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Thought Experiment 44: Till Death Us Do Part

2/29/2016

5 Comments

 
Picture
Las Vegas' Little White Wedding Chapel - Site of At Least One Rational Wedding (My Own)
The title of this week's thought experiment sounds very promising to me. Especially since yesterday was my own fourteenth wedding anniversary. Let's see what Baggini has cooked up for me to think about as I reflect on my own marriage.

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     Harry and Sophie wanted to take seriously the words the minister would utter as they exchanged rings: "These two lives are now joined in one unbroken circle." This meant putting their collective interest first, and their individual interests second. If they could do that, the marriage would be better for both of them.
     But Harry had seen his own parents divorce and too many friends and relations hurt by betrayal and deceit to accept this unquestioningly. The calculating part of his brain reasoned that, if he put himself second, but Sophie put herself first, Sophie would get a good deal from the marriage but he wouldn't. In other words, he risked being taken for a mug if he romantically failed to protect his own interest.
     Sophie had similar thoughts. They had even discussed the problem and agreed that they really would not be egotistical in the marriage. But neither could be sure the other would keep their part of the bargain, so the safest course of action for both was to secretly look out for themselves. That inevitably meant the marriage would not be as good as it could have been. But surely it was the only rational course of action to take?

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 130.

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Oh well. It looks like this is going to be another short post on Friday. I'm starting to recognise the lame thought experiments now as the ones that don't have an outside source attached to them. It's almost as if Baggini needs a partner or something...
5 Comments
Atthatmatt link
2/29/2016 06:21:38 pm

The disconnect is that neither of them truly loves the other. True love simply means that you prioritize the other person higher than yourself. Like, if you would die for them, if they're more important than self-preservation, then you truly love them. There are lesser degrees of love corresponding to lower levels of priority, from just under self-preservation, all the way down to wherever love of pizza falls.

If just one of them truly loved the other, the deal would work, at least abstractly. The game logic wouldn't matter, because one of them would go all in regardless of the other's decision. "Getting a good deal" only has to be irrelevant to one of them. If it's just a partnership for mutual benefit, then the game logic applies.

A person who is fully committed to someone who isn't fully committed in return is in a bit of a pickle. They have a hard choice to make. I think a good heuristic is to not marry a person you don't trust. If you're going onto it assuming you can't trust them to look out for you, then just don't do it. Committing to the wrong person is worse than being alone.

Reply
John A. Johnson link
2/29/2016 07:44:03 pm

I agree that if one person prioritized the other's interests higher than his/her own, there would never be a problem. But if both persons prioritized the other's interests higher than their own, there would be a problem. "I want to sacrifice myself for you!" "No, I want to sacrifice myself for you!" There would always be a fight about who gets to be the martyr.

To me, love is not about being a martyr. I think it is possible to care both about yourself and another person without always prioritizing one over the other. Furthermore, relationships do not have to be a zero-sum game. It is possible for couples to do things where both of them benefit and neither sacrifices self-interest. That sounds much more attractive to me than sacrificing one's interests for another's.

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atthatmatt link
2/29/2016 09:19:18 pm

I feel like being in a situation where you both would die on behalf of each other is the opposite of a problem. Or, at least it's a good problem to have.

There's a difference between the standard for true love and the remote change a situation might force you to act on it. Figuring out who's going to do the dishes doesn't strain self-preservation.

John A. Johnson link
2/29/2016 07:32:42 pm

I suspect that Baggini is using this scenario as an example of the prisoner's dilemma or game theory more generally. My own take on this problem is that it represents the fuzzy thinking inherent in talking about the "interests of collectives" over an beyond the interests of the individuals who are members of a collective. To my mind, the collective called "marriage" has no real existence beyond the two individuals within the marriage. Larger collectives--for example a university--do have a real existence beyond the individual members (students, faculty, and staff) in that you can remove some of the members and the collective still exists. But remove the husband or wife, and there is no marriage.

No matter what the size of a collective, however, I submit that there is no such thing as the "interest of the collective" that transcends the interests of the individuals. In every case, a particular event can be, to some degree, for or against the interests of all of the individuals, but there is no event that is in the interest of the collective but not in the interests of the individuals.

I challenge anyone to give an example of something that is "good for the marriage" but not good for either of the individuals in the marriage.

It seems to me that the "common good" (what is good for a collective) can never be simultaneously good for the collective but bad for all of the individual members of the collective. If there is such a thing as the "common good," it is something that is in the interest of every single member of the collective. But if there is something that is in the interest of the marriage, it would therefore be of interest to both husband and wife, so there is no worry about a conflict between the interests of the marriage and the self-interests of the individuals. They are one and the same.

However, I think that most things that are claimed to be in the "interest of the collective" are usually more in the interests of some members than others. Claims about what is in the interest of a marriage are in reality more in the interest of either the husband or wife. Furthermore, the person who is claiming that something is for the "common good" or "interest of the marriage" is the person whose interests are being served more. Language about "common good" or "good of the marriage" is a rhetorical smokescreen to convince the person whose interests are less served to go along with what the person whose interests are more served.

A good marriage, in my opinion, is not based on secretly looking out for yourself while disguising one's interests as "in the interest of the marriage." Rather, good marriages are based on honesty, when both partners can say how much they really want to go shopping or to a football game, and find as many activities as possible where the interests of both members are being served.

Reply
@EdGibney link
2/29/2016 09:04:48 pm

Thanks for the comments guys! Unfortunately, I'm packing up to head out of town for a couple of nights so I won't be able to respond to this for a while. Keep up the conversation if you like, and I promise I'll address anything left over when I post my response to this thought experiment on Friday. Cheers!

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