Dear Rob,
Thanks for your post and comments on intellectual support-bargaining. I will
try to explain further.
What I give as ‘the conventional and simple understanding of information’
would clearly not be the understanding of Plato and Collingwood. They are
more sophisticated commentators. ‘Good people’ certainly can lie. Both Plato
and Collingwood were members of an intellectual elite, and no doubt found it
convenient to assemble support for the idea that they should be licensed to
lie. It might help to sustain the ascendancy of the intellectual elite.
Keynes the same, with ‘guile’.
Intellectual support-bargaining is not confined to matters that are
inaccessible to empirical testing. The point, which I tried to make in my
previous post, is that empirical testing still confines us to information.
Information, being a matter of mind, is inherently insecure. Consequently,
even the most rigorous empirical testing depends for acceptance of its
conclusions on the assembly of support. The physics of the 20th century
perhaps makes this clear. The empirical certainties of earlier physics,
regarded as identifying ‘absolute’ truths about the nature of things, were
shown to be not quite as certain as had been thought. My understanding is
that physicists now recognise that they do not have certain access to ‘truth’;
rather they acknowledge that the scientific community has to determine what
it will accept as scientific ‘fact’. Support-bargaining draws on Thomas Kuhn’s
ideas regarding the interpretation of the results of empirical tests, rather
than the approach of Russell and Popper.
Nevertheless, I do maintain that support-bargaining becomes more prominent
when empirical evidence is restricted or inconclusive. This is because
empirical ‘facts’ tend to get the support of everyone, or very nearly
everyone, so arguing against them is not productive of support. When there
is a shortage of solid ‘facts’, the way is open for the assembly of support
for whatever points of view, or theories, people want to prevail. People
weigh in with their own convenient ‘facts’. The climate change debate
suffered in its early days at least from a shortage of solid ‘facts’ about
the reality of global warming, and different factions argued to assemble
support for and against measures to combat global warming. Even now, the
level of empirical evidence on global warming does not seem sufficient to
prevent some powerful people (powerful because well-supported) from arguing
that global warming is an illusion.
Intellectual support-bargaining is not at all confined. It deals with all
ideas, theories and hypotheses. I have suggested that ISB in its purest form
takes place in universities and places of higher education, where the avowed
objective is to formulate disinterested theories regarding the way human
society functions. But I suggest also that ISB takes place all across
societies, where people argue and debate over ideas, knowing that the
support assembled around ideas can be utilised also in political forums for
the passage of political measures based on the ideas. The media form one of
the most prominent forums of intellectual support-bargaining, for in that
context the ideas that dominate politics are extensively debated and
evaluated. The media assemble support for ideas and hence assemble support
in a political process that depends on the assembly of majority support. The
forum is much less ‘pure’, because media organisations are commonly set up
as companies. Their primary purpose is to meet and exceed a monetary
viability condition.
‘Good people’ will certainly disagree, since good people have different
interests. Intellectual support-bargaining is certainly not confined to good
people. People across the whole spectrum of virtue will have different
interests and will pursue them through the assembly of support. Interests, I
should add, in the understanding of support-bargaining, derive from
situation. People in different situations have different interests. People
in similar situations are likely to have similar interests and will the more
easily accord each other the support that forms groups. Group interests form
the basis of political support-bargaining.
In intellectual support-bargaining, the equivalent to ‘situation’ is the
‘frame of reference’. People use theories as the basis of observation and
interpretation. The role of theory in directing observation and
understanding makes it of central importance in intellectual
support-bargaining. To assemble support most effectively, you need to ensure
people think, observe and interpret in the way you do, and hence you need to
inculcate your theory into others by establishing it prominently in the
information interface. Hence the link to Kuhn’s idea of ‘paradigm’ change’
in scientific revolutions.
My mention of ‘good people’ and ‘unprincipled people’ raises ethical
questions, although really it was just as an abbreviated caricature of a
popular concept of ‘truth’. But since the ethical questions arise, let me
say that ethics can also be understood in terms of support-bargaining. Who
are ‘good’ and who are ‘bad’ depends on the group you belong to and the
interests you pursue. In general, ‘good people’ are the people who share
your interests, share your ideas, and in short, give you their support.
Support-bargaining, including the intellectual variety, leads to the
assembly of support in groups. Groups with preponderant support tend to
develop concepts of ethical behaviour conducive to their interests. These
concepts are disseminated across the societies until they are so widely
accepted as to be taken as independent of the interest of any particular
group. They form an ethical equivalent of the theoretical ‘frames of
reference’ referred to above, though their extent means they are not
understood in factional terms. The support assembled around ideas of
ethical behaviour can then be used for the passage of measures based on
those ideas, even if the measures are more conducive to factional interest
than to the interests of society in general.
The assembly of support for ethical principles also impacts the general
conduct of society. In most societies the concept of ethical behaviour
includes condemnation of those who tell lies. Those who tell lies to
assemble support for their interests consequently risk losing substantial
support for the breach of an ethical principle. Plato and Collingwood risked
losing support rather than gaining it. It is probably a better strategy in
intellectual support-bargaining for elite intellectuals to proclaim
unwavering commitment to the pursuit of truth.
As regards 4 = 5, this may well receive support in the sort of Orwellian
world in which it is unsafe to think otherwise. People assent to outlandish
principles or commit actions that would normally be unacceptable to indicate
their commitment to a group as a priority over other considerations. The
group recognises the new member as committed to the group’s interests and
give him their support. Such procedures tend to form groups cohesive to the
point of rigidity.
If a group develops the idea that 4 = 5, then one of its members may agree
to accept $4 from an outsider and give the outsider $5. The members of the
group may admire his commitment to ‘the truth’. They may make him leader of
the group, in recognition of his good faith and adherence to principle. Then
later someone in the group may, with great temerity, say that while $4
bought only a cup of tea and half a bun, the $5 bought a cup of tea and a
whole bun. So where was the sense of 4 = 5? The group may then expel the
dissenter from the group as unprincipled and disloyal. The group may even
chop his head off. But the group may, after due consideration, agree that
perhaps a cup of tea and a bun is better than a cup of tea and half a bun,
and agree that 4 ? 5. Group support can sustain all sorts of illusions. Some
of them are exposed as illusions; some not. Great advantage can accrue to
those who enjoy support for illusions, so long as they are not exposed. The
Soviet Union existed for seventy years on illusions. Support is not
uncommonly preferred to truth. Neoclassical economic theory sustains
illusions about uniform products, ‘rational actors’ and ‘perfect information’.
Uskali Mäki in his SHOE post of 24 June announces a conference on ‘What to
make of highly unrealistic models?’. Such models can be understood as
outcomes of intellectual support-bargaining involving theory groups
institutionalised and ascendant in leading universities. Those who are
disloyal to the ascendant group risk having their careers chopped off.
If you ‘do not dispute the sad possibility that in the real human world,
deception is both intrinsic and vital’ then you are well on the way to
support-bargaining and the idea of an information interface.
Support-bargaining suggests that people manipulate information to assemble
support for the advance of their interests. It is not just a possibility,
nor a falling away from otherwise virtuous procedure. It is natural human
behaviour, and systemic in support-bargaining. People in a
support-bargaining system reduce the incidence of falsehood by assembling
group support to condemn it.
There are six published books on support-bargaining and money-bargaining. A
seventh will, I hope, appear next year. The Cambridge Journal of Economics
has published two basic articles on the subject, on situation-related
selection and on companies as bargaining agencies. The last chapter of my
most recent book (link below) is on ‘Information and the Evolution of
Communications’. The basic ‘meat’ of support-bargaining and money-bargaining
is in Support-Bargaining: the Mechanics of Democracy Revealed. A book of
articles, with an introduction, can be downloaded for free from the World
Economics Association website at: https://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/
Patrick Spread
Recent publication: www.routledge.com/9781138122918
Patrick Spread
Saikile, 29 Moorland Close,
Witney, OX28 6LN
United Kingdom
Tel: (+44) (0)1993 862 783
Mob: (+44) (0)787 1108 046
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Rob Tye" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, June 25, 2017 2:01 PM
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [SHOE] LSE series of reprints of scarce works on political
economy
> Dear Patrick
>
> Your offering - 'intellectual support-bargaining' - at this point appears
> to
> me a pig in a poke.
>
> You seem to defend your position by making 'intellectual
> support-bargaining'
> a kind of envelope which contains those matters in the social sciences
> which
> are too complex to definitively resolve empirically. However, at least by
> default, one might fear that the envelope might also contain deliberate
> deceptions. You write:
>
> PS > Mason interprets my comments in accordance with the conventional and
> simple understanding of information, which might be summarised as, "good
> people tell the truth, while unprincipled people do not".
>
> Missing from this summary is not just that “good people might legitimately
> disagree” but also that on some adjudications, “good people lie”. We owe
> that latter insight to (say) Plato and Collingwood, who both clearly
> stated
> that they saw it as a duty of an intellectual elite to deceive the rest.
> And to me, in his “Early Beliefs” Keynes (contra Russell) rather clearly
> signals the same allegiance to deception (“guile”).
>
> I am not sure where you stand on such matters. If you wish to restrict
> 'intellectual support-bargaining' merely to a zone where ‘good people
> legitimately disagree’, how would you propose to exclude such as Plato,
> Collingwood or Keynes from abusing that privilege? Alternatively, do you
> see yourself as a link in the master/pupil chain:
> Keynes-Wittgenstein-Anscombe-Feyerabend, where ultimately “Anything Goes”?
>
> To put all this another way – is 'intellectual support-bargaining' another
> name for Orwell’s Room 101? Is it the place where, if push comes to
> shove,
> 4 = 5?
>
> Forgive me if this sounds merely sarcastic – it is not mean to be. My
> deep
> seated loyalties lie with such as Russell and Popper, who abhor deception,
> but I do not dispute the sad possibility that in the real human world,
> deception is both intrinsic and vital.
>
> Rob Tye
>
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