Eric Schliesser

Abstract: In this paper I argue that in the period after 1945 in the main currents of academic (technical) economics a commitment to-so-called Knightian uncertainty got displaced by two strategies: i) a simple displacement strategy (heavily promoted by Arrow and Samuelson), in which un-measurable uncertainty simply got treated as quantifiable risk; ii) a sophisticated displacement strategy (due to Alchian), which turned uncertainty into randomness understood as a stochastic process. The point of my narrative is to illustrate what a so- ...

Our modern-day word for sympathy is derived from the classical Greek word for fellow-feeling. Both in the vernacular as well as in the various specialist literatures within philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, economics, and history, "sympathy" and "empathy" are routinely conflated. In practice, they are also used to refer to a large variety of complex, all-too-familiar social phenomena: for example, simultaneous yawning or the giggles. Moreover, sympathy is invoked to address problems associated with social dislocation and political conflict. It is, then, turned into a vehicle toward generating harmony among otherwise isolated individuals and a way for them to fit into a larger whole, be it society and the universe. This volume offers a historical overview of some of the most significant attempts to come to grips with sympathy in Western thought from Plato to experimental economics. The contributors are leading scholars in philosophy, classics, history, economics, comparative literature, and political science. Sympathy is originally developed in Stoic thought. It was also taken up by Plotinus and Galen. There are original contributed chapters on each of these historical moments. Use for the concept was re-discovered in the Renaissance. And the volume has original chapters not just on medical and philosophical Renaissance interest in sympathy, but also on the role of antipathy in Shakespeare and the significance of sympathy in music theory. Inspired by the influence of Spinoza, sympathy plays a central role in the great moral psychologies of, say, Anne Conway, Leibniz, Hume, Adam Smith, and Sophie De Grouchy during the eighteenth century. The volume should offers an introduction to key background concept that is often overlooked in many of the most important philosophies of the early modern period. About a century ago the idea of Einfuhlung (or empathy) was developed in theoretical philosophy, then applied in practical philosophy and the newly emerging scientific disciplines of psychology. Moreover, recent economists have rediscovered sympathy in part experimentally and, in part by careful re-reading of the classics of the field. Available in OSO: Contributors to this volume - Rene Brouwer is a lecturer at the University of Utrecht, where he teaches on law and philosophy in the Faculty of Law. He works on theory of law and topics in ancient philosophy, with a special focus on Stoicism, its origins and reception, and the tradition of natural law. He recently published The Stoic Sage. The Early Stoics on Wisdom, Sagehood and Socrates (Cambridge University Press). Remy Debes is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis. His research is in the areas of Ethics and the History of Ethics, with an emphasis on Scottish Enlightenment, Human Dignity, and Moral Psychology. He is currently editing Dignity: History of a Concept (forthcoming in the Oxford Philosophical Concepts series) and (with Karsten Stueber) Ethical Sentimentalism (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press). Julie Candler Hayes is Professor of French and Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research focuses primarily on literary and philosophical texts of the French Enlightenment; she has also written extensively on contemporary literary theory and the history and theory of translation. Her most recent book is Translation, Subjectivity, and Culture in France and England, 1600-1800 (2009). Her earlier books study French theatre and Enlightenment concepts of systematicity in literature, philosophy, and science. Her current scholarly work looks at seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women moral philosophers. Ryan Patrick Hanley is Associate Professor of Political Science at Marquette University. He is the author of Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue (Cambridge University Press, 2009), editor of the Penguin Classics edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Penguin, 2010), and of Adam Smith: A Princeton Guide (forthcoming from Princeton University Press). His most recent book is Love's Enlightenment: Rethinking Charity in Modernity (forthcoming from Cambridge University Press). Karolina Hubner is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. She is the author of a number of articles on Spinoza's metaphysics. David M. Levy is a professor of economics at George Mason University and a Distinguished Fellow of the History of Economics Society. His Ph.D. in economics is from the University of Chicago where he wrote his dissertation under George Stigler. Sandra Peart and he revived the doctrine of analytical egalitarianism from classical economics. They have co-directed the Summer Institute for the Preservation of the History of Economics for fourteen years. Christia Mercer is Gustave M. Berne Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. She is the author of Leibniz's Metaphysics: Its Origins and Development and most recently of The Philosophy of Anne…

<p>This chapter investigates several arguments against Spinoza's philosophy that were developed by Henry More, Samuel Clarke, and Colin Maclaurin. In the arguments More, Clarke, and Maclaurin aim to establish the existence of an immaterial and intelligent God precisely by showing that Spinoza does not have the resources to adequately explain the origin of motion. Attending to these criticisms grants us a deeper appreciation for how the authority derived from the empirical success of Newton's enterprise was used to settle debates within philosophy. The arguments by More and Clarke especially help to discern the anti‐Spinozism that can be detected in Newton's General Scholium (1713). Ultimately, the Newtonian criticisms of Spinoza offer us a more nuanced view of the problems that plague Spinoza's philosophy, and they also challenge the idea that Spinoza seamlessly fits into a progressive narrative about the scientific revolution.</p>

<p>This chapter discusses the three versions of the invisible hand mentioned by Adam Smith in light of each other. It offers detailed contextual analysis in order to argue that Smithian invisible hand processes are not identical to Smithian social explanations. Any given iteration of a Smithian invisible hand process is a relatively short-term process in which an agent produces unintended and, to him or her, unknown consequences. In invisible hand processes the consequences are, in principle, knowable to the right kind of observer (either theoretically informed or by accumulated common sense) at the time. By contrast, Smithian social explanations involve cases where the consequences are visible or knowable only after the fact. Generally they take place over much longer amounts of time than any given invisible hand process. Smithian social explanations can include invisible hand processes as sub-components (or mechanisms) but should not be conflated with these.</p>

<p>This chapter articulates Adam Smith's philosophy of science. The first section emphasizes the significance of Smith's social conception of science—science takes place, not always comfortably, within a larger society and is itself a social enterprise in which our emotions play a crucial role. Even so, in Smith's view science ultimately is a reason-giving enterprise, akin to how he understands the role of the impartial spectator. The second and third sections explain Smith's attitude to theorizing and its relationship, if any, to Humean skepticism. Smith distinguishes between theory acceptance and the possibility of criticism; while he accepts fallibilism, he also embraces scientific revolutions and even instances of psychological incommensurability. His philosophy is not an embrace of Humean skepticism, but a modest realism. Finally, the chapter explores the implications of Smith's analysis of scientific systems as machines.</p>

<p>This chapter uses Adam Smith's obituary of David Hume, "Letter to Strahan," published jointly with Hume's brief autobiography, to explore the rewards and purpose of doing philosophy in a commercial society. Smith thinks that philosophers can enjoy the rewards of friendship in this life and immortality after death if they are benefactors to humanity. For Smith, friendship among equals is the most valuable goal. The argument proceeds by way of an analysis of how Hume and Smith understand magnanimity and vanity in light of the evidence surrounding Smith's description of Hume's deathbed scene reading of Lucian's <italic>Dialogues of the Dead</italic>.</p>

Despite grounding my views in a textual analysis of the Treatise, and an attempt to illuminate it in light of early criticism by Kochiras, my view has not generated consensus. In this postscript I engage with the most significant lines of criticism known to me in order to illuminate and improve upon my interpretation of Newton....

This collection of papers by a leading philosophical Newton scholar offers new interpretations of Newton’s account of space, gravity, motion, inertia, and laws—all evergreens in the literature. The volume also breaks new ground in focusing on Newton’s philosophy of time, Newton’s views on emanation, and Newton’s modal metaphysics. In addition, the volume is unique in exploring the very rich resonances between Newton’s and Spinoza’s metaphysics, including the ways in which Newton and his circles responded to the threat by, and possible accusation of, Spinozism. Seven chapters have been published before and will be republished with minor corrections. Two of these chapters are coauthored: one with Zvi Biener and one with Mary Domski. Two chapters are wholly new and are written especially for this volume. In addition, the volume includes two postscripts with new material responding to critics. A main part of the argument of these essays is not just to characterize the conceptual choices...

29 – The assumption in this style of advice is that “mainstream philosophy journals” would be eager for Asian philosophical work if specialists would but write and submit it. However, the data do not support optimism on this score: despite significant and measurable surges in scholarship in Asian philosophies over the last many decades, purportedly mainstream journals typically show no increase in their publication rates of this work. For data and commentary on this issue, see Amy Olberding, “Chinese Philosophy and Wider Philosophical Discourse: Including Chinese Philosophy in General Audience Philosophy Journals,” APA Newletter on Asian and Asian-American Philosophies and Philosophers 15, no. 2 (Spring 2016).

The main aim of this paper is to explain Sophie de Grouchy’s philosophical debts to Adam Smith. I have three main reasons for this: first, it should explain why eighteenth-century philosophical feminists (De Grouchy, James Millar, and Mary Wollstonecraft) found Smith, who has – to put it mildly -- not been a focus of much recent feminist admiration, a congenial starting point for their own thinking; second, it should permit illumination of De Grouchy’s considerable philosophical originality, especially her important, overlooked contributions to political theory; third, it is designed to remove some unfortunate misconceptions that have found their way into Karin Brown’s ‘Introduction’ to the recent and much-to-be-welcomed translation of Sophie de Grouchy’s Lettres Sur La Sympathie (Letters on Sympathy). While Brown claims that there are major ‘differences’ in their programs of ‘social reform’ (45), I argue there are important communalities between Smith and De Grouchy. In particular,...

Schliesser, Eric. 2011. “Spinoza's Conatus as an Essence Preserving, Attribute-neutral Immanent Cause : Toward a New Interpretation of Attributes and Modes.” In Causation and Modern Philosophy, ed. Keith Allen and Tom Stoneham, 3:65–86. New York, US: Routledge. ... Schliesser, E. (2011). Spinoza's Conatus as an essence preserving, attribute-neutral immanent cause : toward a new interpretation of attributes and modes. In K. Allen & T. Stoneham (Eds.), Causation and modern philosophy (Vol. 3, pp. 65–86). New York, US: Routledge.

The aim of this paper is to explain what philosophical commitments drove mainstream professional economists to understand their own discipline as leaving no space for ethics (including virtue) between, say, 1887 and 1971. In particular, it is argued that economics embraced a technocratic conception of politics and science. Philosophers, too, embraced and continue to embrace a number of commitments about philosophy and science that entrench a sharp division of labor between philosophers and economics and that keep not just ethics, but virtue outside of economics. Many of these philosophers’ commitments were adopted by economists such that they could assume, in practice, that there is a self-sufficient a-political domain of pure economics. So, in effect, this paper explores the origin and nature of a conceptual split between economics and ethics.There are two, subsidiary themes in my essay that are not fully worked out in it, but play a non-trivial role in the development that I sketc...

*In this chapter I discuss the reception of a design argument by Cicero in the works of Holbach and Voltaire. This argument was directed against both the system of chance and the system of necessity. The chapter distinguishes three interpretations of this argument: (1) a prima facie interpretation; (2) a ‘neglected’ interpretation and (3) a ‘transcendental interpretation.’ It shows that in the early modern period Cicero’s argument was very widely discussed and its significance was not merely as a design argument; it connected scientific practice, even progress in science, to providential final causes. To show this I focus on Boyle and Locke before turning to Newton. In the final section, I return to Voltaire’s response to Holbach and show how Voltaire adapts the argument and uses Newton.

In this chapter I draw attention to Sophie de Grouchy’s 1798 distinction between negative and positive right, which, upon examination, prefigures the famous distinction between positive and negative liberty. I analyse her treatment, and I argue that she should be accorded a significant place in the discussions of the tradition(s) of reflection on the famous distinction. First, I frame my discussion by revisiting Isaiah Berlin’s famous lecture and a recent editorial by Jason Stanley and Vesla Weaver; I note the presence of a paternal liberal tradition going back to Constant which gets invoked alongside the famous distinction between the two concepts of liberty. Insofar as a tradition can be conceived as a lineage or an offspring, it is striking that the matriarchs are absent from it. Second, I discuss De Grouchy’s neo-Lockean analyses of justice and property rights, which form the context in which she introduces her distinction between positive and negative right. I illuminate her vi...

Zullen we zo'n grote bank eens laten omvallen? ... Schliesser, Eric. 2011. “Zullen We Zo'n Grote Bank Eens Laten Omvallen?” Nrc.next (rotterdam). Rotterdam: NRC HANDELSBLAD. ... Schliesser, E. (2011). Zullen we zo'n grote bank eens laten omvallen? NRC.NEXT (ROTTERDAM). Rotterdam: NRC HANDELSBLAD. ... Schliesser E. Zullen we zo'n grote bank eens laten omvallen? NRC.NEXT (ROTTERDAM). Rotterdam: NRC HANDELSBLAD; 2011. p. 16–16. ... Schliesser, Eric. “Zullen We Zo'n Grote Bank Eens Laten Omvallen?” NRC. ...

In this paper I distinguish four methods of empirical inquiry in eighteenth century natural philosophy. In particular, I distinguish among what I call, (i) the mathematical-experimental method; (ii) the method of experimental series; (iii) the method of inspecting ideas; (iv) the method of natural history. While such a list is not exhaustive of the methods of inquiry available, even so, focusing on these four methods will help in diagnosing a set of debates within what has come to be known as ‘empiricism’; throughout the eighteenth century there was a methodological reaction against the hegemonic aspirations of mathematical natural philosophy associated with the authority of Newton.

Democratic Enlightenment is the third in Jonathan Israel’s “Enlightenment Series.” According to Israel Enlightenment is best characterized as the quest for human amelioration occurring between 1680 and 1800, driven principally by ‘philosophy’, that is, what would term philosophy, science, and political and social science including the new science of economics lumped together, leading to revolutions in ideas and attitudes first, and actual practical revolutions second, or else the other way a...

This article examines the historical context of Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Principia) and how it reoriented natural philosophy for generations. It first considers how the Principia extends and refines the ideas of De Motu, taking into account the three Laws of Motion, the force responsible for the planetary trajectories, the motion of projectiles in a resisting medium, and the law of universal gravitation. It then discusses three changes that influenced fundamentally the content and reception of the Principia: the relabelling and rewording of nine ‘hypotheses’ (into ‘phenomena’ and ‘rules of reasoning’) at the start of Book 3; the addition of the General Scholium; and changes that minimized explicit commitments to atomism. It also assesses the impact of the Principia on the development of physics and concludes with an overview of Newton’s theory about the cause of gravity

This chapter describes the main components of Adam Smith’s theory of the passions. It offers a detailed taxonomy of the passions. In particular, the chapter discusses four kinds of passions: the natural passions, the proto-passions, the intellectual sentiments, and the derived passions. The chapter also explains the way in which Smith thinks about rationality and the role of reason as a so-called active principle. The chapter introduces a concept, environmental rationality, to articulate what Smith means by sound judgment in a particular context. Finally, by drawing on Smith’s account of the proto-passions and his treatment of reason as an active principle, the chapter shows it is a mistake to understand Smith as a moral empiricist, as is commonly done.

This chapter is devoted to explaining the moral significance of what Adam Smith calls the “natural sentiments.” The significance of the natural sentiments is illustrated by their role in extended case studies. They help us understand Smith’s criticism of David Hume’s account of the origin and morality of justice. It turns that Smith’s criticism of Hume is Humean in spirit, and solves conceptual problems left by Hume. This chapter also explains the difference between natural sentiments and moral sentiments. Despite the undeniable significance of feelings in his moral theory, Smith should not be considered a moral-sense theorist.

Abstract This paper argues for the need of philosophical translator-advocates to overcome the (would-be) limitations produced by the linguistic narrowness of analytic philosophy. It draws on a model used to analyze epistemic communities in order to characterize a form of linguistic injustice. In particular it does so by treating language as an epistemic barrier to entry of ideas and people and by treating philosophical translator-advocates as engaged in a form of arbitrage. Along the way I specify some necessary and jointly sufficient characteristics of a philosophical translator-advocate. My argument is illuminated and vivified with examples from the history of analytic philosophy and other episodes from the history of philosophy.

In this article, the author offers a discussion of the evidential role of the Galilean constant in the history of physics. The author argues that measurable constants help theories constrain data. Theories are engines for research, and this helps explain why the Duhem-Quine thesis does not undermine scientific practice. The author connects his argument to discussion of two famous papers in the history of economic methodology, Milton Friedman’s “Methodology of Positive Economics,” which appealed to example of Galilean Law of Fall in its argument; and Vernon Smith’s “Economics in the Laboratory.” While the author offers some criticism of Friedman and Smith, most of the article is a friendly reinterpretation of their insights.

This article addresses the question how philosophy should be evaluated in a research-grant funding environment. It offers a new conception of philosophy that is inclusive and builds on familiar elements of professional, philosophical practice. Philosophy systematically questions the questions we ask, the concepts we use, and the values we hold. Its product is therefore rarely conclusive but can be embodied in everything we do. This is typical of explorative research and differentiates it from exploitative research, which constitutes the bulk of funded research activity. This article argues that exploratory research is crucial for long-term progress and requires a distinct evaluative regime.

In this paper, I explore the significance of that peculiar concept, the so-called piacular, in Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (hereafter TMS). Smith describes the concept first in the context of his treatment of what we would call “moral luck” and then returns to it in what became part VII of TMS. In brief, the piacular is the feeling that arises when we have been an involuntary cause of another’s harm. It is a feeling of shame that is akin – but not identical – to what is commonly called “agent-regret.” I argue, first, that according to Smith it is part of our humanity that we ought to see ourselves in part as causes in the (great) causal chain of life. This is a plausible interpretation of Smith’s view in light of (i) his treatment of the way in which the sympathetic process that underwrites moral judgment is, in part, a judgment of the proportionality of causes and effects and (ii) his claim that our habitual causal environment is constitutive of our sanity and rationality. Second, I explain the highly regulated norms that according to Smith govern the atonement of the piacular. Somewhat surprisingly, these norms are irrevocably tainted by superstition. In Smith’s account this superstitious element should not be eradicated, but embraced as part of our shared humanity.

<p>This chapter discusses the three versions of the invisible hand mentioned by Adam Smith in light of each other. It offers detailed contextual analysis in order to argue that Smithian invisible hand processes are not identical to Smithian social explanations. Any given iteration of a Smithian invisible hand process is a relatively short-term process in which an agent produces unintended and, to him or her, unknown consequences. In invisible hand processes the consequences are, in principle, knowable to the right kind of observer (either theoretically informed or by accumulated common sense) at the time. By contrast, Smithian social explanations involve cases where the consequences are visible or knowable only after the fact. Generally they take place over much longer amounts of time than any given invisible hand process. Smithian social explanations can include invisible hand processes as sub-components (or mechanisms) but should not be conflated with these.</p>

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Schliesser, Eric. 2011. “Spinoza's Conatus as an Essence Preserving, Attribute-neutral Immanent Cause : Toward a New Interpretation of Attributes and Modes.” In Causation and Modern Philosophy, ed. Keith Allen and Tom Stoneham, 3:65–86. New York, US: Routledge. ... Schliesser, E. (2011). Spinoza's Conatus as an essence preserving, attribute-neutral immanent cause : toward a new interpretation of attributes and modes. In K. Allen & T. Stoneham (Eds.), Causation and modern philosophy (Vol. 3, pp. 65–86). New York, US: Routledge.