New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Mind the Gap: Hume meets Spinoza

As I concluded the previous post, I argued that the Deleuzian extension of Hume’s project entailed both the affirmation of monism (Spinoza) and multiplicity (Hume). This point is made crystal clear in A Thousand Plateaus when Deleuze and Guattari announce that “pluralism = monism” (ATP, p. 20; see this earlier post where I discuss this theme in the context of William James’ radical empiricism). This effort to bring Hume and Spinoza together, however, is fraught with difficulty, or at least apparently so, in a philosophical landscape that has been forever altered by Kant’s project.

But it is just this bringing together of Hume and Spinoza that a Deleuzian metaphysics accomplishes.

On Sympathy

Sympathy is derived from the classical Greek συμπάθεια, or fellow (συμ)-feeling (πάθεια). A solid Latin translation would be compassio. Unfortunately, whatever is exactly meant by "sympathy," to English ears "compassion," that is, "a feeling of wanting to help someone" would seem to denote merely a sub-set of sympathy.* While "sympathy" does appear (with related concepts like harmony, natural friendship, etc.) in Plato and Aristotle, it tends to be originally identified with Stoic thought; it was also taken up and developed in non-trivial ways by Plotinus, Pliny, Vetrivius, and Galen (amongst others). Use for the concept was re-discovered in the Renaissance and -- as I learned from the distinguished scholar, Ann Moyer, -- promoted not so much by Ficino, but by Erasmus and Fracastoro. Even though in Fracastoro sympathy itself had a properly atomistic explanation, the concept was banished by Descartes and lumped with the to-be-discarded occult  (see Principles of Philosophy 4.187).

Given the diversity of usages of 'sympathy' within the context of very different philosophical aims, one might doubt that there is a single, underlying concept rather than a host of family resemblances. Even so, while editing a forthcoming volume on the history of the concept, I came to think that one can identify the four following features that are incorporated in most usages of the term, 'sympathy.'

1. Sympathy is used to explain apparent action at a distance.
2. The very possibility of sympathy presupposes that it takes place among things that are in one sense or another alike (sometimes within a single being/unity/organism) to be contrasted with the antipathy (ἀντιπάθεια) of un-alikes. I call this condition of the possibility of sympathy, "The Likeness Principle" (or TLP; recall).**
3. The cause(s) of sympathy is invisible to the naked eye.
4. The effect(s) of sympathy can be (nearly) instantaneous.

On Norms, blushes, and impartial spectators.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.--Kant
Quaere quid est virtus, et posce exemplar honesti.--Lucan (quoted by David Hume as epigraph to Treatise 3.)

Our bodies can betray us. The main ploy of Seneca’s eleventh Letter is to use the all-too-human-phenomenon of blushing to talk about the limits that nature and our natures put on any philosophical wisdom. Seneca relies on the idea that blushing cannot be controlled even if one has completed an training in philosophical emendation of the mind.  One aim of such a course is a kind of self-mastery, that is, to be composed. Seneca uses blushing as a metaphor for all the ways in which there are limits to our abilities to control nature more generally. Ever since Bacon and Descartes this outlook has been on the defensive, but if we are really heading toward an era of Environmental disasters, recognizing limits may well return to favor before long even if there might be over-the-counter pills against blushing.  

Above, I use the plural “our natures,” not just because in an earlier letter Seneca had already implied there are a variety of kinds of souls (recall), but also because in the eleventh letter Seneca insists that our characters are, in part, the product of varying natural endowments. This sheds some light on the point of the little mystery at the start the eleventh Letter. For, Seneca introduces a third party, Lucilus’s “friend,” but does not reveal his identity. Presumably this is the same “friend” that had acted as (postal) messenger between Lucilus and Seneca  before (recall the third letter). This time Seneca reports a conversation he had with the unnamed friend, and it reveals something about the qualities desired in a philosophical apprentice. It seems the friend has also started a course in philosophical improvement in which Seneca judges that he has progressed.)

Turing as an embodied/embedded kind of guy

Last week I had a post up on metaphorical language in cognitive science, which generated a very interesting discussion in comments. I don’t think I’ve sufficiently made the case for the ‘too much’ claim, and the post was mostly intended to raise the question and foster some debate. (It succeeded in that respect!)

There is one aspect of it though, which I would like to follow up on. One commenter (Yan) pointed out that it’s not so surprising that digital computers ‘think’ like us, given that they are based on a conception of computation – the Turing machine – which was originally proposed as a formal explanans for some cognitive activities that humans in fact perform: calculations/computations. It is important to keep in mind that before Turing, Post, Church and others working on the concept of computability in the 1930, computation/effective calculation was an informal concept, with no precise mathematical definition (something that has been noted by e.g. Wilfried Sieg in his ‘Gödel on computability’.). To provide a mathematically precise account of this concept, which in turn corresponds to cognitive tasks that humans do engage in, was precisely the goal of these pioneers. So from this point of view, to say that digital computers are (a bit) like human minds gets the order of things right; but to say that human minds are like digital computers goes the wrong way round. 

Seneca and Wallace Stevens on Solitude

A naturall foole that could never learn by heart the order of numerall words, as One, Two, and Three, may observe every stroak of the Clock, and nod to it, or say one, one, one; but can never know what houre it strikes...Nor is it possible without Letters for any man to become either excellently wise, or (unless his memory be hurt by disease, or ill constitution of organs) excellently foolish. For words are wise mens counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the mony of fooles...one man calleth Wisdome, what another calleth Feare; and one Cruelty, what another Justice; one Prodigality, what another Magnanimity...such names can never be true grounds of any ratiocination. No more can Metaphors, and Tropes of speech: but these are less dangerous, because they profess their inconstancy; which the other do not.--Leviathan, 1.4

Night nursed not him in whose dark mind
 The clambering wings of birds of black revolved,
 Making harsh torment of the solitude.

 The walker in the moonlight walked alone,
 And in his heart his disbelief lay cold.--Wallace Stevens.

Despite the helpful reminder of 3AM Magazine, we at NewAPPS failed to celebrate the ninetieth birthday of Wallace Stevens' Harmonium. Seneca's mysterious, terse (under 325 words) tenth Letter, brought me back to Stevens' early poetry. Stevens talks of the (nightly) "torment of solitude," faced by the poetic mind (who happens to be a religious skeptic). Yet, Seneca seems to suggest that some of the very best people should seek solitude; in particular they should living with their conscience [conscientia] (recall eight letter). But presumably Stevens's poetic disbeliever is expressing his conscience faitfully.

On Fossils and Economists (and Spinozistic Anti-Mathematics)

"I have no great faith in political arithmetick, and I mean not to warrant the exactness of either of these computations." Adam Smith (1776) Wealth of Nations.

While Ancient writers (Pliny) certainly noted the existence of fossils, the meaning of the existence fossils was explosive during the eighteenth century. In posthumously published work on Discourse on Earthquakes (1705), the secretary of the Royal Society, Robert Hooke, had while surveying fossil evidence suggested that "There have been many other Species of Creatures in former Ages, of which we can find none at present; and that 'tis not unlikely also but that there may be divers new kinds now, which have not been from the beginning." (here)

As it happens, Adam Smith's two best friends in old age, James Hutton and Joseph Black, the editors of his posthumous (1795) work, Essays on Philosophical Subjects (EPS), understood what was at stake. For, in 1785 Hutton gave a public lecture, “Concerning the System of the Earth, Its Duration, and Stability,” at University of Edinburgh. Due to Hutton's illness, Black gave the lecture on Hutton’s behalf. In the lecture Hutton used geological and fossil evidence to argue that the Earth was almost certainly older than 6000 years. We do not know for sure if Smith attended the lecture, although he was in town.The argument was elaborated in far greater detail in Hutton's (1788) Theory of the Earth, which made him an international celebrity. The significance of this episode to the history of geology and Darwinism is much studied.

But what does this have to do with the history of economics?

Smith's closeness to Hutton may provide additional clues for one of the enduring mysteries of the history of economics: why did Adam Smith forsake the deployment of a mathematical model in the Wealth of Nations (1776)?

On viewing and participating in pleasing cruelty

He may say with Parmenides, who, upon reading a philosophical discourse before a public assembly at Athens, and observing, that, except Plato, the whole company had left him, continued, notwithstanding, to read on, and said that Plato alone was audience enough for him.--Adam Smith

The English Bill of Rights (1689) expressly forbids ""cruel and unusual" punishment, and this found its way into the U.S. Constitution. One important, enduring argument against such punishment -- and many other forms of cruelty that may not, in fact, constitute 'punishment' -- can be found in Seneca's Letter 7: viewing and otherwise participating in the degradation and cruelty of others, even in the context of justified punishment  [ille meruit ut hoc pateretur], can harm not just the victims or punished, but perpetrators and spectators alike. This is especially so if the cruelty produces pleasure as it is likely to do at public spectacles [spectaculo]* because then this pleasure makes our soul receptive; a desire for more cruelty creeps up on us  [per voluptatem facilius vitia subrepunt].

Seneca's particular target is the institution of aestheticized, public spectacles of cruelty and inhumanity [crudelior et inhumanior].** He emphasizes the significance of audience participation [spectatoribus suis obiciuntur]. He reorients and subtly transforms Plato's arguments for censorship of the arts to focus on the more pernicious institutions that indirectly teach people to celebrate cruelty. Seneca's argument applies to a lot of issues that we are not likely to consider primarily in terms of political speech: mass sporting events; war coverage; disaster tourism, and any form of entertainment that rely on the pleasures derived from exposure to the suffering of others. (This is not to deny that the targets of Seneca's argument can overlap with Plato's, and that his argument is indebted to Plato's moral psychology.) 

The State of Nature and Emendation in Seneca (and Spinoza, and Adam Smith)

No man has ever been so advanced by Fortune that she not threaten him as greatly as she had previously indulged him. Do not trust her seeming calm; in a moment the sea is moved to its depths.—Seneca, Letter 4. 

In context, Seneca’s acceptance of epistemic uncertainty (or here) is as much about natural events (the sea) as political events—in the previous line we’re reminded of the fates of Pompey, Crassus, and Lepidus. Political mastery does not guarantee immunity against a violent end. Seneca is not blind to the probable destination of his political fall. More important, the violent underpinning of Roman political institutions means that nobody is truly master [dominus] in their “own homes” [domesticis]: “just as many have been killed by angry slaves as by angry kings.” Somebody that “scorns his own life” [vitam suam contemptsit] will not be afraid to die, in order to kill. Seneca offers a veritable picture of a state of nature under the rule of law: “every one possesses the power which you fear.”*

One might think that Seneca is anticipating Spinoza: the state of nature is never fully absent in civil society. But Seneca’s position here is compatible with a more optimistic possibility: if one can remove the sources of anger and scorn of self, one might have a more secure and, perhaps, even less uncertain environment. One may not be able to calms the sea, but the ship of state might be made more even-keeled. It is an open question if Seneca’s proposed emendation of minds [emendato animo] is strictly limited to a kind of enjoyable [freuris] self-help (recall), or (if we cheating-ly glace ahead toward Letter 7) also by way of improved state institutions and social norms.   

Philosopher defends philosophy funding by calling politician "dog-whistler"

Philosopher Paul Redding responds to pre-election public ridicule from an Austrialian politician. I quote the two concluding paragraphs of his piece first:

We sought ways around the gridlock of current debates over the role of religion in public life by examining the way an early 18th century philosopher and theologian had responded to similar circumstances by refashioning the concept of God to accommodate modern ways of thought. The Australian Research Council’s panel of experts, acting on the advice of independent specialist assessors, deemed it worth pursuing. On the basis of its title alone, however, Briggs deems it “ridiculous”.

How to become Canonical

Why write at all if one respects the authority of canonical texts?

Our reading habits reveal our minds; reciprocally, the way and what we read can also shape, even nourish our minds. The words we read are not merely, as the saying goes, food for thought (and sometimes, thus, the semblance of thought), or trusted friends, but they can even be medicine of the mind. Seneca's second letter thus, takes for granted that words can impact us greatly. (The letter -- a compact 321 words -- turns on a series of equations among words, potions, nourishment, friendship, and location.) As we have already seen, this fact is crucial to the very possibility of escaping the ordinary exchange economy.

In the second letter, Seneca distinguishes sharply between unsteady, wandering minds and firmer ones. Now, it is possible that these are so by nature. But even the better sort of minds need cultivation; Seneca suggests that one can copy better readers (like him) and by imitating these good habits improve our minds. The better sort of readers have a limited set of enduring [certis] books that through repeated rediscovery nourish. By example Seneca shows that the better sort of reader is willing to be critical of such, canonical works--he makes a point of criticizing Epicurus. It's not that he disagrees with what Epicurus wishes to convey -- the opinion of the market-place can be wrong in rejecting all what it takes to be poverty --, but Seneca also criticizes Epicurus, in part, for embracing the axiology and conceptual apparatus of the market-place: Epicurus mistakenly treats poverty as something substantial that can be the subject of predication (such that there can be contented and miserable forms of poverty). Famously, Seneca insists that if one is cheerful, that is self-sufficient (i.e., one's needs do not go beyond one's possessions), one cannot be poor [Illa vero non est paupertas, si laeta est.], a position he already announces in his first letter.

On the Contrast between Mythical and Mistaken History...(yes, it's Thomas Nagel again).

Let's distinguish between Mythical history (Myth) and Mistaken history (Mish).

• Myth uses narratives about the past to indicate conceptual linkages among (various) and within natural and social kinds.
• Mish contains factual errors about the past.
• It's possible that Myth = Mish; but Myth need not be Mish (nor does Mish always need to be Myth).

In reflecting on the public and private responses I have received to my criticisms on Thomas Nagel's abuse of history (here and here), I realize I need some such distinction. (In particular, I thank Mazviita Chirimuuta for making me see what's at stake here!)

Myth and Mish are both compatible with (i) messy history, that is, one that suggests the past is (always more) complex and ambiguous (etc.) and (ii) clean history, that is, one that extracts some determinate claim about the way it was (other than being messy). In practice, Myth tends to be clean (but, say, Foucault practices the genre, in part, by being very messy). Mythical history (be it Mish, clean, messy, or not) is philosophially interesting because it can structure how we think about the world and the way we conceive of the nature of the the problems at hand (or overlooked).

Cleanthes' Irregular Argument, reconsidered....

Let me here observe too, continued CLEANTHES, that this religious argument, instead of being weakened by that scepticism so much affected by you, rather acquires force from it, and becomes more firm and undisputed. To exclude all argument or reasoning of every kind, is either affectation or madness. The declared profession of every reasonable sceptic is only to reject abstruse, remote, and refined arguments; to adhere to common sense and the plain instincts of nature; and to assent, wherever any reasons strike him with so full a force that he cannot, without the greatest violence, prevent it. Now the arguments for Natural Religion are plainly of this kind; and nothing but the most perverse, obstinate metaphysics can reject them. Consider, anatomise the eye; survey its structure and contrivance; and tell me, from your own feeling, if the idea of a contriver does not immediately flow in upon you with a force like that of sensation. The most obvious conclusion, surely, is in favour of design; and it requires time, reflection, and study, to summon up those frivolous, though abstruse objections, which can support Infidelity. Who can behold the male and female of each species, the correspondence of their parts and instincts, their passions, and whole course of life before and after generation, but must be sensible, that the propagation of the species is intended by Nature? Millions and millions of such instances present themselves through every part of the universe; and no language can convey a more intelligible irresistible meaning, than the curious adjustment of final causes. To what degree, therefore, of blind dogmatism must one have attained, to reject such natural and such convincing arguments?--Hume, Dialogues 3.

In her post yesterday, Helen de Cruz asserted that Cleanthes "makes an important empirical claim, namely that belief in a designer flows spontaneously, irresistibly and non-inferentially from our consideration of order in the natural world."  Because Helen only quoted the sentence on with "anatomise the eye," she left me the straightforward rejoinder that according to Hume such anatomizing always presupposes expert judgment/taste/cultivation. In response, the up-and-coming Hume scholar, Liz Goodnick, pointed to more evidence for Helen's position. (I think it is a bit misleading to call that evidence "Later in Part III,"--it is the very same paragraph, and part of a single, non-trivial argument, but strictly speaking Goodnick is correct.) I am afraid that in larger context the claim by Helen and Liz cannot be sustained, or so I argue below the fold in some detail (apologies). 

Coetzee on Whorf and Newton's Mathematical Philosophy

The ideal of a pure language in which a pure, pared-down, unambiguous translation of the truths of pure mathematics can be effected deserves a more extended discussion than I have given it here. But I will limit myself to pointing out that this ideal language is very far indeed from the languages of man as conceived by Whorf; for to Whorf the least visible structures of a language, those that seem most natural to its Speakers, are the structures most likely to embody the metaphysical preconceptions of the language Community. On the other hand, the case of gravitational attraction does not at all demonstrate what Whorf asserts about Newtonian cosmology as a System, namely that the key concepts of the cosmology emerge smoothly from or fit smoothly into, the structures of Newton's own language(s). Instead we find in Newton a real struggle, a struggle sometimes — e. g., in the General Scholium to Book III of the Principia — carried out in awareness of the issues involved, to bridge the gap between the non referential symbolism of mathematics and a language too protean to be tied down to single, pure meanings.--J.M. Coetzee (1982) "Newton and the Ideal of a Transparent Scientific Language," Journal of Literary Semantics.

Among recent philosophy the Whorf hypothesis is primarily an object of curiosity as background to Kuhn's Structure (and maybe Quine's Word and Object), although two of my favorite philosophers, Lieven Decock and our very own Helen de Cruz (and a few others), work on it.  (Undoubtedly part of the lack of interest is recent, philosophical abhorrence of relativism, but the thesis has not disappeared from linguistics and psychology.)* A charismatic economist, Keith Chen, rediscovers a version of it in economics by focusing on the surprising impact of linguistic structure and financial activity (saving rates)--here's a popular video. (HT Hülya Eraslan; I ignore my methodological qualms today.) In the article quoted in the epigraph above (it's his conclusion), Coetzee is interested in the version -- he attributes it directly to Whorf -- that "we see nature along lines laid down by our native languages." I call this version, the "narrow Whorf thesis" (to distinguish it from broader claims about linguistic/cultural relativism and also Whorf's explanation for the narrow Whorf thesis.)

Now, what does the narrow Whorf thesis have to do with Newton and Coetzee?

There we go again, Thomas Nagel makes up his history.

The scientific revolution of the 17th century, which has given rise to such extraordinary progress in the understanding of nature, depended on a crucial limiting step at the start: It depended on subtracting from the physical world as an object of study everything mental – consciousness, meaning, intention or purpose. The physical sciences as they have developed since then describe, with the aid of mathematics, the elements of which the material universe is composed, and the laws governing their behavior in space and time.--Thomas Nagel in the NYT.

I have blogged about a variant of this mythological (I think Heideggerian) history before.  (This is not to be confused with other blogging at NewAPPS on Nagel's recent views, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) If all you know is Descartes then this myth might seem plausible. But the Cartesian 'crucial limiting step' was successfully rejected throughout the seventeenth century. Many philosophers are familiar, of course, with Leibniz's monads, but may dismiss Leibniz as not really contributing to the scientific revolution (as opposed to mathematics and mathematics). So, let's focus on Newton. When he thought through the metaphysics of body (in critical response to Descartes), he embraced 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.)  While this doctrine is not stated in the Principia; there are glimpses of it in the General Scholium (added to second edition) and in his Opticks. Newton is not ideosyncratic; as I learned from my PhD Student, Marij Van Strien, through the second half of the nineteenth century leading physicists (including Maxwell) were tempted by anti-reductionist conceptions such that mind was not excluded from their inquiry.

Manufacturing Scientific Consensus by the Government

Even most Kuhn-haters are committed to the popular idea that an important measure of scientific truth is  consensus among the experts. The downside of this commitment is on display in Roberta Millstein's important piece on "the removal of gray wolves from endangered species status in the U.S." One could debate the merits of the proposal, of course, but a scary aspect of her account is the manufacture of scientific consensus by a government-agency. I quote the relevant bits first, and comment below the fold:

The problem is, as the authors of the proposal acknowledge, that there is a lack of consensus among scientists on what species are, what subspecies are, and how many species and subspecies of wolves there are. Nonetheless, they declare that one paper, Chambers et. al (2012), "is the only peer-reviewed synthesis of its kind conducted for North American wolves and summarizes and synthesizes the best available scientific information on the issue."...Chambers et al. (2012) appears in the journal North American Fauna, a publication of the FWS [Fish and Wildlife Service] itself; it is unclear why the paper wasn't sent to a more recognized peer-reviewed journal in the field, such as Conservation Biology. According to the website for North American Fauna, Chambers et al. (2012) is the only publication since 1991; it appears as though the journal was reborn specifically to publish the wolf study only to languish again afterward....In short, the FWS service has taken one of the most well-studied animals, about which there is great controversy...and benighted one paper, authored by itself (perhaps by some of the same people who wrote the proposal) as "the best available scientific information"....What is the urgency – so urgent that the FWS must hastily designate itself as the source of the best available science – to make policy when the science is so unsettled?"

A Society for Modern Philosphy!

More details on this great idea and on how to join, here.

Sympathy and the Likeness Principle (with a nod to the Bentley-Newton correspondence)

Inspired by Plato onwards, theories of cosmic, physical, and moral sympathy (συμπάθεια--'fellow feeling') were developed in a variety of contexts (e.g., Galenic medicine, Stoic metaphysics, magnetism, moral psychology, magic, etc.).  For all its variety, in most thinkers and traditions the very possibility of sympathy presupposes that sympathy takes place among things that are in one sense or another alike (sometimes within a single being/unity/organism) to be contrasted with the antipathy (ἀντιπάθεια) of un-alikes. (Here I  just flag the non-trivial moral issues this raises for ethical theories that rely on sympathy/empathy.) Let's call this condition of the possibility of sympathy, "The Likeness Principle" (or TLP). I learned the significance of the TLP in Plotinian and Stoic thought from Eyjólfur  Emilsson, René Brouwer.

Recently, Stewart Duncan has been blogging about sympathy in various contexts (e.g., Margaret Cavendish) including a nice treatment of an important response by Henry More to Marin Mersenne. The context is a debate over what counts as a proper explanation of sympathetic resonance of vibrating strings. [Among historians of science, the best known 17th century discussions (unmentioned by Duncan) occurs in Galileo's treatment of resonating pendula at the end of the first day of the The Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences (Galileo avoids using 'sympathy') or  Gilbert's work on the magnet and action at a distance (recall my post).]

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

(Cross-posted at M-Phi)

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

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

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

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

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

The soul of man pictured

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

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

An appreciative Remark on Derrida

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

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

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

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

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

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

A.N. Prior: Historian of Philosophy!

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

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

Historians of Philosophy serve the undergraduates

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is Straussianism all wrong, everywhere, all the time?

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

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

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

The Genealogy of Genealogy

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

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

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

Humanist Spinozism (Thomas More, Utopia)

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

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

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

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

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

From the early annals of Law & Economics:

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

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

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

While the cat's away

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

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

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