Via the Peej, K.M. Parsons offers an op-ed defense of public funding for philosophers. Philosophy provides critical thinking, you see, and if citizens were unable to think critically, they'd be nothing but a mob of indoctrinated partisans, you see.
Let's assume that professor Parsons is correct and that the discipline of philosophy does indeed grant students durable, robust critical thinking skills. Let's assume further that the marginal philosopher (extend this to all of the social sciences and humanities if you like: political science, sociology, economics, take your pick) contributes meaningfully to students' ability to question and revise their unexamined beliefs. Assume, if you will, that the exchange between professors and students is euvoluntary.
Even if all of that is true, even if "philosophy is valuable" isn't just a naked assertion, even if the Republic Herself were at stake, a more convincing argument would include at least some mention of how peaceful exchange is insufficient to the task of making sure the next (and by "next" I don't mean Aristotle or Hume or even Sandel or Searle; I mean the third-string just-barely-made-tenure assistant professor at an unranked department) philosopher earns employment. A complete argument, in other words, includes at least some mention of public goods, in the rigorous sense, in that I benefit from your ability to think critically, or that anyone at all benefits from Peppy Not-Quite-Good-Enough-For-Tenure Professor's latest desk rejection. If public funds were supporting the next Summa Theologica, you'd probably be able to get away with hand-waving market failure rebuttals. But that's not what's being argued.
I tend to agree that education is among the new commanding heights. It would be churlish of me to assume that this didn't imply that a great deal of rack and ruin in the editorial pages were sure to follow. But if you must defend your discipline against reasonable objections to outrageous relative price increases, do yourself and your readers a favor and write as if you respected their intelligence.
Hugs,
Sam
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label philosophy. Show all posts
Friday, April 10, 2015
Thursday, August 14, 2014
Hume in Missouri
David Hume, Of Commerce (1752):
Robocop was a warning, not a suggestion. Law enforcement is best when it approaches what a reasonable person might agree to ex ante given the opportunity to bargain. What's happening in Missouri (and what's being prepared in the rest of the country) is hardly euvoluntary.
II.I.5Capital and labor are complements. This is as true in the useful arts as in the maintenance of public order.
The bulk of every state may be divided into husbandmen and manufacturers. The former are employed in the culture of the land; the latter work up the materials furnished by the former, into all the commodities which are necessary or ornamental to human life. As soon as men quit their savage state, where they live chiefly by hunting and fishing, they must fall into these two classes; though the arts of agriculture employ at first the most numerous part of the society.*2 Time and experience improve so much these arts, that the land may easily maintain a much greater number of men, than those who are immediately employed in its culture, or who furnish the more necessary manufactures to such as are so employed.
II.I.6 If these superfluous hands apply themselves to the finer arts, which are commonly denominated the arts of luxury, they add to the happiness of the state; since they afford to many the opportunity of receiving enjoyments, with which they would otherwise have been unacquainted. But may not another scheme be proposed for the employment of these superfluous hands? May not the sovereign lay claim to them, and employ them in fleets and armies, to encrease the dominions of the state abroad, and spread its fame over distant nations? It is certain that the fewer desires and wants are found in the proprietors and labourers of land, the fewer hands do they employ; and consequently the superfluities of the land, instead of maintaining tradesmen and manufacturers, may support fleets and armies to a much greater extent, than where a great many arts are required to minister to the luxury of particular persons. Here therefore seems to be a kind of opposition between the greatness of the state and the happiness of the subject. A state is never greater than when all its superfluous hands are employed in the service of the public. The ease and convenience of private persons require, that these hands should be employed in their service. The one can never be satisfied, but at the expence of the other. As the ambition of the sovereign must entrench on the luxury of individuals; so the luxury of individuals must diminish the force, and check the ambition of the sovereign.
Robocop was a warning, not a suggestion. Law enforcement is best when it approaches what a reasonable person might agree to ex ante given the opportunity to bargain. What's happening in Missouri (and what's being prepared in the rest of the country) is hardly euvoluntary.
Monday, September 9, 2013
Hume on Coercion
Essays; Moral, Political, and Literary Part II, Essay XII: "Of the Original Contract"
It's quite an essay. Here's a nice little passage: "[Philosophers] affirm, that all men are still born equal, and owe allegiance to no prince or government, unless bound by the obligation and sanction of a promise." Again, emphasis in original. Just prior to this he forwarded a particularly lovely style of historicism, both presaging Strauss and writing with prudent Straussian elision. So here, the social contractarians are right, but only so long as the terms of the contract are met. Unwritten is men owe no allegiance to a prince who upturns the terms of trade, so to speak. A sovereign who breaks the agreement no longer retains legitimate authority.
Likewise, "a sovereign cannot, properly speaking, be called [the Deity's] vice-regent, in any other sense than every power or force, being derived from him, may be said to act by his commission." Again, a Straussian call to revolt when the sovereign ceases to act in accordance with the Will of the Divine. You can almost hear him snickering into his sleeve here.
A little later on though, we find the following (keep in mind this was written in 1748, fifty years before M. Guillotine began his bloody rampage): "In reality, there is not a more terrible event, than a total dissolution of government, which gives liberty to the multitude, and makes the determination or choice of a new establishment depend upon a number, which nearly approaches to that of the body of the people: For it never comes entirely to the whole body of them." If you're reading Buchanan into that, you're not alone. Heck, if you're reading Caplan into that, you're not alone. Hume was mightily skeptical of the ability of regular folk to re-design from whole cloth either the terms of a social contract or to re-interpret the Word of God.
Of course, in practice, the post-Enlightenment revolutions tended to be based on the principles of "reason" or "science" or some such nonsense. They also tended to be rather bloody and messy. Being proven right in this case seems little cause for joy.
At any rate, the whole essay is great fun, and if you'll indulge me, there's one more passage in there that answers the question Hayek asks by way of Munger's post below:
I shall venture to affirm, That both these systems [divine right of the sovereign and the social contract] are just; though not in the sense, intended by the parties: And, That both the schemes of practical consequences are prudent; though not in the extremes, to which each party, in opposition to the other, has commonly endeavoured to carry them.Emphasis in original.
It's quite an essay. Here's a nice little passage: "[Philosophers] affirm, that all men are still born equal, and owe allegiance to no prince or government, unless bound by the obligation and sanction of a promise." Again, emphasis in original. Just prior to this he forwarded a particularly lovely style of historicism, both presaging Strauss and writing with prudent Straussian elision. So here, the social contractarians are right, but only so long as the terms of the contract are met. Unwritten is men owe no allegiance to a prince who upturns the terms of trade, so to speak. A sovereign who breaks the agreement no longer retains legitimate authority.
Likewise, "a sovereign cannot, properly speaking, be called [the Deity's] vice-regent, in any other sense than every power or force, being derived from him, may be said to act by his commission." Again, a Straussian call to revolt when the sovereign ceases to act in accordance with the Will of the Divine. You can almost hear him snickering into his sleeve here.
A little later on though, we find the following (keep in mind this was written in 1748, fifty years before M. Guillotine began his bloody rampage): "In reality, there is not a more terrible event, than a total dissolution of government, which gives liberty to the multitude, and makes the determination or choice of a new establishment depend upon a number, which nearly approaches to that of the body of the people: For it never comes entirely to the whole body of them." If you're reading Buchanan into that, you're not alone. Heck, if you're reading Caplan into that, you're not alone. Hume was mightily skeptical of the ability of regular folk to re-design from whole cloth either the terms of a social contract or to re-interpret the Word of God.
Of course, in practice, the post-Enlightenment revolutions tended to be based on the principles of "reason" or "science" or some such nonsense. They also tended to be rather bloody and messy. Being proven right in this case seems little cause for joy.
At any rate, the whole essay is great fun, and if you'll indulge me, there's one more passage in there that answers the question Hayek asks by way of Munger's post below:
Can we seriously say, that a poor peasant or artizan has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives from day to day, by the small wages which he acquires? We may well assert, that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master; though he was carried on board while asleep, and must leap into the ocean, and perish, the moment he leaves her.Hard coercion by untenable alternatives. QED. Take it from a guy who's lived in a place where he knows no foreign language or manners, and lived from day to day, by the small wages which he acquired.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Evaluating Arguments by Attributing Motives
Jonathan Feit goes all post-modern on us, alleging that the motives behind the person making the argument, rather than the quality of the argument itself, is what philosophers should consider.
In fairness, it seems like *I* was the one who was tricked. I have actually been converted to the belief that the usual definition of "voluntary" as the absence of coercion through direct human agency is inadequate. It actually DOES matter that people are able to escape the coercion of circumstance, just like many philosophers of the left have argued.
Of course, I was only able to reach that conclusion because I evaluated the arguments themselves, and found them persuasive. If I had stopped at the point where I just rejected the arguments because I disagreed with the motives of my opponents, I would never have learned anything.
In any case: Michael Sandel, you were right and I was wrong. Interesting.
In fairness, it seems like *I* was the one who was tricked. I have actually been converted to the belief that the usual definition of "voluntary" as the absence of coercion through direct human agency is inadequate. It actually DOES matter that people are able to escape the coercion of circumstance, just like many philosophers of the left have argued.
Of course, I was only able to reach that conclusion because I evaluated the arguments themselves, and found them persuasive. If I had stopped at the point where I just rejected the arguments because I disagreed with the motives of my opponents, I would never have learned anything.
In any case: Michael Sandel, you were right and I was wrong. Interesting.
Monday, September 10, 2012
The Deontology of Liberty in Trade
The main points of euvoluntary exchange:
- Euvoluntary trade unambiguously makes each party to the transaction at least no worse off than without the trade.
- Even if bargaining from a weak position due to poor alternatives, voluntary trade still makes each party to the transaction at least no worse off than without the trade.
- Voluntary trades made under conditions of radical uncertainty may make one or more party to a trade worse off than without the trade. The expectation of gains drives people to trade.
- Involuntary trades can be expected to make at least one party worse off along some dimension than without the trade.
Underpinning our approaches to these categories of exchange are mountains of philosophy. Much of the ethics of the market can be found in Mill, Locke, Bentham, Paine and other Enlightenment thinkers. A revival of moral thought in economics that hearkens back to some of Adam Smith's work is underway thanks to the tireless efforts of people like Deidre McCloskey, Daniel Klein, and Peter Boettke. McCloskey's idea is to reject the principle that prudence is the one and only economic virtue, that inter alia, virtues like mercy, love, justice, temperance, and loyalty are all relevant in the study of human behavior in the marketplace. At a more basic normative level, we should ask whether we care about these things for their ends (consequentialist ethics) or their means (deontological ethics). One might argue that though rap videos about Keynes and Hayek get more attention, it's the ongoing struggle of Kant vs Bentham that drives much of the disagreement over the nature of freedom in exchange.
Pure euvoluntary exchange is acceptable on both utilitarian and deontological grounds. These trades don't hurt anyone, they make some people better off, and they don't violate the presumption of liberty or injunctions against the initiation of violence. Moving further down the spectrum of exchange, we can imagine butting up against one or another principle somewhere along the line. Expropriation by violence runs afoul of the non-aggression principle and may be inefficient using standard economic criteria.
In a world of pure consequentialism, any trade that's Pareto or K-H efficient is morally acceptable. This means that Jorgé can charge whatever he wants for the water in his taco truck, as long as Jimbo prefers that price to death, the trade was a-ok. In a world where justice, fairness and charity matter, Jorgé is obliged to refrain from gross exploitation, n'est-ce pas?
Utilitarianism has no shortage of shortcomings. Many of these shortcomings persist even after resorting to rule utilitarianism or even meta-rule utilitarianism. One big advantage it retains over deontological arguments is that its metrics are clear: measure and compare outcomes. Deontology scrutinizes process but features severe and persistent disagreement over just what imperatives are appropriate. Indeed, many intro to philosophy courses (and innumerable late-night college dorm discussions) are filled with thought experiments intentionally designed to pit various potential deontological principles against each other. Economists, weird as we are, look at you like you've got two heads when you suggest that throwing a man onto the tracks to stop a runaway trolley from killing ten is even the slightest bit different than refraining from throwing a switch that would generate the exact same results.
So when we here at EE claim that sweatshops are good, do we rely on utilitarian arguments? We can. We regretfully remind our readers that people work in light manufacturing under unpleasant conditions for long hours and for (what seems to us) low pay because it's better than their alternatives. This is a utilitarian argument. But we can also make a legitimate deontological argument that it's immoral for third parties to interfere unsolicited in the peaceful arrangements of others. We can claim that the ethics of locking up prostitutes for agreeing to a peaceful exchange of cash for sexual activity or detaining drug users for the peaceful ingestion of arbitrary substances or fining peaceful guitar makers for the "crime" of failing to fill out paperwork for imported wood are suspect without having to rely on arguments that most people outside of the economics profession (or without much in the way of economics training) find especially compelling.
But what then are the deontological principles of euvoluntary exchange? Is non-aggression enough? Do we need to invoke Bastiat's unseen? What about aesthetics? Is it unseemly that so much is now available for sale? More to the point, with whom does the burden of proof lie? Do defenders of liberty in trade need justify the euvoluntarity of an exchange to elite overseers or do public servants who have been hired by the people to provide law and order need to justify interference to their employers before meddling in the affairs of the marketplace?
The answer to that last question there goes a long way in describing the sort of civil society in which we live. I'd encourage you to consider how you might answer it as you vary time and location.
Utilitarianism has no shortage of shortcomings. Many of these shortcomings persist even after resorting to rule utilitarianism or even meta-rule utilitarianism. One big advantage it retains over deontological arguments is that its metrics are clear: measure and compare outcomes. Deontology scrutinizes process but features severe and persistent disagreement over just what imperatives are appropriate. Indeed, many intro to philosophy courses (and innumerable late-night college dorm discussions) are filled with thought experiments intentionally designed to pit various potential deontological principles against each other. Economists, weird as we are, look at you like you've got two heads when you suggest that throwing a man onto the tracks to stop a runaway trolley from killing ten is even the slightest bit different than refraining from throwing a switch that would generate the exact same results.
So when we here at EE claim that sweatshops are good, do we rely on utilitarian arguments? We can. We regretfully remind our readers that people work in light manufacturing under unpleasant conditions for long hours and for (what seems to us) low pay because it's better than their alternatives. This is a utilitarian argument. But we can also make a legitimate deontological argument that it's immoral for third parties to interfere unsolicited in the peaceful arrangements of others. We can claim that the ethics of locking up prostitutes for agreeing to a peaceful exchange of cash for sexual activity or detaining drug users for the peaceful ingestion of arbitrary substances or fining peaceful guitar makers for the "crime" of failing to fill out paperwork for imported wood are suspect without having to rely on arguments that most people outside of the economics profession (or without much in the way of economics training) find especially compelling.
But what then are the deontological principles of euvoluntary exchange? Is non-aggression enough? Do we need to invoke Bastiat's unseen? What about aesthetics? Is it unseemly that so much is now available for sale? More to the point, with whom does the burden of proof lie? Do defenders of liberty in trade need justify the euvoluntarity of an exchange to elite overseers or do public servants who have been hired by the people to provide law and order need to justify interference to their employers before meddling in the affairs of the marketplace?
The answer to that last question there goes a long way in describing the sort of civil society in which we live. I'd encourage you to consider how you might answer it as you vary time and location.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Peter Singer
From the moral point of view, the prevention of the starvation of millions of people outside our society must be considered at least as pressing as the upholding of property norms within our society. (Source)
Even at gunpoint? Even if I do not agree? An interesting set of categories: Obligation, enforce by tanks and prison. Duty, enforced by....what? Conscience? And finally, supererogation. I am not obliged to give, but it is very good if I do.
Singer does make a good argument, though. Not a perfect argument, but a good one. If (suppose) we did all agree we had a duty to give, and consented. But then we all notice that if just one person (me!) fails to give, the total amount of aid sent to Bengal (or wherever; this as 1972) will be pretty much the same. Then it becomes an n-person PD, and we are all actually obliged not just to give, but to submit to (legitimate) coercion to give.
Right?
Even at gunpoint? Even if I do not agree? An interesting set of categories: Obligation, enforce by tanks and prison. Duty, enforced by....what? Conscience? And finally, supererogation. I am not obliged to give, but it is very good if I do.
Singer does make a good argument, though. Not a perfect argument, but a good one. If (suppose) we did all agree we had a duty to give, and consented. But then we all notice that if just one person (me!) fails to give, the total amount of aid sent to Bengal (or wherever; this as 1972) will be pretty much the same. Then it becomes an n-person PD, and we are all actually obliged not just to give, but to submit to (legitimate) coercion to give.
Right?
Friday, April 13, 2012
Too Few To Mention
Chatting with one of my students yesterday, I found myself at loggerheads over an appropriate description of EE-relevant regret. It seemed to me that regret happens when outcomes don't match expectations. Moreover, it's when outcomes fall short of expectations. A recent example for me was the inexplicably popular film The Hunger Games. Many of my friends that I hold in quite high esteem assured me that the books were pretty good and the press coverage of the film suggested it would be good. I was bitterly disappointed.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
The San Francisco Treat
Ed.: I originally wrote this prior to my first post here, so please don't be thrown by the concluding paragraph.
The standard trolley problem goes something like this: you
find yourself inexplicably drinking a soymilk latte in the Mission District a
few blocks up from the The Embarcadero when out of nowhere a runaway trolley
comes rumbling down yonder boulevard. Alack! The trolley is laden with
passengers and if not stopped, ‘twill surely crash into the Bay, killing all
and sundry aboard. Luckily for the people aboard, a portly gentleman out for
his morning constitutional has lost his footing and fallen on the tracks and if
no action is taken by you, the trolley will come to rest against his meaty
flanks, the passengers shaken but otherwise unharmed. The man, naturally, as
happens when struck by a runaway trolley will surely perish. The question then is,
do you roll him out of the way? If you do, he lives and the people on the
trolley die. Spoiler: most people will not respond that they roll him out of
the way. Smugly perhaps, the person posing the scenario then alters it ever so
slightly—instead of the fat guy having already fallen on the tracks, your
choice is now to push him on the tracks or do nothing. Spoiler the second: most
people again elect to do nothing (a close second is to look pained for a
moment, then reluctantly admit that they’d push him, but only with much
regret). Economists, heartless vermin they are, sacrifice the few for the many
without batting an eye, and I suspect they do so without even so much as a
fleeting thought to Spock’s ad hoc repair of the Enterprise inside the Mutara
Nebula. To the economist or the (suppress your shudders, please) utilitarian,
the two variants are perfectly identical, except for a few extra calories burned…
fat guys dies so that 20 strangers may live.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Michael Sandel on Exchange
Okay, so I'm a little embarrassed. I clearly should have cited this before.
But better late than never. Michael Sandel makes an argument about when exchanges are not really voluntary:
The first objection [to the claim that exchange is voluntary] is an argument from coercion. It points to the injustice that can arise when people buy and sell things under conditions of severe inequality or dire economic necessity. According to this objection, market exchanges are not necessarily as voluntary as market enthusiasts suggest. A peasant may agree to sell his kidney or cornea in order to feed his starving family, but his agreement is not truly voluntary. He is coerced, in effect, by the necessities of his situation.
Wow. "Coerced by the necessities of his situation" sounds a lot like condition #6 here at the top right column of this blog, doesn't it. Awkward... Still, I'd like to think that the "disparities in BATNAs" definition gives it a bit more precision.
The second objection is to "corruption," where buying and selling changes human relationships in bad ways. (If you tell your spouse, "Hey, honey, you were great in bed last night! Here's an extra $20!" then that is not really good for the relationship.) (An extra $200,000, instead of $20, might create considerable enthusiasm, but it would not be authentic and would still corrupt the underlying relationship.) Some things can be commodoties and others cannot.
ATSRTWT, by all means.
But better late than never. Michael Sandel makes an argument about when exchanges are not really voluntary:
The first objection [to the claim that exchange is voluntary] is an argument from coercion. It points to the injustice that can arise when people buy and sell things under conditions of severe inequality or dire economic necessity. According to this objection, market exchanges are not necessarily as voluntary as market enthusiasts suggest. A peasant may agree to sell his kidney or cornea in order to feed his starving family, but his agreement is not truly voluntary. He is coerced, in effect, by the necessities of his situation.
Wow. "Coerced by the necessities of his situation" sounds a lot like condition #6 here at the top right column of this blog, doesn't it. Awkward... Still, I'd like to think that the "disparities in BATNAs" definition gives it a bit more precision.
The second objection is to "corruption," where buying and selling changes human relationships in bad ways. (If you tell your spouse, "Hey, honey, you were great in bed last night! Here's an extra $20!" then that is not really good for the relationship.) (An extra $200,000, instead of $20, might create considerable enthusiasm, but it would not be authentic and would still corrupt the underlying relationship.) Some things can be commodoties and others cannot.
ATSRTWT, by all means.
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