Two Different Defences of Religious Liberty

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Religious liberty (along with freedom of speech and other pals huddled together in the First Amendment) is one of the less controversial aspects of our Classical Liberal Heritage. The purpose behind freedom of religion, however, I believe has become incredibly muddled. Two major defences of religious liberty have emerged. One believes that religion essentially doesn’t matter all that much, and the other that religion is of the utmost importance in the lives of individuals as well as the well-being of society. Just because they have the same conclusion does not mean that both defences are of equal value. They may have divergent implications under different external pressures.

The first defence I will call the lollipop religion defence. In a lollipop conception of religion, each religion is a different flavour that you can pull out of a bag. “Oh wow, I like a Jesus super-duper whole lot !”, the Christians say. “Yipee”, the Buddhists exclaim, “I’ve reached Nirvana”! Thus, from the supposedly “objective and secular” position, we are supposed to conclude that both religions are just fine and dandy little hobbies that people have. Criticizing what flavours others enjoy is clearly erroneous. It obviously makes them happy. What could you have against that? When one flavour club tries to sabotage another flavour club, they are clearly acting out of a bizarre irrational faith-based delusion. Religious Liberty is the much-needed replication of de gustibus non disputandum in the realm of beliefs about ghosts or burning bushes or whatever.

The second defence is the aspirational defence. This conception takes the truth in religion or any all-encompassing worldview seriously. The purpose of religious liberty, in this case, is to take control of religion out of any single or small group of human’s hands. No political or priestly class can wholly control the content nor application of any religion. The separation of Church and State is the separation of religious belief and the use of violence. Not the separation of religion from what forms people’s public lives. The lollipop defence of religious liberty asks everyone to partake in a public secular religion of the Enlightenment and practice their religious beliefs in private. The aspirational defence lets people live their religious lives to the fullest but limits the extent to which anyone, religious or not, can use the power of the state for their ends. In Civil Society, religions are able to clash and conflict. Muslims and Christians are allowed to proselytize as long as they respect the secular rules of property, contract, and consent. Nobody is asked to replace God with the State in this instance, but the excesses of religious fanaticism can be similarly curbed.

Freedom of Religion does not imply “Coexist” in the same way that freedom of speech does not imply all opinions are equally valid. The limits on the powers of the government must by extension cover all ideologies and plans, not just religion. Otherwise freedom of religion would be a policy that punishes religious worldviews over secular ones and would encourage religions to secularize themselves in order to compete with non-religious worldviews. Thoughts?

Edit: This is a quote from Mises’ Liberalism that I thought appropriate to clarify: “[W]hat impels liberalism to demand and accord toleration is not consideration for the doctrine to be tolerated, but the knowledge that only tolerance can create and preserve the condition of social peace without which humanity must relapse into the barbarism and penury of centuries long past” ([1927] 1985, 34) quoted in Peter Boettke’s F.A. Hayek: Economics, Political Economy, and Social Philosophy (2018) pg. 267

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Making Austrian Economics Easy (by using Vector Addition)

If the origin point represents our actor then each vector is a unique goal that they pursue.

Oranges = [2,2]

Apples = [-4,-1]

Bananas = [-1,2]

The sum of the vectors represents the amalgamation of the preferences, constraints, and goals of the actor. Their resultant behavior.

Sum = [-3,3]

Another person with different valuations will have this graph.

Oranges = [-6,4]

Apples = [1,1]

Bananas = [2,-2]

The sum, however, is the exact same.

Sum = [-3,3]

From the outside, all that we can see is the sum as expressed by the action of the individual. This is all that appears in aggregated data. From the perspective inside the mind, the individual can see each vector. If new goals developed or new means were discovered. We would have no way of knowing how each of these two actors would respond from merely analyzing present behavior. Human behavior is rational in the sense that we have commonly understandable concepts about it (in this case represented by vector addition). The mind locks up particular knowledge of time and place.

In “Shadow Economies: Size, Causes, and Consequences”, while discussing empirical studies of the shadow economy (underground wheelings and dealings that don’t get counted in official GDP Tony Soprano, crime, untaxed labor etc.), two findings are noted. The first is that increases in the marginal income tax rate are positively correlated with the size of the shadow economy. Second, that the size of the shadow economy is correlated with “ineffective and discretionary application of  the tax system and regulations”.

A country with high tax rates and effective bureaucracy or a country with low tax rates and ineffective bureaucracy might show the same behavior in terms of shadow economy activity. Both economies would react differently with respect to different changes. If we only go by empirics here, we cannot tell which country requires which policy. We require a conceptual dimension of economic science to understand what is going on inside each economy. To know which move to recommend forreform ,we need to know about the hidden and locked away beliefs, goals, and perceptions of individuals, or at least have a concept of them. This is the contribution that the conceptual economics of the Austrian school offers.

Behavior doesn’t reveal preferences; in many ways it clouds them.


Citation: Schneider, Friedrich, and Dominik H. Enste. “Shadow Economies: Size, Causes, and Consequences.” Journal of Economic Literature 38, no. 1 (2000): 77-114. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2565360.

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Adam Smith’s Guide to Loving Your Country

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Why does a single relatively-unknown football player’s refusal to stand for the National Anthem cause such intense and fiery clashes in the gladiatorial arena known as Twitter? Cries against injustice often back patriotism up against the wall. The Kaepernick Affair acts as a convenient little package of sentiments reflecting a broader tension. Adam Smith in The Theory of Moral Sentiments discusses “the love of our country”.

The love of our country seems, in ordinary cases, to involve in it two different principles; first, a certain respect and reverence for that constitution or forms of government which is actually established; and secondly an earnest desire to render the condition of our fellow-citizens as safe, respectable, and happy as we can.

Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments pg. 231

It’s natural to split these two sentiments between conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, but those words already have too much baggage. I’ll use patriotism for Smith’s first principle and activism for the second. Smith says further:

He is not a citizen who is not disposed to respect the laws and to obey the civil magistrate; and he is certainly not a good citizen who does not wish to promote, by every means in his power, the welfare of the whole of society of his fellow-citizens.

Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments pg. 231

Smith explains that these two principles are not necessarily in tension. In a golden age, when the current laws and traditions coincide with the well-being of the majority, we have relative peace and tranquility. The moment that they disjoint, however, “public discontent, faction, and disorder” rear their ugly heads. Smith takes neither the patriotic side nor the activist side. It requires “the highest effort of political wisdom” to determine when to make exceptions to tradition, and when to let their entrenched position grant them the last word. We respect traditions as they preserve wisdom from the experiences of our ancestors. We respect new ideas as they have the chance to correct for past misjudgments.

The passage on love of country precedes Smith’s famous passage about the man of system. He pits the spirit of system against public spirit.  The man of public spirit is able to toe the line between patriotism and activism. A country is one group of people, but it is made up of conflicting interests which must be parsed out and respected. The man of system is the villain of Smith’s story. He believes that what he knows about the political world and the principles he has devised are sufficient to judge political actions, regardless of whether or not those actions respect tradition.

In the Kaepernick case, respect for the flag and the causes of Black Lives Matter are not in necessary tension. This fault comes from a misunderstanding of what the flag represents to people. To most, it represents both the broadest American principles and it’s particular traditions such as liberty, the Constitution, baseball, and hot dogs. In fact, we may find it particularly patriotic to continue the mission of wider equality under the law. In this case, many had set up a false dichotomy because of a misunderstanding of what the flag might mean to others. To better serve public discourse, I recommend, invoking the authority of Adam Smith, to respect both patriots and activists. They are both legitimate sentiments with unique perspectives. The supposed choice between patriotism and activism is best answered with “Why not Both?”.

Special Thanks to Matthew Beal, Dr. Daniel Klein, and Molly Harnish for helpful comments and proofreading.

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Towards a Practical Justice Part 3: The System of Natural Liberty and Smith’s Three-Tiered Justice

From the background of Smith’s moral psychology, I can now demonstrate the meaning that Smith ascribes to term justice. Smith employs the term justice in three ways, described by Daniel Klein (forthcoming). The first is commutative justice or “abstaining from what is another’s”. The second is distributive justice or “making a becoming use of one’s own” (what my neighbor did when he cleared our sidewalk for free). The last is estimative justice (Klein’s term), which is the hardest to define. It refers to treating things with due respect or estimating objects properly. I do a truly magnificent painting justice by giving it a prominent place on the wall in my house. Though Smith typically employs the term justice to mean commutative justice or the respect of property, Klein counts 30 times in TMS that he uses it to mean distributive justice and 36 times he refers to estimative justice (Klein forthcoming, 13 and 23).

In Part II of TMS, Smith uses the term beneficence to refer to distributive justice and uses the term justice to mean simply commutative justice. Beneficence can never be extorted from an individual. Taxation and redistribution do not make an individual generous or loving. Commutative justice, on the other hand, can be prompted by coercion. If someone takes your money by force, you have the right to take it back by force. Justice, in the form of general rules, prevents individual passion and partiality from corrupting a society. To the extent that simple respect for justice does not suffice, fear of law enforcement may be needed to fill in the gaps. Notice that this does not require aview of human nature that is fundamentally selfish, but only one that sees humans as partial and prone to make errors of passion. Justice and Beneficence play two distinct, but important roles to the functioning of a society.

Beneficence…is less essential to the existence of society than justice. Society may subsist, though not in the most comfortable state, without beneficence; but the prevalence of injustice must utterly destroy it… [Beneficence] is the ornament which embelishes, not the foundation which supports the building, and which it was, therefore, sufficient to recommend, but by no means necessary to impose

The Theory of Moral Sentiments pg.86

A society that wants to rely on only beneficence will surely collapse. Respect for Justice is needed because we cannot rely merely on an assumed love for all. We can, however, develop a serious love for the rules of just conduct. Justice can recommend us to behavior that makes us unintentionally useful to our neighbors, while simultaneously preventing us from intentionally harming them. Furthermore, like the example of the generous neighbor, beneficence focuses on the actions of individuals and not on the distribution of outcomes. Beneficence satisfies the pragmatic test in a way that schema of social justice does not.

There are many ways in which commutative justice is unique. Unlike other general rules, commutative justice is precise and accurate. There is little room for varying interpretations in the court of law. The rules of property are negative; they are upheld by not doing something. There are usually no rewards for not trespassing, whereas there may be rewards for acts of public service (distributive justice). Also, Smith makes clear that commutative justice is only intended for disputes between equal citizens. It may be bypassed by certain social entities. It may be proper for the government to violate property rights to extract taxes in the same way that it is okay for a parent to take away their child’s toy. This does not justify all government actions, in the same way that it does not justify all parental choices.

When the government does respect commutative justice, we call that liberty. In The Wealth of Nations (WN), Smith expounds on the “system of natural liberty”, a society in which the economy is guided by the invisible hand and the government largely respects property rights. Natural liberty is the system that Smith wants policy-makers to fall in love with when considering the well-being of the people. There are times when Smith does recommend government intervention in the economy as a matter of distributive or estimative justice. These include taxation, restrictions on notes of small-denomination, and usury laws among others.

In Book I, Chapter 2 of the Wealth of Nations, Smith says: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest” (WN 27, emphasis added). I highlight the word expect because ignoring it has led many to believe that Smith recommends we all remain selfish. That interpretation misses a lot of context. First, the butcher, the brewer, and the baker are living in a society where commutative justice is respected. In a market society, few have the time to develop intimate relationships, but they can recognize a duty to one another by respecting rules of just conduct. Second, Smith clearly does desire beneficence to be added to a society over and above commutative justice and self-love, but we should not expect our bread to be provided by it.

A similar misreading is done of Friedman’s famous article, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits”. He says that executives have a duty to meet the demands of stockholders, but many forget that he continues, “…while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom” (Friedman 2007, 173-4). Friedman wants executives to respect commutative justice, but also the general rules that are laid out for the conduct of distributive and estimative justice.

Smith is able to straddle the demands of social justice while recommending a practical guide to personal conduct. Though the rules for distributive and estimative justice are less precise than those of commutative justice, they still pass the pragmatic test because they are tailored to individual conduct. The rule that makes the man sacrifice his pinky for the “immense multitude” is directed at the person making the decision, not the at distribution of pinkies worldwide. I do not mean to imply that Hayek had no concern for issues of higher justice. Smith, however, does a better job at describing all the types of justice that we may want to address without sacrificing coherence. Some sentiments we are born with and some we develop over time. If we develop respect for property rights without love for our neighbor, we will have only an ugly foundation. Social justice, however, attempts to pursue love for our neighbor with disregard for commutative justice, a path that leads to the disorders of partiality and ignorance. Moving into the future, I recommend a multi-faceted justice to take advantage of the fruits that Adam Smith intended for the system of natural liberty.

Bibliography

  • Friedman Milton (2007) The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits. In: Zimmerli W.C., Holzinger M., Richter K. (eds) Corporate Ethics and Corporate Governance. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
  • Klein, Daniel B., Commutative, Distributive, and Estimative Justice In Adam Smith (March 10, 2017). Adam Smith Review (Vol. 12), Forthcoming; Working Paper in Economics No. 17-11.
  • Smith, Adam (1759) The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Liberty Fund.
  • Smith, Adam (1776). An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, edited by RA Campbell and AS Skinner Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
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Toward a Practical Justice Part 2: Adam Smith’s Moral and Economic Psychology

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Since Hayek’s concept of justice is insufficient, we have to turn no farther than the grandfather of modern economics for a richer understanding of justice and morality that I believe does stand the pragmatic test. In Adam Smith’s first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS), he uses the word justice with multiple interconnected meanings.

When brought together these create a moral guide that fulfills both the demand that justice be a practical guide to individual conduct and the higher senses of justice that “social justice” usually tries to satisfy. To talk about justice in Smith, we need first to understand his moral psychology.

To Smith, human life is made up of sentiments towards various people, actions, and objects. These sentiments are developed through experience. We are born with the natural instinct to care for our own pleasure and pain. Through life, we develop a concern for the well-being of those around us such as our family and neighbors, and further we may develop a love for mankind as a whole. Since these outward developments occur so regularly, Smith feels no hesitation to also call them natural sentiments. Our sentiments develop with someone more intimately the closer they are.  There is a “sympathetic gradient” that develops with ourselves at the center and our attachments growing colder as the distance between us and another increases. Sentiments can be built for concrete objects and people or abstract patterns. Sentiments about human conduct we call moral sentiments.

But sentiments in the moment can deceive. Imagine someone sitting in front of you, perhaps a friend that you habitually end up in debates with. In the heat of the moment, when something that they say brings you past the boiling point, is it not natural to want to call them the first nasty name you can think of? Afterwards, remorse usually sets in, and any cool-headed bystander would disapprove of such behavior, no matter how reprehensible the opinion of the victim. Smith says, “This self-deceit, this fatal weakness of mankind, is the source of half the disorders of human life” (TMS 158). Our moral faculties have not left us unarmed against this weakness. “Our continual observations upon the conduct of others, insensibly leads us to form ourselves certain general rules concerning what is fit and proper either to be done or to be avoided” (TMS 159). To make sure our sentiments don’t lead us to disastrous decisions in the heat of the moment, we develop sentiments for general rules of conduct. These general rules help moderate our behavior and temper our partiality.

Smith’s famous example of the Chinese earthquake explains best (TMS 136-37). If a man in Europe is informed of an earthquake that swallows up all of China he may express sympathy, but ultimately it will not affect his sleep that night. If he is informed that the next day he will lose his pinky, that night will be one of the longest of his life. The example demonstrates clearly the sympathetic gradient. China is much farther from me than the two fingers I have resting on “A” and “;” as I type this sentence. Even though that may be the case, if anyone was given the choice between keeping their pinky and saving one billion people, most would make the sacrifice. How can this be the case if they have already confessed a greater attachment to their finger? There is a third inner force at work. Their devotion to the general rule that they must sacrifice what is only a “paltry misfortune” to themselves for the good of an “immense multitude” makes the choice an easy one. The rule saved this poor soul from the blindness of his own partiality.

Another similar tale that Smith tells is of the policy maker. Economic policy is laid out for the well-being of the people, but the policy maker rarely has an intimate relationship with each member of the population their policy will affect, both in terms of personal affection and situational knowledge. “…if you would implant public virtue in the breast of him who seems heedless of the interest of his country, it will be to no purpose to tell him, what superior advantages the subjects of a well-governed state enjoy…You will be more likely to persuade, if you describe the great system of public police [policy] which procures these advantages,” (TMS 186) Smith is appealing to economists. The love of political and economic systems can prompt even the most cold-hearted to work towards the betterment of others.

It is still important to remember that Smith believed that these rules and systems were “ultimately founded upon experience of what, in particular circumstances, our moral faculties…approve or disapprove of” (TMS 159). The general rules grow out of a deeper soil of natural sentiment. They can change over time as experiences accumulate and traditions evolve. They are still respected as rules in themselves, but their purpose remains to adjust people to pursue higher goals and protect them from self-deceit.

If the respect for rules or love of systems gets in the way of those higher goals, we run into the infamous man of system. The man of system may admit partiality in others, but out of “his own conceit” believes the system he has fallen in love with, or the rules that he has developed, trump all others.

“He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the pieces upon a chessboard. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chessboard have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses on them”

Theory of Moral Sentiments pg. 234

We have a level of intimacy with chess pieces that we do not have with the members of a great society. Systems that ignore other forces will lead to disorder. The intimacy that the man of system fails to have is not always one of affection, but also that of situational knowledge. No single system can contain all the “particulars of time and place” that Hayek speaks of in “The Use of Knowledge in Society”.

Next week I’ll show how Adam Smith’s moral psychology reflects upon his broader and more encompassing sense of justice.

Bibliography:

  • Hayek, Friedrich. (1945) “The use of knowledge in society.” The American economic review 35, no. 4: 519-530.
  • Smith, Adam (1759) The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Liberty Fund.
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Toward a Practical Justice Part 1: The Incoherence of Social Justice

Every idea comes to a final judgment when it is made into a tool of practical use. An idea eventually faces its adult life and the responsibilities that come along with it. The idea has to live up to its promises.

The pragmatic test is clear for the technological products of science, but I suggest the same test can be laid on more abstract principles. If abstract rules and beliefs assist their follower in the quest for virtue, beauty, and truth, we can say that such rules are good to believe; they are for all intents and purposes, true. A map is only good if it gets you somewhere, and abstract concepts function the same way. If a map cannot help you find where you are, or point in which direction you should go, it might as well not be a map at all. No one would buy it.

            A large part of Hayek’s career was dedicated to putting the elusive concept of social justice to the pragmatic test.

To discover the meaning of what is called ‘social justice’ has been one of my chief preoccupations…I have failed in this endeavor – or, rather, have reached the conclusion that, with reference to a society of free men, the phrase has no meaning whatever…I have come to regard ‘social justice’ as nothing more than an empty formula, conventionally used to assert that a particular claim is justified without giving any reason. (Hayek 1967, 57)

Social Justice has “no meaning whatever” not because it is impossible to come up with a definition. Principles of Justice will only survive the pragmatic test, if they are able to recommend real guides to those who can follow them.  In a free society, when the outcomes are the result of human action but not of human design, justice cannot be determined by distribution outcomes as no one is responsible for designing the total array of who gets what.

            Appeals to social justice typically take the following form: “Our society is unjust because Group X is in such a position relative to Group Y. Society must take Action Z (usually some government policy) immediately to rectify the situation.” There is no such actor Society that can satisfy these demands.  “…the demand for ‘social justice’ is addressed not to the individual but society—yet society, in the strict sense which it must be distinguished from the apparatus of government is incapable of acting for a specific purpose” (Hayek 1982, 228).T

            Hayek wants us to return to a form of justice that is applicable at the individual level, a form that he calls “the rules of just conduct”. Here justice is determined by clear, distinct, and followable rules such as property, contract, and consent. These rules are unique in that they are end-independent, impersonal, and universally applicable to all (Hayek 1982, 197). Their universality doesn’t prevent them from being adapted to any particular circumstance. The rules of just conduct directly apply to individuals and are designed to be followed. Each rule is not set in stone, but the criteria that Hayek suggests of end-independency, impersonality, and universality are needed to make each rule followable. Equality of opportunity is granted meaning because, at least respect to these rules, everyone must be treated equally for us to say that justice is done. Justice to Hayek must always be a negative case that no rule has been violated, and never a positive one that some outcome has been achieved.

Milton Friedman claimed that “A society that puts equality—in the sense of equality of outcome—ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom” (Friedman 1980, 148). He strikes at the same problem. Equality of outcome is another name for social justice in that it lays its claim against the outcome of the decentralized acts of a free society, and not the conduct of any living member. Friedman, however, continues, “Freedom means diversity, but also mobility. It preserves the opportunity for today’s disadvantaged to become tomorrow’s privileged and, in the process , enables almost everyone, from top to bottom, to enjoy a fuller and richer life” (Friedman 1980, 149). Hayek is right that individually followable rules are necessary to apply the idea of justice to individual behavior, but the rules are not the ultimate end. We respect each other’s liberty in order to maximize the possibilities for individuals. The respect of life, liberty and property are crucial, but they don’t satisfy all of our moral demands.

Hayek leaves many unsatisfied. He tends to leave an impression on the reader that justice should only be conceived as negative rules. There are reasons that social justice activists demand something greater than the basic rules of just conduct. Equality of outcome is something that people really do care about, and failing to address these concerns is failing to address real moral claims. These higher demands may also properly be called justice. One of my childhood neighbors was the only man on our street to own a snowblower.  When the winter blizzards came, he would plow not only the sidewalk in front of his house but those up and down half of the street. Most would find nothing wrong with calling what he did just, even though it was not strictly required of him. Nor can we find a particular rule of just conduct that he has fulfilled. If Hayek’s standard of justice does not satisfy the moral demands of people, then a wider sense of justice must be adopted to stand the pragmatic test.

Next week, I talk about the moral psychology of Adam Smith and work closer to a practical moral philosophy.

Bibliography:

  • Friedman, Milton, and Rose Friedman. (1980) Free to Choose: A Personal Statement. Harcourt.
  • Hayek, Friedrich. (1967)“The Atavism of Social Justice.” New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Idea.
  • Hayek, Friedrich. (1982) Law, Legislation, and Liberty. Routledge. 2013 ed.
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The Form of Justice

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One of Hayek’s biggest faults is that he is nearly impossible to read sometimes.  Sometimes to the point that you have to read the same paragraph multiple times, only to get more confused each time.  In the second volume of Law, Legislation, and Liberty entitled The Mirage of Social Justice, Hayek associates multiple principles with what he calls rules of Just Conduct. Among these are impersonality, universalizability, generality, and end-independency.  The cohesion between these principles was not apparent to me at first until I experienced them directly.

As I was walking home from the Mercatus office this afternoon, I took my usual route through the Johnson Center.  I like to take the Northeastern door as it has very efficient automatic door openers. This instance, however, I had an additional hurdle.  Someone was coming through in the other direction! We both kept up our regular pace, but if neither of us deviated from our regular path we would collide.  As we only noticed each other seconds before the imminent disaster, we had no time to make a plan as to who would go through first. I stepped to the side and waited for a moment while he passed through.  On reflection, it was decided implicitly between the both of us that I would be the one to step to the side as he was closer to the door when we both noticed each other. At the time, I didn’t make an efficiency calculation and judge from a total social welfare position what the optimal distribution of door usage would be.  I just knew the rules of justice and followed them.

In this case, the rule was end-independent as it didn’t take into account how much either of us needed the extra 2 seconds of time.  It was impersonal as it did not I.D. either of us to make sure we were of the right class to participate in such a rule. It was general as it could apply to any situation in which two people try to use a door, but only one must be chosen.  It was universalizable as I (and I presume the other gentleman) would have applied the same rule regardless of the gender, race, or otherwise distinguishing feature of the other person. We would treat all humans equal according to such a rule.

I lost two seconds not because it is more just for him to have those seconds and me to lose them, but because such rules are blind to circumstance, and can have no comment on the outcome.  If we discover that some rules often create certain kinds of outcomes then we may have reason to change the rules. But those rules again must be changed by other rules of this general type.  In no way does Hayek mean to say that all inherited rules are principles of an eternal justice, but that a certain form of rule, one that is generalizable, universal, impersonal, and end-independent, the product of human action but not of human design, is necessary to a general form of cooperation.  Social justice then acts on the ignorance of the existence of such laws and the belief that the criteria of justice at the outcome level can be used to judge such rules.

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Pragmatism and the Economic Way of Thinking

Image result for fate forger behanceI’ve always felt a philosopher’s project to be incomplete if she does not reflect on her own role as a philosopher in the new system she has created.  Here can breed a particularly pernicious form of ignorance. An inability to recognize your own role in the creation of an idea leads one to lack full understanding of the idea.  Both the classical pragmatists and a man who some characterize as a proto-pragmatist, Adam Smith, reflected on the proper place of the philosopher and the dangers of those who mistreat their role as thinkers. Their philosophy of the philosopher informed both their work and the way that they conducted themselves as philosophers.  The pragmatists saw ideas as tools. The “truth” or “goodness” of an idea is judged by its use in the world. If an idea fails at alleviating one’s doubts, then it has failed as an idea. Adam Smith did not explicitly commit to a form of pragmatism, but the way that he describes the philosopher’s role in the division of labor fits the school of thought very well.  They both see the philosopher as a manufacturer of ideas.  She is not a disinterested observer, but rather acutely interested in developing good answers to genuine problems.  Like a carpenter, the philosopher attempts to make an object for other’s use. The level and saw are tools like logic, self-reflection, the scientific method, and public debate.  These intermediate tools produce a product which is then judged by its efficacy in practice. The tools that produce it are similarly judged by their efficacy in producing a good quality product and may be dropped, adapted or harnessed anew as the carpenter sees fit.

Adam Smith is most well known as the godfather of economics.  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations very much sounds like a hard-nosed natural science attempt to state cold hard facts about the way the economy runs, whether you like it or not.  His earlier book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, makes one see the Wealth of Nations in a different light.  Smith is doing much more than blackboard economics.  The most widely respected insight from Smith is known to us as the theory of the “Invisible Hand” or the division of labor that is the product of human action, but not of human design (a phrase taken up by spontaneous order theorists like Hayek).  Smith marvels at the creation of a coat. How many workers efforts and actions were necessary to produce the coat despite the fact that few of them directly communicated with one another nor even knew that their labor would end up in a coat. Smith offers three major reasons why he thinks the division of labor is so effective.  “…first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.” (WON 17)

The first two reasons are interesting in their own right and say much more about Smith’s ideas in economics, but it is the third reason that he uses to explain his thought on the role of the philosopher.

Many improvements in machinery, however, have by no means been the invention of those who had occasion to use the machines.  Many improvements have been made by the ingenuity of the makers of the machines, when to make them became the business of a peculiar trade; and some by that of those who are called philosophers or men of speculation, whose trade it is, not to do anything, but to observe everything; and who, upon that account, are often capable of combining together the powers of the most distant and dissimilar objects.  (21-22) WON

In other words, the philosopher’s role is at the same level as any other craftsmen but is only different in the scope of its topics.  A carpenter may realize that certain measurement and technical practices having to do with the shape of the wood with which he works. A philosopher, since she is in the economic position where she doesn’t have to be producing new products every day, can observe the carpenter’s practice and apply it to what the artist or builder is doing, thus becoming a philosopher of geometry.  “The difference between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.” WON 28-29

Dewey describes his concept of common sense inquiry and its distinction from scientific inquiry along similar lines.  “Such inquiries are, accordingly, different from those which have knowledge as their goal. The attainment of knowledge of some things is necessarily involved in common sense inquiries, but it occurs for the sake of settlement of some issue of use and enjoyment, and not, as in scientific inquiry, for its own sake.” (60-61)  Common sense inquiry is the issue of searching for a solution to a problem. He describes it in terms of biology. Common inquiry is what allows an organism to respond to its environment, survive, and reproduce. Much like the simple craftsmen, creating tools allows him to produce quality products, sell these on the market and continue his business.  All questions are towards that end.

Scientific inquiry is thus a slave to common sense inquiry.  Its goal is in the creation of bodies of facts and theories for use in common sense issues.  Just like answers to common sense inquiry, scientific inquiry is judged by its ability to solve problems.  Science’s goal is not to give us what Hilary Putnam would call a God’s eye view, but to provide solutions to genuine conundrums.  Good science achieves that goal. In Smith’s conception of the philosopher, the division of labor would be more productive if the products of the philosopher’s observations proved beneficial those who end up using it.  Science and practice are not two different endeavors.

Some, perhaps they could be called common sense, conceptions suppose that practice is impossible without knowledge.  The goal of science, philosophy, or any inquiry is to access true facts that tell the actor what, how, and why to do what they’re doing.  Practice always comes second. There is here an epistemological difference between book smarts and street smarts. The knowledge produces according to scientific methods are facts, and the various musings and insights of the street porter are just opinions.  This ontological chasm has had a degree of harm on the ability of individuals to solve issues.

In the region of highest importance to common sense, namely, that of moral, political, economic ideas and beliefs, and the methods of forming and confirming them, science has had even less effect.  Conceptions and methods in the field of human relationships are in much the same state as were the beliefs and methods of common sense in relation to physical nature before the rise of experimental science.  These considerations fix the meaning of the statement that the difference that now exists between exists between common sense and science is a social, rather than a logical, matter. (The Logic of Inquiry pg. 77)

Science has its victories, but it has failed to solve the vast majority of human issues.  Neither should we expect it to, if we just treat it in its role as subservient to the greater realm of common sense inquiry.

Dewey attempts to show examples of the social distinction between the forms of inquiry appearing in history.  In ancient cultures, labor was often divided into higher and lower faculties. The lower faculty was the direct labor of the artisans.  The higher faculty was also for a particular practice, but it involved cultivating a good relationship with the gods or organizing the whole of society from the top.  These types of labor were so different from one another that they developed social distinctions, and their labor took a very different character. Similarly, in Ancient Greece, philosophy became associated with rational thought while practical work was associated with empirical knowledge.  

Lastly, I want to mention a character brought up in Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments, known as the man of system.  

The man of system… is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chessboard of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder. TMS 233-234

We can imagine that a practitioner of scientific inquiry only could easily be characterized by the man of system.  A scientist can fall in love with their own discoveries. If a biologist falls in love with their genetic discovery, they may treat others as potential breeding partners in a mad experiment.  More pertinently, if an economist falls in love with their model of the economy, they may treat policy as a series of cogs and levers to be manipulated regardless of the real effects. The problem here is not that the scientists attempted to answer questions or develop useful theories, but that they did so in a way that divorced them from the proper role of scientific inquiry.  Their discoveries were no longer judged by their efficacy in practice, but rather the opposite. The world was judged by whether or not it accrued to their theory. If a philosopher is granted a position where her word is taken as truth, then she is no longer tied to the efficacy of her ideas. In a very Smithian sense, the sentiments here are misplaced. The philosopher’s role is to cultivate and develop in the abstract what is to be exported to and judged by the concrete.  

  1. Smith, Adam. 1976. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  2. Dewey, John. n.d. “Common Sense and Scientific Inquiry.” Essay. In The Logic of Inquiry. New York: HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY , 1938

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