November 9, 2010
Offensive Words and Sexist Norms?
Over at Crooked Timber there’s a somewhat bizarre discussion taking place beneath this video (warning, Not At All Safe For Work)
What various Timberites are arguing over is whether the use of language like “sad twat” and “stupid cunt” is sexist and misogynist. Interestingly, we can use this as a case study for applying some recent philosophical theories of meaning and interpretation that have been advanced in the 20th century.
In the study of intellectual history, perhaps the most influential and important contribution to theories of interpretation and meaning was made by Quentin Skinner in this paper, which became a significant plank in what emerged as the “Cambridge School” approach. Skinner’s basic claim was that to properly understand and interpret a text from the past – and to avoid reading one’s own anachronistic contemporary prejudices into it – one had to recover its author’s intentions in writing it. To do this, the text has to be located in its relevant social and intellectual context, to see what arguments it was engaging with and which specific historically located concerns it was informed by.
We can apply this intentionality-based approach to our case of swearing above. The key question is: did the 15 year olds who made this video intend to use language that was derogatory towards women? Reconstructing the context of 15 year olds in Britain, the answer would appear to be that they did not. For as a commenter at CT points out, in contemporary Britain the words “twat” and “cunt” are predominantly used as insults for men. (Indeed it is quite rare and odd-sounding for a women in Britain to be called a “cunt”, in particular).
So can our 15 year olds be cleared of the sexism charge? Not so fast.
Yale professor Ian Shapiro has long argued that the Skinner intentionality approach is not the end of the story. Shapiro urges we acknowledge the possibility of agents un-knowingly reproducing power structures and dominant modes of thinking without realising it. For example, whilst an author may “intend” to produce an argument criticising (say) a current governmental regime, they may unwittingly be reproducing a pattern of argument that simultaneously presupposes that (say) a third of the population ought to continue to be kept as slaves. As the author’s argument becomes widely disseminated, it surreptitiously reinforces a norm that the author did not in fact realise they were endorsing (in this case, that slavery is acceptable).
Whilst that’s an oversimplified example, we can clearly apply the thought-process to the case of our swearing children: they may not have intended to reinforce sexist and misogynistic norms, by using language that portrays female genitalia as the basis for gross insult they unwittingly reproduced and re-enforced sexist and misogynistic values.
On this view, the use of “sad twat” and “stupid cunt” does appear to be misogynistic.
Yet perhaps we can go further. Much of the “post-structuralist” work of Michel Foucault, and the “deconstructionist” approach of Jacques Derrida, emphasised the extent to which individual subjects are themselves the products of power structures and “discourses” beyond their control.
On a (simplified and crude) reading of a general Foucault-Derrida approach, it might be said that these 15 year old children are intimately the products of societies which are ruled by “discourses” (i.e. legitimated ways of speaking, interacting and thereby thinking) that have developed in ways that systematically privilege men and relegate women to the status of subservient, exploited, secondary and controlled members of society. On a certain reading of this approach, what these 15 year old children are doing is redeploying and re-enforcing the gendered sexist norms of a society which is structured so as to systematically dis-empower one gender in opposition to the other. In turn, to focus on what these specific children happen to have done is to basically miss the point: the real action goes on elsewhere, at a more (if you like) “fundamental” level of social analysis.
The famous objection to this approach, however, is that it leaves no room or hope for individual agency. And this indeed seems a proper criticism to make: these children chose to use these offensive words. They could have chosen otherwise, and indeed would have had the phenomenological experience of the possibility of choosing when they made this video, rather than being mere automatons in the power matrix. These children’s actions are not straightforward functions of deeply-seated societal power structures; to forget that renders any analysis inadequate in providing a complete picture.
What we need to do, therefore, is reconcile all of the above considerations in some way. If we do that, I reckon the correct response to the question “was it sexist and misogynistic to use words like twat and cunt?” is clearly both “no” and “yes”.
It’s “no” insofar as these children, possessing their own sense of choice and agency, in a context in which these words are generally used as insults for men, probably did not intend to produce a sexist and misogynistic video. But it’s “yes” insofar as these children (unwittingly?) perpetuated the use of words that take female genitalia to be the height of insult, embedded in a structure of norms that assign women a more lowly status than men, reflective of deep power imbalances between the sexes whereby one group is generally placed in positions of control over the other.
Now, you may think that’s a damn obvious conclusion to draw, and that it shouldn’t have taken a thousand words plus much talk of interpretative theory to get there. Maybe. But then, re-read the CT comment thread and see what happens when people pick either “yes” or “no” and keep slugging it out regardless. Sometimes long-winded theory is helpful on getting clear, even if it yields what appear to be fairly obvious answers by the end of the process.
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.
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 19, 2010
The Corruption of our Moral Sentiments
Yesterday morning, 35 leaders of the UK’s “biggest companies” signed a letter to The Telegraph urging George Osborne not to slow-down his programme of austerity cuts. At one level Gary Dunion’s tweet gets to the heart of things:
“35 of the richest people in the world support ideological cuts to services they don’t use and jobs that aren’t theirs. Hold the front page.”
But there is more to be said. These outbursts by business leaders are hardly unheard of; before the last election Tory deficit tough-talk received a glowing endorsement from industry fat cats. Why do we collectively tend to give space to the views of super-rich big business leaders? Why do their pronouncements receive an apparently automatic level of respected deference, even when they spout partisan self-serving nonsense?
Part of the answer is simple politics: the right wing Telegraph pushes right-wing agendas, and business leaders are happy to partake in this. But that doesn’t go deep enough.
A more incisive answer lies in acknowledging the existence of a general misperception of “merit”, and a mistaken belief that industry leadership (often signaled by high pay) corresponds to unique and unmatched “talent” . This results in a common belief that big business leaders have some special, unrivaled insight to offer. But as Chris Dillow has repeatedly shown, “leadership” is a chimerical beast, because its usually organisational structure and contextual factors that determine success, not the special “talents” of fat cats lucky enough to climb to the top.
Nonetheless, a general (mistaken) belief that business leaders are supremely talented individuals is likely to generate a level of deference and toleration towards their opinion-spouting that other, more lowly-placed members of society, will not enjoy.
But there’s more, and like last week the Scottish Enlightenment may have something to teach us. Adam Smith was intrigued as to why ordinary people imagined the lives of the great and powerful to be full of happiness and pleasantry, when a little reflection shows that power and responsibility bring burdens of duty and the pains of intriuge and betrayal. Furthermore, Smith noted that ordinary people have a curious tendency to be more forgiving of the “vices and follies” of the great and powerful, than of even the “poverty and weakness of the innocent”.
Smith’s account of why this might be is (typically) complex. But one important factor is his belief that in modern commercial society people are presented with two competing paths along which to run their lives. The first emphasises “wisdom and virtue”, but the second promotes material gain. Yet we soon see that most people offer greater praise and encouragement to “the rich and the great, than towards the wise and the virtuous”. As a result, the path of material gain is privileged by most, even (crucially) those individuals who never get very far along it themselves. Growing up in societies where the “rich and the great” have their plaudits sung most widely, it is unsurprising that ordinary people come to imagine that those who are rich and great lead exceedingly more pleasant and happy lives, and their “vices and follies” are tolerated as being more forgivable in such outstanding characters.
But Smith was dubious about this conclusion; reflection on the lives of the “rich and the great” appears to reveal much that a contented soul would be better off without. Furthermore, Smith worried about the consequences for all our lives of this tendency to idolise the materially successful:
“This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.”
For Smith, this represented a deep problem of modern commercial society that his moral theory attempted to navigate. 250 years later, it is far from clear that anything fundamental has changed. So you’ll forgive me if I give short shrift to the self-rightous pontifications of the Telegraph 35.
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.
September 25, 2010
The French Physiocrats Institute
There was a rather silly post up at the Adam Smith Institute blog recently. ASI founder Eamonn Butler’s argument (such as it constituted one) basically went: market competition has all sorts of good consequences; free-market capitalism guarantees such competition; state regulation always strangles such competition; this is what Adam Smith thought and so Vince Cable was wrong to cite him in support.
The first premise is fine. The rest is silly (though admittedly Butler’s post is confused – and confusing – so it’s not clear whether he fully endorses this silly argument or even recognises it to be silly).
Pace Dillow we know that markets, left to themselves, do not always produce and sustain competition quidquid evenit. Situations which start out as competitive may evolve into ones in which one or more businesses corner enough of the market to establish oligopolistic or monopolistic dominance. At which point competition is strangled, and its myriad benefits – efficiency, innovation, etc – are lost.
Regulation, whilst sometimes reducing competition (e.g. when big business and state forces collude) can also generate or sustain it. That, after all, is why the economic regulatory structures of most western democracies include competition laws whose purpose is to prevent oligopolistic or monopolistic consolidation.
Unsurprisingly, Adam Smith wasn’t so dumb as to subscribe to the crude reasoning Butler attributes to him (“Business people would love to rig the market in their favour. But it is only the power of governments that enables them to do this”). Butler alludes to this famous Smith quote:
“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
And he then says that if you read the “following paragraphs” you see that Smith believes “that it is regulation that brings on these cartel meetings and makes the conspiracy stick.” Technically, this is correct. But as presented by Butler the nature of Smith’s position is quite severely distorted.
Smith notes that by forcing (what we would now call) entrepreneurs to be publicly registered, you may alert them to each other and provide them with the knowledge required to start colluding anti-competitively. And he says that “though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.”
But then, this is just common sense. Smith is merely pointing out that magistrates should bear in mind the possibility of unintended consequences. A laudably-motivated piece of regulation may actually have adverse unintended effects, but legislators shouldn’t impose reforms that actually make things worse (e.g. supplying information to merchants hell-bent on skullduggery). So sometimes regulation is indeed a bad idea. But equally, government intervention may sometimes be required (for example, to restore the system of “natural liberty” when monopolies have been established). If the benefits of regulation outweigh the likely negative consequences, then government action may be acceptable. But how often this turns out to be the case is an empirical question, and cannot be settled in advance by the sort of a priori dogma Butler goes in for.
Moving further afield from these few brief paragraphs, it is stonkingly clear that Smith thought the state could intervene in market affairs in desirable ways, improving upon pure free-market outcomes. Over at the Telegraph, David Green makes the point well:
In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith often condemned “projectors”, as speculators were called in his own time. For example, he favoured a legally-imposed maximum interest rate of 5 per cent at a time when the market rate was about 4 per cent. If the legal rate of interest went up to 8 per cent, he said, then more money would be lent to “prodigals and projectors”, who alone would be willing to pay that much. “Sober people”, he argued, would only pay rates that would allow them to make a profit from solid ventures. Without a maximum of about 5 per cent money would be thrown into the hands of people who “were most likely to waste and destroy it”. With a legal maximum “the capital of the country is thus thrown into the hands in which it is most likely to be employed with advantage.”
Contrary to Butler, Green is right to note that “Adam Smith was making the very same point as Vince Cable.”
Now, ASI partisans might want to complain that Smith got it wrong. Which is fine, they are entitled to do that. But what they cannot do is both have their cake and eat it. If it is admitted that Smith advocated market interventions incompatible with the laissez-faire economic policies pushed by the ASI, it is by-the-by whether or not he got those things right. The point now is that Smith wasn’t the poster-boy of Thatcherite market liberalism the ASI like to claim. Which simply raises the question of what on earth is Adam Smith about this institute.
I’ve explained before that the simplistic free-market zealotary at the ASI has more in common with the French Physiocrats than Adam Smith – the former being the latter’s great intellectual opponents. Smith was a theorist primarily of political economy; economic theory was of value only when filtered through the prism of real-world politics and its inevitable distorting impacts upon applied economic policy. The theory-heavy market liberal dogma of the ASI stands a long way from The Wealth of Nations.
If this organisation were really a think-tank, rather than a vehicle of partisan Thatcherite politics, I’d suggest a name-change in the spirit of intellectual honesty: ‘The French Physiocrats Institute’ would be a most appropriate re-branding.
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Seen as we’re talking about Smith, academic readers of this blog should be aware of this:
September 16, 2010
Rejecting The Kingdom of Fairies
From the age of 11-16, I attended a Catholic state secondary school in Merseyside. During that period I realised two things: that I didn’t believe in God, and that even if I did Catholicism would be a bad vehicle of worship.
Many things brought this about. But my contempt for Catholic teaching in particular crystallised in compulsory Religious Education class, around three specific experiences. The first is of a teacher telling my class that contraception was a sin, the rhythm method wholly reliable, and that any girl who had an abortion would definitely go to hell.
The second was the same teacher remarking that if people only had sex within marriage then “aids wouldn’t be a problem.” And then replying to my complaint that this was hardly appropriate insight regarding (say) non-Christians in Africa, that this was simply “their problem”.
The third was a different teacher telling my class that “condoms don’t work” because the AIDs virus is “smaller than the micro-holes in a condom membrane”.
But I also received a piece of genuine wisdom from a more reflective – if still very much Catholic – teacher at the school. I can’t remember what I was whining about in an attempt to disrupt the lesson, but the teacher in question stared me down and said: “Paul, you need to realise that belief in God, and the Catholic Church, are two different things”.
And she was completely right. Whilst I have many reservations about Christianity, believing in Christ as Saviour is a very different thing to following the dogmas and dictates of an institution like the Catholic Church. Because that’s what it is: an institution. And as an institution, it is capable of doing fucked up things, and drawing its members into webs of horror.
As it happens, I’m temporarily back in Merseyside this month. And it’s disappointing – though perhaps not surprising – to find Patrick Kelly, Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool, defending Pope Benedict and blaming systematic paedophile abuse on anybody but the Church:
Archbishop Patrick Kelly told the BBC that the work of other organisations dealing with children should be examined.
He said that most child abuse “occurs within families”.
Archbishop Kelly said: “It’s also worth asking similar groups who worked with young people what were they doing in those same years?
“Other groups were working with young people and we’ve found that the question of child abuse, above all, occurs within families – You know that as a fact.
“According to what others were doing at the same time, I’m afraid we were so ignorant we did not know about the addictive nature [of paedophiles].”
The Archbishop said: “Nobody has been so rigorous in dealing with that terrible issue as [Pope Benedict] has. He has insisted that procedures are in place.
Given that Benedict XVI stands at the heart of a global cover up of decades-long sex abuse, and the continuing protection of abusive priests – in a week when a major paedophile scandal within the Belgian church has been hitting the headlines – Kelly’s lack of remorse speaks for itself.
So I’d like to take this day, when the Pontiff visits our aggressively atheist shores, to remind Catholics that belief in Christ is not the same as the institution of the Catholic Church. If you, as a good Christian, are disgusted by discrimination against women, denial of gay rights, paedophile-enablement and protection, and millions of avoidable deaths – there is a choice.
Or as Thomas Hobbes put it, making a point not a million miles from mine:
“To this and such like resemblances between the papacy and the kingdom of fairies may be added this, that as the fairies have no existence but in the fancies of ignorant people, rising from the traditions of old wives or old poets: so the spiritual power of the Pope (without the bounds of his own civil dominion) consisteth only in the fear that seduced people stand in of their excommunications, upon hearing of false miracles, false traditions, and false interpretations of the Scripture.”
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Fittingly, the above post (excluding this appendix) is exactly 666 words long, according to MS Word.
September 15, 2010
Virtue vs. Virtù: Machiavelli, The Pope and David Cameron
Despite his name becoming a by-word for gangster thuggery, Niccolò Machiavelli was an extremely sophisticated political theorist. One of his most important ideas was that for a ruler to be successful, he had to learn when to be bad.
According to Machiavelli, all rulers had to come to terms with fortuna; the cycle of good and back luck that could favour a prince one year but plunge him into adversity the next. And whereas Hamlet merely questioned why one should suffer “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” (in a play infused with Machiavellian and counter-Machiavellian themes) the Great Florentine advised rulers on how to deal with them.
Crucially, rulers must learn that “virtue” – in the sense of doing conventionally “good” acts – would not be enough to guarantee success. Whilst treating enemies with respect and being loyal to allies might work in certain circumstances, in others this might lead to military subjugation and unanticipated betrayal.
Machiavelli therefore advised rulers to acquire virtù. This was distinct from “virtue”, and encompassed whatever was required for rulers to succeed, conquer and triumph. Whilst murder, betrayal and dishonesty would not be on a list of traditional “virtues”, they might well be classed under the head of virtù if they led to success and glory.
Yet truly successful rulers also had to have guts; they had to know when the occasion demanded that they be really bad. And whilst most rulers knew how to be bad in petty, fleeting, insignificant ways, few could grasp the thorns of dangerous opportunity when the stakes were high.
A case in point was Giovanpagolo Baglioni, tyrant of Perugia. Baglioni was a vicious man who had murdered cousins and nephews to secure the throne, and even slept with his sister. Yet when Pope Julius II came to remove Baglioni from power, the latter was suddenly gifted an opportunity. Baglioni could murder the pope – who had foolishly left his guards outside the city – seizing papal power and international renown. But Baglioni floundered, and let himself be taken away by Julius II in chains. Despite being a man of vice, Baglioni did not know how to be “entirely bad”. He thus squandered his chance to secure greatness – much to Machiavelli’s disgust.
Which brings us to the 21st Century. Tomorrow Pope Benedict XVI will arrive on a state visit to Britain. The former Cardinal Ratzinger embodies the worst aspects of the Catholic Church’s discrimination against women and homosexuals, and continues to oppose measures which could save millions of lives every year. He is also at the heart of a world-wide paedophile scandal, protecting abusive priests by shielding them from legal justice.
So it’s worth asking: what would the ghost of Machiavelli urge David Cameron to do as the Pope sets foot upon these shores?
The obvious answer appears to be that whilst virtue would have the Pope arrested for his criminal paedophile-protecting activities, virtù demands respect for international power politics and cosying up to this distasteful pontiff.
But that is to think too narrowly, too unambitiously; without proper regard for glory!
If David Cameron were to withdraw the Pope’s diplomatic immunity and arrest him as a facilitator of child sex abuse, it would annoy the Vatican rather a lot. Southern European countries and Latin America would probably be a bit peeved too. But they’d get over it, and they’d hardly risk a war over the matter. The world’s 1 billion Catholics might also be annoyed for a while, but the more liberal wings – and those bishops in South America fighting for the right to OK condoms for their congregations – might actually be quite pleased.
Domestically, Cameron would swiftly shift the news agenda away from his government’s programme of insane economy-destroying cuts, and his dodgy media adviser’s phone-hacking troubles. The Pope-arrest story would run for weeks. Cameron would gain international renown as a man to be reckoned with. So as Machiavelli might have put it:
“[Cameron should] dare…to make an enterprise where everyone would have admired his courage and which would have left an eternal memory of himself…and would have done an act, the greatness of which would have overcome every infamy and every danger that could have resulted from it.”
Just a thought, Dave…
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.
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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.”
