Digressions&Impressions

Lenz's Contact Problem with some reflections on Condorcet and Rousseau

Especially early modern explanations seem to construe the mind as something that is tucked away in a body and thus inaccessible by other minds. If this is correct, how could we even begin to think of a way that my thoughts influence yours? Are there ways of transmission or other modes of influence between different minds? I would like to call this the contact problem. Intersubjective explanations, it seems, must specify ways in which one mind can affect another mind. As I will argue, at least some early modern philosophers addressed this problem and provided intersubjective accounts of the mind. What is more, they relied on different models of intersubjectivity. To present three different but crucial explanatory models, I will focus on Spinoza, Locke and Hume: Spinoza will be shown to opt for a metaphysical model, Locke as resorting to a linguistic model and Hume as relying on a medical model that combines assumptions about contagion and sympathy.
Before we take a brief look at these models, let us take a step back and look at the contact problem again. Taking human minds as individual units hidden inside a body suggests that a direct contact between minds is impossible. I can tell you what I think, but in doing so, it’s not my thought that is transmitted. Getting at the thought seems to require an inference on the part of the listener. By contrast, if I endorse a view of the mind that takes mental states to be ingrained in behaviour, such that my mental states are not hidden but part of behavioural patterns, then my mind does seem to be more directly accessible. It seems, then, that the contact problem poses an enormous obstacle for the former but not for the latter view of the mind. On this assumption, intersubjective explanations work well in a behavioural view of the mind but not on what has been called “mentalism”. Martin Lenz (2022) Socializing Minds: Intersubjectivity in Early Modern Philosophy (Oxford University Press), pp, 93-4 (emphases in original)*

I have to admit that when I first started to read Lenz's very entertaining Socializing Minds, I was a bit dubious about the so-called contact problem. It seemed to me, and sometimes still seems to me, an artifact of behaviorialism and some of Ryle's more dubious historiographic moves (which, alas, he was not immune to). But because Lenz's book is so much fun -- it mixes contemporary insights with very erudite and clearly written history of philosophy in refreshing ways easily moving between Avoerrism and memes-- I decided to revise my view. Reflecting on the contact problem is generative and so (by my lights) cannot be a mere artifact (which are sterile).

I have to admit that I don't understand why inference is thought to be a barrier to contact -- the contact problem seems to be rather the no unmediated contact problem --, but obviously for the contact problem to have real bite, by inference here (in this context) is meant something like 'not truth preserving' inference or distorting. And clearly it's true that many if not most early modern philosophers thought that language and other mechanisms of social contact are distorting of reality (and don't do full justice to our ideas of it). Lenz shows that despite this commitment, Spinoza, Locke, and Hume have different kinds of theories in which our minds are, de facto, dependant on other minds, although -- he may disagree with this -- the effect is that in interacting with others the vulnerability to embracing the false remains. (Perhaps, in Locke the vulnerability is also simultaneously the grounds for possibility of reaching some truths. About that some other time.)

Anyway, that the no contact problem seems so much an artificat of behavioralism made me wonder if one couldn't generate it in an alternative framework. This made me consider whether there are circumstances in which no contact is desirable. I immediately thought of Condorcet's Jury theorem which, formally, requires that voters do not communicate with each other and make up their own minds on a decision problem. Without such independence the result that (with rather weak assumptions about human nature) more folk do better than fewer would be unsurprising (and not so unsettling to the elitist and hierarchical mindset).+ Of course, the formation of Rousseau's general will also requires such independence.

Now, while Rousseau's account of the general will has non-trivial formal similarity with Condorcet's jury theorem -- and I would be amazed if it didn't shape Condorcet's thinking --, it is worth signaling that the nature of their independence pushes in different directions: (i) and skating over many interpretive disputes, in Rousseau's general will set up, independence is really designed to create a kind of impartiality not tainted by self-interest (and irrelevant personality features). And this is why this kind of independence is compatible with a kind of representative agent approach (familiar from, and perhaps an ultimate source of, Rawls' original position).

A representative agent approach would undermine the force of the Condorcet jury theorem; in it independence is really about a kind of authenticity of one's judgment. Other minds are corrupting (because they undermine independence). Now, I don't mean to deny that the previous two sentences are things Rousseau himself might say. I am just trying to track a conceptual distinction. (To be sure I think both directions have roots in Spinoza's debts to stoicism--but about that in a future post.) 

That is, the no contact problem is no problem in two contexts: first, one requires or needs authentic judgments that give each of us weight. That is, if one takes democracy seriously. (And lurking here are also protestant ideas about conscience that I have not touched upon above.) Second, one is dealing with a decision problem that is best handled by an impartial agent that represents (the true interests of us) all. That is, if one takes a certain species of objectivity/impartiality seriously. Put like that the two sources of the desirability of no contact seem to be a feature and not a bug of a certain conception of modern political life. And so, to put it as a serious joke, Wittgenstein and Ryle are untimely.

 

Montesquieu, Spinoza, Federalism, and Political Hebraism

IF a republic be small, it is destroyed by a foreign force; if it be large, it is ruined by an internal imperfection.

To this twofold inconveniency democracies and aristocracies are equally liable, whether they be good or bad. The evil is in the very thing itself, and no form can redress it.

It is therefore very probable that mankind would have been, at length, obliged to live constantly under the government of a single person, had they not contrived a kind of constitution that has all the internal advantages of a republican, together with the external force of a monarchical, government. I mean, a confederate republic.

This form of government is a convention, by which several petty states agree to become members of a larger one, which they intend to establish. It is a kind of assemblage of societies, that constitute a new one, capable of increasing by means of farther associations, till they arrive to such a degree of power, as to be able to provide for the security of the whole body....

From hence it proceeds that Holland, Germany, and the Swiss Cantons, are considered in Europe as perpetual republics.

The associations of cities were formerly more necessary than in our times. A weak defenceless town was exposed to greater danger. By conquest, it was deprived not only of the executive and legislative power, as at present, but moreover of all human property‡.

A republic of this kind, able to withstand an external force, may support itself without any internal corruption; the form of this society prevents all manner of inconveniences.

If a single member should attempt to usurp the supreme power, he could not be supposed to have an equal authority and credit in all the confederate states. Were he to have too great an influence over one, this would alarm the rest; were he to subdue a part, that which would still remain free might oppose him with forces independent of those which he had usurped, and overpower him before he could be settled in his usurpation.

Should a popular insurrection happen in one of the confederate states, the others are able to quell it. Should abuses creep into one part, they are reformed by those that remain sound. The state may be destroyed on one side and not on the other; the confederacy may be dissolved, and the confederates preserve their sovereignty.

As this government is composed of petty republics, it enjoys the internal happiness of each; and, with regard to its external situation, by means of the association, it possesseth all the advantages of large monarchies.

THE Canaanites were destroyed by reason they were petty monarchies, that had no union nor confederacy for their common defence: and, indeed, a confederacy is not agreeable to the nature of petty monarchies.

As the confederate republic of Germany consists of free cities, and of petty states subject to different princes, experience shews us, that it is much more imperfect than that of Holland and Swisserland.

The spirit of monarchy is war and enlargement of dominion: peace and moderation is the spirit of a republic. These two kinds of government cannot naturally subsist in a confederate republic.--Montesquieu, Charles. Complete Works, vol. 1 The Spirit of Laws. T. Evans, 1748, pp. 165-166. Book IX Chapters 1-2

It is fairly well-established that these paragraphs inspired in various ways Madison and Kant's Perpetual Peace. It seems to be less well known that Montesquieu is echoing Spinoza's Political Treatise (3.15-16 [recall here; here]),* where Spinoza explains how one can use conventions by which several small states agree to become members of a larger voluntary confederation. 

That we're in the ambit of Spinoza (and Machiavelli) is clear from Montesquieu's concern with corruption (which is a major theme of Spinoza's political writings, or so I argue here) and also by Montesquieu political reading of the Biblical narrative in the quoted paragraph (which also has Machiavellian roots). For, rather than emphasizing the Caananites' idolatry or Jewish providential election, Montesquieu remarks that the conquest of land of Canaan was due to institutional weakness of the Canaanites and, de facto, institutional strength of the Biblical Jews. Montesquieu echoes here, and offers a gloss, on chapter 17 [paragraphs 44-55] of the Theological Political treatise. There Spinoza had emphasized the confederate nature of the conquering Biblical Jews and compared them explicitly to the Dutch in his own day [III/210]. (Spinoza notes that the Dutch lack a common temple.)

While I don't mean to suggest that Montesquieu is slavishly echoing Spinoza here, there are further hints of Montesquieu's debts to Spinoza's chapter 17 of the TTP. For, in the quoted passage from Montesquieu I read six terse arguments in favor of confederate republics:

1. Common protection against foreign enemies. This is the defensive character of a confederacy.
2. Protection against usurpation by an individual citizen of one of the confederate states.
3. Protection against insurrection by the masses of one of the confederate states.
4. Ability to combat local rent-seeking
5. Ability to reform local institutions.
6. Ability to survive implosion of member units.

Except for the first argument, the other five all involve the capacity to notice problems in a member unit of the confederacy and for the remaining units to act on this diagnosis. And what these five arguments presuppose, thus, is that the confederacy lacks a central power that can over-awe the member units, so that the member units can be self-correcting with each other. And, in fact, near the end of chapter 17 of TTP, Spinoza notes that by turning the confederacy into a  monarchy (which does have such a central power), the first Hebrew state became vulnerable to usurpation [see paragraphs 83-111],  insurrection [107-108], corrupt/rent-seeking [106], and the inability to reform the institutions piecemeal [111].** (See also, the treatment of Benjamin by the other tribes at 17.57. And while Spinoza does not explicitly anticipate the sixth it's logically presupposed in his argument (including the survival of Judah after Israel was destroyed).

 

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Newton on the laws of nature and interstellar space

Since Space is Divisible in infinitum, and Matter is not necessarily in all places, it may also be allowed that God is able to create Particles of Matter of several Sizes and Figures, and in several Proportions to Space, and perhaps of different Densities and Forces, and thereby to vary the Laws of Nature, and make Worlds of several sorts in several Parts of the Universe.--Isaac Newton Opticks Query 31 

The quoted passages dates from the 1706 Latin edition of the Opticks and ended up in Query 31 of the later English edition. As regular readers know (recall here), I am rather fond of it, and I have explored the significance and implications of it also in my scholarly work (including writing with Zvi Biener here; and here solo). Because of a visit to Duke, and my conversations with Katherine Brading and Caleb Hazelwood while there, I had occasion to revisit the passage. 

Before I get to that let me offer some clarification on Newton's terminology for those of you who have never seen this passage before: the universe can (but need not) be composed of different worlds. Ordinarily, when Newton uses 'world,' he means thereby to refer to a solar system. Newton recognizes that the universe could be composed of different worlds that coexist (in the General scholium he remarks [recall] on the beauty of the night sky to aliens in other worlds)! A 'system of worlds' is a collection of solar systems (we would say, a 'galaxy') that, presumably, share in a uniform motion or frame of reference.

But Newton also uses 'world' in a metaphysically richer sense. A world in this richer sense is constituted and characterized by the kinds of “particles of Matter” and forces that are to be found in it. The matter and forces of a world can be described by laws of nature. Newton's attitude toward matter and forces is realist in that they are part of his basic ontology; matter and forces ground the laws of nature, which are derivative from them: note Newton's "thereby."

In fact, as an aside, at the start of the Principia, Newton notes that the "basic problem of philosophy seems to be to discover the forces of nature from the phenomena of motions and then to demonstrate the other phenomena from these forces." So, the ontological priority of forces (and matter) is reflected in his epistemic aims. 

The passage quoted at the top of this post suggests that Newton's laws are not primitive or productive in the sense that, say, Maudlin's treatment of laws implies (recall). In my work with Biener, especially, I have tried to explain how we should think of the metaphysics of laws according to Newton (short version: it's complicated). But in what follows I want to make a further suggestion about what we might call the extension or locality of the laws of nature.

For Newton, at every point of space, there is time and God, and places that might be filled by matter. (Conversely, there are space and God at every moment of time.) But there are also enormous number of otherwise empty spaces, some enormous. Now, we can discern in Newton treatment of four kinds of empty spaces: first, there are (interstitial) empty spaces within bodies. Second, there are empty spaces among (planetary) bodies within worlds. Third, there are vast empty spaces between solar systems. Fourth, there are enormous empty spaces between galaxies. (I think this is the doctrine of the Principia, but Newton did not always think this because he sometimes experimented with aether theories.)

Now, according to the doctrine that I ascribe to Newton based on the passage quote at the top of the post, the properties of bodies, and their forces of interaction generate the laws that govern them. How to think about the grounding relation between laws and the bodies they describe, I leave to others. (In fact, Caleb Hazelwood is circulating a fascinating paper about this.) On my view (see here), and also (say) David Miller Marshall (here), the Newtonian laws really are about interactions of bodies or systems of bodies (in which they are grounded).

So, here comes the pay-off of this discussion. It follows from these features of bodies, forces and laws, that on Newton's views the laws can be said to be present in interstitial spaces. They are also present in the spatial voids within and between solar systems. You may wonder, given the view I am sketching here, why I am so confident this is so between solar systems for Newton. However, on his view light easily and rapidly moves between solar systems, and we know that for Newton light rays themselves are composed of particles (with mass). Moreover, on his view solar systems tend to be part of a galaxy  which follows a uniform motion or has a general frame of reference.

I do not mean to suggest that all the laws of nature that exist in a galaxy are also always present in the vast voids that occupy the spaces of a galaxy. It's possible, after all, some kinds of bodies that can be found in parts of a galaxy are, in principle, unable to move among different solar systems. Notice, that lurking here is genuine lack of knowledge how many kinds of bodies there are in the universe and so how many kinds of laws will be discovered. Newton knew that he was making all kinds of homogeneity assumptions (this was explicit in hypothesis 3 of the first edition), and he also knew that the evidential basis of his claims was limited to a small speck of vast space.

So, on the view that I am sketching here, there need to be no laws of nature present in the vast empty spaces or darkness among galaxies (that is, the fourth kind of spaces). So, for Newton it's possible the total universe is rather dappled (in Nancy Cartwright's sense). Of course, in so far as light also may move among galaxies there may be considerable possibility for uncovering unified laws. (Brading teased me that on my view, as bodies move into empty spaces the laws of nature are simultaneously extended--which I find a lovely implication..) But that's an open question. (Zvi Biener and I argue that methodologically, within physics research, Newton assumes universal laws until there is evidence otherwise. But that's a different register.)

One final thought. Often discussions of Newton assimilate his views of laws of nature to Descartes. In Descartes, the laws are kind of second causes and are universal in scope. The issue I have sketched here does not arise there because, in principle, all bits of matter of the universe are indirectly in contact with each other (and are either part of a universal vortex, or mediate among large solar vortices). Spinoza grasps the significance of this picture with a beautiful treatment in a justly famous letter to Oldenburg (that I suspect shaped Leibniz's metaphysics non-trivially):

all bodies are surrounded by others, and are mutually determined to exist and operate in a fixed and definite proportion, while the relations between motion and rest in the sum total of them, that is, in the whole universe, remain unchanged. Hence it follows that each body, in so far as it exists as modified in a particular manner, must be considered as a part of the whole universe, as agreeing with the whole, and associated with the remaining parts. As the nature of the universe is not limited, like the nature of blood, but is absolutely infinite, its parts are by this nature of infinite power infinitely modified, and compelled to undergo infinite variations. 

While in my writings I tend to bring Newton rather close to Spinoza, it should be clear that on the view sketched here, Newton cannot endorse this lovely picture.

 

 

 

Foucault, Stigler, Weber, and some pre-history going back to Thomas More, Mandeville, Grouchy and even Spinoza

The cost limitation upon the enforcement of laws would prevent the society from forestalling, detecting, and punishing all offenders, but it would appear that punishments which would be meted out to the guilty could often be increased without using additional resources. The offender is deterred by the expected punishment, which is (as a first approximation) the probability of punishment times the punishment-$100 if the probability of conviction is 1/10 and the fine $1,000. Hence, increasing the punishment would seem always to increase the deterrence. Capital punishment is cheaper than long term imprisonment; and seizure of all the offender's property may not be much more expensive than collecting a more moderate fine.

To escape from this conclusion, Becker introduces as a different limitation on punishment the "social value of the gain to offenders" from the offense. The determination of this social value is not explained, and one is entitled to doubt its usefulness as an explanatory concept: what evidence is there that society sets a positive value upon the utility derived from a murder, rape, or arson? In fact the society has branded the utility derived from such activities as illicit. It may be that in a few offenses some gain to the offender is viewed as a gain to society,' but such social gains seem too infrequent, small, and capricious to put an effective limitation upon the size of punishments.

Instead we take account of another source of limitation of punishment, which arises out of the nature of the supply of offenses. It is no doubt true that the larger the punishment, the smaller will be the expected net utility to the prospective offender from the commission of a given offense. But marginal decisions are made here as in the remainder of life, and the marginal deterrence of heavy punishments could be very small or even negative. If the offender will be executed for a minor assault and for a murder, there is no marginal deterrence to murder. If the thief has his hand cut off for taking five dollars, he had just as well take $5,000. Marginal costs are necessary to marginal deterrence.2 The marginal deterrence to committing small crimes is also distorted if an otherwise appropriate schedule of penalties is doubled or halved. One special aspect of this cost limitation upon enforcement is the need to avoid overenforcement. The enforcement agency could easily apprehend most guilty people of we placed no limits upon the charging and frequent conviction of innocent people. In any real enforcement system, there will in fact be conviction and punishment of some innocent parties, and these miscarriages of justice impose costs of both resources and loss of confidence in the enforcement machinery. The costs of defense of innocent parties, whether borne by themselves or by the state, are part of the costs of enforcement from the social viewpoint. The conviction of innocent persons encourages the crime because it reduces the marginal deterrence to its commission.--Stigler, George J. "The optimum enforcement of laws." Journal of Political Economy 78.3 (1970): 527-528.

Foucault quotes the Stigler (1970) article in the tenth lecture of 21 March 1979 (Birth of Biopolitics, p. 256.) It is quite natural, if you read the editorial apparatus of the Birth of Biopolitics, to think that Foucault may not have read the original source, but that he is relying entirely on Jenny, F. "La théorie économique du crime: une revue de la littérature." Vie et sciences économique 73 (1977): 7-20. The wording of the editorial footnote (18) -- "(Foucault draws on information provided in this article.)" -- is sufficiently ambiguous to give the editors plausible deniability here. But the editors go on to imply it in a later footnote (25) when they tell the readers that "This phrase is not found in Becker’s article. Foucault relies on the synthesis of Becker’s and Stigler’s works provided by Jenny." Foucault's vexed relationship to underlying sources came up in discussion over lunch with Bruce Caldwell and Joel Isaac yesterday.

So, I was pleasantly surprised yesterday when during a hallway conversation Vincent Carret -- yes I am visiting Duke's Center for the history of political economy [hence all the name-dropping] -- informed me that there is a project, Le projet Foucault Fiches de Lecture (FFL), that is collecting and making digitally available many of Foucault's annotations on his readings which he did to prepare his lectures and books. So, when I went to check it out, I thought it made sense to use it as my first foray to see what annotations he had left on Becker and Stigler. While zero annotations would not be decisive -- after all notes get lost and re-used, maybe he relied on others for summaries and checked them against original sources -- it would naturally be taken to reinforce the editors' point.

To give a non-trivial example that a false negative is not decisive: as far as I can tell, there are no annotations on Jenny's article (or the underlying book in which it appeared). Since there are Foucault annotations on papers by Becker (here) and Stigler, that would have made a nice punchline for this digression, but I have other fish to fry!  In addition, the annotations do not seem to be dated, and as far as I can tell [after a few hours of poking around on the website] the project has not yet tried to date the manuscripts. So, I am not going to try to connect Foucault's scribbling to particular passages in the lecture course. (I will leave that to a different kind of scholar.) Foucault read and made a few annotations (see here) on Stigler's "The Optimum Enforcement of Laws." That should be no surprise because Foucault had a deep interest in criminology, and its history, and Becker's and Stigler's work were creating important waves in the field. (I would be amazed if these annotations were written after the Birth of Biopolitics lectures.)

When Stigler wrote the passage I have quoted, Becker may well still have been at Columbia. (Becker returned to Chicago in 1970.) And, at first sight the passage has the aura of a senior scholar setting the young upstart straight on marginal analysis (then exactly a century old), although the real disagreement is to explain the absence of widespread and enormous numbers of capital punishment. For, while Stigler's (and Becker's) project has a normative component (Stigler is explicit about this), it's also meant to do a decent job with the empirical world.

And, in fact, Stigler's analysis ("If the thief has his hand cut off for taking five dollars, he had just as well take $5,000.") echoes pre-marginalist thinking going back to Thomas More (in part I of Utopia [recall this NewAPPS post]), and, as Foucault explicitly notes (repeatedly in the lecture), in the writings of Beccaria and Bentham (and (recall this digression on) Sophie Grouchy). This is why Foucault treats Stigler and Becker as an updated version of Benthamite utilitarianism (although as the reference to More suggests cost-benefit analysis of criminal decision making and how to create rational punishment in light of it precedes Benthamite utilitarianism). 

Now, I want to close with more substantive observations. Foucault himself makes an important point in a passage (which I have quoted in passing before (recall here) in which he explicitly quotes Stigler (1970):

The regulatory principle of penal policy is a simple intervention in the market for crime and in relation to the supply of crime. It is an intervention which will limit the supply of crime solely by a negative demand, the cost of which must obviously never exceed the cost of the supply of the criminality in question. This is the definition that Stigler gives of the objective of a penal policy: “The goal of law enforcement,” he says, “is to achieve a degree of compliance with the rule of prescribed behavior that society believes it can procure while taking account of the fact that enforcement is costly.” This is in the Journal of Political Economy in 1970.30--Foucault 21 March, 1979,  translated by Graham Burchell, Lecture 10, The Birth of Biopolitics, p. 256.*

The 'definition that Stigler gives' is from the first section of the essay labeled 'The Goal of Enforcement.' Stigler returns to the regulatory principle in the final (third) section labeled 'The Enforcement Agency: A Normative Approach.' Some other time I want to discuss how we should think about the normativity involved in Stigler's analysis. Foucault does not remark on it. It's worth nothing that 'Chicago' is by no means the first to think about the role of enforcement costs in law enforcement: Spinoza (in the Theological Political Treatise) and Mandeville (in the Fable) recognize that Amsterdam's practice of tolerating brothels is explicitly shaped by consideration of enforcement costs.

Now, 'the art of government' is the major theme of Birth of Biopolitics. And the phrase (and its cognates) are used repeatedly throughout the lectures. But one peculiarity of the lectures is that the phrase does not occur in the lectures on Chicago economics ('governmentality' does in case you want to play gotcha with me). And this has let commentators, I think, to miss that Chicago school does have an account of the art of government: in Friedman it's called the 'art of economics' (which is recall here and here the phrase he inherits from J.S. Mill and J.N. Keynes) and Stigler with less flair, calls it "advice on policy...[in light of] understanding of the regulatory process" in the introduction to his (1975) Citizen and the State. Now, in Friedman (and Mill, and even Adam Smith) the content of the art of government is articulated in terms of maxims or principles. Foucault echoes this language when he describes Stigler's 1970 in terms of 'regulatory principles.'** 

To put my first important point simply: in the context of the modern administrative state, the liberal art of government, as understood at 'Chicago' is partially codified in terms of regulatory principles that constrain how one should think about the relationship between policy aims and fundamental liberal principles (and constitutional constraints, etc.) in light of experience with the ordinary workings of the democratic political process which is often also a market in political regulation. 

The second point is that Foucault uses 'regulatory principle' as the content of the art of government in the context of the modern administrative state. This is actually confirmed or illustrated in an interview held with him (by folk who are actually confused on this) in a passage that has attracted quite a bit of critical attention (because it involves Foucault's attitude toward consensus politics), where Foucault corrects his interviewers' terminology by saying that 'X is a regulatory principle' always presupposes that X is subject to "governance" and to "be organized." (The Foucault Reader, p. 378)

And lurking here is the most important point often lost in twentieth century debates over markets vs states is that much of neoliberalism, that, as Foucault correctly recognizes, is about -- and Becker and Stigler are explicit about this -- a process of rationalization of the administrative state on liberal principles not its abolition. And so while Foucault repeatedly ties the ORDO liberal approach to Max Weber's shadow, he could have also done so with Chicago (even if Stigler got his Weber through Knight and Talcott Parsons).

 

 

 

Two Dogmas of The Image of Science

An image of science (recall these posts on Hume, Williamson, Spinoza) contains a list of characteristics that function as short-hand for representing science when these characteristics are used in debates where one side (or more) appeals to the (epistemic) authority of science to settle debate. Images of science can circulate within the sciences, in public discussion, and even in philosophy. Here are two dogmas in the contemporary image of science:

(1) While science may be a complex network of collaboration and competition, it also involves a self-correcting and free exchange of ideas.

(2) Consensus is the natural effect of a proper functioning mature science.

Within philosophy, these two dogmas are familiar from Thomas Kuhn's work. Within economics and formal decision theory the dogmas are linked (at least since Aumann (1976), where (1) helps generate (2)).

In some contexts such consensus within science is a species of higher order evidence and generally a cue to defer to the science. And this reinforces how science can settle debate, and thereby open space for public action (assuming that prior to action there is public debate). Lurking in the previous two sentences is the idea that science can provide (some) authority to public policy based on it. So it is no surprise that governments promote institutions that help discover or articulate such consensus. In practice, governments and science, while distinct from each other (and sometimes at odds), frequently lend each other (some) authority by presupposing and reinforcing the two dogmas. 

So far so good. 

But because settled science is so important to authoritative action [and consensus such an important proxy of it], this also creates incentives to generate or organize the appearance of consensus. And there is conceptual space for such organized consensus. For even if one grants that consensus is the natural effect of a proper functioning mature science, this is compatible with consensus also being the effect of malfunctioning science. Let's call the agreement that is the product of malfunctioning science 'ersatz consensus.' (And I'll use 'real consensus' when I distinguish a naturally occurring consensus from the ersatz type.) 

It's worth noting that, despite the way I have phrased it in previous paragraph, participants in malfunctioning science need not have the intent to produce an ersatz consensus. By this I mean two things: first, some strategic agents may well intentionally wish to promote deliberate confusion such that there does not seem consensus at all (think of the tobacco industry on the relationship between smoking and cancer; or the energy industry and man-made global warming, etc.). Second, sometimes an ersatz consensus is the product of the absence of proper exchange of ideas in science (because of bad replication or publication practices, or because of temporary embargoes on circulation of ideas [not uncommon in medical and defense sciences]). So, sometimes ersatz consensus is the effect of top-down organization, and sometimes it's the effect of bottom-up failures of process.

It's not surprising that for outsiders it's incredibly difficult to distinguish between an ersatz consensus and a real consensus, especially if the science is incredibly esoteric and/or interdisciplinary. But sometimes it is very difficult for insiders to know whether the consensus view is real or ersatz in their own science. There need not be anything nefarious about this; all that's needed is that because of say extensive cognitive division of labor even insiders may be unaware (of the nature and extent of) that the process that shapes the exchange of ideas within their own science is malfunctioning. 

Even though I have well known skeptical leanings, I don't want to exaggerate the claim in the previous two sentences. There are forensic techniques that provide signals about such matters. In addition folks in adjoining sciences may have the skill set to notice communicative problems I am hinting at. (In a way that's the story of how the replication crisis got tackled.) But it may take  time to sort such things out.

Notice that so far I have not touched the two dogmas of the contemporary image of the science (although I have hinted that (1) may be an idealization). What I have done is extrapolate some of their mutual entailments. 

As an aside, even without governments nudging us to accept a scientific consensus is authoritative, (2) has very deep roots in the intellectual culture. The Stoic sages and the Spinozistic wise are said to agree, and I am sure you can list a whole number of other examples. But -- pace Kuhn -- it is worth noting that there were scientific periods where within science persistent disagreement over many important issues was not taken to be embarrassing (I think this was common view of late nineteenth century physics if you go look at Poincare, Duhem, Hertz, Mach, etc.). 

For, it is worth noting however that (2) is not self-evident in all contexts. Sometimes different scientific research groups within the same scientific community rely on different auxiliary assumptions or computational shortcuts to generate (say) agreed upon predictions (go check out real-life examples of Quine-Duhem thesis). So even though at one level of description there may be consensus, at another level of description (including the auxiliaries) there is not. I suspect this situation is endemic in a lot of sciences. (Again, over time this may well be sorted out if the auxiliaries start to matter for some reason.)

In addition, in a very neat recent paper, Kevin Dorst has argued (on the Bayesian terrain of Aumann) -- in the context of trying to provide a mechanism for group polarization -- that if evidence is ambiguous we should not expect consensus. (He has a neat scientific example, so go read it.) My view is that in sciences with incredibly robust and mathematically refined background theories (and instruments) such ambiguity of evidence may well be rare, but that in many sciences ambiguity of evidence and, thus, lack of consensus is to be expected and rational. 

Let me stop here for now.

 

 

On Freedom of the Press, Constant and Condillac, Spinoza, and the Road to Serfdom Schema

If you apply this experience of the last three centuries of history to the present state of human intellection, you will readily be convinced that the annihilation of press freedom, that is to say, of intellectual progress, would have results today even more fatal than those we have recounted. The monarchies whose progressive withering and retrograde movement we have described, deprived of the free use of printing from its inception, felt this deprivation only in a dull, slow, imperceptible way. A people deprived of freedom of the press after having enjoyed it, would experience the initial pain of this loss more sharply, followed by a more rapid degradation. The thing which debases men is not lacking a right but having to give it up. Condillac says there are two sorts of barbarism, the one which goes before enlightened centuries and the one which succeeds them. In the same way one can say there are two kinds of servitude, the one preceding liberty and the one replacing it. The first is a desirable state of affairs compared to the second. But the choice of these is not left to governments, because they cannot annihilate the past.

Imagine an enlightened nation, enriched by the works of a number of studious generations, possessing masterpieces of all types, having made immense scientific and artistic progress, and having got to this point by the only way that can lead there, the enjoyment, assured or precarious, of freedom of publication. If the government of that nation put such constraints on that freedom that it became every day harder to elude them, if it did not allow the exercise of thought except in a predetermined direction, the nation could survive for a while on its former capital, so to speak, on its acquired intelligence, on habits of thinking and doing picked up earlier; but nothing in the world of thought would renew itself. The reproductive principle would have dried up. For some years vanity might stand in for the love of learning. Sophists, remembering what glamour and esteem literary works used once to bestow, would give themselves over to works of ostensibly the same genre. Their writings would combat any good effects which other writings might have had, and as long as there remained any trace of liberal principles, there would be in such a people’s literature some kind of movement, a sort of struggle against these ideas and principles. This very movement, however, this struggle, would be an inheritance of a now-destroyed liberty. To the extent that the last vestiges, the last traditions, could be dispelled, there would be less acclaim and less advantage in continuing these more and more superfluous attacks. When all had been dispelled, the battle would finish, because the combatants would no longer perceive even the shadow of their foes. Conquerors and conquered would alike keep silence. Who knows if the government might not reckon it worth imposing this? It would not want anyone to reawaken extinguished memories, or stir up abandoned ideas. It would come down hard on overzealous acolytes as it used to on its enemies. It would forbid even writings taking its own line, on the interests of humanity, as some pious government once forbade talk of God, for good or ill. Thus a career in real thinking would be definitively closed to the human spirit. The educated generation would gradually disappear. The next generation, seeing no advantage in intellectual occupations, or indeed dangers therein, would break off from them for good. You will say, in vain, that the human spirit could still occupy itself with lighter literature, that it could enter the service of the exact or natural sciences, or devote itself to the arts. When nature created man, she did not consult government. Her design was that all our faculties should be in intimate liaison and that none should be subject to limitation without the others feeling the effect. Independent thinking is as vital, even to lighter literature, science, and the arts, as air is to physical life. One could as well make men work under a pneumatic pump, saying that they do not have to breathe, but must move their arms and legs, as hold intellectual activity to a given object, preventing it from preoccupying itself with important subjects which give it its energy because they remind it of its dignity. Writers strangled in this way start off with panegyrics; but they become bit by bit incapable even of praise and literature finishes up losing itself in anagrams and acrostics. Scholars are no more than the trustees of ancient discoveries which deteriorate and degrade in manacled hands. The source of talent dries up among artists along with the hope of glory which is sustained only by freedom. By a mysterious but incontestable relationship between things from which one thought oneself capable of isolating oneself, they no longer have the ability to represent the human figure nobly when the human spirit is degraded.

Nor would this be the end of the story. Soon commerce, the professions, and the most vital crafts would feel the effects of the death of thought. It should not be thought that commerce on its own is a sufficient motive for activity. People often exaggerate the influence of personal interest. Personal interest itself needs the existence of public opinion in order to act. The man whose opinion languishes, stifled, is not for long excited even by his interests. A sort of stupor seizes him; and just as paralysis extends itself from one part of the body to another, so it extends itself from one faculty to another.--Benjamin Constant (1810?) Principles of Politics Applicable to Government, translated by Dennis O'Keefe., Book VII (On Freedom of Thought), Chapter 5

Recall (here) that at a high level of generality, a road to serfdom thesis holds that an outcome unintended to political decisionmakers is foreseeable to the right kind of observer and that in addition the outcome leads to a loss of political and economic freedom over the medium term. I use ‘medium’ here because the consequences tend to follow in a time-frame within an ordinary human life, but generally longer than one or two years (which is the short-run), and shorter than the centuries’ long process covered by (say) the rise and fall of civilization. Crucially for a road to serfdom thesis, along the way, in order to ward off some unintended and undesirable consequences, decisions are taken that tend to lock in a worse than intended and de facto bad political unintended outcome (lack of freedom or, as Constant emphasizes, loss of rights). It's worth noting that a foreseeable, unintended outcome that is taken to be good is not a road to serfdom thesis. So the fall of feudalism due to luxury spending as diagnosed by Hume and Smith, is not, in their hands, a road to serfdom thesis (even if a social hierarchy leaning theorist of feudalism could present it as such).

The previous paragraph provides a schema for understanding when we're dealing with a road to serfdom thesis. In his (1944) The Road to Serfdom Hayek credits Belloc's (1912) The Servile State with articulating a road to serfdom thesis recall (here and here), although Hayek (and Wikipedia) suggest that the title was inspired by Tocqueville. For (recall) in Book 4, chapter 1, of Democracy in America, Tocqueville claims that the principle of equality generates a 'road to servitude.' But while the phrase seems to have inspired Hayek, and Tocqueville's account fits the schema nicely, it would be a mistake to treat Tocqueville's version of the road to serfdom as providing the template for Belloc and Hayek (and Mises). For Tocqueville is not diagnosing the effects of a welfare state socialism, central planning, or state capitalism. Instead I suggested that Chapter IV ("Laissez Faire") of Hobhouse's (1911) is the progenitor of Belloc's and Hayek's competing road to serfdoms. (I call them competing because they have different normative ideals.)

My schema points to an important feature of road to serfdom theses. They imply that political agents or society could and should have known better than embarking on the fatal action. As Constant implies, while drawing on Condillac, what makes a road to serfdom thesis so shocking is that barbarism can follow from enlightened times not through external conquest but through internal actions. There is, of course, an interesting question lurking in the vicinity here -- one that is highly salient in an age of of scientifically diagnosed man-made climate crisis --  how an age that makes colossal political mistakes can really be called enlightened. 

As should be clear by now I think Constant diagnoses a road to serfdom thesis in his account of how restrictions on freedom of publication lead to ruin. The writings of Constant were well known to Tocqueville, Hayek and Röpke (who claimed some priority for a road to serfdom thesis), so there can well be a direct influence. 

But I want to close with a quite different set of observations. Since Mill we are trained to understand freedom of speech as an engine of discovery that puts us on the road to truth maybe even make it inevitable we reach it (recall Carl Schmitt and Kalven). Constant, by partial contrast, emphasizes that it is a "reproductive principle." It helps society reproduce itself by being truth preserving <insert your own joke about logical proof just being freedom of speech here!>. I think this is in many ways a more plausible thesis than the engine of discovery one.

Be that as it may, in his analysis, Constant isn't merely thinking of factual preservation of truth as a collection of statements. He is also interested in the spirit of truth. I used 'partial' in the previous paragraph, because Constant does think that freedom of speech is conducive to discovery, but more as a kind of background, enabling condition than the engine itself: "Independent thinking is as vital, even to lighter literature, science, and the arts, as air is to physical life....You will say, in vain, that the human spirit could still occupy itself with lighter literature, that it could enter the service of the exact or natural sciences, or devote itself to the arts." (There is more than a touch of Hume in these lines [go re-read "Of Commerce," and Montesquieu, of course].)

There is, thus, lurking in Constant, as in Hume, and later the historicists, a kind of substantial unity of culture thesis in organicist terms in which freedom of publication is one of the animating principles of that culture (even if due to freedom of speech that culture appears pluralistic even chaotic). It is worth asking to what degree such unity of culture is really true. Even quite tyrannical cultures have had produced eminence in science, after all.

Above, I mentioned Hume, but I could equally have mentioned Spinoza. And, in fact, we get more than a hint that we should be thinking of Spinozism here. While it is completely unnecessary for his argument, Constant adds the sentence, "When nature created man, she did not consult government." This is about as Spinozist one can get. (Constant explicitly mentions Spinoza in a footnote near the end of the book.) Yes, the next sentence discusses nature's purposes, but the purpose is to be an integrated organism that preserves itself!  The nod to Spinoza makes sense here because in this chapter, Constant's argument for freedom of speech in terms of the "reproductive principle" is thoroughly pragmatic and conducive to preserve and help flourish the social status quo. The argument is, thus, as it is in Spinoza, an appeal to the enlightened self-interests of the rulers.

The Road to Serfdom in Light of the Invisible Hand (with some mention of Foucault, Spinoza, and Machiavelli)

There are strong reasons for believing that what to us appear the worst features of the existing totalitarian systems are not accidental by-products but phenomena which totalitarianism is certain sooner or later to produce. Just as the democratic statesman who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans, so the totalitarian dictator would soon have to choose between disregard of ordinary morals and failure.--Hayek (1944 [2001]) The Road to Serfdom, chapter 10, p. 139

In what follows, I'd like to show how, conceptually, the invisible hand and the road to serfdom are related as ideal types.  And in order to exhibit this, I'll draw on my analysis of what I have called a 'Smithian Social Explanation' (or SSE; this was developed, in part, by building on Jim Otteson's work). A SSE is an unintended consequence explanation of a certain type, and in Adam Smith's writings it is the paradigmatic case of large scale social explanation of, say, the division of labor, the origin of money,  the origin of justice and morality, and even of language. To be sure, the explanatory model was probably not invented by Smith (one can find anticipations of it not just in Mandeville and Hume, but in other earlier social theorists).

A SSE has three main components:

• (1) it is a causal account
• (2) it is a historical explanation of a long-term process. By “historical” I mean to capture two features:

    (A) that the stable consequence would not have been in “view” (or predictable) to observers of human nature at an early time and, thus, not capable of being intended.

    (B) that to be cause (of a SSE or within a SSE) does not require temporal contiguity between the cause and the effect.

• (3) After certain consequences become visible to observer-participants, they become self-reinforcing, or lock-in (because, say, these participants grow aware that they benefit from certain effects). That is, in the long run and in the aggregate, human propensities and incentives will produce initially unpredictable, albeit definite and determined outcomes.

In addition, it is characteristic of SSE's

• (4) That they can support counterfactual judgments—the process characterized by the Smithian social explanation describes not just what happened, but also how it differs from what would have happened without the process characterized by the Smithian social explanation. (This means that a SSE often presupposes a model or a theory of the 'natural' course of events absent the SSE.)

I am sure this is rather abstract even to regular readers, but you can either re-read this post or chapters 2& 10 of my book on Adam Smith. And, to repeat, this is the main explanatory template in Smith's writings. While I tend to avoid the language of 'spontaneous order,' it is natural to see similarities between SSEs and spontaneous orders as ideal types (see, for example, Jeffrey Young's review of my book). 

Now, unlike Emma Rothschild, who famously argued that the 'invisible hand' is an ironic joke in Smith's writings, I show (in chapter 10 of my book) that it picks out a distinctive kind of explanation for Smith one that is, in fact, different from a SSE (or a spontaneous order).  

In particular, any given iteration of an invisible hand process is (I) a relatively short-term process in which (II) the agent produces unintended and to him/her unknown consequences. Crucially, in an invisible hand process (III) these consequences are, in principle, knowable to the right kind of observer at the time of the agent's actions because the observer is theoretically properly informed or has access to accumulated common sense. In fact, (IV) Smithian invisible hand processes are cases where the agent could have known better epistemically.

The last feature (IV) is very important to the sole instance when Smith uses 'invisible hand' in Wealth of Nations. For the phrase occurs in the midst of a withering attack -- one might see it as a species of ideology critique (as my colleagues Paul Raekstad and Enzo Rossi have suggested to me) -- on mercantilism and the merchants that profit from the policies promoted by the propaganda that emanates from it in what we would call 'policy circles.' (In fact, Smith may be the first to describe a whole bunch of policy claims as a coherent system, 'Mercantilism,' in order to unmask it!) And in that context, the mercantilists claim falsely that a nation’s wealth consists of its holdings of gold and silver (something Smith challenges). And because the merchant class is committed to mercantile doctrines, they don't know how much their ordinary economic actions do promote national wealth.

So, while SSEs and invisible hand explanations are both unintended consequence explanations they operate (a) on different time scales and (b) they involve different kind of epistemic circumstances. They are also asymmetric in the following sense: an invisible hand explanation can be part of or a component of a SSE, but not vice versa. 

Now, what I'd like to do next is to offer an analysis of a road to serfdom thesis at the same level of generality as that I have described SSEs and invisible hand processes. For, the road to serfdom thesis is also an unintended consequence explanation.

At a high level of generality, a road to serfdom thesis holds (p) that an outcome unintended to political decisionmakers is, given some fairly minimal assumptions about human nature and the role of incentives, (q) foreseeable to the right kind of observer and that in addition the (r) outcome leads to a loss of political and economic freedom (s) over the medium term. I use ‘medium’ here because the consequences tend to follow in a time-frame within an ordinary human life, but generally longer than one or two years, which is the relative short-run of the invisible hand process, and shorter than the potentially centuries’ long process covered by Smithian Social Explanations. Crucially for a road to serfdom thesis, (t) in order to ward off some unintended and undesirable consequences, along the way further decisions, forced moves really ("assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans,"), are taken that tend to lock in a worse than intended and de facto bad political unintended outcome(s).

To illustrate a road to serfdom thesis, I have quoted a passage from Hayek's famous book at the top of this post. This passage is singled out in a famous (1995) paper by Pete Boettke to illustrate the point that totalitarianism is a logical consequence of "the institutional incentives of the attempt to centrally plan the economy." (p. 12) It's worth noting that in context, Hayek is here echoing a point one can also find in Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy and Spinoza's Theological Political Treatise, that is, why, in dictatorships/tyranny, to quote the title of Hayek's chapter 10 "the worst get on top."

So, in common with an invisible hand process, in a road to serfdom process, there is a mismatch between an agent's decision-making and what better informed outsiders can foresee. And part of the problem in both instances is that the decision-maker is in the grip of a false social theory and crucially that this is knowable if not known to others. In fact, invisible hand processes and road to serfdom narratives are often trotted out by critics of existing policy!

And not unlike a SSE, in a road to serfdom process, there is a moment of lock-in once initially unforeseen effects become visible to the decision-makers. This is illustrated nicely by another passage quoted by Boettke (p. 13) this time from a (1938) review by Frank Knight of Lippmann's The Good Society in the Journal of Political Economy):

[the planning authority would] exercise their power ruthlessly to keep the machinery of organized production and distribution running.... They would have to do these things whether they wanted to or not; and the probability of the people in power being individuals who would dislike the possession and exercise of power is on a level with the probability that an extremely tender-hearted person would get the job of whipping-master on a slave plantation. Knight 1938: 869 [emphasis added]*

Of course, in a SSE decision-making tends to be dispersed and we're dealing with outcomes that have wide benefits. Whereas in a road to serfdom process, decision-making tends to be concentrated and benefits tend to accrue to a few. What I hope this exercise has shown is that if one is immersed in what one might call Smithian political economy (with SSEs and invisible hands) then a road to serfdom thesis involves fairly minimal conceptual extra steps given some modest variation of time-scales.

Let me close with two observations. First, as Foucault (correctly) noticed (recall, especially, the fifth lecture of the Birth of Biopolitics on 7 February 1979) [but also the qualifications (recall) in the eight lecture on 7 March 1979], in Hayek and the ordoliberals, the road to serfdom thesis was by the 1940s something experienced (and not just merely a speculative prediction about the future of the welfare state). For they treated the development of Weimar Germany as one in which collective planning, socialization of various industries, and toleration of cartels created the pre-conditions for the inevitable rise of Nazi totalitarianism (see especially chapter 12 of The Road to Serfdom). 

Second, it is important to see that at this level of generality the road to serfdom process does not require commitment to free or efficient markets. As I noted, building on Hobhouse's (1911) Liberalism ((recall), which defends a left liberalism, Belloc (recall), who is more akin to a property owning democrat, developed the template of a road to serfdom thesis without such commitments.** In fact, as my mention of Machiavelli and Spinoza above suggests, I would argue the road to serfdom template predates debates over collective planning and socialism altogether. But about that another time more.

Hudde and Spinoza's Monism, Pt 3

This is the third post in a series triggered by an invite from Karolina Hubner and Justin Steinberg to write on the Spinoza and Hudde (1628 – 1704)) exchange.  According to Spinoza (recall this post); and this one), Hudde's original request to Spinoza was to provide [1] "a demonstration of the Unity of God from the fact that his Nature involves necessary existence." (Curley 2016: 25) We can infer from Spinoza's response that in his final letter to Spinoza, Hudde raised two remaining concerns about Spinoza's monism:

[3a] It is unclear why Spinoza seems committed to the claim that it is a contradiction to conceive something whose definition involves existence (or what is the same, affirms existence) under a negation of existence. (Curley 2016: 29)

[3b] Spinoza seems to be unable to rule out the [real] possibility that there could not be many beings, existing through themselves, but differing in nature, just as thought and extension are different, and can perhaps subsist by their own sufficiency... (Curley  2016: 30) 

I doubt Spinoza's response to [3a] really would have been satisfying. Spinoza writes:

since the limited denotes nothing positive, but only the privation of the existence of the same nature which is conceived as limited, it follows that something whose definition affirms existence cannot be conceived as limited. For example, if the term extension involves necessary existence, it will be as impossible to conceive extension without existence as it is to conceive extension without extension. And if this is maintained, it will also be impossible to conceive a limited extension. For if it were conceived to be limited, it would have to be limited by its own nature, namely, by extension. And this extension by which it was limited would have to be conceived under the negation of existence.

For, Hudde is not worried with the possibility that something whose definition affirms existence can be conceived as limited. Rather, he is worried that one can hold the idea of something whose definition affirms existence at a kind of arms length by, say, putting it between brackets and negating it. (As I noted before Hudde pioneered working with negative numbers, so I this was not something he would have thought of as mere wordplay.) It's quite clear, also from the Ethics, that Spinoza does not consider this a real possibility because for Spinoza the thinking subject becomes unified in a certain sense with the clear and distinct (or adequate) idea s/he affirms and cannot simultaneously genuinely deny it, say, for the sake of argument. So, here Hudde and Spinoza seem to me to be talking past each other. (I actually wonder if this represents a fundamental in 17th century post-Cartesianism on the way of ideas.)

The point in the last paragraph is non-trivial because in a fascinating (1989) paper on the Hudde-Spinoza Correspondence, Wim Klever has suggested that Hudde is a kind of crypto Spinozist. (What makes the paper so fascinating is that Klever noticed that Hudde and Locke corresponded (via Van Limborch) over the same issues decades later.)+ I strongly doubt we need to infer that Hudde is a crypto-Spinozist from Hudde's position (as presented by Spinoza) and I don't see why we should ascribe crypto-Spinozism to Hudde.

In addition, Klever thinks that Hudde is worried about the substance-like nature of the attributes in Spinoza (which is a natural concern had Hudde read the Short Treatise), and that this motivates Hudde's concern with polytheism. This cannot be ruled out altogether; and to be sure, [3b] is compatible with Klever's reading because in it the self-sufficient subsistence of thought and extension are mentioned. But to me they seem more introduced as analogy not the source of Hudde's concern. 

The more natural reading of [3b] is that Hudde is worried about multiple self-causing, self-subsisting substances with different (and non-overlapping) natures or attributes existing simultaneously given Spinoza's commitments. And, in Part II, chapter II, of the Appendix Containing Metaphysical Thoughts of the Cartesian Principles of Philosophy, Spinoza himself had invited this concern in the passage on God's Uniqueness (which I had already suggested in the two previous posts on the exchange must have prompted Hudde's questions on other grounds). For in that passage Spinoza explicitly indicates that God has an open-ended number of attributes (including understanding). And Spinoza goes on to write, "If now you say that there are many Gods, or supremely perfect beings, they will all have to understand, in the highest degree." (Curley 1985: 318)

And what Hudde is noticing is that it not obvious that if there are many Gods, that they all have to understand in the highest degree. Spinoza seems to presuppose that to be a God one must have all the attributes (that is, have unity). So, Hudde's original question, 'why does Unity of God follow from the fact that his Nature involves necessary existence?' makes sense. The tought being that maybe all gods necessarily exist (by their own sufficiciency), but they otherwise have a division of labor involving different infinite attributes and they are unlimited in its own kind. So, again, I doubt Hudde needs to be a Spinozist to raise this proto-Leibnizian objection.

My reading seems to be supported by the first sentence of Spinoza's response: "if we assert that something which is only unlimited in its own kind, and perfect, exists by its own sufficiency." This seems to be Hudde's worry as I understand it. But having said that, the way Spinoza refutes Hudde's worry is, in part, by relying on the idea that multiple substance-like attributes actually imply the existence of a single God/substance only might well be taken to support Klever's interpretation (although I deny that that's required). 

Okay, let's now turn to Spinoza's full response to Hudde's [3b]: 

if we assert that something which is only unlimited in its own kind, and perfect, exists by its own sufficiency, the existence of a being absolutely unlimited and perfect will also have to be conceded. This Being I call God. For example, if we want to maintain that extension or thought (each of which can be perfect in its own kind, that is, in a definite kind of being) exists by its own sufficiency, we will also have to concede the existence of God, who is absolutely perfect, that is, of an absolutely unlimited being.
    Here I should like you to note what I said just now about the term imperfection, namely, that it signifies that something is lacking to a thing which pertains to its nature. For example, Extension can be called imperfect only in relation to duration, position or quantity, because it does not last longer, or does not keep its position, or is not larger.
    But it will never be called imperfect because it does not think, since its nature, which consists only in extension, that is, in a definite kind of being, requires nothing of that sort. In this respect only limited or unlimited extension is to be called imperfect or perfect, respectively. And since the nature of God does not consist in a definite kind of being, but in a Being which is absolutely unlimited, his nature also requires everything which expresses being perfectly, since otherwise his nature would be limited and deficient.
    Since these things are so, it follows that there can only be one Being, God, which exists by its own force. For if we assert, for example, that extension involves existence, it must be eternal and unlimited , expressing absolutely no imperfection, but only perfection. Therefore, Extension will pertain to God, or it will be something which expresses God’s nature in some way. For God is a being which is, not just in a certain respect, but absolutely unlimited in being and omnipotent. And this, which is said of Extension (as an arbitrary example), will also have to be affirmed of everything we want to maintain as having such a nature.
    I conclude, then, as in my preceding Letter, that nothing outside God, but only God, subsists by its own sufficiency. I believe these things suffice to explain the meaning of the preceding letter. But you will be able to judge better than I concerning that. (Curley  2016: 30-31)

If I understand Spinoza correctly, Spinoza simply denies what Hudde takes to be possible on Spinoza's view is possible. And that's because if we conceptualize God and attributes properly, then God must have or express all the attributes: "since the nature of God does not consist in a definite kind of being, but in a Being which is absolutely unlimited, his nature also requires everything which expresses being perfectly, since otherwise his nature would be limited and deficient."

By itself this does not seem very compelling as a response to Hudde's worry as I understand it because it rules out polytheism by stipulation. Yet, Spinoza's position is not mere terminology or question begging against Hudde's proto-Leibnizian worry. The really interesting underlying point in the passage quoted above is that Spinozistic God is not the kind of entity that can figure in a question like, 'is there is one or more.' As Jonathan Bennett first suggested (I believe) in his field metaphysics (but relying on the Ethics not this letter), Spinoza's God is, grammatical appearances to the contrary, not a count-noun, but more like a mass noun (Bennett A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, 1984, p. 104).* I doubt that is obvious if one only read the Metaphysical Thoughts or Short Treatise (and, if one is interested in Spinoza's development, I suspect it may not have been obvious to Spinoza himself before Hudde's challenge). 

So, in my view the significance of Spinoza's three responses to Hudde is that they show Spinoza articulating, even developing key features of the PSR and the nature of his monism.  I leave open here, to what degree Hudde's later challenges to Locke reflects continued dissatisfaction with Spinoza's responses or an evolved understanding of the issue(s) (or both).

Spinoza, Hudde, and Monotheism, PT 2

This is the second post in a series triggered by an invite from Karolina Hubner and Justin Steinberg to write on the Spinoza and Hudde (1628 – 1704)) exchange.  According to Spinoza (recall this post), Hudde's original request to Spinoza was to provide [1] "a demonstration of the Unity of God from the fact that his Nature involves necessary existence." (Curley 2016: 25) From what follows in Spinoza's letter (OP 34) from 7 January 1666, it is clear that Spinoza understands 'unity' here as a kind of monotheism which rules out a plurality of Gods:

But from his true definition (as I have already demonstrated previously from the second and third hypotheses) the necessary existence of many Gods cannot be inferred. There follows, therefore, only the existence of one God. Q.E.D. (Curley 2016: 26)

Hudde was evidently not satisfied, and seems to have written two follow up letters. Spinoza's wording suggests that Spinoza wrote a response (now lost) to the initial follow up (from 10 February 1666), in which expressed his difficulty grasping Hudde's continued problems with Spinoza's argument. (All of Hudde's letters to Spinoza seem to be destroyed.) And after the second follow up (30 March, 1666), Spinoza takes Hudde's true worry to be: [2] "whether there is only one Being which subsists by its own sufficiency or power?" (Curley 2016: 26; Letter 35 OP, 10 April 1666.)

What's interesting about the formulation now attributed to Hudde by Spinoza is that the terminology of 'subsistence' is new here in their discussion. To the best of my knowledge, Spinoza does not use it when discussing substance or god. The one exception I have found is in the Cartesian Principles of Philosophy, in Proposition 16 where the incorporeality of God is demonstrated. (Curley 1985: 260) There Spinoza seems to use 'subsist' and 'exist' interchangeably. But, he is here clearly treating Descartes' position, not his own. And he is using 'subsist' in a conditional mode. So, I am inclined to suspect the terminology reflects Hudde's attempts to grapple with Spinoza's view. (As I noted, if Hudde is responding to Cartesian Principles of Philosophy, the argument is rather cryptic.) 

One advantage of this new formulation is that it gets at the worry that [i] it is not obvious why the kind of power that produces God should itself be limited in number. That's subtly different from the original version of the worry (recall) that I attributed to Hudde based on Spinoza's original response: this initial concern is the worry that [ii] it is not obvious why the power that produces God should be limited to producing only one God.* 

From the perspective of this re-formulation, Spinoza's new response to Hudde is frustrating. Because rather than focusing on the nature of such power (or sufficiency), Spinoza's new proof relies on the relationship between necessary existence and pure perfection (and we seem, as Wiep van Bunge suggests [in Dutch], in the real of ontological proofs). His fifth step in his new reformulation is: "whatever involves necessary existence cannot have in it any imperfection, but must express pure perfection." (Curley 2016: 27) This is then used to argue that there is only being with such pure perfection.

That Hudde was not fully convinced is clear. But rather than pressing the point about perfection, he seems to have rephrased his concern by splitting it in two as follows:

[3a] that it is a contradiction to conceive something whose definition involves existence (or what is the same, affirms existence) under a negation of existence. (Curley 2016: 29)

[3b] why there could not be many beings, existing through themselves, but differing in nature, just as thought and extension are different, and can perhaps subsist by their own sufficiency... (Curley  2016: 3o)

What's neat about [3b] is that it shows that (in light of the initial concerns of [i] and [ii]), Hudde de facto accepts something like the identity of indiscernibles.(I put this in Leibnizian fashion because I think [3b] clearly anticipates some of Leibniz's worries about Spinoza's position.) And Hudde concedes a principle like: same perfect power must produce same perfect entity. And so Hudde now recognizes that if there are to be (at least) two gods (self-causing, self-sufficient, necessarily existent, etc.) these must be at least different in nature. (This also shows that Hudde was not convinced by the language of perfection.) 

By contrast, the way I understand [3a] is as an instance of a more general worry at least in the vicinity of [3a] about Descartes and Spinoza's general approach when it comes to God/Substance. They seem to hold that one literally cannot be said to really think the denial of certain clear and distinct or adequate ideas, not even, as it were, at arm's length. And Hudde -- who pioneered the use of negative numbers -- clearly seems to think that one can at least conceive the denial of whatever one affirms (even if it is a thing with necessary existence or whose definition involves existence). 

The other neat thing about [3a] and [3b], from the perspective of the original worry [1], is that Hudde now is decomposing different levels at which concern about Spinoza's argument might enter in. One is at the level of what can be thought/conceived by the meditator. The other is at level of what God(s)'s nature/identity might be. And what he puts his finger on is that in Spinoza's philosophy these two levels seemingly get intertwined.  In my next post, I'll explore Spinoza's final known letter to Hudde in response.