New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Deductive proofs: from premises to conclusion, or from conclusion to premises?

(Cross-posted at M-Phi)

It is fair to say that the ‘received view’ about deductive inference, and about inference in general, is that it proceeds from premises to conclusion so as to produce new information (the conclusion) from previously available information (the premises). It is this conception of deductive inference that gives rise to the so-called ‘scandal of deduction’, which concerns the apparent lack of usefulness of a deductive inference, given that in a valid deductive inference the conclusion is already ‘contained’, in some sense or another, in the premises. This is also the conception of inference underpinning e.g. Frege’s logicist project, and much (if not all) of the discussions in the philosophy of logic of the last many decades. (In fact, it is also the conception of deduction of the most famous ‘deducer’ of all times, Sherlock Holmes.)

That an inference, and a deductive inference in particular, proceeds from premises to conclusion may appear to be such an obvious truism that no one in their sane mind would want to question it. But is this really how it works when an agent is formulating a deductive argument, say a mathematical demonstration?

Male Lactation in the History of Feminism (Diderot, De Grouchy...)

"Je sais qu'il y a eu des hommes qui ont fait jaillir le lait de leurs mamelles" [that is, "I know that there have been men who have brought forth milk from their breasts."]--Diderot (1754) Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature PENSÉES SUR L'INTERPRÉTATION DE LA NATURE, 56. [I thank Charles T. Wolfe for locating the passage; and his general insistence that Diderot (recall) ought not be neglected.--ES]

This post was inspired by reading some unpublished papers by Sandrine Berges, who is a leading authority on the political philosophy of Wollstonecraft and Sophie de Grouchy. Prof. Berges points out that in contrast to Rossseau and Wollstonecraft, De Grouchy rejects the close link between birthing and nursing in her (1797) Letters on Sympathy, which De Grouchy attached to her translation of Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments. De Grouchy's move opens up the possibility of recognizing nursing as a distinct and politically significant activity that can be valued (morally, politically, and economically) by society within the division of labor. In fact, if Diderot is right, nursing need not be a gender-specific activity. Motherhood, thus, need not confine women to domestic careers.

The soul of man pictured

Source: Jan Comenius, Orbis pictus
(Syracuse, NY: C. W. Bardeen, 1887).

The illustration above is from Jan Comenius’ celebrated, oft-reprinted school-book. The Orbis sensualium pictus presents, in words and in pictures, “all the fundamental things in the world and all the acts of life”. In pictures because, after all, “in Intellectu autem nihil est, nisi priùs fuerit in Sensu” (a famous Aristotelian slogan). Knowing requires us to exercise our senses, perceiving by their means the differences of things, so as to lay the foundations of wisdom and right action. (Pictures, I should note, were still an expensive novelty, especially in books meant for children. Comenius had to have the Orbis printed in Nuremberg, not in Patak where he was teaching.)

An appreciative Remark on Derrida

Thus in order to be an original, he is obliged to contribute to the ruin of a language, which a century sooner he would have helped to improve. Though such writers may be criticised, their superior abilities must still command success. The ease there is in copying their defects, soon persuades men of indifferent capacities, that they shall acquire the same degree of reputation. Then begins the reign of subtil and strained conceits, of affected antitheses, of specious paradoxes, of frivolous turns, of far-fetched expressions, of new-fangled words, and in short of the jargon of persons whose understandings have been debauched by bad metaphysics. The public applauds: frivolous and ridiculous writings, the beings of the day, are surprisingly multiplied." --Condillac, An Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, 

In Condillac the "frivolous" is that "which seems worthless" (Commerce and Government. {Condillac is one of the great eighteenth century economists.})

Let's grant his enemies that Derrida's writings and social consequences instantiate such a reign of "subtil and strained conceits, of affected antitheses, of specious paradoxes, of frivolous turns, of far-fetched expressions, of new-fangled words, and in short of the jargon." According to Condillac, "bad metaphysics" is a science that enters into the "nature and causes" of things. (2) We can make the analogy work if we allow that Derrida's followers are the product  of a scientific age (or Husserlian phenomenology). Yet, the passage from Condillac would also exonerate Derrida in a certain sense; he would be the product of a historical circumstance--he would be born too late to contribute to the improvement of his language.

The Genealogy of Genealogy (II): Diderot and the Pursuit of Truths

Recall that in Letters to Serena (1705), Toland’s genealogical method is a debunking enterprise; it is applied only to concepts whose truth cannot be secured by natural methods of inquiry. (Toland graciously or prudentially allows that revelation may secure truth.) In Toland-style ‘genealogy’ a concept is treated "like some others in philosophy, had a beginning at a certain time, or from a certain author who was the inventor thereof, and which was favoured or opposed as peoples' persuasion, interest or inclination led them." I have been unable to find an instance where Toland applies this genealogical method to concepts whose truth, if any, can be secured by natural methods. This move was left to Diderot (also to Adam Smith, but he delayed publication of his History of Astronomy by half a century).

At the start of Diderot’s (1754) Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature, Diderot offers a ‘natural history’ of each of the individual sciences; he treats “geometry,” by which Diderot means – judging from the names he associates with it (e.g., “Bernoulli, Euler, Maupertuis, Clairaut, Fontaine, and D’Alembert”) – mathematical physics or, especially, rational mechanics, as the exemplary science. In section 5, Diderot divides the life-cycle of a science into three stages: (i) a "birth;” (ii) a period of high prestige; and (iii) a decaying period when there are diminishing returns of enquiry within it. Finally, there is (iv) the completed edifice—confusingly, already discussed in the previous section (4; all my references below are to sections).

A.N. Prior: Historian of Philosophy!

What follows is a minor pet-peeve: there is a CFP for the Arthur Prior Centenary Conference in August 2014 in Oxford. It looks like a wonderful event. I am a bit annoyed that Prior's role as a historian of philosophy is not part of the list of official topics of the conference. For, Prior is absolutely crucial figure in the revival of interest in the history of philosophy within an Analytical context.  In 1950 C. D. Broad reviewed Prior's Logic and the Basis of Ethics in Mind, and aptly summarized it as follow:

"This book is concerned primarily with the so-called 'naturalistic fallacy' in ethics, with the history of its occurrence and the refutations of it in the works of English moralists before the publication of Principia Ethica, and with the logical questions involved... The first and last chapters are explicitly devoted to the refutation of this fallacy, the former to the logic and the latter to the history of such refutations. Chapters II, III, and IV deal with the autonomy of ethics, with special reference respectively to Cudworth, to Clarke and Reid, and to Sidgwick and his contemporaries. Chapter V, entitled Promising as Special Creation, is concerned with a theory as to the nature of promises which was held by Reid and has been revived by Mr. Carritt. The remaining three chapters are devoted to theories which identify or assimilate moral fittingness and unfittingness with truth or falsity. Chapter VI deals with the early history of this doctrine with special reference to Wollaston and Adam Smith; Chapter VII with a form of it which Mr. Prior ascribes to Dr. Popper; and Chapter VIII with one which he ascribes to Professor Findlay."

Historians of Philosophy serve the undergraduates

'The history of philosophy as practiced by professional philosophers [hereafter HOPPP] is a service to the rest of the profession; HOPPP's scholarly output is primarily geared to facilitate (undergraduate) teaching.' This suspicion [hereafter HOPPPS2P] had lodged in my mind when a few years ago I started to reflect on (a) the extremely low citation rates for journal articles in HOPPP, which suggests that there are no genuine controversies nor classic papers that ground future research; (b) the lack of concern about the proliferation of Handbooks and Companions that are effectively slowing down research in HOPPP; (c) the extreme difficulty of getting a position in HOPPP if one is not working on a canonical figure. (There are, of course, extreme regional differences on (c); in some places there are no positions for HOPPPers; in other places so-called 'systematic' and 'practical' philosophers do not even regard HOPPP as philosophy, but let it exist out of institutional inertia, benign neglect, etc.) But I wondered if I could ground ground HOPPPS2P in hard data.

Luckily, Michael Beaney, the thoughtful editor of British Journal for the History of Philosophy (BJHP), wrote a review of the last 20 years of the BJHP, with some recommendations for the future. Now BJHP is a young journal, but it has become one of the top venues in the sub-field. (In Europe it certainly also helps that it is listed in Thompson's Web of Knowledge/Science index so that publication can count in the right metrics.) Beaney and his team compiled data on the contents of the first twenty years.

"What this shows is that almost half the journal has been devoted to the work of just seven philosophers – the ‘big seven’ of early modern philosophy – and that around two-thirds of the journal has been devoted to the work of just sixteen philosophers, with three more early modern philosophers included as well as Plato and Aristotle from the ancient period and four [Hegel, Mill, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche--ES] nineteenth-century philosophers.

Weekly Philo of Economics: Spinoza, Hume Adam Smith, and the "Love of System" (with help from Toland)

The same principle, the same love of system, the same regard to the beauty of order, of art and contrivance, frequently serves to recommend those institutions which tend to promote the public welfare. When a patriot exerts himself for the improvement of any part of the public police, his conduct does not always arise from pure sympathy with the happiness of those who are to reap the benefit of it. It is not commonly from a fellow-feeling with carriers and waggoners that a public-spirited man encourages the mending of high roads. When the legislature establishes premiums and other encouragements to advance the linen or woollen manufactures, its conduct seldom proceeds from pure sympathy with the wearer of cheap or fine cloth, and much less from that with the manufacturer or merchant. The perfection of police, the extension of trade and manufactures, are noble and magnificent objects. The contemplation of them pleases us, and we are interested in whatever can tend to advance them. They make part of the great system of government, and the wheels of the political machine seem to move with more harmony and ease by means of them. We take pleasure in beholding the perfection of so beautiful and grand a system, and we are uneasy till we remove any obstruction that can in the least disturb or encumber the regularity of its motions. All constitutions of government, however, are valued only in proportion as they tend to promote the happiness of those who live under them. This is their sole use and end. From a certain spirit of system, however, from a certain love of art and contrivance, we sometimes seem to value the means more than the end, and to be eager to promote the happiness of our fellow-creatures, rather from a view to perfect and improve a certain beautiful and orderly system, than from any immediate sense or feeling of what they either suffer or enjoy. There have been men of the greatest public spirit, who have shown themselves in other respects not very sensible to the feelings of humanity. (The Theory of Moral Sentiments, IV.1.11, 185)

Smith identifies a particular intellectual, even theoretical feeling: the so-called, "love of system." In the passage above, "the love of system" is mostly identified with positive consequences through its ability to compensate for our all-to-human lack of emotional interest in the well-being of others. It do so, especially, when such love of system slides into the spirit of system and when that, in turn, is mixed into public spiritedness. However, as most readers of Smith have noticed later in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) in passages added to the sixth edition of TMS (1790), Smith emphasizes the horrible things that can occur when this love of system is transformed into a "spirit of system" and turns into the ideologically-driven "madness of fanaticism." (TMS VI.2.2.15, 232) Commentators tend to discern in this allusions to the unfolding French Revolution. And it might be thought that what is being targeted is the influence of Rousseau, who as many commentators have noted is, in fact, clearly alluded to in the pages just before the passage quoted at the start of this post. (TMS IV.1.8-9, 182-3)  But nowhere does Smith refer to Rousseau's philosophy, which with he was very well acquainted, as a "system," and it has never been satisfactory shown why from Smith's vantage point the French Revolution would have involved "love of system."

Is Straussianism all wrong, everywhere, all the time?

Given the justified lack of popularity of the neo-cons (and Leo Strauss' purported influence on them), I suspect many of our readers will say 'yes.' Moreover, many of the best historians of philosophy have a deservedly visceral, negative response to Straussians who substitute numerological obsessions and evidence-free arguments about hidden meanings (in which everything is reduced to will to power) for serious scholarship. Let's call what's being rejected "vulgar Straussianism."  

Even so, esoteric readings of our philosophical past crop up in surprising places. For example, consider two recent books emanating at the time from Vancouver. First, in her important book, Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity (Oxford), Catherine Wilson writes (purportedly quoting Malebranche): "that the crux of a philosopher’s doctrine is to be found in those passages where he defends an unpopular thesis; his defense of accepted theses has no informational value." (p. 148) Let's call this "Wilson's Dictum." In context Wilson is commenting on Walter Charleton's use of the dialogue format; a genre that lends itself to multiple readings and, thus, esotericism.

Note that Wilson's is not evidence-free reading; you only get to attribute an unpopular thesis to an author if s/he asserts it once and would have motive not to call repeated attention to it. Primed by Wilson's focus on Epicureanism, I noticed that Adam Smith  states very clearly in his own voice: “Fortune, which governs the world” (The Theory of Moral Sentiments 2.3.1, [p. 104 in the Glasgow edition]) in a chapter which according to its (perhaps now ironic) title describes the "final cause" of our psychological constitution. Of course, a sentence fragment does not settle the matter against a Providentialist interpretation of Smith, but if one takes Wilson's dictum seriously, merely piling on the Providentialist and Deist passages fails to undermine the credibility of the (shall we say) more neo-Epicurean reading of Smith, which was, by the way, Reid's (see this nice paper by David Fate Norton J.C. Stewart-Robertson, although Reid's argument is different). 

The Genealogy of Genealogy

We tend to associate the practice of genealogy, especially in its unmasking variety, with Nietzsche (or the emulators of Foucault). But teaching Toland's (1704) Letters to Serena reminded me that genealogy has a genealogy that precedes Nietzsche. One of Toland's genealogies focuses on the idea of the immortality of the soul, (the subject of the second letter). In paragraph 1, of Letter 2, the "immortality of the soul" is treated as a "truth" known to classical sources independent from and preceding Biblical revelation (p. 20; in fact, he insists that the doctrine is unknown to the Hebrew Bible (Letter II, p. 56)). In the very next paragraph (2) on the very next page, Toland speaks in his own voice and offers a concise statement of his methodology:

To persons less knowing and unprejudiced than Serena, it would [be] found strange perhaps to hear me speak of the soul's immortality, as of an opinion, which, like some others in philosophy, had a beginning at a certain time, or from a certain author who was the inventor thereof, and which was favoured or opposed as peoples' persuasion, interest or inclination led them. Letters II.2 (p. 21 [I have modernized spelling to some degree--ES].)

Serena is the official addressee of the Letters; she is a high status, educated interlocutor. The preface to the Letters has, in fact, a resounding defense of intellectual, gender equality. Toland suggests that it is either "inveterate custom" or the "design in the men" that causes female exlusion from the "world of learning." In general, Toland thinks nurture is responsible for much of our (very flawed) "second nature" in women and men. So, while Toland accepts a universal human nature, it is according to him extremely plastic. Echoing Plato and Malebranche, he suggests that belief and character formation starts in the womb and is developed (or degenerated by) our major social institutions (family, church, universities, etc.)--he treats our acculturation as inevitable, but as practiced as a form of social disease (cf. "infection.")

Humanist Spinozism (Thomas More, Utopia)

Recently I posted about some fine 'law & economics'-style reasoning in Thomas More's Utopia. In the midst of a critical treatment of the practice of executing convicted thieves, a further argument is added (during an exchange between Raphael Hythloday and John Morton, Archbishop and Cardinal of Canterbury, and at that time also Lord Chancellor of England):

To be short, Moses' law, though it were ungentle and sharp, as a law that was given to bondmen; yea, and them very obstinate, stubborn, and stiff-necked; yet it punished theft by the purse, and not with death. And let us not think that God in the new law of clemency and mercy, under the which he ruleth us with fatherly gentleness, as his dear children, hath given us greater scope and license to execute cruelty, one upon another. Utopia

In context, Hythloday ("talker of nonsense") offers a battery of arguments against the severity of the criminal law of England. Now one of these arguments appeals to the authority of revelation to insist that much capital punishment may be immoral. As if Hythloday is a traditional natural law thinker, he claims that even a "law made by the consent of men" does not make it moral. (More is writing in a period in which the Tudor dynasty has just consolidated its rise to power by the force of arms.) After all, "why may it not likewise by man's constitutions be determined after what sort whoredom, fornication and perjury may be lawful?"

But Hythloday's appeal to revelation is also a bit unusual. For, in the passage quoted at the top of this post Hythloday relies on an explicit and a more daring implicit contrast. The official contrast (i) is between Moses's legal code and the more gentle rule of Christianity. But there is also an implied contrast (ii) between the way one rules a barbarous people (recently liberated from tyranny) and the way one rules a more civilized people. (The implied contrast between the barbarous and civilization, which is extremely popular in later early modern writing, would have been familiar to More from Aristotle's Politics.) The implied contrast (ii) effectively historicizes the Bible, whose commandments are now understood as fitted to a people at a particular time and place in need of strict rule. This strategy is pursued more relentlessly in Spinoza's Theologic0-Political Treatise (e.g., chapter 5; III/75).

Weekly Philo of Economics: It Pays to be Tough on Crime (More's Utopia)

From the early annals of Law & Economics:

[T]here is nobody that knoweth not how unreasonable, yea, how pernicious a thing it is to the weal public, that a thief and an homicide or murderer, should suffer equal and like punishment. For the thief seeing that man, that is condemned for theft in no less jeopardy, nor judged to no less punishment, than him that is convict of manslaughter; through this cogitation only he is strongly and forcibly provoked, and in a manner constrained to kill him whom else he would have but robbed. For the murder once done, he is in less care, and in more hope that the deed shall not be betrayed or known, seeing the party is now dead and rid out of the way, which only might have uttered and disclosed it. But if he chance to be taken and descried, yet he is in no more danger and jeopardy, than if he had committed but single felony. Therefore whiles we go about with such cruelty to make thieves afraid, we provoke them to kill good men.--More, Utopia (Raphael Hythloday to John Morton, Archbishop and Cardinal of Canterbury, and at that time also Lord Chancellor of England).

Raphael Hythloday's argument presupposes that criminals respond to incentives and make a rational cost-benefit analysis. Harsh laws that are said to deter crimes can, in fact, create incentives to commit even more crimes (say, by encouraging the elimination of pesky witnesses at no further cost to the criminal). Of course, it is possible that the Sovereign's incentives may not reside in preventing crimes; Hythloday insinuates in the text that the Sovereign is primarily interested in obtaining fines from criminals and recovering for himself "the thief-stolen thing." Moreover, a fearful, mutually suspicious and "troublesome and noyous in peace" population has other advantages to a Sovereign. Such a population desires a strong Sovereign, and is easier held in awe of it.

No wonder that governments promote tough-on-crime laws.

While the cat's away

Ordinarily, I would never dare post on Hobbes or Spinoza while Eric is around. But as he's off being a cowboy in Arizona, now's my chance. (I'm here following up on yesterday's post.)

Among the great early Modern thinkers, Hobbes famously emphasizes the role of fear in the state of nature in prompting the agreement to form the civil state—and fear of a return to the state of nature once in such a state. The reason we must be afraid in – and of – the the state of nature is the widespread ability of people to kill each other; while asleep, even the strongest can be killed by the weakest (Ryan, 1996; Foucault, 2003; Hull, 2009; on the general relation of reason and passion in Hobbes, see Coli, 2006).

The other great early Modern thinker whom we will treat is Spinoza.  

Adam Smith in The Birth of Biopolitics, reconsidered.

[This is a guest-post by Barry Stocker; check out his blog.--ES]

Recent comments by Eric and John on Foucault’s reading of Adam Smith have made me think about one aspect of Smith’s argument about domestic industry in Wealth of Nations IV.ii; and about the phenomenological aspect of Foucault’s thought.

Smith begins by arguing that ‘domestick industry’ benefits from the ‘invisible hand’, so that the individual with capital directs it to the use of domestic industry rather than foreign industry, for reasons of self interest rather than public good. It is only that this individual does not only think of the ‘revenue of society’, not that he is completely unaware of it. Foucault’s reading is typically schematic in seeing this passage as being about the complete invisibility of the public good. That schematism is part of Foucault’s creativity, but we should always be particularly careful about distinguishing between the sources Foucault uses and the way he uses them in service of developing a schema. Getting back to Smith, he moves onto the argument that free trade is better for a society than protectionism, that is that the revenue of a society benefits more from trade with other countries than the situation in which the stare creates impediments to that trade. This is a shift away from the initial point, and consciously or not, Smith is using a rhetorical strategy to move the hypothetical reader, who prefers state direction of the economy, to first accept free trade within a national economy, and then international free trade.

Returning to the invisibility of the hand, this is fascinating for Foucault, I suggest, because of an underlying familiarity with phenomenology, which clearly takes a lot from Merleau-Ponty as well as Heidegger though Foucault never chooses to to refer to Merleau-Ponty in his publications or lectures. A peculiar situation made even more peculiar when we remember that Merleau-Ponty was one of Foucault’s undergraduate teachers. However, the text by Merleau-Ponty that is key here is The Visible and the Invisible, sadly left unfinished on Merleau-Ponty’s death.

Weekly Philo of Economics: Adam Smith's Third Invisible Hand.

Since an article by Macfie (1971), scholars have recognized that Smith uses the phrase “invisible hand” three times in his corpus; once in Wealth of Nations; once in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Recently the great, late Warren Samuels bequeathed us a lifetime of scholarship on the enormous variety of interpretations  that Smith’s “invisible hand” has generated. In this post I focus on the "third" use, which occurs in Smith's "History of Astronomy" -- one of the founding documents of the philosophy of science (and simultaneously the history of the philosophy of science) -- published posthumously in 1795.

Hence the origin of Polytheism, and of that vulgar superstition which ascribes all the irregular events of nature to the favour or displeasure of intelligent, though invisible beings, to gods, daemons, witches, genii, fairies. For it may be observed, that in all Polytheistic religions, among savages, as well as in the early ages of Heathen antiquity, it is the irregular events of nature only that are ascribed to the agency and power of their gods. Fire burns, and water refreshes; heavy bodies descend, and lighter substances fly upwards, by the necessity of their own nature; nor was the invisible hand of Jupiter s ever apprehended to be employed in those matters. But thunder and lightning, storms and sunshine, those more irregular events, were ascribed to his favour, or his anger. Man, the only designing power with which they were acquainted, never acts but either to stop, or to alter the course, which natural events would take, if left to themselves. Those other intelligent beings, whom they imagined, but knew not, were naturally supposed to act in the same manner; not to employ themselves in supporting the ordinary course of things, which went on of its own accord, but to stop, to thwart, and to disturb it. And thus, in the first ages of the world, the lowest and most pusillanimous superstition supplied the place of philosophy.

Will the web transform philosophical praxis? If so, how?

Let's stipulate an expansive notion of 'technology' such that (a) linguistic, mathematical, and logical developments also count as 'technology' and, thus, (b) a lot of philosophical breakthroughs are  preceded by technological ruptures. (Sometimes they redefine philosophy so much that we do not recognize the successor disciplines as "philosophy.") If so, is the web transforming or about to transform philosophical praxis? I use "praxis" to distinguish this question from the one about to what degree professional philosophy is being transformed by the web.

Let me first say what I do not mean with this question. The web *is* transforming philosophical scholarship by facilitating amazing storage & information retrieval (etc.) capacities. I used to spend huge amount of time in libraries (to look at old books and and to scan journals)--now I am genuinely surprised when I enter a library. There are regular on-line/skype seminars on papers, books, topics, etc. The web brings together distributed audiences previously unknown to each other. Blogs have created dedicated intellectual communities, and spawned philosophical movements and catapulted some echo-chambers to professional prominence. (We are probably living in a new golden age of philosophical correspondence--I bet Leibniz would have adored email.) Citation practices are being influenced by blog communities, phil papers, and google.scholar., etc. All of this is swell, but it does not challenge what we mean by "philosophy." (So here I am also ignoring all the exciting ways the web changes how we teach philosophy, and maybe I shouldn't.)

On homeless philosophical notions...

Edward Feser has responded to my  blog-posts (on mythic history of science, on Nagel's abuse of the PSR, on naturalism in analytical philosophy) about Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos. His is a very long post, but makes for interesting Holiday reflections. (I hope to respond in depth when I return from holiday.)

For the Aristotelian-Scholastic philosopher, then, modern metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of religion, etc. are in the same shape that Alasdair MacIntyre famously argued modern ethics is in. In the former cases no less than the latter, crucial philosophical notions have been ripped from the intellectual contexts that gave them their intelligibility and have become distorted as a result, and the range of theoretical options visible to the modern philosopher has shrunk drastically. Nagel’s proposals are bound to seem odd and ill-motivated, not only because they are inchoate, but because fully to work out their implications would require a far more extensive rethinking of current orthodoxy than Nagel himself probably realizes. (That is no doubt one reason why his ideas are inchoate.) Questions about PSR, teleology, etc. cannot properly be understood if they are treated as mere add-ons to a basically naturalistic-cum-scientistic picture of knowledge and reality, which leave that picture essentially intact. The picture as a whole needs to be rethought if any part of it is seriously to be rethought...

Weekly Philo of Economics: Accountants and Greatness of Soul in Ruskin and Adam Smith (with a PS about Coetzee/Swift)

"[T]he sentiment or affection of the heart, from which any action proceeds, and upon which its whole virtue or vice depends, may be considered under two different aspects, or in two different relations: first, in relation to the cause or object which excites it; and, secondly, in relation to the end which it proposes, or to the effect which it tends to produce: that upon the suitableness or unsuitableness, upon the proportion or disproportion, which the affection seems to bear to the cause or object which excites it, depends the propriety or impropriety, the decency or ungracefulness of the consequent action; n.."--Adam Smith, (The Theory of Moral Sentiments (hereafter TMS) 2.1.Intro.2, 67.)

"Magnanimity: greatness of soul...capacity of heart, the great measuring virtue, which weighs in heavenly balances all that may be given, and all that may be gained"--John Ruskin, (The Political Economy of Art, 81-2).

"[F]itness or propriety of affection can be ascertained or judged of. That precise and distinct measure can be found nowhere but in the sympathetic feelings of the impartial and well informed spectator."--Adam Smith, (TMS 7.2.1.49, 294)

One of the least discussed but singularly important aspects of Adam Smith's moral philosophy is that judgments of propriety -- the core Smithian moral judgments --, which from the point of view of a spectator, consists of mentally inspecting, as it were, the proportionality of the two (complex) relata that enter into a cause-effect relation. (Recall here.) One of the relata (the temporally prior cause) is itself a relation between an exciting cause (say, a desire of the person judged), which produces a sentiment of heart (that is, a motive in the person judged), while the other relata (the effect), is (also itself a relation between) the action of the person judged and its contextually or situationally foreseeable effects (that is, consequent to the motive). (See also TMS 1.1.3.6, 18.) According to Smith we paradigmatically judge others and ourselves in particular situations. As Sam Fleischacker first pointed out to me, this brings Smith remarkably close to Samuel Clarke's position (as Smith recognizes--TMS 7.2.1.49, 294 is offered as a correction to Clarke.) Throughout TMS Smith repeatedly insists that judgments of propriety can be "exact."

Berkeley's anti-mathematics

"In physics sense and experience which reach only to apparent effects hold sway; in mechanics the abstract notions of mathematicians are admitted. In first philosophy or metaphysics we are concerned with incorporeal things, with causes, truth, and the existence of things. The physicist studies the series or successions of sensible things, noting by what laws they are connected." (Berkeley, De Motu 71, [Translated by Luce].)

Yesterday, I mentioned that aspects of Hume's Treatise belong to eighteenth century anti-mathematics without explaining what I meant by the term. By "anti-mathematics" I mean expressed reservations about the authority and utility of (Newtonian) mathematical sciences, especially the application of mathematics in inquiry into nature. (I have done posts on this theme before, recall these posts on Mandeville here and here; and on Adam Smith here). I distinguish between two general strategies (although in practices the strategies may be blended): (i) "the devaluation" strategy," which tries to undermine the epistemic status (recall my post on Hume) or epistemic reach of the mathematical sciences; and (ii) what I call a "containment" strategy, which grants the success of Newtonian science, but insists that there are domains of natural inquiry in which applying mathematics lacks utility or is inappropriate (see, for example, Mary Domski's beautiful paper on Locke). While in my story anti-mathematics originates in Spinoza ("Letter on the Infinite"; I quoted a crucial passage here), the strategies get developed in response to efforts to use the authority of Newtonian natural philosophy to settle debates within philosophy (something I call "Newton's Challenge to Philosophy").

A note on Hume's social epistemology & anti-mathematics

There is no Algebraist nor Mathematician so expert in his science, as to place entire confidence in any truth immediately upon his discovery of it, or regard it as any thing, but a mere probability. Every time he runs over his proofs, his confidence encreases; but still more by the approbation of his friends; and is rais’d to its utmost perfection by the universal assent and applauses of the learned world. Now ’tis evident, that this gradual encrease of assurance is nothing but the addition of new probabilities, and is deriv’d from the constant union of causes and effects, according to past experience and observation.--Hume Treatise, 1.4.1.2

I have been revisiting a terrific paper by Kevin Meeker (recall this post). Like a lot of Kevin's other work the paper argues for interpreting Hume as an old-fashioned skeptic (even about purported mathematical knowledge). Because of it I re-read Hume's Treatise 1.4.1 ("Of scepticism with regard to reason"). In  historical 18th century context the significance of 1.4.1 is two-fold:

1. Together with much of Treatise 1.2.4, Treatise 1.4.1.2 reinforces Hume's attack on the epistemic status of applying mathematical concepts to nature: "all [purported] knowledge degenerates into probability." (1.4.1.1) In particular, the epistemic status of mathematical, natural philosophy "becomes at last of the same nature with that evidence, which we employ in common life," (1.4.1.4) That is, Hume is here part of a much larger trend of what I call, 18th century "anti-mathematics." This is much indebted to Spinoza's "Letter on the Infinite" and even if we allow that Hume had not read Spinoza (which goes against a lot of circumstantial evidence), Hume almost certainly would have been familiar with species of such anti-mathematics either in Berkeley or in Mandeville (recall here; also here and here).

Weekly Philo of Economics: on Child Development, or Adam Smith-no-Empiricist

But all the appetites which take their origin from a certain state of the body, seem to suggest the means of their own gratification; and even long before experience, some anticipation or preconception of the pleasure which attends that gratification. In the appetite for sex, which frequently, I am disposed to believe almost always, comes a long time before the age of puberty, this is perfectly and distinctly evident. The appetite for food suggests to the new-born infant the operation of sucking, the only means by which it can possibly gratify that appetite. It is continually sucking. It sucks whatever is presented to its mouth. It sucks even when there is nothing presented to its mouth, and some anticipation or preconception of the pleasure which it is to enjoy in sucking, seems to make it delight in putting its mouth in the shape and configuration by which it alone can enjoy that pleasure. There are other appetites in which the most unexperienced imagination produces a similar effect upon the organs which Nature has provided for their gratification.--Adam Smith (“Of the External Senses,” 79, p. 165)

Smith clearly commits himself to the existence of what (in my book-manuscript-in-progress) I label "proto-passions." In fact, the two examples he offers (appetite for sex and appetite for food) are two of the original passions (not unlike the natural sentiment of resentment).

Here, Smith is adamant that such proto-passions are innate (“long before experience…the new-born infant…the most unexperienced imagination.”) So, while it is, of course, possible that some proto-passions are themselves a consequence of habitual experience (this is implied, perhaps, by a passage that I have discussed here), Smith appears to think that a group (“there are other appetites”) of the proto-passions are innate (in his terminology: they are provided by Nature, not experience). Of course, that proto-passions are innate is compatible with the further claim that they require environmental cues or triggering objects to be activated. While below I describe some pre-conceptions that according to Smith do require such triggering objects, Smith clearly thinks some of those innate proto-passions are self-activating: the infant “sucks even when there is nothing presented to its mouth.” Even though Smith was a life-long, childless bachelor, he clearly showed an active interest in child-development (and I think this makes him so insightful on the mutual emotional regulation that Helen calls attention to).

Evolutionary Biology at the top of the Intellectual Division of Labor

"(A proximate mechanism is an immediate direct cause, while an ultimate explanation is the last in the long chain of factors leading up to that immediate cause. For example, the proximate cause of a marriage breakup may be a husband's discovery of his wife's extramarital affairs, but the ultimate explanation may be the husband's chronic insensitivity and the couple's basic incompatibility that drove the wife to affairs.) Physiologists and molecular biologists regularly fall into the trap of overlooking this distinction, which is fundamental to biology, history and human behavior. Physiology and molecular biology can do no more than identify proximate mechanisms; only evolutionary biology can provide ultimate causal explanations."--Jared Diamond Why is Sex Fun?, 1997.

Let's grant Diamond the coherence of the distinction between proximate mechanisms and ultimate explanations. Let's also grant it him in the way he has articulated it, despite, perhaps, a lingering sense that being "last in the long chain of factors" does not quite grasp the fundamentality of an ultimate explanation. I was struck by (i) Diamond's insistence (without evidence) that his fellow scientists "regularly" overlook the distinction, and by (ii) his further claim that "only" evolutionary biology can get at ultimate causal explanations. Diamond has a nice sense of the intellectual hierarchy within the intellectual division of labor. (If you plug in "metaphysics" for evolutionary biology and "mechanics" for molecular biology, you get a standard 18th century picture embraced by Berkeley and Leibniz, I think.)

Here I am not interested in the hankering after even more fundamental than fundamental explanations (you know, God, the Principle of Sufficient Reason, Final Causes, etc.). Rather, this morning I was gripped by this thought: why think that in the real world there is anything over and above the proximate causes and mechanism? Why isn't the whole idea of "ultimate" explanations just our chasing after patterns? Now, what would persuade me otherwise is if the evidence for the ultimate causes can (a) systematically avoid relying on the evidence for the the proximate causes and (b) be also more robust, higher quality, etc. But given that it is so hard to do controlled experiments in the service of (b), (b) doesn't seem to be so easy to achieve. I am too ignorant about the details to have any strong opinion on (a). Anyway, I bet there are standard answers to my gripped questions.

Spinoza, Hazony, (Lincoln) and The Political Philosophy of the Hebrew Bible

These three things taken together – the simplicity of the theme of all these books, the way they are connected, and the fact that they were written by someone other than the person whose name they bear, many generations after the events related – lead us to infer that, as we have just said, they were all written by one Historian alone.--Spinoza,  (1670) Theological Political Treatise (TTP), Chapter 8 [Here and below I use a draft of Curley's translation he kindly shared with me.--ES]

Yoram Hazony's The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture (recall also here) identifies "a single, largely unbroken  narrative extending from creation of the world in Genesis to the destruction of Judah at the end of the book of Kings" at the core of the Hebrew Bible; this core he calls "The History of Israel." (140; disclosure: Hazony and I have written a piece on Hume & Newton together.) Hazony reads The History of Israel as offering an "instructional narrative," which conveys (among other things) a political philosophy.  The History of Israel favors the anarchic, shepherding life, but as the story unfolds comes to recognize that anarchy is not self-sustaining. Political order is understood "as oscillating between the imperial state...and anarchy." (160) Hazony reads the Hebrew Bible as a search for a politics grounded in ethics--one that makes the state "limited in its aspirations" (153-4; recall this post).

Hazony sugests that Jeremiah "or perhaps one of his students, may have been the final author of the History of Israel as a unified work." (161; by "author," Hazony does not mean "the person who wrote all of it by himself," 37-8.) Hazony's argument for this is that  The History ends "with the exile of Judag's leading political and spiritual figures, the most straightforward reading us that this history is the product of the exile from the land and its aftermath." (37; Hazony acknowledges he is echoing the Rabbanic opinion here.) The book would have been composed in Egyptian exile in the seventh century (BC). Crucially, it means that the viewpoint of the political philosophy of the Hebrew Bible is "the experience of the Jews in degredaton and exile, and the attempt to survive it." (38)

Hume, Smith, and Posidonius: true liberty, magnanimity, design arguments, and a once-famous Stoic...

But if all the parts of the universe have been so ordered that they could not have been better adapted for use, or more beautiful as regards appearance, let us see whether they are the work of chance, or whether their arrangement is one in which they could not possibly have been combined except by the guidance of consciousness and the divine providence. If, then, the things achieved by nature are more excellent than those achieved by art, and if art produces nothing without making use of intelligence, nature also ought not to be considered destitute of intelligence. If at the sight of a statue or painted picture you know that art has been employed, and from the distant view of the course of a ship feel sure that it is made to move by art and intelligence, and if you understand on looking at a horologe, whether one marked out with lines, or working by means of water, that the hours are indicated by art and not by chance, with what possible consistency can you suppose that the universe which contains these same products of art, and their constructors, and all things, is destitute of forethought and intelligence? Why, if any one were to carry into Scythia or Britain the globe which our friend Posidonius has lately constructed, each one of the revolutions of which brings about the same movement in the sun and moon and five wandering stars as is brought about each day and night in the heavens, no one in those barbarous countries would doubt that that globe was the work of intelligence.--Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods.

There are three explicit mentions of Posidonius, the great Stoic philosopher, in Cicero's dialogue, On the Nature of the Gods. (I have used a slightly dated translation.) The first one is in Cicero's own voice, when he includes Posidonius among his "teachers.' The second is the passage above, which was celebrated in  eighteenth century renditions of the design argument. Let's call it the "Posidonian argument." It shows up, for example, in Derham's very popular and influential Physico and Astro-Theology (originally 1714, I think). But it is also familiar in the seventeenth century. (See Cumberland's use of it here.) It reminds us that Paley's famous argument has a long and known pre-history. Hume alludes to a version of the argument in the Enquiry and discusses it more at length in his Dialogues (here and here) and may have even enjoyed transforming Cicero's "Britain" into a desert island. Even so, Hume's treatment does not explicitly mention Posidonius or his portable planetarium (not unlike the now famous Antikythera mechanism [this post was inspired by Jo Marchant's entertaining book about the mechanism!]) In an age in which the motions of the heavenly bodies define time, a planetarium just is a watch.

 

Weekly Philo of Economics: Adam Smith (Hobbes and Hume) on Religion and Usurpation

The good temper and moderation of contending factions seems to be the most essential circumstance in the publick morals of a free people. But the factions of the Greeks were almost always violent and sanguinary; whereas, till the time of the Gracchi, no blood had ever been shed in any Roman faction, and from the time of the Gracchi the Roman republick may be considered as in reality dissolved. (Wealth of Nations, Book V)

Let's leave aside Smith's embrace of mythic history here (even if he rejects the death of Remus as even more mythic, he is familiar enough with Livy to know better). In context Smith is offering an empirical attack on a theory proposed by Montesquieu (who drew on "the very respectable authority of Plato, Aristotle, and Polybius"--some other time we need to discuss the significance of the loss of Polybius from our collective philosophical memory) that Greek musical education of the young (a kind of military-gymnastics) has no positive impact on their public morals. Here Smith leaves open which institution does produce "good temper and moderation of contending factions," or if it is a matter of chance.

Elsewhere, in a different context, he explains the  source of moderation by pointing at the experiences of eighteenth-century Pennsylvania: "This plan of ecclesiastical government, or more properly of no ecclesiastical government..has been established in Pensylvania, where, though the Quakers happen to be the most numerous the law in reality favours no one sect more than another, and it is there said to have been productive of this philosophical good temper and moderation." (Wealth of Nations, V.) That is to say, he takes the lesson of Hume's Natural History of Religion (where in the context of extensive treatment of the Romans the link between polytheism and mutual toleration is nicely established), and then uses it as a political argument against state control over religion (as favored by Hobbes, Spinoza and Hume) in favor of freedom of religion (and state neutrality among competing sects).

Weekly Philo of Economics: Adam Smith on the Piacular

This week I return to Adam Smith's treatment of the piacular in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (hereafter TMS). Recall the following:

“A man of humanity, who accidentally, and without the smallest degree of blamable negligence, has been the cause of the death of another man, feels himself piacular, though not guilty. During his whole life he considers this accident as one of the greatest misfortunes that could have befallen him. If the family of the slain is poor, and he himself in tolerable circumstances, he immediately takes them under his protection, and, without any other merit, thinks them entitled to every degree of favour and kindness. If they are in better circumstances, he endeavours by every submission, by every expression of sorrow, by rendering them every good office which he can devise or they accept of, to atone for what has happened, and to propitiate, as much as possible, their, perhaps natural, though no doubt most unjust resentment, for the great, though involuntary, offence which he has given them.” (TMS 2.3.3.4)

For the sake of brevity, I stipulate that in Smith if we are part of a voluntary cause-effect sequence then the categories of propriety/guilt and merit/demerit are appropriate (see here). If, however, we are part of an involuntary cause-effect sequence then the category of the piacular (derived from the Latin “piāculum” or propitiatory sacrifice, from “piāre” or to appease) is appropriate—it is predicated of the man of humanity, after all. (In other contexts “the man of humanity” is treated as the right kind of impartial spectator, see especially here, which contains well known criticism of Hume’s notorious treatment of the proper response to a Chinese earthquake; this is not to deny that in Smith the very humane can fall short of proper standard when they lack self-command (etc.).) Even so, as others have emphasized (see, especially Chad Flanders) the response of the man of humanity in the case of being an involuntary cause is in no way faulted by Smith in any fashion. This is connected to a subtle point about Smith’s example above the resentful response of the victim’s family is treated as “most unjust,” even though their feeling is quite “natural.” If the man of humanity had been a voluntary cause of the victim’s death their feeling of resentment would have been just (for an exlanation of this, see here). We are, perhaps, led to think that the feelings of the man of humanity are not so natural—in the sense that most of us (who are probably not regularly men or women of humanity) will mistakenly try to use our lack of culpability or blameworthiness as a way to avoid the feeling of the piacular (I return to this below). Echoing Bernard Williams on this point, if we lacked any feeling about even the involuntary harm caused to others by us, something would be remiss in us. That is to say, we are causes and it is part of our humanity that we ought to understand ourselves as such. (I learned from Keith Hankins that there is a further debate on to what degree this "ought" is a moral ought.) As an aside, this is a most un-Stoic move in Smith’s thought (because the circumstances that give rise to the piacular are completely outside our control; a bit more about this below).