Huh? To be fair, I don’t think you were setting out to make the case for deontology here. All I am saying about its “use” is that I don’t see any appeal. I think you gave a pretty good description of what deontologists are thinking; the North Pole—reindeer—haunting paragraph was handily illustrative.
Anyway, I think Kant may be to blame for employing arguments that consider “what would happen if others performed similar acts more frequently than they actually do”. People say similar things all the time—“What if everyone did that?”—as though there were a sort of magical causal linkage between one’s individual actions and the actions of the rest of the world.
For example, if they see you “get away with” an act they will infer that if they repeat your action the will also avoid reprisal (especially if you and they are in similar social reference classes). If they see you act proudly and in the open they will infer that you’ve already done the relevant social calculations to determine that no one will object and apply sanctions. If they see you defend the act with words, they will assume that they can cite you as an authority and you’ll support them in a factional debate in order not to look like a hypocrite… and so on ad nauseum.
There are various reasons people might deny that they function as role models in society. Perhaps they are hermits? Or perhaps they are not paying attention to how social processes actually happen? Or it may also be the case that they are momentarily confabulating excuses because they’ve been caught with blood on their hands?
Not that I’m a big deontologist, but I think deontologists say things that are interesting, worthwhile, and seem unlikely to be noticed from other theoretical perspectives. Several apologists for deontology who I’ve known from a distance (mostly in speech and debate contexts) were super big brains.
Their pitch, to get people into the relevant deliberative framework, frequently involved an epistemic argument at the beginning. Basically they pointed out that it was silly to make moral judgments with instantaneous behavioral consequences based on things you can’t see or measure or know in the present. There is more to it than that (like there are nice ways to update and calculate deontic moral theories based on morality estimates, subsequent acts, and independent “retrospective moral feelings” about how the things turned out) but we’re just in the comment section, and I’d rather not have my fourth post in this community spend a lot of time articulating the upsides a moral theory that I don’t “fully endorse” :-)
Very insightful comment (and the same for your follow-up). I don’t have much to add except shamelessly link a comment I found on Slashdot that it reminded me of. (I had also posted it here.) For those who don’t want to click the link, here goes:
I also disagree that our society is based on mutual trust. Volumes and volumes of laws backed up by lawyers, police, and jails show otherwise.
That’s called selection/observation bias. You’re looking at only one side of the coin.
I’ve lived in countries where there’s a lot less trust than here. The notion of returning an opened product to a store and getting a full refund is based on trust (yes, there’s a profit incentive, and some people do screw the retailers [and the retailers their customers—SB], but the system works overall). In some countries I’ve been to, this would be unfeasible: Almost everyone will try to exploit such a retailer.
When a storm knocks out the electricity and the traffic lights stop working, I’ve always seen everyone obeying the rules. I doubt it’s because they’re worried about cops. It’s about trust that the other drivers will do likewise. Simply unworkable in other places I’ve lived in.
I’ve had neighbors whom I don’t know receive UPS/FedEx packages for me. Again, trust. I don’t think they’re afraid of me beating them up.
There are loads of examples. Society, at least in the US, is fairly nice and a lot of that has to do with a common trust.
Which is why someone exploiting that trust is a despised person.
What’s interesting is that if you follow the Slashdot link, the parent of the comment replies and says (to paraphrase) that his neighborhood is of the broken window kind, where people don’t act like that. The person I quoted above then says,
And because of it, your neighborhood sucks, and mine doesn’t. … Suggesting people become mistrustful will likely turn my neighborhood into one like yours.
Which ties in with what you said about the cascading effect of behavior as others notice it.
Sure, I have an impact on the behaviour of people who encounter me, and we can even grant that they are more likely to imitate/approve of how I act than disapprove and act otherwise—but I likely don’t have any more impact on the average person’s behaviour than anyone else they interact with does. So, on balance, my impact on the behaviour of the rest of the world is still something like 1⁄6.5 billion.
And, regardless, people tend to invoke this “What if everyone ___” argument primarily when there are no clear ill effects to point out, or which are private, in my experience. If I were to throw my litter in someone’s face, they would go “Hey, asshole, don’t throw your litter in my face, that’s rude.” Whereas, if I tossed it on the ground, they might go “Hey, you shouldn’t litter,” and if I pressed them for reasons why, they might go “If everyone littered here this place would be a dump.” This also gets trotted out in voting, or in any other similar collective action problem where it’s simply not in an individual’s interests to ‘do their part’ (even if you add in the 1⁄6.5-billion quantity of positive impact they will have on the human race by their effect on others).
“You may think it was harmless, but what if everyone cheated on their school exams like you did?”—“Yeah, but, they don’t; it was just me that did it. And maybe I have made it look slightly more appealing to whoever I’ve chosen to tell about it who wasn’t repelled by my doing so. But that still doesn’t nearly get us to ‘everyone’.”
Err… I suspect our priors on this subject are very different.
From my perspective you seem to be quibbling over an unintended technical meaning of the word “everyone” while not tracking consequences clearly. I don’t understand how you think littering is coherent example of how people’s actions do not affect the rest of the world via social signaling. In my mind, littering is the third most common example of a “signal crime” after window breaking and graffiti.
The only way your comments are intelligible to me is that you are enmeshed in a social context where people regularly free ride on community goods or even outright ruin them… and they may even be proud to do so as a sign of their “rationality”?!? These circumstances might provide background evidence that supports what you seem to be saying—hence the inference.
If my inference about your circumstances is correct, you might try to influence your RL community, as an experiment, and if that fails an alternative would be to leave and find a better one. However, if you are in such a context, and no one around you is particularly influenced by your opinions or actions, and you can’t get out of the context, then I agree that your small contribution to the ruin of the community may be negligible (because the people near to you are already ruining the broader community, so their “background noise” would wash out your potentially positive signal). In that case, rule breaking and crime may be the only survival tactic available to you, and you have my sympathy.
In contrast, when I picture littering, I imagine someone in a relatively pristine place who throws the first piece of garbage. Then they are scolded by someone nearby for harming the community in a way that will have negative long term consequences. If the litterbug walks away without picking up their own litter, the scolder takes it upon themselves to pick up the litter and dispose of it properly on behalf of the neighborhood.
In this scenario, the cost of littering is born, personally and directly, by the scolder who picks up the garbage, who should follow this up by telling other people about it, badmouthing the person who littered and claiming credit for scolding and cleaning up after them. This would broadcast and maintain positive norms within the community.
I prefer using norms in part because the major alternatives I’m aware of are either (1) letting the world to “fall to shit” or else (2) fixing problems using government solutions. If positive social customs can do the job instead, that’s a total win to me :-)
Err… I suspect our priors on this subject are very different.
From my perspective you seem to be quibbling over an unintended technical meaning of the word “everyone” while not tracking consequences clearly. I don’t understand how you think littering is coherent example of of how people’s actions do not affect the rest of the world via social signaling. In my mind, littering is the third most common example of a “signal crime” after window breaking and graffiti.
The only way your comments are intelligible to me is that you are enmeshed in a social context where people regularly free ride on community goods or even outright ruin them… and they may even be proud to do so as a sign of their “rationality”?!? These circumstances might provide background evidence that supports what you seem to be saying—hence the inference.
If my inference about your circumstances is correct, you might try to influence your RL community, as an experiment, and if that fails an alternative would be to leave and find a better one. However, if you are in such a context, and no one around you is particularly influenced by your opinions or actions, and you can’t get out of the context, then I agree that your small contribution to the ruin of the community may be negligible (because the people near to you are already ruining the broader community, so their “background noise” would wash out your potentially positive signal). In that case, rule breaking and crime may be the only survival tactic available to you, and you have my sympathy.
In contrast, when I picture littering, I imagine someone in a relatively pristine place who throws the first piece of garbage. Then they are scolded by someone nearby for harming the community in a way that will have negative long term consequences. If the litterbug walks away without picking up their own litter, the scolder takes it upon themselves to pick up the litter and dispose of it properly on behalf of the neighborhood.
In this scenario, the cost of littering is born, personally and directly, by the scolder who picks up the garbage, who should follow this up by telling other people about it, badmouthing the person who littered and claiming credit for scolding and cleaning up after them. This would broadcast and maintain positive norms within the community.
I prefer using norms in part because the major alternatives I’m aware of are either (1) letting the world to “fall to shit” or else (2) fixing problems using government solutions. If positive social customs can do the job instead, that’s a total win to me :-)
Err… I suspect our priors on this subject are very different.
From my perspective you seem to be quibbling over an unintended technical meaning of the word “everyone” while not tracking consequences clearly. I don’t understand how you think littering is coherent example of of how people’s actions do not affect the rest of the world via social signaling. In my mind, littering is the third most common example of a “signal crime” after window breaking and graffiti.
The only way your comments are intelligible to me is that you are enmeshed in a social context where people regularly free ride on community goods or even outright ruin them… and they may even be proud to do so as a sign of their “rationality”?!? These circumstances might provide background evidence that supports what you seem to be saying—hence the inference.
If my inference about your circumstances is correct, you might try to influence your RL community, as an experiment, and if that fails an alternative would be to leave and find a better one. However, if you are in such a context, and no one around you is particularly influenced by your opinions or actions, and you can’t get out of the context, then I agree that your small contribution to the ruin of the community may be negligible (because the people near to you are already ruining the broader community, so their “background noise” would wash out your potentially positive signal). In that case, rule breaking and crime may be the only survival tactic available to you, and you have my sympathy.
In contrast, when I picture littering, I imagine someone in a relatively pristine place who throws the first piece of garbage. Then they are scolded by someone nearby for harming the community in a way that will have negative long term consequences. If the litterbug walks away without picking up their own litter, the scolder takes it upon themselves to pick up the litter and dispose of it properly on behalf of the neighborhood.
In this scenario, the cost of littering is born, personally and directly, by the scolder who picks up the garbage, who should follow this up by telling other people about it, badmouthing the person who littered and claiming credit for scolding and cleaning up after them. This would broadcast and maintain positive norms within the community.
I prefer using norms in part because the major alternatives I’m aware of are either (1) letting the world to “fall to shit” or else (2) fixing problems using government solutions. If positive social customs can do the job instead, that’s a total win to me :-)
I wasn’t trying to make the case for deontology, no—just trying to clear up the worst of the misapprehensions about it. Which is that it’s not just consequentialism in Kantian clothing, it’s a whole other thing that you can’t properly understand without getting rid of some consequentialist baggage.
There does not have to be a causal linkage between one’s individual actions and those of the rest of the world. (Note: my ethics don’t include a counterfactual component, so I’m representing a generalized picture of others’ views here.) It’s simply not about what your actions will cause! A counterfactual telling you that your action is un-universalizeable can be informative to a deontic evaluation of an act even if you perform the act in complete secrecy. It can be informative even if the world is about to end and your act will have no consequences at all beyond being the act it is. It can be informative even if you’d never have dreamed of performing the act were it a common act type (in fact, especially then!). The counterfactual is a place to stop. It is, if justificatory at all, inherently justificatory.
A counterfactual telling you that your action is un-universalizeable can be informative to a deontic evaluation of an act even if you perform the act in complete secrecy. It can be informative even if etc.
Okay, I get that. But what does it inform you of? Why should one care in particular about the universalizability of one’s actions?
I don’t want to just come down to asking “Why should I be moral?”, because I already think there is no good answer to that question. But why this particular picture of morality?
I don’t have an arsenal with which to defend the universalizeability thing; I don’t use it, as I said. Kant seems to me to think that performing only universalizeable actions is a constraint on rationality; don’t ask me how he got to that—if I had to use a CI formulation I’d go with the “treat people as ends in themselves” one.
But why this particular picture of morality?
It suits some intuitions very nicely. If it doesn’t suit yours, fine; I just want people to stop trying to cram mine into boxes that are the wrong shape.
Huh? To be fair, I don’t think you were setting out to make the case for deontology here. All I am saying about its “use” is that I don’t see any appeal. I think you gave a pretty good description of what deontologists are thinking; the North Pole—reindeer—haunting paragraph was handily illustrative.
Anyway, I think Kant may be to blame for employing arguments that consider “what would happen if others performed similar acts more frequently than they actually do”. People say similar things all the time—“What if everyone did that?”—as though there were a sort of magical causal linkage between one’s individual actions and the actions of the rest of the world.
There is a “magical causal connection” between one’s individual actions and the actions of the rest of the world.
Other people will observe you acting and make reasonable inferences on the basis of their observation. Depending on your scientific leanings, it’s plausible to suppose that these inferences have been so necessary to human survival that we may have evolutionary optimizations that make moral reasoning more effective than general reasoning.
For example, if they see you “get away with” an act they will infer that if they repeat your action the will also avoid reprisal (especially if you and they are in similar social reference classes). If they see you act proudly and in the open they will infer that you’ve already done the relevant social calculations to determine that no one will object and apply sanctions. If they see you defend the act with words, they will assume that they can cite you as an authority and you’ll support them in a factional debate in order not to look like a hypocrite… and so on ad nauseum.
There are various reasons people might deny that they function as role models in society. Perhaps they are hermits? Or perhaps they are not paying attention to how social processes actually happen? Or it may also be the case that they are momentarily confabulating excuses because they’ve been caught with blood on their hands?
Not that I’m a big deontologist, but I think deontologists say things that are interesting, worthwhile, and seem unlikely to be noticed from other theoretical perspectives. Several apologists for deontology who I’ve known from a distance (mostly in speech and debate contexts) were super big brains.
Their pitch, to get people into the relevant deliberative framework, frequently involved an epistemic argument at the beginning. Basically they pointed out that it was silly to make moral judgments with instantaneous behavioral consequences based on things you can’t see or measure or know in the present. There is more to it than that (like there are nice ways to update and calculate deontic moral theories based on morality estimates, subsequent acts, and independent “retrospective moral feelings” about how the things turned out) but we’re just in the comment section, and I’d rather not have my fourth post in this community spend a lot of time articulating the upsides a moral theory that I don’t “fully endorse” :-)
Very insightful comment (and the same for your follow-up). I don’t have much to add except shamelessly link a comment I found on Slashdot that it reminded me of. (I had also posted it here.) For those who don’t want to click the link, here goes:
What’s interesting is that if you follow the Slashdot link, the parent of the comment replies and says (to paraphrase) that his neighborhood is of the broken window kind, where people don’t act like that. The person I quoted above then says,
Which ties in with what you said about the cascading effect of behavior as others notice it.
Please continue to post here!
I’m newish here too, JenniferRM!
Sure, I have an impact on the behaviour of people who encounter me, and we can even grant that they are more likely to imitate/approve of how I act than disapprove and act otherwise—but I likely don’t have any more impact on the average person’s behaviour than anyone else they interact with does. So, on balance, my impact on the behaviour of the rest of the world is still something like 1⁄6.5 billion.
And, regardless, people tend to invoke this “What if everyone ___” argument primarily when there are no clear ill effects to point out, or which are private, in my experience. If I were to throw my litter in someone’s face, they would go “Hey, asshole, don’t throw your litter in my face, that’s rude.” Whereas, if I tossed it on the ground, they might go “Hey, you shouldn’t litter,” and if I pressed them for reasons why, they might go “If everyone littered here this place would be a dump.” This also gets trotted out in voting, or in any other similar collective action problem where it’s simply not in an individual’s interests to ‘do their part’ (even if you add in the 1⁄6.5-billion quantity of positive impact they will have on the human race by their effect on others).
“You may think it was harmless, but what if everyone cheated on their school exams like you did?”—“Yeah, but, they don’t; it was just me that did it. And maybe I have made it look slightly more appealing to whoever I’ve chosen to tell about it who wasn’t repelled by my doing so. But that still doesn’t nearly get us to ‘everyone’.”
Err… I suspect our priors on this subject are very different.
From my perspective you seem to be quibbling over an unintended technical meaning of the word “everyone” while not tracking consequences clearly. I don’t understand how you think littering is coherent example of how people’s actions do not affect the rest of the world via social signaling. In my mind, littering is the third most common example of a “signal crime” after window breaking and graffiti.
The only way your comments are intelligible to me is that you are enmeshed in a social context where people regularly free ride on community goods or even outright ruin them… and they may even be proud to do so as a sign of their “rationality”?!? These circumstances might provide background evidence that supports what you seem to be saying—hence the inference.
If my inference about your circumstances is correct, you might try to influence your RL community, as an experiment, and if that fails an alternative would be to leave and find a better one. However, if you are in such a context, and no one around you is particularly influenced by your opinions or actions, and you can’t get out of the context, then I agree that your small contribution to the ruin of the community may be negligible (because the people near to you are already ruining the broader community, so their “background noise” would wash out your potentially positive signal). In that case, rule breaking and crime may be the only survival tactic available to you, and you have my sympathy.
In contrast, when I picture littering, I imagine someone in a relatively pristine place who throws the first piece of garbage. Then they are scolded by someone nearby for harming the community in a way that will have negative long term consequences. If the litterbug walks away without picking up their own litter, the scolder takes it upon themselves to pick up the litter and dispose of it properly on behalf of the neighborhood.
In this scenario, the cost of littering is born, personally and directly, by the scolder who picks up the garbage, who should follow this up by telling other people about it, badmouthing the person who littered and claiming credit for scolding and cleaning up after them. This would broadcast and maintain positive norms within the community.
I prefer using norms in part because the major alternatives I’m aware of are either (1) letting the world to “fall to shit” or else (2) fixing problems using government solutions. If positive social customs can do the job instead, that’s a total win to me :-)
Err… I suspect our priors on this subject are very different.
From my perspective you seem to be quibbling over an unintended technical meaning of the word “everyone” while not tracking consequences clearly. I don’t understand how you think littering is coherent example of of how people’s actions do not affect the rest of the world via social signaling. In my mind, littering is the third most common example of a “signal crime” after window breaking and graffiti.
The only way your comments are intelligible to me is that you are enmeshed in a social context where people regularly free ride on community goods or even outright ruin them… and they may even be proud to do so as a sign of their “rationality”?!? These circumstances might provide background evidence that supports what you seem to be saying—hence the inference.
If my inference about your circumstances is correct, you might try to influence your RL community, as an experiment, and if that fails an alternative would be to leave and find a better one. However, if you are in such a context, and no one around you is particularly influenced by your opinions or actions, and you can’t get out of the context, then I agree that your small contribution to the ruin of the community may be negligible (because the people near to you are already ruining the broader community, so their “background noise” would wash out your potentially positive signal). In that case, rule breaking and crime may be the only survival tactic available to you, and you have my sympathy.
In contrast, when I picture littering, I imagine someone in a relatively pristine place who throws the first piece of garbage. Then they are scolded by someone nearby for harming the community in a way that will have negative long term consequences. If the litterbug walks away without picking up their own litter, the scolder takes it upon themselves to pick up the litter and dispose of it properly on behalf of the neighborhood.
In this scenario, the cost of littering is born, personally and directly, by the scolder who picks up the garbage, who should follow this up by telling other people about it, badmouthing the person who littered and claiming credit for scolding and cleaning up after them. This would broadcast and maintain positive norms within the community.
I prefer using norms in part because the major alternatives I’m aware of are either (1) letting the world to “fall to shit” or else (2) fixing problems using government solutions. If positive social customs can do the job instead, that’s a total win to me :-)
Err… I suspect our priors on this subject are very different.
From my perspective you seem to be quibbling over an unintended technical meaning of the word “everyone” while not tracking consequences clearly. I don’t understand how you think littering is coherent example of of how people’s actions do not affect the rest of the world via social signaling. In my mind, littering is the third most common example of a “signal crime” after window breaking and graffiti.
The only way your comments are intelligible to me is that you are enmeshed in a social context where people regularly free ride on community goods or even outright ruin them… and they may even be proud to do so as a sign of their “rationality”?!? These circumstances might provide background evidence that supports what you seem to be saying—hence the inference.
If my inference about your circumstances is correct, you might try to influence your RL community, as an experiment, and if that fails an alternative would be to leave and find a better one. However, if you are in such a context, and no one around you is particularly influenced by your opinions or actions, and you can’t get out of the context, then I agree that your small contribution to the ruin of the community may be negligible (because the people near to you are already ruining the broader community, so their “background noise” would wash out your potentially positive signal). In that case, rule breaking and crime may be the only survival tactic available to you, and you have my sympathy.
In contrast, when I picture littering, I imagine someone in a relatively pristine place who throws the first piece of garbage. Then they are scolded by someone nearby for harming the community in a way that will have negative long term consequences. If the litterbug walks away without picking up their own litter, the scolder takes it upon themselves to pick up the litter and dispose of it properly on behalf of the neighborhood.
In this scenario, the cost of littering is born, personally and directly, by the scolder who picks up the garbage, who should follow this up by telling other people about it, badmouthing the person who littered and claiming credit for scolding and cleaning up after them. This would broadcast and maintain positive norms within the community.
I prefer using norms in part because the major alternatives I’m aware of are either (1) letting the world to “fall to shit” or else (2) fixing problems using government solutions. If positive social customs can do the job instead, that’s a total win to me :-)
I wasn’t trying to make the case for deontology, no—just trying to clear up the worst of the misapprehensions about it. Which is that it’s not just consequentialism in Kantian clothing, it’s a whole other thing that you can’t properly understand without getting rid of some consequentialist baggage.
There does not have to be a causal linkage between one’s individual actions and those of the rest of the world. (Note: my ethics don’t include a counterfactual component, so I’m representing a generalized picture of others’ views here.) It’s simply not about what your actions will cause! A counterfactual telling you that your action is un-universalizeable can be informative to a deontic evaluation of an act even if you perform the act in complete secrecy. It can be informative even if the world is about to end and your act will have no consequences at all beyond being the act it is. It can be informative even if you’d never have dreamed of performing the act were it a common act type (in fact, especially then!). The counterfactual is a place to stop. It is, if justificatory at all, inherently justificatory.
Okay, I get that. But what does it inform you of? Why should one care in particular about the universalizability of one’s actions?
I don’t want to just come down to asking “Why should I be moral?”, because I already think there is no good answer to that question. But why this particular picture of morality?
I don’t have an arsenal with which to defend the universalizeability thing; I don’t use it, as I said. Kant seems to me to think that performing only universalizeable actions is a constraint on rationality; don’t ask me how he got to that—if I had to use a CI formulation I’d go with the “treat people as ends in themselves” one.
It suits some intuitions very nicely. If it doesn’t suit yours, fine; I just want people to stop trying to cram mine into boxes that are the wrong shape.
I suppose that’s about as good as we’re going to get with moral theories!
Well, I hope I haven’t caused you too much corner-sobbing; thanks for explaining.