Digressions&Impressions

On Clarke's Criticism of Austrialian Settler Colonialism and his account of intelligence

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This digression is devoted to an extended aside in A Fall of Moondust; a slender 1961 novel by Arthur C. Clarke (1917 – 2008). It's easy to forget how famous Clarke once was not just as a science fiction author, but in wider discussions of science policy and search for extraterrestrial life. Anyway, the main action of the book is the rescue mission of a group of passengers on a sightseeing tour on the Moon, who are trapped under a kind of lunar dustbowl caused by a lunar Earthquake. While it plays some role in the development of the genre of 'hard science fiction' (or scientific science fiction), the novel is primarily a study, from multiple angles, of group dynamics and leadership under great stress and time constraints. What's neat is that there is no unique hero in the story, but that many kinds of contributions are valued. But because Clarke's characterizations are flimsy (and marred by gendered stereotypes) it's best read as an adventure story with occasionally comic touches. What follows does not contain any spoilers. 

The novel, which is set in the future, is oriented around a kind of settler-colonial mission to the Moon, and the possibility of developing a tourism industry on it. Clarke leaves the exact political details underspecified, and even the institutional contents of global peace is left unclear (especially compared to his slightly earlier Childhood's End). There is some evidence that the United Nations is politically influential and that some of the balance of power in it has shifted to Africa--we'll see evidence of what one might call 'post-colonial subaltern solidarity' that Clarke expects. (It's the great age of decolonization in which he was writing.) And while there is some evidence that the Soviet Union is culturally significant, the novel offers plenty of suggestions that ordinary market capitalism is not extinguished yet. I leave it at that (some of the evidence is quoted below).

Interestingly enough (given Clarke's own non-fictional views), the possibility of encountering extra-terrestrial life is actually minimized and ridiculed throughout the novel. It’s compared to religion in ways unflattering to both UFOs and religion.

In fact, one natural take-away from the novel is that if technological barriers to space-colonization can be overcome (and it is not obvious it's worth the money and risks), it's much preferable over settler-colonization on Earth. And the reason I say this is because there is a set-piece about 2/3rds of the novel, when -- during the dramatic action of the novel things have reached a real nadir -- there is an extended conversation between Pat (the captain of the space-bus buried under lunar dust), who we just learn is Lunar born, and McKenzie (who is one of his terrestrial touristy passengers trapped alongside him). I'll quote the passage in full:

 

"...Incidentally, how did you get a name like McKenzie?"

Having had little contact with the racial tensions that were not yet wholly extinct on Earth, Pat could make such remarks without embarrassment—indeed, without even realizing that they might cause embarrassment.

"My grandfather had it bestowed on him by a missionary when he was baptized. I'm very doubtful if it has any—ah— genetic significance. To the best of my knowledge, I'm a full-blooded abo."

"Abo?"

"Aboriginal. We were the people occupying Australia before the whites came along. The subsequent events were somewhat depressing."

Pat's knowledge of terrestrial history was vague; like most residents of the Moon, he tended to assume that nothing of great importance had ever happened before 8 November 1967, when the fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution had been so spectacularly celebrated.

"I suppose there was war?"

"You could hardly call it that. We had spears and boomerangs; they had guns. Not to mention T.B. and V.D., which were much more effective. It took us about a hundred and fifty years to get over the impact. It's only in the last century— since about nineteen forty—that our numbers started going up again. Now there are about a hundred thousand of us— almost as many as when your ancestors came."

McKenzie delivered this information with an ironic detachment that took any personal sting out of it, but Pat thought that he had better disclaim responsibility for the misdeeds of his terrestrial predecessors.

"Don't blame me for what happened on Earth," he said. "I've never been there, and I never will—I couldn't face that gravity. But I've looked at Australia plenty of times through the telescope. I have some sentimental feeling for the place— my parents took off from Woomera."

"And my ancestors named it; a woomera's a booster stage for spears."

Are any of your people," asked Pat, choosing his words with care, "still living in primitive conditions? I've heard that's still true, in some parts of Asia."

"The old tribal life's gone. It went very quickly, when the African nations in the U.N. started bullying Australia. Often quite unfairly, I might add—for I'm an Australian first, and an aboriginal second. But I must admit that my white countrymen were often pretty stupid; they must have been, to think that we were stupid! Why, 'way into the last century some of them still thought we were Stone Age savages. Our technology was Stone Age, all right—but we weren't."

There seemed nothing incongruous to Pat about this discussion, beneath the surface of the Moon, of a way of life so distant both in space and time. He and McKenzie would have to entertain each other, keep an eye on their twenty unconscious companions, and fight off sleep, for at least five more hours. This was as good a way as any of doing it.

"If your people weren't in the Stone Age, Doc—and just for the sake of argument, I'll grant that you aren't—how did the whites get that idea?"

"Sheer stupidity, with the help of a preconceived bias. It's an easy assumption that if a man can't count, write, or speak good English, he must be unintelligent. I can give you a perfect example from my own family. My grandfather—the first McKenzie—lived to see the year two thousand, but he never learned to count beyond ten. And his description of a total eclipse of the Moon was 'Kerosene lamp bilong Jesus Christ he bugger-up finish altogether.'

"Now, I can write down the differential equations of the Moon's orbital motion, but I don't claim to be brighter than Grandfather. If we'd been switched in time, he might have been the better physicist. Our opportunities were different-that's all. Grandfather never had occasion to learn to count; and I never had to raise a family in the desert—which was a highly skilled, full-time job"

Perhaps," said Pat thoughtfully, "we could do with some of your grandfather's skills here. For that's what we're trying to do now—survive in a desert."

"I suppose you could put it that way, though I don't think that boomerang and fire stick would be much use to us. Maybe we could use some magic—but I'm afraid I don't know any, and I doubt if the tribal gods could make it from Arnhem Land."

"Do you ever feel sorry," asked Pat, "about the breakup of your people's way of life?"

"How could I? I scarcely knew it. I was born in Brisbane, and had learned to run an electronic computer before I ever saw a corroboree—"

"A what?"

"Tribal religious dance—and half the participants in that were taking degrees in cultural anthropology. I've no romantic illusions about the simple life and the noble savage. My ancestors were fine people, and I'm not ashamed of them, but geography had trapped them in a dead end. After the struggle for sheer existence, they had no energy left for a civilization. In the long run, it was a good thing that the white settlers arrived, despite their charming habit of selling us poisoned flour when they wanted our land."

"They did that? "

"They certainly did. But why are you surprised? That was a good hundred years before Belsen."

Pat thought this over for a few minutes. Then he looked at his watch and said, with a distinct expression of relief: "Time I reported to Base again. Let's have a quick look at the passengers first."—Chapter 19.

We don't learn what role Belsen (presumably a reference to Bergen-Belsen) has in the intellectual self-understanding of the future. But the implication seems to be that it is a non-trivial part of the cultural common ground of the educated of the future. Clarke here invites the reader to reflect on the commonalities (and some of the differences) between the genocidal treatment of the Jews by the Nazis and the settler-colonialism of the Anglo-Australians toward the aboriginals. 

More explicitly, McKenzie's argument (which is not contradicted anywhere else in the novel) is critical of racist views of intelligence in two ways (one obvious and one more subtle): first, he rejects racial nativism as explanatory when it comes to intelligence, and he plainly comes down on the side of education, opportunity, and culture as key drivers of intellectual development.

Second, he explicitly rejects the idea that there is one kind of intelligence; intelligence is something context specific. And, in fact, in this day of machine learning, it's a useful reminder of the older, wiser idea of intelligence as a culturally embedded skill that allows one to navigate one's environment(s).

This anti-racist view is embedded in a Victorian stance (that one finds in, say, J.S. Mill) that draws on a much older conceptual contrast of civilization vs savage that is understood in energetic and cultural evolutionary/selectionist terms ("geography had trapped them in a dead end. After the struggle for sheer existence.") Now, again the 'civilized' are not necessarily smarter--the point of the passage is to alert us to their arrogant stupidity and biases that makes the more powerful miss or overlook intelligence when they encounter it (and it suits their interests to do so).

But the implication of the cultural/group Darwinian argument in the quoted set-piece is that it is fundamentally better to be technologically civilized and that ‘savage’ life-styles are fundamentally not worth preserving or revitalizing (notice that 'dead end'). That is to say, the total effect of the extended aside is a kind of cultural argument for technological progress or spatial manifest destiny that tries to avoid the racialist, even genocidal versions of the past. But the racist versions are not wholly repudiated on consequentialist grounds because  "in the long run, it was a good thing that the white settlers arrived" despite the costs. Not to put too fine point on it, but this is a species of secular theodicy.

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Some Pre-History on the History and Sociology of Multiple Discovery: Merton, Dicey, Stigler- (etc.)

It may very well, owing to the condition of the world, and especially to the progress of knowledge, present itself at the same time to two or more persons who have had no intercommunication. Bentham and Paley formed nearly at the same date a utilitarian system of morals. Darwin and Wallace, while each ignorant of the other’s labours, thought out substantially the same theory as to the origin of species.--A.V. Dicey [2008] (1905) Lectures on the Relation between Law & Public Opinion in England during the Nineteenth Century, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, p. 18 n. 6 (based on the 1917 reprint of the second edition).

As regular readers know (recall), I was sent to Dicey because he clearly shaped Milton Friedman's thought at key junctures in the 1940s and 50s. So, I was a bit surprised to encounter the passage quoted above. For, I tend to associate interest in the question of simultaneous invention or multiple discovery with Friedman's friend, George J Stigler (an influential economist) and his son Steven Stigler (a noted historian of statistics). In fairness, the Stiglers are more interested in the law of eponymy. In his (1980) article on that topic, Steven Stigler cites Robert K. Merton's classic and comic (1957) "Priorities in Scientific Discovery: A Chapter in the Sociology of Science." (Merton project was revived in Liam Kofi Bright's well known "On fraud.")

When Merton presented (and first published it) he was a colleague of George Stigler at Columbia University (and also Ernest Nagel). In his (1980) exploration of the law of eponymy, Steven Stigler even attributes to Merton the claim that “all scientific discoveries are in principle multiple." (147) Stigler cites here p. 356 of Merton's 1973 book, The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, which is supposed to be the chapter that reprints the 1957 article. I put it like that because I was unable to find the quoted phrase in the 1957 original (although the idea can certainly be discerned in it, but I don't have the book available to check that page).

Merton himself makes clear that reflection on multiple discovery is co-extensive with modern science because priority disputes are endemic in it. In fact, his paper is, of course, a reflection on why the institution of science generates such disputes. Merton illustrates his points with choice quotes from scientific luminaries on the mores and incentives of science that generate such controversies, many of which are studies in psychological and social acuity and would not be out of place in Rochefoucauld's Maximes. Merton himself places his own analysis in the ambit of the social theory of Talcott Parsons (another important influence on George Stigler) and Durkheim. 

The passage quoted from Dicey's comment is a mere footnote, which occurs in a broader passage on the role of public opinion in shaping development of the law. And, in particular, that many developments are the effect of changes in prevaling public opinion, which are the effect of in the inventiveness of "some single thinker or school of thinkers." (p. 17) The quoted footnote is attached to the first sentence of remarkably long paragraph (which I reproduce at the bottom of this post).* The first sentence is this: "The course of events in England may often at least be thus described: A new and, let us assume, a true idea presents itself to some one man of originality or genius; the discoverer of the new conception, or some follower who has embraced it with enthusiasm, preaches it to his friends or disciples, they in their turn become impressed with its importance and its truth, and gradually a whole school accept the new creed." And the note is attached to 'genius.'

Now, often when one reads about multiple discovery (or simultaneous invention) it is often immediately contrasted to a 'traditional' heroic or genius model (see Wikipedia for an example, but I have found more in a literature survey often influenced by Wikipedia). But Dicey's footnote recognizes that in the progress of knowledge, and presumably division of labor with (a perhaps imperfect) flow of ideas, multiple discovery should become the norm (and the traditional lone genius model out of date).

In fact, Dicey's implicit model of the invention and dissemination of new views is explicitly indebted to Mill's and Taylor's account of originality in chapter 3 of On Liberty. (Dicey only mentions Mill.) Dicey quotes Mill's and Taylor's text: "The initiation of all wise or noble things, comes and must come from individuals; generally at first from some one individual." (Dicey adds that this is also true of  folly or a new form of baseness.)   

The implicit model is still very popular. MacAskill's account (recall) of Benjamin Lay's role in Quaker abolitionism (and itself a model for social movement building among contemporary effective altruists) is quite clearly modelled on Mill and Taylor's model. I don't mean to suggest Mill and Taylor invent the model; it can be discerned in Jesus and his Apostles and his been quite nicely theorized by Ibn Khaldun in his account of prophetic leadership. Dicey's language suggests he recognizes the religious origin of the model because he goes on (in the very next sentence of the long paragraph) as follows: "These apostles of a new faith are either persons endowed with special ability or, what is quite as likely, they are persons who, owing to their peculiar position, are freed from a bias, whether moral or intellectual, in favour of prevalent errors. At last the preachers of truth make an impression, either directly upon the general public or upon some person of eminence, say a leading statesman, who stands in a position to impress ordinary people and thus to win the support of the nation."

So far so good. But Dicey goes on to deny that acceptance of a new idea depends "on the strength of the reasoning" by which it is advocated or "even on the enthusiasm of its adherents." He ascribes uptake of new doctrines to skillful opportunism in particular by a class of political entrepreneurs or statesmanship (or Machiavellian Virtu) in the context of "accidental conditions." (This anticipates Schumpeter, of course, and echoes the elite theorists of the age like Mosca and Michels.) Dicey's main example is the way Bright and Cobden made free trade popular in England. There is space for new directions only after older ideas have been generally discredited and the political circumstances allow for a new orientation. 

It's easy to see that Dicey's informal model (or should I say Mill and Taylor's model?) lends itself to a lot of Post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. So I am by no means endorsing it. But the wide circulation of some version of the model helps explain the kind of relentless repetition of much of public criticism (of woke-ism, neoliberalism, capitalism, etc.) that has no other goal than to discredit some way of doing things. If the model is right these are functional part of a strategy of preparing the public for a dramatic change of course. As I have noted Milton Friedman was very interested in this feature of Dicey's argument [Recall:  (1951) “Neo-Liberalism and its Prospects” Farmand, 17 February 1951, pp. 89-93 [recall this post] and his (1962) "Is a Free Society Stable?" New Individualist Review [recall here]].

I admit we have drifted off from multiple discovery. But obviously, after the fact, multiple discovery in social theory or morals can play a functional role in the model as a signpost that the world is getting ready to hear a new gospel. By the end of the eighteenth century, utilitarianism was being re-discovered or invented along multiple dimensions (one may also mention Godwin, and some continental thinkers) as a reformist even radical enterprise. It was responding to visible problems of the age, although its uptake was not a foregone conclusion. (And the model does not imply such uptake.)

It is tempting to claim that this suggests a dis-analogy with multiple discovery in science. But all this suggestion shows is that our culture mistakenly expects or (as I have argued)  tacitly posits an efficient market in ideas in science with near instantaneous uptake of the good ideas; in modern scientific metrics the expectation is that these are assimilated within two to five years on research frontier. But I resist the temptation to go into an extended diatribe why this efficient market in ideas assumption is so dangerous.

The Caliban and the Witch, Hobbes, Trevor-Roper, Bodin, and the age of Geniusses

But it the jurists the magistrates, and the demonologists, often embodied by the same person, who in, contributed to the persecution. They were the ones who systematized the argument answered the critics and perfected a legal machine that, by the end of the 16th century, a standardized, almost bureaucratic format to the trials, accounting for the similarities of the confessions across national boundaries. In their work, the men of the law could count on the cooperation of the most reputed intellectuals of the age, including philosophy and scientists who are still praised as the fathers of modern rationalism. Among them was the English political theorist Thomas Hobbes, who despite his skepticism concerning the reality of witchcraft, approved the persecution as a means of social control. A fierce enemy of witches — obsessive in his hatred for them and in his calls for bloodshed — Jean Bodin, the famous French lawyer and political theorist, whom historian Trevor Roper [sic] calls the Aristotle and Montesquieu of the 16th century. Bodin, who is credited with authoring the first treatise on inflation, participated in many trials, wrote a volume of 'proofs' (Demomania, 1580), in which he insisted that witches should be burned alive instead of being 'mercifully' strangled before being thrown to the flames, that they should be cauterized so that their flesh should rot before death, and that children too be burned.
Bodin was not an isolated case. In this "century of geniuses” — Bacon, Kepler, Galileo, Shakespeare, Pascal, Descartes — a century that saw the triumph of the Copernican Revolution, the birth of modern science, and the development of philosophical and scientific rationalism, witchcraft became one of the favorite subjects of debate for the European intellectual elites. Judges, lawyers, statesmen, philosophers, scientists, theologians all became preoccupied with the "problem," wrote pamphlets and demonologies, agreed that this was the most nefarious crime, and called for its punishment.10---Silvia Federici (2004 [2021]) Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation, pp. 180-181 [p. 168 in the 2004 US edition!]

I turned to Federici after my dissatisfaction (recall) with De Beauvoir's account of the origin of patriarchy, which I think of as a key (illustration of, and) to maintaining all kinds of social hierarchies. Caliban and the Witch is a riveting read and it connects (recall) with one of my other long-standing interests: the Marxist's tendency to impugn the evils of mercantilism to capitalism as such (see also this post on Meiksins Wood; and this one). And while I intend future posts to tease out my reservations about some of the particularly Marxist theses of Federici, I want to be very clear that one of her underlying theses, that is, that centuries of violent persecution of witchcraft created the conditions of modern patriarchy is eminently plausible even in light of what follows. 

But this post is connected to a more general unease about the book that grew out of my initial inability to figure out what the sources of some of her claims were (mostly for future reading on my part), and then noticing all kinds of minor mistakes in the bibliography and omissions in the index (see here for a blogpost that enumerates all kinds of mistakes  [HT Tim Christiaens]). But when she started to discuss material presumably more familiar to me (17th century natural philosophy and political theory), I was really amazed by some of her claims about figures I thought I had studied reasonably carefully in the past. And my first reaction was a kind of panic that my own blinders and prejudices, combined with intellectually inherited ideas of what is significant, had made me miss all kinds of salient, gendered issues (pertaining to witchcraft and persecution). But as I traced out some of Federici's footnotes, I have come to think that she could have benefitted from more careful refereeing and editing.* And while this post illustrates that claim, it is, however, also focused on a strain of argument that runs through the book, even though in some respects it is dispensable to some of her more important theses. 

Take the quoted passage above. Let me start with common ground. Bodin, who routinely gets credited, and now I quote the textbook I use in my own teaching, Alan Ryan's On Politics, for articulating "the modern concept of a sovereign state and theorize its unity in terms of the indivisible sovereignty" (235), was truly a jerk. I was unaware of Bodin's important role in the persecution of witchcraft. (It  goes unmentioned in Ryan's On Politics.) This is no trivial matter because it supports another of Federici's central claims (shortly after the quoted passage above) that the persecution of witchcraft was a key step in the development of modern state: "Thus, it is no exaggeration to claim that the witch-hunt was the first unifying terrain in the politics of the new European nation-states," (p. 182 [p. 169] emphasis in original). That Bodin was of central importance in creating the intellectual framework for (and personally advocating) reviving the persecution of witches is really an unavoidable conclusion from reading Trevor-Roper's fascinating long essay, "The European witch-craze of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries." (See, especially, p. 112)+ 

But the claim about Hobbes surprised me. And this is actually what first let me to read Trevor-Roper's essay, which I took to be the source for her claims in the passage quoted at the top of this post. For, the only note 10 is appended to material quoted from Trevor-Roper's essay. I will quote the note and Trevor-Roper's source material below. But first, Trevor-Roper never mentions Hobbes in the essay! (I double-checked with word-search.) So, he could not be the source of the claim that Hobbes approved the persecution of witches as a means of social control. This had me scratching my head. 

Now, as it happens, a few pages before Federici had claimed the following:

The incompatibility of magic with the capitalist work-discipline and the requirement of social control is one of the reasons why a campaign of terror was launched against it by the state — a terror applauded without reservations by many who are presently considered among the founders of scientific rationalism: Jean Bodin, Mersenne, the mechanical philosopher and member of the Royal Society Richard Boyle, and Newton’s teacher, Isaac Barrow.18 Even the materialist Hobbes, while keeping his distance, gave approval. “As for witches,” he wrote, “I think not that their witchcraft is any real power; but yet that they are justly punished, for the false belief they have that they can do such mischief, joined with their purpose to do it if they can” (Leviathan 1963: 67). He added that if these superstitions were eliminated, “men would be much more fitted than they are for civil obedience” (ibid.).--Caliban and the Witch, p. 154 (p. 143-144 in the American edition)

Now, as regular readers (with a long memory) know, I think the term 'witchcraft' is very important in Hobbes because he uses it to describe the dangers of ambition (Hobbes anticipates (recall) Spinoza Ethics 3, p29, Scholium) of successful demagogues or usurpers who succeed at rebellion. His key example is Julius Caesar. (See Leviathan, chapter 29 and also the final sentence of ch. 36.) By contrast, as is even clear from Federici's quotes (these are from chapter 2 of Leviathian), for Hobbes, the persecuted women taken to be witches are not really witches at all. It is important to recognize how significant this is. For, as Trevor-Roper shows, non of the skeptics and critics of witch-burning had denied the existence of witches or such powers they might possess. Even the greatest of them, Weyer (a student of Erasmus) had granted not just their possibility, but their existence (p. 135). And this meant that the battle was really over the adequacy of the means of establishing witchcraft, especially the use of torture. So, by denying their reality, or at least denying the reality of their power, Hobbes had finally helped create the conditions for the retreat from persecuting witches through juridical mechanisms (which have to involve at least possible facts). 

Now at this point one may claim that the preceding paragraph is irrelevant because Hobbes does claim that "they are justly punished, for the false belief they have that they can do such mischief, joined with their purpose to do it if they can.” (Leviathan, chapter 2.) And while this can be taken to deny the magic power of witches, it does seem to advocate the persecution of those who understand themselves as witches willing to do harm. It's important to recognize that this alone would dramatically reduce the number of witch-trials because even by Federici's lights few would self-ascribe as witch and whatever powers were claimed were usually deployed for healing and service purposes.   

In addition, and Federici never mentions this, Hobbes, who is not exactly known for his concern with civil liberties, is an opponent of the use of torture: "Also Accusations upon Torture, are not to be reputed as Testimonies. For Torture is to be used but as means of conjecture, and light, in the further examination, and search of truth; and what is in that case confessed, tendeth to the ease of him that is Tortured; not to the informing of the Torturers: and therefore ought not to have the credit of a sufficient Testimony: for whether he deliver himselfe by true, or false Accusation, he does it by the Right of preserving his own life." (Leviathan, chapter 14) The partial critique of torture undermines the very mechanism that's used in the vast majority of witch trials which rely on the torture-induced self-incriminating evidence of the accused. In context this is a clear repudiation of the way witches are tried. For, as Trevor-Roper notes most earlier public intellectual critics of the persecution of witches came to their criticism by their sense that torture was thoroughly unreliable (e.g., p. 138). 

And this puts the claim about "justly punished" in a new light. For Hobbes witches are unjustly punished, and this is what frequently happens, if their conviction relies primarily on their torture-induced confession and not on their (intended) actions. 

Okay, but what about the claim that Hobbes promotes the persecution of witchcraft to promote civil obedience? This sounds something like Hobbes might well believe. Here's the full sentence that Federici partially quotes: "If this superstitious fear of Spirits were taken away, and with it, Prognostiques from Dreams, false Prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which, crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted than they are for civill Obedience." (Leviathan, chapter 2.) So, Hobbes' target here is quite clearly the ambitious demagogue who plays on the fear of common people. These ambitious types are dangerous because they exploit (superstitious/fake news) folk opinion to their own ends. 

Now, as it happens this particular sentence is the closing sentence of the paragraph that Federici uses to suggest that Hobbes promotes the persecution of people who think they are witches. What we can now see is that Federici has completely misrepresented Hobbes' point. The real danger is not people who think they are witches and who wish to harm others, the real danger is ambitious political types who exploit such beliefs and the fears they arouse in others for their own ends. And while Hobbes certainly does not take the civil obedience of ordinary people for granted, he thinks the politically ambitious (soldiers, politicians, and clergy) are the real danger. So rather than promoting the prosecution of witchcraft, what he wants is the wide circulation of official views (in particular his own book) that undercut the very idea of the powers of witches. I would not call Hobbes an Enlightenment thinker, but one can see the seeds of it in him.

Okay, so much for Hobbes. Recall the quote above. In note 10 (which is the only source offered) Federici writes, "H. R . Trevor-Roper writes: “[The witch-hunt] was forwarded by the cultivated popes of the Renaissance, by the great Protestant Reformers, by the Saints of the Counter-Reformation, by the scholars, lawyers and churchmen.... If these two centuries were an age of light, we have to admit that in one respect at least the dark ages were more civilized....” (Trevor-Roper 1967: 91)." That's the whole note (p. 310 [p. 211 in the US edition]). This is a very odd note if it is supposed to support most the claims in the paragraph to which it was attached (quoted at the top of this post).

Here's the corresponding passage in Trevor-Roper:

[The craze] was forwarded by the cultivated popes of the Renaissance, by the great Protestant reformers, by the saints of the Counter-Reformation, by the scholars, lawyers and churchmen of the age of Scaliger and Lipsius, Bacon and Grotius, Bérulle and Pascal. If those two centuries were an age of light, we have to admit that, in one respect at least, the Dark Age was more civilized. (p. 84 in my edition)

What's immediately striking is that Trevor-Roper's list is mostly different from Federici's "century of geniuses.” More important, inclusion in his list is, in fact, not intended to be membership among the advocates of persecuting witchcraft! That's not clear from the passage itself, but it is clear from the larger essay in which Scaliger, Lipsius, Bérulle, and Pascal are never mentioned. He does mention Grotius and Bacon again in a footnote (n.49 primarily on Erasmus), in order to suggest that they avoid the topic and that they probably belonged among the witch skeptics (p. 119)!

In fact, and I'll close with this. Trevor-Roper thinks that the new seventeenth century philosophy (broadly conceived) was one of the main causes of the end of the intellectual obsession with witches:

When we do that, the explanation, I believe, becomes clear. Bacon, Grotius, Selden may have been reticent on witches. So, for that matter, was Descartes. Why should they court trouble on a secondary, peripheral issue? On the central issue they were not reticent, and it is in their central philosophy that we must see the battle that they were fighting: a battle which would cause the world of witches, ultimately, to wither away. (p. 167)

This can't be the whole story, because he recognizes (something Federici passes over entirely in silence) that "no witch was burnt in Holland after 1597 and witch trials ceased in 1610." (p. 158) Trevor-Roper thinks this is primarily due to lay control over the judiciary (and it fits with his larger theme that religious authorities are central to the hunt for witches). 1610 is also the first year of the twelve year armistice (1609-21) of the Dutch war of independence, and presumably peace helped calm things down somewhat. Both 1597/1610 precede the successful uptake of the new sciences by several decades. (1609 is the year of Galileo's The Starry Messenger and Kepler's Astronomia Nova.)

Even so, Trevor-Roper makes a plausible case that it is people influenced by the new science of Descartes, including Queen Christina, and also Thomasius, who shaped the seventeenth century attack on the persecution of witches. One would never get this from Federici, who implies otherwise throughout her argument.**

Finally, of the list "Bacon, Kepler, Galileo, Shakespeare, Pascal, Descartes," the one most intimately connected to witchcraft was probably Kepler. His mother was famously accused of witchcraft when he was at the peak of his fame. (The whole episode is ignored by Federici, but it problematizes a number of her claims.) Kepler defended her personally, and successfully!++ 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

14 March 1979: Foucault's Science Fiction of Neo-Liberal Eugenics (XXX)

[I]n Gary Becker there is a very interesting theory of consumption, in which he says: We should not think at all that consumption simply consists in being someone in a process of exchange who buys and makes a monetary exchange in order to obtain some products. The man of consumption is not one of the terms of exchange. The man of consumption, insofar as he consumes, is a producer. What does he produce? Well, quite simply, he produces his own satisfaction. And we should think of consumption as an enterprise activity by which the individual, precisely on the basis of the capital he has at his disposal, will produce something that will be his own satisfaction. Consequently, the theory, the classical analysis trotted out a hundred times of the person who is a consumer on the one hand, but who is also a producer, and who, because of this, is, as it were, divided in relation to himself, as well as all the sociological analyses—for they have never been economic analyses—of mass consumption, of consumer society, and so forth, do not hold up and have no value in relation to an analysis of consumption in the neo-liberal terms of the activity of production. So, even if there really is a return to the idea of homo oeconomicus as the analytical grid of economic activity, there is a complete change in the conception of this homo oeconomicus.
So, we arrive at this idea that the wage is nothing other than the remuneration, the income allocated to a certain capital, a capital that we will call human capital inasmuch as the ability-machine of which it is the income cannot be separated from the human individual who is its bearer. How is this capital made up? It is at this point that the reintroduction of labor or work into the field of economic analysis will make it possible, through a sort of acceleration or extension, to move on to the economic analysis of elements which had previously totally escaped it. In other words, the neo-liberals say that labor was in principle part of economic analysis, but the way in which classical economic analysis was conducted was incapable of dealing with this element. Good, we do deal with it. And when they make this analysis, and do so in the terms I have just described, they are led to study the way in which human capital is formed and accumulated, and this enables them to apply economic analyses to completely new fields and domains.
How is human capital made up? Well, they say, it is made up of innate elements and other, acquired elements. Let’s talk about the innate elements. There are those we can call hereditary, and others which are just innate; differences which are, of course, self-evident for anyone with the vaguest acquaintance with biology. I do not think that there are as yet any studies on the problem of the hereditary elements of human capital, but it is quite clear what form they could take and, above all, we can see through anxieties, concerns, problems, and so on, the birth of something which, according to your point of view, could be interesting or disturbing. In actual fact, in the—I was going to say, classical—analyses of these neo-liberals, in the analyses of Schultz or Becker, for example, it is indeed said that the formation of human capital only has interest and only becomes relevant for the economists inasmuch as this capital is formed thanks to the use of scarce means, to the alternative use of scarce means for a given end. Now obviously we do not have to pay to have the body we have, or we do not have to pay for our genetic make-up. It costs nothing. Yes, it costs nothing—and yet, we need to see ... , and we can easily imagine something like this occurring (I am just engaging in a bit of science fiction here, it is a kind of problematic which is currently becoming pervasive).
In fact, modern genetics clearly shows that many more elements than was previously thought are conditioned by the genetic make-up we receive from our ancestors. In particular, genetics makes it possible to establish for any given individual the probabilities of their contracting this or that type of disease at a given age, during a given period of life, or in any way at any moment of life. In other words, one of the current interests in the application of genetics to human populations is to make it possible to recognize individuals at risk and the type of risk individuals incur throughout their life. You will say: Here again, there’s nothing we can do; our parents made us like this. Yes, of course, but when we can identify what individuals are at risk, and what the risks are of a union of individuals at risk producing an individual with a particular characteristic that makes him or her the carrier of a risk, then we can perfectly well imagine the following: good genetic make-ups—that is to say, [those] able to produce individuals with low risk or with a level of risk which will not be harmful for themselves, those around them, or society—will certainly become scarce, and insofar as they are scarce they may perfectly well [enter], and this is entirely normal, into economic circuits or calculations, that is to say, alternative choices. Putting it in clear terms, this will mean that given my own genetic make-up, if I wish to have a child whose genetic make-up will be at least as good as mine, or as far as possible better than mine, then I will have to find someone who also has a good genetic make-up. And if you want a child whose human capital, understood simply in terms of innate and hereditary elements, is high, you can see that you will have to make an investment, that is to say, you will have to have worked enough, to have sufficient income, and to have a social status such that it will enable you to take for a spouse or co-producer of this future human capital, someone who has significant human capital themselves. I am not saying this as a joke; it is simply a form of thought or a form of problematic that is currently being elaborated.
What I mean is that if the problem of genetics currently provokes such anxiety, I do not think it is either useful or interesting to translate this anxiety into the traditional terms of racism. If we want to try to grasp the political pertinence of the present development of genetics, we must do so by trying to grasp its implications at the level of actuality itself, with the real problems that it raises. And as soon as a society poses itself the problem of the improvement of its human capital in general, it is inevitable that the problem of the control, screening, and improvement of the human capital of individuals, as a function of unions and consequent reproduction, will become actual, or at any rate, called for. So, the political problem of the use of genetics arises in terms of the formation, growth, accumulation, and improvement of human capital. What we might call the racist effects of genetics is certainly something to be feared, and they are far from being eradicated, but this does not seem to me to be the major political issue at the moment.--Michel Foucault, 14 March, 1979,  translated by Graham Burchell, Lecture 9, The Birth of Biopolitics, 226-229 [emphasis added on 'inevitable'].

It is difficult to write this blog post because I am so in awe of Foucault's analysis. For, in these pages, and the ones that follow and precede it, Foucault basically articulates the whole paradigm in which economic analysis becomes incapable of self-limiting and, thus, totalitarian. The question becomes not just how the genetic endowment, but the "child’s family life will produce human capital?" (229) And as Foucault notes this means that everything that can be measured in this environment must be measured to uncover its effect on human capital formation. Deep learning was made, we might say, for human capital theory.

And this human capital will not just be the principle that generates (possible) income into the future, but also the skill to consume it. Foucault's analysis of Becker's treatment that consumption isn't merely a passive doing, a mere hedonic receptacle, but an effect of human capital is masterly. We must not merely acquire taste but must gain the skill to enjoy our acquired commodities. We might say, as a serious joke, that Becker and Mincer (and Schultz, etc.) re-discover Rousseau and Kames in the vernacular. Foucault alerts us to his own interest in this merging of the philosophy of culture and education with the logical of capital/computing by calling it 'very interesting' (226) which is a stark contrast to the 'banalities' when he discusses political history (216/218). 

As an aside, I noted last week the brilliant almost counterfactual history of economics inscribed in this ninth lecture. But it is also worth noting a bizarre lacuna. For in Foucault's hands it is immediately obvious that this strain of Chicago economics -- the human capital, economic imperialism one -- rediscovers and revives the eugenic features of late nineteenth century and early twentieth century economics most associated with names like Galton and Pearson, but visible and significant in wide variety of American and British progressives, such that it infected the foundation of the welfare state nearly everywhere.* 

That is to say, what Foucault misses, and with him many other well-meaning intellectual commentators, is that part of the neo-liberal reaction against "Keynesian policy, social pacts of war, and the growth of the federal administration through economic and social programs" which "formed the adversary and target of neoliberal thought, that which it was constructed against or which it opposed in order to form itself and develop" (217) had a further moral underpinning (other than the anti-war, anti-collectivism already explicit in Foucault's analysis) one that had high salience after the Nazi-era is that of human moral equality. And this fits even Becker and his Chicago allies/teachers because in their version of human capital theory, after the Robbins redefinition of the nature of economics, the individual agency of each (recall last week) of us matters.  

My language of 'misses' in the previous paragraph is misleading. Given Foucault's knowledge of the study of deviance, it is unlikely he is not aware of this. And, in fact, he clearly signals he is aware of it: "call the racist effects of genetics is certainly something to be feared, and they are far from being eradicated," but he tells us why he does not alert us to this in his treatment: it "does not seem to me to be the major political issue at the moment." This comment raises tough questions about the hermeneutics of Foucault. 

The whole lecture series is (recall) oriented around the liberal art of government. And foucault makes clear that in one sense his is descriptive treatment of praxis and theory, and in other sense he is constructing what we may call the optimal art of liberal government. Now, it comes as no surprise that Foucault is aware of his situatedness in a particular political context; I have tried to be alert in where he hints at this. But here he alerts us to the fact that his decisions about what to highlight are themselves a function of his judgment of what he takes to be a major political issue at that moment. But he does not tell us what -- to be reflexive for a moment -- what enters into the formation of, and what secures the ''output'' of this judgment, and what counts as political for him.

Okay, let's close with a final observation. Above I noted that Foucault rightly discerns a kind of totalitarian element in the neo-liberal turn of Becker, Mincer, Schultz because as a domain of enquiry it is incapable of self-limitation. What he discerns is that (nearly) everything that can become data or a data-set connected to human activity is, in principle, possible evidence (about genes, environment, learning, production, risk, etc.) in this theory. (The remainder of the lecture Foucault spells this out nicely and ambitiously--very much worth re-reading for its significance to theories of capitalism, imperialism, and development.) In so far as there are constraints these are determined more by search costs than by the nature of the paradigm. This is really a contrast to how many other forms of enquiry function, where the paradigm limits severely what may count as possible evidence. 

But, of course, one may object that the totalitarian tendency in enquiry is not sufficient to count something as totalitarian in political praxis. The objection misses the point here. For Foucault is clearly committed to the idea once certain questions become intellectually pertinent -- not to an individual but (notice the bourgeois or at least Weberian terminology of Gesellschaft) "society"* -- then they become also necessarily ("inevitable") pertinent to, and actionable for, political practice ("control, screening, and improvement of the human capital of individuals.") He does not explain why he believes in this kind of weirdly friction-free market in ideas such that the social problem must generate its own social praxis. It is notable that he does not offer a mechanism for why this is inevitably so, and a critique of the present must originate here. But that's for another time.  

To put the more arresting point of the previous paragraph as a serious joke, if one raises the question of what Plato [Republic 546d] calls the marriage number (viz. "the human capital of individuals, as a function of unions and consequent reproduction"), then even in a liberal society (focused on "individuals") there is, contra the hopes of Bacon no self-restraint on its pursuit.* That is to say, Foucault accepts the kind of Heideggerian/Thomistic critique of modernity without their moralism or, despite his latent political "fears," existential angst. 

 

 

Ernest Nagel's Meta-philosophy of science (and politics)

Scientific knowledge does not depend on the possession of  an esoteric capacity 
for grasping  the necessary structure of some superior reality, nor does it require 
modes of warranting beliefs which are discontinuous with operations of thought, 
identifiable and effective in the ordinary affairs of human life. The achievements 
of science are the products of a cooperative social enterprise, which has refined 
and extended skills encountered in the meanest employments of the human 
intellect. The principles of human reason, far from representing the immutable 
traits of all possible being, are socially cultivated standards of competent 
intellectual workmanship. The life of reason as embodied in the community of 
scientific effort is thus a pattern of life that generates an autonomous yet 
controlling ideal. That  ideal requires disciplined dedication without servitude to
 any ultimate authority, imposes responsibility for performance upon individual 
judgment but demands  responsiveness to the criticism of others, and calls for  
adherence to a tradition of workmanship without commitment to any system of 
dogma. To many commentators, the ideals realized in the enterprise of science are
 also the ideals  which areindispensable to the successful operation of any society 
of free men. Many thinkers, indeed, like John Dewey in America, have based their 
hopes for the future of mankind upon the extension of the habits of scientific 
intelligence to every stratum  of communal life and to every  form of social 
organization. --Ernest Nagel (1954), "The Perspectives of Science and the Projects 
of Man," in Sovereign Reason 306

In analytic philosophy fame is transient. For example, Ernest Nagel is now largely forgotten; a few contemporary philosophers of science are familiar with his writings on reductionism and a few others are familiar with his work on function statements. But I doubt he is the subject of many graduate seminars, and I suspect almost none of his papers are taught regularly. That Nagel was once an academic celebrity in the sciences, the leader of what we may call the scientific wing of pragmatism for a generation, influential supervisor, prolific author across many philosophical topics, introducing countless students and their teachers to Gödel’s Proof, and an intellectual polemicist of the first order is now merely a historical footnote.

So, for example, Misak calls "Nagel, perhaps Dewey’s best graduate student" (116) in her influential, The American Pragmatists. She discusses  him as "the paradigm of an analytic, logically inclined, philosopher of science in America," (150). But while she uses some of Nagel's writings throughout her work in discussing other thinkers, and hints that he may be responsible for the synthesis between logical positivism and pragmatism, (163) at bottom she devotes little space to him. 

This neglect is a shame because in addition to being technically among the more competent philosophers of his generation, Nagel was widely read, fiercely sought out opposing views, and always makes clear that philosophical disagreement may matter to the fate of civilization. As regular readers know I think Nagel decisively shaped the character of contemporary analytic philosophy, including its orientation on puzzle solving (even though in some senses we have not been as ambitious as he hoped as we'll show below). But today I assume that in the background. Here I focus on his own sense that in the wake of Einstein the "classical conception of scientific knowledge" (302)* had to be replaced with something new.

For Nagel, science shapes the broader culture in two distinct ways: first, as the fount of technologies and medicines. Second, by challenging established beliefs and intellectual habits (297). And while the former is more emphasized, not the least by scientists in their appeals for resources (296), the latter can also help re-shape (amongst others) our "basic aspirations," our "moral commitments," and "the principles" by which "actions" are evaluated (297).

These facts generate a "threefold task" for philosophy: (i) clarifying the bearing of trends in scientific inquiry upon pervasive conceptions of our place in nature; (ii) of making explicit the intellectual methods by which responsibly held beliefs are achieved; and (iii) of interpreting inherited beliefs and institutions in the light of current additions to knowledge. (297-298) This has an interest implication. For all three involve philosophy of science. And while we tend to think of philosophy of science as a fairly focused enterprise (characterized by (ii)) -- e.g., "the clarification of scientific procedures" (307) and the stress testing of concepts (306) --, for Nagel, philosophy of science becomes first philosophy: "the boundaries of the philosophy of science are in fact the boundaries of philosophy itself." (298) And while (i) speaks to what we may call the existentialist call to philosophy, the third (iii) involves, more dangerously, philosophical activity with the life of her (imagined) community. 

The quoted passage at the top of this post leaves it unclear to what degree Nagel agrees with his mentor, Dewey, that society needs to be modelled on the post-classical conception of science (which is fallabilist, embraces the significance of what is now known as Duhem-Quine, and which is aware of possible incommensurabilities). Nagel rejects the cult of genius and thinks that science is a collaborative enterprise, which involves the systematic and socially sustained refinement of ordinary cognitive processes. So, rather than seeing a scientific society as a means toward a technocratic elite, the idea that society needs to be modeled on science is thought be democratic in a non-trivial sense.

Crucially, on this model science is not a method of silencing others behind an authoritative consensus, but a mechanism by which one becomes responsive to reasons and participates in a social division of labor that is in some sense self-legislating. And so, this helps generate (through its spokesperson in philosophy of science, and in lived experience) an "attitude, at once critical and experimental, toward the perennial as well as the current issues of human life." (307)

And, in fact, Nagel is explicit that philosophy of science so understood, is "a champion of the central values of liberal civilization." And while in the early 1950s the survival of liberal civilization was more secure than it had been in a generation, it is clear that securing such a civilization is one of Nagel's main aims in all his polemics (recall; and here). And, of course, by providing freedom of thought, liberal civilization is conducive to a humane philosophy of science (understood as first philosophy):

The basis for a general outlook on the place of man in nature is supplied by detailed knowledge of the structure of things supplied by the special sciences— an outlook that contemporary philosophy of science has helped to articulate and defend. In the perspective of that outlook, the human creature is not an autonomous empire in the vast entanglement of events and forces constituting the human environment. Nevertheless, no antecedent limits can be set to the power of scientific reason to acquire theoretical mastery over natural and social processes. Every doctrine which pretends to set such limits contains within itself the seeds of intolerance and repression. Moreover, in the perspective of that scientifically grounded outlook, human aspirations are expressions of impulses and needs which, whether these be native or acquired, constitute the ultimate point of reference for every justifiable moral judgment. The adequacy of such aspirations must therefore be evaluated in terms of the structures of human capacities and the order of human preferences. Accordingly, though the forces of nature may one day extinguish the human scene, those forces do not define valid human ideals, and they do not provide the measure of human achievement. But an indispensable condition for the just definition and the realization of those ideals is the employment and extension of the method of intelligence embodied in the scientific enterprise. A judicious confidence in the power of reason to ennoble the human estate may seem shallow to an age in which, despite the dominant position in it of scientific technology, there is a growing and pervasive distrust of the operations of free intelligence. It may indeed be the case that the temper of mind essential to the exercise of such intelligence has no immediate social future. But the cultivation of that intellectual temper is a fundamental condition for every liberal civilization. By making manifest the nature of scientific reason and the grounds for a continued confidence in it, contemporary philosophy of science has been a servant of men’s noblest and most relevant ideals. (307-8)

It would be tempting to give Nagel the last word. But it is notable that he assigns to philosophy of science also (iv) the task of making manifest "the grounds for...continued confidence" in the nature of scientific reason. The future orientation of this task is quite striking. What could merit that?** So, lurking in Nagel's "naturalist" program is the presupposition that either skepticism can be defeated or, well, that we can be persuaded to it ignore its challenge. 

On the Convergence of Economics and Computer Science (with comments on the role of moral reasoning in AI)

We can generalize this idea across our entire model space. Suppose we enumerated all the possible numerical pairs <error, unfairness> achieved by the models we are considering (e.g., SAT cutoffs)....

So each point corresponds to a different model; the x-coordinate of the point is the model’s error, and the y-coordinate is its unfairness score...The key thing to realize is that any model that is not on this boundary is a “bad” model that we should eliminate from consideration, because we can always improve on either its fairness score or its accuracy (or both) without hurting the other measure by moving to a point on this boundary.

The technical name for this boundary is the Pareto frontier or Pareto curve, and it constitutes the set of “reasonable” choices for the trade-off between accuracy and fairness. Pareto frontiers, which are named after the 19th-century Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, are actually more general than just accuracy-fairness trade-offs, and can be used to quantify the “good” solutions to any optimization problem in which there are multiple competing criteria. One of the most common examples is the “efficient frontier” in portfolio management, which quantifies the trade-off between returns and risk (or volatility) in stock investing.

The Pareto frontier of accuracy and fairness is necessarily silent about which point we should choose along the frontier, because that is a matter of judgment about the relative importance of accuracy and fairness. The Pareto frontier makes our problem as quantitative as possible, but no more so.

The good news is that generally speaking, whenever we have practical algorithms for “standard,” accuracy-only machine learning for a class of models, we also have practical algorithms for tracing out this Pareto frontier. These algorithms will be a little bit more complicated—after all, they must identify a collection of models rather than just a single one—but not by much... 

While the idea of considering cold, quantitative trade-offs between accuracy and fairness might make you uncomfortable, the point is that there is simply no escaping the Pareto frontier. Machine learning engineers and policymakers alike can be ignorant of it or refuse to look at it. But once we pick a decision-making model (which might in fact be a human decision-maker), there are only two possibilities. Either that model is not on the Pareto frontier, in which case it’s a “bad” model (since it could be improved in at least one measure without harm in the other), or it is on the frontier, in which case it implicitly commits to a numerical weighting of the relative importance of error and unfairness. Thinking about fairness in less quantitative ways does nothing to change these realities—it only obscures them.

Making the trade-off between accuracy and fairness quantitative does not remove the importance of human judgment, policy, and ethics—it simply focuses them where they are most crucial and useful, which is in deciding exactly which model on the Pareto frontier is best (in addition to choosing the notion of fairness in the first place, and which group or groups merit protection under it, both of which we discuss shortly). Such decisions should be informed by many factors that cannot be made quantitative, including what the societal goal of protecting a particular group is and what is at stake. Most of us would agree that while both racial bias in the ads users are shown online and racial bias in lending decisions are undesirable, the potential harms to individuals in the latter far exceed those in the former. So in choosing a point on the Pareto frontier for a lending algorithm, we might prefer to err strongly on the side of fairness—for example, insisting that the false rejection rate across different racial groups be very nearly equal, even at the cost of reducing bank profits. We’ll make more mistakes this way—both false rejections of creditworthy applicants and loans granted to parties who will default—but those mistakes will not be disproportionately concentrated in any one racial group. This is the bargain we must accept for strong fairness guarantees. Michael Kearns & Aaron Roth (2019) The Ethical Algorithm: The Science of socially Aware Algorithmic Design, Oxford University Press, 80-84 [the linked page should have their diagram]

A few weeks ago, after I started blogging (here and here) about the ethics of algorithms,* I received a Facebook advertisement-notification from Amazon that Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth (the authors of The Ethical Algorithm) had become Amazon scholars. "What an interesting way," I thought, "to advertise books to me." I clicked on the link and read the corporately sponsored interview with them. Perhaps because my expectations were low , but I was surprised how thoughtful -- "the main thesis of our book, which is that in any particular problem you have to start by thinking carefully about what you want in terms of fairness or privacy or some other social desideratum, and then how you relatively value things like that compared to other things you might care about, such as accuracy" -- they sounded and how relevant to my own project. It was clear theirs was a project about thinking about trade-offs (a favored phrase of theirs) about social values in algorithm design. More important to me, since I had just argued that thinking about the ethics of algorithms seems to replicate the very social problems familiar from thinking about ethics in economics, I wanted to see if my hunch was correct. Two clicks later I ordered the book, and a day later it was delivered.

A few years ago (well back in 2012), I used to joke that as even theoretical economists become more applied, becoming (thanks to increasingly cheap computer power) experts at massaging results out of giant "administrative data-sets,"+ economics ran the risk of being displaced by statisticians and, especially, computer scientists. While then I was largely ignorant of deep learning, it was clear to me that fruitful searches for robust and surprising correlations in data didn't require (as Justin Wolfers then suggested) the restrictive assumptions of economic theory. (Think about it: econometrics and economic theory artificially restrict the search space that can be more fully explored with deep learning machinery.) And indeed deep learning can dispense with economic theory.**

But in reading their interview and their splendid The Ethical Algorithm I realized that back in 2012, I had missed a crucial issue: that algorithmic design is conceived in terms of optimization problems under constraints. Since Lionel Robbins (back in the 1930s) this just is the definition of economics (and it enabled a split between ethics and economics). And once in algorithmic design you are interested in more than predictive accuracy, and so have to deal "with multiple competing criteria," a whole set of mathematically precise diagnostic tools familiar from economics can be imported into algorithmic design (as the passage quoted above suggests). So, I now realize that increasingly computer science and economics will merge (as presumably is happening already in finance-notice the passing mention of "portfolio management" in the block quote above). 

The previous is sufficient for a digression. But I also want to call attention to how moral issues are conceived, and not, in the (ahh) paradigm articulated by Kearns and Roth. And, in particular, I want to call attention to four levels, or sites, where they enter in. So, formally moral issues enter into two sites of algorithmic design: (i) first a choice in setting a goal (such as privacy or fairness) or success criterion for the algorithm. In general, Kearns and Roth view this as a constraint on accuracy that generates a trade-off among accuracy and other possible criteria. Kearns & Roth are very good at explaining that the way one makes precise these moral goals need not be univocal or can be very context sensitive. (So, there are different ways to think about fairness or privacy in algorithmic settings.) 

In turn, these trade-offs can be modeled in terms of pareto frontiers. And this generates the second site: (ii) at the level of a decision about ''which model on the Pareto frontier" to use in practice. Conceptually that's a distinct choice from how to encode 'fairness' into an algorithm, but obviously one can imagine that in practice, in the spirit of experimentation, there are going to be interactions between (i) and (ii) within a general goal-oriented design process. (Recall that an algorithm can be understood, even identified, in terms of the functions and goals it serves--something I have promised to return to.) 

Some time soon, I hope to write some more critical posts about their hope of turning algorithm design into a kind of dream of turning ethics into an optimization problem. (That way of putting it is indebted to Kathleen Creel, a young scholar who has written a gem of a paper on opacity in computational systems.) And one can see how the combination (i) and (ii) lend themselves, despite the situationism in (i), to a form of moral reasoning familiar from (and analogous, if not identical to) utilitarianism. Of course, one can let other values enter into the decision of (ii). 

Now, in their argument (ii) tends to happen in algorithm design/development process within, say, a company. But the choice one makes about which model on the Pareto frontier to inhabit generates (ahh) consequences to wider society. Some of these wider consequences -- laws, regulations, social norms, etc. -- are already internalized as constraints, but some are simply outside the company's mission/attention and not anticipated by the legislature.

The point in the previous paragraph fits their general argument. Because the "core concern" of their book is that "optimizing" on some explicit social goals, predictably and foreseeable, has (even in the relatively short term) unintended and perhaps ex ante unknowable side effects. (188) There is, thus, not just (as Kearns & Roth note) a (iii) a prior moral and political decision to be made whether or the extent to which algorithms are permitted or primarily responsible for decisions in a domain or (as they often describe it) norm enforcement (177). In the book they offer as an example, of the former "automated warfare," (175; 178).  But there is also (IV) a question how society should think about, and perhaps compensate for or mitigate, these entirely unintended and perhaps unknowable side effects that are a foreseeable outcome pattern from embracing algorithmic practices. This matters especially if such outcome patterns (recall) create  asymmetric harm patterns to vulnerable populations.

And, not unlike the economists, the way Kearns & Roth have set up their conceptual scheme (IV) turns out to be delegated to policy and so is not part of the ethical algorithm at all (or the responsibility of the firms that profit from them). To put this in their terms, we (now) know that a system with the very best portfolio management can create unexpected, general externalities. Something similar is now foreseeable in their field. (I am not sure what the equivalent term of true Knightian uncertainty in AI is, but they need it!) So given (IV), it would be good to prevent regressive forms of socialization of risk while privatizing profit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Newton, Comets, Life

For just as the seas are absolutely necessary for the constitution of this earth, so that vapors may be abundantly enough aroused from them by the heat of the sun, which vapors either—being gathered into clouds—fall in rains and irrigate and nourish the whole earth for the propagation of vegetables, or—being condensed in the cold peaks of mountains (as some philosophize with good reason)—run down into springs and rivers; so for the conservation of the seas and fluids on the planets, comets seem to be required, so that from the condensation of their exhalations and vapors, there can be a continual supply and renewal of whatever liquid is consumed by vegetation and putrefaction and converted into dry earth. For all vegetables grow entirely from fluids and afterward, in great part, change into dry earth by putrefaction, and slime is continually deposited from putrefied liquids. Hence the bulk of dry earth is increased from day to day, and fluids—if they did not have an outside source of increase—would have to decrease continually and finally to fail. Further, I suspect that that spirit which is the smallest but most subtle and most excellent part of our air, and which is required for the life of all things, comes chiefly from comets.--Newton, Principia, Book III, proposition 41, translated by Cohen & Whitman  (1999) p. 926.

The quoted passage is among my most favorite bits of the Principia. It is pretty nearly the close of the first edition of the Principia. And as I note elsewhere, it contributed to the reception of Newton as a kind of modern (mathematically inclined) Epicurean--something the General Scholium attached to the second edition helps correct. To be clear Newton here does not embrace the Epicurean notion of seeds as the source of human life.

 

In this account comets play a vital role in the economy of the universe. They bring a life-giving spirit from the outer reaches of the universe to our solar system. During the seventeenth century, 'spirit' is a term for a kind of refined fluid (the term is still to be noticed when we use 'spirits' to refer to liquor.) What Newton has in mind is made explicit in the final sentence of the Book III (which I think was itself only added to the second edition): "And the vapors that arise from the sun and the fixed stars and the tails of comets can fall by their gravity into the atmospheres of the planets and there be condensed and converted into water and humid spirits, and then—by a slow heat—be transformed gradually into salts, sulphurs, tinctures, slime, mud, clay, sand, stones, corals, and other earthy substances." (Newton, Principia: 938)

 

I have to admit that if people didn't keep telling me that Newton was a rather heterodox Christian, and we didn't have abundant manuscript evidence of his interest in true Christianity, I would read him here as offering an entirely naturalistic account of the cosmic origin and sustenance of life of a sort that, say, Ibn Tufayl hints at in his account of the rationalizing intellectuals' reconstruction of the site and mechanisms of creation. In any case, we shouldn't be surprised that Leibniz  mischievously, perhaps, reads Newton as a kind of crypto-Spinozist.

 

My reason for returning to Newton's account of comets was prompted by a remark by Chris Smeenk after my recent post, where, while interpreting Whewell, I treated Herschel's (1802) discovery that binary star systems obey Keplerian motion as analogous to the claim that satellites of Jupiter and Saturn obey Keplerian motion and, thereby, showing that Newtonian's gravitation is indeed a universal quality of bodies. For, despite the existence of Newton's third rule of reasoning, which encourages the researcher to take the law of gravitation as a universal (but not essential) quality of systems of matter, Newton only has evidence about bodies in a small region of the visible universe (our solar system). And, in fact, I called attention to a Query in which Newton allows that there may be regions of space where matter is differently constituted and so obeys different force laws. (So much for quick summary.)

 

In response, Smeenk noted that Newton shows that comets also obey Keplerian motion (that is the point of Proposition 40 of Book III of the Principia). It is worth spelling out  the implications of this a bit because they point to an interesting ambiguity in Newton's theory of comets that connects up to the question of the evidence for the scope of law of gravitation. 

 

First, Newton is pretty clear that comets we can see in the sky have Keplerian motion around our Sun: "Those who banish the comets almost to the region of the fixed stars are, therefore, entirely wrong; certainly in such a situation, they would not be illuminated by our sun any more than the planets in our solar system are illuminated by the fixed stars....likely that the comets descend far below the sphere of Saturn," (1999: 892) So comets are part of the solar system and their Keplerian motion is due, in part, to the attraction of our Sun. Of course, some of the orbits of regularly returning comets go to the furthest reaches of the Sun's gravitational field. 

 

But Newton also recognizes that some "comets are not restricted to the zodiac as planets are, but depart from there and are carried with various motions into all regions of the heavens," (937; from proposition 41; emphasis added). And, in fact, this is what he assumes when comets bring spirits and vapors from the outer cosmos to our little planet. 

 

So, lurking in Newton's argument is an open research question: when comets enter the solar system, before they are captured by the Sun's gravitational field (or the gravitational field of the outer planets, etc.) are they obeying Keplerian motion? For, prior to the kind of work that Hershel (and Bradley) could do with their more powerful telescopes, it is difficult to establish what kind of force laws matter obeys far away in different regions of space. It should be noted that Book I of the Principia, presents us with a whole class of possible force laws and motions in accord with such alternative possibilities; so Newton has already developed the tools to answer that question.

 

But, and perhaps this is what Smeenk had in mind, the mere fact that cosmic wanderers do, once they enter or interact with the solar's gravitational field, obey Keplerian motion suggests that they would do so elsewhere, too. And that's because on Newton's (more speculative view articulated in the Queries (quoted on Monday) the laws of motion are themselves ground in the nature of matter--so if you obey Keplerian motion here, you do would do so there, too. (That's compatible with the thought that elsewhere in the universe there is also fundamentally different kinds of matter that might obey additional laws.) So, that the existence of intergalactic wanderers is some evidence for a possible fundamental univocity of matter. In the first edition of the Principia Newton had embraced this explicitly (as a hypothesis) -"Every body can be transformed into a body of any other kind and successively take on all the intermediate degrees of qualities," (198)- , but he had officially dropped it in later editions perhaps because he became more enchanted with a dappled universe (or because he recognized that the univocity he needed -- inertial mass -- was a thinner and more abstract quantity than the transformation thesis requires).*

 

The fact that light also passes among different regions of the universe, also provides evidence for the thought that the universe is unified (as opposed to dappled). I mention this because in the General Scholium, Newton had used the immense distances of solar systems, and their inability to interact with each other (and so fall upon each other catastrophically) as a kind of evidence of God's benevolent design. So, that a dappled universe may well be thought in accord with His wishes.

 

 

On Kitcher (vs Schliesser) on Synthetic Philosophy

Dewey’s vision is one of “synthetic philosophy.” The philosopher’s reading is not limited to the writings of contemporary specialists in their home sub-branch of the academic profession, but should draw widely from many areas—as the greatest figures in the history of the subject, from Plato to Rawls, have all done. The first task is to understand the questions posed for us by the circumstances of our lives and by the conditions of contemporary inquiry, and that task is unlikely to be undertaken by those whose attention is confined to what a handful of specialists have said about some technical issue. Digging deeply into a particular place can have large and important rewards—but before you choose where to dig (and, perhaps, after you have started but before the treasure has been found), you would do well to reflect on why that specific location is so promising. The fact that generations of predecessors have been excavating in the neighborhood is not a conclusive reason—indeed, you might well reflect on the record of successes they have, or have not, achieved.--Philip Kitcher (2012), Preludes to Pragmatism, ("Introduction"), p xi

By synthetic philosophy I mean a style of philosophy that 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, policy, or other philosophical projects (or both). In particular, the synthetic glue tends to be a general theory or theories. When I first started blogging about synthetic philosophy, Max Hayward noted that Philip Kitcher had also used  the term in a lovely, polemical interview (reproduced here). Since I made it clear I traced my use back to Spencer, I did not think more of it. Synthetic philosophy is a potentially powerful meme, and it is no surprise it would infect both Kitcher and me. After my Biology & Philosophy (hereafter B&P) piece went viral, more people mentioned Kitcher's use in somewhat accusatory tones. And I realized he had been using the phrase for a while. So, recently (in a forthcoming Dutch piece), I decided to think through our contrasting uses.+ 

Before I get to the differences, I want to emphasize that one can be a synthetic philosopher in his (Deweyan) sense and my own at the same time. So, there is a clear family resemblance between the two notions, and sometimes -- for the Darwinian synthetic philosophers this is not trivial -- one can trace the same lineage of thinkers and problems back. In particular, both approaches feed on the impulse that within philosophy we should be reading widely and aspire "to know a lot of different things and to forge useful synthetic perspectives."

First, for Kitcher, "synthetic philosophy" ought to "replace" analytic philosophy.  I don't think that necessary at all; they can be reciprocal and mutually supportive enterprises. As I noted in B&P, synthetic philosophy can provide analytic philosophy with the data/input that enter into its arguments. Analytic philosophy can provide a home to and train would-be synthetic philosophers and, more important, be a place where would-be-synthesizing theories are tried out and developed. The previous two sentences do justice to the recent history.

I do not mean to deny that the ambitions of synthetic philosophy are a response to the cognitive division of labor and specialization within the sciences that contrast to those characteristic of analytic philosophy response. To simplify: analytic philosophy has both tried to become scientific and a specialist discipline, and it has tried (in Neurath's orchestration and Quine's regimentation) to propose being steward of a specialist language that might unify the sciences (and metaphysics). Synthetic philosophers aspire to play a more a more activist role in the sciences (and beyond).

Second, Kitcher strongly identifies synthetic philosophy with "naturalism." (That's in the next paragraph after the one I quoted above.) But as I clarified (or conceded) in response to a fine post by Martin Lenz, I don't think that necessary. All that is required is that there is a body of knowledge that can be taught, shared, and criticized (in neighboring fields) by others. This is, in fact, compatible with anti-naturalism, and the kinds of projects one can find in continental philosophy, what the Germans call geisteswissenschaft, and theology. None of this is far removed from what Kitcher writes about embracing the 'methodological canons of science of the day'; but he is adamant it rules out all kinds of beasts (e.g., Aristotelian essences, a priori truths, etc.) to be found in ''the philosophical zoo." And my kind of synthetic philosopher probably shares a lot of Kitcher's suspicions, but nows that its tasks are too urgent and difficult to rule out, a fortiori, useful tools and approaches.

Third, and most important, I think the synthetic 'glue' in synthetic philosophy is provided by one or more generalist theories (e.g., Darwinism, Bayesianism, information theory, game theory, actor network theory, etc.) Such theories provide a form of unification and explanation, and frame the kind of puzzles and research questions that can be pursued within the special sciences, a new synthetic special science, and/or philosophy (and public policy). They also provided a species of discipline (for reasons Timothy Williamson has emphasized in a different context). Kitcher quite clearly rejects the very idea (he calls it a "myth") of philosophical "expertise" (219, and elsewhere).* 

Why do I emphasize this? Kitcher's version of synthetic philosophy risks trapping philosophy in the great man of genius syndrome, where the synthetic glue is an act of creative synthesis; it is no coincidence that Kitcher quotes Dewey's gloss on "great innovators" (xi-xv; 172) confronting the problems of their own times approvingly. This is distinct from mastering skills and the (sometimes fine) drudgery of working through and becoming comfortable of a theory within the give and take of academic discussion (as Liam Kofi Bright would say, #noheroes). I am the first to admit that understood like this I am more likely to be (somewhat self-aggrandizing and delusional) synthetic philosopher in Kitcher's sense  and not my own (and that Kitcher clearly could be quite excellent as a synthetic philosopher in my sense)! The synthetic philosopher as I understand her responds to the division of labor among the sciences, by standing within and among them.

To be sure, I do not mean to deny the possibility of intellectual freedom in the synthesizing process. Nor do I mean to reject the hybrid and sometimes eclectic nature of the cosmopolitan, synthetic philosopher (who rejects nativism in all forms). Like Kitcher, I value the possibilities of roaming free exploring desert landscapes and the rich aquatic life below.

A reader sympathetic to Kitcher, and impatient with mine, may note that Kitcher's reasons for rejecting philosophical expertise are ethical. Kitcher's motives are egalitarian, and he wants to block a cognitive hierarchy in which philosophers are superior in the joint ethical practice we must engage in. Regular readers, familiar with my views on methodological analytic egalitarianism, would expect me to agree. But for Kitcher ethical practice (on the value axis) is orthogonal to synthetic philosophy which operates on a "knowledge axis" (xxv; 214ff). By contrast, fourth, I do not see the axes as opposed, and more important, synthetic philosophy can operate at sites where knowledge and values intersect in complex fashion (and draw on expertise in ethics and metaethics and other value-apt sciences). How to do so responsibly is no simple matter and Kitcher himself has important things to say on the topic.

Fifth, there is a more subtle distinction (connected to the third) between Kitcher's approach and my own. The way I understand synthetic philosophy, it is really about the construction of a scientific image that may influence the development of the special sciences, philosophy, public policy, or the manifest image, and in turn be influenced by these. Integrating the various scientific and manifest images into a single picture, let's call it integrative world-making, probably goes beyond synthetic philosophy. I don't deny that some synthetic philosophers -- think of Dennett's use of the universal acid of Darwinism -- may aspire to such a project. In Kitcher's hands integrative world-making (systematic philosophy) is constitutive of synthetic philosophy: "Setting aside any further ventures in philosophical midwifery, societies and individuals continue to need an integrated picture of nature that combines the contributions of different areas of inquiry, and different fields of investigation can be assisted by thinkers whose more synthetic perspective can alert them to missed opportunities and provide them with needed clarification." (215)

Since I like the sentiment in these last words, I think in practice, this may be merely a matter of emphasis. But the way I understand a synthetic philosopher, she may, in principle, more comfortable with a dappled, disunified, and pluralist world  than Kitcher's integrative world-maker.  While I personally feel the pull of a Jamesian reconciliation between the scientific and manifest image, I do not see why this should be the mission of synthetic philosophy. Kitcher (and Kitcher's Dewey) also deny that this should be the main project. But they do continue to embrace integrative world-making.

Finally, for Kitcher synthetic philosophy belongs to pragmatist philosophy. And pragmatism in its beautiful, broad variety does involve non-trivial philosophical commitments about the purpose(s) of philosophy and the nature of  meaning and truth. I don't see why synthetic philosophy must involve commitment to pragmatism understood in a doctrinal sense even if I grant that synthetic philosophy of all stripes can thrive in such a variety.