Value Competition

A Smithian Admission and Avowal: In the Morality Sweepstakes, We Are and Should Be #2

[more notes for the adv. alt. paper]

The question of whether the advantageous altruism with which this paper is concerned is morally worthy or not cannot be elided, whether or not it can be answered.  From a Smithian/Humean/Aristotelian perspective, the answer is yes.  Morality only makes sense if in some broad sense it aligns with interest, and the historical growth in respect for anonymous others, to the extent it has indeed occurred, is a function of respect, trust, and benevolence being in people's interest now in a way that they once were not.  From a Jesus/Kant perspective, the answer is no.  The beauty, truth, and supreme goodness of morality inheres in its challenge to mere common sense, complacency, and calculation as well as to outright evil.  Only if one is as a little child, or as a god-like follower of duty who kills inclination and evil even to point of killing himself can one truly reside at the right hand of the father in the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of ends.

The differences between the Smithian and the Jesus/Kant perspectives are intensely felt by partisans on both sides.  Not only is there the contempt of the idealist for the seeker of advantage; there is also the contempt of the practical man for an idealism that the practical man sees as a cover for the power-seeking that the practical person suspects is the actual meaning or "cash value", to borrow William James's phrase, of the moralist's idealism.

My personal sympathies in the ideological opposition between the practical man and the idealist lie mostly on the former side.  I believe that future progress not only in practical standards of living and everyday morality but also in scaling the pinnacles of theoretical ethics is much more likely to come from developments on the Smithian side than the Kantian side of modern ethics, and I have a similar belief about the generally impressive if highly zig-zag progress our species has achieved over the past several hundred years.

At the same time, I as one who is on the Smithian side both as a matter of methodology and as a matter of sympathy have an apologia to make to Kantian friends and opponents who may well be offended by the calculating spirit of this paper:  You are right, in a very important sense.   Absent a clear disclaimer, you are warranted in believing that the Smithian argument of this paper is one little piece in a bigger claim that the truth, goodness, and beauty of morality lies on the Smithian side.  I strongly disclaim any such belief.  I affirm on the contrary a belief that the bulk of the truth, goodness, and beauty of morality lies on the Kantian side, not on my own Smithian side.  Lest this be taken as a much stronger renunciation than it is actually is, I also hasten to affirm a belief that morality is only one piece of life, and not necessarily the most important piece at that.

To put the point another way: I strongly agree with and affirm the Joshua Greene claim that Kantianism gets and articulaters the human moral gut in a way that utilitarianism does not.  I  also empathize with what I take to be Greene's bent toward utilitarianism, which I share.  But--although I may be reading him quite wrong--I do not agree with what seems to me his implicit Kantian argument that utilitarianism is nobler for philosophers (though not for merchants) because it rises above our guts just as Kant counseled, while Kant himself does not.   I'm with Smith, or where I take Smith to be, all the way down.  Human nature is okay, even pretty good.  To the extent it's not, let's imagine that it's a bit better than it is and use our moral imagination as a basis for our getting along a bit better with each other.  Being pretty decent along with other people who are pretty decent is pretty good.  And yet: A Jesus who is truly impelled by duty, love, self-sacrifice, justice, etc. is indeed a much finer type than me and thee.  Jesus and Kant not only rule the moral world; they deserve to.

The Combined Value of the Idealistic and Practical Types

[more advantageous altruism notes]

One with a Jesus/Kant idealistic bent will likely find the "we're all right" upbeat practicality of Smith's take on human nature complacent and jejune at best, and at worst complicit in a crass culture of materialism and moral squalor.  On the other side of the moral fence, one with a Smith/Hume bent will likely feel a combination of respect and amused disdain for the soaring aspirations of Jesus and his secular idealistic successors.  This paper, though it is written from within the Smith/Hume tradition, assumes that both the anguished, self-critical sprit of Jesus and Kant and the optimistic, practical spirit of Smith and his great friend and contemporary David Hume are key constituents of positive human nature and of normative ethics.

Making a broad case for the viability of the assumption stated in the last paragraph would be a very large project indeed.  The point to be made here is a smaller, subsidiary one: The practical, limited altruism of the Smithian type can be usefully challenged at the margins to be nicer and more forgiving by the idealistic altruism of the pure Jesus type. The practical Smithian will shrug off the pure Jesus type's idealism when doing so is costly, but will be very open to changes in a more altruistic direction when they can be incorporated into a practical routine of reciprocated trust and generosity that is helpful to both players and to society.  The pure Jesus type, as opposed to the partially forgiving Jesus type of this paper, lacks the skills to differentiate between advantageous and disadvantageous altruism that the Smithian type has in abundance.  But the strong Jesus type usefully challenges the Smithian type to be altruistic in new ways that benefit the Smithian player, the egoist, and society.

A parallel should be noted here between the practical and idealistic sides of Greek virtue ethics represented by Aristotle and Plato respectively and the practical and idealistic sides of modern ethics represented by Smith/Hume and Jesus/Kant respectively.  The all too practical spirit of Aristotle's great-souled man was usefully challenged by the idealistic spirit of Plato's guardian.  To be sure, both were elite types who dominated the ordinary person; to adopt Nietzsche's provocative terminology, Greek ethics was master morality, not slave morality.  But if one can detach oneself from both disdain for the elitism of the great Greeks and from defensive upholding of their eternal wisdom, one can see in the combination of Plato's and Aristotle's versions of advantageous altruism a desirable check and balance to leaders who are either unrealistic fools committed to ideals with no purchase on reality (for Aristotle whatever else he is is no fool, and no one to suffer fools) or all-too-practical seekers of advantage with no ideals (for Plato whatever else he is is a true believer in ideals). 

With the Greeks viewed with a proper measure of sympathy and dispassion, one may also gain perspective on our current situation.  For all the aspirations of modern ethics of both the Smith/Hume wing and the Jesus/Kant wing to be a universal morality rather than a master morality of those who lead and rule--aspirations which here will be assumed to be entirely correct, and which I share--modern ethics is in part a guide to leaders and rulers, just as Aristotle, Plato, Confucius, and Lao Tzu were. 

The elevated position of the leader now as in classical times is justified, if it can be, by a greater concern on the part of the leader for followers, for others in general, and for the whole than is found among more egoistic, narrower, less elevated non-leaders.   Again, if one can detach oneself both from indignation at the degree to which modern ethics remains elitist and of indignant defense of elitism as an eternal verity, one can see in the combination of Jesus and Smith a highly useful set of restraints and incentives for modern leaders that is lacking in either type alone.  Smith will not be a fool. much as he is far nicer than Aristotle about suffering them. Jesus will not suffer hypocrites, much as he is far nicer than Plato about those who fail to live up to ideals.  In the combination of the two modern types as in the combination of the two classical types, one finds usefully ambivalent leaders who are neither slaves to ideals nor to advantage.

What's Beyond Good and Evil and Beyond Good and Bad?

Suppose Nietzsche is right that there has been a transition from the old master morality of good and bad, strong and weak, noble and base to a Jewish-Christian-liberal morality of good and evil that in some ways reverses the high and low of the old morality. 

Suppose further that the old morality of good and bad isn't coming back to rule us, and that in fact it will continue to decline. 

Suppose further, contra Nietzsche, that that's a very good thing, in that good and evil for all its unpleasantly demonizing and hysterical aspects is by and large a profound improvement on the old master morality.

Then what?

I'm not sure at all, as a positive matter.  I have a hope, though: Good and good. 

Does that mean yin and yang, the dao, etc.?   Kind of, and kind of not.  The daoism of Lao Tzu is at least as much of a master morality of noble and base as the virtue ethics of Aristotle and Plato are, and I'm not rooting for the rise of that aspect of daoism.  But I do hope for the future rise outside East Asia of the central part of daoism that posits competing and complementary goods.  

 

After God and Politics, What?

Suppose Nietzsche was right, and that God--at least the Jewish/Christian/Muslim God who has prevailed over other versions--is an expression of an egalitarian impulse to identify virtue with weakness and power with evil.  Further suppose he was right in claiming that the dominant philosophies or substitute religions of the Enlightenment, such as liberalism, utilitarianism, and Kantian rights/duties, are reflections of the same egalitarian impulse.

The abandonment of the worship of power in favor of the worship of God was egalitarian not only in the sense focused on by Nietzsche, but also in the sense that it left more room for athletic strength and skill in fighting--formidable old noble virtues--to become the possession of a lower echelon of people.  So too with the Enlightenment abandonment of the worship of God in favor of the worship of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity and other political visions.  That switch by a significant portion of the intellectual elite over the last few centuries to a worship of politics has had the egalitarian side effect of leaving the formidable passions and power of belief in God more in the possession of the less sophisticated and the less advantaged.

Will the intellectual elite of Western civ, or perhaps the global intellectual elite more broadly, someday lose faith in politics in favor of another egalitarian movement that would be to Enlightenment what Enlightenment was to God?  What would that movement look like?

FWIW, my speculations: First, I think Nietzsche is right about the fundamental and enduring importance of an egalitarian impulse in intellectuals who see themselves as opposing a more forceful elite, though I am much less inclined than he to see that impulse as irrevocably and hopelessly corrupted by resentment.  The world always has been, and always will be, the nerds against the jocks. 

Second, I suspect that history has not ended with the ascension of politics over God.  Politics is itself subject to criticism, just as nobility and God are--the incoherence of the constructive left and right, the destructiveness of the coherent left and right, and the deep connection between politics and violence are the three criticisms of politics that I find the most persuasive.  It is possible that one day those criticisms, perhaps combined with others, will resonate, and that then the graduates of the best schools of the world will be less likely to be political believers than average citizens are, as is now the case for religious belief.   As with the earlier losses of faith, there would be an egalitarian side effect if the elite lost its faith in politics--a world in which average citizens are more likely to be passionate liberals or conservatives than the intellectual elite would be one in which ordinary people would have considerable advantages relative to the world we live in now.

Third: I don't think faith in politics will diminish absent the rise of a rival egalitarian faith.  As to what that future egalitarian faith might turn out to be: I'm not sure :)  My best guess, based on personal inclination as much as anything else: A Daoist belief in opposite truths fused with an egalitarian criticism of success/power/fortune as morally deficient to the degree that it involves focusing one's life on excellence in a single sphere rather than on excellence in two (or more) spheres.

 

 

 

 

Jon Haidt--Hurray for Durkheimian Utilitarians

I've been reading a manuscript version of Jon Haidt's new book, The Righteous MInd, which I hope will be a big success when it comes out in February.   His self-identification as a public policy utilitarian concerned with the rational calculation of costs and benefits and also as a Durkheimian who worries about how utilitarians can neglect social cooperation, tradition, and cohesion in their calculations strikes me as just right in its blend of assertiveness and ambivalence.   I'm very happy to sign up as a foot soldier in the Durkeimian utilitarian movement, if such there be.  (As well as in the even more notional Daoist individualist movement, which I'll talk about in my next post.)   

 

Human beings being the contentious creatures we are, my fervent positive reaction to Haidt's position is accompanied by a quibble.  As I read the manuscript, Haidt seems to see Durkheimian utilitarianism as a mediation between the left and the right, in that there is a conservative flavor to a Durkheimian emphasis on social ties and a liberal flavor to a utilitarian emphasis on cost-benefit calculation in public policy.  I agree on the Durkheimian side, but not so much on the utilitarian side.  Although the philosophers of utilitarianism have indeed been mostly on the left-liberal side, the outstanding practitioners of it--the economists from Adam Smith on who have theorized how markets work--have not.   One could go on about this--there is a critical part of economics that theorizes market failure, and as important as I believe Chicago and other pro-market economics is an exempar of applied utilitarianism, I would not claim that public policy utilitarianism tilts right overall.   Instead, my sense is that the liberal-conservative split on utilitarianism applied to policy maps pretty well onto the act utilitarian-rule utilitarian distinction, with conservatives generally being more inclined to the rule utilitarian side and liberals to the act utilitarian side.  Peter Singer's position in favor of a wealthy individual in the West donating a substantial portion of his or her income to poor people in poor nations is a respectable act utilitarian position; a counterclaim that a widespread practice of doing so would have negative effects on incentives and moral responsibility and would create a poorer world overall is a respectable rule utilitarian position.   For an application of this point to the current economic debates on stimulus, a recent post by pro-market conservative economist John Taylor, in which he asserts that liberals favor situation-specific interventions while conservatives favor predictability through long-term rules, is worth checking out.

Dilemmas of Progressive Consciousness: Nash versus Whitman

High and increasing economic and cultural productivity depend in part on whether people improve over time in their ability to reach optimal outcomes in social games like the Stag Hunt, the Prisoner's Dilemma, and the Battle of the Sexes.  That improvement can happen through a heightened role for both the calculative or "Nash" side of human behavior and the non-calculative "Whitman" propensity of human beings to act uncalculatingly according to feelings of altruism, shame, and competitiveness as well as egoism.  The dilemma is that Nash and Whitman are competing tendencies in people.  Both are important, but both are in tension with the other. 

Management and Law Comparative Paper--Outline

What follows is an outline of a paper that would review and revisit the themes of Barley and Kunda (1992) and Eastman and Bailey (1998); the idea would be to submit it for the AoM conference this summer in Montreal and then revise it for journal publication:

a) Intro--paper theme--a new look at the historical, cyclical, materialist classification of management scholarship by B & K and the different historical classification of management and legal scholarship by E & B, which is non-cyclical and idealist;

b) Predicting the recent past--does B & K's approach or E & B's work better to explain trends in management scholarship and education since the 1990s when B & K and E & B wrote?  How about trends in legal education?

c)  The basic dichotomy between utilitarianism and deontology; the prevalence of the former in management and of the latter in law;

d) Utilitarian-Benthamite and deontological-Kantian approaches to mediating the fact-value antinomy;

e) How management with its predominantly utilitarian mediation surfaces methodological "rationality of means" value competition and represses substantive "rationality of ends" value competition; how law with its predominantly deontological mediation surfaces substantive value competition and represses methodological value competition;

f) The greater salience of business ethics as a field relative to legal ethics; why the utilitarian mediation of management leads to the rise of business ethics and why the deontological mediation of law leaves legal ethics as a backwater;

g) The growth of a methodological split in the legal academy with the rise of law and economics; management in that respect as pointing the way for law;

h) Relevance of the analysis for management education;

i) Conclusion.

Utilitarian and Deontological Mediations of the Fact-Value Antinomy

Eastman and Bailey (1998) contend that the contemporary legal academy features surfaced value competition in a way that the management academy does not, and advocate management scholarship that is overtly normative in the legal mode.  Their positive claim is partly correct, in that the surfaced clash of substantive political visions—individualist, communitarian, left, right—that is central in law is far more muted in management.  But it neglects an important way in which value competition has traditionally been surfaced in management, but not in law.

Management scholarship represses open competition as to substantive visions—the rationality of ends.  But it surfaces open competition as to methods, in particular between the “rational” and “cultural” poles, to adopt Barley and Kunda’s nomenclature.  Legal scholarship by contrast has traditionally repressed methodological competition.  Law has its own methodological parallel to the rational-cultural split in the form of the division between rules stated in factual terms and standards stated in moral terms.  But this methodological division has not traditionally resulted In anything parallel to the intricate divisions in business schools between calculative and cultural approaches.   Duncan Kennedy, Kathy Sullivan, and others have correctly identified the power of the rules-standards split, but have not prevailed in leading the legal academy toward surfaced methodological competition between rules and standards camps.  What has instead worked to crack open the legal academy on methodological lines is basically the same calculation-culture split that dominates in management, with law and economics as the legal equivalent of the calculative finance/econ and optimization/OR camp in management.

Relating the above to the general Bentham-Kant dichotomy and to the utilitarian and deontological modes of mediating the fact-value dichotomy: Utilitarianism mediates empirically, with a faith that logic plus data will at least some of the time lead to moving the ball forward with better ideas.  Deontology mediates a priori, with a faith in universal rules.  Management features utilitarian mediation, with the calculative and cultural camps engaging in an eclectic local competition to move the ball forward.   Law features deontological mediation, with substantive camps competing time after time after time to establish which is right.

Why I'm a Utilitarian

Some thoughts provoked by though not necessarily related to Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy...

a) It's not because I think utilitarianism overall offers a better account of ethics than its doppelganger deontology/duty/rights/law...maybe my background in law biases me, but my sense is that it's the deontological side that corresponds somewhat better not only to the way humans actually are but to the way we should be...sure, the consequentialist side of people is crucial both positively and normatively, and I can make a value competition case for consequentialism having a 50-50 role, but it does seem like the deontological side of the scales has more weight on it...

b) It's also not because I have a particular comparative advantage in doing utilitarian ethics compared to other kinds...it's not the way I have a comparative advantage as a mediocre tennis player in going to the net, where my ground stroke flaws are suppressed and an occasional sneaker-top volley winner brightens my generally futile athletic life...as noted before my background is in law, and my inclinations and skills tilt me more if anything toward a deontological cultural patterning approach to morality than to calculating consequentialism...

So why am I a utilitarian?   Two explanations, one specific to utilitarianism and one not...

a) My intuition is that in the next hundred years (or maybe a lot less than that) there's going to be a tres cool utilitarian theory of how different values, including moral and political values, interact in the human brain and human society in "optimal" or "suboptimal" ways...that theory will link up empirical results in psychology and behavioral econ with modeling...it will be contestable and unclear in its relation to normative ethics in much the same way that economics is, but it will be a beautiful intellectual edifice...believing that as I do, and hoping to have some small part in doing preliminary exploration for such a theory through the value competition stuff, I think it makes sense for me not to see the theory's utilitarianism as radically detached from my normative ethics but rather to see it as connected...

b) I think partisanship by ethicists is good, much in the same way that partisanship by sports fans is good...the quality of the arguments both by ethicists themselves and by the legions of lawyers, economists, and others who do applied ethics can be lifted up if partisanship rather than bland syncretism prevails...the real and increasing split in legal academia between the law and econ consequentialists and the deontological mainstream is a good thing for the legal academy...likewise, the central split in management academia between the finance/econ/OR consequentialists and the management deontologists helps make management academia and education successful, I believe.   Assuming that's right, it's not an argument for for which side to pick, but it is an argument for picking a side...

[addendum--finding the "partisanship works" argument I just gave to be important as well as true does strike me as having a connection to utilitarian sympathies...on reflection, I'm thinking my a) and b) points both are related to my being impressed by the potential of a utilitarian science of ethics...]

Dichotomies in Chinese and Indian Ethics

What's the equivalent in Indian and Chinese philosophy of the master dichotomy in Western ethics between utilitarianism and deontology?   It's easy to see the parallels to character-based Aristotelian virtue ethics in China (Confucius) and India (the Krishna-Arjuna story, etc.), but I don't believe Bentham and Kant map too well onto the Indian and Chinese context.

My sense is that Indian and Chinese ethics have not polarized the way Western ethics has since the eighteenth century, and in any case have not polarized along Kant-Bentham lines and are not likely to do so except to the degree Western ethics becomes hegemonic.  But there are Chinese and Indian dichotomies that are candidates for matching or supplementing the utility-deontology split.  In yin-yang/dark-light/subtle-direct/cautious/bold, there's an obvious candidate for a Chinese-derived dichotomy that, whatever its potential for breaking open contemporary Chinese ethics, strikes me as having considerable potential for teaching and scholarship in business ethics in the West as well as in China.  India is less straightforward; my candidate for an India-derived dichotomy that could help open the minds of Western students and scholars in ethics is pluralism-monism/diversity-unity/complexity-simplicity.