The Honest Broker Gets Institutional Neutrality Wrong

I've got a very high opinion of Pielke, but he makes a couple of common errors when discussing institutional neutrality (and universities).

   One error is a version of the perfection argument against objectivity. Neutrality, like objectivity, is (or at least can be construed as) a matter of degree. Institutions don't need to be perfectly neutral--just approximately so. All we're trying to work toward currently is some vague approximation of neutrality, rather than whole-hog, unmitigated institutional progressivism. When we ask whether someone can be neutral or objective in adjudicating a dispute, we don't mean to ask whether they have Godlike objectivity. We're not interested in whether they can adopt (in Nagel's phrase) "the view from nowhere." We're asking whether they can adopt something more like a bird's-eye view--a view sufficiently more objective than the dog's-eye view of those who have dogs in the fight.

   A second error: contrary to THB, robust institutional neutrality is possible--and often actual: the institution can simply not take an official position on the issue in question. Most institutions are neutral about most issues in virtue of not taking official positions on them (mostly because they don't care about them). Few universities take official positions on, say, whether Pluto is a planet, or who fired first at the Battle of Lexington. Of course individual faculty often have some very passionate commitments about such issues! Although most faculty are undoubtedly pro-abortion, few institutions take official positions on abortion. Institutional neutrality does not require neutrality by individual faculty, students, or administrators.

   A third error--another common one--is that THB's proposed alternative to institutional neutrality--"institutional restraint"--is basically just institutional neutrality differently described. If you like, we could call it "approximate institutional neutrality."

   Anway. Again, Pielke is really good. But people who venture into the jungles of philosophy often make some fairly well-understood errors.