Comments on: Philip who?

By: McMurphy

McMurphy — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:00:24 +0000

Pascal’s wager doesn’t take into account rather a lot of other possibilities – for example, notably, that there is an afterlife, but with the rewards and punishments he was betting on exactly reversed.

yass, sort of like an cosmic casino for crooked timber nihilists!

By: Valuethinker

Valuethinker — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 09:06:16 +0000

Alex at 37

Alas PPE at Oxford doesn’t necessarily teach you any economics. You tend to flush what was in your brain after the exams.

When David Cameron was studying economics at Oxford, many economists believed in the policy nostrums he is spouting now. These were widely practiced in various 3rd world crises. If you read Krugman’s debates with John Cochrane, many economists still do believe them.

This is the disconnect. Cameron is allegedly socially aware but his annunciated policies (which are deeply popular within the party) would make Thatcher blush. Margaret had no problem with the right state intervention.

The annunciated Tory policy risks leaving the UK in a slump reminiscent of Japan. End Quantitative Easing, (strengthen the pound), chop government spending. The fact that the CBI is raving about how clever this all was in the early 90s should be a warning sign. As Giles Wilkes (and Samuel Brittain through him) has pointed out, the UK in the 80s faced inflation and high real interest rates, so cutting government spending was justified.

In the current scenario we have an absolute deficiency of aggregate demand and low real interest rates. Plans to cut government infrastructure spending, for example, are completely foolish.

(contrast that to the 1930s, when a deregulation of mortgage lending and heavy investment in transport infrastructure led to the creation of booming suburbs out along the Metropolitan and Central Lines. Britain outperformed most major economies in the 1930s as a result of that).

Like WWI generals, we are always fighting the last war. DC, George Osborne and the Tory Party have landed on the idea that what we need is a slash and trash Thatcherism because it worked in the 1980s (at a cost of a devastated infrastructure—roads, railroads, hospitals, schools). Which was the last war.

Like Tony Blair, I suspect DC is a profoundly clever politician, and a profoundly shallow mind beneath that.

By: Tim Wilkinson

Tim Wilkinson — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:50:35 +0000

Pascal's wager doesn't take into account rather a lot of other possibilities - for example, notably, that there is an afterlife, but with the rewards and punishments he was betting on exactly reversed. Robert @39: I have not been idle (though short of spare time) in pursuit of answering your request, a rare chance to rehearse my faded, vague-edged position as best I can, without being too Type 4 about it. I ended up going on a bit though, and and this thread is dying so I'm going to put a response on my own site here over the weekend. Meanwhile (or instead) here are some papers by the great economist (and philosopher of economics) Amartya Sen: Amartya+Sen+-+Behaviour+and+the+Concept+of+Preference.pdf (Alternative link) Amartya+Sen+-+Personal+Utilities+and+Public+Judgements+or+Whats+Wrong+With+Welfare+Economics.pdf (Alternative link) Amartya+Sen+-+Rational+Fools.pdf (Alternative link) Also Intro to Wong's long ignored exposé

By: Ben Eltham

Ben Eltham — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:08:37 +0000

John, sounds like you’re making a variation of Pascal’s wager … theology is a pretty important historical subject, as much Western metaphysics, economics and political philosophy is unintelligible without it. Charles Taylor, for instance, has explored the influence of theism/deism on the development of Locke and Smith’s thought

By: harry b

harry b — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 21:16:09 +0000

I don’t think political philosophers (if what that means is professional academics who specialise in political philosophy) think of themselves as deep thinkers. They generally think they are making small, at best incremental, improvements in our collective understanding of the particular moral phenomenon they are investigating. I do agree with JW about what our job description includes (or ought to include) though: which is not to say that all of us should be doing that, but a good number of us should be. See my post on Sandel upcoming tomorrow…

By: tom s.

tom s. — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:47:59 +0000

“When you die, you’ll find out for instance if personal immortality is true or not.” – Not if it’s not, unfortunately.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:47:21 +0000

@JQ I’m confident that I won’t find out, since I’ll be dead. But even if dead people know the answers, that doesn’t make the questions any more decidable for us.

I’m more interested in your last two sentences. I would have thought that anthropology and sociology of religion, starting from a position of neutrality/agnosticism /scepticism on the truth claims of religion would be a far more suitable entry point.

By: James Wimberley

James Wimberley — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:00:54 +0000

On the point of political philosophy subthread: count me on the “yes” side of voyou’s question in #2. Political philosophers like to see themselves as Deep Thinkers, heirs of [choose your own icon], and would like to advance the subject on something like the same level. In the great majority of cases, this is wishful thinking. What political philosophers are mainly good for is education, to use the discipline (including the work of second-division scholars as well as that of the stars) to improve the quality of contemporary political debate. Monitoring and responding to the idiots, fanatics and sophists who populate it, from that standpoint, is part of the job description.
To JQ: theism isn’t undecidable, it’s undecided. When you die, you’ll find out for instance if personal immortality is true or not. That being so, there’s no a priori case for assuming that thinking based on either theistic or atheistic assumptions will be a waste of time. It wasn’t for Augustine and Anselm; why dismiss Milbank or Hans Küng unread? Also, theology provides the link between the phenomenon of religious belief and the lay world of ideas; so it’s an obvious entry point for nonbelieving scholars into an important social and psychological phenomenon.

By: Phil

Phil — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 17:08:24 +0000

FSC - mail me (forename dot surname at gmail dot com).

By: Freshly Squeezed Cynic

Freshly Squeezed Cynic — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:00:11 +0000

Phil, I’d be interested in a samizdata offprint, if you’re still offering.

By: Consumatopia

Consumatopia — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 05:16:49 +0000

@43, just as it’s beyond the power of any individual scientist to educate the public, it’s also beyond the reasonable power of any individual lay person, even a well-educated one, to ascertain the current state of scientific knowledge on any particular topic of personal or public interest. It’s not a matter of the public being stupid, it’s a matter of the public simply not having enough time to read every white paper on all the topics relevant to them as either voters or individuals. Again, a scientist is under no obligation to care how well informed the public is, but if they do care, the only alternative is to actually participate in publicly understandable discussion, navigating and reforming the complicated webs of authority, trust, and division of labor the public uses to (mis)inform themselves.

By: Holmes

Holmes — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 19:50:36 +0000

@42 and off topic

Preventing the misunderstanding of natural sciences by non scientists entails educating the general public so that they take the caveats of scientists as read, and hence understand what making a qualified scientific statement means.

This is clearly beyond the power of any single scientist to achieve but should be a mainstay of the basic scientific literacy imparted by any self respecting school system.

By: Consumatopia

Consumatopia — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:45:27 +0000

It may not be an academic’s obligation to care which academics lay people listen to, but an academic that doesn’t care has no right to complain when lay people listen to the wrong one.

This is even more the case with regards to scientists complaining about journalists misunderstanding/misusing their research. Unless these scientists start doing their part to correct and prevent public misunderstandings, they have no grounds on which to complain.

By: Phil

Phil — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 14:35:35 +0000

Correction: this book. There is a paperback edition of /Remoralizing Britain?/, and it’s a mere £24.99. Which is pretty expensive for a 280-page paperback, but not prohibitively expensive.

Note to Continuum: the title of my chapter does not begin with “Putting the Moral Majority back in charge” but ” ‘Putting the responsible majority back in charge’ ” – as the single quotes imply, the ‘responsible majority’ phrase is a quotation (from Mr Tony Blair, naturally). Nothing to do with the Moral Majority.

By: Phil

Phil — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 12:45:52 +0000

Sarah Hale’s fun article on “Professor Macmurray and Mr. Blair: The Strange Case of the Communitarian Guru that Never Was”

Yes, that was a good piece. I joined up some more dots in my paper “’Putting the responsible majority back in charge’: New Labour’s punitive politics of respect”, which is in this book and hence not online (although I might be able to dig out a samizdat offprint if anyone’s interested). Shorter Edwards: there is some genuine Macmurray in Blair’s ‘Respect’ agenda, but there’s also an awful lot of Hobbes – and the end product is a travesty of both (communitarian absolutism, iow).