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a collective model of the ethics of AI in higher education

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Hannah Cox, James Fisher, and I have published a short piece in an outlet called eCampus News. The whole text is here, and I’ll paste the beginning here:

AI is difficult to understand, and its future is even harder to predict. Whenever we face complex and uncertain change, we need mental models to make preliminary sense of what is happening.

So far, many of the models that people are using for AI are metaphors, referring to things that we understand better, such as talking birds, the printing press, a monster, conventional corporations, or the Industrial Revolution. Such metaphors are really shorthand for elaborate models that incorporate factual assumptions, predictions, and value-judgments. No one can be sure which model is wisest, but we should be forming explicit models so that we can share them with other people, test them against new information, and revise them accordingly.

“Forming models” may not be exactly how a group of Tufts undergraduates understood their task when they chose to hold discussions of AI in education, but they certainly believed that they should form and exchange ideas about this topic. For an hour, these students considered the implications of using AI as a research and educational tool, academic dishonesty, big tech companies, attempts to regulate AI, and related issues. They allowed us to observe and record their discussion, and we derived a visual model from what they said.

We present this model [see above] as a starting point for anyone else’s reflections on AI in education. The Tufts students are not necessarily representative of college students in general, nor are they exceptionally expert on AI. But they are thoughtful people active in higher education who can help others to enter a critical conversation.

Our method for deriving a diagram from their discussion is unusual and requires an explanation. In almost every comment that a student made, at least two ideas were linked together. For instance, one student said: “If not regulated correctly, AI tools might lead students to abuse the technology in dishonest ways.” We interpret that comment as a link between two ideas: lack of regulation and academic dishonesty. When the three of us analyzed their whole conversation, we found 32 such ideas and 175 connections among them.

The graphic shows the 12 ideas that were most commonly mentioned and linked to others. The size of each dot reflects the number of times each idea was linked to another. The direction of the arrow indicated which factor caused or explained another.

The rest of the published article explores the content and meaning of the diagram a bit.

I am interested in the methodology that we employed here, for two reasons.

First, it’s a form of qualitative research–drawing on Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA) and related methods. As such, it yields a representation of a body of text and a description of what the participants said.

Second, it’s a way for a group to co-create a shared framework for understanding any issue. The graphic doesn’t represent their agreement but rather a common space for disagreement and dialogue. As such, it resembles forms of participatory modeling (Voinov et al, 2018). These techniques can be practically useful for groups that discuss what to do.

Our method was not dramatically innovative, but we did something a bit novel by coding ideas as nodes and the relationships between pairs of ideas as links.

Source: Alexey Voinov et al, “Tools and methods in participatory modeling: Selecting the right tool for the job,” Environmental Modelling & Software, vol 19 (2018), pp. 232-255. See also: what I would advise students about ChatGPT; People are not Points in Space; different kinds of social models; social education as learning to improve models

phenomenology of nostalgia

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The other day, I saw on social media that my 40th high-school reunion will happen next spring. I felt a pang. This sensation passed, and while it lasted, it offered some sweetness along with a sense of loss. I would not swallow a pill that prevented similar reactions in the future. Still, it was an interesting feeling that might tell me something about my personality or even about the nature of time and identity.

I suspect that my nostalgia reflected a mistake: a desire for something impossible (backward time-travel) or a failure to appreciate the living present sufficiently. Although I would refuse a cure, I might want to assess my response critically and direct my mind differently.

Marshawn Brewer offers a brilliant “Sketch for a Phenomenology of Nostalgia” (Brewer 2023) that has influenced the following thoughts, but I’ll concentrate on exploring my own experiences and won’t try to compare my first-person account to his broader (and better informed) study.

First, I notice that nostalgia focuses me on one period from my distant past, and the rest of my life seems to vanish, in a mildly distressing fashion. When we middle-aged people think, “High school seems like yesterday!”, it feels as if there weren’t many days between then and now. This is because we cannot think about many times at once. I could make myself nostalgic about virtually any intervening year–but only one at a time. I have the momentary sensation that I’ve thrown away the intervening years; they are somehow gone.

We might assume that experiences and settings are harder to recollect the longer ago they happened, much as objects tend to be smaller and fuzzier the further they are located from our eyes. But that analogy doesn’t hold. Distant memories often come back more forcefully than recent ones. Indeed, “middle-aged and elderly people [tend] to access more personal memories from approximately 10–30 years of age” than from other times in their past (Munawar, Kuhn, and Haque 2018). From my perspective, the decades of the 30s and 40s have a disproportionate tendency to fade away.

If I pause to focus on my teenage years, a certain scene comes into my mind. The first image happens to be a meeting of the Latin Club in the cafeteria after school. This is probably a composite or partial invention, but it is based on memories. I can move from that image to innumerable others from the same period in my life, but (as Brewer notes), nostalgia quickly adopts one setting or another–a physical location that is suffused with a certain atmosphere. It would be hard to feel nostalgic without this sense of place, which connects the word to its etymology (nostos plus alpos = home-pain). Insofar as the feeling is bitter-sweet, the bitterness is a sense that one cannot go back to a place that one recalls. And if I were to return to the high school cafeteria, it would not seem to be the place that I remember.

By the way, I don’t see myself in the cafeteria; I see that room from my perspective, as if I inhabited my 17-year-old body again. I think my recollection is mostly visual, although I wonder if I am also summoning other senses. Certainly, a sound or smell can trigger nostalgia.

I was enrolled in high school for the standard four years, a brief period. However, Brewer notes that nostalgia has “an aeonic temporality” (from the word “aeon,” meaning an indefinite or very long period of time). Here Brewer cites J.G. Hart, who is worth quoting:

the time of my nostalgic past does not know a passing or fleeting character. Nostalgia is not about passing time but about eras, seasons or aeons. It is not about dates but about “times” (which in actual historical fact might have been quite long or quite short) which are enshrined in a kind of atemporal (i.e., non-fleeting) dimension : “the three days vacation with you in Wisconsin,” “our time at college,” etc. This “aeonic” character of the nostalgic world resembles the time of the mythic world. … In the nostalgic having of a non-fleeting aeon the themes of death, aging and illness are out of place (Hart 1973, pp. 406-7).

Childhood seems to have this aeonic character, perhaps in part because we gradually emerge into full awareness and the ability to use language. We cannot remember the beginning of our own childhoods. Regular events, such as birthdays, feel as if they recurred endlessly, even though we can actually celebrate no more than a dozen of our own birthdays between the onset of memory and adulthood. Parents and siblings take on an outsized and permanent or recurrent (once-upon-a-time) character. Like the gods in myths, these relatives have “back-stories” about how they came to be, but while our own story unfolds, they do not seem to change (cf. Hart, 414-15).

I write here of “we,” but I realize that experiences vary. I happen to have had a stable childhood, which would encourage my feelings of timelessness. Later, I had the opportunity to be a parent; and since then, we have watched the years when we raised our children recede–in turn–into memory. While I was a young parent, my own childhood seemed like the template or baseline reality, and I self-consciously inhabited my new role of fatherhood. At that time, my childhood seemed “aeonic,” while parenthood was a matter of specific events and changes that we adults planned or dealt with. But now that second wave of life increasingly has the same character as the first, echoing it. It is another once-upon-a-time.

Indeed, the things that I recall and miss are often my identities. At one time, I was a young guy, a novice at everything, a learner. Later, I was the dad of young kids, someone who played with Legos and read bedtime stories. I am not entitled to think of myself as either of those things anymore.

A Victorian house on a stately street,
Formal, ornate. The bell breaks the silence.
Would a gift have been wise--something to eat? 
When to shift from pleasantries to science?
A ticking clock, long rows of serious books,
China, polished wood, a distant dog barks.
Pay attention, this might have some value.
It's rude to seek help without taking advice.
Now say what you've really come for, shall you?
Then: time to go? Did our talking suffice?
Not for years now have I been the visitor.
This is my parlor and I am the grey one,
The host, the ear, the kindly inquisitor.
How can it be that it's my turn to play one?
    ("The Student," 2021)

For me, nostalgia is not really a feeling that things were better in the past. My life has tended to improve. Rather, it’s the feeling that I used to have one set of identities in one context–for instance, as a graduate student–and those are now gone.

I agree with Brewer that nostalgia involves regret for a whole situation that feels harmonious or integrated, which suggests some alienation from the present. But I can remind myself that I was mildly alienated in the past–and frequently already nostalgic in those days–and I would guess that I am more comfortable in my current identities than in my previous ones. It’s just that I can’t inhabit the old roles as well. I cannot be both the deferential but ambitious graduate student and the avuncular advisor, and I should learn to accept that reality.

We can even be nostalgic about the present. I take that to be the meaning of Basho’s lines (as translated here by Jane Hirshfield):

In Kyoto,
hearing the cuckoo,
I long for Kyoto.

This is an example of mono no aware, that cultivated sense that the present is sublime and also transitory. It is a sad longing to experience what one is (in fact) experiencing.

Perhaps nostalgia-for-now is a desire to see the present in the simplified, comprehensive way that we recollect our own distant pasts. I feel that I know what it was like to be 17 years old: that identity comes to me in an instant. But what is it like to be me, now? I perceive a whole set of changing experiences, emotions, moods, and beliefs, and I’m not sure what they add up to. I want my “now” to resemble how I (falsely) imagine my past–as coherent. Hart writes:

Nostalgia is an instance of one of these unique moments of “gathering.” In it the dispersed projects of life find their unity …. We do not thematically have ourselves together; we are not perpetually in possession of ourselves. But there is a “synthesis in the making” and there are especial moments when I come to grasp my life more or less as a whole (Hart 1973, p. 405).

Nostalgia-for-the-present is a temptation for me, and I am not sure whether to accept (or even nurture) it or to learn to avoid it. Is it a way of appreciating the living moment, as Basho seems to? Or is it a neurotic distancing from the only thing that’s real–the now?

A final point of self-criticism: I believe that my pang of regret at the passing of 40 years is not only nostalgia for the past. At least as significant is my alarm that the future is shortening. Nostalgia looks backward, but one motivation (I believe–at least in my own case) is a desire to travel back to those times so that the end of my life would be further in the future. The ambitious graduate student has more years ahead than the kindly old mentor. To regret that difference is a kind of greediness, an unwise stinginess about time.

See: Marshawn Brewer, “Sketch for a Phenomenology of Nostalgia,” Human Studies 46.3 (2023): 547-563; K. Munawar, S.K, Kuhn, and S. Haque, “Understanding the reminiscence bump: A systematic review,” PLoS One. 2018 Dec 11;13(12); J.G. Hart, “Toward a phenomenology of nostalgia,” Man and World 6, 397–420 (1973). See also: “nostalgia for now,” “there are tears of things,” “the student,” “Midlife,” “when the lotus bloomed,” “to whom it may concern,” and “echoes.”

in defense of institutions as “garbage cans”

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In a 1972 article that has been cited nearly 15,000 times, Cohen, March and Olsen wrote that “an organization is a collection of choices looking for problems, issues and feelings looking for decision situations in which they might be aired, solutions looking for issues to which they might be the answer, and decision makers looking for work. … To understand processes within organizations, one can view a choice opportunity as a garbage can into which various kinds of problems and solutions are dumped by participants as they are generated” (Cohen, March & Olsen 1972).

Cohen and colleagues derived their “garbage-can model” by observing a university. To illustrate it, we might imagine a professor who consistently advocates that a new position be created in a specific field. As time passes, this professor presents her proposal as a solution to many different problems. Sometimes it’s a way of meeting students’ declared needs; other times, a way of preparing them for the job market or challenging their values.

This professor drifts in and out of various conversations, sometimes serving on a key committee, sometimes absent on leave. And she is just one of a few thousand advocates for competing proposals who compose the faculty and the administration. In the institution as a whole, there is no explicit, shared understanding of what problems should be solved. People keep throwing diverse proposals into the bin, with constantly shifting rationales.

This is my hypothetical example, but I think it illustrates the formal model of Cohen et al. (which they represent with a Fortran program). They debunk the assumption that organizations are “vehicles for solving well-defined problems or structures within which conflict is resolved through bargaining.” And they conclude, “It is clear that the garbage can process does not resolve problems well.”

In his classic book from the subsequent decade, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, John W. Kingdon cites the garbage-can model and comments, “On the face of it, this looks a lot like the federal government” (Kingdon 1984, p. 85). Kingdon develops a respected model of “organized anarchy” to describe US policymaking that draws heavily on the article by Cohen et al. However Kingdon is a bit less judgmental. He notes, “messy processes have their virtues” (p. 183). I would like to explore those benefits.

One basic assumption I would offer is that programs never simply work. Schools, doctor’s appointments, rural development projects, therapy sessions–these things are either beneficial, neutral, or harmful depending on how they are implemented. Human capital is always essential–i.e., the preparation, selection, and motivation of the people involved. And these people must always attend to the specific context and the communities they serve. Therefore, we can hardly ever demonstrate in the abstract that a proposal is the solution to a problem. Instead, individuals and groups are entitled to work on making their favored initiatives beneficial. Individuals ought to be loyal to specific ideas and to the other people who support them.

The other assumption is that we often rationalize when we make arguments. When we say why we favor a decision, the reason we give is not actually the explanation of our view. We originally favored a given position for reasons that are often opaque even to ourselves, and these reasons may involve bias and self-interest. We then come up with rationales for public consumption.

However, the psychologists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber (2017) argue that when we listen to other people rationalize, we are decently good at assessing their arguments and sometimes open to changing our views as a result. Kingdon anticipates their point when he writes about policymaking in Washington, DC:

Even if argumentation is nothing more than rationalization, it is still important. Some events may be governed by lobbying influence or by judgments about clout at the polls, but government officials still try to reason their way through problems.

Kingdon 1984, 126.

Consistent with his account, I would posit that officials mostly “reason” by critically assessing and comparing the rationalizations that are given to them by interested parties.

If these two assumptions are correct, then it may be healthy for an organization to consist of many advocates who are loyal to their own ideas and able to change the rationales for their proposals as their audiences and circumstances shift. Other people should listen to their rationalizations and decide what to do. Those who make proposals should be held accountable for helping to implement them if their ideas are adopted.

To use an example from Kingdon, advocates of federal funds for urban mass transportation first argued that it would cut traffic, then that it would reduce pollution, and then that it would diminish US reliance on foreign oil. A transit advocate told Kingdon, “You want to do something and you ask, ‘What will work this year? What’s hot this year that I can hang this on?” (p. 173).

I know little about mass transit advocates during the period that Kingdon describes (ending in the early ’80s). Some of them may have been self-interested in the narrowest sense, e.g., paid to lobby on behalf of companies that would win contracts to build mass transit. Others may have manifested a higher form of self-interest. For example, if you love New York City, you might have a bias for mass transit, because federal funds for subways would flow to your community. Still others may have favored mass transportation for a mix of reasons, from personal experience to political ideology to loyalty to colleagues.

I don’t think the best question is why people really want what they advocate. The important question is whether the federal government should fund mass transit. Subways and buses are “solutions looking for issues to which they might be the answer.” It is good to have such options.

This example comes from federal policy, but similar behavior is familiar in universities and other parts of civil society. As the winds shift, an advocate of community service may switch her rationale from democracy, to job-training, to social-emotional learning. Again, this is not bad if service projects have some merit. It should not surprise us that the same intervention may serve multiple goals. More importantly, it is not really true or false that service projects are good. They will be beneficial or harmful–for various purposes in various contexts–depending on how the people involved use them. (The same is true of mass transit, which has sometimes had catastrophic effects.) What we want are committed advocates for a range of plausible ideas, and it’s much less important what they advocate.

This means that when I look out at my own institution and others, I am reasonably tolerant of the messiness of what Cohen et al. would call the “garbage can.” A large organization should include many people who have partly incompatible underlying values and who want to do different things. There may be some value to discussing shared goals in larger forums, such as faculty meetings, but we shouldn’t hope for consensus about both means and ends. Key questions are often of this type:

  • If we did what Person A advocates, would we be able to count on that person and others to carry it forward? How much should we rely on their dedication, ethics, and skill?
  • If we decided to do what A wants, what are some immediate steps for which we already have the necessary resources, and how far would those steps take us? Do we have a prospect of finding additional support later on?
  • Since Person B is advocating something else, what can we do for B if we say yes to A? Can we simply acknowledge that B has lost out for now and thank them for their forbearance? Or do we risk losing them? Could we satisfy both A and B? (But what about C and D and E?)

In short, I’m pretty comfortable with moving from an organization-centered model, in which the goal is to “solve well-defined problems,” to a people-centered model, in which the goal is to enable individuals to advocate, act, and thereby grow in skill and wisdom.

This is a case for decentralization and against elaborate planning. I admit that I have a hard time taking strategic planning documents seriously and am much more interested in assessing the commitment and resources of various people in my environment. I have less tolerance for arguments of the form “This should be done” than for arguments that begin, “I want to be able to help us do this.”

I also tend to expect the most dynamic ideas to come from people who are directly involved in the organization’s work (e.g., professors who are currently teaching and researching, or civil servants who conduct federal programs, or indeed their students and service-recipients). I view senior leaders as people whose necessary task is to allocate scarce resources among the ideas that come before them. Leaders should consider the strength of arguments, but they should be equally concerned to attract and retain diverse talent. And, of course, leaders need to be accountable–not only for their specific decisions but also for the overall climate of the organization.

Following the line of argument from Cohen et al. to Kingdon, I have combined a university and the federal government into the same discussion. Obviously, they differ. For one thing, there are almost 3 million federal employees, whose salaries are paid by more than 300 million residents, who affect 7 billion human beings. These numbers are orders of magnitude larger than those in any educational institution. As a result, there must be much more distance between the formal decision-makers in the federal government (members of Congress and the cabinet) and frontline workers than should exist in any university. Still, Kingdon saw genuine similarities, and we might adopt similar fundamental values in both cases.

Sources: Cohen, M. D., March, J. G., & Olsen, J. P. (1972). A garbage can model of organizational choice. Administrative science quarterly, 1-25; Kingdon, J W. 1984/2011. Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, Updated 2nd ed. Longman York, NY: HarperCollins; Mercier, Hugo and Dan Sperber, The Enigma of Reason, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2017. See also: democracy’s sovereignty; loyalty in intellectual work (from 2017); making our models explicit; a flowchart for collective decision-making in democratic small groups.

CIRCLE is seeking an executive director

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I loved being the director of CIRCLE (The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement) from 2008-15. Since I moved on from that role and Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg succeeded me, CIRCLE has more than doubled in size and resources and has strengthened its impact much more than that. CIRCLE is the leading source of data, insights, and recommendations about youth civic engagement in the USA.

Now Kei is moving on, in turn, and we are looking for her successor. I can testify that this is a job with a unique position at the intersection of several academic disciplines, youth movements, K-12 schools and higher education, elections, media, and philanthropy. The position is now endowed as the Newhouse Directorship, thanks to a generous gift from the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation. The CIRCLE team is incredible and forms part of the vibrant communities of Tisch College and Tufts University. CIRCLE’s topic is crucial in this time of crisis and opportunity for US democracy.

Here is the job announcement: https://jobs.tufts.edu/jobs/20856?lang=en-us.

does skepticism promote a tranquil mind?

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I think of myself as less sure about most important matters than are most people I know–more equivocal and conflicted. Maybe I shouldn’t be so confident about that comparison! Regardless, my self-perception often makes me wonder about skepticism as a stance. Is being skeptical a flaw, a virtue, or (most likely) a bit of both?

The virtues and drawbacks of skepticism have been an explicit topic of discussion for at least 23 centuries. In this mini-essay, I organize some of that conversation–from Greek, Indian, and modern sources–and conclude with a proposal, meant mostly for myself. As the great skeptic Montaigne wrote, “This is not my teaching, it is my studying; it is not a lesson for anyone else, but for myself. [But] what helps me just might help another” (ii.6).

On one hand, it seems that our duty is to glean what is right and then to act accordingly, to the best of our ability, always with an awareness that we could be wrong. Whenever we decide, act, and stand ready to reflect on the results, we are entitled to derive satisfaction.

For instance, if an election is coming up, we should decide whether voting is a worthwhile way to affect the world. If it is, we should determine whom to vote for. We should remain attentive to what happens, because we could have been wrong. Yet as long as we reason and participate–not only in politics but in innumerable other domains–we may and should feel content.

Socrates presents a particularly strong version of this view. Arguing with Protagoras, who espouses some form of relativism or skepticism, Socrates recommends a “science of measurement” (metrike techne) that gradually improves our objective understanding of right or wrong by detecting and overcoming various kinds of bias. This techne, “by showing the truth, would finally cause the soul to abide in peace with the truth, and so save its life” (Prot. 356d). Similarly, near the end of The Republic, Socrates advises that when misfortune comes, we should not “waste time wailing” but “deliberate” about what has happened and then “engage as quickly as possible in correcting” the problem (Rep. 10.604b-9). Here, Socrates likens this approach to a medical art for the soul.

In these passages, Socrates has not proven that knowledge is possible, but he has claimed that lacking knowledge is–and should be–a cause of discomfort, for which the only appropriate cure is to pursue the truth.

David Hume reaches a comparable conclusion in a somewhat different way. Hume reports that when he considers fundamental questions (“Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return?”), he is struck by the “manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason” and feels “ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and [to] look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another.”

But this is not a happy conclusion. Instead, “I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, invironed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty.”

For a time, Hume is able to cure himself of this “philosophical melancholy and delirium” by distracting himself with ordinary life. “I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours’ amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.” But this mood must also pass, for it is “impossible for the mind of man to rest, like those of beasts, in that narrow circle of objects” Ultimately, “we ought only to deliberate concerning the choice of our guide. … And in this respect I make bold to recommend philosophy” (Hume, 1739, 1.4.7).

Hume says that he cannot be “one of those sceptics, who hold that all is uncertain, and that our judgment is not in any thing possest of any measures of truth and falshood” because it is naturally impossible to remain in that posture. We make judgments for the same reason we breathe; because what we are designed to do. “Neither I, nor any other person was ever sincerely and constantly” a skeptic (1.4). The only way forward is to reason about what is true.

On the other hand, it seems that to hold any strong views about the world is a source of disquiet. Our thoughts rarely influence matters or convince others, and they may prove incorrect. Opinions are sources of frustration. Therefore, members of the ancient Skeptical School advised that we should attain mental peace by convincing ourselves that we do not know what is true.

The Greek verb epekho usually means to “present” or “offer,” but in the Skeptics’ jargon, it meant actively convincing yourself that it is impossible to know what is true, either in a specific case or generally. This “suspension of judgment” (as the related noun is usually translated) is an accomplishment, not a passive state. Effort is required to counteract the tendency to make judgments, which Hume claimed was natural. Epikhe is not a shrug-of-the-shoulders but a deep realization that knowledge is impossible.

The Skeptics provided lists of techniques or practices (generally translated “modes”) to induce such suspension. One mode that sometimes works for me is to reflect on how fundamentally different everything would seem to a different species. This form of relativism has impressed people as diverse as William Blake; Friedrich Nietzsche (“Man, a small, wild animal species …”: Will to Power, 121); the Zen master Mumon Yamada; and the narrator of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, who suggests that the way “this world embraces and exceeds [the family cat] Soapy’s understanding of it” opens the “possibility of an existence beyond this one” (pp. 162-3).

These people have reached divergent conclusions from their shared premise that each kind of sentient being perceives a fundamentally different world. Blake concludes that “everything is holy.” Nietzsche sees “unbelief” as a “precondition of greatness” and “strength of the will” (Will to Power, 615). In Zen, the moral is to be aware of one’s experience. For Robinson’s Rev. Ames (as for St. Augustine), an awareness of human limitations permits a faith in the things not seen that are disclosed in Scripture.

For the Greek Skeptics, the outcome of suspending all belief was calm or equanimity. Sextus Empiricus says, “The skeptics at first hoped [like Socrates] that untroubledness would arise by resolving irregularities of phenomena and of thought, but, not being able to do this, they held back, and when they suspended judgment, untroubledness [ataraxia] came as if by chance, like a shadow after a body. … For this reason, then, we say that untroubledness about opinions is the goal, but about things that we experience by force, moderation” (Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 1:29).

Nearly two millennia later, John Keats praised “Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” (Keats 1817). For a writer, the easier path is to adopt and promote one’s own views. Negative Capability is a difficult alternative with the potential to cure “irritability.” Keats’ main example is Shakespeare, who depicts myriad characters without divulging (or perhaps even holding) opinions of his own.

The Buddha and Nietzsche on Skepticism

I would like to draw attention to two (or two-and-a-half) thinkers who have discussed skepticism in a somewhat similar and interesting way. These people could be described as skeptics, and they use some of the techniques–those that the ancient Skeptics called “modes”–for undermining beliefs. Yet they explicitly disparage practitioners of skepticism on the basis of character. In other words, although they are skeptical, they think that the main proponents of skepticism lead bad lives.

I mainly refer to the Buddha as described in the Pali Canon (1st century BCE?) and Friedrich Nietzsche. (Ironically, in the relevant passages, Nietzsche disparages the Skeptics as “Greek Buddhists,” but he did not know the Pali texts). I also refer to Michel Foucault, who can be classified as a kind of skeptic and who writes in detail about the ancient Greek philosophical schools, but who interestingly omits any mention of Skepticism.

In the first Long Discourse in the Pali Canon, the Buddha canvasses 62 possible views about metaphysical matters, such as whether the cosmos and the soul are immortal. (These are much like the questions that troubled Hume). After summarizing each position, he repeats a close variant of this formula:

The Realized One understands this: ‘If you hold on to and attach to these grounds for views it leads to such and such a destiny in the next life.’ He understands this, and what goes beyond this. And since he does not misapprehend that understanding, he has realized quenching within himself. Having truly understood the origin, ending, gratification, drawback, and escape from feelings, the Realized One is freed through not grasping (S?lakkhandhavagga, DN 1, translated by Bhikkhu Sujato).

Among the 62 views are four that sound like Skepticism. The Buddha calls proponents of these four views “endless flip-floppers.” (Maurice Walsche translates the same word as “eel-wrestlers.”) Presented with each major issue, some of them think, “‘I don’t truly understand … If I were to declare [a view], I might be wrong. That would be stressful for me, and that stress would be an obstacle.’ So … whenever they’re asked a question, they resort to verbal flip-flops and endless flip-flops: ‘I don’t say it’s like this. I don’t say it’s like that. I don’t say it’s otherwise. I don’t say it’s not so. And I don’t deny it’s not so.’”

The three other types of “flip-floppers” behave the same way but for different reasons. Some fear that they would feel “desire or greed or hate or repulsion” as a result of holding beliefs, some fear that they would be defeated in a debate, and some are simply “dull and stupid.”

Apart from the dull and stupid, the “flip-floppers” sound like Skeptics, and the Buddha rejects them with the same formula that he uses in response to all the dogmatists: “‘If you hold on to and attach to these grounds for views it leads to such and such a destiny in the next life.'” The Realized One “understands this, and what goes beyond this. …”

In short, the Buddha is a skeptic about Skepticism. Near the end of the Discourse, he elaborates his own view. All opinions, he says, “are conditioned by contact.” In other words, we believe everything we do as a direct and unavoidable result of previous events. Specifically, the events that lead people to hold philosophical opinions are feelings of craving. This is as much the case for the flip-floppers as for everyone else. They have chosen Skeptical opinions because of their feelings, which include an aversion to being moved or criticized. The real path to enlightenment is to see all opinions as fully conditioned, a realization that permits one to escape from the whole fisher’s net of beliefs.

Is the doctrine that everything is conditioned (“dependent origination”) just another metaphysical position that could be explained away on psychological grounds? Or is it self-refuting?

One answer might that it is self-refuting, but in a good way, a ladder that we can push aside once we have climbed it. Meanwhile, it offers insights about specific positions. When you adopt any given idea and find yourself committed to it, you can ask what prior psychological experience must have generated it and thereby release yourself from it, as a form of therapy.

I think a similar view can be attributed to Nietzsche. His supposed doctrine of Will to Power alleges that all beliefs result from “will,” including the doctrine itself. Like dependent-origination, Will to Power it may be self-refuting, but in a good way.

Deeply distrustful of epistemological dogmas, I loved to look now from this window, now from that, was careful not to get stuck in them, considered them harmful – and finally: is it likely that a tool can criticize its own suitability?? – What I was more careful to note was that no epistemological scepticism or dogmatism ever arose without ulterior motives – that it has a secondary value as soon as one considers what basically forced this position (Will to Power, 179).

Nietzsche’s treatment of the ancient Skeptics (whom he calls Pyrrhonists, after their founder, Pyrrho of Ellis) parallels the Buddha’s analysis of “flip-floppers.” Nietzsche criticizes the Pyrrhonists psychologically. They manifest a “desire for disbelief” that has base motives. “What inspires the sceptics? Hatred of the dogmatists – or a need for rest, a weariness, as in Pyrrho” (193).

Nietzsche argues that the earliest Greek philosophers had been creative, noble (vornehme), and “fertile.” They weren’t right (nothing is right), but they left behind beautiful works. Pyrrho was “necessarily the last”: he killed this creative tradition. His philosophy was “wise weariness”:

Living among the lowly, lowly. No pride. Living in the common way; honoring and believing what everyone believes. On guard against science and the mind, even everything that puffs you up…. Simple: indescribably patient, carefree, mild, apatheia, or even prautes [a word for ‘mild’ in the New Testament]. A Buddhist for Greece, brought up amid the tumult of the schools; late comer; tired; the protest of the tired against the zeal of the dialecticians; the disbelief of the tired in the importance of all things. He has seen Alexander, he has seen the Indian penitents. To such late comers and refined people, everything low, everything poor, everything idiotic has a seductive effect. That narcotizes: that makes you stretch out (Pascal). On the other hand, in the midst of the crowd and confused with everyone else, they feel a little warmth: they need warmth, these tired people…. Overcoming contradiction; no competition, no desire for distinction: denying the Greek instincts. (Pyrrho lived with his sister, who was a midwife.) Disguising wisdom so that it no longer distinguishes itself; giving it a cloak of poverty and rags; doing the most menial tasks: going to the market and selling milk pigs…. Sweetness; brightness; indifference; no virtues that need gestures: equating oneself even in virtue: ultimate self-conquest, ultimate indifference.

Nietzsche’s epithet for Pyrrho, a “Buddhist for Greece,” may turn out to be true (if Pyrrho was a practicing Buddhist), yet a bit unfair if we attend to the Buddha’s reported criticism of eel-wrestling skeptics.

Michel Foucault can also be seen as a kind of skeptic. He describes his project as “making things more fragile” by showing that the combinations of concepts and practices that shape our world arose recently, have contingent origins, and therefore “can be politically destroyed” (Foucault 1981). He does not offer prescriptions but shakes his readers’ confidence in what they think they know. Foucault’s practices of genealogy and archaeology sound like Skeptical modes and strikingly resemble the Buddha’s technique of demonstrating that beliefs arise contingently.

Especially in his last four years, Foucault turned from critically investigating forms of power-and-knowledge to exploring ways that individuals have cared for themselves. In this period, he focused on the ancient Greek philosophical schools that offered various forms of therapy. Citing Carlos Lévy, Frédéric Gros comments;

Foucault, in fact, takes the Hellenistic and Roman period as the central framework for his historico-philosophical demonstration, describing it as the golden age of the culture of the self, the moment of maximum intensity of practices of subjectivation, completely ordered by reference to the requirement of a positive constitution of a sovereign and inalienable self, a constitution nourished by the appropriation of logoi as so many guarantees against external threats and means of intensification of the relation to the self. And Foucault successfully brings together for his thesis the texts of Epicurus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Musonius Rufus, Philo of Alexandria, Plutarch. [However,] The Skeptics are not mentioned; there is nothing on Pyrrhon and nothing on Sextus Empiricus. Now the Skeptical school is actually as important for ancient culture as the Stoic or Epicurean schools, not to mention the Cynics. Study of the Skeptics would certainly have introduced some corrections to Foucault’s thesis in its generality. It is not, however, the exercises that are lacking in the Skeptics, nor reflection on the logoi, but these are entirely devoted to an undertaking of precisely de-subjectivation, of the dissolution of the subject. They go in a direction that is exactly the opposite of Foucault’s demonstration (concerning this culpable omission, Carlos Lévy does not hesitate to speak of “exclusion”). This silence is, it is true, rather striking. Without engaging in a too lengthy debate, we can merely recall that Foucault took himself for . . . a skeptical thinker. (Foucault 2001, p. 548).

    Foucault’s silence about Skepticism is impossible to explain conclusively but provocative. One possibility is that he did not know how to address thinkers like Sextus because they were too close to his own approach.

    Despite some similarities, it is worth distinguishing these thinkers’ goals. The Buddha of the Pali Canon promises “a complete and permanent end to desire, attachment, and aversion” (Segal 2020, 110)–let’s call that “enlightenment.” The Skeptics offer “untroubledness about opinions” and a moderate response to suffering in this life–a version of worldly happiness. Nietzsche admires greatness. The Will to Power bears the epigraph: “Great things demand that we either remain silent about them or speak with greatness: with greatness, that is, cynically and with innocence.” And Foucault seems to offer some kind of liberation, albeit always partial and provisional.

    For myself, I cannot endorse what I take to be the fundamental goal of the Theravada texts: permanent release from a cycle of literal rebirth into suffering. Although there is an enormous amount to learn from these works, their core purpose doesn’t work for me. My view is closer to Rev. Ames’: “this life has its own mortal loveliness” (Robinson, 184).

    Foucault was engaged in something deeply important, and it’s tragic that he wasn’t able to continue his exploration of how to cultivate the self. We are left with impressive critiques and hints of a positive program focused on the inner life. I’d like to think Foucault would have written explicitly and interestingly about Skepticism, but he did not have that opportunity. Foucault also recommends that “Montaigne should be reread … as an attempt to reconstitute an aesthetics and an ethics of the self” (Foucault 2011, p. 251), but he was not able to offer that re-reading.

    As for Nietzsche: I agree with him that most cultural and intellectual figures, and some political leaders, who leave a significant creative legacy are firmly committed to opinions of their own. They are often “hedgehogs” (those who know one thing, even if it’s cynicism or nihilism), not “foxes” (those who know many things and are prone to change their theories). I admit that I sometimes resent the disadvantage that arises from being an equivocal fox or an eel-wrestler–from being chronically unsure. However, at least for me, the point is not to be great (which is surely out of reach), but to live reasonably well. And if I can make progress on that, “what helps me might help another.”

    Thus the questions reduce to these: Should we want worldly happiness in the form of untroubledness, and if so, does suspension of belief help us get there?

    How circumstances have changed

    Jonathan Barnes, an expert on Sextus (with whom I studied many decades ago) finds the Skeptics’ therapeutic promises implausible and even “reprehensible” (Barnes 2000, xxxviii). He acknowledges that “Skepticism is offered as a recipe for happiness…. Sextus thinks that we should read Sextus in order to become happy.” However, he writes, “I find it difficult to take this sort of thing seriously” (p. xxx)

    Barnes offers an example: “Suppose that I suspect that I have a fatal disease: unsure, I worry, I become depressed; and in order to restore my peace of mind I decide to investigate — I visit my doctor.” Unfortunately, the doctor is a Skeptic, so he persuades Jonathan that it is impossible to tell whether or not he has a fatal illness. He “lets me leave … in the very state of uncertainty which induced me to enter it.” This result shows that the purported therapist is “a quack” (xxi).

    We might think that it’s actually better to suspend belief about whether one has an incurable, fatal disease rather than to learn that one is dying. This question seems debatable. But I would like to draw attention to the genuine value of–in this case–medical knowledge. Sextus is said to have practiced as a physician, but there was rarely much that an ancient doctor could do for you. Matters were not much better in 1811-14, when John Keats received his medical training. Nowadays, however, a doctor has a pretty good chance of determining what ails you and may be able to assist, if not with a cure than at least with effective palliatives.

    It’s not that a modern doctor, as an individual, has far more knowledge and better perception than Sextus had. Rather, medical science is deeply collaborative and cumulative. Your physician sends your blood samples to a lab, which uses protocols and instruments developed in other labs, based on previous findings from still others. Much of the physician’s individual knowledge is about how to navigate this human system. Socrates’ metrike techne has become a group effort.

    Trust is essential: not only trust in one’s own senses and reason (which Skepticism challenges), but also trust in other people and institutions. This is the case not only for medicine but also for engineering, academic research, government statistics, journalism, market data, and other forms of organized knowledge.

    By displaying appropriate amounts of trust in cumulative human knowledge, we can find partial solutions to human suffering. Even if we agree with the Buddha that suffering always remains, compassion compels us to do the best we can. Blanket skepticism interferes with our ability to help ourselves and others. That is what happens when people who doubt medical science or professional journalism or government statistics refuse to do things like take vaccines or use currency or participate in politics.

    Yet we must always remember that we and others can be wrong and should build the possibility of error and bias into our institutions and processes. Robert K. Merton saw “organized skepticism” as one of the defining features of science, and constitutional democracy offers mechanisms for identifying and challenging errors.

    At the personal level, we might learn from both the Theravada texts and the Greek Skeptics about the drawbacks of identifying too strongly with our own ideas. A moderate kind of Skepticism encourages not to cling to what we believe, because that is a cause not only of dogmatism but also of disquiet. It increases the odds that we will be frustrated when our ideas fail to persuade.

    One of the Skeptics’ techniques, “The Mode of Dispute,” attempts to attain peace by observing the unresolved disagreements among previous thinkers. The Buddha also practices this mode. At one point, he is asked, “The very same teaching that some say is ‘ultimate,’ others say is inferior. Which of these doctrines is true, for they all claim to be an expert?” The Buddha replies that sages “take no side among factions.”

    Peaceful among the peaceless, equanimous, they don’t grasp when others grasp. Having given up former defilements and not making new ones, not swayed by preference, nor a proponent of dogma, that wise one is released from views, not clinging to the world, nor reproaching themselves. They are remote from all things seen, heard, or thought. With burden put down, the sage is released: not formulating, not abstaining, not longing (“The Longer Discourse on ‘Arrayed for Battle,'” trans. by Bhikkhu Sujato.).

    Here I would emphasize the Buddha’s attitudinal stance. The takeaway is not to be skeptical about everything but rather to avoid clinging to one’s views, submitting to mere preferences, or reproaching oneself for one’s errors and failures to change the world. The text recommends a mild detachment, which is compatible with trying to determine the best thing to do and acting accordingly. This, I think, is the form of skepticism that encourages a tranquil mind.

    [I revised and expanded this post on 8/27/24.]

    Sources: I translate Montaigne from the 1598 Middle French edition (“Ce n’est pas icy ma doctrine, c’est mon estude : & n’est pas la leçon d’autruy, c’est la mienne. … Ce qui me sert, peut aussi par accident servir à un autre”); the Greek texts from Project Perseus; and Nietzsche from the Max Braun 1917 edition (which seems to omit some valuable material). Also quoting: David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 1739; Marilynne Robinson, Gilead: A Novel, Farrar (Straus and Giroux); John Keats, letter to his brothers (Dec. 21, 1817); Jonathan Barnes, introduction to Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Scepticism, translated by Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes (Cambridge 2000); Michel Foucault, “What Our Present Is” (1981), from The Politics of Truth; Gros’ note to Foucault’s The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France (1981-1982), Palgrave, 2001; and Seth Zuiho Segall, Buddhism and Human Flourishing (Palgrave 2020). The Pali translations are by Bhikkhu Sujato via the amazing SuttaCentral.net.

    See also: Cuttings version 2.0: a book about happiness; does doubting the existence of the self tame the will?