Marginal Revolution

On Bryan Caplan's ethical intuitionism

Bryan offers the most extensive version of his view I've seen him blog.  On overall method and meta-ethics, I'm not so far from Bryan (and someday he will get a post in praise of him).  But I usually disagree with his applications of the method.  For instance he seems to argue that because employees are allowed to discriminate against employers, we should allow for a reciprocal right of employer discrimination.

My first objection is that we cannot judge an argument like this outside of a particular historical context.  In some cases employer discrimination rights may be fine, in others not.  I don't think ethical intuitionism, as could be represented by abstract reasoning from analogy. can do the hard work here.  Rather we must look to the history to understand the meaning and long-term effects of the discriminatory act under question.  In some cases the discrimination is effectively perpetuating a regime of evil and thus it is morally wrong.

Here is another part of Bryan's argument:

Suppose A and B be are dating.  A has an equally good outside option.  B can't bear to live without A.  A therefore has some bargaining power - vastly more than most employers, in fact.  Yet almost everyone thinks it would be wrong to force A to stay with B.

If there is one intuition that many reasonable people have, it is that family and personal relationships are not, in moral terms, exactly like commercial or work place relationships.  I get nervous when I see ethical intuitionists serve up simple analogies across these various realms.  (In general I think Bryan creates too much license for analogical reasoning of this kind.)  This is also why I am not convinced by all of the arguments in Steve Landsburg's Fair Play.

My overall view is that ethical intuitionism settles many fewer issues than most of its proponents like to think.  That said, there is often nowhere else to go.  We somehow need to come to terms with two propositions at the same time:

1. We need to think more rather than less ethically.

2. The content of ethical philosophy tells us less, in reliable terms, than most people would like to believe.

Benton's smoky ham and bacon

It's equal to the best I've had, including what I've sampled in Spain.  (I've also had especially fine ham in Slovenia.)  You can read about it and order it here.  It ships without incident or loss of value.  It's what David Chang uses in Momofuku and its affiliated restaurants, by the way.  It's not even very expensive.

Speaking of animal products, a few of you asked me a while ago how the eating of animals could possibly be morally justified.  My primary objection is to how we treat animals while they are alive, especially in factory farms.  The very rise and continuing existence of humanity is based on the widespread slaughter and extinction of other large mammals, not to mention other animals as well.  I'm not saying we should feel entirely comfortable with that, but rather a "non-aggression" stance toward other animals simply isn't possible, short of repudiating all of human civilization, even in its more primitive versions.  Everyone favors the murder of animals for human purposes, although different people draw the lines at different places.  I don't know of any good foundationalist approach to these issues, but at the very least we should be nicer to non-human animals at the margin and less willing to torture them.

At the policy level we should tax meat more heavily and regulate farms more strictly, for both environmental reasons and reasons of animal welfare.  I draw a line at where the life of the animal is "not worth living," but for me animal slaughter is not immoral per se. 

There are a few things you can do personally, including:

1. Buy less from factory farms.

2. Eat better meat and in turn eat less meat, substituting quality for quantity.  This is a common demographic pattern, so it shouldn't be too hard to mimic.

If you are a vegetarian, I think that is excellent.  If you're not, Benton's is a step toward both #1 and #2.

The Big Questions

In The Big Questions, Steven Landsburg ventures far beyond his usual domain to take on questions in metaphysics, epistemology and ethics.  Beginning with Plato, mathematicians have argued for the reality of mathematical forms.  Rene Thom, for example, once said "mathematicians should have the courage of their most profound convictions and thus affirm that mathematical forms indeed have an existence that is independent of the mind considering them."  Roger Penrose put it more simply, mathematical abstractions are "like Mount Everest," they are, he said, "just there."

All this must make Steven Landsburg history's most courageous mathematician because for Landsburg mathematical abstractions are not like Mount Everest, rather Mount Everest is a mathematical abstraction.  Indeed, for Landsburg, it's math all the way down - math is what exists and what exists is math, A=A. 

Read the book for more on this view, which is as good as any metaphysics that has ever been and a far sight better than most.  Moreover, Landsburg's view is not empty, it does have real implications.  Since there is no uncertainty in math, for example, Landsburg's view supports a hidden variables or multiple-worlds view of quantum physics.

Speaking of quantum physics, The Big Questions, has the clearest explanation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that I have ever read.  In fact, this is a necessary consequence of Landsburg's metaphysical views; since it's all math all the way down, the explanation of the uncertainty principle is the explanation of the math and any true uncertainty or mystery is simply a fault of our own misunderstanding.

Turning to epistemology, the theory of beliefs and knowledge, two chapters stand out for me.  I learned a lot from Landsburg remarkable clear explanation of Aumann's agreement theorem--and I say that despite the fact that in the office next to mine is Robin Hanson, one of the world's experts on the theorem (see Robin's papers on disagreement and also his paper with Tyler, but read Landsburg first!).

Landsburg's skills of explanation are also brought to bear in a wonderful little chapter explaining the theory of instrumental variables and of structural econometric modeling  - and this from an avowedly armchair economist!  

Finally for those, like me, who loved The Armchair Economist and More Sex is Safer Sex there is also lots of economics in The Big Questions.  Highly recommended.

Questions that are rarely asked: the Wikipedia paradox

Michael Nielsen has two of them:

Question 1: What’s the most notable subject that’s not notable enough for inclusion in Wikipedia?

Let’s assume for now that this question has an answer (“The Answer”), and call the corresponding subject X. Now, we have a second question whose answer is not at all obvious.

Question 2: Is subject X notable merely by being The Answer?

Do you see where this is headed?  Must Wikipedia include everything?  There is more analysis at the link and note that the more these questions are asked, the more likely we encounter a paradoxical answer:

...suppose I went to great trouble to convene a conference series on The Answer, was able to convince leading logicians and philosophers to take part, writing papers about The Answer, convinced a prestigious journal to publish the proceedings, arranged media coverage, and so on. The Answer would then certainly have exceeded Wikipedia’s notability guidelines!

I wonder, as do you, whether this notoriety extends in transitive fashion to the seventeenth round of deciding who or what is the marginally deserving entry: "Well, you're not really notable, or even close, but all the others who were marginal became famous through the process of having had their lack of fame debated.  Mick Jagger now invites you to his party."  Not!

At some point these people under debate, once there are enough of them, all turn into a big group of Wikipedia nobodies.  

Ayn Rand

With two new biographies being covered in all the major newspapers, The Daily Show, and elsewhere, Ayn Rand is in the news.  Yet all of the reviews that I have seen have focused on her personal life rather than her ideas.  Nearly five years ago Tyler and I both wrote on Rand's ideas on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of her birth.  It seems like a good time to reprise.  Here is my post with links.

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Here, on the 100th anniversary of her birth, are some thoughts on Ayn Rand.  See also Tyler's post and Bryan Caplan's excellent series (links.)

It used to be commonly said that “Until Robinson Crusoe is joined by Friday there is no need for ethics on a desert island.” Rand replied that it was on a desert island that ethics was most needed because on a desert island you cannot free ride on the virtues of others; if you are to survive you must yourself exercise the virtues of rationality, independence, and productiveness. As her reply indicates, Rand was an exponent of virtue ethics, the Greek/Aristotelian idea that ethics is about how one should live. Indeed, although she does not get much credit, Rand is the most prominent and lucid, contemporary exponent of virtue ethics.

I think Rand’s version of virtue ethics is compelling because it is explicitly modern – where the recent literature still sometimes seems to focus on the virtues required of a Greek olive grower, Rand’s virtue ethics is post industrial-revolution, a virtue ethics for the capitalist world.

If ethics is about the virtuous man then politics is about the social requirements for the virtuous man to exist (the modern literature lags behind Rand in connecting ethics and politics). One can understand Rand’s novels as an extended disquisition on virtue ethics and the political and social requirements necessary to practice such an ethics. In particular, she argued that rights, a legal concept creating a protected sphere for independent action, were a necessary condition to live a life of virtue.

One need not buy Rand’s deductive argument that laissez-faire capitalism is the sine-qua-non of ethical action to appreciate her insights connecting the good man and good woman with the good society. Relatedly, I do think that Rand was absolutely right to say that capitalism requires a moral defense.  Moreover, the only plausible defense must involve the virtue of selfishness. It is all too obvious that capitalism promotes and rewards self-interest and, Mandeville nothwithstanding, no defense which simply excuses this fact will succeed.

Rand’s language hasn’t done much to advance her case and indeed it has obscured areas where her insights are now widely accepted. Today, for example, you can find many books attacking the evil of altruism. Surprised? Of course, the books don’t use those terms, instead they call it the problem of codependency (or some other such). Relatedly, it’s no accident that Hillary Clinton was once an avid Randian (recall her political career started with Barry Goldwater) because Rand is an important feminist. Rand’s portrayal of strong, independent, intelligent women is coming to be recognized as a landmark in fiction but in addition Rand’s attacks on self-sacrifice have special meaning in a culture that has long used the “caring ethic” to bind women to the service of others.

Of weaknesses there are many, most of which flow from the combination of Rand as philosopher, novelist and powerful personality. John Galt, for example, is but one instantiation of the Randian/Aristotelian virtue ethic, an instantiation which was created for a particular aesthetic purpose by a particular person. Too often both Rand and her detractors have taken the instantiation for the class thereby limiting the vision.

Where would a do-gooder do the most good?

A loyal reader writes:

I am sitting down on a rainy night to try and dream up a future career... I am a humanities guy with a hobby in economics (not a engineer or coder.)  I want to seek wisdom, not riches; I want to do good, not become wealthy. I want to go where others aren't.

So here is the main question: 1) What would be on your list of unsolved problems that public governments or private enterprise are not addressing adequately? Which of these could be addressed by 1 person or by $1,000? By 10 people or $10,000? 100 people or $100k? 1,000 people or $1MM? 10k or $10M? 100k or $100MM. Where can I have a lot of impact even if I won't find fabulous wealth?

And here is my meta-question.  The problem is that market prices do not correctly signal the relative value of public goods or charitable goods.  So what signals should someone use if they want to allocate their labor (in the charitable sector) to the highest value product?

The one nagging thing you still don't understand about yourself

This is one of the best "time wasters" I've come across in some time.  Here is the upshot:

The email edition of the British Psychological Society's Research Digest has reached the milestone of its 150th issue...To mark the occasion, the Digest editor has invited some of the world's leading psychologists to look inwards and share, in 150 words, one nagging thing they still don't understand about themselves.

Here is Paul Rozin's answer:

I generally believe that we learn from experience. However, a recent study I did with Karlene Hanko repeats a finding from Kahneman and Snell, that people are very poor at predicting how their liking will change for a new product (in our case, two new foods and two new body products) after using it for a week. We predicted that the parents of our college undergraduates would be better than their children at predicting their hedonic trajectory, but 25 more years of self experience did nothing for them. Nor for me. Every night, I bring home a pile of work to do in the evening and early morning. I have been doing this for over 50 years. I always think I will actually get through all or most of it, and I almost never get even half done. But I keep expecting to accomplish it all. What a fool I am.

Here is Norbert Schwarz on incidental feelings:

One nagging thing I don’t understand about myself is why I’m still fooled by incidental feelings. Some 25 years ago Jerry Clore and I studied how gloomy weather makes one’s whole life look bad -- unless one becomes aware of the weather and attributes one’s gloomy mood to the gloomy sky, which eliminates the influence. You’d think I learned that lesson and now know how to deal with gloomy skies. I don’t, they still get me. The same is true for other subjective experiences, like the processing fluency resulting from print fonts – I still fall prey to their influence. Why does insight into how such influences work not help us notice them when they occur? What makes the immediate experience so powerful that I fail to apply my own theorizing until some blogger asks a question that brings it to mind?

For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.  By the way, I wonder if those are their real answers; I wouldn't tell you mine.

Markets in everything, philosophers' edition

Essays on Derek Parfit's On What Matters, edited by Juissi Suikkanen and John Cottingham.  This book is due out shortly in late October.

The Amazon description reads, aptly:

In Essays on Derek Parfit's On What Matters, seven leading moral philosophers offer critical evaluations of the central ideas presented in a greatly anticipated new work by world-renowned moral philosopher Derek Parfit.

An Amazon.com search, or for that matter a Google search, reveals no pending release date for On What Matters.  Perhaps the editors have dabbled in the Newcomb problem?  Or have they simply read too much David Lewis?

For the pointer I thank Alex T., a loyal MR blogger.

Sentences to ponder

The Required Reports Prepared by State Agencies and Institutions of Higher Education is not itself listed in the Required Reports Prepared by State Agencies and Institutions of Higher Education.

That is from Texas, where they must file a report on all the reports they have filed.  Here is more.  That report is itself 580 pages and it recommends the abolition of 318 reports and the consoldiation of 58 others.  It is promised:

The next edition of this report will contain a full assessment of all required reports.

I thank Catfish for the pointer.

Very good sentences

Probability is the oil of rationalisation.

You'll find it here.  And there is this:

The closest thing you can have to free will is for your actions to be determined purely by the state of your brain. Free will is determinism.