Value Competition

SBE paper

The Society for Business Ethics deadline is Sunday, so blogging has been light and will continue to be for the next several days.  My current title is "Mr. Bentham, Meet Mr. MacIntyre: Normative Competition, Normative Contradiction, and Normative Consensus."  The abstract as of now:

"Taken separately, Bentham’s vision of scientific utilitarianism and MacIntyre’s critique of contradiction in modern morality are threats to consensualist normative theory.  Taken together, on the other hand, their positions constitute an ambivalent critical utilitarianism, or utilitarian critique, that can contribute to consensualist normative theory in business ethics.  The argument for that conclusion has three major parts.  First, based on an empirical analysis of recent Business Ethics Quarterly and Harvard Business Review articles, MacIntyre’s claims of unreconciled utility-rights, egoism-altruism, and left-right splits have significant merit, especially in regard to business ethics and the left-right split.  Second, the forms of normative competition found in BEQ and HBR articles can reasonably be defended on utilitarian grounds.  Finally, Benthamite normative competition and MacIntyrean normative contradiction have a logical kinship, recognition of which can support psychological interpretations of the left-right, utility-rights, and egoism-altruism splits that help defang polarization and support consensualist theory."

 

 

 

Avoiding Just-So Stories

One pitfall that's easy to fall into: Thinking of VC explanations as to why an observed pattern of responses is adaptive without thinking at the same time of what other pattern(s) would be maladaptive.  A signal virtue of optimality modeling done right is that it clarifies the conditions under which optimal outcomes will not be attained as well as those under which they will be attained.

Norms Modeling

Can those who believe people often or generally act according to social norms that are not necessarily in their self-interest create models with the intricacy and real-world payoff of models that postulate people act according to calculations of their individual interest?   In principle, yes. Just as rational choice modeling generates interesting results on how actions based on individual interest align or fail to align with social welfare, norms modeling should be able to generate interesting results on how actions based on norms accord and fail to accord with individual welfare, and/or with social welfare if the model assumes norms reflect the interests of some but not of the whole. 

If norms modeling is a logical alternative to rational choice modeling, why isn't it as prevalent?   A path dependency explanation--that rational choice modeling got off the ground first in economics and preempted the modeling field--may be true, though it lacks intellectual bite.  A more interesting possibility is that norms modeling is harder to do well than rational choice modeling.  For one thing, the idea that the welfare of some indivduals is harmed by social norms that are good for the whole lacks the normative payoff of the rational choice idea that the pursuit of individual interest may be desirable or undesirable for the whole.  For another, the idea that social norms differ from the interests of the whole too readily becomes a normative argument distinct from the logic of any particular modeling of norms.  For another, unless norms modeling can assume individual variation in behavior as RC does, it is unlikely to generate interesting results.

One way to understand value competition is as an effort to overcome the problems of pure norms modeling.  In the spirit of norms modeling, VC assumes that people may be motivated by values or norms contrary to their personal or group interests and favorable to others' personal or group interests ("altruistic values").   Also in keeping with norms modeling, though less obviously so, VC assumes that people may be motivated by values or norms in keeping with their individual or group interests that lead them to overcome inaction ("egoistic values").   VC also assumes that these norms/values vary across people (and within people at different moments), rather than being fixed and uniform.  Finally, VC allows for the possibilities that people can act either according to their interests as modified (or reversed) by norms/values, or that they can act purely on a norms/values basis.  The VC claim or hope is that the norms-related assumptions, combined with allowing for the RC assumption in some cases, can produce intricate models with interesting results more readily than pure norms modeling, and can generate certain results inaccessible to pure RC modeling.

Given that VC allows for pure norms-based action with no individual interests or calculation in some cases, I would characterize VC in those cases as a subset of norms modeling, with variance in individuals' adherence to norms/values allowing for interesting modeling results not obtainable when individuals are uniform.  Given that in some other cases VC allows for people acting calculatively according to individual interests, one could say that in those cases VC modeling amounts to a complex subset of RC modeling, with individual interests that include internalized norms/values as well as standard preferences.  Given the well-established status of RC modeling and the nascent status of both norms modeling and VC modeling, that's an understandable position; I believe it's more accurate, though, to characterize VC as a fusion of RC and  norms modeling in such cases.   

Stich on Morality and Cognitive Science, part 4

Stephen Stich's final lecture on the Nicod website deals with moral intuition: http://www.institutnicod.org/lectures2007_outline.htm 

S focuses on research done by Daniel Kelly on disgust and by Joshua Knobe on intentionality to argue that moral intuition is a poorly designed or "kludgy" system that is not merely frequently dysfunctional in modern conditions as opposed to hunter-gatherer conditions (the Peter Singer position), but was always a patchwork whose results were and are dubious.  Kelly's work suggests that poison avoidance and parasite avoidance responses have been co-opted over the course of the evolution of human ultra-sociality into morally-charged, negative responses to outsiders with different cultural norms and to certain kinds of behavior associated, possibly irrationally, with impurity or contamination.   Knobe's research deals with judgments of intentionality.  He has found that people usually consider predictable harm to the environment resulting from profit-seeking intentional, while finding predictable benefit to the environment from profit-seeking not intended.   Additional Knobe results: An ad using an intimate interracial couple was judged to be intentionally encouraging interracial  sex, while an ad using a potted plant was not judged to be intentionally encouraging office plants; a predictable violation of a Nazi racial purity law resulting from profit-seeking was judged to intentionally violate the law, while a predictable fulfillment of the obnoxious law resulting from profit-seeking was not judged to intentionally fulfill the law.  S asserts that Knobe's work indicates the patchwork and morally questionable nature of judgments of intention, given that subjects viewed the interracial ad and the purity-law violating company as acting intentionally even while rejecting racial separation as a norm.

Although I'm inclined to agree with S about the kludginess of disgust, I have more of a John Mikhail, Universal Moral Grammar sense about judgments of intention following an implicit complex logic analogous to that of language.  For judgments of intention, I don't have a VC line as to a need for opposing sides; my intuition is that high variation across and within individuals between harsh and lenient judgments of intentional conduct is highly useful, but I'm fine with a UMG-type uniformity or near uniformity in judgments of whether certain side effects are intentional.  I think S and Knobe are right that there is no single type of intentionality judgment.  The "double effect" logic of judgments of intention in trolley problems as studied by Mikhail is different from the "internalize the negative externalities of self-interested action" logic I see in Knobe's environmental scenarios; both the trolley and environmental logics are different from the "unmask partisanship" logic I see in his ad scenarios; all three logics are different from the "non-exigent rule violation" logic I see in his purity law scenarios. 

Does any of this have anything to do with the VC framework, as opposed to Mikhail and I both being lawyers and hence protective of the intention-oriented logic of our discipline?   I think so, in the following way.   One line, espoused by Joshua Greene, is that intricate reasoning is the property of utilitarianism, with deontological approaches like Kant's amounting to rationalizations of gut feelings.  In addition to countering my lawyer's intuition that non-rational choice, non-utilitarian reasoning exists and is important, Greene's line is contra-VC, since VC as I currently see it involves a deontological part of the brain in competition with a utilitarian part, with both sides employing reasoning and appealing to self-oriented and other-oriented emotions.

Stich on Morality and Cognitive Science, part 3

In his third Nicod lecture, Stich deals with psychological egoism and altruism: http://www.institutnicod.org/lectures2007_outline.htm 

The basic argument: Some philosophers, including Bentham and Mill, have worried that if people are psychologically egoistic, acting solely on the basis of their own pleasures and pains, cooperation is fragile and always vulnerable to being undermined because of its instrumental rather than intrinsic nature.  One may counter this concern--as Sober and D.S. Wilson do--by taking the position that humans are likely intrinsically rather than extrinsically concerned with the welfare of others, given that intrinsic concern for others is a more reliable, cost-effective mechanism to implant in human beings through evolution than instrumental concern.  Or one may counter the concern about egoism--as Stich and Sripada do--by taking the position that instrumental concern for others related to one's own feelings can be just as firmly rooted as intrinsic concern; S concludes by suggesting that egoistic concern for others associated with emotion is more appealing morally than concern detached from feeling. 

A value competition take: VC relies on the conjecture that human beings are constructed in a way that makes it comparatively easy and low-cost to inculcate in them feelings (which may be either intrinsic and thus altruistic per S or instrumental) that lead them away from promoting their own welfare to promoting that of others (or to inaction), if and only if these "altruistic" feelings or values are combined with "egoistic" or "self-oriented" feelings that lead them to overcome inaction to promote their own welfare.   The underlying argument for why that is so could presumably be put in evolutionary terms a la Sober and Wilson; it can also be put in terms of an economic model of optimal individual decision under uncertainty, with optimality viewed from the perspective of society.   None of this in VC strikes me as in any basic conflict with S, or Sober and Wilson; the difference is that VC is more preoccupied than S or Sober and Wilson appear to be with the value of egoistic feelings that motivate people to work harder than would otherwise be the case.

Stich on Morality and Cognitive Science, part 2

Stich's argument in his Nicod lecture 2 http://www.institutnicod.org/lectures2007_outline.htm :  Whether moral disagreement is fundamental rather than dependent on lack of rationality, impartiality, or information by one or more parties to disagreement is an important philosophical issue.  A body of research (Richard Brandt on Hopi acceptance of children playing with small animals in a way that causes them extreme pain and American aversion to such play; Richard Nisbett on different attitudes and physiological responses to honor-related scenarios in "honor cultures" such as the US South and non-honor cultures such as the US North; Doris et al on more honor-oriented and individual-sacrificing responses among Chinese than among American respondents; Henrich et al on different levels of sharing in economic games in different cultures) suggests that moral disagreements are in fact fundamental.  In any case, whether that empirical evidence is persuasive or not, a plausible evolutionary theory of norm acquisition (Sripada and Stich) relies on the idea that people who grow up in environments in which different norms prevail will make different judgments even under ideal conditions; Saunders' criticism of Sripada and Stich for failing to acknowledge how their model of norm acquisition can support rationally-generated moral judgments is fair enough, but such rationally-generated moral judgments are themselves subject to fundamental disagreement, given different socially-acquired norms.    

I find Stich's affirmative empirical case for fundamental moral disagreement in this lecture considerably less compelling than his critical empirical case for blurring the moral rule-conventional rule distinction in his first lecture.  Apart from that secondary point, my main value competition reaction to his espousal of fundamental moral disagreement is to urge that the empirical and theoretical focus be broadened from cross-cultural fundamental disagreement to intra-cultural and intra-individual fundamental disagreement.  If VC is right, we would expect the latter kinds of fundamental disagreement; in fact useful variation across individuals and groups within a culture, especially a complex one like that of the contemporary US, is likely to be considerably greater than variation across cultures.  That is, the "Americans think it's disgusting to eat dogs and Koreans don't" kind of across-the-board cross-cultural variation, real as it is, likely pertains to matters less significant than topics like adultery as to which we should per VC expect even greater differences in attitudes (referring to actual attitudes, not necessarily to expressed ones) within cultures than across cultures, and should also expect fundamental moral disagreement (likely repressed) within a given individual.

Stich on Morality and Cognitive Science

Extremely interesting videos and powerpoints of four lectures by Rutgers philosopher Stephen Stich are available at the following site:

 http://www.institutnicod.org/lectures2007_outline.htm

(Hat-tip to Will Wilkinson: http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2009/02/15/morality-a-kludge-of-kludges/#disqus_thread )

Stich's argument in lecture 1, much abridged: Research by Elliot Turiel and other psychologists that apparently showed a strong distinction between moral rules (don't hurt another child) and conventional rules (don't speak in class unless recognized first) has been effectively debunked by later work by Haidt and others that shows some groups (e.g., people in more traditional cultures and political conservatives) are less inclined to view rules as conventional rather than moral than some other groups (e.g., Westerners and political liberals).  Accordingly, the research does not make the case for a clear nomological distinction between moral rules and conventional rules, though S contends that  it may be possible to define how people think of moral rules in terms of a set of culturally familiar examples of rules and a prototype of how transgressions of these rules are dealt with.

A value competition take:  To the extent one adopts a VC view of a fundamental split in human beings between calculative and anti-calculative reason, one should also believe in a basic split (which might or might not reach the level of consciousness) between calculative conventional rules and non-calculative moral rules.   At the same time, VC suggests that the understanding of what is moral and what is conventional can usefully differ not only across cultures but also within a given culture.   Intra-cultural differences are likely not only between people adhering to different political ideologies, as Haidt's work suggests, but also based on other group affiliations (such as tax accountants working for the IRS versus those working for private clients), on individual temperament, and on the internal competition within a given individual between calculative and anti-calculative modes of reason.  Surfaced differences in judgment as to what is moral and what is conventional, though potentially detrimental to the degree they lead to group polarization, can be useful in society's development of an optimal balance between calculative conventional rules and anti-calculative moral rules.

Value Consilience

Value competition = analysis of the utility or disutility of competition in values.  The perspective is utilitarian; value competition is economic science in the spirit of Jeremy Bentham and Milton Friedman.

Value contradiction = examination of the contradictions within people and among people that are associated with value competition.  The perspective is humanistic; value contradiction is critical philosophy in the spirit of Friedrich Nietzsche and Alasdair MacIntyre.

Value consilience = combining and mediating value competition and value contradiction in the construction of normative theory and practice.   The perspective is virtue-oriented; value consilience is moral philosophy in the spirit of Aristotle and E.O. Wilson.

Egoism, Altruism, and Political Ideology in Suburban New Jersey

A basic value competition proposition is that useful political ideology cuts across the believer's other interests or preferences rather than consistently reinforcing them or consistently countering them.  What follows is an application of that proposition as applied to certain aspects of my individual situation, which I'll relate to a center-right pro-market ideology and a center-left "correct for market failure" ideology:

1.  Tenure--As a tenured professor at Rutgers, a pro-market position pushes me in an altruistic direction all else equal, while a market-correcting position (reflected in New Jersey law, under which fourth year K-12 teachers automatically receive tenure) reinforces my job security interests; 

2.  Land-use regulation--As a homeowner in a quite plush New Jersey suburb, I'm a beneficiary of an elaborate web of regulation (no commuter parking on my street, which is right next to a train station; single-family zoning, minimum lot sizes) that makes it more costly for outsiders to join me in becoming homeowners but that allows me to be something of an inner suburban squire.   A pro-market position on land-use regulation like that taken by Ed Glaeser pushes me in an altruistic direction, while a market-correcting one reinforces my interest in upholding my current way of life;

3.  Exclusive support for public education--As a faculty member at New Jersey's major state university, as a school board member, and as a parent whose children go to public schools now and may well go to Rutgers in the future, a pro-market voucherization position on education like that taken by Milton Friedman is contrary to my interests, while a market-correcting position in favor of government-provided education reinforces them;

4.  Where to live--As a New Jersey resident for most of my life, I've faced a series of choices about which city or suburb to live in.  Particularly for whites such as myself, a market-correcting position that criticizes laissez-faire in housing markets for leading to segregation and the decline of majority-minority communities pushes me in an altruistic direction in regard to choice of community of residence, while a pro-market position supports my interest in maximizing the value of my housing investment.  On the other hand, once I've chosen to live in an integrated inner suburb, it is the market-correcting position that supports my interests;

5.  Tax rates--This category is trickier than some others.  The fact that both my wife and I work for public educational institutions gives us an interest in high state and local taxation, while the fact that our family income is high gives us an interest in federal tax cuts for high earners;

6.  Social welfare spending on health care, etc. for low-income people--Here, unlike in the case of education, the market-correcting position pushes me in an altruistic direction, while the pro-market one reinforces my interests.

The overall count of egoistic rather than altruistic interests for me winds up at  4.5-1.5 in favor of the market-correcting position, treating taxes as a wash and further treating market-correcting interventions in favor of inner suburbs as in my interest given my residence in such a suburb.  The obvious point is that given that tilt, it would be reasonable to guess that my sympathies will lie on the liberal side of the political spectrum more than the conservative one, absent feelings on culture or foreign policy that would tilt me the other way.  Three points of broader interest : a) The exercise helps show some of the difficulties in assessing altruistic and egoistic tendencies within ideologies (for example, support for tenure could be described, contrary to the way I've done it, as a pro-market position to the extent it is freely negotiated for by employees and employers rather than fostered by the state), but overall supports the possibility of making such assessments; b) people who believe in a side that heavily reinforces their interests are a "dangerous class" to the degree they lack the level of internal checks and balances present in those who are more cross-pressured, but are valuable to the degree that their egoistic values can lead them to a high level of effort in coming up with value-enhancing ideas and actions; and c) whether the ideas generated by members of the "dangerous class" are value-enhancing depends on whether they are aligned with victory-oriented politics in which victory depends not on either side's dangerous class but on swing voters who are cross-pressured.

The Specter of Partisanship in Stakeholder Theory

Friedman's incorporation of shareholder maximization and utilitarianism into economic science and MacIntyre's view of modern normative theory as partisan pose particular threats to stakeholder theory.   If the proponent of stakeholder theory accepts a characterization of it as a left-of-center alternative to the right-of-center Friedmanite position, she faces the difficult task of overcoming suspicions that the theory is a partisan artifact, perhaps a useful one for certain purposes, but not a construct that can command consensual support.  If she denies a characterization of stakeholder theory as left-of-center by comparison to shareholder maximization, she avoids conceding partisanship, but at the likely cost of making her position seem disingenuous.  Simply ignoring the issue of the partisanship of stakeholder theory is therefore appealing, but by taking that course the stakeholder theorist leaves himself without any well-worked out defense to the accusation of partisanship. 

Is it possible to create a nonpartisan reconciliation or mediation of the stakeholder and shareholder positions, as Rakesh Khurana argues for (without developing) in his HBR article and his 2008 SBE presentation?  On the face of it, there are considerable obstacles to that project, given that both positions can be understood as principles in irreconcilable opposition to the other.  Neither Milton Friedman nor Edward Freeman nor Alasdair MacIntyre would be satisfied, we may assume, with a contingency argument that says that both approaches have their value, depending on the circumstances and on the incentives they supply for believers in them to generate value-enhancing managerial policies. 

Nevertheless, the logic of both Friedman's utilitarianism and MacIntyre's critique can converge in favor of a reconciliation project.  A utilitarian perspective can reach the conclusion that what works best is not a single overarching principle but a competition of opposing principles.  A critical perspective can use the self-same logic to accept that contradiction, troubling as it may be, can also be functional, and accordingly is not lacking in value.  The end point of the logic can be a Friedman-MacIntyre entente in qualified support of reconciliation.

A key question for advocates of reconciliation is how good the utilitarian case for competing principles is.  Competing principles have their dangers, particularly when intertwined with left-right partisanship.  It would not be a good thing, we shall assume, to have firms internally divided by partisan conflict between supporters of stakeholder management and supporters of shareholder management.  Competing ideologies even if useful need to be kept below the level of parties within firms, given that the close cooperation that facilitates success is highly difficult betwen camps with moral disdain for the other's position.