Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Pragmatism, Education, Democracy

Where Knowing is conceived as a private reception by Consciousness, Education is conceived as the filling of a receptacle, usually with set Truths, which are often pre-specialized in accordance with an established division of labor.  In contrast, according to Pragmatism, Knowing is a mode of social Doing, an active ongoing incorporation of new skills--including 'pure intellectual' ones, like Logic and Math--into previously acquired ones, in coordination with those of others.  Now, the standard criticism of the latter is that it breeds 'Relativism'.  But, aside from its question-begging premise that there is something inherently wrong with Relativism, that criticism usually mistakes permission for passive self-indulgence, for diversifying Empowerment for the benefit of the Whole.  Accordingly, despite its greater conduciveness to Democracy, the Pragmatist concept of Education remains under attack at all levels of the American system.

Monday, February 27, 2017

Pragmatism, Homo Faber, Democracy

Transcending mere Academic quibbling, Pragmatism expresses the profound and epochal re-conceiving of Homo Sapiens as Homo Faber.  That transition entails not a diminishing of the role of Knowing in Human experience, but a re-casting of it as a mode of Doing.  For example, what hitherto is conceived as passive Seeing is, in Pragmatism, presented as active Looking-at.  In further contradistinction from traditional Empiricism, especially from its Phenomenonalist variety, Knowing is a fundamentally social, not private, process, because Belief is always subject to revision by others.  As his criticism of Dewey as "cooking the books" indicates, Whitehead does not quite appreciate that Cognition is as active a process outside of the laboratory as it is within it.  This concept of Human experience as essentially active and social shows why Pragmatism is perhaps uniquely consonant with Democracy.

Sunday, February 26, 2017

Pragmatism, Analytic Philosophy, Class

Most generally, the distinguishing feature of Pragmatism is its concept of Theory as essentially implicated in Practice, functioning as instructions, directions, a recipe etc.  Thus, it constitutes more than a Method--it proposes a novel concept of the role of Thinking in all behavior. Dewey's notable insight is to discern in the traditional Theory-Practice split, with the former the superior factor, a Class distinction between idle ordering employer and employee who does all the actual work, an insight likely influenced by Marx, though Dewey's rejection of Historical Necessity substantively diverges from Marxism.  So the Pragmatist critique of Analytic Philosophy is more than an Academic tiff--the Theory-Practice split entailed in that method is, from a Deweyan perspective, a symptom of an inherently exploitative ideology, regardless of the attribution to it of value-neutrality by its practitioners.  The precise version of that criticism is Wittgenstein's exposure of the presumed privileged and sacrosanct Meta-Language of Analytic Philosophy as a mere abstraction from just another collective activity that he calls a Language-Game.  He, thus, shows, that Theory is the Practice, i. e. the Language-Game, of a certain ruling-class.

Saturday, February 25, 2017

Capitalism and Analytic Philosophy

Though having achieved Political indepence from Britain more than two centuries ago, the U. S. remains under its ideological influence.  By continuing to subscribe to Capitalism, it takes for granted some of the premises that inform the tradition of which Smith's model is an outgrowth, notably that members of a society are fundamently isolated from one another, and that the behavior of each is motivated by a self-interested feeling that is perhaps in conflict with a sympathetic one.  Accordingly, a possibility posited from outside that tradition, such as that one can be elevated by Reason above one's feelings to an impersonal standpoint, is virtually unthinkable in contemprary American life.  Now, a second influence of British ideology can be found pervasively in American Academic Philosophy--Russellian Analytic Philosophy.  For, while its proponents insist that their methodology is value-neutral, its Atomism prejudices any analysis of human activity that is based on Collectivist principles, e. g. Rousseau's General Will, i. e.which Analytic Philosophy can interpret only as an aggregate of Egoisms.  So, many of these Academicians propagate Russell's Capitalism-friendly Theory, wittingly, or otherwise.

Friday, February 24, 2017

European Philosophy and American Philosophy

Corresponding to the political allegiances of the time, the We of the U. S. Constitution reflects the Generality of the Frenchman Rousseau, rather than the Atomism that is typical of British Empiricism.  Now, it is not for nearly a century that a uniquely American Philosophy emerges--Peirce's Pragmatism, which reflects the influence of German Philosophy in two ways--Kant's privileging of Praxis, and Hegel's Dialectics.  The latter does not survive in subsequent Pragmatisms, though another German, Marx, influences Dewey's variety, and Schopenhauer, Santayana's.  But, one constant feature of that doctrine that is a clear split from its European antecedents is what Peirce calls Probabilism, which entails a rejection of the commitment to Certainty that informs all of them.  Pragmatism's innovative recognition of Uncertainty as an irreducible factor in human experience expresses the open-endedness of the American Experiment, and is more aptly characterized as a 'Philosophy of the Future' than what Nietzsche presents under that rubric.

Thursday, February 23, 2017

Egoism, Sympathy, We

Compassion, or Sympathy, is a feeling.  The feeling becomes a motivation if it initiates action.  However, such action is unilateral.  In contrast, We signifies a plurality of agents.  Thus, Democracy cannot be based on Compassion.  Similarly, the addition of Sympathy to the Egoism of a member of Smith's society does not create a work crew, an Economic unit which is beyond the scope of either of his behavioral models.

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Egoism, Compassion, Democracy

Scholars have long puzzled over the relation between Smith's advocacy of Egoism, and passages like the following, from Theory of Moral Sentiments: "How soever selfish man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him", i. e. "compassion".  Now, even though his presentation of Capitalism does not explain the relation between the two apparent antitheses, a combination of Egoism and Compassion is a familiar feature of American politics--with the latter functioning to extend the wealth generated by the former, from its possessors, to those who have been either victimized or neglected by the processes of wealth-generation, e. g. via charity or re-distribution.  Still, even if Compassion is effective as an equalizer of Wealth, it leaves its beneficiaries as politically powerless as they are in its absence.  In other words, even if compossible, this combination of Egoism and Compassion that continues to inform American society is inadequate to the principles of Democracy.

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Self-Interest and Public Good

The foundation of Smith's system is the empirical observation, "I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good."  So, Capitalism is based on an Empirical proposition, plus, it is vulnerable to the suspicion that it reflects his Phenomenalist orientation, according to which, because all Experience is constituted by private data, there is no actual 'public' realm.  It is thus contingent not only on Empirical grounds, i. e. it can be refuted by any example of a philanthropic businessperson, but on Methodological ones, as well, i. e. it can be refuted by the mere availability of an alternative orientation, e. g. Perspectivism, according to which the presumed Private-Public antithesis is actually a difference of degree of scope, ranging from narrower to broader.  Regardless, his circumscription of the efficacy of personal endeavor, such that a transcendent Invisible Hand is required to transform it into a public good, is equivalent to delimiting the potential political power of individual citizens, who, unlike the inhabitants of Rousseau's model, are, accordingly, incapable of any say in the General Good, contrary to the premises of a Democracy.

Monday, February 20, 2017

Equality, Invisible Hand, Trickle-Down

The Benthamist concept of the wealth of a nation as the sum of the individual wealths of its citizens does not distinguish between the various distributions that can constitute one and the same sum, and, so, entails no privileging of Egalitarianism.  However, Smith does favor the latter, though his attention to it is not in Wealth of Nations, but in Theory of Moral Sentiments.  There he proposes that, under the guidance of "an invisible hand", economic equalization can be achieved via the domestic expenditures, even selfish ones, of the wealthy, a process that has come to be known as "trickle-down".  So, in contrast with many contemporary Capitalists, Smith does express concern over Inequality, and, as a solution, he might insist that the wealthy cease hoarding, secreting, or globalizing their assets, though such a remedy conflicts with the Egoism that he promotes.  In any case, compelling evidence, and not mere repetition of slogans such as "A rising tide lifts all boats", of the efficacy of the trickle-down process as an equalizer, has been lacking.

Sunday, February 19, 2017

Prosperity and Empowerment

There is no inherent reason why a wise and benevolent Monarchy or Oligarchy could not bring about universal prosperity.  But what is impossible in either of those systems is universal empowerment.  So, if there is any principle grounding the thesis that Democracy is the best system, it must entail that Power is a higher Good than Wealth.  Now, according to the Plutocrat, Power and Wealth are equivalent.  Still, until it is proven that the acquisition of Wealth is not a zero-sum process, the achievement of universal Empowerment is impossible in a Plutocracy, so Democracy is the superior system in that regard.  And, absent a wise and benevolent system of distribution, which Smith takes for granted, universal prosperity, too, is impossible in a Plutocracy.

Saturday, February 18, 2017

Democracy, Welfare, Power

Implicit in the Preamble are two theses--that General Welfare is a worthy goal, and that Democracy is the best means to it.  Now, one argument against the former thesis is that it could come at the expense of some Individual Welfare, but, a modification that accommodates that potential--reformulation of the goal as Maximum Welfare--is still subject to the charge that Welfare is a passive condition.  That passivity only strengthens the argument against the latter thesis--that some other system, e. g. a benevolent  Monarchy, can better deliver the General Welfare.  Avoiding both these arguments is a shift of emphasis from Welfare to Power, and to accordingly present Democracy as the potentially most powerful system, because it is the most diversified, i. e. as having at its disposal the broadest range of ability, intelligence, etc.  Such a concept of Democracy requires two alterations of some common opinions--first, that Goods such as food, shelter, etc., have value as a means to Action, not vice versa, and, second, that the members of a society are more or less diverse parts of the whole, not unrelated atoms that happen to be associated spatio-temporally.   Those alterations are entailed in the initial "We" of the passage, but its authors do not make them as explicit as they might have.

Friday, February 17, 2017

The Constitution and the Good.

The Preamble can easily be read as an expression of the belief that the polity being proposed is a means to General Welfare.  Whether or not they believe more precisely that the latter is the Highest Good, to which their experiment is either the only means or the best means, is possible, though is not explicitly stated.  But, their We can also be interpreted as a Good in-itself.  For, it constitutes an elevation of Character in two respects--as transcending mere Egocentrism, and as a moment of Empowerment, each of which is highly valued in the Ethics of Aristotle, Spinoza, and Kant.  In either case, private satisfaction, prevalently promoted in their experiment several centuries later, is a relatively petty Good.

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Originalism and Our

We entails Our.  Thus, the cardinality of the former in the Preamble entails that of the latter.  Of course, written decades prior to the birth of Marx, this privileging of collective possession can in no way be intended as a commitment of the Constitution to Marxism, and, there is even less reason to read the document as antagonistic to that doctrine.  Thus, Scalia's justification for his decision, in 2014, against a proposed EPA regulation, on the grounds of its purported Marxist influence, reflects more his own Economic prejudices than any intentions that he or any other Originalist might attribute to the Founding Fathers.

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Originalism and We

In the Preamble, the words "union", "common", and "general", refer back to the initial word of the passage--"We".  Now, We is a Unity of a Multiplicity, and, more precisely, of a specific Multiplicity, i. e. a change in personnel produces a different We.  In contrast, in Smith's system, the principle of Unity--the Invisible Hand--is independent of the Egoism of each member, and vice versa. In other words, a Capitalist society is constituted by a multiplicity of Is, unified by an impersonal force, the combination of which is no We.  Accordingly, if an Originalist were so disposed, they might judge unfettered Capitalism to be contrary to the intentions of the Founding Fathers, and, hence, to be un-Constitutional.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Originalism and More Perfect Union

The concept of General Welfare is open to two interpretations: Associationist, i. e. the sum of individual welfares, and Organicist, i. e. the welfare of a Whole of Parts.  But, the phrase from the Preamble, "a more perfect union", seems decisive between them.  For, it asserts that the Constitution is an improvement over the Articles of Confederation, insofar as it supplants the association of States prescribed by the latter, with a federal body that unifies them.  So, by "general welfare", the Founding Fathers likely similarly intend a condition to which Benthamist-Capitalist concepts are inadequate, regardless of the insistence of Originalists.

Monday, February 13, 2017

Originalism and General Welfare

The unarguable familiarity of the Founding Fathers with Rousseau grounds the hypothesis that "general welfare", from the Preamble to the Constitution, reflects the inspiration of the term "general will" from the Social Contract.  Now, Rousseau conceives 'general' as connoting a unity that is greater than the sum of its parts, a concept of General that is at odds with Bentham's.  Accordingly, while the Benthamist Judicial philosophy that informs Originalist decisions, e. g. Citizens United, may not be un-Constitutional, Originalists do not have an exclusive claim on the intentions of the Founding Fathers.

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Originalism and Benthamism.

The regularly affirmed Capitalism of Originalists strongly suggests that they ascribe to the Founding Fathers a Benthamist formulation of the phrase "general welfare" that appears in the Preamble to the Constitution.  Thus, as Judicial philosophy, Originalist decision-making is also Benthamist.  Now, Benthamism has been subject to a variety of objections, including that it approves the inflicting of misery on some if to do so increases the pleasure of most.  Now, regardless of whether or not Originalists can defend Benthamism against such an argument, the mere possibility that they cannot shows that their commitment to Originalism would outweigh a demonstration of the immorality of an intention of the Founding Fathers.

Saturday, February 11, 2017

Originalism and Experimentalism

Originalists believe that the intentions of the Founding Fathers should be the fundamental criterion of Judicial decision-making.  Now, the standard objection to Originalism is that intentions of the Founding Fathers reflect conditions that are obsolete.  However, a stronger counter-argument is on Epistemological grounds--that knowledge of the intentions of another, especially someone long deceased, is impossible, so what is being attributed to them is only the prejudices of the presumed knower, which are typically Conservative. Related to that objection is the charge that the source material for the alleged expression of intentions has been arbitrarily selected.  For example, on the basis of Washington's term "experiment", and of Jefferson's expression of admiration of Bacon, it could be asserted that the Constitution is an Experimentalist document, as its Amendments exemplify, so, likewise, an Originalist Judicial philosophy is Experimentalism.  At minimum, the range of counters to established Originalism only exposes the feebleness of the standard one.

Friday, February 10, 2017

Equality in America

In American electoral processes, votes are of equal value.  However, the number of votes that each voter casts is, explicitly or implicitly, sometimes unequal.  For example, members of the Electoral College vote twice in a general election, as do Democratic Party super-delegates over the course of determining a nominee, i. e. once in a particular state primary, and once at the convention.  Indeed, in the latter case, the vote cast as a delegate is equivalent to the total of votes that an ordinary delegate represents.  Furthermore, a monetary contribution to a candidate can be tanamount to a vote for them.  Now, in principle, citizens are equal before the Law, but, in fact, factors such as race and class sometimes compromise that indifference.  Also, there is plainly no Economic equality in America, with the vague concept "equal opportunity" instantiated either sporadically or superficially.  So, an Empirical study might have difficulty establishing that Equality is a cardinal principle in American life.

Thursday, February 9, 2017

House of Commons and Political History

'Common' can mean 'shared', but also 'ignoble'.  Now, the most politically significant application of the latter might be the U. K. House of Commons, which is distinguished from the House of Lords, as well as from a Royal Family.  So, it is perhaps ironic that the ignoble part of the government is also the most powerful.  But, it is also instructive, insofar as that Parliament embodies the history of Politics over the past millennium, with a Monarch, Theological Lords, and landed Lords, having yielded all but ceremonial rule to a Democracy of Commoners.

Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Commonality and Equality

In Common Factor and Common Multiple, "common" is equivocal.  In the former, it signifies some characteristic internal to each element in a set, in the latter, something that encompasses them.  The terms 'Atomist' and 'Wholist', respectively, can be used to distinguish the two types of Commonality. Thus, for example, in the expression 'common ground', and its usage in the preamble to the U. S. Constitution, Commonality is Wholistic.  In contrast, when a quantity is a property of each element of a set, its Commonality is Atomist.  In other words, Equality is Atomist Commonality, which suggests that its relation to the Constitution is problematic.

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Lowest Common Multiple Politics

In Mathematical terms, Nietzsche's main complaint about Egalitarianism is that it promotes Averageness.  Likewise in Mathematical terms, Eugenicism, which he advocates, aims at Lowest Common Multiples.  So, his criticism of Democracy, as a breeder of Egalitarianism, misses that in a pluralistic society, such as the U. S., it can also be fertile ground for Miscegenation.  In other words, he seems to fail to consider the potential in a Democracy for Lowest Common Multiple Politics, of which he implicitly approves.

Monday, February 6, 2017

Lowest Common Denominator Politics

In Mathematics, Common Denominator is a property of fractions.  So, if the term is applicable to humans, it is insofar as they are parts of a whole.  Thus, properly used, the "lowest common denominator" among any group of people is simply their Humankind.  Likewise, "lowest common denominator politics", properly speaking, is Cosmopolitics, i. e. the Politics of the whole of the species.  In contrast, what is usually intended by the term "lowest common denominator" in a social context, namely some characteristic that each member of a group possesses, is, more Mathematically properly, the "lowest common factor", and, likewise, politics in an Atomist society, such as the contemporary U. S., that pertains to commonality, is "lowest common factor politics".

Sunday, February 5, 2017

Humanities and the Purpose of Voting

Someone perplexed by someone's voting against their best self-interest is likely unfamiliar with the distinction, drawn by Aristotle and Spinoza, among others, between believing what is good for oneself, and knowing what is good for oneself.  The perplexity furthermore reflects an unfamiliarity with Rousseau's concept of the General Good as the object of a vote, not personal Self-Interest, whether or not adequately conceived.  The current widespread unfamiliarity with this complexity of the topic of the purpose of voting would be remedied in a Humanities education that aims to empower the citizens of a Democracy, rather than serves as a means to increasing their value on the job market.

Saturday, February 4, 2017

Democracy and Education

It seems difficult to deny that a vote in American elections is frequently, as Plato anticipates it, a conditioned response to some superficial phenomena.  Now, 'education', qua a familiarization with names and dates, as American Humanities programs often serve as, offer little to disrupt that common Heterocratic scenario.  More promising is Plato's concept of Education as the cultivation of the envisioning of Forms, though his Ideal-Real dichotomy leaves unclear the applicability of such envisioning to actual practices.  In contrast, Spinozist Education involves the exposure of the causal relations underlying surface Political imagery, such as Marx's thesis that Economic relations constitute the ultimate substratum of such imagery.  Dewey extends the Spinozist approach to the concept of voting as the voter's participation in the reconstruction of Society.  So, if Education is to be effective in empowering the member of a Democracy, academic institutions themselves require liberation from their essentially career-oriented roles that they currently tend to play, undermining Dewey's program.

Friday, February 3, 2017

Democracy and The Humanities

As has been previously discussed, Power entails Knowledge, and the kind of Knowledge required to maximize the Power of one's vote includes not only that of the candidates and issues, but also what is in one's own best interests, the general name of which is The Humanities.  Now, a significant deficiency in the American Education system is that even where advanced Humanities is available, it is usually as a hurdle en route to maximizing earnings. Furthermore, often compounding that subordinate status is a necessity to pay for such Education with loans, which further conditions and constrains the learning process. So, one means to the enhancement of Democracy is to detach the Humanities from career-path training, i. e. and learned for its own sake, which, in turn, requires that it be universally cost-free.  Thus, one indication of a significant shortcoming in contemporary American Democracy is that "affordable education", as a means to being "more competitive in the global job-market", is considered to be a radically progressive suggestion.

Thursday, February 2, 2017

Egalitarianism and Humanism

The fundamental Egalitarianism of Democracy is that one vote has the same value as every other vote.  Now, since the ground of this equivalence is the common Humanity of voters, Democracy is an essentially and uniquely Humanist system.  Thus, to rectify some recognized flaws in such Egalitarianism--that it cultivates de-vitalizing averageness, that it is incommensurate with unequal comprehensions of the Good of Society, etc., without sacrificing that fundamental Humanism, at least one of two courses seems required: first, as Dewey, notably, proposes, a system of Education that is appropriate to a Democracy must be instituted; second, absent the premise of an essential Egalitarianism of Intellectual capacity entailed in that approach, the development of a system that both retains universal suffrage, and allows for gradation in the value of a vote.  To date, the former seems to be the less daunting of the two, though it may be futile if Humanism is essentially Inegalitarian.

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Democracy and Universal Suffrage

The concept of Democracy entails that of Universal Suffrage, so there are two main impediments to the actualization of that system--someone prevents someone else from voting, or someone refuses to vote.  Thus, accompanying the well-known, and ongoing, efforts to rectify the former problem, should be those targeting the latter. Accordingly, as has been previously discussed, voting should be mandatory, with a None of the Above option integrated into the system.  These days, who should be eligible to live in the United States is probably the most prominent and controversial topic.  But, regardless of the status of that dispute, the only disqualifier from participating in the American Democracy that is inherent in the concept is a detraction from universal suffrage, in either of two ways, including the refusal to vote.