Matter (2011)
This is a poem I wrote in September called Matter. It is about my favourite person.
Sweat glinting in yellow-green light
Mouth agog like a child at Christmas
So pale and so pearly a skin, that in fact almost blue
Capillaries underneath pump and spirit
A torrent of blood and water and liquor
Nervous and singing, sweating and imploding is
This young man, alive
A string of events understandable on paper occurred
Unintelligible, like everything
And the difference between one minute and the next, was
Like night to day
What?
It does not matter that he wrote down his dreams in unsteady cursive
Wrote songs that engorged chests and made rooms change colour
That he cleaned cups and spoons so tenderly, dried them, and put them away
Careful not to make excess noise, eager to please
It does not matter that his heart was made of pliable gold,
Or that he cherished the night hours because then he could think
Or that he delighted in things so much his body couldn’t contain it
It does not matter that he wished so sweetly to be recognized,
Or that he was many times so afraid, so ashamed, and so angry
It does not matter one bit that he had thoughts
Incoherent, odd, probing, stupid, or cowardly thoughts
Thoughts so terribly cheap,
Or those great and divine
None of it matters, because
The now is here and what was before i
Isn’t
The cells no longer receive instructions; the fingers do not bend
The capillary travelers frozen as if on strike
The eyelashes do not bat, instead are stuck together like birdcage feathers
The little mouth does not curl and open, astounded by joy
The throat that made hoarse and sweet sounds that sailed across the room
The voice that made places change colour is
Silenced, for all time
Fancy dying
Just like the rest of them
Like a dog
Surely this is some mistake
A deaf silence presses on the sloping hill
There’s been no mistake, murmurs the grass
Memory,
Of his sad downward eyes blue
Persists as a silent hell
A discussion about morality and culture in economics
Below is a brief talk I will be giving next week of the key issues found in the following texts:
Max Weber, Puritanism and the spirit of capitalism
Michael Taussig, The Genesis of Capitalism Amongst a South American Peasantry: Devil’s Labour and the Baptism of Money
Rosalind Shaw, The production of witchcraft/witchcraft as production: memory, modernity, and the slave trade in Sierra Leone
Melford E. Spiro, Buddhism and Economic Action in Burma
In these readings, right and wrong were presented in the context of religion or witchcraft. And as Weber showed, even secular societies like our own grew out of specific religious ideas. It would have been good to read about how morality influences us now specifically, in the relative absence of religion. But now to the crux of the readings.
What came out of the readings for me, in terms of morality determining economic behaviour, was that people find themselves in a particular ideological culture – whether explicitly religious or not – and within the constraints of their position in that culture, try to maximize their self-interest. This was illustrated perfectly by the case of the Buddhist Burmese, who, while seeming to be governed by high religious ideals, were actually just rationally maximizing their self-interest within the confines of their tight situation (wherein saving or buying personal property is insecure due to kleptocratic regimes, but their Buddhist beliefs enable vast spending on religious festivals that not only provide feasting and recreation in this life, but accrue merit for future lives as reincarnated beings).
I really liked Taussig’s point that cultures other than ours, should be used to criticize our own. And certainly these other cultures have provided critiques – in the ways that they represent or react against our culture.
Weber’s account of the genesis of ‘modern economic man’ Homo economicus actually shows up some severe contradictions in him. Not only did he evolve from religious Puritan and Protestant beliefs, but he now believes that he is completely secular, pure, rational and untouched by religious dogma, superstition or illogic. Taussig exposed the fallacy of these beliefs by revealing the fundamentally illogical assumptions that capitalism entertains: e.g. that money ‘grows’ (through the invention of interest) like any organic being; that it is alive and animate, like an animal; that wage-labour is respectable, honest and fair; and that the market is governed by immutable, universal laws, like gravity – so one has no choice but to accept it as a law of Nature. And largely, in the West, these beliefs have been naturalised. But for Marx, these magical properties were far from magical – they just mask certain social relations – as in the way profit is generated by the expropriation of surplus value that workers create.
The non-Western cultures in the readings certainly find these beliefs perplexing and just plain weird: the agricultural peasants in the Cauca Valley, when their wages were doubled, simply halved the amount of work they did, because now they could work less while earning the same amount. This shows a profound disinterest in capitalistic growth. They prefer worldy leisure – something asceticism is entirely against.
In the other readings, capitalism assumed the form of the devil, or something witches are concerned with – as in the case of the ‘Place of Witches’, where houses of gold and diamonds line streets where kebabs of human meat are sold – in short, something morally corrupt and evil – while in the West, it is presented as pure and natural. Both the Colombian peasants and West African Temne saw success in capitalist economies – whether as wage labourers or slaves – as something for which you had to trade either your soul, your health, the religious protection of your children, the productivity of your land or savings, your leisure, or your freedom. In addition, they seemed to instinctively know that chasing material wealth was something corrupting, absurd, and ultimately barren (as in the way the Colombian peasants could only spend their wages on ephemeral things like rich foods and fancy clothes). They were more interested in sustainability – something the excesses of capitalism are only starting to understand – and saw money as something inanimate and barren, something that could be exchanged for goods they needed, and not made into more money, thus becoming divorced from the production of useful objects.
So a big difference between Western capitalism and non-Western economies, as I see it, is that the latter seem to have a more realistic and more logical understanding of cause and effect. This sounds strange because they attribute rain to Gods and illness to witches, etc, but because they live so close to the source of their sustenance – i.e. nature – they understand that if you destroy biodiversity, overuse resources, or try to bend nature to your ends, then there will be severe negative consequences. And these they see as obviously moral equations: if you tempt nature or ignore the laws that govern it (thinking that your own laws are superior) then you will be punished.
It was also interesting to see how religious ideals – like asceticism, restless hard work in a ‘calling’, and poverty – were hijacked to serve industrial capitalist prodution. Workers believed they were pleasing God by working hard for very little money, and capitalists believed they were pleasing God by fulfilling their duty. Inequality was accepted simply as ‘God moving in mysterious ways’.
The questions I want to ask are more about what people in ‘developed’ capitalist societies, like our own, think about their society.
Q. What do you think about the need to specialize, and its effects on people? (Division of labour in capitalist societies).
Q. What do you think the ‘moral ideal’ person or life is, in a capitalist society like ours?
Previous Post
Last night in the still 30 degrees under a blazing orange-and-pink setting sun, I walked my parents’ dog in the suburbs where they live. I went up a hill not far from there we used to call ‘Richville’ owing to the tactless, eave-less monstrosities that cover the hillside, obstructing many fine views of the distant city. I always go up that hill, probably because I formed many dear memories there, sitting in the unfinished skeletal houses swinging my legs over a wall and gazing at the enormous sunset, thinking about all the great things I will see and do when I finally get to the city.
So it was on this walk that I was thinking about the art that I do – specifically the technique I use – and how it sits very happily in between a) that gauzy, soft-focus, pastel-colored still life painting that grandmothers usually busy themselves with; and b) that sketchy, speeding-brush, virtuoso style very popular in the ’80s, especially with men who paint maritime scenes. I despise both of these styles for good reasons: grandmother’s soft-focus pastel is anemic and macerated, there’s nothing to focus the eye. All big feather dusters and pink floral upholstery. Which for me is redolent of that particular noxious mix of floral air-freshener and toilet… An undesirable state of affairs shall we say.
As for the sketchy sort – it reeks of rushing, impatience, a lack of discipline. Of a giddy adolescent boy who fidgets. He’s excited, he knocks over the acrylic. It also says to me ‘How clever I am, I don’t bother with details. I’m creative and I’m expressing myself‘. See, it’s the impression. Never mind that there are several different objects in the picture – a bucket, horse, fence, rider, tree, a gate. It all has the same texture. The worst is when the palette knife comes out (real artists use palette knives) – slashing the rocks and trees and sky and mushing them together as if the scene before him is cake mix in mum’s kitchen. It’s obnoxious, self-satisfied meddling and I hate it.
I think I avoid this unconscionable criminality. I do love ambiguity and mystery, indistinct spaces and voids – but I balance it with clean lines and contrast. The knowledge of where this balance lies is a pointed sense one develops and perfects over time. I won’t pretend that Maritime Boy hasn’t a clue when it comes to rhythm – he certainly does – rhythm is essential to drawing. One of my earliest exposures to a master of rhythm in drawing was Walt Disney. His drawings lived and breathed – they fluttered and trembled on the page.
I have a great many trucks with other styles of execution, and I will write of them soon as I think of the offending examples. In the meantime, discern my work for yourself – deanna-szabo.blogspot.com.
On The Road
I have quite an unusual job. Yet, I had never thought of writing about my experiences until someone suggested it to me yesterday.
My work is such that I am often in nightclubs. I needn’t elaborate further. You see, dear reader, I had thus far been quite contented to read philosophy papers or play Snake on my phone to while away the long minutes in these clubs. I would only record something if it was exceptional – such as the 6-foot black who brought me free champage, the somewhat smaller black who spoke to me at length about his engineering degree, the backwards-cap wearing boganic who slowed his car in a dark alley to ask me ‘What’re ye doin’ down here by yourself? Wanna get a coffee?’ (to which the reply was a swift ‘No’), and the many conversations I’ve extinguished by silently leaving the building. Last night however, I took some more general notes.
The boar creatures at venues like Sorry Grandma and La Di Da are truly fit for prose. These probably Italian and Greek women – their flesh is somehow too much, it’s waterlogged, it’s bulging out of their swaddled and powdered faces. And my God are they ugly – with brutish heads like those of horses or cattle. Mostly they scowl. A bloated french-nailed hand presses against the cold wall because she is tired of waiting in line. Her equally porky male has bleached, spiked hair and a fat neck. I can imagine the two of them sweating like hogs on a floral-scented bed, their meat crashing and slapping together, the choking scent of her pussy… I can imagine their car, with obligatory tissue box, cute teddy strung up on the rearview mirror, and all-important perfume tree. Racing upholstery, or possibly Playboy. Who were these overfed pigs? These smelly, night-time swine?
Now a few doors down I am quite drunk, again. The cheap, pulsating music echoes my viscera processing the drink. What else could I possibly do? Martin Amis isn’t here for me to talk to. I left another conversation at the bar, and this time rather rudely.
‘Do you like to dance?’
‘No, not really.’
‘Are you here with a guy?’
‘Hang on a second.’ I asked the barman a question then walked away with my drink.
I can’t hold my liquor too stunningly. My mind wanders to a nearby possible world. In it, by the third round I am clambering on the carpet and swaying as the bouncer inquires where I am going… My night must press on, I tell him.
I think my new excuse for everything will be ‘I am married’.
In other news, two days ago I was making merry with a book sitting cross-legged at the railway station when I was suddenly accosted by a what looked like a World War II veteran – in khaki overcoat and spectacles and brandishing a cane. ‘Get your feet off the seat! Get them off! You make dirt where other people sit!’ I was speechless, but struggling to keep down a laugh. He was absolutely right, but his high-pitched delivery was too much. And the irony of a certified clean-freak being accused of causing dirt, in one of my favourite train stations no less…
Resource Depletion, Deep Ecology and Alternative Hedonism
Yes, these passages (Hans Jonas and David Wiggins, not shown) do point to the precautionary principle, but I don’t think it is adequate to deal with or mitigate the doom that awaits us. Rather than giving more weight to the prognosis of doom, the prognosis is doom.
First I will highlight a problem with the precautionary principle, then outline the reasons why imminent doom is upon us. I don’ think we can avoid a collapse of some kind given the empirical facts of the world, but there is a strategy we can employ to slow the process of collapse, or make it less abrupt, which I will discuss in the final section together with some ecological philosophy.
The precautionary principle sounds very plausible, and I dare say it is common sense. But there is a potential problem – where do we draw the line of potential risk? In a sense, almost every new invention is a potential risk because we don’t know the long-term effects. Do we stop all progress, lest it create some unfavourable effects a hundred years hence? Some people cite the development of GM crops as something potentially dangerous but also life-saving in the event of extreme global warming or an ice age. There is probably a way of erring on the side of caution without halting all experimentation. Then again maybe ‘natural’ processes – whether extreme warming with natural disasters, an ice age, nuclear war or mass starvation – will be the only things that curb our obsession with progress.
Now to the time-bomb we have set off. The original ‘Limits to Growth chart is the most chilling I have ever seen. The predictions of this study have largely taken place, and the worst is, that the worst is yet to come. The fact is that our enormous wealth, population, production and technology is entirely dependent on the use of fossil fuels. Two-thirds of the whole world’s energy comes from oil and natural gas, 20% from coal. Say Hall & Day, ‘we do not live in an information age, or a post-industrial age, or a solar age, but a petroleum age‘. Our dependence is made obvious when we consider the U.S. oil crisis of the early 70s, and how we ‘solved the problem’ by buying more oil from other countries. The cold, hard reality of the finite nature of resources seems impossible to ignore, once one has the facts. And yet, many manage to ignore it. It seems when times are good, caution is thrown to the wind and it’s business as usual. But the resources will run out, and there is no substitute waiting in the wings, at least anywhere near the scale required. Green energy is a notoriously poor performer in terms of return on investment. The nose-dive the resources line takes after the year 2000, and the soaring death rate after about 2040 is indicative of the famed ‘Malthusian processes’ taking effect.
There are some people, ‘Panglossian economists’ I call them, who do not seem to understand that it is impossible to have an economy if the biosphere it depends on is destroyed. They have unshaken faith in ‘the invisible hand of the market’ to replace the depleted resource and at a reasonable price too! The problem with market solutions is that, it seems to me, people are uninformed or in denial, or callously indifferent to anything but their own immediate benefit. They can be relied upon to make economically rational decisions – this is homo economicus after all – but if that economy is entirely detached from the idea of sustainability, then those decisions are in fact irrational. To ignore the minor fact that 80% of the world’s energy comes from rapidly diminishing natural resources is like pretending 2 and 2 don’t equal 4. No amount of denial, wishful thinking or manipulation of statistics will change this fact.
Because the ‘prognosis is doom’, it is difficult to think about more philosophical questions of value such as those discussed by Arne Naess in connection with his ‘deep ecology’ philosophy. Or perhaps there was never a better time to start. Whatever the case, I find myself agreeing with him, and one of his eight points of deep ecology relates directly to the strategy I think can slow or mitigate the inevitable decline that will come with resource depletion.
Deep ecology says that the earth and its natural phenomena (both human, non-human and ecosystems) have intrinsic worth – that is, independent of any human valuer and any instrumental use to achieve human ends. Thus, humans are only permitted to ‘use’ an amount that satisfies their vital needs. Of course, this is a problematic concept – which needs are considered ‘vital’ ?
Naess makes a distinction between ‘shallow’ and ‘deep’ environmentalism. ‘Shallow’ environmentalism is the ‘quick fix’ or ‘bandaid’ approach to any sort of problem. Solutions are generally short-term and accompanied by generous helpings of denial. One ‘shallow’ tactic that seems to be quite acceptable is that of putting a dollar value on environmental phenomena, both living (plants and animals) and non-living (rivers, mountains, landscapes, oceans). This seems the only way these things can be made visible to an economic system, to homo economicus. A deep perspective would see this as a cheapening and trivialization of the most important ‘resource’ in existence – the earth and its support of life.
I think my own perspective would be that of ‘prudential anthropocentrism’, because I don’t think construing ecosystem health and flourishing in terms of human health and flourishing is as terrible as some deep ecologists think it is. The question is, what constitutes human health and flourishing? For me, a human can only flourish fully, if the natural world is healthy and flourishing also. So, for me ecosystem health is just as important as it is for the deep ecologists.
Naess’s 7th point is that ‘the ideological change (that is necessary according to deep ecology) will be that of appreciating life quality rather than adhering to an increasingly higher standard of living’. Elsewhere he mentions that ‘what these (establishment) experts consider relevant (is) how to stabilize and eventually decrease consumption without losing genuine quality of life for humans’. The only suggestion of how this could be done that I’ve come across is Kate Soper’s concept ‘Alternative Hedonism’.
Kate’s idea echoes exactly Naess’s point about appreciating life quality. Instead of seeing the decrease in consumption as an impoverishing feature, she sees it as an enriching one; indeed, the life of excess consumption as an impoverished one. She sees the decrease also as re-claiming those aspects of life that have become lost – colonized by commerce, growth and ‘development’. Such aspects would include spending more time with loved ones, experiencing the natural environment, engaging in physical exercise, enjoying food in a fuller way from growing and cultivation to preparation and savouring, and less time at work. Alternative hedonism also involves different ways of responding to value, for example appreciating, contemplating, ‘dwelling in situations of inherent value’ as Naess says, being creative – instead of rabidly promoting, producing, consuming, wasting and discarding. This style of living consumes much less energy, but our lives will nonetheless change dramatically after resource depletion.
Euthanasia v. 2
Here is the final version of my euthanasia paper.
Before I came into this course I was convinced of the permissibility, validity and justification of euthanasia – both voluntary and non-voluntary (though not involuntary). The Kantian argument from dignity I read in Velleman and Callahan, and a point Chris Cordner raised in the lectures afforded me an entirely new perspective on human preciousness and autonomy. However, I ended up finding the argument from dignity ultimately unconvincing, and found something better in Ray Gaita – gratitude for the ‘gift’ of life – that I see a parallel to in Richard Dawkins’ scientific account of rarity, and thus preciousness, of life. However I leave the course still in favour of euthanasia, and find it fits with this heightened awareness of the preciousness and rarity of life.
Velleman’s highlighting of ‘interest-independent-value’ was momentous for me, probably because I issue from a society that is coloured entirely by a egoistic, liberal, costs-and-benefits, utility-theorist ‘bang for your buck’ kind of culture, where everything is either valued or disvalued on the basis of its efficiency, its yield, its qualities and its utility. I suppose this is the end result of a market society, in which everything is cheapened and made vulgar by commodification.
Reading Velleman (and Callahan), my staunch defense of autonomy was questioned in assertions such as ‘a person’s dignity is not his to value or not value’, ‘his value is not just his affair’, and that a person’s autonomy is only respected because it is contingent upon his inherent dignity as a person; thus an autonomous decision to kill himself or be killed is contradictory – a lesser part cannot make decisions about a greater whole. The idea is that a person’s life has value independent of what they happen to think about it.
Kant said that ‘trading one’s person for the benefit of relief from harms denigrates the value of personhood’. This was echoed in one of Chris Corder’s lectures when he said ‘a person might not be the best judge of what’s good for him’. A thorough indoctrination into a self-interested, autonomy-worshiping liberal society made me repress any desire to express such a view, even when it is patently obvious that people very often make poor choices in their own interest.
But ultimately I think matters of intense, protracted, unbearable and unrelievable suffering are different, and, though compatible with Velleman’s view, is not so with Callahan’s. Velleman says it is possible to loose this inherent dignity, as when a patient’s life is taken over by pain in such a way that it prevents him from exercising his rationality; when he is reduced to a ‘pleasure-seeking, pain-fleeing animal’. I think to ignore this kind of suffering is paternalistic and akin to torture. Callahan’s view is, I think, actually insensitive to the decision of a person who, after suffering unbearably, asks repeatedly to be euthanised. For him to assert that ‘we can never be sure how much a person is suffering’ is insulting. Taking the word of such people is a risk we have to take. In all cases though, strict medical and psychological assessment of patients would have to occur.
I think what these philosophers are getting at, in the main, is that we must not hold our lives too cheap. This insight needn’t be phrased in terms of ‘dignity-in-virtue-of-rationality’. In fact, the argument doesn’t persuade me – it is not altogether compelling. If I’m not a Kantian, why would I be convinced? Ray Gaita’s ‘gratitude for the gift of life’ is more plausible to me (though I reject the ‘unconditional’ part). But even more compelling – especially for those unmoved by quasi-religious talk of ‘duty’ and ‘inherent dignity’ – is the scientific account of the rarity of life, as expounded by Richard Dawkins. I probably find this the most compelling because I find science utterly compelling. He speaks of the ‘stupefying odds’ of our very existence, how mind-bogglingly unlikely it is that we are alive at all, and with a consciousness intelligent enough to comprehend the fact. I think it is through this lens that we can talk about ‘life as a gift’, without having to appeal to any religious or philosophical arguments at all.
If a person properly internalizes the history of this planet as told by science, they will come to the same conclusions as all the philosophers discussed – that every human life is precious, and can only be sacrificed in the most extreme circumstances. What constitutes an ‘extreme circumstance’? One in which the afflicted person cannot live a recognizably human life, regardless of their age or condition. So ultimately I leave the course in favour of euthanasia, but with a heightened sense of responsbility, and that the temptation to hold life too cheap must be rigorously questioned and resisted.
Rights and Their Duties
Smashed out four essays today, very happy! Molto bene, molto molto bene!
Q. Some people deny there is a human right to subsistence. They reason as follows: 1. If there were a human right to subsistence, it would be a positive right. 2. Positive rights assign implausibly burdensome duties, so there are no positive rights. 3 Therefore, there is no human right to subsistence. Critically assess this argument.
First of all, rights cannot be neatly sorted into positive and negative. A right has corresponding duties, which can be positive or negative. Also there is no one-to-one relation between a certain right and a certain duty. Any one right can have several corresponding duties. The statement ‘positive rights assign implausibly burdensome duties’ is false, because there is no such thing as an exclusively ‘positive’ right. The right in question here is that of subsistence, which many people take to be ‘implausibly burdensome’ because it involves giving aid to people who need it. But as this discussion will show, this potentially ‘burdensome’ aspect of the right to subsistence can be avoided if other duties corresponding to this right are respected. And finally, the idea that something ‘does not exist’ simply because it is burdensome is absurd. As if we could say ‘world poverty does not exist because it’s too big a problem’!
The right to security can illustrate for us the fact that such a so-called ‘negative’ right in fact involves several duties both positive and negative. People think that the right to security is negative because all it involves is people refraining from depriving others of their security- that is, refraining from hurting them, threatening them, raping them, torturing them. But in fact the right to security requires yet other people to prevent such transgressions from occuring, and help those who have been transgressed, and to punish the transgressors. These other people are police forces, police academies, criminal courts, a justice system, lawyers, law schools, administration, tax payers- a massive infrastructure that requires positive action to exist. Thus we see that the right to security involves positive duties as well as the negative one of refraining from depriving someone of their security. It is also worth pointing out that starving to death is not dissimilar to being beaten and left to die. Both involve significant bodily damage, and starving is even a more drawn-out process.
Henry Shue offers a tripartite typology to better explain these concepts. This typology outlines 3 duties that correlate to every right (including general moral rights, he says). 1) Duties not to deprive, 2) duties to protect from deprivation, and 3) duties to aid the deprived. We can apply this typology to the right to subsistence. This would involve: 1) duties not to deprive subsistence, 2) duties to prevent deprivation of subsistence, and 3) duties to aid those deprived of subsistence.
Shue says these duties can be carried out by different parties. For example, the 2nd duty to protect from deprivation could fall upon a government and be manifested in the policies they enact: a policy that limited the amount of pollution discharged into a river would ensure nearby crops do not become contaminated and poisonous for people who depend on those crops for their survival. Duties could often fall upon governments because ‘individual businesses are unwilling or unable to take into account the effect of their decisions’, says Shue. The example he gives is that of a farmer who grows beans which constitute the staple in his village’s diet. A businessman from out of town comes along and offers the farmer a deal which is more profitable for the farmer, but the crop is to be changed to flowers. The businessman is interested in closing the deal, the farmer doesn’t want to pass up the opportunity to make more much-needed money, and so they close the deal. The people of the village however, are now deprived of their subsistence. The price of food goes up and now they are extra poor as well as undernourished. Shue asks, who here is guilty of not fulfilling their duties?
The answer is the businessman and the farmer, and perhaps the government of the region that allows subsistence crops to be changed to non-subsistence crops, as per the dictates of the market. Multinational corporations are especially guilty of not fulfilling the duty not to deprive. They buy up vast tracts of land in developing countries and plant cash crops there for export. The people who previously used the land to grow subsistence crops can now look out at seas of corn (or whatever it is) and starve. If it is naïve to expect individuals to do anything other than pursue their own self-interest, then many duties will fall upon governments to force or entice people (as with tax breaks) to fulfil their duties in the form of laws and regulations.
To the people who say the right to subsistence is implausibly burdensome, I urge them to thank their forebears for transgressing, at every turn, their duties not to deprive, to protect from deprivation, and to aid the deprived. The history of colonisation tells the story well enough: indigenous peoples had their rights to subsistence, security, liberty and more consistently violated in the most heinous way. The oppression, subjugation, massive chronic poverty and lack of subsistence we see today in many parts of the world is the direct result of various parties not fulfilling their duties that correspond to peoples’ rights, and that is why our duty to aid the deprived is so great.
Can Common Sense Morality Be Defended?
Q. Common sense morality judges that you do something seriously morally wrong if you do not save a drowning child when you might do so at small cost to yourself. However, common sense morality does not judge it seriously morally wrong of you not to donate money, at small cost to yourself, to prevent poverty related deaths in the developing world. Can common sense morality be defended?
Common sense morality is wrong about donating, but right about some other things, namely, partiality. Human beings evolved in such a way that they develop special attachments to certain individuals- their family, friends, people they admire. These constitute ‘special obligations’ and they foster empathy, and it is my contention that we can make this partiality and empathy work for us in achieving Singer’s humanitarian aim.
I will first attack Singer’s argument on a number of fronts and see whether his argument stands up. The first rejoinder is that of magnitude. His child in the pond is but one child, whereas the children awaiting donations in developing countries number 30,000 per day. If it is just one child Singer is asking us to donate the price of a pair of shoes to, then his argument is rock solid. This would make the two cases identical- saving a drowning child, losing $200; saving a child from poverty-related death, parting with $200. However, he is not. The sheer number of children starving, and the number of people not donating any money requires us to ‘pick up the slack’. He uses another story to illustrate this case: if there were 10 children drowning in the pond, and 10 adults around the pond, but only 5 were pulling children out, you would be morally required- says common sense- to pull out as many as you can, regardless of whether others are ‘doing their share’ or not. So his argument says we are to donate as much money as we can[1].
The second criticism is that of proximity. The child in the pond is one in our immediate vicinity, one we can see, hear and touch. Intimacy is required for the development of empathy. We cannot empathise with someone we don’t know. An impoverished child on the other side of the world is one we cannot know at all.
The third criticism is that of reliability of return on investment. When we see the child drowning, we know we can easily save him if we tried. The story says we would not be endangering ourselves in saving the child. In donating to an aid agency, we do not know where the money goes, or whether it even gets to its target- a starving child who needs help.
What would Singer say to these criticisms? Firstly, he would say that we do not need to save every child we possibly can. He is only asking us to ‘care a little’, and give up some consumer item we might absent-mindedly buy. That is surely not a lot to ask of an affluent citizen. Yes, he does say to ‘pick up the slack’ of others’ negligence. But not to the point of marginal utility. For an Australian on an average income of 50K a year, a $2000 donation per year is not a stretch and a great help to the recipients. To the charge of proximity, he would say, as a consequentialist, that the two deaths are exactly the same, it’s just that we cannot see one of them. He would cite the capacity of modern technology to acquaint us intimately with the lives of other cultures, through the internet, news stories, documentaries, aid agency publications and advertisements. This type of acquaintance is the first step toward empathy. The more we know, the more we will care and the less we will fear or criticise other cultures. On the reliability of return on our investment, he would say that there are enough reputable aid agencies which we could trust to use our money in the right ways. I think these rejoinders are sufficiently strong to counter those attacks of common sense morality, so his argument still stands. But what else might work against Singer?
What works against him is the requirement that we consider the impartial overall good. I believe that it is impossible for humans to be impartial, to divorce themselves from the pursuit of their own benefit or the benefit of those they are close to, and to try is futile. This is echoed by several philosophers, among them Bernard Williams, who says ‘to constantly judge our emotions as either valid or invalid alienates us from them’. And if we perfect our promotion of the impartial good, if we successfully divorce ourselves from the idea that we only give benefits to those we care about, what is to say we will be able to care, in a partial way, about the individuals who are going to receive this good?
As I mentioned at the start, humans evolved to be partial. That is, we care more about people we know, because we know them. Singer’s answer to the charge of lack of proximity above contain the seeds of what I consider to be the solution to the problem of impartiality, which is that of fostering empathy. If empathy can be fostered by becoming acquainted with people, then we must become acquainted with the people who need our help the most. World Vision and similar organisations use this very tactic by asking you to ‘sponsor a child’ whose name, face, culture and biography you will come to know, and thus develop an emotional attachment to. We must get to know the people we want to help, and a good place to begin this process of cultural acceptance and empathy is in early childhood education. Michael Slote agrees that empathy is something that can be cultivated. If we concentrate on cultivating empathy, on heightening our natural capacity to do this (unlike impartiality), achieving Singer’s aims will be far easier.
[1] He used to say that we ought to give until we ourselves are almost as impoverished as those we are helping- ‘to the point of marginal utility’. He has softened since.
Reply to Susan Wolf’s Moral Saints v.2
Basically the concept of “moral saint” as Susan describes it, implies an impoverished conception of morality. Morality is far broader and richer than that. What is wrong is that some values have come to be valued more than others, namely, cultural goods over human lives and welfare. This imbalance gives the moral saint reason to act, but it does not mean she should think of cultural goods as less valuable.
The type of moral saint Susan Wolf describes is indeed repugnant. We would not want such people as friends or family. Why? Because they would be uninteresting, obsessive, tiresome, not interested in dissent and irreverence, in short, ‘disgusting goody-goodies’. But who are we to criticize them? In themselves they are quite harmless, in fact they do quite a lot of good helping others, donating time, money or effort to various causes. The Loving Saint, he who is motivated by, and inclined to, and derives pleasure from helping others by performing altruistic acts, is virtually un-criticizable. The fact that he ‘does not know how to enjoy a sundae, a fishing trip or a stereo’ is quite irrelevant. He lives to perform altruistic deeds; his is a life of service. However, a moral saint could be harmful to himself, either by thinking too well of others who have less than his best interests at heart, or by being a Rational Saint, who only performs altruistic acts because his reason compels him to; he’s not particularly inclined to do these acts but nonetheless forces himself to, which could bring about an uneasy, internally conflicted personality. This is why Wolf says they are “too good for their own wellbeing”. One could only say someone is “too good for their own wellbeing” if they subscribe to a perfectionist account of the good; that there is more to a person’s good than what they think is good for them.
However, there is a minimal morality we as social beings must adhere to, if we are interested in social cohesion. Even if we aren’t proximal to one another, we still have certain restrictions applying to us such as “don’t pollute” because we share the same environment regardless of where we live. If everybody felt the moral requirement to this minimal extent, then in the rich countries we would all donate 10% of our incomes to the impoverished and solve world poverty quite easily.
My next point is about the perceived divide between so-called “demands of the world” and “self-satisfaction”, or the split between “responsibilities to the worst off” and “cultural goods”. Susan says some cultural goods, like haute cuisine, high fashion, and interior design are not compatible with moral sainthood because “no moral saint could justify the use of human resources” that could be put to ‘better use’ such as famine relief or education in developing countries. But the problem is not that these cultural goods are not valuable, or that what the saint considers valuable are more valuable, but that the cultural goods have come to be valued more highly at the expense of the saint’s values, those being, human welfare and flourishing. The balance has gone awry. People who indulge in cultural goods while at the same time not caring a fig about human welfare elsewhere, are effectively saying “I value my fashion items and caviar more than your life”. (The question of whether such a position is defensible is beyond this paper. For present purposes I will assume that human life is more valuable than fashion items and caviar). As such, it is the case that the valuing of cultural goods above human lives has caused resources to be concentrated in the cultural realm. So it is not that the moral saint ought to repudiate or condemn the cultural goods, but that she redress the balance.
Next I want to discuss value and how it is possible to satisfy the “demands of morality” and “self-satisfaction” as related to cultural goods. Susan talks about certain values that loosely belong to the realm of art and comedy. She cites movie stars, tv shows, dancers and comedians. She describes a sort of humour that is cynical, resigned, pessimistic- ‘character traits a moral saint could never foster as she is required to be very nice to all people all the time, regardless of how she feels or how she feels about the people she encounters, or what they are like. Well I just don’t think that claim holds any water. It is possible to both be nice to people and to enjoy Marx Brothers films. It is possible to really enjoy and be amused by Frank Zappa’s song ‘Suicide Chump’ without going around believing suicidal people should just “go on and get it over with then”. Anything that we care about is valuable, and the fact that we care about it means it is in the domain of the moral.
My concept of morality includes everything that we care about and value. The paradigmatically ‘saintly’ characteristics we value are kindness, generosity, mildness, deference and sensitivity. But value doesn’t end there. As we have seen, art, architecture, sarcastic humour and fine cuisine are also valuable. Creativity, bravery, honesty, frankness, the truth- even when it is unsightly, hurtful, confronting or frightening- are valued. Nietzsche considered playfulness and risk-taking virtues, while Aristotle considered wit to be one. Christine Swanton gives an example of how even a typically non-moral choice, such as what to have for lunch, can be moral because an apple is better than three doughnuts, according to the value of human health. A trip to the Tate Gallery will reveal artworks endorsing racism, sexism, slavery and pornography. Are these immoral? If they are, is censorship moral? The fact that people can’t control themselves when faced with such artworks, that they assume the views on show are to be adopted and applied to daily life, is not a function of the value of the art. The art has value independent of what people think or do in response to it. In this way it is a perfectionist good. It is the responsibility of people to recognize and appreciate the value of art, and then the value of treating people with respect as ends in themselves. If they did that, if they could understand the different ways of responding to different kinds of value, they will see that 1) a “moral saint” can watch Marx Brothers films or listen to Zappa, and 2) that people who see Bill Henson or Tracey Emin or Gustav Klimt works are not going to go home, set about making child pornography and become alcoholics.
Nozick’s Experience Machine
I think Nozick has, through his example of the experience machine, only proved that truth is valuable and important, more so than refuted hedonism. To really have refuted hedonism, (that is, the simple Benthamite pleasure-pain hedonism, let’s call it sensory hedonism) his machine would strictly had to have been a ‘mere sensation’ machine, one in which you could really only experience pleasurable mental or physical sensations (eating ice-cream, having sex, smelling roses, getting a massage). However the picture he paints of his machine is very different. Firstly he says the machine gives you ‘any experience you desire’. Writing a great novel, making a friend, or reading an interesting novel are not strictly sensory hedonistic experiences, rather they are ‘attitudinal hedonistic‘ experiences, or ‘perfectionist‘ experiences. Writing a great novel would be a perfectionist experience- given as it is such a long, arduous undertaking with many highs and many lows. Perhaps making a friend or reading an interesting novel are closer to sensory hedonistic experiences.
Because being both inside and outside of the machine is perceptually indistinguishable, it is only truth that is the difference between the two. Therefore, it is my contention that any kind of valuable experience – whatever your theory of value happens to be – can be had inside the machine, barring the truth. So you could have sensory hedonistic experiences (pleasure, absence of pain), attitudinal hedonistic ones (enjoyment of a certain state of affairs), and your desires could be fulfilled, no matter what they were (although Nozick did stipulate that we would still remain human inside the machine, so maybe we couldn’t get everything we desired after all, say, being an elephant). Even a perfectionist account of the good could be realised inside the machine – whatever your particular concept of ‘human excellence’ is – whether it is perfecting your rational nature and gaining knowledge and wisdom (well not quite, as we shall see), achieving excellence in art, science and culture (Rawls), achieving or realising the best things in life (Nagel), achieving virtue or overcoming difficulty and adversity – it is all possible. Situations as adverse and difficult as your imagination allows could be created for you to overcome. The point is, that these contruals of what is valuable, sensory pleasure, attitudinal pleasure, having my desires satisfied, perfectionist goods – are not dependant on truth. So what kind of value is dependant on truth?
In short, knowledge and authentic, veridical experiences. In his account of knowledge, Nozick proves, by way of a counterfactual, that justified true belief is not knowledge. Inside the machine, we could have justified true beliefs. They are ‘internalist’ accounts of justified true belief. But they are not ‘tethered to the truth’ because they fail Nozick’s third condition: ‘if p weren’t true, S wouldn’t believe that p’. So, ‘if we weren’t having experiences in the experience machine, we wouldn’t believe we were’. But in fact we do believe we are having these experiences, even though we are just blobs in tanks. Our beliefs about our experiences are false, they are not knowledge. It is for this reason, I think, that Nozick is against plugging in.
But this only matters if knowledge matters to us. Because we only have five senses with which to interpret things, the only difference between inside and outside is that outside you are ‘tethered to the truth’. Nozick raises three arguments against plugging in in his article: 1) we want to do certain things, not just have the experience of doing them, 2) we want to be more than just a blob in a tank, and 3) machine experiences can only be as inventive as the human imagination. In response to these I say: 1) you can ‘do’ anything you want in the machine, just as you would outside of it, it’s just that these ‘doings’ won’t be veridical. 2) In terms of ‘being’ more than a blob, this is only disturbing in the few moments between making the decision and plugging in. To the third criticism, I say: most things we value are human-made- great art, architecture, literature, theory, technological and scientific achievments. In terms of the natural world, science can predict fairly well what’s going to happen in the next few hundred years (barring the influence of human inventions and destruction), nothing wildly unexpected like an asteroid or neighbouring galaxy or aliens will come crashing into our corner of the universe any time soon, and this in light of the fact that humans are only able to witness a 70 – 100 year span of time. In addition, human imagination is capable (especially collectively) of coming up with far more interesting states-of-affairs than what we currently witness in reality, if the charge is that ‘we can never predict what reality will throw up’. Nozick mentions ‘being open to other-worldly experiences’ in the real world. I suppose this is only a consideration for theists or deists. These individuals would either plug in and have man-made ‘god-like-contact-experiences’, or not plug in to leave open the possibility of real contact.
I hope I have shown that it is not really hedonism Nozick has refuted, but the importance of (for those whom it is important to) veridical experiences and (real) knowledge.
