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Where Can We Find Knowledge?
During one of Ricochet’s big Same Sex Marriage debates during the run-up to Obergefell, @jamesofengland said this:
I think I’ve been clear that I don’t share Augustine’s confidence in specific bad outcomes […] I tend to think of Burke and Hayek as telling basically the same story, a story that I’ve been boringly obsessive about for decades now (before law, I took theology up to a Master’s degree, spending quite a lot of that time dealing with Derrida and Pseudodionysus, who I also believe to be in the same epistemically humble tradition). […] It’d be good to shift the conversation in that direction, because if the subject isn’t [Same Sex Marriage], but Hayek, I’ll have [another Ricochet gentleman] on my side, along with [a Ricochet lady] and [a third Ricochet gentleman]. I don’t know how much Augustine really backs that side, but I think [another Ricochet lady] has a higher epistemology (a sense that we can know more about the world than Hayek thought), meaning that we could pretty completely reshuffle the teams.
Ever since then, I’ve wanted to start a conversation on the subject. Initially, I wanted to write a long essay explaining and defending my own views, but, frankly, I don’t want to put much time into it. Maybe it’ll be a better conversation anyway if I keep it short! So short it is.
My View
Roughly, my view is that it’s easier to know things about family and the structure of human society than it is to know about economic productivity and the structure of the economy.
In other words, it makes sense to be a Hayekian on macroeconomics, but something else (a Thomist or Augustinian, perhaps) on family and community and friendship. And perhaps a third thing (say, a Calvinist or a Pseudodionysian) on theology, and an as-yet-unnamed thing on something else.
One Reason It Matters
This is one of the reasons I (and, no doubt, others) are SoCons and FiCons but not exactly libertarians: We fear action taken on the inevitable human ignorance of economic matters even as we also fear inaction on social matters where knowledge is possible.
Explanation
I’m not giving a proper argument and haven’t properly thought this through, so I’ll offer just this brief explanation in hopes of starting a conversation from which proper arguments may emerge.
Let’s contrast the production of a human and of a pencil. (Any old widget would do, but let’s stick with the classics!) No individual knows how to make a pencil. But most people know how to make a baby. (And many who don’t . . . find out before the second trimester.)
Now expand this a bit. Pencils are one thing. The healthcare system of a -hundred-million-person country is another. At that level, the knowledge of how to achieve economic productivity moves even deeper into the realm of impossibility for the individual.
What about human relationships? Well, some relationships have an aspect that becomes more complex in the aggregate. (National networks of churches or of chess clubs, for example.) But some things don’t change a bit. For any particular pairing of citizens, how to make a baby is the same, no matter how big the economy gets. For any particular romantic pairing of citizens, things are pretty much the same, again, no matter how big the economy gets. The basics of parenthood aren’t changed by the size of the economy, though though how birthday presents are procured for the kids gets more complex, along with some other details. Friendship is basically the same in a big country, and the same things make it work, things like humility, respect, honesty, and forgiveness. (Internet friendships, if they are friendships at all, might be an exception here.)
I also tend to think individual knowledge in one sphere tends to get easier over time, the other harder. Long ago, the Torah told us “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and Aristotle noted that there is no right way to commit adultery. Even now, I suspect (I admit I haven’t done the homework), careful social science would only confirm that adultery causes a lot of harm. Not to mention fatherlessness and other social ills.
But the process by which a widget is made gets more complex every day. It’s getting harder all the time to know how to efficiently make one and accurately price it.
A Disclaimer or Two
I mentioned above that this has something to do with being a SoCon rather than a libertarian. And so it does. But there are a lot of other details to consider and I’m only addressing one of the fundamental ideas that many SoCon-FiCon types probably have lurking in their brains.
Some SoCon-FiCon types probably don’t have it lurking there at all. And, after you work out what social situations are worthy of governmental interest, you might still be a libertarian!
And after you work out whether things that do merit governmental interest merit at from the states or the feds, and whether they’re Constitutional or not, there’s a lot of room to be be a libertarian of one sort or another — or something similar — if you think that kind of economic knowledge is a delusion for the individual but other kinds of knowledge aren’t.
So, I’m talking about knowledge here: not attacking libertarianism or saying anything about same-sex marriage.
So I’ll stop the opening post now. Hope to hear from you in comments!
Published in Religion & Philosophy
Hey, maybe it doesn’t. If the idea is pretty solid, it just means it’s not inappropriate for that particular reason–namely, the inevitability of ignorance.
Right on!
Yes! Indeed.
A respectable enough view, and I think my views are pretty similar, especially at the federal level.
We probably disagree on a few particulars, but I’d probably need to consider them on a case-by-case basis.
Does that mean you, I, and those libertarians all concur that Obergefell was pretty lousy?
I think you’d be hard pressed to find a libertarian around here that thinks that Obergefell was the right way to implement SSM.
My comment there was pretty much all sarcasm. My point is that you can call anything an “institution,” but calling it that does not create an independent ground for justifying government regulation.
Anything that is widely recognized has aspects of individual participation and aspects of institutional recognition. You can hang the label of “institution” on marriage, or property, or almost anything. KC seems (to me) to be arguing that once you hang the “institution” label on something, there is a justification for government to control and regulate that thing. I say, nonsense. Both property and marriage are “institutions,” but that does not mean that how I choose to select, use, or dispose of my property is not my own business, nor does it mean that how I choose to select or relate to my partner in marriage is not my own business. There may be justifications for regulating either property or marriage, but simply calling them “institutions” is not a valid justification.
Churches would be a good example of institutions….
At this point, I’m pretty bored with both of them.
Exactly!
Whadda thread. A couple of Thatchers, a couple of moderators, a Coolidge, a philosopher, and a Jesuit. Allowing for overlap, lawyers and a mathematician. I considered commenting, but fools rush in…
Are we talking about finding knowledge or finding wisdom ?
You do not rush in, and thus are not a fool. The philosopher and the Jesuit, however, . . . .
Actually, who’s the Jesuit in here? (I feel like I should know that already.)
(Update: Ah! KC M!)
The former.
Maybe the latter, depending on what wisdom is.
Ok, well, pressing on towards a hope of at least understanding each other, . . . .
Do you think there is an independent ground for private property? And do you think that government protection from theft is justified on those grounds?
That might well be nonsense. I don’t think KC M is doing that, however. We marriage traditionalists tend to think that institutions exist independently of the labeling. Marriage just happens to be one.
Simply calling something an institution is about as useful as calling something a narf.
I think my favorite formulation of the general idea I’m getting at is the one in the opening post using the big names: It makes sense to be a Hayekian on macroeconomics but something else on social and familial ethics.
What sort of something else–one of the names I’ve mentioned already, a Thomist or Augustinian or Confucian? Perhaps a Kantian? An Aristotelian? A Taoist?
But that’s another topic.
Does the something else make more sense as a SoCon, a libertarian, or something else?
But that’s another topic.
It just so happens that some of us are SoCons and FiCons, and partially because we are Hayekians in macroeconomics but something else in social and familial ethics. We may be wrong about a good many things; my point is only that we aren’t wrong simply in virtue of the fact that we’re Hayekians on some things but not all things.
Well, good, because this is an opportunity to clear that up. I am definitely not in favor of that, and I mean nothing of the sort. Frankly, it’s as far from my intent as could possibly be.
Please consider that I’m a Catholic. Think of what you said above … do you suspect that I want the government to regulate the church because it’s an institution? Absolutely not.
Obama once said that government is just another name for the things we do together – which just shows how shallow he is. There are a number of “things we do together” (business, sports, church, etc.) that have nothing to do with government, and about which we want government to stay out – and in fact, to shut up about. The government has increasingly been trying to grab control over those institutions, trying to subjugate them to the will of politicians. Believe me, I am absolutely opposed to any of that.
I don’t want the Supreme Court “deciding” anything about churches, or about sports, or about marriage. Those institutions are independent of government, and Anthony Kennedy ought to keep his mouth shut about them.
Business, sports, church, and pencil-making.
The making of a pencil in a free market is a spectacular achievement of social cooperation–the sort of thing a socialist dreams of but destroys while trying to achieve. Yay for Von Mises, who said it all first!
I agree with your statement. It seems to me that human nature doesn’t change, which has allowed centuries of observation about how people operate. The story of David’s adultery with Bathsheba is understandable by today’s reader. It requires no special knowledge of laws or math.
Trying to follow the movie “The Big Short” required me to watch it several times and read auxillary information.
The costs of a bad decision are different. Economically, theoretically, if you make a bad decision, you lose some money (yes, it can make personal problems, but they can also be temporary). Personally, if you make a bad decision, you waste/lose part of your life. Life is finite, you cannot get time back. You can get money back.
@ryanm Government is a leading institution, meaning that provides leadership in society. Even in most libertarian paradises government exists in some form and provides leadership. Also national governments must be able to speak to the nation as a whole and in at least some circumstances speak for the nation as a whole. So as long as Government exists it intervenes in culture by its very existence as does every source of authority. So the question is never should government intervene, but how it should intervene on any cultural question. Since non-intervention is choice that has consequences.
Governments can play positive or negative roles in culture and we should advocate for the positive and work to limit the negative. Government imposing change almost never ends well and should be discouraged. Government does best when it recognizes positive cultural developments and facilitates them or backstops them.
Let me take brothers for an example. The government sees and recognizes that brothers are family and they are close family and they give brothers certain privileges with their immediately family in immigration, inheritance, visitation and the like. This comes not from government valuing loving relationships between brothers but recognizing that brothers are family and as family bear a certain amount of legal responsibility for each other even if they don’t like one another.
By giving legal recognition to brothers it backstops the idea that the family is a group that has duty and obligations to each other no matter how the family relates emotionally to each other. The government correctly recognizes that encouraging that family bond is a societal good even if in the particular two brothers hate each other.
What if the government was neutral in the role of brothers and left the who is a “brother” undefined. In that case where anyone or everyone could be a “brother” the word would no longer serve a distinctive purpose, relationships legal and otherwise would become unclear. Families on the margin would feel less of a bond to each other and as the very idea of siblings weakened society would weaken.
The idea of brother should not be imposed by the Government but it can’t go unrecognized either.
Have you ever come across David Lewis, and his theory of Conventions? One feature of it is that in any large group, conflicts are bound to occur, even over the simplest matters. Now we could all hire lawyers and draw up specific agreements about every matter … and negotiate with every individual separately.
Which would be impossible.
As with language, however, large groups of people settle on conventional patterns of behavior – without benefit of specific agreement. Culture develops this “common understanding” and with few exceptions, everyone figures it out. The key, just like language, is that everyone knows what everyone else means by each action in the convention. If you use a word in the language, you expect your listener to know what you mean.
Institutions are a form of convention. Marriage is a convention. If you just want to have a private relationship with someone, feel free. But when you get married, you’re invoking a social convention that means something to the rest of us.
Nicely put. I especially like the verb used–“backstop.”
Good stuff! It’s not ringing a bell though.
My memories are telling me that David Lewis is the name of a metaphysician with an interesting theory on possible worlds. The guy you’re talking about sounds like a philosopher of some sort. Do you happen to know if the one you’er talking about does metaphysics?
@ryanm The government’s role in these areas should be that of a limit on a mob mentality. It should be a slow down switch that allows societal change to take place but by forcing a certain amount of considerations. Fads can move fast and do lasting damage to a society. If we make the wrong choice as a group it is our right to do so but it is always best to have things move slow enough to give us time to consider the change that we are making.
When political parties try and adjust things in culture for political ends it usually doesn’t end well or at best was an expensive waste of time. When Government makes room for social change through a grinding political process that can only move so fast it plays a constructive role in our culture. When the government takes an issue, by fiat, out of the political process and thereby radicalize an issue, it makes matters worse.
The government along with all voices of authority in a culture have a role to play it can play its role well or it can play it badly but it can’t help but to play.
Absolutely not. Under no circumstances are we having this debate again. My head already hurts.
On the more general point, while I am willing to agree that there is, in theory, different areas of knowledge that we can know more about, I am not sure these divisions are correct. The problem of making a pencil or understanding the universe are external problems -we have to reach out to the world and find answers, which are hard to get, and harder to aggregate.
It may be that knowledge of relationships are internal -that we really can pull the Cartesian trick of simply using ourselves as the measure of the universe. But I’d have to think further on it. Immediate objection from a theological perspective: this would be hard to square with the extent to which God felt it necessary to give us revelation on personal relationships with each other and with Him. Alas, I must go teach a much simpler topic (how government decides what policies to consider) and I will have to return later.
Good points Brian. I couldn’t quote the whole thing, being a lowly coolidge.
Right on.
Good general point to agree on, and good specific point to be cautious on!
I don’t think that’s how we know about relationships. Well, maybe it’s a part of it, but not the whole. Revelation is a big part too. Experience (as in Aristotle and Mill) factors big.
Yes, how it does decide: simpler. How it should decide: very complex, and perhaps subsequent to what we’re talking about here!
Well now… I have this little story about using a color-changing alien squid as an oracle… it is not a very good story, because it’s so obviously contrived, but… it is in my notes somewhere. And other things…
It does seem logically possible for two beings, both of whom do probabilistic inference correctly (that is, with no logical errors), to come to conflicting conclusions when presented with new evidence. Hopefully, it’s unlikely.
I won’t claim we can “know” untrue things, because obviously that depends on what is meant by knowledge, and it’s of course very reasonable to wish to reserve “knowledge” only for those beliefs which happen to be true. I do believe it’s possible to learn untrue things – that is, given the information at your disposal, the untrue thing is equally as well-established as the true things you’ve learned. We can all think of ways, usually rather contrived, in which this would happen, and I think it’s more an article of faith rather than a certainty, that real life, being less contrived, won’t similarly misinform us.
That saying, “It’s not that they’re ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so,” has a point, though. And what’s worse, it seems two probabilistic reasoning machines could each believe that saying of each other without either being in logical error!
Don’t sweat it. We’re celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary, so I haven’t been a Jesuit for a while. (I still live the spirituality, and I love the Society, but let’s not kid anyone …)
Same guy. He was Quine’s star pupil, until he did to Quine what Aristotle did to Plato … he went his own way, so to speak. Convention was his first big notice. He was big in game theory because of conventions, then he went into modal worlds.
I feel like I should maybe have known this all along. Thanks for the tip. I’ll reread what you wrote and hope or pray I remember something about it.
Well, the great philosopher named Lewis is one I’ve read more of anyway.
Lets make sure we are talking about the same question here. I am talking about the question of whether the government is justified in regulating an activity (which is to say, using force to require or prohibit that activity). And by “justified,” I mean morally justified. The legitimacy of the form of government is beside the point. A legitimate, democratically elected government can still do things that are immoral. An illegitimate dictatorship can do things that are moral. These are separate questions.
As I said above, there is a moral ground for the government to protect property rights by prohibiting theft. That ground is simply that the intrusion on individual liberty (i.e., losing the “freedom” to steal) is less than the harm that would be caused by the destruction of property rights if everyone were allowed to steal whatever they wanted. Government intrusion is morally justified to secure the rights of life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. It does not matter whether you call these things “institutions” nor does it matter whether the institution pre-dates the government recognition of that institution.
I’m not convinced as such, but I do not object!
Well, that depends on the definition of “learn,” doesn’t it?
Oh, I’m all about fallibility. Real life deceives us plenty!
Yes, but isn’t it rather like my father’s good advice: Only unloaded guns kill people by accident?
That’s not really the same question. But it is a good question, and I like your answer to it!
Generally, yes, it matters little what we call them.
On the contrary. Traditionalists on property (like me) tend to concur with Locke that this matters a lot.
Good grief, man, what you say doesn’t matter is to Locke what the Scone of Stone was to the Dwarfs of Discworld: It is the thing and the whole of the thing; it is the very thing that makes government legitimate.
(I believe @midge noted above that Coase and De Soto agree.)