New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Adam Smith in The Birth of Biopolitics, reconsidered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On homeless philosophical notions...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Berkeley's anti-mathematics

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Evolutionary Biology at the top of the Intellectual Division of Labor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

Weekly Philo of Economics: Adam Smith on the Piacular

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

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

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