Showing posts with label Autonomy and responsibility. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Autonomy and responsibility. Show all posts

Thursday, February 15, 2024

What makes a narrative good?

 


I asked myself the question posed above as I was reading Michèle Lamont’s book, Seeing Others, How to Redefine Worth in a Divided World. The passage quoted below seems central to Michèle Lamont’s book:

“The hegemony of the American dream manifests in the emphasis Americans put on neoliberal virtues of material success, self-reliance, individualism, entrepreneurialism, and competitiveness. These criteria of worth have gained more and more influence as “models of ideal selves,” and encourage many to internalize blame for the increasing precarity of their lives. This model can also lead people to seek out a scapegoat group to blame.” (p 31)

Those sentences seem to suggest that neoliberalism encourages people to either internalize blame for misfortune or to seek scapegoat groups to blame.

Internalizing blame

The author doesn’t explain why she believes neoliberalism can cause people to “internalize blame for the increasing precarity of their lives”, but she lists several references in the notes section which may support her claims. The one which seems likely to be most relevant is an article by Glen Adams, Sara Estrada-Villalta, Daniel Sullivan, and Hazel Rose Markus entitled ‘The Psychology of Neoliberalism and the Neoliberalism of Psychology’, Journal of Social Issues 75 (1), 2019.

Adams et al use the term ‘neoliberalism’ to refer to an economic and political movement that came to prominence in the late 1970s, advocating “deregulation of markets and free movement of capital with an emphasis on fluidity and globalization”. Such usage of ‘neoliberalism’ to refer to advocacy of free markets is now common, even though the term was once generally understood to refer to advocacy of left-leaning policies, e.g. a ‘social market economy’, rather than free markets. Like most advocates of free markets, I would prefer to be referred to as a classical liberal or libertarian, but I can usually assume that I am among good company when I am labelled as a neoliberal.

The authors argue that neoliberalism encourages “an entrepreneurial approach to self as an ongoing development project, an imperative for individual growth and personal fulfillment, and an emphasis on affect regulation”. I don’t object to that characterisation. It describes some aspects of the approach to human flourishing in Part III my book, Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing.

However, the authors suggest that neoliberalism also supports psychological “responsibilization” - an ugly word for an ugly concept. The claim they make is that neoliberals advocate that individuals should not only accept personal responsibility for problems which it may be possible to ameliorate through behaviour change (such as obesity and substance abuse) but also to accept responsibility for misfortune more generally.

Neoliberals argue that free markets tend to reward individual effort, but that doesn’t mean that they believe that economic misfortune is always attributable to lack of individual effort. In fact, one of the characteristics of neoliberalism is recognition that social problems of poverty, unemployment etc. are often attributable to foolish government economic policies that are opposed to economic freedom.

I don’t know any neoliberal who would suggest that individuals should “internalize blame” for any disruption of their lives associated with innovation and competition. Neoliberals are more likely to suggest that people who lose jobs or other remuneration because of the disruptive impact of innovation and competition should view such setbacks as beyond their control. The potential for such setbacks is a price that previous generations have willingly paid to enable to enable their descendants to enjoy the benefits of economic growth. Deirdre McCloskey – a prominent classical liberal – has coined the term, ‘bourgeois deal’, to refer to the willingness of people to accept the potential for their lives to be disrupted by innovation and competition in exchange for ongoing expansion of economic opportunities. (See Bourgeois Equality.)

I doubt that many psychologists would suggest that their clients should “internalize” blame for all the bad things that happen to them. When psychologists suggest that individuals should take responsibility for their lives, I am sure that the vast majority would mean that individuals should focus on taking personal responsibility for problems that are within their locus of control.

Who is responsible for the scapegoat narrative?

It took me some time to work out why Michèle Lamont believes that neoliberalism encourages people to seek out scapegoat groups to blame for misfortune. Her reasoning evidently has more to do with her belief that Donald Trump is a neoliberal than with the beliefs of neoliberals.

On the page following the passage quoted above, Lamont writes: 

“From Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump, neoliberalism has come to be understood as a precondition for a successful society”.

I believe that free markets help societies to become and remain successful, but it is hard to understand how anyone could perceive Donald Trump to be an advocate of that view. While in office, Trump administered the final blow to the “neoliberal consensus” on international trade that characterised the post-Cold War period, and he currently favors further restrictions on international trade and international movement of labor.  

Lamont’s claim that neoliberalism encourages people to seek out scapegoat groups to blame seems to rest on the behavior of Donald Trump. She observes that in 2015 former president Trump advanced a false narrative in which immigrants from Mexico were rapists and drug dealers. (pp 51-2). During the 2016 campaign Trump appealed to “America’s forgotten workers” by recognizing their plight and “by blaming globalization and immigration for it”. (p 70)

Lamont also suggests that Trump provided “an empowering narrative” for the working class “who are often perceived as “the losers of the system”. (p 165). Early in the book, she notes:

“Instead of depicting ‘everyday Americans’ as ‘deplorables’, as Hillary Clinton was perceived to do in the 2016 presidential campaign, her opponent Donald Trump affirmed their worth in his various electoral speeches, explaining their loss of social status as a result of globalization and immigration.” (p 8)

Lamont’s narrative

The title of Lamont’s book, “seeing others”, refers to “acknowledging people’s existence and positive worth, actively making them visible and valued, reducing their marginalization, and openly integrating them into a group”. (p 6) She suggests that having one’s sense of worth affirmed “is a universal need that is central to our identity as human beings and our quality of life”. (p 7) She urges that we “bridge boundaries with those who are different” via “ordinary universalism”, or “emphasizing similarities over differences”. (p 144)

I don’t object to those sentiments, and I doubt whether many other neoliberals would either. It is certainly appropriate to recognize that ordinary universalism can be “a vital counterweight” to “Nationalist populism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia” which “are on the rise in many countries”. (p 146) As an advocate of ordinary universalism, however, I think it is unfortunate that the author was not sufficiently “inclusive” to recognize that anti-Semitism also belongs on that list.  

I also object to the idea that “individualist approaches” to improving wellbeing “may harm more than they help, since they pull people’s attention away from more meaningful efforts”. (p 48) The author seems to be suggesting that excessive attention is given to approaches that help individuals to improve their assessments of their own worth. Instead, she urges:

“We need to ask ourselves hard questions about how we decide who matters and what we can do to create a more inclusive society.”

It seems to me that people who are lacking in regard for their own worth are unlikely to make a positive contribution to ensuring that the worth of others is appropriately recognized.

Much of the book is devoted to a discussion of how it is possible to change hearts and minds in order to reduce stigmatization of marginalized groups, and thus build a more inclusive society. That discussion is largely beyond the scope of this essay.

In Chapter 7, however, the author discusses the result of a survey of the attitudes of Gen Z students (aged 18 to 23). She seems a little perplexed that Gen Z tend to “embrace some neoliberal ideals – hard work and success” but is pleased that they “combine personal professional aspirations with the promotion of collective well-being”.

The author claims that apart from “the wealthiest of the wealthy” every other group “finds itself reeling from an onslaught of difficulties, disappointments, and anxieties, grasping for dignity and stability”. (p 47) That is implausible and seems at odds with her message about destigmatization of marginalized groups. However, it fits well with another theme of Lamont’s narrative.   

As already mentioned, Lamont suggests that Trump provided “an empowering narrative” for the working class. She suggests that the Democratic party should counter that with “messages of solidarity and dignity”:

Redirecting working class anger toward the one percent is more likely to sustain fruitful alliances than driving wedges between diverse categories of workers who have so much in common.” (p 159)

Is Lamont’s narrative good?

It seems to me that appropriate criteria to consider whether a narrative is good include whether it encourages ethical behaviour and whether it is factually accurate.

Regarding ethical behaviour, Michèle Lamont seems to be seeking to “mobilize” good narratives when she suggests:

“We engineer our world together by mobilizing narratives that expand recognition of who is worthy.”

Leaving aside engineering, the message she is attempting to convey seems to be that narratives have a role in reinforcing the ethical intuition that we should respect other humans and behave with integrity toward them, irrespective of gender, sexual preference, race, nationality, religion, wealth, social status, political affiliations etc. I am not entirely convinced that she would include ideological opponents among those who are “worthy”, but she does acknowledge that “it is worth trying to understand even people we may strongly disagree with”. (p 159).   

On the question of factual accuracy, Lamont’s narrative, which suggests that the workers have reason to be angry with the wealthy one percent, seems to me to be just as questionable as Donald Trump’s narrative which suggests that the workers have reason to be angry about globalization and immigration. Neither of those narratives promotes an accurate understanding of economic reality.  

Conclusion

In this essay I have examined Michèle Lamont’s narrative that neoliberalism encourages people to either internalize blame for misfortune or to seek scapegoat groups to blame. My conclusion is that her claim that neoliberalism encourages people to internalize blame is baseless. Her claim about seeking to blame scapegoat groups seems to be based on the false belief that Donald Trump is a neoliberal.

Good narratives should encourage ethical behaviour and be factually accurate. One of Lamont’s objectives in this book seems to be to “mobilize” good narratives that reinforce the ethical intuition that we should behave with integrity toward all other humans. However, the factual accuracy of her narrative that workers have reason to be angry with the wealthy one percent is highly questionable. If accepted by governments that approach would encourage unethical redistributions of incomes and further dampen incentives that are essential to the ongoing growth of widespread economic opportunities.


Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Do you live in harmony with your daimon?

 


Some readers will be wondering what the question means. What is this daimon? How does it relate to eudaimonia? How can you identify your daimon?

Your daimon

In his book, Personal Destinies, David L Norton explains that your daimon is your innate potentiality – a unique “ideal of perfection”. Every person has this innate potentiality as well as an empirical actuality. Self-actualization is the process of discovering your daimon and living in harmony with it.

Norton suggests that people begin to discover their daimon during adolescence. He argues that autonomous self-awareness first occurs in the form of one’s awareness of being misidentified by other people. (That is clear in a passage quoted in the preceding essay on this blog.) Adolescence is a period of exploration and experiment when mistakes are inevitable. Exploration and experiment are part of the process by which individuals may discover their daimon and obtain the maturity to choose to live in harmony with it – to live an integral life.

Integrity is the consummate virtue. It is “living one’s own truth”. An integral life follows from choosing “wholeheartedly” the self one shall strive to become.

Eudaimonia

I have been accustomed to thinking of eudaimonia in terms of the good life, or self-actualization. As indicated in the passage quoted above, however, Norton draws attention to the distinct feeling of eudaimonia that constitutes its intrinsic reward. He describes that feeling as “being where one wants to be, doing what one wants to do”, as well as the feeling of being where one must be, and wholeheartedly doing what one must do. (pp 216, 222). The feeling of eudaimonia signals that the present activity of the individual is in harmony with his daimon. (p 5).

By contrast, the dysdaimonic individual is impelled to two different directions at the one time:

“The dysdaimonic individual is perpetually distracted, being only in a part of himself where you find him while part of himself is somewhere else, his ‘here’ and ‘there’ being not continuous but contradictory.” (p 221)

Norton suggests that eudaimonia is fully present whenever a person is living in truth to himself or herself. Eudaimonia is as much present for the individual who has just set foot upon his path, as for the accomplished genius of self-actualization. I particularly like this sentence:

“It would make good sense to say that to set foot upon one’s path is as good as arriving at the end, provided we recognize that a condition of being on one’s path is to be engaged at walking”. (p 239)

Norton’s book begins with a quotation from Carl Jung, who speaks of the daimon as an “inner voice” that has determined the direction of his life. Norton recognises that we may be apprehensive that “an ear turned towards our inwardness will detect at most only meaningless murmurings”. Many people who read the book will no doubt have a desire to listen to their daimon but might still have some difficulty in hearing its voice, amid all the meaningless inner murmurings that are seeking their attention.

How can you identify your daimon?

As a philosopher, David Norton could not have gone much further than he has in this book in helping readers to identify and follow their personal daimons. Anyone wishing to proceed further might find some contributions from positive psychology to be of assistance. In what follows, I briefly mention some approaches that I think are helpful.

Two relevant approaches which I discussed briefly in Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing involve identifying personal values and character strengths. Stephen Hayes developed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to help people to identify the personal values that they want to guide them in important aspects of their lives. Russ Harris, a therapist who has written extensively about ACT, has written a book, The Happiness Trap, which I reviewed here. Harris’ book is highly relevant to some of the issues discussed by David Norton.

Martin Seligman and Christopher Petersen identified 24 character strengths that they view as the routes by which virtues can be achieved. People can obtain useful information about themselves by responding to a questionnaire at the VIA Institute of Character, and having the responses fed back in summary form.

At a more personal level, I should mention the help I have obtained from the “inner game” books written by Tim Gallwey, a sports and business coach. Gallwey’s books (described here) are pertinent because they deal with performance problems that arise when an individual becomes confused by inner voices that conflict with his or her authentic inner voice. Gallwey suggests many techniques to help people to maintain focused attention on the task at hand, avoid self-doubt, and exercise free and conscious choice when that is appropriate. People are helped to discover their true identity as they master this “inner game”. My podcast episode, entitled “Tim Gallwey, my inner game guru”, can be found here.

Conclusions

David Norton’s book, Personal Destinies, provides an insightful account of the nature of eudaimonia. He explains it as a distinct feeling as well as the condition of actualizing one’s innate potentiality.

I have suggested some contributions from positive psychology that I think are helpful in complementing the approach adopted in this book.


Tuesday, January 23, 2024

What is wrong with Sartre's view of self-creation?

 


I have read a great deal of the fiction written by Jean Paul Sartre, but my knowledge of his philosophical works is second-hand. I read Nausea, The Age of Reason, The Reprieve, and Iron in the Soul, when I was in my 20’s. Those novels still sit on my bookshelves along side novels by Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Ayn Rand.

The only Sartre novel that left a lasting impression on me is Iron in the Soul. I have a vague recollection of the plot of Part One that novel. It ends with Mathieu Delarue, an academic who became a soldier in the French army, taking part in a futile military operation after France had been defeated by Germany during World War II. The purpose of this military operation was apparently to use up ammunition. Part One ends with Delarue declaring that he is free, even though it seems that his life is about to end.

At the time I read the book I would have been impressed that Delarue had found inner freedom by doing something decisive, but I doubt that I contemplated whether he had discovered himself or created himself.

It is only in the last decade or so that I have pondered whether personal development is best described as a discovery process, or a creative process. David L Norton’s book, Personal Destinies: A philosophy of personal individualism (1976) has recently prompted me to think further on the topic. I will begin with a general discussion of Norton’s view of personal destinies before considering his view of Sartre’s position.

Is your destiny in your genes?

While reading the first chapter of Personal Destinies, I balked at Norton’s injunction to "accept your destiny".

I accept the author's argument that self-actualization requires a person to discover the daimon within, and to live in accordance with it. I have no problem with injunctions to "know thyself", "choose yourself", and to "become what you are". However, being told to "accept your destiny" seems more challenging.

What does Norton mean?

Norton suggests that from the moment of birth, it is the destiny of each individual to actualise their potential in a particular way. If they live in accord with their destiny they become like the heroes of a Greek tragedy, showing undeviating consistency of character as they meet their fate.

He is suggesting that individuals are destined to have a unique personal character if they follow their daimon. He is not suggesting that the individual’s fate is pre-determined.

Why did I object?

My first objection was that accepting one's destiny seems opposed to accepting personal responsibility for one's choices. Norton explains that is not so. Individuals are free to choose to adhere to their destiny or to deviate from it.

I think my second objection has more substance. I have seen individuals change their character through their own actions. Genes play an important role in determining our destinies, but they are not the only determinant. Brain plasticity seems to enable people to change their destinies, for good or ill.

I recommend David Eagleman’s book, Livewired: the inside story of the ever-changing brain, to anyone who needs to be persuaded that genes are not destiny. As previously discussed on this blog, Eagleman, a neuroscientist, makes the point that the human brain arrives in the world unfinished: “despite some genetic pre-specification, nature’s approach to growing a brain relies on receiving a vast set of experiences, such as social interaction, conversation, play, exposure to the world, and the rest of the landscape of normal human affairs”.

It may even be possible for adults who follow their daimons to create more "potential" to actualize. If that is correct, it makes sense to think of personal development as involving self-creation as well as self-discovery. In the post already mentioned, I referred to the approach offered by Gena Gorlin, a psychologist, as an example of self-directed personal development. Gorlin has referred to her approach as a call to self-creation.

What is the problem with Sartre’s view?

Sartre argues that humans are “condemned to be free”. Each self constitutes itself as a “fundamental project” which is a product of free choice.

Norton explains that Sartre’s view of self-creation stems from the idea that whatever may be given to consciousness can appear in consciousness only as a meaning, and meanings are the product of consciousness itself. A person is nothing until he or she (or ?) chooses an identity. Human reality owes nothing to “inner nature”. There are no innate capabilities. “Talent is nothing other than acquired ability deriving from activity that is engaged in by choice.”

Norton suggests that autonomous self-awareness first appears in adolescence as a discovery rather than as a creation:

“In adolescence, autonomous self-awareness first occurs in the form of one’s awareness of being misidentified by the other. … Throughout childhood the individual has unquestioningly accepted adult identification of himself, usually that of his parents. Now, however, it is in the parental identification that the adolescent recognizes misidentification …. . Beneath this sense of misidentification and responsible for it is the adolescent’s new-found awareness that only he can speak. The moment is portentous and felt to be such. By its tone of  “from this moment and forever-more,” it signals a future very different from the past, it marks a disruption of the personal continuum. At the same time misidentification by others cannot be corrected because the new found “inner self” of the adolescent as yet has no voice with which to speak to the world, it is but a murmur within, audible to one person alone, and this helplessness projects itself as “fated to be misunderstood.” (p 111)

That passage brings back some memories of adolescence. And, even now, that feeling of being “fated to be misunderstood” sometimes returns to me.

An internet search suggests to me that developmental psychologists commonly believe that autonomous self-awareness first occurs during adolescence between the ages of 12 and 18 years. That stage of life often involves a great deal of experimentation leading to self-discovery.

The attraction of Sartre’s view of self-creation is that it appears to offer unlimited opportunities to individuals choose their identity. In arguing that human freedom is freedom for self-discovery and self-adherence, Norton suggests that Sartre’s advocacy of absolute freedom is actually a capitulation to “the forces of alienation at work in contemporary life”:

“The man who has no authentic feelings, and must on every occasion manufacture his feelings, is no exemplar of freedom but rather the self-alienated product of special conditions of life today.” (p 116).

Sensible self-creation

The main difference between Gena Gorlin’s approach to self-development and that of Sartre is that Gorlin does not claim that it is necessary to choose an identity before becoming a self-aware person. The existence of a person is presupposed in the builder’s mindset that Gorlin advocates:

“A person chooses what she wants to build, and she holds herself accountable for the work of building it.”

Robert Kegan’s concepts of self-authorship and self-transformation also seem to me to be sensible approaches to self-creation. Most adults have socialized minds – they are faithful followers and team players. Those with self-authoring minds are in the next largest group. They are self-directed and can generate an internal belief system.  Only a tiny percentage have self-transforming minds, capable of stepping back from, and reflecting upon the limits of personal ideology. I included some discussion of Rober Kegan’s concepts in Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing.

Conclusions

David L Norton’s book, Personal Destinies, has prompted me to think further on the topic of whether personal development is best described as a discovery process or a creative process. Norton’s view that personal destinies are determined at birth does not leave any room for self-creation. The existence of brain plasticity suggests, however, that it may make sense for psychologists to view personal development as having a creative component.

Norton offers an illuminating account of what is wrong with Sartre’s extreme view that it is necessary to choose an identity before being aware of being a person. Norton seems to me to be correct in suggesting that autonomous self-awareness occurs as a discovery process during adolescence.

Sensible advocates of self-creation do not claim that it is necessary to choose an identity before becoming aware of being an individual person.


Tuesday, August 16, 2022

What implications does a livewired brain have for personal development?


 


I was pondering this question while reading David Eagleman’s book, Livewired: the inside story of the ever-changing brain. Eagleman is a neuroscientist, writing about neuroplasticity for a popular audience. My interest in brain plasticity was aroused over a decade ago when I read Norman Doidge’s book, The Brain that Changes Itself, and speculated about some implications of his assertion that “to keep the mind alive requires learning something truly new with intense focus”.

Eagleman prefers “livewired” to “plastic” because the latter term may bring to mind plastic molds rather than flexibility. He suggests that we need the concept of liveware “to grasp this dynamic, adaptable, information-seeking system”.

By the way, Eagleman’s book has left me thinking that in 50 years’ time, people who are shown the above cartoon will still be able to see the humor in it.

The livewired brain

In my view, the most important point that Eagleman makes is that the human brain arrives in the world unfinished: “despite some genetic pre-specification, nature’s approach to growing a brain relies on receiving a vast set of experiences, such as social interaction, conversation, play, exposure to the world, and the rest of the landscape of normal human affairs”.

Experiences during early childhood are to a large extent determinative. If infants don’t have appropriate social and sensory interaction, their brains become malformed and pathological.

As brains mature, neural maps become increasingly solidified. As brains get good at certain jobs, they become less able to attempt others. Adult brains keep most of their connections in place to hold on to what has been learned, with only small areas remaining flexible. Nevertheless, even in the elderly an active mental life fosters new connections.

Eagleman distills the main features of livewiring into seven principles:

  1. Brains match themselves to their input, e.g. when a person is born blind the occipital cortex is completely taken over by other senses.
  2. Brains wrap around the inputs to leverage whatever information streams in. It is possible for one sensory channel to carry another channel’s information, e.g. with appropriate equipment, the brain is able to learn to use information coming from the skin as if it is coming from the eyes.
  3. Brains learn by putting out actions and evaluating feedback, e.g. that is how we learn to communicate with other people, how we can learn to control machinery, and how a damaged spinal cord can be bypassed using signals passed directly from a brain to a muscle stimulator.
  4. Brains retain what matters to them; flexibility is turned on and off in small spots based on relevance; what is learned in one area is passed to an area in the cortex for more permanent storage; the cortical changes involve the addition of new cellular material; brains have a different system for extracting generalities in the environment (slow learning) and for episodic memory (fast learning). “Everything new is understood through the filter of the old.”
  5. Brain lock down stable information. Some parts of the brain are more flexible than others, depending on the input. Brains adjust themselves depending on how you spend your time. When learners direct their own learning, relevance and reward are both present and allow brains to reconfigure.
  6. Plasticity arises because different parts of the system are engaged in a competitive struggle for survival. Competition in the brain forest is analogous to the competition between trees and bushes in a rain forest. The principles of competition poise the brain “on the hair-trigger edge of change”.
  7. Brains build internal models of the world; by paying attention, our brains notice whenever predictions are incorrect and are able to adjust their internal models.

Eagleman argues that the computer hardware/ software analogy tends to lead people astray in thinking about brain function. He suggests that as neurologists illuminate the principles of brain function, those principles will be gainfully employed to create self-configuring devices that use their interaction with the world to complete the patterns of their own wiring.

The book ends with this thought:

“We generally go through life thinking there’s me and there’s the world. But as we’ve seen in this book, who you are emerges from everything you’ve interacted with: your environment, all of your experiences, your friends, your enemies, your culture, your belief system, your era—all of it.”

That could be interpreted by social engineers as an invitation to seek to modify our brains by shaping our environments. I prefer to see it as an invitation to individuals to think about their belief systems and the choices they make that influence their personal environments because their beliefs and choices can have a profound impact on their own personal development. I will explain later the links between personal environment, social capital and individual flourishing.

The idea that individuals can make choices about their personal environments implies the existence of free will. Eagleman is somewhat skeptical about the existence of free will but he speculates that it may be a property of the whole brain as a complex network or system.  He acknowledges that organisms display the property of free will in their interactions with their environments. Self-direction seems to be implicitly acknowledged in the discussion of some topics in Livewired.  For example, there seems to be implicit acknowledgment that individuals may choose what they practice in the discussion of the ten-thousand-hour rule concerning the need for practice to acquire expertise. Self-direction also seems to be implicit in choices many elderly people are making to keep their brains active.

More fundamentally, if brains learn by putting out actions and evaluating feedback it seems reasonable to expect such behavior to encompass actions that are consciously self-directed as well as those occurring without conscious awareness. The idea that by paying attention our brains notice whenever predictions are incorrect and are able to adjust their internal models seems to me to suggest a role for conscious self-direction. If humans are capable of building robots which can adjust their internal models in the light of experience, it seems reasonable to expect individual humans to be capable of using some of the principles of brain function to create better versions of themselves.

The knowledge that human brains are livewired suggests to me that it is not unduly optimistic to believe that individuals begin life with huge potential for self-directed personal development and that this potential in never entirely extinguished as they grow older.

Directing attention to achieve cognitive integrity

Self-direction implies an ability to direct one’s attention sufficiently to consider the consequences of alternative courses of action. An ability to direct one’s attention is a meta-cognitive capacity – it entails a degree of control over one’s own thought processes.  

You might be thinking that exercising control over thought processes is difficult enough for psychologically healthy people, so it must be impossible for people suffering from addictions, obsessions and delusions. However, in a Psychology Today article, Gena Gorlin, a psychologist, has pointed to evidence that people who appear to have a diminished capacity for rational deliberation in some aspects of their lives, can actually be helped by therapies which help them to exercise agency and acquire relevant knowledge.


In a scholarly contribution, published in 2019, Gena Gorlin and a co-author introduced the concept of cognitive integrity to describe “the metacognitive choice to engage in active, reality-oriented cognition”. (Eugenia I. Gorlin and Reinier Schuur, ‘Nurturing our Better Nature: a proposal for Cognitive Integrity as a Foundation for Autonomous Living’, Behavior Genetics, 2019, 49: 154-167. Independent scholars may be able to obtain access by following links on Gena Gorlin’s web site.)

Cognitive integrity is both a state of mental activity and a trait-like disposition. It stands in contrast to passive cognitive processing – being driven by unconsciously activated intention – and active pretense, or self-deception. The pretense of cognition occurs when we procrastinate and make lame excuses to ourselves to avoid doing things that we have chosen to do. Among other things, self-deception can also involve negatively distorted self-assessments, inaccurate causal attribution for life events, and false memories. Those cognitive biases are common among individuals with depression and anxiety.

Gena Gorlin posits that people who engage in repeated exercise of cognitive integrity earn self-trust. By contrast, those who engage in frequent self-deception are likely to harbor an increasing sense of insecurity about their own abilities.

It seems to me that there is a strong overlap between people who practice cognitive integrity and people who are self-authoring and self-transforming, according to definitions adopted by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow. A self-authoring mind is self-directed and can generate an internal belief system or ideology. A self-transforming mind can step back from and reflect on the limits of personal ideology. You can read more about that and how I see it as linked to personal integrity in Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing (pp 171-173). There is also relevant discussion on this blog.

Personal development as a multi-stage process

The information we have about the livewired nature of brains is suggestive of substantial potential for individual personal development throughout life. The process of personal development can be seen as a multi-stage process involving interaction between a person’s family and social environment and the degree of cognitive integrity they achieve.

In Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, I make use of an analytical framework proposed by the economist, Gary Becker, to propose that the extent to which an individual flourishes at any time during her or his life, is a function of personal capital and social capital.

Personal capital includes all personal resources, natural abilities, skills acquired through education and on-the-job training, and preferences, values and habits acquired from past experiences. For example, habit formation causes previous consumption patterns to have a large impact on current preferences. Those habits can either enhance or inhibit an individual’s flourishing.

Social capital incorporates the influence of other people—family, friends, peer groups, communities. People want respect, acceptance, recognition, prestige, and so on from others and often alter their behavior to obtain it. Social capital can have a positive or negative impact on an individual’s flourishing. For example, peer pressure on a teenager could lead to sexual promiscuity, or to healthy exercise.

This framework recognizes that present choices and experiences affect personal capital in the future, which in turn affects future flourishing. It is difficult to modify the social capital of the networks to which individuals currently belong, but they may have opportunities to leave networks that damage their prospects of flourishing, and to join other networks.

I wrote:

“The journey of life is a multi-stage process. At each stage, the extent that we can flourish depends on effective use of personal capital we have developed in earlier stages, and alertness to opportunities for further investment in personal capital. Investment in personal capital can help us to forge mutually beneficial relationships with others and, if necessary, to enter more favorable social networks. As we flourish, our priorities may change, bringing about changes in preferences and behaviors. At each stage of adult life, flourishing requires values consistent with wise and well-informed self-direction.”


Tuesday, July 5, 2022

How is it possible to believe in both right to life and freedom to choose?

 


The ongoing public debate between “right to life” and “freedom to choose” advocates, seems to be falsely suggesting that a choice must be made between irreconcilable positions. The debate overlooks the legitimate reasons that people have to support both “right to life” and “freedom to choose” in different contexts. I argue in this article that opportunities for human flourishing are likely to be greatest when the political/legal order recognizes the validity of both “right to life” and “freedom to choose” in contexts where those concepts are most relevant.

The article is addressed to people who believe that our main focus in considering the appropriateness of laws relating to termination of pregnancy should be on their implications for human flourishing. I hope that includes all readers.

My starting point is the proposition that opportunities for human flourishing are likely to be greatest within a political/legal order which allows individuals with differing values to flourish in different ways without coming into conflict with each other. The underlying idea here is that individual flourishing is an inherently self-directed process. The advocates of differing values may all think that they have the best recipe for human flourishing, but no-one can flourish if they are forced to live according to values they oppose.


The “live and let live” view presented in the preceding paragraph is not original. It is explained more fully, with references to major contributors to relevant philosophy, in my book Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing.

The line of reasoning sketched above suggests that people who hold widely differing views about issues such as termination of pregnancy may be able to live in peace and seek to flourish in their own ways, provided they refrain from attempting to coerce one another to modify their behavior. Such attempted coercion usually involves groups of people using their political power to impose their will on others.  

Of course, we may have good reasons to believe that some people are seeking to flourish in ways that are unlikely to succeed. We can try to persuade them to alter their ways but use of coercion to modify their behavior has potential to reduce further their potential to flourish. Putting people into jail does tend to diminish their opportunities to flourish.

When should the legal order recognize the right to life?

To this point I have obviously been writing about behavior that does not infringe the rights of others. When behavior does infringe the rights of others, it is appropriate for it to be subject to legal constraints. Infanticide is the example that is most pertinent to the current discussion.

The proposition that infants have a right to life is not controversial. Even so, legal systems tend to recognize that extenuating circumstances are often associated with the crime of infanticide. In high-income countries, infanticide is often attributed to post-natal depression. In 18th century Britain, when infanticide more commonly occurred for economic reasons (for example, to give other children in a family a better chance of survival) it was apparently common for juries to practice “pious perjury” to avoid convicting offenders for murder. In the 19th century, laws gave explicit recognition to the possibility that extenuating circumstances might exist in cases of infanticide.

There are strong grounds to argue that late term abortion is tantamount to infanticide because the unborn child is at that stage capable of living outside the womb. It makes sense to argue on that basis that in the final weeks of pregnancy the unborn child has a right to life almost equivalent to that of an infant. The “almost” qualification is appropriate because the mother’s life may sometimes to be endangered if an unborn child is accorded the same right to life as an infant.

When should the legal order recognize that women have a right to choose?

In my view the legal order should recognize that a woman has responsibility to decide what status should be accorded the embryo in her womb in the weeks immediately following conception. She is best placed to make such judgements because the embryo is only capable of existing with the life support that she provides it.

The most common alternative is for politicians to assert that they have a right to decide the status of embryos. They may follow the advice of religious authorities, philosophers of various kinds, the majority view of electors, swinging voters, party leaders, their spouses, their best friends etc. or they may rely on their own intuitions and feelings. Some politicians argue that embryos should be sacrificed to achieve their objectives concerning optimal growth of population, or to enable other species to flourish. Others argue that abortion should be illegal because human life is precious from the moment of conception.

Politicians should show some modesty when contemplating laws that over-ride the natural rights of individual pregnant women to make judgements about the status of  the embryos in their wombs and to act according to their consciences. They have a right to seek to persuade pregnant women to adopt their views on the status of the embryo, but there is no good reason why any of their views should constrain the actions of a woman who is not persuaded by them.

There is nothing in human nature that ensures that every woman with an embryo in her womb will view it as having the status of an entity that is worthy of being provided life support, given the opportunity costs that might entail for herself and her family. If the woman does not wish to maintain life support to the embryo, the use of force to require her to do so imposes a form of involuntary servitude upon her.

The authoritarianism involved in denying women the right to choose in the early stages of pregnancy is compounded by the invasion of privacy that is required to ensure compliance with this policy.

The transition

If it is accepted that right to life should prevail at the late stages of pregnancy and that freedom to choose should prevail at the early stages, that leaves the question of what rules should apply between those stages. It makes sense for the option of termination to be progressively restricted as pregnancy proceeds, rather than legal one day and illegal the next.  

A personal view

The views presented above have focused on what should be lawful or unlawful in a society which rejects authoritarianism and recognizes the rights of individuals with differing values to flourish in different ways. The discussion has been about the ethics of alternative legal orders, rather than personal ethics.

In case anyone thinks they can infer my views on the personal ethics of abortion from what I have written above, I will make them clear now. I subscribe to the view that because human embryos have potential to become human persons they should not be lightly discarded. I think the world would be a better place if more people were persuaded to adopt to that view, but it has potential to become a much worse place if governments attempt to impose it.

Conclusions

Opportunities for human flourishing are likely to be greatest in a political/ legal order which allows individuals to flourish in different ways without coming into conflict with each other.

When behavior infringes the rights of others it is appropriate that it should be forbidden. Infanticide obviously falls into that category. It is appropriate to recognize an unborn child as having a right to life almost equivalent to that of an infant in the final weeks of pregnancy.

The issues involved in the early weeks of pregnancy are quite different because the embryo is totally dependent on a woman to provide it with life support. The woman should be recognized to have responsibility to decide the status of the embryo at that stage. If she does not consider it to have a status worthy of being provided ongoing life support, her view should be respected. Laws requiring women to provide life support against their impose a form of involuntary servitude upon them.


Tuesday, November 30, 2021

How are life satisfaction ratings related to living standards evaluations?

 



It is well known that in wealthy countries, further improvement of average incomes has only a small impact on average life satisfaction. Diametrically opposed explanations have been offered.

On the one hand, there are those who say that if rising incomes have little effect on average life satisfaction, that must mean that their apparent impact on living standards is a mirage – rising incomes do not count as progress.

On the other hand, there are those who say that average life satisfaction numbers are garbage – you can’t expect to get useful information by asking people to rate their satisfaction with life on a 10-point scale. They say that rising average incomes provide an accurate picture of progress.

In my view, those opposing explanations are both unhelpful to an understanding of the relationship between living standards and life satisfaction. In my book, Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, I explain that rising incomes result in actual improvements in living standards, and count as progress because that is what people aspire to have. Since self-direction is integral to human flourishing, it is obvious that progress is inextricably linked to conditions that enable individuals to meet their aspirations more fully. In the book, I also explain why I think average life satisfaction is an appropriate measure of psychological well-being at a national level. I suggest that psychological well-being, along with wise and well-informed self-direction, is one of several basic goods that a flourishing human could be expected to have.

The moving benchmark problem.

The failure of life satisfaction to reflect improved living standards is explained as follows in my book:

“The happiness surveys behind this puzzle, often referred to as the Easterlin puzzle, ask respondents to rate their lives relative to benchmarks such as the best possible life. Let us assume that when a person in a high-income country, call him Bill, answered that question in 1990, and he gave a rating of 8/10 for his life. Since then, Bill’s income has increased at about the same rate as the average for the country in which he lives, and there have been no abnormal changes in the circumstances of his life. In January 2020 … he again rated his life as 8/10. …

Bill’s income has risen, but his rating of his life has not risen.

The problem is that the survey prompted Bill to rate his life against a moving benchmark. Bill’s view of what constitutes the best possible life is likely to have risen over time. The people he sees living such a life have obtained access to better communication technology, and other things that have potential to enhance the quality of life. If you ask people to rate their current lives relative to a benchmark that is moving upwards over time, measurement error is inevitable.”

Ways to avoid the moving benchmark problem include the ACSA approach previously discussed on this blog (here and here). For reasons best known to themselves, happiness researchers have not shown much interest in using that approach to test the extent to which life satisfaction measures are distorted by moving benchmarks.

Living standards comparisons

The moving benchmark problem does not arise when people are asked how their standard of living compares with that of their parents when they were about the same age. Surveys of that kind have tended to provide information consistent with perceptions of ongoing progress with rising incomes in wealthy countries.

There is no plausible reason why such inter-generational comparisons should be viewed as less credible than life satisfaction ratings, or vice versa. As I see it, they are cognitive evaluations of different things. The intergenerational comparisons are measuring perceptions of progress, and the life satisfaction ratings are measuring current psychological well-being.

Merging life satisfaction and living standards evaluations

In order to obtain a better understanding of the linkage between perceptions of progress and current life evaluations, it is necessary to bring those different cognitive evaluations together in some way. That has been made possible by inclusion in the latest round of the World Values Survey of a question asking respondents whether their living standards are higher, lower, or about the same as those of their parents when they were about the same age. The graphs shown above were prepared using the excellent Online Data Analysis facility of the World Values Survey. Information is shown for the United States and Australia, but similar pictures emerge for other high-income countries.

The most obvious point illustrated by the graphs is that people tend to be much less satisfied with their lives if they perceive that their living standards are lower than those of their parents at a comparable age. Their perceptions that their living standards have fallen tends to make them feel grumpy about life.

The second point to emerge is that the life satisfaction ratings of those who perceive that their living standards are better than those of their parents are not much higher than for those who perceive that their living standards are about the same as those of their parents. Their perceptions of progress are not reflected to any great extent in their satisfaction current lives. That result is consistent with my view that life satisfaction is a poor indicator of the extent to which people meet their aspirations for higher living standards.

Implications

Perceptions of change in living standards that emerge from intergenerational comparisons are related to the recent history of economic growth in different countries. The greatest percentage perceive that their living standards are higher than their parents in countries that have sustained high rates of growth in per capita GDP over several decades. Of the 54 countries for which data are available, Vietnam has the greatest percentage in that category (90%) and Iraq has the lowest (21%). The corresponding percentages for Australia and the U.S. are 56% and 48% respectively.

Percentages who perceive that their living standards are lower than their parents follow a broadly similar pattern, but in most countries are within the range of 10% to 25%. Of the 54 countries, Zimbabwe is the only one where more than half of respondents perceived that their standard of living was lower than that of their parents. The corresponding percentages for Australia and the U.S. are 15% and 19% respectively.

The age structure of people who perceive themselves to be worse off than their parents suggests that this source of grumpiness is likely to pose a greater problem in Australia and the U.S. in the years ahead. The incidence is lowest among the 65+ age group (7.6% for Australia and 8.4% for the U.S.). The highest incidence in Australia is in the 25-34 age group (20.1%) and in the U.S. in the 35-44 age group (26.4%).

Conclusions

Average life satisfaction provides useful information on psychological well-being at a national level, but is a poor measure of the extent to which people are meeting their aspirations for higher living standards. As expected, people who perceive their standard of living to be higher than that of their parents, do not rate their life satisfaction much higher than those who perceive their standard of living to be about the same as that of their parents. However, people who perceive their standard of living to be lower than that of their parents have markedly lower life satisfaction than the other groups. The percentage of grumpy people in countries such as Australia and the U.S. seems set to rise in the years ahead unless opportunities improve for young people to meet their aspirations for higher living standards.

Saturday, June 26, 2021

What does "A Dream of Red Mansion" tell us about place-seeking culture in China?

 


A Dream of Red Mansion, which was written by Cao Xuequin in the 18th century, is often claimed to be China’s greatest classical novel. The book is sometimes also referred to as Dream of the Red Chamber, or The Story of the Stone.

After reading the novel it is easy for me to see why it is considered to be a great novel. It is impossible for translations to capture everything conveyed by Chinese characters but even in translation (I read Gladys Yang’s version) this is one of the best novels I have read.

What is the book about?

The book is about many aspects of life of a wealthy aristocratic family living in the Chinese capital. It follows the life of the central character, Jia Baoyu, through childhood to early adulthood. Baoyu spends most of his time playing with girls – his cousins and servants. He is spoiled by his mother and grandmother, but is frequently reprimanded by his father.

In terms of broad structure, the novel is about destiny – the story of a piece of jade, with prophetic inscriptions, that miraculously appears in Baoyu’s mouth at the time of his birth. The novel is also a story about love and arranged marriage. While suffering from some kind of mental illness, Baoyu is fooled into thinking he is being married to the person he loves during the ceremony in which he is being married to a different person.

One of the features of the novel is the author’s obvious admiration of girls and young women. Baoyu’s cousins have greater skill in composing poetry than he does, and provide the competition he needs to improve his performance. The novel suggests that females in the Jia household had somewhat idyllic childhoods, but were at great risk of suffering from heartbreak, disease (particularly TB) and early death, or from spousal abuse if they survived long enough to have a marriage arranged for them.

The novel is also a story about the role of place-seeking in a family of government officials whose fortunes were declining. In that context, Baoyu is under pressure from his father to study hard and to learn to write essays in a manner that will enable him to perform well in the imperial examination. Baoyu, however, is more interested in engaging in poetical activities with his female cousins. Those tensions were of particular interest because of the role of civil service examinations in China’s place-seeking society.

The civil service examinations

By comparison with Western Europe, in China the accumulation of wealth over several generations seems to have depended to a greater extent on securing an official position and maintaining favor with government authorities. Emperors of China seem to have been more readily able to confiscate the property of wealthy people who fell out favour than were the kings of Western Europe, who often had to share power with barons and popes.

I turned to Linda Jaivin’s book, The Shortest History of China, for background information about place-seeking in China. In writing about the Tang dynasty (618-907), Jaivin emphasizes the links between inherited wealth, education, and official position:    

“Unlike the hereditary aristocracy of Europe, China’s landed gentry owed their influence to a fluid mix of lineage, wealth (including land ownership), education and official position. It was a stable identity insofar as inherited wealth made it easier to get an education, making it easier to secure an official position, making it easier to accumulate wealth.”

Civil service examinations had ancient origins, but were reformed under Empress Wu Zetian. The principle of meritocracy was advanced by making the examinations accessible to candidates of humble background and by using blind marking to eliminate favouritism. She mandated that the examinations were to be held regularly and to focus on subjects she deemed useful for governance, such as history and rhetoric, rather than the ancient classics. However, the ancient classics once again became the basis of the civil service examinations during the Song dynasty.

Civil service examinations did not remain a constant feature of government in China during subsequent centuries. They were effectively abolished during the Yuan dynasty, following the Mongol invasion. During that period, top appointments went to Mongols and were made hereditary.

During the Manchu Qing dynasty, the civil service examinations were upheld by Emperor Kangxi (1662-1722) who had studied the Confucian classics as a child. The tradition was continued through the reign of his grandson Qianlong (r. 1735-1796). It was during that period that Cao Xuequin wrote A Dream of Red Mansion.

Baoyu’s predicament

Baoyu’s father, Jia Zhen, did not expect Baoyu to perform spectacularly at the imperial examinations. When he saw that Baoyu was not fond of study, but had some understanding of poetry, he decided that this “did not really disgrace their ancestors; for they themselves, he recalled, had been the same, and although working hard for the examinations had never distinguished themselves”.

However, that didn’t stop Jia Zhen from threatening his son with dire consequences if he did not study hard:

“I’ve also heard that you spend all your time in the Garden playing about with your girl cousins and even fooling about with the maids, forgetting your studies completely. You may write a few lines of poetry but it’s not up to much, nothing to boast about. After all, when you come to take the examinations, it’s essay-writing that counts; but you’ve neglected that. Here’s what you’re to do from now on. Stop versifying and writing couplets, and concentrate on studying eight-section essays. I give you one year. If you’ve made no progress by the end of that time you can stop studying, and I shall disown you!”

Baoyu loathed the eight-section essays, “taking the view that as these were not written by sages or worthies they could not expound the wisdom of sages or worthies and were simply ladders by which later examination candidates climbed up to bureaucratic advancement”. He had a low opinion of place-seekers. In commenting on his meeting with a person who had a strong physical resemblance to himself, Baoyu says:

“He talked and talked but said not a word about seeking for truth, just holding forth on scholarship and the management of affairs, as well as loyalty and filial piety. Isn’t such a person a toady.”

Baoyu was fond of the Zhuangzi, one of the foundational texts of Taoism, which tends to promote carefree attitudes. In Chapter 21 of the book he is delighted by a passage suggesting the existence of some weird paradoxes, for example that “all men under heaven will learn skill for themselves” if the fingers of deft artisans were to be cut off.

By the time we reach Chapter 118 of the book, as the examinations are approaching, Baoyu disturbs his family by hinting that he intends to renounce the world. At that point, he is absorbed in reading the chapter “Autumn Water” in the Zhuangzi. The author does not tell us what passage he is reading. Perhaps it is the passage about what the “truly great man” does:   

“He struggles not for wealth, but does not lay great value on his modesty. … The ranks and emoluments of the world are to him no cause for joy; its punishments and shame no cause for disgrace. …”

When his wife, Baochai, sees what Baoyu is reading she takes this to mean that he is seriously considering “leaving the world of men” and giving up all human relationships. This leads them into a heated exchange in which Baochai emphasizes Baoyu’s responsibility to his family. The exchange ends with Baochai giving some final advice:

“Since you’ve run out of arguments, my advice to you is to take a grip on yourself and study hard; because if you can pass the triennial examination, even if you stop at that, you’ll be paying back your debt of gratitude for your sovereign’s favour and your ancestor’s virtue.” Baoyu nodded and sighed, then said, “Actually it isn’t difficult to pass. And what you said about stopping there and repaying my debt is not far wide of the mark.”

Baoyu does study hard. He performs exceptionally well at the imperial examination and then disappears to become a Buddhist monk. The emperor decrees that the brilliance of Baoyu’s writing must be due to his being an immortal, and the whole household is overjoyed.

My view

The struggle that Baoyu experiences in coping with parental expectations is no doubt heightened by the Confucian culture in which he lives. However, individuals can feel conflict between their personal values and a desire to meet the expectations of parents even when they grow up in a culture with little reverence for sovereigns or ancestors. The novel can be read as an account of how a young man was eventually able to reconcile his Taoist values with the Confucian culture in which he lived. As I see it, the novel has wider relevance as a story about personal development and the need for individuals to take responsibility for directing their own lives as they approach adulthood.

Friday, February 5, 2021

Are you getting sauced?

 




It is about time greater recognition was given to the sterling efforts of Australia’s liquor licensing regulators. While some public health officials have become media superstars during the COVD-19 epidemic, the liquor regulators have gone quietly about their business of protecting us from ourselves.  Lack of public recognition for their efforts must be almost enough to drive them to drink.

The Australian Broadcasting Commission – your ABC (or is it our ABC, or their ABC) – is normally a strong supporter of government regulation, but when was the last time you saw the ABC praise liquor regulators for their efforts? Just about everyone that the ABC interviews says, “Aorta do something about that”, no matter what “that” is. The “A” in aorta is the government, of course. Someone should tell the government Aorta get the ABC to praise the liquor licensing regulators.

I can’t remember anything the ABC has done over the last 18 months or so to recognize the sterling efforts of liquor regulators. Liquor licensing regulators have to make contributions that are a long way beyond the call of duty before the ABC recognizes them.

The sterling efforts of the acting director-general of licensing of the Northern Territory (NT) were reluctantly acknowledged by Katrina Beavan and Steward Brash in an item published on 30 July 2019. The headline of the article gives an indication of the perceptiveness and courage of the acting director-general: “NT liquor licensing laws affect sale of household cooking products, vendors warned”.

The acting director-general deserves to be highly honored for making such a magnificent contribution to the welfare of citizens of the NT. Most liquor regulators would be inclined to turn a blind eye to the fact that some household cooking products contain alcohol. After all, regulators are human, and just about as lazy as the rest of us. Regulators could be expected to be particularly reluctant to rock the boat by upsetting food retailers and their customers.

However, the acting director-general wrote a letter to food retailers telling them that if they want to sell any product over 50 ml that contains 1.15 per cent ethyl alcohol or more, they require a liquor licence. Licensing inspectors followed up by visiting a range of stores in Darwin and Alice Springs, insisting that owners take offending items off the shelves.

Some of you might think that the acting director-general was being excessively zealous, particularly since the legislation specifically referred to “beverages”.  I can almost hear some of you saying that soy sauce is not a beverage. You wouldn’t drink it!

Well, you obviously haven’t heard of a “bloody geisha”? As cocktails go, a bloody geisha isn’t too bad in my view. It is more flavorsome than straight sake. I imagine that if you use enough soy sauce, you could reduce the amount of sake, and still get a kick out of it. Some people may even omit the tomato juice.

In my view, a strong case can be made that the acting director-general didn’t go far enough. Why not also specify that methylated spirits and turps must also be sold through liquor stores? You might point out to me that regulations to protect government revenue from sale of alcoholic beverages require metho to be adulterated to contain enough poisonous stuff (methanol) to make people go blind and to kill them. You probably think that the fact that metho kills people is a strong enough deterrent to stop nearly everyone from drinking it. However, that is odd argument. It implies that human nature is such that if you leave people to make choices for themselves, they will nearly always choose to stay alive.

You probably also want to tell me that when you say someone is “on the turps” that is just a figure of speech. You claim to know that mineral turpentine contains no alcohol. If I object, you will tell me that is a scientific fact.

Struth! You probably still think there is a real world out there and that we all tend to have common perceptions of reality. One day you will understand that we live in a post-truth world. Everyone has their own truth. Perceptions are everything. If you have any interest at all in protecting people from themselves, you will agree with me that to discourage people from “going on the turps”, mineral turpentine should only be sold in licensed liquor stores.

How does this story end? From what I can gather, the NT Licensing authorities subsequently backtracked on efforts to ensure soy sauce could only be sold in licensed liquor outlets. Nevertheless, the acting director-general deserves a medal for assiduous efforts in trying to protect NT people from themselves!


Tuesday, May 19, 2020

How is behavioral economics relevant to human flourishing?



The practitioners of behavioral economics have tended to direct their research findings mainly at “choice architects”, including paternalistic governments. For example, in their book, Nudge, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein adopt the term “libertarian paternalism” to propose:
Choice architects can preserve freedom of choice while also nudging people in directions that will improve their lives”.

An example might help to clarify what a nudge involves. If the government were to invest a certain proportion of your income in a superannuation fund on your behalf this would amount to a nudge, rather than a push or a shove, if you were allowed to withdraw the funds at any time to use as you wished. Because of a tendency for people to avoid choices, or to choose default options, such an arrangement would be likely to result in more investment in superannuation than one that relied solely on tax incentives. It would do this without the interference in personal choice that is involved in compulsory superannuation, such as exists in Australia. (That example is taken from my review of Nudge.)

However, if you view human flourishing as an essentially self-directed activity, as I do, you may be sceptical about claims that such nudging can improve your life. Even if the people doing the nudging have your interests at heart, their perception of what will improve your life will not necessarily accord with your own preferences.

In the example provided above, additional transactions costs may be imposed on the person being nudged. For example, investment in superannuation might not be the best option for a young person wanting to save for a deposit on a house. Over the longer term, the value of an investment in a superannuation fund could be expected to rise to a greater extent than cash in the bank, but short term fluctuations in equity prices make superannuation a less suitable vehicle for shorter term saving. Withdrawing funds for a house deposit could result in capital losses being incurred.

Robert Sugden suggests that “something is clearly wrong if economists think that their response to the discovery of mistakes in individual decision-making must take the form of a recommendation about public policy” (The Community of Advantage, p 44). If you want to help individuals to make better decisions it makes more sense to address the information to those individuals rather than to address it to autocrats.  (I have previously discussed The Community of Advantage here, here and here.)

Sugden makes the point that nudgees (people who are nudged) do not always explain their failure to follow expert advice in terms of self-control problems. For example, an obese person who fails to follow expert advice about choosing fruit rather than cake, could explain his choice in a range of different ways that do not involve a self-control problem. If he sees nothing wrong with his choices, he has no reason to want to be nudged by having the fruit placed in a more prominent position in the cafeteria relative to the cake (p 47).

However, if the obese person acknowledges that he has a self-control problem, research findings about the influence of placement of products on consumer purchases might help him to modify his behaviour. His trusted advisers might be able to suggest how he could nudge himself to make better choices. By coincidence, earlier today, I heard a news item indicating that there is a supermarket chain in Australia that refrains from placing confectionary near checkouts. That information could be relevant to a person with an acknowledged self-control problem, who was wanting to avoid impulse purchases of confectionary.

The fact that supermarkets often place confectionary near checkouts illustrates that choice architects may not always have paternalistic motives. It should not be assumed, however, that their motives are exploitive. Supermarkets want loyal customers, so it is not likely to be in their interests to have shoppers end up feeling that they have been manipulated to make unhealthy choices and/or to spend more money than they wanted to spend. It is possible that the placement of the confectionary helps give most shoppers good feelings about their shopping experience. The nudge that one person views as manipulative may be viewed by others as benign, or even as providing a helpful reminder.

As a rule, it is good to be aware how you are being nudged in the choices you make. It is necessary to be aware that you are being nudged, as the first step in making a conscious choice to accept or reject the suggestion involved. Behavioural economics can make a useful contribution in helping to make us aware of how nudges may affect the choices we make.

Sugden suggests that behavioural economists who discover possible mistakes in individual decision-making are in an analogous situation to epidemiologists who discover an apparent causal relationship between some activity and the prevalence of an illness. The epidemiological findings are made available to the public in various ways and begin to influence behaviour prior to any public policy intervention being contemplated (p 43). 

Similarly, happiness researchers who discover that average life satisfaction of various groups is affected by factors such as leisure, or commute times, are providing information that individuals may wish to consider in the choices they make.  Individuals are likely to be affected differently, but rarely so differently that information about others is irrelevant.

Sugden acknowledges that normative economics has almost always been directed toward public decision-makers rather than private individuals, but suggests that “since economists often characterize their discipline as the science of rational choice one might expect them to recognize the potential value of helping individuals to make better decisions in their private lives” (p 43). He notes that Philip Wicksteed, one of the founders of neoclassical economics, presented economics as a study of the “general laws of the administration of resources” and insisted that these laws apply “from end to end of life”. He gave practical advice on how to avoid common mistakes in decision-making. The passage quoted above reflects the role he saw for economists in helping people to make better choices.

Sugden’s view that there is a role for economists in helping individuals to make better choices seems somewhat at variance with the view of James Buchanan. In his article “What should economists do?”, published in 1964, Buchanan argued that the theory of choice should be removed from “its position of eminence in the economist’s thought processes”. He suggested that economists should concentrate their attention on human behaviour in market relationships and other voluntaristic exchange processes, and upon the various institutional arrangements that can arise as a result of this form of activity.

I maintain the view, as previously expressed, that Buchanan is correct in identifying the heartland of economics to be concerned with voluntaristic exchange processes, but that does not rule out the potential for economists to make useful contributions in helping individuals to make better personal choices. It is in the latter context that behavioural economics is most relevant to human flourishing.