What might we actually discuss?

Political Philosophy
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Borrowing from Frank Ramsey’s “On There Being No Discussable Subject”, the following is a opening to a similar question within political philosophy (hopefully the topic category will make this clear enough, but my intention here is not to cover the whole of philosophy).

As Ramsey did (kind of), I’m going to open with a possible list of things we can’t discuss.

1. Factual disputes

We are simply not in a position to adjudicate on matters of fact. Very rarely are political philosophers also experts on international relations, economics, medicine, environmental sciences etc., but even if we were, we’d be only of the same level of expertise as others in the field. We would not be of a higher level of expertise such that we might adjudicate on competing theories.

The common counter to this is that we can use logic and reason to adjudicate, but of course, we’ll all claim to be doing that, which just kicks the can further down the road - who then adjudicates on that dispute.

So matters of fact must be taken as unresolved where there is dispute on those facts among experts in the field.

2. Factual disputes masquerading as ethical ones

Relating to (1). There is a common class of discussion where overtly factual disputes are coerced into ethical ones to make them amenable to non-expert discourse. For example overbearing police tactics might be defended with “you wouldn’t want criminals out on the streets able to do harm to the vulnerable would you?”. The matter of dispute is clearly over the facts pertaining to whether those being targeted are, in fact, criminals and whether they are, in fact, putting vulnerable people at risk. Or the dispute may be over whether the police tactic in question does, in fact, reduce that risk.

What the dispute is almost certainly not over, is whether it is ethically permissible to deliberately allow vulnerable people to be put in harm’s way.

3. Historical outcomes

I don’t think there’d be any disagreement with the notion that we live in a very complex world with hundreds of factors responsible for any given state of affairs. It’s also evident that we’ve only run history once. We have a sample of one problem.

And yet is is quite a common topic of dispute that “we tried X and it turned out this way, therefore X is wrong”. People will be familiar with this from the classic argument against communism, but it also applies on a meso-scale to discussions about government policy. Each move in politics is a move embedded in it’s historical context, in its time and place, and cannot be readily extracted from that to extrapolate over wide-ranging generalisations about ideological principles.

This is not that same as saying we cannot learn from history, or apply historical outcomes to disputes over political philosophy, but that the mere existence of precedent does not in itself constitute an argument. It is half an argument. “A similar policy was tried in this historical example and the situation then was similar to the situation now in the following ways …”, is the full argument. And, as with (2), it is this second half that is more often the real matter of dispute, but with discourse masquerading as dispute over the first half (that the precedent did indeed occur).

4. The self-evidency of the status quo

That things are the way they are is trivially self-evident and isn’t something which argues against a position saying they may be otherwise.

A centrist, status-quo maintaining, argument is often treated as in an equal position to that of an ideological one, but they do not have the same evidentiary burden. Note - I’m going to assume here that the centrist argument is something like “things must be this way because of x, y, z…”, setting aside the possibility that someone might actually argue the status quo is genuinely ideal and what we would have even in utopia. So the argument is not about how things ought be, but about how things could possibly be.

The counter from the centrist to the idealist has to be of the form that things cannot be the way the idealist intends. The key here is that an argument claiming things must be such-and-such a way has a significantly different burden of proof to an argument claiming that things could be such-and-such a way.

Leaving…?

So what remains as a ‘proper topic’ for discussion in political philosophy? As common with much of the rest of philosophy - internal consistency, coherence, and usefulness.

To what extent is fitting political events to a particular framework more coherent an explanation than the alternative? Which political ideology is most useful for understanding some political event? How might political events be seen under different frameworks, and to what extent is that internally consistent?

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A great OP. I’m away from my computer and just working on my cell phone and at a family function,so I might not be able to respond right away, but I’ll try to come back with more detail later.

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Thanks. I look forward to hearing amy comments you may have.

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The usefulness of a discussion in political philosophy is that you have to state clearly your viewpoints, which gives you clarity to your own thinking. Also, it is very beneficial when you find good, coherent and well-argumented replies that differ from your own. Understanding others is important.

Having a discussion about the philosophy of logic or about mathematics is quite different as you can really find mistakes. Something that someone thinks to be logical actually might be false, illogical and hence the person has made an error. Sure, they might argue that they are right and you are wrong, but in reality the discussion is already over.

With political philosophy there is no chance of this in reality. People have their views on how the World works and it’s quite useless to attempt to correct them that actually “the World doesn’t work like that”. When events have a multitude of reasons, it’s extremely difficult to argue that some reasons are more important than others, when someone has taken to heart one narrative which emphasizes some and disregards others. And we just love narratives in politics.

In a way political philosophy and politics is something like debating economics. Various schools of economics usually make good arguments about something while others emphasize other issues. Usually opposing economic arguments cannot be judged by one being right and the other wrong.

Showing a problem is easy. The real issue what is purposed as a solution. And there, just as in economics, also in political philosophy and in politics the real challenge lies.

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Thanks for the reply.

The usefulness of a discussion in political philosophy is that you have to state clearly your viewpoints, which gives you clarity to your own thinking.

I don’t see how. Perhaps you could expand? It seems just as easy to write a load of half-baked, barely rational, viewpoints as it is to write ones that are well-argued. I’m not sure how the mere process of engaging in a discussion helps. Often, in fact, it seems to me what’s required of many engaged in these discussions is to disengage for a moment and actually think about what they are saying.

I’m not sure you’ve grasped what I’m arguing for here (or else you’ve taken the discussion off into a different topic - which is fine, I suppose). I’m not talking about the pragmatic difficulty of convincing another person they have the wrong view of a political event. I’m talking about the irrationality of us believing that we are in an epistemic position to do so.

I’m arguing that it is not merely impractical to try and ‘set someone right on the facts’ it is irrational to do so when there is expert disagreement on them.

I’m not arguing that it can be challenging to point out that someone is under the sway of some ‘narrative’. I’m arguing it is irrational to think that we could, since doing so would involve the claim that we have possession of some facts or analysis unavailable to other experts in the field.

It’s not, then, about …

what is purposed as a solution

… because that already implies that there is some ‘right’ answer and the problem is how we get these ‘narrative-bewitched’ dissenters to see it. That’s not the problem I’m describing.

The problem I’m describing is one of the de-railing of important political discussion by those who think they can adjudicate on the ‘facts’, that they the only ones not bewitched by the narrative, or by mere mention of historical precedent, or by pivoting to false ethical arguments, or shifting the burden of proof.

Basically, I think political discussion is vital to the lifeblood of a healthy community, but it is being subsumed by these sorts of unproductive diversions when the real issue is that of how to act, now, in the face of all this uncertainty. That’s not so much about facts (we often don’t have those), it’s about ideology.

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I just want to expand on this, to help with clarity on the topic of my OP…

The usefulness of a discussion in political philosophy is that you have to state clearly your viewpoints, which gives you clarity to your own thinking.

This seems like such a common position, particularly in political philosophy, and it’s just self-evidently wrong. It’s trivially easy to defend one’s position with rational argument and facts. I’m not saying everyone does - there’s plenty of arguments out there that are nonsense, but the bar is so low that meeting it is almost irrelevant. It would be something like waxing on about how all the teams in the World Cup won their qualifiers. That’s just the entry requirements, not the actual competition.

Merely being able to construct a rational argument backed by evidence just gets you a seat at the table.

The point is that from that point on, reference to the evidence is almost pointless. We all have rational arguments backed by evidence. None of us can adjudicate on the strength of that evidence since we’re not experts in those fields.

So once ‘at the table’ what then do we use to adjudicate on competing theories? That’s the question I’m exploring.

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This is a bit of a shot in the dark, but if we are talking about usefulness, it seems that an argument’s amenability to revision in the face of new facts - given that it is already rational and evidence based - should matter? That the frameworks used to analyze political events that are not so rigid represent truth more easily as we pursue the process of adjudicating between different arguments in the face of changing facts?

Maybe a proper topic for discussion, then, is how we can more efficiently apply the frameworks we invent? Or perhaps how to align our methods more closely with the kind of rigor we see in the sciences such that we achieve more flexibility and, thus, dynamism?

I know that leaves the normative question almost completely open, so there clearly needs to be much more to it than that; even if we could reduce the process of creating and amending a philosophical framework to a science, that doesn’t address the actual accuracy of any associated arguments over others except insofar as they could be changed to be accurate more easily when the experts manage to make headway.

I suppose, however, that if we assume that there are actual endpoints towards which the discourse is oriented, then we reach those points more quickly, and perhaps more reliably, the more dynamic our arguments are. If there really are right answers, I think greater amenability in the face of changing facts might get us there.

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Not at all. It’s bang on. Exactly the sort of thing I wanted to discuss here.

an argument’s amenability to revision in the face of new facts - given that it is already rational and evidence based - should matter?

Yes, that seems right. Can you give any examples of the sorts of properties you think an argument might have that would make it more amenable to revision?

Maybe something like being un-moored from any overarching ideology helps? But then that might conflict with the equally(?) important quality of being coherent. Broader ideologies cohere better by their very nature, than those explaining events by reference only to specific local factors.

if we assume that there are actual endpoints towards which the discourse is oriented, then we reach those points more quickly, and perhaps more reliably, the more dynamic our arguments are.

Interesting. I can see the appeal, and I don’t disagree, but there’s a caveat in that if our models are irreparably under determined by the facts, then we could end up chasing rainbows?

One problem with adapting to the latest evidence is it always privileges recency, which is not necessarily all that important.

Say five papers were published one year, three said that policy X had raised welfare, two said it lowered it. A responsive ideology might spend that year quite dizzily changing as the new data arrived. A more rigid ideology might be cynical about the batch that conflicted and so be less vaccilatory (but potentially more biased).

The problem is that it is all too easy to fit evidence to a theory with rational argument (and far too many people seem impressed that they’ve done it - I’ve just read the Ukraine thread!). We could, if we wanted, quite easily find reasons to doubt whichever of those studies didn’t match our ideological position. Studies are rarely without their flaws after all.

The attraction to ‘following the facts’ is strong and I totally understand the appeal, but I’m not sure the quality of ‘fact’ we have available to us in political philosophy is sufficiently robust to warrant such an approach.

Really interesting thought though, I’m definitely intrigued by the possibilities there.

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I don’t actually think that there is too much reason to believe that we would end up chasing rainbows if we are able to establish verifiable principles along the way while making progress towards better and more cohesive frameworks in which to analyze political events; what we are talking about is a process. That is to say, in physics, for example, we might not have a unified field theory yet, but I don’t think that many physicists would dispute that it is possible to reconcile the fundamental forces of nature that we largely understand already to potentially establish a unified field theory. I mean, that has been pretty much the goal for a long time.

So, while maybe our models at the cutting edge are underdetermined by facts, we can still leave room for broader statements and arguments provided they aren’t contradicted by the most recently established models informed by those facts.

I have to go shovel snow, but I’ll respond in more detail later!

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I went looking for the text of the article referenced but couldn’t find it. From the web, I gather he wrote it because he was frustrated by the low quality of discussions at his college. You find the kind of problem he was talking about a lot here on the forum.

I don’t necessarily think it applies only to political philosophy and that’s not my strong point, so I’ll reference other philosophical questions also.

This strikes me as a weak argument. You don’t need to be an expert to speak thoughtfully and effectively about any subject. Certainly you need to know something relevant—philosophy without content is meaningless. More importantly you need to know the limits of your knowledge and understanding. We have it easier than people in the past—the we have far greater access to information than they did.

On the other hand, a strong body of knowledge can make a big difference. Truth starts with the specific and grows from there up to the general. RG Collingwood was an historian and archeologist and he grew up in an artistic household. He could and did write authoritatively on art, history, metaphysics, and epistemology. William James was a psychologist and it shows in his philosophy. I’ve been reading and listening to his “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” which is wonderful and insightful into human nature. My own interest in the philosophy of science grows out of my interest in science and my experience as an engineer. For me, that translated immediately into an attraction to epistemology and metaphysics. Strikes me that a political philosopher would have to be knowledgeable in history if they wanted to be taken seriously.

I think we’ve seen enough attempts to make communism work with catastrophic results to be able to say it’s probably not a very good idea as a practical guide to governing. When something doesn’t work once, it makes sense to step back, rethink it, and then try again. After you’ve tried a few times without success, though, it probably makes sense to put your energy into something else.

Are you saying that the status quo should get no special consideration in discussions of the ideal political philosophy? We should keep in mind that any reformed political system will have to be mostly the same as the status quo. We have found in the past that tossing out the old political system and losing continuity and institutional knowledge can lead to disaster. De-Bathification in Iraq is often cited as an example.

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They literally say that even if the philosophers were experts they could not adjudicate when there is disagreement. The way you quoted that might seem to provide scaffolding for your response, but you clearly misunderstand their point. They are not saying that one cannot formulate rational, evidence-based arguments on topics without being an expert, but rather that when there is disagreement among experts on a particular topic, we cannot resolve that factual dispute and, thus, decide on a certain theory being correct.

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I don’t actually think that there is too much reason to believe that we would end up chasing rainbows if we are able to establish verifiable principles along the way while making progress towards better and more cohesive frameworks in which to analyze political events; what we are talking about is a process.

I see. Initially I was thinking of models of understanding that might be blown by the winds of academic fashion a little too much, but, if I read you right, you’re suggesting such a weakness might be one of the very things addressed by a ‘more cohesive framework’. Is that something near what you’re thinking?

So, while maybe our models at the cutting edge are underdetermined by facts, we can still leave room for broader statements and arguments provided they aren’t contradicted by the most recently established models informed by those facts.

I’d certainly like to think so. My hesitation is again about adjudication.

We can have our own models and it would be nice if they were well-informed, but in discussion I feel like we need to be able to say more than just “see my model, see how it’s informed by the facts” because our discussion partner will most likely be able to say the same. The question is, where do we go from there

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I went looking for the text of the article referenced but couldn’t find it.

The proper title is “On There Being No Discussable Subject” (edited now), it was published as an epilogue in ‘The Foundations of Mathematics’. I don’t think there’s an online version available I’m afraid. Worth reading though if you ever get the chance.

From the web, I gather he wrote it because he was frustrated by the low quality of discussions at his college. You find the kind of problem he was talking about a lot here on the forum.

Yes, that’s the sort of thing that provoked this post (not this forum actually, but I’ve already seen examples of it here)

This strikes me as a weak argument. You don’t need to be an expert to speak thoughtfully and effectively about any subject.

As @Toothy_Maw has pointed out, this wasn’t quite my point. It may be my fault for using ‘discussion’ which is an ambiguous term. I mean more ‘debate’ (or possibly even ‘argument’). A situation where there are mutually incompatible interpretations of political events and policies.

I think we’ve seen enough attempts to make communism work with catastrophic results to be able to say it’s probably not a very good idea as a practical guide to governing. When something doesn’t work once, it makes sense to step back, rethink it, and then try again. After you’ve tried a few times without success, though, it probably makes sense to put your energy into something else.

Fair enough. But there are people who would argue that, and also argue in our current era along the lines of ‘Putin…’ or ‘Trump…’ Where these autocrats are held personally responsible for events. So whilst either idea might be true, and both are supported by sufficient evidence, what we can say is that to hold both contains an incoherence which requires further rationale.

It can’t (without reason) be the case that when Stalin and Mao are in charge it’s the system that’s to blame, but when Putin and Trump are in charge its suddenly all their personal fault and the system is fine.

Basically, this is the kind of analysis I’m talking about. To what extent are worldviews coherent, explanatory,.. Not ‘which has most evidence’

Are you saying that the status quo should get no special consideration in discussions of the ideal political philosophy?

No, not quite. I’m saying that arguing in favour of the status quo is rarely idealistic. I don’t often come across arguments claiming the status quo is perfection. The arguments are (much like the example you gave) ones of unfortunate necessity. ‘We would change to system b only unfortunately rapid change like that can be problematic’. I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m saying the burden of proof is different. Claiming a thing can’t be done is a different claim to claiming it can. To prove it can’t one must eliminate all ways it could work. To prove it can one only need show one of the ways it could work.

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Honestly, I’m not totally sure if that was exactly what I meant when I wrote that, but it is, ostensibly, what I meant. I guess it’s what I mean now.

Yes, if we make our arguments particularly dynamic, simultaneously attempting to establish principles to guide us towards more cohesive frameworks could compensate for the extra potential for the negative effects of the primacy of recency or the uncertain directionality of just “trying to follow the facts” as they appear.

I guess it would be because new data or facts would need to be integrated into something more procedural than just a model of understanding based upon localized facts or data. Thus, there would be more room to dismiss what might look like stochastic noise (for lack of a better term) to our favored model.

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I don’t think I misunderstood what you were trying to say, and I do think my response was appropriate. Politics is all about resolving issues between conflict and disagreement. If you say, we have to wait until arguments are finalized before we can discuss their implications, then we can never talk about anything. Maybe that’s your point, but it doesn’t make any sense to me. The main problem with this is that we have to make decisions based on the information and understanding we do have. The solution is to just do the best we can.

I don’t see any contradiction. I can hold Mao responsible for what happened at the same time I identify it as a result of a program or policy. Is capitalism better than communism? I’d say yes. I think it’s more in line with human nature. It’s a system that could, at least in theory, run without government involvement. Still, there’s plenty of bad things to say about capitalism.

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Thus, we could adjudicate between theories based upon how well they resist disintegration when measured against our most accurate models of understanding - which should themselves be expressions of the kind of dynamic truth-seeking that, ideally, orients us towards some sort of endpoint. The more cohesive our models are, the better this would work.

@Pseudonym

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If you say, we have to wait until arguments are finalized before we can discuss their implications,

I don’t.

The main problem with this is that we have to make decisions based on the information and understanding we do have. The solution is to just do the best we can.

Exactly. My argument is that ‘the best we can’ is not to waste time pretending that laymen can adjudicate on expert opinion, or on pretending that the disagreement is about ethics when it is about facts, or in shifting the burden of proof, all of which are typical of discussions in politics.

I don’t see any contradiction. I can hold Mao responsible for what happened at the same time I identify it as a result of a program or policy.

I didn’t say you couldn’t. I said it was in want of a reason. The question is - why is communism (the system) to blame, or partly to blame, for the atrocities of Stalin, or Mao, but capitalism barely gets a mention in the atrocities of Putin and Trump? There’s nothing wrong with holding the view that it’s the case, but there’s a hidden premise which needs extrapolating.

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I guess it would be because new data or facts would need to be integrated into something more procedural than just a model of understanding based upon localized facts or data. Thus, there would be more room to dismiss what might look like stochastic noise (for lack of a better term) to our favored model.

Yes. I’ll admit not the direction I was intending the thread to go in, but without a doubt interesting. The next stage is obviously to think about what sorts of procedures might achieve this.

Thus, we could adjudicate between theories based upon how well they resist disintegration when measured against our most accurate models of understanding - which should themselves be expressions of the kind of dynamic truth-seeking that, ideally, orients us towards some sort of endpoint. The more cohesive our models are, the better this would work.

I agree. This is much more the sort of model-comparing I had in mind. Instead of adjudicating on facts, we compare models for other attributes such as resilience over time (assuming as process of assimilation of new facts has taken place, of course - there may be nothing more than dogmatic resistance to them!)

I suppose I’m still a little wary ‘truth-seeking’. I like the notion of pruning down models which are overwhelmingly contradicted by the evidence. I’m lass sure about whether it is even possible to make further progress using the evidence at all. One thing about politics, and human civilisation) is that it is progressing quite fast. It’s not like studying physics, which has had the same ‘laws’ for eternity. they patiently sit there unchanging until we discover them. Human societies are dynamic, no sooner have we discovered a guiding principle behind them than they have moved on and no longer behave that way.

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Maybe a topic for another thread?

That’s a good one. Didn’t even think of that.

Yeah, even if we decide on some topics that can be properly discussed, having really accurate models would depend just as much or more upon the political scientists, anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, etc. establishing facts and principles quickly enough that the underdetermination of whatever models we might come up with is not too glaring. Thus, I think more dynamic models might have a leg up in this capacity too if there is tension between what we might discuss and the establishment of facts and principles by experts.

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As far as I know the question of the legitimacy of institutions like states is a big part of political philosophy. This definitely isn’t a debate over empirical facts but more akin to ethics so this doesn’t go into any of your categories so it’s something we might discuss?
am I missing something?