Hume the not-so-great psychologist; once again a hypocrite?

A Twitter back-and-forth with Julian Baggini over various things David Hume has led me to in part question Hume's value as arguably the world's first modern psychologist. His "I can't apprehend myself" sounds so true when one tries to make an instantaneous grasp of who Hume is, as if the mind has a certain quasi-quantum fuzziness that can't be precisely held, or, to riff on both Anaximander and Zeno of Elea, as if it's a river which is always flowing halfway further to its destination while also never the same river.

The reality is that the "self" is a corpus of work, not a moment. To go back to the quantum world analogy, it's the entire diffraction pattern, not one individual wave-particle duad. 

Let's note his (in)famous comment in full:

“For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception…. If any one, upon serious and unprejudic'd reflection thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu'd, which he calls himself; tho' I am certain there is no such principle in me.”

The first thing I thought of when reading this again after hunting it up to get the exact quote?

The story about Hume being asked about the Problem of Induction by a lady, who wondered how he could fall asleep at night not knowing whether or not the sun would rise in the morning.

And, Hume essentially said, "I act as if."

Well, there's the hypocrisy part. Per what I said about the self being an ongoing corpus of work? Hume certainly did "act as if" in his personal life (other than when denying he wrote the Treatise). So, by his actions, if not his statement at the moment, he accepted the other side of the claim, not his own.

Of course, to further the petard-hoisting? The quote IS, as Hume students know ... from the Treatise! The book that Hume claimed he didn't write!

That said, the "bundle theory" behind this has its own additional problems. If all we can know about an object is a bundle of impressions, how can we know that that bundle of impressions is all we can know about it? To quote Hume against himself, the assumption that he makes could be called "divinity or school metaphysics" and another of his (in)famous quotes applied against himself:

“If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”

Beyond that, Hume arguably stacked the deck, and for this we head back to quantum mechanics.

Maybe I can't see "particle X," but I can see the vapor trail left by its decay products and see if they match what's predicted. Likewise, maybe I can't see the self, but I can hear or see you state your political beliefs, your philosophical beliefs, your religious beliefs, your preferences in food and many other things.

These often do not stay rigid over a lifetime. The self of 20 years from now will likely not be the same as that of today, and the self of 20 years ago likely is not the same as the current one. (Example for me? As I write this, I think more and more that Hume needs to be shelved on the "overrated philosophers" list; 20 years ago, I couldn't conceive that.)

That said, the self of three months from now will likely be pretty close to the same as the self of today, close enough to be considered the same self, barring a Damascus Road moment. (Or a belief in p-zombies or something.) 

The problem gets worse. Most of Hume's highlights in philosophy, such as the whole Problem of Induction, started in the Treatise. It's true that he reworked some of them in some degree in later works. Nonetheless, if we took Hume's fictive anonymity claims as face value real, we should throw out what, one-third of philosophical thought attributed to him? And, that would officially move him into my "overrated philosophers" list.

So, again, as with Kant, Hume, or an overestimation of Hume, has awakened me from dogmatic slumbers.

Coronavirus, ethics and 'reopening America':Philosophy is indeed a real-world discipline

The New York Times Magazine recently remotely convened five people to talk about the ethics of when and how to "reopen America" from the current coronavirus pandemic. While only one of the five, Peter Singer, is a professional philosopher, all five are using philosophical models for ethics.

There are three main schools of ethics.

The first is virtue ethics, which has seen a resurgence in the past 50 years. It stems from Aristotle, and its base idea is doing good for personal ethical development. I think in small part Aristotle may have developed it as a sort of humanist way around the Euthyphro dilemma articulated by his teacher, Plato. It says that there's a paradox or dilemma on ethical beliefs, and thus actions: do we hold something as good because a god or gods command it, or is something good because it's divinely commanded? The first leaves the door open for divine tyranny; the second for ethics being independent of divinities.

There is one issue, and that applies more directly to the second school. Virtue ethics is relativistic. (Many virtue ethicists will, I think, downplay this if they don't totally deny it. But, I stand by my guns.) Also, while one other ethics theory has problems the other direction, virtue ethics attempts to be normative, but, as shown by Aristotle's 11 principles, there's a lot of wiggle room outside of the social relativity factor.

Wiki uses utilitarianism for an umbrella over what it says are a family of consequentialist ethics. Both these words say something. The first — is the action useful? The second —what is the result? This is often summarized as "the greatest good for the greatest number" or similar.

This is an obviously relativistic school at the top level, and not just at lower levels. Per the "consequences," it also can be seen as "the ends justify the means." Rule utilitarians, per Wiki, try to minimize this by using some basic framing rules. And, people who focus on the word "consequentialist" usually stipulate that the issue of consequences is itself a norm.

Besides this, utilitarianism has one other problem, re the "greatest good for the greatest number." As I have said repeatedly in criticizing John Rawls' 20th-century political science liberal utilitarianism, we simply cannot achieve a "view from nowhere." Something that looks great for 330 million now (as in the coronavirus "lockdown") might be horrible for 50 million in just months. And it might be enough worse for them than the 330 million now to be worse overall. Something that looks great for them in three months (ending the lockdown quickly and with no controls) might look horrible again for 330 million in another three months.

Deontology is the third school. It was formulated by Immanual Kant, keyed by his "Categorical imperative," which tried to nail down a rule-based ethics apart from religious metaphysics.

It has huger problems than the other two, per that imperative.
1. Different people have different ideas for what should be a universal ethical law, especially once we get away from a hot-button item like murder. (Behind Kant's mindset, IMO, he's trying to create a secularist version of something that runs into Euthyphro. Biological evolution, contra this, isn't determinative for ethics any more than a god, re the first fork, and cultural evolution cannot develop ethical absolutes, re the second fork.)
2. The second bullet point comes off as a crude caricature of utilitarianism, where almost nobody talks about treating fellow humans only as means. (Bentham had not been published until after this, but utilitarian ideas were in the air of the Enlightenment.)
3. It assumes a level of human rationality which the post-Enlightenment real world has devastated. Sorry to friend Massimo and his love of Stoicism, but behavioral economics and psychology, as well as quantum mechanics at base-level physics showing this about the world as a whole, are a good indicator.

In reality, per Martha Nussbaum saying that virtue ethics doesn't clash with either of the other two schools, few professional philosophers, or other professional ethicists, are members of a single school. I would probably call myself about 45 percent virtue ethicist, 45 percent rule-utilitarian within utilitarianism, and 10 percent theoretical deontologist — that is, the idea that per the imperative nature of deontology, we should always seek to codify ethics better.

With that, let's dive in.

Peter Singer, the professional, is a deep-dyed utilitarian. He's well known, or notorious, for his articulation of animal rights issues. He has otherwise declared himself to be a hedonistic utilitarian, among the different schools of utilitarianism considered to exist today. (And that no more means debauchery than it did with Epicurus and Epicureanism.)

Rev. Joseph Barber II would exemplify liberal Protestantism's version of divine command deontology, with an admixture of virtue ethics.

Vanita Gupta, I would say, is about 60 percent virtue ethics and the other 40 percent, given her position, a secularized version of Barber's version of divine command deontology.

Zeke Emanuel is a rule-based utilitarian with some admixture of virtue ethics, as best as I can determine. Outside of medical schools run by religious organizations, this is, from what I grasp, the default position for academically-taught medical ethics.

Anne Case? Aside from jokes about economists and ethics, I would call her, per the piece and what I know about her and Angus Deaton, a preference utilitarianism.

Gupta and Barber both note that both the coronavirus and what we see in governmental response, especially at the federal level, are hammering minorities more. They don't argue for a quick reopening; they argue for more help for the poor.

Case says that some of this is a sort of comorbidity of ongoing "hollowing out" of American economic life, but she doesn't get prescriptive about that. She and Emanuel both note psychological factors of a longer shutdown.

Singer then reminds everybody that their discussion to this point has been focused on America, and to a lesser degree, other affluent countries. He then notes how the poor in India are being devastated by its sudden and brutal crackdown.

As a hedonistic utilitarian, he then talks explicitly about quality of life vs loss of life.

Barber then counters that, as a pastor, this utilitarian type counting offset is troubling in some ways.

Singer also, at least in the short confines of this discussion, doesn't discuss how to weight different hedonic issues within quality of life. And, of course, if he has such a sub-utilitarian calculus, another hedonic utilitarian will differ.

As for starting the reopening? All are OK with schools taking the lead in some way, if parents are OK.

They conclude by discussing long-term consequences. Emanuel thinks the US will ultimately have an "immunity passport." How discriminatory that would be without national health care, he doesn't touch. But, he is Rahm Emanuel's brother. His rule utilitarianism, even more than Case's preference utilitarianism, is in part capitalist driven.

Beyond that, there's some great discussion. I won't try to summarize it.

Friend Massimo Pigliucci noted a couple of weeks ago that deontology hits the wall hard at times like this. Issues such as medical triage are ultimately utilitarian.

That said, the other two main schools hit the wall themselves, albeit a lot less hard. The reality is that on tough issues like this, no single school of ethics controls the commanding heights. With utilitarianism, that's more obvious. Virtue ethics, though, has its own issues. A religious person praying for a dying secularist in the hospital, despite express desires otherwise, is one example. It's virtue developing for the person offering prayer, but a washout at best utilitarianly, and if I try to twist the Silver Rule into a secular deontology different from Kant's, a bad thing there. Wikipedia sadly (one of many shortcomings) doesn't have a separate entry on the Silver Rule.

Ethics thoughts on utilitarianism, contractualism, deontology, Kant and Rawls

This overview of theories of ethics by Massimo Pigliucci, followed by this particular one on contractarian versions of ethics, and this specific one on John Rawls' veil of ignorance, reminded me of a few things, some of which I've specifically articulated either here or on Massimo's blog, but others that have ben just wandering in my head.

They are, in no particular order after No. 1 —

1. John Rawls is overrated;
2. Rawls is, if not a classical utilitarian, some sort of consequentialist;
3. The veil of ignorance is really just a specialized view of the utilitarian "view from nowhere";
4. Though I'm not a system builder, ethics in my philosophical mindset depends much more on a correspondence theory of truth, contra Massimo, who allows more room for the coherence theory of truth to guide ethics. (As I posted on his blog recently, that may be part of what explains his love for virtue ethics.)

I'm going to unpack 1-3 more, with the unpacking of 2 and 3 explicating No. 1, which means I'll unpack them first.

No. 2 comes from Rawls' own famous "justice = fairness" phrase. What is that if not some sort of consequentialist? Now, he may put that in a contractarian background, but I believe that if push had ever come to shove (assuming Rawls accepted either one of the labels as applying to himself) he would have called himself a consequentialist first.

Now, some people will criticize me for this, the same who criticize the a few of my book reviews, but I came to hold that Rawls was overrated by reading about him more and before actually reading him.

The linchpin? Walter Kaufmann's "Without Guilt and Justice," which simply blows Rawls' "justice = fairness" ideas out of the water. 

Kaufmann starts with the obvious, which I will slightly rephrase to fit into terms of the current discussion.

That is that the "veil of ignorance," or the more general "view from nowhere," is an idealized abstraction which isn't even close to achievable in reality.

Oh, sure, we strive for it, and sometimes obtain it in some special issues that have at least a degree of ethical freight. An obvious example is the practice of major symphony orchestras to give tryouts to new players by having them play from behind a screen. This is designed to screen out, pun intended in some way, any female bias from the conductor, the principal chair in the section with the opening, and others involved. (And, yes, such bias was real, and huge, before the screens were raised.)

But, that's not what the likes of Rawls are getting at. He, and followers, act under the idea that we can take this veiled view out into situations outside the original setting, including settings where, Kaufmann charges, it's not only impossible to remain veiled, but where some people will demand we become unveiled.

Ergo, it's a thought experiment with little relation to reality. (Short of some Brave New World future which would entail some overseers controlling the veils.)

Or, to put it more pithily, there are always oxen being gored — and sometimes, their owners' complaints are rightfully made.

Or, even more to Kaufmann's point, there are always oxen being gored — and sometimes, some people think with good reason their owners' complaints are rightfully made, and other people think with good reason these complaints are out of bounds.

So, contra Pigliucci, no, Rawls' idea doesn't grow on me. The Platonic cave and the Theory of Ideas once did grow on me, but I was less than half the age then that I am now, and still a conservative evangelical Christian.

To me, Rawls' thought experiment only grows on people who, in terms of political philosophy, do not  put "skeptical" in front of "liberal" or "left-liberal." (Unlike yours truly.)

Now, to the degree a view from nowhere might seem to be an unveiled, but theoretically detached, utilitarianism. However, this is where consequentialism in general fails.

Human life, like space-time, has four dimensions. Humans are, of course, not temporally omniscient. Therefore, we can never say that our utilitarian judgments are correct. For all we know, maybe we should have let Hitler kill more people, if one wants to stake out a deliberately Godwin-like position.

Beyond that, utilitarianism fails in other ways. The hedonic calculus does so even without the view from nowhere falling short. On matters of taste, and hedonic benefit, it runs smack into the old Latin maxim: "De gustibus non disputandum." On this account, shouldn't the National Endowment for the Arts give more money to punk rock bands and less to symphony orchestras?

And, no, the arts aren't the same as ethics. The above question is in part rhetorical, but not entirely so.

On ethical issues, we have a certain natural compass from biology. The arts? Not so much. Let's stay within fine arts. A lot of people don't call what Picasso does "art," or what Schoenberg does "music." So, somebody else might say, no, we shouldn't give NEA money to punk rock, but, we shouldn't give it to a symphony orchestra, either, unless it pledges itself to not play any post-1900 music. 

And, not in terms of NEA money, but in terms of ticket sales, exactly that happens. Blue-haired ladies around the country refuse to plunk down money for classical concerts that have serial music on the program. A few of the largest cities in our country have orchestras that specialize in modern music, but they struggle.

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As a sidebar note, this is a good example of why I identify myself as a skeptical left-liberal on this blog, and elsewhere. I'd love it if Rawls were right, but I just don't see that.