Right Reason

What is Complexity?

 

Melanie Mitchell, an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, provides a quick description of how the study of complexity can influence our understanding of the world in "How Can the Study of Complexity Transform Our Understanding of the World?" A short excerpt: 

The “study of complexity” refers to the attempt to find common principles underlying the behavior of complex systems—systems in which large collections of components interact in nonlinear ways. Here, the term nonlinear implies that the system can’t be understood simply by understanding its individual components; nonlinear interactions cause the whole to be “more than the sum of its parts.”

Complex systems scientists try to understand how such collective sophistication can come about, whether it be in ant colonies, cells, brains, immune systems, social groups, or economic markets.  People who study complexity are intrigued by the suggestive similarities among these disparate systems.  All these systems exhibit self-organization: the system’s components organize themselves to act as a coherent whole without the benefit of any central or outside “controller”.  Complex systems are able to encode and process information with a sophistication that is not available to the individual components. Complex systems evolve—they are continually changing in an open-ended way, and they learn and adapt over time. Such systems defy precise prediction, and resist the kind of equilibrium that would make them easier for scientists to understand. 

Most discussions of complexity go without a very good definition of what complexity is, so Mitchell's essay is certainly valuable in helping us focus on exactly what we mean by "complexity." 

 

Nassim N. Taleb provides his own description of the essential features of complexity in Antifragile:

The organic-machanical dichotomy is a good starter distinction to build intuitions about the difference between two kinds of phenomena, but we can do better. Many things such as society, economic activities and markets, and cultural behavior are apparantly man-made but grow on their own to reach some kind of self-organization. They may not be strictly biological in that, in a way, they multiply and replicate - think of rumors, ideas, technologies, and businesses. They are closer to the cat than to the washing machine but tend to be mistaken for washing machines. Accordingly we can generalize our distinction beyond the biological-nonbiological. More effective is the distinction between noncomplex and complex systems. 

Artificial, manmade mechanical and engineering contraptions with simple responses are complicated, but not "complex," as they don't have interdependencies. You push a buttom, say, a light switch, and get an exact response, with no possible ambiguity in the consequences, even in Russia. But with complex systems, interdependencies are severe. You need to think in terms of ecology: if you remove a specific animal you disrupt a food chain: its predators will starve and its prey will grow unchecked, causing complications and series of cascading side effects. Lions are exterminated by the Canaanites, Phoenicians, Romans, and later inhabitants of Mount Lebanon, leading to the proliferaton of goats who crave tree roots, contributing to the deforestation of mountain areas, consequences that are hard to see ahead of time. Likewise, if you shut down a bank in New York, it will cause ripple effects from Iceland to Mongolia. 

In a complex world, the notion of "cause" itself is suspect; it is either nearly impossible to detect or not really defined - another reason to ignore newspapers, with their constant supply of causes for things (Taleb 2013, 56). 

 

The notion of complexity and its implications for our cheished notion of causality has important implications for what it means to understand the world. The idea that in order to have knowledge of the world, we have to know its causes dates at least as far back as Plato's "Meno," and Aristotle provided a mature description of the doctrine in The Physics:

For the point of our investigation is to acquire knowledge, and prerequisitve for knowing anything is understanding why it is - in other words, grasping its primary cause. Obviously, then, this is what we have to do in the case of coming to be and ceasing to be, and natural change in general. Then, once we know the principles of these things, we can try to analyze anything we are looking into in terms of these principles (Aristotle. Phys II.3.194b18-22, trans. Waterfield).

The attempt to try and discover general causes of things within a complex system shall always fail. Whereas we can provide a general discription of a complex system like an ecosystem, as Taleb did above, we can never identify the exact causes. Instead, all we can do is to point out that there were certain patterns of events which lead to the creation of the world as we see it, and to humbly accept that we shall be able to go no further than that rough description. Rather than trying to understand those systems in terms of the arrow of causality, we can only understand them in terms of patterns, and that is how the notion of complexity should change our basic world view. 

 

 

Bibliography

Aristotle. The Physics. Translated by Robin Waterfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. 

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. Antifragile. New York: Random House, 2013.

Wonder and Inquiry

 

 

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

-Socrates, Theaetetus by Plato

 

The proper place to begin any inquiry is with wonder. Wonder is by far the most innocent and pure place to begin inquiry. When we begin inquiry with either a desire to solve a specific problem or to get a certain answer, our perspective is skewed by those desires. Inquiry can lead us anywhere, paradigms can change, and our priors can, nay will change in the course of inquiry. It is a journey which must be begun with the best mindset possible. When we are wedded with certain solutions and even certain problems, we cannot follow the inquiry where ever it may lead. 

 

The theme goes back to ancient times. Aristotle wrote about wonder as the start of philosophy in The Metaphysics:

For it is clear that this science is not productive also from the earthly history of philosophy. For it was because of wonder that men both now and originally began to philosophize. To begin with, they wondered at those puzzles that were to hand, such as about the affections of the moon and events connected with the sun and starts and about the origin of the universe. And the man is who is puzzled and amazer is thought to be ignorant (hence the lover of stories is, in a way, a lover of wisdom, since a story is comprised of wonders). And so, if men indeed began to philosophize to escape ignorance, it is clear that they pursued science for the sake of knowledge and not for any utility… So it is clear that we seek it for no other use but rather, as we say, as a man is for himself and not for another, so is this science the only one of the sciences that is free (982b).

 

The Origin of Species is a concrete example of wonder as the beginning of inquiry. Charles Darwin’s “theory of descent with modification; through variation and Natural Selection” was a response to his wonder at the orderliness of the biological world. That wonder was one of the clear motivations leading to his enquiry is manifest in the couple of sentences of The Origin of Species:

When on board H.M.S. Beagle, as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the organic beings inhabiting South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts, as will be seen in the latter chapters of this volume, seemed to throw some light on the origin of species - that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers. On my return home, it occurred to me, in 1837, that something might perhaps be made out on this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it (Darwin 1876, 1). 

It was not out of a desire to augment man’s capability for domesticating animals nor a desire to justify certain intellectual priors that Charles Darwin set forth on figuring out that mystery of mysteries. Rather it was out of a desire to trace out the orderliness of the natural work - the orderly distribution of species across the planet and the seemingly orderly line of current species to those known only by their fossils - back to their causes that Darwin was stimulated to write. Darwin’s description of his own wonder also goes to show that the way we approach our inquiry influences our stylized facts. 

Charles Darwin even ended The Origin of Species on a note of wonder when he began the final paragraph with the sentence:

It is interest to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, and birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting upon us (Ibid, 429).

Overall, Darwin’s theory of descent with modification was a response to his wonder at the orderliness of the biological world. The project which he sets out in the book is largely about his own quest to still his own mind, and to answer questions which have their origin from his own wonder at the orderliness of the biological world.

 

That inquiry should begin with wonder is true for economics as it is for any other discipline. When the economist looks out the window, what he sees is an orderly commercial society. Despite disparate interests and selfish propensities, the mammals known as Homo sapiens have managed to work together and to cohere their interactions into something which is colloquially referred to singularly as ‘the economy.’ Across the entire world, human beings have managed to make themselves a part of an orderly division of labor which enables the anonymous cooperation of everyone within that order even though they have no clue that they are in cooperation. 

All of the people in Leonard Reed’s “I, Pencil” have no idea that they are cooperating together in order to produce a pencil, and yet they are. “I, Pencil” is the most powerful stylized fact which economists are faced with. Yes, there is such a thing as involuntary unemployment and yes things do go wrong, but all of that disorder cannot overwhelm the greater order of the market. Pencils get made despite all of the forces trying to disrupt their production. Sometimes more pencils can get produced than are needed and sometimes less pencils can be produced than are needed, but nevertheless there is a concatenate order to their production. A concatenate order which we should wonder at, and that astonishment should be our stimulus for doing economics. 

Liberty, and Prudence in Policy: The Case of Marijuana

 

 

In a post responding to the severe criticism David Brooks has received on his own unfortunate column arguing against the legalization of marijuana, T.N., a blogger at The Economist’s “Democracy in America” blog, comes to his defense in “Marijuana Legalisation: Sort of In Defense of David Brooks.” There he argues that while Brooks’ point certainly could have been better argued, that Brooks certainly had a point which is often neglected in the tide of increasing support for legalization.  

The most noteworthy part about the blog post, though, does not have to do with the topic of cannabis, or David Brooks. It is that T.N.’s post is paradigmatic of a certain mentality about policy. That mentality is the belief that policy is about a matter of utilitarian calculus. A good piece of legislation is therefore one that encourages the general welfare while a bad piece of legislation, vice versa, is one that diminishes the general welfare. T.N. advocates for such an understanding when in writing:

The point is that however the cost/benefit formula is constructed, there are factors on both sides of the equation. Lives have been ruined by marijuana as well as by its prohibition. It may be facile to lament the legalisation of the drug while ignoring the damage wrought by prohibition, but it is equally silly to assume that there will be no losers from the unprecedented experiments in Colorado and Washington.

 

According to this view, a politician’s craft is a matter of prudence - defined by Aristotle as being “about human concerns, about things open to deliberation” (Nicomachean Ethics 1141b). When legalizing marijuana, then, politicians have to weigh the benefits of its legalization compared to those of its prohibition, and if those benefits outweigh the costs, then the legislation should be passed.

Completely lacking from T.N.’s  account of legislation, though, is any voice for the presumption of liberty. The idea that the prudential decision ought to, by principle, be left to the person who shall serve to reap the decision’s fruit is not be to found there. Nowhere in T.N.’s appraisal of legalization does the columnist seem to consider the idea that people ought to be free to destroy themselves. Instead, politicians stand above their citizens, to ensure their happiness. When the columnist addresses the choices of individuals, it is only with respect to either minimizing or maximizing their utility: “Moreover, lots of people smoke marijuana because they like it; the drug therefore has a ‘utility function’ that ought to be factored in to any cost/benefit analysis.”  

That is a dim view of human free will. A cost/benefit analysis from on high simply looking at people as utility maximizers fails to capture the full tapestry of human motivations across society, and it fails to consider the multiplicity of motivations for why people would make their own prudential choices. The presumption of liberty, though, acknowledges that, and in acknowledging it, respects human beings as free to their own prudence lest a grave concern overwhelm that presumption.

 

The presumption of liberty alone, not the politician’s prudence, should be the reason for the legalization of cannabis. It is not that marijuana does no more harm than alcohol, or that marijuana might even have positive effects across societies, but that people should be given the respect that they deserve, and that no one should claim to make the prudential decision to partake in drugs for them. There is simply no scope for a superior in politics to interfere with that decision, and so there is no reason why politicians need to deliberate about it. It simply should not be their decision to make.  

Humanity is, at heart, a species with a deep impulse towards self-destruction, and if someone desires it, he will be able to achieve it through one means or another. Talk about the political prudence of legalizing marijuana does nothing to address that.  Prudence is a matter of proper deliberation, but there is no strong reason for why the choice of whether to smoke marijuana should not be made by politicians, especially when it comes to the well being of individuals.  

 

The fact shall always remain that if people are to be free to choose virtue, they must be free to choose vice. Whether it is the case of the problem of evil or the legalization of drugs, people are free agents whom need to be respected as free agents. Ensuring the integrity of  what Adam Smith called “the obvious and simple system of natural liberty” which liberals should be the primary concern of politicians, matters of prudential legislation only following after that. As far as the legalization of marijuana, it would be one small way forward towards ensuring the existence of that system of liberty. It isn’t for no reason that The Economist named Uruguay its country of 2013 for enacting such an “obviously sensible” change.

Aristotle and Adam Smith on Virtue

 

Nature, accordingly, has endowed (men), not only with a desire of being approved of, but with a desire of being what ought to be approved of; or of being what he himself approves of in other men. 
-Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Every craft and every line of inquiry, and likewise every action and decision, seems to seek some good; that is why some people to describe good as what everything seeks.

-Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics

 

Adam Smith and Aristotle provide two different ways to look at virtue. While virtue serves as a standard for judging the praiseworthiness of conduct in Smith’s writing, it serves as a description of the ideal functions of human beings, determined by their nature, for Aristotle. 

The difference is reflective of the different perspectives which the two take in their ethical inquiry. Aristotle begins The Nicomachean Ethics by thinking about what is the good for humanity in terms of means and ends, and how people, as craftsmen, can attain the human good. Adam Smith begins The Theory of Moral Sentiments with a description of the importance of sympathy and empathy to human interactions. The Nicomachean Ethics is a book about what virtue is, and how people can attain it, The Theory of Moral Sentiments is a book about how people’s moral sentiments lead them to sympathize and judge one another, and while both descriptions certainly neglect much to be found in both works, it captures the difference between the two. And this difference leads to a radically different conception of the nature of virtue.

 

The vision of virtue that Aristotle provides in The Nicomachean Ethics is one in which virtue is the key to human happiness. “Since happiness is a certain sort of activity of the soul in accord with complete virtue, we must examine virtue; for that will perhaps also be a way to study happiness better” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1102a). Here and throughout his corpus, Aristotle uses the term “εὐδαιμονία” which we today translate as “happiness.” “Happiness”, though, does not capture the full breadth of the meaning of “εὐδαιμονία.” “Εὐδαιμονία” can perhaps be better translated as “flourishing.”  It is characteristic of a life worthwhile. It requires activity in accordance with reason, and so is contrasted with the pleasant, yet passive, emotion of fulfillment which characterizes “happiness.” 

Virtue, in turn, was the necessary condition for that flowering of the human condition which makes εὐδαιμονία possible. The virtues virtues, therefore, are the ends which we should all be orientated towards in our behavior if we are to truly live a life worth living.  

 

For Adam Smith, on the other hand, virtue is not something towards which human beings are orientated. Instead, virtue is a standard by which we can judge the behavior of ourselves, and others. Important to Smith’s entire moral framework in The Theory of Moral Sentiments is the notion of propriety with respect to the impartial spectator. 

The impartial spectator is a moral construct, and he is the one who is the spectator to the behavior which is to be judged. He starts first simply as a thought experiment of what would be the reaction of the person who is there to judge the conduct: If Bob saw Sally kill Jim, what would Bob’s reaction be. The impartial spectator then becomes a demigod as the book progresses, and the thought experiment becomes more and more about what the great Impartial Spectator in the great firmament of heaven of human conduct. 

Virtue in Adam Smith’s thought is therefore a matter of creating a standard for conduct. Whereas in The Nicomachean Ethics, virtue is a matter of what is the constitution of the moral agent, and whether he is flourishing according to his nature, it is a matter of standard of conduct, and whether a moral agent is deserving of praise. 

  

Compare how Aristotle and Smith speak of the cardinal virtue of prudence: “In his steadiness of his industry and frugality, in his steadily sacrificing the ease and enjoyment of the present moment for the probably expectation of the still greater ease and enjoyment of a more distant but more lasting period of time, the prudent man is always both supported and rewarded by the entire approbation of the impartial spectator…” (TMS, VI.i.11). Aristotle on the same subject: “The remaining possibility, then, is that prudence is a state of grasping the truth, involving reason, concerned with action about things that are good or bad for a human being… That is why Pericles and such people are the ones whom we regard as prudent, because they are able to study what is good for themselves and for human beings…” (Nich. Ethics, 1140b). 

 

All-in-all, whereas Adam Smith uses virtue in order to determine who would be worthy of the praise of the impartial spectator, Aristotle uses it in order to talk about the character of a moral agent. Virtue, for Smith, is a matter of standards of conduct. Virtue, for Aristotle, is a matter of the flowering of a certain possibilities within human nature

 

On Agency and Identity

 

Love is the expression of one's values, the greatest reward you can earn for the moral qualities you have achieved in your character and person, the emotional price paid by one man for the joy he receives from the virtues of another.

 -Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle wrote that the greatest good for human beings was to be found in their capabilities for reason, and that the most choiceworthy life for a human being was one dedicated to the enhancement of our understanding. We need not follow Aristotle in thinking that study is “the activity of (the) divine element” (1177b25, translation by Terence Irwin) to agree with him that the most excellent and praiseworthy traits of human life have to do with the life of the mind. Not only have those rational traits given our species the capability of bringing the challenge of Genesis 1:27 to completion, but it has also enabled each individual person agency, the capability to reflect back upon their lives, and to decide who they want to be.

 

Although surely encumbered by a wounded nature, human beings have, by their rational nature, a world of possibilities in front of them. Through reflection and erudition, they can expand those possibilities, and learn to differentiate the virtuous from that which is not. If rationality means anything, it means that the rational agent can do those two things. 

As for the former, in her lecture “Apollo and Dionysus,” Ayn Rand, ever the Apollonian, noted that it was “man's reason that brought him to the stars.” By virtue of their rationality, human beings can understand chains of concatenation within the world, and manipulate those causal nexus, as what occurs within a Saturn V rocket upon ignition, in order to better their position in the world.

As for the latter, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in Book III, Chapter 3 of his Summa Contra Gentiles (translation by Ralph McInerny) that the rational agent “acts for the sake of an end, determining itself to the end” and later that the rational agent “determines an end for itself only under the formality of the good...” Rationality was thus the part of the human being that enables her to be able to discern the good in the world, and to strive after it. 

 

It is here, in these two aspects that we find what is really commendable in human beings across the world: their ability, as ends in and of themselves (to throw Herr Kant into the mix), to make the world, both external and internal, according to their own decisions. Relating to the external world, our reason has enabled us to raise skyscrapers, and, even more amazingly when we actually ponder about it, to devise ways to feed around seven billion human beings who now call Earth home. Relating to the internal world, our reason has enabled us to envision our own virtue, to have a moral vision of what we ought to be, and to be able to give that vision chase with all of our human passion. This is what each person should take pride in, what deserves admiration from others, and what deserve to be the foundation of a truly human identity.

Neuroscience, Rationality, and Virtue

 

 

"If I say that it is impossible for me to keep quiet because that means disobeying the god, you will not believe me and will think I am being ironical. On the other hand, if I say that it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virute every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living for men, you will believe me even less."

-Socrates as recorded by Plato in the Apology

 

 

In his book, How We Decide (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company 2009), Jonah Lehrer uses recent evidence from neuroscience to argue that morality is not a matter of reason, but rather a matter of emotion. Like Hume, who argued that reason was the slave of the passions and argued morality to be but feelings of approval and disapproval, Lehrer finds moral judgments as less a conscious deduction and more an emotivistic response. In his argument, Lehrer primarily takes Kant, and the Enlightenment tradition as his opponents, but he argues that the ethical consensus for thousands of years from the Ten Commandments to the categorical imperative are based upon a the erroneous assumption that “our moral decisions are based on rational thought” (How We Decide, pg. 173).

According to Lehrer, when we make a moral judgment, the motivation for the decision is not a rational deliberation, but rather a unconscious emotional reaction. Within his vision of morality, our reason serves not as a guiding light, but rather as a post-hoc apologist which serves to make our emotional reactions seem reasonable. The thrust of Lehrer's argument is thus that it is a mistake to find the source of morality in reason because people's actual moral judgments are actually based on emotional reactions.

 

 

However, all of this in turn misses the thrust of the Socratic maxim that a life unreflected is a life not worth living. What Plato is emphasizing in the Apology through Socrates is not that at every single point in our moral lives we make moral decisions based on deductive reasoning taking all of the evidence into account, but rather that we can reflect on previous moral decisions in order to shape our character to make better decisions in the future. This perspective is echoed in Charles Darwin's description of a moral being in The Descent of Man as something that can reflect back on past actions with either approval or disapproval.

Furthermore, in the Nichomachean Ethics (trans. Terence Irwin, 2nd edition), Aristotle finds virtue not in singular acts and feelings but a habit of action that causes the person in question to perform her functions well. Leaving aside the question of what the proper functions of a human being are, this is a much different vision of morality from the vision that is tacit within Lehrer's account in How We Choose. To suggest, as Lehrer does, that the essential use of reason in a moral agent's life comes at the moment of decision making thus ignores a large strand of ethical inquiry, from Aristotle to Darwin, that places more emphasis on reflection and the cultivation of proper habits.

 

Rather than morality being about singular judgments of the rectitude of an action, morality within Plato and Aristotle's tradition of virtue ethics is about the formation of a character able to habitually make the right decisions. In a classic article in the American Journal of Psychology, “Habit,” B.R. Andrews defined “Habit” as “a habit, from the standpoint of psychology, is a more or less fixed way of thinking, willing, or feeling acquired through previous repetition of a mental experience." (American Journal of Psychology,Vol. 14. No. 2. (1908) pp 121-149). Today, “Habit” is first defined in the Oxford American English Dictionary as “A settled or regular tendency or practice.” The point of a reflected life was not we would be able to make deductive judgment for the propriety of each action. Instead, it was that, by proper reflection, we would be able to form a character that could reflexively make such decision based on our habits.

The virtue-ethical tradition does not reject that moral decisions are often made by emotional responses within the moment; instead, it teaches that we need to grow a virtuous character that can make proper emotional responses informed by our previous reflections. Rather than denying how moral decisions are made, as does the Enlightenment tradition, it harnesses and improves upon it. By living a life well reflected upon, we are able to train our moral intuitions and shape our emotions to react in the ways that reason determines to be right. The virtuous person then doesn't need to deliberate on most moral decisions; rather, she has trained herself to be able to react almost automatically in a proper manner. It is not for no reason that Charles Darwin wrote, again in The Descent of Man, that the perfect moral being is able to act in the most noble manner possible purely by reflex.

 

Explaining this vision of the moral life in terms of neuroscience would have been interesting, especially considering that Lehrer has an earlier chapter about how in decision making ("The Predictions of Dopamine," pp. 28-56). When someone has consistently repeated a pattern of behavior, he can rely on emotion in making that decision because of how dopamine in the brain created expectations we are often only partially to. This echoes the process that Aristotle wrote virtue is required in the opening of the Nichomachean Ethics' second book when he wrote: 

Virtue, then, is of two sorts, virtue of thought and virtue of character. Virtue of thought arises and grows mostly from teching; that is why it needs experience and time [i.e., of ēthos] results from habits [ethos]; hence its name 'ethical', slightly varried from 'ethos'. (1103a15-18)

The similarities between the two are striking. Striking enough that I doubt Lehrer became familiar with the Aristotelean literature before opening up a broad-side assault on all of Western moral philosophy.

He misses a great opportunity, though. Since Aristotle relies on a metaphysical understanding of the human person, much of it rooted in his biological thought, within his writings that could be critiqued and improved upon with a modern understanding of the cognitive sciences. Lehrer could have helped provide that; instead, he simply launches on an attack of an entire tradition of inquiry he is not familiar with.

Moving backto the main topic, that each moral judgment may rely more on an aesthetic sense of the world than a rational deduction does not mean that moral decision making is fundamentally divorced from reason. What commentators like Lehrer, even though it may be working off of the correct neuroscientific perspective, fail to take into account are the lessons of the Classical virtue-ethical tradition. As taught by Plato and Aristotle, the use of reason within moral decision making is not a matter of on-the-spot decisions, but reflecting upon previous decisions in order to make possible the gradual growth of a habitual character that can make such on-the-spot decisions properly. By ignoring both the role of habits and reason's reflective capacity, not as simply something able to calculate but to look back on actions, Lehrer's critique of reason in morality falls short by his ignorance of virtue ethics.