Review of Oakeshott’s The Concept of a Philosophical Jurisprudence

oakeshott, philosophical jurisprudence, political philosophy, politics, Richard Mullender

Here’s a very brief review published in Political Studies Review.

Michael Oakeshott: The Concept of a Philosophical Jurisprudence by Luke O’Sullivan ( ed. ). Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2008. 384 pp., £30.00, ISBN 978 1845 400309

In this book, Luke O’Sullivan presents us with Oakeshott the philosopher and Oakeshott the political commentator. The philosophical Oakeshott is younger and committed to comprehending the ‘whole character’ of the subjects he examines. The political Oakeshott is older and less ambitious. Moreover, a note of world-weariness runs through his work. For he finds himself surveying developments that he considers unattractive.

We meet Oakeshott the philosopher in the essay from which O’Sullivan’s collection derives its title. In ‘The Concept of a Philosophical Jurisprudence’ (1938), Oakeshott bemoans ‘the chaos of modern jurisprudence’. He identifies the chaos to which he points as the upshot of ‘a number of different, mutually exclusive and unrelated types of theory’. This leads him to argue for a ‘philosophical jurisprudence’. He explains that such a jurisprudence is not ‘merely one among a number of unrelated explanations of law’. Rather it is an account of law that, in embracing a ‘hierarchy of explanations’ (e.g., analytical, historical, sociological), yields an authoritative account of law’s nature.

Oakeshott’s account of ‘philosophical jurisprudence’ contrasts sharply with a meditation on a prominent feature of the British cultural scene written eleven years later. In ‘The BBC’, the analysis is the work of Oakeshott the political commentator. He is critical of the ‘enterprise of evangelization’ in which he finds the BBC (at that time a monopoly) engaging. On Oakeshott’s account, the BBC exhibits a ‘schoolmasterish disposition towards its patrons’ which finds expression in ‘a severe and self-determined policy of social uplift’. He also notes that those to whom the BBC broadcasts are ‘never at a loss for an escape from [their] own thoughts’. These points lead Oakeshott to conclude that the power wielded by the BBC makes it ‘dangerous’.1

While politics came to occupy a place of prominence in Oakeshott’s mind as he grew older, his commitment to analytic precision remained a feature of his thinking. We see it in, for example, ‘Contemporary British Politics’ (1948). He is critical of the crudely majoritarian approach to democratic politics advocated by John Parker (a Labour supporter). However, he also finds fault with the alternative proposed by Quintin Hogg (a Conservative MP). For Hogg identifies ‘natural law’ as a basis on which to secure the interests of individuals. But Oakeshott dismisses Hogg’s argument on the ground that it fails to exhibit the clear-mindedness of others (e.g., Burke and Hegel) who have staked out similar positions.

O’Sullivan’s collection merits close attention, for it records the process of development that saw Oakeshott the philosopher become Oakeshott the political commentator.

Note 1
Recent analyses of the BBC by Michael Buerk and Peter Sissons exhibit family resemblances to that offered by Oakeshott (except that now a less nuanced vocabulary, e.g., ‘political correctness’, is doing the critical work). See M. Buerk, ‘Blowing the BBC’s Gaff’, Standpoint (April 2011).

Plantinga and Noë on the science vs religion debate

Alva Noë, Alvin Plantinga, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, rationality, reason, religion, science

Noë reviews Plantinga’s latest book.

from a naturalistic point of view, we have every reason to doubt that our cognitive faculties are reliable. Therefore we can’t seriously believe naturalism. For to believe it would be to have grounds for doubting the reliability of our own inclinations to believe it.

The Philosopher Stoned

drugs, philosophy, Walter Benjamin

Here is a review article going back a few years in The New Yorker on Walter Benjamin‘s relationship to dope.

The sessions were recorded in “protocols,” furnishing raw material for what Benjamin intended to be a major book on the philosophical and psychological implications of drug use.

Hayek in Today’s Cognitive Neuroscience

brain, brain scans, brain science, cognition, cognitive science, consciousness, distributed knowledge, Fuster, hayek, joaquin fuster, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, qualia, the "easy" problems, the "hard" problem, the sensory order

Check out Joaquín Fuster’s recent paper:

Only now, more than half a century after the publication of his theoretical book (Hayek, 1952), is the reaction to Hayek’s argument beginning to be heard. And it’s a positive reaction, now supported by facts. He used to say that without a theory the facts are silent. Now, belatedly reacting to his book, we can confidently say that modern facts speak eloquently for his theory. In order to understand how modern facts meet Hayek, it is necessary to understand where his thinking came from and where cognitive neuroscience has been going in the past 50 years. Only in this manner can we fully appreciate the happy convergence of two trends of cognitive neuroscience that for most of the 20th century have developed far apart from each other. One is the ‘‘modular’’ trend (one cerebral module for each cognitive function), the other the ‘‘distributed’’ or reticular trend (brain networks of distributed knowledge participating in all the cognitive functions that adapt the individual to his environment). In his The Sensory Order, Hayek was the first to theoretically adopt the latter trend, which has lately developed greatly. Yet, astonishingly, to this day, most of the main actors in the field of cognitive neuroscience don’t even know of Hayek. In my opinion, the chief reason for this lingering neglect of his ideas is the language he used in his book. For example, he used terms that are unusual in physiological psychology, such as ‘‘following’’ and ‘‘map,’’ to characterize what in modern translation corresponds to synaptic association and neural network, respectively. Three powerful intellectual currents shaped Hayek’s psychology: Vienna’s logical positivism, Gestalt psychology, and psychophysics. Curiously, he tried to disown all three, yet ended up modifying them and incorporating them in his thinking.Afourth current, the dynamic systems theory of Von Bertalanffy (1950), came natural to him to theorize about the brain after having accepted the relational code of Gestalt (Koffka, 1935). After all, Hayek had been applying general complex systems theory to economics. With his application of that theory to psychology came the acceptance of a cortical dynamics in which the whole is more than the sum of the parts and irreducible to them: a cortical dynamics in which relationships were established by cell connections. Yet, in his time, little was known about the connectivity or physiology of the brain to support the relational anatomical code or the dynamics of the perceptual system that he devised. Now we know much more about them. Like the positivists of the ‘‘Vienna Circle,’’ Hayek advocated the use of the scientific method devoid of metaphysics as the only valid approach to human knowledge. In dealing with perception, however, he rejected the purely empiricist tenets of the positivists (like his friend Karl Popper, another quasi-renegade among them). According to Hayek, no perception was reducible to raw sensation. The concept of the brain as tabula rasa or passive recipient of sensations was to him unacceptable. The ‘‘elementary sensations’’ (e.g., a pure color) proposed by Ernst Mach (1885), the famous psychophysicist, were literally meaningless as a foundation for perception. Even the simplest of sensations is based on prior experience, either by the self or by the species – thus, in the latter case, inherited.

The Effects of Music on the Brain

brain, brain scans, brain science, cognitive science, mri, mri and music, music, neural correlates, neurobiology, neurophilosophy, oliver sacks, philosophy of mind

Oliver Sacks is the test subject in looking at the effect of music on the brain.

Can science ever explain consciousness?

Anil Seth, barry smith, behaviorism, brain science, chris frith, cognition, cognitive closure, cognitive science, consciousness, david chalmers, mri, naturalism, neural correlates, neurobiology, neurophilosophy, Neurophysics, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, physicalism, qualia, the "easy" problems, the "hard" problem, zombies

Anil Seth, Chris Frith and Barry Smith (of Birkbeck, not Buffalo!) outline the topography in a podcast.

Bak’s Sand Pile

Bak's Sand Pile, catastrophes, Per Bak, self-organized criticality, ted lewis

I want to give a plug to Ted Lewis’ new book Bak’s Sand Pile.

Did the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, the massive power blackout of 2003, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the Gulf oil spill of 2010 ‘just happen’-or were these shattering events foreseeable? Do such calamities in fact follow a predictable pattern? Can we plan for the unforeseen by thinking about the unthinkable? Ted Lewis explains the pattern of catastrophes and their underlying cause. In a provocative tour of a volatile world, he guides the reader through mega-fires, fragile power grids, mismanaged telecommunication systems, global terrorist movements, migrating viruses, volatile markets and Internet storms. Modern societies want to avert catastrophes, but the drive to make things faster, cheaper, and more efficient leads to self-organized criticality-the condition of systems on the verge of disaster. This is a double-edged sword. Everything from biological evolution to political revolution is driven by some collapse, calamity or crisis. To avoid annihilation but allow for progress, we must change the ways in which we understand the patterns and manage systems. Bak’s Sand Pile explains how.

Ted is the author of the very excellent Network Science: Theory and Applications and is contributing a paper to Marge and my themed issue of Cognitive Systems Research on stigmergy which is about to be delivered to the publisher. Ted is Professor of Computer Science and Executive Director of the Center for Homeland Defense and Security at the Naval Postgraduate School. If you want to know more about the late Per Bak, here is his obituary.

Review of Menary’s (ed.) The Extended Mind

active externalism, active perception, Adams & Aizawa, Andy Clark, david chalmers, David Spurrett, extended mind, externalism, Joseph Ulatowski, mark rowlands, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, richard menary, robert rupert, robert wilson, situated cognition, Stephen Cowley, susan hurley

Richard Menary’s long time coming The Extended Mind is reviewed here by  Joseph Ulatowski.

Colin McGinn: All machine and no ghost?

cognition, cognitive closure, cognitive science, Colin McGinn, consciousness, Descartes, dualism, Eliminative Materialism, hayek, idealism, neurophilosophy, neuroscience, Panpsychism, philosophy of mind, the "easy" problems, the "hard" problem, the sensory order

Colin McGinn locates his position within philosophy of mind. Though not a fashionable position, I’m very sympathetic to it – and of course, it is a position that has much in common with Hayek.

The “mysterianism” I advocate is really nothing more than the acknowledgment that human intelligence is a local, contingent, temporal, practical and expendable feature of life on earth – an incremental adaptation based on earlier forms of intelligence that no one would regard as faintly omniscient. The current state of the philosophy of mind, from my point of view, is just a reflection of one evolutionary time-slice of a particular bipedal species on a particular humid planet at this fleeting moment in cosmic history – as is everything else about the human animal. There is more ignorance in it than knowledge.

Hayek, Connectionism, and Scientific Naturalism

connectionism, intentionality, joshua rust, naturalism, science, Searle

Here is an excellent paper by Joshua Rust.

Barry Smith (1997, p. 18) observes that ‘‘Hayek is at one with the connectionist tendency within contemporary cognitive science.’’ And at one level of description, Smith is correct. Friedrich Hayek’s question is, in part, a procedural one: by what mechanism does the mental order come to replicate or represent the most general features of the physical order of which it is a part? In response, Hayek posits an associative scheme that bears some resemblance to contemporary connectionist theories of mind. Nevertheless, I shall contend that Hayek is wrongly shoehorned into the connectionist camp. Hayek’s question cannot be the same as the philosophical connectionist because the former does not share the same ontological presuppositions as the latter.