Sen's Democracy

I really like the way that Sen separates the various reasons that democratic liberties are important: directly, instrumentally, and constructively. He illustrates how these different components of liberty are lacking in certain undemocratic nations, but it's also interesting to think about how these different aspects of the importance of democracy can be seen in the US. For instance, I think a lot of American citizens are aware of the direct and instrumental importance of democracy; if asked about why democracy is important, they could probably come up with reasons both about the intrinsic importance of democracy as well as the democratic actions that democracy allows us to undertake. However, the constructive aspect that Sen points out might not be as immediately obvious, but explains a lot of democratic feeling in the US. Based on how Sen describes the constructive aspect, it seems like the reason most Americans largely believe in the importance of certain capabilities in the first place is because our democratic political system has allowed us to discuss and arrive at their importance. As Sen says, "these [democratic] processes are crucial to the formation of values and priorities, and we cannot, in general, take preferences as given independently of public discussion, that is, irrespective of whether open debates and interchanges are permitted or not" (153).

I also think the qualification that Sen places on democracy's value adds strength to his overall understanding of democracy. According to Sen, democratic liberties' "effectiveness would depend on how they are exercised" (154). This is how Sen explains the inequalities that African Americans in the US are subject to, even though the US is a functioning democracy.

Other thoughts on how Sen presents democracy?

The Lee thesis

As a Singaporean I’m very well acquainted what Sen calls “the Lee thesis,” which broadly speaking says that freedom and rights tend to inhibit economic development. I’m not sure how many of you caught this, but Lee Kuan Yew passed away recently. It was a pretty big deal in Singapore, to put it mildly. Lee Kuan Yew towers over Singaporean history. I am fairly ambivalent about LKY, but I’d happily contend that he’s one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century. His life’s work has been to secure many of Sen’s multiform freedoms for Singaporeans. But he never believed much in democracy. 

This recent Atlantic article puts forward the Lee thesis quite succinctly:

The contrast between Singapore’s ranking in the first two categories, and the third, reminds us of a fundamental question of political philosophy: What is government for? Contemporary Western Europeans and Americans tend to answer that question by emphasizing political rights. But for Lee Kuan Yew, “the ultimate test of the value of a political system is whether it helps that society establish conditions that improve the standard of living for the majority of its people.” As one of his fellow Singaporeans, Calvin Cheng, wrote this past week in The Independent, “Freedom is being able to walk on the streets unmolested in the wee hours in the morning, to be able to leave one’s door open and not fear that one would be burgled. Freedom is the woman who can ride buses and trains alone; freedom is not having to avoid certain subway stations after night falls.” Lee Kuan Yew always insisted that the proof is in the pudding: rising incomes for the broad middle class, health, security, economic opportunity.

I am personally on Sen’s side. I believe there is intrinsic value to democracy, and its instrumental and constructive impact on other freedoms is not to be neglected. But it surely cannot be prescribed indiscriminately for all societies (in all their disparate stages of development). Sen mentions that the strength of democracy is very much dependent on a society’s ability to seize it. A society must have civic virtue, there must be “vigor” in its multiparty politics, there has to be “dynamism of moral arguments” and “value formation.” This reminded me of Brettschneider’s value theory of democracy. Brettschneider outlined a few core constitutive values of democracy, but I do not remember him commenting on the constitution populace itself. This might be a fourth core value, then: it requires a people ready for it.

Section 3, in plainer prose

I find Kant’s writing next to impossible to parse sometimes. Section 3, especially, was a pain. Each page must have taken me half an hour. I’ll try to explain it in my words. I hope I didn’t get it wrong.

(a) Kant proves that free will is concerned only with the categorical imperative.

I had to go back and revise a few definitions before I could get to grips with this passage. Causality is the relationship between cause and effect. Heteronomy = subject to external laws.

1. Freedom is a type of causality. It’s a type of causality that exists (“be efficient” in Kant’s words) independent of external influences.
2. All causalities are ruled by laws. It would be absurd if they weren’t: how else is a cause supposed to translate into an effect?
3. Since freedom cannot have exogenous laws affecting it, its law must come from itself. 
4. We know from earlier that the will has only one principle, the categorical imperative (“I ought never to act except in such a that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.”)
5. Therefore free will is ruled only by the categorical imperative. (i.e. “a free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same.”)

(b) Rational beings must have free will.

1. A rational being is so because he can initiate causality, i.e. be the source of an effect.
2. It is only possible to do so with a self-generated reason that is independent of external influences.
3. The only way for a being to generate a reason of his own is if he has free will.
4. Therefore all rational beings have free will.

Hope this helps anyone who struggling with these passages.

Kant's free and rational individual & the implication on creating moral society

Kant emphasizes the requirement of individuals being both free and rational agents in creating and applying a moral standard. He argues that these characteristics are what uniquely make humans able to understand and act upon moral principles. Thus, "...the most fundamental moral principles must therefore apply to any possible (free and) rational agent" (289).  Kant then argues that these same characteristics which "make us subject to moral oughts...are also sufficient for us to comply with them" (289). Similarly, these these characteristics are also what make lead Darwell to his account 'reciprocal accountability,' or why we are bound and restricted by these moral obligations. Furthermore, a moral community is one is which freely acting moral agents are all accountable to one another.

In each of these aspects of Kant's account, we presume the existence of society of human beings. Morality would take on a different form if we were not assuming that we are constantly interacting with other free and rational beings. Like Darwell explains, would not matter if we lied if the subject of the lie was not similarly a human. Yet this makes me consider whether or not this account requires a more extensive definition of free and rational. Does one only need to be a human by nature in order to be considered to have these characteristics? What about the issues of mental health, or even imposed social positions? Furthermore, does a moral society require a state that ensures such standards of basic equality? I'm curious to hear others' thoughts.

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.