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Response to Thought Experiment 97: Moral Luck

6/16/2017

45 Comments

 
Picture
Come ooonnn, good. Daddy needs a new get out of jail card.
Before I introduce this week's thought experiment, I thought it would be helpful to consider the common Japanese saying, "All is Saiou's Horse." It's a saying that's based on an ancient Chinese parable about...

"...an old man whose horse runs away. His neighbors agree this is very bad, and Saiou says to wait and see. The next day the horse comes back with another horse. This is good, everyone agrees. Saiou says wait and see. His son, riding the new horse, falls and breaks his leg. This is bad, everyone agrees. Saiou says to wait and see. The army comes through forcibly conscripting young men, but does not take Saiou's son because of his broken leg."

The meaning of this is that "the ways of heaven are inscrutable; fortune is unpredictable and changeable." This may seem obvious when presented in this way, but if that's really true, then how can consequentialist moral philosophers ever decide they have waited long enough and considered widely enough to know for certain whether an action is "good" or "bad"? In fact, they probably cannot. What then to make of the following thought experiment?

--------------------------------------------------
     Mette looked into the eyes of her estranged husband, but could find no flicker of remorse.
     "You tell me you want us back," she said to him. "But how can we do that when you won't even admit that you did the wrong thing when you left me and the children?"
     "Because in my heart I don't think I did wrong, and I don't want to lie to you," explained Paul. "I left because I needed to get away to follow my muse. I went in the name of art. Don't you remember when we used to talk about Gauguin and how he had to do the same? You always said he had done a hard thing, but not a wrong one."
     "But you are no Gauguin," sighed Mette. "That's why you're back. You admit you failed."
     "Did Gauguin know he would succeed when he left his wife? No one can know such a thing. If he was in the right, then so was I."
     "No," said Mette. "His gamble paid off, and so he turned out to be right. Yours didn't, and so you turned out to be wrong."
     "His gamble?" replied Paul. "Are you saying luck can make the difference between right and wrong?"
     Mette thought for a few moments. "Yes. I suppose I am."

Source: The eponymous essay from Moral Luck by Bernard Williams, 1981.

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 289.
---------------------------------------------------

I suspect that Gauguin probably had more reasons than Paul did to expect that his bet on himself to become a successful artist would pay off, but we really don't know that for a fact. Either way, wouldn't Paul and Mette have discussed this when Paul first made his decision to leave the family? If not, they certainly should have. And if they did, then Paul presumably did the best that he could under the circumstances he was in. Otherwise, Mette wouldn't even be talking to him now. If such simple conversations at the moment of leaving could have solved this issue right from the get go, why is this thought experiment considered a problem at all?

As stated in the Stanford Encyclopedia's introduction to the problem of Moral Luck, Bernard Williams said, “when I first introduced the expression moral luck, I expected to suggest an oxymoron." Traditionally, people are committed to the general principle that we can only be judged morally on factors that are under our control. But in countless particular cases, "we morally assess agents for things that depend on factors that are not in their control. And making the situation still more problematic is the fact that a very natural line of reasoning suggests that it is impossible to morally assess anyone for anything if we adhere to [this principle of control]."

To help illustrate this further, consider another common example that is often used to discuss the extent of this problem of moral luck—that of a traffic accident. Imagine the following scenario:

"There are two people driving cars, Driver A, and Driver B. They are alike in every way. Driver A is driving down a road, and, in a moment of inattention, runs a red light as a child is crossing the street. Driver A slams the brakes, swerves, in short does everything to try to avoid hitting the child – alas, the car hits and kills the child. Driver B, in the meantime, also runs a red light but, since no one is crossing, gets a traffic ticket but nothing more. ... The only disparity is that in the case of Driver A, an external uncontrollable event occurred, whereas it did not in the case of Driver B."

So Driver A gets caught and punished severely, while Driver B faces nothing more than a fine. Is that fair? We might say that the circumstances can't be known to be exactly the same since Driver B might still have managed to avoid the child, but we could rule this quibble out at least theoretically for the purposes of thought experiments. The point, however, is not to say that all drivers like Driver B should be rounded up and given manslaughter charges—we just couldn't prove they really deserved it—but the story of the traffic accident involves a much different kind of luck than the one illustrated by Gauguin, Paul, and Mette. In fact, the philosopher Thomas Nagel identified four kinds of moral luck in a response to Williams' original paper:


  1. Resultant moral luck (consequential) - we can't know the future (e.g. Paul and Mette, or Saiou's horse)
  2. Circumstantial moral luck - our wider environments are out of our control (e.g. the traffic accident)
  3. Constitutive moral luck - who we are (nature x nurture) is out of our control
  4. Causal moral luck - free will determinists would say everything is out of our control

Given all this uncertainty in the world, there really ought to be much less moralising judgment. Don't you think? That, to me, is the point of this thought experiment. Heck, even in the case of the traffic accident, how can we really know that the child who was killed wasn't on his way to becoming Hitler? If that were found to be the case, would Driver A eventually be praised by historians? Movies about what a time traveller ought to do would certainly suggest so.

This all takes the fundamental epistemological uncertainty I've written about — i.e. that knowledge can only ever be justified, beliefs, that are surviving — and shows how that is relevant to everyday decisions about ethics and justice. Since knowledge is probabilistic, then it stands to reason that moral outcomes are susceptible to luck. And so, for ethics, no principles of consequentialism can ever provide a clear enough picture on their own to justify moral judgment. As I said in response to wonderful comments from reader Disagreeable Me on Monday's blog post, a larger picture must also be considered. I noted that...

...in previous posts, I've said the three main camps of moral philosophy are roughly concerned with the three tenses of time—past, present, and future. Virtue ethics is concerned about your prior intentions. Deontological rules govern in-the-moment actions. Consequentialism judges the future results. Of course, in real life, we take a total perspective of the whole and can easily recognise when someone had A) the best intentions, followed the rules, and things ended badly; or B) selfish intentions, broke a few rules, but things turned out well; or some other combination of the three. ... I would say that deontology is concerned with the *action*, not the intention leading up to it, nor the consequences after it, so while those actions may now be in the past, the deontological judgment is concerned with the momentary action in the present tense that it happened. Confining virtue ethics to the past tense is tricker because virtuous intentions do lead to an action, but I think that moral school of thought is more concerned with what is going on in the mind of the actor *prior to* an action (how virtuous are they trying to be) rather than the virtue of one action in isolation. For example, if someone cowered in fear about doing the right thing for weeks and months but then in the moment ended up acting courageously, I think virtue ethics would judge them less virtuous than someone who courageously prepared for a right action all along. 

Following on to how this plays out in considerations of justice, I say again that the four main categories of punishment must be reconsidered. As I already wrote about this topic, the various means of punishment should be doled out as necessary and appropriate in an escalating order of: restoration, rehabilitation, and finally incapacitation as a last resort. The focus of these punishments is the education of the criminal and the deterrence of future offenses by the populace. Seeking retribution gives way to short-term emotions of vengeance that were useful in nature before the public good of justice was provided for by the state. Now, however, the emotions of the victim of a crime must not be allowed to override the use of reason to create justice and stability for the long term.

Only retribution is aggravated when we ignore the role that moral luck plays, but as you can see, I think the motive for retribution should already be ignored.

Finally, to reiterate another fundamental position of my evolutionary philosophy, these judgments of "good" or "bad" virtues/rules/consequences are not based on some cosmic, supernatural thing that exists separately from us. Before life came into the universe, it made no sense to consider the concept of good or bad. We can only answer if something is good or bad once we consider the question "for whom?" And that requires a "who" to actually survive and exist. Recognising this, means that there is no ultimate or externally derived definition of good or bad. Good or bad, can only be judged for "us." In my published paper on morality, I explained how "us" must logically be widened as far as possible to include considerations for "life in general over evolutionary timelines," but the trick of course then, is how to balance the competing needs of various subsets of "us"—the self vs. others; family vs. family; nation vs. nation; species vs. species; current vs. future generations. Inevitably, however, the ultimate consequence of morally good actions must be the survival of life in general. Without life, the question of good or bad goes away entirely. We may not ever really know if our actions are leading towards this universally fundamental goal, but we can do our best with the knowledge we have and be ready to forgive or punish appropriately the trials and errors that have gone astray along the way.

​All our actions are susceptible to the luck of "genes x environment," but now that your environment has been exposed to the idea of what is morally good for the survival of life, you really ought to consider it and act accordingly. Sorry, but that's just the luck of our draw.

#sorrynotsorry
45 Comments

Thought Experiment 97: Moral Luck

6/12/2017

6 Comments

 
Picture
Drat. Not a four-leaf clover in the bunch. Guess that makes me evil.
Hooray! This week's thought experiment gives us another chance to poke holes in consequentialist moral philosophy. See what you think of this scenario.

--------------------------------------------------
     Mette looked into the eyes of her estranged husband, but could find no flicker of remorse.
     "You tell me you want us back," she said to him. "But how can we do that when you won't even admit that you did the wrong thing when you left me and the children?"
     "Because in my heart I don't think I did wrong, and I don't want to lie to you," explained Paul. "I left because I needed to get away to follow my muse. I went in the name of art. Don't you remember when we used to talk about Gauguin and how he had to do the same? You always said he had done a hard thing, but not a wrong one."
     "But you are no Gauguin," sighed Mette. "That's why you're back. You admit you failed."
     "Did Gauguin know he would succeed when he left his wife? No one can know such a thing. If he was in the right, then so was I."
     "No," said Mette. "His gamble paid off, and so he turned out to be right. Yours didn't, and so you turned out to be wrong."
     "His gamble?" replied Paul. "Are you saying luck can make the difference between right and wrong?"
     Mette thought for a few moments. "Yes. I suppose I am."

Source: The eponymous essay from Moral Luck by Bernard Williams, 1981.

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 289.
---------------------------------------------------

I haven't left my wife behind for my art and my philosophy, but I have left a lot of money and socially productive work behind. And I don't think I've had my lucky break yet to make this all worth it. Does that mean my actions have been morally bad too? I'll be back on Friday to discuss Paul's choice, my choice, and how I think this moral question can be considered in general. In the meantime, let me know what you think about this in the comment section below. I can't guarantee it, but that just might turn out to be the right thing for you to do.
6 Comments

Response to Thought Experiment 96: Family First

6/9/2017

3 Comments

 
Picture
Sometimes water rescues are easy.
Circumstances matter, don't they? This week's thought experiment shows that they certainly do in the case of moral decision-making, and that blows a hole through simpleminded applications of utilitarianism. Let's look at the experiment and then I'll show you what I mean.

--------------------------------------------------
     Sally's boat was one of only a few that regularly sailed these waters, which is why she always made a point of listening out for SOS calls. So when she heard that an explosion had left a dozen people in the ocean, without lifeboats, she immediately set a course for them.
     But then she received a second message. Her own husband's fishing boat was sinking and he needed help too. The problem was that, to get to him, she would need to go even further from the drowning dozen. And with the weather turning bad, and no other vessels responding to the distress calls, it seemed clear to Sally whoever she went to second would probably be dead by the time she got there.
     There was not much time to think. On the one hand, not to save her husband would seem to be a betrayal of their love and trust. On the other, he was a good man, so wouldn't he also see the sense in saving twelve people instead of just one? She knew where she wanted to head first, but not where she should.

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 286.
---------------------------------------------------

To me, this story is far too vague to make an informed decision. Consider just two scenarios with some additional facts:

Scenario 1
Sally's young, kind, hard-working husband had to go fishing every day to support not only his family, but many members of the village who lived near these out-of-the-way waters. By contrast, the dozen people in trouble were terrorist drug smugglers who ignored weather conditions and rough seas, which led to an accident with their bomb-making supplies.

Scenario 2
Sally's 95-year-old husband had been suffering terribly with incurable bowel cancer after having lived a long life marred by years of drunkenness and domestic abuse. The twelve people in trouble were comprised of four Nobel prize winners and their young assistants who, as a result of their research, were sinking an old ship for a reef creation program intended to renew the local ecosystem when a small mistake put them in danger.

Wouldn't you make different decisions about who to save in each of these scenarios? I would. And confidently, too. Yet that seems to go against an important point that Baggini wants to raise via his discussion of this experiment. He noted that:

It has been held by most ethicists that morality demands the equal respect of all persons. As Jeremy Bentham said, "Each person is to count for one and no more than one."

Bentham is of course considered one of the main founders of utilitarianism, which remains one of the most important schools of thought for moral philosophers. Probably the most famous living utilitarian philosopher is Peter Singer, who I quoted in
 my published paper on morality for having explained this view of moral equality more thoroughly. He wrote:

If I have seen that from an ethical point of view I am just one person among the many in my society, and my interests are no more important, from the point of view of the whole, than the similar interests of others within my society, I am ready to see that, from a still larger point of view, my society is just one among other societies, and the interests of members of my society are no more important, from that larger perspective, than the similar interests of members of other societies...Taking the impartial element in ethical reasoning to its logical conclusion means, first, accepting that we ought to have equal concern for all human beings. (Peter Singer, 
The expanding circle: ethics and sociology, 1st ed., 1981, p. 119.)

This is exceedingly logical and compassionate when it leads to universal human rights and effective altruism within human societies, but as my scenarios above show, the equal weighting of persons or sentient creatures in the theoretical mathematics of utilitarianism doesn't always hold up in the real-life decision-making of individuals. This is partly because we are not indistinguishable widgets that can be perfectly substituted one for another. We are living animals with brief times on Earth, and we're made up of a unique gene-culture, co-evolutionary combination of nature and nurture. Even for strict utilitarians, we individuals have different capacities to promote pleasure or reduce pain. And that should mean our moral obligations towards all individuals are not all equal either. In one of the FAQ's on my academic paper, I already discussed this point when I wrote the following question and answer:

Q. Does this concern for all of life mean we can’t enjoy many of the things that make us human? Singer already tells us we should morally give all our spare money to other poor people across the globe. Do we have to do the same for birds and flies and plants and bacteria now too?
A. Singer stated that we should have “equal concern for all human beings” but that lead him to conclusions about charity and largesse that were out of touch with our actual moral urges. While all human beings originally have equal standing for claims, especially from the point of view of the veil of ignorance , the actual force of their claims on us is variable depending on many things such as our ability to satisfy their claims, their reputation from prior actions, or their possibility of reciprocating aid over repeated interactions in the future. Moral concerns are a force that behaves somewhat like gravity with stronger pulls by larger bodies at close distances often overshadowing the background tugs of fainter objects far away. As long as we remain sensitive to the possibility that the collection of those tugs from fainter objects may occasionally outweigh those from more obvious sources, then there is no reason we can’t enjoy many of the localized concerns that make us human.


So is this thought experiment really such a paradox? Not if the details of the situation are as extreme as either one of my scenarios. But in other more difficult situations, Baggini is right to point out that,

The basic principle at work here seems to be that we are right to focus our energies and attention on family and friends rather than strangers, just as long as by doing so we treat everyone fairly. As principles go, however, it's not a very useful guide to practice. Is it fair to lavish expensive toys on your own children while others starve to death? Is it fair for articulate, knowledgable parents to get the best out of public services while other, usually poorer, ones fail to take full advantage of what is on offer? Is it fair to help your children with their homework and so enable them to do better than kids whose parents are not willing or able to do the same? Some of these questions are more difficult than others. But unless you believe that we need think only of ourselves and our families, such dilemmas will arise for everyone at some stage.

Yes, dilemmas arise in life. It would be nice to have simple rules to avoid such difficulties, but deontological laws don't hold up in all situations, and utilitarian calculations aren't precise enough to know what actions always lead toward the long-term survival of life in general (my universal definition of good). Therefore, it is vital to develop as much dispassionate wisdom as possible to make morally difficult choices. There's no getting around that. And we must be sympathetic to those faced with such difficult choices. So go on Sally, decide who you would rather save, based on your unique circumstances, and then go and sail to get them. We'll understand.
3 Comments

Thought Experiment 96: Family First

6/5/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
When is one man worth a dozen?
Back to the utilitarian calculations of morality this week. How are your skills for such mathematics?

--------------------------------------------------
     Sally's boat was one of only a few that regularly sailed these waters, which is why she always made a point of listening out for SOS calls. So when she heard that an explosion had left a dozen people in the ocean, without lifeboats, she immediately set a course for them.
     But then she received a second message. Her own husband's fishing boat was sinking and he needed help too. The problem was that, to get to him, she would need to go even further from the drowning dozen. And with the weather turning bad, and no other vessels responding to the distress calls, it seemed clear to Sally whoever she went to second would probably be dead by the time she got there.
     There was not much time to think. On the one hand, not to save her husband would seem to be a betrayal of their love and trust. On the other, he was a good man, so wouldn't he also see the sense in saving twelve people instead of just one? She knew where she wanted to head first, but not where she should.

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 286.
---------------------------------------------------

What do you think? Where should Sally go? Where would you? And why? I'll be back on Friday with my answers.
0 Comments

Response to Thought Experiment 95: The Problem of Evil

6/2/2017

2 Comments

 
Picture
A much more logically-consistent god.
I'm having a hard time getting too worked about this week's thought experiment. It's a very old and famous problem, but it's really only a difficulty for the beliefs of Abrahamic, monotheistic, religious worshipers, and I'm definitely not in that crowd. However, let's see what kind of trouble they are in and try not to get too smug about it.

--------------------------------------------------
     And the Lord spake unto the philosopher, "I am the Lord thy God, all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing."
     "Surely not," replied the philosopher. "I look at this world and see horrible disease, hunger, starvation, mental illness. Yet you don't stop it. Is it that you can't? In which case you are not all-powerful. Is it because you don't know about it? In which case you are not all-knowing. Or perhaps you don't want to? In which case you are not all-loving.
     "Such impudence!" replied the Lord. "It is better for you if I don't stop all this evil. You need to grow morally and spiritually. For that you need the freedom to do evil as well as good, and to confront the chance occurrence of suffering. How could I possibly have made the world better without taking away your freedom to grow?"
     "Easy," replied the philosopher. "First, you could have designed us so that we feel less pain. Second, you could have made sure we had more empathy, to prevent us doing evil to others. Third, you could have made us better learners, so we didn't have to suffer so much to grow. Fourth, you could have made nature less cruel. Do you want me to go on?"

Source: The problem of evil recurs in different forms throughout the history of theology.

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 283.
---------------------------------------------------

It couldn't be any clearer, right? Gods are all just made up ideas, but the particular one invented and followed by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—the one that is supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving—is a logical impossibility given the facts of the world. Heck, we don't even have to actually gather evidence from the world since they invented Satan for their stories, which would rule out omnipotence by any test of the definition. The most common answer I've come across for all of this is that "God's ways are mysterious and He knows better than us what is good and what is evil." Well if that's the case, then why are you trying to define good and evil at all? Get off your soapbox and leave the discovery of morality to those of us with some sense. Religions are filled with so many contradictions, it's no wonder their adherents can't sort anything out.

If I'm wrong, I can only pray that I'd have the eloquence to repeat Stephen Fry's 2-minute answer to the following question posed to him on Irish TV:

In spite of your protestations, suppose it's all true, and you walk up to the pearly gates, and you are confronted by God. What will Stephen Fry say to Him, or Her, or It?
So powerful! And it's great to hear that the charge of blasphemy, which was brought against Fry for this response, was recently dropped by the Irish police. The Humanist UK organisation does a lot to fight such dangerous blasphemy laws around the world, which are clearly based on nonsense. If you agree, why not follow them on facebook and consider a membership? (Only £3 per month!) If not, let's talk about it in the comment section below. I may not be all-loving, but I'll do my charitable best.
2 Comments

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