Your Morning Durkheim

Not a lot of time to post today, as I am busily note taking for prelims. But I came across this gem at the beginning of Durkheim’s The Division of Labor in Society, which I wanted to share. Somehow my theory sequence completely skipped any mention of DoLiS, focusing on Rules and Elementary Forms of Religious Life instead, so I was not treated to this stunning little rejection of functionalism from the supposed functionalist himself (on the first page of the first chapter no less):

If we have chosen this term [function], it is because any other would be inexact or ambiguous. We cannot use ‘aim’ or ‘purpose’, and speak of the goal of the division of labour, because that would suppose that the division of labour exists for the sake of results that we shall determine.

So, Durkheim chose to investigate the function of the Division of Labor in part because he didn’t want to assume, teleologically, that the division arose because of the function it later fulfilled. Well, that, or I am reading my anti-functionalism into everyone and everything in the hope of not being so disappointed.

On a more humorous Durkheim-related note, here’s another snippet (p. 17 of DoL):

We are therefore led to consider the division of labor in a new light. In this case, indeed, the economic services that it can render are insignificant compared with the moral effect that it produces, and its true function is to create between two or more people a feeling of solidarity. [Emphasis added.]

Is it just me, or is it hard not to imagine Darth Vader reading that line? Maybe it’s just me.

Your Morning Gramsci

I just came upon this excellent blog by historian of European thought Carl Dyke. One of his recent entries mentioned Borges’ story On Exactitude in Science, thus endearing his blog to me immediately. Another recent entry discusses the sociology of knowledge, and philosophers’ frustrations with said subject, citing a lovely passage from Gramsci:

Words and things pt. 5: Practice of theory – Dead Voles:

“The unitary … elaboration of a homogeneous collective consciousness demands a wide range of conditions and initiatives. … A very common error is that of thinking that every social stratum elaborates its consciousness and its culture in the same way, with the same methods, namely the methods of the professional intellectuals. … It is childish to think that a ‘clear concept’, suitably circulated, is inserted in various consciousnesses with the same ‘organizing’ effects of diffused clarity: this is an ‘enlightenment’ error. ? When a ray of light passes through different prisms it is refracted differently: if you want the same refraction, you need to make a whole series of rectifications of each prism.”

I always think of this problem as the “liberal fallacy” (liberal in the modern American sense of politically progressive). “If only they knew the facts,” cries the liberal, “then they would see the world as I do.” Apparently, as with so much else in the world, the problem is an old one. Silly enlightenment, making us want so badly to believe that there is truth, a single, universal, explicable truth which could shine like a light through a vacuum, unrefracted.

Carl ends with another snippet of Gramsci, which reminds me of my favorite quote of late:

Words and things pt. 5: Practice of theory – Dead Voles:

“Hence it is a matter of studying ?in depth? which elements of civil society correspond to the defensive systems in the war of position. The use of the phrase ‘in depth’ is intentional, because these elements have been studied; but either from superficial and banal viewpoints, as when certain historians of manners study the vagaries of women’s fashions, or from a ‘rationalistic’ viewpoint ? that is, with the conviction that certain phenomena are destroyed as soon as they are ‘realistically’ explained, as if they were popular superstitions (which anyway are not destroyed either merely by being explained).”

Baudrillard, echoing Nietzsche, writes, “We don’t believe that truth remains truth after it is unveiled.” (“On Seduction”)

What is Rationality? The Economist on The Endowment Effect

This week’s Economist featured an interesting piece on the Endowment Effect. The effect is explained below:

The endowment effect | It’s mine, I tell you | Economist.com:

I AM the most offensively possessive man on earth. I do something to things. Let me pick up an ashtray from a dime-store counter, pay for it and put it in my pocket and it becomes a special kind of ashtray, unlike any on earth, because it’s mine. What was true of Wynand, one of the main characters in Ayn Rand?s novel “The Fountainhead”, may be true of everyone. From basketball tickets to waterfowl-hunting rights to classic albums, once someone owns something, he places a higher value on it than he did when he acquired it; an observation first called “the endowment effect” about 28 years ago by Richard Thaler, who these days works at the University of Chicago.

The endowment effect was controversial for years. The idea that a squishy, irrational bit of human behaviour could affect the cold, clean and rational world of markets was a challenge to neoclassical economists. Their assumption had always been that individuals act to maximise their welfare (the defining characteristic of economic man, or Homo economicus). The value someone puts on something should not, therefore, depend on whether he actually owns it.

My point, in short, as I just got back to my hotel room from a wedding party: Rationality as defined in an economics textbook is simply a consistency requirement. Preferring things you own to things you do not, net other differences, is perfectly consistent and thus not irrational. Irrationality only enters the picture when your preferences are inconsistent, which is what seems to happen in this case, if you misread it. It seems like you prefer the mug to the chocolate bar in one situation, and the bar to the mug in another (an inconsistency, and thus irrational), but indeed, you prefer a mug that you already own to a chocolate bar that you do not, and vice versa. The whole point of the endowment effect is that ownership of a good makes the good different. But that’s not irrational, unless you have a particular bias in mind. So, I ask the Economist – what do you mean by rational? Clearly, some stronger definition than the one in a standard econ text (e.g. Varian’s Intermediate Microeconomics).

Ok, 2:30 am and I’m exhausted from dancing (poorly). Goodnight all.

Dear Economists, Please Stop Talking About Human Nature

So, after reading a recent post on the Monkey Cage, I started browsing the most highly downloaded papers on the Social Science Research Network (gated access to the top list, sorry). Unsurprisingly, papers by the top agency theorists – Fama, Jensen and Meckling – rank very highly, as they are of broad interest to folks in business, law, economics and organizational theory, which make up a good chunk of SSRN’s coverage. What was surprising, to me at least, was a boldly titled paper by Jensen and Meckling that ranks number 15 on the all time top downloads list: The Nature of Man.

When is a question settled? When is further research uncalled for?

Almost every major work I’ve read in the past few months (years?) has invoked some variation of the twin phrases “the question is not settled” or “further research is called for.” On the one hand, I find these hedgings admirable – knowledge is as much a process as a product, and the types of questions considered are often far too broad to admit complete answers (“why do organizations exist?”, say, or “who controls the modern corporation?”). In addition, the hedging serves a couple tactical purposes – both allowing for alternatives without a loss of face and suggesting more is yet to come from the authors themselves. And yet, after reading variations on these phrases over and over, I am left to wonder: when is a question settled? When is further research uncalled for?

An Ethnomethodological Analysis of Why I Answered a Trivia Question Wrong

So, I attend a weekly team trivia event at a local pub here. It’s a fun event, around 40 teams of 2-6 players answer 6 rounds of questions on sheets of paper which are graded and then the top 3 teams get prize money based on the number of teams who paid to play. The questions are mostly pop culture (music and movies being two of the rounds each week) but range over everything from neuroscience to history to Harry Potter.

This week, one of the questions was a poorly written statistics question in a science category. I’ll repeat it here, shuddering all the while: “At a confidence interval of 95%, a value of .06 would be considered: Significant, trending towards significant, or not significant.” Now, if you’ve taken a few stats classes before, this question should make you want to rip out your hair and/or write an essay on the different philosophies of statistics.* As the resident quant on the team, it was up to me to decide how to answer the question.

Wherein I Express Displeasure With Lou Dobbs

I’m going to say something I don’t say often enough:
Lou Dobbs is an idiot.*

I’m watching CNN, and Dobbs is pushing the Obama-Clinton ticket. The Democrats on the show (Carville and Donna Brazile, primarily) are resisting. And here’s one of Dobbs’ arguments, paraphrased:
The Obama campaign already has detailed knowledge of everywhere Clinton is strong, due to primary results and exit polls. There is no other VP candidate we can say the same about. And, Clinton is strong everywhere Obama is weak.

Dear Lou Dobbs: Strength is relative. We know where Clinton is strong against Obama. In elections, voters make choices between the options available. We know which states and amongst which subgroups of voters Clinton was chosen over Obama. So we know where she is strong against him, and vice versa. We have no idea where she is strong against McCain (except the tiny bit from state by state general election polls, but polls do not equal election results). Furthermore, the Democratic primaries were just that – Democratic primaries. How one performs in a primary is not necessarily a predictor of success in the general – Clinton may have been popular amongst whtie men in West Virginia, as compared to Obama, but we simply do not know against McCain. Also, performance at the bottom of a ticket is different than at the top.

But most importantly, Mr. Dobbs, your argument that Clinton compliments Obama because she does well wherever he does poorly is idiotic: There were only two choices in the majority of states, so of course Clinton did well when Obama did poorly. Votes for Clinton + Votes for Obama = 100 (approximately, at least in the last few months). If one goes up, the other goes down. It’s called an inverse relationship.** Yes, Clinton did better among women in most states than Obama did. Does this mean Obama is weak among women, as compared to McCain? We do not yet know, but my bet would be “no”. Democrats traditionally do well among women (as the West Wing quips, if only men voted, Democrats would never win elected office). Additionally, McCain has a bit of a history with women and anger that should upset both men and women.

So, in summary, Lou Dobbs is an idiot. Clinton might be an excellent VP choice, she might not. But arguing that primary results show us that Clinton perfectly complements Obama is just plain wrong.

* I first came to dislike Lou Dobbs when I was studying immigration. To say that Dobbs is wrong on immigration is to understate the issue in a roughly comparable way to saying that China is slightly larger than Guam.
** Dobbs and the CNN talking heads liked to say that “the math [was] hard” for Clinton (hooray sexism!). Apparently, the math (or, more importantly, the underlying logic of math) is actually hard for Dobbs.