Sunday, June 28, 2009

The Essential Library

The following are the books which have been the most formative for my worldview.

Human Nature

David Hume: Treatise of Human Nature

Charles Darwin: Origin of the Species


Economics

Carl Menger: Principles of Economics

Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk: Capital and Interest

Ludwig von Mises: The Theory of Money and Credit    |   Human Action

Friedrich von Hayek: Prices and Production

Murray Rothbard: ManEconomy, and State


Ethics & Political Philosophy

Murray Rothbard: The Ethics of Liberty  |  For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto

Frederic Bastiat: The Law

Lysander Spooner: No Treason

Estienne De La BoetieDiscourse on Voluntary Servitude

John Locke: Second Treatise of Civil Government


History

Jean Gimpel: Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages (Amazon.com)

Richard Rubenstein: Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages (Amazon.com)

Article Recommendations

Current Events

The Health Czar Can't Calculate

Why Obamacare Can't Work: The Calculation Argument

Global Warming is a Fraud: Best essay I've read yet on global warming.

Ethics

Ought Presupposes Can by Steve Horwitz

History

John Lilburne: The First English Libertarian

By Murray Rothbard...

  • The Origins of Individualist Anarchism in America
  • Origins of the Welfare State in America, in which Rothbard reveals the Progressive Movement to have evolved out of Great Revival Yankee pietism.
  • World War I as Fulfillment, in which Rothbard reveals World War I to be a natural extension of the Progressive Movement
  • The Federal Reserve as a Cartelization Device
  • The Ontological Revolution: The Proto-Skepticism of Heraclitus

    This post is one in a series on the History of Epistemological Thought.  Previously in this series: Induction in Ancient Greek Thought.

    A key element of the cosmologies of the Milesian physiologi is the phenomenon of change.  Each Milesian believed the entire universe was once composed of a single kind of matter.  This primordial substance was called arche.  For Thales it was water; for Anaximander it was an underlying substance he called Te Apeiron.  For Anaximander's student Anaximines it was air.  This arche then underwent change, becoming the diverse forms of matter we are familiar with today.

    Change fascinated a later thinker name Heraclitus.  Heracltius noticed things that were in a constant state of change.  One of his many examples of this was a certain kind of potion.  It consisted of barley mixed with wine.  The barley, if left alone, always settles to the bottom.  Thus separated out, the potion is no more, since its existence depends on a mixing of the two ingredients.  Therefore, for the potion to persist, it must be stirred constantly.  The potion is in the motion, as it were.  The existence of the potion depends on ever-occurring change (stirring).

    Heraclitus's most famous saying was, "You cannot step into the same river twice."  This is because waters are constantly both leaving (from the mouth) and entering (from the sources) the river.  So the second time you place your foot into a river, you are placing it into a different mass of water than you did before.

    Heraclitus believed that the whole universe was like his potion and like rivers: in a constant state of flux.  Presumably Heraclitus would not have been surprised at the modern understanding that the human body is constantly sloughing off cells and generating new ones, such that one's body is comprised of almost completely different individual cells from one decade to the next.  If the whole universe is in flux what do we really mean when we refer to, for example, the Colorado River or Kevin Bacon?  If we think we are referring to distinct material objects, then both the Colorado River and Kevin Bacon cease to be the moment after designating them as such.  The Colorado River instantly becomes an assemblage of different water molecules from before, and Kevin Bacon instantly becomes an assemblage of different cells than before.

    If all things are constantly in flux, what can it mean to "be" at all?  Can we really know what anything "is" if all things are constantly changing?

    Such questions, of the very meaning of being, are what comprise the philosophical field of ontology; and Heraclitus seems to have been the earliest known philosopher to have asked them.  This began a long tradition whose latest inglorious highlight was President Bill Clinton musing over what the "definition of 'is' is."  These questions would prove revolutionary in western philosophy.  The Milesians and the Pythagoreans seemed to promise knowledge regarding the most fundamental workings of the universe itself.  Heraclitus's conception of a world in constant flux threatened to take away not only that knowledge, but knowledge of even the most everyday facts of life.  In this way, Heraclitus was something of a proto-skeptic.  One of Heraclitus's followers, according to a rather defamatory story written by Plato, was so averse to saying anything certain, that he was reduced to saying nothing, and merely moving his finger back and forth.

    Next in this series: The Ontological Counterrevolution: Parmenides, the First Extreme Rationalist

    The Ontological Revolution: The Proto-Skepticism of Heraclitus

    This post is one in a series on the Epistemology and Worldview Throughout History.  Previously in this series: Induction in Ancient Greek Thought.

    A key element of the cosmologies of the Milesian physiologi is the phenomenon of change.  Each Milesian believed the entire universe was once composed of a single kind of matter.  This primordial substance was called arche.  For Thales it was water; for Anaximander it was an underlying substance he called Te Apeiron.  For Anaximander's student Anaximines it was air.  This arche then underwent change, becoming the diverse forms of matter we are familiar with today.

    Change fascinated a later thinker name Heraclitus.  Heracltius noticed things that were in a constant state of change.  One of his many examples of this was a certain kind of potion.  It consisted of barley mixed with wine.  The barley, if left alone, always settles to the bottom.  Thus separated out, the potion is no more, since its existence depends on a mixing of the two ingredients.  Therefore, for the potion to persist, it must be stirred constantly.  The potion is in the motion, as it were.  The existence of the potion depends on ever-occurring change (stirring).

    Heraclitus's most famous saying was, "You cannot step into the same river twice."  This is because waters are constantly both leaving (from the mouth) and entering (from the sources) the river.  So the second time you place your foot into a river, you are placing it into a different mass of water than you did before.

    Heraclitus believed that the whole universe was like his potion and like rivers: in a constant state of flux.  Presumably Heraclitus would not have been surprised at the modern understanding that the human body is constantly sloughing off cells and generating new ones, such that one's body is comprised of almost completely different individual cells from one decade to the next.  If the whole universe is in flux what do we really mean when we refer to, for example, the Colorado River or Kevin Bacon?  If we think we are referring to distinct material objects, then both the Colorado River and Kevin Bacon cease to be the moment after designating them as such.  The Colorado River instantly becomes an assemblage of different water molecules from before, and Kevin Bacon instantly becomes an assemblage of different cells than before.

    If all things are constantly in flux, what can it mean to "be" at all?  Can we really know what anything "is" if all things are constantly changing?

    Such questions, of the very meaning of being, are what comprise the philosophical field of ontology; and Heraclitus seems to have been the earliest known philosopher to have asked them.  This began a long tradition whose latest inglorious highlight was President Bill Clinton musing over what the "definition of 'is' is."  These questions would prove revolutionary in western philosophy.  The Milesians and the Pythagoreans seemed to promise knowledge regarding the most fundamental workings of the universe itself.  Heraclitus's conception of a world in constant flux threatened to take away not only that knowledge, but knowledge of even the most everyday facts of life.  In this way, Heraclitus was something of a proto-skeptic.  One of Heraclitus's followers, according to a rather defamatory story written by Plato, was so averse to saying anything certain, that he was reduced to saying nothing, and merely moving his finger back and forth.

    Next in this series: The Ontological Counterrevolution: Parmenides, the First Extreme Rationalist

    Article Recommendations

    Current Events

    The Health Czar Can't Calculate

    Why Obamacare Can't Work: The Calculation Argument

    Global Warming is a Fraud: Best essay I've read yet on global warming.

    Ethics

    Ought Presupposes Can by Steve Horwitz

    History

    John Lilburne: The First English Libertarian

    By Murray Rothbard...

  • The Origins of Individualist Anarchism in America
  • Origins of the Welfare State in America, in which Rothbard reveals the Progressive Movement to have evolved out of Great Revival Yankee pietism.
  • World War I as Fulfillment, in which Rothbard reveals World War I to be a natural extension of the Progressive Movement
  • The Federal Reserve as a Cartelization Device
  • The Essential Library

    The following are the books which have been the most formative for my worldview.

    Human Nature

    David Hume: Treatise of Human Nature

    Charles Darwin: Origin of the Species


    Economics

    Carl Menger: Principles of Economics

    Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk: Capital and Interest

    Ludwig von Mises: The Theory of Money and Credit    |   Human Action

    Friedrich von Hayek: Prices and Production

    Murray Rothbard: ManEconomy, and State


    Ethics & Political Philosophy

    Murray Rothbard: The Ethics of Liberty  |  For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto

    Frederic Bastiat: The Law

    Lysander Spooner: No Treason

    Estienne De La BoetieDiscourse on Voluntary Servitude

    John Locke: Second Treatise of Civil Government


    History

    Jean Gimpel: Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages (Amazon.com)

    Richard Rubenstein: Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages (Amazon.com)

    Saturday, June 27, 2009

    Bohm-Bawerk and the Business Cycle

    Ludwig von Mises is credited with first formulating the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle.  But in the following much earlier passage by Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk (who was a great influence on Mises) one can see the theory shadowed forth.

    Bohm-Bawerk considers below what would happen if, for some reason, no premium was placed on goods sooner over goods later (time preference), and thereby an absence of interest occurring.  He shows how this situation would be unsustainable.

    The possibility of obtaining means of subsistence free of agio would be certain to tempt undertakers into immoderate extension of the production period. If this were to occur only partially and in a few branches of production, naturally the limited stocks of subsistence would leave so much less for the other branches of production; these latter would have to curtail their processes unnaturally; and there would ensue a deficiency in the social provision which would outweigh the increased return got from the favoured branches through the immoderate extension of their processes.  But if the excessive extension were to be introduced all over, the community's stock of subsistence would come to an end sooner than the fruits of processes thus unduly extended could mature; there would be deficiency in provision, want, and distress; famine prices would recall the misdirected natural powers, and put them, with difficulty, to supply provision for the moment. All this could not happen without serious disturbance, expense, and loss.

    Now the constant presence of the agio on present goods is like a self-acting drag on the tendency to extend the production period; without checking it all at once it makes it more difficult, and more difficult in proportion to the projected length of the process. Extensions which would be harmful as regards social provision are thus made economically impossible. Moderate extensions over the average process, however, are not absolutely prevented, but are limited to those branches where, from peculiar economic or technical circumstances, the productiveness that goes with the extension of the period is so great that they can bear the progressive burden of the agio. Branches, again, where longer processes are somewhat, but only a little, more productive, are tempted to escape the burden of agio by recurring to periods under the average. Thus, finally, under the influence of the agio, the total fund of subsistence is divided out automatically among the individual branches of production, in such amounts that each branch adopts that length of process which—in the given condition of the fund—is most favourable to the total provision.

    Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk, The Positive Theory of Capital, Book VI, Chapter VI, (from The Library of Economics and Liberty)

    The theory is almost all here: the immoderate extension of the production period (lengthening of the chain of production), the long-term necessity for savings and investment to be in balance, and the role of the interest rate in keeping that balance.  All Bohm-Bawerk needed do was to extend this analysis of a situation with a complete lack of agio/interest to situations with artificially low agio/interest, and the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle might have come rushing forth from his pen.

    Wednesday, June 24, 2009

    Krugman's Rearguard Apologists

    As most readers will know, a collection of damning quotes has surfaced recently, exposing Paul Krugman, the doyen of the economic left, as having been completely backward on the most material economic event in our generation: the housing bubble.  My recent article on the subject, Krugman's Intellectual Waterloo, has elicited some pretty heated rearguard apologetics, which, in the present article, I'd like to sum up, and knock down.

    The first quotes which surfaced are from a 2002 editorial by Krugman.  This was followed by a cluster of even more damning 2001 quotes collected by Mark Thornton.  The first editorial could be twisted, if one was inclined to twist, into something seemingly benign.  The second wave of quotes is much harder to mischaracterize (which is not to say Krugman ditto-heads don't try).  The laziest tactic of the Krugman apologists is to only address the more stretchable 2002 editorial, and completely ignore the 2001 quotes.  But, not even that approach, if accepted, helps Krugman' case, since the 2002 editorial is damning enough on its own, once the benign interpretations of Krugman's apologists are shown to be nonsense.

    One protestation offered has been that a quotation offered in my "Waterloo" piece which read...

    To fight this recession the Fed needs…soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. [So] Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.

    ...omits the context which shows that Krugman was "merely" quoting someone else.  The last sentence quoted reads in full:

    And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.

    "Disingenuous partisan misquoting!" the apologists cry, "It was this Paul McCulley fellow who said that, not Krugman!"  But lets pull the lens back even further, and add even more context by including the whole paragraph, and the one preceding it.

    A few months ago the vast majority of business economists mocked concerns about a ''double dip,'' a second leg to the downturn. But there were a few dogged iconoclasts out there, most notably Stephen Roach at Morgan Stanley. As I've repeatedly said in this column, the arguments of the double-dippers made a lot of sense. And their story now looks more plausible than ever.

    The basic point is that the recession of 2001 wasn't a typical postwar slump, brought on when an inflation-fighting Fed raises interest rates and easily ended by a snapback in housing and consumer spending when the Fed brings rates back down again. This was a prewar-style recession, a morning after brought on by irrational exuberance. To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble. (Emphasis added.)

    So the first paragraph introduces the "double-dipper iconoclasts", and then clearly states that he, Krugman, agrees with them.  The second paragraph then outlines the "basic point" of the double-dippers, which again, he agrees with.  And the basic point in question is that to "fight this recession the Fed...needs soaring household spending."  Krugman then continues to say how the Fed would need to accomplish this goal, which again, he supports; he says that the recession needs to be fought with soaring household spending, which Alan Greenspan needs to induce by creating a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.  By writing, "as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it", Krugman is not "merely" quoting another person; he is using someone else's phraseology to express his own opinion.

    Another protestation is that Krugman was saying the housing bubble won't work, since later in the editorial he wrote:

    Judging by Mr. Greenspan's remarkably cheerful recent testimony, he still thinks he can pull that off. But the Fed chairman's crystal ball has been cloudy lately; remember how he urged Congress to cut taxes to head off the risk of excessive budget surpluses? And a sober look at recent data is not encouraging.

    But this protestation completely ignores the fact that when Krugman wrote in the editorial...

    Despite the bad news, most commentators, like Mr. Greenspan, remain optimistic.

    and...

    But wishful thinking aside, I just don't understand the grounds for optimism. Who, exactly, is about to start spending a lot more? (Emphasis added.)

    ...he was clearly characterizing a housing bubble as an object of optimism, whether or not he thought it was possible.  In other words, at best, Krugman could be interpreted as saying that it would be great if Greenspan could pull off a housing bubble, but that he, Krugman, doubts whether he'll be able to accomplish such a worthy feat.

    So it should be clear that the Fed causing a housing bubble in order to bring about "soaring household spending" was Krugman's optimal situation, whether or not he thought it was do-able at the time.  Given the consequences of the housing bubble that did ultimately happen, that alone should be enough cause for the public to stop listening to this fellow. 

    Another question is, how did he see the Fed bringing about his optimal situation?  He answered this question himself in a 2002 interview with Lou Dobbs (which can be found here, though not at the page originally linked to in Thornton's collection):

    Low interest rates, which promote spending on housing and other durable goods, are the main answer. (Emphasis added.)

    This brings us to the key point that all the Krugman apologists egregiouslly ignore: namely that it would be surprising if such an arch-Keynesian economist as Krugman (he's written extensively on what he has called "the greatness of Keynes") didn't adovocate a housing bubble to replace the Dot Com Bubble, since doing so would dovetail perfectly with basic Keynesian doctrine.  As a Keynesian, Krugman should have wanted lower interest rates (as he actually did want, as is revealed by the previous quote).  To quote Keynes himself,

    Thus the remedy for the boom is not a higher rate of interest but a lower rate of interest!  For that may enable the so-called boom to last. The right remedy for the trade cycle is not to be found in abolishing booms and thus keeping us permanently in a semi-slump; but in abolishing slumps and thus keeping us permanently in a quasi-boom. (Font emphasis added, but the exclamation point is Keynes' own.)

    John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, p. 322

    To be true to his Keynesian principles, Krugman ought to have to welcomed the housing bubble, since to him (1) it was a good way to achieve his coveted "soaring household spending", and (2) it was the likely result of Keynesianism-prescribed lower interest rates.

    Now let's take a look at some more recent and more directly damning evidence of Krugman's pro-bubble economics.  In my recent article, I pointed out that in Krugman's 2001 editorial, he implicitly agreed with the Onion's facetious call for a new bubble to replace the old one.  In a brilliant comment left in Krugman's own blog (which you can still read until it gets "moderated" (purged), as is the fate of many critical comments there), one "M Ingelmo" reveals, in a most devastating manner, that in 2009 Krugman explicitly agreed with the Onion piece.

    Mr. Krugman,

    I don’t know if you were on the grassy knoll, too, but you certainly were in Spain in March, chatting with that most fervent of your admirers, Prime Minister Mr. Zapatero, and interviewed in the Spanish public TV channel.

    Since these days a video is worth a thousand words, allow me to quote you and say: “guys, watch it for yourselves”. The program is about other things, innovation, and in Spanish (sorry), so go straight to the 35 seconds in the interview after minute 2:50. Under the Spanish translation I’m sure you’ll be able to hear the English original. Quite enlightening:

    “To be honest, a new bubble now would help us out a lot even if we paid for it later.  This is a really good time for a bubble…

    There was a headline in a satirical newspaper in the US last summer that said: “The nation demands a new bubble to invest in” And that’s pretty much right.”

    http://www.rtve.es/mediateca/videos/20090502/innovar-para-salir-crisis-informe-semanal/495712.shtml

    Not a piece of policy advocacy? Just economic analysis? Will it look like it to all your defenders and commentators here? Personally I am delighted with the words “pay for it later”; are we paying right now for the last one, advocated in 2002, or maybe not enough yet, Mr. Krugman?

    If governments follow your “not-a-piece-of-policy-advocacy-just-economic-analysis”, (as it seems certain at least with ours), when that new bubble thus inflated eventually bursts, and we are “paying for it” in a few years time, what will you write in your blog then, Mr. Krugman?

    But perhaps the most instructive lesson out of all this is that, implicit in Krugman's quotes, there is a big fat finger of blame pointed directly (and correctly) at the Federal Reserve.  Krugman himself would only admit to blaming other factors for our present crisis.  But, if...

    1. as any sane person will recognize in hindsight, the housing bubble was disastrous for the economy
    2. as Krugman himself stated, the Fed can induce such a bubble by lowering interest rates, and
    3. as the public record shows, the Fed did drastically lower interest rates in the time leading up to, and in the thick of, the housing bubble,

    ...then according to the vanishingly few economic principles Krugman actually gets right, he should blame the Fed for the present crisis.  Although somehow I doubt, he'll be supporting the Audit the Fed campaign, or Ron Paul's Federal Reserve Transparency Act anytime soon.

    As it turns out, Krugman's apologists shouldn't demand more context for his notorious quotes, since it only shines even more light on his confused backwardness as an economist.


    Related Posts

    Krugman's Rearguard Apologists: Featured on Mises.org

    Krugman's Intellectual Waterloo

    The Second Coming of Keynes

    Monday, June 22, 2009

    Krugman's Intellectual Waterloo: Featured on Mises.org

    My piece  Krugman's Intellectual Waterloo has been made today's Daily Article on Mises.org.  Check out the hilarious "Krugman-as-Napoleon" image they put together.  My thanks to Jeffrey Tucker for selecting it, to BK Marcus for editing it, and to nirgrahamUK on the Mises boards and anyone else who passed it on to others.

     I consider the Mises Institute web site to be the greatest source for truth and wisdom on the web.  So it's an honor to have something I wrote featured on its main page, and it's a kick to see my name in the list of Mises Daily Authors, along with the names of a great many of heroes.

    I hope my characterization of Krugman's twisting in the wind will be convincing to people and that this piece will help spread the word regarding the damning quotes that Lew Rockwell and Mark Thornton have discovered.  If I could help soften the ground under Krugman's pedestal and cause it to sink just one inch, I would feel I have truly done good in the world.

    Please join the assault on neo-Keyneseanism by contributing a comment to the article's entry on the Mises Blog.

    For a New Libertarian Ethics

    In order to present the theory of ethics which underlies my libertarian political philosophy, I am going to first carefully discuss the theory of ethics currently dominant among other Austro-libertarians: that of Murray N. Rothbard.

    Note: In what follows, I'm going to come down pretty hard on Rothbard's formulation, and agree very strongly with that of David Hume.  So let me just say at the outset that, in my estimation, Murray Rothbard may very well have been the greatest man this past century has been graced with, and certainly a far better man than Hume was.  I differ with him here out of the spirit of free inquiry and love of truth that he himself championed so brilliantly.

    All of the Rothbard quotes in this essay are drawn from the first chapter of The Ethics of Liberty.  (My thanks to "hashem" on the Mises Forums for collecting and organizing them.)


    The Rothbardian System

    Let us begin with Rothbard's discussion of the existence of human nature.

    "If apples and stones and roses each have their specific natures, is man the only entity, the only being, that cannot have one? And if man does have a nature, why cannot it too be open to rational observation and reflection? If all things have natures, then surely man's nature is open to inspection."

    What does Rothbard mean here by "nature"?  Rothbard is something of an Aristotelean (or at least a Thomist, which is much the same thing) so let's consider Aristotle's conception of nature.  A likely definition of Aristotelean nature you'd hear from an Aristotle expert would be an "inner principle of change or rest."  Myself, I think a more precise definition would be an "endogenous tendency of change or rest" (thus Rothbard's repeated reference to "tendency" later on in the following quotations).  To Aristotle, stones had an endogenous tendency to move toward the center of the world, stars had an endogenous tendency to move around the center of the world, seeds had an endogenous tendency to grow into plants, and man had an endogenous tendency to pursue ends.

    Ends can also be apprehended by reason as either objectively good or bad for man" "[T]here is therefore room for the concept of right reason, reason directing man's acts to the attainment of the objective good for man." Moral conduct is therefore conduct in accord with right reason: "If it is said that moral conduct is rational conduct, what is meant is that it is conduct in accordance with right reason, reason apprehending the objective good for man and dictating the means to its attainment." "For the ends themselves are selected by the use of reason; and right reason dictates to man his proper ends as well as the means for their attainment."

    Here is one of my most fundamental disagreements with Rothbard.  I believe that Hume was right when he insisted that ends (ultimate ends) are determined by our passions, not our reason.  The function of our reason is to choose means, and only means.  This is necessarily true, because to determine by reason whether something is "objectively good or bad" is to judge it according to whether it fulfills a certain requirement.  In that case the "something" is, by definition, not an end.  It is a means to the end of fulfilling whatever the "certain requirement" is.  Therefore ends cannot be creatures of our reason.  They must emerge involuntarily from our psyche.  Hume calls the part of our psyche they emerge from "the passions"; this is NOT to say that all men are basically wild beasts.  The "passions" that produce ends include, for example, the involuntary urge of curiosity that impels a philosopher, scientist, or mathematician to seek out truth.

    Another problem is that here Rothbard eschews the methodological individualism he promotes in his economic works (especially Man, Economy, and State).  This might be fine, if he did so consistently, or at least justified his inconsistent application; but he doesn't.  When he brings up "moral conduct", he can only be talking about individual moral conduct, because as he correctly states in Man, Economy, and State, only individuals act.  But he says that moral conduct depends on recognizing the "the objective good for man": not for the individual acting man in question, but man as a class.  Needless to say, the objective good for man as a class will not always be the same as the objective good for the acting man in question.  Why ought (since "moral conduct" implies "ought") a man choose the objective good for man as a class over the objective good for himself?

    "The natural law ethic decrees that for all living things, "goodness" is the fulfillment of what is best for that type of creature; "goodness" is therefore relative to the nature of the creature concerned...In the case of man, the natural-law ethic states that goodness or badness can be determined by what fulfills or thwarts what is best for man's nature" "The natural law, then, elucidates what is best for man -- what ends man should pursue that are most harmonious with, and best tend to fulfill, his nature...

    Rothbard defines "goodness" for any given thing as the fulfillment of the nature of that thing.  Again nature is an endogenous tendency of change or rest.  So "fulfillment" occurs when that tendency is allowed to actualize, or "play out".  This descriptive analysis is sound, but in the following Rothbard moves from descriptive to prescriptive.

    For in natural-law ethics, ends are demonstrated to be good or bad for man in varying degrees; value here is objective -- determined by the natural law of man's being." "This is the foundation of what we call ethics, or natural law...demonstrating that this or that action tends to man's real happiness, and therefore very justly concluding that the performance of it is a part of the law of nature; or, on the other hand, that this or that action is destruction of man's real happiness, and therefore that the law of nature forbids it."

    Here Rothbard slips into the "ought" realm when he brings in the term "natural-law ethics."  Implicit here is that the individual man ought to act in a manner which promotes the fulfillment of the nature of man, in other words, the actualization of the endogenous tendencies of man as a class.  Again WHY a man ought to do so if that manner happens to not promote his own individual ends is not stated.  Moreover, an individual is a member of a great number of classes.  Why should his selfless allegiance be to any one in particular?  If his membership in a class imposes some magical "ought" upon him, why wouldn't he be just as much bound to act in a manner which promotes the fulfillment of the nature of a broader class like "primate", or a narrower class, like "welfare recipient"?

    "One common philosophic objection to natural law ethics is that it confuses, or identifies, the realism of fact and value. In answer we may point out that [natural law] identifies value not with existence but rather with the fulfillment of tendencies determined by the structure of the existent entity. Furthermore, it identifies evil not with non-existence but rather with a mode of existence in which natural tendencies are thwarted and deprived of realization."

    "Existence is. . . not a property but a structuralized activity. Such activities are a kind of fact. They can be observed and described by judgments that are true or false: human life needs material artifacts; technological endeavors need rational guidance; the child has cognitive faculties that need education. Value statements are founded on the directly verifiable fact of tendency or need. The value or realization is required not merely by us but by the existent tendency for its completion. From a sound description and analysis of the given tendency we can infer the value founded upon it. This is why we do not say that moral principles are mere statements of fact, but rather that they are "founded" on facts."

    "Ethics, for man as for any other entity, are determined by investigating verifiable existing tendencies of that entity, [but] why are such principles felt to be binding on me? How do such universal tendencies of human nature become incorporated into a person's subjective value scale? (1) Because 'the factual needs which underlie the whole procedure are common to man. The values founded on them are universal. Hence, if I made no mistake in my tendential analysis of human nature, and if I understand myself, I must exemplify the tendency and must feel it subjectively as an imperative urge to action.' The ethics of natural law...recognizes prescriptive moral laws but asserts that these are founded on tendential facts which may be described.... Goodness...must...be conceived dynamically as an existential mode, the realization of natural tendency. In this view, the world is not made up of determinate structures alone, but of determinate structures in an act of existing which they determine toward further appropriate acts of existing.... No determinate structure can be given existence without determining active tendencies. When such a tendency is fulfilled in accordance with natural law, the entity is said to be in a stable, healthy, or sound condition-adjectives of value. When it is obstructed or distorted, the entity is said to be in an unstable, diseased or unsound condition-adjectives of disvalue. Goodness and badness in their ontological sense are not phases of abstract structure, but rather modes of existence, ways in which the existential tendencies determined by such structures are either fulfilled or barely sustained in a deprived, distorted state."

    Here, Rothbard attempts to justify his deriving "ought" from "is": value from fact.  The problem with his justification is that, while the "factual needs" for fulfillment are, loosely speaking, common to all man, they are not so STRICTLY speaking.  Let's say a man needs to rob someone to pay off the mafia, who will otherwise kill him, and that in the course of doing so, the man would likely end up killing his victim.  In that case the factual needs for the fulfillment of the robber/murderer's nature as an individual man (to survive and flourish) directly conflicts with the factual needs of the victim for the fulfillment of his nature (also to survive and flourish), as well as conflicting with the factual needs of the rest of society to flourish, since the crime might engender further crime, through its example, or through back-and-forth retaliations.  But the robber is not himself "the rest of society", so since strictly speaking, the factual needs for natural fulfillment are NOT common, why do some factual needs trump others?

    "Professor Hesselberg has shown, however, that Hume, in the course of his own discussions, was compelled to reintroduce a natural law conception into his social philosophy and particularly into his theory of justice, thus illustrating the gibe of Etienne Gilson: 'The natural law always buries its undertakers.' For Hume, in Hesselberg's words, 'recognized and accepted that the social...order is an indispensable prerequisite to man's well-being and happiness: and that this is a statement of fact.' The social order, therefore, must be maintained by man. Hesselberg continues:

    But a social order is not possible unless man is able to conceive what it is, and what its advantages are, and also conceive those norms of conduct which are necessary to its establishment and preservation, namely, respect for another's person and for his rightful possessions, which is the substance of justice....But justice is the product of reason, not the passions. And justice is the necessary support of the social order; and the social order is necessary to man's well-being and happiness. If this is so, the norms of justice must control and regulate the passions, and not vice versa.

    Hesselberg concludes that 'thus Hume's original 'primacy of the passions' thesis is seen to be utterly untenable for his social and political theory, and . . . he is compelled to reintroduce reason as a cognitive-normative factor in human social relations.' Indeed, in discussing justice and the importance of the rights of private property, Hume was compelled to write that reason can establish such a social ethic: 'nature provides a remedy in the judgment and understanding for what is irregular and uncommodious in the affections' -- in short, reason can be superior to the passions."

    I argued against Rothbard's and Hesselberg's critique of Hume's natural law position in my post Morality, Reason, and Passion, in which I wrote:

    As discussed and concurred with by Rothbard, A. Kenneth Hesselberg countered that Hume, in his own writings, inconsistently resorts to normative natural law. Hume states that man’s happiness depends on a social order. Hesselberg notes that the way a social order can be attained and preserved can only be found through contemplation of natural law. Therefore, according to Hume’s own theory, concludes Hesselberg and Rothbard, reasoning from natural law is needed for choosing ends. 

    While Rothbard is an intellectual hero of mine, I must here differ with him.
    In Hume’s construction, the social order is a MEANS to the end of human happiness. And, as Rothbard himself states, Hume recognizes the value of natural law in choosing means. And, nowhere in his construction, does Hume ever promote the use of natural law to choose the end of human happiness; it is only promoted for choosing the means of social order. 

    The Mises Forum user "hashem" wrote in response to this: "Maybe Rothbard did not "refute" Hume, but he showed that Hume required Natural Law for social order, and social order for man's happiness."

    But again, "ought" concerns the individual man.  If the individual man would be himself happier if he actively contributed to social disorder in his own small way, nothing in what Rothbard wrote indicates why he is bound not to do so.


    The Humean-Libertarian Synthesis

    So, ultimately I don't think Rothbard's formulation of natural rights ethics stands.  My understanding of human morality is much closer to that of Hume's.  True human morality consists of moral urges.  Moral urges are human ends, and like all human ends they are a product of the passions.  Hume made the case for this position in his Treatise of Human Nature:

    Take any action allow’d to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which you call vice. In which-ever way you take it, you find only certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no other matter of fact in the case. The vice entirely escapes you, as long as you consider the object. You never can find it, till you turn your reflexion into your own breast, and find a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, towards this action. Here is a matter of fact; but ’tis the object of feeling, not of reason. It lies in yourself, not in the object. So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it.

    When we assign names to things it is from seeing them as distinct.  So what makes morals distinct from other feelings and other human ends?  What most distinguishes morals is that they are urges which are hardwired into us for the sake of the material well-being of other individuals, even to the detriment of the material well-being of the moral person in question.

    If, as Hume and I contend, morality is subjective and arises from the passions, should morality be ignored for being chaotic and irrational?  Should we all be amoral egoists?  Did Hume destroy natural law, and thereby reveal the feet of clay upon which libertarianism stands?  No.  Far from destroying natural law, Hume's conception of morality, correctly understood and carefully improved, puts libertarianism upon a different natural rights conception which provides a much firmer footing than what might be called "extreme moral rationalism" (basing morals on reason alone).

    Morality may not be the product of the top-down order present in human reason.  But it is not chaotic.  I believe it is the product of the emergent order present in natural selection.  There is a burgeoning school of thought in evolutionary biology and the cognitive sciences (led by Marc Hauser and Steven Pinker) which contends that morality is not just cultural artifice, but that it is an intrinsic feature of the human mind which evolved over the countless millennia of humans living together.   As I concurred with Rothbard, loosely speaking there ARE factual needs for flourishing which are common to man.  There is an overwhelming general need in the human species for self-restraint and fellow-feeling if it is to flourish.  It only makes sense that this overwhelming general need would mean that familial groups who tend to have certain highly-functional moral feelings would end up prospering and propagating their genes, while familial groups made up of individuals who were constantly killing and plundering each other would have died out.

    Economic science teaches us that the MOST highly-functional moral feelings are those concerning ownership (both of one's bodily self and of external objects).  I believe it is no coincidence that we find in experience and in history that these same moral feelings concerning property are, of all moral feelings, the most timeless and universal.  When we take up some unused thing and begin to use it, we automatically think of it as our "ours". We take reflexive affront when our person or our property is aggressed against by others. We feel involuntary outrage when we see the person or property of others aggressed against. And we spontaneously feel guilt when, or at least after, we aggress against the person or property of others.  Of course there are exceptions (as with those suffering from Aspberger's), but these facts are true for the overwhelming preponderance of humanity.  We don't need to be taught to feel revulsion toward murder, plunder, and enslavement; it has been stamped on our hearts by nature.  THAT is what I mean by "natural law": not moral precepts which can be deduced from an understanding of nature, but moral precepts which have arisen out of nature.  And chief among these precepts are the property rights implicit in our natural revulsion toward murder, plunder, and enslavement.  I would go so far as to say that anyone who says they don't feel such revulsion are either impaired or lying.  And the fact that a great many people every day override that revulsion and go ahead and murder, plunder, and enslave anyway is owing to two causes.  First of all, frailty is just as much a part of human nature as morality is.  Moral urges are one kind of urge among many, and sometimes they lose the tug of war over human action.  The second cause is that institution that fosters and feeds upon human frailty: the state.

    As I've argued, there is a moral code written in our hearts.  This inherent moral code is only shoved aside when we enter conditions of extremity (known as "lifeboat situations"), in which circumstances have forced the human community to devolve into a war of all against all. In those cases, the involuntary urge for survival overwhelms the involuntary urge for moral behavior, and we therefore cast aside our communal moral feelings for the sake of extreme short-term selfishness. In other words, we allow ourselves “necessary evils”.

    The state has deceived the bulk of humanity into believing that society is inherently in constant extremity: a perpetual "lifeboat situation" in which a great many "necessary evils" must be committed by the state, else the "lifeboat" of society will keel over and everybody will drown. This is a lie. Society does not require for its survival, or even for its flowering, that certain men be above natural morality. The acts of murder, plunder, and enslavement committed by the state are not necessary evils.  They're just plain evils; just as much as if you or I committed them as private individuals.  Were this "lifeboat lie" to be exposed, I strongly believe the inherent decency of man would then kick in.  Good men would no longer tolerate (or indulge in) "necessary evils", and evil men would have nowhere to run.
    It is the Humean man I see in myself and in others, tinted by the light of Darwin and Mises.  But contra Hume's mild Toryism, it is the Rothbardian society that I think him capable of.

    Related Posts

    Natural Morality

    Natural Morality: Objections Considered

    The Role of the Libertarian Intellectual

    Morality, Reason, and Passion

    The Sword and the Lie

    Saturday, June 20, 2009

    Vain Intellectuals and Wise Workers

    All professions have a tendency toward self-importance. So it should be no surprise that historians have a distinct bias towards eras in which their own forerunners (ancient chroniclers and historians) were existent and employed. Thus, societies without chroniclers are termed “dark ages”. Of course these ages are dark, as in “obscure”, since we necessarily know little about them. But too often, this “darkness” is also given a decidedly judgmental connotation. To many historians, an absence of their own kind must signal social despair and economic desolation. However great the recent dividends of literacy, however, for most of history, literacy has actually been largely a tool for elite domination. It was the literate classes who lorded it over the non-literate classes, using the written language as a class barrier and a tool for greater efficiency in their criminal statecraft.

    Another bias of historians is one which they share with all “academics”: one favoring the non-practical studies over the practical. Thus, mankind only really achieved “glory” in the world of thought when they began to contemplate the stars as did the ancient Babylonians or tried to discover laws of nature as did the ancient Greeks. Never mind that the Babylonian priest monitoring constellations did so fed by grain forcefully extracted from a hard-laboring serf. And never mind that the fruits of the astronomer’s labor never resulted in any actual increased prosperity for ancient man. The careful thinking and experimentation of the working man who improved his tools and techniques, thereby increasing his prosperity, is the realm of “science” which did, by far, the most good for mankind; i.e. the woman who figured out a better way of stiching a grain pouch, or the man who judged, based on profit-loss calculations, what was the best price for his wares.

    According to these biases, the oppressive regimes of Chinese emperors are glorified because glorious philosophers staffed their mandarinates. The economic stagnation of the Roman Empire is seen as a glorious time of order when the literate classes held their rightful place at the top of the heap. And the amazing industrial revolution of the medieval era which resulted in a tremendous increase in the standard of living, is falsely seen as a dark time of superstition and squalor, since the only deep thinkers of the age (priests and monks) were humiliatingly cloistered.

    The cogitations of the learned classes throughout history have been largely vain or pernicious. It is the hard-thinking of the common man trying to improve things for himself and his family (which, in aggregate ends up improving things for everybody) that should be honored.

    Lilburne's Guide to Menger's Principles

    The following are my posts discussing the "founding document" of Austrian economics, the revolutionary book Principles of Economics by Carl Menger (available for free in HTML and PDF on Mises.org).  The fundamentals found in this book are the most important concepts for a sound understanding of economics.

    Blogging Menger: a preface to this series of posts.

    Introduction
    Historical Context and Methodology of Menger's Principles

    Chapter 1
    General Theory of Goods

    Chapter 2
    Economy and Economic Goods

    Chapter 3
    Theory of Value

    This series of posts is a long-term work in progress.  New posts can be found here and on the Menger Tag Page.

    Cradle of the State

    The state was likely born out of a cult. The former would not have been supportable with the latter. Further, it is unlikely that the latter would last long without evolving into the former. Thus it is reasonable to believe that both would have originated in the same place. In my post “Between the rivers, before the state“, I argued that archaeology shows that mankind in the near east lived in a prosperous, agricultural, anarchic society, until a new culture, dominated by priest-kings, arose and spread from the south. Where did this “Ubaid” culture start and how? It seems likely that that culture, and the very ideas of cult and state first arose in Eridu. My evidence for this claim is as follows.

    Evidence from Literature 
    The “Eridu Genesis”, found in a tablet dating from the 18th century BC, calls Eridu “firstling of the cities”. And the Sumerian king list states:
    After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridug. In Eridug, Alulim became king
    It is uncontroversial that the first “city-states” arose in Sumer. And here we find a Sumerian text pointing to Eridu as the first Sumerian city-state. And here, in the words “kingship descended from heaven” we have an indication of false legitimacy fostered by religion being used to establish a worldly power.

    Alulim is considered the first king of Eridu. But there is a yet more important figure in the city’s foundation story: the mysterious character of Adapa. According to ancient tablets, the legendary figure of Adapa was:
    the wise man of Eridu, Ea had created him as chief among men, A wise man whose command none should oppose, The prudent, the most wise among the Anunnaki was he, Blameless, of clean hands, anointed, observer of the divine statutes
    Each city in Mesopotamia had its chief deity. The city’s temple for that god was considered to be its home, and the priests of that temple were its servants. Eridu, throughout its history, was considered by all of Mesopotamia to be the home of Enki (known to the Semites as Ea) the god of fresh waters and fertile land. According to the above passage, the first god of the firstling of cities chose Adapa as his chief priest. 

    Furthermore, Adapa is often associated with the mythic character Oannes, who according to the later Babylonian scholar Berossus:
    taught (the people of Mesopotamia) to build towers and temples; and to establish laws;
    If this myth has any basis in cultural memory, then perhaps Adapa was a real person who introduced a cult to the area now known as Eridu. As the new cult’s chief priest, it is easy to imagine this ancient Jim Jones amassing power. 

    Evidence from Archaeology Eridu is the oldest Sumerian city known to archaeologists. And it is the first place in which evidence of the “Ubaid” culture is found. In fact, the early phase of the Ubaid period is known as “Eridu”.

    The archaelogical site of Eridu reveals that a series of successively larger temples was built on the same spot, starting with a simple, tiny one-room building, and ending with a vast sprawling proto-ziqqurat.1 This is the first instance in the archaeological record in which any kind of heavy centralization of power is evidenced by a few buildings being dramatically larger than the rest. And one can see that centralization of power growing as each successive temple is built with ever greater opulence, while the surrounding buildings stay humble.

    The temples of Eridu are numbered such that the most recently built temple is numbered 1, and older temples are successively numbered higher.

    Temple 17, the earliest discovered temple on the site (and most probably in the world), is a small square building (no more than 4 meters square) with a simple, small square pedestal inside. This is possibly the site of the first ever “offerings” to Enki (or to any god for that matter), with ovens outside for baking the offerings.

    Temple 16 is a larger reconstruction of 17, with two pedestals, one surrounded by ash. The construction is of higher quality than preceding temples, with plaster bricks. Pottery was found outside, as well as an oven.

    By the time we reach Temple 11, Enki’s home has grown to be 15 meters long. And now it is raised on a platform (to suitably represent the superiority of the god and his servants), with a 1 meter ramp leading up from a lower level (there are signs that the platform was extended at some point). It has a large central chamber, a sanctuary conjoined with an offering room, and a private room for the priest(s).

    Temple 10 has a yet larger podium, and the platform is extended by a further 8 meters.

    Temple 9 has thicker walls, a large door before the altar, and a bench (perhaps for votive statues). This arrangement is very similar to level 13 of the archaeological site, Gawra.

    Temple 8 is greatly enlarged (21 x 12 m). It has even thicker walls, false doorways behind the altar, and the remains of fish offerings. This is particularly interesting as Berossus depicts Oannes as wearing a mantle which looked like the head of a fish.

    Temple 7 has a special priests-only entrance to the altar-end of the sanctuary.

    Temple 6 also has a bench for votive statues.

    At some point, a separate palace is constructed one kilometer north of the temple site. This palace site, the earliest known in the world, also undergoes a series of upgrades through the ages. However, most of the palace levels were not archaeologically recoverable. Level 2 is the most complete. It bears resemblances to palaces in the city-state and later holy site of Kish. It is distinguished from temples in the absence of altars and the presence of gates, chambers, courtyards, guard’s rooms, and living quarters.

    Perhaps this palace, and palaces in general, developed as a residence for top priests, who evolved into kings. Alternately, perhaps the priests gave some local uneducated ruffian command of the army, so they would not themselves need to get in harms way. This “general” acquired a power-base of allegiance of his own among the soldiers, and evolved into a king, then demanding his own lavish quarters.

    Did Adapa come into Eridu, convince a small fishing village that he had the ear of the god Enki, translate that influence into great wealth for himself and his temple, pass on his position to his sons, and thus create the first temple-state? We will never know with certainty exactly what happened. But what hardly admits of doubt is that
    1. according to both literary and archaeological evidence, Eridu really was the “firstling of cities”,
    2. Eridu is the earliest archaeological instance of acute centralization of power and pelf (as indicated by its buildings),
    3. Eridu’s centralization of power and pelf fell upon the first great cult (as indicated by the fact that the earliest great buildings were also the earliest great temples),
    4. in this firstling of cities, the cult antedated the secular state (since its temples andedated the palaces), and
    5. the first great cult gave rise to the first ever secular state (it is too much of a coincidence that the first great temples arose in the same exact place as the first palaces).
    Eridu’s place on the King’s List also indicates that it was something of an empire. The King’s List is known to have only included kings whose cities reigned over (or were at least hegemonic over) the entire region of “Sumer-and-Akkad”. This jibes perfectly with the fact that the Ubaid culture which first arose in Eridu was later found throughout the region. And given how, throughout history, the most centralized nation-states have also been the most war-thirsty, it seems very likely that the priest-kings of Eridu would not be satisfied with completely subjugating only the local population. And also seems very likely that an all-powerful central cult-state, with the ability to dragoon its young men into war, would be able to put under the yoke village after peace-loving village as it marched up the Euphrates.

    People tend to implicitly assume that the state has always been with us, and thus it is somehow a natural fact of life. This assumption is greatly assisted by the fact that, even though agriculture pre-dates the state, the state predates writing and written history. Writing itself played a key role in ratcheting up the power of the state. I will discuss that role in my next post.

    1 Reconstruction of Eridu, http://babel.massart.edu/~tkelley/v5.0/eridu/. This is an excellent HTML model of the archaeological site. I highly recommend taking this stratigraphic “tour” of Eridu. For more information see this excerpt from the Cambridge Ancient History (on Google Books).

    The Racket and the Cult

    As I argued in my post The Sword and the Lie, the state is a symbiosis of violent criminals (the sword) and propagandizing intellectuals (the lie).

    The sword needs the lie. Rulers always outnumber the ruled, so a reign predicated on bald criminality (like a protection racket) would shortly be overthrown. To maintain its power, a regime must transmute murder into justice, tribute into taxation, and slavery into citizenship in the minds of its subjects. To do that, it needs intellectuals.

    The lie needs the sword. Elaborate scams based on lies and manipulations (like cults) are difficult to maintain. Eventually some people begin to see through the lies and speak out. To keep its hold on its flock, an elite must be able to silence or coerce dissenters. To do that, it needs thugs.

    So which came first in the original state, the racket or the cult? And how did the first-comer bring its partner into the scheme?

    Let us consider the sword preceding the lie. Thomas Paine speculated that:

    “It could have been no difficult thing in the early and solitary ages of the world, while the chief employment of men was that of attending flocks and herds, for a banditti of ruffians to overrun a country, and lay it under contribution. Their power being thus established, the chief of the band contrived to lose the name of robber in that of monarch; and hence the origin of monarchy and kings.”1


    But how exactly could the bandit chief have established such false legitimacy? The easiest thing to do what have been to brainwash the children. While the banditti’s first “subjects” would never forget the criminal basis of their subjugation, the malleable minds of their children could be molded to accept just about anything. And as keeping brains sufficiently washed became a bigger part of the enterprise, some of the bandits may have come to specialize in it. Thus, through division of labor, might the sword have begotten the lie.

    How, then, might the lie have given rise to the sword? That question is easier to answer, because we’ve seen this happen in our own age. After the cult leader Jim Jones had acquired enough influence over his flock and managed to lead it into isolation from the rest of the world, it was quite easy for him to arm his most loyal supporters and thus gain coercive control over the rest. One can imagine a similar development happening in antiquity.

    In fact, as I will argue in my next post, I believe just such a development was indeed the origin of the very first state in the world.


    1 Thomas Paine, excerpted from Liberty and the Great Libertarians, edited by Charles T. Sprading

     

    Between the Rivers, Before the State

    It has been argued that man has only risen from the depths of squalor upon becoming “civilized”, that is, upon coalescing into a civitas, or state. Thus mainstream history textbooks include the origination of government as a crucial step in the “march of progress.”Great prosperity is the fruit of society, not the state. And society antedates the state. 

    Civilization first arose in Mesopotamia, the “land between the rivers”.   However, many societal advancements associated with “civilization” antedated the state in that region.  Paleolithic families commerced with people as far away as Anatolia and Palestine: many millenia before the rise of the Sumerian city-states.  Village life arose in Mesolithic times.  And the Neolithic agricultural revolution and introduction of pottery got underway quite nicely under stone age anarchy.

    Three successive (though overlapping) proto-historical cultures arose in northern Mesopotamia: the Hassuna, Samarra, and Halaf cultures.  All three made great strides in art, trade, and the technologies of agriculture, building, implements, pottery, and even irrigation.  And not one of them showed any signs of having any central government.  There were signs of religion on a household level; but there were no temples, and no signs of an official cult.The Hassuna culture developed stamp seals, an important development in private property and trade, as well as a precursor to the written language.  The Samarra culture invented irrigation with which they produced amazingly abundant harvests, as evidenced by the remains of capacious granaries.  The Halaf culture even had cobbled streets and specialized centers which mass produced a distinctive pottery (which has been called by the French antiquarian Georges Roux, “the most beautiful ever used in Mesopotamia”1) for peaceful exchange abroad. Anarchic Mesopotamian humanity was accomplishing wondrous things for itself.

    Then something happened.   Several Halafian towns were for some reason depopulated.  And their exquisite pottery was replaced by a cruder style: an archaeological sign of cultural displacement.   A very different people, the Ubaid culture, had come from the south and supplanted the Halafians.  The Ubaid culture had shrines, altars, offering tables, and enormous temples: sure signs of a priestly elite.  And their temples consistently grew in size and grandeur as the ages went by: a sure sign of consolidating priestly power.   It is highly likely that the people of this culture are the famous Sumerians themselves in their proto-historical form.   If so, then the cult which originated in the Ubaid temples is the very tradition which evolved into the monstrous temple-states of Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, and Assyria.  The north Mesopotamian tradition of freedom that lasted for a millenium and a half was replaced by the systemic deceit and coercion of the temple and the state, which at this early stage, were one and the same.

    1 Ancient Iraq by Georges Roux

    Friday, June 19, 2009

    On Techniques

    An essential characteristic of man is that he acts. Action is purposeful behavior, that is the behavior of rationally utilizing means for an ends. We call means that have material embodiment “technology.” We call means that do not have material embodiment “techniques”. Mankind has always been a rational animal, therefore he has always used technology and/or techniques.

    When a bee constructs a beehive, the method of construction is not a technique. Nor is the beehive itself technology. This is because the bee itself does not “act”, strictly speaking. It exhibits behavior, but the “purpose” in the behavior is that of its genes, and not of its mind. Only mental purpose (rationality) makes a behavior an action. Most animal behavior is irrational.

    Much human behavior is irrational too. When a human unthinkingly blinks, he does not “act”. The behavior has purpose (to clear out particles), but the purpose is that of his genes, not of his mind. Moderns tend to call what we consider ill-decided action “irrational”. For example, we often would call rain dances irrational. This is not so. Rain dances (as strange as it is to say) are rational. They are behavior with mental purpose. The rain dancer is utilizing means (the dance) for an end (rain). Of course it erroneous rationality, but it is rationality nonetheless.

    Rational animals are always choosing between means to their various ends: “Do I fight, or do I run?”. The means of fighting and and the means of running are themselves mostly instinctual. But the choice between the two is rational. Rational animals are often choosing between means/techniques which they already know. But some rational animals can also invent new means/techniques.

    For example, chimpanzees are known to strip branches of their leaves, and lower them into logs to harvest termites. They do not instinctively know how to do this. Therefore, some chimpanzee long ago must have figured it out, and other chimpanzees learned from observing him. That means the behavior is mentally purposive, and the stripping of the leaves qualifies as technique, and the stripped stick itself qualifies as technology.

    While the non-rational behavior of instinct is passed on through heredity, technique is passed on through learning. Though it may dismay educationalists to hear this, learning doesn’t necessitate teaching. It only necessitates observation and reason. The learning chimpanzee sees(observation) the inventive chimpanzee utilize his new technique, and through his rationality becomes aware that the new technique could be a means to his end of eating termites.

    Thus throughout the history of rationality in animals, technique was passed from one individual to another, and from one generation to the next, solely through observation until the development of spoken language. Spoken language enables the human animal to express his own ratiocinations to other humans using only sounds. This widened the range of techniques which could be passed on. Through speech, humans could pass on techniques such as “how to get a wife”, which they couldn’t pass on through observation. Through speech, techniques could be passed across great distances, especially in the memorable form of song (as in the agricultural poetry of Hesiod).

    The development of the written language widened the possibilities yet further for the propagation of techniques. It made the verbal transmission of techniques more exact and less prone to loss. Writing also enabled people to invent techniques which required the use of arithmetic and geometry. In ancient Phoenicia, merchants used written arithmetic to improve their business practices. In ancient Mesopotamia, priest-bureaucrats used written algebra to improve their grain management techniques. And in ancient Egypt, priest-bureaucrats used written geometry to improve their land-surveying techniques.

    Technique is a sub-class of means, and it is also a sub-class of knowledge. All new knowledge is attained in one of the following ways:

    1. Instinct: Instinctive knowledge is knowledge that arises within the mind without any observation or ratiocination.
    2. Authority: Belief in accounts told by other humans
    3. Observation or Empirical Knowledge: Belief in sensory impressions
    4. Induction: Finding patterns in facts and anticipating that that pattern will continue
    5. Deduction: Finding necessary implications of certain facts

    Techniques, by definition, are not instinctive (see above). Techniques also cannot be considered solely observational knowledge. Thinking, “That chimpanzee is getting termites with that stick” is observational knowledge. But thinking, “Perhaps I could get termites with a similar stick as well” is induction. Thinking, “When I planted seed this time last year I got a huge harvest” is observational knowledge. Thinking, “Perhaps if I do so again, I will get another big harvest” is induction.

     

    The Dead, the Dumb, and the Rational

     

    What sets "us" apart from the rest of the universe?

    Dead things don’t reason, choose, or act. They just react. They are mindless assemblages of particles which only respond slavishly to the impulses given them.

    Dumb animals don’t reason, choose, or act. They just behave. They are non-rational expressions of genes which only serve reflexively the end of propagating those genes. 

    Humans and any other animals who have evolved reason are assemblages of particles as well; and we are also expressions of genes. But crowning all of this, we also have reason, will, and action. 

     

    Know Thyself

     

    "The true science and study of man is man."

    -Pierre Charron

    In the 5th century B.C., the Greek sophist Protagoras wrote,

    "Man is the measure of all things."  

    This statement is generally taken to refer to subjective truth, such as whether a woman is beautiful or a circumstance is happy.  But it can just as well be said of objective knowledge, such as whether the boiling point of water is 99.97 degrees Celcius.  Water may always boil under certain conditions whether man existed or not.  But the ascertainment of that fact is dependent on the mental and sensory powers of man.

    As David Hume wrote,

    "'Tis evident, that all the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature: and that however wide any of them may seem to run from it, they still return back by one passage or another. Even. Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some measure dependent on the science of MAN; since the lie under the cognizance of men, and are judged of by their powers and faculties."

    "There is no question of importance, whose decision is not compriz'd in the science of man; and there is none, which can be decided with any certainty, before we become acquainted with that science."

      To be confident in our knowledge of things that are not self-evident, we must be confident in our method of learning about such things.  To be confident in that method, we should discover first any self-evident truths about how we, as men, learn.  There are no self-evident truths about other men.  The only self-evident truth a man has access to lies within himself.  As the science of man is thus most appropriately prior to all other sciences, the science of one's self is most appropriately prior to the science of man in general.

    Or as Thales said,

    "Know thyself."

     

    From Watery Chaos

     

    Cosmologies, like Hesiod's Theogony, are accounts of the beginnings of the universe, and they generally also, through the course of telling the universe’s origins, tell of the universe’s workings: i.e., why the sun rises every day. Cosmology most likely antedates the written language, since non-literate peoples during historical times had cosmologies (like the Amerindian Coyote myths).

    The earliest written cosmologies were, like Hesiod's, “theogonies” (stories of the origins of the gods) because the creators of various elements of the universe, and oftentimes the elements themselves, were thought to be gods: super-human rational beings.

    The earliest surviving written cosmology is the Babylonian Enuma Elish, which is thought to have descended from Sumerian sources. According to this work, the primal state of the world (which of course to an ancient was the whole universe) was a water mass in which salt water (Tiamat), fresh water (Apsu), and clouds (Mummu) were all intermingled. But these inter-mingled entities were not lifeless masses. They were characters, with personalities and rationality. Neither were they merely gods of the various forms of water: over-grown humans with command over their respective elements. Tiamat had a distinct personality, but she was also literally salt water itself (”tiamat” literally meant “salt water”).

    Given that the Sumerians lived near the mouth of two great rivers, on can understand their preoccupation with water. The antiquarian Georges Roux, in his excellent work Ancient Iraq, mused on how the ancient poet might have envisioned such a primeval scene:

    “If we stand on a misty morning near the present Iraqi sea-shore…what do we see? Low banks of clouds hang over the horizon; large pools of sweet water…mingle freely with salty waters of the Persian Gulf…all around us sea, sky and earth are mixed in a nebulous, watery chaos.”

    “Creation” happened when this watery chaos began to un-mingle. First arose silt islands, like the ones which can be found where the Tigris and Euphrates pour into the Persian Gulf (personified as the gods Lahmu and Lahamu) Then came the horizon (personified as the gods Anshar and Kishar). 

    This evolution in the story evinces a greater sophistication than myth-makers are often given credit for. Aristotle called myth-makers theologi, because they explained the mysteries of the universe by invoking personal forces (gods, or theoi), in marked contrast to those he called phusici, the later philosopher-cosmologists who explained those same mysteries by theorizing impersonal forces (nature, or phusis). But as I shall attempt to show below, many ancient myth-makers seemed to be trying to make rational cosmic theories within the bounds of the god-myth format.

    Myths are also often derided for “just being stories”. But really compelling stories are often compelling for their plausibility. Thus, stories that survive the test of time are often the most plausible ones, and evince an author’s good grasp the plausible.

    Let us examine the first two generations of gods in Enuma Elish, ignoring for the time being the proper-noun treatment given to the cosmic entities, and keeping an eye out for plausibility.

    Firstly, let us imagine the three water gods as simply dumb masses of water, and that the poet is merely postulating that the earliest state of the world was a single, indiscernible foamy blob of fresh water, salt water, and mist. The notion that all discernible things arose from a single mass is not inherently fanciful. In fact it is quite plausible. There are only two possibilities regarding the primal state of the universe: either (1) things were distinct, various and discernible, as they are now or (2) they were indistinct, single and indiscernible. The Enuma Elish authors simply chose option number 2, as did many of the Greek philosophers of the 6th century1, and chose water as that single thing.

    Once the primal state is established, a cosmologist must decide which cosmic entity would arise out of the primal state first. The Enuma Elish authors chose silt islands, which is a very plausible choice for a Mesopotamian, given that silt islands occur right where the waters above (cloud and mist) and the waters below (salt and fresh waters) still mingle (as described in the Roux’s colorful quote above).

    Then, if the clouds and the waters continued to separate out, the first discernible things one could see would be the bottom of the sky flush with the top of the earth: in other words, the horizon.

    This account, arrived at from a sense of plausibility arrived at via induction, given the lack of scientific instruments at the time, is a perfectly adequate theory for how the world that ancient man saw around him could have come to be. Scientists even today use their sense of plausibility to construct theories. Of course they have much more powerful techniques for testing those theories, but other than that, there is not as much difference between ancient and modern cosmologists as might be supposed.

    1In fact, Thales, regarded as the first Greek philosopher, is thought to have traveled to Babylon and may have been directly influenced by Enuma Elish in his assertion that the world was created out of water, and that everything fundamentally is water. He, as Carl Sagan said, told the Babylonian story, but “took the gods out of it.” Sagan used the comparison to exemplify how different the mythmakers and early philosophers were. I think it exemplifies how surprisingly similar they were.