By the late 19th century, philosophers had formulated three theories about the nature of truth.
Before I should say any more, I should add: they were all using the word "truth" in a way that contemporary philosophers would not. They all meant, not "truth" specifically, as a property of belief -- but KNOWLEDGE of truth, as the reason why we know truths, when we do.
The three classical theories were these: correspondence, coherence, pragmatism.
According to the correspondence theory, a belief is true when it accurately copies a fact in the world. As Wittgenstein said, in his usual straightforward style, "In order to tell whether a picture is
true or false we must compare it with reality."
The correspondence theory carried with it some pretty heavy metaphysical baggage. Suppose I'm looking at a painted portrait of John Smith. If I want to decide whether that's a "true" portrait of
John Smith, I can go up to John himself, get a good like at him, then decide whether the likeness is an accurate one.
But even then, we should say that the portrait is either realistic or not. A surrealistic portrait of John Smith, painted say by Salvador Dali, might be as "true" in its own way as anything that can come out
of a camera in the noontime sun, but it would be true in a non-copyist way.
Furthermore, that is a very bad metaphor for my efforts to know the world. After all, both the portrait and the man who sat for it are facts outside of my skull -- I have the same kind of access to the
one as to the other. An analogy to that sort of comparison gets us nowhere if what is in question is the nature of truth/knowledge about people and paintings both.
The coherence and pragmatic theories of knowledge were both efforts to get rid of the metaphysical baggage of correspondence, or the copy theory. They both said that there is something about some of my experiences, my ideas, my beliefs, etc. that makes them true -- and that something isn't a transcendence of the whole body of my experience by the way that it relates to itself, the way the parts of it relate to one another.
In the coherence view, error is inconsistency. If I could only get all my beliefs into a single coherent whole, I would know them as true -- or, strictly, I would know them as the whole single shining
body of Truth itself.
In the pragmatic view, error is failure. Beliefs guide me through experiences well or poorly, they are valuable when they lead me where I want to go, harmful when they get me lost. Truth, then, is success.
The tendency in Anglo-American philosophy since about the 1930s has been to distinguish sharply between the issue of truth and the issue of knowledge, then to render the notion of truth impoverished. To say "it is true that this computer is working" is just to say, with a little extra emphasis perhaps, that "this computer is working" -- the word "true" is the emphasis, but in terms of strict meaning its
redundant.
I've said all this before, but what I'd like to emphasize today is that it isn't only pragmatism that needs restatement in order to become comprehensible within contemporary philosophical jargon. It is each
of the original three positions. They all turn out, in 21st century terms, to have been more about knowledge -- and even more specifically one's WARRANT for a true belief -- than about truth as
such.
The correspondence theory looks backward for warrant, for evidence that the copy derives casually from the thing copied.
The coherence theory looks inward for warrant, and worries whether all parts of a world view cohere.
The pragmatic view would LIKE to look forward -- but since the success or failure of this moment's forward looks is necessarily still unsettled, it adapts by looking backward at earlier instances
of successful forward look, and imitating whatever made them succeed.
Showing posts with label pragmatism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pragmatism. Show all posts
25 March 2012
25 June 2011
Why I Am Not A Conservative, Conclusion
In the end, the reasons I am not a conservative (the reasons that label doesn't apply to the views I do hold, and the reasons I don't agree with views to which the label more readily does apply) are roughly the same as those Hayek set out.
Hayek's essay of this title was published in the very same year as the Goldwater book I've been examining: 1960. Hayek said that in our day (in this respect, he speaks even more to ours than to his own) "movements that are thought to be progressive advocate further encroachments on individual liberty." A conservative and a real liberal, a defender of individual, may well be thrown together in mutual opposition to those progressive movements which may call themselves liberal.
But Hayek also said that the problem with conservatism is that it offers no alternative. "Let-us-keep- the-good-things-we-have" is not an alternative to change, because the world will necessarily change, and the real struggle has to be over the direction of change. Toward more liberty, or toward less?
Hayek wrote, "the tug of war between conservatives amd progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments."
That sentence echoes remarkably Goldwaters sentence, written at roughly the same time, about how the trouble with liberals is that they are in a hurry. That is just what Hayek warned us conservatives would falsely say the trouble with "liberals" -- the folks he called progressives -- is. The real trouble, on the other hand, is that the progressives are pulling us in the wrong direction.
I am reminded of a buddy of mine in college who was arrested for drunk driving. That was the 1970s, and -- so long as no one was hurt -- drunk driving was not yet regarded as the horrendous offense it is nowadays taken to be. It was under the general category stupid-college-kid offense.
Anyway, my buddy was driving along a sidewalk when he was arrested -- which made the breathalyzer test almost entirely unnecessary. The next day, after I bailed him out, he complained to me that among the 6 or 7 charges for which the police officer had written him up, there was "speeding." This was too much. How could he have been speeding when he was driving on a place he shouldn't have been driving on at any rate!
I'm not, BTW, making fun of DWI offenses. I was simply amused by my friend's indignation, and it comes back to me now because Hayek was offering in all seriousness -- and I think rightly -- the same complaint against the Goldwaters of the world. They should not pretend that any part of the offense is speeding. The problem is that progressives have us on a sidewalk!
This problem won't be resolved by complaints that suggest that a slower rate of speed on the sidewalk would be okay.
So: what are we to say about Goldwater's opposition to Brown v. Board? Does it tell us anything beyond that one historic incident? It tells us, I submit, that at a time when the progressive agenda demanded the end to Jim Crow, the conservative attitude reflexively defended Jim Crow. Of course, many people defended Jim Crow out of self-interest. It helped a lot of white people avoid competition in the job market, for example. The privileged generally abstain from challenging the grounds of their privilege. But even those who lived in states without Jim Crow often reflexively defended the system, or opposed its opponents, out of the knee-jerk reflex Hayek understood.
It tells us, also, that when the progressives won that one, when Jim Crow was dead, conservatives in time came along, and posed as the true defenders of equality of opportunity for the Linda Browns of the world-- not because their principles had changed, but because the real objection posed by those principles had been one of velocity, and that is irrelevant given an accomplished fact.
A true liberal -- a believer in liberty, and in such forms of progress as serve liberty, consistent with the preserving of such liberty as has been attained -- would have found the root of the problem in the whole notion of mandatory public education. Naturally, if there are government-run mandatory schools, if taxes are used to pay for them, if people under an arbitrary age are ordered to attend them absent specific state-sponsored exemptions -- then virtually everything that is done in the administration of that system will seem tyrannical to someone. Evolution is taught or it isn't -- coercion either way. The pledge of allegiance is made part of a regular ritual, or it isn't -- coercion either way. The races are separated or they aren't -- coercion either way IF one understands that the system itself is coercive.
The real direction of progress (not of progressivism) would involve getting people to see market alternatives, and understand that the forces of spontaneous order will address all such dilemma to the extent they are allowed to do so.
In some moments Goldwater seems to want to follow that rule. Alas, though, he was all too often a conservative instead.
Hayek's essay of this title was published in the very same year as the Goldwater book I've been examining: 1960. Hayek said that in our day (in this respect, he speaks even more to ours than to his own) "movements that are thought to be progressive advocate further encroachments on individual liberty." A conservative and a real liberal, a defender of individual, may well be thrown together in mutual opposition to those progressive movements which may call themselves liberal.
But Hayek also said that the problem with conservatism is that it offers no alternative. "Let-us-keep- the-good-things-we-have" is not an alternative to change, because the world will necessarily change, and the real struggle has to be over the direction of change. Toward more liberty, or toward less?
Hayek wrote, "the tug of war between conservatives amd progressives can only affect the speed, not the direction, of contemporary developments."
That sentence echoes remarkably Goldwaters sentence, written at roughly the same time, about how the trouble with liberals is that they are in a hurry. That is just what Hayek warned us conservatives would falsely say the trouble with "liberals" -- the folks he called progressives -- is. The real trouble, on the other hand, is that the progressives are pulling us in the wrong direction.
I am reminded of a buddy of mine in college who was arrested for drunk driving. That was the 1970s, and -- so long as no one was hurt -- drunk driving was not yet regarded as the horrendous offense it is nowadays taken to be. It was under the general category stupid-college-kid offense.
Anyway, my buddy was driving along a sidewalk when he was arrested -- which made the breathalyzer test almost entirely unnecessary. The next day, after I bailed him out, he complained to me that among the 6 or 7 charges for which the police officer had written him up, there was "speeding." This was too much. How could he have been speeding when he was driving on a place he shouldn't have been driving on at any rate!
I'm not, BTW, making fun of DWI offenses. I was simply amused by my friend's indignation, and it comes back to me now because Hayek was offering in all seriousness -- and I think rightly -- the same complaint against the Goldwaters of the world. They should not pretend that any part of the offense is speeding. The problem is that progressives have us on a sidewalk!
This problem won't be resolved by complaints that suggest that a slower rate of speed on the sidewalk would be okay.
So: what are we to say about Goldwater's opposition to Brown v. Board? Does it tell us anything beyond that one historic incident? It tells us, I submit, that at a time when the progressive agenda demanded the end to Jim Crow, the conservative attitude reflexively defended Jim Crow. Of course, many people defended Jim Crow out of self-interest. It helped a lot of white people avoid competition in the job market, for example. The privileged generally abstain from challenging the grounds of their privilege. But even those who lived in states without Jim Crow often reflexively defended the system, or opposed its opponents, out of the knee-jerk reflex Hayek understood.
It tells us, also, that when the progressives won that one, when Jim Crow was dead, conservatives in time came along, and posed as the true defenders of equality of opportunity for the Linda Browns of the world-- not because their principles had changed, but because the real objection posed by those principles had been one of velocity, and that is irrelevant given an accomplished fact.
A true liberal -- a believer in liberty, and in such forms of progress as serve liberty, consistent with the preserving of such liberty as has been attained -- would have found the root of the problem in the whole notion of mandatory public education. Naturally, if there are government-run mandatory schools, if taxes are used to pay for them, if people under an arbitrary age are ordered to attend them absent specific state-sponsored exemptions -- then virtually everything that is done in the administration of that system will seem tyrannical to someone. Evolution is taught or it isn't -- coercion either way. The pledge of allegiance is made part of a regular ritual, or it isn't -- coercion either way. The races are separated or they aren't -- coercion either way IF one understands that the system itself is coercive.
The real direction of progress (not of progressivism) would involve getting people to see market alternatives, and understand that the forces of spontaneous order will address all such dilemma to the extent they are allowed to do so.
In some moments Goldwater seems to want to follow that rule. Alas, though, he was all too often a conservative instead.
23 June 2011
Why I Am Not A Conservative
That title served for some famous reflections by Fredrich Hayek. It will serve for me as well.
Should I be a conservative? After all, many in our own day who use that label for themselves happily define their creed as the distrust of government, central planning, etc. That is valid enough for me, since I'm an anarcho-capitalist. (Going further in the libertarian economic direction, then, than did Hayek.)
So: am I a conservative?
Fortunately, conservatism conserves enough of a memory of its own past that some of its proponents today quote classic texts, and these texts can give me a fix on what I am or am not. For example, in the mid-20th century US one of the most prominent conservatives was Barry Goldwater, long-time Senator from Arizona, 1964 presidential candidate, author of a book entitled The Conscience of a Conservative (1960).
Let us see if he had anything to say that helps me fix ideas about what I am, or should be, or perhaps should not be.
"Conservatism," Goldwater says rather early on in that book, "therefore looks upon the enhancement of man's spiritual nature as the primary concern of political philosophy. Liberals, on the other hand, -- in the name of a concern for "human beings" -- regard the satisfaction of economic wants as the dominant mission of society. They are, moreover, in a hurry. So that their characteristic approach is to harness society's political and economic forces into a collective effort to compel 'progress.' In this approach, I believe they fight against Nature."
There is a good deal of confusion in those sentences, and I believe the respects in which they are confused will help me get to me goal: clarifying why I am not a conservative in any sense in which the late Senator Goldwater was.
The pause to blame liberals for being "in a hurry" is one loose thread on which we might want to tug. After all, if somebody wants something that is wrong, then it hardly matters whether he wants it quickly or slowly. It is wrong to move quickly to do a bad thing and it is wrong to move slowly to do a bad thing.
Someone is trying to rob a bank. Oh, a bad thing. And what is more, they're in a hurry! they have a getaway car all revved up out front and they're motioning to the teller to be quick about putting the loot in the bag. Is that an aggravating factor?
Consider another set of bank robbers. More methodical, they take days to create a tunnel beneath the bank into the vault. They aren't in a hurry, then, They are showing some patience in working toward their goal. Are they the "good" bank robbers? Are conservatives more firmly against the one set of bank robbers than the other?
I think not. Indeed, the only relevance of this "in a hurry" qualification would arise if there were things that would be good only if accomplished slowly.
My inference is that Goldwater was doing two things in this passage. First, he was trying to link his conservatism with the views of Edmund Burke, as expounded in the 1950's by political theorist Russell Kirk. The rest of his (Goldwater's) book has relatively little to do with the Burke/Kirk constellation of ideas, but Goldwater wanted to bow in that direction.
Second, though, Goldwater wanted to anticipate what he would say about the civil rights struggles of black Americans later in his book. He would say "It so happens that I am in agreement with the objectives of the Supreme Court as stated in the Brown decision. I believe that it is both wise and just for Negro children to attend the same schools as whites, and that to deny them this opportunity carries with it strong implications of inferiority."
But, of course, he didn't want to desegregate in a hurry. That would be fighting against nature. He wanted the Justices to leave the decisions to the state legislatures, and he hoped that moral suasion would in time bring the state legislators around.
I have to wonder about the pragmatic significance of this sort of "agreement with the objectives." After all, the 14th amendment was enacted in 1866. It was 90 years later that the Supreme Court ordered desegregation, and even then it included the key phrase "all deliberate speed." The word "deliberate" (i.e. you in the states and towns can think about this and make sure you do it right) was an invitation to further foot dragging -- an invitation that was immediately accepted.
So 90 years plus is "in a hurry"?
But let us return to the passage in the introduction, the passage I italicized above. Goldwater is unhappy that liberals "regard the satisfaction of economic wants as the dominant mission in society." What does that mean?
Can "wants" be divided into economic and non-economic "wants"? Or are all wants economic wants? I hope to take things up from this point tomorrow.
Should I be a conservative? After all, many in our own day who use that label for themselves happily define their creed as the distrust of government, central planning, etc. That is valid enough for me, since I'm an anarcho-capitalist. (Going further in the libertarian economic direction, then, than did Hayek.)
So: am I a conservative?
Fortunately, conservatism conserves enough of a memory of its own past that some of its proponents today quote classic texts, and these texts can give me a fix on what I am or am not. For example, in the mid-20th century US one of the most prominent conservatives was Barry Goldwater, long-time Senator from Arizona, 1964 presidential candidate, author of a book entitled The Conscience of a Conservative (1960).
Let us see if he had anything to say that helps me fix ideas about what I am, or should be, or perhaps should not be.
"Conservatism," Goldwater says rather early on in that book, "therefore looks upon the enhancement of man's spiritual nature as the primary concern of political philosophy. Liberals, on the other hand, -- in the name of a concern for "human beings" -- regard the satisfaction of economic wants as the dominant mission of society. They are, moreover, in a hurry. So that their characteristic approach is to harness society's political and economic forces into a collective effort to compel 'progress.' In this approach, I believe they fight against Nature."
There is a good deal of confusion in those sentences, and I believe the respects in which they are confused will help me get to me goal: clarifying why I am not a conservative in any sense in which the late Senator Goldwater was.
The pause to blame liberals for being "in a hurry" is one loose thread on which we might want to tug. After all, if somebody wants something that is wrong, then it hardly matters whether he wants it quickly or slowly. It is wrong to move quickly to do a bad thing and it is wrong to move slowly to do a bad thing.
Someone is trying to rob a bank. Oh, a bad thing. And what is more, they're in a hurry! they have a getaway car all revved up out front and they're motioning to the teller to be quick about putting the loot in the bag. Is that an aggravating factor?
Consider another set of bank robbers. More methodical, they take days to create a tunnel beneath the bank into the vault. They aren't in a hurry, then, They are showing some patience in working toward their goal. Are they the "good" bank robbers? Are conservatives more firmly against the one set of bank robbers than the other?
I think not. Indeed, the only relevance of this "in a hurry" qualification would arise if there were things that would be good only if accomplished slowly.
My inference is that Goldwater was doing two things in this passage. First, he was trying to link his conservatism with the views of Edmund Burke, as expounded in the 1950's by political theorist Russell Kirk. The rest of his (Goldwater's) book has relatively little to do with the Burke/Kirk constellation of ideas, but Goldwater wanted to bow in that direction.
Second, though, Goldwater wanted to anticipate what he would say about the civil rights struggles of black Americans later in his book. He would say "It so happens that I am in agreement with the objectives of the Supreme Court as stated in the Brown decision. I believe that it is both wise and just for Negro children to attend the same schools as whites, and that to deny them this opportunity carries with it strong implications of inferiority."
But, of course, he didn't want to desegregate in a hurry. That would be fighting against nature. He wanted the Justices to leave the decisions to the state legislatures, and he hoped that moral suasion would in time bring the state legislators around.
I have to wonder about the pragmatic significance of this sort of "agreement with the objectives." After all, the 14th amendment was enacted in 1866. It was 90 years later that the Supreme Court ordered desegregation, and even then it included the key phrase "all deliberate speed." The word "deliberate" (i.e. you in the states and towns can think about this and make sure you do it right) was an invitation to further foot dragging -- an invitation that was immediately accepted.
So 90 years plus is "in a hurry"?
But let us return to the passage in the introduction, the passage I italicized above. Goldwater is unhappy that liberals "regard the satisfaction of economic wants as the dominant mission in society." What does that mean?
Can "wants" be divided into economic and non-economic "wants"? Or are all wants economic wants? I hope to take things up from this point tomorrow.
11 March 2011
Atlas Shrugged
That title will boost my hits.
Next month the first movie in a projected trilogy, dramatizing Ayn Rand's notoriously ponderous novel, hits screens near you.
Since the movie is a 21st century event, it has its own webpage here.
Anyway, here is a link to a Slate review of that name.
The review is not especially enthusiastic. I like this line: "Anyone who's seen a SyFy Channel original movie in which a mutated insect battles a mutated amphibian will be comfortable with the production quality."
In general, regular readers will know what are my views on Objectivism. They are, roughly, the views that Murray Rothbard expressed even while Ayn Rand was still formulating this as a philosophy. Any recognition of the supposed need for any sovereign is too much of a concession to the myth of sovereignty.
Further (and this is a related point) the case for freedom is best made not through painfully abstract or conceptualist arguments but through practical demonstrations of how freedom works, and how central planning fails. Hence the title of this blog: Pragmatism Refreshed.
As for the novel, it is almost painfully bad. It was written by someone who could never say anything in a single sentence if a 20-page speech would do the job.
Finally, a guess about the movie: it might be better than a lot of what reaches theatres these days. The Fountainhead was a good movie, after all, and even made for a decent episode of Barney Miller.
Next month the first movie in a projected trilogy, dramatizing Ayn Rand's notoriously ponderous novel, hits screens near you.
Since the movie is a 21st century event, it has its own webpage here.
Anyway, here is a link to a Slate review of that name.
The review is not especially enthusiastic. I like this line: "Anyone who's seen a SyFy Channel original movie in which a mutated insect battles a mutated amphibian will be comfortable with the production quality."
In general, regular readers will know what are my views on Objectivism. They are, roughly, the views that Murray Rothbard expressed even while Ayn Rand was still formulating this as a philosophy. Any recognition of the supposed need for any sovereign is too much of a concession to the myth of sovereignty.
Further (and this is a related point) the case for freedom is best made not through painfully abstract or conceptualist arguments but through practical demonstrations of how freedom works, and how central planning fails. Hence the title of this blog: Pragmatism Refreshed.
As for the novel, it is almost painfully bad. It was written by someone who could never say anything in a single sentence if a 20-page speech would do the job.
Finally, a guess about the movie: it might be better than a lot of what reaches theatres these days. The Fountainhead was a good movie, after all, and even made for a decent episode of Barney Miller.
12 June 2010
James' thought for today
"Ordinary epistemology contents itself with the vague statement that the ideas must 'correspond' or 'agree' [with reality]; the pragmatist insists on being more concrete, and asks what such 'agreement' may mean in detail. He finds first that the ideas must point to or lead towards that reality and no other, and then that the pointings and leadings must yield satisfaction as their result. So far the pragmatist is hardly less abstract than the ordinary slouchy epistemologist; but as he defines himself farther, he grows more concrete."
"The Pragmatist Account of Truth and its Misunderstanders," PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW (Jan. 1908).
"The Pragmatist Account of Truth and its Misunderstanders," PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW (Jan. 1908).
21 May 2010
Hitler's Holy Relics I
I've recently read a surprisingly fascinating book, Hitler's Holy Relics: A True Story of Nazi Plunder and the Race to Recover the Crown Jewels of the Holy Roman Empire by Sidney D. Kirkpatrick.
The book is written from the point of view of Walter Horn, an art historian by trade who had improbably been given the task near the war's end in Europe of interrogating German prisoners on what they knew about poison gas. There was nothing improbable about the mission: allied intelligence was sensibly concerned, circa February 1945, that Hitler would unleash poison gas when he believed he had nothing left to lose. What seems improbable in retrospect was that Horn, whose interest in medieval art had had him studying before the war with such giants in the field as Erwin Panofsky and Bernard Berenson, should have been given that task. But it was a fortuitous circumstance, because one day one of the German prisoners, knowing nothing about poison gas but eager to please his captors and perhaps improve his own miserable conditions, leaned forward to ask Horn, "Are you interested in art and antiques?"
He was. And that sets Kirkpatrick's tale in motion. Private Huber told of a bunker on Blacksmith's Alley in Nuremburg that held a variety of artefacts that he, the private, had seen but the importance of which he did not understood. (Huber had been there because his father was in charge of maintaining the air ventilation unit, which is obviously crucial to any facility for the underground storage of antiquities.) Huber told of monarchical robes embroidered with pearl-studded pictures of camels and lions, of a crown with uncut sapphires, rubies, and amethysts, a golden apple tipped with a cross, and much else. Horn recognized that the descriptions matched the regal paraphenalia of the Holy Roman Emperors, the "First Reich" in the line in which Hitler fancied his own regime the Third.
US forces invaded Nuremburg on April 17. Acting on Horn's report, and on high command's concerns that the relics could become symbolically significant for the would-be founders of a Fourth Reich, a 135-man assault team was detailed in the chaos of that battle to secure the Blacksmith's Alley facility. Huber had been telling the truth. The facility was the Third Reich's treasure trove.
The war in Europe ended on May 8 (and the dying Third Reich had never employed poison gas). Horn's job in the early days of the occupation was to interrogate high-ranking Nazis, in anticipation of the eventual war crimes trials. So although he was now asking questions of people who far outranked poor Private Huber, his daily work had not much changed. But in July '45 Horn was called away from that task and given another. Some of the most precious of the treasures inside that Blacksmith's Alley trove had gone missing. He was ordered to become an impromptu gumshoe -- to report within three weeks on who was responsible for their disappearance, and if possible, to recover them.
SPOILER ALERT! Stop reading NOW if you hope ever to read this book in the spirit of reading a who-dunnit. Still with me? All right.
The two alternative hypotheses with which Horn begins his quest are: that the Nazis had established a covert resistance program near war's end in order to sabotage the occupation and lay the groundwork for an eventual restoration of their fortunes, and had spirited away the pick of the treasures -- including the aforementioned imperial crown -- for this purpose; and that one or more GIs within the occupation administration had taken them either for souvenirs or for a black-market profit.
The right answer was a variant of the first of those. There was general agreement among the Nazi elite that these treasures should be kept safe for a Fourth Reich, but the actual move of the five key pieces out of the Blacksmith Alley locale seems not to have been part of any very careful plan, but the result of an intra-party dispute, and of an order given by the City's mayor (who was himself murdered by an SA Group Leader just before the US forces invaded the city.)
Before that final confrontation, Mayor Liebel had instructed that certain artefacts be moved out of one underground hiding place ... into another. Not far away. Indeed, this mystery has a twist that reminds me of one of Poe's stories, "The treasures for which [Horn] had criss-crossed Germany had apparently been hidden less than a thousand yards from where his investigation had begun."
Two of the mayor's underlings did some prison time for lying about this to the occupation authorities, and Horn was treated like a conquering hero by the MFAA, the office of the US Forces European Theatre concerned with "Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives."
It's a fine story, with broader significance concerning the core matters of this blog -- pragmatism and sovereignty. I hope to speak to that significance tomorrow.
The book is written from the point of view of Walter Horn, an art historian by trade who had improbably been given the task near the war's end in Europe of interrogating German prisoners on what they knew about poison gas. There was nothing improbable about the mission: allied intelligence was sensibly concerned, circa February 1945, that Hitler would unleash poison gas when he believed he had nothing left to lose. What seems improbable in retrospect was that Horn, whose interest in medieval art had had him studying before the war with such giants in the field as Erwin Panofsky and Bernard Berenson, should have been given that task. But it was a fortuitous circumstance, because one day one of the German prisoners, knowing nothing about poison gas but eager to please his captors and perhaps improve his own miserable conditions, leaned forward to ask Horn, "Are you interested in art and antiques?"
He was. And that sets Kirkpatrick's tale in motion. Private Huber told of a bunker on Blacksmith's Alley in Nuremburg that held a variety of artefacts that he, the private, had seen but the importance of which he did not understood. (Huber had been there because his father was in charge of maintaining the air ventilation unit, which is obviously crucial to any facility for the underground storage of antiquities.) Huber told of monarchical robes embroidered with pearl-studded pictures of camels and lions, of a crown with uncut sapphires, rubies, and amethysts, a golden apple tipped with a cross, and much else. Horn recognized that the descriptions matched the regal paraphenalia of the Holy Roman Emperors, the "First Reich" in the line in which Hitler fancied his own regime the Third.
US forces invaded Nuremburg on April 17. Acting on Horn's report, and on high command's concerns that the relics could become symbolically significant for the would-be founders of a Fourth Reich, a 135-man assault team was detailed in the chaos of that battle to secure the Blacksmith's Alley facility. Huber had been telling the truth. The facility was the Third Reich's treasure trove.
The war in Europe ended on May 8 (and the dying Third Reich had never employed poison gas). Horn's job in the early days of the occupation was to interrogate high-ranking Nazis, in anticipation of the eventual war crimes trials. So although he was now asking questions of people who far outranked poor Private Huber, his daily work had not much changed. But in July '45 Horn was called away from that task and given another. Some of the most precious of the treasures inside that Blacksmith's Alley trove had gone missing. He was ordered to become an impromptu gumshoe -- to report within three weeks on who was responsible for their disappearance, and if possible, to recover them.
SPOILER ALERT! Stop reading NOW if you hope ever to read this book in the spirit of reading a who-dunnit. Still with me? All right.
The two alternative hypotheses with which Horn begins his quest are: that the Nazis had established a covert resistance program near war's end in order to sabotage the occupation and lay the groundwork for an eventual restoration of their fortunes, and had spirited away the pick of the treasures -- including the aforementioned imperial crown -- for this purpose; and that one or more GIs within the occupation administration had taken them either for souvenirs or for a black-market profit.
The right answer was a variant of the first of those. There was general agreement among the Nazi elite that these treasures should be kept safe for a Fourth Reich, but the actual move of the five key pieces out of the Blacksmith Alley locale seems not to have been part of any very careful plan, but the result of an intra-party dispute, and of an order given by the City's mayor (who was himself murdered by an SA Group Leader just before the US forces invaded the city.)
Before that final confrontation, Mayor Liebel had instructed that certain artefacts be moved out of one underground hiding place ... into another. Not far away. Indeed, this mystery has a twist that reminds me of one of Poe's stories, "The treasures for which [Horn] had criss-crossed Germany had apparently been hidden less than a thousand yards from where his investigation had begun."
Two of the mayor's underlings did some prison time for lying about this to the occupation authorities, and Horn was treated like a conquering hero by the MFAA, the office of the US Forces European Theatre concerned with "Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives."
It's a fine story, with broader significance concerning the core matters of this blog -- pragmatism and sovereignty. I hope to speak to that significance tomorrow.
18 April 2010
Not all redundancy theory is alike
Deflationism as to truth is a major trend in epistemology, at least in English speaking countries, one that has lasted throughout much of the 20th century into the 21st. But let us back up a bit: century ago, a triangular debate was underway as to the Meaning of Truth. The correspondence theory, affiliated with various forms of realism about the external world, represented one corner of this triangle. The coherence theory, affiliated generally with idealism, represented another, and pragmatism the third. But the deflationists sought to ring the bell and end the fight, declaring that "truth" doesn't mean anything interesting, i.e. that the grand metaphysical puzzle of its significance is actually a hot air balloon.
Personally, my view is that deflationism is well and good, but if the air is let out of this balloon it will go somewhere else. The matters that Russell, Royce, and James debated back in the old days under the label "truth" will still have to be thrashed out under other labels.
Today, I wish simply to observe that not all deflationism is alike. One variant of deflation is the "redundancy theory of truth." According to this view, to say "it is true that the grass is green" is the same thing as to say "the grass is green," so the extra words are redundant. One of those extra redundant words, of course, is the word "true," no matter how attached to that one we tend to be. Other forms of deflationism give the concept of "truth" some minimalist function. It is not just redundancy. It is, for example, a type of performance. Or a way of creating emphasis (like using italics in the way I just did.) Still, the hot-air of metaphysics is to be deflated.
Now comes a further revelation. File this under the heading "philosophy is fractal." For it appears that not all redundancy theories of truth are alike, either. According to Pierre le Morvan here, there are at least three distinct redundancy theories: a "robust" redundancy that Morvan associates with W.E. Johnson; a skinnier redundancy that Morvan calls the "received interpretation," and an intermediate view he associates with Frank Ramsey.
His explanation of the differences among these, though, makes my brain hurt, so further into the exploration of this Mandelbrot set I will not press.
Personally, my view is that deflationism is well and good, but if the air is let out of this balloon it will go somewhere else. The matters that Russell, Royce, and James debated back in the old days under the label "truth" will still have to be thrashed out under other labels.
Today, I wish simply to observe that not all deflationism is alike. One variant of deflation is the "redundancy theory of truth." According to this view, to say "it is true that the grass is green" is the same thing as to say "the grass is green," so the extra words are redundant. One of those extra redundant words, of course, is the word "true," no matter how attached to that one we tend to be. Other forms of deflationism give the concept of "truth" some minimalist function. It is not just redundancy. It is, for example, a type of performance. Or a way of creating emphasis (like using italics in the way I just did.) Still, the hot-air of metaphysics is to be deflated.
Now comes a further revelation. File this under the heading "philosophy is fractal." For it appears that not all redundancy theories of truth are alike, either. According to Pierre le Morvan here, there are at least three distinct redundancy theories: a "robust" redundancy that Morvan associates with W.E. Johnson; a skinnier redundancy that Morvan calls the "received interpretation," and an intermediate view he associates with Frank Ramsey.
His explanation of the differences among these, though, makes my brain hurt, so further into the exploration of this Mandelbrot set I will not press.
24 September 2009
Pragmatism Refreshed: Freedom Pursued
Is pragmatism an adequate and indeed an essential foundation for the advocates of liberty? I have long contended that this question needs a strong "yes" answer. As I explained in my September 12 blog entry, though, I am delighted that Frank van Dun has set forth his reasons for believing that I am wrong.
This is my reply to the case he has made, which was in turn a response to an editorial I wrote years ago for a now-defunct magazine called The Pragmatist.
Preliminaries
I am an anarcho-capitalist. I am no longer active within the Libertarian Party, but I wish the LP well, and I speak not merely of the anarcho-caps therein but of the minarchists as well. The advance of their ideas is infinitely to be preferred over the continued dominance of the "liberals" and "conservatives" in public debate.
My earlier essay on "The Necessity of Pragmatism," moved as concisely as I could manage through a theory of meaning, to the nature of truth and knowledge, and then on to ethics. I also said a few words at that time about restitution as the central principle of Justice. I will leave restitution out of this essay, but otherwise I will retrace and elaborate my steps, taking account as I go of van Dun's critique.
Van Dun agrees with me largely on meaning, so I will be very brief here. Pragmatists ask "what difference would it make" were one hypothesis rather than another true. If there is no practical difference, then pragmatists write off the dispute as an idle one. There is no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere else. I will not press that point except to provide the curious with this link for the story of James' squirrel, a bit of philosophical exposition that van Dun and I both admire.
Van Dun disagrees with me about truth, but I think that this is largely because he conflates the old correspondence theory of truth with a more new-fangled thing called the disquotational (or deflationary) theory of truth. The two are not at all the same, as we can see from works in which advocates of the real correspondence view argue against deflation, and even from efforts to reconcile the two.
I think James' arguments retain their old force against the genuine correspondence theory. Jamesians can probably consent to the deflationary theory without loss of anything James wanted to save, though, because if "truth" is the uninteresting tautological property that deflationists say that it is, then the notion doesn't really do any work in epistemology or anywhere else. I'm happy to concede that the statement "snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white. If we say that this is a full account of truth, though, then we abstract from a lot of other considerations that show up in all of the older theories.
The gist of the older disputes remains, nonetheless. Giving up "truth" to the deflationists means that the 19th century disputes among coherentists, correspondence theorists and pragmatists will have to rage again over other labels, such as "reference," or "knowledge," or (fittest of all) "warrant." And pragmatism in particular can easily enough refit itself as what is nowadays called a theory of warrant, of when we are warranted in asserting or believing that snow is white or anything else.
I suspect that van Dun's real objection to my old essay, the heart of our quarrel, doesn't really become evident until deep into his essay, when he gets to historical questions. We come to that point when he quotes me thus: “Human history contains plenty of data from which we might draw the conclusion that liberty works and slavery fails.”
Human history
To this he takes exception on a number of grounds. He asks: “[Where] do we draw the line between ‘liberty’ and ‘slavery’?" I might interject: the line is easily drawn, because I mean by slavery here what the history books mean by it -- the ownership or control of a person as a chattel. His questions continue: "What is the point of asking whether it is liberty or slavery that works? Surely, no one holds that the abolition of the institution of slavery brings a libertarian society into existence. A person can be unfree without being a slave (or a prisoner) in the common meaning of the term.”
True enough. Allow me to get this riposte properly underway, then, with two examples of unfreedom that fall far short of slavery, that also conspicuously didn't work. I take examples from my own country's history. In the early 20th century a sophisticated political movement went to a good deal of trouble to secure an amendment to the U.S. Constitution in order to allow Congress to prohibit the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors. Why? The motives were perfectly understandable (it is difficult to deny that the consumption of liquor has been tied up with a good deal of heartbreak and disaster in human life), and these motives seemed to participants in that political movement to justify a constraint upon human liberty, upon individual decisions about the use of their own property and about the contracts into which they would or would not enter.
That unfreedom, imposed on us from 1919 until 1933, quite plainly did not work.
It fell because it failed.
Secondly, let us consider the sort of unfreedom typified by centralized social planning represented by the creation of a Federal Reserve Board, and ultimately by the introduction of fiat money. I think it safe to say that the headlines of the last year and a half especially make it clear that this unfreedom, too, does not work. This example is of a new sort because in each of the preceding two examples -- chattel slavery and alcohol prohibition -- we are discussing an institution that is no more. In the case of the Federal Reserve, we have to deal with an ongoing failure. Nonetheless, that it is a failure -- and that it is an instance of unfreedom -- are both very clear to me, and I hope to Mr. van Dun.
Business cycles preceded fiat money. But such money, and the central bankers whose "fiat" it is, surely worsen these destructive waves, these macrocosmic outbreaks of manic-depressive disorder. By flooding the land with the ever-cheaper legal tender, the central bankers cajole the retail and investment bankers, who in turn cajole men and women of varying degrees of prudence, industry, and business sense to accept their loans, for residences and for businesses; for the execution of good plans or bad plans or no plans at all.
Thus houses are built to be sold to families with fictitious income on the expectation that the houses will keep rising in price and will "flip" so no one will be the wiser; malls are built where there is no reasonable expectation that anyone will shop; deserts are watered and made to bloom at enormous expense in regions few wish to inhabit; dotcoms boast of "new paradigms" when their only real achievement is cluttering up cyberspace with yet more harebrainedness.
We know what comes next. What else can come next? Mises put it well: "There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." Either way, it is nasty, and the victims of the collapse are, insofar as they are victims thereof, unfree.
Slavery Fails
So why, if I acknowledge that not all unfreedom involves slavery, is it the case that when I say that freedom works, do I immediately couple that with "slavery fails"? The answer is simple: Slavery provides a neat textbook case, if you will, of the failures of unfreedom. It shows us for example that one important mark of the failure of unfree institutions is that they constrain the possibilities and deform the hopes even of those whom they seem to privilege.
Let us return to the issue of slavery, then. By the 1850s in the southern United states, it was clearly a dysfunctional pillar of a dysfunctional society. What did slavery do for the free laborers of the slave states? Hinton Helper was right about this, in his book on The Impending Crisis of the South (1857). Helper was wrong on much, but he was on firm ground in arguing that slavery undermined the economic development of the south. The great plantations that employed large numbers of slaves to tend usually just one out of just three agricultural staples suited to this arrangement also soaked up the risk capital than might otherwise have gone to entrepreneurs, manufacturers, or even more mixed-use varieties of farmer, thereby making a diversified and balanced economny impossible.
The LONDON DAILY NEWS, in its review of Hinton's book, described it as advocating "a thorough reform in the labor system and renovation of the capitalists." Alas, it was too late for the old South to renovate itself in this way. The region was straped into a kamikaze plane, about to dive bomb the aircraft carrier of the North.
Slavery, in short, fell not because of accidents of history, and not because it was inhumane toward its intended victims (though it surely was). It fell because it failed, even on its own terms.
Hinton's arguments against the slave system may be taken, then, as a paradigm of pragmatic arguments for liberty in general. Liberty works in directing capital toward a variety of fruitful products, and co-ordinating the activities of innumerable individuals pursuing innumerable courses of life. The slave system confused the movement of capital, and made such co-ordination impossible.
An Industrial Society
The economics of antebellum slavery in the US is a huge subject, but I will take it as established for my purposes here that slavery, as represented specifically by the slave states within the United States in the 1850s, did not work. This leaves us with another important question of van Dun: Where is the evidence that the experience of an industrial society with rapidly changing technologies, extended markets and a highly developed division of labour can be extrapolated to other types of societies?
First, I do happen to live in an industrial society with rapidly changing technologies, so I think it worth remarking that slavery failed here, and that other forms of unfreedom regularly fail to an extent that suggests the obvious generalization. They represent the problems that freedom does and will solve.
But, second: are there really any other types of "society" on this planet now? There is only the one, so far as I know. There are different governments, who strive to keep up the illusion that sovereignty is a valuable thing, and so pretend to represent not just arbitrary chunks of land and the people there but so many distinct "societies" or "nations." I don't buy it. Still, it all seems to be just the one, this industrial one with its rapidly changing technologies, where slavery as a central part of a society's structure is a thing of the past. And that one emphatically does not need an earthly sovereign.
Globalization is nothing new. It was well-established when Leonard Read wrote his classic exposition of the information value of prices, "I, Pencil." What did the pencil have to say for itself? My core, it said, comes from graphite mined in Ceylon mixed with clay from Mississippi to produce the mixture inaccurately called "lead." This lead is then treated with a hot mixture that includes candle wax from Mexico.
The rubber-like product that tops off the pencil so we users thereof can correct our mistakes is made by combining rape seed oil from the Dutch East Indies (this was published in 1958) with sulfur chloride. And so forth.
I submit that all these contributions to the existence of that single pencil are themselves drawn from a single society incorporating both Indonesia and the US State of Mississippi. What has changed since 1958 is not this singleness but our awareness thereof.
A couple of digressions
By way of digression, let us acknowledge the final point of Read's essay. His point was not so much geographic spread as overwhelming complexity. No person, no central planning commission -- and we might easily add on his behalf, no bank of computers -- could anticipate or ordain everything that goes into putting together a pencil, which on its face seems such a simple implement. Only the whole of society consisting of innumerable individuals whose activities are co-ordinated by prices can accomplish this in the efficient way that pencil users take for granted.
There is only one society and within this one, slavery is wrong. Does slavery no longer exist, then? Alas, we can not say that. A second and much more solemn digression is appropriate here. According to a study by the U.S. State Department, 600,000 to 800,000 men, women, and children are trafficked across international borders each year. Eighty percent of these are women, and about half are minors. Although most of the traffic is commercial sexual exploitation, manual labor is exacted from some such objects of traffic, too. There are likely millions of other victims who are trafficked within the borders of a single nation and thus don't show up in such statistics.
Everybody except the immediate beneficiaries (and they remain silent on their practices) has little trouble recognizing this as an evil and an atavistic practice. It is not something that works, nor anything that promises to work. It is simply on a continuum with the acts of battery and abduction with which it generally begins -- violent crime surviving because of the darker traits of human nature. Note indeed, that trafficking in human beings takes place largely for the benefit of a market, prostitution, that itself has been driven underground by misguided criminalization. Despite that, we have shaking ourselves into a better equilibrium than that in which such bondage was any essential part.
James' Moral Vision
Allow me now to move on to the most daunting portion of my exposition. I will try to convey the essence of William James' (and incidentally my own) moral vision. Not all value is moral value but moral value is the type on which van Dun and I seem to occupy distinct stands. I would ask him to try to grasp the Jamesian vision, and to note in doing so that it has both a conservative and a rebellious side -- the conservative respects and defends the social equilibrium that has developed, against the savage or the fraudulent and the threats each presents. But the rebellious side tells us that no equilibrium is final, and pushes forward toward something more inclusive, more tolerant...higher.
A thoroughly secular view can grasp both halves of this vision, as a logical matter. But depth in contemplation of the human predicament, James says, will lead an ethical philosopher to wonder what motivates and what sustains the rebels who challenge the existing order and upon whose efforts the pattern of moral progress depends. In one passage in The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life, (MPML) James said that every one of "hundreds of ideals has its special champion already provided in the shape of some genius expressly born to feel it, and to fight to death in its behalf".
Expressly born? A champion already provided? Provided by whom? The most natural hypothesis is that champions -- saints, we may call them, to recall the lectures on sainthood and its uses in Varieties of Religious Experience -- they come to us and are sustained by what James near the end of MPML calls "a divine thinker with all-enveloping demands."
There are innumerable situations in which both sides are right. The conservative is right, as is the rebel. Mr. van Dun glances at this situation when he asks, "Does the fact that my liberty stands in the way of another's plans or hopes, provide him or any other with a sufficient reason to disregard it?" That is indeed a very good question. Given the adjective "sufficient" before the word "reason" in that question I can confidently offer an unequivocal answer: No. But this requires some explanation, and that in turn requires that we make the question a bit more concrete.
It is quite commonly the case that one person's liberty is in accord with the established systems of his day (in the 1850s, an Alabama white man may well have had plans or hopes that involved ownership of a slave) and the sort of conflict the question suggests comes about because other person's liberty will involve defiance of that order. A slave may plan his escape just as an aspiring owner approaches the site of the auction. With whose hopes and plans should the pragmatist side?
Victory and Defeat There Must Be
So we meet the conservative and the rebel in a rather stark form. There are reasons to lock out some interests and disdain some passions. The reasons always come down to this: those interests and passions are (a) inconsistent with the existing social equilibrium, and (b) we can not now see our way clear to a better one. But each passion has its champion, and the collective pressure of them helps make way (whether they as individuals wanted this or not is irrelevant) to a broader, more tolerant, equilibrium later. Here I quote James's MPML again. "Since victory and defeat there must be, the victory to be philosophically prayed for is that of the more inclusive side -- of the side which even in the hour of triumph will to some degree do justice to the ideals in which the vanquished party's interests lay."
Later, and adopting I would say a somewhat more Olympian tone, James writes, "The pure philosopher can only follow the windings of the spectacle, confident that the line of least resistance will always be towards the richer and the more inclusive arrangement, and that by one tack after another some approach to the kingdom of heaven is incessantly made."
James epistemology, then, leads to an ethic that has to unfold in history, and it conceives of history as progressive.
Let us move a bit further back to get a sense of how messy a process history is, even if conceived of as a moral progress. Consider the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay colony. They certainly felt locked out by the High Churchmen running the established religion in the mother country in the early 17th century. Some of their colleagues would in time rebel and help put a king to death. But the Puritans who show up in US history books are the ones who braved the ocean to create a "shining city on a hill."
Did their own rebelliousness entail tolerant attitudes on their part. Heck no! Neither Anne Hutchison nor Roger Williams thought so, at any rate. But the rebellions of the Puritans -- both the at-home King-killing ones and the emigrants -- helped contribute over time to greater tolerance in the English-speaking world. This business of rebellion and the emergence of ever more inclusive equilibria is a costly one, to be sure.
Every equilibrium has discontents, out of whose ranks come rebels. Every equilibrium also has its defenders, some of whom think that the status quo is wonderful; others of whom simply think that it is better than any of the other options on the table. So with this backdrop, we can confidently answer van Dun's question.
"Does the fact that my liberty stands in the way of another's plans or hopes, provide him or any other with a sufficient reason to disregard it?"
Remember that I said that "sufficient" is the crucial word there. If the question were whether it provides the "other" with a genuine reason to disregard it, I would have had to say "Yes." But that genuine reason is not a sufficient reason. There is history to consider. There is the question of which of our freedoms represents the more inclusive order. If he is the one proposing to break with an established equilibrium, there is the question whether his actions will help replace it with a better. The answer, then, is "No."
Infinite Regression
One of the classical arguments against pragmatism, either epistemological or ethical, is the claim of an infinite regression.
Truth, (or knowledge, or warrant, or successful reference) is understood by pragmatists to be that which works.
Works toward what end or by what standard? ask the critics. And if any end or standard is specified, they pounce. Does that end or standard work? If not, it is neither true nor good, according to pragmatism itself. Yet if the end or standard does work, it must do so according to some yet further end or standard, and so on forever. Surely nothing that requires such an endless loop can be an accurate account of how we do or should make our here and now decisions. So pragmatism stands defeated!
Although Van Dun makes no such argument explicit, I believe that some such notion operates between the lines of his essay, so I give it answer here.
The regression is not infinite because one can in principle imagine a world in which all desires are harmonized each with the others. That is not the world in which we live, but we may well see both history and ethics as a process of working toward that summit, and we may see freedom as the crucial means to that end -- the metabolism by which we can keep putting one foot in front of the other toward that eschatology.
Physics
But then there is the argument from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or from contemporary cosmological theory, that the world will not end happily -- that it will all end in a heat death, as detached particles move endlessly far away from each other and all meaning is lost. Won't that make a mockery out of the goals humans had pursued so assiduously during our span in this cosmos?
Not at all. All such scientific premises represent the latest word, hardly the last word. A century from now, some revived form of the old Steady State cosmology may be regnant and the second law may itself have been defeated by some real-life version of Maxwell's demon, brought us by nanotechnology. Indeed, who knows but that in some Big Picture the destiny of the human race is to reverse the flow of energy into heat and save the cosmos from the contemplated death? All the better, then, do we have a good reason to set each other free from one another's tampering.
And with that stunningly speculative flourish I had better conclude, for fear that anything else I might say in this post will be an anti-climax.
This is my reply to the case he has made, which was in turn a response to an editorial I wrote years ago for a now-defunct magazine called The Pragmatist.
Preliminaries
I am an anarcho-capitalist. I am no longer active within the Libertarian Party, but I wish the LP well, and I speak not merely of the anarcho-caps therein but of the minarchists as well. The advance of their ideas is infinitely to be preferred over the continued dominance of the "liberals" and "conservatives" in public debate.
My earlier essay on "The Necessity of Pragmatism," moved as concisely as I could manage through a theory of meaning, to the nature of truth and knowledge, and then on to ethics. I also said a few words at that time about restitution as the central principle of Justice. I will leave restitution out of this essay, but otherwise I will retrace and elaborate my steps, taking account as I go of van Dun's critique.
Van Dun agrees with me largely on meaning, so I will be very brief here. Pragmatists ask "what difference would it make" were one hypothesis rather than another true. If there is no practical difference, then pragmatists write off the dispute as an idle one. There is no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere else. I will not press that point except to provide the curious with this link for the story of James' squirrel, a bit of philosophical exposition that van Dun and I both admire.
Van Dun disagrees with me about truth, but I think that this is largely because he conflates the old correspondence theory of truth with a more new-fangled thing called the disquotational (or deflationary) theory of truth. The two are not at all the same, as we can see from works in which advocates of the real correspondence view argue against deflation, and even from efforts to reconcile the two.
I think James' arguments retain their old force against the genuine correspondence theory. Jamesians can probably consent to the deflationary theory without loss of anything James wanted to save, though, because if "truth" is the uninteresting tautological property that deflationists say that it is, then the notion doesn't really do any work in epistemology or anywhere else. I'm happy to concede that the statement "snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white. If we say that this is a full account of truth, though, then we abstract from a lot of other considerations that show up in all of the older theories.
The gist of the older disputes remains, nonetheless. Giving up "truth" to the deflationists means that the 19th century disputes among coherentists, correspondence theorists and pragmatists will have to rage again over other labels, such as "reference," or "knowledge," or (fittest of all) "warrant." And pragmatism in particular can easily enough refit itself as what is nowadays called a theory of warrant, of when we are warranted in asserting or believing that snow is white or anything else.
I suspect that van Dun's real objection to my old essay, the heart of our quarrel, doesn't really become evident until deep into his essay, when he gets to historical questions. We come to that point when he quotes me thus: “Human history contains plenty of data from which we might draw the conclusion that liberty works and slavery fails.”
Human history
To this he takes exception on a number of grounds. He asks: “[Where] do we draw the line between ‘liberty’ and ‘slavery’?" I might interject: the line is easily drawn, because I mean by slavery here what the history books mean by it -- the ownership or control of a person as a chattel. His questions continue: "What is the point of asking whether it is liberty or slavery that works? Surely, no one holds that the abolition of the institution of slavery brings a libertarian society into existence. A person can be unfree without being a slave (or a prisoner) in the common meaning of the term.”
True enough. Allow me to get this riposte properly underway, then, with two examples of unfreedom that fall far short of slavery, that also conspicuously didn't work. I take examples from my own country's history. In the early 20th century a sophisticated political movement went to a good deal of trouble to secure an amendment to the U.S. Constitution in order to allow Congress to prohibit the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors. Why? The motives were perfectly understandable (it is difficult to deny that the consumption of liquor has been tied up with a good deal of heartbreak and disaster in human life), and these motives seemed to participants in that political movement to justify a constraint upon human liberty, upon individual decisions about the use of their own property and about the contracts into which they would or would not enter.
That unfreedom, imposed on us from 1919 until 1933, quite plainly did not work.
It fell because it failed.
Secondly, let us consider the sort of unfreedom typified by centralized social planning represented by the creation of a Federal Reserve Board, and ultimately by the introduction of fiat money. I think it safe to say that the headlines of the last year and a half especially make it clear that this unfreedom, too, does not work. This example is of a new sort because in each of the preceding two examples -- chattel slavery and alcohol prohibition -- we are discussing an institution that is no more. In the case of the Federal Reserve, we have to deal with an ongoing failure. Nonetheless, that it is a failure -- and that it is an instance of unfreedom -- are both very clear to me, and I hope to Mr. van Dun.
Business cycles preceded fiat money. But such money, and the central bankers whose "fiat" it is, surely worsen these destructive waves, these macrocosmic outbreaks of manic-depressive disorder. By flooding the land with the ever-cheaper legal tender, the central bankers cajole the retail and investment bankers, who in turn cajole men and women of varying degrees of prudence, industry, and business sense to accept their loans, for residences and for businesses; for the execution of good plans or bad plans or no plans at all.
Thus houses are built to be sold to families with fictitious income on the expectation that the houses will keep rising in price and will "flip" so no one will be the wiser; malls are built where there is no reasonable expectation that anyone will shop; deserts are watered and made to bloom at enormous expense in regions few wish to inhabit; dotcoms boast of "new paradigms" when their only real achievement is cluttering up cyberspace with yet more harebrainedness.
We know what comes next. What else can come next? Mises put it well: "There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." Either way, it is nasty, and the victims of the collapse are, insofar as they are victims thereof, unfree.
Slavery Fails
So why, if I acknowledge that not all unfreedom involves slavery, is it the case that when I say that freedom works, do I immediately couple that with "slavery fails"? The answer is simple: Slavery provides a neat textbook case, if you will, of the failures of unfreedom. It shows us for example that one important mark of the failure of unfree institutions is that they constrain the possibilities and deform the hopes even of those whom they seem to privilege.
Let us return to the issue of slavery, then. By the 1850s in the southern United states, it was clearly a dysfunctional pillar of a dysfunctional society. What did slavery do for the free laborers of the slave states? Hinton Helper was right about this, in his book on The Impending Crisis of the South (1857). Helper was wrong on much, but he was on firm ground in arguing that slavery undermined the economic development of the south. The great plantations that employed large numbers of slaves to tend usually just one out of just three agricultural staples suited to this arrangement also soaked up the risk capital than might otherwise have gone to entrepreneurs, manufacturers, or even more mixed-use varieties of farmer, thereby making a diversified and balanced economny impossible.
The LONDON DAILY NEWS, in its review of Hinton's book, described it as advocating "a thorough reform in the labor system and renovation of the capitalists." Alas, it was too late for the old South to renovate itself in this way. The region was straped into a kamikaze plane, about to dive bomb the aircraft carrier of the North.
Slavery, in short, fell not because of accidents of history, and not because it was inhumane toward its intended victims (though it surely was). It fell because it failed, even on its own terms.
Hinton's arguments against the slave system may be taken, then, as a paradigm of pragmatic arguments for liberty in general. Liberty works in directing capital toward a variety of fruitful products, and co-ordinating the activities of innumerable individuals pursuing innumerable courses of life. The slave system confused the movement of capital, and made such co-ordination impossible.
An Industrial Society
The economics of antebellum slavery in the US is a huge subject, but I will take it as established for my purposes here that slavery, as represented specifically by the slave states within the United States in the 1850s, did not work. This leaves us with another important question of van Dun: Where is the evidence that the experience of an industrial society with rapidly changing technologies, extended markets and a highly developed division of labour can be extrapolated to other types of societies?
First, I do happen to live in an industrial society with rapidly changing technologies, so I think it worth remarking that slavery failed here, and that other forms of unfreedom regularly fail to an extent that suggests the obvious generalization. They represent the problems that freedom does and will solve.
But, second: are there really any other types of "society" on this planet now? There is only the one, so far as I know. There are different governments, who strive to keep up the illusion that sovereignty is a valuable thing, and so pretend to represent not just arbitrary chunks of land and the people there but so many distinct "societies" or "nations." I don't buy it. Still, it all seems to be just the one, this industrial one with its rapidly changing technologies, where slavery as a central part of a society's structure is a thing of the past. And that one emphatically does not need an earthly sovereign.
Globalization is nothing new. It was well-established when Leonard Read wrote his classic exposition of the information value of prices, "I, Pencil." What did the pencil have to say for itself? My core, it said, comes from graphite mined in Ceylon mixed with clay from Mississippi to produce the mixture inaccurately called "lead." This lead is then treated with a hot mixture that includes candle wax from Mexico.
The rubber-like product that tops off the pencil so we users thereof can correct our mistakes is made by combining rape seed oil from the Dutch East Indies (this was published in 1958) with sulfur chloride. And so forth.
I submit that all these contributions to the existence of that single pencil are themselves drawn from a single society incorporating both Indonesia and the US State of Mississippi. What has changed since 1958 is not this singleness but our awareness thereof.
A couple of digressions
By way of digression, let us acknowledge the final point of Read's essay. His point was not so much geographic spread as overwhelming complexity. No person, no central planning commission -- and we might easily add on his behalf, no bank of computers -- could anticipate or ordain everything that goes into putting together a pencil, which on its face seems such a simple implement. Only the whole of society consisting of innumerable individuals whose activities are co-ordinated by prices can accomplish this in the efficient way that pencil users take for granted.
There is only one society and within this one, slavery is wrong. Does slavery no longer exist, then? Alas, we can not say that. A second and much more solemn digression is appropriate here. According to a study by the U.S. State Department, 600,000 to 800,000 men, women, and children are trafficked across international borders each year. Eighty percent of these are women, and about half are minors. Although most of the traffic is commercial sexual exploitation, manual labor is exacted from some such objects of traffic, too. There are likely millions of other victims who are trafficked within the borders of a single nation and thus don't show up in such statistics.
Everybody except the immediate beneficiaries (and they remain silent on their practices) has little trouble recognizing this as an evil and an atavistic practice. It is not something that works, nor anything that promises to work. It is simply on a continuum with the acts of battery and abduction with which it generally begins -- violent crime surviving because of the darker traits of human nature. Note indeed, that trafficking in human beings takes place largely for the benefit of a market, prostitution, that itself has been driven underground by misguided criminalization. Despite that, we have shaking ourselves into a better equilibrium than that in which such bondage was any essential part.
James' Moral Vision
Allow me now to move on to the most daunting portion of my exposition. I will try to convey the essence of William James' (and incidentally my own) moral vision. Not all value is moral value but moral value is the type on which van Dun and I seem to occupy distinct stands. I would ask him to try to grasp the Jamesian vision, and to note in doing so that it has both a conservative and a rebellious side -- the conservative respects and defends the social equilibrium that has developed, against the savage or the fraudulent and the threats each presents. But the rebellious side tells us that no equilibrium is final, and pushes forward toward something more inclusive, more tolerant...higher.
A thoroughly secular view can grasp both halves of this vision, as a logical matter. But depth in contemplation of the human predicament, James says, will lead an ethical philosopher to wonder what motivates and what sustains the rebels who challenge the existing order and upon whose efforts the pattern of moral progress depends. In one passage in The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life, (MPML) James said that every one of "hundreds of ideals has its special champion already provided in the shape of some genius expressly born to feel it, and to fight to death in its behalf".
Expressly born? A champion already provided? Provided by whom? The most natural hypothesis is that champions -- saints, we may call them, to recall the lectures on sainthood and its uses in Varieties of Religious Experience -- they come to us and are sustained by what James near the end of MPML calls "a divine thinker with all-enveloping demands."
There are innumerable situations in which both sides are right. The conservative is right, as is the rebel. Mr. van Dun glances at this situation when he asks, "Does the fact that my liberty stands in the way of another's plans or hopes, provide him or any other with a sufficient reason to disregard it?" That is indeed a very good question. Given the adjective "sufficient" before the word "reason" in that question I can confidently offer an unequivocal answer: No. But this requires some explanation, and that in turn requires that we make the question a bit more concrete.
It is quite commonly the case that one person's liberty is in accord with the established systems of his day (in the 1850s, an Alabama white man may well have had plans or hopes that involved ownership of a slave) and the sort of conflict the question suggests comes about because other person's liberty will involve defiance of that order. A slave may plan his escape just as an aspiring owner approaches the site of the auction. With whose hopes and plans should the pragmatist side?
Victory and Defeat There Must Be
So we meet the conservative and the rebel in a rather stark form. There are reasons to lock out some interests and disdain some passions. The reasons always come down to this: those interests and passions are (a) inconsistent with the existing social equilibrium, and (b) we can not now see our way clear to a better one. But each passion has its champion, and the collective pressure of them helps make way (whether they as individuals wanted this or not is irrelevant) to a broader, more tolerant, equilibrium later. Here I quote James's MPML again. "Since victory and defeat there must be, the victory to be philosophically prayed for is that of the more inclusive side -- of the side which even in the hour of triumph will to some degree do justice to the ideals in which the vanquished party's interests lay."
Later, and adopting I would say a somewhat more Olympian tone, James writes, "The pure philosopher can only follow the windings of the spectacle, confident that the line of least resistance will always be towards the richer and the more inclusive arrangement, and that by one tack after another some approach to the kingdom of heaven is incessantly made."
James epistemology, then, leads to an ethic that has to unfold in history, and it conceives of history as progressive.
Let us move a bit further back to get a sense of how messy a process history is, even if conceived of as a moral progress. Consider the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay colony. They certainly felt locked out by the High Churchmen running the established religion in the mother country in the early 17th century. Some of their colleagues would in time rebel and help put a king to death. But the Puritans who show up in US history books are the ones who braved the ocean to create a "shining city on a hill."
Did their own rebelliousness entail tolerant attitudes on their part. Heck no! Neither Anne Hutchison nor Roger Williams thought so, at any rate. But the rebellions of the Puritans -- both the at-home King-killing ones and the emigrants -- helped contribute over time to greater tolerance in the English-speaking world. This business of rebellion and the emergence of ever more inclusive equilibria is a costly one, to be sure.
Every equilibrium has discontents, out of whose ranks come rebels. Every equilibrium also has its defenders, some of whom think that the status quo is wonderful; others of whom simply think that it is better than any of the other options on the table. So with this backdrop, we can confidently answer van Dun's question.
"Does the fact that my liberty stands in the way of another's plans or hopes, provide him or any other with a sufficient reason to disregard it?"
Remember that I said that "sufficient" is the crucial word there. If the question were whether it provides the "other" with a genuine reason to disregard it, I would have had to say "Yes." But that genuine reason is not a sufficient reason. There is history to consider. There is the question of which of our freedoms represents the more inclusive order. If he is the one proposing to break with an established equilibrium, there is the question whether his actions will help replace it with a better. The answer, then, is "No."
Infinite Regression
One of the classical arguments against pragmatism, either epistemological or ethical, is the claim of an infinite regression.
Truth, (or knowledge, or warrant, or successful reference) is understood by pragmatists to be that which works.
Works toward what end or by what standard? ask the critics. And if any end or standard is specified, they pounce. Does that end or standard work? If not, it is neither true nor good, according to pragmatism itself. Yet if the end or standard does work, it must do so according to some yet further end or standard, and so on forever. Surely nothing that requires such an endless loop can be an accurate account of how we do or should make our here and now decisions. So pragmatism stands defeated!
Although Van Dun makes no such argument explicit, I believe that some such notion operates between the lines of his essay, so I give it answer here.
The regression is not infinite because one can in principle imagine a world in which all desires are harmonized each with the others. That is not the world in which we live, but we may well see both history and ethics as a process of working toward that summit, and we may see freedom as the crucial means to that end -- the metabolism by which we can keep putting one foot in front of the other toward that eschatology.
Physics
But then there is the argument from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or from contemporary cosmological theory, that the world will not end happily -- that it will all end in a heat death, as detached particles move endlessly far away from each other and all meaning is lost. Won't that make a mockery out of the goals humans had pursued so assiduously during our span in this cosmos?
Not at all. All such scientific premises represent the latest word, hardly the last word. A century from now, some revived form of the old Steady State cosmology may be regnant and the second law may itself have been defeated by some real-life version of Maxwell's demon, brought us by nanotechnology. Indeed, who knows but that in some Big Picture the destiny of the human race is to reverse the flow of energy into heat and save the cosmos from the contemplated death? All the better, then, do we have a good reason to set each other free from one another's tampering.
And with that stunningly speculative flourish I had better conclude, for fear that anything else I might say in this post will be an anti-climax.
12 September 2009
Antwerp, Belgium
Something I wrote long ago seems to have found a reader in Antwerp.
I don't see any date on this document, but I'm delighted by it.
The writer is obviously an admirer of the anarcho-capitalist intellectual Murray Rothbard, writing on behalf of something called the "Rothbard Instituut," which was apparently founded (according to their "about us" or "over ons" page) in November 2007. So sometime in the last two years, someone in Antwerp discovered and sought to reply at length to an unsigned editorial I wrote in the 1990s when I was managing editor of a very niche-publishing mag called The Pragmatist. That editorial was headlines "The Necessity of Pragmatism."
My critic appears to admire the "delightful story" I passed along from James' writings about the metaphysical debate over a squirrel in the course of a camping trip. The immediate point of that story is about the pragmatic theory of meaning, not of truth: although later in the book, aptly itself called "Pragmatism," James generalizes the method to the meaning of truth. That is where my critic's views and that of my 1990s self part company.
I won't contend with his argument today. I'm too delighted that my own literary/philosophical effort was thought worth of this painstaking a response. It is one of only four English-language articles so far listed on the site which makes my inclusion that much more intriguing.
If my critic, Frank van Dun, reads this: Hi. And thanks for making my day. I'll compose something more substantively responsive in due course.
I don't see any date on this document, but I'm delighted by it.
The writer is obviously an admirer of the anarcho-capitalist intellectual Murray Rothbard, writing on behalf of something called the "Rothbard Instituut," which was apparently founded (according to their "about us" or "over ons" page) in November 2007. So sometime in the last two years, someone in Antwerp discovered and sought to reply at length to an unsigned editorial I wrote in the 1990s when I was managing editor of a very niche-publishing mag called The Pragmatist. That editorial was headlines "The Necessity of Pragmatism."
My critic appears to admire the "delightful story" I passed along from James' writings about the metaphysical debate over a squirrel in the course of a camping trip. The immediate point of that story is about the pragmatic theory of meaning, not of truth: although later in the book, aptly itself called "Pragmatism," James generalizes the method to the meaning of truth. That is where my critic's views and that of my 1990s self part company.
I won't contend with his argument today. I'm too delighted that my own literary/philosophical effort was thought worth of this painstaking a response. It is one of only four English-language articles so far listed on the site which makes my inclusion that much more intriguing.
If my critic, Frank van Dun, reads this: Hi. And thanks for making my day. I'll compose something more substantively responsive in due course.
02 August 2009
Theory and Reality
Theory and Reality is the title of a book published in 2003, written by Peter Godfrey-Smith.
I haven't read it and don't have any immediate plans to do so but will give some ancillary data about it since it seems from the descriptions I've seen to be the sort of thing that may interest some of my readers.
First, here is the website of the book's author, a Harvard professor.
He says, on one of the pages of that site, "My main research interests are in the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of mind. I also work on pragmatism (especially John Dewey), general philosophy of science, and some parts of metaphysics and epistemology. I have written three books, Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature (Cambridge, 1996), Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Chicago, 2003), and Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection (Oxford, 2009)."
The second of those three books, of course, is the one with the sweeping title.
You can get a "limited preview" of Theory and Reality through Google Books here.
Here's a passage from late in that book. Godfrey-Smith has just remarked briefly about the origins in natural selection of our perceptual organs. He then writes, "So far this is not a point about science or even about human beings in particular. It is a claim about all the animals (and other organisms) that use perceptual mechanisms to adapt themselves to what is going on in their environments. But this point is enough to help us avoid some philosophical problems about our 'access' to the world. We should not think in terms of two domains in reality: one accessible and one mysterious. We are biological systems embedded in a world containing objects of all sizes and at all kinds of distance and remove from us. Our mechanisms of perception and action give us a variety of different kinds of contact with these objects."
So far, it seems to me, so good.
I haven't read it and don't have any immediate plans to do so but will give some ancillary data about it since it seems from the descriptions I've seen to be the sort of thing that may interest some of my readers.
First, here is the website of the book's author, a Harvard professor.
He says, on one of the pages of that site, "My main research interests are in the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of mind. I also work on pragmatism (especially John Dewey), general philosophy of science, and some parts of metaphysics and epistemology. I have written three books, Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature (Cambridge, 1996), Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Chicago, 2003), and Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection (Oxford, 2009)."
The second of those three books, of course, is the one with the sweeping title.
You can get a "limited preview" of Theory and Reality through Google Books here.
Here's a passage from late in that book. Godfrey-Smith has just remarked briefly about the origins in natural selection of our perceptual organs. He then writes, "So far this is not a point about science or even about human beings in particular. It is a claim about all the animals (and other organisms) that use perceptual mechanisms to adapt themselves to what is going on in their environments. But this point is enough to help us avoid some philosophical problems about our 'access' to the world. We should not think in terms of two domains in reality: one accessible and one mysterious. We are biological systems embedded in a world containing objects of all sizes and at all kinds of distance and remove from us. Our mechanisms of perception and action give us a variety of different kinds of contact with these objects."
So far, it seems to me, so good.
21 March 2009
Truth and knowledge
Recalling the title of this blog, let us do some old-school philosophizing.
By the late 19th century, philosophers had formulated three theories about the nature of truth.
Before I should say any more, I should add: they were all using the word "truth" in a way that contemporary philosophers would not. They all meant, not "truth" specifically, as a property of belief -- but KNOWLEDGE of truth, as the reason why we know truths, when we do.
The three classical theories were these: correspondence, coherence, pragmatism.
According to the correspondence theory, a belief is true when it accurately copies a fact in the world. As Wittgenstein said, in his usual straightforward style, "In order to tell whether a picture is true or false we must compare it with reality."
The correspondence theory carried with it some pretty heavy metaphysical baggage. Suppose I'm looking at a painted portrait of John Smith. If I want to decide whether that's a "true" portrait of John Smith, I can go up to John himself, get a good like at him, then decide whether the likeness is an accurate one.
But even then, we should say that the portrait is either realistic or not. A surrealistic portrait of John Smith, painted say by Salvador Dali, might be as "true" in its own way as anything that can come out of a camera in the noontime sun, but it would be true in a non-copyist way.
Furthermore, that is a very bad metaphor for my efforts to know the world. After all, both the portrait and the man who sat for it are facts outside of my skull -- I have the same kind of access to the one as to the other. An analogy to that sort of comparison gets us nowhere if what is in question is the nature of truth/knowledge about people and paintings both.
The coherence and pragmatic theories of knowledge were both efforts to get rid of the metaphysical baggage of correspondence, or the copy theory. They both said that there is something about some of my experiences, my ideas, my beliefs, etc. that makes them true -- and that something isn't a transcendence of the whole body of my
experience by the way that it relates to itself, the way the parts of it relate to one another.
In the coherence view, error is inconsistency. If I could only get all my beliefs into a single coherent whole, I would know them as true -- or, strictly, I would know them as the whole single shining body of Truth itself.
In the pragmatic view, error is failure. Beliefs guide me through experiences well or poorly, they are valuable when they lead me where I want to go, harmful when they get me lost. Truth, then, is success.
The tendency in Anglo-American philosophy since about the 1930s has been to distinguish sharply between the issue of truth and the issue of knowledge, then to render the notion of truth impoverished. To say "it is true that this computer is working" is just to say, with a little extra emphasis perhaps, that "this computer is working" -- the word "true" provides emphasis, but in terms of strict meaning it's
redundant.
It isn't only pragmatism that needs restatement in order to become comprehensible within contemporary philosophical jargon. It is each of the original three positions. They all turn out, in 21st century terms, to have been more about knowledge -- and even more specifically one's WARRANT for a true belief -- than about truth as such.
The correspondence theory looks backward for warrant, for evidence that the copy derives casually from the thing copied.
The coherence theory looks inward for warrant, and worries whether all parts of a world view cohere.
The pragmatic view would LIKE to look forward -- but since the success or failure of this moment's forward looks is necessarily still unsettled, it adapts by looking backward at earlier instances of successful forward looks, and imitating whatever made them succeed.
By the late 19th century, philosophers had formulated three theories about the nature of truth.
Before I should say any more, I should add: they were all using the word "truth" in a way that contemporary philosophers would not. They all meant, not "truth" specifically, as a property of belief -- but KNOWLEDGE of truth, as the reason why we know truths, when we do.
The three classical theories were these: correspondence, coherence, pragmatism.
According to the correspondence theory, a belief is true when it accurately copies a fact in the world. As Wittgenstein said, in his usual straightforward style, "In order to tell whether a picture is true or false we must compare it with reality."
The correspondence theory carried with it some pretty heavy metaphysical baggage. Suppose I'm looking at a painted portrait of John Smith. If I want to decide whether that's a "true" portrait of John Smith, I can go up to John himself, get a good like at him, then decide whether the likeness is an accurate one.
But even then, we should say that the portrait is either realistic or not. A surrealistic portrait of John Smith, painted say by Salvador Dali, might be as "true" in its own way as anything that can come out of a camera in the noontime sun, but it would be true in a non-copyist way.
Furthermore, that is a very bad metaphor for my efforts to know the world. After all, both the portrait and the man who sat for it are facts outside of my skull -- I have the same kind of access to the one as to the other. An analogy to that sort of comparison gets us nowhere if what is in question is the nature of truth/knowledge about people and paintings both.
The coherence and pragmatic theories of knowledge were both efforts to get rid of the metaphysical baggage of correspondence, or the copy theory. They both said that there is something about some of my experiences, my ideas, my beliefs, etc. that makes them true -- and that something isn't a transcendence of the whole body of my
experience by the way that it relates to itself, the way the parts of it relate to one another.
In the coherence view, error is inconsistency. If I could only get all my beliefs into a single coherent whole, I would know them as true -- or, strictly, I would know them as the whole single shining body of Truth itself.
In the pragmatic view, error is failure. Beliefs guide me through experiences well or poorly, they are valuable when they lead me where I want to go, harmful when they get me lost. Truth, then, is success.
The tendency in Anglo-American philosophy since about the 1930s has been to distinguish sharply between the issue of truth and the issue of knowledge, then to render the notion of truth impoverished. To say "it is true that this computer is working" is just to say, with a little extra emphasis perhaps, that "this computer is working" -- the word "true" provides emphasis, but in terms of strict meaning it's
redundant.
It isn't only pragmatism that needs restatement in order to become comprehensible within contemporary philosophical jargon. It is each of the original three positions. They all turn out, in 21st century terms, to have been more about knowledge -- and even more specifically one's WARRANT for a true belief -- than about truth as such.
The correspondence theory looks backward for warrant, for evidence that the copy derives casually from the thing copied.
The coherence theory looks inward for warrant, and worries whether all parts of a world view cohere.
The pragmatic view would LIKE to look forward -- but since the success or failure of this moment's forward looks is necessarily still unsettled, it adapts by looking backward at earlier instances of successful forward looks, and imitating whatever made them succeed.
12 January 2008
Welcome China's Money
In November I wrote an entry in this blog about sovereign funds, in connection with what I saw as an amusing editorial lapse on the part of The New York Times.
Click here.
As a refresher: these are what the name suggests: pools of capital amassed by governments in countries where revenue exceeds government operating expenses, generally managed by a quasi-public authority.
The issue underlying that little chuckle at the Times expense, though, wasn't all that compelling to my mind. It took a while for that to change.
Later in November, the Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on the subject, "assessing the economic and national security implications" of such funds and their investments in the U.S. After all, at least on first blush, such a fund's managers would act for political reasons. They've got no significant "bottom line" contraints such as private sector hedge funds or banks, wherever they might be headquartered, do have.
Evan Bayh chaired the hearing. That is a straw in the wind right there. Evan Bayh is the fifth ranking Democrat on the committee. When the fifth ranked chairs a hearing on a subject, that subject clearly doesn't yet have a high profile on the national radar screen.
And in his opening remarks, Bayh did his best impression of a high-wire walker at the circus. On the one hand this. On the other hand that. Let's find the right balance. Okay, and let's yawn on cue.
Click here for his scintillating opening statement.
So ... the Banking Committee hearing did nothing to make the issue seem worthy of a close watch from yours truly.
But then in December, (on the 10th) Judge Posner discussed it at some length on his blog, a vent he shares with professor Becker. I came across Posner's comments only this week, and they are -- as the best of Posner's writings often is -- both logical and counter-intuitive. I love it.
Here's a quote:
"[The] purchase of assets by foreign nations, even when they are hostile or potentially hostile to us, does not threaten U.S. welfare or security. The purchase of a company from its owners places money in the hands of those owners that they can invest for a higher return--if they did not think they could do this, they would not sell the company. So such a purchase is wealth-enhancing. It does not undermine our national security just because the purchaser is a foreign government, but on the contrary enhances our security because the investment is a hostage. It's as if to guarantee China's good behavior the president of China sent his family to live in the United States."
This week, the GAO has acknowledged the receipt of a request from a Senator to look into various questions about sovereign wealth funds and their interests in major US institutions. We'll see if Posner's view (call it pragmatic complacency?) gets a public airing as a result.
Click here.
As a refresher: these are what the name suggests: pools of capital amassed by governments in countries where revenue exceeds government operating expenses, generally managed by a quasi-public authority.
The issue underlying that little chuckle at the Times expense, though, wasn't all that compelling to my mind. It took a while for that to change.
Later in November, the Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on the subject, "assessing the economic and national security implications" of such funds and their investments in the U.S. After all, at least on first blush, such a fund's managers would act for political reasons. They've got no significant "bottom line" contraints such as private sector hedge funds or banks, wherever they might be headquartered, do have.
Evan Bayh chaired the hearing. That is a straw in the wind right there. Evan Bayh is the fifth ranking Democrat on the committee. When the fifth ranked chairs a hearing on a subject, that subject clearly doesn't yet have a high profile on the national radar screen.
And in his opening remarks, Bayh did his best impression of a high-wire walker at the circus. On the one hand this. On the other hand that. Let's find the right balance. Okay, and let's yawn on cue.
Click here for his scintillating opening statement.
So ... the Banking Committee hearing did nothing to make the issue seem worthy of a close watch from yours truly.
But then in December, (on the 10th) Judge Posner discussed it at some length on his blog, a vent he shares with professor Becker. I came across Posner's comments only this week, and they are -- as the best of Posner's writings often is -- both logical and counter-intuitive. I love it.
Here's a quote:
"[The] purchase of assets by foreign nations, even when they are hostile or potentially hostile to us, does not threaten U.S. welfare or security. The purchase of a company from its owners places money in the hands of those owners that they can invest for a higher return--if they did not think they could do this, they would not sell the company. So such a purchase is wealth-enhancing. It does not undermine our national security just because the purchaser is a foreign government, but on the contrary enhances our security because the investment is a hostage. It's as if to guarantee China's good behavior the president of China sent his family to live in the United States."
This week, the GAO has acknowledged the receipt of a request from a Senator to look into various questions about sovereign wealth funds and their interests in major US institutions. We'll see if Posner's view (call it pragmatic complacency?) gets a public airing as a result.
15 December 2007
Tony Soprano Pragmatism
If you type those words: Tony Soprano Pragmatism, into the google search engine, this humble blog comes up fifth on the resulting list of more than 2,000 results.
Indeed, according to sitemeter, somebody in Burlington, Mass. did did get to my blog by typing that string of words two days ago.
That person wasn't disappointed, either. (S)he spent more than 24 minutes here, looking at 15 pages. I'm proud to have received such attention for this collection of stochastically-generated sitemaster-friendly, synaptic snapshots.
My guess? Some teacher in an intro-to-philosophy course suggested a pro or con assignment on pragmatism, as part of which, said instructor suggested asking yourself "Was Tony Soprano a pragmatist?" A teacher must always use his student's existing interests as a base, after all, and presumably Tony S. was known to our Burlingtonian student going in.
I regret to say, though, that although such an inquirer into this blog could find some material on Tony, and could of course find some material on pragmatism, in the task of interestingly relating the two, I'd be unhelpful.
And so I remain even in this post, despite its promising title.
Indeed, according to sitemeter, somebody in Burlington, Mass. did did get to my blog by typing that string of words two days ago.
That person wasn't disappointed, either. (S)he spent more than 24 minutes here, looking at 15 pages. I'm proud to have received such attention for this collection of stochastically-generated sitemaster-friendly, synaptic snapshots.
My guess? Some teacher in an intro-to-philosophy course suggested a pro or con assignment on pragmatism, as part of which, said instructor suggested asking yourself "Was Tony Soprano a pragmatist?" A teacher must always use his student's existing interests as a base, after all, and presumably Tony S. was known to our Burlingtonian student going in.
I regret to say, though, that although such an inquirer into this blog could find some material on Tony, and could of course find some material on pragmatism, in the task of interestingly relating the two, I'd be unhelpful.
And so I remain even in this post, despite its promising title.
11 November 2007
Philosophic Musings
Empiricism: the view that knowledge of the world is a construct from the raw materials provided by the senses. Vision gives me "red here now." Touch tells me that what is in front of me is in a roughly spherical shape. Taking a bite adds taste to the impressions that this is an apple.
Voila! we've just constructing a datum, a bit of knowledge, "I am holding an apple," from the various senses. Empiricism says that (a) all knowledge is like that, although usually more complicated, and (b) knowledge obtained in this way is reliable, so we don't need any other source.
External-world skepticism undercuts this theory directly. It says, "My senses have been wrong about a lot of things. I see railroad tracks converging in the distance, for example, but they don't really converge at all -- they remain parallel. Maybe, then, my senses are wrong about everything, or at least about so much so often that nothing I think I know about the world outside my body -- about apples or pears, planets or stars, sound waves or ocean tides -- is at all reliable."
Hume's problem of induction undercuts empiricism somewhat more subtly. Induction is the form of reasoning that says, "every X that I've ever seen has attribute Y. I've seen enough of X to consider this a fair sample. Thus, I conclude that all Xs have Y." Every human in recorded history has proven mortal -- few have lived beyond 100 years, none that we can be sure of have ever lived beyond 150. So ... all men are mortal!
If classical empiricism is right, then induction is very important. Recognizing a single fruit's attributes, as in my apple example above, is one thing. But one might argue that impressive knowledge only comes about once we start talking about large classes of things. If we can't reliably make inductions, perhaps empiricism can't account for the more impressive sorts of knowledge at all.
So Hume's challenge: show, within the confines of empiricism, why induction is reliable!
Do you, dear reader, think empiricism can be defended from those two types of criticism? Can it best be defended by transforming itself into ... pragmatism?
Voila! we've just constructing a datum, a bit of knowledge, "I am holding an apple," from the various senses. Empiricism says that (a) all knowledge is like that, although usually more complicated, and (b) knowledge obtained in this way is reliable, so we don't need any other source.
External-world skepticism undercuts this theory directly. It says, "My senses have been wrong about a lot of things. I see railroad tracks converging in the distance, for example, but they don't really converge at all -- they remain parallel. Maybe, then, my senses are wrong about everything, or at least about so much so often that nothing I think I know about the world outside my body -- about apples or pears, planets or stars, sound waves or ocean tides -- is at all reliable."
Hume's problem of induction undercuts empiricism somewhat more subtly. Induction is the form of reasoning that says, "every X that I've ever seen has attribute Y. I've seen enough of X to consider this a fair sample. Thus, I conclude that all Xs have Y." Every human in recorded history has proven mortal -- few have lived beyond 100 years, none that we can be sure of have ever lived beyond 150. So ... all men are mortal!
If classical empiricism is right, then induction is very important. Recognizing a single fruit's attributes, as in my apple example above, is one thing. But one might argue that impressive knowledge only comes about once we start talking about large classes of things. If we can't reliably make inductions, perhaps empiricism can't account for the more impressive sorts of knowledge at all.
So Hume's challenge: show, within the confines of empiricism, why induction is reliable!
Do you, dear reader, think empiricism can be defended from those two types of criticism? Can it best be defended by transforming itself into ... pragmatism?
21 August 2007
Pragmatism in South Korea
A former CEO of Hyundai, Lee Myung-bak, is now running for president of South Korea as a member of the Grand National Party.
Lee calls himself a pragmatist. Indeed, he uses the phrase "empirical pragmatist," which sounds a tad backwards to me, but that may be an artifact of translation. I prefer "pragmatic empiricism" when both terms are used, because pragmatism is a variant within the broader empirical camp.
Lee, at any rate, used "empirical pragmatism" as a label for his desire to get beyond ideologies, which he believes have simply blinded previous governments to the national interest. He also thinks the national interest is best served -- pragmatically advanced, by what he calls the "smart market economy," in which on the one hand competition, freedom and creativity are protected, and on the other hand stragglers are assisted.
I don't know South Korean politics well enough to comment, but I will say as a pragmatist I don't object to Lee's use of the term. In my own mind, as I have long contended, the fullest political expression of pragmatism is anarcho-capitalism. But ....
I recognize that the Republic of Korea is unlikely soil for anarcho-capitalism, largely because the notion of a free-market system for territorial defense leaves people queasy, and with Communism-induced famine so evident just to the north of an arbitrary line on a map, that queasiness is rather hard to overcome. So, pragmatically, I suspect Lee is going as far in what I regard as the rational direction as could be expected of him.
Iceland, after all, in the days sometimes evoked as an anarcho-cap model, or for that matter in all days since, has been ... well, an island. Not the southern half of a peninsula.
Lee calls himself a pragmatist. Indeed, he uses the phrase "empirical pragmatist," which sounds a tad backwards to me, but that may be an artifact of translation. I prefer "pragmatic empiricism" when both terms are used, because pragmatism is a variant within the broader empirical camp.
Lee, at any rate, used "empirical pragmatism" as a label for his desire to get beyond ideologies, which he believes have simply blinded previous governments to the national interest. He also thinks the national interest is best served -- pragmatically advanced, by what he calls the "smart market economy," in which on the one hand competition, freedom and creativity are protected, and on the other hand stragglers are assisted.
I don't know South Korean politics well enough to comment, but I will say as a pragmatist I don't object to Lee's use of the term. In my own mind, as I have long contended, the fullest political expression of pragmatism is anarcho-capitalism. But ....
I recognize that the Republic of Korea is unlikely soil for anarcho-capitalism, largely because the notion of a free-market system for territorial defense leaves people queasy, and with Communism-induced famine so evident just to the north of an arbitrary line on a map, that queasiness is rather hard to overcome. So, pragmatically, I suspect Lee is going as far in what I regard as the rational direction as could be expected of him.
Iceland, after all, in the days sometimes evoked as an anarcho-cap model, or for that matter in all days since, has been ... well, an island. Not the southern half of a peninsula.
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