My friend Bas van der Vossen has an interesting paper, "In Defense of the Ivory Tower: Why Philosophers Should Stay Out of Politics", forthcoming in Philosophical Psychology.
I'm curious to see what people think of it. I'm inclined to think that premise (2) of his argument ("The task of political philosophers is to seek the truth about political issues") is false. Seeking the truth is certainly one of our tasks, but must it dominate all other considerations? What would be wrong with balancing truth-seeking against making the world a better place? Bas briefly considers something like this objection on p. 21 of the unpublished draft of his manuscript, but I don't find his response very convincing. He writes:
The problem...is easy to spot. Suppose that the need to make the world a better place really does trump considerations of truth. That raises an obvious question: how should we go about this? In order to make the world a better place, we first need to know what would make it better. But to ask that question is to ask the central question of political philosophy. And to answer it we need to know the truth about political philosophy. In this sense, truth cannot be avoided.
By my lights, the line of argument here hangs on a false dilemma: namely, either (1) we pursue truth, or (2) we pursue making the world a better place. Bas' argument then is that if we want to do (2) effectively, we have to do (1)--thus, the idea that advocacy should "trump" truth is incoherent (one can't advocate properly without first knowing truth).
Suppose, though, that we substitute a weaker goal: that of balancing concern for truth with some probability of making the world a better place. Bas' line of reasoning in the above passage doesn't show that this is incoherent, nor, it seems to me, does anything in the rest of the paper show that it is wrong. Advocacy may well have epistemic and moral risks (viz. the kinds of biases Bas talks about in his paper), but why not think that those risks--the risks of making the world a worse place--might be morally outweighed by a significant probability of making the world a better place through advocacy? To see how this might be the case, consider an oversimplified but broadly concrete case.
Suppose, on the one hand, I do not engage in advocacy. Then suppose that because I don't, my biases are lessened and my chance of finding The True Theory of Justice is 99%. However, suppose that because I do not engage in advocacy, the chances of actually convincing many people of The True Theory are small to nil (so that even if I find the True Theory, my finding it will do very little good). On the other hand, suppose that if I engage in advocacy, my probability of finding The True Theory falls to 70% but, through advocacy, I stand to convince many people of whatever theory I arrive at. Even though I risk great harm in the latter case (should my biases drive me to convince people of a False Theory), there is a far greater chance of doing great good (should I settle on and convince many of the True Theory).
For Bas' argument to be sound, he would have to show that the moral risks of playing it safe (99% of finding True Theory+no advocacy) outweigh the possible moral benefits of the other option (75% chance of True Theory+effective advocacy), given that the benefits of the latter could be tremendous. Now, maybe there is a good moral argument for playing it safe here over playing it risky--but I don't quite see such an argument in his paper.
On one final note, I can't help but wonder what the implications are for Bas' role as contributor over at Bleeding Heart Libertarians. Given that the blog--by its own self-description--engages in political advocacy ("We seek here to revive, energize, and extend that tradition—to demonstrate that contemporary libertarians can, in addition to their traditional vindication of individual liberty, offer effective, powerful, and innovative responses to the problems of economic vulnerability and injustice and to their social, political, and cultural consequences"), shouldn't Bas call it quits (if he hasn't already)?
No worries, Bas is only employed in our truth-seeking division, not our public outreach division.
Posted by: Jason Brennan | 07/21/2014 at 09:21 PM
Hi Jason: Thanks for your comment! Of course, even if Bas is only in your truth-seeking division, he's still contributing to an advocacy *organization* (which BHL is)--which is itself a kind of indirect advocacy (his posts do publicly "advance the libertarian cause", do they not?). Indeed, aren't his posts--to the extent that they defend libertarian views, espousing them publicly--akin to public "votes" in favor of libertarianism...in which case, if libertarianism is a harmful view, Bas is akin to a bad voter? (He could, after all, refrain from "voting" at small cost to himself!). ;)
On a more serious note, it's not as though I have a problem with Bas being an advocate! First, I'm not convinced (yet) by his argument against philosophers engaging in political advocacy. Second, given that I defend a (new) version of libertarianism myself (though probably quite a different version of it than anyone at BHL), I'm all for public discussion of the view!
Posted by: Marcus Arvan | 07/21/2014 at 10:15 PM
In the post at BHL, Bas describes the first premise as follows: (1) People who take up a certain role or profession thereby acquire a prima facie moral duty to make a reasonable effort to avoid those things that predictably make them worse at their tasks.
From the same empirical research that I imagine Bas is citing, we know that taking a position on a topic (or identifying as X in relation to that topic) can cause bias. Does this mean that we have a prima facie moral duty to avoid taking positions, *especially* when they are public? If so, Bas isn't making an even remotely reasonable effort at avoiding those types of behaviors. He's not only staked out a position, but he has publicly announced it and advocated for it. The commenters in the thread also give other good reasons to suppose that (1) is false.
I also have a slightly different objection to (2) as well. It could be that the best way to find the truth is for political philosophers to take up positions and argue for them. If this is the case, it means means that the *task* of each individual political philosopher is to seek the truth. Instead, we ought to think that the individual's task is to put the best argument forward for the position that they think is most likely to be correct. If this is the case, being a political activist won't be very - if at all - harmful to the political philosopher's task.
Posted by: Matt DeStefano | 07/23/2014 at 03:13 AM
Hi Matt: Thanks for your comment.
You write: "From the same empirical research that I imagine Bas is citing, we know that taking a position on a topic (or identifying as X in relation to that topic) can cause bias. Does this mean that we have a prima facie moral duty to avoid taking positions, *especially* when they are public? If so, Bas isn't making an even remotely reasonable effort at avoiding those types of behaviors. He's not only staked out a position, but he has publicly announced it and advocated for it."
I entirely agree. I'm very puzzled by his defense of participating at BHL in his post. His justification, essentially, is that he doesn't *think* his participation there biases him. But this is precisely what the very studies he cites in his paper predict he should think even if it *does* bias him (people judge themselves not to be biased situations that do in fact bias them).
Posted by: Marcus Arvan | 07/23/2014 at 10:51 AM
Matt, that is an interesting challenge. I think the correct response is that it is not reasonably possible to avoid arriving at conclusions. So that's not excluded by my principle in (1). That principle, incidentally, is very plausible. I honestly can't see why you'd resist it.
Marcus, one last time: my response was not that I don't think I'm biased. My response was that, looking at my background and the nature of the blog, the additional risk of becoming biased by joining the blog seemed very low to me. That's an ex ante assessment, not a piece of ex post introspection. The latter is extremely unreliable and, having actually studied this literature, I'm not so dumb as to rely on it. The former is fallible too, and surely subject to biased assessment on my part. Here I can't do anything more than my best. That's why I explained my reasons for the decision and repeatedly invited people to persuade me my ex ante reasoning was flawed. Just saying "but you're biased" isn't exactly helping. But I'll leave it at that.
Posted by: Bas van der Vossen | 07/23/2014 at 02:23 PM
Hi Bas: Thanks for your comment.
I'm not saying you are biased--merely that you may be, and that, according to your own argument, people shouldn' reply on their personal judgments (ex ante or ex post) of whether they are biased (or the risks of further biasing them), precisely because political activism biases them (making them blind to their own biases!).
The very point of your paper is that philosophers shouldn't engage in activism and then say, "Hey, I'm doing my best. Give me reasons to believe I may be risking greater bias, despite my belief that the risks are small." Demonstrating that your work at BHL has either biased you or increased your risk of bias would be a remarkably difficult task, one that neither I nor, I suspect, other readers can accomplish. But again, isn't the point of your paper that people shouldn't have to do that--that we should take the *empirical* evidence regarding bias as dictating that we philosophers shouldn't engage in political activism, our own judgments of the risks notwithstanding?
Also, bias can be a really subtle thing. You may have already had libertarian leanings before joining BHL, but your work there could well have (1) solidified your views, and (2) given you subtle and hard-to-detect reasons for lobbying harder for views than you might otherwise have, given the personal-professional benefits involved (a community of people who reinforce libertarian views, etc.). These are real risks that anyone faces in joining a political organization. Even committed democrats, for instance, may become *more* committed--and more strident--after working with other democrats. How do you know something similar hasn't happened in your case? (Note: I'm not suggesting that it has! But your paper points to research that this kind of stuff does happen--and it is part of your argument for staying away from activism).
Posted by: Marcus Arvan | 07/23/2014 at 02:35 PM
What counts as "political activism"? If I am on an admissions committee, and I see that my fellow committee members are openly disregarding applications from members of a particular sex or race or ethnic background, should I do nothing to oppose their egregious discrimination? If I witness a lynching, do I simply walk away? If I am a citizen of a nation that allows for discrimination in the workplace of lynching in the legal system, do I turn away, for fear that getting involved will hinder my ability to seek the truth impartially? I think none of us should think that our abilities as impartial truth-seekers are good enough in the first place to suffer very much damage from engaging in these activities.
Posted by: Ram Neta | 07/23/2014 at 11:34 PM