Progress I've been reading some of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations for a class of mine, and I was struck by his concern for the working class. It is a testimony to his work and the advance of history that the following discussion doesn't seem very necessary any more:
The common complaint that luxury extends itself even to the lowest ranks of the people, and that the labouring poor will not now be contented with the same food, cloathing and lodging which satisfied them in former times, may convince us that it is not the money price of labour only, but its real recompense, which has augmented.
Is this improvement in the circumstances of the lower ranks of the people to be regarded as an advantage or as an inconveniency to the society? The answer seems at first sight abundantly plain. Servants, labourers and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
Smith's claim here about equity is something of an aside, since his main argument is to show that improvements in the conditions for the working class actually increases their productivity by giving them reason to think that their work will be reasonably rewarded. It shows why Smith is regarded as so important to classical liberalism.
Sad to say, our two-day reading of the first book of The Wealth of Nations is all the economics some of my students will ever see. And it shows. They readily confuse wealth with money, and believe (as so many others seem to today) that you can increase your wealth through consumption. Talk about eating your cake and having it too! Eddie 8:47 AM
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Common Ground Although I have been a supporter of our efforts in Iraq and will almost certainly vote for Bush so that he can continue those efforts, I can see a lot of issues that are up for reasonable discussion. Here are a number of them:
1. Whether the war against Iraq was really vital to the war on terrorism, or whether it was a serious distraction.
2. Whether the war effort has been conducted competently, especially regarding the policing immediately after the occupation and the disbanding of the Iraqi regular army.
3. Whether the Administration's arguments for going to war were in keeping with their true intentions, or in keeping with available intelligence, and whether the Administration's current efforts to justify the war accurately acknowledge the misperception regarding the presence of WMDs.
4. Whether the current successes in Iraq will be offset by larger problems down the road, such as increased terrorist activity or decreased cooperation from European countries.
5. Whether the effort against terrorism should best be understood in military or law enforcement terms.
6. Whether Homeland Security has made us secure, or whether it is worth the loss of various freedoms.
7. Whether Bush or Kerry have the ability to see the situation in Iraq through to a proper conclusion.
8. Whether the good of improving the situation in Iraq justifies a second term for Bush.
I have strong opinions on most of these issues, but I can understand why there might be disagreement and I am open to argument. There are a number of other issues, however, that seem to me to be utterly absurd:
1. Whether the Clinton administration ever made terrorism a top priority, or expended any political capital to convince the American public that terrorism should be a top priority.
2. Whether the Bush administration could have mounted a serious effort against terrorism prior to 9/11 sufficient to stop the events of 9/11. Or that, if it had, whether that effort would not have been blamed as the very cause of 9/11.
3. Whether the Bush Administration could have received UN approval if only it would have given diplomacy more of a chance. Or even just French and German approval.
4. Whether Saddam's obstruction of the inspections process and his actions in world affairs and against his people constituted ample legal and moral grounds for military action.
5. Whether the situation in Iraq is better or worse than before the invasion.
6. Whether the improvement of the situation in Iraq matters in passing judgment on the war effort itself. In other words, whether we should dismiss the policy on the basis of disliking the one making the policy.
7. Whether we deserve to be targets of terrorism.
While I have certainly seen discussion of the first issues, it is unfortunately the case that the Democrats and the lefty bloggers have spent much more energy dedicated to the second set of questions. With so many serious issues to challenge the President upon, it is disheartening to witness such unserious discourse. I can only suppose that serious discourse grants too much honor to the one you are challenging and that the left believes it more efficient simply to cast the President as too stupid or too evil to take seriously.
While thinking over these matters, it occured to me that there is an important difference between the warbloggers and the lefty bloggers. The warbloggers were all motivated to take strong action in response to 9/11, and thus ended up largely supporting the President in his war effort. Most of the prominent warbloggers weren't and aren't Republicans, and to a large extent are unwilling to endorse much of his domestic policies. The lefty bloggers, on the other hand, have never had the war as their main concern. Their main concern has always been that the war effort would lead to Bush's re-election, and so they have dug in their heels accordingly, taking every opportunity to make the President look bad. The warbloggers often criticize the President, on domestic policy and sometimes the conduct of the war, but the lefty bloggers almost uniformly preach the party line. It is comical to read Atrios and Eschaton. I would add Josh Marshall, but his academic credentials make me too irritated to laugh. Academics ought to be more devoted to the truth.
We all have leanings, and those leanings will invariably, at some point, limit us. I am still, however, in search of an honest critic of this war. Eddie 3:10 PM
Friday, March 19, 2004
Method A gratifying aspect of my job is seeing how far students progress over the course of their college careers. As if by magic, they generally end up better writers, clearer thinkers, and more interesting people. It seems like magic because it is almost impossible to detect any progress at all within a given semester or even a given year.
Unfortunately, being able to see progress only over the long term makes it remarkably difficult for me to develop my craft. I can work with a student to understand a particular philosophical position or to improve a particular paper, but I rarely see that improvement lead to a more general improvement in ability. The paper written at the end of the semester is not much different from the one written at the beginning. In fact, when I look at the progress that students make over their college career, I honestly cannot conclude with any certainty that I played a part in it at all.
How then does one improve in a job when there isn't clear feedback over performance? There are, of course, any number of performance measures, i.e., assessment tools, but they are largely useless. Am I a better teacher now than I was eight years ago? I think so, but I don't really know. What an odd thing to not know if you are improving in your occupation.
When I began, my teaching style was mainly Socratic, meaning that I mainly asked philosophical questions and pushed students to formulate their answers. What I have discovered, however, is that students don't generally have second thoughts. They can become more articulate in explaining their position, and can sometimes recognize when their position has difficulties, but they can't really formulate a new position to address those difficulties. Either they are left speechless or they just reinvent their original position in different words.
This would seem to point to a defect in the Socratic method. If I am trying to draw truth out of my students, but they don't have much to offer beyond their initial take on things, where can I go? Perhaps I can draw a number of positions out of different students, and place these positions side by side, but that doesn't usually remove the paralysis. When confronted with two positions that are equally plausible yet inconsistent, the student will affirm both: "it is a little of one and a little of the other." This isn't exactly Hegelian dialectic.
I have come to think, however, that my view of Socratic method is itself too narrow. Socrates doesn't just ask questions and then torture the answers. He also tells odd and mysterious stories about ancient lands, the underworld, and the afterlife. He is the midwife, of course, helping to deliver the opinions of others, but he is the poet too, and sometimes the sophist.
One of the most important professors in my college experience was a sophist. He was from Hungary (the Iron Curtain was still up) and was one of these traveling European cosmopolitans who would follow the money anywhere, especially if it landed him in sunny southern California. His teaching consisted mainly of telling stories of 20th century European high-brow culture. He had a syllabus because the university demanded it, and we sometimes read books, but usually he just talked about people and books and left it up to us to find them in the library if we wanted. It was utterly enchanting, even for a provincial like me. I don't know if I learned a thing.
I'm not sure if I have it in me to be enchanting. I am drawn to the ugly Socrates, the one who is unafraid to undermine the apparent beauty of common opinion. There was a beauty to Socrates too, however, which is what made him dangerous to the Athenians. Can I make beautiful speeches as well?
Nagging Doubts Apparently I'm not the only one confessing to some belief in relativism. Well, Aaron isn't actually confessing to it, but he is having doubts, in this case doubts about whether judgments of taste can be made objectively. ("Objectively" is my word, not his; I suspect he would put it more precisely.) The idea that taste is subjective is the most common relativism around, so Aaron's battle against it has been quite instructive for me, especially given my ignorance of both good taste and theories of taste. Nonetheless, when the mighty make a misstep, the rest of us must do what we can.
I've recently returned, after a hiatus of over a decade, to reading Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence by Andre Hodeir. (Stop laughing.) Hodeir wants to write a book for jazz that is akin to Descartes' Discourse on Method, so that should give you some sense of how seriously he believes that objective foundations can be found for art. To satisfy his readers that such a project is even plausible, he opens his preface with the following:
"As his taste becomes more refined, the admirer of Alfred de Musset abandons him for Verlaine. One who was brought up on Hugo dedicates himself completely to Mallarme. These intellectual changes generally occur in one direction rather than the other, which is much less plausible."
Who is it expressing himself in this way? Paul Valery, who here gives a golden rule of one's own esthetic evolution, the only criterion of taste that is confirmed by common experience. In the field of music, this evolution reflects not only the refinement of taste, but also the awareness of certain objective realities that do not always appear at the outset.
I find Valery's argument compelling. The premise of the argument isn't that everyone agrees on which art is best, which is obviously untrue, but that when people have a change of taste, there are regular patterns to that change. A person may always prefer Jim Croce to Bob Dylan, but it is highly unlikely that a person who finds great satisfaction in Dylan will ever come to the conclusion that Croce is the superior artist. The reverse, however, is entirely thinkable. The same point can be made within an artist's career. I know people who prefer the Johnny Cash you hear on all of the Greatest Hits CDs to the early Johnny Cash, but I have a hard time believing that anyone who is significantly drawn to his early work will think that his later music was an improvement, while I would count myself as someone who liked his best-known hits and then fell in love with the early work.
Of course, there may very well be lateral moves in taste. I can imagine one person starting with great fondness for Merle Haggard who later becomes captivated by Willie Nelson, and another who moves in the opposite direction. If Valery is right, however, and I think he is, then the existence of progressions that can only feasibly happen in one direction is solid evidence that there is something to taste beyond the accidents of personal history. The task of aesthetics then would be to elucidate what those objective elements could be.
Nonetheless, it seems wrong to me to demand that the objective elements of taste take precedence over the subjective. It is valuable to know the difference, especially in one's own tastes, but I can't see an obvious reason to prefer one over the other. Over time, it is likely that the objective elements will push your preferences in a particular direction, but what's the hurry? As can be inferred from my own examples above, my own musical preferences are not for classical music or jazz, which generally would be considered superior to other popular forms. I have been spending some time lately with music from the 20s and 30s, so my interest in jazz has increased, but it is not an art form I have much experience with. Eventually, I might understand why students who get music degrees invariably study classical music or jazz. Country music, however, fits my world and my sense of self, and generally resonates with me spiritually. I believe I can make objective discriminations within the genre, but my preference for the genre itself is largely subjective.
As in all things, I ask WWSD (What Would Socrates Do)? Socrates sought to understand things through their perfection, while showing the Athenians their distance from that perfection. Nonetheless, Socrates never left the city, except for military duty. If I can't please the Athenians, he said, who can I please? He could have added: if I can't be pleased by the Athenians, who will please me? Eddie 2:53 AM
Thursday, March 11, 2004
A Question If you compare us to other species, the similarities between us greatly eclipse the differences. These similarities allow us to speak broadly of a human nature, and give us grounds for thinking that we can work out ethical and political positions that are not strictly bound to a particular time and place. For example, when Locke speaks of natural rights to life, liberty, and property, I have no significant qualms with making these rights universal.
As with any species, however, there is variation among us, and this natural variation takes on unusual significance for two reasons. First, we are a highly sensitive species. We measure our well-being very closely: I consider a doughy, undercooked waffle to be sublime, and a hard, crisp waffle to be inedible. Second, we are constantly comparing ourselves to one another, making our small differences into important marks of self-identity. How grateful I am to now have enough distinctiveness that I no longer need a favorite color!
It is inevitable, then, that a little will count for a lot with us, and thus relativism has an unassailable foothold. Is liberty a universal right? Sure. Is it a reasonable infringement upon a person's liberty to have them sit quietly through a public prayer before a high school football game? We can spill a lot of ink on this point, and employ any number of abstract principles to assist us, but I think ultimately the answer will vary according to the individual and there will be no rational recourse to bridge the difference. (There will be a political recourse, but that is another matter.) Personally, I can sit through the prayer and feel like no harm has been done, but I know others who feel it as an offense.
Does this make me a relativist? Not from a distance, but it might make me one close up.
I'm Back After a week of getting caught up with grading and then being in Florida for nearly a week for spring break, I have returned. Thanks for stopping by and check back within a day or two. Eddie 1:05 AM
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
A Puzzle For the past two weeks, my colleagues and I have been conducting campus interviews to replace two members of my department. It has worked out that one candidate comes in a day or two after the previous candidate has left, so the schedule has been grueling. Today the last candidate comes in, and by Friday afternoon we will be done.
Thinking about what faces us, an interesting question of probability occurred to me. Let's say that, at the beginning of the process, each candidate is equally desirable and equally likely of getting a job. There are five candidates, and two positions to offer. At the beginning of the process then, each candidate has a 40% chance of receiving an offer. At this point in time, however, we have interviewed four of the five. It stands to reason that, if the search committee agrees about who it likes most out of the first four, the college should extend that candidate an offer immediately so as to make it more likely that he doesn't take a position elsewhere. This shouldn't be prejudicial to the last candidate, since the last candidate could only receive one offer at most anyway. However, from the last candidate's point of view, it now looks like this: there are four candidates who haven't been offered a position (including himself) and only one position left to offer. His chances now look like they are 25%.
This can't be so. Surely coming last in the interview process wouldn't change the basic probability of getting a job, and yet it seems it has. What gives?
Update: Aaron has offered a solution on his website, but I have my own in my comments.
Choices Made Mill's utilitarianism is famous for amending Bentham's original utilitarianism by introducing a qualitative rank in human pleasures. According to Mill, the intellectual pleasures are higher than bodily and base social pleasures, as can be shown from one point: those who have experienced both sets of pleasures invariably consider the intellectual pleasures more choiceworthy. I don't think Mill actually took a survey.
Whatever we might think of Mill's conclusions (I tend to prefer Bentham's philosophy), the test itself seems fairly reasonable. If a person has experience with two ways of being, the way chosen would seem to be a fair indication of what is truly good, unless we believe human nature to be so weak that it routinely chooses against its own best interest. This latter supposition has some theological support, to be sure, but it also puts us beyond the range of normal experience. If we can't trust what people do as evidence towards what they ought to do, it is hard to see how we can determine what they ought to do at all.
If I am correct in these matters, I think the conservative concept of family values needs further consideration, because it seems clear that people, when given ample opportunity, choose just about everything over their family of birth.
American conservatism is an odd bird, in that Republicans are as much defenders of classical liberalism as they are defenders of an older conservative tradition. It is hard, for example, for most American conservatives to conceive of conservatism as hostile to capitalism, but historically this is the case. Under capitalism, economic relations threaten all older forms of relation, including church and family. Human beings become human resources, and businesses relocate their resources to maximize efficiency. To keep their jobs, or to take a job making more money, people routinely leave their place of birth and extended family. An older style of conservatism found this abhorrent, and many social conservatives (like Buchanan) still do. (This is also what Marx found valuable about capitalism.)
Truth be told, people don't even need economic reasons to leave their place of birth. I teach a lot of students who come from small, south Georgia towns, and very few of them would think of returning. While many of them would speak of job opportunities, it is clear from other things they say that they just don't want to be constrained in that way. They want to make a new life.
My mother-in-law tells a similar story. She decided to leave her small town in Virginia because she realized that she would never be her own person there. When you are growing up, the people around you tend to form an opinion of who you are and will be, and it is nearly impossible to shake it. I have seen this in my own life as well. It is demoralizing to contend with these preconceptions, and frightening to think that you might just give in to them and become the person everyone expects you to be.
Families are important, and there are obviously values connected to the success of families, but it would appear that, in the life of an individual, family is mostly a transitional structure that should largely be put behind one as soon as possible. (Sentiment encourages keeping in touch, but this is a far cry from the intensity of the original family experience.) Looking at other species, perhaps this shouldn't surprise us too much. The bond between parent and offspring seems to dissipate once the offspring reaches maturity.
Why might we think otherwise? Well, I think it is true that traditional society had virtues that modern societies have lost. There is something profound about having people who have known you your whole existence. In fact, it is very difficult to have a sense of the continuity of one's life without these people. There is also something wonderful about the support that is always at hand. Both my wife and I grew up around extended family, and they were regularly available to help out with most everything. Now that I have my own children, and see how difficult it is for my wife and I to do anything that doesn't involve them, I understand how valuable it would be to have relatives nearby.
Apparently, however, these traditional goods should be considered examples of making a virtue of necessity, because when necessity no longer demands traditional arrangements, people largely choose otherwise. "Make new friends, but keep the old/ One is silver and the other gold." It doesn't look like it. Eddie 3:43 AM
Sunday, February 15, 2004
Endangered Species I remember when I was young reading about King Midas, the miser who wished everything he would touch would turn to gold. As we all know, things ended badly.
For the life of me, however, I cannot actually imagine what a miser would look like such that someone might disapprove. I think of a miser as being someone who accumulates wealth without spending much at all. I do know of people like this, but I can't figure out why anyone would object.
To begin with, in a modern economy, money sitting in a bank isn't just sitting in a bank. Indeed, leaving money for banks to loan out to businesses might be far more socially productive than actually using one's wealth for consumption or deciding for oneself who to give money away to.
What if someone instead just took their money and used it to stuff their mattress? As far as I can tell, this would make a miser someone fairly stupid, but not exactly vile. Money is just a promissory note. Putting money into a mattress forever is just like having a promissory note one never collects on. If the miser actually works for that money, then he has added to the nation's wealth without taking any back in the form of consumption. While not as good as putting money in a bank, shouldn't this be socially respectable? What am I missing? Eddie 3:51 AM
