WEBVTT NOTE Spontaneous Order: Commentary 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.720 The greatest achievement for me of Roderick and Charles' papers is their demonstration, 2 00:00:06.720 --> 00:00:13.000 not just in theory but in practice, of the usefulness of spontaneous order explanations. 3 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:19.640 They I think show how things become clear when you use this mechanism of explanation. 4 00:00:19.640 --> 00:00:24.640 But I have two challenges for both Roderick and Charles. 5 00:00:24.640 --> 00:00:31.320 I'll begin with Charles' discussion of the disagreement between Brownmiller and her critics. 6 00:00:31.320 --> 00:00:36.640 I'm not familiar with the literature he discusses, but I believe that he might be missing the 7 00:00:36.640 --> 00:00:41.760 depth of the disagreement between Brownmiller and her critics, namely on whether there is 8 00:00:41.760 --> 00:00:46.040 such a social order as Brownmiller describes in the first place. 9 00:00:46.040 --> 00:00:50.960 Not the reality of male dominance, that's a given, but the connection she makes between 10 00:00:50.960 --> 00:00:58.240 In that and what in the paper he quotes, the discovery that gentilia could serve as weapons. 11 00:00:58.240 --> 00:01:04.040 The reason I think there might be such a disagreement is that when I read about Brown Miller's views 12 00:01:04.040 --> 00:01:09.320 for the first time, my first reaction was an embarrassed giggle. 13 00:01:09.320 --> 00:01:15.880 The world Brown Miller describes just seemed to me like a caricature of the world I know. 14 00:01:15.880 --> 00:01:19.680 My first challenge concerns that giggle. 15 00:01:19.680 --> 00:01:25.360 There is then a distance and misunderstanding between Brown-Miller and her critics. There 16 00:01:25.360 --> 00:01:31.720 is also a distance between adherence and non-adherence of invisible hand explanations and I think 17 00:01:31.720 --> 00:01:37.020 it's instructive to take them together. Take the second distance between adherence and 18 00:01:37.020 --> 00:01:43.820 non-adherence of invisible hand explanations. Johnson, Charles takes Brown-Miller's critics 19 00:01:43.820 --> 00:01:48.680 to assume erroneously that the social order she describes has to be the product of some 20 00:01:48.680 --> 00:01:49.680 Some Planning. 21 00:01:49.680 --> 00:01:57.240 They do so, perhaps as Roderick says, because order is one of the cues whereby we recognize 22 00:01:57.240 --> 00:01:59.880 the presence of intention. 23 00:01:59.880 --> 00:02:04.100 More generally though, there is here in the background an idea about what it is to explain 24 00:02:04.100 --> 00:02:08.440 social orders, the phenomena of social order in principle. 25 00:02:08.440 --> 00:02:14.000 And this idea of Brownmiller's critics about social order as something planned is competing 26 00:02:14.000 --> 00:02:16.640 with Roderick's and Charles' ideas. 27 00:02:16.640 --> 00:02:21.080 Social order can be the result of spontaneous developments. 28 00:02:21.080 --> 00:02:24.480 So let me briefly overview this competition. 29 00:02:24.480 --> 00:02:25.920 Social order is a weird thing. 30 00:02:25.920 --> 00:02:30.080 It is a category between, I think, the mechanical and the intentional. 31 00:02:30.080 --> 00:02:31.080 Let me explain. 32 00:02:31.080 --> 00:02:36.240 When I do something intentional, for example, raise my hand, you can ask me why. 33 00:02:36.240 --> 00:02:41.880 But if my hand simply jerks, goes up as a result of some electrical imbalance in my 34 00:02:41.880 --> 00:02:45.840 muscles, this sort of why question doesn't apply. 35 00:02:45.840 --> 00:02:51.960 It would be like complaining to me that I'm still digesting lunch. It's nonsense. Now, 36 00:02:51.960 --> 00:02:57.320 when it comes to social order, we have, I think, conflicting intuitions. Sometimes we 37 00:02:57.320 --> 00:03:03.840 think about social orders as mechanical, for it has no mastermind, or no obvious mastermind 38 00:03:03.840 --> 00:03:09.800 at least, possibly none at all, and sometimes we think about it as intentional, for it is 39 00:03:09.800 --> 00:03:17.760 is more than an anthill. This is the competition and I believe that we are genuinely conflicted. 40 00:03:17.760 --> 00:03:23.520 We are tempted to amalgamate the two languages. But when we start doing that, things get murky 41 00:03:23.520 --> 00:03:31.080 and talking about different degrees of intentionality, for example, or of subconscious mechanisms 42 00:03:31.080 --> 00:03:36.440 is often no more than wavering and equivocating. We have to decide which language we want to 43 00:03:36.440 --> 00:03:44.800 This is why I think the very idea of invisible hand explanations is so important. 44 00:03:44.800 --> 00:03:48.360 It gives us a non-conflicted language. 45 00:03:48.360 --> 00:03:53.360 To give invisible hand explanations of social phenomena, then, is both unlike explaining 46 00:03:53.360 --> 00:03:58.300 how machines work and unlike justifying intentional actions. 47 00:03:58.300 --> 00:04:03.760 To explain social phenomena on the invisible hand model is rather to identify patterns 48 00:04:03.760 --> 00:04:04.760 of intentions. 49 00:04:04.760 --> 00:04:13.760 I'll explain. In large groups, different people have different intentions and ways of thinking and act in different ways, but there is no chaos. 50 00:04:13.760 --> 00:04:22.760 We can identify patterns among those groups, resemblances and differences, strands and currents of thoughts and actions. 51 00:04:22.760 --> 00:04:29.760 According to the invisible hand theories, then these patterns are what we call social order. 52 00:04:29.760 --> 00:04:42.760 Now, if this is true, adherents of invisible hand explanations, adherents of that language are faced with a complicated problem, how to convince people to learn and use this language. 53 00:04:42.760 --> 00:04:52.760 But, and here I criticize Roderick and Charles, it seems that they do not recognize, or not enough at least, the task, that task that they are facing. 54 00:04:52.760 --> 00:04:58.000 They seem to think that we can just offer invisible hand explanations and that merely 55 00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:03.540 upon hearing them, these explanations would instantly make sense to everyone. 56 00:05:03.540 --> 00:05:12.960 In his paper, Roderick writes and italicizes, nothing essential is hidden, he insists, amazed 57 00:05:12.960 --> 00:05:15.480 at how blind people can be. 58 00:05:15.480 --> 00:05:19.640 But even if this is true, and I take it to be true, it doesn't mean that people know 59 00:05:19.640 --> 00:05:25.500 know how to see it, or that they have to see the same thing, the same patterns that Roderick 60 00:05:25.500 --> 00:05:31.380 does. There is, I think, reason to be more cautious with one's expectations. A similar 61 00:05:31.380 --> 00:05:37.040 argument applies to Charles' paper. There is reason to suspect, that is, not only that 62 00:05:37.040 --> 00:05:42.520 Brown-Miller's critics disagree with her, but that in a sense they do not have even 63 00:05:42.520 --> 00:05:48.920 understand her. If my first reaction to her claims, my giggle, is any indication, it may 64 00:05:48.920 --> 00:05:54.440 It may be possible that the problem these critics have with Brown Miller's argument is that 65 00:05:54.440 --> 00:05:58.360 they do not know how to connect what she says about the reality they take themselves to 66 00:05:58.360 --> 00:06:04.300 be familiar with or to connect what she says to this reality. 67 00:06:04.300 --> 00:06:08.880 It seems very plausible that for them she is offering a caricature, not a theory, that 68 00:06:08.880 --> 00:06:15.080 she is describing something perfectly familiar and ordinary in a very bizarre and extraordinary 69 00:06:15.080 --> 00:06:16.600 way. 70 00:06:16.600 --> 00:06:21.360 So imagine a discussion between Brown Miller and a critic, imagine her saying all those 71 00:06:21.360 --> 00:06:26.840 things about genitalia weapons and imagine the critic listening and being astounded. 72 00:06:26.840 --> 00:06:31.480 He wants to laugh, that's his first reaction, but then he looks at her and notices she's 73 00:06:31.480 --> 00:06:33.300 not joking. 74 00:06:33.300 --> 00:06:38.280 What should he do now and what should Brown Miller do to help him see what she's after? 75 00:06:38.280 --> 00:06:42.400 Possibly the best thing that could be done in such cases is to tempt people, tempt the 76 00:06:42.400 --> 00:06:48.880 is a critic in this case to somehow see things in a certain light, to identify certain patterns. 77 00:06:48.880 --> 00:06:57.440 But tempting people to see things in a different light, attempting people for example to see 78 00:06:57.440 --> 00:07:01.680 things from the perspective of a rape victim is not an easy task. 79 00:07:01.680 --> 00:07:06.200 For to begin with there is nothing tempting about that pain and humiliation. 80 00:07:06.200 --> 00:07:09.220 It is much easier to be blind to it. 81 00:07:09.220 --> 00:07:15.300 Like in the case of Franz Kafka, another Austrian hunger artist, the tragedy is that 82 00:07:15.300 --> 00:07:22.020 what is really a cry of pain can sound to the unfamiliar crowd like a joke. 83 00:07:22.020 --> 00:07:27.500 And there may not be any calm, reasoned, organized way of convincing them otherwise. 84 00:07:27.500 --> 00:07:31.740 It is not impossible to convince people to start using different language and identify 85 00:07:31.740 --> 00:07:35.640 new patterns, but it takes some sort of temptation work. 86 00:07:35.640 --> 00:07:41.680 takes creating the motivation in them to try and see things in a new light, but it doesn't 87 00:07:41.680 --> 00:07:46.200 seem that Roderick and Charles are willing to do all the work that's needed. 88 00:07:46.200 --> 00:07:47.960 So this is my first challenge to them. 89 00:07:47.960 --> 00:07:52.720 How do they expect their arguments to convince their opponents if in the sense I explained 90 00:07:52.720 --> 00:07:58.280 their opponents do not even speak the language necessary, if they see other patterns, if 91 00:07:58.280 --> 00:08:04.280 the patterns that Brown Miller is presenting, for example, strike them as funny? 92 00:08:04.280 --> 00:08:10.680 My second challenge is more of a request for clarification. Both Long and Johnson support 93 00:08:10.680 --> 00:08:17.900 in principle spontaneous social orders, but they make claims that make me worried about 94 00:08:17.900 --> 00:08:23.500 such orders in general and anarchy in particular. If Roderic is right, the anarchy seems to 95 00:08:23.500 --> 00:08:29.000 have no reason to be an adherent of spontaneous order for, as he claims, it may lead to the 96 00:08:29.000 --> 00:08:32.920 and the creation of the state, spontaneous order namely. 97 00:08:32.920 --> 00:08:39.360 If Charles is right, the anarchist seems to have no reason to reject the state for Charles' 98 00:08:39.360 --> 00:08:40.360 claims. 99 00:08:40.360 --> 00:08:48.000 The evils we are concerned with are not necessarily the evils of the state. 100 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:54.000 I suggested above that invisible hand explanations supply us with the conceptual scheme we need 101 00:08:54.000 --> 00:08:56.480 in the social sciences. 102 00:08:56.480 --> 00:09:02.040 If this is indeed so, then it should not be altogether surprising that as Charles and 103 00:09:02.040 --> 00:09:06.600 Roderick claim, the male dominant society and the state, which are after all kinds of 104 00:09:06.600 --> 00:09:10.760 social orders, will also have to be explained in those terms. 105 00:09:10.760 --> 00:09:14.080 Any social order has to be explained in those terms. 106 00:09:14.080 --> 00:09:20.080 But now, what is anarchy and what is the rape free society supposed to be beyond the fact 107 00:09:20.080 --> 00:09:24.980 that like any other social order, they are spontaneous orders? 108 00:09:24.980 --> 00:09:30.960 The source of my un-clarity I think is this. Do Roderick and Charles take spontaneous order 109 00:09:30.960 --> 00:09:38.580 to be a program for implementation or do they take it to be a scheme for explanation? I 110 00:09:38.580 --> 00:09:43.420 suggested it was the latter. Invisible hand explanations give us a language in which to 111 00:09:43.420 --> 00:09:49.260 investigate social orders in general and this is why they are important. The question about 112 00:09:49.260 --> 00:09:54.420 the good of social order, discussions in politics in general, cannot even get off the ground 113 00:09:54.420 --> 00:10:00.420 without it, for to discuss something, one at least needs to have a language for discussion. 114 00:10:00.420 --> 00:10:06.980 If I may take the two papers presented today as representative, it seems to me that this 115 00:10:06.980 --> 00:10:13.220 is not how libertarian anarchists, like Roderick and Charles had taken them to be, understand 116 00:10:13.220 --> 00:10:14.220 things. 117 00:10:14.220 --> 00:10:19.620 They do indeed use the spontaneous order explanation as such a fundamental conceptual scheme, but 118 00:10:19.620 --> 00:10:26.620 At the same time, they put it forward as an agenda, a suggested platform for social improvement. 119 00:10:26.620 --> 00:10:35.620 In other words, they advocate spontaneity within limits, but at the same time take any social reality complicated enough to be spontaneous anyway. 120 00:10:35.620 --> 00:10:44.620 So this is my second challenge to them. What is the point in fighting for what necessarily exists, namely spontaneous order? 121 00:10:44.620 --> 00:10:49.620 and what's the point of fighting against what cannot exist, namely non-spontaneous order.