0:02

This is Philosophy Bites with

0:04

me David Edmonds and me

0:06

Nigel Warburton. Philosophy Bites is

0:09

available at www.philosophybites.com. Frank

0:11

Ramsey was a remarkable Cambridge philosopher who

0:13

died very young. He was only 26.

0:15

In his short

0:18

life he produced a slew of brilliant

0:20

ideas, many of which are still discussed.

0:23

In this interview, in the Biobites

0:25

thread of Philosophy Bites, Sheryl

0:28

Mezak, author of Ramsey's biography,

0:30

which she's subtitled A Sheer

0:32

Excess of Powers, explores

0:35

the relationship between his life and

0:37

thought. Sheryl Mezak, welcome

0:39

to Philosophy Bites. My pleasure.

0:42

We're talking today about Frank

0:44

Ramsey. You've been on Philosophy Bites

0:47

before, also talking about Frank Ramsey,

0:49

but in particular today we're going

0:51

to be talking about how his

0:53

life affected his philosophy. Let's

0:55

not by summarising who he

0:57

was, when he lived, how

0:59

important he was. Ramsey was,

1:02

as Paul Samuelson, the

1:04

economist once said, a genius by

1:06

any test of genius. So

1:08

he died at the age of 26 in 1930.

1:11

He was a Cambridge philosopher,

1:14

economist and mathematician who

1:16

really did unbelievable things in

1:19

this very short life. There's

1:22

a branch of combinatoric mathematics

1:24

named after him, Ramsey Theory.

1:27

There are two sub-branches of

1:29

economics that he really founded,

1:31

optimal taxation theory and

1:33

optimal savings theory. In

1:36

philosophy, we also have

1:38

just a ton of things named

1:40

after him, Ramsey sentences, Ramsey conditionalisation.

1:42

My favourite is Donald

1:44

Davidson's coinage of the term,

1:46

Ramsey effect. The Ramsey effect

1:49

is when you think you've

1:51

just come up with some

1:53

absolutely stunningly brilliant, cool idea.

1:55

And it turns out that

1:57

Frank Ramsey in 1927... already

2:00

had it. So a genius

2:02

by any definition, tell me a bit

2:04

about his upbringing, his parents. So

2:07

he was a Cambridge product. His

2:09

father was a job

2:11

in mathematics Don. When I say

2:14

a job in mathematics Don, I

2:16

mean he wrote textbooks, never did

2:18

anything of major significance. So Ramsey

2:20

was much better a mathematician than

2:23

his father. His mother

2:25

was one of these

2:27

firebrand, progressive,

2:30

feminist, socialist do-gooders.

2:34

So she would take her

2:36

three children on Christmas

2:38

Day to the poor house and

2:41

they would give presents to

2:43

the poor children before they had their own

2:45

Christmas. And Ramsey really grew up with this

2:49

mother with very strong values and

2:51

he imbibed them. He adopted his

2:53

mother's values. So he became

2:55

a socialist, is that right? Because one

2:57

doesn't really equate Ramsey economics

2:59

with socialism. Yes, Ramsey

3:02

is thought of as

3:04

an economist as being a sort

3:06

of paradigm case of a utilitarian

3:09

analyzer. So he was very,

3:11

very good at making utilitarian

3:13

arguments. In fact, he's considered

3:15

the founder of rational choice

3:18

theory because he was the

3:20

first person before Difenetti, before

3:22

von Neumann and Morgenstern to

3:25

figure out how to measure partial belief,

3:27

to come up with a subjective account

3:30

of probability and show that we could

3:32

be rational by keeping our

3:34

probability measures, our belief credences

3:36

in line with the probability

3:38

calculus. But Ramsey

3:40

was very clear, even

3:42

though he did this tremendously

3:44

impressive technical thing, that

3:47

no human being could

3:49

keep their probabilities in line with

3:52

the probability calculus. He

3:54

was running around Cambridge in 1927, giving

3:56

a talk called Mathematics and Economics. economics

4:00

in which he said look this

4:02

is a highly idealized kind of

4:04

rationality that no one can measure

4:06

up to and So

4:09

he would have hated the fact that he's

4:11

considered the founder of rational choice theory

4:14

Where does the socialism of his

4:16

mother and concerns for justice then

4:19

fit into his economics? so as

4:21

an undergraduate comes into Cambridge

4:23

very young because he was always clever and

4:26

always moved ahead He

4:28

comes in as a socialist and then

4:30

he meets Morris Dobb who was an

4:32

undergraduate at the time and a communist

4:34

and Dobb takes

4:36

Ramsey to Workers

4:38

meetings and Ramsey actually does a

4:41

lot of good and very kind

4:43

of administrative work for these workers

4:45

associations taking notes

4:47

making Generalizations about

4:49

what kind of worker was more

4:51

inclined to unionization than others and

4:54

he really had his socialism cemented

4:56

as an undergraduate and

4:58

when an undergraduate he wrote a paper called

5:01

socialism and inequality Where

5:04

he argued that economists should be

5:06

socialists and then later on when

5:08

he wrote his two very famous

5:10

papers in economics They look

5:12

like straight-up Utilitarian

5:15

models, but in fact

5:17

in one of them called a mathematical

5:19

theory of savings He asks

5:22

how much a society should save for

5:24

the future And

5:26

that's not just how much money a

5:28

society should save for future generations but

5:31

how much natural resources and the like

5:34

they should save and He

5:36

was very clear that you couldn't just

5:38

run a utilitarian calculus and for instance

5:41

Discount future generations because

5:43

some war disease might come and

5:45

wipe them out So you

5:47

can't count their utility. He said no, no, no that

5:50

would be unjust so

5:52

he brought justice considerations

5:55

into his utility analyses

5:58

and they were all left-wing

6:00

welfare economics analysis.

6:04

And is there a link at all

6:06

between his socialism or perhaps more widely

6:08

putting human beings at the center of

6:11

his thinking with his philosophy as what

6:13

is his economics? Yes,

6:15

Ramsey was first

6:17

and foremost in philosophy a

6:20

pragmatist. So the pragmatist says

6:23

that when we analyze our

6:26

philosophical concepts like truth, probability,

6:31

knowledge, belief, we

6:33

mustn't go all metaphysical, but

6:36

we must start with human beings and

6:38

the role these concepts play in

6:41

human inquiry and human lives. So

6:44

Ramsey's account of probability is

6:46

a subjectivist accountability. It's about

6:48

our degrees of belief and

6:50

what they ought to be.

6:53

And his account of knowledge, he

6:55

was the first reliabilist in the

6:57

theory of knowledge. He said, we

6:59

know P when P is a

7:01

reliable belief with which we meet

7:04

the future, something that works

7:06

perfectly for us. This

7:08

stands in my contrast to Wittgenstein's

7:11

philosophy and Wittgenstein was an enormous

7:13

influence on Ramsey. Yes,

7:15

although I would argue that Wittgenstein

7:18

was an enormous influence on Ramsey

7:20

and Ramsey was an enormous influence

7:22

on Wittgenstein. So as

7:25

an undergraduate, Ramsey is

7:27

asked to translate this

7:29

manuscript that has come out of war-torn

7:31

Europe. Wittgenstein is in a

7:33

prisoner of war camp in Italy and

7:36

Russell and Keynes managed to

7:39

get this manuscript out of

7:41

Europe to Cambridge. And

7:43

it's a very unusual manuscript.

7:45

It's written as a series

7:47

of propositions with sub-propositions. It's

7:49

unlike anything that has been

7:52

seen before and

7:54

it's very technical. And Moore

7:56

says it's untranslatable. And

7:58

then they figure out, well, actually,

8:00

maybe. this young mathematically inclined genius

8:03

Frank Ramsey can translate it. And

8:05

indeed, Ramsey is very keen

8:07

to do it and he understands the philosophy

8:09

completely because he's been going to Moore's

8:12

lectures and he's been going to visit

8:14

Russell in London to talk about logic.

8:17

And Ramsey takes Wittgenstein's

8:20

manuscript in German to

8:22

the university typing office and

8:25

he reads off to mis-pate the

8:28

tractatus logical philosophicus in

8:31

English. So he looks at the German

8:33

sentence and he reads it off to

8:35

mis-pate in English. She transcribes it. They

8:37

go back and forth and Wittgenstein declares

8:40

the translation to have more

8:42

authority than the original. So

8:45

Ramsey was completely taken

8:48

by Wittgenstein's tractatus,

8:51

which is, as you

8:53

say, completely unlike Ramsey's

8:55

later pragmatist philosophy. So

8:58

Wittgenstein's argument was that the

9:00

meaning and truth of a

9:02

proposition, which is somehow some

9:04

independently existing entity, very bizarre,

9:07

but the meaning of a proposition and the truth

9:09

of proposition is that you take

9:11

a complex proposition, you boil it

9:14

down to its very simple constituents

9:16

and then each of those constituent

9:19

elements shares a logical form with

9:22

reality or a state of affairs. So it's

9:25

completely non-human kind of meaning

9:27

and truth. And Ramsey

9:30

translates a tractatus and then

9:32

immediately writes a critical notice

9:34

of it, which still stands as one

9:36

of its most important commentaries. Famously

9:39

at the end of the tractatus

9:41

there's a section about ethics and

9:43

the meaning of life. How does

9:46

Ramsey's human approach differ

9:48

from Wittgenstein? Good. Wittgenstein

9:51

in the tractatus had

9:54

a big problem in that very

9:57

few propositions are going to come out.

10:00

meaningful and true on this

10:02

strict logical picture theory of

10:04

meaning and truth. Only

10:06

very simple statements like the pen is

10:08

to the left of the cup, perhaps,

10:11

are going to share a logical form with the

10:14

state of affairs. There were

10:16

a lot of propositions like

10:18

universal generalizations, causal propositions, but

10:21

also ethical propositions and propositions

10:23

about the meaning of life that literally

10:25

just don't fit into Wittgenstein's picture. And

10:28

of propositions about the

10:30

meaning of life, Wittgenstein said, we must

10:32

be silent. We can't

10:35

say anything about the meaning of

10:37

life, but somehow our thoughts

10:41

about the meaning of life are

10:43

more important than what we can

10:45

say in this primary logical language.

10:48

So in 1925, there was a very interesting series

10:52

of papers given at the

10:54

Apostles Society in Cambridge, the

10:56

secret conversation society. So

10:59

first Russell came and talked about

11:01

the meaning of life and he

11:03

talked about how puny human beings were

11:05

in the great universe

11:08

and was eloquent as he always

11:10

was about how all

11:12

of human aspiration and accomplishment

11:16

and love is bound to

11:19

just be wiped out in

11:22

the debris of a dying universe

11:25

because the universe is going to cool and die. Now

11:29

we think it's going to heat up and die, but at the

11:32

time we're sure it was going to cool and die.

11:35

And Ramsey then gave a talk about

11:37

the meaning of life and

11:39

he said unlike some of my friends, he

11:42

didn't mention them, but he meant Russell and

11:44

Wittgenstein. He took

11:47

the human perspective He

11:49

said the stars are all

11:51

as small as threepenny bits as

11:53

far as the human is concerned. What

11:56

Ramsey was interested in was human

11:59

beings. and what was

12:01

best for human beings. So

12:03

Russell focused on the vastness of

12:06

the universe and found it depressing

12:09

when it came to the meaning of life. Wittgenstein,

12:12

on the other hand, focused on this

12:14

tight, logical language and said you couldn't

12:16

say anything about the meaning of life,

12:19

but nonetheless, he also was a massive

12:21

depressive. And Ramsey said, unlike

12:23

some of my friends, I

12:25

find life quite wonderful

12:27

and enjoyable because I take the

12:30

human perspective. Well, tell

12:32

me a bit about Ramsey's character then,

12:34

because that seems to be

12:36

connected with an attitude

12:38

to other human beings, an

12:40

enjoyment in life. Wittgenstein notoriously

12:42

was terrible with other people,

12:44

lacked empathy. Russell was more

12:46

gregarious. What about Ramsey? Ramsey,

12:49

it was very easy to write

12:52

this biography in a way because

12:54

Ramsey turned out to be the

12:56

sunniest, most lovely, lovable

12:58

character, probably in the history

13:01

of philosophy. It's very

13:03

hard to find anyone who would

13:06

say a bad word about him. So

13:09

he was warm, he was gregarious, and

13:11

he was very concerned about what

13:14

other people were feeling

13:16

in any human situation. And

13:19

this did have an influence on

13:21

his both philosophy and economics, I

13:23

think. An economist, I believe

13:25

it was Paul Samuelson, identified

13:28

one move of Ramsey's in

13:30

economics as being after the

13:32

feasible first best. And this,

13:35

I think, is

13:37

Ramsey's approach to everything

13:39

in philosophy and economics. He's not

13:41

after the ideal. So Wittgenstein was

13:43

after the ideal truth that actually

13:45

no human being can have, no

13:47

human being is going to get

13:49

their propositions such that they

13:52

share a logical form with reality. He

13:55

was against idealization in economics.

13:57

No human being is going

13:59

to be... a perfect maximizer

14:01

of utility. What Ramsey

14:04

was after was what human

14:06

beings can realistically

14:09

get to. And that's a line

14:11

of his that I employ quite

14:14

heavily in my work on Ramsey.

14:16

He was after a realistic philosophy

14:19

and a realistic economics. And I

14:21

think that is because as a

14:23

human being, he was after the

14:26

best that we human beings can do. And

14:28

you describe him as a pragmatist.

14:30

Does he come up with pragmatism

14:32

himself or is he introduced to

14:35

pragmatism by somebody else? Yes, so

14:37

he is introduced by pragmatism by

14:39

someone else. When he was a

14:41

school boy, a family

14:43

friend, Charles K. Ogden,

14:45

who was kind of a man about

14:47

town in Cambridge and a very serious

14:49

publisher, published Vickenstein's Tractatus,

14:52

for instance. Ogden was

14:54

Ramsey's mentor, took him under his wing.

14:57

And Ogden was one of

14:59

the very few people in Britain who

15:02

was really interested in and attracted

15:04

to pragmatism. And he was reading

15:07

Peirce, not understanding him very well.

15:09

Ogden wasn't a great thinker himself,

15:11

he was a great publisher. And

15:14

he put in the young Ramsey's hands

15:17

a couple of papers of Peirce's. And

15:19

then when the very first volume of Peirce's

15:21

papers were published after his death, Peirce died

15:24

in 1914, 1922, the Harcourt Brace in America

15:26

published a volume of Peirce's

15:32

papers. And Ogden published them

15:34

simultaneously in the UK. Hardly

15:37

anyone has clocked that. And

15:39

Ramsey read them hot off the press

15:42

when he was an undergraduate in 1922. And that's when he

15:45

started to call himself a pragmatist.

15:49

You've written the definitive

15:51

biography, definitely, of Ramsey.

15:54

You already knew about his philosophy, but

15:56

did writing the biography give

15:59

you new insights into

16:01

how you understood his philosophy. It

16:04

did, in that I knew he was a

16:06

pragmatist because he said he was. And

16:09

I had thought that pragmatism manifested

16:11

itself with respect to his theory

16:14

of belief and how what is

16:16

important about a belief is that it meet

16:18

the future well. So we're not

16:21

interested in that kind of correspondence theory

16:23

of truth that Wittgenstein was interested in,

16:25

but we're interested in how our beliefs

16:27

serve us well in the future. But

16:30

then it turned out when I dived into

16:33

the rest of Ramsey's thought and

16:36

also into his personality that

16:38

this idea of the feasible

16:40

first best really was

16:42

the governing thought of all

16:44

of his work, except obviously

16:47

in combinatoric mathematics. It would have really

16:49

been a stretch to try to apply

16:52

that overarching thought to Ramsey theory

16:54

in mathematics. Ciao, Ami

16:56

Sakh. Thank you very much indeed. Thank

16:58

you.