cover of episode Cheryl Misak on Frank Ramsey's Life and Thought

Cheryl Misak on Frank Ramsey's Life and Thought

2024/9/24
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David Edmonds: 本访谈探讨了剑桥哲学家弗兰克·拉姆齐短暂而辉煌的一生,以及他对哲学和经济学所做出的杰出贡献。拉姆齐在26岁英年早逝,但他留下了大量的思想遗产,至今仍被广泛讨论。他的贡献涵盖了组合数学、经济学(例如最优税收理论和最优储蓄理论)以及哲学(例如拉姆齐语句、拉姆齐条件化和拉姆齐效应)。他被认为是理性选择理论的奠基人之一,对概率论和知识论也有深刻的见解。 Cheryl Misak: 拉姆齐的父亲是一位普通的数学教授,而他的母亲是一位具有进步思想、社会主义倾向的女性,这深刻地影响了拉姆齐的价值观。拉姆齐从小就接触到社会正义的理念,这在他的经济学和哲学思想中都有所体现。虽然拉姆齐在经济学领域被认为是功利主义分析的典范,但他并不认同高度理想化的理性模型,而是更关注人类能够实际达到的目标。他将社会正义的考量融入到他的功利主义分析中,例如在探讨社会储蓄问题时,他反对简单地用功利主义计算来处理未来世代的利益,认为这会是不公平的。 在哲学方面,拉姆齐是一位实用主义者,他认为分析哲学概念应该从人的角度出发,关注这些概念在人类探究和生活中的作用。他的概率论是主观主义的,关注的是人们的信念程度及其应该是什么样的。在知识论方面,他是可靠论的先驱,认为知识是可靠的信念。拉姆齐翻译了维特根斯坦的《逻辑哲学论》,并对其进行了评论,指出维特根斯坦的哲学体系无法解释伦理和人生意义等问题。拉姆齐与罗素和维特根斯坦对人生意义的看法不同,他更关注人的视角,认为生活是美好的,并从中获得乐趣。拉姆齐的性格开朗,乐于助人,这影响了他的哲学和经济学思想。他追求的是一种现实主义的哲学和经济学,关注的是人类能够实际达到的目标,而不是理想化的目标。他的实用主义思想受到查尔斯·K·奥格登的影响。撰写拉姆齐的传记使作者对拉姆齐哲学的理解更加深入,特别是“可行的最佳方案”这一思想贯穿了他的所有作品。

Deep Dive

Key Insights

What were Frank Ramsey's major contributions to philosophy, economics, and mathematics?

Frank Ramsey made significant contributions across multiple fields. In mathematics, he founded Ramsey theory, a branch of combinatorics. In economics, he established optimal taxation theory and optimal savings theory. In philosophy, he introduced concepts like Ramsey sentences, Ramsey conditionalization, and the Ramsey effect, which refers to discovering that Ramsey had already thought of an idea you believed was original.

How did Frank Ramsey's upbringing influence his values and philosophy?

Ramsey's mother was a progressive, feminist, and socialist who instilled strong values in him. She took her children to the poor house on Christmas to give presents to the less fortunate. Ramsey adopted her socialist and justice-oriented values, which influenced his economic theories and his focus on human welfare in both philosophy and economics.

Why is Frank Ramsey considered the founder of rational choice theory?

Ramsey was the first to develop a subjective account of probability and measure partial belief, laying the groundwork for rational choice theory. He demonstrated how individuals could align their beliefs with the probability calculus to act rationally. However, he acknowledged that this was an idealized form of rationality that no human could fully achieve.

How did Frank Ramsey integrate justice into his economic theories?

Ramsey incorporated justice into his economic analyses by arguing against discounting future generations in utilitarian calculations. In his paper 'A Mathematical Theory of Savings,' he emphasized the importance of saving not just money but also natural resources for future generations, rejecting the idea that their utility could be ignored due to potential catastrophes.

What was the relationship between Frank Ramsey and Ludwig Wittgenstein?

Ramsey and Wittgenstein had a mutually influential relationship. Ramsey translated Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus' into English, and Wittgenstein declared Ramsey's translation more authoritative than the original. While Ramsey was deeply influenced by Wittgenstein's early work, he later developed a pragmatist philosophy that contrasted sharply with Wittgenstein's logical and metaphysical approach.

How did Frank Ramsey's pragmatism differ from Wittgenstein's philosophy?

Ramsey's pragmatism focused on the role of concepts like truth, probability, and belief in human inquiry and life, emphasizing their practical utility. In contrast, Wittgenstein's early philosophy, as seen in the 'Tractatus,' was based on a logical picture theory of meaning and truth, which excluded ethical and existential propositions as meaningless. Ramsey prioritized the human perspective, while Wittgenstein sought an ideal, non-human logical structure.

What was Frank Ramsey's approach to the meaning of life?

Ramsey took a human-centered approach to the meaning of life, contrasting with Russell's focus on the vastness of the universe and Wittgenstein's silence on the topic. Ramsey argued that life is wonderful and enjoyable when viewed from the human perspective, emphasizing what is best for human beings rather than abstract or metaphysical considerations.

How did Frank Ramsey's character influence his philosophy and economics?

Ramsey's warm, gregarious, and empathetic character shaped his philosophy and economics. He focused on what human beings could realistically achieve, rejecting idealizations. This approach, termed 'the feasible first best,' emphasized practical and attainable solutions in both philosophy and economics, reflecting his concern for human welfare and realistic possibilities.

How did Frank Ramsey become a pragmatist?

Ramsey was introduced to pragmatism by Charles K. Ogden, a family friend and publisher, who gave him papers by Charles Peirce to read. After the first volume of Peirce's papers was published in 1922, Ramsey read them as an undergraduate and began identifying as a pragmatist, incorporating pragmatist ideas into his philosophy.

Chapters
This chapter introduces Frank Ramsey, a brilliant philosopher, economist, and mathematician who died young. It covers his early life, upbringing, and his significant contributions to various fields, including his socialist views developed during his undergraduate years.
  • Frank Ramsey was a genius in philosophy, economics, and mathematics.
  • He died at 26.
  • Ramsey theory in combinatorics is named after him.
  • He made foundational contributions to optimal taxation and savings theories.
  • He was a socialist and involved in workers' associations.

Shownotes Transcript

Translations:
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This is Philosophy Bites with me, David Edmonds. And me, Nigel Warburton. Philosophy Bites is available at www.philosophybites.com. Frank Ramsey was a remarkable Cambridge philosopher who died very young. He was only 26. In his short life, he produced a slew of brilliant ideas, many of which are still discussed.

In this interview in the BioBytes thread of Philosophy Bites, Cheryl Misak, author of Ramsey's biography, which she's subtitled A Sheer Excess of Powers, explores the relationship between his life and thought. Cheryl Misak, welcome to Philosophy Bites. My pleasure. We're talking today about...

Frank Ramsey. You've been on Philosophy Bites before, also talking about Frank Ramsey, but in particular today we're going to be talking about how his life affected his philosophy. Let's start by summarising who he was, when he lived, how important he was.

Ramsey was, as Paul Samuelson, the economist, once said, a genius by any test of genius. So he died at the age of 26 in 1930. He was a Cambridge philosopher, economist, and mathematician who really did unbelievable things in this very short life.

There's a branch of combinatoric mathematics named after him, Ramsey theory. There are two sub-branches of economics that he really founded, optimal taxation theory and optimal savings theory. And in philosophy, we also have just a ton of things named after him, Ramsey sentences, Ramsey conditionalization. My favorite is Donald Davidson's coinage of the term Ramsey effect.

The Ramsey effect is when you think you've just come up with some absolutely stunningly brilliant, cool idea. And it turns out that Frank Ramsey in 1927 already had it. So a genius by any definition. Tell me a bit about his upbringing, his parents. So he was a Cambridge product.

His father was a jobbing mathematics don. When I say a jobbing mathematics don, I mean he wrote textbooks, never did anything of major significance. So Ramsey was much better a mathematician than his father. His mother was one of these firebrand mathematicians.

progressive, feminist, socialist do-gooders. So she would take her three children on Christmas Day to the poor house and they would give presents to the poor children before they had their own Christmas. And Ramsey really grew up with

this mother with very strong values and he imbibed them, he adopted his mother's values. So he became a socialist, is that right? Because one doesn't really equate Ramsey economics with socialism. Yes, Ramsey is thought of

as an economist, as being a sort of paradigm case of a utilitarian analyzer. So he was very, very good at making utilitarian arguments. In fact, he's considered the founder of rational choice theory because he was the first person before Di Finetti, before von Neumann and Morgenstern, to figure out how to measure partial belief

to come up with a subjective account of probability and show that we could be rational by keeping our probability measures or belief credences in line with the probability calculus.

But Ramsey was very clear, even though he did this tremendously impressive technical thing, that no human being could keep their probabilities in line with the probability calculus. He was running around Cambridge in 1927 giving a talk called Mathematics and Economics in which he said, look, this is a highly idealized kind of rationality that no one can measure up to.

And so he would have hated the fact that he's considered the founder of rational choice theory. Where does the socialism of his mother and concerns for justice then fit into his economics? So as an undergraduate, comes into Cambridge very young because he was always clever and always moved ahead.

He comes in as a socialist, and then he meets Morris Dobb, who was an undergraduate at the time, and a communist. And Dobb takes Ramsey to workers' meetings, and Ramsey actually does a lot of good and very kind of administrative work for these workers' associations, taking notes, making generalizations about what kind of worker was more inclined to unionization than others.

And he really had his socialism cemented as an undergraduate.

And when an undergraduate, he wrote a paper called "Socialism and Inequality," where he argued that economists should be socialists. And then later on, when he wrote his two very famous papers in economics, they look like straight-up utilitarian models, but in fact, in one of them called "A Mathematical Theory of Savings," he asks how much a society should save for the future.

And that's not just how much money a society should save for future generations, but how much natural resources and the like they should save. And he was very clear that you couldn't just run a utilitarian calculus and, for instance, discount future generations because some war or disease might come and wipe them out, so you can't count their utility. He said, no, no, no, that would be unjust.

So he brought justice considerations into his utility analyses. And they were all kind of left-wing welfare economics analyses. And is there a link at all between his socialism or perhaps more widely putting human beings at the centre of his thinking with his philosophy as well as his economics?

Yes, Ramsey was first and foremost in philosophy a pragmatist. So the pragmatist says that when we analyze our philosophical concepts like truth, probability, knowledge, belief,

We mustn't go all metaphysical, but we must start with human beings and the role these concepts play in human inquiry and human lives. So Ramsey's account of probability is a subjectivist accountability. It's about our degrees of belief and what they ought to be.

His account of knowledge, he was the first reliablest in the theory of knowledge. He said, we know P when P is a reliable belief with which we meet the future, something that works perfectly for us. This stands in marked contrast to Wittgenstein's philosophy. And Wittgenstein was an enormous influence on Ramsey.

Yes, although I would argue that Wittgenstein was an enormous influence on Ramsey, and Ramsey was an enormous influence on Wittgenstein. So as an undergraduate, Ramsey is asked to translate this manuscript that has come out of war-torn Europe. Wittgenstein is in a prisoner of war camp in Italy, and Russell and Keynes manage to get this manuscript out of Europe to Cambridge.

And it's a very unusual manuscript. It's written as a series of propositions with sub-propositions. It's unlike anything that has been seen before. And it's very technical. And Moore says it's untranslatable.

And then they figure out, well, actually, maybe this young mathematically inclined genius, Frank Ramsey, can translate it. And indeed, Ramsey is very keen to do it, and he understands the philosophy completely because he's been going to Moore's lectures, and he's been going to visit Russell in London to talk about logic. And Ramsey takes Wittgenstein's manuscript in German to the university typing office, and he reads off to Miss Pate,

the Tractatus Logical Philosophicus in English. So he looks at the German sentence and he reads it off to Miss Pate in English, she transcribes it, they go back and forth, and Wittgenstein declares the translation to have more authority than the original.

So, Ramsey was completely taken by Wittgenstein's Tractatus, which is, as you say, completely unlike Ramsey's later pragmatist philosophy. So, Wittgenstein's argument was that the meaning and truth of a proposition, which is somehow some independently existing entity, very bizarre,

But the meaning of a proposition and the truth of a proposition is that you take a complex proposition, you boil it down to its very simple constituents, and then each of those constituent elements shares a logical form with reality or a state of affairs. So it's completely non-human kind of meaning and truth.

And Ramsey translates the Tractatus and then immediately writes a critical notice of it, which still stands as one of its most important commentaries. Famously, at the end of the Tractatus, there's a section about ethics and the meaning of life. How does Ramsey's human approach differ from Wittgenstein? Good. So Wittgenstein in the Tractatus had a big problem in that

Very few propositions are going to come out meaningful and true on this strict logical picture theory of meaning and truth. Only very simple statements like the pen is to the left of the cup.

perhaps are going to share a logical form with the state of affairs. There were a lot of propositions like universal generalizations, causal propositions, but also ethical propositions and propositions about the meaning of life that literally just don't fit into Wittgenstein's picture. And of propositions about the meaning of life, Wittgenstein said, we must be silent. We can't say anything about the meaning of life, but somehow our...

thoughts about the meaning of life are more important than what we can say in this primary logical language.

So in 1925, there was a very interesting series of papers given at the Apostles' Society in Cambridge, the Secret Conversation Society. So first, Russell came and talked about the meaning of life. And he talked about how puny human beings were in the great universe and was eloquent, as he always was, about how all of human aspiration and accomplishment and love

is bound to just be wiped out in the debris of a dying universe because the universe is going to cool and die. Now we think it's going to heat up and die, but at the time, we were sure it was going to cool and die. And Ramsey then gave a talk about the meaning of life, and he said, unlike some of my friends, he didn't mention them, but he meant Russell and Wittgenstein,

He took the human perspective. He said the stars are all as small as threepenny bits, as far as the human is concerned. What Ramsey was interested in was human beings and what was best for human beings. So Russell focused on the vastness of the universe and found it depressing when it came to the meaning of life.

Wittgenstein, on the other hand, focused on this tight logical language and said you couldn't say anything about the meaning of life, but nonetheless he also was a massive depressive. And Ramsey said, unlike some of my friends, I find life quite wonderful and enjoyable because I take the human perspective.

Well, tell me a bit about Ramsay's character then, because that seems to be connected with an attitude to other human beings, an enjoyment in life. Wittgenstein notoriously was terrible with other people, lacked empathy. Russell was more gregarious. What about Ramsay?

Ramsey, it was very easy to write this biography in a way because Ramsey turned out to be the sunniest, most lovely, lovable character probably in the history of philosophy. It's very hard to find anyone who would say a bad word about him. So he was warm, he was gregarious, and he was very concerned about what other people were feeling in any human situation.

And this did have an influence on his both philosophy and economics, I think. An economist, I believe it was Paul Samuelson, identified one move of Ramsey's in economics as being after the feasible first best. And this, I think...

is Ramsey's approach to everything in philosophy and economics. He's not after the ideal. So Wittgenstein was after the ideal truth that actually no human being can have. No human being is going to get their propositions such that they share a logical form with reality. He was against idealization in economics. No human being is going to be a perfect maximizer of utility.

What Ramsey was after was what human beings can realistically get to. And that's a line of his that I employ quite heavily in my work on Ramsey. He was after a realistic philosophy and a realistic economics. And I think that is because as a human being, he was after the best that we human beings can do. And you describe him as a pragmatist. Does he...

Does he come up with pragmatism himself or is he introduced to pragmatism by somebody else? Yes, so he is introduced by pragmatism by someone else. When he was a schoolboy, a family friend, Charles K. Ogden, who was kind of a man about town in Cambridge and a very serious publisher, published Wittgenstein's Tractatus, for instance. Ogden was Ramsey's mentor, took him under his wing.

Ogden was one of the very few people in Britain who was really interested in and attracted to pragmatism. He was reading Peirce, not understanding him very well. Ogden wasn't a great thinker himself, he was a great publisher.

And he put in the young Ramsey's hands a couple of papers of Peirce's. And then when the very first volume of Peirce's papers were published after his death, Peirce died in 1914, 1922, Harcourt Brace in America published a volume of Peirce's papers, and Ogden published them simultaneously in the UK. Hardly anyone has clocked.

And Ramsey read them hot off the press when he was an undergraduate in 1922, and that's when he started to call himself a pragmatist. You've written the definitive biography, definitely, of Ramsey. You already knew about his philosophy, but did writing the biography give you new insights into how you understood his philosophy?

It did, in that I knew he was a pragmatist because he said he was, and I had thought that pragmatism manifested itself with respect to his theory of belief and how what is important about a belief is that it meet the future well. So we're not interested in that kind of correspondence theory of truth that Wittgenstein was interested in, but we're interested in how our beliefs serve us well in the future.

But then it turned out when I dived into the rest of Ramsey's thought and also into his personality that this idea of the feasible first best really was the governing thought of all of his work except obviously in combinatoric mathematics. It would have really been a stretch to try to apply that overarching thought to Ramsey theory and mathematics. Shilpa Misek, thank you very much indeed. Thank you.

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