New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Weekly Philo of Economics: The Future of Economics is Data-Mining?

Ali Wyne lets eight young to mid-career stars in economics tell us about the future of economics for a popular, wonkish audience. So, befitting the genre it is full of largely self-serving cliches, but I still found it revealing. (Much to my surprise I was familiar with the work of three stars.) Bottom line: due to low cost computing and a data rich environment the future of economics is data-mining (this was clear from at least four of the comments). This is especially so because the young stars have lost faith in homo economicus (due to behavioral work and the crisis). Let me add three more observations.

First, if data-mining is the future, any person with access to data and sophisticated statistical technology can displace the trained economist as top policy dog (including their poor cousins, the sociologists!) One of my favorite economists, Justin Wolfers, believes that economics will remain top dog because "Economic theory will become a tool we use to structure our investigation of the data." (And economic theory is superior to its competitors.) But in light of the foregoing that is wishful thinking--the reason why economics is turning to data-mining is because economic theory is after sixty years not perceived the fruitful driver of research anymore. (Historical aside: In "Measurement without Theory," Koopmans convinced the economics profession after a famous debate with the now-forgotten Vining that if they want to be the preferred policy-scientists they could not rely on such pure induction. [Recall my post here.])

Syllabi in philosophy of social science.

My most recent post in philosophy of economics unexpectedly led to a number of requests for syllaby suggestions in the philosophy of social science. I have not taught that course since 2005 (when I left WashU, St. Louis). Sadly, my old syllabi are not online anymore. Now, my choice of topic/approach is always a function of my sense of the quality and skills/backgrounds of the students (philosophy or social sci majors, etc) , the level taught, as well as my personal aims for the class (what do I want to learn about; do I want to teach writing or methodological skills), etc. So, please take what follows as ideosyncratic. I have often used then recently popular books (Nickle and Dimed, The Bell Curve, Freakonomics, The Tipping Point, etc) and supplemented these with philosophical and critical material and classic methodological works by Max Weber, Milton Friedman, Jon Elster, Donald Winch, Geertz, and Elinor Ostrom. I have used Brian Fay's textbook, which I liked a lot, but I bet it is probably getting dated. There are two readers (one edited by Delanty&Strydom and the other by Martin/McIntyre) that give a good sense of classic topics and recent developments about two decades ago (the same can be said of Stephen Turner's Blackwell Companion). I would recommend that students follow a bunch of blogs (which give a very good idea of ongoing debates in science in practice): Retraction watch, Marginal Revolution, Economic Principles, Crooked Timer (especially anything by Quiggin), Brad de Long, [Schliesser on NewAPPS?], etc. Anyway, here are some topics that I would certainly cover (and that seem underserved by existing readers):

"Heated Discussion" for boys only in Berlin (@Feyerabend 2012)

[Apologies; I accidentally deleted an earlier version of this post.--ES]

Today I received a call for papers for this conference on Feyerabend (in Berlin) with fourteen (and not as previously reported by me twelve) international keynote speakers. The cfp claims that Feyerabend continues to inspire "heated discussions;" the second (out of two) main aim of the conference is "to promote the pressing issues concerning the nature of  science and its impact on society and how they are structured." One need not be a standpoint theorist to realize that not having women at the main table impoverishes the discussion.

We need "less attention to disciplinary boundaries, not a more sharply demarcated domain of our own where we rule as sovereigns."

In this Scholium [to the definition in the Principia--ES]Newton steps back and discusses the concepts of space and time that are, in his view, requisite for making sense of the laws of physics. This sort of question is the sort that we now recognize as a philosophical question, and much of the current discussions in the philosophy of space and time trace their origins to this issues raised in Newton’s Scholium, which is so widely quoted in the philosophical literature on space and time that I suspect that most philosophers who work in that area know it by heart. Wayne Myrvold

Myrvold, a distinguished philosopher of physics, has a sensible piece on the dust-up between Lawrence Krauss and Dave Albert; Myrvold also corrects a lot of silly things that have been said about the history of physics along the way.

Malament Retirement Blues

Some of the things you really need to know about David Malament's contributions to philosophy of physics (and a few other interesting facts):   [HT Taking up Spacetime]

The "Kuhn Loss" in the demise of natural philosophy...

Craig Callender says some very interesting things in this 3:AM Magazine interview.

Before there was physics and before there was philosophy of science, there was of course natural philosophy. When you read Newton, Maxwell, Thomson, Hertz, Boltzmann, and other greats, you would be hard pressed to circle what’s philosophy and what’s physics in these writings. There were just certain questions – e.g. are fields real or are they accounting devices? what explains entropy increase? are space and time real? – and a range of considerations for and against. The answers to these questions would draw on conceptual distinctions and scientific knowledge, however the two were classified, because these are the ingredients needed for an answer.

Specialization into distinct disciplines obviously has many benefits, but it’s naïve to think something doesn’t get lost too. Fallen into the cracks are a huge assortment of questions like the ones I just mentioned. These questions are deep and significant, but they are largely untouched. One can give sociological explanations for this: little grant money flows to such work in physics, the “linguistic turn” in metaphysics, and more. Whatever the reasons, there are good questions that deserve answers and often answering them will require the skill of a natural philosopher, be they officially a philosopher, physicist, or mathematician. 

A problem for convergent scientific realism

[cautionary note] This post relates to an article that is about 4 years old, but someone pointed it out to me today and was I intrigued by it - so my apologies if readers have already seen discussions of this before

I've been a long-time fan of convergent scientific realism, which I hold to have the following properties: some scientific theories are at least approximately true, and they genuinely refer. The history of mature sciences is a progressive approximation to truth. (This is just offered as a quick definition of convergent scientific realism, not a technically correct definition). Convergence seems to imply that as time goes by and scientific theories change, they move closer to the truth. While convergent realism is usually invoked in a backward-looking way to explain changes in theory-formation, one expects on the basis of it that - if the current scientific climate does not collapse due to budget cuts, religious fundamentalism, or whatever other threats - we will know more and more about the empirical world. A few years ago, Krauss and Scherrer published a paper in Scientific American (The end of cosmology?) and in some more technical journals that challenged these assumptions. According to them, we live in an epistemically privileged age. "We may be living in the only epoch in the history of the universe when scientists can achieve an accurate understanding of the true nature of the universe" (p. 47). 

The Significance of Quine's "Flux of Experience" for freedom with scientific and formal philosophy

Quine's (1948) "On What There Is" is probably my favorite piece in the analytic tradition and not only because in response Carnap mistakenly thought "there appears now to be agreement between us: ("On What There Is," p. 38)." As we learn from Howard Stein's reminiscences, Carnap and his students thought there was no substantial disagreement between Carnap and Quine--little did they know! (It also tells us something about the limitations of contextual approaches to the history of philosophy.) So, if even our Carnap could misread Quine's essay it should be clear that my reason for admiring the piece have, alas, nothing to do with quintessentially analytic virtues of clarity and perspicuity of argument. Moreover, as Jody Azzouni has taught us, Quine's particular criterion for recognizing what our language commits us to is defeasible; even so, there are two substantive commitments worth preserving (or reviving) from Quine's piece: (a) the embrace of multiplicity within scientific philosophy; (ii) the proper role of formal philosophy.

Personality changes in man who becomes genius after head injury

I have written about our case study of a person with acquired synesthesia and savant syndrome in an earlier post on this blog. To make a long story short, JP was hit on the head in a mugging incident and acquired traumatic brain injury.

After the incidence he started experiencing the world in terms of geometrical figures. He also had lost his ability to see smooth boundaries and smooth motion. He sees objects as separated from their surroundings in terms of tiny tangent and secant lines. He experiences motion in picture frames. When objects are moving relative to him or he is moving relative to objects, three-dimensional geometrical figures form before his eyes.

Right after the incident he started drawing some of these images by hand. They turned into beautiful pieces of art that have received several awards. After some elementary math training following the accident, JP also experienced automatic visual imagery in response to certain mathematical formulas.

How Something Came To Be From Nothing

[THANKS TO LAURIE PAUL FOR THE POINTER.]

Why is there something rather than nothing? How did there come to be something rather than nothing? Two different questions. A positive answer to the first, especially if a priori, implies that the second question has a false presupposition; if the reason is a priori, then it should have force at every moment of time, and this implies that there never could have been a moment when there was nothing. Conversely, if there is a positive answer to the second—if the Big Bang is an answer, for example—then there cannot be a positive reason for the first.

The two questions seem not to be distinguished by Lawrence Krauss, in a recent book, A Universe From Nothing: Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing.

Doubled differences: the Gulf Oil Disaster multiplicity and models of future deep-water spills

Deleuze's "ontological difference" between virtual multiplicity and intensive individuation processes can help us think the ontological status of "model" in its relation to the events it models. The "doubling" of difference in the post title means that the multiplicity (the model) is differential (a-centered) and that its actualizations are all different events. Translating into other terms, the second claim is that the Deleuzean scheme accounts for the "multiple realizability" of models (but please note that Deleuze would not use this term because for him the virtual is real, so individuation is actualization rather than realization).  

What crisis in General Philosophy of Science?

In a recent post, I proposed an intellectual division of labor between General Philosophy of Science (GPOS), which rests on a quasi-transcendental assumption (QTA): if anything counts as knowledge it is fallible science, especially physics (chemistry, biology, whatever), so let's now articulate how this is possible or, more formally, justified (and develop, say, norms appropriate to this); by contrast Gettierized Epistemology (hereafter GE), which from the vantage point of ordinary cognition (perception, locution, observation), deals with a variety of skeptical challenges to any purported knowledge claims and works out the norms that govern, say, ordinary testimony, etc. Of course, a naturalistic GE can draw on scientific knowledge about cognition (etc). A naturalistic GPOS can draw on empirical work (history, sociology, or case-studies) on scientific practice, or rely on work done in philosophy of a particular science (PoX), while recognizing much of the autonomy of PoX [some other time more about the relationship between GPOS and PoX]. This division of labor recognizes that both enterprises (GE & GPoS) can be normative, explanatory, descriptive, etc. Moreover, it protects practitioners of GE from saying silly things about science (and so their reliance on outlandish and toy-examples does not embarrass us to our colleagues in the sciences); it protects GPOS from saying silly things about whether it is raining or not.

Scientific Knowledge: Shouldn't GPOS Get Out of the Game?

Eric’s recent post about epistemology illustrates the identity crisis that General Philosophy of Science (GPOS) is currently suffering. According to Eric, observation “plays no foundational role whatsoever” in many (or even most) sciences, a conclusion he draws from the fact that measurement can be delegated to machines–the human senses, and hence “observations”, play no essential role. Eric argues that “Gettierized Epistemology” (I prefer to call it General Epistemology, but we can agree on the acronym, GE), preoccupied as it is with “ordinary cognition, perception, and locution,” has no way of coping with machine measurement, and hence not with science as it is today, and has been for going on two hundred years. GPOS asks the transcendental question: How is scientific knowledge possible? “So,” Eric writes, “GPOS is a in bad position to answer the skeptic, except to remark that within the scientific machinery one is not much perturbed by it.”

Retraction Watch

I am one of those philosophers of science that believes we learn as much (or more) from scientific failure (and its nieces, dis-confirmation, falsification, lack of statistical significance) as from successful science. So, this very entertaining website, Retraction Watch, is a must-read Godsend, and almost amusing to read as The Onion, if it weren't so sad.

For example, believe it or not a paper by S. Kalimuthu (whose email address is “ohm@budweiser.com.”) was retracted from Computers & Mathematics with Applications, an Elsevier title. Of course, the subtext of the site is important: as scientific metrics take over judgments of quality, the premium to control and publish in impact journals becomes higher and higher.

Duhemian General Philosophy of Science VS Gettierized Epistemology (or an afterthought about Bergson)

When in science we measure we dramatically eliminate (as opposed to ordinary observation) our access to huge amount of potential information we can extract from the environment. Even so, as we have learned since the time of Huygens onward this is a price worth paying when our measures are theoretically fruitful (etc). One nice feature of measurement is that (if well designed) it makes observation of one's measurements trivial; so much so that one could, in principle, farm out the whole process of registering the measurements to machines (as is often done now). Observation does no interesting epistemic work in theory-mediated measurements. While there are sciences where observation matters a lot (taxonomy and Marc Hauser's experiments come to mind), for much of science (as in mathematics) it plays no foundational role whatsoever. Those of us working within General Philosophy of Science (GPOS) have known this since Duhem.

This is why Mohan and epistemologists more generally are wrong in thinking that Gettierized Epistemology (hereafter GE) provides the so-called content-general framework with which to evaluate knowledge claims and the status of science more generally. GE mistakenly presupposes that ordinary cognition, perception, and locution matter epistemically in science. Now this is not to deny that GE explores important issues that matter to us citizens on a day to day basis; the recently popular work on testimony comes to mind. (As long as the authority of science does not displace the experiences of ordinary witnesses this remains to be true in law courts.) But whatever special expertise GE has in answering the skeptic is largely irrelevant to thinking about science. Now (as I have remarked before) GPOS, by contrasts, rests on a quasi-transcendental assumption (QTA): if anything counts as knowledge it is fallible science, especially physics (chemistry, biology, whatever), so let's now articulate how this is possible or, more formally, justified. So, GPOS is a in bad position to answer the skeptic, except to remark that within the scientific machinery one is not much perturbed by it.

Weekly Philo of Economics: the equation of randomness with uncertainty

[As I pointed out last week, I am revisiting earlier material because I am giving some papers at GMU next week.] Warning: this post will not discuss Keynes, Hayek, or Milton Friedman (it will only mention them in passing). Rather it will try to pin-point a very clever conceptual move that became crucial to 20th century economics and finance theory.

That Arrow (1951) is the canonical source for the displacement of unmeasurable uncertainty by probabilistic risk within mainstream economics seems to confirm my initial working hypothesis about the sources of its demise in mainstream economics: technocratic Keynesian got rid of uncertainty from professional economics so that they could use probabilities to justify and guide preferred policy action. (Interestingly, the move may have originated in the work of Tintner, a student of Carnap.) After all, Arrow is one of the high-priests of the technocratic, formalistic turn of post-WWII economics. Much of Arrow's 'argument' against the very idea that there is unmeasurable uncertainty (as opposed to measurable risk) is ridiculing the lack of formalism by its proponents (i.e., Frank Knight) or advocating what I call the "simple displacement strategy:" just handle uncertainty by quantifiable risk (by, say, using subjective probabilities). So, I was badly prepared for literally the closing lines of his 1951 article where Arrow credits Armen Alchian with a crucial, far-reaching conceptual move:

“Recently, Professor Alchian [1] has argued that the absence of definite criteria for action, corresponding to profit maximization in the theory of behaviour under certainty, means that we should regard behaviour under uncertainty as essentially random. The process of convergence to optimal behaviour by trial and error is impossible when the basic conditions are changing and unknown. However, since there will be a process of selection in the economic struggle for existence, there will be some tendency towards optimal behaviour.” (435)

Time in Newton's Dynamics

[This is the middle section from a draft article on "Newton's Philosophy of Time" commissioned for a Blackwell Companion on the philosophy of time, edited by Adrian Bardon and Heather Dyke. The preceding section provides historical context with treatment of Galileo and Huygens; the subsequent section provides a closer analysis of Newton's metaphysics. Comments very welcome.--ES][1] The main aim of the Principia is according to Newton, “to determine true motions from their causes, effects, and apparent differences, and, conversely, of how to determine from motions, whether true or apparent, true causes and effects. For to this was the purpose for which I composed the following treatise,” (Scholium to the Definitions; Newton 1999: 413-14).[2] In particular, from measurement Newton infers forces, which he treats as such “true causes and effects,” of accelerations. This (theory-mediated) measurement(s) as well as the laws of motion on which it is predicated presupposes a conception of time.

Esoteric arguments for the existence of God in Maxwell and Hertz

Vulgar, not to mention warmongering, Straussians have given a bad name to the very idea of esotericism by associating it with a nihilistic/atheistic interpretation of Nietzschean will to power. But, of course, one can use esoteric means to hide many kinds of messages. Below I explore the works of two very famous Victorians, Maxwell and Hertz, who practice a form of esotericism when presenting physics inspired arguments for the existence of god. In Maxwell's case it's pretty clear what he is up to, while in the Hertz case I am genuinely uncertain about how he wants us to read his text.

WAM! The Story of an Academic Spat

We have been discussing academic refereeing on NewAPPS, and I thought I might contribute a little story about an academic dispute. It's about me, and it is more or less irrelevant to abstract questions about the pros and cons of blind refereeing. And it's much longer than I usually post here. So it might belong in what Catarina Dutilh calls "the Department of Shameless Self-Promotion". But it's about academic politics and publishing. And my self-centred account may be mildly amusing to some. So indulge me, please.

Why does this music make me feel younger? Tidiness versus accuracy in psychological studies

In a recent paper in Psychological Science, Joseph Simmons et al. report how listening to particular musical compositions affects your subjective age. In one experiment, they report how people listening to Hot Potato (by The Wiggles) felt subjectively older than those who listened to a control song (Kalimba, an instrumental tune that comes with Windows 7). In a second study, they report how listening to the Beatles' When I'm 64 leads one to underestimate of one's own age. Undergraduate students listened to either When I'm 64 or Kalimba. They were then asked to fill out a questionnaire including the age of their father and their own date of birth. Students who had listened to When I'm 64 reported an age of almost 1.5 years younger compared to those who listened to Kalimba. If these results strike you as unbelievable, they are! The study is absolutely bogus, as the authors themselves freely admit. Yet, they did not fabricate data or tamper with their results, but simply used practices that are common in experimental psychological research. 

Weekly philo of economics: Adam Smith, not-so-Newtonian, after all.

[I start with intellectual autobiography because, perhaps, my journey may serve as a warning to students who let the secondary sources do their thinking while reading primary sources.--ES]

One of the dogmas that I encountered and accepted uncritically when I started doing scholarship on eighteenth-century figures is that they were 'Newtonian.' This conceit wrecked my dissertation (on David Hume and Adam Smith) because I had to conclude that Hume either was an ignoramus or dishonest.

Later, by teaching Berkeley to very inquisitive Wesleyan undergraduates, I realized that very smart philosophers could be informed critics of Newton, and contest the authority of natural philosophy (this paper is the finding of my scholarly voice, which resulted in a more ambitious project.) I returned to Hume and started to see the un-Newtonian and anti-Newtonian aspects. In the wake of my more recent scholarship on Spinoza, I started to discern a whole eighteenth century debate over the application of mathematics to human affairs.

But Adam Smith was not touched by my revisionism. I continued to stand by my reading of the Wealth of Nations, and to see in Smith a very sophisticated Kuhnian-naturalistic defense of the Newtonian paradigm. After all, it was Smith's student, the great jurist-sociologist John Millar, who tagged Smith as the Newton of civil society. [Millar pairs Smith with Montesquieu, presumably to keep Hume out of the picture.]

Now, however, reflection on work by a young Argentinian visiting scholar, Leondro Stieben, and, especially, a fascinating manuscript-monograph on Adam Smith by the distinguished scholars Mike Hill and Warren Montag, which usefully compares Spinoza and Smith, has led me to reconsider Adam Smith. Consider the following paragraph:

The man who hand-draws mathematical fractals

One of the subjects I work with, JP, has acquired synesthesia and acquired savant syndrome. This happened as a result of a brutal assault in 2002, during which he was kicked and hit on the head. He was subsequently diagnosed with a bleeding kidney and an unspecified head injury. What the doctors didn't know was that JP no longer saw the world the way he used to. Objects suddenly did not have smooth boundaries. Things no longer moved smoothly. Motion took place in picture frames. It looked like someone paused and unpaused the flow of the world very rapidly. Even more amazing: JP was suddenly able to see vivid fractal images of objects with a fractal structure (such as, broccoli).

JP's response to his new way of seeing the world was to withdraw from it. He spent the following three years in his apartment and refused to leave unless it was strictly necessary. After three years in complete isolation JP figured that he would try to draw what he saw, so he could make people understand him. He started drawing. And he continued. He drew and drew and drew, using only a pencil, a ruler and a compass. The results were beautiful hand-drawn fractal-like images. JP didn't know then that he was the first in the world to hand-draw mathematical fractals and that he would later win prizes for his drawings. He didn't even know what he was drawing, except that it was what he saw.

Neuroscience versus Cognitive Science

A professor writes:

My colleagues here at my small liberal arts college in several disciplines (biology, biochemistry, psychology, computer science, languages) want to start a minor that covers neuroscience (including neuroscience that is not cognitive neuroscience) and what I would call cognitive science. My colleagues are keen, enthusiastic, inclusive and want very much for courses in philosophy, computer sciences, linguistics, etc. to be part of the program. That's the good news. The bad news is that many think that the minor should be called a Neuroscience minor. What I have learned is that folks who do this from the hard sciences think of the term 'Neuroscience' as including these areas. My response, in brief, is, 'that's the problem.' Thankfully, because I have such wonderful colleagues, this hasn't presented an inalterable obstacle. They have responded that they are very surprised to learn that folks who they think of as being included under 'neuroscience' might not want to be included under this umbrella exclusively. To be clear: the alternative proposal is to call the program 'Neuroscience and Cognitive Science.' What they want from me is some very short, clear, explanation of why folks who do what might be better termed 'cognitive science' would appreciate being in a program that includes that title rather than the title 'Neuroscience.'

The problem, as the reader sees it, is that neuroscience and cognitive science seem to represent significant methodological differences. Cognitive science assumes that cognitive phenomena can be studied at multiple levels and the process rather than their neural correlates are the objects of study. What do you think?

On philosophy as the a priori; on Glymour's "apologies"

In the concluding paragraph (quoted here) of Glymour's controversial manifesto, we find three criteria to keep philosophy departments around: 1. Grant-making ability; 2. Being cited and useful outside philosophy; 3. Good undergraduate teaching. All three are sensible reasons to give philosophers some "shelter" in a university (it's not clear they are also good reasons for a distinct department). In his piece, Glymour focuses (with a nod to Michael Friedman) on the second reason; he praises those philosophers that are "outsiders to the science of the day, people who will take up questions that may have been made invisible to scientists because of disciplinary blinkers." Glymour presupposes that at any given moment science is not necessarily, optimally truth-tracking--a topic close to my heart. That is, one task for philosophy is to be critical of present science (but not the scientific ideal) in an informed and constructive fashion. Despite Abe Stone's protests so far so good. But from here Glymour's argument slides.

Clark Glymour responds

Recent discussion at NewAPPS prompted an interesting reflection by Clark Glymour. [Thanks to Hannes Leitgeb for the pointer. I have two important criticisms of the piece: a) not all philosophy worth defending needs to be redeemed by science; b) there were very brave Continental philosophers [Camus, Jaspers, etc], so that part of the piece should be ignored. But about these some other time more.] What I like about Glymour's approach, and he says it very elegantly (one can almost miss it), is that philosophers also have a role as critic(s) of ongoing science but not the scientific ideal. Anyway, here's the final, very controversial paragraph of Glymour's piece:

"Salvation? Were I a university administrator facing a contracting budget, I would not look to eliminate biosciences or computer engineering. I would notice that the philosophers seem smart, but their writings are tediously incestuous and of no influence except among themselves, and I would conclude that my academy could do without such a department. (Phi Beta Kappa would protest, of course.) But not if I found that my philosophy department retrieved a million dollars a year in grants and fellowships, and contained members whose work is cited and used in multiple subjects, and whose faculty taught the traditional subject well to the university’s undergraduates. I am in such a department, and I will never again be a university administrator, but the time is here when many university administrators are in fact in the situation I imagine, and some of them may come to conclusions like mine."

Are there multiple futures for analytic philosophy?

As a professional (US-trained) philosopher working in the (the still existing) Eurocore-zone, I found it striking that the recent PGR ratings do not rank departments like Carnegie-Mellon very highly despite their being (as Brian Leiter notes) "well-rated in certain specialties." CMU has a very significant presence and influence on the way analytic philosophy is practiced in Europe. I would characterize this approach as a commitment to formal (or mathematical) philosophy. (There is also an underlying sense -- nicely expressed by Sebastian Lutz -- that the spirit and, perhaps, substance of logical empiricism is still very much alive.) If anything some of the most exciting analytically oriented departments (Munich, Groningen, University of Amsterdam, LSE, Tilburg, and, perhaps, Bristol [as well as a few in Scandinavia]) seem increasingly committed to formal philosophy (in the way that descends -- in the felicitous phrase of Mohan -- roughly from Carnap, Bayesianism, Suppes, etc.)

Weekly Philo of economics: Private epistemic virtue --> public vices

In a famous article “Agreeing to Disagree,” Robert J. Aumann (1976) proved with a very elegant Bayesian argument that people with the same priors cannot agree to disagree. (Aumann went on to win a Nobel prize in economics.) His "result implies that the process of exchanging information on the posteriors for A will continue until these posteriors are equal." (1238) And this result fits a widespread intuition that in science (unlike say much of the history of philosophy) there is essentially agreement. (This idea has had unfortunate impact on economists who tried to make their field look scientific by suppressing disagreement.) Aumann tacitly assumes an efficient (scientific) 'market' for information exchange. As regular readers of this blog know by now, I am no fan of the uses people put the Bayesian machinery, so I return to Aumann's argument below. The economist Ali Khan reminded me of Aumann's piece after he read a draft-paper I co-authored with a terrific young Flemish PhD Student, Merel Lefevere, “Private Epistemic Virtue, Public Vices: Moral Responsibility in Policy Sciences.” (What follows draws on our joint research.) A lot of philosophers also assume without argument that scientific communities are like Aumann's efficient market for information exchange.

Does the emperor have no clothes?

"What is striking about neuroaesthetics is not so much the fact that it has failed to produce interesting or surprising results about art, but rather the fact that no one — not the scientists, and not the artists and art historians — seem to have minded, or even noticed. What stands in the way of success in this new field is, first, the fact that neuroscience has yet to frame anything like an adequate biological or “naturalistic” account of human experience — of thought, perception, or consciousness."--ALVA NOË in the NYT.

Weekly Philo economics: Mark Blaug (1927-2011) & Andrew Skinner (1935-2011)

This has been a terrible week for the history of economics: two of its giants, Andrew Skinner and Mark Blaug, died a few days apart. I'll post a longer notice on Blaug later today. Skinner was the Daniel Jack Professor of Political Economy from 1985 to 1994 and Adam Smith Professor of Political Economy from 1994 until 2000 at University of Glasgow. Skinner is best known for his superb editing of the volumes of the The Wealth of Nations in The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith. He is the author of a very fine collection of essays on Adam Smith, A System of Social Science: Papers Relating to Adam Smith. (He also edited several volumes of scholarly papers on Adam Smith.) He should have been better known for his very helpful (1966) edition of Sir James Steuart (1767) An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy. (The edition does contain some cuts, so let the buyer be aware.) Steuart was a subtle reader of Hume's political economy, and was deliberately ignored by Adam Smith; it mattered a lot to Skinner to ensure that Steuart was not forgotten.

I did not have much interaction with Skinner. But one is worth recounting. At the start of 2000, I sent him a draft of my main methodological/interpretive chapter on Smith's Wealth of Nations of my dissertation-then-in-progress. (We had never met.) Skinner was a natural choice because he was the leading scholar of the connections between Adam Smith's economics and Smith's Kuhnian theory of science. A few months went by, and just before his official retirement from the university he sent me his (kind) reflections on my chapter. Then I did not realize how rare such generosity is. He concluded his letter with a remark that I quote: "I met [Thomas] Kuhn in 1975 in Princeton when he told me, as I recall, that he was unaware of [Adam Smith's "The History of] ASTRONOMY" - if true, intriguing in that both Kuhn and Smith cite Copernicus' introduction as a classic example of the crisis state?"

Two links: Neanderthals and intuitions in philosophy

As I may have mentioned before, at the moment I'm very much enjoying Google+, the new Google social network. Among other things, I come across fascinating material through the links posted by fellow G+'ers, such as John Baez and Massimo Pigliucci. John and I have many common interests, including math, music and early hominids: on the latter, he recently posted a link to an article on the latest work of Svante Paabo, who is at the forefront of the application of DNA-based methods to paleontology. An excerpt from the article: