Book Review: Steven E. Landsburg’s "The Big Questions"

Dr. Steven E Landsburg is an economist at the University of Rochester. This is his third book.

From an overview perspective, Landsburg's writing is clear, accessible and engaging. It is not likely that his position will be misunderstood, no matter what your opinion of it might be.

Landsburg admits up front that he takes on the Big Questions from an economist’s viewpoint. What this actually means doesn’t surface immediately. So I will reveal it early on: Landsburg is a philosophical Consequentialist.

Consequentialism, especially in the economist’s world, is the valuing of actions by their consequences – at the surface. More deeply it is the moral evaluation of actions based on cost / benefit ratios. This leads directly and inevitably to several conclusions: global governance by consequentialists, and the leveling of all peoples to equal outcomes as determined by cost / benefit analyses. While Landsburg doesn't overtly endorse this conclusion, neither does he take pains to abjure it.

With that held in our minds, We start, with Landsburg immediately taking on ontology with a breathtakingly over-simplification of a number of variables to arrive at these conclusions: (a) all existence is mathematics, and (b), the existence of mathematics proves there is no God.

Here’s how that works in Landsburg’s universe:

The first premise is that mathematics is real and immutable; it exists because it is necessary that it exists and it cannot NOT exist.

Premise 2 is that because computer software can run on any computer, it is independent of the computer (the computer is just baggage). This leads to,

Premise 3: The mind is software, the brain is hardware; the mind is independent of the brain (isn’t this a variation on Duality?).

Premise 4: The computer / brain baggage can be eliminated altogether, since it doesn’t matter what computer is used to run the software.

Premise 5: Consciousness – being software - is not a function of the brain; consciousness would exist independently of the brain.

Premise 6: If software is developed that is conscious, it would be conscious without the computer.

Premise 7: Since all hardware is merely “baggage” and can be eliminated, then all reality is actually software – which is basically mathematics.

Conclusion: All reality is actually mathematics.

Next,

Mathematics could not have been created because it is essential, necessary. (In fact, the universe exists expressly for mathematics, which must exist)

Therefore God could not have created it.

And thus, since there is no existence that is not mathematics, then God didn’t create anything that exists, ergo: no God.

This Atheodicy, like all analogies, fails in its inability to be comprehensive. Starting with Premise 4, the analogy goes astray, wandering off into absurd thoughts that are taken as Truth, even axiomatic. To declare that computers can be eliminated is of course absurd. To declare that all reality is mathematics is absurd: if mathematics is metaphysical (and it is), then there is no physical existence, if the premises are valid.

Are mathematics truly essential, immutable? What is immutable is the numbering of objects, where 2 objects added to 3 objects always leaves 5 objects; as Landsburg says, the number three is essential - without it mathematics and logic fail. But wait. Without objects, mathematics is without meaning despite being metaphysical and abstract. If 2 plus 3 does not refer to objects, then "2" and "3" are meaningless symbols. Outside space/time mathematics as we know it is just as likely to be false as it is true, and there is no evidence possible to prove otherwise. Moreover in multiple dimensions our concepts of mathematics would never suffice to describe objects of 6 or 9 or 11 dimensions. So there is no reason to think that our mathematics is immutable outside our dimensions, and there is no coherency conflict with the concept of a creating deity.

It is difficult to tell if Landsburg is just playing with us to see what we will stomach, or if he is seriously setting up the rest of the book.

But as we proceed, we see that he is definitely a materialist in the sense that he measures the values of outcomes (benefits) using material measures. So he contradicts his Atheology as he goes along.

Landsburg does not shy away from taking on scientific questions, including quantum mechanics. He several times declares admiration for Dawkins (an early life influence on Landsburg) and Dennett, yet never mentions Aristotle, Newton, Hume, Locke, Popper, Boole, etc. although he does give one sentence to Feynman, and he creates a fictional conversation with Einstein. But science really is a cause and effect sort of business, which is Landsburg’s forte’. Science just doesn’t try to invoke morality for its principles... well, science which subjects itself to the scientific method, anyway.

One wonders if all economists are afflicted with the cost / benefit approach to morality. Given the affliction with Keynesianism, one might guess, maybe so.

As Landsburg says, “Morality then, is a biological accident”.

And, “My problem with deontology [abstract moral absolutes] is that I can’t think of anything that is always wrong. I’d cheerfully cut off the ears of a small child to cure malaria.”

Again, “…my ‘self interest’ accounts for everyone’s interests. That’s what a moral judgment should do…”

So he develops what he calls “The Economist’s Golden Rule”:

“Roughly, the rule is ‘Don’t leave the world worse off than you found it.’ A corollary is ‘Don’t spend valuable time and energy is nonproductive ways’”.

This “roughly” translates to: your moral capital is measured by your contribution. If you are not totally productive, you are losing moral capital commensurate with your lapse of productivity. You are valued by the amount of moral capital you accumulate, or lose.

The moral valuation of an individual becomes numerically quantifiable based on cost / benefit calculations. If this does not raise both red flags and the hair on your neck, well I can’t help you. Because the immediately obvious next step is to make certain that individuals are, indeed, evaluated and their morality assured. And the quality of the individual’s moral benefits would be defined not by the individual but by elites who know better than the individual what that individual “should” be doing.

Consequentialism is not just compatible with Alinskyism, communism, socialism/totalitarianism and eugenics, it is the fundamental moral theory underlying those aggressive philosophies.

Western culture was not founded on assured outcomes. It was founded on the freedom to personally assume the cost of pursuing a yet unrealized benefit. The probability of achieving the benefit is frequently inversely proportional to the magnitude of the benefit – yet no one is precluded from pursuing benefits for which they can pay the cost and are willing to do so, no matter what the ratio might be. This could be thought of as the underlying premise for liberty, freedom and private ownership of property. Assured outcomes are the darlings of elitist, socialist, totalitarian thoughts and agendas.

While Consequentialism is the main thrust of the book, one last interesting feature intrigued me, a section called “How to Think”. But I was disappointed to find, not a treatise on logic or rational thought, but a series of articles on what to think, not how. Only two subjects are worthy of mention here: his attack on Al Gore’s use of phony metaphors in a section called “Don’t Blather”; and the final tiny section called “Delight in Losing Arguments”, which I quote here in its entirety:

“Argue passionately for your beliefs; listen intently to your adversaries, and root for yourself to lose. When you lose, you’ve learned something”.

And learning something is a benefit that is (usually) worth the cost.