A Keynesian Beauty Contest, on the other hand, can give us some information about what people think other people will judge to be most pleasing to popular taste but it can't be used to construct a theory of Aesthetics or to create a consensual yardstick for Beauty.
Sen pretends otherwise not because he himself has any idea or theory of Justice but because he is Sen-ile and likes comparing apples to oranges because this proves he has mastered horticulture.
Sen asks-
Would not a theory that identifies a transcendental alternative also, through the same process, tell us what we want to know about comparative justice?Yes. The Stalnaker Lewis 'closest possible world' to our own, which we hold to be perfectly just, does in fact tell us what we need to do in any specific case. Generally, the answer is 'Do nothing. Stop worrying about it. You aren't actually a Judge, thanks be to Fuck! Quit twiddling with your todger and go do something useful.'
Sen takes a different view-
The answer is no – it does not. We may, of course, be tempted by the idea that we can rank alternatives in terms of their respective closeness to the perfect choice, so that a transcendental identification may indirectly yield also a ranking of alternatives. But that approach does not get us very far, partly because there are different dimensions in which objects differ (so that there is the further issue of assessing the relative importance of distances in distinct dimensions), and also because descriptive closeness is not necessarily a guide to valuational proximity (a person who prefers red wine to white may prefer either to a mixture of the two, even though the mixture is, in an obvious descriptive sense, closer to the preferred red wine than pure white wine would be)The transcendental alternative- i.e the perfectly just 'closest possible world'- tells us to shut the fuck up unless it is feasible for us to
1) rank alternatives in terms of their relationship with, not the perfect choice, but the most efficient transition vector such that its implementation accelerates convergence to the ideal.
this requires us to
2) have a system of description that 'carves up the world along its joints' and which thus doesn't have 'holes' or 'discontinuities' of the red wine/white wine sort Sen mentions. Such a system of description would
3) give us a single valued metric such that McKelvey chaos is avoided. Furthermore, it would prioritise certain injustices and thus be proof against concurrency or race hazard type problems.
If there is at least one person who is universally acknowledged both to be more just as well as to know more and have more skill than any rival; then the transcendental alternative can be immediately institutionalised and can commence its program of action. Arrow might say 'this is dictatorial' but, in this context, the word has no repugnant association.
In the real world, it is a matter of fact that Judges do look at the ideal solution and work backwards to see how much of it can be realised. So do Economists. These 'second best' solutions require idiographic 'expert cognition' and are protocol bound. A nomothetic approach based on 'principles' just adds noise to signal. It is worthless.
Sen has told us that people he calls 'transcendental institutionalists' do make comparative judgments. This is naughty, in his view, because 'a plurality of impartial reasons' are thereby ignored. However, it is not proven that any such plurality exists. The parable of the flute does not show any such thing. Bob and Anna's claims are not 'impartial'. They are based on some accidental circumstance peculiar to themselves. Bob is poor. Anna can play the flute. Neither of these accidents have any essential relationship to ownership. Bob's claim would be defeated if a poorer child chanced to come by. Anna's claim would be defeated if a superior flute player turned up. Clara, by contrast, made the flute deliberately and with the expenditure of time and skill. Her ownership claim is based on an impartial principle. No doubt, Clara, in making her claim may have included irrelevant reasons- e.g. that she didn't get cake at lunch because there wasn't enough and so had to make do with rice pudding instead- but that does not alter things in the slightest because there is only one 'impartial' ratio here- viz. the good old Lockean notion of ownership as arising through mingled labor power.
A Transcendental Institutionist could easily stipulate for a type of education or indoctrination such that no plurality of impartial reasons could exist. It is simply a matter of defining and enforcing a definition of 'impartial reason' of a particular sort. In practice, the protocol bound 'artificial reason' of the Courts does dispense with 'a plurality of impartial reasons'. The Judgment states the ratio used in deciding a case. It features only one reason. The obiter dicta may mention other reasons and explain where and when they could become the ratio. However, obiter dicta are not binding in the same stare decisis sense.
I suppose, a Transcendental Instiutionalist could permit a 'plurality of impartial reasons' with some tribunal giving a discretionary weighting to each 'impartial reason'. However, this would make the system more 'gameable'. Still, the thing is possible. I recall a friend of mine who happened to be Gay, Disabled, Muslim and Ugandan. He was given a scholarship to Ivy League initially for an undergraduate degree (though he had a Bachelors degree from Makerere) but was quickly admitted to the MPhil program because of his undoubted ability. Still, on attending his first seminar, he could see that his peers regarded his admission as 'tokenism' since he ticked so many boxes! Since his subject was purely alethic, not Sen-tentious shite, he was soon able to make his mark. However, he choose not to remain in Academia, though he received good offers, precisely because of a new type of prejudice which has been created by badly designed 'affirmative action'.
This is not to say that the private sector is less prejudiced than the public sector. The opposite is the case. No doubt, my friend would be making a lot more money- or running a much bigger division- if he weren't judged on appearance and place or origin. Still, he is getting to make decisions in the field where his is the greatest competence.
It is perfectly proper, in Liberal Societies, that Professors are permitted to say anything they like about Jurisprudence. But this is only because Judges, who lack any such freedom as opposed to duty, get to actually decide cases.
Sen is worried only about the Professors. He says-
It is, of course, possible to have a theory that does both comparative assessments between pairs of alternatives, and a transcendental identification (when that is not made impossible through the surviving plurality of impartial reasons that have claims on our attention). That would be a ‘conglomerate’ theory, but neither of the two different types of judgements follows from each other.Sez you! It is perfectly possible to have a transcendental identification which rejects 'plurality of impartial reasons' or nullifies their deadlocking effect, by introducing a multiplicative weight update algorithm- and which also becomes the foundation of a comparative approach.
The same thing can be done through a non deterministic 'Oracular' procedure or Ethics based mimetic process. Some Revealed Religions, much of classical Chinese political thought, and many ideologies can fairly be described in no other way.
Consider the system of Ninomiya Sontoku which a Japanese economist has shown gives rise to a desirable type of general equilibrium. It is transcendental and could be institutionalised- indeed, the Bukufu bureaucracy sponsored the 'peasant-sage' and, at a later point, presented his vision as an alternative to Western style 'Liberalism'. Indeed, Herbert Spencer, on the evidence of a private letter to a Japanese admirer, would probably have preferred Ninomiya's approach had he known about it.
A different system can be discerned in the writings of the great Chinese poet Yan Wan Li. It too is transcendental and was associated with the leading Chinese institution of its time.
A transcendental approach is not different from that of positive economics. Both are concerned with global opportunity cost. This means they are looking at different possible 'transition vectors' and choosing on that basis. Thus, a genuine transcendental institutionalist can always compare situations though he is likely to most often say 'this doesn't matter' or 'this is properly indeterminate' because most things don't matter and most processes are indeterminate for an excellent reason- viz. they are part of inclusive fitness's regret minimizing strategy under Knightian uncertainty.
Sen never examines the global aspect of opportunity cost. That is why he was and is a shite economist who always gives the worst advice possible in any given situation. Why? He thinks most people are as stupid as he is himself.
Sen says a guy who lives in a gangster controlled neighborhood can't run away from that neighbourhood or work with others to get rid of the gangsters. But, if the guy doesn't look at this 'global' aspect of his opportunity set- if he concerns himself solely with his immediate utility- then his opportunity set will shrink adversely.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. To be free means to think about possible threats to your freedom as well as possible opportunities that might arise if you act prudently or diligently now without any immediate reward.
More immediately, the standard theories of justice that are associated with the approach of transcendental identification (for example, those of Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant or, in our time, Rawls or Nozick) are not, in fact, conglomerate theories. It is, however, true that in the process of developing their respective transcendental theories, some of these authors have presented particular arguments that happen to carry over to the comparative exercise. But in general the identification of a transcendental alternative does not offer a solution to the problem of comparisons between any two non-transcendental alternatives.This is not an argument but an arbitrary and partisan assertion. It is perfectly possible to repair the theories of those Sen mentions so that all 'this world' alternatives correspond to items in the most efficient transition vector to the closest possible 'transcendental world'. Indeed, the Spilrajn extension theorem can also be used the other way. Any partial ordering in this world means there must be a transcendental closest possible world. An efficient, for global, 'comparatist' program would be identical to the transition vector to that perfectly just alternative world.
The problem with Hobbes, Rousseau and Kant is that they don't say 'non-transcendental alternatives' don't matter but give some stupid reason why they do. Masturbation does not matter- though failure to have a wank may adversely affect health outcomes in later life. Rousseau and Kant were foolish to discuss the subject.
Consider the case for and against tax-funded abortion. I'm for it because it has reduced my likelihood of getting mugged by feral teens. Rawls was probably for it though for a mistaken reason. People behind the veil of ignorance don't know if they might be the ensouled as a fetus at risk of the procedure. Nozick was against tax funded abortion because he thought tax money should only be used for the police and the army. Actually, he should have been for criminalising abortion because there can be no doubt that most fetuses could become right bearers.
What about Sen? He is against female foeticide but is cool with abortion. Short-run, a ban on sex selective abortion can have some impact. But it becomes easier and easier to evade as technology advances. Moreover, it doesn't actually have any negative consequences because men can get brides from less developed regions. The men in those places have to work in distant towns, living in crowded dormitories, so there is no actual gender imbalance in their region as a result of the export of brides. By comparison, a developed society- like East Germany- which loses girls more than boys to the bright lights of Frankfurt and Munich, may develop social and political problems. But then depopulation would have occurred in any case.
The transcendental solution, I'm afraid, is pro-life. Imagine if there had been some scientific way of telling that I'd be a worthless blathershite while I was still in the womb. Might not Mum have been tempted to get rid of me? Thankfully, my parents were Hindus and had a horror of 'garbha-hatya'.
The 'comparative' aspect of the transcendental solution would be to compensate the woman who feels obliged to have the abortion. It may be decided that no adequate compensation is affordable and thus the woman may go ahead. However, it should punish anyone who has committed a crime or tort against the woman thus causing her to wish to terminate her pregnancy. It is not the mother, but those who have abused or oppressed her who are guilty of 'garbha-hatya'. The woman has suffered enough and may certainly be entitled to tax funded help of various sorts.
Transcendental theory simply addresses a different question from those of comparative assessment – a question that may be of considerable intellectual interest, but which is of no direct relevance to the problem of choice that has to be faced.Nonsense! Either the transcendental theory is action guiding or it is a worthless academic availability cascade in which case the only question that is addressed is how to write the stupidest shite possible. All the informational and computational constraints that vitiate an Academic, as opposed to action-guiding, 'transcendental theory' also vitiate comparative assessment.
Sen believes that-
if we are trying to choose between a Picasso and a Dali, it is of no help to invoke a diagnosis (even if such a transcendental diagnosis could be made) that the ideal picture in the world is the Mona Lisa.A diagnosis is either alethic or it is mischievous. Since nobody, in good faith, would invoke a false diagnosis in a different context, it follows that we are talking of 'knowledge' not 'surmise'. Such knowledge may be comprehensive with respect to every state of the world in which case the person offering this knowledge in another context is like the Game Show host in the Monty Hall problem who is changing our information set and with a view to getting us to change our decision. Alternatively this may snippet of information may arise from a 'zero-knowledge proof'- i.e. the person offering it has verified that someone else has correctly identified the 'ideal picture' but this verification did not involve his own gaining any extra knowledge. Thus he is speaking truthfully when he says 'the Mona Lisa' is the ideal picture. However, he can't tell us by what process of analysis this fact was arrived at.
Sen says 'invoking a diagnosis' (even if it is based on either a comprehensive theory or a 'zero knowledge proof') is no help in a slightly different context. He is wrong. Knowing the ideal picture is X is very very helpful indeed. It would immediately affect the art market. Art dealers would consult metrics based on different theories regarding why exactly X is the ideal and factorising those elements so that all other pictures can be given a value on the basis of how they score on those same elements.
This does not necessarily mean that the market won't be volatile. Indeed, volatility may increase as better methods of factorisation compete.
In my own case, as a follower of Pater or Haemsterhuis, I might say Dali is more preoccupied with factors in Da Vinci than Picasso. My preference for him is justified.
However, preferences aren't aesthetic judgments any more than the fact that I like the number 69 more than the number 420 is a mathematical judgement. No knowledge is generated by aggregating preferences. Effective demand is another matter. But effective demand is highly sensitive to expert cognition. As I write this I'm looking at a reproduction of Alma Tadema's 'Roses of Heliogabalus'. In 1960 I could have bought if for a hundred quid. It was last sold for a million and a half. This is not because British preferences changed greatly over the period. Rather it has to do with 'expert cognition' in the Art market.
Aggregating preferences over numbers won't give you a Mathematical theory. Similarly, the fact that some one likes Dali more than Picasso and then someone else says 'Mona Lisa is the ideal picture' has absolutely no relevance or bearing on Aesthetic theory or the Idea of Beauty. It's just cheap talk is all. However a zero knowledge proof that the Monal Lisa is the ideal is a very costly signal indeed. It creates a new separating equilibrium.
There is an old story about an American millionaire who approaches the Pope. He offers a munificent donation in exchange for one one small change in the Bible. Instead of 'loves and fishes', he wants a mention of the breakfast cereal he produces. The Pope is obliged to refuse. The words of Scripture are a type of 'zero knowledge proof' of the Creator's compassion for Humanity. Like all genuine knowledge with respect to what can be seen or touched, Scripture too must be tamper-proof albeit with respect to what is unseen and beyond mortal ken.
That may be interesting to hear, but it is neither here nor there in the choice between a Dali and a Picasso.'Doxa'- opinion- may or may not be interesting to hear. Still, it is prudent to bear it in mind. After all, doxastic systems, formal or informal, have methods of enforcing themselves if only as a solution to coordination games.
Knowledge may be very boring to hear or difficult to comprehend. But it is action guiding for rational people- or rather, rational people delegate decisions to people with expertise in this knowledge.
'Public Reason' which does not feature alethic knowledge but rather which concerns itself with doxa invented by careerist Academics is not wholly useless. In the short run, it is true, some mischievous ideas may gain currency. Medium term, however, people recognise that an entire branch of Academia is simply dead wood. Long term, these braying donkeys have destroyed only their own pasture. Their students will starve.
Thus the wise professor will keep his mouth shut.
Indeed, it is not at all necessary to talk about what may be the greatest or most perfect picture in the world, to choose between the two alternatives that we are facing.Provided we do it by tossing a coin or saying 'this picture's got more naked ladies' or 'that picture would look cool on my kitchen wall.
However, if we are not choosing simply to please ourselves- if for example we are discussing what sort of pictures we should buy to decorate the rooms of our international hotel chain- then a helpful place to start is by thinking out the most perfect picture for our purpose. For copyright reasons, or because the picture is too trite or 'on the nose', we may not be able to actually choose that 'perfect picture'. But it is enough to get our Art Director going in the right direction.
Nor is it sufficient, or indeed of any particular help, to know that the Mona Lisa is the most perfect picture in the world when the choice is actually between a Dali and a Picasso.Sheer nonsense. If Moaning Lisa is perfect, Dali is better than the virile Picasso.
Knowing something is perfect tells us about perfection. It changes everything. There was a time when I'd never had proper Italian food. Like many Britishers, I thought good Italian food meant lots of cheese and sauce and black pepper. Then I was served a perfect Italian meal. When I was told it was perfect, no further words were needed. More importantly, I was easily able to work out for myself what qualities Italians valued. Suddenly I was able to see why Ungaretti was better than the shithead D'Annunzio. To know the Italian notion of perfection is life changing. You stop dressing like a pimp and suddenly appear natural and even, to some extent, graceful and elegant.
Italy is a big and diverse country. At about the same time as the French were trying to create a champagne type wine industry in India, a cooperative in a poor part of South Italy was trying to climb the value chain. Indian grape growers- in the main- did not drink wine. The Italians did. They were quickly able to develop 'expert cognition' about a multi-dimensional quality space. Competing locally, then regionally, then at the European level, they settled on a particular style of wine- not the most expensive- but certainly very acceptable at certain seasons with certain sorts of food.
To say to these, now quite elderly, peasants- 'I've brought you this Chilean wine. It won the gold medal in its class' is to initiate a very complex epistemological process. The peasants are gaining knowledge of a type that bypasses usual metrics. They know their own terroir and its possibilities. Tasting this alien wine grown under wholly different conditions nevertheless can lift their own horizons.
Expert cognition is like that. Idiographic knowledge is useful in this way.
By contrast, what Sen is engaging in is a particularly meaningless sort of Methodenstreit. He is slaying a non-existent epistemological dragon to protect the maidenhood of a harlot.
What is needed instead is an agreement, based on public reasoning, on rankings of alternatives that can be realized.There can never be any such agreement because it is rational to permit the inclusion of antagonomic arguments. Robert Aumann has told us that the Sanhedrin actually had a rule against unanimity. The Catholic Church has at least one 'Devil's advocate' even in so sensitive a matter as Canonization.
In any case, there can't be a process of 'public reasoning' which ranks itself higher than any alternative ranking mechanism save by some arbitrary procedure. But in that case it isn't reasoning at all.
We all know that Public Reasoning is a waste of time. We also know that people who pretend to believe otherwise are seeking agenda control to push through some public mischief.
Sen, who has spent more than his fare share of time in stupid committee meetings, knows this better than most, yet Sen-ilely insists that
The separation between the transcendental and the comparative is quite comprehensive, as will be more fully discussed in Chapter 4 (‘Voice and Social Choice’).Does Sen actually demonstrate any separation between transcendental and comparative approaches in the relevant chapter?
No.
Sens says-
' A transcendental approach cannot, on its own, address questions about advancing justice and compare alternative proposals for having a more just society, short of the utopian proposal of taking an imagined jump to a perfectly just world. Indeed, the answers that a transcendental approach to justice gives – or can give – are quite distinct and distant from the type of concerns that engage people in discussions on justice and injustice in the world (for example, iniquities of hunger, poverty, illiteracy, torture, racism, female subjugation, arbitrary incarceration or medical exclusion as social features that need remedying).This is nonsense. A politically significant 'transcendental approach'- one that founds, or has the potential to refashion, a polity- would have a prioritised 'transition vector' featuring 'revolutionary justice'- i.e. killing certain key officials or influential people- followed by some 'War Communism' type draconian rule featuring expropriation and conscription without due process- before finally reverting from this 'state of exception' to a stable society under the rule of Law administered by Institutions which, the faithful might well believe to be 'transcendentally just'.
Alternatively, if plutocrats are in charge, no visible bloodshed need occur. The thing could be outsourced to Cambridge Analytics or feature the type of shenanigans familiar to us from 'House of Cards'.
By contrast, elderly pedants playing puerile 'Dracula vs Spiderman' games should, both for transcendental and comparative reasons, just shut the fuck up or else simply carry on fucking over young elitists in some Ivy League Ivory Tower.
Sen now presents a mathematical argument as to why, contrary to my assertion, a transcendental theory can't always yield a comparative assessment and vice versa
Could it be the case that the comparative rankings of the different alternatives must inter alia also be able to identify the transcendentally just social arrangement? Would the transcendental invariably follow from the full use of the comparative? If that were the case, we could plausibly argue that in a somewhat weak sense there is a necessity for the tractability of the transcendental alternative. It would not, of course, imply that there is any need to go via the transcendental approach to comparative assessments, but it would at least give transcendental identification a necessary presence in the theory of justice, in the sense that if the transcendental question cannot be answered, then we should conclude that we cannot fully answer the comparative question either. Would a sequence of pairwise comparisons invariably lead us to the very best? That presumption has some appeal, since the superlative might indeed appear to be the natural end-point of a robust comparative. But this conclusion would, in general, be a non sequitur. In fact, it is only with a ‘well-ordered’ ranking (for example, a complete and transitive ordering over a finite set) that we can be sure that the set of pairwise comparisons must also always identify a ‘best’ alternative.The Szpilrajn extension theorem tells us that we can always fill out a strict partial order to get a strict total order. So long as a transcendental theory seeks to operate upon the existing world and map it on to the target 'closest possible' ideal world, subject to certain constraints to do with efficiency and fairness, then there is a 'best' Transition vector which some possible redactor of the Theory will find is complete with respect to his vision. This redactor may not exist in this world but does in the closest possible just world. If 'possible worlds' exist, we each have such a redactor. Indeed, there must be some world where we all have univocal redactors.
We must, therefore, ask: how complete should the assessment be for it to be a systematic discipline?Why ask this? Nobody in the real world has a complete assessment even with respect to the decisions- e.g. what to think about while brushing one's teeth- we make in a single, solitary, hour of our life.
The vast majority of 'systematic disciplines' don't greatly matter. Wanking is a systematic discipline. So is taking a shit. We are under no obligation to ask 'how complete is the assessment' a wanker makes in deciding which video on pornhub to jizz to or whether a shitter is optimising the application of pressure on his bowels. No doubt, at the margin, there may be some people who need help with these things but it is not a matter of general concern.
Professors- as opposed to Lawyers or Legislators- talking shite about distributive Justice are just having a wank. They may be systematic (though Sen isn't) and some poor boobies may attend their lectures thinking they are acquiring an academic discipline but the truth is they are paying for a golden shower from a pedagogue, not a high priced prostitute of the kind who can tell you a juicy story about Trump which you can dine out on for the rest of your days.
In the ‘totalist’ approach that characterizes the standard theories of justice, including Rawls’s, incompleteness tends to appear as a failure, or at least as a sign of the unfinished nature of the exercise.The real failure is that Professors fight shy of wading into 'wedge issues' or get egg on their face when they do. Sen condemns female foeticide but not abortion. Levinas decided that Palestenians don't represent an alterity so it's okay to bomb them. Rawls advocated killing and eating African babies. Well, not in so many words, he didn't. But if it were a 'general truth' of Economics or Psychology that African babies must be ground up and added to one's breakfast cereal by multinational corporations so as to stimulate a passion for 'justice as fairness' in people, then that's what his theory would cash out as.
Incompleteness is not a problem in a theory- especially a theory of Justice- because completeness would involve a state space explosion.
Indeed, the survival of incompleteness is sometimes seen as a defect of a theory of justice, which calls into question the positive assertions that such a theory makes.The fact that something is sometimes seen as an elephant does not make it an elephant. It calls nothing into question except one's capacity to drive if those elephants happen to be pink.
I make the positive assertion that my name is Vivek. The fact that I can't make positive assertions about the names of other fat middle aged South Indian drunkards does not call anything into question at all.
I have a theory about names which is different from Saul Kripke's. That is why I used to ring up our Ambassador in Washington and positively assert that my name is Rahul Gandhi and could you please tell Mummy to legalise butt sex immediately otherwise I won't come home and become Prime Minister. I don't deny that my theory of names is incomplete. I don't know what name I will positively assert myself to bear the next time I drunk dial an Indian diplomat.
In fact, a theory of justice that makes systematic room for incompleteness can allow one to arrive at quite strong – and strongly relevant – judgements (for example, about the injustice of continuing famines in a world of prosperity, or of persistently grotesque subjugation of women, and so on), without having to find highly differentiated assessments of every political and social arrangement in comparison with every other arrangement (for example, addressing such questions as: exactly how much tax should be put on the sale of petrol in any particular country, for environmental reasons?)No theory of justice is required for saying 'feed the starving you fat fucks!' or 'stop shitting on women you limp dick retards!'
A sound knowledge of economics is required to answer questions about how much tax should be put on petrol. It's what Economists should be doing as opposed to putting on their underpants over their trousers and poncing around in a cape as the 'Captain Obvious' of the soundbite hungry mass-media.
Sen claimed that Social Choice theory was important for some reason to do with comparative justice. He wrote a chapter on the topic. But that chapter says nothing. Both comparative and transcendental approaches may be complete or they may be incomplete. What matters is that neither type, as advanced by Sen and his colleagues, say anything substantive at all. They just gesture at famine or the oppression of women and say 'that's unjust'. Beyond that they are wholly empty unless they propose an actual mechanism we have reason to think is incentive compatible and thus capable of being the solution of a repeated game or a voluntarily entered into bond of law.
Sen thinks this emptiness of his own 'idea' is a good thing because our response will be to spend more and more time on public reasoning about what ought to be done. But if we do that then some senile careerist like Sen will barge in and start babbling about Condorcet- as if that nobleman, as opposed to Henry Adams, had actually achieved anything.
As it happens, the comparative approach is central to the analytical discipline of ‘social choice theory’, initiated by the Marquis de Condorcet and other French mathematicians in the eighteenth century, mainly working in Paris.Condorcet was guillotined because he was too stupid to run away. Talleyrand ran away but returned to play a big part in reshaping France and Europe.
The formal discipline of social choice was not much used for a long time, though work continued in the specific sub-area of voting theory.Voting theory was and is important- it explained why French democracy was so unstable and corrupt while British democracy was stable and increasingly scrupulous. However, precisely because voting theory is important, the idiographic expert knowledge of local power-brokers is always able to harness the flying pigs of the mathematical theorist to the chariot of true Democracy which will fuck over the voter more thoroughly than had ever been previously envisaged.
The discipline was revived and established in its present form by Kenneth Arrow in the middle of the twentieth century.This 'discipline' only existed in Econ. Departments and there too it scarcely has had a pulse for decades. Pilates, by contrast, is a discipline which has burgeoned. Real world people do Pilates, they don't do Social Choice.
The truth is Arrow kicked his brother-in-law, Samuelson, in the goolies by telling a stupid, obvious, lie- viz. that a dictator can be a guy with no power. For a couple of decades a lot of students thought the Bergsonian Social Welfare Function had been killed off. This wasn't true as even Arrow must have realised after Sen alerted him to the implications of the Szpilrajn extension theorem. By then Social Choice was as moribund as Samuelson's Research Program. Chichilnisky, whom Sen helped get published, did prove a valuable result to do with the sufficiency of 'limited arbitrage' which might be relevant here- but only to show that nobody needs an idea of Justice which can't actually judge anything save by cutting up a baby to appease the different 'impartial reasons' of its supposed mothers. Another name missing from Sen's book is McKelvey of the Chaos theorem fame. Multi-dimensional policy spaces- like those which must emerge in a Sen-tentious 'pluralist' comparative approach- are manipulable through agenda control.
Sen's mistake is in thinking that if a lawyer or other type of advocate gives a whole bunch of reasons for doing something then some information is lost if the ratio of the final judgment is based only on one argument. This isn't true at all. A drunk man may fumble through a dozen keys before he hits upon the right one to his apartment. This doesn't mean all the keys can open the lock to his home.
In general, we do need to know the value of the second best alternative use. Ebay is an example of an auction where the price paid depends on the second best offer, or the reserve, whichever is higher. This is not always the optimal auction process. There is a first order theory of auction design, which- unlike Social Choice- does seem to be useful and able to 'pay its way' in the real world. But Sen isn't doing that sort of useful work. He thinks the Public won't notice. Perhaps it wouldn't if he'd kept his mouth shut. After winning the Nobel, the Indian media had an inexhaustible appetite for Sen. But the more he talked the more apparent it became that he and his subject were worthless. Now, it is sufficient for Sen to say he is for something for everybody to conclude that it is a bad idea.
Sen praised 'nyaya' (substantive justice) over 'niti' (procedural justice). India's response has been to get rid of the Planning Commission (which, theoretically, could enforce any allocation by 'command' and thus achieve 'nyaya') and replacing it with a Niti Aayog (Policy Commission). India has realised that Development is not about 'Public Reason' or 'Social Choice' deciding what the country should do in a top down fashion. Rather it is about 'subsidiarity'. Decisions should be made locally by those with expert knowledge and 'skin in the game'. Stupid professors should carry on soiling themselves in public so that young people will understand that non-STEM subjects are shite. At one time mathematical Econ looked sort of 'STEMish'. People like Sen have shown why this assumption was wholly mischievous.
Both Social Choice Theory and the Academic discourse concerning Public Reason are 'nomothetic'- they are based on generalisations. But Economics is idiographic- it works with what is, not what ought to be. Generalisations are useful in Maths. Grothendieck's 'Yoga'- i.e. unification of diverse branches of Maths on the basis of greater generality- can make Math more productive. In anything involving Social processes, however, there is a trade-off between generality and significance. Even a good first order theorist, like Rawls or Harsanyi, or Nozick, has nothing significant to say though their generalisations have some imperative force. Sen, by contrast, is a second order theorist. He is pretending that the first order theorists he is critiquing had something significant to say. His next step is to pretend that Society obediently implemented these first order theories. Yet, injustice still occurs. Sen is saying the reason for this is Society's implementation of a flawed theory. He is saving Society by uncovering that flaw so that we can choose a better path. Thus he is truly not just the 'Mother Theresa of Economics' but the new Solon or Buddha.
The facts are quite different. Though Rawls has been widely quoted in judicial opinions and law review articles- not least because of the clarity of his prose- this is because he incarnates the best features of the Warren Court which created the atmosphere in which Rawls developed his theory. Thus, Rawls- though a first order thinker- was not essentially changing the course of Jurisprudence; rather he was clarifying and elucidating what was most valuable in a particular epoch making period in American judicial history.
Justice Posner, by contrast, could be said to have directly changed jurisprudence or inaugurated a new 'Law and Economics' era'.
Rawls marks a 'high water mark' for a particular type of elite left-liberal optimism. When his seminal work first came out some still believed Samuelson's claim that the Soviet Union, with its command economy, could overtake the US in terms of living standards. Nixon was the first President to publicly espouse Keynesianism. He also implemented a brief 'Price-Wage freeze'. Thus some people who subscribed to Tinbergen, or Galbraith's, 'convergence hypothesis' thought America would become more like Russia- it would have a price control board of the sort Galbraith had presided over during the War- and thus Hayek and Friedman and so forth were on the wrong side of history (probably because they weren't mathematicians).
During the course of the Seventies, it became apparent that Hayek was right and Kantorovitch was wrong. In the mid Eighties, some stupid Soviet mathematical economists persuaded Gorbachev to end the party's control of the means of production. The resulting, entirely predictable, 'scissors crisis' was a sort of neutron bomb- it killed the party while leaving the nomenklatura alive to turn to a more lucrative type of gangsterism.
Sen is very much a witness to this history. Indeed, by leaving India- rather than following the career path of a Sukhamoy Chakroborty or Manmohan Singh- for the harsh life of British academia (where he had no servants and ayahs and malis and chauffeurs and so forth) he was showing he was on the right side of history. He made the most of his opportunities and by writing silly books based on stupid lies, he created a niche for himself as somehow representing poor brown people everywhere.
Sen knew his subject- Social Choice- was regarded as 'India's subject' in the early Seventies- a time when India was considered a basket case and Calcutta, in particular, was viewed a Malthusian hell hole worthy of the paintbrush of a Hieronymous Bosch.
Morishima asked Kaushik Basu whether this was what he was going to specialise in 'India's subject' when Basu first came to the LSE. But Basu, like Sen, knew the subject was a wank and that the slitty eyed Marxist, whose country was going from strength to strength, was making fun of him. Thus Basu went in for game theory and did very well from it though his work is worthless. Maybe that's a good thing. Suppose we have the correct 'Revelation principle' and thus a Just 'mechanism' is describable game theoretically. Then, the danger arises that Justice can be spoofed. We have made ourselves vulnerable to a predator or a parasite.
One way out is to say the 'idea of justice' is in a higher complexity class. But this immediately crashes Arrowvian Social Choice which makes the opposite assumption. Similarly, Public Reason degenerates into pointing at Turing Oracles which might well be Delphic in their ambiguity.
It is not a bad thing to say neither Social Choice nor Public Reason can have an idea of Justice so long as Jurisprudence, as a protocol bound system of 'artificial reason' can have such an idea. After all, useful things are only useful towards specific ends. A hammer can't peel potatoes. A knife is no use in fixing a nail to the wall. So what? Both are useful in specific contexts.
To see how and when Social Choice and Public Reason can and should be incorporated into pedagogy consider the following incident which I witnessed in 1998 in a Middle School in rural Bihar.
When the bell rang for recess a group of boys approached the Games Master who had the key to the Sports shed. They wanted to play cricket.
'Why not football?' the Games Master asked, 'you have only a short time to play and football will give you more exercise. Moreover, everyone has the chance to score a goal whereas with cricket only the batter has a chance to distinguish himself.'
The boys started to argue about whether to play cricket or football. Thus, they were learning,if not the theory, then the praxis of Democratic Social Choice within a framework or impartial Public Reason. I was amazed at how quickly the level of discussion of these supposedly 'backward' Bihari children rose to a level of rationality and impartiality which few students at the LSE could have shown! True, there was one boy who kept silent and just stood at the side hanging his head and keeping his hands in his pockets. I wondered to myself whether he was perhaps from a religious minority or an oppressed caste. I suppose this is because I was not born in India. I see things with a foreigner's eyes. The last thing I wanted was to embarrass the fellow or draw attention to him. Still, the fact is, I am a Hindu. Love of Akhand Bharat, not just my own Province, is enjoined on me by Sanaatan Dharma. So I addressed the boy in a rough but affectionate manner. 'Hey you! Why so silent?'
'These boys are arguing about whether to play cricket or football', the little urchin replied, 'But I saw all the sports equipment being loaded onto the boot-legger's truck. That is why I'm standing here playing with myself. What else is there to do?'
Just then the bell rang and the boys ran back to their classes. I resolved to shell out a few rupees to get the little tattle-tale knifed before the Headmaster got to hear about what I'd done with the Sports equipment. Public Reason is useful in this manner. We mustn't let the likes of Sen & Nussbaum monopolise it.
Mind it kindly.
Aiyayo.
