New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Political Affect: it's killing you

One of the things I focus on is "political affect." It's a multi-valent concept; one of the registers in which it works is psycho-somatic effects of political economic conditions. This article summarizes research which details the bad health effects of chronic job insecurity: 

Research shows that the purgatory of job insecurity may be even worse for you than unemployment. And it's turning the American Dream into a sleepwalking nightmare. From young temporary workers to middle-aged career veterans, Americans are being pushed to their physical and psychological limits in what has the makings of a major national public health crisis.

To turn this back to politics in the restricted sense, we should recall the classic distinction between anxiety and fear. Anxiety is free-floating arousal; fear is targeted. You're anxious about the dark and afraid of an approaching attack dog.

Consider then the brutality of contemporary US politics (and don't be so smug, my non-US friends; it's coming your way, sound bites and attack ads and all). If anxiety is worse than fear, anxiety-gripped people will be prone to accept the bogeys on offer by politicians, because at least you can focus your fear / hatred on a bogey, whereas with systemic insecurity, all you can do is suffer. So better to focus on some chimeric Islamomexikenyanian-gay-sex-having-and-abortion-loving-latte-sipping-arugula-eating-unionized-public-school-teacher-cultural-elite-who-are-sapping-and-impurifying-our-precious-bodily-fluids than to have to think your way through the anxiety to the social system that makes you insecure.

Or better, the contemporary political discourse blocks the path to an intellectual understanding of systematic insecurity by its relentless individualism and shaming, its victim-blaming. "Insecure? what a loser! You should have picked a better career."

Maudlin on Einstein and Lewis, and some Spinoza...

[I am reading Tim Maudlin’s The Metaphysics Within Physics with Fred Muller, Victor Gijsbers, and Lieven Decock. The following post was inspired by our recent discussion.—ES]

In the context of a critical discussion (that I admire) of what he calls a "Separability" doctrine that he attributes to David Lewis, Tim Maudlin quotes a letter from Einstein to Born:

"The following idea characterises the relative independence

of objects far apart in space (A and B): external influence on A

has no direct influence on B; this is known as the 'principle

of contiguity', which is used consistently only in the field

theory. If this axiom were to be completely abolished, the idea

of the existence of (quasi-) enclosed systems, and thereby the

postulation of laws which can be checked empirically in the

accepted sense, would become impossible." (See here for the full letter, p. 170-1; a fuller extract is quoted in Maudlin, pp. 53-54, and discussed around pp. 63-4)

By ‘Separability,” Maudlin means “The complete physical state of the world is determined by (supervenes on) the intrinsic physical state of each spacetime point (or each pointlike object) and the spatio-temporal relations between those points.” (51)  Maudlin takes Einstein’s letter as evidence that in the face of evidence from quantum mechanics, Einstein also endorses Separability (and, thus, Lewis’ position is not just “a philosopher’s fancy.”)  In response, Maudlin writes, “Quantum theory has both been formulated and rigorously tested despite the centrality of non-Separable elements in its ontology. Whatever Einstein had in mind, he had to be wrong.” (64)

Now, I am no scholar of Einstein, but I suspect Maudlin is seriously misreading Einstein here.

[punkrockmonday #20] Mance Lipscomb- Ella Speed

There are at least four types of murder ballads depending upon: (1) whether the narrator is the murderer, and (2) whether the murderer or victim is the tragic and/or heroic figure in the song. I realize that (2) sounds perverse, but it really is not give the oppression experienced by the original audiences of so much great folk art. For examples, see all of the myriad versions of Henry Lee, Stagger Lee, Frankie and Johny, and Johnny Hart.

Mance Lipscomb's version of Ella Speed interests me for a few different reasons:

In particular, I'm obsessed with the anxiety of influence in good popular music. This version clearly inspired two other great songs, and is also sui generis in a couple of other ways.

Manners and Morality--some Humean reflections.

"I shall also be bold to affirm, that among the ancients, there was not much delicacy of breeding, or that polite deference and respect, which civility obliges us either to express or counterfeit towards the persons with whom we converse." (Hume, "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Sciences").

Not unlike Mohan ("Politeness is appearing to respect another"), Hume (a keen observer of the "old-fashioned English") connects politeness to respect or at least the appearance of respect in his essay (which is a kind of geneology of politeness). [See here for a great paper on the contexts of Hume's views on politeness.] Moreover, Hume is clear that politeness is a consequence of good breeding. With early modern authors it is never easy to tell whether such breeding is merely a matter of good education and proper institutions or if it implies some eugenic features, but that need not concern us here. (It is not simple, because Hume connects the right sort of politeness to gallantry, and he thinks that is a "natural passion.") Unlike Mohan (who is silent on the matter), Hume recognizes different kinds of politeness and he rates the Modern version an improvement over the Ancient one (which -- like my fellow Dutch -- is too blunt in its expressions of respect; Hume quotes Rousseau on the mater: ""The republics in EUROPE are at present noted for want of politeness. The good-manners of a SWISS civilized in HOLLAND," is an expression for rusticity among the FRENCH."). (One gets the sense that Mohan recognizes differences in etiquette, but thinks politeness is uniform.) Now crucially, according to Hume the Modern version of politeness has been shaped by norms of civility, that is, it has been influenced by a courtly culture, which is why "a civilized monarchy" is most favorable "to that of the polite arts."

So what?

Well, when we reflect on courtly culture, we immediate realize that there respect is accorded to rank or to being a courtier. This is why Hume so commonly associates politeness to deference. So, polite respect is not due to some intrinsic human worth. Now, politeness can spread beyond the court. According to Hume this is due to emulation. It is quite possible, of course, that during the spread politeness becomes disassociated from deference. Let's stipulate this is true of the version endorsed by Mohan. Even so, it is, thus, eminently possible that a particular system of politeness, which is, say, based on a convention of systematic inclusion of privileged insiders and exclusion of  some (or many) outsiders, is -- however beautiful and gratifying -- immoral by our lights. (In his piece, Mohan had recognized the "polite scoundrel," after all.) Hume, for example, suggests there is no "better school for manners, than the company of virtuous women;" and he does so in the context where the virtue of a woman ("softness and modesty") is entirely one appropriate to disenfranchisement (even thought is a is a public virtue--in context, Hume is criticizing the Ancients for keeping women locked inside their homes).

Manners and Morality

The imperatives of etiquette are not incumbent on you because of some desire you happen to have. It is a piece of old-fashioned English table manners that one should not cut food with a fork. (Fact checkers: please refute if necessary.) This “should” is not conditional upon your desires; regardless of what you desire, English etiquette demands that you should not cut food with a fork. In this way, the should of etiquette is different from my advice that you should take the Gardiner Expressway. For if you have no desire to travel west from downtown Toronto, my “should” simply doesn’t apply to you. The force of the etiquette's should can be disputed. However that might be, its force is not conditional upon desire. Thus, it is formally a categorical imperative in the way Kant defined the term.

This was Philippa Foot’s incisive argument in a famous paper published in 1972.

An Anecdote about Dirk Struik

A propos Dennis' promise to say more about the historian of mathematics, Dirk Struik, here's my favorite Dirk Struik (September 30, 1894 – October 21, 2000) anecdote: I have long been interested in Struik -- a life-long Marxist who ran afoul of McCarthyism while at MIT --, who taught at my very bourgeois high school, Vossius Gymnasium, in Amsterdam during the 1920s or so. Just before I was about to enter graduate school I was hanging around my alma mater (Tufts) when I heard from Jody Azzouni that Struik was about to give a lecture. It must have been during the Spring of 1995. Now, I was in the phase of my life in which I thought that Kuhn had to be historicized in all respects and I had just read Struik's brilliant Yankee Science in the Making (see here for an interesting appreciation), which dates from 1948. My immediate response was, "he must be over 100 years old!" Of course, I was told he was 100.

It was a great talk. A report of that lecture survives:

Well into his 90s [Struik] visited Tufts regularly, giving guest lectures in Lenore Feigenbaum's course on the history of mathematics at least every other year. Tufts faculty and alumni remember him, at well over 100, standing in front of the blackboard facing the audience and producing, without notes, a sweeping account of 19th century mathematics, providing literature references from memory as needed.

During the lecture I was seated not far from the eminent historian of science, I.Bernard Cohen himself over 80 years old at the time. During the festive intermission, Cohen leaned over to the person sitting next to him and said loud enough for a few of us to hear that Struik "had improved as a lecturer since he had turned 80."

There is hope for all of us.

On bad anecdotes and good fun

My initial topic is the attractions of scandal, and an oft-told story: Diderot, humiliated at the court of Catherine by his inability to answer Euler’s supposed mathematical proof of the existence of God, limps back home to Paris.

The moral generally drawn from the story is: Learn your algebra! My moral will be an admonition to historians (but not only to historians).

I’ve read the Diderot anecdote many times—mathematicians seem to like it—and I’ve long been suspicious. Inspired by a colleague’s use of it in a talk last semester, I did some checking. Here’s what I found.

Weekly Philo of Economics: A snark too far...an apology to Glen Weyl (and some further critical reflections)

Last week I wrote the following (in response to this):

Third, among economists under sixty the aforementioned Glen Weyl passes for being an intellectual (see here) because he is interested in past economists. And, indeed, he quotes a famous paper by Hayek (incidentally one I mentioned last week.) But without apparently realizing it, Weyl rediscovers Oskar Lange's famous response to Hayek, but Lange could not appeal to netflix. (On Lange, see here.) Weyl also says (I am not making this up) "Others, who value the libertarian tradition that has often been associated with economics, will be forced to articulate other arguments [in favor of the "market economy"], perhaps based on privacy, that are not susceptible to erosion by the increasing power of centralized computation." Now libertarianism is a beautiful American tradition, but for most of its life-time it members have (rightly) complained that economists are ignoring its collective wisdom! (I'll let others reflect on the merits of the argument from privacy in the age of Patriot act.) I apologize for the sarcasm, but it is really scary how utterly ignorant young incrowd economists are of their own past and anything related to associated disciplines.

One of our readers, "Daniel," objected to these remarks (here and here). After a private exchange with Weyl and upon further reflection, I agree that I was not entirely fair  to Weyl.  First, I continue to stand by the claim that Weyl rediscovers Lange's response to Hayek. And this matters because in contemporary economics Lange is a mere footnote to the prehistory of the First fundamental theorem of welfare economics (if he is mentioned at all in textbooks--I checked Mankiw's quickly to no avail). Second, here is how Weyl understands his own claim about what he said about Libertarianism:

I was saying that [A] the libertarian tradition has often been associated with economics, not [B] that every economist is a libertarian or that economists pay attention to what libertarians!  I was also saying [C] many economists would end up being in favor of central planning.  So my main point was that [D] economic arguments classically used to defend libertarian views within economics would get weak.[A-D added by Schliesser.]

It's clear that I failed to convey accurately Weyl's claim. For this I apologize to him and my readers. But below the fold I do want to reflect a bit more (somewhat critically and earnestly) on Weyl's position.

Caster Semenya, Maria Mutola, and Pamela Jelimo

Rebecca Jordan-Young, author of the excellent book Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences (Harvard UP, 2010), has -- along with co-author Katrina Karkazis -- articles in the Guardian and in New Scientist on the IOC's terrible new sex test policy. (An open-access article in the Am J Bioethics is here; [UPDATE: an excellent point from the article: "It [the policy] also shows that female athletes have always been under suspicion, and women with intersex traits have often been scapegoats for broad anxiety about the gender contradiction inherent in the very concept of an elite female athlete."])

A key point of their argument is that women with high testosterone levels (there's a lot to talk about in that term "high" but let's leave that alone for now) do not necessarily outperform women with lower testosterone levels. They just look different. So, time for another photo essay, in the form of a quiz. Which of the women below provoked an international affair about sex testing? Which is the fastest?  Photos and answers below the fold.

Petition on the Québec situation

The petition is here. The preamble: 

Dear Colleague,

We are a group of high school and college professors from Quebec. We write to you today because we need the support of teachers everywhere.

As you know, students in Quebec have been on strike for the past four months to reject a government-mandated increase in university tuition fees – a 75% hike over the next five years. On May 18, the government of Jean Charest, the Quebec Premier, passed an emergency law (known as « Law 12″, previously known as Bill 78) which severely restricts students’ fundamental rights, such as the right to demonstrate and the right to strike.This law forces us to teach in an environment which does not recognize our students’ right to protest.

We are actively participating in the student demonstrations through a network called « Profs contre la hausse » (Teachers against the raise). Our teachers collective is determined to denounce this law and to exercise our rights in a context which respects our freedom to teach. In this spirit, we have drafted a manifesto to be co-signed by high school and university teachers from inside and outside Quebec. We send it to you now in the hopes that you will add your signature.

Sports Sunday: Body dimorphism in gymnastics

The IOC is making a PR push for their advances in gender equality at the London 2012 games. It is true that with the addition of women's boxing, all the sports are now open to men and women. 

But a glaring instance of gender inequality is with the sport that is usually said to get the best TV ratings, women's gymnastics. The difference is in the disciplines. The men do 6 disciplines: floor, vault, pommel horse, high bar, parallel bars, and rings. The women do floor (but with music, which the men do not have), vault (but with the horse placed horizontal to the runway, whereas it is longways for the men), uneven parallel bars, and balance beam. 

The resulting difference in demands produces a striking body dimorphism, with women gymnasts being very small and thin in the upper body compared to the men. Whereas in other sports with the same demands men and women athletes look the same: swimmers are shaped like swimmers, whether they are women or men, sprinters look like sprinters, distance runners like distance runners, rowers like rowers, weightlifters like weightlifters, boxers like boxers, etc. 

Does this body dimorphism help to explain the popularity of women's gymnastics? More photos below the fold.

The Sublimity of Quadratic Equations

In today’s New York Times, Andrew Hacker asks whether algebra should be necessary for higher education. Hacker, a political scientist who has written extensively on race relations, argues, first, that algebra is, for many, a useless qualification that serves as a barrier to higher education, —“In the interest of maintaining rigor, we’re actually depleting our pool of brainpower.” He argues, further, that it is not required for “quantitative reasoning,” and does not contribute to “more credible political opinions or social analysis.” “It’s not easy to see why potential poets and philosophers face a lofty mathematics bar,” he writes. In place of algebra, Hacker proposes, the universal mathematics background should be something more practical, like “citizen statistics.”

Both of Hacker’s arguments bother me, though I can’t say that I have the kind of evidence that would make me confident in rejecting them.

cool Gratton/Morin anthology on Nancy (hat tip Graham Harman)

Man this anthology looks cool. LSU's own Francois Raffoul has the lead-off essay.

As a new student of French philosophy myself, I'm incredibly lucky to find myself at LSU. The PhD in French Studies is gangbusters, and having Francois and John Protevi on faculty (both are joint appointed, check out our new web page) as well as Jeff Bell down the road make LSU a wonderful place to study.

Publishing strategies, for those of us not Harvard Bound.

[This post is a follow up to some passing comments in this post, which prompted a few emails from readers.--ES]

"You are publishing too much," said one of my letter writers (while I was preparing for the fourth time on the market), "Harvard will never take you." The preceding year (2004 or so) I had six acceptances. I loooked at him (and edited my words carefully), and responded: "Harvard has had its chance, I need a job!" In graduate school nobody explained how to write a journal article. After the third year out on the job-market I had one publication--a long piece on Adam Smith's obituary of David Hume (that was, despite some kvetchy refereeing,  accepted and significantly shortened under the wise and helpful editorial guidance by Ken Winkler and Elizabeth Radcliffe--bless their souls). It's not like I wasn't trying to get published: a paper sat at Philosophical Review for a year (rejection without comment); another version of that paper was rejected after a year at BJPS (a one paragraph, misleading summary and no further comment). I don't recall the exact details, but another journal (PPR?) was about to stop accepting submissions, etc. Meanwhile, one other paper was getting elaborate referee comments on how I was clearly ignorant of the important work done by George Smith (George, my undergraduate guru, and I have had a paper forthcoming since the late 1990s).

So what changed was this: with the help of senior colleagues at Wesleyan  and, especially, Red Watson at WashU in St. Louis (my first two adjunct positions--yeah, don't cry for me--), I learned how to craft a journal article, and started to send papers to slightly less incrowd journals with reputations for quick turn-around and getting things in print fairly quickly.  Below the fold some of the things I picked up (with room for readers' comments):

More on Regnerus

Commenter Neil calls our attention to this Chronicle piece from 26 July on the Regnerus affair (previously treated here and here at New APPS). 

The peer-review process failed to identify significant, disqualifying problems with a controversial and widely publicized study that seemed to raise doubts about the parenting abilities of gay couples, according to an internal audit scheduled to appear in the November issue of the journal, Social Science Research, that published the study.

The highly critical audit, a draft of which was provided to The Chronicle by the journal’s editor, also cites conflicts of interest among the reviewers, and states that “scholars who should have known better failed to recuse themselves from the review process.”

Neil's comment reminded me of this attempted pre-emptive strike from 23 July, also in the Chronicle (h/t LGM), by Christian Smith of Notre Dame, which in turn reminded me of the old joke about the right-wing version of the First Amendment:

Some perspective on publishing strategies, for those of us not Harvard bound

Eric's post on publishing strategies was excellent in my opinion.  I thought almost all the suggestions were good ones. (I might suggest just leaving the nasty footnote out, rather than inserting it late, but clearly that was tongue-in-cheek.)  Here I wanted to throw out a couple thoughts about keeping publishing in perspective, what with the ramp-up of application season and the growing obsession with graduate student publishing that I perceive to be overtaking the field.  (I don't take it that I'm disagreeing with Eric here.) 

The first thing to emphasize is that publishing is just one thing you need to accomplish in graduate school.  In some ways, it is the easiest to document, quantify, etc., which feeds a tendency to focus on it.  "Well, if I have 8 refereed publications, and my competitors only have 4, they have to admit that I'm better qualified. Right?"

Well, no, they don't.  Nor should they.

Weekly Philo of Economics: The Future of Economics is Data-Mining?

Ali Wyne lets eight young to mid-career stars in economics tell us about the future of economics for a popular, wonkish audience. So, befitting the genre it is full of largely self-serving cliches, but I still found it revealing. (Much to my surprise I was familiar with the work of three stars.) Bottom line: due to low cost computing and a data rich environment the future of economics is data-mining (this was clear from at least four of the comments). This is especially so because the young stars have lost faith in homo economicus (due to behavioral work and the crisis). Let me add three more observations.

First, if data-mining is the future, any person with access to data and sophisticated statistical technology can displace the trained economist as top policy dog (including their poor cousins, the sociologists!) One of my favorite economists, Justin Wolfers, believes that economics will remain top dog because "Economic theory will become a tool we use to structure our investigation of the data." (And economic theory is superior to its competitors.) But in light of the foregoing that is wishful thinking--the reason why economics is turning to data-mining is because economic theory is after sixty years not perceived the fruitful driver of research anymore. (Historical aside: In "Measurement without Theory," Koopmans convinced the economics profession after a famous debate with the now-forgotten Vining that if they want to be the preferred policy-scientists they could not rely on such pure induction. [Recall my post here.])

Book Reviewing follies...

This review by Ori Simchen is fascinating philosophically and sociologically--it gives a lovely sense of the historic, geographic differences in 20th century (analytical) philosophy of language. (I assume these are fading, but one never knows.) However, the review doesn't adequately convey and evaluate the contents of the book. We learn more about what's not in the book than what is included. (I discerned the name of just one chapter author.) Now, I love reviews that have a sense of personality and a vision. But reviewers have a duty to the profession to help possible readers know what is to be found in the volume, and if it is any good. 

A perusal of the volume's TOC at Amazon taught me, sadly, that all the contributors to the volume are boys (although diverse and impressive in other ways); so are all the key thinkers covered.

Congratulations Mohan!

We are very proud that one of our own has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada!

Martin Kusch's Alternative "Minimal Proposal" to a Modest Proposal

[Discussion on this proposal is welcomed.--ES]

Martin Kusch writes on what he calls a "Minimal Proposal"

Let us launch an "Online Petition in Support of the Gendered Conference Campaign".

Signatories commit themselves

(1) not to keynote at conferences at which women are clearly underrepresented;

(2) not to organize male-only or male-almost-only conferences or workshops;

(3) to add to their websites and email signatures the following line: "I am a signatory of the 'Online Petition in Support of the Gendered Conference Campaign'; please visit [Online Petition] for details;"

(4) to email information about the Online Petition and the GCC to their colleagues within and outwith their own department, possibly including various internet discussion lists, blogs, etc.

I would be curious to see how far one could get with this more gentle approach -- more in keeping with the  GCC.

(Apologies for this being a one-off contribution. Family commitments take priority for me at the moment.)