The Myth of Enlightened Self Interest, Part One

Before I dive back into the ethical position discussion on the topic of abortion, I've decided to jump the gun on something slightly more wide-reaching in scope (in fact, it is an important pattern occurring in ethics and human behavior).

As a disclaimer, this post may be likely to generate the most amount of noise, if for no other reason that my viewpoint differs from a number of my peers--or at least it may appear to on the surface.  If so, I hope that the noise it generates is constructive.  If it does not generate noise, I will at least consider that it is a success in that either a) nobody cares strongly enough about any differences in opinion, b) I've articulated my point of view well enough that it appears "self-evident" without reaching tautology (i.e., has something useful to say), or c) nobody actually really reads this blog, in which case I've successfully articulated my viewpoint to myself (hi there!).

Over the course of my life, I've either said some of the following statements or encountered them said by others:

• "I'm an anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist."
• "I'm a libertarian."
• "I believe in small government."
• "I believe in deregulation."
• "I'm pro-capitalism. (or free market, laissez faire, etc.)"
• "I believe in individual rights, or privacy."
• "I'm an objectivist (or I read lots of Ayn Rand)."

One thing that these statements have in common is a specific aspect I will call individual self interest.  To best articulate or define this concept, I will distill it into the following statement:

• "Society works best as a whole when individuals are acting entirely within their own self interest."

For the sake of abbreviation, I will call this the statement the hypothesis of individual self interest.

Once established, lots of things logically fall from this premise.  The free market, for instance, in theory touts the benefit of creating better products through competition.  We can conclude that things only get better when individuals are free to do what they would like, that things have either 1) only gotten better over time, or 2) that the only reasons things have gotten worse is due to government regulation or intervention.

I can't deny the appeal of the premise.  It is easy (and in my own self-interest, natural) to conclude that individual self interest is where it's at.  It's especially easy to make fun of ideologies such as communism (the collapse Soviet Communism as an often cited example), that demonstrate (or at least appear to demonstrate) how impractical ideas are that are not based on individual self interest.  Communism, in particular, falls into demagoguery, in which individual self interest is at the root of its own power structure!  The economist John Kenneth Galbraith once famously stated "Under capitalism, man exploits man.  Under communism, it's just the opposite."

The hypothesis of individual self interest is no mere straw man.  It is at the heart of so many ideologies, the influences of which can be seen and felt all around us.  Apologists of a particular ideology may amend the hypothesis to be restated as:

• "Society works best as a whole when individuals are acting entirely within their own enlightened self interest."

The definition of the word in bold, however, is severely lacking.  By stretching the hypothesis to include things outside of the scope of self interest, it is no longer representative of self interest, and has rendered the hypothesis itself meaningless.  Why draw attention to self interest, if it requires some form of enlightenment in order to be ethically valid?  Wouldn't the enlightenment part be the relevant bit?  If one is to say, "self interest is one variable in helping society," that isn't a bad statement to make, but that's a bit like saying "I like oxygen because it enables us to breathe," or "food is good."  It is an admission of its own lack of specificity.  If you didn't want us to pay attention to the self interest part, then it should, by Occam's razor, not mentioned in the hypothesis at all.

No, I think we have no choice but to take the hypothesis of self interest on face value.  Now, here comes the devilish part: in my next post, I am going to disprove the hypothesis of self interest by counterexample, using game theory.

Homosexuality

Note: Apologies for the inactivity over the last week or so.  I got hit with a bad cold that left me in bed for two days.

The first of two relevant modern ethical positions I have promised to take on is the topic of homosexuality. Naturally, I can't get to every taboo under the sun.  I have chosen homosexuality and abortion because they are two areas where Western attitudes have shifted from traditional Catholic values, in part due to new scientific information that has become readily available.  I have pointed out that there are ethical ways to judge taboos and logical traps that one can fall into when discussing them.

Starting in 1973, the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality from its status as a mental disorder.  The main reason for this is that there was found to be no causal link between homosexuality and harmful behavior.  Many scientists have been curious about the cause of homosexuality.  Modern science has concluded that it is caused by a variety of genetic, prenatal, and environmental factors, but, importantly, sexual orientation is most often not a "choice," and attempts to alter one's sexual orientation have proven harmful to the subject.

The taboo against homosexuality is common in human history and has not been exclusively a Western one, but it is true that there are many cultures that have not developed a taboo against sexual orientation.  In our case, the taboo is backed by religion.  From the point of view of Halakha, under the book of Leviticus, lying with another man is "an abomination."  This passage has been interpreted in many ways to mean very specific acts, but as an impartial observer, one cannot help but wonder why it has been given so much attention and remained in observance, while other taboo laws have fallen by the wayside or relaxed (laws about shaving, not being able to eat pork and shellfish, how much you are supposed to get in exchange for selling your sister into a brothel, why you aren't ever supposed to touch "unclean" women, etc.).

Regardless of the history of the taboo, the correct way to look at it is from a modern set of eyes.  If sexual orientation is not a choice, then is it not wholly unethical to deprive a percentage of the population some rights to property, survivorship, citizenship, etc., based on some factor that is outside of their agency?  If it is not harmful behavior, then is there some reason for it to be denigrated or shunned?  I have found no argument in support of keeping the taboo that does not appeal to tradition, religion, or fear.

Taboo

Often at the heart of conflict between the Ugly American or Rebel vs. the Conformist or Chameleon is the taboo.  Simply put, a taboo is a social prohibition on a specific behavior.  Any type of behavior can be considered taboo to a segment or group.  In this blog, one early example I used was anthropophagy, since it is one of the most universal of taboos (even though it is not entirely universal, as we've discovered).

Halakha, or Jewish law, is one system with a complex structure of taboos and rich set of ethics.  It is a good example to use, because it was the origin of modern Western law (for better or worse), even though it has gone through millennia of changes and several large cultural shifts.  Among other things, one important aspect is the "self-correcting" mechanism that allows laws to be interpreted not according to the literal word, but through modern interpretations ("consult your local rabbi" being the universal answer).  This has allowed for symptoms such as the Parable of the Roast to get "filtered out" as time marches forward.  Unfortunately, the legacy of the original legal code (in this case, the Ten Commandments--which ten were those anyway?  there weren't originally ten) is broad, intolerant of other religions, simplistic, and probably a bit too mass marketed to be of any real use to us today as a legal or moral framework.  There is an old joke--and I probably shouldn't tell it for risk of sounding anti-Semitic--that if you start out with ten Jews on a desert island, you end up with eleven synagogues (because nobody goes to that one).  The challenge facing modern day Jews is no different than of any other generation: having intelligent, thoughtful rabbis who are aware of modern attitudes and can make all the difficult decisions based on a wealth of information.  With the internet as a tool, this may not be implausible, but human infallibility is a very difficult problem to overcome.

As time marches on, our taboos shift.  As in my previous post, my hope is that taboos serve a utilitarian purpose rather than a more arbitrary one that labels a specific segment of the population as "unmutual."  True democracy results in a tyranny of the majority, and it is easy to see why: taboos can be little more than fads.

I've mentioned two specific examples of taboos that I have promised to address: homosexuality, which is a sexual taboo, and abortion, which is a medical taboo.  Both of these are complex topics.

I am going to point out one logical fallacy that is frequently applied to both taboos: the slippery slope argument.  It is logically invalid to point out one taboo as some kind of gateway towards other taboos.  A change in the acceptance of one taboo does not in any way lead to the acceptance of others (more often than not, the acceptance of one taboo actually creates a backlash against other taboos).  How one feels about homosexuality, for instance, is rather different from that of bestiality.  How one feels about abortion is very different from how one feels about capital punishment.  Acceptance of one taboo over another does not make one a hypocrite, it only makes one human.

Before I continue, I want to construct a framework in which to talk about the ethics of taboos.  Here are a few questions to ask when judging a taboo:

• Is there any physical harm or risk to a human being in this behavior?
• Is any human being denied a choice or voice in this behavior?
• Is there any permanent damage to the environment resulting from this behavior?
• Is there any non-utilitarian cost or inefficiency resulting from this behavior?
• What are the long-term consequences of this behavior?
• What are the facts about this behavior?

These are questions that are invalid (or at least incomplete) when judging a taboo:

• What does tradition, family, religion, or leadership say about this behavior?
• What does the majority say about this behavior?
• Is accepting this behavior a "gateway" to other taboos?
• Will I gain more money, support, or power if I have a particular opinion of this behavior?
• Will a behavior result in any immaterial, not measurable, spiritual cost or benefit (e.g., roasting for all eternity in Hell)?

In the United States, appeals to divinity are not admissible in a court of law (ethics is by, for, and about human beings--not deities, prophets, or saviors).  Any appeal to tradition is an ethical deadlock: a refusal to accept anything outside of a particular interpretation of the past (and a parable of the roast).

I am sure there are other questions to put on either list, which I hope generates a discussion.  I am going to proceed, without further ado, into the topics themselves.

Politeness

While I am eager to jump back into the fold of my mental outline for this blog (taboo being the next category I've been promising to get to), I had an experience this morning that led me to thinking about politeness, cultural standards, and how to define what is "right" and "wrong."

Naturally, like anyone else, I have my own cultural biases.  Some of these serve me well ("don't talk out loud during a movie"), while others may seem a little obscure ("take off your hat when entering a room").  Still, there are moments where I feel my cultural biases serve an ethical, utilitarian purpose.  In this case, the Conformist in me was quite angry at the Ugly American in a group of other people.

I take the BART to commute each day.  This morning, on a moderately crowded, but not overly crowded train, I witnessed both a man with a cane and a venerable man go through the same experience.  Specifically, no one got up from their seats to let either of them sit down.  This was particularly troubling in the section that is specifically designated as priority seating for these passengers.

Now, before I get all "Miss Manners", I did notice something that made the situation tricky: just about everyone sitting down was Indian (from India), and everyone seated was from some kind of Asian culture.  Having been to India, Hong Kong, and Malaysia, I know that there is a cultural difference at work.  In many crowded Asian cultures, everything is treated as a "first come, first served" situation.  I'll never forget my first experience on a plane landing in India.  Before the plane was even safely landed and at the gate, people had not only taken off their seat belts, but had crowded immediately to the doors.  This immediacy, the lack of following structure, and the (perceived) inefficiencies and safety problems they cause, seemed to permeate into virtually every aspect of life in India, from driving (who actually follows the lines in the road?) to getting back on the plane (queues? who needs those?).

I found myself in a bit of a quandary.  What should I do?  Should I tell someone, "hey, get up, let this person sit down, please"?  I've seen someone do exactly that before (a black woman--one thing I will say about black American culture is that it is very similar to my own, Southern background).  Should I let people be assertive on their own (if they need to sit down, maybe they should say something)?  At some point, the moment is passed for me to have any impact or interference without it seeming rude or condescending.

Our cultural standard is to do as BART indicates: let senior citizens, disabled passengers, pregnant women (or women in general--sometimes I offer to let anyone sit down) take your seat.  It is politeness, as our culture has defined it.  Still, I can't help but claim a certain bias that this form of politeness suits a utilitarian purpose.  Simply put, you are keeping someone from having to endure unnecessary stress and potential pain.  That seems a greater gain than keeping to our own selfish need of enduring a slight amount of discomfort.

The Rebel in me also sees room for improvement in our cultural standards, following the same utilitarian logic.  Why can't we automate cars, eliminating most auto accidents and drunk driving (not to mention reduce the cost of auto insurance to near zero)?  Why do we insist that subsidies are inherently "bad" ideas (the rich subsidizing the poor, the healthy subsidizing the sick, etc.) until the day when we find ourselves in need of said subsidies?  Does capitalism always lead to "better" technology--or does the cost of competition outweigh the benefits?

Politeness: it's contagious.  Please pass it around.

The Grand Design

Within 24 hours of its release, I've already purchased and read Stephen Hawking's new book, The Grand Design.  Call me a bit of an eager beaver, but I've been quite excited about it, as indicated in a previous post.  No doubt that Stephen Hawking is an expert in the fields of physics and astrophysics, but more importantly he serves the role as an educator through the medium of popular science.

It is a good read, though I find some of the assumptions slightly short on detail.  Perhaps this lack of detail is a good thing, though: any explanation of M-Theory takes very complicated math and makes my head hurt.  In The Universe in a Nutshell, Hawking explored some of these ideas more thoroughly.  Instead, The Grand Design focuses specifically on questions concerning the existence of the universe.  Specifically:

• Why is there something rather than nothing?
• Why do we exist?
• Why this particular set of laws and not some other?

His assertion is that "it is possible to answer these questions purely within the realm of science, and without invoking any divine beings."

Without ruining too much of the surprise, the answer lies in something called the strong anthropic principle.  In essence, the set of laws for the universe happen to exist because the conditions for this universe happen to be favorable to them.  The Big Bang, for instance, is not an event, but a coordinate in space-time called the no-boundary condition--no different than asking yourself, if you are on the South Pole, to head "further south," which would be a meaningless designation.

Since this is an ethics and philosophy blog, these new theories are relevant in the following way:

• As Hawking points out, religion has held a traditional role in attempting to explain the mysteries of things.  Over time, these models for the universe have proven themselves less useful than newer models.  For example, the Ptolemaic view of the universe was replaced with the Copernican theory.
• Beliefs such as Creationism, though they cannot necessarily be falsified, require a great deal more effort to explain (fossils--"were they put there to fool us?").
• Hawking asserts "philosophy is dead.  Philosophy has not caught up with modern developments in science, particularly physics.  Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge."  I disagree, at least in one sense: knowledge alone does not constitute ethics.  Without ethical progress, a search for meaning is meaningless.  I would agree that it has not caught up with science, yet the fault lies within our cultural priorities.  But more on this subject later.

Given that the universe is agnostic, there is a lot of ground to cover in the realm of the human experience.  How do we define ethical behavior?  How far do we have the right to exert ourselves?  When is the correct time to intervene, or not intervene?  Science alone cannot answer these questions.

The Ugly American

The last of the four archetypes that I've taken to look at I call the Ugly American.  No, I didn't come up with the name because I "hate America" or some other such nonsense (how dare you question my patriotism!  how unpatriotic of you!).  The epithet comes from a book written during the 1950s about Vietnam.  Abroad, the epithet has been used as a term of discrimination specifically against Americans, but I use it solely for the purpose of the archetype in describing a situation where a foreigner takes his or her values with them while operating in a culture with different values.

In his book Values for a New Millennium, the late author Robert L. Humphrey identifies one key factor in his research of anti-American hostility: not treating locals with respect as equals.  Now, I may take issue with some of his methods (and you may wonder if asking the question was condescending in the first place), it is indicative of a very real problem that was (and still is) plaguing this great, fantastic, all-amazing and all powerful nation that is vastly superior to everyone else on the planet (especially the French).  Namely, why doesn't everybody on the planet just learn English?  Huh?

It is human to take our own values (and culture) with us.  Naturally, the more proud or privileged we are, the more entitled we feel to expressing those values.  In other words, with great power comes great responsibility.  Part of the problem with privilege is that frequently it is a form of power we don't even realize is there.  It we argue about the toppings on yesterday's pizza, it can be a bit insensitive to have the discussion in front of a starving child.  The way to overcome these positions of power is through learning--and frequently this means making many mistakes before getting it right.

We may not have to share values with our surrounding environment, but it is our duty to respect them when we can.  I make a distinction between the Ugly American and the Rebel because the notion of one's community and home (our comfort zone) has a logically separate place from traveling outside it.  In a post about the Chameleon, I reflected about Star Trek's "prime directive" and Westphalian sovereignty.  And yet, as John Lennon so succinctly put it:

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

In other words, the boundaries that separate us from each other are all artificial layers of structure.  Each structure is in place as a form of legacy that has been built up for social and geographical reasons.  Because of ease of travel and communications, the boundaries between ourselves and our surroundings have become much more social and much less geographical--the word community itself is being used to describe social, not geographical strata.

Something from Nothing

"Nothing?" asks an incredulous King Lear.  "Nothing will come from nothing.  Speak again."

As it turns out, like Cordelia's response to her father, the creation of the universe does not need...a creator.  In other words, if there is a god (or gods), those deities are very likely to be (or have been) agnostic.

Now before believers of various sorts start to cry "foul," this does not mean that you have to give up whatever gives your life meaning for you.  But it does mean that you will have to stop insisting that there is a direct chain of command between belief and science.  In other words, to quote Pierre-Simon Laplace, 'Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là'--"I had no need of that hypothesis."

There is no scientific need to put a deity in charge of lighting the fuse to create the universe.  It can, and simply does, happen.  The physical laws of the universe, the swirling chaos of the cosmos, even our perception of beauty and the awe we feel--these are in the eye of the beholder.

Part of the beauty--the beauty that I perceive--is that this system does not require anything but pure deductive and inductive reasoning at every level, from the smallest sub-particle to the largest galaxy.  The laws that control individual human behaviors, while certainly complex, are not so complex as to be eternally elusive.  Such as it is with every science, even the social sciences.

And yet...is there any reason to get defensive about such knowledge?  Why should it cause anyone to doubt their beliefs?  It would put into question certain assumptions, perhaps, but faith?  Hey, you might need that faith later.  It may help you survive on days when you feel your life is meaningless or if a close friend or relative dies.  Those feelings may be important.

Just, well, there are a few places your faith no longer belongs:

• The creation of the universe. NEW!
• Causality and determinism.
• Evolution (CHANGE) of species.  Get that hunching over to upright-walking diagram OUT of your head.  Thank you.
• Matter and energy.
• Probability.
• "Free will" (very sorry about this one, really, I don't like it either, but there you have it).
• "Intelligent design" or any comprehensive "plan."
• The shape and structure of the universe.
• Quantum mechanics.
• Biological structures and physiology.
• Animal behavior.
• Natural healing and disease.
• The causes of floods, hurricanes, droughts, famines, or other natural disasters.

I apologize for any redundancy in the above list, as well as anything I may have left out.  I was tempted to put "my bedroom" up there, but realized that it isn't particularly scientific and not everyone is equally thrilled about imagining it.

Now back to your regularly scheduled program.  And my poor fool is hanged...


Edit: Just as a follow-up, the comments on slashdot are rather entertaining.