Molina's middle knowledge & free market ideology

 Luis de Molina, a prominent member of the School of Salamanca which some see as originating laissez faire ideology, also proposed that God has 'middle knowledge' - scientia media- i.e. the power of knowing future contingent events. One might say, 'an expert chess player or arbitrageur may be able to predict how others will react to a series of events. Moreover, if others have equally 'rational expectations', then those outcomes will be inevitable. Thus, we see one grandmaster resigning to another once he sees his defeat is inevitable. It is 'common knowledge' that there would be no point in  moving the pieces till the foreordained conclusion is reached.'

 Similarly, we may find that 'cobwebs' arising from 'adaptive expectations' disappear as all agents expect the outcome predicted by the right economic theory. We may say, following Samuelson, that 'ergodicity' prevails over 'hysteresis'. 

We may also believe that there is something like 'natural law' or 'spontaneous order' or a 'reflective equilibrium' must exist such that there is a Social Contract which all rational people will commit themselves to even absent the passing of any type of consideration.

 Molinism is also a way of reconciling free-will & God's omnipotence (or, indeed, His being the only efficient cause). What ties Molina's theology & economics together is faith that there is a 'mysterious economy' or 'invisible hand' which solves coordination problems and prevents 'combinatory explosion' of the underlying configuration space.

Sadly, by the end of the Sixties, there were purely mathematical reasons to do with complexity, computability, concurrency & categoricity such that any type of 'compatibilism' or chaos free co-evolution appeared vanishingly unlikely. Put another way, 'naturality' seemed ever further to seek. Even if there is an objective function, the thing being optimized is arbitrary to some degree. Moreover, uncorrelated asymmetries would drive Eusocial 'bourgeois strategies'.

 One such asymmetry is thinking your God or ideology or culture is superior to all others. This puts paid to the Thomist dream of getting rid of an angry, arbitrary, God or, if that was always impossible, at least, asserting that the Katechon might be nice even if the Eschaton is going to be fucking horrible.

 Molinist 'middle knowledge' has been described as-  'God's pre-volitional knowledge of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom—hypothetical scenarios exploring what free agents would do in any given set of circumstances'. This is another way of saying every Brouwer choice-sequence is actually 'lawful' though the reverse may appear to be the case for a finite intelligence. 

Suppose 'middle knowledge' was 'volitional'. Then we might say God is a 'creative subject' in the Brouwerian sense. But then Troelstka's paradox would arise. One way around it would be to reject Markov's principle on the grounds that God, or his Knowledge, is neither possible nor impossible.

 But the thing would still come across as weak sauce. Equally, non-volitional knowledge sounds fatalistic. If the being is strong and has a will, then the thing is virtually empty or trivial. 

But the same can be said of free market ideology or natural law or Enlightened Humanism or the project of everybody being so filled with empathy as to incessantly offer gratuitious rape-counselling to all sentient beings. 

Religion has no obligation to feel at home in the world. Nor, indeed, do some positional goods and services in the commodity space. Ontological dysphoria isn't a scandal- a stumbling block- to either Faith or Enterprise or Thrift or whatever. The best Molinist would be Mayavaad. 

Spivak on Naxalbari

 Spivak, like other ex-pat buddhijivis, learned about Naxalbari from American academics like Marcus Franda. To be fair, Spivak was teaching European literature. She had no knowledge of Bengali politics. She still does not. Last year, she wrote a gushing letter to Mamta- who had beaten the Communists into utter political oblivion some 15 years previously- without realising that her thuggish regime was on the point of collapse.

In 2017, she wrote as follows in Frontier magazine which was founded by Samar Sen and which was initially sympathetic to the Naxalites (and thus against the mainstream CPM). I should mention, Congress would have been happy to encourage this second split within the Communist party. 

A Few Words About Naxalbari
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

It is hard to think that fifty years have passed since the first confrontation in Naxalbari.

The CPM had become part of the ruling coalition in 1967. The leading Communist ideologue, Hare Krishna Koner had become the Minister for Land Revenue. This meant that he could take 'surplus land' and redistribute it to party loyalits. Hilariously, the Naxal leader, Charu Mazumdar, lost 13 acres  in this way. This impoverished his widow.  

I was both too far and too close.

She was far away. The reason Naxalbari happened was because both China and Pakistan wanted to choke off India's 'chicken neck'- i.e. the narrow strip of land connecting the bulk of the country to the 'seven sisters' in the North East. Since Bengali intellectuals hate Hindus and Hindu majority India, many- quite naturally- wanted to support the country's enemies.   

One of my cousins, with whom I had gone to school every day as a child, was deeply involved.

Why? The answer is that hardcore 'anti-Browderists' were angry that the CPM had fought and won elections. The Naxals believed that Communists should only rule after they have killed all 'class enemies' and have gotten rid of Parliaments and Courts of Law and so forth.  

And one of our batchmates let loose unbelievable mass brutality upon young men lining a street, asking householders to close their windows.

No. The batchmate was useless. Some lowly policemen and some hired goons killed kids who might plausibly be taken for Naxals. This was a good thing. Sadly, the mainstream CPM was doing a great job fucking over the economy. 

Rumours, before cable television (we had a small black and white),

TV broadcasting in Calcutta only began in 1975- by which time the Naxals had been crushed. The first colour broadcast was in 1982. The CPM was firmly in the saddle in West Bengal by then. This was because it continued to redistribute 'surplus' land & enhance the property rights of share-croppers and tenants. 

before the internet, before satellite telephone. I was tucked away at the University of Iowa, a young Assistant Professor quite set in with the anti-Vietnam War struggle earlier, and with the diasporic support of the Bangladesh upheaval later,

there was no such 'diasporic support'. Incidentally, the Bangladeshi equivalent of the Naxals supported Pakistan over the Mukhi Bahini. Why? Pakistan was allied with China. Sheikh Mujib, like Indira, was considered Moscow's puppet.  

but about Naxalbari was caught in helpless hearsay.

She relied on Marcus Franda's book which came out in 1971. Sadly, it was shit. The truth is, firstly there was no on-going 'Federalising' process in India at the time. Secondly, Hare Krishna Konar had discovered that colonial law gave the Revenue Ministry considerable discretionary powers in redistributing land to 'loyalists'. This is what transformed Bengali politics. 

Hadn't enough money to go home until 1972, only then to realise the depth and breadth of the wounded polity.

Siddhartha Shankar Ray became CM towards the end of March. By July, Naxalism had been crushed. Stupid foreign academics who thought India was a 'soft state' were revealed to be ignorant cunts.  

But, and I say this with some embarrassment, an old cynical woman now, some of us had romanticised the fact that the first shot was an arrow.

It was fired by a tribal woman whose people had emigrated to the region about a century and half previously. She killed a police officer belonging to the erstwhile Bhutia ruling class. Would the Centre support the Naxals as a way to split the CPM? No. Naxalbari was next to the 'Siliguri gap'. Thus National Security concerns trumped petty provincial politics.  

My best understanding of the entire movement still comes from Sumanta Banerjee's In the Woke of Naxalbari.

Sumanta was a journalist who quit the Statesman in 1973 & went over to the Naxals. But they had already been crushed. I think Bhabani Choudhury, who was helpful to Samar Sen, was an influence. Prof. Ruth Glass- an urban sociologist from London University- was close to Jyoti Basu and used to visit once a year. In other words, we are speaking of some useless journalists and academics who had jumped on a bandwagon which had ceased to have any meaningful existence. Still, any Naxal faction (there were dozens of them) which joined mainstream politics, could be used to split the CPM vote (on a caste basis) and thus could be useful to Congress. It was around this time that Mamta was beginning her rise, as a street-fighter- for the Youth Congress in Calcutta. At a later point, the CPM would accuse her of working with the Naxals in places like Singur (where some agricultural land had been given to ig industrialists) . 

Sumanta's book, which came out in 1980, though glorifying Charu Mazumdar, focussed on the land question and thus the Left Front government had no great objection to it. But neither did Congress which Indira had successfully taken to the Left. The collapse of the Janata Morcha & Indira's return to power meant that pretty much everybody was on the same page. Either 'landlords' could transform themselves into gangsters or they would be preyed on by gangsters. In either case, nobody gave a fuck about them.  

I have learnt some Chinese since then, enough to teach some Mao Zedong with the help of graduate students in Chinese.

She knows about as much Chinese as she does about European literature.  

It seems at this distance that, although Charu Mazumder's general inspiration from Mao was certainly enormously effective and moving,

it was useless. Hare Krishna Konar had met all the top Chinese leaders during his 1960 trip to Beijing. Incidentally, it was Ho Chi Minh who confirmed to him that the breach between the Chinese & the Soviets was permanent. But, since China was much poorer than Russia, this meant that whatever arms Mao could give you would be wholly ineffective compared to what the Soviets could supply Indira with. Pakistan's defeat in Bangladesh meant that the Siliguri gap was no longer vulnerable. Naxalism was welcome to retreat into remote forests so as to fuck over tribal people there.

it was the at least temporary conscientisation

a term from Paulo Frere's 'pedagogy of the oppressed'.  

of Left intellectuals that seemed most impressive to us. In 1968, when French university students joined hands with the working class,

The working class decided they preferred De Gaulle to a German Jew like Cohn-Bendit.  

the Naxalbari phenomenon seemed to us, from far away, a greater political achievement.

Because Spivak had shit for brains.  

It is no doubt a function of my base abroad that I cannot readily perceive continuity between the Naxalbari movement and what is called Maoism now in India.

The CPM was pro-China. The Naxals were supporters of the Cultural Revolution which was utterly disasterous. The CPM was able to rule West Bengal for thirty years on the basis of land-reform & clientism. Could they break their own 'iron rice-bowl' and emulate Deng? No. Their cadres were criminalized and corrupt.  

It could also be a function of the horror of violence

unleashed by the Left Front? 

among my co-workers from the landless SCST-s (this is the descriptive they commonly use) on the border of Birbhum and Jharkhand. It nay also be because I have personally encountered ex-Naxals in Purulia, completely given over to hands-on work for agricultural justice; I have inevitably thought of swords and ploughshares.

Swords don't matter. Guns do. The government can give pensions to those who shoot Naxals. Thus Naxalism was bound to disappear as tribal people gained political control of their own ancestral territory. 

Compare Mahashweta's 'Duoupati'- a Santhal woman whose job is to get beaten and raped by the police- with Prespident Draupati Murmu. Two Bengali Brahmin women- Mahua and Mamta- attacked her for visiting Dajeeling last year. Now it is Mahua & Mamta who fear jail while Murmu remains Head of State. Will a Santhali speaking State be carved out for her people? I suppose so. 

I am a literary critic and a translator. In 1981, I translated Mahasweta Devi's "Draupadi". That story rather than the novel The Mother of 1084, set the seal on Naxalbari for me, as it will for generations to come.

Mahashweta- like Spivak, Mahua & Mamta- was a Bengali Brahmin woman. They may have looked down on Santhal women named 'Draupadi', but it is the Santhal woman who has prevailed. Centuries from now, school kids will chant the name of the 15th President of the Republic. Nobody will remember Mahashitter.  

Iyer's report on Experience

Contra Waugh, Charm isn't the weapon of the weak

Nor, pace Greene, Pity a Pan ruinous to let speak

Both were qualities England ever & yet lacks

Tho' now overrun by Lezzas & Blacks.

Telos' Tetelestai

Utile the self-domesticating Elitism Paideia yet posits

Futile the Monothelitism our current Caesar cossets 

In Telos' Tetelestai either all Energy ends

Or the Godhead's geodesic to self-sodomy bends

Amie L. Thomasson on Ontology vs Aetiology

Contemporary academic philosophy consists of asking questions of the form 'Why do so many contemporary philosophers order salad at the cafetaria when, everybody agrees, nothing but one's own shit can be, or ought to be, eaten'? It is pointless to complain that nobody thinks coprophagy is a good thing. Why? Because this shows you aren't an academic- let alone a philosopher. 

As a case in point, Amie L. Thomasson, whom some consider one of our greatest living philosophers- which is like saying my neighbour's cat is the most proficient living alchemist- has a recent paper titled-

SHOULD ONTOLOGY BE EXPLANATORY?

The answer is no. 

 'What' questions are ontological. 'Why' questions are aetiological.  A particular discipline or discourse seeks to discover, invent or otherwise posit as existing, particular types of things. Those types are its ontology.  

Why a thing arises is a question about causation and is aetiological because the Greek word for 'cause' is aitia (αἰτíα).

Abstract. The central question of ontology has long been thought to be ‘What is there?’.
The central way of answering it has been to consider which entities we must posit as part
of a best total explanatory theory.

This begs the question- be it central or peripheral- as to whether thoughts exist. We may, for certain purposes, posit their existences just as we can posit other things- e.g. cuddliness- but nothing is explained by saying 'the cuddliness of the baby causes me to cuddle the baby' or ' thought cause us to think there are thoughts'.  

This paper argues against this ‘explanatory’ conception of metaphysics,

Nobody thinks of metaphysics (literally 'what is beyond natural science') as aetiological. Diseases have aetiologies and curing diseases by understanding their causes is useful and noble. Philosophy is jejune and useless.  

by showing that it relies on an unarticulated assumption that all the terms at issue in these metaphysical debates serve an explanatory function.

If so academic philosophy is even shittier than we imagine it to be.  

Making use of work in systemic functional linguistics

can't help unless philosophers suffer some sort of nuerological disorder when it comees to language processing. 

enables us to identify the many different functions played by terms of interest in metaphysics.

The functions of interest to metaphysics are metaphysical. But language- it now appears- isn't beyond physics at all.  

And that makes it clear that ‘contribution of explanatory power’ should be rejected as an across-the-board criterion in ontology.

Who accepted it? Name & shame the cunts!  

This work in functional linguistics also enables us to see why it is useful to have a language that entitles us to use redundant inferences

e.g. 'that utterly cunty cunt' 

to introduce terms for properties, numbers,

e.g. cunty cunt as opposed 'not that cunty cunt, I meant the other cunty cunt'

and the like, giving us new reason to accept ‘easy’ inferences that there are such things.

cunty cunts?  

As a result, we should give up thinking that ‘what is there?’ provides a deep and interesting question for a discipline called ‘ontology’ to answer,

Quantum onlology- sure. But that's high IQ stuff. What this lady is doing is finger painting with her own faeces.  

and give up thinking that the task for ontology is to determine which entities to ‘posit’ as part of a best total explanatory theory.

Since we don't know what that is- but are pretty sure the best one we have will soon be superseded- nobody has ever applied themselves to any such task. 

The central question of ontology, as Quine presented it, could be expressed in three
words: “What is there?”

Quine was wrong. To find out what there is, you need to get out of your armchair & go look. For a example, to find out what is in the cupboard, I have to open the cupboard door. OMG! It's a ga..ga..ga ghost! I shut the door quickly. But that doesn't mean a ghost exists in the cupboard. I have to apply various verification protocols. 

Ontology is what you must content yourself with because neither direct obversvation nor verification are possible. Equally, it may be purely dogmatic- what in Sanskrit is called 'matam' as opposed to 'vigyan'. 

But those who aim to answer this question

are either doing 'vigyan' (science) or else they are talking about how many angels can dance upon the point of a pin.  

generally do not take their goal as simply to generate a list or inventory,

Physicists would love to have an inventory of elementary particles or to find out whether hypothetical ones- e.g. gravitons- can be verifiably produced in the laboratory or detected in the cosmos.  

and tend to deny that answers are easy to come by. Instead, the project of ontology has been
thought of

by whom? Usless shitheads.  

as a matter of determining what entities we should or must ‘posit’ as part of
a best total explanatory theory.

which is that these cunty cunts are copraphogous cunty cunts.  

Amie's paper shows a complete absence of thought. This is a sample-

Here is the idea. In early language—both developmentally and evolutionarily

we know nothing about 'evolutionarily' early language. As for 'developmentally' early language- all we can say is that infants are different from mature people. If some fundamental change occurs in our fitness landscape, we have no idea how language will 'develop'. Overy my own lifetime it has become much more mathematical.  

(and across languages)—we begin with ‘congruent’ meanings: nouns for things, verbs
for processes. . . (Halliday 2009, 117).

but anything can be a gerund or a denominal verb or whatever. What is certain is that philosophy is now only taught and studied by those who are developmentally challenged. 

Lyly's Campaspe

Since to every rouged & rutting Phyllis

& our rude waking to what her bill is

Entelechy accords an Appelles

Tho' of suet her titties & sausage rings her bellies

Nathless, so hard has that whore ridden Aristotle

None can prove wine isn't its own bottle

Or Sherlock's smoke, Home's desiccating dottle

 Cupid's dick- Campaspe's demographic throttle.

Envoi- 

Turk! For its gate was greater,  Myndos fled through it

Brick up Mercy's- lest Kristos' dead rue it. 

Riposte- 

Tho' Homonoia's incarnate anointment

aint, for haemorrhoids, an ointment

Grieve who it will

It suffices to gate any City on a Hill. 

Siddhantha-

Euphuism sublates its own Erudition- rendering both so silly

Only an old darkie like me bothers with John Lyly. 

Why Hohfeld rules & Kelsen drools.

 

Henry Cohen summarises Hans Kelsen's pure theory of law thus- 

Kelsen was a legal positivist.

i.e. law is a command 

The "positivity" of law, in his words, lies in the fact that it is created and annulled by acts of human beings,

sovereigns or those acting for sovereigns 

thus being independent of morality and similar norm systems.

This does not follow. A command may be defeated by the higher claim of morality, religion or some other normative system. Moreover, one defeated command may lead to loss of sovereignty or the power to command. Thus commands aren't independent of anything which might lead to their defeat or disregard.  

This constitutes the difference between positive law and natural law,

Positive law may say it is natural and natural law might say that it is obvious that the Sovereign has commanded it or was just about to do so before deciding to invade Poland instead. Kelsen was a stupid man who couldn't tell the difference between shite which is only different by ipse dixit stipulation.   

which, like morality, is deduced from a presumably self-evident basic norm which is considered to be the expression of the "will of nature" or of "pure reason."' Kelsen labelled his theory of positive law "the pure theory of law."

rather than the 'shit theory of law'. I wonder why? 

He explained the nature of its purity: [I]t seeks to preclude from the cognition of positive law all elements foreign thereto.

This can't be done. Cognition is bound up with the entire web of predication. You can't even separate law from econ or biology.  

The limits of this subject and its cognition must be clearly fixed in two directions:

No limits can be placed on any thing which is epistemic. German pedants were donkeys. 

the specific science of law, the discipline usually called jurisprudence, must be distinguished from the philosophy of justice, on the one hand, and from sociology, or cognition of social reality, on the other.

Distinguishing things doesn't mean they have discoverable 'limits'.  

The pure theory of law should be distinguished from the philosophy of justice.

Both are useless. Moreover, they may presuppose each other in various useless ways.  

While the pure theory of law is a science

only in the sense that the sexy theory of astrology is a science 

justice is an "irrational ideal" 

it may be arbitrary. It isn't irrational.  

and "a judgment of value, determined by emotional factors and therefore subjective in character."

Emotions are either Darwinian algorithms of the mind or we live in an occasionalist universe. There can be 'naturality' in that which is 'subjective' (i.e. has no observable metric) just as naturality may be lacking in an 'objective' configuration space- e.g. Arrow Debreu.  

" The pure theory of law must also be distinguished from sociological jurisprudence.

Only in the sense that we must distinguish my attempt to donate sperm to the moon from ordinary cases of public exposure & indecent behaviour during the course of a School excursion to the Zoo. 

Still, if you are too stupid to practice law & are stuck teaching it to people who are too stupid to practice law, then make such distinctions by all means. 

The pure theory of law studies norms-"propositions that state how men should behave" -

There are no such norms. There are merely certain actions which are forbidden- that too in specific circumstances (e.g having a wank on the Tube or taking a dump on the steps of No.10 Downing Street).  

whereas sociological jurisprudence studies what "is"-how people actually behave.

It is shit. Turds are incapable of studying anything except how to get smellier or squishier.  

Thus, Kelsen agreed with neither the natural law theorists,

who thought laws could have 'naturality' (i.e. be 'non-arbitrary') or canonicity such that all jurisdictions would converge to the same rule. Since this hasn't happened even between Scots & English law, we can safely say the thing is a pipe dream.  

who viewed law and morality as sharing the same basis,

Everything to do with human beings shares the same basis- e.g. wanking on the Tube & teaching this shite in a University.  

nor the legal realists, who believed that law consists solely of "the actual decisions of courts that litigants must live with."

This is clearly false. Many things which are clearly justiciable are nevertheless res non lege decisae

Law as a Coercive Order 

The coercive order is independent of law. I have the legal right to tell Mike Tyson he is totes gay & desperately wants to suck me off. Sadly, the coercive order which obtains has him punching off my fucking head if I try to exercise my right. 

Kelsen viewed law as a coercive order of human behavior. 

Did it stop the 'Night of the Long Knives'? No. Kelsen was clearly wrong. No wonder he couldn't get an Academic appointment when he first moved to the US. 

Laws "command a certain human behavior by attaching a coercive act to the opposite behavior."

No. Those with the means of coercion command. My infant son used to beat the fuck out of me till I surrendered the TV remote to him so he could watch Tellytubbies. The odd thing was, he got me to clean up after myself and even do some cooking and cleaning. He didn't like his Mum having to act like my unpaid servant. 

He disagreed, however, with the belief of John Austin, who

lived in a nice country where the 'Crown in Parliament' saw Justice as a service industry whose aim was utility- nothing more, save in egregious cases of repugnancy. 

 posited laws to be "a species of commands,"" since a command "is essentially a willing and its expression," 

or baby beating me or  biting my nose till I changed the channel to 'Tellytubbies'. But, at a later point, even the neighbour's cat could get me to watch 'Aristocats' for the umpteenth time instead of 'Fist of Fury'. I'm lying. It is 'Pyaasa' that I watch continually. 

and because it is doubtful whether some laws embody the true will of anyone."

There can be no doubt that, if everybody wants 'representative government', they go along with whatever legislative compromise proves 'incentive compatible'. 

 Many legislators enact laws without understanding them, let alone willing them.

They 'meta-will' them- i.e. will to will whatever results from some legislative process. But 'meta-will' is just 'will'. 

 Kelsen preferred to describe laws as norms or rules "stating that an individual ought to behave in a certain way, but not asserting that such behavior is the actual will of anyone."

In Civil Law, this may seem to be the case- e.g the conduct of a bonus paterfamilias with respect to culpa levis in abstracto. But, Hohfeld shows us the proper way to understand tort actions of this type. Essentially, you have an immunity if you show that your conduct was such as a person of the highest diligence would have exhibited in defending his own interest albeit it was a third party who was affected. 

Hohfeld was the only jurist of the previous century who wasn't pants. Add in Coase's theorem & Myerson type incentive compatibility & ...what? We are back where we started- which is a good way to be if the alternative is being stuck up our own assholes.