Wikipedia and its Critics

When Nature Magazine published a study which suggested Wikipedia is far more reliable than is commonly believed, fist-waving librarians were all over the Slashdot scene with their criticisms. The study gave reviewers a blind test to examine a parallel sample of articles from Wikipedia and Britannica, and demonstrated that the average number of errors in a typical Wikipedia science article, which was 3.86, is not substantially more than in Britannica, which had 2.92. Not every error is equally erroneous in the study, but that reflects poorly on Britannica regardless. It meant the most renowned encyclopedia for entry-level reference work is seldom more accurate than the anyone-can-edit-“populist history of the world,” as editors at Britannica call it.

And even though Wikipedia contained an average 0.94 more inaccuracies per article, consider further that it contains 1.4 million articles in the English version alone, while Britannica contains a mere 120,000. If each wiki entry contains the same average error amount, it must be admitted that Wikipedia simply holds more factual information than Britannica. In fact, for Wikipedia to contain fewer accuracies than Britannica it would need more than 25 average errors per article. It’s unempirical to say that Wikipedia is an unreliable source of information. It might even be unscientific to say that, since after all, Nature conducted the study.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has always maintained that The Wiki and its community are built around a self-policing and self-cleaning nature which helps to ensure its accuracy. Of course, vandalism does happen on Wikipedia. But the users have dozens of metawiki tools to check users and watch for errors. The more advanced editors use bots, for example, which allow users to sort thousands of articles a minute, making corrections as the bot moves from article to article. Not just anyone can get their hands on a bot, however, because the peer-review process is the law in world of wikis.

To get your bot approved, one has to be a reputable contributor first. After you run it through some tests, other users discuss the bot on the talk page and decide whether you can use it on Wikipedia or not. The peer-review community is why, when comedian Stephen Colbert told his thousands of viewers to change the article on Elephants to say “the number of elephants has tripled in the last six months,” the errors were quickly found and the article was locked to prevent further vandalism.
In politically sensitive areas such as climate change where the NPOV (neutral point of view) is disputed, contributors have had to battle with skeptics pushing a POV that is out of kilter with mainstream scientific thinking. But this usually requires no more than a little patience. Wikipedia's users are generally interested in the reasoning behind proposed changes to articles. Backing up a claim with a peer-reviewed reference makes a world of difference. And every edit ever made to an article is archived, which allows everyone to see what changes have been made, by whom they were made, and the reasons for doing so.

The MediaWiki Foundation developed wiki technology with the intention of keeping it free and open-source. “Because ideas want to be free,” the MediaWiki logo says. But ever since Wikipedia was launched in 2001, the proprietary encyclopedias began losing their dominance to the open-source community. Microsoft, in an attempt to recapture the encyclopedia market, announced it will be using wiki-like features in its next release of Encarta. All proposed changes to Encarta, however, will be reviewed by a small staff of editors but still wouldn’t keep up with Wikipedia’s exponential pace. Microsoft doesn’t understand that wiki communities are not isolated individuals whom it can easily exploit and manipulate. To run a wiki requires committed people who genuinely care about the community for it to work. Why should anyone pay money to help edit Encarta articles so that Microsoft can become richer? I would much rather edit a Wikipedia article and help make the world more free and open-source.

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?

By the end of Book 7 Augustine is approaching intellectual rapprochement with Christianity. He is convinced of the intellectual superiority of Christianity, and has decided to accept Christian beliefs. But, very paradoxically, he comes to this conclusion by reading, not Christian Scripture, but pagan philosophy. More specifically, by reading what he calls "the Platonist philosophers."

He never took Christianity seriously, he says, before listening to St. Ambrose preach. Before that, he only knew about Christian beliefs through a Manichean lens, which proved to have been a very biased lens after listening to Ambrose speak. He was already disillusioned with Manichean doctrine after being unimpressed with one of the Manichean rhetoricians. At that point, Augustine says, I was lucky enough to get my hands on some books that were "written by the Platonists."

He's not specific about which Platonist texts he actually read. It's even more difficult to figure out which Platonist philosophers he was reading because they are paraphrased instead of being presented directly. When he paraphrases what he read it sounds not only suspiciously like something other than Platonist philosophy: they sound exactly like something other than Platonist philosophy. That is to say, what he reads in the Platonists sounds exactly like the beginning of John's Gospel.

His paraphrasing of the Platonists begins this way, "In them I read, not that the same words were used, but precisely the same doctrine was taught, buttressed by many and various arguments, that, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God; He was God. He was with God in the beginning. Everything was made through Him; nothing came to be without Him."

Augustine uses this strategy--of saying "In them I read..."--four times in Book 7. Think about this is outrageous claim, and this outrageous strategy. Let me paraphrase Augustine's strategy: "What was in these works? The best way I can adequately summarize them is by quoting word-for-word, the beginning of John's Gospel."

Because he is becoming increasingly aware of his Christian identity, in them, he finds a way of articulating Christian belief, and a way of moving towards Christian belief. Platonists told him that Christian beliefs were what he was looking for.

The logic behind his psychological movement towards Christianity goes something like this. Because the Platonists have come to the same conclusion that the Gospel of John has, without Revelation, then this part of Christian Scripture is something that can also be discovered through the use of reason.

But if what he read in Platonist philosophy was the beginning of John's Gospel, why does he need Platonist philosophy? Why not just read John's Gospel?

What he seems to imply is that, since the Platonists have reached the same doctrine as the Gospel of John by reason, it provides an explanation for how one arrives at the Gospel of John. Augustine can see, reasonably, and "buttressed by many and various arguments," how the Gospel is evident to one who has not received the Revelation. After all, what John's Gospel does not do is give many and various arguments. Knowing that there is a rational basis for accepting some of what's in Scripture makes it much easier to accept what cannot be "buttressed by many and various arguments" in Scripture.

Augustine's psychological path to Christian belief, is an elaboration of the Pauline notion that there is a Natural Revelation available to everyone through reason. Paul uses it to say that no one claim ignorance of God. Augustine is simply updating this notion for his own people of his own historical time and people of his own particular intellectual experience. How do we get to Christianity? Well for somebody like Augustine--somebody educated in the pagan classics--pagan classics is going to be the most natural way to get to Christianity. Augustine suggests that, not only is this simply permissible, but there is something very interesting about the way in which Athens and Jerusalem complement each other.

What about the things the Augustine did not read in the Platonist philosophers? In fact, Augustine mentions what he did read in John's Gospel as opposed to what he did not read in the Platonists. This comparison is intruiging because it seems as though he's saying that, since the Gospel of John has proven to be something that one can arrive at using reason, then it must be some kind of shortcut through reason. In other words, he accepts the reasonability of Revelation. He then uses the Revelation as something with which to contrast against the things he did not read in the Platonists. The Platonists could not by reason prove that "God so loved the world...." so we must conclude that Platonism is, essentially, insufficient.

Augustine uses a somewhat obscure metaphor to justify this approach. It comes from the story of the Exodus: the paradigmatic story of the Jewish people. He takes a particular view of the Exodus. The Jews obviously left everything behind in Egypt when they left. But they also took the Egyptian gold with them. Augustine asks, what does this mean for me now in this situation of reading Platonist texts, and Christian belief and identity? This leads Augustine to say that, for him, the Platonists philosophers are the Egyptian gold. One can, and should, Augustine says, take those things with them on their journey out of Egypt. The Egyptian gold comes out of Egypt, other Egyptian things stay behind. It's a powerful metaphor in which Augustine can both understand and justify the use of and taking of the Platonist philosophy to his Christian identity.

The Egyptian gold becomes a kind of consecrated, shorthand way of describing anything from another culture which becomes valuable to Christianity. As such, Augustine is making an enormous contribution to the question Tertullian famously asked, "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" Enormous because of course, implied in this, if there is Egyptian gold, there is going to be a lot of things that we want to leave behind: such as idol-worship. For Augustine, he wants to leave behind stories about, for example, Zeus doing dirty things with nymphs. (But even then there's opportunities of reading the stories deeply rather than literally.)

What this means is that Augustine now has the opportunity to bring pagan culture and Christian culture together in a sanctified and meaningful way, and a way in which it isn't simply a luxury for somebody like Augustine. It's something that enriches the Christian community itself. Augustine is making the claim the Egyptian gold he brings to the table, not only allows him to become a Christian, but enriches the Christian patrimony once it's there.

We know more about who we are as a Christian community because Platonist philosophy has been let in. And in this sense he is making a fairly radical claim about what Athens has to do with Jerusalem.

Information is Asymmetric: market vs government failure

When a market left to itself does not allocate resources efficiently, interventionist politicians usually allege market failure to justify interventions. Neo-Keynesians have identified four main causes of market failure: the abuse of market power, externalities, public goods, and asymmetric information. My concern in this blog is with the fourth reason for market failure, asymmetric information. Perhaps I will be able to discuss the other three some time later.

Information becomes asymmetric when someone knows more than somebody else. But someone always knows more than somebody else. So information is unavoidably asymmetric. But what interests me is that this situation can make it difficult for the two people to do business together, which is why economists (especially those practicing game theory) are interested in it.

Transactions involving asymmetric (or private) information are everywhere. A government selling broadcasting licenses does not know what buyers are prepared to pay for them; a lender does not know how likely a borrower is to repay; a used-car seller knows more about the quality of the car being sold than do potential buyers. This kind of asymmetry can distort people's incentives and result in significant inefficiencies. Some say this is market failure, and therefore grounds for intervention.

Kenneth Arrow, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, said that free-enterprise economies under-invest in research and development because of risk. In the "ideal socialist economy" government would supply such information free of charge, thus separating the use of and the reward for producing such information.

The idea is that we get markets not to fail by government intervention. But this, as has been pointed out by the economist Harold Demetz, is to indulge in what he calls the "Nirvana Fallacy," whereby we compare allegedly imperfect real markets to imaginary governments that lack even the smallest imperfection.

To setup my argument, I think it is important to recall Occam's Razor, which says that "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity." This heuristic maxim encourages economy, parsimony and simplicity in theories. Economists, of all people, should know most about this. My point is that if markets have imperfections, and are alleged to be corrected by government, then government must have fewer imperfections than markets in order to meet the standards of parsimony. An imperfect government correcting an imperfect market would be multiplying entities beyond necessity, which we want to avoid.

The burden of proof is not upon the free market to prove it doesn't need corrections. The burden is upon the government since it is the entity making the case for correction. If government cannot meet the parsimony standards, then we give our presumption to the free market.

Joseph Stiglitz is probably one of the most prominent proponents of government intervention. In particular, Stiglitz has written many papers on informational problems in markets. He once claimed that markets are "not perfect aggregators of information". From this, he concluded that we need a greater understanding of how central authorities use information before we can tell if they use information better than markets.

Stiglitz arrived at the conclusion that governments can improve upon welfare even when it faces serious informational constraints, because its incentives and other constraints are better than in markets. He notes that, upon embarking on his venture into the public sector, some friends of his suggested that he might return from Washington "a bit more jaundiced about the role of government." This did happen. During his tenure in the Clinton Administration, Stiglitz identified four significant problems with government: commitment problems, bargaining problems, imperfect competition, and last but not least, asymmetric information. Stiglitz now says that these problems prevent the government from implementing efficient policies. He also contends that incentives for secrecy in government are central to these problems.

Governments, not just markets, suffer from imperfections. Stiglitz now has the knowledge of how government uses information--knowledge that he lacked when he worked for the World Bank. He says,

"Making government processes more open, transparent, democratic and more participation and effort at consensus building is likely to result not only in a process that is fairer, but one with outcomes that are more likely to be in accord with the general interests. Perhaps we can bring efficiency to government."

Perhaps. But why should we make this effort? If government has serious failings that prevent its efficient operation, should we not at least consider free market capitalism as an alternative? Or are we for some reasons obligated to bend over backward to make sure government works efficiently?

Objective scholars, if Stiglitz is one, concerned only with economic efficiency, ought to be faithful to just that. Instead, Stiglitz holds out hope that we can improve upon government. Why doesn't he hold out the same hope for free markets? This illustrates his bias.

If we are concerned with the allocation of scarce resources, we are primarily concerned with economic efficiency. Stiglitz has shown that government intervention adds an even further imperfection to the process of allocating scarce resources. The government has the same problem with asymmetric information. It has an incentive for secrecy, just as the competitive firm does. But using a secretive government to correct the secrecy of firms only magnifies the problem and the secrets become much larger. Therefore multiplying inefficient entities does not make them more efficient. As an advocate of consumer awareness, what disturbs me the most is that consumers are hurt most when this happens.

Government's purpose of intervening conditions of asymmetric information was, in the first place, to increase consumer and businesspeoples' awareness, which leads to better allocations. But government is not a necessary entity to ensure this happens. The free market provides this information itself. If the consumer wants information that the seller is not willing to give, she can always consult a consumer report. Even for risky investments in research and development, the market can provide the information in the form of CPI and PPI predictions, "whisper numbers" and other information. Since it is profitable to be in the business of investor and consumer reporting, the problem of asymmetric information corrects itself in the free market and multiplying government simply multiplies inefficiencies.

Technology is Like Keynesian Price-Stickiness

I have been reading much transhumanism lately, as is evident from my blogs. So I began to reflect on the nature of technology in capitalist economies.

Keynes argued that prices in the economy were "sticky" in the sense that they very easily moved upward and very stubbornly moved downward. Petrol prices is the example a popular textbook gives because petrol-pump prices do not change every time oil prices change. Similarly holiday prices and standard hotel rates are fixed for months. Sticky prices are slow to change in response to changes in supply and demand. As a result there is, at least temporarily, a disequilibrium in the market. The causes of stickiness, Keynes argued, included mainly menu costs, imperfect information, consumers' dislike of frequent price changes and long term contracts with fixed prices. The principle behind all this is that "prices change only when the cost of leaving them unchanged exceeds the expense of adjusting them."

In financial markets, prices move all the time because the cost of quoting the wrong price can be huge. In other industries, the penalty may be much less severe. Small disequilibria, say, the pricing of hotel rooms will not make much difference. Hotel prices are often sticky.

Likewise, technologies are slow to change in response to changes in government policy. This can be thought of as some kind of disequilibrium, if you imagine that on one axis you have government policy and technology on another. They disequilibrate when technology is not in kilter with current government policy. This happens all the time with new patents and copyright protection laws. Script-kiddies and hackers are most certainly going to find their way around the protections, and the policies themselves are irrelevant to the development of these hacks. It actually produces an even greater incentive to develop hacks.

As many libertarian transhumanists have argued, once human-enhancement technology is available on the market, you cannot make it go away. There never was a technology that the human race ever abandoned wholesale, even the hydrogen bomb or other weapons of mass destruction with the power to wipe out all life on Earth. You might eventually be able to ban the production of H-bombs, but it would take a long time to kill everybody who knew how to make one or eliminate all blueprints and specifications for the design. While scientists discussed the possibility of a ban on recombinant DNA research at the Asilomar Conference, they knew it was not going to happen. Even if overt public funding for such research was cut off, covert private funding would continue to flow from various interested parties, as has happened with even disproved technologies like cold fusion.

But prices are often sticky because wages are sticky. That is, when petrol prices increase, and demand remains the same, wages generally increase. But when petrol prices begin to fall, it's difficult for wages to fall as well. So wages stay about the same, and prices stay the same too. Wages are prices trend upward and very seldom trend downward. This is the Keynesian explanation for inflation.

There is something quite like "technology inflation". It's what happens when the general level of technology rises, in the sense of a technological revolution. Unlike price-inflation, rooted in price-stickiness, technology-inflation seems rooted in the nature of the business cycle itself. It's an increase in the ratio between labor and capital. When capital investment increases the demand for labor-saving capital technology becomes sticky. Once we have upgraded our capital equipment why would we want to downgrade? So there is an upward-leaning trend for increasing capital technologies.

But with price-inflation, unless unchecked, eventually goes bust. This could happen with technology as well if technology increases productivity without increasing wages. If wages do not increase as productivity increases, demand slows down, and the capital investment which fueled the technology-inflation goes bust. The economy would come to screeching halt. Or perhaps, as John Stuart Mill suggests, we would land happily into a stationary state.

The Contemplative Man of Practical Wisdom: A Reading of Aristotle's Phronemos

Aristotle has often been charged with indecision and sometimes with holding conflicting views about the relative merits of a comprehensive practical life and one devoted primarily to contemplation (i). He intimates that practical affairs might well be ordered so as to give the greatest opportunity for such theorizing (117a12-18) (ii). But he also regards growth, motion, perception scientific understanding, and political activity as essential to a fully developed human life.
I want to investigate a way of reading Aristotle which shows how the contemplative and the comprehensive practical lives need not be competitors for the best life. There is nothing about the practical life which prevents its also being contemplative, and even enhanced by being contemplated.

Indeed, Aristotle says (1140b7-11) that men like Pericles are thought to possess practical wisdom because they have contemplative understanding of what is good. This is, he adds, our conception of an expert of leader in politics. Properly conceived, theoria completes and perfects the practical life, in the technical sense of those terms. And while of course practical wisdom cannot ensure theoria, it can assure the political conditions that allow contemplators to discover and exercise their potentialities.

When he contemplates the divine, or the fixed stars, the contemplator is no more interested in explaining them—no more interested in constructing the science of theology or astronomy—than he is in his achieving nobility or serenity. While objects that do not change at all are exemplary cases of what is contemplated, it is also possible to contemplate the unchanging form of what does change. Species meet that requirement: they have no external telos: they are eternal and unchanging (11035-1036a1). Even when the definition of a species is a pattern of a temporal life, that pattern can be comprehended in one timeless whole.

In principle, then, the most general ends of human life, insofar as these are defined by the species, can be contemplated. For living creature the formal and the final causes coincide: our general ends are the actualization and the exercise of the basic activities that define us. If eternal objects can be contemplated, and if species are eternal objects, Humanity and its proper ends can be contemplated.

This sketch may have touched on some very interesting Aristotelian doctrines: but what does it tell us about what contemplation can add to the practical life? After all, the phronimos—man of practical wisdom—knows what to do and how to do it. Why isn’t practical wisdom in all its glory sufficient unto the day? This is just the difficulty: despite his knowledge of human ends the phronimos grasps those ends in the particular. His knowledge of the good is expressed in the appropriate action done in the right way, in the mean that fits each situation. It is in his actions that the phronimos specifies and articulates his knowledge of general human ends (1144b1-1145a11) (iii). There is nothing the phronimos lacks to carry on properly, except the self-conscious, explicitly articulated placing of his knowledge in a reasoned whole. The phronimos is presumably aware of his virtue: because his actions involve the actualization of natural hexeis, they are characteristically pleasurable (1153a14-15). His life is characteristically, although not necessarily, eudaimon. It is triply well-lived: its ends are characteristically realized. Either in properly prized consequences or in intrinsically valuable activities; it is well lived because these activities involve the exercise of potentialities whose actualization constitutes the ergon and the well-being of a human life; and it is well lived because the actions that constitute such a life are performed well even when for contingent reasons they do not succeed.

Even when the phronimos can give a wise account of the merits of a course of action, he need not necessarily have a reflective theoretical understanding of the connection between his virtues and the energeiai that constitute a well-lived life. The contemplative phronimos sees his ends as specifications of species-defining potentialities. Of course such contemplative reflection does not generate a more precise decision-procedure: contemplating humanity does not increase practical wisdom by a jot (iv).

It might be argued that this account gives too much scope to theoria and not enough to phronesis. After all, it is clear that the activities and decisions that constitute practical life are far too particular, too contingent, and insufficiently lofty to fall within the scope of Sophia, let alone theoria. And that is right: it is not political debate as such, or a decision to strengthen the walls of the city rather than invade a neutral polis, that is contemplated. The energeiai that compose the virtuous life are not contemplated by the essential properties of the species. It is our species-defined ends in action that are contemplated. In any case, no one engages in theoria in order to perfect the practical life. It has to be done for its own sake to be done at all.

It might be argued that this account gives too much scope to theoria and not enough to phronesis. After all, it is clear that the activities and decisions that constitute practical life are far too particular, too contingent, and insufficiently lofty to fall within the scope of Sophia, let alone theoria. And that is right: it is not political debate as such, or a decision to strengthen the walls of the city rather than invade a neutral polis, that is contemplated. The energeiai that compose the virtuous life are not contemplated by the essential properties of the species. It is our species-defined ends in action that are contemplated. In any case, no one engages in theoria in order to perfect the practical life. It has to be done for its own sake to be done at all.

It might be argued, however, that there is no need to make the phronimos quite as concentrated on the particular as I have suggested. After all, there are many situations in which being able to act well requires being able to reason well. There are many situations, especially those of rapid change or political instability, in which the phronimos must be able to calculate and even articulate the nestling of ends in order to determine the best course of action. Of course the calculations of determinate means to determinate ends, as that is standardly conceived, gives a poor model of Aristotelian practical reasoning, since it fails to capture the way in which ends come to be specified by the activities that contribute to them and sometimes compose them. Nevertheless, just because the phronimos is often required to exercise a large range of intellectual virtues, but as the clever vicious man and the intelligent akrates attest, more is necessary.

While this may tell us what contemplation can contribute to an understanding of the moral life, and even to its perfection, we have yet to see why the contemplative life is the more prizeworthy, the happiest—even the pleasantest—of lives. To see this we must sketch some of Aristotle’s more difficult views about thinking and the thinker.
When we are engaged in intellectual thought, no particular part of us is actualized as the sort of flesh it potentially is. Rather, the whole individual realizes his potentiality as Humanity by thinking (1166a17; 1169a2). This realization of an individual as thinker is not the becoming of ordinary change, the replacement of contrary predicates. It is the actualization of a potentiality in an activity, with the added and difficult characteristic that in thinking the mind becomes identical with the forms of its objects. For Aristotle the objects of thought are neither the efficient causes nor the products of a process.

The objects of contemplation are the best and most perfect substances. By and in contemplation one becomes actively identical with the formal character of those substances. As contemplative persons, thinking species, Humanity, and its essential energeiai, we realize those energeiai fully, being not only practically virtuous as the phronimos is—virtuous on each occasion as the occasion requires. As mind, we become identical with our lives as unified wholes, the eidos, or the form of, Humanity. Contemplating the essential energeiai that define the species realizes our formal identity as the species. The contemplator of Humanity becomes a unified whole, a self-contained, self-justified, actualized Humanity, his essential and perfected life. Such a contemplator not only lives his life, he is that life as an eternal and unified self-contained whole. His contemplation and his living become one, immutable and unchanging, because contemplating is the best human activity and because the mind is actualized as and in what it thinks.

One might think that if this has shown anything at all, it has shown too much. After all, the virtuous person need not be a sage, much less a contemplator of himself as Humanity; and even the most articulate sage and contemplator may not be very virtuous. Contemplating the species is not a necessary condition for virtue (1106b36-1107a3) (v). A person may by grace and good fortune have been so brought up that in the very rightness of his actions, and in their balancing, the fruits of contemplation are plucked without his ever having contemplated the human perfection. If thinking nobly makes the mind noble, it does not thereby make us act nobly.

And the contemplator has certain problems too: even if he is assured that he can contemplate while eating a peach, and contemplate eating a peach as the activity of nourishing, a basic energeia, there will be times when forwarding the leisure necessary to contemplation will thwart political participation, and vice versa. It is of course as a political problem that this emerges most sharply, and it is for this reason that the discussion of politics follows the discussion of contemplation in Book 10. Aristotle is quite clear that there are few contemplators among us; but he is also committed to the view that they are the best among us, their existence being the perfection of the species.

What place shall be given to those whose lives are not those of thinkers or contemplators? Their lives will either become unimportant (like pots a master potter might discard in his work of producing excellent pots) or be thought best organized, for their own sakes so as to develop their limited potentialities by following the model set by the life of the contemplator. I think that Aristotle genuinely does waver; he hopes that the two courses will coincide, that as decisions to promote peak exercise of human faculties are those that will also promote their continuous best exercise in the course of a whole life, so also political decisions to promote the best development of contemplators are also those that promote the flourishing of virtuous noncontemplators.

But sometimes, of course, the contemplative and the practical lives diverge, and the political system that supports one seems at odds with the other. Such conflict is a symptom of practical and perhaps also of scientific failure: the real nature and the proper definitions of human energeiai are misunderstood by common opinion and common practice. It is, after all, crucial to virtue that the basic human energeiai should be properly performed, that their ends should be seen in the right light, and that philosophy, friendship, and political activity should be understood for what they really are. The political and moral philosopher who determines the priorities of various activities begins with common opinion, with the lives of those who are taken to be virtuous, with the intentions that define and guide their actions. The most astute contemplator of the stars cannot completely transcend his origins. The most astute contemplator of the stars and triangles begins as a child of his time, begins with the common moral opinion. The contemplator of humanity inherits a kind of dialectical account of the basic political and practical energeiai.

It is one of the signs as well as one of the aims of a good polity that the activities of contemplation and the comprehensive practical life support each other. When they conflict, however, Aristotle favors the contemplative life, because the independence of the intellectual from the moral virtues allows contemplation to continue in the midst of political disaster and practical blindness. Because many of the moral virtues are interdependent and because their exercise often involves social and political activity, it is difficult to lead an excellent practical life when basic energeiai are misconceived. The stars and the divine remain unaffected by the absence of a phronesis; that we can contemplate them no matter what else is happening is, however, only an incidental benefit of contemplation. This wry sense of the independence of contemplation does not reveal its true power and superiority. The benefits assured by contemplation in the worst political times is unlike its excellence in the best political times.



Principle source: Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle.

(i) Thomas Nagel, “Aristotle on Eudaimonia,” Phronesis 17 (1972), p 252-259; Jaeger, Aristotle (Oxford, 1948).

(ii) Leon Olle-Laprune, “Aristotle,” Paris, 1881.

(iii) J.D. Monan, “Moral Knowledge and Methodology in Aristotle,” (Oxford, 1968.)

(iv) Ibid.

(v) Ackrill, “Aristotle on Eudaimonia,”

Scientific Theory as Predictive Machinery

A reply to Milton Friedman's economic methodology...


Milton Friedman’s 1953 paper is an attempt to rescue economics from scientific realism. He argued that the primary criterion of validity for economic models was not the “realism” of the assumptions, but the accuracy and importance of the predictions generated by its implications. Realism has many uses in the language of science. Its primary use, of course, is in the interpretation of “unobservables” in scientific theories, that the success of science involves the status of unobservable entities talked about by scientific theories. If one is a scientific realist she says the unobservable things talked about by science are little different from ordinary observable things (such as tables and chairs). For the realist with respect to economics, these unobservable entities include the assumptions of economic theories, such as that businessmen supply commodities up to the point where marginal cost equals marginal revenue.

Friedman’s paper takes a different position than that of the physical scientist. His paper is methodologically committed to instrumentalism, while being epistemologically pragmatist. The two are closely related. An epistemological pragmatist is oftentimes a methodological instrumentalist, much like John Dewey. It is also clear that Friedman places little confidence in the reasons the realist might proffer for believing significant portions of what a theory says about unobservables, and in other words is an antirealist with respect to the ontological status of the unobservables in economics.

While it was commented that the philosopher might not find any “new” ideas with Friedman paper, the idea of positive economics, as I will argue in this paper, is given new meaning. Friedman is knowingly influenced by Popper (although he is no Popperian, as I shall argue) when he links positive economics to the Popperian ideal of science as conjecture and refutation. In Friedman’s version the conjectures do not necessarily need to be realistic, but only that they give rise to predictions that can be empirically verified. This formula, when substantially followed up by empirical testing, gives the economist a powerful device for developing scientific machinerey with strong predictive records.

“Viewed as a body of substantive hypothesis, theory is to bejudged by its predictive power for the class of phenonmenon which it is intended to ‘explain.’” (Friedman 1953)

Friedman’s instrumentalism fundamentally denies that theories are truth-evaluable, and that they should be treated like a so-called black box into which you feed raw observed data—“brute sensations”—and through which you produce observable predictions. As a study in philosophy, it is apparent that the Friedman method then requires a distinction between theory and observation, and within each type a distinction between terms and statements. This has been covered extensively elsewhere, and for that reason will not be repeated here. But it is interesting to note that the theory-language of Friedman’s methodology, if explicitly developed, would be very close to the theory language developed by the logical positivist school. If Friedman’s methodology were thoroughly exhausted, we might end up with something quite like the protocol sentences and observation sentences found in the positivist literature.

Friedman is curiously obsessed with factual evidence. He espoused the view that “factual evidence can never ‘prove’ a hypothesis; it can only fail to disprove it.” This sounds admirably Popperian. But Friedman’s “fail to disprove” is not synonymous with falsification. With every failed attempt to disprove a theory, one actually lends weight to the confirmation of that theory. (One could arue that was Popper’s project too.) But the theory itself does not depend on being “disproved” by a single shred of evidence, as in Popper. It’s not obvious whether Friedman even encourages the falsifying of theories, but it’s clear that he’s concerned about the verification of certain theories he approved of. On this account, one could simply ask those who are working on problems in support of your ideological position to “please work harder at verifying them.” In contrast, Popper would ask of the same people to “please attempt to falsify your work if you really think you’re on to something.” But Friedman’s verificationist methodology is wrapped neatly in a somewhat naïve account of empiricism.

“The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis,” says Friedman, “is comparison of its predictions with experience.”

This sounds, again, admirably Popperian in its repeated stress on testing. But “the only relevant test of validity” is, essentially, verification with the economist’s brute sense experience. (That is, the verification one finds in economic indexes and journals.) This is a very interesting philosophical position indeed because, together with his rejection of realism as a test of theory, meant that the problem of induction was simply done away with. Friedman apparently does not hear David Hume rolling in his grave. The problem of induction is not the most interesting of problems in economics. It is of immense importance, however, to its own philosophically empiricist foundations. The problem classically involved the epistemic disconnect between what was observed in the past and predicting what will be observed in the future. Justifying induction on grounds that it has worked in the past, Hume says, is essentially begging the question—a fallacy students of philosophy are perhaps all-too-familiar with.

Friedman is fundamentally un-Popperian in this sense due to the fact that Friedman is arguing from a naïve inductivist position. His position begs the question of the validity of induction. Popper sought to resolve this problem by placing it within a scientific context: science does not necessarily argue from induction, but rather, science argues by deductive principles. Popper essentially makes “modus tollens”—proof by contrapositive—the centerpiece of his methodology. And on this account, of course, one should pay more attention to that which potentially falsifies the argument rather than what confirms it.
Moreover, according to Popper, the more the theory “exposes its chest” (i.e. the more risk the theory is and the more it tells us) the more vulnerable it is, the more it is likely to be accepted. But with Friedman’s instrumentalism, there is no room for the theory’s neck to stick out. It cannot test its own assumptions. It’s only testable in a non-comparative way. We cannot tell whether one theory’s neck is sticking out further than any other’s, since we have no adequate account of what a realistic/unrealistic assumption is.

Friedman suggests that the testing of assumptions themselves is not important. The assumptions are not the explanandum, (“that which must be explained”) they are the explanans (“that which does the explaining”). Friedman does not care too much about whether that which does the explaining is “realistic”. Its simplicity is to be taken into consideration, he says, but what counts as simple is not adequately elaborated in the paper. In this sense, Friedman’s unobservables are decidedly un-Popperian. They’re strictly axioms and the scientist should not trouble himself with their bothersome philosophical justification. They are, in a word, instruments of science.

We can see how Friedman’s methodology is unlike Karl Popper’s. How, then, is it like the methods espoused by those of the logical postivist school? The simplest answer is that one can see Friedman’s method suffered from the same problems as the positivist school method suffered. In principle, then, Friedman is positivist since his method adds little novelty to the subject, and hence could not solve the problems of earlier methods. Friedman is consciously aware of Popper, and he covers his verificationist residue in language the Popperians would find pleasing. For example, his repeated stress on testing of hypotheses with sense experience. This is not, as I have argued earlier, the same thing as falsificationism.

Friedman’s view is that concepts and theories are merely useful instruments whose worth is measured not by whether the concepts and theories are true or false (or correctly depict reality), but by how effective they are as predictive machinery. In fact, however, it is a positivist account.

Besides their concordance with brute sense experience, theories must also be judged by another criterion: whether the alternatives to the theory are also acceptable. But just as the logical positivists could not choose the better theory between Freudian and Adlerian psychology, Friedman cannot choose the better theories in economics.

I want to stress that Friedman is a relativist with respect to the unobservables in the theory. Since these unobservables could, in fact, be wildly diverse and Friedman has no adequate method with respect to the reality of the unobservables themselves. The method says that whatever does have the strongest predictive record is in some sense worthy of the title “scientific theory”. But on this account one could have a theory of rational behavior interpreted instead through, say, a Christian account of sinful nature. Friedman says choose the theory which predicts most and puts to use the least unrealistic assumptions. But this does not solve the theory choice problem, since we cannot test whether one is putting to use more or less unrealistic assumptions. Moreover, on this account, the scientists cannot even tell us what a realistic assumption looks like. Friedman simply plays on our intuitions as to what a “realistic” and “unrealistic” assumptions looks like. We somehow know this already, and thus Friedman again begs the question. And in the last analysis, all Friedman arguments against what he railed most, Paternalism, is merely an elaborate “intuition pump” as Daniel Dennet says. The entire argument is built into the assumptions.

Further, what would Friedman be able to say about the demarcation problem between science and non-science? His theory does not adequately guard against pseudoscience, as Popper noted of the logical positivists. If a non-science model could arrive at higher predictive records, then Friedman has nothing to demarcate between the two. In fact, he ought to prefer the non-science model since it has a better predictive record.

As a final note, Friedman and the positivists share essentially the same notion of what the job of the philosopher is. This is particularly interesting to me, as one who studies philosophy. Hands writes in Reflections that the logical positivist movement redefined the job of the philosopher as turning philosophy into a kind of “conceptual cleanup operation.” The philosopher is to point out to the aspiring scientific community what was (and was not) meaningful discourse. Likewise, Friedman redefines the job of the philosopher in a similar fashion. Formal logic, Friedman says, is a tautology, and these philosophical tools are “aids in checking the correctness of reasoning, discovering the implications of hypotheses.” (P186.) This should come as no surprise, as I have argued that Friedman’s methodology is simply a lapse into positivism. The philosopher’s duties once again include janitorial duties like sorting out all this brute empirical data and storing it in some vast “analytical filing system.” The philosopher, then, is once again a discourse-Nazi and a merely the secretary of science.

What Friedman was trying to establish was a framework in which economic knowledge could not be attacked at the foundations. It could not be attacked on the basis of realism (its most-feared opponent) because the task of economic model-building is not to aim the predictive machinery towards cranking out realistic assumptions. The Friedman case for an instrumentalist methodology is built into the argument presuppositionality, and thus should be refuted before it can get off its feet. It comes as no surprise to Popper that this method should be tautologically irrefutable, but this lends far less credibility than is often believed.

The Economic Noumenon and the Innocuous Empiric

According to Lawson’s critical realist view, the central aim of economic theory is to provide explanations in terms of hidden generative structures. Despite Lawson’s clarity of style and painstaking efforts to explain his view—a process involving a good deal of repetition—his essays are not easy to read. His criticisms of mainstream economics seem familiar and are widely held in circles of critical realists. They include: excessive reliance on deductivist methodology, uncritical enthusiasm for formalism, an unwarranted faith in “event regularities” in economic and social life, a mistaken belief in the scope for strong conditional predictions in economics despite repeated failures, and confusion with respect to methodology. A fundamental reorientation of the discipline is needed to remedy this sorry state of affairs, including a radical transformation of its accepted objectives. This would bring about the effective demise of economic orthodoxy.

While the main thrust of Lawson’s argument is decidedly anti-positivist and anti-empiric it is not, by most standards, avant garde. Lawson explicitly dissociates himself from the views of subjectivists and the hermeneuticists. He maintains that economics can be scientific in precisely the same sense as physics. Where the critical realist approach differs is in saying that economics ought to embrace “social ontology”, which a strict attention to the empirical reality is not presently able to include. (1)

The main project is that of ontological inquiry, for Lawson argues that the abandonment of ontological reasoning is the basic error underlying the now discredited positivist conception of science. According to the transcendental realist (in a semi-Kantian sense) there are three distinct domains of reality: the empirical (characterized by event regularities), the actual (events and states of affairs in addition to the empirical), and the real (structures, powers, mechanisms, and tendencies in addition to actual events and experiences.) The three levels of reality are “out of phase” with each other (2). The real world the scientist examines is the empirical. This is limited, Lawson argues, because empirical realists presume that the objects of inquiry are solely empirical regularities, with no substance, no underlying causes. Or at least, these underlying causes are not taken seriously by mainstream economists.
Transcendental realism views the third domain, the real, as the focus of science, whereas positivists adopt the erroneous view that ontological matters can always be translated into epistemological terms.

According to Lawson, transcendental realism is the general theory of science which is combined with a specific theory of ontology to form critical realism. Enduring social structures are distinguishable from purely natural ones by their dependence on human agency, and the task of social research, including economics, is to uncover such social structures as exist—for example, rules, relationships, and positions. Contrary to the methodological individualists’ claim, such as the Austrians, these social structures are not reducible to individual human actions. The positivists’ basic error is the failure to examine explicitly the “intransitive objects of social science.” (3)

Most mainstream economists take it for granted that their theories, procedures, and techniques are appropriate for the investigation of social life, but this is not the case. The result is a conservative ideology which serves to rationalize contemporary practice.

Lawson’s consideration of competing explanatory theories is central to an understanding of his contribution to economic methodology. Contrary to the orthodox economists’ positivistic claims, strict event regularities cannot be found in the social realm (and, indeed, only rarely in the natural world, and even then only under strictly controlled experimental conditions.) Hence, the economist is forced to reply on partial event regularities (or demi-regs). The result is that economic analysis is usually a “complicated and messy affair.” (4)
The methodological position that Blaug adopts is, roughly, logical empiricism as propounded by Karl Popper and his followers. Blaug is a “shout-it-from-the-rooftops empiricist” with an unqualified commitment to the methodologies of Popper and Lakatos. He is for prescriptive methodology and is against the postmodernist tendency towards hermeneutics and rhetorical analysis. “Methdological pluralism” is a sham—an excuse for making final judgments about competing theories (5).

And where some blame the absence of judgment on the failures of econometrics, Blaug calls for “more and better econometrics” (6). For an unrepentant neoclassical, he is surprising sympathetic to Marx and to radicals.

In Blaug’s account, Popper and Lakatos seem to be indistinguishable, although he does say that Lakatos is “softer on science” than Popper (7). Lakatos is, however, much “harder” than Kuhn and more inclined to criticize bad science. He seems to reduce Lakatos’ methodology to (i) theories should be progressive in that they predict something beyond the facts used to construct them; and (ii) theories should be confronted with experience. To an empiricist, these are unexceptionable statements. But perhaps that is Blaug’s point: are we all Lakatosians now?

Blaug is a Popperian methodological falsificationist, and as such, he is unhappy with the present state of affairs in economics. However, Blaug is not upset with the lack of transcendental wishy-washiness, but rather the lack of hardcore Popperian falsificationism. The problem is plain to see: though economists have learned to preach the rhetoric of falisificationism, they have not yet learned to practice it, preferring instead verificationism, or “innocuous falsificationism”. Testing ought to give way to testability as a demarcation criterion.

Both Lawson and Blaug see ugly currents in modern economics. But the ugly is more consistent from Lawson’s point of view. Perhaps this can be attributed to its vagueness, but at least it is consistently vague. Blaug makes interesting arguments, and his essays are better written than Lawson’s. But his criticism of critical realism, if applied, could not possibly be relevant, whereas Lawsons’ criticism of Blaug, if applied, is better understood. Lawson may be considered an innocuous falsificationist in his empirical economics. But if the critical realist project is seen as a research program, it cannot be thrown out as being a degenerative one. Its hardcore is sustained by the economists busy bouncing negative heuristics off the protective belt. It is thus a progressive research program. Blaug tries to blend the Lakatosian and the Popperian together, but overlooks the more relativistic notions that Lakatos introduces. Thus it does seem that with Lakatos falsification no longer matters where progressiveness is the standard for research evaluation.

The critical realist position, broadly, is not relativistic. It can give an account of ugly economics with an ability to criticize not just falsificationism, but all of modern economics, for not having any explanatory power with regards to underlying causes. Perhaps it cannot give an adequate of account of what proper social ontology ought to be, but it is defensible in the sense that it is consistently arguing for a proper place in economics of the causal explanandum.



Works Cited:

(1) Review: Economics and Reality. A.W. Coats. Jstor.org :1997
(2) A Realist Theory For Economics. Tony Lawson. New Directions in Economic Methodology: 1994. P 260
(3) ibid. P 265
(4) Why I am Not a Constructivist. Mark Blaug. New Directions in Economic Methodology. 1994: p 116
(5) ibid. P 363
(6) Pluralism in Economics. Andrea Salanti. Jstor.org 1998
(7) Paradigms versus Research Programs. Mark Blaug. Anthology. P 353

Atomism and Perception: A Reply to Barnes

According to Barnes, however, I am stuck in the unhopeful position of not being able to trust my senses, and therefore unqualified to expound on the structure of reality. My poor perception cannot arrive at the answer to these matters. But alas, if perception is illusory, why embrace anything at all? This is a logical extension of Barnes’ obstruction that, “If perception is illusory, why embrace atomism?” It is my point that if Barnes’ obstruction is warranted for atomism, it is also warranted for any alternative to atomism. Why embrace anything, for that matter? Having been reduced to an absurdity, why embrace Barnes’ own argument?

This is, after all, Barnes’ Waterloo. He assumes one can only pass a posteriori judgments on the nature of matter. I also have my rational mind to work with, the atomist rightfully contends, where perception does not impede my judgment. In fact, if my perception is so flawed, then I might as well embrace my a priori judgments—and if the a priori judgments lead me to an atomic theory of the universe, then I should actually embrace it.

Atomism, of course, is either true or untrue. Moreover, to embrace a theory one must to some extent be convinced that it is valid. At the very least, I am prepared to embrace a theory on the basis of pragmatism. That is, if I believe embracing atomism is useful in explaining other phenomena, for example, if I work in the pharmaceutical industry or perchance am a particle physicist at Fermilab, and for certain reasons need to suppose that matter is indestructible at some level, I will. Atomism, then, can serve as a means to practical ends. But, pragmatism aside, how might I be convinced that to some extent atomism actually is valid?

Just as I have stated that a posteriori cannot solve for atomism, it may be objected that a priori cannot solve this problem either. Perhaps a more thorough argument would lead us to the world W’ in which matter is infinitely divisible. The atomism of W, after all, seems to have been superceded by W’ in the realm of the inductive sciences. At this level of argument I am prepared rather to agree with the objector. An a priori argument would seem to suggest that W’ is the actual world in which we live, although this is hardly conclusive. But Barnes does not seem to be concerned whether atomism is true as a scientific theory, and for that matter, neither am I. Still, we want to answer the question of why we should embrace atomism.

Perhaps it should not be embraced because atomism is thought to presuppose the validity of sense-perception and “to gain support from its capacity to explain the phenomena of perception,” as Barnes puts it. But in what sense, does atomism presuppose the validity of sense-perception? That reality exists, as I have shown, does not presuppose sense-perception; Descartes’ brain in a vat is able to determine whether reality exists. That sense-perception as a phenomenon exists, it is explained by atomism only insofar as atomism is true and explains all phenomena. That sense-perception especially is explained by atomism is a non-unique argument. Moreover, to emphasize my point, if atomism is true, a posteriori judgments are misleading. So why ought an atomist be required to presuppose the validity of something a posteriori to prove an a priori construct?

That atomism may or may not be true is an open question. That atomism may be defended by Barnes’ assumptions has been shown to be true through my own argument. Since Barnes’ believes that ordinary, rational people ought to believe his arguments, and since his arguments do not stand, then this entails that ordinary, rational people ought to rather believe atomism provides a rational alternative to the idea that matter must be infinitely divisible. Of course there may be other reasons for supposing that atomism ought to be embraced, in the scientific, linguistic, philosophic communities or elsewhere. There may be a priori arguments in favor of the necessary truth of atomism, although it is certainly difficult to see what the reasons might be. Hence my tentative conclusion: if Barnes’ skepticism about the atomists’ view on perception is rational, so is Democritus’ skepticism about the possibility of human knowledge.

Idee Fixe

I am really puzzled as to the conservative obsession with missile defense. The fact that North Korea has proven it can't launch of missile capable of reaching Alaska is a reason to build an expensive shield that doesn't work? Obviously there are a certain number of companies that stand to make a lot of money off this project, but surely there's something less useless we could be building for an equal fee.

The Real Cartesian Distinction: Revisiting the Mind-Body Paradox (Part 1)

The ‘real distinction’ argument has its roots in arguments developed in the Second Meditation concerning knowledge of the self as a thinking thing, and knowledge of the body as something “extended, flexible, movable.” Having used the Evil Genius hypothesis in the First Meditation to bring into doubt the existence of the body, Descartes argues in the Second Meditation that this doubt does not extend to his own existence (if he deceives Descartes, Descartes exists.) He then considers what attributes with certainty to himself at this stage of his reasoning. He concludes that even certain properties, like nutrition, must be excluded as part of the doubt of body. There is only one, he finds, that is not called into question on this basis: “I am therefore, strictly only a thinking thing.”

This seems to imply that Descartes has established his argument: that he is nothing but a thinking thing, and as such distinct from anything physical: “thought alone cannot be separated from me.” But Descartes does not wish to claim on the basis of the Second Meditation reasoning alone that he knows that he is only thought and there is nothing corporeal or physical about him. He is implicitly claiming to know, not merely that he thinks, but that thought pertains to his nature or essence: it “cannot be separated from me.” Also, he maintains that reasoning concerning the indubitability of his own existence has brought him to the conclusion that he is a “truly existing thing.”

The Second Meditation contains at least one other assertion that is important to the ‘real distinction’ argument: that Descartes has a clear and distinct idea of himself as a thinking thing. He begins to hint at this point immediately after the statements already cited. And at the end of the Second Meditation, after arguing that his best knowledge of a typical physical object—a piece of wax—is derived from reason rather than sense, he concludes that his existence is more distinct and evidence than that of the wax. The claims about distinct perception are important because of Descartes’s very consciously held position that only clear and distinct perceptions or conceptions will suffice as the basis for positive affirmations about the nature of a thing.

Between the Second and Sixth Meditations Descartes validates his distinct perceptions by setting forth “proofs” of the existence of an omnipotent and benevolent creator who would not permit Descartes to be deceived in what is most evident. Descartes is, then, so far from concluding rashly from what he can conceive to what is the case, that he finds it necessary to present God as a bridge from what he can distinctly conceive to what is the case.

We may now turn to the ‘real distinction’ argument itself. The Sixth Meditation begins with the observation that God is capable of bringing about or making the case whatever I am capable of clearly and distinctly perceiving: “…And I never judged that anything could not be brought about by him, except for the reason that it was impossible for me to perceive it distinctly.” The first application of this principle is to establish the possible existence of “physical things conceived as the object of mathematics”—since previous Meditations have held these to be distinctly conceivable.

The Real Cartesian Distinction: Revisiting the Mind-Body Paradox (Part 2)

The second application is the real distinction:“…I am a thinking thing. And although probably (or rather, as afterward I will say, certainly) I have a body, which is very closely conjoined to me, because nevertheless on the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, insofar as I am only a thinking thing, not extended, and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far as it is only an extended thing, not thinking, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist apart from it.”I will provide a provisional reading of this argument, which to me seems natural:

(1) If A can exist apart from B, and vice versa, A is really distinct from B, and B from A.

(2) Whatever I can clearly and distinctly understand can be brought about by God.

(3) If I clearly and distinctly understand A apart from B, and vice versa, then God can bring it about that A and B are apart.

(4) If God can bring about A and B apart, then A and B exist apart.

(5) I am clearly and distinctly able to understand A apart from B if there are attributes Y and X, where I understand Y to belong to A only and X to belong to B only.

(6) Where A is my mind and B is my body, thought extension satisfy the conditions and Y and X respectively.

(7) Hence I am really distinct from my body and can exist apart from it.


What, if anything, is wrong with this argument? Whatever may be the connection in Descartes’s mind between his inability to doubt his own existence while doubting the existence of body it is perhaps not sufficiently captured by his real distinction, we may say. But it appears that if the mind and body are separate, that one may indeed be more certain than the other, which Descartes take to be the mind. Another objection may be that Descartes shows that mind and body are possibly distinct—and would be distinct if God chose to separate them—not that they are distinct. But Descartes holds that two things are really distinct if it is possible that they exist in separation. Therefore distinctness does not entail separation. It seems the objections are difficult to come by, so the next thing to ask is how one recognizes clear and distinct perceptions.

The Sixth Meditation concludes Descartes’s argument by means of the senses for the existence of body. Sensory perceptions must either be created by the Meditator himself, by someone or something else, or by God. The Meditator can rule himself out since he is not aware of creating these perceptions, and they come upon him so forcefully and involuntarily that it would be inconceivable that he could be the creative force behind them. This is proof enough that sensory perceptions have some outside cause. He is naturally inclined to think his sensory perceptions are caused by things that resemble those perceptions. Since God is not a deceiver, he must not be fooling him in giving him this natural inclination. Therefore, he concludes, bodies must be something like what they seem to be.

The discussion of sensory perceptions as being “caused” by some outside source marks an important turning point. The mind is sharply distinguished from the world of bodies around it. The Meditator argues that mind and body have nothing in common, so they must be two totally distinct substances. We could point out that Clark Kent and Superman are very dissimilar and are yet the same thing, and so argue by analogy that mind and body might be two very different ways of looking at the same thing. However, even the primary attributes of mind and body are different. Body is essentially extended, whereas mind is non-extended and essentially thinking. Since the two are totally different, the Meditator concludes that he is only mind, and not body. This is a step beyond what is stated by the sum res cogitans in the Second Meditation, as there the Meditator asserts that he only knows that he is a thinking thing. Now he knows that he is only a thinking thing.

This sharp distinction between mind and body has profound implications. If sensory experience is in the mind and the bodies that cause our sensations are in the world, the question arises as to how the two can causally interact. What is the connection between mind and world? When the mind and the world are held as totally distinct, the mind is then conceived of as being trapped within the body, unable to know about the world except through a “causal interface” at the sensory surfaces.

Atomism and Perception: A Reply to Barnes

Jonathan Barnes argues that Democritus’ atomistic beliefs are challenged by his skeptical beliefs concerning the possibility of human knowledge. But more precisely, Democritus’ skepticism is concerned with the validity of sense-perception—and more broadly, the validity of a posteriori judgments. It is widely held that propositions which are known a priori are necessarily true, arguably at least. But propositions that are known a posteriori are contingent because they depend on external conditions (external to the mind and pure reason), which may change in time, for example, rendering the proposition false. ‘Necessary’ in this sense means that something is true in every possible world, whereas by ‘contingent’ I mean that something is true only in some possible worlds. By arguing that Democritus’ epistemic justification for atomism is a priori, I may appear to advocate that atomism must be a necessary truth. My argument rather is that Barnes’ begs the question of whether atomism should be embraced by presupposing a posteriori as the only valid epistemology. Then I proceed to explain under what conditions might atomism be embraced by ordinary, rational persons.

We know that if atomism is true, perception is illusory. This is easily understood, for if the world we see W is composed of elementary particles that cannot be perceived by the senses, then perception is not a valid means to the atomic view of the universe. But suppose what would be the case if atomism were false. The mutually exclusive alternative would be that we live in the world W’ in which matter is infinitely divisible. Unfortunately, this cannot be perceived either. So it should be said that if ‘infinitely divisible matter’ is true, perception is therefore also illusory, for how is perception able to perceive this fact? Democritus obviously did not “perceive” or “experience” an indestructible magnitude. Democritus, after all, was not able to purchase an electron microscope at the Agora, and even if he could the epistemological uncertainty remains the same. This means that the classical argument for atomism was an a priori construction, since neither W nor W’ can be known by experience, which is an important point because it means that Democritus would have maintained that atomism is known without the aid of experience, thus without the aid of perception. But Barnes’ overlooks this point.

Barnes says in one passage (p. xlvii) that if we “distrust our senses, how can we say anything about the structure of reality?” This should send up a red flag, for Barnes presupposes that the structure of reality can only be known through sense-perception, through a posteriori judgments. Aside from the question of solipsism—which is also resolved a priori, since illusions presuppose reality—perhaps the next question rational animals ask concerns what reality is, and what reality is made of—hence the question of atomism. It is important to see that our inquiry has not yet required us to call upon our a posteriori faculties. We do not need to. Barnes’ assumptions are false. Since Democritus’ epistemology is a priori, we can distrust our senses and say a lot about the structure of reality as well.

But does a priori reasoning solve for atomism? Consider this analogy. If I am a physicist and I believe that my colleagues and I have arrived at an indestructibly smallest particle P, it would still be true that, with sufficient government grants, this particle could be smashed into something smaller, (P-1) for example. It is not unlike the mathematician who proclaimed he had arrived at the largest number, for it is still true that an even larger number exists, (x+1). But no sum of experience will arrive at infinity. No one could possibly experience infinity, or with regard to the structure of matter, experience zero. In fact, only induction, which is a kind of epistemological shortcut, has something to say on the subject. Thus speaks the physicist, “Since we have been smashing larger particles into smaller and smaller particles, inductive logic suggests that particles are most likely infinitely divisible.” But even induction is not conclusive. On the other hand, if we accept atomism as an a priori truth like the fact that there is no largest number, then a priori alone is sufficient.

According to Barnes, however, I am stuck in the unhopeful position of not being able to trust my senses, and therefore unqualified to expound on the structure of reality. My poor perception cannot arrive at the answer to these matters. But alas, if perception is illusory, why embrace anything at all? This is a logical extension of Barnes’ obstruction that, “If perception is illusory, why embrace atomism?” It is my point that if Barnes’ obstruction is warranted for atomism, it is also warranted for any alternative to atomism. Why embrace anything, for that matter? Having been reduced to an absurdity, why embrace Barnes’ own argument?

This is, after all, Barnes’ Waterloo. He assumes one can only pass a posteriori judgments on the nature of matter. I also have my rational mind to work with, the atomist rightfully contends, where perception does not impede my judgment. In fact, if my perception is so flawed, then I might as well embrace my a priori judgments—and if the a priori judgments lead me to an atomic theory of the universe, then I should actually embrace it.

Atomism, of course, is either true or untrue. Moreover, to embrace a theory one must to some extent be convinced that it is valid. At the very least, I am prepared to embrace a theory on the basis of pragmatism. That is, if I believe embracing atomism is useful in explaining other phenomena, for example, if I work in the pharmaceutical industry or perchance am a particle physicist at Fermilab, and for certain reasons need to suppose that matter is indestructible at some level, I will. Atomism, then, can serve as a means to practical ends. But, pragmatism aside, how might I be convinced that to some extent atomism actually is valid?

Just as I have stated that a posteriori cannot solve for atomism, it may be objected that a priori cannot solve this problem either. Perhaps a more thorough argument would lead us to the world W’ in which matter is infinitely divisible. The atomism of W, after all, seems to have been superceded by W’ in the realm of the inductive sciences. At this level of argument I am prepared rather to agree with the objector. An a priori argument would seem to suggest that W’ is the actual world in which we live, although this is hardly conclusive. But Barnes does not seem to be concerned whether atomism is true as a scientific theory, and for that matter, neither am I. Still, we want to answer the question of why we should embrace atomism.

Perhaps it should not be embraced because atomism is thought to presuppose the validity of sense-perception and “to gain support from its capacity to explain the phenomena of perception,” as Barnes puts it. But in what sense, does atomism presuppose the validity of sense-perception? That reality exists, as I have shown, does not presuppose sense-perception; Descartes’ brain in a vat is able to determine whether reality exists. That sense-perception as a phenomenon exists, it is explained by atomism only insofar as atomism is true and explains all phenomena. That sense-perception especially is explained by atomism is a non-unique argument. Moreover, to emphasize my point, if atomism is true, a posteriori judgments are misleading. So why ought an atomist be required to presuppose the validity of something a posteriori to prove an a priori construct?

That atomism may or may not be true is an open question. That atomism may be defended by Barnes’ assumptions has been shown to be true through my own argument. Since Barnes’ believes that ordinary, rational people ought to believe his arguments, and since his arguments do not stand, then this entails that ordinary, rational people ought to rather believe atomism provides a rational alternative to the idea that matter must be infinitely divisible. Of course there may be other reasons for supposing that atomism ought to be embraced, in the scientific, linguistic, philosophic communities or elsewhere. There may be a priori arguments in favor of the necessary truth of atomism, although it is certainly difficult to see what the reasons might be. Hence my tentative conclusion: if Barnes’ skepticism about the atomists’ view on perception is rational, so is Democritus’ skepticism about the possibility of human knowledge.