of speech, there is negligible freedom of speech in the workplace to this day. And, in fact, even during the golden age of expansive freedom of speech, there was considerable restraint and self-censorship not to mention regulated speech in the mass media. One reason to watch Public-access television channels on cable back in the day (1980s), before the rise of the internet, was that it was one of the few places one could encounter genuine viewpoint diversity in the mass media (in addition to assorted goofballs, etc.). Bernie Sanders' recent political campaign renewed interest in that era.

Unfortunately, the cumulative effect of the golden age of freedom of speech is not only a marvelous diversity of speech, but also the empowerment of corporate, rent-seeking interests; and with the growth of the internet menacing racists/supremacists and would-be-fascists have found ways to circumvent all the self-censorship and gate-keeping of the mass media. After the implosion of the local newspaper/radio/tv monopolies, the racists and fascists, and the anger they provoke (cf. the rise of Breitbart, the dark web) are inevitably copied by the rest of corporate media. Feeding on anger is the prevailing business model.

With the rise of President Trump, it is no surprise that the myths that support the expansive free speech civic religion receive new scrutiny and in some cases have become perceived to be rank superstition. It is not unusual to hear advocates of freedom of speech claim that only exposure and argument can defeat evil ideas--no empirical evidence is ever offered for that. There is a persistent tendency among free speech defenders to minimize or belittle the whole range of harms that come from spreading of incitement, political propaganda, as well as microaggression, political gaslighting, testimonial injustice, etc. 

It is no surprise at all that people of good will come to think that (a) if they are not protected by freedom of speech in the workplace, and (b) if those with concentrated economic power and those with malicious intent are protected to spread their lies and hatred, then freedom of speech merely stacks the decks against all kinds of other important political ends. It is no surprise at all that the internet is being used as a means to mobilize and generate countervailing powers that restrict the range of speech (from many political ends).

Contemporary  freedom of speech fundamentalists may well lament most of the restrictions I have mentioned, and perhaps even the outcomes that have strengthened corporations and would-be-fascists. But that they personally welcome caustic counter-speech from all quarters makes them folk of high integrity. It does not address the crumbling of the ramshackle edifice that is today's liberalism.

That we're in the realm of a decaying civic religion is clear from the fact that those among the high priests of our intellectual elite that defend it can't recognize the emptiness of their own incantations and their refusal to engage with their critics with minimal good faith: they claim sincerely and without evidence that any restriction on debate is supposed to end up in harming the most vulnerable; yet no restrictions may also (and does) harm the most vulnerable.* One can hold in equally good faith, even find empirical support for, the idea that some restrictions on speech may well be the condition of possibility of reasoned debate. As Teresa Bejan, who has anticipated much of my claims here, taught me: one way to understand cancel culture is, in fact, as an imperfect mechanism for equal speech.

One may well misinterpret me as defending cancel culture (this happened to me to my surprise after a recent post) or that I somehow willfully miss all the bad effects of cancel culture (these are very real). In fact, our civic and educational institutions have an obligation to defend scholars' and artists' ability to think and speak freely and to experiment in all kinds of forms of creative lives. 

Let me close: defenders of the decaying civic religion often accuse its critics of illiberalism. And undoubtedly there are illiberal critics of freedom of speech who cheer on cancel culture. But it is not illiberal to learn from experience and to worry about the political and civil harms that follow from experiments in freedom. We have had a half-century trial in relatively expansive freedom of speech. I lament the demise of that culture's assumptions. But it is not illiberal to take stock of the effects of policy, and to wish to correct for known harms.

The great political insight of liberalism as a creed is that our destiny is uncertain and surprising. And that as our great project unfolds we emphasize different means and different ends to face the political problems of the moment. What's urgently needed is that the eloquent and creative defenders of the old civic religion set their minds to the task of helping the young devise new norms and institutions that can promote human emancipation, equality, justice, and, yes, a bit wiser freedom for the next half century. 

 

 

Helen Huss Parkhurst on meaning atomism, unrestricted composition, concrete modal realism and philosophical imagination [Guest Post]

[This is a guest post by Joel Katzav (University of Queensland)--ES]

Helen Huss Parkhurst (1887-1959) was an early twentieth-century, American philosopher.  She completed her MA in 1913 and her PhD in 1917, both at Bryn Mawr college. Her MA supervisors were Grace and Theodore de Laguna. Theodore was also her PhD supervisor (Parkhurst 1917, p. 67). Parkhurst came to be known primarily for her work in aesthetics and wrote two books–Beauty: An Interpretation of Art and the Imaginative Life and Cathedral: A Gothic Pilgrimage–in this field. However, her early work was on various forms of realism. I focus here on her criticism of the realist view that meanings are atoms, her exploration of unrestricted composition, her exploration of concrete, modal realism and her view that what primarily matters in philosophy is the exercise of the imagination.

Parkhurst’s PhD is entitled ‘Recent logical realism’ and appraises logical realism. According to Parkhurst, it was Bertrand Russell who suggested the topic to her when she visited Cambridge on a fellowship in 1913-1914 (ibid., p. 67). As she understands logical realism, it includes, among other premises, the view that “all conceivable acts of judgment and conception” have non-physical correlates (ibid., p. 3) as well as the view that “the meanings expressed by propositions are separate entities, atomic in character” (ibid., p. 4). Parkhurst’s primary target is Alexius Meinong’s work, but she also discusses Edmund Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen in some detail.

In criticising logical realism, Parkhurst draws on the theory of fictions, influentially presented in Vaihinger's Philosophie des Als Ob, on pragmatism and on idealism. Her pragmatist inspired discussion suggests that, even if the pragmatist is wrong in supposing that the meaning of a judgment is constituted by its consequences for action,  “its nature may perhaps be intelligibly ascertainable only by investigating the consequences” (ibid., p. 44). The problem is that, for the logical realist, meanings are atoms and thus implausibly supposed to be graspable independently of any of their consequences (ibid., pp. 40-44). Parkhurst’s idealist inspired discussion of meaning concludes that, contrary to the logical realist’s atomistic view of meaning,

when an individual mind is coerced in its recognition of "the meaning" denoted by its judgment, it is coerced not by a single, isolated, unified entity, but by an entire universe of interpenetrated, systematized meanings in use. 'The meaning' is then, as a unit, merely a convenient term about which to centre one's discourse. As a unit it is a fiction” (ibid., p. 47).

Parkhurst’s 1924 paper, ‘More Things in Heaven and Earth’ is an examination of a different kind of realism, one she calls ‘radical realism’. Radical realism is the view that “nothing thinkable depends for its being or its nature upon being thought, and that consequently what is to be looked for everywhere is a maximum reality rather than a minimum” (Parkhurst 1924, p. 534). As her starting point, Parkhurst assumes that a radical realist will accept that our world is one “in which matter, space, time, and consciousness are real in their totality and in their ultimate constituents, and together with all that they logically imply” (ibid., p. 534). Relations are real, as are the groups they, with their relata, form. Numbers too are real. She then aims to bring out two implications of these unremarkable, realist commitments. First, she argues that the radical realist’s starting point leads to accepting unrestricted composition, that is, that every plurality of objects comprises a group. According to Parkhurst, since radical realism recognises some groups, e.g., the collections of atoms that constitute physical objects, it should recognise all unions of objects as groups. For these various unions do not differ qua groups. She concludes that, from the radical realist perspective,

there is actually nothing which mischievous imagination can conjure and bind into inharmonious unions which has not already its place in the omnivorous universe! (ibid., p. 536).

Second, Parkhurst argues that the radical realist’s starting point leads to accepting the actuality of every conceivable pattern, including every conceivable pattern of musical notes and every conceivable pattern of words. One argument here is that the patterns that might be recognised on, and in, the physical objects posited by unremarkable realism–atoms, molecules and larger physical objects–must, according to radical realism, be there independently of being recognised. Chiselling brings out an already existing figure. Printing a chequered pattern on the wall brings out already existing patterns of surface areas. Drawing a line on a sheet of white paper makes visible an already existing track of paper. Another argument is that the radical realist recognises the word combinations we have deliberately produced as real but should also, since she thinks that these combinations are real independently of whether they were thought of by anyone, recognise that all conceivable word combinations are real:

what can still be said about the actuality of undiscovered combinations of words composing any one language group? It can be said, on the same principles that we have been using, that those combinations must already have been actual before they came to be thought of (ibid., p. 542).

According to radical realism, the actual world contains, in concrete form, representations of everything that might conceivably be represented by language and art.

Parkhurst’s 1917 discussion of logical realism is instructive about the philosophical environment that she was working in at the time. She presents the idea that the meaning of terms is fixed by their use as a familiar, idealist position. Indeed, the idealist view of meaning she presents is close to that of her teachers’ teacher, the idealist James E. Creighton (see, e.g., his An Introductory Logic), and both of her teachers are explicit that they are committed to the idea that meaning is fixed by use (see here for a discussion of Theodore’s view and Grace’s 1927 book Speech: Its Function and Development for her view). From this perspective, it is not entirely surprising that one of Parkhurst’s teachers, Theodore, thought that the misuse of natural language was why philosophers misguidedly tried to develop substantive theories of truth, identity, property possession and knowledge, and was the first to develop the deflationary view of truth (see here). Similarly, it is not entirely surprising to find her other teacher, Grace, developing a private language argument (see here) and a theory of speech according to which its primary function is the coordination of group behaviour (again, see Speech).

Parkhurst’s discussion of radical realism is of interest partly because of its novel exploration of realism, including the earliest explicit argument for unrestricted composition that I am aware of. Also interesting, however, is the attitude to philosophy that her discussion expresses. While Parkhurst’s PhD thesis is a sober, critical examination of positions, her paper is a humorous, imaginative exploration of a possible world. Her emphasis is not on evaluating radical realism, but on spelling it out in an entertaining way. She writes, reflecting on those who, like her, sometimes tire of disputation, that

[a]rtist-like, we would take canvas or chisel and attempt a portraiture of those ideas for the sheer pleasure in their piquancy. Confirmed controversialists may perhaps be loath to assume even for a moment this care-free, uncritical attitude toward epistemological and cosmological solemnities. For such the following reflections are not intended. Those only who share the mood of peaceful dalliance are hereby invited to participate in the present undertaking (Parkhurst 1924, p. 533).

Parkhurst’s emphasis on the imaginative, artist-like side of philosophy fits well with some of the key trends in American philosophy in the early decades of the twentieth century. While American academia is professionalising and specialising, many American philosophers, including Parkhurst, are worried about their inability to agree even about what philosophy is, never mind on a body of substantive philosophical theses (Parkhurst 1920). An emphasis on the imaginative side of philosophy was one reaction to the disagreements within philosophy.

On the Origin of 'Western Philosophy

Nay, if I mistake not, 'tis of a worse consequence, even (the Doctrines of Religion, to assert an infinite Privation, or want of Existence, to be co-eternal with the substantial GOD, who is omnipotent, living, and strong; than to affirm Matter itself to be co-eternal with him, since this is an actual Substance, and may with reason be suppos'd, as a necessary Emanation of his Power and Goodness; whereas the other is a mere naked Potentiality, a Non-Entity, as the Western Philosophers call it; and therefore cannot be conceived to flow from the Divine Nature, which is Essential Lift and Being. Yet in these nice and remote speculations I am timorous, and dare not be positive; left I should prosane the honour of the Sovereignly Good, who is the Breath of our Nostrils. To speak the truth, I am wavering in all things but this : That there Is an Eternal Mind, everywhere present, the Root and Basis of all Things visible and invisible, whom we call Alla, the Support of in finite Ages, the Rock and Stay of the Universe. Letters written by a Turkish spy, who lived five and forty years undiscovered at Paris: giving an impartial account to the Divan at Constantinople, of the most remarkable transactions of Europe: and discovering several intrigues and secrets of the Christian courts (especially of that of France). Continued from the year 1637, to the year 1682, volume 4, pp. 286-7.

In one of my posts on Bertrand Russell's The History of Western Philosophy, I pointed out that the phrase 'western philosophy' was barely used before 1880, trailing the increasingly popular use of 'western civilization' with a lag of a few decades. I argued that Russell probably played a non-trivial role contributing to the popularity of the very idea of western philosophy. In context Russell clearly signaled some familiarity with existing literature (especially through his interest in Albert Schweitzer's writings) in comparative philosophy, in which 'western philosophy' was compared with the philosophies to be found in other great 'civilizations,' especially China and India. This use of 'western philosophy' is also (recall) presupposed by the critics of the 'eurocentric' professional practices or the 'western' canon. 

Naturally, this made me curious about the pre-history of the concept of 'western philosophy' in the comparative sense assumed by (say) Russell. Obviously, this rules out all the kinds of uses of 'western philosophy' where 'western' picks out something different than the comparative, civilizational sense presupposed by Russell. As I noted before, Ibn Tufayl, for example, writing in medieval Islamic Spain, understands himself as a western philosopher to be contrasted with philosophers (e.g. Al-Farabi, Ibn Sinna, etc.) of the Islamic orient some of whose texts are not circulating in the west. One can easily imagine that when the Roman empire was divided between western and eastern parts, a Roman philosopher working in, say, Rome, could refer to the members of Alexandrian school as those eastern philosophers.

There is a further issue lurking here in that when Russell is writing 'philosophy' is many respects a considerably narrower project than in the ancient world, where in the remit of philosophy there is both what we would call 'science' and what we would call 'wisdom literature' or 'self-help literature.' Philosophy in Russell's sense is only increasingly clearly visible from, say, the late Renaissance onward. So, this made me narrow the search space a bit. 

The first use of ‘western philosophy’ that I am familiar with -- but this is an invitation to my learned readers to do better -- to mark an implied contrast between the speculative thought of Europe and that of a distinct contrasting civilization occurs in volume 4 of the Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy (L'Espion Turc), published in the early 1690s. The exact author of this volume is unclear. The book is surrounded by mystery and mystification. The work is clearly a model for Montesquieu's Lettres persanes, one of the foundational texts of the Enlightenment.

The context of that use of ‘western philosophy’ is a bit complicated to convey succinctly in part because the letter itself pretends to be an "endless meditation," (mocking Descartes) but within this meditative structure it occurs in the midst of a ridiculing digression by the ‘turkish spy’ on the misguided faith in the divine origin of holy texts by various peoples.* That's an explosive topic then much debated in the wake of Spinoza’s suggestion that the Hebrew Bible as we have it was pretty much the society shaping work of Ezra at the re-founding of Israel as a political entity. He (the ‘spy’) goes on to offer a heterodox argument to the effect that whatever else is true, something, be it God or a Vacuum, must exist eternally. And at that point the ‘spy’ introduces a scholastic distinction immanently, in part for comic effect, with terminology used by ‘western philosophers.’

Part of the comedy is that such terminology must have felt already partially dated to the learned audiences of the Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy because a new, modernizing anti-scholastic philosophy (familiar to us through names like Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes) had swept away the Scholastic kind. Of course, part of the art and pretense of the Letters is that they are written just during the ascent of this modernizing anti-scholastic philosophy, but that its ultimate victory cannot be taken for granted. 

Part of the larger agenda of the Letters is to defamiliarize and thereby problematize moral and political assumptions common in 'the West.' So, in a rhetorical sense the framework of the Letters is resolutely comparative, presupposing familiarity with and taking on the natural perspective of the philosophy and mores of Turkey and Islamic civilization more generally. But, of course, in practice that is primarily a ruse. So, the home civilization presupposed between the letter writer (the spy) and his audience is itself a construct as imagined from a perspective that at least rhetorically and perhaps conceptually understands itself as western.

  

On Living with Cosmic Loneliness; On the art of living and liberalism in Russell's History of Philosophy (III)

Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge--so I should contend-- belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy. Almost all the questions of most interest to speculative minds are such as science cannot answer, and the confident answers of theologians no longer seem so convincing as they did in former centuries...Why, then, you may ask, waste time on such insoluble problems? To this one may answer as a historian, or as an individual facing the terror of cosmic loneliness.
The answer of the historian, in so far as I am capable of giving it, will appear in the course of this work. Ever since men became capable of free speculation, their actions, in innumerable important respects, have depended upon their theories as to the world and human life, as to what is good and what is evil. This is as true in the present day as at any former time. To understand an age or a nation, we must understand its philosophy, and to understand its philosophy we must ourselves be in some degree philosophers. There is here a reciprocal causation: the circumstances of men's lives do much to determine their philosophy, but, conversely, their philosophy does much to determine their circumstances. This interaction throughout the centuries will be the topic of the following pages.
There is also, however, a more personal answer. Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand, induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance, and by doing so generates a kind of impertinent insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. It is not good either to forget the questions that philosophy asks, or to persuade ourselves that we have found indubitable answers to them. To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.--Russell The History of Western Philosophy "Introductory" xiii-xiv

At the start of the History, Russell claims that philosophy involves a rejection of extrinsic authority (e.g., revelation, tradition, faith, political legislation, etc.) and accepts or embraces (and perhaps submits to) the intrinsic authority of reason. So, from the start Russell's History embraces a kind of Enlightenment project in which the point of philosophy is to be free from the (unreasonable) tutelage of others. To become philosophical is to become both rational and secular. That is to say, part of the world historical drama of the History has a Spinozistic character: the attempts of reason/philosophy to free itself from such tutelage. One effect of this is that in general Russell evaluates the past, in part, in terms of its contribution to such progress. And this connects (recall) the way he evaluates philosophy both on its own terms and as a cause on shaping its environment. Okay, with that in place let's turn to the particular conceptions of philosophy.

First, philosophy is a speculative enterprise. But what counts as speculative can shift over time. So, the philosophy of one age may be the science of the next. That Russell associates science with definite knowledge is a bit surprising because when he was younger he treated the content of science as a changeable moving target. (There is an echo of this in the History in his passing comments on the impact of quantum mechanics on science (p. 540.)) Even so, one important implication of Russell's picture is that even in philosophy science has only limited authority: it may provide constraints, but if a question is properly philosophical, the present answer will outstrip the resources of present science (but may make future science possible). So, even scientific philosophy is in a certain sense beyond science. (I return to this below.)

Second, Russell thinks speculations, past and present, are interesting, in part, because they help understand ages and nations, which are both partially constituted by philosophy and, in turn, constitute it (see also the chapter on political liberalism). So, even if the history of philosophy is the history of error, it's these errors that shape fundamental features of social reality. And while ages may pass and nations go extinct, the present age and existing nations have been partially shaped by past philosophy.

This suggests that in order to grasp one's social world one must become acquainted with the speculative thoughts that helped shape it. If one only studies effects (e.g.,ages and nations) one lacks a full understanding and explanation of one's social world. And strikingly this acquaintance must be of such a sort that one becomes in a certain way a philosopher oneself ("to understand its philosophy we must ourselves be in some degree philosophers.") The study of the history of philosophy is thus, both, part of a political education and part of the path toward rationality.

Third, because philosophy is intrinsically speculative it is always accompanied by uncertainty. And so the natural teaching of philosophy qua philosophy in the art of living is to learn to live without certainty. (This puts an interesting spin on Keynes and Knight.) Russell tacitly assumes away here that giving up on hopes and fears -- the Stoic and Buddhist response -- or the very asking of certain questions (e.g., Hume, Nietzsche, Carnap, Wittgenstein) are appropriate.*

In Russell's narrative to live without certainty is, at bottom, the teaching of Locke (p. 608-9, where he quotes the Essay IV.XVI.4).** And because Locke is treated as the "first comprehensive statement of liberal philosophy" (600), we can see that for Russell liberalism -- in so far as it remains a skeptical liberalism -- is the repository of philosophy's contribution to the art of living. Marxism and fascism are also genuinely modern, in the way that liberalism is modern, but  these are more coherent than liberalism. Fascism, however, produces the subordination of individual reason to some despotic (non-rational) authority (600 & 790). In principle, Marxism need not do so in its ultimate state, but to get there rational persuasion is sacrificed to class war and revolution (790).

As an aside, Russell recognizes that to learn to live with uncertainty, which is always a bit "painful," is not always what's called for; one should not always insist on it in others. In particular, he praises Spinoza's philosophy of being a source of "help towards sanity and an antidote to the paralysis of utter despair" when circumstances are especially bad. According to Russell is this available without the metaphysical claims of Spinoza--"all one needs to realize is that that "human life...is an infinitesimal part of the life of the universe." (580)

Russell understands scientific philosophy, or the philosophy of logical analysis, as a two-fold discovery: on the one hand "many questions...can be answered with precision, and by objective methods" not perhaps definitively, but with cumulative "successive approximations to the truth." (835-6) And where such truth is reached, philosophy turns into science. On the other hand, it is the embrace of mankind's inability to "find conclusive answers to many questions of profound importance to mankind" by science and reason alone. (835) That is to say, in this respect, as it looks like 'western' civilization is nearly destroying itself, Russell interprets the general outlook of  scientific philosophy as in fundamental accord with the way liberalism is the depository of philosophy's true teaching, as he puts in the last sentence of the book: "in abandoning a part of its dogmatic pretensions, philosophy does not cease to suggest and inspire a way of life." (836)

 

What's Western in Russell's History of Western Philosophy (II)

The chart above tracks the rise of "western philosophy" in the google.books corpus. At the end of this post, below the fold, I have added another chart, comparing "the history of western philosophy" to "analytic philosophy" and "continental philosophy." I use these graphs to give a sense of trends and magnitude, but given the limitations of the corpus I make no claims to precision. I checked for the frequency of 'western philosophy' in different major scholarly languages and eyeballing the results suggests that variants of it are modestly more popular in German than in French (or Dutch) in the nineteenth century. But that the pattern is very similar to the results in English.

My reason for looking into this matter is to ask why the title of Russell's (1945) The History of Western Philosophy (hereafter History) includes "western" as a modification of "philosophy."  Before I get to to the History, a few more words about the data. What is clear from these charts is that the term "western philosophy" predates Russell's History. But that the term was not widely used before the mid 1930s. (More about that in a second.) And that it started to gain in popularity in the late 1930s. It's unclear why it increases in popularity in the early 1940s, but it is pretty clear it gets a huge boost from Russell's History.

In the chart below the fold I use the title of his book and it is significantly more prevalent than either "analytic philosophy" or "continental philosophy." I am not claiming that is solely the effect of Russell. But I do think they provide evidence for the thought that Russell's own book managed to help shape the "circumstances" that shaped philosophy since. So, by the standards of the History itself (recall yesterday) the book is a great success!

With the help of Jstor and scholar.google (and useful feedback from Michael Kremer and Trevor Pearce who inspired several points in this post), I learned that "western philosophy" is used from around WWI onward in the context of papers/scholarship in comparative philosophy, primarily focused on China and India. This fits with the analysis by Joel Katzav that there was thriving scholarly literature in comparative philosophy (recall here and here)  By contrast, in the first half of the twentieth century. Prior to 1914, the more negligible use of 'western philosophy' can be very idiosyncratic; it can also refer to intra-clerical disputes (between eastern and western churches). In particular, ideas from comparative philosophy are used in ordinary scholarship. 

So, for example, in 1923, the Oxford philosopher, F. C. S. Schiller, published a piece, "Analysis and Self-Analysis,"  in Journal of Philosophy. In it, a contrast between "oriental" and "western" philosophy is used in order to assert that Oriental philosophy has tackled "the problem of self-analysis" long before Descartes. I mention this articular, in particular, because it is explicitly a response to Russell. Russell mentions Schiller in the History (and treats him as one of the less important founders of pragmatism [e.g., p. 77; 792])

Okay, if we now turn to Russell's History, the book is primarily focused on Greek philosophy and its afterlife in the Macedonian and Roman empires; the scholastic period in Catholic and then Reformation Europe; and then modernity centered on England, France, Germany, Holland, and eventually the United States. Indian philosophy is discussed a bit in the context of Schopenhauer. There is a disappointing section on "Mohammedan Culture and Philosophy" (although values their "civilization"). Chinese  and Shinto thought are mentioned but not really discussed. Only Philo is mentioned as a distinctively Jewish philosopher, although Maimonides is discussed. His attitude is best expressed by this passage:

Learned Jews, who knew Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic, and were acquainted with the philosophy of Aristotle, transmitted their knowledge to less learned schoolmen. They transmitted also less desirable things, such as alchemy and astrology. After the Middle Ages, the Jews still contributed largely to civilization as individuals, but no longer as a race. (History, 323)

I return to the pattern of exclusion soon. Because my interest here is in Russell's use of 'western.' It is pretty clear that in this period, to use 'Western philosophy' was a clear contrast to the philosophies found in the great (Indian, Chinese) civilizations in the East. But embedded in this was an older historically grounded contrast between the eastern and western Roman Empire and the subsequent division in an Eastern (Byzantine/Orthodox) and Western (Catholic/Protestant) Christianity. And, in fact, throughout the text, Russell almost never uses "western philosophy," but he does frequently use "the West" in order to pick out the topic of interest. In these cases, 'western' and 'the west' refers to Western part of Roman Empire, the Catholic church, and the geographic region what during the subsequent (!) cold-war came known as the West.  

I could end there. But I have three more reflections: first, Russell treats the object of study, 'western philosophy,' as co-enduring, perhaps even co-constituting, (western) 'civilization'--a word used throughout the History. And, in fact, the whole book is structured by dichotomy between civilization and barbarism (a word used as frequently as 'civilization.') As the graph shows, the very idea of a western Civilization takes off around 1923. I think it's highly likely that's due to the publication of Schweitzer's The Decay and Restoration of Civilization and, especially, Civilization and Ethics. Russell corresponded with Schweitzer and reviewed the latter "Does Ethics Influence Life?" which is (recall yesterday) one of the themes of the History.

As aside, in the review, Russell answers the question repeatedly in the negative (for example, "neither it nor its academic predecessors seem to the present reviewer to have that importance in moulding events which the author attributes to them,") while in the History less so (perhaps because he treats 'philosophy' more expansively than 'ethics.'). In the review, he thinks, re-orienting one of Spinoza's strange inversion of reasoning, that our ethics reflect our actions.

More important, and to extend my first reflection. In his rather critical review, Russell notes that "the bulk of [Schweitzer's] book is concerned in discussing European philosophers from Socrates to Count Keyserling, and affirming their inferiority to the philosophers of India and China, whom he does not discuss." It is unclear what Russell thinks of Schweitzer's claim about the relative merits, but when he discusses these other philosophies at all in the History Russell tends to reverse the valence. (I'll explain why in a subsequent post.)

As noted, Russell is clear that the 'West' is not the only 'civilization,' and he also believes it was (partially and occasionally) lost in the region that goes by 'the West.' But, not unlike Mill and Hume, he thinks civilization is clearly morally superior to, or more worthy than barbarism. In particular, civilizations that are characterized by dynamic development can count on his approval. (He treats "Greek civilization" in the Eastern Roman empire, as "a desiccated form, survived, as in a museum, till the fall of Constantinople in 1453, but nothing of importance to the world came out of Constantinople except an artistic tradition and Justinian's Codes of Roman law." History, p. xvi)

Second, one may still wonder why the "West" (civilization and its philosophy) becomes so salient in the decade before Russell's History. My speculative thought is that this is the period in which Anglo intellectuals revive the Smithian and Kantian idea(s) of regional federation centered either on Europe or on the Atlantic (and, sometimes including, the colonies they may have owned). This involved many public intellectuals in the U.K. and (recall) philosophers at the University of Chicago. And, in this period, the very idea of a West and the urgent matter of its survival takes renewed shape. As I noted yesterday, the treatment of pragmatism, which is the climax of the book, closed on the need to have a philosophy which does not contribute to the "danger of vast social disaster"

This sense of the danger of the moment is the great master theme of the History. As Russell puts it in the introduction: 

In general, important civilizations start with a rigid and superstitious system, gradually relaxed, and leading, at a certain stage, to a period of brilliant genius, while the good of the old tradition remains and the evil inherent in its dissolution has not yet developed. But as the evil unfolds, it leads to anarchy, thence, inevitably, to a new tyranny, producing a new synthesis secured by a new system of dogma. (xxiii)

It is clear that Russell thinks this historical pattern has been open-ended. But, then he adds a thought, one which will shape my subsequent reflections on the book: 

The doctrine of liberalism is an attempt to escape from this endless oscillation. The essence of liberalism is an attempt to secure a social order not based on irrational dogma, and insuring stability without involving more restraints than are necessary for the preservation of the community. Whether this attempt can succeed only the future can determine.

We may say, then, that we live in the extended present of Russell's History.