New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Manners and Morality--some Humean reflections.

"I shall also be bold to affirm, that among the ancients, there was not much delicacy of breeding, or that polite deference and respect, which civility obliges us either to express or counterfeit towards the persons with whom we converse." (Hume, "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Sciences").

Not unlike Mohan ("Politeness is appearing to respect another"), Hume (a keen observer of the "old-fashioned English") connects politeness to respect or at least the appearance of respect in his essay (which is a kind of geneology of politeness). [See here for a great paper on the contexts of Hume's views on politeness.] Moreover, Hume is clear that politeness is a consequence of good breeding. With early modern authors it is never easy to tell whether such breeding is merely a matter of good education and proper institutions or if it implies some eugenic features, but that need not concern us here. (It is not simple, because Hume connects the right sort of politeness to gallantry, and he thinks that is a "natural passion.") Unlike Mohan (who is silent on the matter), Hume recognizes different kinds of politeness and he rates the Modern version an improvement over the Ancient one (which -- like my fellow Dutch -- is too blunt in its expressions of respect; Hume quotes Rousseau on the mater: ""The republics in EUROPE are at present noted for want of politeness. The good-manners of a SWISS civilized in HOLLAND," is an expression for rusticity among the FRENCH."). (One gets the sense that Mohan recognizes differences in etiquette, but thinks politeness is uniform.) Now crucially, according to Hume the Modern version of politeness has been shaped by norms of civility, that is, it has been influenced by a courtly culture, which is why "a civilized monarchy" is most favorable "to that of the polite arts."

So what?

Well, when we reflect on courtly culture, we immediate realize that there respect is accorded to rank or to being a courtier. This is why Hume so commonly associates politeness to deference. So, polite respect is not due to some intrinsic human worth. Now, politeness can spread beyond the court. According to Hume this is due to emulation. It is quite possible, of course, that during the spread politeness becomes disassociated from deference. Let's stipulate this is true of the version endorsed by Mohan. Even so, it is, thus, eminently possible that a particular system of politeness, which is, say, based on a convention of systematic inclusion of privileged insiders and exclusion of  some (or many) outsiders, is -- however beautiful and gratifying -- immoral by our lights. (In his piece, Mohan had recognized the "polite scoundrel," after all.) Hume, for example, suggests there is no "better school for manners, than the company of virtuous women;" and he does so in the context where the virtue of a woman ("softness and modesty") is entirely one appropriate to disenfranchisement (even thought is a is a public virtue--in context, Hume is criticizing the Ancients for keeping women locked inside their homes).

Manners and Morality

The imperatives of etiquette are not incumbent on you because of some desire you happen to have. It is a piece of old-fashioned English table manners that one should not cut food with a fork. (Fact checkers: please refute if necessary.) This “should” is not conditional upon your desires; regardless of what you desire, English etiquette demands that you should not cut food with a fork. In this way, the should of etiquette is different from my advice that you should take the Gardiner Expressway. For if you have no desire to travel west from downtown Toronto, my “should” simply doesn’t apply to you. The force of the etiquette's should can be disputed. However that might be, its force is not conditional upon desire. Thus, it is formally a categorical imperative in the way Kant defined the term.

This was Philippa Foot’s incisive argument in a famous paper published in 1972.

An Anecdote about Dirk Struik

A propos Dennis' promise to say more about the historian of mathematics, Dirk Struik, here's my favorite Dirk Struik (September 30, 1894 – October 21, 2000) anecdote: I have long been interested in Struik -- a life-long Marxist who ran afoul of McCarthyism while at MIT --, who taught at my very bourgeois high school, Vossius Gymnasium, in Amsterdam during the 1920s or so. Just before I was about to enter graduate school I was hanging around my alma mater (Tufts) when I heard from Jody Azzouni that Struik was about to give a lecture. It must have been during the Spring of 1995. Now, I was in the phase of my life in which I thought that Kuhn had to be historicized in all respects and I had just read Struik's brilliant Yankee Science in the Making (see here for an interesting appreciation), which dates from 1948. My immediate response was, "he must be over 100 years old!" Of course, I was told he was 100.

It was a great talk. A report of that lecture survives:

Well into his 90s [Struik] visited Tufts regularly, giving guest lectures in Lenore Feigenbaum's course on the history of mathematics at least every other year. Tufts faculty and alumni remember him, at well over 100, standing in front of the blackboard facing the audience and producing, without notes, a sweeping account of 19th century mathematics, providing literature references from memory as needed.

During the lecture I was seated not far from the eminent historian of science, I.Bernard Cohen himself over 80 years old at the time. During the festive intermission, Cohen leaned over to the person sitting next to him and said loud enough for a few of us to hear that Struik "had improved as a lecturer since he had turned 80."

There is hope for all of us.

On bad anecdotes and good fun

My initial topic is the attractions of scandal, and an oft-told story: Diderot, humiliated at the court of Catherine by his inability to answer Euler’s supposed mathematical proof of the existence of God, limps back home to Paris.

The moral generally drawn from the story is: Learn your algebra! My moral will be an admonition to historians (but not only to historians).

I’ve read the Diderot anecdote many times—mathematicians seem to like it—and I’ve long been suspicious. Inspired by a colleague’s use of it in a talk last semester, I did some checking. Here’s what I found.

Weekly Philo of Economics: A snark too far...an apology to Glen Weyl (and some further critical reflections)

Last week I wrote the following (in response to this):

Third, among economists under sixty the aforementioned Glen Weyl passes for being an intellectual (see here) because he is interested in past economists. And, indeed, he quotes a famous paper by Hayek (incidentally one I mentioned last week.) But without apparently realizing it, Weyl rediscovers Oskar Lange's famous response to Hayek, but Lange could not appeal to netflix. (On Lange, see here.) Weyl also says (I am not making this up) "Others, who value the libertarian tradition that has often been associated with economics, will be forced to articulate other arguments [in favor of the "market economy"], perhaps based on privacy, that are not susceptible to erosion by the increasing power of centralized computation." Now libertarianism is a beautiful American tradition, but for most of its life-time it members have (rightly) complained that economists are ignoring its collective wisdom! (I'll let others reflect on the merits of the argument from privacy in the age of Patriot act.) I apologize for the sarcasm, but it is really scary how utterly ignorant young incrowd economists are of their own past and anything related to associated disciplines.

One of our readers, "Daniel," objected to these remarks (here and here). After a private exchange with Weyl and upon further reflection, I agree that I was not entirely fair  to Weyl.  First, I continue to stand by the claim that Weyl rediscovers Lange's response to Hayek. And this matters because in contemporary economics Lange is a mere footnote to the prehistory of the First fundamental theorem of welfare economics (if he is mentioned at all in textbooks--I checked Mankiw's quickly to no avail). Second, here is how Weyl understands his own claim about what he said about Libertarianism:

I was saying that [A] the libertarian tradition has often been associated with economics, not [B] that every economist is a libertarian or that economists pay attention to what libertarians!  I was also saying [C] many economists would end up being in favor of central planning.  So my main point was that [D] economic arguments classically used to defend libertarian views within economics would get weak.[A-D added by Schliesser.]

It's clear that I failed to convey accurately Weyl's claim. For this I apologize to him and my readers. But below the fold I do want to reflect a bit more (somewhat critically and earnestly) on Weyl's position.

Caster Semenya, Maria Mutola, and Pamela Jelimo

Rebecca Jordan-Young, author of the excellent book Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences (Harvard UP, 2010), has -- along with co-author Katrina Karkazis -- articles in the Guardian and in New Scientist on the IOC's terrible new sex test policy. (An open-access article in the Am J Bioethics is here; [UPDATE: an excellent point from the article: "It [the policy] also shows that female athletes have always been under suspicion, and women with intersex traits have often been scapegoats for broad anxiety about the gender contradiction inherent in the very concept of an elite female athlete."])

A key point of their argument is that women with high testosterone levels (there's a lot to talk about in that term "high" but let's leave that alone for now) do not necessarily outperform women with lower testosterone levels. They just look different. So, time for another photo essay, in the form of a quiz. Which of the women below provoked an international affair about sex testing? Which is the fastest?  Photos and answers below the fold.

Petition on the Québec situation

The petition is here. The preamble: 

Dear Colleague,

We are a group of high school and college professors from Quebec. We write to you today because we need the support of teachers everywhere.

As you know, students in Quebec have been on strike for the past four months to reject a government-mandated increase in university tuition fees – a 75% hike over the next five years. On May 18, the government of Jean Charest, the Quebec Premier, passed an emergency law (known as « Law 12″, previously known as Bill 78) which severely restricts students’ fundamental rights, such as the right to demonstrate and the right to strike.This law forces us to teach in an environment which does not recognize our students’ right to protest.

We are actively participating in the student demonstrations through a network called « Profs contre la hausse » (Teachers against the raise). Our teachers collective is determined to denounce this law and to exercise our rights in a context which respects our freedom to teach. In this spirit, we have drafted a manifesto to be co-signed by high school and university teachers from inside and outside Quebec. We send it to you now in the hopes that you will add your signature.

Sports Sunday: Body dimorphism in gymnastics

The IOC is making a PR push for their advances in gender equality at the London 2012 games. It is true that with the addition of women's boxing, all the sports are now open to men and women. 

But a glaring instance of gender inequality is with the sport that is usually said to get the best TV ratings, women's gymnastics. The difference is in the disciplines. The men do 6 disciplines: floor, vault, pommel horse, high bar, parallel bars, and rings. The women do floor (but with music, which the men do not have), vault (but with the horse placed horizontal to the runway, whereas it is longways for the men), uneven parallel bars, and balance beam. 

The resulting difference in demands produces a striking body dimorphism, with women gymnasts being very small and thin in the upper body compared to the men. Whereas in other sports with the same demands men and women athletes look the same: swimmers are shaped like swimmers, whether they are women or men, sprinters look like sprinters, distance runners like distance runners, rowers like rowers, weightlifters like weightlifters, boxers like boxers, etc. 

Does this body dimorphism help to explain the popularity of women's gymnastics? More photos below the fold.

The Sublimity of Quadratic Equations

In today’s New York Times, Andrew Hacker asks whether algebra should be necessary for higher education. Hacker, a political scientist who has written extensively on race relations, argues, first, that algebra is, for many, a useless qualification that serves as a barrier to higher education, —“In the interest of maintaining rigor, we’re actually depleting our pool of brainpower.” He argues, further, that it is not required for “quantitative reasoning,” and does not contribute to “more credible political opinions or social analysis.” “It’s not easy to see why potential poets and philosophers face a lofty mathematics bar,” he writes. In place of algebra, Hacker proposes, the universal mathematics background should be something more practical, like “citizen statistics.”

Both of Hacker’s arguments bother me, though I can’t say that I have the kind of evidence that would make me confident in rejecting them.

cool Gratton/Morin anthology on Nancy (hat tip Graham Harman)

Man this anthology looks cool. LSU's own Francois Raffoul has the lead-off essay.

As a new student of French philosophy myself, I'm incredibly lucky to find myself at LSU. The PhD in French Studies is gangbusters, and having Francois and John Protevi on faculty (both are joint appointed, check out our new web page) as well as Jeff Bell down the road make LSU a wonderful place to study.

Publishing strategies, for those of us not Harvard Bound.

[This post is a follow up to some passing comments in this post, which prompted a few emails from readers.--ES]

"You are publishing too much," said one of my letter writers (while I was preparing for the fourth time on the market), "Harvard will never take you." The preceding year (2004 or so) I had six acceptances. I loooked at him (and edited my words carefully), and responded: "Harvard has had its chance, I need a job!" In graduate school nobody explained how to write a journal article. After the third year out on the job-market I had one publication--a long piece on Adam Smith's obituary of David Hume (that was, despite some kvetchy refereeing,  accepted and significantly shortened under the wise and helpful editorial guidance by Ken Winkler and Elizabeth Radcliffe--bless their souls). It's not like I wasn't trying to get published: a paper sat at Philosophical Review for a year (rejection without comment); another version of that paper was rejected after a year at BJPS (a one paragraph, misleading summary and no further comment). I don't recall the exact details, but another journal (PPR?) was about to stop accepting submissions, etc. Meanwhile, one other paper was getting elaborate referee comments on how I was clearly ignorant of the important work done by George Smith (George, my undergraduate guru, and I have had a paper forthcoming since the late 1990s).

So what changed was this: with the help of senior colleagues at Wesleyan  and, especially, Red Watson at WashU in St. Louis (my first two adjunct positions--yeah, don't cry for me--), I learned how to craft a journal article, and started to send papers to slightly less incrowd journals with reputations for quick turn-around and getting things in print fairly quickly.  Below the fold some of the things I picked up (with room for readers' comments):

More on Regnerus

Commenter Neil calls our attention to this Chronicle piece from 26 July on the Regnerus affair (previously treated here and here at New APPS). 

The peer-review process failed to identify significant, disqualifying problems with a controversial and widely publicized study that seemed to raise doubts about the parenting abilities of gay couples, according to an internal audit scheduled to appear in the November issue of the journal, Social Science Research, that published the study.

The highly critical audit, a draft of which was provided to The Chronicle by the journal’s editor, also cites conflicts of interest among the reviewers, and states that “scholars who should have known better failed to recuse themselves from the review process.”

Neil's comment reminded me of this attempted pre-emptive strike from 23 July, also in the Chronicle (h/t LGM), by Christian Smith of Notre Dame, which in turn reminded me of the old joke about the right-wing version of the First Amendment:

Some perspective on publishing strategies, for those of us not Harvard bound

Eric's post on publishing strategies was excellent in my opinion.  I thought almost all the suggestions were good ones. (I might suggest just leaving the nasty footnote out, rather than inserting it late, but clearly that was tongue-in-cheek.)  Here I wanted to throw out a couple thoughts about keeping publishing in perspective, what with the ramp-up of application season and the growing obsession with graduate student publishing that I perceive to be overtaking the field.  (I don't take it that I'm disagreeing with Eric here.) 

The first thing to emphasize is that publishing is just one thing you need to accomplish in graduate school.  In some ways, it is the easiest to document, quantify, etc., which feeds a tendency to focus on it.  "Well, if I have 8 refereed publications, and my competitors only have 4, they have to admit that I'm better qualified. Right?"

Well, no, they don't.  Nor should they.

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.])

Book Reviewing follies...

This review by Ori Simchen is fascinating philosophically and sociologically--it gives a lovely sense of the historic, geographic differences in 20th century (analytical) philosophy of language. (I assume these are fading, but one never knows.) However, the review doesn't adequately convey and evaluate the contents of the book. We learn more about what's not in the book than what is included. (I discerned the name of just one chapter author.) Now, I love reviews that have a sense of personality and a vision. But reviewers have a duty to the profession to help possible readers know what is to be found in the volume, and if it is any good. 

A perusal of the volume's TOC at Amazon taught me, sadly, that all the contributors to the volume are boys (although diverse and impressive in other ways); so are all the key thinkers covered.

Congratulations Mohan!

We are very proud that one of our own has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada!

Martin Kusch's Alternative "Minimal Proposal" to a Modest Proposal

[Discussion on this proposal is welcomed.--ES]

Martin Kusch writes on what he calls a "Minimal Proposal"

Let us launch an "Online Petition in Support of the Gendered Conference Campaign".

Signatories commit themselves

(1) not to keynote at conferences at which women are clearly underrepresented;

(2) not to organize male-only or male-almost-only conferences or workshops;

(3) to add to their websites and email signatures the following line: "I am a signatory of the 'Online Petition in Support of the Gendered Conference Campaign'; please visit [Online Petition] for details;"

(4) to email information about the Online Petition and the GCC to their colleagues within and outwith their own department, possibly including various internet discussion lists, blogs, etc.

I would be curious to see how far one could get with this more gentle approach -- more in keeping with the  GCC.

(Apologies for this being a one-off contribution. Family commitments take priority for me at the moment.)

On Disciplinary Norms

In Q&A after a talk folk trained at Oxbridge (and those imitating them) often use the expression "I am confused," (or "I am puzzled," etc.) by which they generally mean something like, "you're an idiot." (This becomes clear because the sentence is often followed by an objection and a smug look.) [I welcome learning the origins of the use. Maybe it started in Ithaca, NY?] Now, I find this way of operating obnoxious: (a) through its insincerity it tends to make shared intellectual inquiry impossible; (b) it asserts social superiority; (c) and when you (thinking you understand the game) try to use the same expression, you will surely be interrupted by the chorus confirming your confusion. Of course, in practice (a-b) are not even in the speaker's mind; s/he is often not even conscious of active participation in a philosophically corrupt practice. [Once, when Peter Hacker came to give a seminar in Utrecht, I was so fed up with his overuse of the expression, I called him on it, and the exchange quickly degenerated into lots of unpleasantness. Over lunch our hosts try to keep us separate (fearing we/I would ruin everybody's day), even though by that time Peter and I had gotten to talk civilly about the issues.] Now, all the criticism in the world will not make me able to change the norm that permits this fake-genteel crap to operate in the discipline. For, it will just  confirm the Oxbridge types in their sense of superiority. Maybe systematic ridicule would work to change it, but, of course,  by exhibiting the ridiculer's obsession with the practice, again it confirms the superiority of the Oxbridge type.

Now, consider another example. If I say to some graduate student after a talk on Hume, "that's fake scholarship," I am not being constructive, failing to do justice to the effort put in, and just being an all around jerk. (I have been this kind of bully; it's very bad!) But if I say this to, say, Roger Ariew, I must be joking because Roger is the gold-standard for scholarship in Early Modern. A half year ago, I did say it (or something like it) to Roger after a paper presentation of his (co-written with Joanne Waugh). Everybody in the room could tell I was not joking because I proceed to defend the claim in very hostile fashion. (Mea Culpa, Roger!) Of course, the scholarship was not fake, but the underlying methodological-moral issue that divided us that day -- what we owe to the philosophical dead and the traditions we speak with -- goes to a core of our self-identity as scholars and the way we understand how philosophy is also, in part, a moral community. Hostility will not create a shared intellectual inquiry. That day and in the weeks that followed the other people in the room (that is many of the peers I admire and respect most) let me know in clear fashion I had gone too far. Some did it jokingly, others, including my super-gentle and encouraging supervisor (and still one of my referees) more critically. Because we all know how hard it is to do history of early modern philosophy (the required mastery of languages, weird vocabulary, enormous number of texts, the intermixing of moral, scientific, theological, metaphysical (etc.) issues (many of which our training as philosophers do not prepare us well for), we pride ourselves (rightly or not) in early modern on our inclusive and friendly atmosphere that can incorporate a transnational intellectual culture.  Our intellectual leaders work hard at setting good examples and subtly and, as I discovered painfully, less subtly, enforcing the norm. If I turn into a repeat-violator of the  norm I risk being ostracized or will succeed in corroding the norm. Either way it will be very unpleasant.

A Modest Proposal, reconsidered.

In light of many helpful suggestions and criticisms (cf here) we received on our modest proposal, Mark and I have decided to re-think and certainly reword it. (It was, after all, a "proposal.") We hope to get back to you in the near future.

 

Weekly Philo of Economics: When economic consensus just is class warfare

NPR is peddling a "consensus" on six policies that "economists of all stripes" advocate. [HT to Wim Christiaens on facebook.] It is a very nice example of how a supposedly scientific consensus masks political ideology. Now, for the record: I am no economist, but I happen to support four of these ((i) eliminate the mortgage tax deduction; (ii) eliminate the tax deduction companies get for providing health-care to employees; (iii) Tax carbon emissions (in progressive fashion); (iv) Legalize marijuana). I also support elimination of payroll taxes. But I do not see why we should switch from a progressive income tax to a progressive consumption tax. Robert Frank (a creative economist who suppposedly represented the left on the program) explains his attraction to the idea here. As he admits (this is the money-quote of the day), "it would likely have the opposite effect on wealth inequality, since the rich could better take advantage of the savings exemption." No kidding.  Private bankers will have a field day in creating financial products in which consumption get disguised as savings. This is the kind of proposal that no serious left-winger will find atractive. (I am, by the way, a happy bourgeois.) Now, maybe more savings would really help society's ills, but that can be achieved through more modest steps (you know, expand incentives for tax-free saving).

But the truly bogus proposal is this one: "Eliminate the corporate income tax. Completely. If companies reinvest the money into their businesses, that's good. Don't tax companies in an effort to tax rich people." First, it is simply not true that business investment is always everywhere "good"--it's not even always an economic good (cf Japan ca 1985). But let's leave that aside. Second, there are  sane reasons to tax companies. Corporations often draw on lots of public goods provided by local communities; taxing their income is a sane way to pay for these goods (not to mention possible externalities). This is especially so given that stakeholders of corporations are often very different from the local citizenry. (I am using 'local' in a wide sense by the way.) Given that since Citizens United, Stateside corporations are treated as citizens there is absolutely no political reason why they shouldn't be asked to pay up to carry their badge of liberty. 

Reflections on our choice of keynotes: not by quality alone

A lot of the discussion on the previous posts by Mark, Eric, and Mohan seems to tacitly assume that when we have a conference in field X, we dispassionately look for the best authors on X, invite them, they either accept and decline, and so on until all keynote slots are filled. Under this assumption, it seems sensible to ask whether a consequentialist approach is warranted here, i.e., is it OK to sacrifice excellent male speakers who are not invited if one of the invitees is a woman? But this dispassionate procedure does not seem to reflect the reality of deciding conference line-ups. Having been directly or indirectly involved in the organization of over a dozen conferences and workshops so far, I have noticed that organizers are not always, or even mainly, guided by the relevance of speakers for a particular topic. Instead, they seem to rely on things like hearsay, reputation, informal networks.

On the face of it, this is not unreasonable. Organizing a conference is a lot of work, time, effort and money. In my case, I have a fixed budget I can spend on all research-related expenses. So money I spend in organizing a conference, paying for travel of keynotes etc., I cannot spend on travel for myself, books and other research-expenses. If I invite a keynote from the States, that means one conference less I can go to myself that year. So it seems reasonable want to make sure our keynotes are reliable. That they show up and not cancel at the last moment. That they give a talk that is not extremely technical, dry or incomprehensible for people outside of field X. That they don't go over their (often very generous) time slot. That they allow at least some time for discussion. How do we know which people fit those desiderata? In many cases, we decide to invite people we have seen speak in the past, people who are part of our informal network, or people whose reputation we know indirectly through others. I'm not saying this is the case for all speakers in a line-up. But it's very rare that *all* speakers in a lineup are unknown in this way (i.e., qua speakers) to the organizers. This seems to disadvantage non-minorities in various ways.

Who will write the Foucauldian story of the Institution of Philosophy?

"There is clearly a connection between power, knowledge, and its control. Perhaps no one has understood and investigated this more thoroughly than Foucault. A Foucauldian study, not of prisons or sexuality, but of the institution of philosophy, would make compelling reading."--Graham Priest in a footnote, responding to Kristie Dotson; Dotson responds to Priest, in turn. [Recall our discussion here at Newapps: here, Helen, Mohan, Me.]

Happy Birthday David M. Levy!

This post is in honor of his election as Distinguished Fellow of the History of Economics Society and his  birthday--the most exciting and generous economist-historian that I know: David M. Levy.

Other than Kansas, what else do that Little House on the Prairie and Charles Koch share in common? Who is, "Rose Wilder Lane" (picture below)--an influential public intellectual.  The abbreviated story, which is indespensable to a better understanding of the intellectual roots of American Libertarian thought,  here; the fuller (more academic) story here.

 

A Modest Proposal, Vindicated.

In Mohan's critical response to the modest proposal by Mark and I, he writes, "[A] restrict your actions to what is in your domain. [B] Don’t interfere with or trespass on the autonomy of others." ([A&B] added to facilitate discussion.) Let's grant the two principles [A&B] that Mohan relies on. I endorse [A]. Something like [A] animates a lot of my blogging and it motivates me to try to get our philosophical house in order with achievable means and ends. (Of course, my judgment about what it takes may be wrong.) Such a principle matters for intrinsic reasons (ought implies can, etc), but it also makes us philosophers more credible when we address society's ills.

As several commentators on Mohan's post have noted, Mohan restricts what is in our domain and "feduciary responsibility" too narrowly.  Mark and I claim there is collective negligence in professional philosophy in the face of a pattern of exclusion. We have identified a strategy that allows us to focus on people -- the disciplinary leaders -- who collectively can make a difference in changing the norms of  our profession. (Mohan does not challenge that being a keynote is a decent proxy for being a disciplinary leader.) If we are wrong about the way the disciplinary norms operate (and it will take some time to learn this),  the harm from this assumption is relatively small given that we focus on people who receive lots of privileges from the status quo. These are are also people who have ample resources to respond to any public criticism. Of course, there will be cases where public criticism may turn out to be very unfair, and in those cases frank public apologies should be expected and given.

When "Modest Proposals" Go Too Far

The Gendered Conference Campaign seeks to encourage gender-neutrality in the selection of invited speakers to philosophical conferences and workshops, or perhaps even to foster a little affirmative action in the selection of speakers. The Campaign is worthy and well motivated. Gender-neutral consideration of academic work should be a very high priority, and the Campaign promotes this goal in many ways. It encourages conference organizers to look beyond a small circle of friends and acquaintances; it helps break down barriers to the appreciation of worthy work by women; it aids the careers of women undervalued by the gender discount. 

In their recent post, “A Modest Proposal,” Mark Lance and Eric Schliesser urge keynote speakers to support the Campaign by declining invitations to male-only events. It is hard not to appreciate their fine motives. (And it goes without saying that it is entirely up to them what invitations they decline, and why.) But it’s also possible to support the Campaign while maintaining that such a policy goes too far.

Let me say that I do NOT support their call. I will NOT decline invitations on this basis.

Here, very briefly, are two reasons why I oppose Lance and Schliesser on this issue.

Sexism in Philosophy: a Modest Proposal on how to Change the Status Quo

• Professional, academic philosophy has a well documented and ongoing pattern of excluding women. This is the product of collective negligence, the persistence of subtle sexist norms, and lack of action to change the status quo (for a fuller account see here). The situation is bad in the English speaking philosophical world, and it is no better in much of Europe.
• One non-trivial way in which the status quo replicates and reinforces itself is through conferences and edited volumes that have only male, invited keynote-speakers. (See here for more on this.)
• One way in which we can change the way we operate in our profession is if the insiders that benefit most from their ongoing privileges change our norms. Such a change of norms is never easy; if there are real privileges at stake, this can be a bruising experience. Even so we believe that we should hold our academic leaders to highest standards here. (Note: this is about their public, academic actions. We do not expect from each other that we are angels in every department of life.) Keynote speakers are visible examples of recognized leaders in the field. Among the functions of keynote speakers, a prominent one is to confer prestige on events and topics. Every time a keynote speaker accepts a free trip to an all-male line-up, he effectively and visibly contributes to our collective negligence. As Catarina noted a while ago keynotes can put pressure on conference organizers to different degrees.
• The time has come to change the cost-benefit analysis of the main parties involved. We propose a campaign in which we publicly identify keynote presenters at conferences with all or almost all male invitees who through their inaction, complacency, and indifference contribute to the sexist status quo. This involves few epistemic risks (there is no need to rely on hearsay, testimony, etc); it is also likely to be an effective way of promoting change.
• We hereby commit ourselves not to accept invitations to male-only events. We call on others to join us.

Mark Lance & Eric Schliesser

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):

Amazon to its Education Customers: Good Enough to Buy from Us, but not Worthy to Trade With

Earlier today, I went to Amazon.com in order to look up a book-title. On the front page I was welcomed by a letter from Jeff Bezos to his customers. Two paragraphs caught my attention:

We want to make it easier for employees to make that choice and pursue their aspirations. It can be difficult in this economy to have the flexibility and financial resources to teach yourself new skills. So, for people who've been with us as little as three years, we're offering to pre-pay 95% of the cost of courses such as aircraft mechanics, computer-aided design, machine tool technologies, medical lab technologies, nursing, and many other fields.

The program is unusual.  Unlike traditional tuition reimbursement programs, we exclusively fund education only in areas that are well-paying and in high demand according to sources like the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and we fund those areas regardless of whether those skills are relevant to a career at Amazon. [Emphasis added--ES; see here for details on the program.]

Now, normally I don't get too exercised by paternalistic compensation programs run by large coorporations. But I was struck that a company, which was originally built on (electronic) books and educational materials must have a lot of student and education-related customers at one point or another, would treat the value of education worth paying for as exclusively linked to income  and employment. It turns out that other "aspirations" are not very valued at Amazon.

Weekly Philo of Economics: More Critical Reflections on the Cognitive Reflection Test measure

Last week Catarina did a critical post on a widely cited 2005 article by Shane Frederick that was  published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. (In what follow I assume that readers are familiar either with Catarina's post or with The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT).) Now it is worth mentioning that "Articles appearing in the journal are normally solicited by the editors and associate editors." [Full disclosure: once I tried to have this article "solicited" there!] I mention this because when I shared my interest in the piece with some of my usual 'informants' from economics, one of them (who shall remain anonymous) immediately shut back and reminded me that (a) Frederick is not a trained economist (he is a decision-scientist trained at CMU) and (b) that the refereeing at JEP is (shall we say) non-standard. The special provenance of this paper is reflected in its stated purpose: to explore "the possibility that general intelligence or various more specific cognitive abilities are important causal determinants of decision making. To provoke interest in this neglected topic," (25-26). It is, thus, a good proxy for the kind of ideology that excites certain incrowd social scientists. (I return to this at the end of the post.)

Now, Frederick argues that "CRT scores are predictive of the types of choices that feature prominently in tests of decision-making theories, like expected utility theory and prospect theory." (26) But as Nobel Laureate (Economics), the experimental economist, Vernon Smith, pointed out to me the "decision-making theories" that Frederick is exploring are all about isolated individuals. They are not about decision making understood as social psychology (of the sort that he and I associate with Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments).  Smith's philosophically sophisticated fellow experimentalist at Chapman, Bart Wilson remarked, that Frederick's approach simply ignores how "distributed knowledge [is] built into our institutions, both formal and informal, which are smarter than any single mind;" If such a focus on institutions were included "then exploring human cognitive difference in economics could prove fruitful."

Weekly Philo of Economics: Policy Analysis Markets and Uncertainty

One of Hayek's best ideas is that market are great epistemic discovery engines, especially when the relevant information is dispersed and it is valuable to agents (see here and here). A creative, philosophically trained economist, Robin Hanson, saw that prediction/betting markets (so-called Policy Analysis Markets (or PAM)) could fill a role prior to policy making by inducing people to reveal potentially valuable information to policy-makers at a price. I heard Hanson speak about it a decade ago, and I was admittedly intrigued. Modeled on Iowa betting markets, the first PAM blew up spectacularly amidst political controversy that it would create additional financial incentive for terrorists. (No doubt the involvement of John Poindexter made matters worse.) Reflection on Hanson's case (and others in which philosophical-scientists/experts have their ideas applied in the real world), influenced my development of the "Socratic Problem" concept; that is, philosophers that enter the public sphere -- Heidegger, Mill, Socrates, Adam Smith, Rousseau, etc -- can expect that people will be interested in more than just their arguments, but also how those arguments relate to their public activity.  This scrutiny and the authority it may have in philosophy is the "Socratic Problem" (recall here, here, here, and; a concept I sometimes deploy in my research (on, say, the Chicago Boys in Chile under Pinochet [here's the published version]) (which I have also explored in reception of Newtonian natural theology).)

Despite the demise of Darpa's initial PAM, the concept and its application have not gone away: policy-makers (in corporate world and government) know that sometimes they don't know all the relevant information.  Moreover, sometimes they need to make forecasts so why not use the wisdom of crowds or people's willingness to bet on an outcome? Now, recently Erik Snowberg, Justin Wolfers, and Eric Zitzewitz circulated a NBER working paper that was mostly favorable to the idea, but also included some criticism. [I have been following Wolfers' work since 2007, when I tried to organize a conference in which I would bring economists and philosophers together--alas my grant proposal was never funded.] The NBER is as close to the exitence of an economics establishment, by the way. But Snowberg et al are also critical of betting markets and in the end are quite deflationary about the uses of these markets (the nub: PAMs are mostly useful for scientific modeling, not policy-making), and their criticism was taken up by The Economist no less. I am sympathetic to Hanson's response, but he overplays his hand.