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- Peter Vanderschraaf (2010). The Invisible Foole. Philosophical Studies 147 (1).I review the classic skeptical challenges of Foole in Leviathan and the Lydian Shepherd in Republic against the prudential rationality of justice. Attempts to meet these challenges contribute to the reconciliation project (Kavka in Hobbesian moral and political theory , 1986 ) that tries to establish that morality is compatible with rational prudence. I present a new Invisible Foole challenge against the prudential rationality of justice. Like the Lydian Shepherd, the Invisible Foole can violate justice offensively (Kavka, Hobbesian moral and political theory , 1986 ; Law and Philosophy , 14:5–34, 1995 ) without harming his reputation for justice. And like the Foole, the Invisible Foole dismisses the possibility that being just preserves goods intrinsic to justice, and will be just only if he fears that others will punish his injustice by withholding the external goods like labor and material goods that he would otherwise receive for their performance in covenants. I argue that given a plausible folk-theorem interpretation , Hobbes’ response to the Foole’s challenge is inconclusive, and depends crucially upon common knowledge assumptions that may or may not obtain in actual societies. I present two analogous folk-theorem arguments in response to the Invisible Foole’s challenge, one using the idea that the Invisible Foole’s power of concealment might be transitory, and the other using the idea that members of society might stop performing in covenants with anyone, thus punishing the Invisible Foole indirectly, if the Invisible Foole commits sufficiently many injustices.Reading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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Adam Smith is usually thought to argue that the result of everyone pursuing their own interests will be the maximization of the interests of society. The invisible hand of the free market will transform the individual''s pursuit of gain into the general utility of society. This is the invisible hand argument.Many people, although Smith did not, draw a moral corollary from this argument, and use it to defend the moral acceptability of pursuing one''s own self-interest.
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| | Other links: jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... When Adam Smith published his celebrated writings on economics and moral philosophy he famously referred to the operation of an invisible hand. Adam Smith's Political Philosophy makes visible the invisible hand by examining its significance in Smith's political philosophy and relating it to similar concepts used by other philosophers, revealing a distinctive approach to social theory that stresses the significance of the unintended consequences of human action. This book introduces greater conceptual clarity to the discussion of the invisible hand and the related concept of unintended order in the work of Smith and in political theory more generally. By examining the application of spontaneous order ideas in the work of Smith, Hume, Hayek and Popper, Adam Smith's Political Philosophy traces similarities in approach and from these builds a conceptual, composite model of an invisible hand argument. While setting out a clear model of the idea of spontaneous order the book also builds the case for using the idea of spontaneous order as an explanatory social theory, with chapters on its application in the fields of science, moral philosophy, law and government.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The notion of a spontaneous social order, an order in human affairs which operates without the intervention of any directly ordering mind, has a natural fascination for social and political theorists. This paper provides a taxonomy under which there are two broadly contrasting sorts of spontaneous social order. One is the familiar invisible hand; the other is an arrangement that we describe as the intangible hand. The paper is designed to serve two main purposes. First, to provide a pure account of the invisible hand, with some indication of the varieties of invisible hand (and, indeed, backhand) available. Second, to develop and motivate the unfamiliar conception of the intangible backhand. We believe that a recognition of the availability of this latter sort of spontaneous organising mechanism — and the mechanism is implicitly recognised in many traditions — is of great importance in political theory; it is of particular importance nowadays when the usual focus is entirely on the invisible hand.
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| | Other links: jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... David Hull accounts for the success of science in terms of an invisible hand mechanism, arguing that it is difficult to reconcile scientists' self-interestedness or their desire for recognition with traditional philosophical explanations for the success of science. I argue that we have less reason to invoke an invisible hand mechanism to explain the success of science than Hull implies, and that many of the practices and institutions constitutive of science are intentionally designed by scientists with an eye to realizing the very goals that Hull believes need to be explained by reference to an invisible hand mechanism. Thus, I reduce the scope of Hull's invisible hand explanation and supplement it by appealing to a hidden hand explanation.
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| | Other links: jstor.org journals.uchicago.edu dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... An invisible hand seems to play an important role in science. In this paper I set out the general structure of invisible-hand explanations, counter some objections that have been raised to them, and detail the role that they play in science. The most important issue is the character of the mechanisms that are supposed to bring about invisible-hand effects.
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| | Other links: jstor.org journals.uchicago.edu dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... According to the so-called “Folk Theorem” for repeated games, stable cooperative relations can be sustained in a Prisoner’s Dilemma if the game
is repeated an indefinite number of times. This result depends on the possibility of applying strategies that are based on reciprocity, i.e., strategies that reward cooperation with subsequent cooperation and punish defectionwith subsequent defection. If future interactions are sufficiently important, i.e., if the discount rate is relatively small, each agent may be motivated to cooperate by fear of retaliation in the future.
For finite games, however, where the number of plays is known beforehand,
there is a backward induction argument showing that rational agents
will not be able to achieve cooperation.
On behalf of the Hobbesian “Foole”, who cannot see any advantage
in cooperation, Gregory Kavka (1983, 1986) has presented an argument
that significantly extends the range of the backward induction argument.
He shows that, for the backward induction argument to be effective, it is
not necessary that the precise number of future interactions be known. It
is sufficient that there is a known definite upper bound on the number of
interactions. A similar argument is developed by John W. Carroll (1987).
We will here question the assumption of a known upper bound. When
the assumption is made precise in the way needed for the argument to go
through, its apparent plausibility evaporates. We then offer a reformulation of the argument, based on weaker, and more plausible, assumptions.
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| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... To show that morality is in one's interest, the challenge put forward by Hobbes's Foole, we must first be clear what is meant by something's being in one's interest. Defining self-interest in an external or objective sense (so that claiming morality really satisfies her self-interest, albeit in ways she will never appreciate) will not placate the Foole. Self-interest, for the Foole, must be understood in terms that she will endorse. Are such terms possible? Subjective interpretations of self-interest have been accused of incoherence for two separate reasons. First, calling 'good' that which we desire gets the order backward, since the desirability feature is what causes us to desire it. Second, subjective accounts cannot properly explain the phenomenon of mistaken desires, or accommodate reflection on our desires with the intent on warding off such mistakes. My goal here is to show how a subjective account of self-interest is not self-defeating in these ways.
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