I'm posting this discussion here because my blog seems to be a forum conveniens.
DG
Do you think people are inculpable for self-serving, mistaken moral judgments?
Me
I think it depends on why one made the mistake. Do you mean an honest (i.e., trying to do the right thing) mistaken moral judgment that happens to be self-serving? If so, the question seems to be whether the honest mistake was also acceptable and not negligent or the like.
That said, as you know, I don’t think there’s a satisfactory “model” for moral blame. I’m down with the Gideon Rosen stuff (which has a lot in common with the “basic argument” that Strawson outlined in The Stone but does not rely on determinism), which concludes that we should be skeptics about moral responsibility because all allegedly culpable acts presumably stem ultimately from nonculpable ignorance of some sort. Then there are alternatives such as your person-based position, which I haven’t gotten around to really thinking about (I still need to reread that long email you sent awhile back and read a handful of articles before I feel comfortable making any claims about it).
Speaking of reading things, I did very well on this paper I wrote for a philosophy seminar. I remember feeling confused upon rereading it, thinking I got mixed up somewhere, maybe got tautological. But it has at least some merit and is relevant to your question. I’d appreciate your thoughts.
DG
I suppose I think the existence of a self-serving tendency in mistaken judgments undermines the idea of an “honest” mistake; don’t you?
I think the tendency of someone’s mistakes to be convenient is a counterexample to the putative principle that mistaken judgments are non-culpable (which I take to be a premise of Rosen’s view, though I am not that well-versed in his views).
Me
On the traditional notion of moral responsibility, if someone reasonably tried to be honest (non-self-serving) in making a moral judgment but ended up getting it wrong in a way that was self-serving, he’s not culpable. Rosen would argue that one isn’t culpable for the self-serving tendency because it ultimately stems from something non-culpable. It’s a straightforward, neat argument.
DG
That’s really more like the “basic argument” from the NYT. Rosen’s position is (depends on the claim that), to be morally blameworthy, you must correctly judge an action to be wrong and nonetheless undertake that action. That loses its force if you can be culpable for taking a “convenient” wrong moral judgment. Now Rosen would retreat to his weaker notion of skepticism -- he is not saying that moral responsibility is impossible, just that it’s very hard to confidently identify. But I think the “convenience” of a moral judgment can appear so powerfully that this is not availing.
But yeah you’re eliding Rosen’s position with the blunter form of skepticism sketched in the “basic argument,” probably because you find that argument very persuasive.
Me
I do find it persuasive, and I’m not sure about the subtlety you’re trying to get at. I take it you’re imagining someone who convinces himself of a certain moral position by either (i) somehow intentionally convincing himself of it because it’s self-serving (culpable on the traditional account), (ii) negligently coming to believe it (culpable, albeit less so, on the traditional account), or (iii) reasonably coming to believe it in good faith, though perhaps unconsciously disposed to believe it due to its self-serving nature (not culpable). Are you simply saying that (i) and (ii) are often easy to identify? If so, so what? This just pushes the problem back a step -- is the person really culpable for intentionally or negligently coming to believe the position?
I guess an underlying issue is how much metacognition we should expect of people when making moral judgments. This is, of course, a question that must be resolved by intuition to avoid infinite regress. But we can come up with an answer (e.g., a “reasonable” amount) and practically judge people.
I imagine most people whose moral judgments are both really off base and really self-serving don’t really believe the judgments or are really good at something like self-deception (for which they may or may not be culpable on the traditional account).
All this stuff makes me curious about all these neuroscience-based “models” of cognition that people are working on that really mess with concepts such as belief and intention. A lot of this stuff seems to come down to these seemingly irresolvable (at least with our current tools!) age-old debates, such as whether akrasia is possible, etc. I’m not sure we can get anywhere worthwhile if we start by assuming one side of these questions.
JB
This is a rather thorny problem, I remember discussing it in college. I think Rosen is persuasive and sophisticated on this issue, and basically lays it out in the right way, although I think I come down on the other side of the result.
It doesn’t seem like I have in any of the forwards an explanation of what level of subtlety DG thought you were missing. But what seems missing to me is the virtue-ethical (character trait) component of the problem, which you ignore in this response but mention later when you discuss tendency to self-serving self-deception.
So, assume culpable akrasia. I think it’s much easier to then apply blame to a pervasive, self-serving character trait developed and maintained over time.
Any individual bad act or bad belief or whatever, you can apply the honest mistake argument. But if these are read as blameworthy merely because they supervene on bad character, well I don’t think there are very many reasons why you could have self-serving self-deceptive bad character over the long term other than akrasia. Which is, by hypothesis, culpable.
I think about this in essentially statistical terms. For an individual bad act there’s only one trial, the probability of doing the bad act as an honest mistake even without akrasia is high compared to the probability of doing the bad act as result of akrasia. For the self-serving character trait there are many trials, the probability of maintaining the character trait without culpable akrasia falls to zero as the number of trials increases. Thus the self-serving character trait is culpable, even if you are very willing to give people the benefit of the doubt as to honest mistake (except maybe in children, who’ve had less chance to take responsibility for their character traits over time, fewer trials, thus less justification for attributing their bad acts to culpable A.)
I thought this point of view was right in college, since then I’ve changed my mind about some pretty foundational issues without necessarily following through all of the implications, but it still seems reasonable to me.
Me
Don’t think DG really spelled it out, but it seems like the position you're advocating.
You say: “I don’t think there are very many reasons why you could have self-serving self-deceptive bad character over the long term other than akrasia.” Hmm. I was assuming that once the initial self-serving self-deception “kicks in,” the agent doesn’t reflectively maintain or reinforce it with every judgment; rather, it changes the basis of his specific moral deliberations such that in adhering to it he thinks he’s doing the right thing. In other words, I was assuming at most one “instance” of akrasia -- the self-deceived agent is already deceived and therefore no longer akratic. Is this psychologically realistic? I’m not sure, but I think it’s close. I imagine successful self-deception doesn’t involve much metacognition about the fact! The upshot is that it would be misguided to blame someone for “maintaining” a self-serving moral system that he’s simply come to believe (i.e., I’m not sure how realistic your statistical “model” is).
There remains, of course, the question of how likely it is that akrasia is the basis for an agent coming to believe a moral system that happens to be self-serving. To what extent are people really capable of intentionally sculpting their honest moral beliefs so that they will end up serving themselves whenever they subsequently make good faith moral judgments? I guess this is where Rosen raises an eyebrow. I forget what he says about the psychology of akrasia, but I guess he doubts that people have so much intentional control. This is where I start to wonder about the whole model of straightforward intentional decision-making. How do we really form “foundational” moral beliefs/systems? To what extent to we reflect on them when “applying” them? Can neuroscience help us?
Anyway, I think you raise some provocative points, but I’m inclined to side with Rosen, perhaps simply because of the basic difficulties with conceptualizing akrasia (even though I know a discussion of the traditional account of moral blame must assume its possibility!).
JB
Look, I agree with you, DG and Rosen that it all comes down to your concept of akrasia. I tend to think, for Kantian reasons, that however we construct our concept of free will, it must be in such a way that validates moral responsibility. I.e. that validating moral responsibility is a basic criterion that an account of free will has to satisfy. I understand that it’s hard to reconcile culpable akrasia with determinism or other core concepts (this is what Critique of Pure Reason is about, right? Inasmuch as I understood it). So we could talk about what free will would look like such that it validates akrasia, I think it’s hard not to end up with something that looks rather like religion, but that’s another story.
The other side of the issue is the model of character. Basically the question is your model of “bad character”: is a “bad character” strongly persistent, such that once it kicks in it requires no further culpable actions, or is it not. I think this is actually two issues: First can you get by without considering the issue of whether you are a bad guy, and need to think things through. Second, given that you’ve considered the issue is it realistic to expect to to try to resculpt your character so that you’re not such a bad guy any more.
I think issue one is pretty easy and you sort of brush it over in the opposite direction in a really implausible way. It’s not like you can just, you know, develop a trait of consistent self-deception and then never consider it again, unless you live in total isolation. Culture prompts you quite a lot to question your values and think about integrity. I think this is actually basically what a lot of popular culture is for, and why people are interested in it. Hey, sometimes individuals prompt you, although I’ve come to learn that this is considered rude.
Issue two is harder but look: I don’t think you really believe that it’s impossible for people to resculpt their character. I think you at most really believe either that it’s possible, but sort of too expensive for us to reasonably expect more than a small number of people to do it. Note that this isn’t really a logical or metaethical objection: There’s nothing about the concepts of right and wrong or blaming which says that it has to be easy to do the right thing. But many people have the intuition that if a moral system is so harsh that it cannot be satisfied without extraordinary pain or difficulty or effort then it is not a “moral” system at all (I don’t have this intuition). I don’t know what this issue is called, I think of it as the problem of moral gravity (in the sense of weight. I think I’m thinking of Giles Corey).
Look, neuroscience could tell us that it’s not really possible for people to resculpt their character but I don’t really expect it do do so.
Another dimension which I haven’t addressed arises from moral uncertainty; “right action” or “right character” aren’t known and might not really be knowable for an individual which might make us suspicious of the idea of restructuring our character, or suspicious of people who restructure their character.
PS, I think I don’t believe that people have foundational moral beliefs or systems. Or rather I don’t think that people really rely on them very much when making private moral decisions - I think the function that moral systems serve is more a way of organizing public moral decision-making in society.
Me
Interesting ideas in your first paragraph; seem promising to me. I also more or less agree with your last four paragraphs. But I want to distinguish two things that you seem to mention together in paragraph 4: the requirements of morality and the requirements of blameworthiness. I share your intuition that a correct moral obligation need not be “sufficiently easy” to follow, only possible. But the fact that it’s likely possible (i.e., with the right education, training, effort, etc.) for most sane people with bad characters to restructure their characters doesn’t mean that we are necessarily entitled to blame them for having bad characters; justified blame requires a judgment that someone reasonably should have acted differently. Now that I think about it, this is simply another way of saying that blame depends on how much control and understanding we could reasonably expect of someone (e.g., we'd blame the choleric teenager less than, I don’t know, Lord Russell for the same offense), but the right thing to do doesn’t operate on the same sliding scale.
As for issue one (“can you [realistically] get by without considering the issue of whether you are a bad guy”), I think it comes down to the level at which one’s self-reflection about his moral judgments occurs. For a simplified example, imagine someone who thinks at the levels of (i) what moral “system” (basically, consequentialist or deontological algorithms and heuristics) should I adopt, and (ii) am I reasonably and honestly applying it to a given situation? (I know this isn’t super realistic, but I think anyone who tries to be morally “consistent” necessarily bifurcates his reasoning like this, even if his moral system is incomplete, semi-conscious, and somewhat shifty.) As I touched on in my previous emails, I doubt that much straightforward intentional reasoning is involved in (i); I think it’s largely shaped by temperament and intuition (which, in turn, shape which moral arguments -- essentially intuition pumps -- appeal to a person and shape his moral system). Moreover, people don’t seem to reflect on (i) all that much. So it’s hard for me to see where akrasia is likely to enter the process at the level of (i). Sure, I think it’s inevitable that some self-interest seeps in, and likely with it self-deception, but I doubt whether akrasia is involved in the very act of self-deceiving. Effective self-deception seems to rely on internal mental opacity. And, of course, once someone has truly deceived himself such that he thinks he’s honestly arrived at an acceptable moral system, one is no longer akratic in unreflectively maintaining it.
I see more room for akrasia at the level of (ii). I mean, I can’t help but consider myself akratic in some cases (occasionally eating factory-farm-produced meat, downloading pirated music): I believe I do certain morally bad things because I derive enjoyment from them and am not sufficiently troubled by their badness. But I wonder about other people. And I wonder what neuroscience could tell us about this. I want to reread what Rosen says, because I think this is where the rubber hits the road. I vaguely remember him saying that he doesn’t really perceive himself as akratic, which surprises me. Then again, I’m under the impression -- and I confess to deriving a feeling of superiority from this! -- that most people are much less honestly self-reflective, and more self-deceptive, than I. (Or maybe they’re just better people, though they probably have worse moral systems!)
Showing posts with label Dialogue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dialogue. Show all posts
December 29, 2010
July 22, 2008
A Dialogue on Public Responses to Inequality
Me
How conservative are you?
Dave
I think income redistribution is (largely but not completely) wrong. I think the problems of sexism against women and racism against people who aren't white and Jewish are generally very overstated, or at least overstated by vocal political minorities who can overcome indifferent majorities, and government and institutional policies reflect this (family law, much affirmative action, contracting quotas, "wage gap" advocacy, etc.). I think legal color-blindness generally minimizes errors relative to color-consciousness. I think we have too much rather than too little economic protectionism and favoritism.
I do believe in principle that details matter (duh!), but many of my disagreements with median liberal opinion are stark enough that small differences in the specifics either of the policies or the world wouldn't make a difference.
Me
I have similar instincts, but I'm not confident enough in my knowledge of even the big picture (e.g., how bad these -isms are) to take a general stand.
What do you think we should we do about kids who are born poor and culturally disadvantaged?
Dave
I think I find "equality of opportunity" appealing. I think the battle for good public education is worth fighting. I especially like the class of arguments for good public schooling that emphasize the divergent interests of parent and child; I think these form a strong libertarian case for public schooling (I don't know if anyone has bothered to put it that way).
That's only a partial answer, though, because (arguably) it's possible for kids to be irredeemably fucked by their home lives (etc.), or for public schooling to fail them by being really shitty. I think I'm for state support for the very worst off, but the more provocative question is whether (and if not why not?) this same logic operates over the whole spectrum of different starting positions. As between myself and Dave^1, an otherwise-identical version of myself whose parents owned only 10% as many books, are differences in outcomes unfair? Should they be remedied by the state? It does seem unfair. But I think it's hard to systematically disentangle differences that are unfair from those that are fair.
The question of which differences in starting position are unequal opportunities is at least somewhat tricky. What about Dave^2, an otherwise-identical version of myself who's (even) lazier(!) than I am? I don't think Dave^2 deserves the same outcomes as I do, though this conclusion doesn't feel like it has a utilitarian logic (one could be devised; I'm not sure how I feel about this). And Dave^3, an otherwise-identical version of myself who's significantly dumber than I am -- are differences between his outcomes and mine unjust, at least insofar as he'd prefer to be closer to my outcomes? Some would say yes, some would say no, I think. I would summarize differences like those between Dave^2 and myself as differences in character (that does sound conservative!). I guess my anti-redistribution position grows largely out of the feeling that differences in outcome that correspond to differences in character are fair, and that those differences account for a large share of observed differences in outcome.
PS notwithstanding all the grappling above, I think it's easy to reach the conclusion that even the massively underprivileged should not be admitted to Amherst College, unless they demonstrate levels of proficiency similar to those required for the median student. The median student ain't even that bright.
PPS (Why the median student? I sorta figured the bottom of the class is crowded with special cases right now, and so not exemplary of good admissions standards.)
Me
I'm also committed to equality of opportunity; I suspect (hope) that the vast majority of people are and that disagreements are really about what meat to put on the concept's bones. The issue isn't ensuring equality but rather how much inequality is optimal (it's okay if only some kids get violin lessons).
I wish there were a good way of publicly addressing bad home lives/bad socialization. It seems that good public education and maybe a national propaganda campaign (to put it cynically) are the best we could do.
My off-the-cuff answer to your "more provocative question" is that we simply have to make a value judgment about where to make the trade-off between equity and efficiency -- hence common arguments in favor of a "right" to (a certain amount of, but no more) education, food, etc. It's also important to keep in mind that redistribution does not necessarily entail pie shrinkage; it provides social benefits such as crime control and the productivity of disadvantaged achievers who would otherwise have failed (especially if public funds are skewed towards promoting particularly productive achievement such as engineering degrees). Of course, there are borderline cases, but Dave^1 clearly has enough opportunity such that publicly providing for him would not be in the optimal basket of public expenditure; we'd be eating the harms of socialism at that point. It's also true that some people who don't have enough opportunity have character defects that render publicly lifting them up unproductive ex post, but that's a price that we've got to pay.
Given inadequate public assistance for the disadvantaged, institutions face the problem of identifying who would succeed if given the opportunity, and whether providing the opportunity would be worth it. This is of course difficult and depends on a given institution's values/purpose. This would be easier and largely obviated if there were effective public assistance from day one.
What about the simple fact that Dave^2 hasn't demonstrated as much proficiency as you but could have (so what if it would have been really hard -- see my discussion with Tarun on moral culpability)? His worse outcome encourages people to work hard and follows from allowing institutions to select for proficiency -- seems like good utilitarian logic. I don't get the point of Dave^3. Okay, he lost the genetic lottery. But his outcome is fair if he had enough of a chance to be all that he could be.
As for Amherst, I think underprivileged students should be given a bit of a leg up, especially if there are factors that suggest that they would readily thrive in a land of opportunity (obvious example: someone who did worse in high school just because she had to work two jobs, assuming this cause can be isolated). (Perhaps your [academically] median student point sufficiently accounts for this, since the median is lowered by athletic admitees and the like.) But I agree that Amherst is not the place for significantly unprepared applicants, no matter how unfair their unpreparedness. It's bad for the range of academic ability among students at an elite educational institution to be too big.
Dave
I don't think you're engaging the Dumb Dave^3 hypo. Your "okay, he lost the genetic lottery" assumes the conclusion at "okay." Why is it fair for someone to suffer worse outcomes for losing the genetic lottery? (Especially if it's not fair for someone to suffer worse outcomes for losing the social lottery?) Is this true for any case of losing the genetic lottery? You offer a utilitarian rationalization for this in the Dave^2 hypo (even if laziness is not necessarily genetic), but it's a justification that's specific to laziness / work ethic and doesn't cover the gamut of genetic lottery outcomes.
I think your response to the Lazy Dave^2 hypo suffers from a similar infirmity.
If I may free-associate in the guise of summarizing, I think you're relying heavily on unexamined notions of "could have": It's fair for society to treat Lazy Dave^2 worse because he "could have" worked harder; what does that mean? This can probably be boiled down to a pure utilitarian point, but is that what you meant? I think if you look closely at these "could have" intuitions, you'll find yourself at the notion of "character" I outline above, and the rough conclusion that it's okay to allow differences in outcome when they are explained by differences in character.
Of course, I broadly agree with your actual social-policy suggestions.
Anyway, gotta run, more later.
PS Of course, as Kaplow & Shavell show in their tautological book, giving any concern to "fairness" that's not completely anchored in utilitarianism fails to maximize utility. That compels one of just a few ways of resolving the interplay between fairness and utility here; I'm not sure which I choose.
PPS another class of redistribution I think I disapprove: Devoted Dave^4 graduates law school and decides to do "public interest" working, earning total pre-tax income of well under what Dave will make (inshallah); Devoted Dave^4 is subsidized by the government at the expense of Dave.
Me
I think you're needlessly complicating things. I agree with your "rough conclusion;" it seems to follow from the concepts of personal responsibility and equality of opportunity. Let me try to clear up my position.
Genetics are a built-in constraint (as of now) on opportunity; social environment is not. Dave^3 shouldn't starve if he's too dumb to earn a living, but it's okay if his stupidity keeps his standard of living below yours. True, this is no more "fair" than socially-induced inequality, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that the latter kind of inequality can be remedied to some extent; we can give Dave^3 books, but we can't up his INT.
To put it differently, everyone should be guaranteed a basic quality of life, regardless of opportunity concerns. (We have to assume that people who seem capable of providing themselves with a basic quality of life but refuse to either can't, are irrational, or both, not to mention the externalities they create.) This ensures that the losers of life's lotteries don't lose too badly (fairness rationale, though not necessarily pie-shrinking). Then we should consider public assistance to create equality of opportunity (equity rationale, no conceptual conflict with efficiency). Social lottery losers (such as the poor) are obviously a better target than genetic lottery losers (such as the dumb) because we can help them reach their potential; we can actually redress their inequality and possibly get a good return on our investment.
Regarding Dave^4, I presume you're okay with the "subsidization" resulting from progressive taxation. That said, I share your anti-subsidy inclination, but I worry about market failures. By the way, do you think donations to non-profit organizations should be tax deductible? (What if we could perfectly and costlessly identify which organizations serve the "public interest?") Might this policy promote efficiency by avoiding the transactions costs of government redistribution? (Or did I stop making sense?)
To be continued in the comments...
How conservative are you?
Dave
I think income redistribution is (largely but not completely) wrong. I think the problems of sexism against women and racism against people who aren't white and Jewish are generally very overstated, or at least overstated by vocal political minorities who can overcome indifferent majorities, and government and institutional policies reflect this (family law, much affirmative action, contracting quotas, "wage gap" advocacy, etc.). I think legal color-blindness generally minimizes errors relative to color-consciousness. I think we have too much rather than too little economic protectionism and favoritism.
I do believe in principle that details matter (duh!), but many of my disagreements with median liberal opinion are stark enough that small differences in the specifics either of the policies or the world wouldn't make a difference.
Me
I have similar instincts, but I'm not confident enough in my knowledge of even the big picture (e.g., how bad these -isms are) to take a general stand.
What do you think we should we do about kids who are born poor and culturally disadvantaged?
Dave
I think I find "equality of opportunity" appealing. I think the battle for good public education is worth fighting. I especially like the class of arguments for good public schooling that emphasize the divergent interests of parent and child; I think these form a strong libertarian case for public schooling (I don't know if anyone has bothered to put it that way).
That's only a partial answer, though, because (arguably) it's possible for kids to be irredeemably fucked by their home lives (etc.), or for public schooling to fail them by being really shitty. I think I'm for state support for the very worst off, but the more provocative question is whether (and if not why not?) this same logic operates over the whole spectrum of different starting positions. As between myself and Dave^1, an otherwise-identical version of myself whose parents owned only 10% as many books, are differences in outcomes unfair? Should they be remedied by the state? It does seem unfair. But I think it's hard to systematically disentangle differences that are unfair from those that are fair.
The question of which differences in starting position are unequal opportunities is at least somewhat tricky. What about Dave^2, an otherwise-identical version of myself who's (even) lazier(!) than I am? I don't think Dave^2 deserves the same outcomes as I do, though this conclusion doesn't feel like it has a utilitarian logic (one could be devised; I'm not sure how I feel about this). And Dave^3, an otherwise-identical version of myself who's significantly dumber than I am -- are differences between his outcomes and mine unjust, at least insofar as he'd prefer to be closer to my outcomes? Some would say yes, some would say no, I think. I would summarize differences like those between Dave^2 and myself as differences in character (that does sound conservative!). I guess my anti-redistribution position grows largely out of the feeling that differences in outcome that correspond to differences in character are fair, and that those differences account for a large share of observed differences in outcome.
PS notwithstanding all the grappling above, I think it's easy to reach the conclusion that even the massively underprivileged should not be admitted to Amherst College, unless they demonstrate levels of proficiency similar to those required for the median student. The median student ain't even that bright.
PPS (Why the median student? I sorta figured the bottom of the class is crowded with special cases right now, and so not exemplary of good admissions standards.)
Me
I'm also committed to equality of opportunity; I suspect (hope) that the vast majority of people are and that disagreements are really about what meat to put on the concept's bones. The issue isn't ensuring equality but rather how much inequality is optimal (it's okay if only some kids get violin lessons).
I wish there were a good way of publicly addressing bad home lives/bad socialization. It seems that good public education and maybe a national propaganda campaign (to put it cynically) are the best we could do.
My off-the-cuff answer to your "more provocative question" is that we simply have to make a value judgment about where to make the trade-off between equity and efficiency -- hence common arguments in favor of a "right" to (a certain amount of, but no more) education, food, etc. It's also important to keep in mind that redistribution does not necessarily entail pie shrinkage; it provides social benefits such as crime control and the productivity of disadvantaged achievers who would otherwise have failed (especially if public funds are skewed towards promoting particularly productive achievement such as engineering degrees). Of course, there are borderline cases, but Dave^1 clearly has enough opportunity such that publicly providing for him would not be in the optimal basket of public expenditure; we'd be eating the harms of socialism at that point. It's also true that some people who don't have enough opportunity have character defects that render publicly lifting them up unproductive ex post, but that's a price that we've got to pay.
Given inadequate public assistance for the disadvantaged, institutions face the problem of identifying who would succeed if given the opportunity, and whether providing the opportunity would be worth it. This is of course difficult and depends on a given institution's values/purpose. This would be easier and largely obviated if there were effective public assistance from day one.
What about the simple fact that Dave^2 hasn't demonstrated as much proficiency as you but could have (so what if it would have been really hard -- see my discussion with Tarun on moral culpability)? His worse outcome encourages people to work hard and follows from allowing institutions to select for proficiency -- seems like good utilitarian logic. I don't get the point of Dave^3. Okay, he lost the genetic lottery. But his outcome is fair if he had enough of a chance to be all that he could be.
As for Amherst, I think underprivileged students should be given a bit of a leg up, especially if there are factors that suggest that they would readily thrive in a land of opportunity (obvious example: someone who did worse in high school just because she had to work two jobs, assuming this cause can be isolated). (Perhaps your [academically] median student point sufficiently accounts for this, since the median is lowered by athletic admitees and the like.) But I agree that Amherst is not the place for significantly unprepared applicants, no matter how unfair their unpreparedness. It's bad for the range of academic ability among students at an elite educational institution to be too big.
Dave
I'm in a bit of a hurry and don't have time to reply fully. Here are some disjointed thoughts:
I don't think you're engaging the Dumb Dave^3 hypo. Your "okay, he lost the genetic lottery" assumes the conclusion at "okay." Why is it fair for someone to suffer worse outcomes for losing the genetic lottery? (Especially if it's not fair for someone to suffer worse outcomes for losing the social lottery?) Is this true for any case of losing the genetic lottery? You offer a utilitarian rationalization for this in the Dave^2 hypo (even if laziness is not necessarily genetic), but it's a justification that's specific to laziness / work ethic and doesn't cover the gamut of genetic lottery outcomes.
I think your response to the Lazy Dave^2 hypo suffers from a similar infirmity.
If I may free-associate in the guise of summarizing, I think you're relying heavily on unexamined notions of "could have": It's fair for society to treat Lazy Dave^2 worse because he "could have" worked harder; what does that mean? This can probably be boiled down to a pure utilitarian point, but is that what you meant? I think if you look closely at these "could have" intuitions, you'll find yourself at the notion of "character" I outline above, and the rough conclusion that it's okay to allow differences in outcome when they are explained by differences in character.
Of course, I broadly agree with your actual social-policy suggestions.
Anyway, gotta run, more later.
PS Of course, as Kaplow & Shavell show in their tautological book, giving any concern to "fairness" that's not completely anchored in utilitarianism fails to maximize utility. That compels one of just a few ways of resolving the interplay between fairness and utility here; I'm not sure which I choose.
PPS another class of redistribution I think I disapprove: Devoted Dave^4 graduates law school and decides to do "public interest" working, earning total pre-tax income of well under what Dave will make (inshallah); Devoted Dave^4 is subsidized by the government at the expense of Dave.
Me
I think you're needlessly complicating things. I agree with your "rough conclusion;" it seems to follow from the concepts of personal responsibility and equality of opportunity. Let me try to clear up my position.
Genetics are a built-in constraint (as of now) on opportunity; social environment is not. Dave^3 shouldn't starve if he's too dumb to earn a living, but it's okay if his stupidity keeps his standard of living below yours. True, this is no more "fair" than socially-induced inequality, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that the latter kind of inequality can be remedied to some extent; we can give Dave^3 books, but we can't up his INT.
To put it differently, everyone should be guaranteed a basic quality of life, regardless of opportunity concerns. (We have to assume that people who seem capable of providing themselves with a basic quality of life but refuse to either can't, are irrational, or both, not to mention the externalities they create.) This ensures that the losers of life's lotteries don't lose too badly (fairness rationale, though not necessarily pie-shrinking). Then we should consider public assistance to create equality of opportunity (equity rationale, no conceptual conflict with efficiency). Social lottery losers (such as the poor) are obviously a better target than genetic lottery losers (such as the dumb) because we can help them reach their potential; we can actually redress their inequality and possibly get a good return on our investment.
Regarding Dave^4, I presume you're okay with the "subsidization" resulting from progressive taxation. That said, I share your anti-subsidy inclination, but I worry about market failures. By the way, do you think donations to non-profit organizations should be tax deductible? (What if we could perfectly and costlessly identify which organizations serve the "public interest?") Might this policy promote efficiency by avoiding the transactions costs of government redistribution? (Or did I stop making sense?)
To be continued in the comments...
July 8, 2008
A Dialogue on Moral Psychology
Preface
This hopefully ongoing conversation stems from my previous post about the Stanford Prison Experiment. Of course, I welcome other participants.
Tarun
There's a fairly interesting documentary on the experiment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o0Nx31yicY
There are people who think situationist psychology should lead us to revise our notion of moral responsibility. I'd like to think the soldiers in Abu Ghraib did what they did because they were more racist and/or more callous than me, but attributing the difference in action (or in my case, imagined action, I guess) to a difference in character rather than a difference in context is a mistake. The best predictor of moral behavior is situation rather than character. We assume the Abu Ghraib behavior is aberrant without understanding that the context in which they are placed fundamentally distorts practical reasoning. We assume that soldiers in a war-zone or in the Stanford Prison Experiment are more or less moral agents like us (their moral cognitive faculties operate more or less like ours) and on that basis judge their behavior pathological and therefore blameworthy. But the presumption is wrong - our cognitive faculties are significantly impacted by situational factors. We have reason to think that in a prison-like setting the behavior of the SPE subjects or the Abu Ghraib jailers is, from a psychological perspective, normal moral functioning.
I have a feeling that if we accept situationist claims, these kinds of exculpations are not going be restricted to extreme situations like war-zones. After all, finding a dime in a phone booth is apparently sufficient to produce a significant difference in moral behavior. If such apparently insignificant contextual factors have a quantifiable effect on our moral cognition, then the argument from the last paragraph should lead us to a radical skepticism about our folk theories of moral motivation and consequently moral responsibility. But then we already knew folk psychology is bullshit, right? Especially folk moral psychology.
Me
It's left-coast relativism like this that's destroying America! Seriously, though, not everyone goes apeshit in evilgenic situations. The issue of course is what we can reasonably expect of people. I'll focus on Abu Ghraib because the prison experiment was distorted by roleplaying (for those of you who haven't seen the documentary, one of the guards styled himself after a particularly sadistic guard in Cool Hand Luke in order to see, according to him, how much verbal abuse people would put up with; I wouldn't rule out shits and giggles). The issue of reasonable expectations is complicated by personal differences. If it's systemically viable, perhaps we should account for factors such as education, temperament, and life experiences, as we do age, when setting moral baselines. Shouldn't someone familiar with Milgram, Zimbardo, and moral psychology ideally be held to a higher standard than someone without a college education (leaving aside any perverse incentives that may result)? "Normal moral functioning" depends significantly on non-situational factors. Given my (perception of my) psychology, I can't imagine that I should be excused for committing atrocities akin to those in Abu Ghraib. Most of the soldiers apparently didn't cross the line, and I doubt most of them exhibited superhuman willpower; they probably just weren't as racist and/or callous as the abusers. Naturally this raises the question of how responsible people are for being callous or racist, but we have to put our foot down somewhere; we can't limit moral blame to the Jeffrey Skillings of the world and regard other wrongdoers as, to some extent, sociopathic. Essentially the problem seems to come down to what fictional account of moral responsibility the law should embrace, given that we can't excuse everyone to the extent that his psychology makes it hard for him to follow the law. I recall that Gideon Rosen had some persuasive things to say about the limitations of real moral culpability. Maybe I'll read this more recent paper of his.
Perhaps this is the same kind of arrogance that any of the participants in these experiments would have exhibited. But I stand by it. Just don't testify at my war crimes trial.
BTW, what's the story with the phone booth example?
Tarun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_character#Experiments
"In one experiment that was done, the moral character of a person was based on whether or not a person had found a dime in a public phone booth. The findings were that 87% of subjects who found a dime in a phone booth helped somebody in need, while only 4% of those who did not find a dime helped."
This hopefully ongoing conversation stems from my previous post about the Stanford Prison Experiment. Of course, I welcome other participants.
Tarun
There's a fairly interesting documentary on the experiment: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
There are people who think situationist psychology should lead us to revise our notion of moral responsibility. I'd like to think the soldiers in Abu Ghraib did what they did because they were more racist and/or more callous than me, but attributing the difference in action (or in my case, imagined action, I guess) to a difference in character rather than a difference in context is a mistake. The best predictor of moral behavior is situation rather than character. We assume the Abu Ghraib behavior is aberrant without understanding that the context in which they are placed fundamentally distorts practical reasoning. We assume that soldiers in a war-zone or in the Stanford Prison Experiment are more or less moral agents like us (their moral cognitive faculties operate more or less like ours) and on that basis judge their behavior pathological and therefore blameworthy. But the presumption is wrong - our cognitive faculties are significantly impacted by situational factors. We have reason to think that in a prison-like setting the behavior of the SPE subjects or the Abu Ghraib jailers is, from a psychological perspective, normal moral functioning.
I have a feeling that if we accept situationist claims, these kinds of exculpations are not going be restricted to extreme situations like war-zones. After all, finding a dime in a phone booth is apparently sufficient to produce a significant difference in moral behavior. If such apparently insignificant contextual factors have a quantifiable effect on our moral cognition, then the argument from the last paragraph should lead us to a radical skepticism about our folk theories of moral motivation and consequently moral responsibility. But then we already knew folk psychology is bullshit, right? Especially folk moral psychology.
Me
It's left-coast relativism like this that's destroying America! Seriously, though, not everyone goes apeshit in evilgenic situations. The issue of course is what we can reasonably expect of people. I'll focus on Abu Ghraib because the prison experiment was distorted by roleplaying (for those of you who haven't seen the documentary, one of the guards styled himself after a particularly sadistic guard in Cool Hand Luke in order to see, according to him, how much verbal abuse people would put up with; I wouldn't rule out shits and giggles). The issue of reasonable expectations is complicated by personal differences. If it's systemically viable, perhaps we should account for factors such as education, temperament, and life experiences, as we do age, when setting moral baselines. Shouldn't someone familiar with Milgram, Zimbardo, and moral psychology ideally be held to a higher standard than someone without a college education (leaving aside any perverse incentives that may result)? "Normal moral functioning" depends significantly on non-situational factors. Given my (perception of my) psychology, I can't imagine that I should be excused for committing atrocities akin to those in Abu Ghraib. Most of the soldiers apparently didn't cross the line, and I doubt most of them exhibited superhuman willpower; they probably just weren't as racist and/or callous as the abusers. Naturally this raises the question of how responsible people are for being callous or racist, but we have to put our foot down somewhere; we can't limit moral blame to the Jeffrey Skillings of the world and regard other wrongdoers as, to some extent, sociopathic. Essentially the problem seems to come down to what fictional account of moral responsibility the law should embrace, given that we can't excuse everyone to the extent that his psychology makes it hard for him to follow the law. I recall that Gideon Rosen had some persuasive things to say about the limitations of real moral culpability. Maybe I'll read this more recent paper of his.
Perhaps this is the same kind of arrogance that any of the participants in these experiments would have exhibited. But I stand by it. Just don't testify at my war crimes trial.
BTW, what's the story with the phone booth example?
Tarun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
"In one experiment that was done, the moral character of a person was based on whether or not a person had found a dime in a public phone booth. The findings were that 87% of subjects who found a dime in a phone booth helped somebody in need, while only 4% of those who did not find a dime helped."
February 20, 2008
A Dialogue on Mandatory Abortion
Preface
This potentially ongoing exchange grew out of an earlier post in which I offhandedly defended the horrible-sounding practice of mandatory abortion (in the case of even more horrible, and incurable, diseases and conditions, that is).
Dialogue
Anonymous
I had a question or two about your stance on mandatory abortions. If all babies with a certain disease (for example, Tay-Sachs) are aborted, doesn't that completely destroy the incentive and ability to find a cure for that disease? Forget drug trials for that disease. Also, let's say that there's a 2% chance that the disease will not kill the person whom it afflicts, and a 98% chance that it will result in a terrible horrible death. Is that a high enough probability to require abortion? If so, isn't that probability still lower than what the judicial system should require for imposing non-lethal punishment upon a criminal defendant?
Me
It seems clear that aborting everyone with a given incurable disease would almost certainly prevent a cure. But I don't think it's worth it in certain cases. Many people would suffer and die in the costly search for a cure. On the other hand, many families would have to get abortions. Certainly the latter is a painful process - but not necessarily more painful overall than the search for a cure. I think it depends a lot on the specifics.
I'm not sure about the point of your criminal punishment analogy. In my view, a mandatory abortion requirement would depend on the expected value of a life with a given disease or condition. It would only apply in extreme cases and at the discretion of state-appointed experts who reviewed the findings of the primary ob/gyn doctors (who would be obligated to report certain diseases and conditions that met a some high standard). I'm not sure what, if any, exceptions would apply. I'm inclined to think that ideally there would be none - what could justify creating a life with something along the lines of infantile Tay-Sachs? I'm also realizing that it would be quite difficult to craft a mandatory abortion requirement, aside from the obvious objections of certain groups of people. Anyway, my response to your punishment analogy is that the relative harms of false positives and false negatives are different in the punishment and mandatory abortion contexts. I think it's worse to convict an innocent person than to mandate the abortion of a fetus that wouldn't have led a sufficiently bad life. And I think it's often more harmful to allow the birth of a baby with a sufficiently bad disease or condition than it is to let a guilty person go free. Note also that the mandatory abortion provision would only apply when a test indicates that the fetus has a disease or condition; perhaps the provision should only rely on tests that are virtually flawless. Then the only question is the expected value of life with the disease or condition. Now that I think about it, the implication of my position - which I'm fine with - is mandatory euthanasia for the incompetent in some cases (e.g., infanticide as an alternative to mandatory abortion when no sufficiently reliable prenatal test is available). To me the real problems are practical; this would be some statute to draft.
Anonymous
You're right that people would die painful deaths while humanity searches for a cure. But once a cure is found, then most -- if not all -- of the people with that disease henceforth will be able to lead full and, I assume, relatively painless lives. That condition will last forever, meaning that potentially countless lives will be saved by the cure. I agree that you have to consider the expected value of a life, and that a horrifically painful life will have quite a negative expected value. But if you really want to aggregate expected values here, don't you think that the value added by a cure, multiplied repeatedly for as long as mankind exists and uses that cure, would be quite large, and would probably result in a net positive value? I suppose you can make the argument that you're then subjecting the disease-afflicted children, who are born before a cure is found, to immeasurable suffering for the sake of speculative children in the future. And perhaps you can't add expected values of different people together. I haven't taken the time to think about my intuitions on this, but to me, something feels wrong about simply acquiescing to a disease instead of trying to find a way to cure it. Of course, this assumes that a cure can be discovered at all, let alone in the reasonably near future. In that respect, you're correct that it depends a lot on the specifics.
I'm going to leave alone your response to my criminal punishment analogy. Not only was your response effective, but also all this talk about Tay-Sachs and mandatory abortion....
Me
I take issue with the way in which you're valuing the cure. You implicitly assume that the alternative to the cure is countless afflicted people over time. But mandatory abortion/infanticide would prevent these people from coming into being. Thus the relevant cost (broadly speaking) is the cost of the mandatory procedure, which is certainly significant but pales in comparison to innumerable cases of suffering and death. It may be better to abort a diseased fetus even if a cure is readily available, because the cost of not having a child or of conceiving another child may be lower than the cost of treating the child (especially if treatment is risky or limited). In short, a cure doesn't necessarily have net positive value in the case of diseases that make lives not worth living and can be detected before or at birth.
I can see why one would view abortion as a form of acquiescence, but that's a matter of perspective, not a normative point. Besides, there's no inherent value to "fighting." It may feel better (more noble or whatnot), but does it do the most good?
I also want to note the undesirable implications of treating the values of lives as incommensurable. This may be attractive, but the alternative to measurement, however flawed, is no rational basis for decision-making. Consider environmental goods, such as the existence of bonobos, for example. Some may consider them "priceless," but this is belied by these people's willingness to trade them off for other goods. The real issue is valuation. (Should it be based on willingness to pay? Willingness to accept? Something else? How, if at all, can differential levels of wealth be accounted for?)
This potentially ongoing exchange grew out of an earlier post in which I offhandedly defended the horrible-sounding practice of mandatory abortion (in the case of even more horrible, and incurable, diseases and conditions, that is).
Dialogue
Anonymous
I had a question or two about your stance on mandatory abortions. If all babies with a certain disease (for example, Tay-Sachs) are aborted, doesn't that completely destroy the incentive and ability to find a cure for that disease? Forget drug trials for that disease. Also, let's say that there's a 2% chance that the disease will not kill the person whom it afflicts, and a 98% chance that it will result in a terrible horrible death. Is that a high enough probability to require abortion? If so, isn't that probability still lower than what the judicial system should require for imposing non-lethal punishment upon a criminal defendant?
Me
It seems clear that aborting everyone with a given incurable disease would almost certainly prevent a cure. But I don't think it's worth it in certain cases. Many people would suffer and die in the costly search for a cure. On the other hand, many families would have to get abortions. Certainly the latter is a painful process - but not necessarily more painful overall than the search for a cure. I think it depends a lot on the specifics.
I'm not sure about the point of your criminal punishment analogy. In my view, a mandatory abortion requirement would depend on the expected value of a life with a given disease or condition. It would only apply in extreme cases and at the discretion of state-appointed experts who reviewed the findings of the primary ob/gyn doctors (who would be obligated to report certain diseases and conditions that met a some high standard). I'm not sure what, if any, exceptions would apply. I'm inclined to think that ideally there would be none - what could justify creating a life with something along the lines of infantile Tay-Sachs? I'm also realizing that it would be quite difficult to craft a mandatory abortion requirement, aside from the obvious objections of certain groups of people. Anyway, my response to your punishment analogy is that the relative harms of false positives and false negatives are different in the punishment and mandatory abortion contexts. I think it's worse to convict an innocent person than to mandate the abortion of a fetus that wouldn't have led a sufficiently bad life. And I think it's often more harmful to allow the birth of a baby with a sufficiently bad disease or condition than it is to let a guilty person go free. Note also that the mandatory abortion provision would only apply when a test indicates that the fetus has a disease or condition; perhaps the provision should only rely on tests that are virtually flawless. Then the only question is the expected value of life with the disease or condition. Now that I think about it, the implication of my position - which I'm fine with - is mandatory euthanasia for the incompetent in some cases (e.g., infanticide as an alternative to mandatory abortion when no sufficiently reliable prenatal test is available). To me the real problems are practical; this would be some statute to draft.
Anonymous
You're right that people would die painful deaths while humanity searches for a cure. But once a cure is found, then most -- if not all -- of the people with that disease henceforth will be able to lead full and, I assume, relatively painless lives. That condition will last forever, meaning that potentially countless lives will be saved by the cure. I agree that you have to consider the expected value of a life, and that a horrifically painful life will have quite a negative expected value. But if you really want to aggregate expected values here, don't you think that the value added by a cure, multiplied repeatedly for as long as mankind exists and uses that cure, would be quite large, and would probably result in a net positive value? I suppose you can make the argument that you're then subjecting the disease-afflicted children, who are born before a cure is found, to immeasurable suffering for the sake of speculative children in the future. And perhaps you can't add expected values of different people together. I haven't taken the time to think about my intuitions on this, but to me, something feels wrong about simply acquiescing to a disease instead of trying to find a way to cure it. Of course, this assumes that a cure can be discovered at all, let alone in the reasonably near future. In that respect, you're correct that it depends a lot on the specifics.
I'm going to leave alone your response to my criminal punishment analogy. Not only was your response effective, but also all this talk about Tay-Sachs and mandatory abortion....
Me
I take issue with the way in which you're valuing the cure. You implicitly assume that the alternative to the cure is countless afflicted people over time. But mandatory abortion/infanticide would prevent these people from coming into being. Thus the relevant cost (broadly speaking) is the cost of the mandatory procedure, which is certainly significant but pales in comparison to innumerable cases of suffering and death. It may be better to abort a diseased fetus even if a cure is readily available, because the cost of not having a child or of conceiving another child may be lower than the cost of treating the child (especially if treatment is risky or limited). In short, a cure doesn't necessarily have net positive value in the case of diseases that make lives not worth living and can be detected before or at birth.
I can see why one would view abortion as a form of acquiescence, but that's a matter of perspective, not a normative point. Besides, there's no inherent value to "fighting." It may feel better (more noble or whatnot), but does it do the most good?
I also want to note the undesirable implications of treating the values of lives as incommensurable. This may be attractive, but the alternative to measurement, however flawed, is no rational basis for decision-making. Consider environmental goods, such as the existence of bonobos, for example. Some may consider them "priceless," but this is belied by these people's willingness to trade them off for other goods. The real issue is valuation. (Should it be based on willingness to pay? Willingness to accept? Something else? How, if at all, can differential levels of wealth be accounted for?)
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