A Perverse Sense of Humor?

Why else would I choose Christmas Eve to start reading a biography of Baruch Spinoza, progenitor of the Enlightenment and bete noir of Reformation religious establishments (both Jewish and Christian)? The book is Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge 1999).

A Great Sen-tence and a Bad Review

From Amartya Sen's article in the forthcoming Dec. 29, 2011 issue of The New Republic (behind a pay-wall here), "The Boundaries of Justice: David Hume and Our World":

The usefulness of reasoning is not dependent on its being able to solve every problem at hand.

Sen believes a contrary presumption has harmed decision theory and the theory of rational choice, and observes that understanding the incompleteness of our knowledge is in fact central to human reasoning.

Sen's observation is usefully borne in mind while reading the review of Jonathan Israel's Democratic Enlightenment, which appears in this Sunday's New York Times (here). I've previously blogged about the Israel book here and here. While some of the reviewer's criticisms hit the mark (Israel does too strongly distinguish and elevate radical enlightenment thinkers, such as Spinoza and Diderot, over their more moderate brethren, like Voltaire and Hume), the overall tenor of the review is far too glib and jaundiced, treating Enlightenment studies, and seemingly the pursuit of reason itself, as somehow passe.

Ron Paul Wants to Abolish the EPA

No surprise there. And he offers a conventional libertarian bromide as a substitute for the regulatory agency: "Polluters should answer directly to property owners in court for the damages they create...." For years, small minorities of economists and libertarians calling themselves "free-market environmentalists" (see, e.g., here and here) have argued that common-law property protections, by themselves, can and would supply efficient, even optimal, levels of environmental protection. They would certainly be right, if we lived in the mythical world of the "Coase theorem," in which information is complete and transacting is costless (see here). Indeed, if we lived in that world, we wouldn't even need property law or courts to resolve environmental disputes as parties in the free market would costlessly bargain to optimal allocations of pollution. But, as Coase himself acknowledged many times (see id.), the world we live in is not at all like the world of the "Coase theorem." In the real world, theories of free-market environmentalism are dangerously misguided because of transaction costs and the real limitations of common-law solutions to environmental problems.

Here's what Coase had to write about environmental protection in his 1959 article on "The Federal Communications Commission" (see here, p. 29):

[I]f many people are harmed and there are several sources of pollution, it is more difficult to reach a satisfactory solution through the market. When the transfer of rights has to come about as a result of market transactions carried out between large numbers of people or organizations acting jointly, the process of negotiation may be so difficult and time-consuming as to make such transfers a practical impossibility. Even the enforcement of rights through the courts may not be easy. It may be costly to discover who it is that is causing the trouble. And, when it is not in the interest of any single person or organization to bring suit, the problems involved in arranging joint actions represent a further obstacle. As a practical matter, the market may become too costly to operate.

In these circumstances, it may be preferable to impose special regulations (whether embodied in a statute or brought about as a result of the rulings of an administrative agency).

 Peter Grossman and I build on Coase's arguments in Chapter 15 of our book, Principles of Law and Economics (Aspen 2011), pp. 397-8:

The causation-proof problems Coase recognizes are especially important. Many pollutants travel long distances, and pollution-related diseases can have long latency periods. To prevail in court, plaintiffs must be able to trace their harm to a particular pollution source that might be located hundreds of miles away, and prove that their harm was proximately caused by exposure to a certain pollutant that may have occurred several decades ago. This evidentiary burden is often unbearable, and always very expensive. Moreover, common-law courts have traditionally restricted nuisance remedies to cases involving visible air pollution, such as smoke and dust; bad odors were usually not enough to state a claim. But, of course, many harmful pollutants - including some of the most toxic - are invisible. 

In addition to causation-proof problems, common-law remedies only protect environmental resources subject to property rights; they do not protect unowned, common-pool resources, regardless of social value.

The problems raised, respectively, by Coase and Cole and Grossman bear on Paul's belief that common-law causes of action provide sufficient remedies for environmental harms, but ultimately they are inapposite to his opposition to EPA and large-scale environmental regulation because Paul is not a welfare-consequentialist. As true-believing libertarian, Paul is more interested in maximizing individual liberty than overall social welfare (although he might believe that maximizing the former would maximize the later). Paul's strict libertarianism distinguishes him from his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. While they mostly pander to anti-environmental interest groups, Paul's environmental position is principled. But, if implemented as policy, it would be disastrous for the health and welfare of the American people.

A Provocative Assertion about the Conservatism of the Legal Profession in the 18th Century

From Jonthan Israel, Democratic Enlightenment (Oxford 2011), pp. 231-2:

Modern historical surveys of the Enlightenment often seem to suggest that Europe's judicial systems could be and were swiftly and almost painlessly reformed in the eighteenth century, as if this was just a question of ending judicial torture, modifying the harsh treatment of debtors and unmarried mothers, and a few other widely acknowledged defects, and as if there was widespread support for the proposed changes in society and among the legal profession. But the evidence strongly suggests otherwise. Significant sections of the Enlightenment, and Hume in particular, systematically undermined every overall approach to rationalizing the law, thereby drastically limiting the scope for legal reform. In the legal and moral sphere, it was neither public opinion, nor economic pressure, nor governments, and especially not ... magistrates or lawyers that acted as agents of change. The legal profession in fact contributed practically nothing to the reform programme anywhere in Europe. Rather it was philosophy itself - and especially la philosophie moderne - helped by the sheer accumulation of social difficulties and pressures (as distinct from public attitudes), that spread awareness of deficiencies and urged root and branch reform.

I am not enough of a legal historian (especially of Europe in the 18th century) to adjudge the accuracy of Israel's strong claim. I suspect he is correct about the general conservatism of the legal profession, which seems a persistent quality. On the other hand, I find it hard to imagine that the successful legal reforms Israel discusses could have been achieved without at least the strong support, if not the instigation, of some enlightened magistrates and lawyers. If the legal profession, as a whole, possesses a conservative (perhaps Humean) mindset, the existence within that profession of a minority of reformers - both moderate and radical - seems another of its persistent qualities. Of course, Israel's apparent bias for the philosophes, especially those like Spinosa, Bayle, and Diderot with a more radical reform agenda, is understandable given his own heavy investment in their works. But it seems doubtful that they their works were the sole drivers of enlightened political, legal, and economic reform.

A Concise Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind

Here in Philosophy Now, by Laura Weed. Very nicely done.

Hat tip: The Browser.

Finding Diderot

Reading Jonathan Israel's intellectual histories of the Enlightenment (see here) has motivated me to start reading the French essayist Denis Diderot. But his writings, including his Pensees philosophiques and his Pensees sur l'interpretation de la nature do not seem to be available online in English translation in either Kindle, pdf, or html format. I find it very disappointing that important works by a major Enlightenment thinker, which are in the public domain, are not freely available. I guess I'll have to resort to the library. How old-fashioned.

A Riddle

If pride comes before the fall, then what comes before the pride?

Enlightened by Jonathan Israel

Oxford University Press has just published the latest book in Jonathan Israel's impressive series on the intellectual history of the Enlightenment, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750-1790. Needless to say, I've bought it, but I won't be reading it for a while because I have to read his earlier installments first, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750 (Oxford 2001) (which I've only just started reading) and Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1670-1750 (Oxford 2006).

Israel, who is Professor of Modern European  History at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, is an amazing scholar. His books are to intellectual history what William Cronon's books are to environmental history, though perhaps a bit more demanding of the reader. Ranging from 700-1000 pages each, Israel's tomes are monuments of erudition with references to so many major and minor scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it is hard work keeping track. The books are not dry or especially difficult to read, but it is easy to get lost in the detail. This is not a criticism; arguably, authors should demand more of readers than they typically do. Israel's books represent the kind of meticulous and comprehensive scholarship that all scholars, myself included, wish we could write.

The Moral Economy of Football (Soccer)

As a regular viewer of European football matches, especially from the UK and Spain, I have been fascinated by (among other things) the post-match interviews and analyses, which seem to me to differ markedly from those of American sporting events in one vital respect: in Europe, a great deal of attention is focused on the moral desert of a victory or loss, as if whether a win, draw or loss was "earned" matters as much as the final scoreline. Did the winning club play well enough to "deserve" its victory? Did the losing club perhaps "deserve" a point or to get "more from the match." This kind of post-match analysis is endemic. Listen to any post-match interview with a team manager or media analyst, and you will like hear a discussion of whether the match result was or was not a "fair" reflection of the game, among other moral issues. A team that ties a match might be considered morally victorious, if they were expected to lose or if they were expected ex ante to have been "content with a draw." A team that wins as expected, may not get full credit if their quality of play, or the extent of the victory, did not meet some (or someone's) presupposed standard.

In the US, as a rule, the final score seems to be all that counts. This is reflected in the traditional response of a winning player to trash tack from the other team: "SCOREBOARD!" While the final score might is explained in post-match analyses by various factors affecting the outcome, it is rarely interrogated for its rightness or fairness.

If I am right that this difference exists between European and the US, when it comes to adjudging the outcomes of sporting events, I can only wonder at the reasons for it. Does it boil down to differences in social psychology or mental models of the world? Is it a consequence of different cultural histories? Does it reflect different attitudes about markets or the "rules of the game"?

The Rest of My Summer Reading (for This Year and Probably the Next)

I just received both volumes (all 1060 pages, not including appendices) of Derek Parfit's new book, On What Matters (Oxford 2011). My recollection, from reading Parfit's last book, Reasons and Persons (Oxford 1984), is that, although Parfit writes clearly, the sheer depth and complexity of his analysis makes for hard reading. I anticipate that the payoff to be high (otherwise, I wouldn't start reading the first page of the first volume). I cannot predict, however, how long it will take me to get to that payoff.

Was Adam Smith a Legal Positivist?

From his Lectures in Jurisprudence (R.L. Meek, D.D. Raphael and P.G. Stein, eds, Oxford 1978):

[T]he age of shepherds is where government first commences. Property makes it absolutely necessary. When once it has been agreed that a cow or a sheep shall belong to a certain person not only when actually in his possession but where ever it may have strayed, it is absolutely necessary that the hand of government should be continually held up and the community assert their power to preserve the property of the individualls.

This seems awfully close to Bentham's argument that legal rights cannot exist in the absence of government.

Thaler on Wrong Scientific Beliefs

Over at The Edge, University of Chicago Business School Professor Richard Thaler, coauthor with Cass Sunstein of the influential book Nudge (Yale 2008), has raised an interesting question for regular Edge contributors:

The flat earth and geocentric world are examples of wrong scientific beliefs that were held for long periods. Can you name your favorite example and for extra credit why it was believed to be true?

I am not a contributor to The Edge, but I nevertheless sent Thaler the following message:

Already a couple of respondents have correctly indicated Newtonian gravity as a “wrong scientific belief.” Interestingly, it’s a wrong scientific belief that still seems to be treated as true, not by physicists of course, but by large segments of the public. I suspect there are two reasons for this: (1) gravity is both intuitive and conforms to our “common sense” of the world (of course, common sense is often treated as a infallible guide to judgment, but often is misleading); and (2) Newtonian gravity is only falsified at very high speeds, which none of us experiences. Thus, while Newton’s theory of gravity is scientifically false, it seems experientially “true.”

Long before Newton, when Aristotle’s “scientific” theories held sway for centuries, it was thought that objects move faster as they approach the earth because they sensed that they were approaching “home,” i.e., where they belonged. This theory, too, made some intuitive sense if one also accepted Aristotle’s belief that vacuums were impossible.

More generally, my sense is that all scientific theories, like all religious theories, are not only about people trying to comprehend the mysterious world and universe in which we live, but to establish regularities so as to be less frightened by the world and attain some (true or false) psychological equilibrium. The need for some such equilibrium is innate.

Happy Birthday Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)

A seventeenth-century Dutch Jew and rationalist philosopher who helped lay the groundwork for the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Although not an empiricist, Spinoza had an advanced understanding of science (for his day). Among other advances, he disputed Descartes mind-body dualism, arguing that what we perceive as two separate entities are really just two expressions of a single entity.

Happy Birthday Voltaire (1694-1778)

Francois-Marie Arouet was one of the great Enlightenment philosophers and writers who promoted freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, science, and free trade against the absolute monarchism, mercantilism, and religious dogmas of his day. He wrote dozens of plays, stories, philosophical treatises, and histories, many displaying his great wit as well as wisdom. He was revered by and inspired other Enlightenment thinkers, including Adam Smith, Rousseau, John Locke, and Benjamin Franklin. The crown and church considered Voltaire a dangerous man because he thought for himself, and that is what made him great.