Digressions&Impressions

On Rammstein, MRIs and Being Real (long covid Diaries)

A month ago we went on a family holiday on a deserted island in the Indian ocean with a very tiny, quiet resort on it with huts overlooking the ocean. It was very quiet, and my family spent their time sailing and snorkeling. While I love swimming, I didn't feel ready to try my luck with an ocean. So, twice a day I went to the hut with a treadmill and started to do a gentle interval training. It was painful, but I enjoyed it. The rest of the day I would read and live-tweet some of my chapter summaries of books. Only at dinner would I notice any symptoms of covid with the minor buzz of other guests in the background and dinner conversation exhausting me. I would fall asleep early not bothered by the heat, and sleep long restful hours.

I was reminded of a book, The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction, by my graduate school dog-park buddy (and basketball competitor), Matthew Crawford  (whose Shopcraft as Soulcraft was a genuine bestseller and briefly a cultural icon), in which he points out that in our age the very rich pay for quiet (as can be noticed in their airport lounges). Most of the few other guests at the resort were very bourgeois Suisse couples (bankers, insurance, etc.), sporty and pleased with the lack of noise while they enjoyed the ocean (and presumably each other). It was truly restful, and it was also delightful to be around my spouse and son while both were mellow. 

When I returned from the holiday, I went back to lap-swimming in the pool down the hill. And I quietly started to muse that if it weren't for my fatigue  after social interactions I had turned the corner on covid. (For my official "covid diaries," see here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here; here;  here;  here;  here;  here; here;  here; here;  here; here; here; here; here; here; and here). Two weeks ago I went to Amsterdam for a MRI and a visit to my occupational therapist. The occupational therapist insisted that I try to to discipline myself and avoid social interactions for more than 25-30 minutes (including with my family). Of course, I had to experiment occasionally with longer interactions, but I should really try (now using her words) not to deplete energy. She recognized that returning to teaching in February would mean I would violate her instructions, but since I claimed I 'gain energy' from my undergraduates, and these were fairly unidirectional lecture courses (I promised her to make few jokes and leave less room for questions from the lecture hall), she resigned herself to it.

Now I know many academics really dislike social interactions, and I am myself known to be irritable, impatient, and unpleasant on occasion. And there is no doubt that I can be incredibly happy writing hours on end. But in general I love the social aspect of doing philosophy together, and hanging in cafe's and talking. And I love spending time with the undergraduates discussing the material and learning from their insights. And I love gossip. And after a few years of pandemic I really just want to watch crowds enjoying life. 

I was musing about this when I arrived early at my MRI. Much to my amazement I was allowed to go thirty minutes ahead of schedule. After the MRI I had a minor panic attack that the nurse who administered it never asked me for my name (just my weight) and whether my wedding band was made of pure gold. I haven't heard the results yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if my results were mixed up with those of the lovely old man who was scanned after me.

The brain scan was pure horror. I have done them before, and I have never been too bothered by the claustrophobic set-up or the noise. (I had a MRI done of my lungs when I was first diagnosed with covid.) The claustrophobia still didn't bother me--I just closed my eyes. But even with ear-plugs and noise-canceling headphones, a brain scan is the way to kill off all the long haulers. Imagine your head exploding, and then adding TNT, while listening to Rammstein. It only lasted thirty minutes or so. But the variety and intensity of the noise stayed with me for a whole week. I was bedridden, insomniac, and with a weird nausea/headache. And while I am much better this week (more about that below), the optimism of a few weeks ago  eliminated. The bitter irony is that I had arm-twisted my neurologist to put me in the scan. (I am back to swimming my laps daily.)

On Monday I had an important telephone meeting with an occupational health agency expert. According to the law, after one year this expert evaluates my dossier in light of a formal report of my occupational physician, documentation sent by me, and an employer's report. While I have another year on disability funded by my employer, this is the first moment a process that can lead to termination or a new career can be initiated. So, it's not just a routine conversation. I don't think I reveal any state secrets when I disclose that my Chair had not submitted her report. This told me that my department wasn't yet at the point where they would use my partial disability to get rid of my position and salary.

As an aside, but not irrelevant, luckily, the evals of my Fall course were stellar: students felt they had to work hard and were challenged, but they adored the course. (I did say I love my undergraduates, and it is returned.)* The only sign in the evals that my students noticed anything of my covid is that one complained that my jokes were real downers (usually people praise my jokes).

The conversation with the occupational expert got off on the wrong foot when I misunderstood her intention in her trying to get me to understand that based on my CV I was probably overstretched before I got covid. I thought she was insinuating that my covid was mostly a burn-out. My reaction was not wholly surprising because too many Dutch medical types have tried to push this line on me this past year. And I reminded her that while everyone in Dutch academy was overworked (because of structural lack of funding), I was in no mood for another physician trying to convince me that my situation would just heal itself if I took a step back. But we quickly clarified that what she was trying to say was that I should not expect to return to my former level of activity in my job. I assured her that there was no risk of that. I don't expect to get any research done while teaching, and for the moment I am withdrawing from all speaking engagements. 

The rest of the meeting was anticlimactic. She said she trusted my occupational physician that I was likely to have a full recovery. And that as long as my department and I stayed within the guidelines of the occupational physician we should aim to keep me in my position. We would re-evaluate in four months. Later that day I received a lovely email from the Chair of my department that echoed these sentiments.

As I turned to preparing my syllabus for my enormous required, survey course -- 637 registered students -- I initiated a whirlwind of emails to settle logistics. Leaving aside pandemic uncertainty and the fact that we still have to do online testing, courses this size really and this prominent in the curriculum involve half a dozen stake-holders who all have their vision on what it should be. As the emails went back and forth, I mentally realized and accepted I would not get much scholarship done. It would be a prep week. 

Two nights ago I awoke in the middle of the night from a complex nightmare. As I laid in bed restless, I wondered whether my irritability over the burn-out trope was perhaps blinding me to the truth; maybe I couldn't handle the workflow at work? But as my mind drifted into anxiety and I reflected more on the dream, I was terrified over my future: what if each class lecture would incapacitate me for two days (like my Fall seminars)? What if I really could never have a real, long conversation with my kid again? What if I could never attend a workshop again? What if my wife becomes miserable because she has lost her partner in crime? And so on, and so on. 

I mentioned in some of posts at the end of last year that I understand myself as partially cognitively disabled. This limits my life, but it also puts enormous strains on others. My immediate colleagues have had to pick up some of the slack, and my family's life-style is hugely impacted. A lot of the changes can be folded into 'the pandemic', but some of the adjustments pertaining to me qua individual may well be structural for me, and my environment. If my class does incapacitate me I will have to think about a career switch. Not because my department will nudge me out, but because i shouldn't be in a job that makes be bedridden out of sight. And that is terrifying.

As regular readers know I have been influenced by (recall here; here; and here) Elizabeth Barnes' The Minority Body. And one lesson I took from it is that being alive just is living with constraints. The real political and psychological problem is that when you are disabled or impaired, our social environment is shaped for different bodies and agents.  The adjustment to the absence of once familiar affordances which have become out of reach is painful and tiring. Yesterday, Matt Strohl called my attention to a beautiful essay by Francey Russell in The Boston Review. In it, she quotes Sidney Poitier that “acting isn’t a game of ‘pretend.’ It’s an exercise in being real.” This made me see that each new role would be exhausting for actors. For me, being cognitively impaired is taking on a new role, and, if you allow me the inference, so an exercise in being real.  

A note on Le Guin and Fanon, and Carl Schmitt

"You are the same species, race, people, exactly the same in every way, with a slight selection towards color. If you brought up an asset child as an owner it would be an owner in every respect, and vice versa. So you spend your lives keeping up this tremendous division that doesn't exist. What I don't understand is how you can fail to see how appallingly wasteful it is. I don't mean economically!"

"In the war," he said, and then there was a very long pause; though Solly had a lot more to say, she waited, curious. "I was on Yeowe," he said, "you know, in the civil war."

That's where you got all those scars and dents, she thought; for however scrupulously she averted her eyes, it was impossible not to be familiar with his spare, onyx body by now, and she knew that in aiji he had to favor his left arm, which had a considerable chunk out of it just above the bicep.

“The slaves of the Colonies revolted, you know, some of them at first, then all of them. Nearly all. So we Army men there were all owners. We couldn’t send asset soldiers, they might defect. We were all veots and volunteers. Owners fighting assets. I was fighting my equals. I learned that pretty soon. Later on I learned I was fighting my superiors. They defeated us.”

“But that—” Solly said, and stopped; she did not know what to say.

“They defeated us from beginning to end,” he said. “Partly because my government didn’t understand that they could. That they fought better and harder and more intelligently and more bravely than we did.”

“Because they were fighting for their freedom!”

“Maybe so,” he said in his polite way.

"So ..."

"I wanted to tell you that I respect the people I fought."--Ursula K Le Guin (1994) "Forgiveness Day" in The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin, p. 287.

Because I am about to teach The Dispossessed (recall) again, I am trying to read all the books in the so-called Hainish cycle. "Forgiveness Day" is part of a series of interlocking stories (also collected in Four Ways to Forgiveness) about two planets, Werel and Yeowe. As the quoted passage suggests, Werel is a slave-owning society that treated Yeowe as a colony. In fact, Werel is an extremely patriarchical society, too, which treats its women in the way Athens treats theirs. 

The nameless 'he' is Rega Teyeo, a scion of a rural soldiering elite; conservative and stoic in his ways. He discovers that after the lost war on Yeowe his own people, who are modernizing and shifting toward commerce, have little use for him. So, he ends up a bodyguard to Solly, the alien (female) ambassador to his planet. In many ways it's a humiliating end to his public service. 

The quoted exchange takes place in the turning point in the relationship between Rega and Solly, which itself occurs when they think they are in mortal danger. I am not a big fan of "Forgiveness Day" because the writing is relatively clunky and the characters are relatively stereotypical. Because it's Le Guin, there is still plenty of food for thought about the nature of patriarchy and the interlocking forms of oppression and resistance it generates.

The quoted passage illustrates my complaint about the writing in the novella; that Teyeo respects the people he fought is already abundantly clear before Le Guin makes it explicit ("I wanted to tell you that I respect the people I fought."). 

Having said that, the passage did remind me (no surprise we are in the ambit of Hegel's master-slave dialectic) of a kind of symmetrical point in the famous first chapter of Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth that in the Manichean world colonialism, "At the individual level, violence is a cleansing force. It rids the colonized of their inferiority complex, of their passive and despairing attitude. It emboldens them, and restores their self-confidence." (p. 51)

Le Guin invites us into thinking that when you have been defeated on the battle-field it is difficult to deny the fundamental equality of your victor. She published "Forgiveness Day" when the Vietnam war was living memory. As Le Guin's novella shows, that individual experience on the battle-field need not transform wider social attitudes toward those thought inferior if that society can insulate itself, to some respect, from the military defeat. As a cursory glance at history shows, for every Rega Teyeo whose attitudes are transformed, there may be a lance corporal who prefers a dagger-stab legend. And in her story Le Guin, who is not naïve about such matters, suggests that individual character matters a lot to when a potentially existential experience becomes transformative.

Earlier in the story, after Rega has requested a discharge from his duty to protect Solly, his request is declined by his (and her) employer as follows:

"Love of god and country is like fire, a wonderful friend, a terrible enemy; only children play with fire. I don't like the situation. There's nobody here I can replace either of you with. Will you hang on a while longer?"

What's striking about the response is that it is couched in terms familiar from Schmitt (with its friend-enemy distinction) [recall here and here mediated via Popper]. This is interesting because the employer I have just quoted represents in Le Guin's story, and in the wider Hainish cycle, the Kantian federative ideal of the aspiration toward perpetual peace founded in human equality. And what Le Guin recognizes is that one can accept that in some circumstances the friend-enemy distinction is empirically adequate of people's ('childish') behavior even though one is oneself committed to a different ideal that is supposed to abolish or overcome it.

Now, in light of "Forgiveness Day" it is tempting to suggest that the friend-enemy distinction itself rests, if not conceptually then at least on the battle-field, in a kind of symmetry between the two foes. And this symmetry is itself ground in a kind of equality or mutual recognition. And so, one may be tempted to see in this observation a refutation of Schmitt.

As an aside, this is why 'wars' on cancer, drugs, and on poverty are such strange ways of speaking. (This is extended to the "courageous battle" one wages against a fatal disease.) They do not have the latent possibility of such mutual recognition. Norman MacDonald (who died of cancer) makes the point in a sketch here. His punchline is that, if you die, the cancer dies at exactly the same time in your body. “That, to me, is not a loss. That’s a draw.”

Be that as it may, of course, Schmitt anticipates the point and suggests that the political distinction is orthogonal to any moral interpretation of such mutual symmetry.  It is entirely compatible with his view that one can find one's enemies moral, even beautiful. (I doubt he would grant that they are superior, but it seems logically consistent.)

Now, it is important to Schmitt's analysis that these judgments involve collectivities not individuals (as it is in Le Guin and Fanon). And so there is an important sense that Schmitt can accommodate the point about symmetry or the transformative experience of the battle-field, as long as (and I find this ironic) it is understood in, and limited to, individual terms. 

And, in fact, one of the psychological, perhaps, social conditions for Rega's judgment, or maybe it's an effect of it, is his disenchantment with his own society. And while this turns out to be a pre-condition for his political understanding (he starts to see through slogans) it also leads him to withdraw from it emotionally, politically, and eventually physically. Part of the closing line of the story with him going into a kind of exile is (also) explicit about this: "he had lost his world." And so, while one can read the Hainish cycle as resting on a kind of faith that Schmittianism can be overcome, Le Guin recognizes that there are circumstances in which its logic is impeccable. 

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transforming Philosophy By Diversifying Its Traditions

A very similar transformation actually occurred in Western philosophy not too long ago. When a major European university began to teach the ideas of a particular noncanonical thinker, mainstream philosophers on the faculty objected that the new philosophy was not part of “our tradition,” and that it was watering down the curriculum in the name of a misguided fad. Because the new philosophy was inconsistent with many widely held positions, some philosophers resorted to a flaccid relativism, arguing that there were “two truths” on these matters. This sort of approach only convinced the mainstream philosophers that the new philosophy was nonsense. However, a brilliant philosopher argued that the best way to discover the truth is through a pluralistic dialogue with all the major world philosophies. This philosophical genius was Thomas Aquinas. In the thirteenth century at the University of Paris, Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, and others encouraged students and colleagues (who had previously only learned a form of Platonized Christianity) to expand the canon and learn not just from the philosophy of the pagan Aristotle (only recently rediscovered in Western Europe), but also from Jewish and Muslim thinkers. The result was to reinvigorate and deepen the Western philosophical tradition.... The case of Aquinas and the rediscovery of Aristotle is just one of many examples that illustrate that the Western philosophical canon is not, and never was, a closed system. Philosophy only becomes richer and approximates the truth more closely as it becomes increasingly diverse and pluralistic.--Bryan W. Van Norden (2017) Taking Back Philosophy: a Multicultural Manifesto, 18

The widespread turn to meta-philosophy, even discussion of the merits of progress, if any, in philosophy are simultaneously signs of self-confidence -- as Montaigne, Pascal, and Margaret Cavendish show it takes a certain courage to question oneself -- and a sense of malaise, not always fully justified, induced by a sense of exhaustion of approaches that have had their trial. And this turn to meta-philosophy occurs after vanquishing -- a word I don't use lightly --, its parochial rivals, and benefitting from soft association with imperial power, analytic philosophy strides the world as a global hegemon increasingly being taught in colleges, often branded with American and European names, around the world.  

While there is a strain of argument in Van Norden's Taking Back Philosophy preoccupied with the distribution of jobs in 'ranked' departments (e.g., 2; 5; 25-26; 31-34 162; see also Garfield's foreword, p. xii; xx) and the scarce resource of  time in the curriculum (e.g., xviii-xix; 8, 36, 103, 115), his more important argument is that philosophy would benefit from what is known as 'diversifying' its canon. And the paragraph quoted above is supposed to offer an instance of such fruits. 

Before I get to that, it is worth noting three features about contemporary analytic philosophy: first, analytic philosophy has exceedingly few substantive dogmas. I don't mean this only as the bad joke that Quine and Davidson jointly could only count to three (and with Socrates we may ask where is the fourth?). But rather in the more serious sense that analytic philosophy always has been like a sponge drawing in ideas and techniques from the sciences and logic, and even rival schools, and, like a high energy shape-shifter, has had an open-ended capacity to reinvent itself. This is why most critiques of analytic philosophy lodged by its rivals often seem so comically off-base within a short amount of time.*   

Second, because analytic philosophy's self-identity is constantly re-invented over time, it has no felt requirement for a fixed canon of texts to give it identity.** So, for example, Feigl's and Sellars' (1949) Readings in Philosophical Analysis. was welcomed as a "book" which "contains a good number of the classics of analysis and should therefore provide useful source material for courses in Contemporary Philosophy, Problems, and Methods." Most of the authors of these classics are still familiar names, - "Feigl (4 essays), Kneale, Quine (2), Tarski, Carnap (3), Frege, Russell, [C.I.] Lewis (3), Schlick (4), Aldrich (2), Adjukiewicz, [Ernest] Nagel, Waismann, Hempel (4), Reichenbach (2)" - , but it is to be doubted that most of the articles themselves, or what they argue for, play much of a role in contemporary undergraduate or graduate education (outside those that cater to specialists in history of analytic). I bet a few names are completely unfamiliar.  One can play a similar game with Rorty's more recent (and larger) Linguistic Turn. To be a classic within analytic philosophy is to risk oblivion quickly from the perspective of eternity. 

As an aside, the author of  the review from Philosophy of Science just quoted, Russell L. Ackoff, became one of the founders of operations research and systems thinking in management science. Even the limited biography of Wikipedia suggests wonderful avenues of research for sociologists of analytic philosophy.

Third, analytic philosophy is, despite inhabiting extremely steep prestige and economic hierarchies, and having become a (near) mono-linguistic culture, still a dispersed discipline with many local nodes doing their own thing. And while a shift to standardizing text-book education may change the dispersed nature, for now analytic philosophy evolves -- despite our natural tendency to be guided by the Williamsons', Chalmers', Siders', Pauls' (etc.) -- in virtue of countless many relatively independent, contingent curricular and refereeing decisions. And while, with Condorcet's jury theorem in the back of the mind, such a structure may offer confidence that we're somewhat truth-apt, it also means that the content of the destination of such a dispersed philosophical 'market' in ideas may be intrinsically uncertain. This means there is also space for local arbitrage opportunities, including (as Justin Smith has remarked) richly supported non-university think-tanks funded by (self-proclaimed) Libertarian billionaires. 

Okay, let's grant Van Norden his main claim that a philosophical tradition can be reinvigorated by a kind of systematic exposure to another tradition or, as in the thirteenth century example, a diversity of traditions. It doesn't follow, as he tacitly recognizes, that it will always do so. Some novelties, regardless of their sources, are fads and claims to ancient wisdom may, upon inspection, be banality. In that respect, it is striking that the thirteenth century transformation involved purportedly incompatible, even contradictory traditions. The contradiction could only be resolved by the genius of a synthesizing mind who created a kind of aufhebung. 

My criticism is not that Van Norden seems to presuppose civilizational intellectual traditions with a true essence here (he denies that the page before, see the quote below); nor is that Van Norden seems to have replicated a basically neo-Hegelian-Romantic scheme of progress and (so the worry goes) imposed it on the historical 'data'. But rather that if the mere fact of contradiction is not a reliable means toward distinguishing fad from source of renewal, the episode seems to teach that one can never know that some innovation isn't fad (given our canons of rigor).  

So, I do like Van Norden's other exemplar better, which is closer to our current situation:

There are also clear historical examples of intellectual traditions accepting and being broadened by alien systems of thought. When Buddhism was brought to China by missionaries from India in the first century ce, there already existed a robust and diverse native spiritual tradition, including Confucianism and Daoism (each of which had a variety of competing interpretations). Buddhism was a completely alien system of thought that challenged many of the fundamental ethical and metaphysical assumptions of the classic Chinese thinkers. However, Chinese philosophers studied Buddhist works, translated them into their own language, learned a new technical vocabulary, and engaged with Buddhist arguments. As a result, the Chinese intellectual tradition was permanently deepened. Even if one refuses to bestow the label of “philosophy” upon any of these systems of thought, the fact that Confucianism and Daoism were able to adapt to and incorporate Buddhist ideas dispels the illusion that intellectual traditions have an unchanging essence that makes them hermetically sealed (17)

What this example reveals is that intellectual traditions can be internally heterogeneous and still sufficiently distinct from each other such that internally heterogeneous alternatives may seem, at first, 'completely alien.' And that members of a resourceful home tradition can bring themselves, despite the barriers of entry [language, technical vocabulary, techniques, argument styles, etc.], to study such an alternative system of thought. I am sure that Van Norden could name these intrepid philosophical explorers/abitreurs that created intellectual trading zones among Confucianism & Daoism and Buddhism at various sites. But these these under-laborers are not named, and the local turmoil that surrounded them effaced, even if (despite presumably some unnamed Kuhn-losses) their fruits are "permanent." 

So, one way to think of attempts at diversifying analytic philosophy, and its relationship(s) to a 'canon', is to generate the conditions of such self-transformation of the tradition without -- pace Condorcet -- any guarantee of success, but with the expectation that the unknown destinations may well give us rewarding sights, even, as I learned from Eileen O'Neill, a better, but painful, political and intellectual self-understanding, and, as collective transformative experiences, unexpected views on the truth.

On Analysis

Seven or so years ago, near the beginning of my analysis, I explained to my analyst, after some frustrating experiences, how important it was to me that they always engage with the actual content of what I was saying. I took a huge amount of care in expressing myself – choosing exactly the right words, multiplying distinctions in order to communicate with laser precision – and I didn’t want to be ‘interpreted’ before the letter of what I was saying had been fully attended to....Those seven or so years ago, when I implored my analyst to take me at my word, it was, almost needless to say, only the first way, according to which it contrasts with “spirit,” that I had in mind. Two or three years after that, well into the analysis, I was becoming more comfortable and more curious. The tight control over my words – the only real power I could exert to protect myself and ensure the analysis did not unleash anything too scary – came to feel constricting, even suffocating...

 At the end I exclaimed “I’d like to go back to that injunction I made right at the start. Please make an effort to engage with the letter of what I am saying before trying to hear what is unsaid.” To which they replied, with some, subsequently confessed, hyperbole: “You do realize that is literally the exact opposite of what I’m supposed to be doing?!” (One reason to think that the designation of psychoanalysis as “the Jewish science” may be misleading.) In some sense, of course, what they said is obvious. They are listening for what is unconscious, which is unlikely to be found in the obsessively-controlled language that I wield almost like a weapon. But it startled me nonetheless and I decided to write this post to help work through it.--Simon J. Evnine "For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life"

One recurring fascination is the common root of 'analysis' in analytical philosophy that it shares with the 'analysis' in psychoanalysis. I sometimes wonder why analyse and its cognates had such pull over late nineteenth and early twentieth century (Viennese and Cambridge) minds. I was reminded of this by Simon Evnine who regularly calls my attention to his blog, "The Parergon." I hope he does not mind too much being the trigger occasion for these impressions. I treat him here as the everyman of analytic philosophy in which all of us can be substituted into his place, opaque contexts be damned!

It is noticeable that Simon treats his precision and "care in expressing" in terms of a "weapon." Even when used in self-defense, weapons are explicitly designed to hurt others.* I have noted before (recall) the analytic philosopher's tendency to describe the toolkit of her  craft in terms of surgical (and laser-like) instruments, but in those instances the instruments are meant to heal. Of course, Simon's intent is not to hurt others, but self-protection ("the only real power I could exert to protect myself.")+ 

I do not know a better expression of the fragility at the root of much analytic philosophy. Any badly formulated phrase is a misstep of monumental proportions. The robustness of the whole collapses with the weakest link. This fragility is fueled by "frustrating experiences." Once primed by psychoanalysis, it's hard not to discern the dependent child here. 

I do not mean to suggest that the analytic philosopher's attitude toward rigor  and clarity only expresses fragility. One may as well -- and here I am inspired by Simon's "extravagant letteralism" -- read it as pure holiness (recall here on Carnap). After all, a Torah scroll is disqualified if even a single letter is added or a single letter is deleted. Every sign must be correct. 

A few days ago a lovely blog post by Liam Kofi Bright inspired me to reflect a bit on what the norms of analytic philosophy would have to be if we "conceived of conceptual engineering as a means to enter into lifeworlds of others." I asserted that the non-dominating way of doing so requires a willingness to be transformed by the experience. What I missed saying explicitly then, and I suspect this omission (recall) is part of my professional deformation, is that one cannot (non-dominatingly) enter into the the lifeworld of another without, as Simon shows without saying, being vulnerable.

On the Norms of Philosophy; On Liam Kofi Bright and entering the life world of another

Because people take subjectivism to be such a wildly implausible view they make no effort to see the world from a subjectivist's point of view. Even calling the view "relativism" betrays that - because it imagines a point of view beyond any particular person's perspective, surveys all of them at once, and says "truth for the individual is just what is believed by them, and so truth per se is relative to each individual's beliefs and all beliefs are true for their believers". From this last conjunct objections are drawn out. But from a committed subjectivist's point of view that cannot be right - their point of view is the one from which truth is evaluated,  and the other points of view are not on a par with that but simply errors. The objection imagines a kind of God's-eye-perspective on truth and launches their attack from there, but the kind of person who is attracted to subjectivism (or for that matter relativism) is almost certainly the kind of person who is suspicious of the idea of such a God's eye perspective. Seen from within, these objections simply lose their force, they don't take seriously what the subjectivist is trying to do or say as a philosopher of truth.

Of course one can always make the move against the subjectivist that many philosophers now make against the sceptic. One can say that after all our job is not to find arguments that would persuade the subjectivist, our job is just to explain why they are wrong in an internally coherent manner. We wish not to help the subjectivist see their error but just ensure others do not fall into it. Well, good luck and God speed to those whose philosophical mission is explaining why they are right to their own satisfaction. But if you want philosophy to help you enter into the lifeworld of others quite different from yourself, this cannot be enough.--Liam Kofi Bright "Truth Subjectivism and Giving Implausible Views their Due"

Because I am an inconstant skeptic, perhaps, the final three sentences of Liam's essay resonated strongly with me. I cannot tell you how often I have encountered refutations of skepticism (or Hume's problem of induction) where I quietly think 'you [confident, smug X] have not even started to grapple with the problem.' Even the very best efforts that, say, offer an immanent critique of skeptical positions tend to reveal primarily that it is very difficult to be a (certain kind of) skeptic consistently. This is treated as an objection. But, duh, 'I already know sense how difficult it is to be me.' That the non-skeptic has a more satisfying life is good for her.

I often complain that in professional philosophy there is a tendency to cherry pick objections (often correlated with the perceived status of another philosopher).+ I often claim that we ought to have a norm that we seek out alternative viewpoints and the strongest possible objections from perspectives distinct from ours. When I do this, I basically tacitly embrace a partially agonistic model of philosophy. The idea being that philosophical development is enhanced when we have rival viewpoints come into combative contact with each other and are improved by their mutual agonistic albeit genuine engagement.

As others have noted (see here Michael Della Rocca), the methods of reflective equilibrium, intuition mongering, and cost-benefit analysis of theoretical virtues have enormous status quo even confirmation bias built into them. What I'd like to see is a lot more of a kind of stress testing of concepts (see this paper by Stone, which is suggestive). This would shift us from a confirming bias, to a more (ahh) Popperian ethos. (The interesting Popper, not falsificationism.) If mirabile dictu I were to get my way on this, it would only make philosophy more robust.

By contrast, Liam's post (which echoes the loveliest parts of Carnap's program with a surprisingly Husserlian/Levinasian sensibility) opens the door to a much more humanistic understanding of philosophy. The very point of the enterprise would be to facilitate mutual understanding. From the philosophical analyst's perspective the point of analysis or conceptual engineering, then, is not getting the concepts right (or to design them for ameliorative and feasible political programs), but to find ways to understand, or enter into, one's interlocutor life world. To see how radical this is, I just want to note the contrast with the other humanistic ethos of philosophy as a means to self-knowledge often inscribed (with a nod to Socrates or Descartes) with the slogan that the unexamined life is not worth living, 

To be sure, philosophical-translators (recall, when I discussed the transformative effects of entering into another's life-world) and historians of philosophy of a certain sensibility are quite practiced in developing skills to enter into the life-worlds of philosophers from different epochs. And precisely to generate some such understanding, I have argued that we (speaking briefly as a historian of philosophy) must reject actor's categories as well as the (imperialistic) application of our own categories, but must be willing to introduce or coin new concepts. (That's a creative and risky practice.) But because our subjects don't talk back, historians can pick to be interested in a very narrow range of the life-world of another. 

Liam's program -- conceptual engineering to enter into lifeworlds of others -- has some fascinating consequences. First, it would open the door to structural collaboration between ethnographic researchers and philosophers. Let's call that (with a nod to my colleague, Enzo Rossi) in honor of the developing interdisciplinary research community PPA+ (that is, philosophy, politics, anthropology). Second, given the increasing cosmopolitan presence of professional philosophy across the globe, and cultural diversification within philosophy, it would generate ambitious, open-ended research programs of bridging attempts among different philosophical cultures, traditions, and research programs. (In addition to Liam's work in Africana philosophy, I think Graham Priest's work are paradigmatic examples of this.)*

There is a lot more to be said about both consequences. But I just want to note two side effects of the second: (i) it would help limit the known risk of philosophy facilitating imperial and hegemonic projects in which our concepts become a form of domination (recall this post; or see the work of Serene Khader (recall).) And (ii) it would be a generative source of philosophical innovation.

To be sure, conceptual engineering to enter into lifeworlds of others is risky: one may be exposed to stuff one prefers not to hear (including for reasons of tact or respect); and one may end up in a philosophical place different from the one was satisfied to defend at all cost. 

 

Chiang on metahumans (and the great chain of being)

The question is, are these worthwhile undertakings for scientists? Some call them a waste of time, likening them to a Native American research effort into bronze smelting when steel tools of European manufacture are readily available. This comparison might be more apt if humans were in competition with metahumans, but in today's economy of abundance there is no evidence of such competition. In fact, it is important to recognize that — unlike most previous low-technology cultures confronted with a high-technology one — humans are in no danger of assimilation or extinction.

There is still no way to augment a human brain into a metahuman one; the Sugimoto gene therapy must be performed before the embryo begins neurogenesis in order for a brain to be compatible with DNT. This lack of an assimilation mechanism means that human parents of a metahuman child face a difficult choice: to allow their child DNT interaction with metahuman culture, and watch him or her grow incomprehensible to them; or else restrict access to DNT during the child's formative years, which to a metahuman is deprivation like that suffered by Kaspar Hauser. It is not surprising that the percentage of human parents choosing the Sugimoto gene therapy for their children has dropped almost to zero in recent years.

As a result, human culture is likely to survive well into the future, and the scientific tradition is a vital part of that culture. Hermeneutics is a legitimate method of scientific inquiry and increases the body of human knowledge just as original research did. Moreover, human researchers may discern applications overlooked by metahumans, whose advantages tend to make them unaware of our concerns.

For example, imagine if research offered hope of a different intelligence-enhancing therapy, one that would allow individuals to gradually ‘upgrade’ their minds to a level equivalent to that of a metahuman. Such a therapy would offer a bridge across what has become the greatest cultural divide in our species' history, yet it might not even occur to metahumans to explore it; that possibility alone justifies the continuation of human research.

We need not be intimidated by the accomplishments of metahuman science. We should always remember that the technologies that made metahumans possible were originally invented by humans, and they were no smarter than we. Ted Chiang (2000) "Catching crumbs from the table," in Nature.*

The existence of metahumans (or enhanced, human cyborgs) reminds us that developments in technologies generate violations of Descartes' causal principle: what is more perfect can arise from what is less perfect. Technologies change how we conceive of what is humanly possible.+ In addition, technology helps generate violations of the great chain of being; there are  in-commensurable gaps between humans and metahumans.

Whether any technology can remove scarcity may well be doubted unless the metahumans can practice moral checks on themselves and nudge the humans into breeding at a replacement rate. Of course, if the metahumans did so, it's possible the humans would not know about it ([recall] in the way the machines/artificial intelligence nudge humans in Iain Banks' The Culture series).

The narration assumes that scarcity is the main motive for genocide. It also implies that being capable of developing science and technology, including presumably meta weapons of meta mass destruction, would generate an ethics of their proper use. Since metahumans were initially invented by humans no smarter than us, this is to be doubted. Perhaps the thought is that the ability to dominate nature (abundance, etc.) removes the desire to dominate (destroy/exploit, etc.) lesser beings. But let's leave that aside.

When I was reflecting on the story, I was initially unsure parents would indeed choose to be able to communicate with their children, and so continue their traditions even form of life, rather than choosing for their kids to be among the cognitive elite (the metahumans). Often today, it seems, designer babies represent not just the desire for healthy kids, but parents' status and economic aspirations for their children. Such parents appear to act for their childrens' good. 

But, upon second thought, Chiang's moral psychology seems persuasive. Because despite the emphasis on 'choice' in selling human enhancement technologies, our contemporary parents of designer babies are not really showing much respect for the (let's call it) autonomy of their children. Rather what they de facto do is lengthen the odds that the structure of their (parental/social) values/traditions are passed on and reproduced. 

Part of the joke of the story -- which first appeared in Nature -- is that academic journals have stopped being the vehicle for publishing original research. They are now mostly in the business of hermeneutics trying and trailing to understand metahuman science. For us the joke may be less funny because with the opacity of machine learning this possibility may well be shading into reality. Even so, it would indeed be funny if the success of an all-knowing data science would regenerate the felt need for a kind of science of interpretation that could help decode the revelations of a hidden intelligence. When computer science departments start hiring big-data-hermeneuticists, the heirs of Gadamer or Davidson can laugh at our analytic philosophers.++ Of course, with machine algorithms, there may simply be no there, there. And so this hermeneutics may well have to rely on an intentional stance.

Not unlike AL-Farabi's God (at least this is Al-Ghazali's charge), the metahumans may be t uninterested in the physical going-ons of mere mortals. One's position reflects one's choices of research topic. Chiang suggests that faced with the existence of scientifically superior metahumans, scientific humans would embrace if not standpoint epistemology, then the argument from epistemic diversity, from self-interest. If these human scientists are right, then the great chain of being would be restored.

 

On Games and Society: On Iain Banks' The Player of Games, reflexivity and transformative experience.

Gurgeh never ceased to be fascinated by the way a society's games revealed so much about its ethos, it's philosophy, its very soul.--Iain M. Banks (1988) The Player of Games, p. 30. 

The Player of Games is a clever science fiction novel, but here I want to treat it as a contribution to Socratic Political Theory (recall here and here). The action starts in an imperial, utopian somewhat anarchic (there are few laws) society with little scarcity (nor money) and not much death full of semi-clever drones that serve and keep humans alive. This intergalactic human society is surrounded by an, in part, hidden machine-culture in which super smart machines and networks reveal consciousness and intelligence that outstrip anything we are capable of. Jointly these two societies inhabit the Culture, which is extremely powerful in the galaxy. Its ruling ideology (it's called a 'philosophy' by themselves) is 'Strength in depth; redundancy; over-design." (239) This is an ideology of precautionary principles. In this volume of the series, we never learn what keeps the machines from killing the humans they outsmart. Perhaps the humans are thought the useful redundancy of the Culture.

The Culture is committed to a Whorfian thesis about language, and its language has been designed to facilitate the flourishing of the Culture. The Culture itself is governed by the ruling machines in the manner of Government House utilitarians. The humans kind of know this, but they can never be quite sure what the machines are up to. This turns out to be an important, structural element in the novel. The Culture is resistant to creative innovation (at least among the  humans). 

Prior to the start of the narrative of the novel, the Culture encounters another technologically skillful civilization, the Empire of Azad. This is a militant and hierarchical meritocracy.  This society has not solved the problem of scarcity, and so it is based on property (or "ownership" 114); it both needs conquest abroad and material inequality, which has severe consequences for the quality of life of those at the bottom of the hierarchies. (It has abolished formal slavery -- something they are said to be proud of, but there is wage-slavery.) Part of the fun of the novel is that the Empire of Azad seems a lot more familiar than the Culture to us readers, but that the representatives of the Culture finds it disorienting and (despite all the glitter and color) inferior.

The meritocracy of Azad has two important characteristics. A game, conveniently also called 'Azad,' (which means 'machine, or perhaps system' [76]) is the main selection mechanism of status within the hierarchy. The game (Azad) reflects (like a "model" (76)) the social reality of Azad, "whoever succeeds at the game succeeds in life; the same qualities are required in each to ensure dominance." (76) But because the game, Azad, is such an important social institution, it also structures social reality: "such is the pervasive nature of the idea of the game within the society that just by believing that, they make it so," (77; emphasis in original.) It is to Banks's credit that he does not merely characterize such reflexivity, but also shows the ways such reflexivity can be both extremely robust (the game Azad and the Empire so structured have co-evolved for a long time) and quite fragile--if the idea can be undermined in the right way the whole society can collapse rapidly. Interestingly enough, from the point of view of political philosophy, is the observation that in such a (partially hereditary meritocracy), the opinion of the people is still vital to the survival of the hierarchy--propaganda precisely consists in giving the people what they want to hear.  

The second characteristic I just mention, but deserves fuller discussion. The Empire of Azad has three sexes: males (with testes and penis), and two kinds of females: one with a reversible vagina and ovaries and one just with a womb (74). This sexual division of labor facilitates a social hierarchy with the first kind of women on top and the other on the bottom. The novel was first published in 1988, and one can see that Banks has thought through some of the potential implications of surrogacy and genetic engineering which were then becoming common among our wealthy.   

The novel is structured around a subtle distinction between a mere game player and a game player that is a 'true gambler.' (21) The former, presumably, enjoys play and the thrill of winning, and does not concern us here. However, the latter "needs the excitement of potential loss,even ruin, to feel wholly alive." It is not obvious one needs to be a true gambler in order to be a great or greatest game player. In fact, the novel is most interesting on this very point. The main protagonist (Gurgeh), who is the best game player of the culture and also among its leading game-theorists, discovers that he is such a true gambler.* There is a revealing, seemingly unconnected detail that illuminates this point. Gurgeh's sexual and personal identity is remarkably un-fluid given the society he inhabits. (Sex changes and sexual preferences are very fluid.)  He is one of the very few in his society who has not never changed sex, or (being a man) has slept with a man (24). That is, it's clear his identity is tied up with both extreme loss aversion and treating loss as existential. But in the right circumstances the true gambler is willing to risk all. 

As an aside, the narrator of the novel, who turns out to be one of the super-smart drones who are part of of the machine network that runs the Culture, explains at one point that in the ruling ideology, dubbed 'dynamic (mis)behaviorism' (a species of consequentialism) that identity is less important than humans think: "We are what we do, not what we think. Only the interactions count." (231) The logical problems such a view encounters are not confronted. 

But it turns out the fluidity of identity in another sense also accompanies the true gambler (who is both risk averse and eager for existential games). For, as it happens to be a true gambler, and to know it about oneself, involves playing games that one knows may change who one is--a so-called transformative experience: "he would change; he would be a different person at the end of it; he could help but change, take on something of the game itself; that would be inevitable." (82) That is, if a true gambler plays a game in which one can suffer great, existential loss  (and I am leaving that un-defined in this post) then by definition she can know in advance of the game that she can come out transformed without knowing the content of the transformation. The point of playing the game is not to be transformed, it's feeling the thrill of being alive in the right sort of way; but the transformation is a known  by-product if and only if one survives. (Of course, this is compatible with the existence of all kinds of other transformative experiences.) The game of Azad can also generate transformative experiences for those players who don't expect it.

Let me wrap up, Gurgeh has been trained up, we may say, on playing many different kind of games throughout his life. Even so, in his game playing he represents the Culture. As it turns out, however, this is sufficient to beat the very best folk in Azad at their own game. He is more adaptable than they are and this somehow represents a feature of the Culture. However, it turns out, as he gradually becomes aware, that he himself was a pawn -- even a pawn that could be sacrificed -- by the  machine-network that runs the Culture. It is worth reflecting on this momentarily.

In the Culture, something we learn early, the study of game theory and the study of philosophy are sharply distinguished (p.15)  This is significant, as I hope to suggest in (closing in) what follows. Gurgeh is very good at the former. We only get hints of the game theory, but among the humans of The Culture it seems to be a mixture between the craft involved in the study of positions in the matter of say Chess and Go, and the more formal kind of apparatus we find in say our (Earth) game theory used in economics or political science. 

Again, Gurgeh is notable for being good at playing games and theorizing about it. He also recognizes that games and society are intimately linked. But strikingly his contributions to game theory is all about games one can play and not the society in which they are embedded and (can) model.* This lacuna in his theory, perhaps even a consequence of the way the discipline of his culture is structured [recall the Whorfianism], is especially striking in virtue of the fact that his very own game theory involves a metaphysics in which "reality is game" because "physics at its most fundamental, the very fabric of our universe, results directly from the interaction of certain fairly simple rules, and chance." (41) 

So, one of the indirect points of the book is that only the insertion of what I have been calling Socratic Political Theory, a meta-theory in which the games and structures of societies are analyzed in comparative fashion [More and Le Guin (recall) are astoundingly good at this], completes the proper union of philosophy and game theory. (That's an ideal game theory.) We learn that Gurgeh is fascinated by the subject matter (see the quote above), but that he lacks skill in it. Absent such political science one is, for example, slow to recognize, as Gurgeh is, that one can be a pawn in a game played by hidden powers behind the scenes, that is, the invisible ruling powers of the Culture.

 

 

On Wanting To Be A Public Philosopher

• Do you actually want to? 

  • ...nobody should have to be a public philosopher. Although it can be valuable, it can also be risky, and it isn't suitable for every kind of philosopher or for every kind of philosophical work.
  • If you are only here in response to external pressure in this direction, and this is not something you're motivated to do for your own reasons, or for its own sake, IMO you're within your rights to resist that pressure citing the risks and/or the inappropriateness of this kind of work for your situation.

• Be aware of the risks.

  • Online hate and abuse are disproportionately directed at women, POC, LGBTQ people and other groups who experience discrimination, but anyone can be targeted. There are psychological, emotional, legal, financial, and other risks involved in public-facing work. They are often unpredictable.
  • Hate and abuse do not only occur online, even if they begin there. If you become a public figure your personal safety may be put at risk through e.g. doxxing, stalking, and dangerous physical mail. Academics are typically easy to target as our work addresses and phone numbers are posted freely online by our universities and our physical office spaces are often accessible to anyone.
  • If you belong to a university or other institution, find out what support and protections they provide. If nothing (or too little) is available, you might want to suggest/request/demand that they do better. Especially if your institution, department, or funding agency is actively encouraging you to engage in the risky business of public scholarship, they should support and help you when you do.
  • Some colleagues, in philosophy and elsewhere in the academy, do not respect public-facing scholarship. Some will even view it as evidence that you've lost interest in—or failed at—"real" philosophy. This can be an issue in securing employment as well as for promotion, tenure, and other forms of assessment.
  • Even positive experiences in the public arena can be exhausting and unpredictable. For example, media interest tends to come in viral waves, the timing of which can depend on all kinds of factors beyond your control and won't respect your teaching schedule.

• Have something to say.

  • It should be something you care enough about, and that enough people will want to hear, to make your efforts worthwhile. If you are going to make a serious investment of time, emotional energy, research funding, and other things into public work, you need to believe in your project and your message.
  • I started to do public-facing work in earnest when I started to research the philosophy of love. My work on the epistemology of arithmetic is no less important to me, but it isn't suitable for the same kind of public audience, and that's OK (see above).

• Consider who you want to be in the public arena.

  • If you develop a public profile, you will almost certainly be judged both positively and negatively for pretty much anything you do. Under these circumstances, integrity is challenging but essential. I recommend thinking carefully in advance about your intended public image, persona, personal brand, or whatever you like to call it.
  • I created a list of features I would aim to embody in my public-facing self. You don't need to be that explicit about it, but it helps to have a sense of direction and personal ethics to maintain consistency as you build a platform and audience.
  • Think ahead about your preferences with respect to privacy, as well as those of people around you (such as family members, collaborators, and colleagues). Keep these conversations current—people and situations change.

• Know that you will need different skill sets.

  • Philosophers trained in a typical contemporary philosophy PhD program are not trained to be public philosophers. Don't expect it to be easy to transfer what you already know into the public sphere. Although often ignored, trivialized, or disparaged, everything listed in Part 2 below is an achievement.

  • I've found learning to write and speak for public audiences very challenging. I experienced a steep learning curve. I'm still learning rapidly...--Carrie Jenkins " So You Want To Be A Public Philosopher?" [HT DailyNous; all emphases in original]

I warmly recommend Carrie Jenkins's post to would-be-public philosophers, their would-be-peers and evaluators, and people that love public philosophers (for whatever reason). The piece is full of important insights and suggestions (there is a lot more than I quoted above), and I would echo her focus on integrity (recall). In particular, I really like how she calls attention to the significance of advance planning. Importantly, Jenkins calls attention to the responsibilities of institutions, not the least universities and grant agencies, that encourage public philosophy, but often provide shamefully few resources to support colleagues that are being threatened or abused/harassed from various angles or become targets of political campaigns. (The previous sentence draws on my experiences of my departmental colleagues and myself.) In addition, Jenkins is right to call attention to the reputational risks of doing public philosophy. We do have a lot of colleagues who fail to respect public-facing scholarship, but use it, as she suggests, as a proxy for lack of philosophical ability.

I like how Jenkins speaks of "public-facing" work/scholarship. It is clear that she tries to make it symmetrical with, let's call it, peer-facing scholarship. She is right to emphasize that they draw on different skill sets, and that our professional training does not really prepare us for public-facing work. (Having said that, European universities and grant agencies are increasingly offering seminars to address some of the required skill set as part of graduate training.) Her underlying (tacit) model, however, is that of publicizing insights she developed through her peer-facing expertise.  That is, for Jenkins some peer-facing expertise is suitable for development to a public audience (and some not). That is, this is really a matter of (to use European technocratic-speek) disseminating peer-evaluated research findings to a wide audience.

To be sure, Jenkins's model is compatible with skipping publication in peer-facing outlets (journals) and hybrid versions (publishing some material for fellow experts and other material only in public venues, but with expert-quality documentation available--Piketty did a version of this and, perhaps, also Jenkins in her work on love). But my point is that public philosophy so conceived has an implied directionally from peer-facing expertise to public-facing exposure. There is nothing wrong with this conception. But it is not the only possible conception of the genre (for more of my views on public philosophy, recall here, here on Dotson's service philosophy, and here on some blogging as public philosophy).

Before I get to to that, it is worth noting that even in Jenkins's model of public philosophy, the person, who is a philosopher, and who faces the public, may well change. Jenkins hints at this by calling attention to the many skills and new dispositions one acquires by doing public philosophy. Even leaving aside (due to opportunity costs) that one may not be able to participate with the same dedication and attention to peer-facing philosophy, one may become a different kind of philosopher entirely. Here the metaphor of face is not innocent; by professionally facing others, one also becomes -- go read your Levinas - part of their community. A public-facing orientation generates duties, loyalties, and obligations and these when taken serious, in turn, transform the person. I don't mean the previous sentence to be my last word on it (it's not the first), but as the Hypatia debacle revealed (recall), research ethics are not fully developed within professional philosophy yet.

And this gets me to another possible conception of the genre. It is quite possible for public-facing philosophy to influence or displace peer-facing philosophy. (To give a standard example: Socrates undoubtedly talked quite a bit to Plato, one hopes, but quite possibly spent a lot more time talking to non-philosophers.) By this I mean that public-philosophy entails a receptivity toward the risk that one's peer-facing philosophy is not just influenced by one's engagements with public others, but, more importantly, shaped by one's public-facing activities. For example, and it's not my area of expertise, but it is my sense from reading Judith Butler that gender theory was shaped by (no doubt, theory-mediated) encounters with lived experience that in certain respects ran well in advance of gender theory. (Some such analogous transformative experience occurred to me through my engagements with professional economists--I didn't go native [despite being employed in a social science department], but I look very differently at my own profession and its history now. I am confident plenty of philosophers of mind, say, were changed by their immersion in some of the cognitive sciences.)

The way such public-facing work can shape peer-faced work is unpredictable. Some will start muttering about lowered standards and lack of seriousness--and, indeed, there are genuine risks. But the would-be-shaping of peer-faced scholarship is, in fact, a central argument in favor of public-facing work. As I have noted before, analytical philosophy has low barriers to entry and little in the way of doctrinal or even (much) methodological expertise. At its best, it has a sponge-like capacity to constantly rejuvenate itself -- some would say be disciplined -- by way of outward engagement with mathematics, the other sciences, history, and even the arts, etc. There is no reason to end rejuvenation by way of facing-other-expert-areas. But, in addition, if we are being encouraged to face and transform the public, we should not be afraid to be transformed by it.

On Public Philosophy

Today, an invited guest post on Political Transformative Experience that I authored appeared at Daily Nous (thank you Justin and Helen--recall this post (when I called it Transformative Political Experience; do I have to settle on a stable name?); go check it out and explore the whole discussion.

By public philosophy one can mean three things:  first, interventions or participation in public debates by professional philosophers and those trained in professional philosophy. The previous sentence is still vague, but I am relying on a distinction between philosophy withdrawn from the public and geared toward fellow philosophers and would-be-philosophers (e.g., journal articles and seminar discussion are not 'public' in the relevant sense), and those philosophical utterances oriented toward a non-philosophical audience (a newspaper editorial, a television appearance, etc.). There are some tricky cases: a (taped) lecture to a university-wide audience may well drift into such public participation; expert advice to technocrats is not really public in the relevant sense, but may well influence the public. Second, a genre of writing and speaking by intellectuals, who are not professional philosophers -- and do not engage in the debates/discussions among professionals --, yet engage public(s) on philosophical topics. (Sometimes these are topics that are not much discussed by recent professional philosophy.) Both species of direct public philosophy can draw on the results/insights or distinctions of professional philosophy, but need not do so.

Both kinds of public philosophy require special skills that are distinct from those that allow one to flourish in professional context(s). These special skills involve an ability to combine communicative, accessibility (note, not clarity or simplicity) and public agenda. Much public philosophy ignores intellectual specialization within the profession in order to offer a broader narrative, even a corrective to the public speech of specialist experts, in order to promote some (or a) common good. Such public philosophy can be done by way of public unmasking of practices, by the introduction of distinctions, by clarifying conceptual entailment, and by deploying systematic narratives, etc. There are contemporary examples of philosophers who are very good at public and professional philosophy (and here I ignore the divisions between analytical and continental styles).  There are also interesting issues associated with cases of professional philosopher leveraging status (gained from the professional credit economy) within the profession in order to participate in and benefit from public philosophy (and vice versa).

I am a friend of public philosophy (although do not think it should be expected from professional philosophers) because it enriches public life, even though (a) it can be dangerous to the public and, thereby, to philosophers, and (b) give the public a false image of what philosophy is (public philosophy gets to be taken to be philosophy as such) or what the consensus of all (professional) philosophers might be.  Both (a-b) involve tough questions on both the nature of responsible, public speech that I tend to explore under the heading "Socratic Problem" (which also involves the public role of experts) as well as what I have been calling philosophical integrity, that is, the way(s) in which one's professional arguments, professional credit, and public utterances and comportment cohere.

Before I turn to the third indirect species of public philosophy, I would like to distinguish public philosophy from two closely-related activities: i) punditry and ii) advocacy by professional philosophy. Professional philosophers can be pundits (from the Hindi pandit)--opinion-makers informed by learning. I don't think professional philosophers have any special expertise as pundits (and on the whole I try to avoid it, although last week with less success). A lot of would-be-public-philosophy is really  service to a cause or a political agenda and often certain cosmopolitan preferences are taken to constitute rationality. To be sure, such partisan or service philosophy -- be it in the seminar room or in public -- is real philosophy (recall that according to Dotson this just is philosophy.) But such service does not tend to presuppose a common good--if anything it is often legitimately suspicious of the common good; it recognizes that the status quo is zero-sum and, it nobly, wishes to redress a political (economic, etc.) imbalance in the name of justice, truth, morality, etc. There is also a species of (naive) philosophy that fails to understand how its public utterances predictably facilitate the rise of injustice (we may call it disservice philosophy).

Thus, I associate the 'public' in public philosophy with a shared life or common good. That is, public philosophy so understood is committed to a form of minimal political unity--a unity that is constituted by (educational) practices, narratives, and public understandings that facilitate some dispositions conducive to minimal, political union. (In a community of angels or philosophers there would be no need of public philosophy.) Public philosophy plays (as Platonizing philosophers have long recognized) a role in the would-be-civic religion of society.

I have no doubt that many of my peers think that what I have called philosophy as 'advocacy' (or Dotson's service) just is public philosophy and that civic religion just is a bunch of lies and (if they were to comment on this post) will accuse me of a lack of warmth (if not worse) toward justice. Some of these (my closest intellectual friends), accepting as an article of faith the priority of the right over the good, are convinced that it is the duty of (public) philosophy to promote public justice and cosmopolitan morality. Allowing that there exists some such duty, I demur from accepting that is the main or only duty of philosophical speech.

So far, I have emphasized the role of individuals as public philosophers. But facilitating or enhancing social norms, public practices, and political institutions conducive to a common good can also be an indirect species of public philosophy (that is the third kind of public philosophy). For such practices can instantiate rational arrangements that make possible, perhaps, constitute a common good which I will provisionally define (recall) as mutual accommodation and modest forms of mutual receptivity such that public conversation -- not war or domination -- can be continued.