Digressions&Impressions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

Two Dogmas of The Image of Science

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

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

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

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

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

So far so good. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let me stop here for now.

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A SSE has three main components:

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

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

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

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

In addition, it is characteristic of SSE's

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hudde and Spinoza's Monism, Pt 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spinoza, Hudde, and Monotheism, PT 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The PSR, Spinoza and Hudde

I shall presuppose that:
(1) The true definition of each thing contains nothing beyond the simple nature of the thing defined.
From this it follows that
(2) No definition involves or expresses any multiplicity or any definite number of individuals since it involves or expresses nothing but the nature of the thing, as it is in itself.
For example, the Definition of a triangle contains nothing but the simple nature of the triangle, not some definite number of triangles, just as the definition of the Mind, that it is a thinking thing, or the definition of God, that he is a perfect Being, contains nothing but the nature of the Mind, or of God. It does not contain a definite number of Minds or Gods.
(3) There must necessarily be a positive cause of each existing thing, through which it exists.
(4) That this cause must be affirmed to exist either in the nature and definition of the thing itself—because existence pertains to its nature, or its nature necessarily contains existence—or outside the thing.

From these presuppositions it follows that [A] if some definite number of individuals exists in nature, there must be one or more causes which were able to produce precisely that number of Individuals, neither more nor fewer. For example, if twenty men exist in nature—to avoid all confusion I shall suppose that they exist together and without predecessors in nature—it will not be sufficient, to give a reason why the twenty exist, to investigate the cause of human nature in general. [B] What must also be investigated is the reason why neither more nor fewer than twenty men exist. For (according to the third hypothesis) concerning each man a reason and cause must be given why he exists. But (according to the second and third hypotheses) that cause cannot be contained in the nature of the man himself, for the true definition of man does not involve the number of twenty men. Therefore (according to the fourth hypothesis), the cause of the existence of these twenty men, and hence of each of them separately, must exist outside them.--Spinoza to H [Hudde], Letter 34, Voorburg, 7 January 1666. Translated by E. Curley, The Collected Works of Spinoza, Vol. II, (Princeton 2016), pp 25-26. [Emphasis added.]

This post is triggered by an invite from Karolina Hubner and Justin Steinberg to write on the Spinoza and Hudde (1628 – 1704)) exchange. If we only had the second quoted paragraph above, and not the earlier part of the letter, we might infer that the third hypothesis is a causal principle in the spirit of “ex nihilo, nihil fit” (“from nothing, nothing comes”). What's notable is that rather than using what we may call its negative formulation (ex nihilo, nihi) 'from nothing, nothing...', Spinoza opts for what we may call a positive formulation: "(3) There must necessarily be a positive cause of each..."

The positive formulation of Hypothesis (3) echoes Axiom 11, from Spinoza's (1663) The Principles of Cartesian Philosophy,:

Nothing exists of which it cannot be asked, what is the cause, or reason, why it exists. See Descartes’ Al.
Since existing is something positive, we cannot say that it has nothing as its cause (by A7). Therefore we must assign some positive cause, or reason, why [a thing] exists—either an external one, i.e., one outside the thing itself, or an internal one, i.e., one comprehended in the nature and definition of the existing thing itself. (Curley (1985), Vol 1, p. 246; emphasis in original)

It is worth noting that Spinoza here is explicitly riffing on Descartes' Replies to the Second Objections (of the Meditations), and in the context of his treatment of the Cogito; and that Spinoza does so, as he tells us, because it is "impossible for" him "to think that something may come from nothing." (PCP, Vol 1, p. 242) 

In their SEP entry, Yitzhak Melamed and Martin Lin claim that Axiom 11 is "Spinoza’s earliest statement of the PSR." (They omit the causal principle on p. 242 perhaps because it's possible to read it as Spinoza attributing it to Descartes.) It's worth mention that there is a version of the PSR in the Short Treatise, which may well date from before 1663. (I thank John Grey and Daniel Schneider for alerting me to this.) In part 1, Chapter 6 (the one on predestination), paragraph 4, Spinoza writes:

Regarding our second question: whether there is any thing in Nature of which one cannot ask why it exists? our saying this indicates that we must investigate through what cause a thing exists. For if that [cause] did not exist, it would be impossible for this something to exist.
We must seek this cause, then, either in the thing or outside it. But if someone asks what rule we should follow in this investigation, we say it does not seem that any at all is necessary. For if existence belongs to the nature of the thing, then certainly we must not seek the cause outside it. But if existence does not belong to the nature of the thing, then we must always seek its cause outside it. And since the former is true only of God, this shows (as we have already proven before) that God alone is the first cause of everything. (Curley (1985), VOL 1, p. 86)

Be that as it may, let's return to the first letter to Hudde. Let's stipulate, for the sake of argument that Spinoza's conclusion, which I labelled [A], follows from the four 'hypotheses.'* My interest is in the final clause, "neither more nor fewer." That [A] includes 'neither more nor fewer' [nec maiorem, nec minorem] looks, at first glance, a kind of redundant exactitude requirement. To count as a proper explanation (or ground, etc.) the cause of the existence of some entity (or group) may not overshoot or undershoot. I call it 'redundant' because Spinoza already has stated 'precisely' [in Latin: illum iuste].+ [A] anticipates a principle we find in the Ethics, “if a certain number of individuals exists, there must be a cause why those individuals, and why neither more nor fewer, exist.” (E1p8s2) 

But in the letter to Hudde, from the exactitude requirement in [A] Spinoza infers the requirement/demand [B].++ And [B] seems to demand that the cause X of some entity (or number of entities) Y also explains the omissions of possible entities (Yn) such that only Y. If you think that my gloss on [B] is too strong, fair enough. But it is not wholly improbable interpretation because later, in the Ethics, Spinoza articulates an even stronger version of this principle: “For each thing there must be assigned a cause, or reason, both for its existence and for its nonexistence”. (E1p11dem). And so it looks like [B] anticipates some such demand for providing causes of nonexistence(s).

I should note that depending on how one thinks of what a cause or reason is, it's not silly to think that an explanation for Y simultaneously helps rule out why all kinds of not Ys do not obtain. If I can show why a projectile with a particular velocity breaks a particular window at a particular time, I can probably also show why given that velocity it is only breaking that window (and not other windows) at that time. If you agree with Spinoza that a definition is a kind of (formal) cause you can run this example through properties of triangles (and which help explain why it's not a hexagon).

So, crucially, then, compared to the Short Treatise and the Cartesian Principles of philosophy, in the letter to Hudde, Spinoza starts packing quite a bit more into what counts as a proper causal explanation of things existing in nature and so also starts developing a heavier duty version of the PSR to be used in explanations of nature.

The foregoing also helps explain why Hudde was confused in the first place. His question to Spinoza was (according to Spinoza) to provide "a demonstration of the Unity of God from the fact that his Nature involves necessary existence." In the Cartesian Principles of philosophy, at the end of his demonstration to proposition 11 ("there is not more than one God") Spinoza had added the following remark:

It should be noted here that it follows necessarily from the mere fact that some thing involves necessary existence from itself (as God does) that it is unique. Everyone will be able to see this for himself, provided he meditates attentively. I could also have demonstrated it here, but not in a way perceptible by everyone, as has been done in this proposition. (Curley (1985), p. 255)**

Spinoza returns to this material in Chapter 2 of the Appendix. And he says somewhat cryptically, "I advise the Reader that by right we infer God’s Unity from the nature of his existence, which is not distinguished from his essence, or which necessarily follows from his essence." (Curley (1985), p 319)

Clearly Hudde -- himself a very accomplished mathematician and natural philosopher [not to say eventually one of the most powerful people in Amsterdam and Holland [and so Europe]] --- had tried to meditate attentively, but had failed in seeing it for himself. And the reason why he had failed in this is, I submit, that Spinoza had actually not yet articulated [A] and [B].

For without such precification or extension of the causal principle it is not obvious how one can even begin to rule out multiple Gods. (I am not suggesting that Spinoza has successfully done so here. Clearly some folk think even the Ethics version fails.) This is especially so if one thinks, not implausibly, that the cause of (a) God can itself be not limited in particular ways  (since it it is powerful enough to cause God and neither involves any multiplicity or any definite number of individuals).

 

Descartes on Indignation

The 195 Article. Of Indignation.

Indignation is a sort of Hatred or Aversion, that a man naturally beares to those who doe some evil, of what nature soever it be. And it is often mixed with Envy, or Pity, but yet, the object thereof is altogether different from them. For he carryes an Indignation onely against those who doe good or evil to persons unworthy of it: but he envies those who receive this good, and pities those who receive this evil. It is true, in some respects it is evil to possesse a good whereof a man is not worthy. Which may be the reason wherefore Aristotle and his followers, supposing that Envy is alwayes a vice, have cal­led that Indignation which is not vicious.

...

The 198 Article. Of the use of it.

Furthermore, Indignation is observed to be more in those who would seem vertuous, than those who really are. For althought they who love vertue cannot without some Aversion look upon the vices of others, they are Passio­nate onely against the great and extraordinary ones. For it is to be nice, and squamish, to have much Indignation for things of little concern­ment; it is to be unjust to have any for those which are not blameworthy; and it is to be im­pertinent and absurd not to confine this Passion to the Actions of men, but extend them to the works of God or nature: as they do who being snever contented with their condition or fortune, dare controule the government of the world, and the secrets of providence.--Descartes, René, 1596-1650., 2013, The passions of the soule in three books the first, treating of the passions in generall, and occasionally of the whole nature of man. The second, of the number, and order of the passions, and the explication of the six primitive ones. The third, of particular passions. By R. des Cartes. And translated out of French into English., Oxford Text Archive, http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12024/A81352.

I was triggered to return to Descartes' Passions while preparing a review of Michelle Schwarze's wonderful book Recognizing Resentment: Sympathy, Injustice, and Liberal Political Thought (Cambridge: 2020). This book is primarily focused on Butler, Hume, and Adam Smith, but it has a preliminary chapter on seventeenth century ideas on resentment and indignation in which Descartes is omitted. This omission is no surprise because Schwarze is focused on recovering and articulating a distinctly liberal understanding of sympathetic resentment and Descartes is no precursor to liberalism or especially interested in promoting commerce and sociability.  Even so, I think Descartes plays an important part of the story she wants to tell, so, here goes.

Early in Passions (article 65), Descartes define or characterizes indignation as follows "evil done by others, having no relation to us, breeds only in us Indignati­on against them." Indignation is, thus, an impartial response ("no relation to us") to the witnessing or experience of harms done to others by third parties. It has, thus, a kind of spectatorship and impartiality built into its very possibility. In addition, it presupposes that these harms are in some sense moralized and intentional ('evils').  This is nicely conveyed by the seventeenth century Dutch translation by Spinoza's acquaintance Jan Glazemaker, where Descartes' indignation is translated as 'euvelneming' literally the experience of evil. 

As an aside, when we are harmed by others, according to Descartes, we feel something stronger than indignation: colere translated nicely as 'wrath'. This passion is very similar to indignation, but also includes the desire of revenge. So it is action-guiding (and can actuate bold and/or courageous actions (see sect 199 of  the Passions). In fact, the somatic instantiation of wrath divers among people, and Descartes is careful to distinguish between a sudden wrath and a carefully nurtured wrath, which when it is joined with love for another may well be a kind of indignation on their behalf. ("interest themselves in the behalfe of those they love, as if it were for themselves;" sect 201).

If we now look at Descartes' treatment of indignation in sections 195-198, we see that he adds an important qualification, that is, that we only feel it when we judge the victim unworthy of the harm ("he carryes an Indignation onely against those who doe good or evil to persons unworthy of it"). It has, thus, an evaluative feature built into its very triggering conditions. So, to sum up the discussion so far, according to Descartes indignation is a  moralized reactive attitude that presupposes considerable impartiality by an observer to intentional harm done to someone not deserving of it. That is to say, the spectator most share a moral universe with the perpetrator and victim. It's not especially action guiding, and seems to have more a role in what we might want to call moral score-keeping and, perhaps, recognition of harms done to other.

When we to turn to the section on the use of indignation (198), we see that Descartes de facto distinguishes two uses of it: first, it has a social role -- I will call it virtue-signaling -- to make us seem virtuous in the eyes of others. And we can infer from Descartes' terse analysis that in its signaling capacity, there is a tendency for an overuse of indignation. This clearly suggests that being thought virtuous creates what we might call social credit. And since indignation is not action guiding (and so has little consequences or negative feedback), there are incentives for being too oft indignant on  behalf of others without qualification because there are no drawbacks. 

It's worth noting that Descartes does not really spell out what's wrong with excessive virtue-signaling, except that he seems to rely on some kind of proportionality requirement that the passion needs to be commensurate with the triggering cause(s). I actually think this kind of principle plays a huge role in Hume's and Smith's moral psychology, and I am kind of sad I just noticed this feature in Descartes today. Of course, that causes and effects have to be proportional to each other is an important element in Descartes' physics (see, for example, his letter to Huygens, 5 October, 1637: “L’effet doit toujours être proportionné à l’action qui est nécessaire pour le produire.” [Quoted from S. Roux]), so  it is not ad hoc. But it has moved from a natural principle to a normative one that can be violated (and again that's not untypical of Hume and Smith). 

Be that as it may, presumably Descartes things that too-frequent indignation destroys the signaling quality of indignation when it is proper. (If X is a cheap source of social credit then X may well become inflationary.) So, second, there is a proper form of indignation of those who truly love virtue (and are not merely virtue signaling) at "great and extraordinary harms." Unlike, say, Hobbes (as described wonderfully by Theresa Bejan (recall)), Descartes really takes (to be anachronistic for a second) micro-aggressions for granted as not needing to be registered by bystanders and spectators. Perhaps this is due to the Stoic element in his thought.

It's not quite clear what the measure is that allows a spectator to distinguish between small-ish harms not deserving a passionate response and those so worthy. But indignation at the harms to others worthy of note is appropriate according to Descartes. Since it's not action guiding its primary function seems to be let victims (and their aggressors) know that evils done to them are recognized by outsiders. So I infer that its main role according to Descartes is as a kind of social score keeping that make victims of harms be seen by the community (and which establishes, thereby, to perpetrators that the have violated important social norms).

Interestingly enough, Descartes wants to rule out indignation at the greatest cause of all (and he puts this in surprisingly Spinozistic fashion) God or Nature [Dieu, ou de la Nature]. Again, we see a kind of appeal to a normative proportionality principle here. But lurking here is also an idea that we cannot make our indignation felt on God or Nature, and that in an important sense we are not fundamentally equal. 

I think it's pretty clear that by Descartes' lights, wrath -- as action guiding and nurtured over time under the sway of, say, anger or revenge, -- is taken as potentially more destabilizing to society than indignation. For, wrath can undermine good judgment. And so wrath must be moderated according to Descartes by generosity (sect 203).

You haven't read Schwarze's book, but I hope you trust me when I say that Descartes's account of indignation has already a lot of the building blocks that will be deployed by Butler, Hume, and Smith and that she analyzes with great skill. From the eighteen century perspective, what's really lacking in Descartes is a proper analysis of the role of sympathy in calibrating indignation. (Descartes was famously averse to sympathy because he associates it with the kind of philosophy he thinks is baloney.) And Descartes does not spell out the normative features that enter into judgment of the impartial bystander. If I am right about this it does raise an interesting historical-sociological question why Descartes' view of indignation was only really developed and elaborated during the eighteenth century by folk commonly portrayed as his critics.

 

On Professor Melamed, Rabbi Serfaty, and entry into the Snoge

My colleague, and friend, Yitzhak Melamed got denied entry to the Snoge (or Esnoga) to do some filming for a documentary on Spinoza by an eloquent Rabbi. (See below for the letter.) Looking at the wording of the letter, I suspect the Rabbi (who despite Amsterdam being a small village, I have never met) kind of calculated it would go viral. For his letter is needlessly insulting.

It is not insulting, to be sure, in calling Spinoza an 'Epicouros.' While the word is undoubtedly derived from 'epicurean' in so far as Epicurus believed that the Gods took no interest in people's affairs.** Now, it is generally applied to all heretics and so Spinoza fits the bill (regardless of what exactly the learned Rabbi has in mind--it would have been nice to know if he has Maimonides' meaning in mind or a more generic use.)

It is needlessly insulting not just because there is no reason to believe Spinoza ever set foot in the Snoge (which was built long after he left Amsterdam.) It is insulting because he declares Melamed "persona non grata" in the Snoge. This is peculiar given that the Snoge welcomes tourists without distinction from all walks of life, even keeping that in mind when setting its times for prayer; and has let an Epicouros like myself attend bar mitzwahs there. This is why I suspect some ambition and opportunism in the Rabbi's stance. He is now a very public defender of the faith. But only some opportunism. Let me explain.

Most of our friends have joined in the ridicule of the actions of the Rabbi, when they don't denounce it more strongly.* And here, much to my own annoyance, I wish to defend the Rabbi's stance. In these matters I tend toward the Lockean-Marxian (Groucho not Karl) in my sensibilities: as I suggested in a different context (recall the Tuvel/Hypatia-affaire): I am all for minority groups to have the right to decide on their often illiberal and sometimes immoral entry-requirements, not just membership, but also including their houses of worship (as long as Exit is relatively straightforward). The Portuguese Jewish Community of Amsterdam is very small, decimated by the Holocaust and emigration. It doesn't just have every right to avoid facilitating a movie that however intelligent and sober still will aid in the glorification of its greatest Heretic, but in many ways it has a duty to do so.

As an aside, in an article that deserves careful scrutiny, "Freedom of Speech and Philosophical Citizenship in Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise," Julie Cooper has argued persuasively that Spinoza was a critic of philosophical/intellectual celebrity. That is, in fact, one of Spinoza's lines of criticism of Descartes. And it is pretty clear that the celebration of Spinoza -- which is, in fact, a big politicized deal in Amsterdam -- goes very much against the spirit of his political philosophy. So, somewhat ironically Rabbi Serfaty is in some respects defending Spinoza from his admirers here.

Melamed himself is often a critic of Spinoza, and in my presence has criticized Spinoza's (what we may call) moral philosophy in no uncertain terms. So, it is a bit odd the Rabbi thinks that the study of Spinoza is problematic. We are, in fact, far removed from, say, the spirit of Rabbi Soloveitchik, who was a learned reader of Spinoza. 

UPDATE: It turns out that the Rabbi has no legal right to refuse Melamed entry to library Ets Chaim. (I basing myself here on a report in Dutch (here). HT: Mum.)  This library is open to researchers from all over the world. And since there is government money sponsoring the foundation that runs it, the Rabbi can't treat Melamed as "persona non grata" there. But in re-reading the letter by the Rabbi, I think it's pretty clear he intends to keep Melamed only out of the Snoge.+ [End OF UPDATE.]

I would never personally argue that Rabbi Serfaty is obliged to keep the film crew out of the Snoge. (Plenty of politicians have been filmed there for events.) But there are grounds to suspect such a film would be a mechanism to help later day critics of the community (to which I never belonged) litigate against it, and certainly to treat the Cherem as a colossal mistake and a sign of backwardness. In fact, Rabbi Serfaty is acting here in the spirit of Rabbi Toledano who, in rejecting a revocation of the ban, argued that it would mean that "we in our synagogue should spread the denial of God's existence to the extent that it destroys our heritage and the pillars on which Judaism rests."  If you take that line of thought seriously, and he gets paid to do so, Rabbi Serfaty's position is common sense even though it lacks warmth and what my people call, menschlichkeit.

 

On Pynchon on 1984

By the time they have left the Ministry of Love, Winston and Julia have entered permanently the condition of doublethink, the anterooms of annihilation, no longer in love but able to hate and love Big Brother at the same time. It is as dark an ending as can be imagined. But strangely, it is not quite the end. We turn the page to find appended what seems to be some kind of critical essay, "The Principles of Newspeak". We remember that at the beginning, we were given the option, by way of a footnote, to turn to the back of the book and read it. Some readers do this, and some don't - we might see it nowadays as an early example of hypertext. Back in 1948, this final section apparently bothered the American Book-of-the-Month Club enough for them to demand that it be cut, along with the chapters quoted from Emmanuel Goldstein's book, as a condition of acceptance by the club. Though he stood to lose at least £40,000 in American sales, Orwell refused to make the changes, telling his agent, "A book is built up as a balanced structure and one cannot simply remove large chunks here and there unless one is ready to recast the whole thing . . . I really cannot allow my work to be mucked about beyond a
certain point, and I doubt whether it even pays in the long run." Three weeks later the BOMC relented, but the question remains, why end a novel as passionate, violent and dark as this one with what appears to be a scholarly appendix?
The answer may lie in simple grammar. From its first sentence, "The Principles of Newspeak" is written consistently in the past tense, as if to suggest some later piece of history, post- 1984 , in which Newspeak has become literally a thing of the past - as if in some way the anonymous author of this piece is by now free to discuss, critically and objectively, the political system of which Newspeak was, in its time, the essence. Moreover, it is our own pre-Newspeak English language that is being used to write the essay. Newspeak was supposed to have become general by 2050, and yet it appears that it did not last that long, let alone triumph, that the ancient humanistic ways of thinking inherent in standard English have persisted, survived, and ultimately prevailed, and that perhaps the social and moral order it speaks for has even, somehow, been restored.--Thomas Pynchon (2003) "Introduction" Nineteen Eighty-Four By George Orwell [HT: Victor Gijsbers]

We know that Pynchon is not the only major novelist that grappled with Orwell's Appendix to Nineteen Eighty-Four; at the end The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood, who according to her own testimony about 1984, "read it again and again," pays homage to it in the "Historical Notes" themselves "Being a partial transcript of the proceedings of the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies, held as part of the International Historical Association Convention held at the University of Denay, Nunavit, on June 25, 2195." In presenting these historical notes, Atwood, reassures the reader, who may have no taste for (recall) Socratic metaphysics --  "for everything that has come into being destruction is appointed, not even such a fabric as this will abide for all time, but it shall surely be dissolved" (Plato, Republic, 546a)" -- that the "Gilead period," too, will come to an end in some sense. 

Pynchon, who is not exactly known for his optimism, is right to pay attention to the Appendix to 1984, but I am not entirely sure that his hesitant ("perhaps") optimism about what the Appendix signals can withstand scrutiny. His interpretation assumes, first, that the (let's call it) authorial stance of the Appendix has to be taken at face value. That's decidedly odd because 1984 represents us with a world in which just about every text is a forgery of some sorts. (While it would be a mistake to treat them alike, Orwell and Borges were contemporaries, after all.) In fact, much of the action of 1984 consists in the production of forgeries (not just of texts of memories). The production of newspapers by the Ministry of Truth and the torture chambers of Ministry of love have this in common. So, why would the Appendix be any different?

As an aside, the apparent function of the forgeries in Oceania appear to be to produce a totalizing infallibility about everything, not the least the past, of the Party. (No Pope would dream of this!) And what it illustrates is that even if one were to grant (for the sake of amusement) the linguistic idealist, that all is text, what one may call the production values that inform or are exhibited by the production of texts make a huge difference. Linguistic idealism comes in many varieties. If one treats this focus on 'values' as bourgeois, feel free to replace 'production values' with 'means of production' in the previous sentence. In so far as Orwell is a true socialist (and an author), this attention to the conditions of textual production need not surprise. 

But let's stipulate that we need to take the Appendix at face value. You may say, 'What else can we do, after all?' It's true, as Pynchon emphasizes, that the Appendix treats Newspeak as a thing of the past. Given that Pynchon explicitly understands Newspeak as the essence of Oceania, and in his argument tacitly relies on the metaphysical principle, I'll paraphrase Spinoza (E2D2), that when its essence is taken away the entity ceases to be, Pynchon infers from the demise of Newspeak quite reasonably that Oceania must have ended.

Before I get to the merits of Pynchon's argument, a reader may suspect that I will object to Pynchon's metaphysics as an imposition on the world of 1984. Of course, I am assuming you are not the kind of reader who may find my parading of metaphysical jargon quite pedantic. Even so it's worth noting that the core torture scenes in Part III of 1984, emphasize that metaphysics is salient. The torturer, O'Brien, repeatedly, in fact, reminds his victim, Winston Smith, that metaphysics is not his "strong point." So I am not going to object to the form of Pynchon's argument.*

Newspeak is what the philosophers call a final language. In the text -- I have in mind both 1984 and its Appendix -- this is marked by the contrast between the provisional versions (as, I now quote the Appendix, "embodied in the Ninth and Tenth editions of the Newspeak Dictionary") -- and its definitive form "embodied in the Eleventh Edition of the Dictionary."  As we learn from the Appendix and, earlier in the novel, from Syme, who, before he is presumably vaporized, is one of the developers of Newspeak, Newspeak is supposed to be an austere language: its vocabulary culled down, and, through some semantic tools the expressive power of particular words is greatly enhanced, the language's expressive power is curtailed. It's a final language designed to be spoken and used by the Party.**

Now, Syme indeed suggests that the "Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak." The narrator of 1984 adds that this is expressed with "a sort of mystical satisfaction." And indeed this idea, the perfection of language, is characteristic of what we may call Enlightenment mysticism (and satirized by Swift). Pynchon's interpretation of 1984 is rooted in Syme's understanding of Newspeak.

The Appendix, which follows Syme's interpretation of Newspeak sometimes literally, omits this mystical claim. I'll quote the Appendix (and then suggest an alternative to Pynchon's interpretation):

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought--that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc--should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever.

Unlike Syme, the Appendix places greatest emphasis on the fact that the purpose of Newspeak was to make what in 1984 is called 'Thoughtcrime' impossible. Even a Quine-ean couldn't be heretical through indirect methods in Newspeak. We might say, then, that it is regimentation that is the fundamental function of Newspeak as a final language.

Interestingly enough, this is an aside, the author of the Appendix recognizes that once Newspeak is perfected, it would make translation of books and even complex fragments from older languages into Newspeak in a certain way impossible unless they either referred "to some technical processor some very simple everyday actions." (The Appendix offers the Declaration of Independence as an example of how "impossible" would be to render it into Newspeak.) One wishes (recall) our advocates of formal languages would keep this in mind.

Be that as it may, a more natural interpretation of the demise of Newspeak presents itself now.  For, from the point of view of the Party, the elimination of even possible Thoughtcrime would be self-defeating. For Thoughtcrime grounds the repressive apparatus of the Party. The possibility of Thoughtcrimes are -- as much as the conditions of permanent War -- central to the structure of self-discipline of the Party. The elimination of Thoughtcrime as a category would spell doom to the survival of the Party because it would lose its main means of self-control as a ruling, corporate spirit. It would then have to start codifying laws of some sort and bureaucratize, formalize these. This was not a problem in the world of 1984 because the perfection of Newspeak had been projected, as the Appendix notes in its closing sentence, into a more distant future (2050).

So, a more natural political possibility is that the Party abandoned the project of Newspeak because it saw that its perfection would be self-undermining and incompatible with the ideological needs of Ingsoc in power.*** (By contrast, a socialist language planner like Carnap recognizes that Esperanto, for example, is great for a world of public Enlightenment.) And the Appendix reflects the writings of someone who is intimately familiar with the abandonment of Newspeak (not the demise of Oceania).  Admittedly, there are some passages in the Appendix that exhibit a rather free-thinking attitude: the use of the Declaration of Independence as an example, in particular, is rather cheeky. And it forms the best evidence for Pynchon's interpretation. But the more literal reading of the Appendix understands it as a fragment from a reconstruction of the rise and fall of Newspeak as a social enterprise. That is compatible with the survival of Oceania once the Party realized that the mystical attitude toward Newspeak threatened to make it the essence of Oceania.+