November 4, 2010
Blogging, Status and Nasty Competitive Animals Like You
Shift your gaze to the sidebar on the right. See that little Wikio icon, which gives me a UK-wide blog ranking? The one that is replicated across hundreds of blogs in the UK. What’s that little button doing there?
I guess I’d like to say that it’s for purely instrumental reasons. That when people first visit this site they will note it as widely endorsed, and thus pay more attention. But let’s not pretend that’s doing the serious work.
That little button is there partly as a marker of my status. It’s there to tell people “not only is this a popular blog, but it’s author is successful”. That little icon is thus a mark of my competitive tendency – and more importantly, of my success in that competitive process. I take the same to be true for all the other blogs carrying such icons.
Am I just an over-competitive freak, who needs to get a grip and swallow a heavy dose of modesty? That’s certainly possible, and people have been suggesting so for a very long time. But it may not be the end of the story.
Much of what I’m reading at the moment – like this, this, this and this – argues that competitive status-seeking is in some way what fundamentally characterises absolutely all of us, even if we seek and achieve it in different (often secret) ways.
That is, and to simplify horribly: human beings are creatures who are inherently disposed to compare themselves to their neighbours. But when they compare poorly, this causes them psychological pain. As a result humans develop strategies to successfully compete with – and ultimately dominate – their neighbours, thus achieving reflected glory in the minds of the more lowly.
In stable politically organised societies, the more brutish outlets for competition and subjugation – violence, murder, rape, enslavement of rivals – are prohibited and controlled (perhaps even “monopolised by the state”, as some have had it). But nasty, comparative-competitive humans don’t suddenly become placid saints. Rather, they find new outlets for competition and domination. Like having the fanciest most expensive clothes, or the biggest cars. Or, if they’re really clever, developing self-assured auras that tell others that they don’t care about fancy material goods, because they are above all that.
This is potentially problematic, for leftists in particular.
Typically, rightists – example – aren’t troubled by this diagnosis of inescapable competitive-comparison. They shrug it off or even embrace it as a fact of life, and look for systems to channel, direct and control it without worrying about its consequences for human well-being (which they generally deny or downplay).
Leftists, however, don’t tend to like this sort of thing at all. In fact they really hate it. But here comes the nasty rub, inspired by giving a careful reading to this guy and this guy.
Most leftists tend (I think) to assume that nasty competitive comparisons are a product of material inequality: that because some have more than others, psychological hierarchies emerge and mental and emotional suffering for losers is the result. But what if it is in fact the other way around? What if material inequality – i.e. wealth, unequal possessions, riches and the power they all bring – are employed by already competitive-comparative animals as markers of differential status? That is, material inequality doesn’t so much cause competitive status-seeking and psychological inequality, as the reverse (though the process will be complex and dynamic, and to an extent flow in both directions at different times).
Indeed if that is the case, then there may be a bleak outcome for leftists: reducing material inequalities may well temper the worst excesses of status competition and subjugation, and potentially halt vicious cycles of psychological decline. But the nasty competitive animals will remain, even in a more equal world, and promptly seek out new ways of asserting their deeply-desired status superiorities. Thus, whilst a more equal world may very well be nicer than the one we currently live in, it may inevitably be a lot less nice than many leftists would like to imagine.
UPDATE: Chris Dillow’s response to/development of the above ideas is very much worth reading. Here.
November 2, 2010
Hume on Fry
“Despite claiming to have been misquoted by Attitude magazine, Fry is on record in several other interviews opining that women don’t really like sex – for if they did, they would ‘go to Hampstead Heath and meet strangers to shag behind a bush.’ “
So reports Laurie Penny, in her scathing put-down of Stephen Fry’s very silly comments about women not liking sex. Laurie handles the contemporary political demolition with aplomb, and I’ve nothing more to say on that front. Philosophically, however, Fry’s attitude is a nice excuse (as if I needed one) to talk about the ideas of the great David Hume.
On Hume’s picture, Fry is falling into a very straightforward sort of error: he is taking the product of habituation and artificial practice, and mistaking it as natural and original. To see why, a quick summary of Hume’s ideas about virtue (and morality more generally) is in order.
For Hume, “virtue” – i.e. the staple of what morality revolves around, but taken in a very wide sense so as to encompass emotive reaction, motivation, duty, obligation and considerations of consequence – comes in two alternative forms.
First, there are the “natural virtues”. These arise spontaneously from the natural sentiments of ordinary human beings. The classic example is the benevolence of a father for his child. This sort of moral sentiment does not need to be inculcated or habituated into a person (assuming they are normally functioning, morally speaking). It just exists as a part of being a (good) father.
But there are also “artificial virtues”. These only arise when general practices have been established which create a system of mutually understood rules, whose repeated iteration across time generate both a clear sense of their mutual utility, but crucially also a psychological disposition to embrace the “virtues” promoted by the long-established rules.
Hume’s classic example is justice. If we imagine solitary individuals with no experience of any social living, they would be completely baffled by the concept of “justice”, when this is understood as respecting specific rules which dictate who can do what with various bits of physical stuff (i.e.possessions and property). “Justice” – as a set of socially-enforced rules determining who can do what to what – makes sense only after repeat iteration of the rules, and repeated long-term conformity to them. Eventually, all mutually recognise the advantage of obeying the rules in the short term (i.e. leaving another’s possessions alone) so as to gain in the long term (i.e. having security of one’s own possessions).
But crucially this is only half the story. Over time, human beings become psychologically disposed to internalise the rules of justice originally established to secure possessions over time, and extend the concept to one of full-scale moral virtue. That is, it becomes not just a matter of practical convenience that the rules of justice be generally observed, but people begin to respect the rules as in themselves morally binding. Indeed in really sophisticated societies where justice has been long-established, people will forget where the concept of justice came from, and the psychological tendency to see the rules as having autonomous normative force will lead them to think of “justice” as a special sort of moral virtue wholly independent of any practical co-ordination problems. (And modern Humeans might add: some people in such societies then go off and write books called things like A Theory of Justice, which from the Humean perspective look deeply misguided indeed).
Hume holds that the rules of “chastity” regarding women’s sexual propriety are, like justice, artificial in origin. Indeed Hume gives short shrift to the idea that women are “naturally” modest and sexually reticent. Rather, women and men have roughly the same natural propensity to want to sleep around, but “the vast difference betwixt the education and duties of the two sexes” that we see every day in fact derives from one very simple social fact.
To cut a long story (and blog post) short, Hume argues that because men can never be sure whether a partner’s child is really theirs (despite having to labour for its sustenance and survival), men have over time constructed systems in which to minimise the opportunity for women to get impregnated by other men.
Rather than positing any natural female modesty, Hume is adamant that society inculcates women into being modest and celibate because this is in the interests of men who want to make sure the women they impregnate aren’t sleeping around. A crucial component of this social inculcation is to discourage female sexual license and profligacy by creating systems of collective social disapproval, which women deeply imbibe into their own psyches. Thus, the artificial virtues of “chastity and modesty” are impressed upon women from infancy, but ultimately so as to serve the interests of husbands and fathers labouring for children they cannot ever be completely sure are theirs:
“In order, therefore, to impose a due restraint on the female sex, we must attach a peculiar degree of shame to their infidelity, above what arises merely from its injustice, and must bestow proportionable praises on their chastity.”
But as with justice, people are apt to forget the genesis of this artificial virtue. They instead look at contemporary practice, and assume it to be a straightforward indicator of natural tendencies and determinations. Stephen Fry therefore makes the classic mistake the Humean account cautions against: he looks at a socially inculcated outcome – not shagging behind the bushes on Hampstead Heath – and is himself so well-integrated into the relevant social practice that he fails to spot its artificial origin in social convention:
“Education takes possession of the ductile minds of the fair sex in their infancy. And when a general rule of this kind is once establish’d, men are apt to extend it beyond those principles, from which it first arose.”
Thus, although it is stretching things too far to claim Hume as an early feminist, it remains the case that his historically-minded account of morals and social practices should be of great interest to many modern feminists today.
October 24, 2010
Of the Extent of the Influence of Fortune
I recently wrote a bleg querying why we experience lesser sentiments of disapprobation towards – as well as inflicting lesser punishments upon – unsuccessful wrong-doers who have exactly the same motivations as successful wrong-doers.
As it happens I’m developing a general maxim in ethical enquiry whose worth is proved today: that if you can’t find it in David Hume, it’s probably in Adam Smith.
At the end of his The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith considered precisely the questions that troubled me (and those who left comments in reply):
“First, I say, though the intentions of any person should be ever so proper and beneficent, on the one hand, or ever so improper and malevolent, on the other, yet, if they fail in producing their effects, his merit seems imperfect in the one case, and his demerit incomplete in the other. Nor is this irregularity of sentiment felt only by those who are immediately affected by the consequences of any action. It is felt, in some measure, even by the impartial spectator. The man who solicits an office for another, without obtaining it, is regarded as his friend, and seems to deserve his love and affection. But the man who not only solicits, but procures it, is more peculiarly considered as his patron and benefactor, and is entitled to his respect and gratitude.”
And the same holds true the other way around:
“As the merit of an unsuccessful attempt to do good seems thus, in the eyes of ungrateful mankind, to be diminished by the miscarriage, so does likewise the demerit of an unsuccessful attempt to do evil. The design to commit a crime, how clearly soever it may be proved, is scarce ever punished with the same severity as the actual commission of it. The case of treason is perhaps the only exception.2 That crime immediately affecting the being of the government itself, the government is naturally more jealous of it than of any other.”
This leads to a puzzle:
“Such is the effect of the good or bad consequences of actions upon the sentiments both of the person who performs them, and of others; and thus, Fortune, which governs the world, has some influence where we should be least willing to allow her any, and directs in some measure the sentiments of mankind, with regard to the character and conduct both of themselves and others. That the world judges by the event, and not by the design, has been in all ages the complaint, and is the great discouragement of virtue. Every body agrees to the general maxim, that as the event does not depend on the agent, it ought to have no influence upon our sentiments, with regard to the merit or propriety of his conduct. But when we come to particulars, we find that our sentiments are scarce in any one instance exactly conformable to what this equitable maxim would direct. The happy or unprosperous event of any action, is not only apt to give us a good or bad opinion of the prudence with which it was conducted, but almost always too animates our gratitude or resentment, our sense of the merit or demerit of the design.”
But, thankfully, there is a more than satisfactory answer to hand, and one working on multiple levels:
“Nature, however, when she implanted the seeds of this irregularity in the human breast, seems, as upon all other occasions, to have intended the happiness and perfection of the species. If the hurtfulness of the design, if the malevolence of the affection, were alone the causes which excited our resentment, we should feel all the furies of that passion against any person in whose breast we suspected or believed such designs or affections were harboured, though they had never broke out into any action. Sentiments, thoughts, intentions, would become the objects of punishment; and if the indignation of mankind run as high against them as against actions; if the baseness of the thought which had given birth to no action, seemed in the eyes of the world as much to call aloud for vengeance as the baseness of the action, every court of judicature would become a real inquisition. There would be no safety for the most innocent and circumspect conduct. Bad wishes, bad views, bad designs, might still be suspected; and while these excited the same indignation with bad conduct, while bad intentions were as much resented as bad actions, they would equally expose the person to punishment and resentment. Actions, therefore, which either produce actual evil, or attempt to produce it, and thereby put us in the immediate fear of it, are by the Author of nature rendered the only proper and approved objects of human punishment and resentment. Sentiments, designs, affections, though it is from these that according to cool reason human actions derive their whole merit or demerit, are placed by the great Judge of hearts beyond the limits of every human jurisdiction, and are reserved for the cognizance of his own unerring tribunal. That necessary rule of justice, therefore, that men in this life are liable to punishment for their actions only, not for their designs and intentions, is founded upon this salutary and useful irregularity in human sentiments concerning merit or demerit, which at first sight appears so absurd and unaccountable. But every part of nature, when attentively surveyed, equally demonstrates the providential care of its Author, and we may admire the wisdom and goodness of God even in the weakness and folly of man.
“Nor is that irregularity of sentiments altogether without its utility, by which the merit of an unsuccessful attempt to serve, and much more that of mere good inclinations and kind wishes, appears to be imperfect. Man was made for action, and to promote by the exertion of his faculties such changes in the external circumstances both of himself and others, as may seem most favourable to the happiness of all. He must not be satisfied with indolent benevolence, not fancy himself the friend of mankind, because in his heart he wishes well to the prosperity of the world. That he may call forth the whole vigour of his soul, and strain every nerve, in order to produce those ends which it is the purpose of his being to advance, Nature has taught him, that neither himself nor mankind can be fully satisfied with his conduct, nor bestow upon it the full measure of applause, unless he has actually produced them. He is made to know, that the praise of good intentions, without the merit of good offices, will be but of little avail to excite either the loudest acclamations of the world, or even the highest degree of self–applause. The man who has performed no single action of importance, but whose whole conversation and deportment express the justest, the noblest, and most generous sentiments, can be entitled to demand no very high reward, even though his inutility should be owing to nothing but the want of an opportunity to serve. We can still refuse it him without blame. We can still ask him, What have you done? What actual service can you produce, to entitle you to so great a recompense? We esteem you, and love you; but we owe you nothing. To reward indeed that latent virtue which has been useless only for want of an opportunity to serve, to bestow upon it those honours and preferments, which, though in some measure it may be said to deserve them, it could not with propriety have insisted upon, is the effect of the most divine benevolence. To punish, on the contrary, for the affections of the heart only, where no crime has been committed, is the most insolent and barbarous tyranny. The benevolent affections seem to deserve most praise, when they do not wait till it becomes almost a crime for them not to exert themselves. The malevolent, on the contrary, can scarce be too tardy, too slow, or deliberate.”
The more I read of Adam Smith, the more convinced I am that he was one of the greatest – and most accurate – moral thinkers ever to have committed thoughts to paper. How tragic that his work has been so long neglected.
October 22, 2010
The Unsensible Knave
Notorious internet liability Nadine Dorries MP was yesterday cleared of fiddling her expenses, but at the cost of compromising her credibility:
‘ [Dorries] was criticised for comments on her blog which “suggested that she spent the majority of her weekends in the constituency, whilst she had told the Commissioner that nearly all weekends were spent in her main home”.
Explaining the discrepancy, she told the watchdog: “My blog is 70% fiction and 30% fact.
“It is written as a tool to enable my constituents to know me better and to reassure them of my commitment to Mid Bedfordshire.
“I rely heavily on poetic licence and frequently replace one place name/event/fact with another.” ‘
Much merriment is already being had. But we can do more than poke fun – we can analyse.
Viewed retrospectively Dorries has acted very stupidly. With the 20:20 vision of hindsight, her claim that she used “fiction” on her blog to “reassure” constituents looks gloriously self-defeating. But that may not actually be the best way to look at things.
Before she was found out, Dories clearly made a set of calculations. That with the expenses scandal at full throttle – and having embarrassed herself on national TV in the middle of it – she needed to solidify her constituency position. Dorries thus calculated that some “poetic license” would boost her position. And indeed this might well have worked (as perhaps it did in the 2010 election), if she hadn’t eventually been caught.
That Dorries has indeed been stupid is not so much because she used “poetic license”, but because she antagonised enough people to prompt some of them to spend hours trawling through her expense claims and comparing them with her blog entries. If she’d been less of a high-profile pain in the backside, she might have got away with her “fictions”.
But what’s worth analysing goes beyond Dorries’ stupidity, wherever exactly that may lie. More interesting is her willingness to mislead constituents to serve herself.
In a parallel world where Dorries is less stupid, she would look very much like David Hume’s example of the Sensible Knave: a person who follows the rules of justice when they think they have to, but breaks them when they reckon they’ll get away with it. Although real-world Dorries is actually an Unsensible Knave, the relevant conclusions can still be summarised.
Firstly, whether sensible or unsensible, Dorries is a knave and as a general rule well-brought-up members of society a) do not like knaves and b) try to exclude them from as much public and private life as possible.
Secondly, although we probably can’t convince Dorries to stop being a knavish person (by this point she’s likely set in her ways), we can stop her being a knavish MP. In other words: over to you voters of mid-Bedfordshire; feel free to rid Parliament of this very silly woman.
But thirdly, should Dorries retain her safe Tory seat we need not trouble ourselves too much. In the end, we non-knaves are far better off, even if we can never make even the Unsensible Dorries Knave see why:
“I must confess that, if a man think that this reasoning much requires an answer, it would be a little difficult to find any which will to him appear satisfactory and convincing. If his heart rebel not against such pernicious maxims, if he feel no reluctance to the thoughts of villainy or baseness, he has indeed lost a considerable motive to virtue; and we may expect that this practice will be answerable to his speculation. But in all ingenuous natures, the antipathy to treachery and roguery is too strong to be counterbalanced by any views of profit or pecuniary advantage. Inward peace of mind, consciousness of integrity, a satisfactory review of our own conduct; these are circumstances, very requisite to happiness, and will be cherished and cultivated by every honest man, who feels the importance of them.
Such a one has, besides, the frequent satisfaction of seeing knaves, with all their pretended cunning and abilities, betrayed by their own maxims; and while they purpose to cheat with moderation and secrecy, a tempting incident occurs, nature is frail, and they give into the snare; whence they can never extricate themselves, without a total loss of reputation, and the forfeiture of all future trust and confidence with mankind.
But were they ever so secret and successful, the honest man, if he has any tincture of philosophy, or even common observation and reflection, will discover that they themselves are, in the end, the greatest dupes, and have sacrificed the invaluable enjoyment of a character, with themselves at least, for the acquisition of worthless toys and gewgaws. How little is requisite to supply the necessities of nature? And in a view to pleasure, what comparison between the unbought satisfaction of conversation, society, study, even health and the common beauties of nature, but above all the peaceful reflection on one’s own conduct; what comparison, I say, between these and the feverish, empty amusements of luxury and expense? These natural pleasures, indeed, are really without price; both because they are below all price in their attainment, and above it in their enjoyment.”
October 13, 2010
Sympathy and Threshholds
Ben Goldacre recently highlighted the worrying finding that the greater the number of victims resulting from a crime, the less intense the feelings of disapprobation or concern onlookers felt. This was mirrored in legal punishment: paradoxically, the more victims some perpetrators hurt, the lower their sentence tended to be.
Why might this be? Goldacre points somewhat inconclusively to some failure of “empathy”. But a subtly different explanation may be more illuminating.
My answer – you may not be surprised to hear – lies in 18th Century Scottish philosophy. Specifically, in the principle of “sympathy” introduced by David Hume, and developed with great care by his friend Adam Smith. Although their concepts of sympathy are far too technical to be properly expound here (especially in the case of Smith, who differs from Hume in some crucial and highly detailed respects), a brief and basic exposition may be fruitful.
We begin to “sympathise” with others when we represent their feelings or mental states to our own minds. This can be done by conscious reflection, or automatically without stopping to think at all (e.g. the difference between actively “thinking yourself into somebody else’s shoes” and spontaneously wincing at the mere sight of them being hit by a stick). The crucial development is that after we have represented the feelings (or mental states) of another to ourselves, we then have a subsequent reaction: we feel ourselves to some degree reproducing that person’s feeling (or mental state), and experience a fainter version of it ourselves.
Thus, if I see you being hit with a stick I represent this action in my mind (possibly reflectively, but probably automatically) and imagine feeling the pain you are feeling. As the stick rises against you, I may even reflexively move my leg away such is the extent to which I “sympathise” with the experience you are undergoing. Similarly, if I know that you are currently in a state of extreme psychological anxiety, I may represent your feelings to myself and come to feel a fainter impression of anxiety myself.
Hume and Smith thought this tendency of humans to sympathise with the experiences – both good and bad – of their fellow creatures constituted a crucial plank of shared morality, and ensured the ability to live socially without constant recourse to self-interest. They also thought that as human knowledge developed, further discoveries would expand and enrich their hypotheses about the functioning (and importance) of sympathy.
The cases Goldacre illustrates may do something just like that. This is because there is a problem to explain here: why is it that we apparently “sympathise” (in the Humean/Smithean sense) with a few victims, but not so easily with larger numbers (and correspondingly, feel strong disapprobation to perpetrators in the former but not the latter case)?
Hume and Smith were keen to emphasise the extent to which “nature” has “fitted” us with the right mental equipment to navigate the world and survive extremely competently. But as pre-Darwinians they were somewhat at a loss to explain how “nature” does this. We may fare a little better.
Consider: creatures that are able to “sympathise” with large numbers of sufferers will have to represent the suffering of that large number to their mind, and then feel corresponding impressions of copied suffering themselves, on a scale reflecting the large amount of suffering taking place. To put it bluntly, that may end up being a lot of suffering to represent, and in turn feel. Yet creatures so-representing large amounts of suffering to themselves would surely be most likely to experience debilitating psychological breakdown, as other (vital) functions are crowded out.
By contrast, creatures who only represent to themselves the sufferings of relatively limited numbers will be able to “block out” large-scale suffering that might otherwise debilitate them. Yet such creatures will nonetheless possess enough “sympathy” to be able to form common bonds with their nearest and dearest, overcoming brute self-interest, benefiting all their lives accordingly.
From a Darwinian perspective it’s obvious which sorts of creatures will be most likely to survive (or rather, evolve in the first place). Put slightly differently: the collective evolutionary benefits of being able to “sympathise” with your friend being stalked by the saber-toothed tiger are considerable; of sympathising with several thousand victims of a natural disaster far less so. “Nature” has “fitted” us to sympathise with others – but only below a certain threshhold.*
Thus 18th century Scottish philosophy, with a helpful splash of Darwin, may go a long way to solving what might otherwise look like a tricky modern puzzle. What a shame, once more, that the great Scots have fallen so far from favour in recent times.
–
*Proximity and familiarity of victims will also be important factors – but let’s leave that to another day.
October 6, 2010
Consequences bleg
I expect this week’s long Wednesday philosophy post is going to prompt people to call me an idiot. Please, try and be patient and recognise that I’m focusing on something quite specific, so pause before hitting your keyboards to decry my stupidity. This is a bleg rather than a blog; an appeal for the philosophically inclined who read this blog to try and help me out.
–
Faisal Shahzad – the man who tried to blow up a car bomb in Time Square – has been sentenced to life in prison. Would he have received the same punishment if the bomb had successfully gone off, killing and maiming thousands? I ask because New York State has the death penalty, and despite being unused since 1976 it’s feasible it might have been revived in such an eventuality.
To tease out the underlying point I really want to get at: we tend to think that it is right for successful criminals to receive harsher penalties than unsuccessful ones, and indeed tend to cast greater moral condemnation on those who are successful than those who aren’t.
But things can start to seem odd if we ask why we feel this way.
To illustrate: imagine a parallel world in which Shahzad had the exact same motivations as in this world. However, imagine that this parallel world differs in one single respect: Shahzad makes a successful car bomb. Instead of his device failing to detonate, it goes off and kills hundreds.
Parallel World Shahzad is duly caught and brought to trial, just like Real World Shahzad. Yet the former receives a more severe punishment (the death penalty) than the latter (who gets life in prison). Yet Real World Shahzad did everything he could to achieve the results that Parallel World Shahzad actually brought about, namely mass death and destruction.
The motivation in each case is identical; the intent to kill is the same. But in one case people die and in the other they don’t. Yet it seems in some sense bizarre to say that Parallel World Shahzad is more evil than Real World Shahzad, simply because the former succeeded and the latter failed. Real World Shahzad wanted to bring about exactly the same ends Parallel World Shahzad managed to achieve, and indeed did everything within his power to do so. Real World Shahzad was thwarted by (let’s say) the bad luck of not setting up his bomb properly, which he would happily have corrected he’d been aware of it. And yet he receives a lesser punishment and less moral disapprobation simply because he failed even though he meant entirely to succeed.
To stop using silly abstract examples, a concrete illustration: I’m presuming that most people join me in having stronger feelings of moral aversion to the successful 7/7 tube bombers than the unsuccessful Glasgow airport terrorists, even though the intent to cause mass death and suffering was the same in both cases. The fact that one group succeeded, and the other didn’t, appears to carry important moral weight. Even if we condemn both groups, we apparently condemn the successful group even more severely because they were successful. Or even if people don’t quite share my moral intuitions here, it remains to be explained why legal punishments increase in severity for successful murders as oppose to unsuccessful ones, and why most people are apparently quite comfortable with that.
So to attempt (and probably fail) to avoid misunderstanding, the specific question I’m focused on is: why do we tend to think a successful terrorist is more evil than an unsuccessful one, even when they both have identical motivations and the latter failed only because of bad luck. What work in our moral thinking is the successful bringing about of consequences doing, even when that success (or unsuccess) is external to the agent, say because of uncontrolled luck?
Hume famously remarked that:
“`Tis evident, that when we praise any actions, we regard only the motives that produced them, and consider the actions as signs or indications of certain principles in the mind and temper. The external performance has no merit. We must look within to find the moral quality. This we cannot do directly; and therefore fix our attention on actions, as on external signs. But these actions are still considered as signs; and the ultimate object of our praise and approbation is the motive, that produc’d them.”
And this may look like no solution at all: haven’t we just established that consequences matter over and above the motives of evil-doers? But a solution perhaps begins to present itself if we recall the Humean observation that actual events have a stronger and more lively impact on the mind than mere imagination.
Seeing the attrocities of successful terrorism transports our ideas to the evil motives of the terrorist far more powerfully than merely imagining what the consequences would have been if the terrorist had been successful (knowing that they weren’t). Our increased disaprobation for the successful over the identically-motivated yet unsuccessful (reflected in more severe legal punishments for successful criminals than unsuccessful ones) can thus perhaps be explained. The difference lies not in the consequences themselves, but in the greater power of real consequences than imagined ones to excite moral disapprobation for another’s evil motives.
The problem, however, is that I’m not satisfied with that answer. It feels like what matters here is whether people really do die - and not simply whether the person who killed them had a motivation to do so, and that his success more effectively transports our thoughts to that motivation than if he had failed and the work was left to imagination.
And I’m not sure what to do about that, because I feel quite stuck and can’t get my head clear on exactly what work consequences are doing here – and at the very least, the Humean account needs to be expanded (though I would hope, not abandoned).
Thoughts, anyone?
September 29, 2010
How to think about…vegetarianism
Self-indulgent long philosophy post of the week. My super-long-term readers have seen this argument before, at my old (now deleted) blog. I am unrepentant in my recycling.
–
The other day Andrew wanted to know why I gave up vegetarianism. And as it happens, I was recently listening to Jeff McMahan claiming that we should all be vegetarians. I’ll therefore use McMahan as a stalking horse, by way of answering Andrew.
***
I’m prepared to go easy on McMahan. I won’t make any controversial claims that animal suffering is not necessarily bad (as McMahan simply assumes it to be). So I’ll leave out quasi-Nietzschean thoughts about the suffering of animals enhancing the reasons to eat them.
I’ll also abstain from calling into question some of McMahan’s question-begging manoeuvres. Like assuming that the enjoyment animals experience is straightforwardly commensurable with that of humans.
I’ll even leave off snarking too hard on McMahan’s bizarre remark that his children have been vegetarian since birth “by choice”.
Instead, I’ll focus on a simple argument I take to be final in these matters.
It is a brute fact that the vegetarianism of any individual neither saves any animal lives, nor stops any animal suffering. This is because – given the scales of production involved in modern meat-rearing and processing – the decisions of any single consumer have no appreciable impact on market demand. This demand is so large, being constituted by so many thousands of individual consumers, that the removal of one specific consumer has no appreciable reduction for the net demand for meat, and thus no consequent reduction in supply will follow.
Simple vegetarianism – i.e. abstaining from meat purchase/consumption, but doing nothing else – does not save animal lives (or prevent their suffering). If you want to make a difference in terms of consequences to animals themselves, then do something practically useful. Like buying a herd of cows, putting them in your field, and feeding them until they die of old age. That sort of action affects animal lives. Abstaining from meat in a modern mass-consumer economy does not.
Of course, what we have here is a nasty little Sorites Paradox. If everybody acted in concert to give up meat, then market demand would fall, supply would contract, and fewer animals would be killed or experience suffering (largely because many would never be born in the first place). But here’s another brute fact: any individual considering going vegetarian must face the truth that the vast majority of others won’t follow suit. A mass vegetarian revolution is simply not a realistic prospect. As a consequence, any individual’s decision to abstain from meat can have no appreciable impact on market demand, meaning no fewer animals suffer and die. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
But this isn’t the end of the matter. Integrity is also important for moral agents.
People like McMahan are appalled by the meat industry. The mass suffering – and as they see it, exploitation and murder – of animals is to their minds indefensible. In turn, such people may decide they want to have no association with such an evil (as they see it) industry. They do not want to benefit from, or even enjoy, the products of such processes. Nor do they want to be (even symbolically) complicit in them, say by handing over money for flesh. To do otherwise would cast a stain on their moral character – and they want their characters to be clean.
For people who reason this way, vegetarianism will probably be the right option, insofar as it guarantees of their own personal integrity. But not everybody needs to end-up at that decision.
Let’s grant that what is done to animals, via the meat industry, is highly unpleasant. Animals die and suffer for our pleasure, and yet most of us tend to think that suffering is prima facie a bad thing. However it doesn’t follow that everyone must give up eating meat, even if they condemn animal suffering as morally wrong.
For people like me, the “clean hands”/“not in my name”/“I don’t want to be a beneficiary of nasty processes” type thoughts simply don’t have decisive motivational purchase. Other thoughts carry more weight. Like knowing that life as a vegetarian is considerably more difficult than one as an omnivore. Or believing that being the beneficiary of a process which would go on regardless of whether or not one abstained is no particularly bad thing. Or even just liking the taste of meat more than worrying (with somewhat pointless futility) about how it arrived on one’s plate.
Accordingly, because I don’t feel that my personal integrity is compromised by meat-consumption, there’s simply no reason that I should give it up. Indeed, because my giving-up meat would have no consequences for any animals’ lives, even if I think killing animals (or making them suffer) is wrong, it doesn’t follow that I must go vegetarian.*
McMahan, of course, may disagree. He may find he can’t sleep at night if he eats sentient beings. But that will be a decision for him, about his integrity. The philosophical rub, however, is that vegetarianism turns out to be rather less about the animals, and rather more about McMahan.
–
*Note: if I were to fear that others might view my meat-eating as callous and so hold me in disregard, that might be a reason for me to go vegetarian. But what would be doing the motivational work would be a desire to avoid the disapprobation of others, not a concern for the lives and well-being of animals.
September 23, 2010
On The Philosophy of Murdering Hamsters
Should I be imprisoned for 9 weeks, the sentence applied retrospectively for a crime committed when I was 13 years old? I speak of the death-by-neglect of my two Russian Dwarf hamsters.
As a somewhat self-involved teenager (la plus ca change, eh?) the pressing concerns of school life commanded my utmost attentions. I correspondingly neglected to notice that the animals in my care had run out of drinking water – until it was too late.
This week, Anthony Parker was jailed for nine weeks after he microwaved his girlfriend’s Syrian hamster during a drunken row. I don’t expect the RSPCA will kick my door down after this post goes up. But in a consistent world, should they?
In his Tanner Lectures [PDF] Jonathan Bennett explored the philosophical foundations of what is known as the acting/omitting (or sometimes: killing/letting die) distinction. A common thought – and one sanctified in, for example, much Catholic teaching – is that it is morally worse to actively kill than to passively let die; that positive action to bring about some end is morally worse than sitting on one’s hands and doing nothing even if the exact same end comes about in either case.
An illustration: imagine there is a microwave that automatically starts when a weight of 100 grammes+ is present inside it, and the door of which closes automatically when the weight-sensor is activated. Now imagine two scenarios:
1. I take Bobby the Hamster, who weighs 150g, and put him inside the microwave (knowing that it will start and he will die).
2. I observe Bobby the Hamster walking into the microwave (knowing that it will start and he will die) and do nothing to stop him even though I could.
Most people want to say that 1) is worse than 2). But Bennett explodes this distinction. When you get down to the philosophical nitty-gritty, so long as everything else is kept constant there is no morally relevant difference between acting to bring about a consequence, and omitting to act when one knows that so-omitting will yield the exact same consequence.*
This is counter-intuitive to many. But Bennett’s reasoning is impeccable; the challenge is to explain why we have collectively developed the acting/omitting distinction and employ it in so much of our intuitive moral thinking even though it is a deep conceptual mistake. We need an error-theory of this common moral practice.
But as it happens, none of this touches the question of whether I should be in jail. Because there is a very important difference between myself and Anthony Parker: whereas he intended to fry Suzie the Hamster, I did not intend for my pets to die. If somebody had said to me “give the poor things some water, you idiot” I would have done so immediately. Telling Parker that Suzie was going to experience her own little Hiroshima would not have stopped him, because that was exactly what he intended to bring about.
Thus, the two cases are asymmetrical: I caused death by negligence but without intention, Parker caused death by design and with intention. That difference of intention – or specifically, the different motivations underlying those different intentions – is what does the moral work here, not any acting/omitting distinction.
Certainly, negligence is morally reprehensible; that’s whynegligence of children by parents can rightly end in criminal prosecution. Negligence reveals a defect of moral motivations insofar as adequate concern for other (dependent) living creatures is lacking. But such callous, overly-self-regarding motivations are of a less heinous order than a cruelty-seeking motivation which issues in the wilful murder-by-microwave of innocent hamsters.
I am a bad and guilty man. But I am not as bad, or guilty, as Anthony Parker. All of which, of course, comes as no surprise to those who’ve been wise enough to read their Hume:
“`Tis evident, that when we praise any actions, we regard only the motives that produced them, and consider the actions as signs or indications of certain principles in the mind and temper. The external performance has no merit. We must look within to find the moral quality. This we cannot do directly; and therefore fix our attention on actions, as on external signs. But these actions are still considered as signs; and the ultimate object of our praise and approbation is the motive, that produc’d them.”
–
* Actually, the acting/omitting terminology is itself hopelessly confused at a philosophical level, and Bennett junks it accordingly. I’ve retained it here for ease of exposition.
September 14, 2010
Idiot, or Thug?
As Osborne’s Axe begins to fall, pleas for exemption are coming thick and fast.
And no surprise. Andrew Rawnsley recently highlighted how the Coalition is cutting deeper and quicker than any government since the 1920s. The pressure is on for organisations to hang on to whatever funding they have – at the expense of rivals if need be.
Hot on the heels of Rawnsley’s claim that ministers fear “lynch mobs”, yesterday police Chief Superintendent Derek Barnett supplied his own eye-catching declaration:
” ‘In an environment of cuts across the wider public sector, we face a period where disaffection, social and industrial tensions may well rise,’
‘We will require a strong, confident, properly trained and equipped police service, one in which morale is high and one that believes it is valued by the government and public.’ “
Or as the Guardian headlined it: “Police: We can’t take care of cuts protests if you cut us”.
The warning is clear. In order to secure a basic minimum of stability, the coercive power of the state is needed to repress those elements so desperate and disadvantaged they’ll risk life and limb by rioting in the street. So make sure the police guarantee that basic minimum, by giving them loadsa muneh.
But I’m not a police officer. I’m a self-appointed representative for academic arts and humanities funding. So let me offer an argument on behalf of my own interest group – which comes at the expense of the rozzers (it’s a dog-eat-dog world, what can I say?)
Studying the arts and humanities brings inumerable and often incalculable benefits to individuals, as well as to wider society. But let’s consider just one practical benefit of this study, by applying two basic analytic tools.
The first is familiar to historians: a basic knowledge of, and ability to critically employ, the facts of history.
The second is familiar to trained philosophers: the argumentative dilemma (i.e. impaling your opponent on one of two argumentative horns by logically forcing them to pick between two unacceptable options).
Bringing these tools to bear, let’s examine another of Superintendent Barnett’s utterances:
“From the massacre in 1819, that took place not so many miles away from here, to the current day alcohol-related disorder, history teaches us that there will always be widespread threats to the public peace”
1819 massacre, you say? Near Cheshire? Why, Mr Barnet can only be talking about…er, the Peterloo Massacre. Here’s what Wikipedia (hardly a byzantine source available only to crusty scholars) says of that event:
The Peterloo Massacre (or Battle of Peterloo) occurred at St Peter’s Field, Manchester, England, on 16 August 1819, when cavalry charged into a crowd of 60,000–80,000 gathered at a meeting to demand the reform of parliamentary representation. [...]15 people were killed and 400–700 were injured. The massacre was given the name Peterloo in ironic comparison to the Battle of Waterloo, which had taken place four years earlier.
So, the example a top police officer gives of “professional” policing of public protest is a massacre in which mounted officers killed innocent citizens. Lovely.
That’s the history, now the philosophy.
Two options:
Either: Mr Barnet is a thug who surreptitiously refers to public massacres for a range of possible motives. (These might include: attempting to further intimidate lawful protestors; warning the Government that the police are liable to kill if they don’t get their funding protected; or assuring the Coalition that the force has its back and will charge into the crowds, sabers-drawn if necessary).
Or: Mr Barnet is a spectacular idiot lacking the most basic grasp of history, who deserves widespread ridicule, and whose wider competence might now be called into question.
See how powerful the arts and humanities can be? They teach you to think clearly and accurately. They promote the sorts of minds we want in Britain. Clear and accurate thinkers, graduating from our universities. Minds which may one day occupy positions of power and influence.
And so that’s just one of the many reasons arts and humanities funding should be protected. Or at any rate, it’s better than giving the money to idiots/thugs (delete as applicable).
September 9, 2010
Plundering the Classics: How to think about the “self-interest” brigade
Long Post Warning! Available as a PDF for those who would rather print out.
–
Why read the great works of philosophers past?
Lots of high-falutin’ answers present themselves: to gain self-knowledge; to avoid repeating the mistakes of history; to distinguish what is parochial in modern practices from what is timeless; to appreciate works of elegance and beauty which withstand the test of time – or to rediscover those that didn’t.
All good answers. But never forget a less glamorous yet extremely important one: to plunder old arguments in order to bash your opponents.
Matthew Taylor has some typically muddled thoughts about rational self-interest (with a big dollop of RSA propaganda), but correctly concludes that people are not simply self-interested utility maximisers but rather that altruism and disinterested benevolence are possible. Over at Crooked Timber, Chris Bertram has some sensible thoughts up, and the comment thread has predictably descended into those who are single-mindedly and ferociously determined to reduce everything to motivation by self-interest, and those who see this as being a little too simplistic.
If you already think this isn’t a new debate – what with “selfish gene” arguments, evolutionary psychology, and the self-interested utility maximisers of microeconomic theory now all being well-established concepts – you’re even right than you think. Because the modern “oh we just do everything to maximise our self-interest, even when we think we’re being benevolent and disinterested” meme goes way, way back. To at least the 18th Century, and the systems of “self love” at whose expense David Hume had rather a bit of fun.
Indeed, the second appendix to Hume’s Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals provides a veritable battery of arguments that are as applicable to the “we’re all just self-interested maximisers” crowd today as they were to their systems of self-love forerunners in the 18th century. Here are some of the best moves, plundered and relayed.
Hume is keen to observe that one possible outcome of reducing all human motivation to self-love is to collapse ethical distinctions between good and bad completely. For consider, if “the most generous patriot and most niggardly miser, the bravest hero and most abject coward, have, in every action, an equal regard to their own happiness and welfare”, then really what is the end moral difference between their characters and acts? Hume does not present this as necessarily a fallacy of the systems of self-love. The point is rather: if a consequence of your philosophical system is that moral distinctions everybody ordinarily takes for granted turn out to be erroneous and hollow, well that’s a pretty amazing upshot so you better have a good explanation for how these distinctions gained such widespread currency. And your system stands in a disfavourable light as long as it produces such upshots without satisfactory explanations for such massively counter-intuitive conclusions.
Hume pursues the point: “The most obvious objection to the selfish hypothesis is, that, as it is contrary to common feeling and our most unprejudiced notions, there is required the highest stretch of philosophy to establish so extraordinary a paradox”. Indeed. For not only can we think of many examples of personally disinterested genuine concern for others – the man dying of cancer who worries how his gay lover will survive when he’s gone; the campaigners fighting service cuts that will affect the severely disabled, elderly and mentally ill – but we must observe that our very language and culture are infused with words and concepts like “altruism”, “benevolence”, “kindness”, “self-sacrifice” and so on. If the selfish-systems are correct, they need to explain how all this comes about, and why it is common-sensical that altruism and benevolence are possible to all those who haven’t already been reading too much EvPsych or Rational Choice Theory (if you don’t mind me updating the argument).
What appears to motivate the reduction of everything to self interest is indeed “that love of simplicity, which has been the source of much false reasoning in philosophy”. Superficially, it looks as though there will be a neat parsimony to explaining everything by reference to self-interest. The problem, however, is that when we get into concrete examples – like the gay lover who is dying of cancer but makes exhaustive plans for his partner to be financially supported once he’s gone – to reduce all these to self-love requires an elaborate story of confused motivations and desires that are not even transparent to agents themselves, all so as to eventually reduce benevolence and affection for others to a secret selfishness. Yet the simpler explanation is surely the more desirable: that (say) a dying man feels affection and concern for his partner whom he loves, and wants to ensure the best for a future he will sadly not partake in. And that that’s all there is to it:
“But a man, that grieves for a valuable friend, who needed his patronage and protection; how can we suppose, that his passionate tenderness arises from some metaphysical regards to self-interest, which has no foundation or reality? We may as well imagine, that minute wheels and springs, like those of a watch, give motion to a loaded wagon, as account for the origin of passion from such abstruse reflections”.
Pressing the point, Hume shows us just how counter-intuitive and bizarre the claims of systems of self-love are when we get them under the microscope:
“Is gratitude no affection of the human breast, or is that a word merely, without any meaning or reality? Have we no satisfaction in one man’s company above another’s, and no desire of the welfare of our friend, even though absence or death should prevent us from all participation in it? Or what is it commonly, that gives us any participation in it, even while alive and present, but our affection and regard to him?”
When we take in the vast panoply of human experience we find multiple instances of people acting in ways that can only be reduced to “self love” by paradoxical machinations and assertions about hidden motives requiring great endeavours of contorted imagination. Reducing everything to self-love thus becomes a task undertaken in order to vindicate the system of self-love itself, when the process is supposed to be the other way around. Or in other words: the selfish systems end up with the cart before the horse because instead of the system explaining everything, everything ends up being explained so as to fit the system. It would therefore be better just to take the more simple and obvious explanation as the more likely one: that as per common sense people really can exhibit those qualities we have words for and treat as given on a daily basis – like benevolence, altruism, self-sacrifice and the rest.
But there is of course a demon manoeuvre left to deal with. And we all know what it is, because it’s been repeated ad nauseam since at least the 18th century. It’s to reply: “well, if people want to be benevolent, then that’s self-interest. They get a pleasure out of being benevolent, so they do it because it makes them feel good – so you see, it is really all self-interest after all”.
To this old canard Hume has a fitting reply:
“Now where is the difficulty in conceiving, that this may likewise be the case with benevolence and friendship, and that, from the original frame of our temper, we may feel a desire of another’s happiness or good, which, by means of that affection, becomes our own good, and is afterwards pursued, from the combined motives of benevolence and self-enjoyments? Who sees not that vengeance, from the force alone of passion, may be so eagerly pursued, as to make us knowingly neglect every consideration of ease, interest, or safety; and, like some vindictive animals, infuse our very souls into the wounds we give an enemy; and what a malignant philosophy must it be, that will not allow to humanity and friendship the same privileges which are undisputably granted to the darker passions of enmity and resentment; such a philosophy is more like a satyr than a true delineation or description of human nature; and may be a good foundation for paradoxical wit and raillery, but is a very bad one for any serious argument or reasoning.”
Hume’s point is partly ad hominem, but that is all to the good; for to a large extent this entire debate revolves precisely around which perspective one chooses to take on moral questions.
As Hume implies, there’s nothing wrong with taking pleasure in helping others – indeed quite the contrary, for that is surely a sign of a healthy moral character. And it’s evident from basic human experience that helping others can go far beyond any immediate benefits one may feel even from the pleasure of doing so – as Hume says, we admit this quality to the nasty passions like the desire for revenge, so why not the nice passions too? And that’s where the justified ad hominem point comes in: how very odd those people must be who so steadfastly deny the possibility of benevolence, altruism and the rest – things so evident to ordinary people, on a daily basis.
What are these philosophers of self love telling us about themselves, when they make (usually with ferocity) these counter-intuitive claims? And when answering that question, we should surely keep another in mind: are these the sorts of people we ought really to be listening to in the settling of moral issues?
It’s best to close with Hume’s opening remarks on this subject:
“This principle is, that all benevolence is mere hypocrisy, friendship a cheat, public spirit a farce, fidelity a snare to procure trust and confidence; and that while all of us, at bottom, pursue only our private interest, we wear these fair disguises, in order to put others off their guard, and expose them the more to our wiles and machinations. What heart one must be possessed of who possesses such principles, and who feels no internal sentiment that belies so pernicious a theory, it is easy to imagine: and also what degree of affection and benevolence he can bear to a species whom he represents under such odious colours, and supposes so little susceptible of gratitude or any return of affection. Or if we should not ascribe these principles wholly to a corrupted heart, we must at least account for them from the most careless and precipitate examination.”
