KANT

Kant believes that actions have moral worth when motivated by duty, not inclination. To illustrate this point, he offers examples where subjects have no inclination to adhere to duty. (11-12) As a theoretical condition, absence of inclination ensures actions of moral value. At The Press, Francesca claimed that people always act self interestedly, and indeed complete absence of inclination can never be proven. Her point does not address the existence of universal law or obligations to observe it. It questions whether it is possible to perform an action that has moral worth. I believe it is. Consider a martyr, burned alive for religious observance. Consider the searing, overwhelming pain. Does he endure for the satisfaction of following his obligations? No, he is bound regardless of consequence. Anyone disagree with Kant's claims?

Cooperation and Cause

I'm interested in Blackburn's account of cooperation and cooperative dispositions. As he claims, "success needs society" which speaks to the idea that mutual cooperation leaves all parties better off than in, say Hobbes' state of nature, and "society needs trust" (198). Cooperation seems to stem from two main places for Blackburn, and perhaps at different orders: from the acknowledgement of eligible agents that "the chance of their being the only group to benefit from unrestrained greed is vanishingly small" which would lead to a socially better "cooperative state" (181) where all are more likely to enjoy greater benefits and from the motivation of trust (194). In the first case it is not more rational to cooperate, we choose to do so because cooperation "appeals most to us" because of its appeal to satisfying our concerns (181). If they cannot see this appeal, they are doomed to the "invisible boot" and stay in a mutually disadvantageous competitive and aggressive state. 

Trust seems to be Blackburn's way of more or less securing human action in accordance with this appeal. He introduces trust by suggesting that war is not the only way nature has provided for us to interact: "we grow into communities in which the mechanism of counting on people and signalling that we can be counted upon is embedded" (194). The motivation for trust is then described in two primary ways: your goodwill and the knowledge that others rely on you (194). He says that, although there is no "inevitability theorem" dictating that trust will always evolve, there is also no "impossibility theorem" proving how trust cannot evolve; we rarely have a guarantee that others are to be universally mistrusted (196). So, with the benefit of cooperation along with this optimistic possibility of beneficial evolution, we should be inclined, Blackburn argues, to trust others, and place an "organic growth model in place of a rational design model" which might suggest trust to be irrational because it is not guaranteed or because it may not immediately maximize one's utility. We must develop "habits of reliance" according to him. While certainly society needs trust, I do not think Blackburn's arguments definitively prove that we should trust one another. The possibility of evolution of any sort of trust seems to be a weak claim akin to saying that one should certainly do something just because there's a chance it becomes something greater and positive, despite the risk. There are many who would choose not to act. It also seems like a reach to suggest that our motivations for trust in cooperative relationships stems primarily from goodwill or knowledge of another's reliance. These seems to be ingredients for exploitation (as we've discussed in previous works). It makes more sense to me that trust is treated similarly to how Sen (I believe) treated morality. Being trusting and trustworthy (like being moral) is rational (although I know Blackburn doesn't like this distinction) because otherwise, in a society where all pursued narrow self-interests and disregarded cooperation, all would be worse off. Unfortunately, if one is not concerned with being trustworthy in Blackburn's conception that person is acting in a perfectly permissible way, as being uncooperative is a reasonable choice for them to make due to consistency or otherwise. 

Differing forms of 'truth'

About the principle that individuals always act to maximize their own expected utility, Blackburn asks, "Are we dealing with a human universal, characteristic of us simply through our species-wide natures, or with a very specific cultural self image: the ideology of 'possessive individualism' or Western capitalism?" (135). Here, Blackburn questions whether we can truly understand a model based on self-interest as a universal one, or whether it is based fundamentally on the culture it developed from. In response, he says that there are three possible statuses about the principle, that the thesis be "an empirical truth," a "normative truth," or "analytical or definitional" (135). Blackburn asks a fundamental question about philosophical accounts that can be used to evaluate the critical assumptions taken to be true within philosophical models, such as the economic one.

Blackburn again stresses the difference between theoretical and empirical accounts when he discusses the Prisoners' Dilemma (177). He says that the problem includes both a theoretical game and an empirical game, the first representing how individuals perhaps would act under a given type of society while the latter explaining how individuals actually do act (and how it is rational for them to do so). Both accounts are important to Blackburn: the first is an exercise under which we can see how convention/culture will define how individuals in a society ought to address collective action problems. In doing so, individuals can consciously decide how they ought to be like how parents will try to raise their children to act given their notions of how others act within society. The empirical dilemma allows some people to "...co-operate, or play dove....defect, or play hawk" without being "rational or irrational because of that" (182). Because this game focuses on how individuals actually do act, it permits persons to value results (positive and negative) unequally as we do in real life.

Regardless of the completeness of Blackburn's account, I think he is right to emphasize the distinctness of the role's that empirical and theoretical versions serve. We ought to always assess each account by the type of account it is describing so that we can better evaluate the validity and completeness thereof.

Blackburn's rat choice

I find it curious that Blackburn, who sets about taking about the theory of rational choice, so shuns the word rational (ostensibly because it confuses endlessly.) But regardless …

Eligible persons, that is “anyone with consistent, transitive preferences over a set of options,” make decisions on the basis of two concepts: (a) util, a function of expected utility where utility is valued on the basis of transitivity, and (b) revpref, which is the preference relation of any choice to other available options in that particular situation. And so Blackburn builds a very robust theory of rational choice that can "interpret the decision of any eligible agent as if they were seeking to maximize expected utility.” (164)

I find Blackburn’s approach problematic still. It reminds me of the inner-consistency accounts of rationality that we’d talked about last seminar. The crank-oil example, which seems intuitively irrational, would not be classed as so by Blackburn’s system. I'd thought that this was inherently problematic because I’d felt that theories of rational choice surely must be able to make normative claims and make recommendations but Blackburn denies this again, and again (136, 167). But perhaps Blackburn has a point, that it may be an inherent limitation of theories of rationality that they cannot adjudicate on the primacy of one preference set over another. Maybe that’s where ethics gets to feature.

Pleasure and Mill's Falacy

Mill's characterization of human motivation in terms of pleasure is simplistic and I like how Blackburn uses Butler to point out his mistake. The satisfaction of some wants does bring pleasure, but as Butler and Blackburn both note "not all desires seem to bring 'pleasure' upon being gratified" (139). Human motivations and decisions are ruled by things besides pleasure. Butler distinguishes between an "object of my 'particular' desire," and "the pleasure" that comes from the satisfaction of that desire (138-139). As many things bring feelings besides pleasure, Mill's direct relationship between desire, action, and pleasure is false. Blackburn then discusses other ideas about human desires and choice. He mentions the idea of release, but state of mind is not always directly related to an action. Blackburn also explores the idea of a "change from a state of desire to one of fulfillment," but dislikes this on the basis that it "presupposes a preceding desire," as the desire for change is secondary (141). Thus choice is not merely ruled by desire and pleasure, as Mill proposed. I am much more convinced by the idea that humans are motivated by concerns not mere pleasure. For example, an individual is concerned about the survival of the whales rather than acting for the pleasure derived from the survival of the whales. I particularly liked the Gauthier quote used that, "it is not interests in the self, that take oneself as object, but interests of the self, held by oneself as subject, that provide the basis for rational choice and action" (162).

Throughout this semester, we have discussed the idea of self-interest as encompassing more than merely economic personal gain and Blackburn delves into this issue. I find myself persuaded by this idea that we are motivated by interests of the self not in the self. Blackburn works to bridge the divide between benevolence and self-interest by arguing that "any such concern [such as benevolence] may be one of the particular (first-order) concerns whose satisfaction goes to making up our own self-interest" (143). I'm curious to see if other people found this to be an interesting and potentially persuading idea? Can self-interest encompass altruism and benevolence as Butler and Blackburn propose?

Grey (50 Shades of)

I think we can find some parallels in Frank's work to the ideas Khadija pointed out in Sen. As Khadija said, "people can behave very unpredictably or 'irrationally,' when making decisions," making it difficult to normalize rational behavior universally. I think that Frank's adaptive rationality framework works to address this concern. Whereas individual conceptions of rationality will often differ, this doesn't necessarily prevent us from creating common standards, while obviously expecting some deviations. I found it interesting how he constructed the "cooperator and defector" example, illustrating that our differences in rationality, as well as how we discern these differences, are actually a vital part of maintaining our population. 

When cooperators and defectors are indistinguishable, defectors might rationalize coercive or immoral behaviors that have larger payoffs than the behaviors of the more beneficent cooperators. In this "complex interaction of genes and culture" defectors reign supreme, and are able to rationalize their pursuits of self-interest at the expense of those cooperators around them, who, due to their lower material payoffs relative to the defectors, would likely go extinct (49). When the two types of individuals can be easily distinguished, cooperators unite away from self-interested defectors, and "reap the benefits of mutual cooperation" because this higher order pursuit of self-interest is combined with a sense of altruism (49). Defectors eventually go extinct in this situation. What this example illuminates is the shortcomings of existing, binary models of rationality. It does not pay to be exclusively self-interested nor exclusively benevolent and trusting. This is why Frank suggests the adaptive rationality framework, whereas individuals possess an internal "equilibrium in which each individuals experiences both selfish and altruistic motives to varying degrees" (50). It is impossible to define rationality without grey area, so Frank makes the grey area the focal point of his definition, which I think addresses your initial concerns. There will likely never be a universal definition of rationality that can be applied in all situations in all contexts, but this framework applies to many. 

I also like the connection between Sen and Frank where both mention the application of rationality models to individuals rather than groups. With Frank, he suggests that because populations will showcase differing conceptions of rationality, and "a stable balance" must be struck between those forces in order for the most members of the population to thrive, it would make the most sense for individuals to possess various conceptions and motives, and to various degrees. Just as it is unlikely that all defectors or all cooperators in a population would go extinct, it is unlikely that individuals would only be able to work exclusively within one conception of rationality. "We should not expect a world populated exclusively by the homo economicus caricature," Frank warns, for "they hardly represent a sensible basis on which to ground a universal science of human behavior" (50). People are rationally nuanced just as populations are, and we must work within this framework of grey area. 

Sen and Rationality

I think Sen's piece speaks to many of the debates we have had concerning self-interest and human behaviors. The notion of rationality is particularly interesting to me, and I think Sen eloquently articulates the struggles modern economics faces if it wishes to universalize rational behavior. Rationality takes on so many different forms. What is viewed as rational by one individual can be viewed as completely irrational by another individual.

Economists devised the price theory mechanism and created the supply and demand model, which give a broad outline of how markets work, by understanding how people face preferences and opportunity cost. However, as Sen mentions, people can behave very unpredictably or "irrationally," when making decisions, such as if the means don't align with the ends, so how can we normalize rational behavior to all individuals?

I also thought Sen's discussion of applying economic thought to the individual versus to groups was interesting. Although outcomes can be Pareto optimal, they can lead to significant misery, which is why political powers are so essential to a stable society.