Archive for the 'Philosophy' Category

In Hobbes’ state of nature, self-interested robots descend into mutual warfare, because they cannot resolve their resource conflicts by non-violent means. If every robot is programmed to maximize its own welfare, if all goods are rivalrous, and if there is no powerful central authority to change the cost/benefit calculus, then a state of mutual warfare is indeed inevitable. Hobbes solution to the problem of coordination is to introduce the Leviathan, a social construct whose primary job is to impose massive costs on non-cooperators. Hobbes’ solution is ingenious, not in the least because he does not rely on re-programming his robots to make them more social or even altruistic. Rather, he changes their environment (their incentives) so that the prisoner’s dilemma conditions are neutralized and coordinated behavior emerges among single-mindedly self-interested agents. One can fault Hobbes for having underestimated the possibility of social organization emerging as a result of mutual trade. His natural state is a zero sum game, which is an assumption of questionable value. But at the end of the day, Hobbes’ asocial robots became the type-case from which modern economics with its undersocialized rational actors emerged.

Against that backdrop, it appears that the persistence of the equilibrium model of perfect competition is at least in part the result of its ability to provide a formal answer to Hobbes’ challenge of how social order can be achieved and maintained. Hobbes’ answer was: Change the incentives of the rational actors through a central authority. The economist’s answer comes in two steps.

• First, the economists replaces the zero sum game assumption with a theory of mutual gain from trade.
• Second, he or she replaces the central authority of the Leviathan with the disciplining force of a perfectly competitive market.

Under conditions of perfect competition, no individual actor can afford to use violence or deceit to maximize their profits, because the other market participants will simply contract around the “difficult” participant. (Perfect information, which is part of the conceptual framework, includes not only perfect information about the goods but also about the market participants.) Since no single actor can influence the market clearing price, the “difficult” market participant harms him or herself (that is, internalizes the costs of his or her behavior) with the force of a natural law. The impersonal punishment meted out by the market is structurally similar to the costs imposed on the non-cooperator by the Leviathan. Both, the market and the Leviathan are impersonal institutional arrangements that change the actors’ incentives so as to make cooperative behavior more profitable than violence or deceit.

[tags]hobbes, economics, market[/tags]

Of all proofs for the existence of god, the teleological argument or the argument from design is the most commonly invoked: The watch proves the existence of the watchmaker. Of course, the argument from design is a non-sequitur and fails as a result of some well-known flaws documented elsewhere. But there’s another noteworthy weakness of the argument from design: The more complex an object gets, the less likely it is that anyone truly designed it. Thus, the more complex the watch, the less likely that there is any identifiable watchmaker. Only very crude artifacts (e.g., stone tools) permit the “watch → watchmaker” inference. This is a result of the distribution of knowledge. Recall the story “I, Pencil” by Leonard Read.

I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write. Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that’s all I do. … I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. … I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because—well, because I am seemingly so simple. Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? Especially when it is realized that there are about one and one-half billion of my kind produced in the U.S.A. each year.

No single person knows how to make a pencil, because of the dispersion of knowledge resulting from the division of labor. Thus, even though someone might have thought of “designing” a pencil, the design incorporates thousands of previous “design” decisions by others. In other words, there is no single designer, and particularly the most obviously designed objects (e.g., airplanes) do not permit the inference of a single mind behind them. Interestingly, a very similar point was made by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations:

The woollen coat, for example, which covers the day-labourer, as coarse and rough as it may appear, is the produce of the joint labour of a great multitude of workmen. The shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser, with many others, must all join their different arts in order to complete even this homely production. How many merchants and carriers, besides, must have been employed in transporting the materials from some of those workmen to others who often live in a very distant part of the country! how much commerce and navigation in particular, how many ship-builders, sailors, sail-makers, rope-makers, must have been employed in order to bring together the different drugs made use of by the dyer, which often come from the remotest corners of the world! What a variety of labour too is necessary in order to produce the tools of the meanest of those workmen!

[tags]god, argument from design[/tags]

In his NYT article on What Should a Billionaire Give – and What Should You?, Peter Singer makes the case that the wealthy are morally obligated to give to the poor. Not just to the poor around them, but also, and equally, to the poor on the other side of the world. In practical terms, Singer suggests the following contributions from US residents or families:

[The top 14,400 earn an average of $12,775,000,] with total earnings of $184 billion. The minimum annual income in this group is more than $5 million, so it seems reasonable to suppose that they could, without much hardship, give away a third of their annual income, an average of $4.3 million each, for a total of around $61 billion. That would still leave each of them with an annual income of at least $3.3 million. Next comes the rest of the top 0.1 percent (excluding the category just described, as I shall do henceforth). There are 129,600 in this group, with an average income of just over $2 million and a minimum income of $1.1 million. If they were each to give a quarter of their income, that would yield about $65 billion, and leave each of them with at least $846,000 annually. The top 0.5 percent consists of 575,900 taxpayers, with an average income of $623,000 and a minimum of $407,000. If they were to give one-fifth of their income, they would still have at least $325,000 each, and they would be giving a total of $72 billion. Coming down to the level of those in the top 1 percent, we find 719,900 taxpayers with an average income of $327,000 and a minimum of $276,000. They could comfortably afford to give 15 percent of their income. That would yield $35 billion and leave them with at least $234,000. Finally, the remainder of the nation’s top 10 percent earn at least $92,000 annually, with an average of $132,000. There are nearly 13 million in this group. If they gave the traditional tithe — 10 percent of their income, or an average of $13,200 each — this would yield about $171 billion and leave them a minimum of $83,000.

As much as I sympathize with Singer’s proposal, I am not convinced by his philosophical justification for a universal duty of assistance (which, admittedly, is harder to justify than duties of non-interference). Here are some observations:

What is the source from which a duty for A to assist B arises? Singer states at the outset that a human life has great value (”in the millions”). From that, we can certainly derive a duty of non-interference. A must not, without good reason, harm B. But can we also derive an affirmative duty for A to assist B and a corresponding moral claim of B to A’s assistance if B’s life is in jeopardy? Usually, we require a rather narrow set of conditions to be in place for such affirmative duties to arise, specifically (i) a promise by A to B (either explicit or as a result of friendship, reciprocity, assumption of an office such as that of a firefighter, etc.); or (ii) A’s responsibility for the threat to B’s life, for example because B’s extreme poverty is the result of A’s exploitative behavior. Singer proposes much less situational and demanding conditions for a duty to assist to arise, namely (a) maximum utility for B (”saving B’s life”) and (b) minimal cost to A (”ruining A’s shoes”). In other words, Singer postulates a general duty to optimize total welfare, or at least to minimize certain extreme disequilibria. It is worth nothing that legal systems, at least, are somewhat divided on that score. German criminal law, for example, knows a general duty of assistance to strangers in emergencies, US criminal law (by and large) does not. As much as I sympathize with Singer’s result, the origin of the duty to assist that he proposes is not sufficiently well explained.

Singer makes some implicit claims about morally relevant and morally irrelevant facts, which require closer examination. Let’s take a look at his primary example.

[We walk] by a shallow pond and [see] a small child who has fallen in and appears to be in danger of drowning. Even though we did nothing to cause the child to fall into the pond, almost everyone agrees that if we can save the child at minimal inconvenience or trouble to ourselves, we ought to do so. Anything else would be callous, indecent and, in a word, wrong. The fact that in rescuing the child we may, for example, ruin a new pair of shoes is not a good reason for allowing the child to drown.

So far so good, with the caveat outlined above. But then Singer continues:

Similarly if for the cost of a pair of shoes we can contribute to a health program in a developing country that stands a good chance of saving the life of a child, we ought to do so.

Singer’s implicit claim is that physical and cultural distance between A and B is irrelevant for A’s obligation to assist B. If that’s true, then virtually everyone who could better the life of anyone in dire poverty anywhere is flaunting his or her moral obligation. (Which may well be the case.) Singer universalizes A’s obligation by extending it to everyone in B’s position everywhere. Alternatively, one could also universalize a more local obligation, e.g., everyone in A’s immediate situation (here, walking past a drowning child) has an obligation to assist. The former way of universalizing the obligation creates billions of overlapping global/universal obligations. The latter creates a global/universal “mesh network” of local obligations. Singer chooses the strategy of creating a universal duty over universalizing local duties, which may ultimately be correct (I am not sure), but definitely requires more explicit supporting arguments.

Should we really treat everyone equally? One moral problem with true equality is illustrated by Singer’s second example.

A few years ago, when he was in his mid-40s, Zell Kravinsky gave almost all of his $45 million real estate fortune to health-related charities, retaining only his modest family home in Jenkintown, near Philadelphia, and enough to meet his family’s ordinary expenses. After learning that thousands of people with failing kidneys die each year while waiting for a transplant, he contacted a Philadelphia hospital and donated one of his kidneys to a complete stranger. [Kravinsky acknowledges that we form special attachments with some people, for example our children, but] that does not, in Kravinsky’s view, justify our placing a value on the lives of our children that is thousands of times greater than the value we place on the lives of the children of strangers. Asked if he would allow his child to die if it would enable a thousand children to live, Kravinsky said yes. Indeed, he has said he would permit his child to die even if this enabled only two other children to live.

To me it is more plausible that we owe different moral obligations to different people. Kravinsky’s children, I would argue, have a greater moral claim to his assistance, based on mutual promises, than those to whom no such promises have been made, and who, as a result, don’t have the same justified expectations. That is not to say, of course, that no baseline moral obligations exist vis-a-vis strangers, but if meaningful tradeoffs have to be made, then choosing the interests of the few who are close to us over the interests of the many who are distant is not per se morally deficient.

What if there is no duty of assistance to those in need who are far away? In that case, paradoxically, charitable giving may be even more laudable. Gates and Buffet are not just doing what every decent person ought to do. They act out of kindness to which no one can lay a moral claim. Thus even if optimizing utilitarianism, other forms of consequentialism, rights-based theories, etc. were to fail in justifying universal claims for assistance, we may still owe to ourselves to help strangers in need if we want to lead virtuous lives.

[tags]poverty, morality, consequentialism, peter singer[/tags]

Every human society experiences both conflict and cooperation. Conflict, more often than not, is conflict over scarce resources, in other words, an economic problem. (There are other types of conflicts as well, but economic conflict is as close to universal for humans as it gets.)

1. One prominent way of dealing with economic conflict is violence: If I want X and you want it too but we can’t both have it at the same time, then we will have to fight.
2. Another way of dealing with scarcity is organized production. If I want X and you want it too, then let’s work together (= let’s each specialize and trade) and make more of X or improve X. There have been surprisingly few patterns of organizing production in history. They broadly fall into the categories of tradition (e.g., casts, guilds, apprenticeships, etc.), authoritarian rule (e.g., soviet-style central planning), and market exchange (e.g., barter, bazaars, eBay, NYSE). Virtually every real-world system of organized production that exists today contains elements of each.
3. A third way is some arrangement by which you and I transform our preferences so that we no longer want X (or want less of it). Virtually every such arrangement aims at replacing (or tempering) our self-interested nature with some form of altruism.

Only option (3) requires agents to change their preference structure and thereby presumes that such a thing is possible. In contrast, options (1) and (2) operate mostly at an agent-external level, which is why realists instinctively feel drawn to (1) and (2) as explanations for human behavior and (3) has held great appeal for idealistic reformers of both secular and religious ilk.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that humans, by and large, are in fact fundamentally self-interested, and that they are unlikely to change in that regard. That rules out (3) as a viable approach to solving the economic problem. As between (1) and (2), the latter has proven to be significantly more successful at minimizing scarcity and thus the potential for violent conflict over scarce resources. As within (2), the “free exchange” mode of organizing production is not only more efficient but also most compatible with notions of fundamental equality (e.g., no casts) and democracy. That, I believe, is the kernel of truth in the adage that “democracy follows free markets.” However, democracy follows free markets not because they both share some fundamental commitment to freedom, but rather because free markets are efficient at avoiding violence as a means of solving resource conflicts and, unlike authoritarian and traditional patterns of organizing production, are compatible with our phenomenological experience of and belief in self-determination and the resulting urge to have a say in matters concerning ourselves. In addition, the majoritarian character of democratic rule is a structural counterweight to the tendencies of free markets to produce economic elites with disproportional influence over both, the economic and the political system. The bottom line is that of all political economies within (2), the “free market plus democracy” combination seems to have emerged as the most successful means of avoiding violent conflicts over resources by means of growth and innovation – humans being what they are. That is not to say, of course, that humanity won’t self-destruct in one way or the other. There’s a good chance that it will, for example, by continuing to pursue growth qua growth over growth qua innovation, by remaining in the grip of traditional and religious superstition, and by a single-minded focus on the short run. But it means that if there’s a solution to these problems, it is to be found within (2), not within (1) or (3).

What I find attractive about this bare-bones model of both the economic the and political system is that it provides at least the outline of an explanation for what I observe in the real world without requiring me to make assumptions about human nature beyond some fairly basic propositions such as virtually universal self-interest. In addition, it seems that the above is at least continuous with the results of hard science and history, and should thus pass the test of m-naturalism. Why should we introduce intrinsic qualities of both freedom and democracy, if we can explain the world around us without them?
[tags]politics, economy, democracy, freedom[/tags]

/// What follows is the final installment of a series of examinations of utilitarianism from Harwood’s seminal essay, “Eleven Objections to Utilitarianism”, along with my demonstrations of how these objections are unsound. Previous installments address such topics as integrity, justice, promise-keeping, supererogation, average and total utilitarianisms, rule utilitarianism, and hedonism. ///

10. Utilitarianism makes interpersonal comparisons of utility.
What utilitarianism demands, implicitly, is that the happiness of persons can be compared to one another (usually using some abstract idea of a “hedon”, or unit of pleasure). However, this in itself seems suspect, since the experience of happiness is entirely a) idiosyncratic, b) subjective, and c) variant between persons. Thus, it seems bizarre, or outright impossible, to say that one may compare happiness across persons.

Harwood rightly dismisses this objection for a variety of reasons.

First, he stresses that utilitarianism allows for different means by which satisfaction may be achieved. So the fact that needles make me miserable without doing the same to you, doesn’t indicate anything about pain itself. Thus, the idiosyncratic nature of pleasure and pain can be dealt with by utilitarians.

Second, he argues that we regularly and commonsensically make interpersonal comparisons of utility. To illustrate, he writes that “we build freeways even though we know that it is just a matter of time before and innocent baby who would not have died nearly so soon had the freeway never been built gets crushed in an automobile accident on the freeway. But the great convenience of the freeway and the other lives saved by allowing ambulances and other emergency vehicles to use the new freeway … outweighs the harm caused to the crushed baby”. This seems to defuse some of the motivation behind the objection, although, as an appeal to this mysterious thing we call “common sense”, it falls short of being persuasive.

Third, he argues that interpersonal comparisons of utility have just as many problems as intrapersonal comparisons of utility; all the same arguments made against the former can be made against the latter.

This isn’t true, however. I may compare my imagined happiness in the future to that of the present, or the present to the past, and my act of doing so does not interfere with the objection that both are subjective experiences. But if I were to try to compare my experiences to another person’s, I would run into problems, because experience is always unique to the subject. The point — which is worth taking seriously — is that you can’t just lay out the contents of one person’s conscious mind, lay out those of another person’s, and compare the two. Minds just aren’t like that.

Still, I think that, for all intents and purposes, we may make comparisons between persons by taking our analyses with a few grains of salt. But even if we were to allow that such comparisons could be made in principle, we can rightfully ask, “Well, how? Put it in empirical terms, already”.

It is said that utilitarianism has served to be an inspiration to economic theorists, but one thing that economists have grown to accept is that happiness cannot be measured en masse. Rather, they tend to rely upon observing the preferences of persons, postulating through the use of models of human action that there is a connection between desire satisfaction and happiness. An economic sociologist and utilitarian could then argue that certain models of social action allow us to infer levels of happiness, at least in part, on the basis of satisfying desires.

I won’t begrudge the general epistemic point, although the calculation depends upon a plausible model of human action. The favorite of classical economists and vonMiseans, rational choice theory, is something which we now know is implausible, and has rightfully fallen out of grace across the social sciences. Still, I mention these things only to point out yet another place where utilitarianism appears to be in desperate need for coherant and plausible analytic social philosophy to help provide genuine moral guidance.

[Edit: So those are Harwood's first few rejoinders. But he also considers a second kind of thought-experiment. Let's say that there are two kinds of people: those who are disposed towards dourness, and those disposed towards contentment. The same effort that it would take to make the dour person happier by 2 hedons could also make the contented person happier by 4. This experiment tells us, then, that utilitarianism councils us to expend more effort on those who are easily amused, since they will produce greater hedonic dividends.]

Harwood’s objection to this experiment is fairly brilliant and deserves to be quoted at length. He accuses a thesis of variance between interpersonal happiness as leading to bad statistical mojo. “Even if satisfaction was as wildly unpredictable from person to person… would it not mizimize our margin of error if we assumed that each person’s satisfactions were comparable? It seems so. For if we started giving preference or extra weight to persons whose satisfaction was assumed to be weightier [i.e., someone who is easily and intensely delighted], then the wildly unpredictable nature of satisfaction … would imply that we are as apt to be preferring and weighting the satisfactions of the right persons… as those of the wrong persons. If we chose the wrong person and thus gave extra weight… to the satisfactions of a [dour person]… then we have compounded any mistake we would have made by considering all satisfactions comparable, and we have extended the margin of error further than it was.”

[Edit: I really haven't got much to add to this point, because I think Harwood offers a persuasive argument relative to what he's arguing against. My only caveat would be to point out that the objection need not state that the differences in temperament are wildly unpredictable in order to be morally salient. It might be obvious that some people get more happiness than others as a matter of character; it is not at all unpredictable. And so it really would seem worthwhile to help these persons over those of more phlegmatic temperament, which seems wrong.

The trouble with all this is the habit which it forces us to endorse a habit of arbitrarily helping certain persons over others, which (if taken to such extremes where moral intuitions would come into play) would violate the optimizing spirit of utility.]

11. Utilitarianism forces us to violate the publicity condition.
Ethics, to put it roughly, is the guidance towards right thought, action, and life. This rough definition uses the word “guidance”, which seems to imply a necessary social element. Based on these axiomatic truths, we can understand that ethics, in order for it to be what it is, must be a public phenomenon. It can’t be secretive.

But some utilitarians have argued that “it would be a mistake to let most or all people directly pursue maximizing satisfaction, since too many will show bias or incompetence in calculating what will maximize satisfaction”. I can see very good sense in this objection, because (as we’ve seen in this series) a number of unsound objections are based upon bizarre, unrealistic worldviews can use utilitarianism to create nasty and evil results. Utilitarianism is dangerous when used improperly.

This has caused some to remark that utilitarianism is “elitist” or “secretive”. But that’s not getting to the core of the problem. To put it another way, the moratorium on publicity can be invoked by admitting the sheer impracticability of making utilitarian calculations in the real world. We have already dismissed objective utilitarianism because it provides no succor except to those who can see the future — that is to say, none of us. Meanwhile, subjective utilitarianism gives us a wide range of possibilities and risks, which requires some cool-headed and informed deliberation which we often don’t have the opportunity to engage in.

This objection concerns me more than any of the others because it seems to be quite strong. The publicity condition must be defended. The intuition behind the doctrine arises out of an inescapable conviction that unwritten laws must be either exposed and treated with rational scrutiny, or be ignored. Human social life is largely a mystery for me, but mindless conformity to (and rationalization of) norms strikes me as one component of Arendt’s banality of evil, mentioned earlier. An attack upon unwritten laws strikes me as an attack upon that very thing. When we take it seriously, we (rightfully) understand that for any abstract system of laws which direct action, thought, or life, and which is incommunicable, or (just as well) are based upon mere thoughts or beliefs instead of speech acts, then those systems are amoral by default.

Moreover, the publicity condition seems to be necessary because it is supported by the most plausible doctrines of accountability. We may formulate a person as accountable for some act if they could not possibly be blameworthy (or praiseworthy) by a moral agent. And a person cannot be blamed for a law to which they had no way of knowing. Thus, the laws which a person are held to, must be made public, so that persons may be held accountable to them.

My argument is in favor of examining utilitarianism in a slightly different way. It should no longer be considered a fundamental norm; instead, it is a kind of supportive groundwork for any fundamental norms at all. What I would like to say is that utilitarianism is a meta-ethic. This kind of utilitarianism (or “meta-utilitarianism”) provides guidance to the ethicist, but not guidance in general, simply because when taken alone it wouldn’t be very good at getting the job done. Its purpose for the ethicist is to provide clarity and guidance when reasoning concerning moral quandries, and to spur forward more nuanced analyses of social science. Ultimately, however, guidance must be intelligible in short form, either in the form of rules or narratives, and these things will be more helpful in everyday life. Since its audience is limited to ethicists, it does not need to satisfy the publicity condition.

I can imagine the reader getting impatient, and yelling: “that’s still elitist!”. And certainly, meta-utilitarianism (MU) seems more aloof than classical utilitarianism in some way. The way I think of MU is as if it shared a relationship with ethics like that between geometry and soccer. [Special thanks to Mitchell Langbert (CUNY) for his emphasis on this fact in discussion]. Zinedine Zidane didn’t need to do complex calculations during the World Cup, but every single move he made was still compatible with geometric truths. Similarly, the virtuous person doesn’t need to perform utilitarian calculations in every ethical dilemma; but for any plausible ethical reasoning, it will have to be compatible with utility. I don’t think it is elitist for that fact, any more than geometry is elitist.

I come to this conclusion on the basis of examining the evidence in the harder cases presented in the series. None of them seem to be decisive, many often missing the point. But all of them conclusively show that more explicit decision procedures towards judgments are needed than mere postulation of the principle of utility. Indeed, utilitarianism does not seem to exhaust all that there is to say on the subject of moral guidance; to use just one example, it is not usually obvious when, and to what extent, considerations of the social system are to be counterweighed against considerations about individual happiness, and these things make the project difficult to keep up in practice.

Some theorists may interpret this formulation as the last cries of the theory itself. If we are speaking in terms of the Benthamian calculus, and of archetypical utilitarians who are so skilled as to compute their way into infallible judgments at every turn, then in indeed, the theory is dead, has long been dead, and has only the scarcest hope of resurrection. But what if we take these dismissals more broadly, to include a rejection of the entire family of utilitarian theories (and especially MU)? No, I do not think such accusations can succeed. In the way I have presented it, meta-utilitarianism is, and should be, forever a part of the landscape of moral thinking. And even if there are more objections (as there always are), my more modest goal here has been to corall the efforts into tasks with a hope of success. If the theory at large, or MU in the small, are ever to be defeated, it won’t be through these unsound examinations of utilitarianism.

—
Summary of the important working parts of the argument

i. Agency is an incorrigible value.
ii. Enjoyment is a product of choice, and is unique to beings with agency.
iii. If supererogation is a significant concept, it derives out of successful moral risks. If it isn’t significant, then virtue serves as a replacement concept.
iv. Virtue is, in part, the fulfillment of agentic duties: the obligations to know and learn, and to empower oneself.
v. Counterfactual cases are significant only when they represent plausible or intelligible universes.
vi. Trust compels promise-keeping.
vii. Truth is not an incorrigible value. It is sometimes wrong to tell the truth. This counters proposals by thinkers like W.K. Clifford.
viii. Rights demand commitment at the risk of making them powerless.
ix. All “rules” are really just principles with extra weight. Rule-following is associated with positive duties more than negative ones. Nevertheless, the demands of utilitarianism apply across all situations.
x. The experience of waking from the experience machine serves as a reason to doubt that the machine is reliable. Also, the experience of waking from the machine rightly inspires moral horror. These are reasons why a person might not be advised to enter the machine.
xi. Hedonism is a thesis about the intrinsically valuable. It is not a thesis about right and wrong.
xii. Utilitarianism seems to violate the publicity condition. Until peripheral questions are answered regarding values and social systems, it must be understood only as a meta-ethic.

/// What follows is a piece which presents a series of examinations of utilitarianism from Harwood’s seminal essay, “Eleven Objections to Utilitarianism”, along with my demonstrations of how these objections are unsound. Previous installments address such topics as integrity, justice, promise-keeping, supererogation, average and total utilitarianisms, and rule utilitarianism. As the objections get more and more serious, my replies have grown in length. My apologies. ///

7. Utilitarianism requires us to enter the experience machine.

Most readers are by now familiar with the film “The Matrix” (just as most philosophers are tired of references to it in introductory philosophy classes). A central feature of the film was the concept that people could, without their knowledge, live in a world that was entirely virtual. Robert Nozick, in “Anarchy, State, and Utopia”, famously asks us to imagine a device called the “experience machine”. The experience machine is, in almost all respects, akin to the apparatus featured in The Matrix, with the sole exceptions being that for Nozick, a) people would have a choice as to whether or not they could enter the machine, and b) the machine would be programmed to provide nonstop pleasure to the participant(s). It would simulate happy experiences in virtual reality, allow the participant to achieve their greatest dreams, and so on. Let’s also suppose that everyone else on the planet has already entered such a machine. Suddenly, Joe awakes, as part of a normal procedure of setting up the details of the virtual life to come.

Nozick argues that utilitarianism requires Joe to enter the machine, for it would ultimately create happiness in him. However, Nozick contends that this is wrongheaded; people are in some sense alienated from their goals if those goals are not satisfied in reality. Thus utilitarianism is false.

This is a serious objection, and not just a charicature of hedonism. What is impressive is that the qualitative aspect of experience is kept the same in the example. If the example had involved lobotomy, or morphine injections, it would misfire, because they would diminish our capacity to experience which is necessary for the enjoyment of things. It would, for example, destroy the ability to commit to enjoyment, among other things which the utilitarian ought to concern herself with. Moreover, it doesn’t (as an accusation) say anything about what Joe would, in fact, choose. Rather, it relies upon our intuitions concerning what he ought to choose.

1. The first reply that needs to be made is that the consequences of leaving the experience machine are dire. As we have seen, there is such a thing as enjoyment, which appends itself to experiences of happiness that we have. It is important to note that one form of enjoyment is nostalgia, where we enjoy the acts we do through hindsight.

If Nozick has any viable intuitions here, it is that very good virtual experiences would involve the desire for the authentic achievement of one’s goals. Let’s grant him that. (If we refuse to grant him that, the objection to utilitarianism would be automatically defused; but that’s hardly interesting.)

Now let’s imagine a person wakes from the experience machine. How would they feel? How would it feel to realize that all which one finds meaningful has been a lie? We all know the experience of waking from very good dreams, and feeling distraught at the realization that they are false (before the memories of them fade in the process of waking). If this same sense were generalized to a sufficient portion of one’s life, then it would surely be an excruciating experience. Yet even this comparison may not capture quite the psychological impact of it. Perhaps the best analogue would be to the cases of refugees whose families and homes were destroyed in war. Surely these are not enviable positions to be in.

But in order for the Nozickian argument to carry, they would not seem to be enough to compel us not to enter the machine. Perhaps, they would argue, the participant’s pain in that brief moment would be outweighed by a lifetime of good future experiences in the machine. Let’s grant them that the machine produces great horror upon waking, but that is but a moment in time, and the memories of the subject were wiped upon re-entering the machine. Are the participants obligated to continue with it?

Before settling on a good reply to Nozick, I should consider a few replies which I think are insufficient.

The creed, “agency is an incorrigible value”, has had the power to deal with some objections so far. However, it does not seem to have much power here. An incorrigible value is trumped by an intrinsic value, and the only thing of intrinsic value is happiness. And Nozick’s example is a critique of precisely this: hedonism. Indirectly, it may play some role, though, in that agency produces enjoyment and its related concepts.

Enjoyment, and nostalgia, can be inverted: their twins are regret and embitterment. And these are precisely the things a person should avoid in a contented life, but which are inevitable results of the experience machine. The moment of misery upon waking creates a sense of embitterment which seeks to countermand every single happy experience created by the machine. However, the counterweight of bitterness only applies for the length of time in which a person is outside of the machine, which is a comparatively short period of time. Thus, this still may not be enough to save utilitarianism. However, it should be noted that the sting of bitterness present here is exquisite, which even a calamatous instance like that of the refugee doesn’t necessarily have to suffer.

What about supererogation? It would say, as would objective utilitarianism, that the person has no hope of behaving virtuously in the supererogative sense. But this is barely the point, as I’ve admitted that virtue is ultimately a means to an end, just like anything else. And it was unreliable anyway.

What would the person do? Would they go back into the machine? Likely not. But that’s not the point, Nozickians would insist: the point is that utilitarianism requires them to go back. Their actual choice afterwards is irrelevant.

We must wonder, what experiences did the person have in the machine, such that they would want to go back? Nozick’s example involves virtual reality, where the experiences are identical to real experiences. Knowing what we know — that agency is incorrigible — we may suspect the drive for authenticity would have demanded experiences that were contingent upon perceived authenticity while in the machine — it would be part of the person’s goal. Thus, it seems as though the participant’s goals, desires, and preferences aren’t being satisfied; and that this would be a way out. Indeed, a number of utilitarians have taken this route, exclaiming that ‘true satisfaction of goals’ is an aspect of happiness alongside length, intensity, purity, and so on. But I don’t believe that this position works, either. For there is a difference between a goal and the state of affairs which the goal maps onto. The goal is critically tied to a person’s intention and perceived experience, while the state of affairs is objective. And only goals are significant, because they’re a part of the person’s experiences, and the actual state of affairs is not necessarily available to the participant.

We can postulate that the person would, if they entered the machine, lead a happy life. What we can’t postulate is that the person would KNOW they would lead a happy life if they entered, or even that it would be reasonable to believe it, because of the circumstances of their waking. If we were given the same knowledge as he, then we couldn’t advise him to re-enter the machine. Because he would run the risk of future rediscovery of this world-crushing incident.

Now let’s presume that Joe is sound of mind, and change the experiment slightly: Joe was born and raised in an ordinary life, and was offered the opportunity to enter the machine, and is assured that he will never wake. If he is sound of mind, the outcome would be the same, the difference being that the negative consequences are provided by Joe’s imagination, and not through firsthand revelation.

A clever interlocutor might say (as Brian Berkey did recently), “Aha! But what about our obligation to know? It would seem that insofar as Joe doesn’t know that his future in the machine is happy, he would be in violation of his agentic duties!” The obligation to know can be defended radically, as with W.K. Clifford, who wrote: “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence”. It may also be defended modestly, by saying something like, “Believing in the truth tends to produce good, but not always”. I support the latter sort of view, because of the ‘dying mother’ example we encountered in the promise-keeping objection.

Second, the Nozickians are the ones fighting an uphill battle on the epistemic question, because it is manifest to the waker that the possibility of waking up again and again in the future is very real, given that he is presently experiencing wakefulness. The best evidence available to Joe tells him that he is, and in the future will be, in deep trouble. Asking a person to re-enter the machine is like asking a refugee to withstand another war on new soil.

That would be wrong.

2. Another interesting avenue for escape arises through the examination of the self. It may be that we need to understand the notion of the self as (at the very least) the coherant connectedness of memory and consciousness across time. Recall that Joe’s memory would be wiped if he were to enter the machine. If so, then he would be cutting ties to his past self. In a sense, the Waking Joe and the Sleeping Joe would be entirely different people. I don’t know the extent to which this consideration makes much of a difference to the Nozick objection, but ultimately, it has some impact.

8 and 9. The axiology objections.

At first glance, Harwood’s essay provides us with two objections as if they were separate. They are: (8) Utilitarianism wildly overstates our duties to animals; and (9) Utilitarianism panders to bigots and sadists. However, in fact, they’re just variants of the same confusion.

The first argument is a rephrasing of the old accusation, that utilitarianism is the philosophy of pigs; for utilitarianism seems to provide no distinction between the “higher pleasures” (presumably, drinking tea and listening to NPR) and “lower” ones (which don’t require enumeration here).

I think that this argument is propelled by the intuition that certain pleasure-seeking activities are evil, sinful, etc. Some acts really aren’t that great to perform. Still, the entire point of utilitarianism, from Bentham’s view, was to show that some acts tend to produce less happiness, and some produce misery in others, and so they are to be avoided. So certain “lower” acts would produce less happiness, and so, should be avoided.

Mill wasn’t entirely satisfied with Bentham’s quantitative view. Thus, Mill famously produced his doctrine of qualitative utilitarianism, whereby particular values are better or worse than one another because certain values somehow become a “part of” happiness with experience. The rank-ordering of values can be accomplished on the basis of opinions from competent judges, who have tested this and that pleasure and can rank them one after the other. Mill did not exactly disagree that Bentham had produced an adequate reply, but sought to supplement Bentham’s argument by showing the place of particular values, in order to make the doctrine seem more palatable.

I think Bentham’s original account was satisfactory. I must confess to being mystified both by Mill’s account, which contains outright bizarre claims (what does it mean for a thing to be a “part of” happiness?), and by the accounts of those critics who carry on with objections which are not only explicitly dealt with by a classic utilitarian, but are dealt with by the original utilitarian himself.

Why, though, is it better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied? First, I wouldn’t quite go that far; if asked whether I would rather be a tortured man or a happy pig, I would probably and quite naturally reply, “a happy pig”. Such exaggerated examples, which are meant to shock us into disavowal of a doctrine under scrutiny, don’t quite have the rhetorical force that’s being looked for when they make the case against them quite so costly. I think that the aphorism, though, could be rephrased and agreed to, if we were to say that “it is better to be a blasé Socrates than a happy pig”. Second, with the doctrine of enjoyment at our disposal, we can say that the person is able to have more experience of happiness than the pig is able to. Third, we might say that the human being is more capable of discerning pleasures than the pig, which would both mean that conscious pains are more sharp and horrible, and conscious pleasures are greater.

I think part of the confusion arises over utilitarianism’s commitment to the thesis that happiness is the only intrinsic value. Sometimes, this point is glossed over by critics, who declare (as Harwood does) that “utilitarianism insists that there is only one moral value, satisfaction”. This is not true. Rather, from what I understand, there is only one thing of intrinsic value, and this thing applies to explain the genesis of both moral and non-moral values. There are plenty of instrumental values, and as we’ve seen (with Bentham), they may be rank-ordered in order to produce moral guidance on the basis of however they produce happiness.

Similarly, we are told that the pleasure of bigots and sadists are not of intrinsic value, and so, hedonism is mistaken. However, I deny that the pleasure of any animal is without intrinsic value. But I declare that this proposition, when considered in context, amounts to nothing; for the worth of particular kinds of acts are evaluated separately from the worth of the happiness which they originate from. The experience of pleasure of the lion who eats a baby, and of a bigot who protests the funerals of hate crime victims, are activities that produce intense and personal misery in many others. They are immoral and unjust. But it is no contradiction to say that the pleasure of the sadistic act has intrinsic value, and then to say that it is grossly immoral. All that is asked is that the reader understand that that which is valuable is not necessarily that which is morally significant.

Over at X-Philosophy, posts are centered around the Knobe effect like tornados around Kansas. The Knobe effect is essentially the idea that moral intuitions muddle with peoples’s attributions of intention to the acts of others. (I’ve offered some philosophical objections there previously. Rise from your grave, Kohlberg.) For various reasons, the effect is quite puzzling.

Recently, Clayton has attempted to explain the Knobe effect. I would like to respond to it. Before I do, I should warn the reader that my commentary here will probably seem like unintelligible abstractions unless they take a gander at his paper first. Luckily, Clayton’s paper is short, relatively self-contained, and straightforward.

Clayton argues that the Knobe effect may be understood by way of two distinctions. The first is in terms of selective/collective treatment of reasons. A person may evaluate a reason for acting on a case-by-case basis, or they may evaluate them all at once. [Implicitly, we know that reasons can either recommend a certain action ("pro"-reasons), or they can provide reasons not to act ("con"-reasons).] The second distinction is in terms of conformity/compliance. Conformity is when a pro-reason is merely consistent with the greater goal, and compliance is when a pro-reason provides impetus for the greater goal. The conformity/compliance distinction only applies to reasons which have been examined selectively (though it is not immediately clear why).

He seems to argue that, for a case in which the goal is decided in favor of some pro reasons, one cannot treat con reasons selectively, because the cons taken selectively would have provided motivational weight against the goal (thus undermining the motivation to pursue the goal). So a person must treat con-reasons collectively; thus, there is no conform/comply distinction in such a case. “To respond selectively to them, she’d have to conform or comply with some of [the con-reasons] without conforming or complying with the others… Blight could not conform to their demands without giving in to them and deciding against starting Project Z.” Moreover, the conform/comply distinction is what explains the Knobe effect for the Benison case; some reasons (care for the environment) take a back seat relative to the overall goal, but are consistent with it, and so, conform to it without complying.

I want to make two replies. One is to cast doubt on whether or not a selective treatment of con-reasons collapses the conform/comply distinction. The other is to cast the problem in terms of the relevance of goals with subgoals in terms of apathy and defiance.

1. Maybe Clayton means something specific about “selectivity” which I haven’t understood. But from my first reading, I’m not at all clear on why it is that, from a Humean standpoint, the consideration of con-reasons entails that they would definitely motivate a person in a con-direction. Reasons don’t necessarily provide motivation. They provide reasons, which may be taken seriously, or may be dismissed, at the whim of the listener’s fancy. So if Blight selectively treated the con-reasons, then it wouldn’t necessarily matter; she doesn’t have to take them seriously, she just has to consider them. What Clayton might mean is that Blight be selective in the sense that she in fact accepts some reasons, and in fact denies others; but that’s not a comment on selection, which is a process, but rather upon an outcome.

2. It seems to me that a person may cite any relevant condition or consequence which they were aware of at the time of the action as a reason for acting. For present purposes, relevance has to do with the place of action within a wider chain of goals and subgoals. It also seems to me that it is a poor thing to fail to attribute to a person even those minimally relevant things which they have known at the time of the action; and this is what Knobe’s subjects fail to do in the Benison case. So something genuinely surprising seems to be happening in their responses, at least for me — or, is not surprising, then outright wrong.

Relevance comes in degrees. So, if I drive my lawnmower just to annoy my neighbor (the manifest consequence), but fully expect that I’ll cut the grass in the process (the latent consequence), then there will be a rich series of motivations and goals behind the goal of “annoying my neighbor”, perhaps involving an ongoing slapstick feud, but the connections to “cutting the grass” will be weak (it is a mere means to the end). Using Raz’s language, as presented here, compliance would seem to describe the conditions which are more relevant to an action, and conformity would describe the conditions which are less relevant.

If we admit that mere conformity constitutes an intention, as I would like to, then we’re up the creek in our examination of the Knobe effect, it seems, in the Benison case; for while Benison’s consideration of the environment conforms to his overall decision, his de facto intent to do well for the environment does not register with those people who examine the case. And the Blight case may be selective, as I’ve suggested in (1), but clearly it involves neither conformity nor compliance to environmental protection. Rather, it must be characterized as either apathy or defiance towards that subgoal; and it seems that Knobe’s subjects want to treat apathy towards reasons (at least in this case) as intentional. I don’t immediately see how the conformity/compliance distinction helps us in the Blight case — especially since the distinction seems irrelevant in the Benison one, where we are supposed to expect it to do some work.

There may be a way out of this problem if we postulate an ambiguity in interpretation. I might attribute the Knobe effect in the Benison case to an implicit tendency on the part of Knobe’s subjects to examine intention only above a certain threshold of relevance, because it seems more useful to them to interpret the words that way for the purposes of the discussion. Compliance is the theory of intention which people are attracted to, for moral, epistemic, and everyday purposes. (Morally, to make the distinction between doing and allowing; epistemically, because we don’t know the deep-seated knowledge in a person’s mind.) In other words: in the Benison case, our conversational purposes as readers are not morally exhaustive, as our attention is not morally charged; we are focused only on the compliant acts, and unimpressed either way by his amoral apathy, we have no moral desire to interpret any care for merely conforming reasons. But in the Blight case, our conversational purposes are entirely moral, since it is a morally charged issue; so we focus both on her intentional apathy and bad compliant acts. In this way, moral interest acts as a kind of radioactive dye which lights up areas which would otherwise have been hidden. It follows that if we were to ask someone with a plausible and fully-formed moral theory, we would find that they would be willing to attribute some intent to help the environment in the Benison case, although they would likely take pains to say that he’s not behaving virtuously or somesuch.

In some cases, like the Blight case, the subject is aware of certain conditions but fails to give them motivational weight in a decision, such as in situations involving carelessness. I want to require, in moral cases, along with Knobe’s subjects, that apathy to some peripheral condition be considered a part of their intent, in order to explain their decision adequately. Here is the knowledge of so-and-so; here is the flouting of so-and-so; thus, here is the intention to get such-and-such done, in the context of this wider web of goals. I also want to require that conformity be understood as an aspect of a person’s intent.

I don’t believe that a reason must be a possible defeater in order to be relevant to an explanation of a person’s intent. It may be the case that some description does not and would not have the power to change an action, given the dispositions of the person, their wider goals, etc., but that doesn’t mean that the description is explanatorily idle. I disagree with the claim that, “When we consider those side effects or pros we don’t say the agent brought about intentionally, we recognize that the agent wouldn’t have changed course had those pros not favored her decision.” For sometimes it’s precisely the disposition to suppress the possible motivating content of a particular peripheral goal which is intentional (so long as the subject is consciously aware of doing so). And, anyway, explanations need not be tossed aside as “idle” just because they aren’t the primary moving parts in some phenomenon. To claim so, is to pretend to know the whole story about causes (especially with respect to matters of intent), and that’s not something that anyone has lisence to claim.

I think all of this is supportive of Knobe’s interpretation of the effect, in a way. It’s just that it relies on the pragmatics of the situation more than a principled examination of intentions.

In Sterling Harwood’s essay, “Eleven Objections to Utilitarianism”, he surveys a number of critiques to utilitarianism, and then examines them for cogency. Over the next month, I will summarize all of those objections, along with his answers. I will then evaluate both. During the final week, I will examine any other miscellanious objections which I have encountered and feel like addressing.

Since this is a blog, each post after this one will be in bite-sized packets of three. To anticipate: classical utilitarianism is riddled with absurdity, but utilitarianism in general – as in the body of theories which center around the principle of utility – must be a permanent feature of moral and/or meta-ethical analysis.

I. The aretaic objection: “Utilitarianism is overly demanding.” Because the principle of utility requires us to treat people impartially, it alienates us from our integrity, and forces us to examine a situation from some third-person standpoint. This a) makes duties to our friends (associational duties) impossible, and b) forces us to into the squalor of excessive altruism, where we must give away anything and everything we own (for instance) so long as doing so does not reduce our happiness to low levels.

Harwood’s treatment is fourfold.

i) The “penny saved” rebuttal. He argues that the anticipation of future horrors (i.e., of overpopulation) is reason to amass one’s wealth wisely, so that it accumulates, and so future charity will be more significant.

This seems like a very poor defence. For generally speaking, misery accumulates: protection now will reduce burdens later. The maxim, “Prevention is the cure” seems wise enough in many cases.

ii) The “suck it up” rebuttal. Harwood explains that this objection is simply a reflection of the difficulty of morality. It is simply a fact of the matter that it is hard to be a moral person. We complain about the impartiality requirement, but in fact, being moral is tough. Our resistence arises out of a weakness of will.

And indeed, there is often a time where the moralist must say, “Oh, suck it up already”, to someone who suffers without reasonable cause (i.e., in modest – but not extreme – psychosomatic cases). However, the desire to protect oneself, one’s friends, and one’s family from harm is hardly as trite as the bruising of a kneecap. Harwood is hardly taking the objection as seriously as it deserves here. Personal projects and associations seem to have a genuine moral weight.

This objection from integrity has been offered as a decisive objection against utilitarianism by famous icons in contemporary ethical theory. Bernard Williams (and to a lesser extent, Samuel Scheffler) are theorists who believe that, in some manner or other, utilitarianism as usually conceived must alienate the moral actor from their integrity. Their greivances, as far as I can make out, are that: a) personal integrity must be treated as a value, and does not play a more fundamental role at the level of producing the right; b) utilitarianism alienates the person from the option to do otherwise and still be considered moral.

I would affirm the correctness of a), but find nothing compelling in the objection. Integrity, insofar as it is morally significant, is one of those values which produces happiness. Thus, we have a means of including integrity (and associational duties) as items with moral weight. There can be no fundamental alienation from integrity if it may be included in the theory at least some of the time, so this objection fails.

(b), however, is more interesting. Take a case where an actor evidently has a very clear utilitarian duty to optimize happiness. Let’s say that Jim would increase the happiness of Sally if he bought her iced cream by amount x. Let’s also say that Jim was thinking of buying a model airplane in order to receive happiness y. The two cost the same amount of money. Let’s also say that Sally has had a bad day and that iced cream would give her twice the pleasure as that which Jim would get from buying a model airplane: x = 2y. The question is: if he bought the model plane, would that be moral?

Utilitarianism seems to say, it is better for you to buy the iced cream. Integrity theorists (esp. Schefflerians) say, you have the option to do whatever you want and still be moral; after all, we’re dealing with really small quantities of happiness, here. For them, you can make the non-utilitarian choice, and still be moral. Integrity theorists want to say that utilitarianism can provide no options in the matter, but would also insist that there really ought to be the more egoistic moral alternative (within some bounds).

The accusation is subtle. It is not that utilitarianism cannot ever tell a person to do an altruistic act; for that would be a just plain goofy reading of utilitarianism, and unintuitive no matter what ethical point of view you’re coming from. Equally (I think), they’re not saying that, strictly speaking, utilitarianism is anti-egoistic. Rather, they aim for a modest claim — they think that utilitarianism destroys the idea of moral choice, or of merely permissible behavior, especially (for Scheffler) where there are low levels of happiness involved.

We can find an excellent rejoinder in another defence which Harwood covers.

iii) The epistemic rebuttal. He invokes Kurt Baier (and, it turns out, Henry Sidgwick), in arguing that people are simply better judges of their own desires, which makes some degree of egoism acceptable.

Ultimately, this is the lynchpin which secures the defence of utilitarianism. The thought-experiment presented in (ii b) is predicated on knowledge that we don’t normally have. It should not be a surprise that a scenario which effectively postulates omniscience will produce unintuitive results.

Indeed, beyond the fulfillment of basic needs, what we know about human happiness is limited to those with whom we are most intimately familiar; and our knowledge makes any of our duties far more clear. On this view, we do have options. They arise out of uncertainty about the best means of achieving the utiliarian goal. Strike out the uncertainty, and one’s moral choices are far more limited. (This is not to suggest that having moral choice is a blessing, incidentally. Social psychology has made clear that our minds derive less satisfaction from a state of affairs when we are given more choice of alternatives.) In other words: knowledge of preferences demands familiarity.

But this is likely not enough to convince a non-believer in utilitarianism. So here is another argument that is not mentioned by Harwood. There is a difference between happiness and enjoyment. Enjoyment is the reflection upon happiness, the meditation upon it such that it produces more happiness. To enjoy one’s own personal projects is to amplify one’s happiness beyond the levels one would ordinarily have. Enjoyment is, at some level, an ad hoc choice.

Two conclusions arise: one, all other things equal, to produce happiness in others without choosing to do so, is to tacitly subscribe to a rule which says, “No enjoyment”. This will eventually, after precedent etc., fail to optimize utility. Here, of course, I am invoking rules. But I should clarify that I’m still within the sphere of act-utilitarianism. Properly understood, a rule is merely a cognitive device that governs a certain exceptional kind of act. The act is the thing we care about; rules just help us get there. In this sense, enjoyment propels happiness.

Two, in principle, an ad hoc choice is not knowable to an outsider, it is only known to the agent themselves. In this sense, it is both unpredictable and, for all intents and purposes, secret.

iv) The pride rebuttal. He argues that there is significant value to not simply feeling like a charity case.

This is true in Western cultures. But the real question is, “WHY might this be true, consistent with utilitarianism?”. It may be explained, I think, by the fact that agency is an incorrigible value – that is to say, one’s sense of self and of personal powers inevitably tends to provoke a primordial respect for agency in the abstract. In certain cultural climates, and in people whose senses of self are appropriately developed, this respect for agency may lead to a sense of dignity, and to the demand to be the power which sustains their own life. Thus, agency is incorrigible. Utility must be organized around it, because of the kind of beings that we are.

[Edit: In some cultures, such as ours, this rightly leads to a division between positive and negative responsibility. Doing a bad action seems as though it is somewhat worse than allowing a bad action. Utilitarianism has been accused of favoring a strong thesis of negative responsibility: where the bad consequences that arise out of your creative striving are equally bad as those you allow to happen. But if we take agency to be incorrigible, it will modify our moral calculations along the lines of the "enjoyment" thesis, in such a way that the wrongs associated with agency will seem more wrong, and the rights associated will seem more right.

It is easy to make the mistake of thinking that the consequences of an action are agent-external, or merely situational. But the actions of persons affect the behaviors of other persons: these are social consequences. Still, if consequentialist considerations of actor-internal factors seem ad hoc or unconvincing to the reader, I should note that the same principle applies to non-intentional behaviors as well: namely, our habits. Later on, we'll understand more about the role of rules in utilitarianism. But suffice it to say right now that the bad consequences which arise out of rule violation center in large part around our habits. If we accept this latter thesis, then it is only a short step before we accept the thesis about intentions. For both habits and intentions are agent-internal.]

Ideology is incorrigibly interesting. For apathy is not an option in ethics, semantics, and society, since all three are essential to social life. All correspond to some social habits, and each are compelled by our nature; and habits, being a part of everyday life, tend to be hard to ignore. Admittedly, questions of ideology are sometimes at the fringe of ethics and institutional analysis both. Still, while they should not compel the attraction of everyone, and where ideology intersects with ethics, it ought to (and usually will) inspire some interest. And anyway, anyone who is interested in the creeds that buttress institutions will find ideology to be fascinating.

The semantics of ideology are an essential part of the study of ideology itself. Indifference toward lexical semantics by any scholar of ideology is sure to dupe us all; for it will lead to a divide between people who are largely in agreement, and muddle together those who have deep disagreements. This is an interpretive and ethical mistake. It is also a scientific mistake: for, in the words of Stephen Jay Gould, “taxonomies are theories of order” (cited in The Annual Review of Sociology (1994), “Societal Taxonomies” by Gerhard Lenski).

There are at least two possible practices which lead to the aformentioned dooms. Both arise out of disputes over how to formulate the concept of “ideology”. The first practice involves a flight from philosophical social science and into mere description. The second practice involves conflation of political ideology with other forms of ideology.

1. There is an enticing view which tells us that an ideology is nothing more than how an ideologically charged word is collectively understood. It states that meaning is power; that all social structures are just the roles and expectations that have found a way to crystallize into meanings; that a word is a fortress, a flag, which people use to represent themselves to others, and around which they rally. And there is much truth to this view.

But our discussion over ideologies ought to be principled, not just a contest of folk usage. To use John Kvanvig’s language, the study of ideology must be “value-driven”, not as a simple game of gathering popular linguistic preferences; it ought to be partially prescriptive, not merely descriptive. A political ideology is a set of plans for governmental order, the sort that one may find in a manifesto. To secure a clear idea of what should be a part of such a manifesto, we need to filter out popular ideas which have no bearing on the philosophies represented by a particular ideology. Rather, we must prescribe the meaning of an ideology (or set of ideologies), and construct plausible meanings of an ideology out of historical context and precedent as they are understood by informed persons.

2. The concept of “ideology” is indeterminate with respect to the scope of its content. On my last perusal of political science articles, the term (it was hoped) would be used to describe a great pot full of ideas. “Liberalism”, for instance, is not to be taken as a certain kind of creed with a nest of characteristic plans for state and society, but rather, a whole worldview, which includes the various and sundry vexes and affiliations that a person has in their social life: views on parenting, on education, etc. This sentiment finds folk popularity in many quarters; George Lakoff, for instance, seems to associate maternalism (as a metaphor) with liberalism.

I take this to be a step in the wrong direction, although with the best of intentions. We need to be a bit more incisive, and develop a taxonomy of ideologies. There are, for my purposes, at least three kinds of ideology: those which treat of wordly wisdom, or the social facts that people hold in their lives; the part which gives rise to social ideologies, which pertain to issues of social identity, household management, everyday life, and so on; and the part which holds certain political or collective plans, which may ideally be captured in the form of a manifesto. Only the last sort can be understood as “political ideology”. And if there are interesting correlations which may be observed between the three, then fine; if, for instance, it may be observed that self-titled socialists tend to have a certain view of economics, then we may associate their political plans with their scientific worldview. But as far as political ideologies themselves go, our discussion ought to be limited.

Such a taxonomy is not of merely idle interest. For instance, with the above tools at hand, we may examine the work of Karl Mannheim in a new light. He, writing in the Marxist tradition, understood ideology to be a pejorative term which was used to describe ostensibly irrational beliefs about social life: a set of ideas that “conceals the present by attempting to comprehend it in terms of the past” (cited in George Ritzer’s “Classical Sociology Theory”). He was evidently speaking of social philosophy, or worldly wisdom, not political ideology.

My worry is that, without making sense of the differences between these sets of ideas, it will inspire the kind of generalizations that make ideological discussion needlessly toxic. If my political ideology (that is, my plans for reform or status quo) are so-and-so, it does not necessarily entail that my economic and social ideologies are such-and-such. To take the Lakoffian example, although I may support welfare, I may justify the practice in many different ways: through cold utilitarian terms, virtue ethics, distributional justice, perhaps even perfectionism, not just some maternalistic ethics of caring. Sure, many advocates of welfare also likely do so out of sympathy; but this is a connection that needs to be shown, not inferred, and which may be wrong. Without separate categories, there temptation for conflation is too great.

Ben Nelson left the following thoughtful comment to my previous post:

My point in the previous post was that there is very little disagreement between consequentialists and deontologists. In it, I had argued on the basis of a certain story about how rights arise. In this post, I’ll try to solidify deontology as compatible with one kind of consequentialism. To anticipate: hard-core deontologists may be entirely and comfortably cast as satisficing consequentialists.

First: a taxonomy. We can separate between two kinds of consequentialism: ethical and psychological. I take it for granted that psychological consequentialism is correct: that is to say, the thesis that the moral value of a thing arises out of our conscious and subconscious expectation of certain consequences which arise out of it. Ethical consequentialism, which is the more common meaning of “consequentialism”, may be understood as the doctrine which tells us that the right thing to do in a particular situation is dictated by a consideration of good consequences. It, in turn, comes in optimizing and satisficing varieties (though its associations with utilitarianism have created a habit of the doctrine being tied to optimizing consequences, as with the work of Brink etc.); where the optimizer is constantly striving to maximize some good, while the satisficer is happy after a certain minimal threshold is met.

The analysis of morality involves at least two categories: fundamental norms (categorical imperative, principle of utility, etc), and mid-level principles (prime facie duties). Fundamental norms straddle a borderline between the general field of abstract ethics (which provide intelligible ultimate rules to follow) and that of meta-ethics (which try to explain the intuitions, semantics, nature of world, etc behind the f. norms).

Next: an argument. Both varieties of consequentialism are by-and-large just explanatory meta-ethical doctrines which describe the genesis of moral systems in all of the most plausible of their forms. So it isn’t fair to ask the doctrine to have much normative power. While it may have some moral force to it, it is a limited force. Most of the labor that it does is in the field of meta-ethics.

To see what I mean, take one of the usual trolley-tracks examples, where the operator of a runaway train must decide whether to kill one pedestrian to save five others or not. Consequentialism provides zero guidance on what to do; it only provides a meek framework for analysis. A satisficing consequentialist, Stan, may believe he must never kill, because being in any way involved in the ending of a life is a moral stain; and Stan values the good will, and respect for persons. In which case, the most satisfactory condition for Stan would be if he did not kill a single person. Either way he chooses, he cannot fulfill his duties; no moral guidance can be provided. In a completely different vein, a morally pathological optimizing consequentialist, Opelia, might consider only the wellbeing of flowers to be of moral importance, and so constantly strive to make the world safer for flowers; and in the process, kill all humans for fertilizer. These are just two examples which show how consequentialism alone is not, and cannot be, clear.

It is true that utilitarianism and some kinds of ethical consequentialism may deliver a kind of moral clarity on the goals of the situation. However, ethical consequentialism proper says nothing about the matter: it is, for the mostpart, normatively opaque. So it is not true that “for a consequentialist the moral answer is clear: the interests of the many trump those of the few”. They may, or may not. Whereas at least one deontological reply would be identical to the satisficing consequentialist’s reply: in this decidedly unfortunate situation, one’s choices are constrained, one’s will is roped up, and thus one cannot fulfill their duties / satisfy consequences. I suspect this analysis is powerful enough to account for more than that.

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I don’t worry about utilitarianism being unable to accomodate hard-core deontology, because I think the latter are morally deficient. If, for utilitarianism, rule-consequentialism collapses into a special kind of act-consequentialism, then I have only shrugs to offer. I don’t see the problem in that. Quite the opposite: I would argue that the absolutism which characterizes the hard-core deontological thinking is morally deficient. So that argument would probably steer a bit closer to what we’re looking for in a moral system. However, my purpose for the last two posts was just to defend consequentialism. I can pass onto the next subject, but I’m not sure I’ve been convincing enough. And if you disagree with my points here, the rest would probably be disagreeable as well. (So it goes.)

We may learn many things from the law, to be sure. It is inherantly practical; abstract ethics is errantly practical. In some sense, juggling mid-level principles, prime-facie duties, values, etc. is the real caramel core of ethics. But any attempt to abandon fundamental norms is, I think, premature, misguided, and will (given enough time) negotiate away virtue and morality.

There are at least three governing principles which are key to practical ethics (as in law): comprimise between two virtues, seek the mean between two opposed vices, and comprimise the needs of principles and those of reality. The first two actively rely upon the third, lest they become mere empty pragmatism (whose advice sways with the winds of politics). The third is fed by fundamental norms.

[tags]consequentialism[/tags]

Non-relativistic moral theory oscillates between the two great intuitions of consequentialism and deontology. Consequentialism is intellectually rigorous, autitable, and eminently practical. The problem is that it leads to horrendous results, where the few are sacrificed for the good of the many. As Bentham famously said, “everyone is to count for one and no one for more than one.” Deontological theories, or rights-based approaches, focus on the individual. In Nozik’s words:

There are only individual people, with their own individual lives. Using one of these people for the benefit of others, uses him and benefits the others. Nothing more. What happens is that something is done to him for the sake of others. Talk of an overall social good covers this up. (Intentionally?) (Anarchy, State, Utopia)

The blueprints for modern deontological theories were outlined by Kant and Hegel. Practical reason (starting from “I”) or recognition (starting from “you”) demand that we attribute individuals with a hard nucleus of rights – rights sufficiently hardened to resist the pull of consequentialist considerations that can only be restricted and in some instances overridden by conflicting rights. That is all well and good and leaves most thoughtful people torn between these two intuitions, hoping that in the normal course of events consequentialism and rights-based theories won’t clash. Within that “normal” realm of peaceful coexistence, consequentialism has distinct advantages over rights-based moral theories, because its decision procedures are rational, require only a minimal set of anthropological assumptions, and yield sufficiently concrete results to be useful in practice, e.g., in designing social policy. Last but not least, consequentialism is significantly more compatible with the market and with economic theory than its deontological competitors. Given the significance of trade, exchange, and the market as a decentralized ordering principle of human cooperation and life, that compatibility underwrites much of the plausibility of consequentialism.

But what if the normal conditions don’t obtain? What if the normal conditions aren’t even normal at all but rather the exception to the norm? What if there are pervasive patterns of racial, social, and gender discrimination that undermine the consequential calculus already at an epistemological level? What if liberal democracies start torturing people, not to defuse the proverbial ticking bomb but to gather intelligence of questionable probative value?

Jonathan Wolff (University College London) doesn’t propose a solution to the latter problem. Instead, in Making the World Safe for Utilitarianism, he proposes a set of criteria to help us distinguish what he terms “fortunate circumstances” (my “normal conditions”) from “unfortunate circumstances.” Under fortunate circumstances, consequentialism works. Under unfortunate circumstances, it may lead to horrendous outcomes.

[Maximizing consequentialism is] very powerful but also very dangerous. Like a powerful but destructive technology, the task is understanding when to use it and when not to.

Here then are the four conditions of fortunate circumstances:

1. There need to be regular opportunities of a similar nature. (Call this the assumption of “many chances”.)
2. No single loss (or likely repeated series of losses) creates a type of level of harm for any individual from which recovery is very difficult or impossible. (The assumption of “recoverable loss”.)
3. There is no reason to doubt that the probabilities run true. (The assumption of “true odds”.)
4. All relevant gains and losses can be quantified and compared to each other. (The assumption of “weak commensurability”.)

In the absence of a unifying moral theory, knowing the conditions under which a partial theory applies is absolutely critical. Wolff’s list of criteria significantly advances the demarcation and classification effort. Highly recommended.
[tags]philosophy, utilitarianism, consequentialism, Wolff[/tags]

In response to Hanno’s post on Simon Blackburn’s Lewis B. Frumkes Lecture at NYU, in which Hanno argued that international law may have been the argument the Melians lacked to convince the Athenians not to attack Melos, Simon Blackburn posted the following interesting comment:

I would classify the habit of deference to law (and law extended to cover international relations) as a good result of what I called a sentimental education – an education here into a certain pattern of respect. Perhaps that sounds odd, and if it weren’t for the Scottish tradition the word ’sentiment’ would sound out of place. I like it because it rescues respect for law from its Kantian and rationalist overtones. But however that pans out, putting law more central is certainly warranted. …

For the full comment, and the further interesting comments by Paul Gowder and George Ehrhardt (don’t miss this one, Ehrhardt writes about the invadee’s prior obligation of sympathy for the invader), see the comments to Hanno’s posts (scroll down). Thanks for the terrific discussion.