Digressions&Impressions

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.

Marx on Ideology Critique and Social Explanation in the Jewish Question

Nevertheless, North America is pre-eminently the country of religiosity, as Beaumont, Tocqueville, and the Englishman Hamilton unanimously assure us. The North American states, however, serve us only as an example. The question is: What is the relation of complete political emancipation to religion? If we find that even in the country of complete political emancipation, religion not only exists, but displays a fresh and vigorous vitality, that is proof that the existence of religion is not in contradiction to the perfection of the state. Since, however, the existence of religion is the existence of defect, the source of this defect can only be sought in the nature of the state itself. We no longer regard religion as the cause, but only as the manifestation of secular narrowness. Therefore, we explain the religious limitations of the free citizen by their secular limitations. We do not assert that they must overcome their religious narrowness in order to get rid of their secular restrictions, we assert that they will overcome their religious narrowness once they get rid of their secular restrictions. We do not turn secular questions into theological ones. History has long enough been merged in superstition, we now merge superstition in history. The question of the relation of political emancipation to religion becomes for us the question of the relation of political emancipation to human emancipation. We criticize the religious weakness of the political state by criticizing the political state in its secular form, apart from its weaknesses as regards religion. The contradiction between the state and a particular religion, for instance Judaism, is given by us a human form as the contradiction between the state and particular secular elements; the contradiction between the state and religion in general as the contradiction between the state and its presuppositions in general. Karl Marx (1843/1844) On The Jewish Question, Proofed and Corrected: by Andy Blunden, Matthew Grant and Matthew Carmody, republished at marxists.org.

I returned to the early Marx of Zur Judenfrage after nearly thirty years because of a discussion in my department about the nature of ideology critique. And I did so because in the intervening years I had picked up somewhere that it is the original Marxist ideology critique. And indeed it anticipates, as Jo Wolff notes in his SEP entry, a standard criticism of liberalism: that the political project that is supposed to emancipate us both presupposes and promotes our separation and, thereby, promotes a false view of life (that is, greed) and a false (Hobbesian) view of freedom (that is, security from threats). It also anticipates the line of argument that liberal democracy just is a species of applied or debased christianity. I leave to others to trace the link of influence from this piece to Max Weber, Nietzsche, Freud, and Carl Schmitt and all the luminaries of modernity.

In re-reading the argument I was struck by the claim that the "existence of religion is the existence of defect, the source of this defect can only be sought in the nature of the state itself." In particular, the causal claim this presupposes -- viz., social defects are the effects of the nature of the state [hereafter: the causal claim] -- can be made best visible "where the political state exists in its completely developed form." It is no surprise that Marx quotes The Social Contract further down, because this kind of causal claim that deviations from human flourishing in social life can be explained by social even political causes is articulated in The Social Contract.+

The United States is then the main instance of such complete development because it, or at least some of its states, allows pure freedom of religion even granting that all political rights (including holding office) can be gained without a formal religious requirement.* Marx does not deny that the causal claim operates in other (post-Feudal) political contexts, but in those contexts there are interfering social mechanisms (so Marx is intuitively thinking of the causal claim in terms of its instantiation of a law with ceteris paribus conditions). 

The way Marx traces out the argument suggests something like the following: that there continue to be religious individuals is the effect of the liberal state's promotion of capitalism and individualism (since it does not promote a religion). Their religiosity is essentially a byproduct of this. And because religious association is constituted by individual choice it generates not community, but growing difference and differentiation (and so, as Weber notes, value pluralism). Now, in context this fact is used to criticize Bauer's argument that Jewish emancipation is only possible on the condition that Jews give up their Judaism. While the main criticism of Bauer is that he has an incomplete understanding of emancipation, the conceptual argument is that Bauer aims for the impossible (because the liberal state effectively promotes religious diversity). 

While Bauer's argument is developed in a Prussian context (where relations of subordination are christianized), Marx's criticism of Bruno Bauer remains of interest in light of the militant secularism of French laïcité (which is effectively anticipated by Bauer), which is the true Atheist state described by Marx. (More than the United States, France evacuates traditional religiosity from the public sphere.) From a Marxist perspective, even more than the US, French secularism (which presupposes our separateness in civil society) is doomed to fail in virtue of its effective tendency to promote religiosity among (sovereign) individuals, and simultaneously to insist that the French state itself is the only legitimate political tie in common.

But the proposed site of religiosity, civil society, is incapable of being truly heavenly according to Marx because it presupposes our separateness and promotes our greed. But because our religiosity has not been extinguished, it has in fact been stimulated, its only effective site is the state (which presents itself as striving for eternality). Thus, the state is effectively an idol not just from the perspective of the Marxist, who recognizes that the state continues the (essentially Christian project of) estrangement of abstract citizens from themselves (by secular means), but also from the perspective of those citizens who reject an individualist (i.e., protestant) conception of religion (and state).

In fact, if we think about the causal claim it is accompanied by a further claim (which Marx explicitly asserts): "the imperfection even of...politics [in the perfected state] becomes evident in religion." So, the presence of religious fundamentalism among citizens of a state that understands and presents itself as atheist, is indicative of the fact that the state itself has taken on the character of a supreme idol. So, rather than seeing fundamentalism as something archaic or atavistic it is a distinctly modern effect of a society that is capitalist and with a secular public sphere. 

Let me return to the building blocks of Marx's argument: his causal claim presupposes a proper functioning view of human nature. In his account of the effects of history this proper functioning is deformed/undermined by economic practices which are, in turn, secured by state power. (Again, note the echo of Rousseau here.) So, Marx here already anticipates features of his later view (recall) that is more articulated in (say) The Communist Manifesto and the Critique of the Gotha Program. Crucially, Marx's argument (in terms of social defects) in The Jewish Question does not get off the ground without such a proper functioning view of human nature. 

Now one may well wonder why from the perspective iof such a proper functioning view of human nature religion is a defect. Presumably because it is seen to undermine an authentic, communal life that belongs to our essence. It is possible Marx could allow that a non-individualistic religion -- one that glories our communal life in shared joyful activity (recall Plato's natural religion) -- wouldn't be thought defective. But perhaps he treats all religion as instances of superstition (there is language in the Jewish Question that suggests this). I am not sure.

Let me wrap up. Recall that for Mill ideology is the product of a system of hierarchy or domination in which the ruling classes promote falsehoods which justify their rule. Along the way this ideology undermines the proper functioning of the moral sentiments of the rulers and the ruled. In general the ruled see through these falsehoods, even if at times the ideology effectively promotes servility. What makes something ideological is not just that it is false and corrosive of our nature, but (and here Mill echoes Smith) that it serves a particular (factional/class) interest. (This sounds, in fact, like the kind of thing one would expect from a vulgar marxist.) So, we may say that the liberal idea of ideology requires the false to serve ruling faction and undermine our capacity to political and moral judgment. From a liberal perspective, one can always smell/rat out the existence of ideology if we ask 'cui bono?' and follow the trail. 

One attractive feature of the liberal conception of ideology is that the victims of it can see through it (and this eventually leads to standpoint epistemology). They generally do not need ideology critique to learn the truth of their situation. In this liberal conception if we could make our ruling ideas more impartial and reinforce our natural capacities, ideology can be overcome. And one natural route, although not the only one, to the undermining of ideology (and this (recall) anticipates Jason Stanley) (and here) is according to the liberal the flattening of hierarchy, which would undermine the 'demand' for such false justifications (and also undermine its supply by making it less profitable). Another route is to make sure that people flourish within a liberal polity.

If we go beyond Bauer's own aims, we can see that in Zur Judenfrage Marx, in effect, criticizes this liberal idea of ideology as itself a species of ideology. And Marx's main point is not that it serves the interest of capital (although clearly this is implied). But rather because the political emancipation implied by impartiality in the context of liberal state is, while worth having if you lack it, itself a defective ideal of emancipation. It is emancipation into a fragmentary and inauthentic life, and so no genuine emancipation at all.++ 

The explicit role of the Jews in Marx's analysis is, as is well known, not too flattering to Jews (or Christians). But the role they play in his analysis is also to show that on Marx's account it is by no means obvious that the subordinated victims of an ideology will see through the ideology. And so we see here already the rudiments of the need for a project of consciousness raising. That is to say, ideology critique takes on the shape of unmasking so that the victims of ideology can be oriented to a better ideal. This clearly has, although Marx does not alert his reader to it, the character of a kind of religious conversion.

I do not wish to try to settle the debate between Marx and liberalism. I just note that modern liberals may claim that such an ideology critique misses the mark. After all the proud modern liberal is, when legislating public reason, agnostic about the good life; this only works if the defectiveness of modern life is not widely felt. Such agnosticism does not tempt the older perfectionists like Smith and Mill, who have a conception of human flourishing that is a partial rival to Marx's. But I have gone on long enough today.

 

 

On Philosophy Being Political

The elimination of conscious fraud is seldom mentioned in formal discussions of the reasons for repetition in science. The quasi-mythological view that scientists are uniformly of higher moral standards than ordinary mortals is maintained, and subconscious bias is usually depended upon to explain the importance of independent repetition. To repeat, scientists are not much better than other men, and there certainly are at least a few among them who would fake experiments if there was something to be gained therefrom. The induced researcher has something to gain if he can get away with such a fraud. His income depends largely on the reputation he can develop, and this, in turn, depends on his “discoveries.” It is obviously easier to produce an important and exciting article if one simply invents the facts reported than if one is confined to reality. This being so, the prevention of fraud depends on a detection apparatus. Part of the detection apparatus involves repetition (Tullock The organization of inquiry [1966] 2005: 124).

Tullock considers economics, as we have seen, to be a discipline in which the possibility of concealment is greater than in what he calls science. Now, we consider what differential auditing possibilities do to Polanyi’s argument that scientific opinion is uniform. Long before Polanyi the uniformity of opinion had been viewed as a necessary condition for scientific status....

[In his 1962 “Republic of Science”] Polanyi asked what scientists believe and proposed that everyone believes the same thing. How could this be? With the division of labor, scientists in one specialization have no competence in another so why the unanimity? Polanyi appealed to an overlapping neighborhood of competence by which all problems in science is connected....All Polanyi needs is transparency.
Characterizing Polanyi’s argument as a special case of Longfield’s argument shows that we can use one principle to analyze the intra-community connections. This will be enormously helpful because the machinery which has been set in motion for one community can be applied to the other. Thus, [Adam] Smith himself discussed how monopolies form and create inequality within the labor market. A group keeping others out can enrich themselves. If we can move the argument across communities, what does monopolization look like among experts? We are using “experts” because following Tullock, we do not know whether they are “scientists” until we know something about the institutional structure in which they function.
Tullock, when he rehearses Polanyi’s argument, silently provides the missing step and thus fails to impress his delightful cleverness on the reader. To make the overlapping competence argument work, there must be data audits, results must be checked. He says this over and over again. This distinguishes economics and science. As Tullock writes, economics allows concealment. Therefore economics allows factions and it doesn’t have the Polanyi efficiency properties. Sandra J. Peart & David M. Levy (2012) "Tullock on motivated inquiry: expert-induced uncertainty disguised as risk," Public Choice, 171-3

The quoted paragraphs is from a paper, even research program, methodological analytic egalitarianism, that (as regular readers know) has long influenced me. I was inspired to go back to it by Liam Kofi Bright's recent, interesting argument that "all philosophy is political is a trivial consequence of the more interesting fact that all inquiry is...united." [HT Dailynous] Drawing on Neurath, Bright argues this unity is a regulative or normative ideal, "it is an achievement to be won, not a fact to be granted." Neurath's argument is also a bit self-interested because within the division of scientific labor, it gives philosophers, a new kind of philosopher, a special role, of (linguistic/conceptual) orchestration. (See here; I link to this piece because Neurath is especially clear about the anti-totalitarian political significance of the program.) Uncharacterstically, Bright does not quite mention this, but the general gist is clear from his presentation:

The unity of science consists in the fact that we may potentially bring the results, methods, and fruits of inquiry in one field to bear on all others, providing we take the time to formulate our claims in a way that can be mutually understood, and are sufficiently clear in stating logical or evidential relations. The unity of science is thus a kind of consequence of the attitude of seeking to be clear and assist one another.*

If it is remembered that 'We' here is 'we [new] philosophers' Bright's position is echt Neurathian. If the 'we' here is all of of us engaged in science, Bright has subtly added a set of virtues some epistemic some social to the practice of all science. Notice, and Bright is very good on this, that even if one rejects some such normative unity program, the attitude is useful because "we cannot ever rule out the potential relevance of any one field of inquiry to another." Bright gives some cute historical examples. I would just add that anybody who is engaged in debates in contemporary climate science will be struck how many different,and different kinds of sciences are brought to bear on each other all the time. So far so good.

Now, here's my observation, if we think of different sciences also as reflecting different interests, then we should not automatically assume that when two sciences are brought in communication/trade with each other they will automatically agree. As Max Weber pointed out, pluralism is a consequence of the division of labor and differentiated interests. It is, thus, to be expected that when two sciences or sub-fields within a discipline/science are made to communicate some disagreement is to be expected. (Obviously, it does not follow there will always be disagreement or even most of the time.) The claim in this paragraph is strengthened, perhaps a trivial consequence, of the idea that not all sciences rely solely on epistemic commitments (see Heather Douglas' now classic book). 

Of course, if we think of the ways in which sciences are brought to bear on each other, it is quite possible to come to agreement either by creating a third new science (which may well has its task of figuring out the discrepancies between the two sciences) or by transformation of one of the sciences (in dialogue with each other). [If you think not all disciplines are science, then follow Peart/Levy and substitute expert-disciplines where necessary!] This sounds abstract, but actually happens quite a bit in the history of science. 

I put the Tullock in, in part, to show that Tullock anticipates the debates over the replication crisis (in some bits of the academy) by several decades. And that is I want to strengthen Bright's argument (in his spirit, see here) by suggesting that even if one is doubtful of the desirability or feasibility of general unity of science that he (and I, with slightly different sensibility) embraces, there are additional reasons to embrace the idea of leaving room to keeping open, '"the potential relevance of any one field of inquiry to another." It reduces the incentives and possibilities for fraud and rents for members of autonomous disciplines. As we have seen, that is not just a hypothetical possibility.

But, and here I close, the idea of intellectual even disciplinary autonomy is very much part of the DNA of philosophy, perhaps uniquely so (with exception of 'pure' math) [recall this old post on Williamson]. To be an intellectual self-legislator, to have autonomous/foundational or self-sufficient reason, is an ideal that is a permanent temptation for philosophers (in ways not so for other disciplines within the division of intellectual labor)--go read Descartes, or even Kant. I think it is some such ideal that makes some philosophers also uneasy about the very idea of (what I call) a philosophical politics within philosophy or in its relationships with other disciplines. The Neurathian offers orchestration (and its modern successors) as a consolation prize to them (if orchestration seems like the wrong way to go, then see the program of synthetic philosophy!)

Of course, the would be autonomous philosopher can refuse to allow his philosophy to be scrutinized by outsiders. (Just as not all offers to trade are accepted.) The risk of such hermeticisms, of thinking philosophy pure and untainted by politics, is, in fact, to make philosophy a hiding place for charlatans and cultists.  It is amusing to see my own ilk, analytic philosophers embracing that risk.

 

 

It's not Kant, it's norms/incentives/institutions on Kuhn & Politics

But while Einstein won—and would continue to win—all the logical battles, Bohr was decisively winning the propaganda war. The Copenhagen doctrine of the completeness of quantum theory and the inescapability of fundamental chance spread, enforced by Bohr and Heisenberg and the rest of the Copenhagen school. Behind the scenes, the Copenhagenists did not agree with each other, but to the world they presented a unified front. Meanwhile, Einstein and Schrödinger both rejected Bohr, but they also bickered with each other.

Here is Einstein’s own description of Copenhagen: “The theory reminds me a little of the system of delusions of an exceedingly intelligent paranoiac.” Philosopher Imre Lakatos gave this later assessment:

In the new, post-1925 quantum theory the ‘anarchist’ position became dominant and modern quantum physics, in its ‘Copenhagen interpretation’, became one of the main standard bearers of philosophical obscurantism. In the new theory Bohr’s notorious ‘complementarity principle’ enthroned [weak] inconsistency as a basic ultimate feature of nature, and merged subjectivist positivism and antilogical dialectic and even ordinary language philosophy into one unholy alliance. After 1925 Bohr and his associates introduced a new and unprecedented lowering of critical standards for scientific theories. This led to a defeat of reason within modern physics and to an anarchist cult of incomprehensible chaos.

Strong words. It is Becker’s burden, and Becker’s triumph, to show that every word is true.

The story has twists and turns: John von Neumann’s purported mathematical proof (1932) that quantum mechanics is complete and one could not add anything more to it and retain its successful predictions; the philosopher Grete Hermann’s detection in 1935 of the fatal flaw in von Neumann’s proof—and the complete disregard of her work; the elaboration of Einstein’s reasoning into the famous Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) argument; Bohr’s incomprehensible response to EPR; Schrödinger’s reaction, including his eponymous cat. Surely, one thinks, this mess must have been cleaned up eventually! But it never was. It persists to this day. And we are only through the first third of the book.

Robert Oppenheimer is reported to have said, ‘If we cannot disprove Bohm, then we must agree to ignore him.’

The middle third of Becker’s book adopts a somber tone in the stories of three renegades who bucked the system in the 1950s and ’60s, after the Copenhagen mysticism had congealed into an icy command: shut up and calculate! Work on the foundations of quantum theory was effectively forbidden, with one’s career and future at peril. The first renegade was David Bohm, a bright and dutiful Copenhagenist until he met the aging Einstein and recanted. Bohm rediscovered the pilot wave theory that Louis de Broglie had presented at Solvay in 1927. The theory slices through the enigma—wave or particle?—like Alexander’s sword through the Gordian knot: the answer is wave and particle. The wavefunction becomes a pilot wave that guides the particles along their paths. The theory is completely deterministic—no playing dice—and recovers all the predictions of standard quantum mechanics. One would think Einstein would love the theory, but he did not. The dreaded nonlocality had not been exorcized. Indeed, it was even more striking.

Bohm’s theory put the lie to von Neumann’s impossibility proof by direct counterexample. Contra Bohr, the particles are visualizable even at microscopic scale. In short, the theory demonstrates beyond all doubt that the Copenhagen interpretation is nonsense. But Bohm’s work was ignored and effectively suppressed.

A political leftist, Bohm had refused to testify at the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was dismissed from his job at Princeton and went into exile in Brazil. His U.S. passport was revoked. He eventually found his way to Birkbeck College in London, but never received the recognition that was his due. In a notorious episode, Robert Oppenheimer is reported to have said, “If we cannot disprove Bohm, then we must agree to ignore him.”

The second renegade was a graduate student at Princeton not long after Bohm left in 1952. Also rejecting Copenhagen, Hugh Everett took Schrödinger’s evolving wavefunction and removed the collapse. He argued that rather than an incomprehensible smear resulting, as Schrödinger’s neither-alive-nor-dead cat suggested, a multiplication of worlds results. Schrödinger’s cat ends up both dead and alive, as two cats in two equally real physical worlds. Today this approach is called the many-worlds interpretation.

Everett’s thesis advisor, John Wheeler, had great enthusiasm for Everett’s innovation. But he insisted that Everett get the nod of approval from Bohr. Bohr refused, and Wheeler required Everett to bowdlerize his thesis. Everett left academia and did not look back. His work lay in obscurity.

The last and greatest renegade was John Stewart Bell. Spurred by Bohm’s papers, Bell queried whether Einstein’s dreaded spooky action at a distance could be avoided. Copenhagen and the pilot wave theory had both failed this test. Bell proved that the nonlocality is unavoidable. No local theory—the type Einstein had sought—could recover the predictions of quantum mechanics. The predictions of all possible local theories must satisfy the condition called Bell’s inequality. Quantum theory predicts that Bell’s inequality can be violated. All that was left was to ask nature herself. In a series of sophisticated experiments, the answer has been established: Bell’s inequality is violated. The world is not local. No future innovation in physics can make it local again. The spookiness that Einstein spent decades deriding is here to stay.

How did the physics community react to this epochal discovery? With a shrug of incomprehension. For decades, discussion of the foundations of quantum theory had been suppressed. Physicists were unaware of the problems and unaware of the solutions. To this day, they commonly claim that Bell’s result proves Bohm’s theory to be impossible and indeterminism to be inevitable, while Bell himself was the staunchest advocate of Bohm’s deterministic theory. Even now, the average physicist has no understanding of what Einstein argued in the EPR paper and what Bell proved.

The last third of What Is Real? could hopefully be titled “Slow Convalescence.” Gradually the worst excesses of Bohr’s influence are mitigated as Bell’s work inspires a new generation to look into foundational issues. We meet a new cast of characters, and the overall atmosphere is mildly optimistic. But there is a long way to go, and this very book could prove to be a watershed moment for the physics community if it faces up to its own past and its present. Or, following the fate of Einstein, Bohm, and Everett, Becker could just be ignored. But if you have any interest in the implications of quantum theory, or in the suppression of scientific curiosity, What is Real? is required reading. There is no more reliable, careful, and readable account of the whole history of quantum theory in all its scandalous detail.--Tim Maudlin reviewing What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Adam Becker in Boston Review. [HT: Liam Kofi Bright]

In his review, Maudlin (recall) makes clear that he thinks that in the history of quantum mechanics epistemic considerations have been thwarted by political machinations in the physics community. I want to make an impure three-fold distinction: 1. Some of the political machinations are connected to external politics--e.g., the reception of Bohm's theory really suffered due to his leftism. 2. Some of the political machinations are internal to science--including debates over resources and, let's say, conceptual hegemony (which often creates better access to resources). For example, Bohr and his students/admirers turn out to be very good at turning conceptual hegemony into resources. 3. And some of the political machinations are connected to underlying philosophical commitments (about nature of explanation, about what counts as intelligible, action at a distance, etc.)

The problem is that 2-3 also often involve debates over what counts as proper epistemic considerations.  (Let's stipulate that 1 is really unconnected to epistemic considerations.) But Maudlin, a word class philosopher of physics, is unabashed in taking sides here and suggesting that the scientific community has not merely made mistakes about philosophy (as philosophy arises in research), but also failed to make all possible epistemic progress in some sense.

It's worth noting that Maudlin here does not consider the possibility that the conceptual and theoretical confusions in the physics community (which are response of politics in all three senses) may have  been fruitful to the epistemic progress physics has made. This is not my own view in this case, but that's because I don't consider myself an expert on the history and philosophy of quantum mechanics. Even so, the older I get, the more receptive I am to the idea (I associate it with Bill Wimsatt) that too much conceptual clarity can sometimes hinder progress (for example, ambiguity can be useful). 

One important implication of Maudlin's analysis is that even in a field that is central to much of science, attracts widespread interest, and which is broadly international in scope, one cannot assume an efficient market in ideas in science. Regular readers know I think (recall for example) too much philosophy and science, decision-theory, and epistemology tacitly relies on such a free market in ideas in its image of science (but that's changing among students of Kevin Zolman and folks with a Ghent connection).

It is notable that Maudlin aims to end (the review of Becker) on an optimistic note about the future of quantum mechanics (and cosmology). But it is notable that he offers no ground for this optimism. For, he (Maudlin--I have not yet read Becker) never confronts what norms and institutions are responsible for the thwarting of epistemic considerations. (We do get mention of some big personalities --  Bohr, Feynman --, but that is not sufficient explanation.) I mention this because in some way the epistemic grounds of contemporary particle physics have narrowed considerably: there are a few big and very expensive particle accelerators and a few very very expensive instruments  that probe space (and so back in time); access to these machines is a political (in the second sense) affair; they are controlled by committees funded by big grant agencies. And their publications are committee work (sometimes huge  number of 'authors'). This is big science, big data, big statistics,* big software and big committees. It would be a miracle if politics became less under these circumstances.

Maudlin himself holds Kant and Kantian philosophy responsible for the mess in physics (and Kuhn). Really: "The hand of Kant lies behind both Bohr and Kuhn." I think it is undeniable that neo-Kantianism is important for understanding both the early debates in the reception of quantum mechanics and (mediated via Max Weber) as background to Kuhn's philosophy. Much as I like holding philosophers responsible for mucking things up in the world, but I really doubt that Kantianism is responsible for the state of affairs diagnosed by Maudlin/Becker. I do suspect that the decline of philosophical education and wider cultural literacy in the larger culture of science education impacted the decline of conceptual clarity and philosophical discussion within physics. I suspect this because we see something similar in the development of twentieth century economics (often recruited  from physicists), who also show such a decline. But that's just a hypothesis.

I close with a final reflection. The peculiarity of Maudlin's larger review is that the first half of the review really vindicates let's call it the empirical basis of Kuhn's philosophy of science. (I leave aside here incommensurability.) The internal life of science is, in part, governed by politics in various senses. That was part of the scandal Kuhn caused. It does not follow it is wholly so governed, and so I am not suggesting Kuhn's whole philosophy is thereby vindicated.

 

 

 

A working definition of political theory (and five main tasks)

In this post I articulate a working definition of 'political theory.'  I aim at capturing the distinctive practice that covers an extremely wide variety of thinkers throughout history and across cultures and civilizations who practiced their craft in competing ways in very heterogeneous circumstances.* I do so, in part, by piggy-backing on existing definitions of 'politics' (and 'theory'). The post was prompted by my desire to offer some such working definition at the start of my course on the history of political theory next week (see description here).

I call it a 'working definition' because it is provisional and is not meant to offer necessary and sufficient conditions that cover each and every case. It is meant to recognize that the concept is contested.  Speaking of contested, the working definition is not meant to distinguish sociologically political theorists from political philosophers (recall my post, itself a response to Jacob T. Levy's famous piece); in fact, it is meant to cover some of the central activities of both groups. Okay, with that out of the way, let me start.

Politics is the practice or site (or institution(s), etc.) where power is, or could be, exercised in decision-making over collective ends.

This is a fairly broad understanding of politics because it suggests that politics is pretty much intrinsic to all groups (so not just states and governments, but also churches, clubs, corporations, families, classrooms, unions, etc.) It is broad, in another sense, because politics so understood is not restricted to humans. That's deliberate because I want to do justice to the recurring temptation to treat human politics in light of the politics found in our animal relatives (bees, bonobos, horses, and sheep show up regularly in the history of political thought) or the other way around (and to allow that Martians or Angels could also have politics).

While I do not mean to be exhaustive let me offer brief working definitions of 'power' and 'decision-making:'

• Power is a means (or cause) to achieve ends (or aims).
• Decision-making involves: (i) aims; (ii) means; (iii) some procedure/norm/practice.

So, on this conception, in politics, power allows one to settle or influence questions/issues related to the aims, means, and manner of decision-making.* It is also inherently teleological--it is inherently (even if often tacitly/latently) oriented toward some aim or another. The exercise of power may well require considerable organization, triggering, or communication, but when it is so exercised it is directed. So, this conception of power, which is just a cause among many, allows one to distinguish among various background and enabling conditions and power as such. Of course, the content and nature of power varies hugely (from material goods to beliefs,** money, faith, numbers, bullets, swords, technology, love, etc.). 

A background assumption here on the nature of political decision-making is that there is always some scarcity that requires some prioritizing (which is reflected in the aims,  means, procedure, etc.). Otherwise, the conception is deliberately vague in order to allow a wide variety of practices (voting, coercion, rational deliberation, networked distribution, marketing, revelation, habit, etc.) to be understood as parts of and contributing to collective decision-makings.

Theory is an abstract or conceptual entity that has or may have systematic relations among its principles, components, and inferential basis.

This is meant to be inclusive and so to make room for self-consciously scientific treatises as well as narratives/epics/dialogues/revelation. What matters is not the way theory is presented, but rather if there is an underlying account that abstracts away from mere contingent description and offers ways to project beyond a moment in time and place. 

Importantly, maxims and proverbs are not themselves theory. But if they are or could be collected together, they may form the basis of theory. A policy brief or (to give a historical example) advice to the prince are not themselves theoretical, but they may presuppose theory or point the way to one.

So, Political Theory is an abstract (and potentially systematic) account of the ways (or means), conditions of, and constraints on which power(s) is or could be exercised for (its) collective ends.

While the phrase 'political theory' is derived historically from the book-title of Aristotle's Politics (Πολιτικά) which can be translated as "affairs of the cities," one finds political theory in many cultures, ages, and disciplinary environments (including, but not limited to, Ancient Egypt and Ugarit [recall], the Hebrew Bible [recall], classical China [recall]  etc.). While one cannot rule out some intercourse among major civilizations far apart and the preservation of insights through historical apocalypses, my present understanding entails that at least until the last few centuries there are historically distinct traditions of political theory.

So understood Political theory has at least three main distinct roles:

• (1) Normative guidance
  •    This ranges from utopian projects to reform the whole of society and ideal theory to focused policy advice.
• (2) Explanation
  • This can be offered in terms of (a) causes, (b) statistical regularities; (c) process tracing; (d) functional explanation  (etc.)
  • Or can be done in terms of making something intelligible by way of (a) rational/historical reconstruction; (b) sympathetic interpretation, etc.
• (3) A tool in empirical research
  
  • Theory tells you what data and phenomena to pay attention to
  • Helps one turn data into evidence

Since Max Weber and John Neville Keynes (see here for defense of that claim)+ the first (1) and latter two (2-3) tend to be separated with the latter two finding their home in the social sciences, socio-biology, network theory, while the first is often treated as distinctly philosophical or (if allowed in a social science faculty) housed in a separate political theory chair. Obviously, in practice 1-3 can be mingled in all kinds of ways as illustrated by the history of political theory. For example, normative political theory (1) often presupposes commitments about, say, the causal structure of the world (2), which may be the product of (3). But we may also be focused on some area of study (3) because of some normatively salient background theory (1), in order to generate an explanation (2), etc.

This intermingling is no surprise because of the nature of (political) power. Because power is inherently teleological, that is, when exercised directed at some aim(s), it is impossible to completely ignore human ends in political science--these ends are just what is taken to be valuable. Of course, on many conceptions of doing empirical research and offering explanations, the researcher should set aside his/her own commitments (but recall **) when describing/explaining or studying these values.++

There are two more distinct roles that political theory can take on, and these can, often, be intermingled with the first three:

• (4) Unmasking the status quo
  • This can involve genealogy, ideology critique, etc.
• (5) Clarification of (contested) concepts
  • By way of conceptual analysis (what is 'democracy;' 'freedom;' 'justice;' 'equality', etc.)
    

I treat unmasking projects (4) as distinct from (1) because while these often are informed by a deep (and morally informed) sense of outrage or indignation, they tend to be suspicious of morality (as it is theorized) and to be disinclined to present themselves in theoretically rich, normative terms. Rather, they aim to cast the ruling orthodoxies or even quite tacit habits of thought/behavior in a new, troubling light that remove their self-evidence. In so doing such projects can draw on or offer new (2) explanations of political phenomena (even point to the presence of politics/power where it was previously unnoticed) or (3) stimulate new empirical research on various phenomena. 

Finally, conceptual clarification is in some sense the least ambitious way in which political theory can manifest itself. For conceptual clarification is not sufficient for a political theory.*** (A political theory is more than its clarified concepts.) But while there are many forms of constructive (and destructive!) ambiguity in political practice, conceptual clarity is an important virtue (with evolving standards, etc.) when comparing political theories and, in many traditions, articulating one. If somebody objects that this (5) is really a method (and then one of many [see, for example, Blau's fine collection)], fair enough. Theory can be messy like that.

 

On Understanding Without Mathematics and the Slums of Sociology

I must confess that my own first reaction to the General Theory was not at all like that of Keats on first looking into Chapman's Homer. No silent watcher, I, upon a peak in Darien. My rebellion against its pretensions would have been complete except for an uneasy realization that I did not at all understand what it was about. And I think I am giving away no secrets when I solemnly aver-upon the basis of vivid personal recollection-that no one else in Cambridge, Massachusetts, really knew what it was about for some 12 to 18 months after its publication. Indeed, until the appearance of the mathematical models of Meade, Lange, Hicks, and Harrod there is reason to believe that Keynes himself did not truly understand his own analysis.
Fashion always plays an important role in economic science; new concepts become the mode and then are passé. A cynic might even be tempted to speculate as to whether academic discussion is itself equilibrating: whether assertion, reply, and rejoinder do not represent an oscillating divergent series, in which-to quote Frank Knight's characterization of sociology-"bad talk drives out good."
In this case, gradually and against heavy resistance, the realization grew that the new analysis of effective demand associated with the General Theory was not to prove such a passing fad, that here indeed was part of "the wave of the future.--Paul Samuelson (1946) "Lord Keynes and the General Theory," Econometrica. 187-188.

As I noted yesterday, an invited comment on Backhouse's biography of Samuelson has had me take a second look at Samuelson's biographical sketches and obituaries. It's testimony of Samuelson's confidence and rhetorical abilities that his lack of initial understanding of the General Theory is treated as a problem of the General Theory (and even Keynes). It is notable that he does not consider the obvious alternative suggestion that Cambridge, MA, was a relative intellectual backwater in 1936 (the year the General Theory appeared) and so unfamiliar with the new thinking developing in Cambridge England. (To his credit, in the rest of his essay, Samuelson provides some evidence for the latter half of that claim.)

As an aside, it is a bit peculiar to see a low estimation of sociology attributed to Frank Knight, the man most responsible of generating initial interest in (and translation of) Weber Stateside. One wonders if, perhaps, Samuelson's memory is failing him and that he is importing his own negative characterization of sociology (recall) into his memory of Knight's acerbic wit. My evidence for this suggestion is that when in a different obituary, he discusses Jacob Viner's ferocious use of the Socratic Method (indebted to the Harvard economist Taussig), Samuelson adds that graduate students who did not meet Viner's exacting standards "had no choice but to drop out or to transfer to the slums of political science or sociology." (JPE, 1972: 6) It's not impossible that the low estimation of sociology was more common among economists in Chicago, but we know from Stigler's citation practices that some read sociology and social theory rather seriously, and that it even influenced Milton Friedman's methodology. 

Some other time I'll explore the significance of the proto-cyclical-equilibrium model of scientific fashions, a model that would certainly have some significance (recall) for professional philosophy (where the idea that ideas cycle in and out of fashion is itself a recurring fashion.)* I mention it here because the whole obituary is framed in proto-Kuhnian terms in which Keynes generates a scientific revolution (and in which differential response to the revolution is explained in terms of generational differences.) Later in the piece, Samuelson notes that textbooks break the cycle: "most important from the long-run standpoint, the Keynesian analysis has begun to filter down into the elementary textbooks; and as everybody knows once an idea gets into these, however bad it may be, it becomes practically immortal." (189) Samuelson was just finishing up his mega-influential textbook. (Luckily, in philosophy textbooks are not the dominant mode of instruction yet.)

Okay, let me get to the main point. Samuelson claims here that mathematics is the language in which by way of a model one understands an analysis. (The previous sentence is compatible with the further thought -- pressed by Samuelson's ironic critic -- that mathematics may well be many languages.) This is true not just of the readers of the General Theory, but also its author. Samuelson emphasizes the point later: "In it the Keynesian system stands out indistinctly, as if the author were hardly aware of its existence or cognizant of its properties."** Now, to be sure, there are two important truths lurking in Samuelson's position: first, that the meaning of a text may well escape or go beyond an author (and sometimes even may be so intended by an author)--I made that same point when discussing the debate between Plantinga and Hazony over biblical meaning. Second, sometimes, maybe often, an analysis in non-mathematical language is fuzzy or unclear or equivocal in ways that are only made transparent by a mathematical model. (A claim Samuelson would repeat regularly later in his rejection of verbal economics as opposed to mathematical economics.)*** Only later in life (1972), when discussing Viner's significance (he calls him both the "greatest neoclassical economist" and a "great eclectic"), does Samuelson relent on the point: "Jacob Viner was a respecter of mathematics, but also both critical and defensive about it. Let me make clear that Viner possessed in superlative degree what might be called native mathematical ability....But I now realize in retrospect that the subject of economics gained from having Viner concentrate upon those areas of wisdom and erudition for which he had a unique comparative advantage, and that more mathematical facility might merely have diverted him from his appointed task."

Samuelson does not consider an alternative interpretation: that in different ways,  Meade, Lange, Hicks, and Harrod may have offered models inspired by the General Theory, but  in their very formulation changed the meaning of the 'Keynesian' analysis.+ One can recognize the previous point while allowing that the new models may have had all kinds of uses (teaching, policy, transferring knowledge, etc.) made difficult by the General Theory. To argue that case is not my present charge (and I would have to re-familiarize with all the relevant models), although I have already suggested that Keynes's insights about the nature of true uncertainty were lost in the way his views got formalized. (I made some such point in a different context when discussing Carnapian explication.) 

Strikingly enough, and Samuelson often buries his most important points in footnotes, he adds the following observation:

8 Indeed only in connection with Frank P. Ramsey's "A Mathematical Theory of Saving"...does he show interest in an esoteric theoretical problem; there he gave a rather intricate interpretation in words of a calculus-of-variations differential-equation condition of equilibrium. His reasoning is all the more brilliant -- and I say this seriously! -- because it is mathematically unrigorous, if not wrong. The importance which Keynes attached to this article is actually exaggerated and can be accounted for only in terms of his paternal feeling toward Ramsey, and his own participation in the solution of the problem. (196)

An uncharitable reading of Samuelson may suggests that he is committed to the idea that wrong mathematical reasoning is better than no mathematical reasoning (even if not wrong). A more charitable reading would suggest that he recognizes that sometimes insight does trump a wrong mathematical formulation, especially -- and this is not meant as criticism -- if it takes a Samuelson to discern the kernel of insight.

 

On Should Ethics Professors Be Held to Higher Ethical Standards in Their Personal Behavior?

I think we can reasonably expect ethicists to shape and improve their personal behavior in a way that is informed by their professional ethical reasoning. This is not because ethicists have a special burden as exemplars but rather because it's reasonable to expect everyone to use the tools at their disposal toward moral self-improvement, at least to some moderate degree, or at least toward the avoidance of serious moral wrongdoing...If our ethicist knows that as soon as she reaches a demanding moral conclusion she risks charges of hypocrisy, then our ethicist might understandably be tempted to draw the more lenient conclusion instead. If we demand ethicists to live according to the norms they endorse, we effectively pressure them to favor lenient moral systems compatible with their existing lifestyles.--Eric Schwitzgebel Should Ethics Professors Be Held to Higher Ethical Standards in Their Personal Behavior? The Splintered Mind [Emphases in original]

Schwitzgebel and I have been fellow travelers in exploring to what degree the norms and morals we investigate and even come to endorse as professional philosophers should be the standard(s) we live by. That is, we resist the recurring tendency to accept unquestionably that our professional practice is an innocent game (I say 'innocent' because there are many games  that demand from its practitioners to live according to their needs), and rather to turn it (reflexively) into an existential practice. Schwitzgebel has gone beyond my own musings on these matters by doing experimental work on the topic (I tend to confine myself to historical studies). We also agree that the question which gives Schwitzgebel's latest post its title is not exclusively moral nor individual he (correctly) points to the social, epistemic significance (and costs & benefits) of the nature of the answer. Schwitzgebel's post (go read the whole thing!) articulates and exhibits a kind of aporia about the question that appeals to my sensibility

Even so, Schwitzgebel and I have a different understanding of what is at stake in answering the question.

My starting point -- and this is quite evidently not Schwitzgebel's -- is that moral philosophy has a real impact on policy and policy science and a variety of 'applied' ethics practice (medical ethics, professional ethics, just war theory, etc.). In this respect, professional moral philosophy is no different from other practices that we come to understand as policy relevant science. The imperfect and partial translation or transference of bits of moral philosophy into policy is a complex and diffuse (and often opportunistic) process in which some moral philosophers are not innocent bystanders but major agents. (The diffusion also goes in the other direction, the range of problems and topics that are deemed important as well data/social science theories that matter, etc. are not merely given.) There are also be non-moral philosophers who play an important role (journalists, politicians, donors, grant agencies, various institutions)--the ecology is complex and there is a lot of local detail.

In my view (see my piece with Lefevere), within any professional community there are so-called Aggregators, who function as gate-keepers within the community (and whose proteges get influential positions) as well as agents that partially represent the community within policy environments and public opinion. Not all Aggregators perform all roles at the same time, and not all Aggregators are in all respects the intellectual leaders or trend-setters of the community. Among contemporary moral philosophers famous Aggregators include (just to offer some examples) Peter Singer, Thomas Pogge, Martha Nussbaum, Norman Daniels, and Jeff McMahan.  Obviously, your list is allowed to be different! To be sure, not all influential moral philosophers take on the role of Aggregator within the profession or as a conduit to the world of policy, but quite a few do.

The role of Aggregators is, in part, epistemic and, in part, political. They represent the insights and understanding of the profession and also are, fairly or not, representative, exemplars of it within the profession and without. Aggregators tend to be powerful within the profession, and (without exaggerating their public influence) in virtue of their professional accomplishments also consequential in the policy environment. There are considerations of public prudence that enter into the evaluation of and expectations on Aggregators, who are subject to all kinds of temptations from massaging their message (or selling out) to taking advantage of various 'success goods.' Because considerations of prudence tend to be situational, I tend to constrain them in light of an appeal to integrity (which is a mixture of coherence, substantive norems, and role-relative demands).

Philosophical integrity is the way(s) in which one's professional arguments, professional credit, and public utterances and comportment cohere. The idea behind it is simple: it is meant to capture the thought that there is an intimate relationship (perhaps one of partial identity or accountability) between our words and our professional character; that there is some relationship between our lived experience and 'our' disembodied arguments. The nature and content of philosophical integrity is different for different kinds of philosophers--not all of us have a non-professional, public profile; not all of us theorize about (the possible) world(s) we inhabit.

One important fact about philosophical integrity is that it is context sensitive. It also accommodates those who wish to keep their distance from or frown on a moralized conception of professional life--their philosophical integrity will be constituted by practices that can deviate significantly from such mores. But we live in a public culture in which sincerity is a dominant (even exaggeratedly dominant) virtue. In fact, sincerity may well be thought to trump [sic] any other virtues. In such an environment, hypocrisy is, in fact, a deadly sin. I recognize that Schwitzgebel is right to wish to be extremely cautious about charges of hypocrisy. As he writes, "If we expect high consistency between a professional ethicist's espoused positions and her real-world choices, then we disincentivize highly demanding or self-sacrificial conclusions." My way to respond to this concern is that such a demand for high consistency is increasingly unavoidable for the Aggregating professional ethicist. But it does not follow that it is necessary for all professional ethicists.

In fact, there is lurking in my analysis here a commitment to epistemic pluralism in which we can get to keep the epistemic cake that Schwitzgebel wishes to eat [see this useful piece by Ryan Muldoon], by insisting that some (non-Aggregating) professional moral philosophers may live a life of doctrinal experimentation in word (without adjusting their deeds), while others can explore these very same doctrines in word and deed. In fact, one can maintain one's (less demanding) professional integrity, by merely experimenting in word if one has the right meta-philosophical stance toward words (e.g., it's just a low stakes game) [recall this post; and this one.] On my understanding of professional Aggregators they have a role to play (as thought leaders and gate-keepers within the profession) to maintain the right epistemic, professional structure within it such that this kind of experimentation occurs (and we don't fall into epistemic stagnation or fragility).

So, given the world we live in, I think it is no-brainer that professional Aggregators have to live lives of philosophical and professional integrity. (Considerations of integrity can also be applied to the character of the whole community, but that's not the present topic.) If they promote higher ethical standards (not all need to do so), then it is reasonable to "demand that they also behave according to higher ethical standards." It does not follow, however, that their professional and philosophical integrity are the only relevant standard. For, their integrity (and the standards of evaluation presupposed in it) may not cover all the relevant moral and prudential considerations. For example, a lot of professional Aggregators are tempted by and, perhaps, selected for technocratic approaches to political life in which the downside risks of implementation are (predictably) not properly captured by either the professional moral philosophical discussions or by the Aggregation mechanisms that are rewarded by the profession or society. 

To put my disagreement (well, different emphasis) from Schwitzgebel in his vocabulary. I agree that the question he poses is "multi-dimensional." It follows that it does not have a univocal answer (that depends, in part, on one's role in the profession). But in my analysis I am also inclined to privilege a dimension -- the policy relevance of moral philosophy -- that Schwitzgebel tends to down-play such that the dimensionality of the problem is compressed a bit. So, for some ethicists their personal behavior just is political.

Becoming a moral phenomenologist, or: why philosophers might want to engage with social science, or do a bit themselves

[This is a guest-post by Lisa Herzog.--ES]

I am a philosopher, and last year I went on a research trip to Ecuador and Columbia. Yes, you haven’t misread, and this is not The Onion. Let me explain how this came about, and why a philosophers can engage with social scientific research, and even engage in it themselves, a little bit. I do not hold that all philosophers should do this. But I argue that for addressing certain questions, it makes sense. I would like to share my experience and encourage people who do similar things to get in touch – you must be out there, somewhere!

I work in a research project in philosophy on ethical agents in financial markets. It was initiated by Axel Honneth and is based at Frankfurt University; my office is at the Institut für Sozialforschung. This already gives away part of the story: Frankfurt has, of course, a great tradition of critical interdisciplinary research. For this project, Honneth found a partner: a bank that has an explicit mission to support economic development. Its headquarters are in Frankfurt, but it mostly works in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America. It started out doing microfinance, at around the same time when Yunus started the movement in Asia, but has now turned towards financial small enterprises, because they take it that this is more promising for supporting sustainable economic improvements for the worst-off.

Before having the good luck of being hired at this project, I had already started empirical work: I was interested in ethical agency in organizations, I wanted to write about it, but I felt I had no sense of what it was like to work in a complex organization. The books I read about it did not give me a feeling of real understanding from the inside. So I threw myself into a series of interviews: I bought a recording device, ordered books on methodology from the library (most of them turned out to be distinctively unhelpful), and reached out for interviewees, starting with friends and acquaintances, and then using a snowball system. I asked all kinds of questions: what are the moral aspects of your job? What are the challenges? How do you relate to your professional role? The answers to these questions were interesting, but what was even more interesting was when interviewees opened up and started to tell their own stories, ask their own questions, and tell me about their doubts and uncertainties.

The project on ethics in financial markets began similarly: I had conversations, mostly with one manager, himself a sociologist by training, who told me about his years of experience in the bank, the struggles, the joys, the challenges, his search for moral narratives to pass on to employees. He arranged meetings with other managers and employees, and opportunities for listening in on training sessions. And he said: ‘you have to see it on the ground.’ My first trip was to Eastern Europe, with a tight schedule of conversations with employees in different roles, accompanying them when they met customers and listening in to courses they taught to newly recruited members. The second trip was the one to Ecuador and Columbia. We had planned a third trip, to Bolivia, but it turned out that some important legal chances in the country’s financial system, the consequences of which I would have wanted to explore, were delayed, so we had to postpone the trip.

Why on earth would one want to do such things?

LEMM & HISTORY NOT ATTRACTING BLACKS IN THE PHILOSOPHY PROFESSION

 There is a willful, not necessarily a conscious, preference among many members of the philosophy profession largely to maintain the status quo in terms of: the social group profiles of members; the dynamics of prestige and influence; and the areas and questions deemed properly or deeply "philosophical." None of this is good for black folks.--LK McPherson at NewAPPS, Dec. 12, 2011.

I put a screaming headline on this post. That's because I just finished reading “What is the State of Blacks in Philosophy?” (2014) Critical Philosophy of Race, by Tina Fernandes Botts, Liam Kofi Bright, Myisha Cherry, Guntur Mallarangeng, and Quayshawn Spencer. DailyNous posted a link to the piece, but to my amazement it has not generated any significant public discussion that I am familiar with. So, let me provoke some. According to the paper (this is summarized on DailyNous from which I quote):

• Blacks make up just 1.32 percent of the total number of people professionally affiliated (as grad students or faculty) with U.S. philosophy departments.
• Approximately 0.88 percent of U.S. philosophy Ph.D. students are black.
• Approximately 4.3 percent of U.S. tenured philosophy professors are black.
• Of black philosophy Ph.D. students in the U.S., half are female. That is about double the rate of the U.S. philosophy Ph.D. student population as a whole.
• The distribution of black female Ph.D. students across philosophy Ph.D. programs is much lower than black males. Specifically, 69 percent of black female Ph.D. students are at Penn State.
• The top areas of specialization for U.S. black philosophers are (1) Africana, (2) Race, (3) Social and Political, (4) Ethics, and (5) Continental philosophy.

One bit of terminology: Fernandes Botts et al. use "BIPs" to refer to Blacks in the Profession; I follow this convention. Before I offer some commentary I want to note that the "4.3 percent of U.S. tenured philosophy professors are black" number is based on the number of tenured APA members. I think it would be a  mistake if that number became the baseline for future discussion of BIPs. For, Kate Norlock reminds me that NCES has calculated (based on now ten year old data) that there are about 13,000 full-time philosophy faculty. (These are NOT all tenured, of course. But it excludes nearly all PhD students/ABDs.)* The number of BIPs in the (non-graduate-student) full-time teaching population, is, thus, probably closer to approximately 1%. This is back-of-the-envelope calculation, so should be treated with caution; it excludes part-time faculty! But that rough 1% number matches better, I think, the other data collected by Fernandes Botts et. al.

Correlation isn't causation. But....ahhh...correlation can also not be ignored.  So, to be blunt, every time we treat the LEMM as the CORE parts of philosophy (recall) and every time we mock SPEP-style Continental philosophy, we are, in effect, also (further) marginalizing (insulting, demeaning, etc.) the majority of BIPs. Every time you are a bystander to this, you are very likely complicit to making matters worse when it comes to the status of BIPs.

Or to get to the nub of the matter: the way professional philosophy understands what philosophy is may well be part of the problem. The issue has been explored with subtlety by Kristie Dotson in her now famous paper (see also her post at NewAPPS and McPherson's post linked at the  top of this post). I think we need to acknowledge that analytical philosophy, the way it has evolved, and the way we understand the history of philosophy are part of the problem. This is not to deny that we may have inherited Plato's original sins. (See also this post; so, yes, I was probably too optimistic, if not just deluded, in this post.) How much, I don't know. (This is not to ignore problems within Continental and other areas of philosophy; I am just not the right person to speak about them.) That is to say, rather than only focusing on fighting bias (explicit/tacit)), and improving procedures, we should be open to the possibility that our systematic downplaying of those parts of philosophy that seriously question both the philosophical status quo as well as the political/social/cultural/institutional status quo, and philosophical complicity in it, may, in fact, contribute to the very problem here.

When I was an undergraduate I was in awe of most of my philosophy teachers. I admired their intelligence, their argumentative skill, and their intellectual integrity. At the time, I didn't think I could become as good as them, but I wanted to join a club in which I could participate as a peer in the noble quest for the search after truth and justice. Professionally philosophy has treated me better than I expected. In looking at the numbers collected by Fernandes Botts and her colleagues, I now recognize that I was also striving to join and be allowed into a club very much like myself. And while I want to scream like my headline, this belated -- 'what took you so long?!' -- insight makes me wonder how many of my aspirations are tainted.

On Disciplinary Princes and Princesses

The superior gods laugh--'David Hume' [Suppressed by Adam Smith]

Look who thinks he is nothing?--From an old joke.

1. Lewis, David (214)
2. Quine, W.V.O. (164)
3. Putnam, Hilary (131)
4. Davidson, Donald (120)
4. Rawls, John (120)
6. Kripke, Saul (117)
7. Williams, Bernard (104)
8. Nozick, Robert (96)
9. Nagel, Thomas (94)
9. Nussbaum, Martha C. (94)
11. Searle, John (93)
12. Chisholm, Roderick M. (92)
13. Armstrong, David M. (87)
14. Fodor, Jerry (86)
15. Dummett, Michael (84)
16. Dennett, Daniel (83)
16. Harman, Gilbert (83)
16. Jackson, Frank (83)
19. Strawson, P. F. (82)
20. van Fraassen, Bas C. (77)---From The 266 Most-Cited Contemporary Authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [Compiled by The Schwitzgebel family; HT Newapps]*

In accompanying posts, Eric Schwitzgebel has already noted the analytical/anglo slant of the Encyclopedia and the dramatic exclusion of anybody not 'white male' from the the-Schwitzgebel-SEP-top-266-list. Anybody familiar with the patterns of intellectual, cultural, and personal exclusion in the profession is not surprised by this.  Even so, it is -- forgive the pun -- instructive to note that the list is also a testament to the successful emancipation of Jewish men in the Anglophone world. Many of the  most important educational institutions had policies/quotas restricting Jewish access through the 1950s. (I am too young to remember any of this, of course, but when I would visit my grandfather in Forest Hills (Queens) in the 70s, he would show me the grounds of the (once) famous Tennis stadium and tell me about the exclusion of Jews.) One finds echos of these days not just in the cherished anecdotes about Morgenbesser, but also, more subtly, in some of Nozick's self-fashionings (walking around Brooklyn with Plato). {For more on such themes, see Robert Paul Wolff's memoir.}

Much of my philosophical life is a struggle against my inner high-school-teacher-to-be, and so I resist getting too close to the-list-making philosophers (Aristotle, Kant, you know the type). Of course, I love lists and stared at the-266 longer than I should. I was pleasantly surprised that two (Nussbaum and Dennett) in the top-20 were my teachers once. I was pleased that my supervisor (Garber) made the list based not just on his strength as a scholar, but also for his youthful contributions to decision theory. I know that Leonard Linsky (who did not make the list) would have been proud of his Bernard.  I am startled that one of my graduate school peers, Jesse Prinz, is about to crack the 'top 200' (and he has time to watch movies).

Is there anything else to say about the Schwitzgebel-SEP-top-266-list other than my name-dropping?