Digressions&Impressions

Quining Quine, Dennett/Borges and Tocqueville's Spinosizing Spinozism

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

I like to imagine that Dan Dennett started his celebrated (1988) "Quining qualia" as an attempt to publish a journal article in the manner of a comic, Borges story. (In fairness to my teacher, this was in the age before blogs!) How else to explain the erudite reference to Descartes in the first paragraph of the essay, and then the mock-ironic, scholarly reference to the eight (!) edition of "The Philosophical Lexicon (Dennett 1978c"--I love that well-placed 'c'!-- in the second paragraph. The give away, the tell, is the earnest claim that "I don't deny the reality of conscious experience" in the fourth paragraph. 

Perhaps because I tend to read "Quining qualia" as high comedy, I started to misremember the title as 'Quining Quine' in graduate school. As memetic evolution goes, this is minor slippage. Now, in the original 'to quine' means "To deny resolutely the existence or importance of something real or significant." But in my fictitious Quining Quine, 'to quine' means "to offer an immanent criticism and/or a reductio that turns out to be an extreme example of what's being criticized." {Look up it up in the fifteenth edition!}

I was reminded of these halcyon days by the sixth chapter of Russell Kirk's (1953) The Conservative Mind, which repeatedly reminds the reader that Tocqueville is a critic of the so-called system or "doctrine of necessity," (p. 197 & 201) that is, Spinozism. And Kirk hints at a neat argument -- a Quining Quine par excellence -- in which Spinozism is itself historicized. Before I allowed myself a further flight of fancy, I thought it useful to re-open Tocqueville's Democracy in America, and take a sober look at Volume 2, Chapter VII: "Of The Cause Of A Leaning To Pantheism Amongst Democratic Nations" in the Henry Reeve translation of 1840 (for any scholars complaining, it's the edition reviewed by J.S. Mill). 

The chapter is a very brief two paragraphs. For the sake of simplicity I just quote it:

I shall take occasion hereafter to show under what form the preponderating taste of a democratic people for very general ideas manifests itself in politics; but I would point out, at the present stage of my work, its principal effect on philosophy. It cannot be denied that pantheism has made great progress in our age. The writings of a part of Europe bear visible marks of it: the Germans introduce it into philosophy, and the French into literature. Most of the works of imagination published in France contain some opinions or some tinge caught from pantheistical doctrines, or they disclose some tendency to such doctrines in their authors. This appears to me not only to proceed from an accidental, but from a permanent cause.

When the conditions of society are becoming more equal, and each individual man becomes more like all the rest, more weak and more insignificant, a habit grows up of ceasing to notice the citizens to consider only the people, and of overlooking individuals to think only of their kind. At such times the human mind seeks to embrace a multitude of different objects at once; and it constantly strives to succeed in connecting a variety of consequences with a single cause. The idea of unity so possesses itself of man, and is sought for by him so universally, that if he thinks he has found it, he readily yields himself up to repose in that belief. Nor does he content himself with the discovery that nothing is in the world but a creation and a Creator; still embarrassed by this primary division of things, he seeks to expand and to simplify his conception by including God and the universe in one great whole. If there be a philosophical system which teaches that all things material and immaterial, visible and invisible, which the world contains, are only to be considered as the several parts of an immense Being, which alone remains unchanged amidst the continual change and ceaseless transformation of all that constitutes it, we may readily infer that such a system, although it destroy the individuality of man – nay, rather because it destroys that individuality – will have secret charms for men living in democracies. All their habits of thought prepare them to conceive it, and predispose them to adopt it. It naturally attracts and fixes their imagination; it fosters the pride, whilst it soothes the indolence, of their minds. Amongst the different systems by whose aid philosophy endeavors to explain the universe, I believe pantheism to be one of those most fitted to seduce the human mind in democratic ages. Against it all who abide in their attachment to the true greatness of man should struggle and combine.

So, the first thing to notice is that Tocqueville is treating of Spinozism, which he associates with "the Germans" (Hegel, Schelling, etc.), not Spinoza. I return to that below. But writing in the nineteenth century, Tocqueville sees Spinozism as the rising ("most of the works") background ideology of the age.

Somewhat surprisingly, Tocqueville, who is purportedly critical of the doctrine of necessity, ascribes the rise of Spinozism not to chance (an 'accidental cause'), as one might expect, but to a structural (in his terminology a 'general') cause. To be sure, I am not accusing Tocqueville of a kind of inconsistency, because a general cause is compatible with the working of providence (itself the effect of the most general cause, after all). That is, Tocqueville is critical not just of Spinozism, but also the system of chance (Epicureanism). 

The structural cause of Spinozism is, in fact, egalitarianism (or democracy), or in Nietzsche's terms (which Tocqueville anticipates) the homogeneity or uniformity of last men. And because it eliminates all hierarchy of being (no angels, demons, superior men), Spinozism "fosters the pride, whilst it soothes the indolence, of their minds." The chapter closes with a call to arms (again anticipating Nietzsche) that against the false magnanimity of such Spinozisms those who wish to foster true magnanimity must organize ('combine') and fight (struggle).   

Now, it's a core commitment of Spinozism to historicize the holy texts inspired by revelation. And so, I joked on twitter that here Tocqueville is Spinozing Spinozism (in the manner of Quining Quine).

I could stop here, but as always the joke is on me.

In the "preface" of Spinoza's (1670) Theological Political Treatise (hereafter TTP) Spinoza claims, in aside, that already before his time all lead the same kind of life [vita eadem omnibus est]. Long before Tocqueville, Nietzsche, and (echoing Foucault [recall Lecture 5 on, 7 February 1979, pp. 113 and 117]) Sombart, and Marcuse, Spinoza diagnoses a flattening of human kind such that within modernity the differences among people become very narrow and track shallow exterior features, opinions, and religious practices. (See my paper on Spinoza.)* So, while Tocqueville may be Spinozing Spinozism critically, Spinoza got there first. Spinoza, too, understands his own era as an age of flattening homogeneity. And, in fact, the main point of the aside is the conclusion that the existing church has lost its way; nothing [nihl] remains of the religion; it's an empty shell with some adornment [externum cultum], lacking in inner refinement and substance.

Again, I could stop. But it is worth noting that in Chapter VII of TTP Spinoza explicitly alerts his reader to the fact sometimes, when dealing with "simple and most intelligible" matters (of the sort we find in Euclid) we don't need biographical and contextual knowledge in order to understand the intentions of an author. Geometrical entities lack power and have simple (generative) definitions, and so are simple and most intelligible in his terminology. In context, Spinoza seems to imply that in order to understand the author(s) of biblical texts "we need to know about his life, concerns and customs, or in what language, to whom and when he wrote, or the fate of his book, or its various readings, or how and by whose deliberation it was accepted." [VII.67] To be sure, in order to understand the moral teachings, which are also fairly simple and straightforward, of the Bible, such historicism is unnecessary Spinoza suggests.  Oddly, in the following chapter, Spinoza goes on to suggest that Ezra is the author of the (first main parts) of the Hebrew Bible and then goes on to historize Ezra who gave Israel the Bible as we have it in order to provide the re-founding of Israel with a religion that simultaneously teaches politics.

I have long thought that Spinoza invites us here to be alert to the circumstances of his own life and times, that is, to historicize his own text. And that's because unlike Euclid, Spinoza's works (even the ones in geometric order) do not merely deal with the simple and most intelligible matters. Spinoza is concerned with power and its differentiated effects. In fact, as an aside, in returning to Spinoza's text, I noticed that Spinoza introduces VII.67, with a proverbial remark that "For things which by their nature are easily perceived can’t be said so obscurely that they aren’t easily understood. As the proverb says: to one who understands a word is enough.” [VII.66] Caution ahead. Be that as it may, Spinoza is explicit that he is writing in a leveling age. 

Again, I could stop here. But I was reminded that Spinoza, too, hints at an account of greatness of soul in the Ethics. At E4p46, Spinoza writes, "He who lives according to the guidance of reason strives, as far as he can, to repay the other's Hate, Anger, and Disdain toward him, with Love, or Nobility." Now what Curley translates with 'nobility' is generositate in the Latin. In the glossary, Curley explains he avoided the use of 'high-mindedness' because it has negative connotations nowadays (in, we might add, our democratic, leveling age). Curley notes that Spinoza's generositas echoes Descartes' générosité, which in Descartes explicitly replaces magnanimity (see Passions of the Soul, paragraph 161).** In the Dutch translation of Spinoza in De nagelaten schriften, the connection with magnanimity is explicit because 'edelmoedigheit' (literally 'noble courageousness') just is the common translation of magnanimous. So, Spinoza, understands his own philosophy as a defense of magnanimity.

And, now we're back to Tocqueville. That Tocqueville understands Spinozism/patheism as a religious seduction of democratic man that is simultaneously a self-confirming projection of democratic man is compatible with (even Tocqueville being aware of  the fact that) Spinoza generates a project of Spinozism in order to make true religion, namely living under the guidance of reason, possible. However, my interest today is not to resolve to what degree Tocqueville and Spinoza are on the same side, or not. I leave that open.

Rather, I want to turn the knob one more time and return to a passage in Dennett that long intrigued me. It's from near the end of the book (chapter eighteen) that he taught in a seminar I attended while still in manuscript, Darwin's Dangerous Idea.

In chapter 3, I quoted the physicist Paul Davies proclaiming that the reflective power of human minds can be "no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless purposeless forces," and suggested that being a byproduct of mindless purposeless forces was no disqualification for importance. And I have argued that Darwin has shown us how, in fact, everything of importance is just such a product. Spinoza called his highest being God or Nature (Deus sive Natura), expressing a sort of pantheism. There have been many varieties of pantheism, but they usually lack a convincing explanation about just how God is distributed in the whole of nature. As we saw in chapter 7, Darwin offers us one: it is in the distribution of Design throughout nature, creating, in the Tree of Life, an utterly unique and irreplaceable creation, an actual pattern in the immeasurable reaches of Design Space that could never be exactly duplicated in its many details. What is design work? It is that wonderful wedding of chance and necessity, happening in a trillion places at once, at a trillion different levels. And what miracle caused it? None. It just happened to happen, in the fullness of time. You could even say, in a way, that the Tree of Life created itself. Not in a miraculous, instantaneous whoosh, but slowly, slowly, over billions of years.

Is this Tree of Life a God one could worship? Pray to? Fear? Probably not. But it did make the ivy twine and the sky so blue, so perhaps the song I love tells a truth after all. The Tree of Life is neither perfect nor infinite in space or time, but it is actual, and if it is not Anselm's "Being greater than which nothing can be conceived," it is surely a being that is greater than anything any of us will ever conceive of in detail worthy of its detail. Is something sacred? Yes, say I with Nietzsche. I could not pray to it, but I can stand in affirmation of its magnificence. This world is sacred.

Amor fati! (Some other time I return to Dennett's life-long fascination with Nietzsche.) Several of us have noticed Dennett's flirtations with Spinozism before (see Huebner (2017); Schliesser (2018) here; Veit (2021)). Here Dennett assimilates Darwinism to pantheism. What's neat about Dennett's interpretation of Darwinism is that it explicitly, "chance and necessity," combines the doctrine of necessity (Spinozism) with the doctrine of chance (Epicureanism).  Dennett eliminates the need for worship altogether and displaces it with pure affirmation.

Dennett explains his Darwinism as a strand of pantheism through his own Darwinism. However, from Tocqueville's perspective Dennett's  Quining elimination of providence and any distinction in kind in nature is (anticipatorily) itself to be explained through social causes in virtue of the democratic age we live in. Do you place your bets on natural or a social explanation? Dennett and Tocqueville insist that there is a real choice here, but I prefer a Borgesian, skeptical solution in which, inspired by Escher’s Drawing Hands, the left hand and the right hand write each other. 

• This first appeared at: <Quining Quine and Spinosizing Spinoza; reflections on Dennett and Tocqueville (substack.com)> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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*Here's what Spinoza writes: "Long ago things reached the point where you can hardly know what anyone is, whether Christian, Turk, Jew, or Pagan, except by the external dress and adornment of his body, or because he frequents this or that Place of Worship, or because he’s attached to this or that opinion, or because he’s accustomed to swear by the words of some master. They all lead the same kind of life." (In Curley's translation.)

**"J’ai nommé cette vertu Générosité, suivant l’usage de notre langue, plutôt que Magnanimité, suivant l’usage de l’École, où elle n’est pas fort connue.
I have called this virtue ‘nobility of soul’, in keeping with the usage of our language, rather than ‘magnanimity’, according to the usage of the schools, where this virtue is not much in evidence." (Quoted from Michael Moriarty's chapter, "Cartesian Générosité and Its Antecedents.")

On Stebbing, Spinoza, and the Cognitive Demands of Political Freedom, Part 2

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

For Stebbing (recall) clarity is a property of cognition and intelligence. Clarity is necessary condition for success at thinking and action guided by it, or what she calls "effective thinking." (5) In particular, clarity is the absence of distortions in thought and perception caused by bias and ignorance one is not aware of. That is, undistorted or unbiased thought is what's being aimed at in describing something as ‘clear.’

But her suggestion is that known biases and awareness of ignorance are not an obstacle to successful thought presumably because they can knowingly be controlled for. Clarity is, in fact, for Stebbing an acquired skill that can be controlled and that makes "rational argument and… reasonable consideration" possible. A feature of the skill is logically sound argument. Unsurprisingly, awareness and discovery of possible fallacies play a prominent role in Stebbing's (1938) Thinking to Some Purpose.

As I noted, there is a whiff of Spinozism in her treatment of clarity. We know she was familiar with Spinoza’s system, which she discusses, in passing in her (1932) “The Method of Analysis in Metaphysics.” She deliberately evokes the last sentence of Spinoza's Ethics in the last sentence of the "epilogue" of her book:

My point of view with regard to this topic can be summed up in the statement: He alone is capable of being tolerant whose conclusions have been thought out and are recognized to be inconsistent with the beliefs of other persons. To be tolerant is not to be indifferent, and is incompatible with ignorance. My conclusions have been reasonably attained in so far as I have been able to discount my prejudices, to allow for the distorting effects of your prejudices, to collect the relevant evidence and to weigh that evidence in accordance with logical principles. The extent to which I can achieve these aims is the measure of my freedom of mind. To be thus free is as difficult as it is rare.-- Susan Stebbing Thinking to Some Purpose, p. 256.

Clarity, then, is a means toward freedom of mind, but also its measure. (Clarity clearly comes in degrees for Stebbing.) To avoid confusion, in that quoted paragraph, 'logical principles,' include deductive and inductive logic. 

Now 'freedom' is not introduced until the epilogue. I will quote the key paragraph to give a flavor of Stebbing's use of it: 

I believe also that similar strictures could be truly made with regard to polls held recently in Germany and in Austria. Elections in this country are not in this sense unfree. We are proud to consider ourselves a democracy; we claim to have freedom of election, freedom of speech (including freedom of the Press) limited only by the laws of libel, sedition and blasphemy, and freedom in religion. No doubt there are certain qualifications to be made; it is probable that most people would admit that without economic freedom there cannot be political freedom, and that lacking economic security no man can be regarded as economically free. But, even if these admissions be granted, it will be contended that, by and large, we in this country do have institutions that may properly be described as democratic. It is not to my purpose to dispute these contentions. Nor shall I attempt to determine what characteristics are essential to democracy. It is enough if it be granted that it lies in our national temper to dislike obvious governmental restrictions. We like to feel ourselves to be free. In short, we value civil liberties. (249)

Here 'freedom' means something like the 'means conducive toward democratic life,' including economic, political, and civil means. So, one might think that by a 'free mind,' Stebbing also means 'the mental state conducive, at least in part, toward a democratic life.' I think this is what she does mean (as I will show in the next paragraph.) But, somewhat confusingly, Stebbing goes on to write, "I deliberately omit, however, any discussion of such political obstacles to freedom as we may encounter. I am not concerned with politics. My topic is freedom of mind. Unless I can think freely I cannot think effectively." (250) And so one might think that in so far as a 'free mind' has nothing to do with politics -- and democratic life is of political significance -- that by a 'free mind' Stebbing means something essentially private. 

But that would not be right conclusion, because she immediate goes on to write, "Here ‘I’ stands for any person. If I want to make up my mind upon any problem of political action, I must be able to deliberate freely. If it were in fact true that we were all politically and economically free, still it would not follow that we were possessed of the freedom of mind without which, in my opinion, no democratic institutions can be satisfactorily maintained." (250) So, by 'politics'  on the same page, Stebbing means not 'pertaining to political life,' but rather 'subject to existing political controversy' (in the sense of which "political measure" (254) to support.) For, by a 'free mind' Stebbing clearly means a key, effective ingredient that makes public deliberation possible and so is conducive to democratic institutions, that is, political life in the institutional sense (but not in the humdrum sense of a 'subject of political controversy').

So, clarity is a skill conducive to the kinds of agency involved in public deliberation of a sort that maintains democratic institutions or democratic way of life. And by 'democracy' Stebbing means a participatory one that is exercised in voting but also (as her examples in the book make clear) in the formation of public opinion of the sort familiar from British parliamentary democracy. As she puts it 'democratic government' is more than just "the consent of the governed," -- this she thinks is actual in British political life -- but rather it means that "the voice of the people prevails." (254) The latter she denies exists because the British populace lacks freedom of mind.

Now, as Stebbing notes, her book has emphasized obstacles to such freedom: "the difficulty of freeing our minds from blinkers, the difficulty of resisting propaganda and of being content to be persuaded where we should have striven to be convinced, the difficulties of an audience dominated by an unscrupulous speaker and the difficulties of a speaker who has to address an audience that is lazy and uncritical – in short, the difficulties created by our stupidity and by those who take advantage of that stupidity." (250) But in the epilogue she focuses on "the difficulty of obtaining information – the difficulty of knowing how to discover reliable testimony." And by this she means, in particular, the way the press shapes access to information.

In light of the concentrated ownership of the press, and its interests in withholding or shaping such information, and in light of many examples of partial or biased reporting that Stebbing discusses, Stebbing concludes:

I am forced to say this; if my belief in the reliability of the testimony is false, then I am not free to decide. If such information as I have is not to be trusted, then I lack freedom of decision. For this reason, those who control the Press have power to control our minds with regard to our thinking about ‘all public transactions’. A controlled Press is an obstacle to democracy, an obstacle that is the more dangerous in proportion as we are unaware of our lack of freedom. (253)

The implication being that the British seem to think that they have free minds, but in reality -- because they do not reflect on the conditions that shape their access to the information salient to public life and do not seem perturbed by their controlled press -- they are not. They "acquiesce" in rule by a narrow elite, "the ruling class," whose decisions "control us." (254) Empirically, Stebbing echoes, thus, the sociological thesis (associated with Pareto, Mosca, and Michels) that one can have elite rule even in a functioning parliamentary democracies. Unlike the Italian elite school, she deplores this situation. 

Now, it is natural to read Thinking to Some Purpose, and come away thinking that to think clearly and to become free requires a lot of very time-consuming individual effort at self-betterment. And one can certainly cite passages to that effect: "I do seek to convince the reader that it is of great practical importance that we ordinary men and women should think clearly, that there are many obstacles to thinking clearly, and that some of these obstacles can be overcome provided that we wish to overcome them and are willing to make an effort to do so." (29) She closes the book with the admonition that "I...would maintain that it is desirable that we should develop in ourselves a habit of sceptical inquiry." (255) These are passages where Stebbing, thus, anticipates Arendt's conception of democratic life.

But as the book unfolds and reaches its crescendo in the epilogue, it is obvious that Stebbing also thinks that there are many structural obstacles to removing all such impediments to clear thinking. Even if one grants that Stebbing's rhetoric is designed as a kind of call to action (say to break up the ruling class monopoly on ownership of the popular press), somewhat disappointingly, she does not offer a program of how those obstacles can be removed while not undermining the possibility of a democratic life in the deliberative and self-governing sense she advocates. (She does not offer any program!)

It is also not entirely clear on Stebbing's account what to make of a people that does not seem to wish to be free in Stebbing's sense, as she implies of the English: "The vast majority of English people want to be governed peaceably, and want to be free to pursue their own unpolitical interests." (254) This echoes Lippmann's (1922) diagnosis of the (American) democratic public in Public Opinion. It is worth noting that even if one agrees with Stebbing's diagnoses, the English are not irrational. For it is, in fact, very hard work to be free in the sense she advocates, and as the concluding paragraph quoted above suggests, she is explicitly aware of this. (In fact, I like that she notes how difficult achieving tolerance is.) In addition, given the obstacles to such freedom she diagnoses, it also seems rather fruitless and (ought implies can) not required or unnecessary to be free in the political or democratic sense advocated by Stebbing. To be sure, for many unpolitical pursuits such freedom, clear thought, will be necessary for effective action and within reach.

Given the many economic and educational preconditions required and the demands on our time and attention that a life of thinking clearly requires on Stebbing's account, it is a bit surprising that she does not explore the psychological, collective, or institutional means we might have to organize our lives in complex epistemic and political environments. For example, while I have no interest in defending the English or its ruling class (then or now), but if it's true that its "ruling class, [is] educated for political purposes, trained from birth to undertake the responsibilities of ruling" (254) then this does represent (one might say echoing Schumpeter) a possible, even rational response to the structural impediments to creating a mass society of free minds in the political sense Stebbing diagnoses (even if it is also a contributing cause to maintaining such political tutelage). 

In fact, Stebbing clearly thinks that attachment to a political party is a contributing source of bias and so of not thinking clearly. (This is especially clear in chapter 8, see p.  98 on party attachment.) Throughout Thinking to Some Purpose, she often uses politicians of opposing parties as examples to illustrate biased thinking. And by varying these examples she tries to be even-handed and entice her readers to discern the structural obstacle(s) to clear thinking she diagnoses.

It does not seem to occur to Stebbing, however, that part of the epistemic or cognitive function of parties may well be to provide useful signals in complex social and political environments for cognitively overburdened or agents without sufficient interest in political life. (One may well think that one of liberal democracy’s fruits is that such a lack of interest in active political life need not be irrational.) So, because Stebbing treats clarity as a property of individual minds who must almost possess the virtues of a stoic Spinozistic sage, she misses how in the division of (cognitive and economic) labor, we might well have strategies or heuristics that allow individuals to remain in partial darkness while being part of collectives that can act with sufficient enough effectiveness.*

• This first appeared at: <On Stebbing, Spinoza, and the Cognitive Demands of Political Freedom, Part 2 (substack.com)> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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*One may well see the exact contemporary, Lippmann's (1938) The Good Society, as developing this strategy, and laying the groundwork for a research and political program for handling the problems diagnosed by Stebbing.

On Borges, John Perry, Spinoza, and Identity

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

I once met John Perry for a few minutes in line at a hotel Starbucks at an Eastern APA when those were still the job-market. We didn't know each other, and we never met again (so far). But I knew his name because I owned his A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality; our chat was brief, but it was kind not the least because his eyes didn't wander to scan the room while we talked. I forgot what we talked about, but, as the kids say, sometimes the vibe is more important than the words and it was one of the few sweet moments during that otherwise dismal APA.

So, I'll forgive him that in his (2007) Amherst Lecture which offers a reading of “Borges and I,” Perry opts for "the more straightforward interpretation" in supposing that the implied author of "Borges and I" is Borges the (famous) actual author of the piece, and not some fictional counterpart or doppelgänger of the actual author. After all, we're dealing with Borges, the author of Pierre Menard!

"Borges and I' is, in fact, about the estranged relationship between the implied author of "Borges and I" and the famous author, Borges. So, it's not impossible that the implied author of "Borges and I" is the fictional counterpart.

Perry actually acknowledges this possibility on some level later in his argument when he concedes that "in following the writer’s thoughts, we must to a certain extent pretend that the writer is not Borges." But Perry thinks we can't sustain this perspective because "the interest of the story is the thoughts that the writer has about himself" (emphasis added) and not the implied fictional counterpart.

As an aside, the less straightforward interpretation that Perry rejects is that "Borges could have written a story like this about some other author." But that's compatible with the implied author being (not just a counterpart/doppelgänger of Borges, but) also (say) Eric Schliesser. And it's quite clear that the latter option is not really implied by the story. So, while I agree with Perry that this is less likely and should be rejected, I don't think, as I hinted in the previous two paragraphs, Perry has canvassed all the relevant options when he opts for what he takes to be the more straightforward interpretation.

Perry's interpretation of "Borges and I" actually goes off the rails, I think, shortly thereafter when he writes that "It would not only be odd, but quite impossible, for Borges to survive the writer. Even if all that is meant by “survival” is living on as a literary figure, if Borges lives on in that way, so will the writer."  This is not right if we reject the more straightforward interpretation.

But even on the straightforward interpretation there is a wrinkle that Perry does not confront. (I say this with some trepidation not just because I remember his kindness so fondly, but also because between the two of us, he is actually the expert on identity.) Before I get to that, for Perry, "Borges and I" is fundamentally about the expression of "a certain alienation [the actual Borges] feels about certain aspects of himself and certain achievements of his." The alienation thesis is quite plausible. But the reason for Perry's confidence here is that he is working with a theory of identity (let's call it a 'classical' one) in which "the relation that A and B have when there is just one thing that is both A and B. It is the relation that Tully has to Cicero, the evening star has to the morning star, Mark Twain has to Samuel Clemens, Bill Blythe has to Bill Clinton, and so on. Identity is the relation that each thing has to itself and no other." This is familiar enough for philosophical readers.

In order to hold on to this classical theory of identity and to handle the ways in which A and B (Borges and I or I and Borges) may seem to come apart in "Borges and I," Perry introduces the idea of "motivating cognitive complex." If you are interested in finding out what that is read Perry’s lecture. I'll stipulate here that it can do the job Perry wants it to do.

To be sure, I don't mean to deny that Perry may be playing an elaborate, Borgesian game with us, too. After all, along the way, while discussing a thought experiment of Hector-Neri Castañeda, Perry notes that "then I see on the web that the date when John Perry published his Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality was 1978, that information goes into the same mental file where information about what is in front of me, whether I am hungry or not, and the like, is kept. I get the information “John Perry published the dialogue in 1978” and this leads to the thought, “I published the dialogue in 1978.”" One may well wonder who this I really is supposed to be. 

Be that as it may, I don't think that Borges (in the straightforward interpretation) or the implied author, Borges's counterpart (in my preferred interpretation) is relying on the classical theory of identity in "Borges and I." And my reason for thinking that is two-fold: first, the story ends with an epistemic claim: "I don’t know which of the two writes this page." On Perry's reading this ought to be deeply puzzling. For, by stipulation (the straightforward interpretation), the persona who is writing the piece is Borges the famous author. So this doubt really can’t arise on Perry’s straightforward reading.

Second, Perry completely, and somewhat oddly (he is a professional philosopher, after all), skips the explicit invocation of Spinoza in "Borges and I" (which in the translations I am familiar with is shorter than a double-spaced page). 

It's pretty clear that Spinoza rejects the classical theory of identity. This is obvious in Spinoza's doctrine of eternality in which the X that becomes eternal loses all the particularity one naturally  (and also on the classical theory of identity) associates with X and becomes, in fact, in a certain sense co-extensive with the true or the truths (Y). But it’s not so that from the perspective of eternity, X=Y. (See here for an attempt to describe this.) In fact, Spinoza also rejects what Tarski calls the 'classical' conception of truth (and defends what one might call a metaphysical identity theory of truth (recall here)). Rather, like the Muslim philosophers' views of God’s knowledge (as Al-Ghazali infers, they deny that God knows individuals), from the perspective of eternity, Spinoza's individuals and individuality are ephemera (and so unknowable). My point here is not to defend Spinoza.

Now, it's possible, of course, that the implied author of "Borges and I" has a different interpretation of Spinoza than the one hinted at in the previous paragraph. Fair enough. In the story, the following is claimed: "Spinoza understood that all things want to be preserved in their being." This is an evocation of a feature of the so-called general 'Conatus doctrine' (EIIIp6). In fact, it echoes Ethics IIIp9 (and a whole series of propositions developed in parts IV/V of the Ethics): "The mind, both insofar as it has clear and distinct ideas and also insofar as it has confused ideas, strives to persevere in being." In "Borges and I" the doctrine gets glossed as follows (in the translation of Ilan Stavans): 

the stone eternally wants to be a stone and the tiger a tiger. I shall remain in Borges, not in myself (if I am someone), but I recognize myself less in his books than in many others and in the laborious strumming of a guitar. Years ago I tried freeing myself from him and went from the mythologies of the arrabal to the games with time and the infinite, but those games are Borges’ now and I shall come up with other things. Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to the other.

Again, at first one may think it's pretty clear Perry is onto something when he suggests that this expresses alienation. Perhaps an alienation so extreme, that the conatus doctrine ends up in a kind of inversion: rather than tending toward eternity, it tends in the implied author toward oblivion or near-total loss of identity.

Before I close this digression, I should admit that I ended up returning to Borges' story because my friend Petra had bait-and-switched me into buying Amina Cain's fascinating essay, A Horse at Night. This essay mentions two of Borges' stories (including "Borges and I”.) I write ‘bait-and-switch,’ because Petra had sent me a picture of a paragraph from Cain, which I only later realized (while reading Cain's essay) was an excerpt from Annie Ernaux's The Possession.

A major theme of A Horse at Night, is how in "writing and life" two things can be imaginatively projected on top of each other without eclipsing each other and, thereby, generating something new. That is, Cain explores the complex nature of identity. To put this as a serious joke: I find Cain's implied author in A Horse at Night nearly insufferable and banal when she is engaged in autobiography and mesmerizingly evocative and interesting when discussing other artist’s works of art. For the record: Cain treats the implied author of "Borges and I" as sad.

Neither Perry nor Cain discusses Spinoza or the skeptical conclusion of "Borges and I:" "I don’t know which of the two writes this page." It's not obvious on Perry's reading why this occurs. It's a rather extreme form of skepticism; it denies knowledge of the self-identifying features of the Cartesian ego in the very act of affirming its existence. It is especially notable — alerted by Cain — that this occurs in the writer’s life that one forgets or losses oneself in a certain sense. (Cain touches on this from the perspective of the Soto Zen tradition, not Spinozism.)

If we glance at Spinoza's theory of identity the puzzle disappears if we imagine, as we are allowed in fiction, that the sentence, "I don’t know which of the two writes this page," is written from the perspective of eternity/oblivion. For from that perspective such individualizing marks are not known/knowable. Of course, the joke is knowing that one is Borges, or the implied author, or his very vain counterpart, wouldn't matter from that perspective either, or at least it shouldn't.

• This first appeared at: <On Borges, John Perry, Spinoza, and Identity - by nescio13 (substack.com)> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

On Newton's Refutation of the Mechanical Philosophy

In the recent philosophical reception of Newton there is an understandable tendency to focus on the inverse square law of universal gravitation. I don't mean to suggest this is the only such focus; arguably his views on Space have shaped -- through the good works of Stein and Earman -- also debates over spacetime theories. 

The effect of this telescoping has also impacted, I think, the way in which the debate between the mechanical and Newtonian philosophy has been understood. The former is said to posit a contact model in which contact between very small corpuscles explains a lot of observed phenomena. A typical mechanical philosopher creates a hypothetical model, a machine with pulleys and levers (etc.), that can make observed phenomena intelligible. In the mechanical philosophy, which itself was directed against a variety of Aristotelian and Scholastic projects, efficient causation -- once one of four canonical causes (including formal, final, and material) -- has achieved a privileged status.

The scholarly fascination with the status of action at a distance is, thus, readily explicable because it violates the very model of intelligibility taken for granted in the mechanical philosophy. As Newton notes in the General Scholium (first published in the 1713 second edition of the Principia), universal gravity "operates, not according to the quantity of the surfaces of the particles upon which it acts, (as mechanical causes use to do,) but according to the quantity of the solid matter which they contain, and propagates its virtue on all sides, to immense distances, decreasing always in the duplicate proportion of the distances." 

Before I get to the main point of today's post, I offer two asides. First, with its emphasis on hypothetical explanations, the mechanical philosophers (and here I use the term to cover people as diverse as Beeckman, Descartes, Boyle, and Huygens) also exhibit a deep strain of skepticism about the very possibility of truly grasping nature's innards as it were. Spinoza's natura naturans and even Kant's ding-an-sich are the enduring expressions of this strain of skepticism (allowing that Kant is much less a mechanical philosopher). To put this as a serious joke: the PSR is, thus, not an act of intellectual hubris, but a self-limitation of the knower when it comes to fundamental ontology. Second, by showing that there is something wholly unintelligible about the way motion is supposed to be transferred from one body to the other (Essay 2.23.28), Locke, who gets so little credit among contemporary philosophers, had already imploded the pretensions of the mechanical philosophy on conceptual grounds.  Okay, so much for set up.

The mechanical philosophers were not so naïve to think that models that relied on mere impulse, matter in motion, could create hypothetical models of sufficient complexity to provide hypothetical explanations of the phenomena. This is especially a problem because the mechanical philosophers posited a homogeneous matter. So that in addition to matter and motion, they posited size and shape not merely as effects of motion, but also as key explanatory factors in the hypothetical models of visible phenomena (this can be seen in Descartes, Gassendi, and Boyle, whose "The Origin of Forms and Qualities according to the Corpuscular Philosophy" (1666), I take as a canonical statement of the mechanical philosophy). So that the mechanical philosophy is committed to privileging (to echo a felicitous phrase by Biener and Smeenk [here; and here]) geometric features of bodies.

Even leaving aside the inverse square law and its universal scope, Newton's experimental work on gravity demolished a key feature of the mechanical philosophy: size and shape are irrelevant to understand gravity. I quote from Henry Pemberton's View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy (1728):

It will be proper in this place to observe concerning the power of gravity, that its force upon any body does not at all depend upon the shape of the body; but that it continues constantly the same without any variation in the same body, whatever change be made in the figure of the body: and if the body be divided into any number of pieces, all those pieces shall weigh just the same, as they did, when united together in one body: and if the body be of a uniform contexture, the weight of each piece will be proportional to its bulk. This has given reason to conclude, that the power of gravity acts upon bodies in proportion to the quantity of matter in them. Whence it should follow, that all bodies must fall from equal heights in the same space of time. And as we evidently see the contrary in feathers and such like substances, which fall very slowly in comparison of more solid bodies; it is reasonable to suppose, that some other cause concurs to make so manifest a difference. This cause has been found by particular experiments to be the air. --1.2.24 [emphasis added]

Pemberton (who was the editor of the third, 1726 edition of the Principia) goes on to give Boyle's famous vacuum experiments with falling feathers and stones as evidence for this argument. That is, Pemberton uses Boyle's experimental work to refute Boyle's mechanical philosophy. 

Now, in the Principia, references to Boyle's experiment got added only to the (1713) second edition in two highly prominent places: Cotes added a reference to it in his editor's introduction and Newton added a reference to it in the General Scholium at the end of the book. In both cases Boyle's experiment is used as a kind of illustration for the claim that without air resistance falling bodies are equally accelerated and for the plausibility of positing an interstellar vacuum. That is, if one reads the Principia superficially (by looking at prominent material at the front and end), it seems as if Newton and Boyle have converging natural philosophies.

Of course, neither Pemberton nor Newton rely exclusively on Boyle's vacuum experiment to make the point that shape and size (or geometry) is not a significant causal factor when it comes to gravity. The key work is done by pendulum experiments with different metals. (These can be found in Book II of the Principia, which is often skipped, although he drives the point home in Book III, Prop. 6 of Principia.) These show that quantity of matter is more fundamental than shape. And, crucially, shape & size and quantity of matter need not be proportional to or proxies of each other. This fact was by no means obvious, and at the start of the Principia. even Newton offers, as Biener and Smeenk have highlighted, a kind of geometric conception of quantity of matter in his first definition before suggesting that 'quantity of matter' is proportional to weight (and indicating his pendulum experiments as evidence thereof).

Let me wrap up. What's important here is that even if Newton had been wrong about the universal nature of the inverse square law, he showed that the mechanical philosophy cannot account for the experimentally demonstrated features of terrestrial (and planetary) gravity. (So, that the mechanical philosophy is not a natural way to understand Galilean fall.) And this means that in addition to Locke's conceptual claim, Newton shows that the mechanical philosophy's emphasis on just one kind of efficient causation, by way of contact, is not sufficient to explain the system of nature. 

What I say here is not surprising to students of Newton. But it's also not really much emphasized. To be sure, Newton, too, accepted a kind of homogeneous matter, but rather than its size and figure, he showed that an abstract quantity (mass) is more salient. Of course, how to understand mass in Newton's philosophy opens new questions, for as Ori Belkind has argued it should not be taken as a property of matter, but rather as a measure.

 

 

Zera Yacob and Intellectual traditions; a note on the origins of Africana Philosophy

What should we make of this similarity? Note that it would be anachronistic to describe Zera Yacob’s argument as “Lockean,” for the Second Treatise of Government was published over two decades after Zera Yacob wrote his Hatäta. This points us toward the limits on the usefulness of viewing Zera Yacob and Locke as sharing an early modern world. Consider Richard Tuck’s Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (1979), which explores categories of Roman law, locates the birth of natural rights discourse in the late medieval period, and examines figures like Hugo Grotius, John Selden, and Thomas Hobbes before giving Locke attention in the final chapter. Scholarship like this places Locke in a certain lineage of thought, which shaped him just as much as the political context of his times. Zera Yacob does not stand in that lineage. Indeed, when comparing Zera Yacob to Descartes and Locke, we should remember that Locke read and was influenced by Descartes, learning from his approach to philosophy even while rejecting central views of his. There is a sense in which Locke and Descartes share a modernity that Zera Yacob does not, a point that need not lead us to deny that Zera Yacob is a modern philosopher but rather to say that he inhabits a different modernity. (p. 130)

[W]hile Zera Yacob can be seen as similar to Descartes but must be recognized as outside the lineage leading to and branching out from him, Amo, like Locke, did philosophy in the wake of Descartes and critically responded to his work. (p. 132)

 

What I think this means is that, for Cugoano, as for Zera Yacob, the idea of natural rights is not really embedded within a modern European intellectual tradition. Certain formulations of it may be paradigmatically European, but it is ultimately a concept that transcends cultural boundaries, which also means that one can come up with paradigmatically Fanti formulations of it. Cugoano thus does not fit neatly into the framework of modern Africana philosophy as a form of modern European philosophy into which Amo and Haynes fit. But, of course, neither is he disconnected from the European tradition in the way Zera Yacob is. Cugoano, I believe, represents modern Africana philosophy as a convergence of African and European intellectual trajectories, a hybrid case of radicalizing European thought from within, as with Haynes, while also modernizing African thought through comparing indigenous and foreign viewpoints and using reason to decide what makes the most sense, like Zera Yacob.

I take Cugoano to be, in this way, a model for Africana philosophy going forward. The riches of the Western philosophical tradition must be valued but also made sharper and more liberating through the use of a critical philosophy of race lens. At the same time, there must be constant efforts to transcend the Western framework by rooting Africana philosophy in oral and literary traditions from Africa and the diaspora. In many instances, we may come to a conclusion like Cugoano’s about natural rights: that what we thought of as particularly Western is not and that the cross-cultural recognition of a shared concept may strengthen our sense of commitment to the value at stake. (p. 138)

The quoted passages are all from Chike Jeffers' (2017) "Rights, Race, and the Beginnings of Modern Africana Philosophy." The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Race. This is a text that I assign as required background reading to the session that roughly goes from Las Casas to Cugoano and discusses slavery, mercantile political economy, and rights in my lecture course on the History of Political Theory. This is a required course with enrollments between 500 and 600 students. Jeffers' paper is short and hits the sweet spot because it offers helpful historical context, makes important distinctions, and it explains the ongoing significance of the material discussed. It's also astonishingly brief, and clear. I warmly recommend it. 

 

But as I was preparing my quiz about the text, and so re-reading it, I became uneasy in reflecting on the passages quoted above. To be sure, the underlying idea of what Africana philosophy should be going forward (articulated in final paragraph, but also made available throughout the chapter) strikes me as rather attractive and is not something I am going to challenge here. In fact, in some ways I am going to reinforce Jeffers' main point because I want to suggest that Zera Yacob is much more connected to what Jeffers calls 'the European tradition,' although what I prefer to call the (partially overlapping) 'Abrahamic-Platonic traditions' that also shaped non-trivially Descartes and Locke. What do I have in mind?

 

First, Yacob (1599 – 1692) is, in part, polemicizing against the Jesuits and, now I quote Jeffers, "as “Franğ,” a Ge’ez word that literally means “foreigner.” But note that he uses that word in a way that is interchangeable with “Catholic.”" (p. 131) And, in fact, if you read Zera Yacob’s Hatäta "or “inquiry,” commonly called his Treatise" (p. 128) it's very clear that Yacob was rather acquainted with their teachings (which he largely rejects).+ Now, Descartes was taught by Jesuits at La Flèche. (Descartes was there between 1607-1614.) So, there is a non-trivial sense in which they were exposed to largely the same views. (The Jesuits standardized their curriculum.) Obviously, I am not claiming that they had the same teachers (although Jesuits did move around so it's not wholly impossible they encountered the same people--how cool would that be?), but I would be amazed if the Iberian Jesuits who are his targets did not bring with them ideas shaped by, say, Francisco Suárez's metaphysics and moral/political theory, including his theory of rights. (Suárez was an intellectual celebrity of the age.) Suárez is rather important to Descartes and, as I have noted (here), Suárez also shaped the social contract tradition (including Hobbes and perhaps -- I will not make the case today -- Locke).

 

Second, Yacob is quite clearly evoking Augustine's Confessions at various points. This is not just in virtue of the auto-biographical style, but also in particular details of the narrative (not the least the early sinful behavior and the attraction to various alternative intellectual traditions). One important commonality is the significance of David's Psalms to both. I don't think either can do without an explicit or implicit allusion to Psalms on a single page! (I suspect one can write a PhD about this.) I return to this below. Either way, Descartes' debts to Augustine, and Augustine's Confessions has itself generated a huge scholarly enterprise. In saying this, I don't mean to suggest there are no differences between Descartes or Yacob, but just to point to the fact that they share in an overlapping tradition even if they may be mediated by different sources and contexts. (I don't mean to suggest that Descartes himself was especially shaped by Psalms--I leave that aside, although intrigued to reflect on it.)

 

Third, a good chunk of (what we might call) the philosophy in the Hatäta draws on the Book of Wisdom (which Yacob, as is common, attributes to Salomon). I don't want to make this claim more precise here. But while Yacob is plenty critical of the particularity and some of the laws of Judaism, the Hebraic sources in his text are abundant. This he does share with Hobbes and Locke. I don't mean to suggest that the sources are exclusively Jewish; I would love to know, for example, if Al-Ghazali's Deliverance of Error (with with the Hatäta and the Meditations share non-trivial commonalities) was circulating among the Muslim scholars he encountered and debated. 

 

But it's only if one denies that the Book of Wisdom (which itself is shaped by Hellenistic philosophy) is philosophy or insists that the Hebrew Bible is non-philosophy (as some who are in the grip of  the opposition between Jerusalem and Athens might claim) that this is not part of the overlapping tradition(s). (I have argued against this claim in many digressions, but start here.) In addition, it's quite clear that Yacob identifies with David's enforced exile from court, and perhaps (I put this more tentatively) even the Israelites in the dessert. 

 

So, while it is undoubtedly true that Yacob and Descartes and/or Locke did not share the exact same modernity, I also suspect that in some non-trivial respects they did. It is striking that both politically and religiously the question of religious pluralism and the role of using state authority to impose a single religion dominate France and Ethiopia (and England) in their life-times, including rather dramatic reversals of fortune. I am not especially fond of 'modernity' because it is often inscribed in complex conceptual hierarchies (involving 'feudalism,' civilization vs barbarism, etc.), but it can be useful to point to the symmetry of conditions that these thinkers faced.

 

Does anything hinge on this? Well, I am certainly not the first to note debts of Africana philosophy to Hebraic and Abrahamic sources more broadly. But when in 2019 Peter Adamson (who has collaborated with Jeffers) writes, in the context of Zera Yacob that the "Ethiopian philosophical tradition simultaneously belongs to at least two larger stories: that of philosophy within various Christian traditions of the East, and that of African philosophy," that is factually true, but it effaces the Hebraic contribution to at least the former (and, perhaps the latter--in so far as Hebraic philosophy itself was developed, in part, under African skies). A similar claim can be made "about ancient Egyptian philosophy" (which Adamson goes on to mention) in so far as Philo is a rather signicant presence in it. 

I don't think this is merely a matter of geographic score-keeping. It has important contemporary political salience when 'philosophy' plays a role in identity formation and articulation (as it seems to do within Africana philosophy--that is not a criticism!). That there is also a very clear Hebraic root in Yacob [!] and all the figures discussed in the Beginnings of Modern Africana Philosophy (with perhaps partial exception of Amo) is, thus, non-trivial (if only because the bondage and exodus of Israel resonate within it). It also may facilitate discussion today among Africana philosophers and those philosophers that takes Hebraic sources seriously. This is no small matter given the polarizing effects of Zionism and Palestinian nationalism in our world.

 

Including the Hebraic tradition(s) into the narrative may also be epistemically useful if Yacob is right. Because he thinks that when different traditions agree, we are more likely to find truth, whereas their differences reveal their errors--and in religious conflict we de facto always defend error. It's probably more natural to read him as saying that this is so because when traditions agree they latch onto the truth (a thought like this can be found in Montaigne, too). But I'd like to read him Spinozistically as suggesting, and I'd like to argue for this at some point that this is his view, that through dialogue when we find ways to agree, and so live in peace with each other, we instantiate or generate the truth.*

 

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).