New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Wollstonecraft's Spinozism...

[The prevailing opinion, that woman was created for man, may have taken its rise from Moses's poetical story; yet as very few, it is presumed, who have bestowed any serious thought on the subject, ever supposed that Eve was, literally speaking, one of Adam's ribs, the deduction must be allowed to fall to the ground; or, only be so far admitted as it proves that man, from the remotest antiquity, found it convenient to exert his strength to subjugate his companion, and his invention to shew that she ought to have her neck bent under the yoke; because she, as well as the brute creation, was created to do his pleasure.--M. Wollstonecraft (1792), A Vindication of the Rights Woman (hereafter Vindication), Chapter 2. (25). [Here and below the page-numbers refer to the Dover Thrift reprint, while the provided links refer to the third (1796) edition.--ES]

"Nature, or, to speak with strict propriety, God,"--Vindication, chapter 2, (29).

Upon re-reading the Vindication in preparation for a class discussion, the second epigraph to this post, which we may loosely translate as Natura sive Deus, startled me. Could Wollstonecraft, who so often sounds like a Deist, be a kind of Spinozist? For, Wollstonecraft is quite clear that "propriety" is just "another word for convenience." (106) So, the substitution of "Nature" by "God" is really an act of social expedience. Yet, could this really be so? For, so much of Wollstonecraft's argument seems to rely on commitments that require commitment to immortal souls and, presumably, a judging God (and one can find other Deist commitments).

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).

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."

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).

On Sensus Divinitatis in Plantinga, a footnote to Dutch Spinozism (Van Eeden & Dooyeweerd)

Dooyeweerd rightly rejects any dictation to philosophy on the part of theology; and where he thinks that traditional Reformed thinking deviates from the truth, he does not shrink from suggesting revisions. One of his virtues as a philosopher, I take it, is his refusal to be bound by all the formulae of past Reformed thinking. Still, however, if the total result is to be called a Christian philosophy and in particular a Reformed philosophy, it must be consistent with the spirit and the main doctrines of the Reformed and Christian tradition. And if his doctrine that meaning is the mode of being of created reality does imply that the relation between God and creation is like that between a thinker and the meanings he entertains, then at this point the accusation of a really significant departure from the Reformed and Christian tradition would be justified. For then created reality becomes constitutive of God's mind and thus of God.

And this is clearly to controvert the Christian conception of creation with its ontological chasm between God and created reality. But to have such a chasm seems to presuppose being on the part of creation as well as on the part of God. How, for example, can we conceive of sin in the context of a creature that is merely meaning? Can a meaning sin? What would an evil meaning be like, unless it is thought of as entertained by an evil being? The Christian philosopher must steer a nice course between the Scylla of giving finite reality too much self-sufficiency and power, and the Charybdis of altogether divesting creation of distinctness and "over-againstness" with respect to God. The first alternative threatens God's uniqueness and sovereignty; the second courts pantheism. Rightly determined to avoid Scylla, Dooyeweerd steers perilously close to Charybdis; for the very attempt to emphasize God's transcendent uniqueness and sovereignty may end by making him the author of evil in a very intimate sense and by denying an ontological distinction between Creator and creation altogether.--Alvin Plantinga (1958) "Dooyeweerd on Meaning and Being" (reprinted here [HT to Ingrid van Laarhoven, who helped me track this down.]; emphases in original.)

The quoted passage is the surprising conclusion of Plantinga's "first serious article." (Hengstmengel, (63)) It is surprising because Plantinga had begun the (short) article with the claim that "a slavish adherence to traditional modes of thought can discourage and stultify intellectual progress." (10) Yet, here Plantinga is quite clear that Dooyeweerd has deviated too far from the "spirit and main doctrines" of their shared tradition. While (the proto-Kuhnian) Plantinga clearly allows that "progress" within the "tradition" is possible and desirable, he basically insists that Dooyeweerd's Spinozistic doctrines are simply too revolutionary and disruptive, even though an outsider to the tradition, while drawing on, say, Susan James's recent book, might point to the considerable continuity between Spinoza's philosophy and Reformed doctrines, especially if one thinks (as the far more mature Plantinga footnotes against the authority of his father) that it "is by no means obvious that the right side won at the Synod of Dort." Either way, in the body of his paper, Plantinga offers a number of philosophical arguments (including some from "common experience" and another that anticipates Meillassoux's arche-fossil strategy against correlationism) against Dooyeweerd's position; nevertheless, in his conclusion Plantinga makes clear that to be called "Reformed," one cannot just follow the arguments come what may to their conclusion. I call the authority of tradition over the possibility space of philosophical thought an instance of the "Socratic Problem."

Searle on Panpsychism: not even false

"The problem with panpsychism is not that it is false; it does not get up to the level of being false. It is strictly speaking meaningless because no clear notion has been given to the claim. Consciousness comes in units and panpsychism cannot specify the units." John Searle, NYRB, 10 January, 2013, 55, reviewing Christof Koch, Consciousness: Confessions of A Romatic Reductionist.

So, take that, Mr. Spinoza!

Thomas Nagel and the Principle of Sufficient Reason (or, on unprincipled natural teleology)

[Thomas Nagel's Mind & Cosmos has generated a number of very critical reviews, including this blistering one by Leiter/Weisberg, and another, wide-ranging one by Eliott Sober (thanked for his refereeing at OUP by Nagel in the preface to M&C!) as well as gratitude from the creationists (recall Mohan's discussion). Mohan has blogged about some of Nagel's moves before,  but the rather long post -- apologies -- below engages with issues thus far unexplored in these discussions.--ES.]

Analytical philosophy has made great progress over the last century. But its original, necessary biases did some harm, too. In particular, detailed working knowledge of the history of philosophy and metaphysics was banished for several generations. While metaphysics is thriving again, we still lack (despite the brilliance of David Lewis' modular approach) complete systems of thought that can rival in depth and interlocking breadth the past masters (say, Suarez, Leibniz, etc.). The damage has also been more narrow. For example, one of the most obvious so-called ‘Kuhn Losses’ is our relative ignorance of the nature and implications of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR). This is no surprise because analytical philosophy was founded in the act of rejecting PSR. Our forefathers’ attempt to balance between common sense and the truths of science meant -- as science and the PSR parted ways -- the willing submission to brute, ultimate facts (recall this post).  

In Mind & Cosmos, Thomas Nagel happily embraces “a form of the principle of sufficient reason” (17) in support of his "common sense" (5, 7, etc.) and against the recent “orthodox scientific consensus.” (10; 5) Rather than accepting this "ideological consensus," (128) Nagel insists -- regularly using language reminiscent of the great Feyerabend --  that "almost everyone in our secular culture has been browbeaten into regarding the reductive research program as sacrosanct." (7) While Nagel insists that the champions of scientific enlightenment are bullies, he treats the "defenders of intelligent design" with "gratitude" (Plantinga returns the gratitude),  even though Nagel clearly recognizes that once one embraces one's inner sensus divinitatis one is also compelled in one's judgments. (12) 

A classic statement of the PSR is Spinoza's "For each thing there must be assigned a cause, or reason, both for its existence and for its nonexistence." (Ethics 1p11d2) That is to say, any PSR worth having imposes significant explanatory demands (especially of non-arbitrariness) on any philosophical system in which it is deployed. Below the fold I critically discuss Nagel's way of combining the PSR and his attempted revisionary science, but here I just register the marvelousness of Nagel's deployment of the PSR as an instrument in the service of common sense! (cf. 91-2) This is certainly an original move in the history of metaphysics--one that, in a single, magical stroke overturns Lovejoy's long narrative.

On card-carrying contextualists

In her introduction, James explains her methodology by pointing out that "in order to follow Spinoza, and to grasp the significance of his claims, it is not enough to explicate the text: one must also set it in the context of the sequence of theological and political debates to which he is contributing" (4). Though not myself a card-carrying member of the contextualist school, I believe that at least in the case of the TTP this attitude is quite fruitful and apt for a rather simple reason. The most salient feature of the text (as James points out) is its polemical nature, and it is hard to grasp the full meaning of a claim made as part of a debate when that claim is abstracted from its setting. Obviously, this interpretative attitude makes the decision about the proper context for understanding the book utterly critical.

...But James interestingly suggests that, in spite of this historical grounding, the book should not be read merely as an "active theological-political intervention in the politics of its time," but also as a work which "yields insights of general philosophical interest, bearing on our own predicament as much as that of the Dutch state in the second half of the seventeenth century" (6).--Yitzhak Melamed reviewing Susan James' Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion, and Politics: The Theologico-Political Treatise, Oxford University Press.

I was trained as a member of the contextualist school, and I used to carry my card proudly when I left home. (Nowadays as regular readers of this blog know I vaccilate between trying to save or abolish the school!) But the school was also founded with a dogma--the denial that classic philosophical texts addressed perennial issues that may have permanent answers. Yet, in the part of the introduction quoted by Melamed, James comes very close to denying the contextual dogma; Spinoza's text ""yields insights of general philosophical interest." So, what we are seeing, I think, is an evolution in the contextualist school.

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).

Spinoza, Hume, Hazony and Regimes of Truth

Some of the Hebrews seems to have seen this, as if through a cloud, when they maintained that God, God's intellect, and the things understood by him are one and the same.--Spinoza (E2P7S) [in Curley's translation]

In my previous three posts (here, here, here) on Yoram Hazony's The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, I did not engage with Hazony's efforts at articulating the epistemology (chapter 6) and metaphysics (7) of the Hebrew Scripture. Chapter 6 is a fascinating meditation on Jeremiah. Here I focus on the latter. According to Hazony in "the Hebrew Bible...truth is not in the first instance a quality of that which is said, but of "objects and persons." "Objects" here are taken very widely to include "objects of the understanding more generally, including actions and circumstances." (195-196). In particular, that "which is true is something that is reliable, steadfast, faithful; while that which is false is something that cannot be counted upon, or which appears reliable but is not." (199) So to simplify: something is true iff it is a steadfast object. So, in addition to true being a property of objects (etc.) it is also a normative property. As Hazony writes, "that which is true is that which proves, through time and circumstance, to be what it ought." (202)

Hazony contrasts what one can label -- to introduce and deploy a Foucault-ish terminology -- "the Biblical regime of truth" with the traditional one he claims we have inherited from Aristotle. (Foucault nor Heidegger are mentioned by Hazony.) In the traditional regime truth is a "quality of speech" (thought, etc.); true speech is about a reality separate from speech and agrees with or corresponds to that reality. (195) Let's grant Hazony the conceptual possibility that there are different "regimes of truth." So, here I ignore the kind of criticism familiar from, say, Bernard Williams' "general point:" that "nothing that was not opposed to the false could be rightly represented as the "the true." (Truth and Truthfulness, 272; emphasis in original; Williams' passage was discussed recently in an illuminating lecture on Foucault's debts to Marcel Detienne by my Ghent colleague, Maarten Van Dyck.) Williams is not just making a narrow (and plausible) point about translation; the general point denies the possibility of different regimes of truth. Given that here I am merely describing the history of various regimes of truth I need not worry if alternative regimes to ours represent anything.

The Myths of Modern Science in the Responses to Nagel's Mind and Life in the Cosmos

Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos is drawing quick responses. (Can't wait to read Mohan's!) Both in the hostile review by Brian Leiter and Michael Weisberg as well as in the more cautious strategic pivot by Alva Noë (who doesn't engage critically with Nagel's book), mythic history of the scientific revolution plays significant rhetorical roles.

Let's start with Noë:

If there is mind — and of course the great scientific revolutionaries such as Descartes and Newton would not deny that there is mind — it exists apart from and unconnected to the material world as this was conceived of by the New Science.--Alva Noë (NPR)

Let's accept Noë's point about Descartes. But Newton thought minds  had to be somewhere in space and in time, extended but "indivisible." Incidentally, this is also Newton's doctrine about "the Maker and Lord of all things" who "cannot be never and no where."  (Principia, General Scholium.) And at one point earlier in his career, Newton also flirted with the idea that an extended body had to be the kind of thing that was capable of exciting various perceptions in the senses and imagination of minds (this is from a piece known as "De Gravitatione;" I am linking to a very nice treatment by Zvi Biener and Chris Smeenk.) [Note that I am not drawing on the infamous sensorium passage at all.]

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)

Williamson vs Experimental Philosophy; or Philosophical Expertise

"why, if at all, such testing of expertise is more urgent in philosophy than in other disciplines."--Tomothy Williamson

The Wykeham Professor of Logic claims that "the project of Experimental Philosophy, as characterized by Alexander, does not withstand scrutiny." It is worth paying attention if only because this is clearly an attempt to delegitimize experimental philosophy as properly philosophical. (In the conclusion to the piece experimental philosophy is characterized as "polemical philosophy-hating philosophizing from which it has not been entirely free.") Do not object that Williamson is merely criticizing Alexander's formulation. Williamson also writes:

"What the Experimental Philosophy revolution is supposed to change — systematize, restrict, or abolish — is a philosophical method: the use of philosophical intuitions as evidence....The systematic deployment of elaborate hypothetical cases is indeed an eye-catching feature of much recent analytic work. But what Experimental Philosophers target is neither the systematicity nor the elaboration." (Quoted from here; HT Prophilosophy)

Williamson targets the methodological aspirationsof Experimental Philosophy an sich. Given that this approach is no more than a methodology it has no reason for existing. Williamson has three strategies: first, after he suggests (via an analogy with theoretical and empirical physics where the "trade-off between the two sorts of skill is not easily avoided"--this sentence comes after a blistering few pages in which Alexander is portrayed as simply not understanding what important philosophical debates are about) that experimental philosophers will lack certain conceptual skills. (Williamson is counting on us agreeing that without conceptual expertise philosophy is empty.) The second  and third strategy are cleverly connected.

I quote Williamson:

Spinoza's fascination with Descartes's Death

[Today's post is a follow up to this one.--ES]

In a short note -- crossing the battle-front between the forces of Louis XiV and William III -- from 1673 to the Utrecht Professor Graevius, Spinoza asks for the return of a letter about the death of Descartes.  The rightful owner of the letter (ht: to Stefan Heßbrüggen) has demanded it back. Spinoza adds that if it had been his letter a hasty return would not be required. Let's leave aside the fascinating and complicated sociological fact (see here for background in Dutch) that Spinoza and Graevius, a professor of rhetoric and a classical philologist (who was very critical of Spinoza's Theological Political Treatise in his public utterances) were intimate enough to share letters.  (Anybody that spends time on editing Lucian can't be all bad.) At one point in his life, Spinoza was apparently interested enough to seek out (and presumably to copy) eye-witness testimony about Descartes' death. (After his death and later Hume's there was quite a bit of such interest; how do philosophers face death when they deny the immortality of soul?) This is a bit surprising.

While Spinoza sometimes has nice things to say about Descartes (see here), he is often extremely harsh about the thinker that is often taken to be his philosophical predecessor. In the Ethics, especially, Spinoza asserts the following:

"The illustrious Descartes [celeberrimum Cartesium]... in my opinion, he accomplishes nothing beyond a display of the acuteness of his own great intellect," (Ethics 3, Preface)

"Such is the doctrine of this illustrious philosopher [“clarissimi…Viri”] (in so far as I gather it from his own words); it is one which, had it been less ingenious, I could hardly believe to have proceeded from so great a man. Indeed, I am lost in wonder",(Ethics 5, Preface; see also E, 3p2S)

Maudlin on Einstein and Lewis, and some Spinoza...

[I am reading Tim Maudlin’s The Metaphysics Within Physics with Fred Muller, Victor Gijsbers, and Lieven Decock. The following post was inspired by our recent discussion.—ES]

In the context of a critical discussion (that I admire) of what he calls a "Separability" doctrine that he attributes to David Lewis, Tim Maudlin quotes a letter from Einstein to Born:

"The following idea characterises the relative independence

of objects far apart in space (A and B): external influence on A

has no direct influence on B; this is known as the 'principle

of contiguity', which is used consistently only in the field

theory. If this axiom were to be completely abolished, the idea

of the existence of (quasi-) enclosed systems, and thereby the

postulation of laws which can be checked empirically in the

accepted sense, would become impossible." (See here for the full letter, p. 170-1; a fuller extract is quoted in Maudlin, pp. 53-54, and discussed around pp. 63-4)

By ‘Separability,” Maudlin means “The complete physical state of the world is determined by (supervenes on) the intrinsic physical state of each spacetime point (or each pointlike object) and the spatio-temporal relations between those points.” (51)  Maudlin takes Einstein’s letter as evidence that in the face of evidence from quantum mechanics, Einstein also endorses Separability (and, thus, Lewis’ position is not just “a philosopher’s fancy.”)  In response, Maudlin writes, “Quantum theory has both been formulated and rigorously tested despite the centrality of non-Separable elements in its ontology. Whatever Einstein had in mind, he had to be wrong.” (64)

Now, I am no scholar of Einstein, but I suspect Maudlin is seriously misreading Einstein here.

Spinoza, the Self-Sufficient.

[The following reflections were prompted by a very interesting conversation with a young scholar, Johan Olsthoorn.--ES]

The official Letters by and to Spinoza that were collected in his posthumous works start with a letter from a very important person (The Secretary of the Royal Society, Oldenburgh), and that correspondence segue-ways nicely into a correspondence with Boyle--just about the most famous living scholar of the period. It would be a very surprising if this was the very first letter ever addresed to Spinoza. The Letters also cover only the last sixteen years of Spinoza, life. Spinoza was not very old when he died, but even so it implies that during the first twenty-eight years of his life the mailman never knocked at Spinoza's abode. (That's not a miracle; mail was expensive. But it was also not so uncommon in seventeenth century Holland.) From a note on the back of a letter (Letter 28 to Bouwmeester) that was not included in the original collection (but published later in Van Vloten) we know that not all letters known in 1677 were included in the original collection. It is safe to say that these letters are very much a biased selection. 

Even so, even including the letters found and collected since the publication of Spinoza's posthumous works, we average less than six letters per year during the last sixteen years of Spinoza's life. That's not a lot. (Still no letters have been found, I think, that predate the first letter from Oldenburgh.) Moreover, with one exception, none of the letters from Spinoza initiate a correspondence.  In a few cases Spinoza's is the first letter extant from a correspondence, but in all of these Spinoza is responding to a now lost letter. In these generalizations I leave aside a very brief note to Prof. Graevius in Utrecht (in which Spinoza wants a letter (presumably written by neither Graevius nor Spinzoa) returned so he (Spinoza) can return it to its rightful owner). [I am not claiming this note isn't interesting for the light it sheds on Spinoza's network in the academy!]

We can infer from these letters that Spinoza was remarkably self-sufficient intellectually. He did not seek out others in the Republic of Letters, nor did he sought to fashion himself through these letters. He also does not seem to be very curious about what others are up to in this Republic.  

Weekly Philo of Economics: on the Positivist Dogma Of Historical Scholarship, or Adam Smith as Reader of Spinoza...

A Positivist Dogma (PD) of scholarship is the rule that one must supply hard evidence for claims such as  "Z was influenced by Q" or "B is responding to C," etc. This is thought to be the insurmountable barrier between evidence-based scientific scholarship and shoddy research that bottoms out in arguments from authority, or (worse) some mystical insight. ("I just intuit that Kant read Hume's Treatise!") Moreover, not all evidence is appropriately hard: Y's book can be found in X's library (at X's death), show signs of wear and tear, but still be unread by X. (This could happen to books in your library!) Y may even be mentioned by X in X's main works and still only be known second-hand. (How many of us have read Gödel Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der "Principia Mathematica" in the original?) So, for example, given that Adam Smith never mentions Spinoza a responsible scholar should not assume that Smith is responding to or building on Spinoza.

Let's allow that the Positivist Dogma rules out a lot of lazy scholarship. It also prevents interpretive strategies that rely on authorial omniscience. One price to pay for PD is that it rules in a lot of lazy thought and gives ignorant scholars an excuse to remain...ignorant. For most scholars can discern there were once very different citation practices and modes of writings when crucial sources are never mentioned and extra-textual evidence on the reading habits of our subjects is deliberately scarce. For example, we know that Adam Smith, who was eager to control his posthumous reputation, had his notebooks burned in his presence just before his death. (Smith thought that Swift's reputation has suffered from the publication of Swift's personal papers.) But arguments from silence are tricky.

Now, in unpublished research Sarah Skwire has made a compelling case that Adam Smith's famous line early in the Wealth of Nations that "By nature a philosopher is not in genius and disposition half so different from a street porter, as a mastiff is from a greyhound, or a greyhound from a spaniel, or this last from a shepherd’s dog," echoes Shakespeare's Macbeth III.i.91.        . (See also the student notes to Smith's Lectures on Jurisprudence.) Skwire has shown that there is more Macbeth in Wealth of Nations than meets the eye. Now, we know from student notes on Smith's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres that he lectured on Shakespeare (although not, it seems, Macbeth), so a strong case can be made that the link between Wealth of Nations and Macbeth is not accidental. Either way, in the case of Smith we know that some of his silences are very deliberate. For example, Smith was famously proud  to refute An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Economy, written by his rival James Steuart, without mention or allusion in the Wealth of Nations.

So what about Adam Smith and Spinoza?

Weekly Philo of Economics: Adam Smith on Religion (with hints to Spinoza)

[In honor of Ryan Hanley, the author of a very fine book on Adam Smith, and my host this week, I do a post on Smith's philosophy of religion--ES]

Discussions of Adam Smith's views on religion are bedeviled by two obsessively posed questions: (i) does the so-called 'invisible hand' instantiate or rely on a providential order?; (ii) is Smith a Humean skeptic about the existence of God? In what follows I ignore these. Consider, first, the following passage:

In the Decalogue we are commanded to honour our fathers and mothers. No mention is made of the love of our children. Nature had sufficiently prepared us for the performance of this latter duty. Men are seldom accused of affecting to be fonder of their children than they really are. They have sometimes been suspected of displaying their piety to their parents with too much ostentation. The ostentatious sorrow of widows has, for a like reason, been suspected of insincerity. (The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS), III.3.13)

Here Smith treats the Ten Commandments sociologically. The Decalogue offers insight into which of our moral duties are innate (i.e., they don't need to be mentioned in the them) and which duties require sanctions (the ones listed). Given that at least for this item on the list he treats it as a reliable authority, he understands Moses or Moses' source as a wise-lawgiver (on this matter). This has affinity with chapter three of Spinoza's Theological Political Treatise. (I return to this below) As an non-trivial aside, if we are allowed to treat the whole list in such sociological terms then it appears that Smith thinks that the very idea of a mono-theistic God is not natural (nor innate) to us but requires social reinforcement mechanisms. (This echoes the first chapter of Hume's Natural History of Religion.)

The Spinoza-Clarke dispute in Boole (the origins of analytic philosophy, reconsidered)

A few weeks ago, I quoted this line from Russell: "The ethical work of Spinoza, for example, appears to me of the very highest significance, but what is valuable in such work is not any metaphysical theory as to the nature of the world to which it may give rise, nor indeed anything which can be proved or disproved by argument." (On Scientific Method In Philosophy) In commenting on the full passage, I remarked, "Russell systematically defends the beauty and nobility of Spinoza's ethics, but denies it is philosophical for three reasons: (a) Spinoza's metaphysics of substance has been disproved by science. I call such appeal to the authority of science to settle philosophic argument within philosophy, "Newton's Challenge to Philosophy." Russell here echoes eighteenth century Newtonian criticism of Spinoza. Once Spinoza's metaphysics is discredited, (b) Spinoza's ethics is not really founded on or supported by argument, but by feeling (and this is indeed also Russell's view of Bergson) and "maxims." I actually think this reading of Spinoza has a lot going for it (and the significance of maxims is a way in which Spinoza and Smith are connected), but about that some other time. (c) The feeling that Spinoza's ethics promotes is oriented toward practice, and (c*) Russell denies that philosophy is fundamentally concerned with practice, but rather with understanding." In private I wondered why Russell would have thought (b); had he done an analysis of Spinoza's arguments in the Ethics, which (we learn from Monk's biography) he admired greatly, and found them wanting? I doubt he did.

Rather, I suspect Russell remembered chapter 13 (and 14) of Boole's masterpiece, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854). Elsewhere, Russell credits Boole with having discovered "pure mathematics," or formal logic. (Oddly, Boole is not mentioned by Monk; this neglect is emblematic for a more general problem in the way "early analytic" is treated, but about that some other time more.) Boole writes, "The analysis of its [Spinoza's Ethics'--ES] main argument is extremely difficult, owing not to the complexity of the separate propositions which it involves, but to the use of vague definitions, and of axioms which, through a like defect of clearness, it is perplexing to determine whether we ought to accept or to reject. While the reasoning of Dr. Samuel Clarke is in part verbal, that of Spinoza is so in a much greater degree; and perhaps this is the reason why, to some minds, it has appeared to possess a formal cogency, to which in reality it possesses no just claim." (p. 145) What are these remarks doing in a book that regardless of its limitations from a more recent point of view, invents "pure mathematics"?

Clarke on Spinoza on Motion

{In honor of this conference a blog about some of Clarke's interesting arguments against Spinoza.--ES} Samuel Clarke is now best known for his correspondence with Leibniz. This is a shame because it is not his finest performance that does no justice to his philosophic acumen nor to Newton's views. Clarke's (1705) A Demonstration of the being and attributes of God: more particularly in answer to Mr. Hobbs, Spinoza and their followers is full of terrific arguments and also extremely subtle readings of Spinoza (and a book I like to blog about). In preparing this post, I have found a remarkable authority for this claim (about which more some other time)!!!

Now together with other English (Newtonian) critics of Spinoza, Clarke focuses on Spinoza's rather un-sophisticated treatment of motion to argue against Spinoza's system (and argue for an alternative physics, metaphysics, and theology). Here I discuss two of these arguments: “if [motion] was of itself necessary and self-existent, then it follows that it must be a contradiction in terms to suppose any matter to be at rest.” Now, when Clarke charges a "contradiction," one ought to read it as "this is problematic." This particular claim is, of course, question-begging against Spinoza (cf. Ethics 2p13A1’: “All bodies either move or are at rest”). But the spirit behind Clarke's argument may well be Spinozistic. Let me briefly explain.

Bergson says Spinoza, Russell says Leibniz

 In his nice post on the origins of analytic philosophy, a theme that has been addressed many times at this blog, Eric points out that Bergson was among Russell's principle targets. It is perhaps understandable that this part of the story has been forgotten. The Frege-Russell narrative concerning the origins and legitimacy of analytic philosophy has largely maintained its hegemonic status. Within this narrative, Bergson emerges not only as a  marginal “continental” figure safely ignored by analytic philosophers but moreover he is a philosopher whose influence on the continent was itself surpassed by the phenomenologists (who, such as Merleau-Ponty, rejected Bergson’s vitalism). However, following up on a comment I made on the thread to John Protevi’s post about Adrian Moore’s book, I would push back the genealogy of an important aspect of the continental/analytic divide to the choice between Spinoza or Leibniz. Understood in this way, Bergson, à la the song "Let's call the whole thing off," says Spinoza and Russell says Leibniz. In targeting Bergson, therefore, Russell is ultimately one in a line of many who are seeking to exorcise the specter of Spinoza.

Quote of the Day

"Peirce was motivated in his cosmogony by a bias toward a spiritualistic interpretation of the cosmos, and by an understandable reaction to philosophies of his day which attempted to derive the variety of things from a primal homogeneity. The moral is that it is just as much a mistake to deny an ultimate specificity and variety, as it is to deny an inexpugnable order. It is instructive to compare Peirce with Spinoza. Both recognized nature to possess a structure and also to contain an inexhaustible variety. Peirce chose to emphasize the latter and to regard the former as derivative. But I think Spinoza was both sounder and wiser when he included in Part I of the Ethics Prop. 15 as well as Prop. 28."--Ernest Nagel (JHP, 1933)

Footnote of the day

"53. Mr. Yolton's book on Locke's Essay demonstrates how a philosopher's modes of thought gain domination over the minds of men who devote their efforts to refuting him." (Rosalie Colie (1963) “Spinoza in England, 1665-1730,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 107(3): 210)

On Clarke's Use of Newton Against Spinoza and Hume's Response...

In The History of England, Hume writes: "While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he shewed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy; and thereby restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain.” As I have argued elsewhere, this quote reveals crucial details about Hume's attitude toward Newton and the nature of skepticism. But I have recently come to believe that Hume's target is the use made of Newton and his achievements the argument for God's Benevolent Design in Samuel Clarke's Anti-Spinozistic (1705) ADemonstration of the being and attributes of God: more particularly in answer to Mr. Hobbs, Spinoza and their followers.

“Our whole approach presupposes a teleological account of concepts” (Benardete 1964: 224)

According to José A Benardete, philosophy can (also) be “an investigation of utopian concepts that transcend the empirical” (Infinity: An Essay in Metaphysics, 1964: 285). Now even most of our metaphysicians today do not durst to write so boldly; this is a radical break with the authority of SCIENCE (which knows one religion: the authority of the empirical). The enterprise is not, however, anti-scientific; for Benardete ontology and natural science are conversation partners (although with a reference to Hamlet, Benaderdete also observes that "in the absence of practical wisdom, [physical] theory itself may be pressed into the service of folly." (225)) Now a utopian concept belongs literally to no-place. It is beyond measure. But it does not mean it does not belong to this world. (Think of Spinozistic "eternal truths"--i.e., things that can't be negated; it is no surprise, then, that Benardete invokes Sponoza at the end of Infinity and in an old JPhil piece wishes to make room for the investigation of "invariants that preside over, and constitute, the eternal order.") Is there more to be said about philosophy's task according to Benardete? (And as I observed in an earlier post about Benardete's work this is not far removed from what Jeff Bell and I have advocated in a different key.)

Yes, there is.

Question about E2A5 (Spinoza, Ethics). feelings...

E2A5: "We neither feel nor perceive any singular things [NS: or anything of Natura naturata], except bodies and modes of thinking. See the postulates after P13" (Ethics in E. Curley's translation)

So, do such feelings/perceptions cross the attribute barrier (E2p7)? That is, somehow an individual's feelings/perceptions can be responsive to modes in both attributes? Or should we think of this axiom as saying that the intellect perceives (pure) modes of thought (in the manner of E1D4&e5p40) and that the imagination feels modes of extension (and the ways in which ideas are inadequate).

A note on one of Spinoza's prefaces

"I pass now to explaining those things must necessarily follow from the essence of God, or the infinite and eternal being--not, indeed, all of them, for we have demonstrated (1p16) that infinitely many things must follow from it in infinitely many modes, but only those that can lead us, by the hand, as it were, to the knowledge of the human mind and its highest blessedness" (Spinoza Ethics, preface to II; translated by E. Curley) A few remarks and questions about this little passage:

1. Are the topics that are deliberately avoided potentially harmful? That is, do they lead us away from highest blessedness? (Assuming that all such things are harms.) If so, then Spinoza's silences are motivated about a substantive views about the Good.

2. Is Spinoza also claiming that he has exhausted what can be said/written about God (understood as an infinite and eternal being)? For, nowhere does Spinoza indicate that he is leaving stuff out as he does say here about what could be said about modes ("not...all of them") or later about the "definitions of jealousy and the other vacillations of mind" (EIIIp58DefXLVIIIEXP [the wider passage is also relevant]).

3. This passage clearly looks ahead not just to Part II of the Ethics ("to the knowledge of the human mind"), but also to the last five propositions of Part V, that is, the end of the book. I think this is significant for claims about geometric method in the Ethics--Parts II-V are connected in an ascent to our salvation.

4. To say that something is "eternal" in Spinoza just means to say that it exists. But this kind of existence has funny properties. [Note: I am committed to the idea that in Spinoza existence is not used univocally.] In particular, it is not existence in time (or space). Rather it is more akin to an eternal (sic) truth. But as letter 10 teaches us, these "do not have any place outside the mind." Given that God is a self-cause and thinks, to say that he is "eternal" just means he has an idea of himself.

Maybe this is the best interpretation of Conatus doctrine thus far...

Thanks to Keith Allen for the pointer.