David Braybrooke

Philosophy of social science

The only foundation for the knowledge of the natural sciences is the idea that the general laws, known or unknown, which regulate the phenomena of the Universe, are necessary and constant; and why should that principle be less true for the intellectual and moral faculties of man than for the other actions of nature? – Condorcet Synopsis: The social sciences include economics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, etc.: disciplines seeking knowledge about human individuals and groups. In the philosophy of social science we ask whether it is possible to gain secure knowledge in those domains at all. How is supposedly rational and free human action explained scientifically? How does social science go about explaining? Are social sciences like or unlike natural sciences in their predictive capabilities, lawfulness and explanatory power and status? Is physical causal explanation different than understanding or interpretation of meaningfulness? The tensions between causation and justification will be explored in the analytic and continental traditions. We will also explore the ramifications of the social scientific method as applied to morality and to the practice and institution of philosophy itself. Writing philosophy is difficult. We will work on being clear and concise. A writing assignment will be due early because experience tells me this is best. I expect hard work from my students. There is a lot of reading and a lot of writing. And I will call on people in class even if their hands are not raised. But, if you work hard, the experience will be rewarding.

The Insoluble Problem of the Social Contract

The traditional problem of the social contract defies solution. Agents with the motivations traditionally assumed would not in the circumstances traditionally assumed voluntarily arrive at a contract or voluntarily keep it up, as we can now understand, more clearly than our illustrious predecessors, by treating the problem in terms not available to them: the terms of Prisoners Dilemma and of the theory of public goods.

Social rules : origin, character, logic, change

* The Logicians And Philosophers Approach To Rules The Representation of Rules in Logic and Their Definition (David Braybrooke. ) Hyperdeontic Logic: An Overview (Peter K. Schotch. ) Normative Explanations (Geoffrey Sayre-McCord. ) Rules and the Rationality of Scientific Cultures (Bryson Brown. ) Changes of Rules, Issue-Circumscription, and Issue-Processing (D. Braybrooke. ) The Nature of Customary Law in the Manor Courts of Medieval England (Lloyd Bonfield. ) Worries About Quandaries (Richard W. Miller. ) Rules and Resources: The Legitimation of Political Parties in France and the United States (Ronald Aminzade. ) Synoptic Comment on Applications of the Logical Theory of Rules (D. Braybrooke. ) * Transition Do We Know Enough About Legal Norms? (Charles Silver. ) Notes on the Logic of Legal Change: Bonfield v Silver (Lewis A. Kornhauser. ) * The Economists Approach To The Origin Of Rules And To Changes In Them Comment on Reconciling the Philosophers Approach with the Economists (D. Braybrooke. ) Institutional Change: A Framework of Analysis (Douglass C. North. ) Conceptions of Social Rule (L. A. Kornhauser. ) The Origin of Rules in Uncertainty (Ronald A. Heiner. ) Rules, Equilibrium, Beliefs, and Social Mathmematics (Norman Schofield. ) * Epilogue: Schematic Synthesis By Way of Summary: A Schematic Synthesis of the Discussion (D. Braybrooke. ) * Appendixes Proofs Relating to Chapter 11 (L. A. Kornhauser. ) Deliberation and Rational Choice (Nicholas Baigent ) Comment (L. A. Kornhauser.)

The Relation of Utilitarianism to Natural Law Theory

At first glance, especially if we have in mind the history of utilitarianism as it has descended from Bentham, it must seem that the relation of utilitarianism to natural law theory is adversarial. Philosophers will think of Bentham’s scorn for natural rights (“nonsense on stilts”2) and its backing in the scornful references to natural law in his review of alternatives to utilitarianism.3 Moreover, is not utilitarianism a secular doctrine, in which God plays no part, and natural law theory a religious one, in which God’s part is essential? Yet whatever we make of Bentham’s scorn, the doctrines are not opposed on this point. For the most part forgotten now, the name of Paley may still have, besides some resonance as a proponent of the argument from design, a resonance, though fainter, as a proponent of a Christian utilitarianism, which sprang up in his writings and in the writings of others about the same time as Bentham’s Introduction.4 Moreover, more important, at its core natural law theory is a secular doctrine, and was such for St Thomas as well as for Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Hume. Hume is the key author. To class Hume as a natural law theorist as well as what he is more commonly ranked, a utilitarian or proto-utilitarian, will astonish many students of philosophy. Commonly, the passages in which he seems emotivist in tendency get undue weight, even in comparison to the passages in which he approaches being a utilitarian. They commonly quite overshadow the central passages in which “correct” and “uncorrect” figure as analogues of “true” and “false,” indeed as surrogates for them. The passages in which he ascribes “true” and “false” themselves to moral judgments get forgotten entirely. If these passages get the weight that they deserve,5 Hume takes on the defining characteristics of moral realism, which he has to be in order to be a natural law theorist. He does more, however, than meet this necessary condition He says (even if he is speaking ironically) that what he is propounding on the subject of justice are natural laws.6 They are established as such by what is visibly an entirely secular argument, in which he makes no mention of God and draws no inference from God’s will. Setting aside Rousseau, who ranks as a natural law theorist in spite of himself, mainly because of his illuminating contribution to the conception of the Common Good,7 all the other authors do have God present in the perspective in which they set forth their natural law theories; but for none of them is any professed inference from the will of God indispensable to arriving at the content of natural law. One does not need to think about God to identify the social rules that foster the thriving of human societies and of the people who belong to them. When St Thomas cites Cicero on the utilitas (mark that word!) of the natural laws8 he comes close to this position. Bringing imperative force behind that content is another matter. Only Hume is entirely clear about God not needing to be invoked in this connection,9 either, though Hobbes, in substance if not in form, comes close. Indeed, insisting that laws must have a law-giver, and invoking God as such, may bring more trouble than help. God is traditionally called upon not only to give the laws but also to enforce them. At least one theistically-inclined natural law theorist of the present day holds that AIDS is God’s punishment for defying the natural law for sexual activity. This theorist acknowledges that the punishment is not certain; and that it may be delayed by a generation or two. He does not seem troubled either by the gross disproportion between the savagery of the punishment and the trivial nature of the offence, e.g., putting one’s weenie in an unauthorized place, when there are no complications about consent or age of consent. (This description is tendentious, I think, only by the use of the disrespectful term, “weenie,” instead of “the male organ of generation,” a term which may be substituted for neutral effect.) The theorist in question is not troubled enough, either, by the many innocent women and children who have shared the punishment.10 It has not occurred to him, furthermore, that if people can avoid AIDS, and the punishment, by practicing safe sex, whatever sexual activities they engage in, God, in providing this means of escape, seems to be prohibiting, not various “deviant” forms of sexual activity, but just unsafe practice of them. It is true that believers might not regard these considerations as undermining trust in God as a law-giver and a law-enforcer. Who are we to question the wisdom of God? Believers might cite God’s answer to Job: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth . . . [where were you] when the morning stars sang together and all heavenly beings shouted for joy?” Magnificently eloquent. But . . . all the other authors do have God present in the perspective in which they set forth their natural law theories; but for none of them is any professed inference from the will of God indispensable to arriving at the content of natural law. One does not need to think about God to identify the social rules that foster the thriving of human societies and of the people who belong to them. S Y M P O S I U M

Decision-making Systems: Personal and Collective

The leading models for personal choice are maximizing utility (equilibrating marginal utilities) and satisficing (looking for an object that meets a manageable set of specified criteria). The models do not carry over easily to collective choice. Especially problematic is collective choice that is to be aggregated from personal preferences. Social choice theory undermines such aggregations logically. However, even if its theorems are set aside, and heavy reliance is put upon the market or market-like processes to avoid problems with voting, problems beset democratic collective choice wherever it is resorted to. They include free riding (shirking contributions to public goods), failing to turn out to vote, and habitually omitting to keep up with political details. Yet these problems do not preclude intelligent democratic choice on some important issues—e.g., grand absurdities like the failed ‘War on Drugs’ and the horrific associated rate of imprisonment in the United States. Voters do not need to know the names of their Senators to support remedies to unambiguous disasters.

Policy-Formation with Issue-Processing and Transformation of Issues

Adopting a certain model for policy-formation, one may impute to a stable region of the political system an issue-machine, i. e., the analogue of a computer, with a program in place for processing issues. The ‘computer’ will consist of a network of agencies or stations, public or private. The program will call upon them (perhaps repeatedly) in a certain sequence and (giving effect to their reactions) round by round process issues of a given sort in much the same way, with much the same results.

Justice in Jeopardy if Needs Not Met: A Reply to Gillian Brock

From Gillian Brocks vigorous probing (Brock 1994, 1996) of my treatment of meeting needs in my book of that title (Braybrooke 1987) I have learned a good deal; and from the article published in Dialogue , which concerns in particular the connection that I made between justice and needs, I have certainly learned how my arguments for that connection might have been expressed more cogently. Yet I think that the arguments I intended, and even the arguments I expressed, escape her criticisms. She quotes a number of leading assertions drawn one by one from my text, but consolidates into one argument what are best regarded as three different, though connected, arguments, to the disadvantage of their respective strengths. She also disregards, to their disadvantage, the distinction between “respect for a person Ms position”—my phrasing, meaning Ms position under some assignment of benefits and burdens—and “respect for a person M”—a notion that does not come into the three arguments.

Marxism and Technical Change: Nicely Told, but not the Full Contradictory Story

Of these two books by Jon Elster*, Making Sense of Marx (MSM) is the more substantial. In it the most substantial parts of Explaining Technical Change (ETC) reappear; and in it in its impoverished conception of contradiction the most striking omission of ETC takes the heaviest toll. ETC is to a very considerable extent taken up with reviews of other peoples work on the economics of technical change. Its Part One survey of the philosophy of social science is very rapid, with little novelty in-

Self-Interest in Times of Revolution and Repression

In Professor Tullock’s hands, axioms about rationality once again prove their fertility in generating arresting empirical hypotheses, which emerge from the very womb trailing plausible theoretical connections. I speak of ‘axioms’ in the plural, because there is a whole family of axioms to draw from. It will suffice, however, for my purposes in discussing the present example of Tullock’s work, to have just one in mind: what I shall call “the gross axiom of rational action”. Suppose that the alternatives to be chosen are reduced to two categories of action, exhaustive and mutually exclusive: doingA or not- doingA; the gross axiom of rational action says that a person acts rationally only if he eschews the alternative for which the algebraic sum of the costs and benefits to himself is smaller. The axiom is gross not for want of delicacy, since among the benefits and costs the most refined philanthropic pleasures and the most delicate conscientious scruples may be counted. It is gross simply for want of the detail that other members of the same family of axioms bring into play: for example, one of the marginal principles for equilibrium in a consumer’s budget.

Variety Among Hiearchies of Preference

People may have preferences about their own preferences, and this possibility generates the possibility of one sort of hierarchy: (I) Preferencesi about which N has Preferences2 about which N has Preferences3, etc.