That one sees the picture differently each time, if it is now a duck and now a rabbit

Rabbit-Duck Illusion

An ambiguous figure in which the brain switches between seeing a rabbit and a duck. The duck-rabbit was "originally noted" by American psychologist Joseph Jastrow (Jastrow 1899, p. 312; 1900; see also Brugger and Brugger 1993). Jastrow used the figure, together with such figures as the Necker cube and Schröder stairs, to point out that perception is not just a product of the stimulus, but also of mental activity (Kihlstrom 2002).

Jastrow's cartoon was based on one originally published in Harper's Weekly (Nov. 19, 1892, p. 1114) which, in turn, was based on an earlier illustration in Fliegende Blätter, a German humor magazine (Oct. 23, 1892, p. 147).

Interestingly, children tested on Easter Sunday are more likely to see the figure as a rabbit, whereas when tested on a Sunday in October, they tend to see it as a duck (Brugger and Brugger 1993, Kihlstrom 2002). Brugger and Brugger (1993) has provided a comprehensive catalog of duck-rabbit variants, along with data on their ease of reversibility.

SEE ALSO: Young Girl-Old Woman Illusion

REFERENCES:

Brugger, P. and Brugger, S. "The Easter Bunny in October: Is It Disguised as a Duck?" Perceptual Motor Skills 76, 577-578, 1993.

Fliegende Blätter. October 23, 1892, p. 147.

Gombrich, E. H. Art and Illusion. New York: Pantheon, p. 5, 1960.

Jastrow, J. "Minor Contributions. Studies from the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology of the University of Wisconsin." Amer. J. Psych. 3, 43-58. 1890.

Jastrow, J. "The Mind's Eye." Popular Sci. Monthly 54, 299-312, 1899.

Jastrow, J. Fact and Fable in Psychology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1900.

Jastrow, J. The Subconscious. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1906.

Jastrow, J. "The Administrative Peril in Education." Popular Sci. Monthly 81, 495-515, 1912.

Jastrow, J. "Conflict of Psychologies." Sci. Monthly 29, 411-416, 1929.

Jastrow, J. "Joseph Jastrow." In A History of Psychology in Autobiography (Ed. C. Murchison). Worcester, MA: Clark University Press, pp. 135-162, 1930a.

Jastrow, J. Keeping Mentally Fit: A Guide to Everyday Psychology. Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing, 1930b.

Jastrow, J. Piloting Your Life; the Psychologist as Helmsman. New York: Greenberg, 1930c.

Jastrow, J. "Has Psychology Failed?" Amer. Scholar 4, 261-269, 1935.

Kid's World. "Optical Illusions--2." http://www.frontiernet.net/~docbob/ilusion2.htm.

Kihlstrom, J. F. "Letter to the Editor." Trends Cognitive Sci. 6, 502, 2002.

Malach, R.; Levy, I.; and Hasson, U. "The Topography of High-Order Human Object Areas." Trends Cogn. Sci. 6, 178-184, 2002.

Peterson, M. A.; Kihlstrom, J. F.; Rose, P. M.; and Glisky, M. L. "Mental Images Can be Ambiguous: Reconstruals and Reference-Frame Reversals." Memory and Cogn. 20, 107-123, 1992.

Popplestone, J. A. M. An Illustrated History of American Psychology, 2nd ed. Akron, OH: University of Akron Press, 1994.

"Rabbit and Duck." Harper's Weekly 36, No. 1874, p. 1114, Nov. 19, 1892.

Scheidemann, N. V. Experiments in General Psychology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 67, 1939.

Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford, England: Blackwell, pp. 165-166, 1953/1958.

CITE THIS AS:

Weisstein, Eric W. "Rabbit-Duck Illusion." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Rabbit-DuckIllusion.html

75. Should I say: “The picture-rabbit and the picture-duck look just the same”?! Something militates against that--But can’t I say: they look just the same, namely like this--and now I produce the ambiguous drawing. (The draft of water, the draft of a treaty.) But if I now wanted to offer reasons against this way of putting things--what would I have to say? That one sees the picture differently each time, if it is now a duck and now a rabbit--or, that what is the beak in the duck is the ears in the rabbit, etc.?

As a high-falutin' academic, he calls this an "epistemological recession."

From Arnold Kling:

"Justin Wolfers writes,

there are about three papers written on monetary policy for each paper mentioning fiscal policy. And there are only a few dozen papers written on the multiplier each year.

He has more data.

Jerry Muller writes,

a large role was played by the failure of the private and corporate actors to understand what they were doing. Most heads of ailing or deceased financial institutions did not comprehend the degree of risk and exposure entailed by the dealings of their underlings

As a high-falutin' academic, he calls this an "epistemological recession." As you know, I call it the suits vs. geeks divide.

Finally, David Leonhardt has a big piece coming up in the NYT Magazine. So far, I've only read the first page, and he mentions Mancur Olson, which is cool."

My reply:

Don the libertarian Democrat writes:

"a large role was played by the failure of the private and corporate actors to understand what they were doing. Most heads of ailing or deceased financial institutions did not comprehend the degree of risk and exposure entailed by the dealings of their underlings"

I'm wondering why you buy this explanation. Did you feel the same way about the people running Enron? Those were pretty complicated investments.

There is nothing complicated about a CDS or CDO. Explaining and understanding their risk is easy. What's hard to understand is the math used to determine default rates for mortgages and tranches. But is not terribly hard to understand graphically. Most people can understand a Bell Curve and the idea of tails graphically, for example. I learned about Godel's proof from Prof. Chihara when I was a freshman in college. I didn't understand everything, but, because he knew what he was talking about, he helped me understand the basics of it.

CDSs and CDOs were chosen because they needed lower capital requirements. If it wouldn't have been these, it would have been some other investment created to suit the need. Such a need is inherently risky. Everyone knows that. Higher capital standards are in place to lessen risk.

There are a number of papers on the internet from 2005 and earlier that detail, for anyone interested, how and why the math models were risky. Can a CEO use the internet? They do not entail the need of great mathematical acumen to understand.

When I was in college and graduate school, I did pretty well in logic and math. I'm terrible at them and they bore me. But I always managed to find someone who could help me for free. Are you telling me millionaires couldn't find skeptics or third parties to inform them of the problems?

Not understanding risk is not an epistemological problem. It is a problem of competence. Epistemology often deals with justification. How do you know something? Why do you believe something? That's why Wittgenstein and Austin, who wrote( both were actually edited from notes ) the two best books on the subject in the last 75 years, On Certainty and Sense And Sensibilia, spend so much time on how we justify beliefs and knowledge. They both stress context and presuppositions.

The question is what are the beliefs and suppositions that justified these business decisions? I say that it was a context of implicit government guarantees to intervene in the case of a financial crisis, and lax prosecution dating back to the S & L crisis.

I'm don't doubt that the magnitude of the debacle stunned the bankers and investors acting on these beliefs. Sadly, they trusted, based on the S & L Crisis and the Fed's actions in recent years, in the efficacy of government to limit a crisis should one occur. But I believe that they all knew that they were taking very large risks for very large payoffs.

When Lehman collapsed, the market and investors panicked. Not in five minutes as Prof. Taylor seems to believe, but during the following weeks. That's because they were counting on government intervention. They had no Plan B.They do not believe in nor want a financial system free of government aid. As Wittgenstein wrote, "If a lion could speak, we could not understand it". I say "If a free market existed, our investor class could not compete in it".

Disciples who came to him expecting to find a man of incredibly deep learning found a man who saw mankind held together by suffering alone

One genius about another:

Guy Davenport on Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein before he came to philosophy was a mathematician, an architect, a sculptor, a mechanical engineer, a grade-school teacher, a soldier, and an aviator. He could have followed any of these careers doubtless with brilliant success; just before he came to Cambridge (they gave him a doctorate at the door) he was strongly inclined to "be an aeronaut." Every account of his strange life indicates that he tried to teach. He did not dine with the faculty, as the faculty in all its grandeur always dines in academic gowns, black shoes, and neck tie. Wittgenstein was forever tieless and wore a suede jacket that opened and closed with that marvelous invention: the zipper; and his shoes were brown. He held his lectures in his rooms, in the continental manner. As there was no furniture except an army cot, a folding chair, a safe (for the Zettel), and a card table, the students brought their own chairs. Philosophy classrooms in our century have frequently been as dramatic as stages: Santayana, Samuel Alexander, Bergson --- men of passionate articulateness whose lectures fell on their students like wind and rain. But Wittgenstein, huddled in silence on his chair, stammered quietly from time to time. He was committed to absolute honesty. Nothing --- nothing at all --- was to escape analysis. He had nothing up his sleeve; he had nothing to teach. The world was an absolute puzzle, a great lump of opaque pig iron. Can we think about the lump? What is thought? What is the meaning of can, can we, of can we think? What is the meaning of we? If we answer these questions on Monday, are the answers valid on Tuesday? If I answer them at all, do I think the answer, believe the answer, know the answer, or imagine the answer?

It was apparently not of the least interest to Wittgenstein that Plato had answered certain questions that philosophers need to ask, or that Kant or Mencius had answered them. He sometimes liked other philosophers' questions; he seems never to have paid any attention to their answers. Truth was stubborn; Wittgenstein was stubborn; and neither faced the other down. We have to look back to the stoic Musonius to find another man so nakedly himself, so pig-headedly single-minded. He actually taught for very little of his life. He was forever going off into the Norwegian forests, to Russia, to the west of Ireland where --- and this is all we know of these solitudes --- he taught the Connemara birds to come and sit in his hands. He mastered no convention other than speech, wearing clothes, and --- grudgingly and with complaint --- the symbols of mathematics. The daily chores of our life were wonders to him, and when he participated in them they became as strange as housekeeping among the Bantu. ...

Wittgenstein did not argue; he merely thought himself into subtler and deeper problems The record which three of his students have made of his lectures and conversations at Cambridge discloses a man tragically honest and wonderfully, astoundingly absurd. In every memoir of him we meet a man we are hungry to know more about, for even if his every sentence remains opaque to us, it is clear that the archaic transparency of his thought is like nothing that philosophy has seen for thousands of years. It is also clear that he was trying to be wise and to make others wise. He lived in the world, and for the world. He came to believe that a normal, honest human being could not be a professor. It is the academy that gave him his reputation of impenetrable abstruseness; never has a man deserved a reputation less. Disciples who came to him expecting to find a man of incredibly deep learning found a man who saw mankind held together by suffering alone, and he invariably advised them to be as kind as possible to others. He read, like all inquisitive men, to multiply his experiences. He read Tolstoy (always getting bogged down) and the Gospels and bales of detective stories. He shook his head over Freud. When he died, he was reading Black Beauty. His last words were: "Tell them I've had a wonderful life."

-- Guy Davenport, The Geography of the Imagination

"And, for that matter -- why isn't there a philosophy of plumbing or long-distance bus driving? "

A post from Understanding Society:

"When philosophers do their thinking within a field called "the philosophy of X", there is always a natural question that arises: how will philosophical reflection about X be helpful or constructive for the practitioners of X? For example, how might the philosophy of science be helpful for working scientists? How can the philosophy of biology or economics be helpful to biologists or economists? And, for that matter -- why isn't there a philosophy of plumbing or long-distance bus driving?

As for the last question, there seem to be two separate reasons for this gap in the spectrum -- a dearth of difficult conceptual problems and a lack of potentially useful consequences. First, philosophy finds traction when it deals with subject matter that raises difficult conceptual or inferential issues. Philosophers are particularly good at untangling unclear concepts; they are experienced at the task of formulating problems clearly and logically; they are ready to unmask the hidden presuppositions underlying a particular formulation. This is the kind of work Wittgenstein describes as "letting the fly out of the fly bottle"; it is what J. L. Austin does so well in "Three ways of spilling ink" (link). Drawing distinctions and formulating ideas clearly -- these are core intellectual tools, and they lie at the root of philosophy.( I AGREE )

Another core intellectual tool is the commitment to providing justification for the things we believe, and raising reflective questions about the nature of rational justification. What is the evidence that supports a given belief? What degree of warrant does this evidence create? Why do statements like these make it more likely that P is true? Questions like these too are foundational for philosophy -- from Plato to Locke to Quine. And philosophers have a developed and nuanced set of frameworks and vocabularies in terms of which to interrogate them.( YES )

Both these types of intellectual work are doubly cognitive. They represent cognitive effort directed at examples of cognitive effort -- efforts to explain the workings of nature, the behavior of other people, or the workings of social institutions. Putting the point very simply -- philosophers are good at helping us think clearly about thinking. And, at their best, they can help us think more clearly and coherently.( I AGREE )

So now we have part of an answer for why there is no philosophy of plumbing( I DISAGREE ): plumbing is a routine activity( ROUTINE ACTIVITY IS A PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION, AS IS EXPERTISE ) with few conceptual puzzles and a secure base of practical knowledge( PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE IS A PHILOSOPHICAL TOPIC. FOR EXAMPLE, HEIDEGGER'S "BEING AT HAND ", AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROGRAMMING COMPUTERS. WITTGENSTEIN ALSO CONSIDERS THIS QUESTION. EMBODIMENT IS ALSO A PART OF THIS DISCUSSION. OLIVER SACKS CONSIDERS EMBODIMENT AND PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE AS WELL. ). There just isn't any room for philosophical analysis in this realm. And, second, there is the pragmatic point: it is very hard to see how the plumbers( THERE COULD BE A ZEN OF PLUMBING. THERE ARE CERTAINLY PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ABILITY TO PERFORM MUSIC. ) might benefit from philosophical analysis( WALKING BENEFITS FROM PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS ). If Deleuze were to write a treatise on plumbing, how could that possibly enhance the practical discipline of plumbing? The plumbers' effective ability to control the water and waste systems( WHAT ABOUT THAT OLD SYSTEMS THEORY APPROACH ? I NEVER FOUND IT VERY USEFUL, BUT SOME PEOPLE DO. ) of our buildings would not be enhanced by conceptual or epistemic analysis. Their conceptual and theoretical problems are well-mapped; all that remains is to discover( HOW HE DISCOVERS THINGS IS A PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION. AGAIN, HOW WOULD YOU CONSTRUCT A ROBOT TO DO PLUMBING? WHAT DOES THE PLUMBER ASSUME ABOUT THE TASK FACING HIM? ) the source of the leak. And this does not require philosophy.

Why, then, do we need other philosophies of X's? What is it about economics, evolution, or the mind that makes it intellectually and practically valuable to have a philosophy of economics, biology, or psychology? The answer proceeds along the lines sketched here. All these disciplines confront huge problems of concept formation, theory construction, and inference and justification. The most basic questions remain unsettled: does capitalism exist? How are theories and models related to the empirical world? Is there such a thing as group selection? How do emotions intersect with reasoning? What is consciousness? And in all these fields, there is the problem of inference and method -- again, unresolved. So there is ample room for philosophical thinking in these fields.( TRUE )

But more importantly, philosophy can help to improve the intellectual practices of the cognitive-empirical disciplines. By working productively in tandem with creative scientific researchers, with a focus on the conceptual and methodological problems that matter the most, philosophers can help contribute to real progress in the disciplines( TRUE ). This requires the philosopher to engage with the discipline in depth. But the fruits of this sort of synergy can be highly productive. It is sometimes complained that philosophy brings only "logic chopping" and dry conceptual analysis. But this is a caricature; the conceptual issues faced by the special sciences are deeply challenging, and sustained dialogue with philosophers can potentially lead to meaningful progress in the science( HERE I NEED SOME EXAMPLES ). And reciprocally, quite a few traditional concerns of philosophy --in ontology, epistemology, and the theory of the mind, for example -- can be significantly deepened( SOMETIMES ) through close engagement with current scientific work. There need not be a sharp line of demarcation between philosophy and empirical research.( TRUE. SORT OF. FEYNMAN, FOR EXAMPLE, THOUGHT THAT PHILOSOPHY WAS USELESS. )

Posted by Daniel Little at 12:01 PM

A good book on Practical Knowledge is "The Craftsman" by Richard Sennett. To the extent that a Plumber can be a craftsman, many philosophical issues do arise. For example, can plumbing be learned from a manual? My type of philosophy is very interested in these kinds of questions. One should also remember Titchmarsh's Two Truths, the second of which is the following:

"2) "The question what numbers are has been much debated by philosophers, and they do not seem to have reached any agreement about it. There is nothing particularly surprising or distressing about this. It has been said that mathematicians are happy only when they agree, and philosophers only when they disagree. Philosophic doubts about the nature of number have never prevented mathematicians from getting on with their calculations, or from agreeing when they have got the right answer. So perhaps the situation is satisfactory to all parties. "

"However, the free market does have a cure: it's called a recession, and it's not fun, easy or quick."

A Doomsayer in the WSJ:

"By PETER SCHIFF

As recession fears cause the nation to embrace greater state control of the economy and unimaginable federal deficits( THIS IS TRUE. THAT'S WHY WE DON'T WANT THEM GENIUS ), one searches in vain for debate worthy of the moment( WE CAN HAVE THE DEBATE LATER, RIGHT NOW WE NEED ACTION. THE TWO AREN'T SYNONYMOUS ). Where there should be an historic clash of ideas, there is only blind resignation and an amorphous queasiness that we are simply sweeping the slouching beast under the rug( DON'T BE DAFT. YOU'RE WRITING IN THE WSJ AND YOU'VE BEEN ALL OVER THE TELLY AND BLOGS. THERE ARE PLENTY OF DISSENTING VIEWS. THEY'RE SIMPLY NOT CONVINCING TO MANY OF US ).

With faith in the free markets now taking a back seat to fear and expediency( SILLY ), nearly the entire political spectrum agrees that the federal government must spend whatever amount is necessary to stabilize the housing market, bail out financial firms, liquefy the credit markets, create jobs and make the recession as shallow and brief as possible( TRUE ). The few who maintain free-market views have been largely marginalized( THEIR VIEWS WON'T WORK. WE DON'T HAVE A FREE MARKET. WE HAVE A HYBRID ).

Taking the theories of economist John Maynard Keynes as gospel( IT'S MORE LIKE A NARRATIVE, BUT YOU OBVIOUSLY FAVOR PEJORATIVES AND OVERSTATEMENTS. YOU'VE BEEN READING MENCKEN, PERHAPS. HE WAS ONE OF A KIND ), our most highly respected contemporary economists imagine a complex world in which economics at the personal, corporate and municipal levels are governed by laws( LAWS? LIKE NEWTONIAN MECHANICS? ) far different from those in effect at the national level.

Individuals, companies or cities with heavy debt and shrinking revenues instinctively( THEN WHY HAVEN'T THEY BEEN DOING THAT UNTIL NOW? ) know that they must reduce spending, tighten their belts, pay down debt and live within their means. But it is axiomatic in Keynesianism that national governments can create and sustain economic activity by injecting printed money into the financial system( IT CAN. AN ECONOMY ISN'T A HOUSEHOLD. BY THE WAY SCIENTIST, THE LAWS OF NATURE ALSO APPLY DIFFERENTLY AT DIFFERENT LEVELS OF EXPLANATION, OTHERWISE WE'D HAVE KEYNE'S CAT OR SOME SUCH MONSTROSITY ). In their view, absent the stimuli of the New Deal and World War II, the Depression would never have ended( MORE LIKE TOTALITARIANISM MIGHT HAVE WON ).

On a gut level( IS THAT A DIFFERENT LEVEL THAN THE NATIONAL? WHAT ARE ITS LAWS? ), we have a hard time with this concept( WHAT IS IT AGAIN? ). There is a vague sense( QUITE SPECIFIC AREN'T YOU GALILEO ) of smoke and mirrors, of something being magically created out of nothing( LIKE THE BIG BANG? ). But economics, we are told, is complicated( MORE LIKE OF LIMITED USE ).

It would be irresponsible in the extreme for an individual to forestall a personal recession by taking out newer, bigger loans when the old loans can't be repaid( ACTUALLY, MANY PEOPLE HAVE MAXED OUT THERE CREDIT CARDS, GONE BUST, AND THEN STARTED OVER AGAIN. PRESUMABLY, ON THIS MODEL, COUNTRIES COULD THIS AS WELL. IT DOES APPLY TO CITIES. ). However, this is precisely what we are planning on a national level.( IT'S A SILLY ARGUMENT )

I believe these ideas hold sway largely because they promise happy, pain-free solutions( ARE THOSE NOT TO BE DESIRED? ). They are the economic equivalent of miracle weight-loss programs that require no dieting or exercise( ENOUGH OF THE ANALOGIES ). The theories permit economists to claim mystic wisdom, governments to pretend that they have the power to dispel hardship with the whir of a printing press, and voters to believe that they can have recovery without sacrifice( MAYBE THEY'D LIKE MUTUAL SACRIFICE ).

As a follower of the Austrian School of economics I believe that market forces apply equally to people and nations( I'VE POSTED ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL. IT HAS SOME VERY USEFUL INSIGHTS, BUT THIS ISN'T ONE OF THEM. ). The problems we face collectively are no different from those we face individually( OF COURSE THEY ARE ). Belt tightening is required by all, including government( FOR A SCIENTIST, YOU THROW AROUND A LOT OF CLICHES ).

Governments cannot create but merely redirect( IS THIS LIKE THE DEBATE ABOUT WHETHER GOD CREATED THE WORLD FROM NOTHING, OR JUST REARRANGED MATTER? ). When the government spends, the money has to come from somewhere( SAME THING WHEN I SPEND ). If the government doesn't have a surplus, then it must come from taxes( THE GOVERNMENT CAN INVEST. YOU'VE JUST GIVEN A WHOLE TREATISE TELLING US THAT THE NATION AND PEOPLE ARE THE SAME ). If taxes don't go up, then it must come from increased borrowing. If lenders won't lend, then it must come from the printing press, which is where all these bailouts are headed( I SHOULD HOPE SO ). But each additional dollar printed diminishes the value those already in circulation ( AND? ). Something cannot be effortlessly( HOW MUCH EFFORT DOES IT TAKE? ) created from nothing.

Similarly, any jobs or other economic activity created by public-sector expansion merely comes at the expense of jobs lost in the private sector( MORE OR LESS ). And if the government chooses to save inefficient jobs in select private industries, more efficient jobs will be lost in others( THERE'S NO WAY TO KNOW THAT A PRIORI. IT'S CONCEIVABLE THAT THE PRIVATE ECONOMY COULD CREATE EVEN LESS EFFICIENT JOBS ). As more factors of production come under government control, the more inefficient our entire economy becomes( OVER THE LONG RUN THAT IS TRUE ). Inefficiency lowers productivity, stifles competitiveness and lowers living standards( TRUE ).

If we look at government market interventions through this pragmatic lens( WHAT'S PRAGMATIC ABOUT WHAT YOU JUST SAID? IT'S ALL THEORY ), what can we expect from the coming avalanche of federal activism( TELL ME )?

By borrowing more than it can ever pay back( HOW'S THAT ? ), the government will guarantee higher inflation for years to come, thereby diminishing the value( NOT REALLY. PRICES WILL VARY BASED ON MANY FACTORS ) of all that Americans have saved and acquired. For now the inflationary tide is being held back by the countervailing pressures of bursting asset bubbles in real estate and stocks, forced liquidations in commodities, and troubled retailers slashing prices to unload excess inventory. But when the dust settles, trillions of new dollars will remain, chasing a diminished supply of goods. We will be left with 1970s-style stagflation, only with a much sharper contraction and significantly higher inflation( NOT ).

The good news is that economics is not all that complicated( USEFUL ). The bad news is that our economy is broken( IT'S NOT A MACHINE. GOD SPARE US MECHANISTIC THINKERS ) and there is nothing the government can do to fix it. However, the free market does have a cure( THAT MAKES THE UNEMPLOYED WHAT ? ): it's called a recession( AREN'T WE GOING THROUGH IT? ), and it's not fun, easy or quick. But if we put our faith( TRY ARGUMENTS, WHICH YOU HAVEN'T EVEN BOTHERED TO ARGUE AGAINST ) in the power of government to make the pain go away, we will live with the consequences for generations( DON'T BE SILLY. IF WE LISTEN TO YOU, WE WILL LIKELY END UP WITH SERIOUS SOCIAL DISLOCATIONS, WHICH, BELIEVE ME, YOU AREN'T PREPARED TO DEAL WITH. )"

I guess if you're rich, you're supposed to be smart. I don't believe that.

Let's go over this once again. The context determines the range of possible actions. Since he likes analogies, the same is true for human communication. The context determines the meaning of a sentence or word. Because our investor class believes in government bailouts and was preparing for them, they were entirely unprepared to handle this crisis on their own. That is the true context of this crisis. The free market does not exist here. We have a Welfare State. Most people accept its terms of operation.

Wittgenstein had a sentence about meaning that applies here:

"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him."

Let's try this:

"If a free market proposal were offered, we could not implement it. "

Let me add a postscript from Thoreau:

"That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. "

Men are not prepared for it, including libertarians. It's our job to get them there, but, as a good Burkean, I believe that it will take time and compromise, and nothing is written.

"The evidence points to the conclusion that people in commercial societies are better, which is one of the best reasons to prefer commercial societies

Recently, Becker and Posner considered if the Free Market corrodes moral character. I inflated myself immediately after they posted, only to be deflated in minutes. Today, Will Wilkinson weighed in, and the same thing happened. Why? I love philosophy. Well, I'm going to tell you why.

Many years ago, I was a student of the philosopher Paul Grice. At the time, he appeared and dressed a little oddly in my opinion. Nowadays, I'm looking and dressing more and more like him. Someday, the resemblance will be uncanny.

Anyway, I used to spend a good part of my time sitting on the steps of the philosophy building. I was called the gargoyle of the philosophy building. The story was that one of my teachers had been known as the gargoyle of Emerson Hall when he was in college and graduate school, because he spent a good part of his time sitting on its steps, and he had made a remark that I reminded him of his younger self, and so I was so named. The truth was probably more like we're both short gnarly guys who look a bit like gargoyles.

So, one day, when I should have been reading Davidson, Quine, or Strawson for class, I was sitting on these steps reading Bradley. Grice walked up to me and almost rolled over, saying something like, " Good Lord, Bradley. Well, every philosopher comes back in vogue someday".

The thing was, I wasn't reading Bradley because of philosophy. As I recall, Eliot had written a book on Bradley which I'd managed to come across, so I'd decided to read Bradley afterwards.

After all these years, I believe that Grice was wrong. My favorite philosopher is J.L. Austin. Even then, Austin had fallen out of favor. One reason I never liked Strawson was because he'd gone head to head against Austin, and most philosophers had given the prize to Strawson. I date the decline of Anglo-American Philosophy to that calamity.

My other favorite philosopher is Wittgenstein, especially in his book called "On Certainty". Years after being dismissed from school, I managed to get to know an incredibly decent and knowledgeable man by the name of Bernard Williams. Even though he found me hard to take, he talked to me a few times.

Once, I told him that I was writing a philosophy book in the style of Austin and Wittgenstein, and what did he think would come of it if I did. He told me go ahead, but only he and a few others would get it, and hardly anyone would read it.

For many years, I assumed that it was because Austin and Wittgenstein are complicated, but now I have a different assumption. I believe that most people find their style of philosophizing annoying. They're both rather like Socrates with the Elenchus. Their mode of analysis tends to make people feel out of sorts and unmoored.

Take "On Certainty". Many people finishing it probably ask themselves if Moore was speaking a foreign language, or maybe speaking in code. "This is my right hand" means arm the bomb, "This is my left hand" means detonate it.

So, when I analyze posts philosophically, my guess is that they will be very annoying. For one thing, I would have spent some energy on the word "corrode", in order to see if their question even made sense, and was capable of being intelligently answered. You get the point.

However, here's some great news. You can read "On Certainty" online here.

Please read the Becker, Posner, and Wilkinson. But ask yourself, what does Wilkinson mean when he uses the word "better"?