Pareto Optimality II

Yesterday we discussed the notion of what Pareto optimality means.

To repeat, it represents any situation in which there is no further improvement anywhere without loss somewhere else. A situation is sub-optimal, then, to the extent that improvements are still possible without loss.

The idea has had very broad application in the social sciences and in the attention philosophers pay to same. It is generally controversial only because it seems inadequately demanding. To the extent reform efforts are aimed at finding sub-optimalities, they are NOT aimed at correcting the gross inequalities and injustices that can occur within this notion of "optimality."

But as I said yesterday, Sen's critique of the idea is different. He argues that in a certain hypothetical position (which I won't describe today again) Pareto is too demanding. His notion would require "Lewd" and ""Prude" to enter into a "peculiarly 'other-regarding' social contract" which offends "the good liberal practice of reading what one likes and letting others read what they like." He hopes that live-and-let-live attitude wins out against any Paretian temptation.

His explanation reminds me of the old question, "do you even know what you want?" After all, one of the reasons that the Lewds of this world might give for insisting that the Prudes read a certain book is that "they can't know enough to put assign any value to reading it unless they .. read it!"

But that question works havoc upon the example. Does Prude have to sample a certain number of pages of LCL before his judgment that he doesn't want to read it (and his further judgment that he doesn't want Lewd to read it either) acquire any social significance? Any how does Lewd know what books he wants to read, as opposed to those he wants to re-read, anyway? Because of the cover art?

Is there a significant difference, for discussions of value theory, between reading a controversial book and eating a blueberry pie? Yes, at some point there was a first time that I ate a blueberry pie. I could not have known whether I 'liked blueberry pie' until then. But at least as adults we regard reading certain books as actually or potentially transformative events in ways that we do not think of culinary choices. Is that an intellectualist prejudice, or is it an intuition deserving of respect?

If we try to rephrase the paradox in terms of blueberry pies, it just sounds goofy. One character, "Maine," likes blueberry pies. She'd like to eat one but even more than that, she'd like to get her rival, "Georgia," to eat one, although Georgia left to herself only eats peach pie. Georgia doesn't want to eat blueberry pie but, more than that, she doesn't want Maine to eat blueberry pies either. So they agree that Maine will give up these pies and Georgia will take them up, and everybody is happy. Really? That just sounds bizarre.

Beware thought experiments that smell too much of blackboards.

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...

Recent Controversies Involving Nassim Taleb, Part I

I've written about Nassim Taleb on earlier occasions in this blog. I'll let you do the search yourself, dear reader, for the full background. The short answer to the question "who is Taleb?" is this: he is a 57 year old man born in Lebanon, educated in France, who has been both a hedge fund manager and a derivatives trader. He retired from active participation from the financial world sometime between 2004 and 2006, and has been a full-time writer and provocateur ever since. Taleb's writings for the general public began where one might expect -- in the field where he had made his money -- and he explained certain financial issues to a broad audiences in a very dramatic non-technical way. Since then, he has widened has fields of study, writing about just about everything, applying the intellectual tools he honed in that earlier work. As you might have gather from the above, I respect Taleb, though I have sometimes been critical of him when my own writing ab...

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

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