Josh on music

Several memorable thoughts on music over at josh blog recently:

I don't like going to philosophy conferences, but I like it less when I'm frustrated enough to lose sight of why they're dissatisfying. One way of putting it: however little it makes sense or however obscure it is to think this, I somehow see artworks as having the same standing as works of philosophy; or, art as having the same standing as philosophy. I have a fantasy of beginning a paper-reading session at a conference like this by playing a piece of music—giving the audience a chance to listen and then displaying an attempt to put into words what is heard, giving a demonstration of the fact that there are phenomena in life with the structure of calling-for-articulation. The difficulty of putting things to words seems to get short shrift among philosophers.

All of this is worth reading, too, albeit hard to talk about.

And finally this: I used to prefer 'Protection'. Now I prefer 'Safe From Harm'.

Thankfully we don't have to choose, Although I wish foreign policy were directed by someone with the hardly extraordinary insight of whoever wrote the words to 'Safe From Harm' (i.e. people don't always like being 'liberated'). 

Predictably all I got from josh's recommendations was the discovery of Kacey Musgraves, by far the safest music on his list. I don't think of myself as liking country music at all (except when it's done by non-Americans), but I like this. Perhaps because it sounds a little like Mary Lou Lord (not this song, really, but others). 

I don't have much to recommend in return, but I liked Tracey Thorn's autobiography a lot. I think of this blog as a diary as much as anything else, so even if it's of interest to no one but me let me record that it was nice to read something that felt as though it came from my world. I'd forgotten that was a world and not just me. (Not that her world is quite the same as mine: there are regional, age, and gender differences that matter, as well as some differences of taste. And I never became a pop star.) But if you like 'Protection' enough to want to know more about its singer then you might want to know that she's written a good book.  

The ethics of free markets

I've been asked to be on a panel on the ethics of free markets next month, which involves speaking for about ten minutes and then joining in a discussion. It's for a non-philosophical and probably rather conservative audience. Below is what I've got so far. Are there any bloopers, omissions, or excesses I should correct?

The two most obvious ways in which free markets appear to be ethical are in the freedom they embody and the efficiency they provide. Freedom and efficiency are good things. Anyone who wanted to challenge the claim that free markets are ethical would have to argue (1) that these good aspects are outweighed by other bad ones, or (2) that freedom and/or efficiency are not really good in this particular case, or (3) that (a) freedom and (b) efficiency are not really features of free markets after all. These are ideas that anyone interested in the ethics of free markets ought to consider, even if we end up rejecting them ultimately. I’ll address them in turn, in reverse order.

3b. Are free markets efficient, or more efficient than the alternatives? Of course it depends what we mean by ‘efficient’. I’ll take the question to mean: do free markets get people what they want to a greater extent than alternative systems of distribution? If we assume that people know what they want better than anyone else then it does seem likely that allowing them freely to seek what they want and make whatever offer they like for it will maximize their getting what they want at a price that they are OK with. There are some assumptions here that could be questioned: Do people know what is out there? And can they get to it?, for instance. But history suggests that free market economies deliver more successfully than controlled ones.

3a. Are free markets really free? Well, it depends what you mean by ‘free’. Free markets are free in the sense that people’s behaviour in them is constrained only by the law, and I suppose we have to assume relatively liberal laws. One objection, though, might be that liberal laws allow advertising, and advertising makes us want things we wouldn’t want otherwise, or makes us want things more that we would want less otherwise. We are not free, the argument goes, to resist its allure. This is a real issue, it seems to me. Or rather two issues (if not more). One is an empirical question about the effects of advertising. I don’t have the answer to that, but I assume it is at least somewhat effective otherwise companies wouldn’t keep spending so much money on it. The other is an ethical question, which I will pose but not try to answer. Which is more important, the freedom to behave as we desire or freedom from having our desires manipulated by others? I think a case could be made that the way goods are marketed would be limited (no advertising aimed specifically at children, perhaps) in a maximally free market. But that isn’t an argument against free markets as such.

2. Are freedom and efficiency, while undeniably good in general, somehow not good in this particular case? This could be the case if the freedom of free markets had bad consequences, for instance if it was not efficient, but we’ve already addressed that concern. The real issue here, it seems to me, is whether the efficiency of free markets is a good thing. In other words, is it good that people tend to get what they want at prices they are willing to pay? That might sound like a ridiculous question (“Of course it’s good!”), but people don’t always want good things. If everyone simply got what they were given by the government, say, then they might complain about it but they might also get healthier food, more educational or morally improving forms of entertainment, and so on. They might not, of course, but they might. We currently restrict the buying and selling of various drugs, weapons, sexual goods (if ‘goods’ is the right word), etc. Would a completely free market be more ethical? It would be amoral. If we value freedom to buy and sell above all else then allowing anything and everything to be bought and sold would be a moral improvement, because it would maximize that kind of freedom.  But arguably drug addicts are not fully free, and a free market for drugs might be expected to lead to an increase in the number of addicts. We could argue also that freedom might be reduced if just anyone were allowed to buy chemical or nuclear weapons, or tanks, for instance. We might also have doubts about the value of the freedom to be a prostitute. Not to mention questions about the ethics of the freedom to buy and sell people, body parts, embarrassing information, very large sodas, raw cheese, unsafe vehicles, and so on. The question seems to be not so much whether free markets are better than unfree ones but rather, given that there have to be restrictions on the market, what restrictions should we have? (There have to be some restrictions because otherwise we would have a market for slaves, and because the very idea of a market implies or presupposes the rule of law, which implies laws restricting what people can and cannot do.)

Finally, 1, what bad aspects might free markets have that could outweigh the goodness of freedom and efficiency? One is that with freedom there are no guarantees. If people are free to hire other people or not then there is no guarantee of a job for everyone. Nor is there any guarantee that what jobs are available will pay a decent wage. Similarly there are no guarantees regarding healthcare, education, housing, and food. It might be better to sacrifice some freedom and efficiency in order to ensure that everyone has what they need to stay alive. It might be better to sacrifice some freedom and efficiency to make sure that everyone has more than this: a realistic chance to live a decent life. Again, I won’t try to say whether it is worth it or not, but we can ask the question, as well as questions about what a decent life is.

Those are concerns about the outcomes of free markets: will everyone end up with what they need, and if they don’t then what should we do? Another kind of question concerns justice or rights. I need a job because I need to eat, roughly speaking (I also need shelter, etc.), and there isn’t any free food. That is, if I want to grow crops to eat then I can’t because the land on which I might grow them has all been taken by other people. The same goes for fruit I might want to pick, deer I might hunt, etc. There isn’t any free land, and we need land to live. Of course people do hunt deer, but only with the permission of the landowners or else on land that the hunters already own. If I want (or need) to hunt and own no land then I am at the mercy of people who already own land. By what right has the land all been taken? It’s very hard to answer that question, unless we simply say that the answer is none. It is debatable whether rights exist as anything but a potentially useful fiction. John Locke argued for strong property rights on the basis of mixing one’s labour with the land one works, but only on condition that one leaves as much and as good for others. And people have not left as much and as good for others. They haven’t left any. I can’t go into much careful argument about property rights here, but claims that property rights are absolute exist on very shaky ground. The most plausible defence of property rights is (in my opinion) on the basis of utility, and utilitarian considerations certainly suggest that some of some people’s property should be taken to help those who need it. To the extent that we redistribute wealth or income our economy is less free. At least in one sense of ‘free’.  The recipients of redistributed goods might be much freer than they would otherwise have been. People who can eat are freer, can do more, than those who starve to death. People who go to college have more options than those who cannot afford to do so. A well fed, educated society might be much more productive than the alternative, leading to greater wealth in general, and hence an overall increase in opportunity and, in another sense of the word, freedom.  And to the extent that redistribution is good, a less free economy (in the sense of freedom for those with goods to do with them as they please) is better than a freer one. To repeat and, hopefully, clarify: freedom from taxes is an instance of one kind of freedom (often called negative) and freedom to do things is another kind (generally called positive). Both are undoubtedly good, but it’s possible that less of the former might lead to more of the latter. If that’s true then negatively free markets (which are usually what people have in mind when they talk about free markets, I think) might not be as ethical as other kinds.

Another objection to free markets is to their market aspect. What’s so great about shopping? Do we fetishize commodities? This brings us back to advertising, but I won’t discuss that again. It also raises questions about culture. Free markets by themselves do not cause commercialism. But excessive banging of the drum for free markets might do so. I have argued that free markets are at least to some extent a good thing. Very roughly speaking, socialism doesn’t work and freedom is intrinsically good. So free markets are good. But markets need restrictions, they need laws. And a society needs taxes. So we cannot have complete freedom. Indeed, as many people have pointed out before, complete freedom means anarchy, and anarchy leads to tyranny by local bullies or foreign powers. The most we can have is the maximum possible freedom, not total freedom. How much that is depends, in part, on what kind of freedom we want. Perhaps the real question then is not whether free markets are ethical but which markets are the most free. 

I have a fear that I might sound like a socialist and be ignored for this reason, so let me conclude by addressing that idea head on. I am not advocating socialism. I’m not really advocating anything here so much as I am raising questions. But the suggestion behind these questions is that the kind of system we have now is on roughly the right lines. It is good that we don’t allow the buying and selling of slaves. It is at least reasonable that we don’t allow the unrestricted buying and selling of all drugs, weapons, secrets, and uses of human bodies. It is reasonable that we don’t allow unrestricted advertising. And it is good that we have measures in place to ensure that people aren’t left to die if they slip between the fingers of the invisible hand. Freedom is a great thing. My interest is in how we can have as much of it as possible.

Infidel

I don't always agree with Simon Blackburn, but this all seems right to me (it's an interview about arguments for and against religion). Here's a taste:

Marx is admired by militant New Atheists for saying that religion is the opium of the people. But they forget what he said next, which is that “The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.” I think that is right, which is why moral and political questions should occupy all of us far more than ontological questions.

Would the world be a better place if everyone were an atheist?

Across large parts of the world religion conspires with tyranny and injustice to oppress women, to cement the power of men, to suppress free speech, to force acquiescence with the status quo, and to whip up hatred against other peoples. Nobody would want Europe to return to pre-Enlightenment attitudes; nobody sane thinks that people flourish more under theocracies. But as the Marx quote shows, it would require a whole moral, political, and economic change before the need for religion will wither.

The humanities again

Alex Rosenberg lays into the non-analytic-philosophy humanities here (h/t Brian Leiter). It's unfortunate that just when he talks about people losing credibility he misspells both 'Virginia Woolf' and 'lose' in the same line. But never mind. What does he actually say?

His claim is that few students want to major in the non-philosophy humanities because they don't believe that doing so will help them become better leaders or better at dealing "with the human condition in a way that matters to them." And he gives three reasons for this:

1. too much multiculturalism (or too much sacrificing of attention to canonical works and figures in order to make room for others) and "theory"
2. too little attention to the basics, such as composition (which is rarely taught by senior professors)
3. attempts by humanists to "compete on the terrain of the sciences," which inform us scientifically while the humanities move us emotionally

The solution is for humanists to get back to helping people appreciate and create art.

It's hard to agree. Learning to appreciate or create art won't make anyone a better leader. Or at least offering to teach such appreciation will not attract large numbers of students whose primary goal is to develop leadership skills. There is no clear connection between leadership and art. 

What about those who want to learn to deal with the human condition in a way that matters to them? I'm not sure such people exist, because I'm not sure that either the human condition or ways of dealing with it exists. Perhaps that's silly. Part of the human condition is that we die (so there must be such a thing as the human condition, if it has parts), and there are surely ways of dealing with mortality, of coming to some terms with it. Perhaps. But do large numbers of students want to major in this kind of thing? Surely not. There are students who want to major in something that matters to them, that seems important. Pretty much all students want that, even those who reluctantly major in something that seems trivial but practical to them. So perhaps there's a problem of perceived importance in the humanities (by which we seem to mean literature). 

One problem, then, seems to be that not many students care enough about literature to major in it. There is something sad about this, but I'm not sure how much it matters. If they love to read but care even more about finding a cure for cancer, for instance, then that's not a shame. And there certainly are some students who love literature enough to want to major in it. If the number has gone down I suspect this is partly because of new media (people read more stuff online and watch more movies than they used to, and correspondingly read fewer books) and partly because professors of literature themselves seem to have lost interest in literature. At least the more you talk about theory and science (although I'm not sure how much of the latter really goes on) instead of literature, the less your students are likely to think you care about literature. And apathy is contagious. 

As for composition, it's not something I really believe in. I'm not sure that composition instructors really believe in it either. Those who specialize in rhetoric and composition generally present themselves as something other than champions of proper spelling and grammar. And students can learn how to write in courses whose primary focus is on something else, such as philosophy or literature. They won't go from illiterate to literate in one course, but they can improve if they have to read and write well written stuff throughout their education. Learning foreign languages is likely to help too. As Rosenberg notes, though, the incentives in place favor devoting time to research rather than to teaching. (And "good teaching" often means engaging teaching rather than challenging teaching, which is another thing I would change if it were up to me. Not that engagement is bad, but it's not the only good.)        

Part of the problem, surely, is that the education we offer is too largely based on the choices of the uneducated. If we offer a major in money-making they will sign up. If we offer a major in doing one's duty they won't (unless they are especially self-righteous). This is why people major in business. As long as we only let people study things that are worth studying, and require them to study things that ought to be required, then there's no problem. A core curriculum of something like two literature courses, two history courses, two philosophy, one religion, one art, and two psychology (for instance) should do the trick. (I'm not convinced that college-level math and science courses for those who won't use them have any value, although something on what science is (not "just a theory") might be worthwhile.) Other courses could be required depending on the major (math for scientists, languages for humanists, for instance). We wouldn't necessarily have lots of people majoring in the humanities, but that's OK. 

Happy New Year

New Year's Resolution: to write something of value.

The future of higher education

A gloomy post to end the year, possibly because I spend too much time reading about the academic job market. I'll try to make the next post cheerier.

I once meant to say something about Coetzee's thoughts on the future of higher education, but I don't remember doing so. (Actually I do remember doing so, but I assume it's a false memory since I can't find it by searching the blog.) And then I just read this TED talk on TED talks by Benjamin Bratton, which left me with similar pessimistic thoughts. Coetzee writes that:

All over the world, as governments retreat from their traditional duty to foster the common good and reconceive of themselves as mere managers of national economies, universities have been coming under pressure to turn themselves into training schools equipping young people with the skills required by a modern economy.

Bratton says:

If we really want transformation, we have to slog through the hard stuff (history, economics, philosophy, art, ambiguities, contradictions). Bracketing it off to the side to focus just on technology, or just on innovation, actually prevents transformation.

Both seem right. And of course the economy does not want transformation. Nor do most people. So universities won't provide it.

I used to think that I went to college because I wanted to learn, but of course what my peers were doing and what my parents expected had a lot to do with it. Money and social class were probably the underlying concerns. And today people don't seem to care about social class very much, except to the extent that it has become something that money can buy. All you really need is money. So I don't see much hope for the humanities except in the form of the courses Coetzee describes: "Reading and Writing" and "Great Ideas," for instance. (Except that they won't have these names because they are too honest to be taken seriously by the people in charge of naming.) Perhaps a few boutique humanities programs will survive, but I can't really see why they would. It just doesn't make much sense to get a PhD in a humanities subject any more, and who will teach in these programs if no one has a relevant PhD? Nor can I imagine the politician who will fight to increase public funding for the humanities. So, doom.

But it's not all doom. I don't think the end will come overnight. I don't think it is certain. And I don't believe that philosophy, art, etc, will just disappear if they aren't much taught in universities any more. Perhaps they will even make a comeback after the 'exciting' integration of disciplines (philosophy only being taught by business ethicists, literature only taught by historians who want to add a bit of colour to their courses, etc.) turns out to be a dead end.

Ethics and the Tractatus

Kevin Cahill argues that the Tractatus cannot achieve its ethical purpose. If the resolute reading is right then this purpose, he suggests, must be something like what James Conant and Michael Kremer have said it is. Conant compares the Tractatus with Kierkegarrd's Concluding Unscientific Postscript because both provide "a mirror in which the reader can recognize his own confusions" and have "the reader climb up a ladder which in the end he is to throw away." Kremer connects the Tractatus with Saint Paul and Augustine, suggesting (in Kevin's words) "that one of Wittgenstein's fundamental goals in that book was to expose as illusory all attempts for ultimate justification in logic, metaphysics, and of course, ethics." Both Conant and Kremer, Kevin says, see Wittgenstein as trying to use nonsense to bring about "a change in the reader's self-understanding through a change in her relationship to language" where the change in question is "characterized primarily by how we do and do not act, not by what we know."

He cannot succeed, though, according to Kevin, because "the method in the Tractatus presupposes a view of language and philosophical confusion that is far too narrow." The book is too intellectualist, and tries to do its work by showing us what a sentence is.

If the (relevant part of the) book consists entirely of nonsense, though, then it surely cannot hope to show us what a sentence is. It can at most show us what a sentence is not. That is, if you start with a certain idea of what a sentence is and then follow that through until you end up in patent nonsense then you have shown that the original idea was wrong. But you can't show what we ought to believe instead in this way. Kevin isn't talking about what the Tractatus says about language, though, but about what its method presupposes. If it aims to show that all attempts at ultimate justification in logic, metaphysics, and ethics are illusory then he is probably right. But if the aim is as Conant describes, i.e. if the aim is to show the reader something, not to show something completely general, then whether it succeeds or fails will surely depend on the reader. And Wittgenstein says that:

This book will perhaps only be understood by one who has himself already at some time thought the thoughts that are expressed herein – or at least similar thoughts. –It is therefore not a textbook.—Its end would be reached if it gave pleasure to one person who read it with understanding.          

If the reader has the right confusions then I don't see that Kevin has given any reason to think the book cannot work as intended on him (the suitably confused reader). Can a book like this bring about change in how one lives? Well, I don't see why not. If one's problems are intellectualist then an intellectualist book might be just the thing. Of course it might not work. One might give up one kind of intellectualist wrong path only to take up another. But I don't see that failure is guaranteed.