Academia

About thirty years ago, a Stanford educated philosopher, Paul Humphreys (1950-2022), realized that when connectionist models started to be developed within AI, that a set of questions and debates about Monte Carlo simulations might be salient.* In particular, the fact that connectionist networks might be very complex, inscrutable matrices need not be an objection to their epistemic usefulness. This inscrutability of AI is known as ‘the Black Box problem’ in recent scholarship. After all, some Monte Carlo simulations were in practice also inscrutable, but this didn’t prevent physicists from using them. (There is a nice, accessible discussion by Eric Winsberg of the significance of Humphreys’ work in the philosophy of simulation here.)

In the course of his many papers on related topics, Humphreys coined a term, ‘epistemic opacity’ or Humphreys opacity, that characterizes one of the key aspects of such inscrutability.  (See also here; or here). Such epistemic opacity — and now I paraphrase Humphreys — involves the inability to surveil the steps of a process from a known input to a known and desirable (or truthful, useful, beautiful, etc.) output in a timely manner to the decision-maker or responsible agent. I put it like that to make clear that this ignorance is pragmatic in character and could be modelled in terms of trade-offs between the quality or benefit of the output and the cost of surveillance. (Of course, it’s possible the opacity is not pragmatic, but ontological in character.) In addition, I use the ambiguous language of ‘surveillance’ because the process can be computational, social, or natural in character.

I make no claim that epistemic opacity is unique to AI. Often human minds are opaque to each other in this very sense. And in other cases such opacity is characteristic of our self-knowledge. Even if one wishes to keep one’s distance from Freud and his school, it is uncontroversial that there are lots of brain processes that are inaccessible to ourselves even though we can track the input and output to them.

In fact, epistemic opacity in Humphreys’ sense has been long recognized in the study of natural, psychological, and social processes. For example, for a very long time ‘sympathy’ was the term used to describe (a/the) cosmic and psychological mechanism(s) in which the process was invisible, even though the start and end of the process were visible. My interest below is not in this particular example, but I will suggest that the history of social awareness of the significance of epistemically opaque mechanisms may illuminate our discussion of the unfolding impact of AI.

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It has been like this for weeks and weeks. And not just in the UK, but across much of Western Europe.

Not long after Trump took office, I observed that the status of the US as the “indispensable nation” could not be sustained. A year later, the US, considered strictly as a state actor, is already dispensable and has, in fact, been largely dispensed with, by Europe in particular. The standing ovation given to Rubio in Munich recently (made almost unavoidable when his retinue jumped to their feet in Stalinesque fashion) should not obscure the fact that almost no one interpreted it as anything more than a politer restatement of Vance’s tirade a year ago. At that time, Europe needed to keep Trump on-side to prevent a sudden collapse in support for Ukraine and to avoid an all-out trade war.

None of that is particularly relevant now. Europe (include Ukraine) has held Russia to a standstill for a year despite the complete cessation of US military aid. The US is still relevant as an arms exporter and as a patchy supporter of sanctions against Russia, but that’s about it. Trump has turned his attention to his desire to rule the Americas from Nunavut to Tierra del Fuego, as well as returning to the forever wars of the Middle East.
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I’m not a Rawlsian, though I would admit to certain affinities, and, indeed, I’ve used the device associated with Rawls (though not invented by him) of the veil of ignorance in my own work. But when I disagree with Rawls, I hope I at least take the trouble to get him right. Sadly, one can’t say the same of the former Cambridge academic, political theorist and professional podcaster David Runciman. To be fair to him, Runciman’s podcasts are usually informative and entertaining and I’ve discovered things through them that I wouldn’t otherwise have come across. He also often has some really good guests. That’s usually enough to make up for the annoying tics that litter his output, most notably his habit of telling us that “X was rather like Y, but also the complete opposite of Y”, as a way of introducing some thinker or other.

My patience has been somewhat tested, though, by his latest series on What is Wrong with Political Philosophy?, a series of conversations with the King’s London political theorist and historian of political thought Paul Sagar on Aristotle, Adam Smith, Max Weber, Bernard Williams and Judith Shklar (I’ve not yet listened to the one dealing with the last two). Now I don’t have much complaint about the positive exposition of these figures by Runciman and Sagar, and that’s a useful public service. Nor do I much mind, even though I disagree, with their view that political philosophy ought to be about something like giving useful guidance to those engaged in politics. But this view, and its associated claim that politicians need to draw more on history and psychology to develop their practical wisdom is set up via an opposition to a caricature of normative political philosophy.
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Which jobs will be replaced by AI? Here is a modest proposal.* Replace higher management by AI. Not “management” in the sense of the teamleader who works alongside their colleagues with a bit more responsibility to make decisions and mediate conflicts, maybe not even the HR person who does performance evaluations, but the C suite.

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… to reader and commenter Doctor Memory. We noticed recently that old posts weren’t displaying properly, apparently because we’d used a markup language (Textile) that our current setup doesn’t support. We put out an appeal on Bluesky, and Dr M was one of several people who volunteered to clean up the database for us. After backing everything up and doing the necessary editing, he’s just advise me the job is done.

There are still more problems to work on, including the display of curly quotes in comments. And, if you notice anything else, please mention it in comments.

But for the moment, we just want to thank Doctor Memory for helping to keep this blog (nearly 25 years old now) in working condition.

Ever since it became evident that Trump was likely to be re-elected, I’ve been among the most pessimistic of commentators on the likely course of US politics (most recently here for example). I’ve also been nowhere near pessimistic enough. I assumed that Trump would follow the course of dictators like Putin and Orban, gradually eroding freedom and making his own power permanent. Instead, he’s gone most of the way inside a year.

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The Australian government’s legislation seeking to ban access to social media for people under 16 has received plenty of attention in International media, mostly leading with the government’s that 4.7 million accounts were banned or deactivated when the legislation came into effect. Rather less attention has been paid to discussion of the outcome within Australia, where the consensus is that there has been very little effect for most. With most kids still active, the minority who have been caught by the ban have suffered feelings of ostracism and exclusion When discussing the issue on my own social media (which had few if any teenage readers to begin with) I’ve only had one parent report their kids being thrown off.

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It is undisputed that Leo Strauss (1899 – 1973), a German exile, who, after a long stint at The New School reached prominence at The University of Chicago, became the founder of a ‘school’ of academics who found a home mostly in political theory, but also in literature and philosophy. Most members of the school write on political theory broadly conceived. His writings are dense and not infrequently commentary on books written by long-dead authors (including, it is worth noting, medieval Muslim and Jewish philosophers). Because many of his students, and their students, ended up training public intellectuals, think tankers, and advisors associated with Republican politicians and administrations (including many so-called ‘neo-cons’), the study of Strauss and his school has itself become intensely politicized. There have been Straussians, who have resisted the rightward drift of the school, and (in recent memory) the rise of MAGA (including “Never Trump Straussians” many of whom once associated with the ‘neo-cons’).

I took classes with a number of Straussians at The University of Chicago. In these courses Strauss was never taught. I also played basketball with some of their students. Joseph Cropsey (1919 – 2012), one of Strauss’ earliest American admirers and collaborators and an important Adam Smith scholar, adored my Bullmastiff. He would indulge me in long walks so he could spend time with my dog, and I could ask him questions about his views on Smith. I have written on his work in the philosophy of economics (here).

Later, at Syracuse University, my senior colleague, José Benardete (1928 – 2016), whose brother (Seth Benardete) was one of the more prominent students of Strauss, became a highly valued mentor. During most of our lunches, he talked about Wallace Stevens. José had many intellectual debts to Strauss, which he did not hide in his work, but he had also embarked on an intellectual career that was not confined to political theory. In fact, on my somewhat quixotic interpretation of twentieth-century philosophy, José helped revive the study of metaphysics during the period of positivist dominance within analytic philosophy (alongside others at Syracuse and Rochester). There is an interesting question why David Lewis went all the way to Australia rather than Upstate New York for his intellectual nourishment, but that’s for another occasion.

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