Knowledge And Decisions

Intellectuals — persons who earn their living by transmitting generalized ideas — have incentives and constraints determined by the peculiarities of their social class, as well as incentives deriving from the nature of the intellectual process. Questions about resolving conflicts between the two — how to be honest while political, ethical while an advocate — only highlight the existence of two disparate sets of incentives and constraints. Such conflicts are defined out of existence when intellectuals are categorized as people who “live for rather than off ideas.”⁹⁵ Such may be the hoped-for ideal, but the actual observable characteristic of the group is that they live off ideas. The extent to which they ignore that fact and regard purely cognitive incentives as overriding is an empirical question that can be examined after first determining the incentives created by their social class and those created by their cognitive activity.

It is to the self-interest of intellectuals as a social class to benefit themselves economically, politically, and psychically, and for each intellectual to benefit himself similarly. Among the ways in which this can be done is by increasing the demand for the services of intellectuals and increasing the supply of raw material used in their work. The output of intellectuals — ideas — is a product supplied in abundance by all other members of society, so that a prerequisite for increasing the demand for specifically intellectuals’ ideas is to differentiate their product. Certificates from authenticating institutions (universities, learned societies, research institutes, etc.) help, but the intellectual differentiates his product most distinctively by its manner of packaging — the choice of words, organization of the material, and observance of cognitive principles and scholarly form. The intellectual who does these things can even dispense with degrees entirely, as John Stuart Mill did, or the degree may be wholly incidental, as in the case of Karl Marx (a law degree) and Adam Smith (a degree in philosophy). It may well be that most contemporary intellectuals are degree-holders, but that is hardly their defining characteristic.

The conflict between cognitive and occupational incentives is particularly clear in the choice between existing knowledge and newly created ideas. An intellectual is rewarded not so much for reaching the truth as for demonstrating his own mental ability. Recourse to well-established and widely accepted ideas will never demonstrate the mental ability of the intellectual, however valid its application to a particular question or issue. The intellectual’s virtuosity is shown by recourse to the new, the esoteric, and if possible his own originality in concept or application — whether or not its conclusions are more or less valid than the received wisdom. Intellectuals have an incentive to “study more the reputation of their own wit than the success of another’s business,” as Hobbes observed more than three centuries ago.⁹⁶ As part of this product differentiation, it is essential that alternative (competing) social inputs be discredited cognitively (“irrational”) or morally (“biased,” “corrupt”), that competing elites be discredited (“greedy,” “power hungry”), and that the issues at hand be depicted as too unprecedented for application of existing knowledge inputs available to intellectuals and nonintellectuals alike, and too urgent (a “crisis”) to wait for systemic responses, which are also alternatives that compete with intentional intellectual “expertise.” More generally, the meaning of knowledge must be narrowed to only those particular kinds of formalized generalities peculiar to intellectuals. Assertions of the gross inadequacy of existing institutions and ideas likewise increase the demand for intellectuals by discrediting alternatives. The rewards are both psychic and financial.

The demand for intellectuals’ services is also increased by developing preferences for such political and social processes as commonly use more of intellectuals’ inputs — e.g., political control and status ascription from the top down, “education” or “more research” as the answers to the world’s ills, and “participation” and institutional articulation as the way to better decisions.