Do People Choose What is Good for Them?

From Blick

Jerry Coyne has a post up titled How Iranian women would dress if the theocracy disappeared. It shows a number of (western) fashionably clad Iranians from the 1970s. It seems obvious that (some) women would dress differently if there were no theocracy in Iran, although there is perhaps an implicit assumption behind the title that the women depicted before the theocracy are free from societal coercion, which seems unlikely; we are all subject to conformation pressures, after all. An apologist for Islam might point out that the extra flesh displayed by the 70s women indicates sexism in the 'western' East just as the covering of flesh indicates sexism in the modern-day Islamic East. As one of the commenters, Heather Hastie, says, "Things are better in the West, but there are still big problems.".

I think a *diversity* of dress is indicative of a free society, but we observe that humans are clubbable animals so they are not making these choices in a vacuum (if they are making choices at all, pace free will debates). Some people might choose to show more flesh, some might choose to show less flesh; the reasons for their choices can range from fashionable to political.

Serious scholars have observed that some women *chose* to don the veil in the 1970s ("In the 1970s, often to the consternation of parents and siblings, certain progressive young Arab women voluntarily donned the veil." - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Veil-Modesty-Privacy-Resistance-Culture/dp/1859739296). Should we defer to the autonomy of these women in the choices they make? Or should we complain that their choices are somehow malformed? What is to stop the Muslim apologist suggesting that it is women in the West who are slaves to culture?

These questions give me a chance to discuss some philosophy of well-being. Some think that final values (those things we *should* pursue) reside in objective things, like life, knowledge, community, health, wealth and so on; Martha Nussbaum argues for a flavour of this.  Others argue that we should simply satisfy our preferences; Harriet Baber, for example. Simplistically, the problem with the first idea is determining what that list is, if it is objective. One problem with the second idea is: what to do if people 'prefer' to embrace normally 'illiberal' things, like the veil - we should not object because we should let people follow their preferences? An objection to this sort of preferentism is that preferences can be malformed in some way; these so-called 'adaptive' preferences might, therefore, pose a problem for preferentists. They may, for example, cause difficulties if we want to improve the conditions of people in apparently straitened circumstances. I shall examine those difficulties and illuminate them through Nussbaum’s arguments and Baber’s replies.

Terms

Preferentism, or ‘preference-satisfaction welfarism’ (Barber, 2014, p.47), is the theory that final value resides in a person’s well-being, and well-being is delivered by satisfying a person’s preferences. By final value I mean what people should rationally direct their efforts to attaining; as Baber says, ‘what’s basic or fundamental, good in and of itself’ (The Open University, 2014a, 0:30). It contrasts with hedonism, which also proposes well-being as the final value, but delivers it with happiness; and with objectivism, which instead suggests there is an objective list of things in which final value resides, such as life, knowledge, community, health and so on. Preferentism benefits over objectivism in avoiding the dangers of an authoritarian imposition of values that are not universally agreed upon, but opens itself up to charges of relativism – perhaps anything could have final value under this theory.

The meaning of adaptive preferences is not altogether clear. Alex Barber says a ‘person’s set of preferences is adaptive if he or she has taken it on in response to limited options’ (Barber, 2014, p.63). But some of these preferences appear unproblematic, such as someone wanting to be a football referee rather than playing, say, because they lack footballing ability. Nussbaum’s conception of the term reflects her theory: she suggests an objective list of capabilities that all humans should have and want. These ‘Central Human Capabilities’ (Nussbaum, 2001, p.154) include things like being able to have good health, being able to laugh and play, and being able to enjoy a life of normal length.

Nussbaum writes:

People’s liberty can indeed be measured, not by the sheer number of unrealizable wants they have, but by the extent to which they want what human beings have a right to have. (p.160)

Presumably the perfectly free, then, will want Nussbaum’s capabilities. So if someone does not want the capabilities that, she suggests, constitute basic human rights that would reflect their lack of liberty. For example, any preference that threatens the ability to have good health reflects a restriction on that person’s freedom to choose, so would be adaptive. And while considering Amartya Sen’s work, Nussbaum mentions ‘life-long habituation’ and says ‘most of the interesting cases do involve life-long socialization and absence of information’ (p.161).

The Problem

Nussbaum thinks that adaptive preferences pose a problem for preferentism because they prevent us from challenging institutions that threaten the capabilities she considers central, because ‘some existing preferences are actually bad bases for social policy’ (p.154). In particular, she is addressing the limited options women have in many societies. Her approach recognises the deeply-ingrained nature of certain power structures so that even the victims of those power structures consider them desirable.

This hints at a wider concern about preferentism: that without some objective standard it’s difficult, if not impossible, to push for change where people express satisfaction with the status quo.

Baber

Harriet Baber, following J.C Harsanyi, draws a distinction between a person’s manifest preferences (those they express and reveal by their behaviour) and their true preferences. For a person’s preferences to be true, she says:

1) they must be fully informed, so that those that result from misinformation are deformed;
2) they ‘must be free in the broadest sense’ (Baber, 2007, p.107), so that those that manifest as a result of high passion, for example, are deformed;
3) they cannot derive from moral obligations.

Baber thinks Nussbaum ignores the distinction between manifest and true preference above and also the ‘dispositional nature of preference’ (p.108); that our behaviour sometimes does not reveal our true preferences - for example, many will shop at Claire’s Accessories when they might rather shop at Tiffany’s. Baber says that:

"Adaptation" is irrelevant: if I want something, getting it is good for me regardless of how I came by that desire; if getting what I choose does not benefit me, it is because what I chose is not something that I want. (p.110)

Baber denies that the genesis of a preference matters, whilst also allowing (in the 3 points above) that a preference’s genesis can be flawed – an apparent contradiction.

The quote does reflect preferentism’s ‘apparent ass-backwardness’ (The Open University, 2014a, 10:20), which suggests that what is good is what we prefer, not that we prefer what is good. What follows is that an individual’s true preference does not represent an unjust state of affairs; which further suggests that people’s true preferences define the justice or injustice of institutions.

Adaptive True Preferences?

Baber argues plausibly that we all have a preference ranking, and that to choose, and to express, a sub-optimal preference does not show that the preference is deformed or adaptive; someone may just consider it the choice that achieves the best outcome in the circumstances. People ‘have a certain fundamental character represented by their preference rankings’ (9:55), revealed if someone jumps at an opportunity if given it. She cites evidence from Nussbaum’s work to show that Nussbaum’s subjects (Nussbaum makes a study of women in non-western cultures) do betray a series of preference rankings, since they jump at the chance to exercise political power when given the chance. The extent to which people would jump at such opportunities, Baber says, exposes how unjust a state of affairs is.

So here she presumably agrees with Nussbaum that some preferences are bad bases for social policy. Ultimately, however, Baber is still committed to a final set of preferences that is fundamental, and Nussbaum can target those preferences as adaptive whilst granting that expressed preferences can change according to circumstance. Consider the following diagram:

Pa to Pz is a person’s ordered set of preferences, Pz being the final preference;
Pm to Pz measures the injustice a person suffers, per Baber;
Pz to P? is the putative adaptive preference suggested by Nussbaum, suggesting an additional injustice.

Preference Inception

Baber speculates:

...if [Jayamma] were offered a promotion or a raise she would jump at it, since there is no reason to think that she is any different from most people who prefer more money to less money and would rather not spend their days hauling bricks if other options were available. (Baber, 2007, p.111)

Well, perhaps, but the notion that some people are not driven by money and prefer simpler, more basic, work is not so outlandish that Baber can assume this is not the case for Jayamma. Baber thinks it’s a fundamental preference of her own that she would never like to go shopping for clothes (The Open University, 2014a, 9:40). Presumably she goes shopping for clothes occasionally, but that is just a manifest preference; her true preference is never to go shopping for clothes. It seems likely that the subjects of Nussbaum’s research, like Jayamma, also only occasionally go shopping for clothes. Jayamma may have a manifest preference to occasionally go shopping, because of her limited options; but her true preference may be to go shopping or to not go shopping (like Baber); we don’t know.

But should we believe Baber when she says she doesn’t want to go shopping, and not Jayamma, if that’s what she says? Nussbaum has an account that can answer this, whilst Baber’s seems inadequate.

Either way, manifest or true, Nussbaum can suggest the preference has been habituated, and there is another preference (P?) which the subject is not free to prefer. And she could suggest that Baber’s true preference is habituated too. Maybe her upbringing has prevented her from appreciating the joys of shopping; perhaps she has had an ascetic, academic upbringing that has prevented her from appreciating some of the finer things of life, like beautiful clothes?

Baber says that Nussbaum ‘doesn’t seem to realise how little room to manoeuvre most of us have’ (The Open University, 2014b, 3:30). According to Baber we all have revealed preferences that change according to the room we have to manoeuvre, but we also have true preferences that are, if not cemented in, still our final preferences.

But those final preferences are dispositional and ultimately down to the individual, as Baber concedes when she recounts the story of the Harvard academic who has chosen to spend her time counting blades of grass rather than something more apparently worthwhile, like teaching her students or writing papers. In the end, being a preferentist, she says ‘...De gustibus. Keep counting.’ (The Open University, 2014a, 12:00).

Unjust Institutions

But some true preferences seem to result from institutions that are obviously unjust. Baber struggles with the example of human trafficking and the story of Srey Mom, for instance, ‘rescued’ by Nicholas Christof from a brothel, but who then returned to it. ‘It is not so clear’, she writes, ‘that it would have been better for Srey Mom to go back to her village or get an honest job sewing sneakers’ (Baber, 2007, p.120). This is the same problem I suggested might arise with Jayamma. We just don’t know what someone’s true preference is, and it’s possible Srey Mom’s state of affairs is her truly preferred state of affairs or just a manifest preference.

This presents two problems for the preferentist:

1. While Baber maintains that the difference between manifest preference and true preference is the measure of how much a person would change their circumstances, given the option, (Pm-Pz), we don’t know what that is ahead of time, so it’s difficult to know what actions to take to relieve individual situations.
2. Even if we grant the preferentist account, it is resistant to any objective measurements, such as health indicators and life expectancy. While preferentists must commit to satisfied preferences being the good, there will be no impetus to improve those measures (except insofar as people prefer them).

As a straight matter of fact, then, if one’s goal is to improve those indicators, preferentism has a problem. Baber would reply that our goal should not be to improve those indicators, per se. Even if the preferentist grants some adjustment to people’s revealed preferences for problems in their provenance, ultimately the preferentist is committed to prioritising autonomy, from wherever it springs, over any objective measures of well-being. In the end, a preferentist like Baber must bite the bullet and accept that a human-trafficked prostitute’s situation can be just.

Conclusion

Preferentism would deliver a world where people’s autonomy is observed and a wide range of diverse lifestyles and cultures would be accommodated and respected. However, it presents an epistemic problem when we are confronted with an apparent case of injustice – is it really unjust? And, further, it is plausible that individual autonomy is good, but the notion that what we choose just is good relies on an idealised self rather than the messier self of real life; we are none of us causa sui, and we have all been habituated to a degree.

As a liberal Millian type of character, I want to encourage self-expression, even if it doesn't reflect my values - in fact, *because* it doesn't reflect my values. But simply deferring to agents' autonomous wills does not seem workable without some anchoring in our state of being; some recognition of our human condition must be included in any account of rational action to avoid a rational relativism which can be destructive to human lives. So I'm a little sceptical when folk claim how things would be, given the removal of some obstacle to freedom, even if we agree that the obstacle (like theocracy) should be removed; unadulterated choice is still not available, and something like Nussbaum's 'Central Human Capabilities' is needed if we are to navigate our way toward a healthy society.

Bibliography:
Baber, H. E. (2007) ‘Adaptive preference’, Social Theory and Practice, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 105–26.
Barber, A. (2014) Reason in Action (A333 Book 2), Milton Keynes, The Open University.
Nussbaum, M.C.. (2001) ‘Nussbaum on adaptive preferences and women’s options’ in Barber, A. (ed) (2014) Reason in Action (A333 Book 2), Milton Keynes, The Open University.
The Open University (2014a) ‘Baber on welfarism and adaptive preferences (Part 1)’ [Audio clip], A333: Key questions in philosophy. Available at https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/repeatactivity/view.php?id=458507 (Accessed 11 Jan 2015).
The Open University (2014b) ‘Baber on welfarism and adaptive preferences (Part 2)’ [Audio clip], A333: Key questions in philosophy. Available at https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/repeatactivity/view.php?id=458508 (Accessed 11 Jan 2015).

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Reason-able?

Chris Mooney has been posting some excellent pieces recently, thankfully avoiding (mostly) his accommodationist nonsense. At Mother Jones he wrote The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science, detailing many studies exploring our cognitive problems. It's well worth a read to get acquainted with some of the studies exercising psychologists at the moment. In it he talks about how emotion informs and, to a degree, poisons one's pre-existing beliefs and affects how one argues.

And that undercuts the standard notion that the way to persuade people is via evidence and argument. In fact, head-on attempts to persuade can sometimes trigger a backfire effect, where people not only fail to change their minds when confronted with the facts—they may hold their wrong views more tenaciously than ever.

This is his standard retort to gnu atheism. But it's quite modest, and doesn't do the work he wants it to. I mean, obviously on many (most?) occasions people are persuaded by evidence and argument. What he means to say is that this may not be the best way when the issue under discussion triggers deep emotions. Later he says:

If you want someone to accept new evidence, make sure to present it to them in a context that doesn't trigger a defensive, emotional reaction.

Again, this, I presume (!)  is the reason for his tone trolling, but it's not doing the work he wants. I don't think any gnu denies that tone is important, and these studies indicate some reasons why a sympathetic context can work. But that doesn't mean it's the only way to get results. Ridicule also generates an emotional reaction, and that may produce results too, without evidence and argument. I can remember being persuaded as a child not to do certain things by the ridicule heaped on me by my brothers when I went wrong. There was precious little evidence and argument presented.

More recently he's blogged about a study relevant to that article, calling it Is Reasoning Built for Winning Arguments, Rather Than Finding Truth?. That title's not really accurate, as a read through uncovers. It's based on a study by Mercier and Sperber, called Why Do Humans Reason? Arguments for an Argumentative Theory. Mooney sums it up better in the final line:

When it comes to reasoning, then, what’s good for the group could be very bad for the individual–or, for the echo chamber.

An interesting finding. We have an imperfect reasoning tool in our locker. If we just reason our way around the world as individuals, disaster can strike. So, an example in the comments, the Unabomber living alone in the woods can easily go crazy because no one is there to say, “Whoa, where’d you get that idea?” A better evolutionary survival tactic is to introduce some argument. This, I guess, moderates some of the flaws in our thinking, such as cognitive bias, and is more likely to produce a better result for the genes (this is an evolutionary psychology argument). In the comments it's also made clear that like-minded groups are a problem too. Hugo Mercier pops up to confirm what he thinks the solution is:

What we’re suggesting is that in a normal debate, you try to convince the other guy when you produce arguments, but you’re mostly objective when you evaluate arguments (after all, if you’re better off changing your mind, you’d rather know about it). So a normal debate is the solution, and it has worked very well for ever. There is no need for any new thing really, just fixing institutions that don’t rely enough on genuine debate.

A pretty good addition to the argument for freedom of speech, I think. Further, it counters the accommodationist position that gnu atheists shouldn't confront the moderately religious and dismiss their beliefs. Genuine debate is what gnus demand, and these studies suggest that if moderate religionists aren't challenged, they will operate in an echo chamber that may end up radicalising their views.

No doubt accommodationists can accuse gnus of operating in their very own echo chamber, but this chamber rings very hollow indeed. In a world where atheists are outvoted and outprivileged wherever one looks, it will be a long time before it becomes a dangerous in-group. But one would have to concede that it may happen one day. O, frabjous day!

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Catholic Post-modernism

A useful post, by Simon Rowney of Cathnews, as an example of the sort of witless rambling that the intertubes facilitates. I'm of the opinion that the more free speech and transparency for ideas in the public sphere the better, and the internet supplies that in spades. So, the theory goes, idiocy will be exposed, and the human project will progress *more* rationally. Hopefully. It's possible, however, that it allows foolishness to be spread as quick if not quicker than before, so the theory may be wrong. Consider this nonsense:

Modern people believe philosophy is a private and personal encounter with truth. Ever since the publication of Descartes' Meditations each person has been forced to answer the fundamental questions alone. This paradox holds true, despite the fact that Science, much like Christianity, is very public and has a definite creed.

I'm not too sure what this means; perhaps he's commenting on the inevitable problem we humans have as prisoners of our own perceptions; certainly Descartes' cogito ergo sum points us in that direction. But one can easily fall into solipsism, which hardly gets the Catholic anywhere. If one isn't solipsistic, then, by definition, one isn't *forced* to answer the fundamental questions alone. No, one has fellow travellers, and tools to help. (And of course, science does not have a *creed* but a methodology.)

Because of this, in the modern world it is considered a grave error to question another person's rationality. By all means we are invited to proclaim truth and critically appraise the validity of arguments. However we cannot, under any circumstances, question another's rationality.

This is so laughable one is attempted to call Poe. What would be the point of not pointing out someone's irrationality? Or is he saying no-one's really irrational?Are we really expected never to question someone's rationality? Where does that leave the courts, who have to decide on the competence of defendants? Are we not expected to call Harold Shipman and Christie mad? This really is the height of stupidity, let alone irrationality. It's clear to me that what the writer is talking about is not modernism, but post-modernism.

Dawkins assumes that all educated people will reach the same conclusions!

No. He's well aware that educated people reach different conclusions. That evidence is all around us. Why is science such an important methodology? Because it acknowledges this truth and counters it.

In the modern world proclaiming public and definite truths has special difficulties. Dawkins and many spokespeople for science are not even aware these difficulties exist. They move forward in blissful ignorance of their fundamental myopia.

On the contrary, in my experience they are well aware of the problems that proclamations of definite truths can be. Truth in science, as opposed to logic for example, is always contingent. In this it stands in stark opposition to the bold absolute assertions of the dogmatically religious.

The Church, on the other hand, is acutely aware of the modern challenge. She is equally aware that personal philosophy can strengthen Faith and create opportunities for evangelization. In large part the Church's view has been the happy result of Cardinal Newman's influence. Through the life and writings of this thoroughly modern man, the Church has come to understand and embrace the extraordinary interplay between a personal philosophy and a public creed.

It's ironic indeed that the Catholics are beatifying Newman, who appears to have been a very devout man whose very nature is denied as natural by his Church, and was buried with his lifelong partner Ambrose St. John. Interesting indeed to consider how the personal and the public 'interplayed' for him. But however pious and wise is a person does not make them right in all matters, and for that reason, personal philosophy is nothing more than a useful contribution to the human project. The root of much evil in the world is to reify one's own personal philosophy and present it as fact. This could be the definition of the religious.

Rowney wants to discredit science through a post-modern dismissal of all rational analysis, which allows him to maintain his foul prejudices (and of course everyone else theirs). So we begin to see a coalition of forces in defence of irrationality, made up of the devout and the credulous, demanding an unthinking *respect* for any crackpot idea. That way, they can get a free pass for their favourite crackpot idea.

Now the danger here is that many people have rather *disreputable* crackpot ideas, which they are keen to impose in the public sphere, to satisfy their own prejudices and benefit themselves. Rowney's argument is the perfect justification for *any* ideology. By his own logic a church set up with a mission statement to eliminate all Roman Catholics could not be condemned as irrational. Well, unlike him, I *would* question the rationality of such people, and would defend everyone's right to question it. More than that, it's vital for the healthy development of our society that we shouldn't stand idly by when we see irrational behaviour, but should condemn it for what it is.

Therefore I question Rowney's rationality, despite not being able to, apparently.

For an example of the irrationality of Catholic dogma, try this.

And a tragic example of the irrationality of another sect here.

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