Category Archives: philosophy

envisioning morality as a network

1 Reply

Let us posit that a person’s moral worldview is a network. The nodes are commitments, beliefs, principles, and other moral ideas. The connections are logical. But, since we are thinking about morality and not mathematics, our criteria for valid connections must be loosened. Two moral ideas are connected not only in cases when A implies B, but also if A sets a precedent for B, A is analogous to B, A is a compelling example of B, or A and B came together harmoniously in the life of a person we admire. We can examine any moral network map and ask whether it has desirable features as a whole. Improving our own map becomes a method of introspective self-improvement.

Many works in the philosophical tradition push us to ask whether all the nodes in our own maps are mutually consistent and whether all the connections are logically tight. But those are only two virtues of a moral worldview, and they are easily overrated. A moral monster could have a consistent network in which all his concrete beliefs followed from a few premises by adamantine chains of logic. This evil person might hold horrible premises, or his assumptions might be wonderful (e.g., “Freedom for everyone!”), yet his whole system could be fanatically simplistic. Although moral networks vary in quality, and we should strive to improve them, coherence is not their main virtue.

Continue reading →

putting facts, values, and strategies together: the case of the Human Development Index

1 Reply

Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate economist and philosopher who spoke recently at Tufts, helped design the Human Development Index, which ranks all countries on a single list based on life expectancy at birth, years of schooling, and gross national income per capita. Sen seemed a bit chagrined that he is famous for this. The work took him only a few hours, he said. The formula was extremely simple. He called it a “vulgar index,” because it lumps together diverse variables in a potentially misleading way. He said that he agreed to do it mainly at the urging of his very old friend Mahbub-ul-Haq, who believed that an ordinal ranking for all nations would win media attention and help to undermine the tyranny of GNP growth, too often treated as the only measure of development. Mahbub-ul-Haq was correct, because the HDI gets global attention and has even been a central issue in some countries’ election campaigns. A set of separate indicators wouldn’t get much notice.

In my own small way, I have tried to do something similar by creating the Index of National Civic Health (INCH) for the National Commission on Civic Renewal in the 1990s, which led to the Civic Health Index, which continues today. Our idea was to challenge the dominance of economic growth by adding a measure of civic engagement that could also be tracked. Like the HDI, it was a “vulgar” measure, designed for subversive purposes–or, to put our objective more positively, to provoke a good discussion.

One interpretation of such efforts would go like this: There are facts about the world. A full picture of the world would be very complicated, but we can strive for it. Once we have “the data,” we can choose what to emphasize and whether to use positive or negative adjectives to describe reality. That is a matter of imposing values, opinions, or preferences on the data. Finally, once we have an informed opinion about what to do, we can try to change the world by persuading other people to agree with us. Creating an index is an example of a rhetorical tactic that may prove persuasive. This, then, is the “positivistic” model:

facts > interpreted by opinions > transmitted by strategies > changes in the world

I assume Sen would reject this model. He knows that one can reason about values as well as data, so selecting and morally evaluating information is not just a matter of imposing subjective preferences or opinions on reality. For instance, it is right to see an increase in lifespan as a good thing (all else being equal). Further, what we call “data” is always imbued with norms. Education, for example, is a component of HDI–but what is education? Years spent in school looks like a hard number, but no one believes it’s worth measuring unless it is a proxy for education, rightly understood. In fact, you can’t even tell what counts as “school” without some basic value-judgments. Defining education requires a moral theory of the human good.

Sen knows all of the above, and I interpret his model like this:

reasoning about facts and values (taken together) >> transmitted by strategies >> changes in the world

For instance, Sen reasoned for a long time about human development–a rich and complicated topic–before Mahbub-ul-Haq gave him a strategy to influence the public debate: generating a “vulgar index.” The index changed the world, at least modestly.

I would push the critique of positivism further. A moral theory is no good unless it has beneficial strategic consequences. We can announce that everyone should be equal, but unless we have a plan for making everyone more equal without producing a tyranny or chaos, that statement is worse than no theory at all. Further, the information and ideas (including moral ideas) with which we reason come from somewhere. They are produced by people and institutions. By communicating strategically, we influence the process that produces the data and arguments with which we reason. Thus I would connect all of the following with two-headed arrows: facts, values, and strategies. And I think people in influential positions, like Amartya Sen, should be held accountable for having good strategies, not just good values and data.

(see also Why political recommendations often disappoint: an argument for reflexive social science, Is all truth scientific truth?, Bent Flyvbjerg and social science as phronesis, A real alternative to ideal theory on philosophy and Abe Lincoln the surveyor, or the essential role of strategy)

my evolving thoughts on animal rights and welfare

Leave a reply

We can wrong other sentient beings in three ways: by reducing their happiness or causing them to suffer (moving them down the happiness scale), by violating their rights, or by exploiting them, which means using them as mere means to our ends. I am not convinced that the second and third kinds of wrong apply to animals as they do to human beings. But we cause much suffering in animals–for example, through factory farming and the destruction of habitats–and we are obligated to address that. Reducing the consumption of meat is obligatory to the degree that it affects the supply of factory-farmed animals. But it is not the case that any killing or eating of animals is immoral. Those are my current views, and I will try to explain below.

I think about the relationship between happiness and rights in the following way. You should not cause me to suffer or reduce my happiness. But instantly killing me would not harm me in that way. I’ve had a happy life, and you would be freezing my current happiness score at its high net level. I would then suffer no more. Yet obviously you would have violated my right to life, which must be different from my interest in being happy. Why do I have a right to life? Mainly because I have plans that make sense of my actions. By suddenly killing me, you ruin my plans and make many of my past actions pointless. You also harm other people and violate their rights by removing me from their lives (or so I hope they would feel).

Now, if our beloved dog suddenly and painlessly died, his long-term plans would not be frustrated, and his recent actions would not be rendered meaningless. He has plans, such as stealing the treats out of the closet and snuggling with his human companions; but these plans are short-lived. His past treats and snuggling sessions would still represent successes even if his life suddenly ended. We would be sad, and you would violate our rights if you took him away. But I am not convinced his rights would be affected.

Likewise, our dog would be very sad to lose me and my family; suddenly killing us would cause him harm. But if this happened while he was with his dog-sitter, whom he loves, he would not be sad. The ties among animals, although profound, only matter morally insofar as they cause happiness or suffering. In contrast, human relationships give our actions purpose, and thus wrecking other people’s relationships can violate their rights even if they aren’t unhappy about it.

As for exploitation, this also violates other people’s rights because it frustrates their plans or substitutes our plans for theirs–even if it causes them no unhappiness or indeed makes them happier. I am not convinced that this concern applies to dogs and other mammals. Whether our dog is happy is the issue, not whether we treat him as an end in himself. If we train him to do the right thing by giving him treats, we view him as a means to our ends. That just makes him happy, and why not?

If the sole moral issue with animals is their happiness, we are in the realm that philosophers call “consequentialist,” where you add up all the benefits and subtract the harms. You don’t worry as much about bright lines. For example, eating less meat may enhance animal welfare if it reduces financial support for factory farming. But zero pounds of meat is just a number, like any other. Reducing your consumption from 50 lbs to 40lbs is ten times more important than getting it down from 1lb to zero. The same is not true with eating human flesh, which we regard as a matter of transgression and pollution. Even if cannibalism is merely a taboo, killing other people is truly wrong, and you’re a killer even if you only have one victim. I don’t think that’s the case with animals.

As long as our reasoning is consequentialist, offsets seem appropriate. It could be much better to eat a steak and contribute to an animal-welfare organization than to shun the meat but do nothing about public policy. Offsets and compensatory payments do not excuse violations of human rights, but they make sense with respect to animals (and nature more generally).

using the full space of moral reasons

Leave a reply

I am certain about some of my moral ideas: genocide is definitely and unequivocally wrong. Some other moral ideas seem equally important, and I would be loath to abandon them, but I feel uncertain or equivocal about them. They capture moral truths, yet they are not fully or certainly right.

Some of my moral ideas are alive in me, informing and guiding the rest of my thoughts and my actual behavior. Other ideas are theoretical or inert: I assent to them but they don’t influence my mind or my actions. Yet (once again) I would be loath to abandon them because they may capture truths that should bind me in new circumstances. For example, if a tyrant arose, I hope I would recall my latent objections to tyranny.

Some of my moral ideas are very general; for instance, Do unto others as you would have them do unto yourself. And some are very particular: make sure that we honor our own organization’s mission statement. My particular ideas do not seem to be mere applications of my general principles, nor are my principles mere abstractions from the particulars. They are different and not fully connected. Again, I would not want to do without any of them.

You could think of these as three dimensions; that would create a space of moral reasons. Each idea can then be placed at a point in the space. I believe that we (because of the kinds of creatures we are) need the full expanse.

Alexis de Tocqueville once remarked that God “stands in no need of general ideas” because He “does not regard the human race collectively. He surveys at one glance and severally all the beings of whom mankind is composed; and he discerns in each man the resemblances that assimilate him to all his fellows, and the differences that distinguish him from them.” Thus God would need no abstractions. God would also have the capacity to act on all of His moral principles, all of the time. He would be fully certain about each of them; and they would all be mutually consistent.

The same is not true for us. Although influential philosophers typically hold subtle and complex views about moral certainty, generality, and the application of moral ideas, I am not sure that we explore–or value, or teach our students to consider–enough of the moral space. We tend to assume that we’d be better off if all our moral ideas could be certain, general, and directly applicable to a broad range of issues and actions. We imagine that the ideal moral agent would fully assent to something resembling a Categorical Imperative (even if not the Kantian version) that would link straightforwardly to the rest of her or his ideas and actions. Nothing like a spiritual exercise (processes for making ideas live in the soul) need intervene between the principles and their application.

The simple view also encourages us to clean things up, getting rid of the ideas that seem partly good and partly bad, or mostly true but not perfectly so, or good under limited circumstances but liable to switch their meanings in different contexts. But the cleanup just deletes some of the the rich experience stored in the full space of our moral reasons.

moral network mapping and literary criticism: a methodological proposal

1 Reply

A moral worldview is a set of beliefs or values connected by various kinds of relationships. For instance, one belief may imply another, or may subsume another, or may be in tension with another even though both are truths. If analyzed that way, a whole worldview can be mapped as a network, with the beliefs viewed as nodes, and the relationships as ties.

Using that method, we can map the moral network implied by a work of literature, such as a lyric poem. Previously, I wrote some notes on W.H. Auden’s poem “September 1, 1939” (notes here; full text here.) I then mapped the moral network of that work. I think my first effort was a bit off, so here is a revised map:

What assumptions underlie this method?

1. The moral evaluation of literature is a valid and useful mode of criticism. It is not just about judging the values of the text (pro or con), nor is it merely a matter of elucidating what the author meant or what the text implies about moral issues. It is rather a critical engagement with the moral perspective of the work, a kind of joint investigation into what is really good and right that is informed by both the text and the reader’s critical response. Although I think that remains a rare mode of literary criticism, it has prominent defenders.*

2. Formal network analysis, a branch of graph theory, offers insights about the structure of any system that is composed of objects and relationships. Tools from network analysis, such as calculating the centrality of nodes or the density of relationships, can help to elucidate and assess the moral worldview of a work of literature.

Underlying this premise is a deeper assumption that moral worldviews should not be assessed only (or mainly?) by evaluating the correspondence between their separate ideas and truths about the world. It’s also (or more?) important to ask how the whole worldview hangs together. The question is not whether Auden should be against tyranny, but how that stance fits into his overall thinking. When people argue for assessing a whole worldview instead of individual principles, their next step is usually to look for internal consistency. But consistency is not the main virtue of a well-structured worldview. Better a mentality that incorporates valid and fruitful tensions than one that avoids all inconsistencies at the cost of narrowness or oversimplification.** Network analysis reveals density and other virtues that are more helpful than consistency. (See also “ethical reasoning as a scale-free network.”)

3. Abstract and general principles are overrated. I do not claim that they should be expunged from one’s moral thinking (that would be an over-radical form of “particularism”), but rather that there is no good reason to assume that a well-ordered moral mentality can be arranged like an organizational chart, with the abstract principles at the top and all one’s concrete beliefs and commitments as mere implications. That would be one kind of moral network map, and some people do think that way. Other people are much more concrete, or they mix concrete particularities with abstract generalities in interesting and complex networks. For instance, I think New York City and the “dive” bar where Auden sits in this poem are just as important to his moral vision as tyranny or selfishness.

One reason not to try to make the abstract principles fundamental to one’s whole network is that certain crucial ideas, such as love, will then be distorted. These ideas have the feature that they are sometimes good and sometimes bad, depending on the circumstances. If you try to organize your thinking around abstract and general principles, you will be compelled to divide love into the good and bad kinds, and that is false to the experience of what love is.***

Turning the map above back into a written analysis of “Sept 1, 1939” would take some space, but I think a few key points emerge:

  • Auden has a dense moral network, not dependent on just one or two ideas. It’s robust. For instance, he later came to hate the line, “We must love one another or die.” But the poem does not rest on that.
  • Love, art, and politics are densely interconnected.
  • Homosexuality is not mentioned in the poem but is alluded to at least twice. It is hard to know whether Auden would connect it to “unselfish love.” I would. So I am either in disagreement with the poem or sympathetic with Auden (a gay man in the 1930s) because he could not draw that connection openly.
  • Much depends on a polarity between public and private, but poetry occupies an uneasy space between. Consider declamatory statements like this: “There is no such thing as the State /  And no one exists alone.” Are they incursions of public demagoguery into a poem, which should be private? Or should the poem speak truth to power?

*See David Parker, Ethics, Theory and the Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Todd F. Davis and Kenneth Womack, Mapping the Ethical Turn: A Reader in Ethics, Culture, and Literary Theory (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 2001), Amanda Anderson, The Way We Argue Now: A Study in the Cultures of Theory (Princeton, 2006)

** Simon Blackburn, “Securing the Nots,” in W. Sinnott-Armstrong and M Timmons, eds., Moral Knowledge (New York, Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 95

*** This is basically my thesis in Reforming the Humanities: Literature and Ethics from Dante through Modern Times (Palgrave Macmillan, December 2009).