Moral Outrage Redux March 23, 2009
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Current Events, Dwight Furrow's Posts, Ethics.Tags: AIG, budget, Congress, moral outrage, Obama, politics, populism, Robert Reich
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I wrote last week that moral outrage is a cheap emotion—easy to generate but demanding very little from us.
Robert Reich provides the evidence:
In a rare show of bipartisanship, members [of Congress] are eagerly registering shock and outrage at AIG’s bonus payments by coming up with an assortment of ways to reclaim the bonanza…But much of this is for show. When the public isn’t looking, Congress reverts to its old ways. The Obama-supported plan to allow distressed homeowners to renegotiate their mortgages under the protection of bankruptcy has run into a Wall Street wall. Although Citigroup temporarily broke ranks… the rest of Wall Street has remained adamantly opposed, and apparently Democratic leaders have decided not to push back.
Meanwhile, Obama’s plan to limit itemized deductions for the richest 1.2 percent of taxpayers (including the top 1.9 percent of small business owners) to 28 percent, starting in 2011, is also in trouble on the Hill. Wealthy contributors and friends of congressional leaders involved in setting tax policy have balked. So Congress is telling the White House to look elsewhere for the $320 billion it needs over ten years to finance half of the tab for health care reform. Congressional leaders have also informed the White House that they don’t have the votes to pass Obama’s proposal for treating the earnings of hedge-fund and private-equity managers as income rather than capital gains.
The bonuses paid to AIG executives are small potatoes with minimal impact on the public compared to the package of reforms contained in the budget. Yet, when it comes to the stuff that really matters, changes in policy that would make a real difference, Congress will roll over for their Wall St. patrons.
And why are Congress critters so easily bought off? Because they know the public is interested in cheap emotional payoffs and lacks the sustained attention required to follow through on holding their feet to the fire.
Outrage can be readily manufactured when you can point to easily identifiable villains in the spotlight of a media-driven narrative that demands of us only punching the TV remote. It is much more difficult to sustain outrage when knowing who the villains are requires more complex judgments about systematic abuse of power.
Geithner’s Plan: Getting the Values Right March 22, 2009
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Current Events, Dwight Furrow's Posts, Ethics.Tags: Brad Delong, Ethics, Paul Krugman, Philosophy, politics, TARP, Tim Geithner, Tim Geithner's plan
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Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s plan to rescue the banking system is due to be released today. Details of the plan have been leaking all weekend, and it should come as no surprise that there is no consensus among economists (or at least the one’s I read) on whether it is a good plan or not.
Paul Krugman called the plan “an awful mess”
But it’s immediately obvious, if you think about it, that these funds will have skewed incentives… For the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose. So sure, these investors will be ready to pay high prices for toxic waste. After all, the stuff might be worth something; and if it isn’t, that’s someone else’s problem.
But Brad Delong is more smitten:
So why do I have a positive and Paul a negative view of the Geithner Plan? I see three reasons:
1. The half empty-half full factor: I see the Geithner Plan as a positive step from where we are. Paul sees it as an embarrassingly inadequate bandaid.
2. Politics: I think Obama has to demonstrate that he has exhausted all other options before he has a prayer of getting Voinovich to vote to close debate on a bank nationalization bill. Paul thinks that the longer Obama delays proposing bank nationalization the lower it’s chances become.
3. I think the private-sector players in financial markets right now are highly risk averse–hence assets are undervalued from the perspective of a society or a government that is less risk averse. Paul judges that assets have low values because they are unlikely to pay out much cash.
In fact, Delong’s entire FAQ is worth reading if you want a brief, clearly written analysis of the plan.
I’m not an economist so dear reader beware. But, as I sort through the various opinions of economists, it seems to me some of the disagreement is about values, not technical economic issues.
Some people emphasize the fact that this scheme throws more taxpayer money at the same dingbat scumbags who got us into this mess. The government will insure overpriced assets that will have little value in the future, and we will end up once again rewarding investors for their bad bets. This is fundamentally unfair and unjust. These folks don’t like the plan.
Others emphasize the chance that this plan will get the bad assets off the bank ledgers and encourage more lending, giving consumers more buying power and firms less reason to lay off workers, thereby (hopefully) stanching economic decline. These folks like the plan a lot more.
I think both sides are right on the economics. It seems to me that there is plenty of incentive for investors to buy these assets since the government will limit their losses if they go bad. That is good and should provide further stimulus to the economy. They also have an incentive to bid up the price of the assets since they don’t have to put a lot money on the table to acquire them. That is bad because undoubtedly the taxpayers will have to pay up.
No one knows if this will work or not, and my economics crystal ball shattered many decades ago. But the moral philosopher in me would rather sacrifice a little justice and fairness to avoid the misery that a prolonged recession (or worse) entails. So independently of the economic issues, I think the administration gets the value question right.
Indecent Proposal March 21, 2009
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Culture, Dwight Furrow's Posts, Philosophy.Tags: moral conflict, Philosophy, pragmatism, wife swap
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Kieren Healy at Crooked Timber was forwarded an email from an acquaintance containing a strange request:
Hello,
I hope you are doing well! I am a casting producer for ABC Television’s hit reality show, Wife Swap. I am currently trying to cast families that promote philosophy as a discipline for a special episode of our show and thought perhaps you might know some scholars that would be interested in such an opportunity. An ideal family would have 2 parents that are both philosophers and children that also believe in the discipline…In case you are unfamiliar with the show, the premise of Wife Swap is to take two different families and have the moms switch place to experience how another family lives. Half of the week, Mom lives the life of the family she is staying with. Then she introduces a “rule change” where she implements rules and activities that her family has. It’s a positive experience for people to not only learn but teach about other families and other ways of life.
Fascinating! The timberites are having a great time in the comments section speculating about what “believing in the discipline” might mean and, because this show is really based on conflict, imagining the kind of bloody debacle the producers want to see—Kantians vs. utilitarians, anyone vs. the Nietzscheans, etc.
Myself, if my wife and I were paired off with metaphysicians I would share dsquared’s worry.
I would be worried that they were actually going to destroy my wife and then replace her with a molecule-by-molecule replica of my wife.
But philosophers ought to be cautious about signing up for this. Imagine if a family of moral realists were paired off with a family of moral constructivists and they got along just fine—no big disagreements about family rules, appropriate behavior,etc. That would expose a dirty little truth about philosophy. And we can’t have that.
Friday Food Blogging 3/20/09 March 20, 2009
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Dwight Furrow's Posts, Food and Drink.Tags: cooking, cooking personality, Food
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Deep questions of personal identity are on the table today.
So what kind of cook are you? From the NY Times’ Tara Parker-Hope we have these five categories:
a) Giving: Friendly, well-liked and enthusiastic, giving cooks seldom experiment, love baking and like to serve tried-and-true family favorites, although that sometimes means serving less healthful foods.
b) Methodical: Talented cooks who rely heavily on recipes. The methodical cook has refined tastes and manners. Their creations always look exactly like the picture in the cookbook.
c) Healthy: Optimistic, book-loving, nature enthusiasts, healthy cooks experiment with fish, fresh produce and herbs. Health comes first, even if it means sometimes sacrificing taste.
d) Competitive: The Iron Chef of the neighborhood, competitive cooks have dominant personalities and are intense perfectionists who love to impress their guests.
e) Innovative: Creative and trend-setting, innovative cooks seldom use recipes and like to experiment with ingredients, cuisine styles and cooking methods.
These are not exactly precise analytic categories, but I suppose they tell us something. So take the quiz.
As for me, I would have said, prior to taking the quiz, that I am methodical. But the quiz reveals that I am more innovative and competitive.
Self-knowledge is hard.
“In Sync” is Not Just a Metaphor Anymore March 20, 2009
Posted by Nina Rosenstand in Art and Music, Nina Rosenstand's Posts, Philosophy, Science.Tags: neural synchronicity, theory of mind
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Dwight has posted about Denmark, so I guess it’s my turn to post about music! According to the Discover Magazine website,
Two guitarists playing the same melody together don’t just tap their feet to the same beat to stay coordinated: New research shows that their brains sync up, producing brain patterns that are virtually identical. In the study, researchers had pairs of professional guitar players play short melodies together while their neural activity was monitored with an electroencephalogram (EEG). Researchers found that the synchrony kicked in when the lead guitar player marked the tempo and indicated when to begin. As the pair continued playing, their brain waves oscillated in synchrony from the same brain regions. This suggests that the same sets of neurons were at work, and at the same rhythm, in both players [New Scientist].
The study’s implications are profound; not only do we now have evidence of musical activities creating synchronicity in brain waves, it extends to other rhytmic activities, and even to the entire field of sympathetic communication:
In a common sense result, researchers found coordination in the parts of the brain that control motor activity. But they also saw synchronized activity in regions that are linked with “theory of mind” – the recognition that other creatures think and act independently – as well as brain “mirror” systems that enable people to subconsciously mimic the actions and feelings of others. The researchers think these areas may have been activated to increase the bonding and synchrony between the players in the shared task of playing the duet [New Scientist].
So maybe there’s a true physical component when lovers feel “in sync,” when twins and/or friends think of the same things at the same time, and when (imagine this) there is a collective Aha-experience going on in the classroom. Take this further, and you might get the explanation for group hysteria (just watched A Hard Day’s Night, again), as well as collective religious experiences. Now I want to know if all social animals have similar brain synchronizations!
Singer Vs. Cowen March 19, 2009
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Dwight Furrow's Posts, Ethics, Philosophy, Political Philosophy.Tags: Ethics, Peter Singer, Political Philosophy, poverty, The Life You Save, Tyler Cohen, utilitarianism
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Bloggerheads has a terrific video of an interview with Peter Singer, the utilitarian philosopher. The interviewer is Tyler Cowen, a widely respected economist. The interview is in part devoted to Singer’s new book The Life You Can Save, in which Singer argues that as individuals we have an obligation to do more to end world poverty.
But the discussion ranges over a variety of topics that capture the flavor of utilitarianism, and to my mind, expose some of its flaws. Cowen’s questions are sharp and well-informed—it you’re interested in applying ethics to real world problems, the video is worth checking out.
I was surprised that at one point Cowen attributes to Singer the view that “people whether we like it or not will be committed to working on their own life projects rather than giving money to others and we need to work within that constraint…” Cowen asks whether Singer is comfortable with that fact or if he thinks it is a human imperfection.
This has always been one of my pet peeves against utilitarianism—its tendency to ignore human psychology and our need to devote substantial resources and attention to our own projects. Apparently, Singer is addressing the issue in his new book. (To be fair, he may have addressed the issue in earlier work. I am not familiar with all of it.)
In the interview, Singer’s response was to hope that people would adopt aid to others as part of their personal projects, and he suggests that individuals should do so only if it makes them happy. But this is not really a utilitarian response since it puts such a premium on individual human happiness.
Utilitarianism asserts that our actions should advance the general welfare. Our personal happiness is only one very small component of the general welfare, and thus utilitarians cannot be motivated primarily by the pursuit of personal happiness. That is psychologically implausible. But some utilitarians argue that we can best advance the general welfare when we focus on personal happiness. But then they are conceding defeat. If that is the case, utilitarianism no longer provides us with a theory of practical reason.
If there is a coherent utilitarian position that places such a premium on individual happiness, utilitarianism is inching closer to an ethic of care (or at least my version of it).
More Paradise March 19, 2009
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Culture, Dwight Furrow's Posts.Tags: Denmark, George Soros, Justin Fox, paradise
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Nina has helpfully informed us about relaxed attitudes toward religion in Denmark. Via Justin Fox, she will no doubt be proud to know that Denmark has great energy policies, a terrific climate for entrepreneurial ventures despite having high taxes and very generous social welfare programs, and some great restaurants. According to George Soros, they also have a very intelligent mortgage finance system, which is the main topic of the article.
It sounds like paradise. Except that it is still too damn cold.
But perhaps global warming will fix that.
World-Destroying Finger Pricks March 18, 2009
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Current Events, Dwight Furrow's Posts, Ethics, Philosophy.Tags: climate change, coal, David Hume, deficit of care, Democrats, Obama
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This was a minor but quite disturbing development last week that goes to the heart of why our political system does not work.
When President Obama submitted a budget that predicted passage of a revenue-raising climate change bill, hopes rose that Congress could successfully rein in carbon emissions this year.
But a cap-and-trade climate bill is almost certain to be filibustered by Republicans — and in a letter delivered to the Senate Budget Committee yesterday, eight Democratic senators joined 25 Republicans to defend the GOP’s right to set a 60-vote margin for passing emissions limits.
“We oppose using the budget process to expedite passage of climate legislation,” the senators, including eight centrist Democrats, wrote in their missive.Using the procedure of budget reconciliation, which would allow a climate change measure to become law with 50 votes while preventing filibusters, “would circumvent normal Senate practice and would be inconsistent with the administration’s goals of bipartisanship, cooperation, and openness,” the 33 senators wrote.
Why is this a big deal? I can guarantee these Senators weren’t worried about Senate rules.
A cap-and-trade system of regulating greenhouse gases will increase the price of coal-generated electricity, hitting the South and Midwest especially hard.
The eight Democratic Senators who signed this letter were from states that generate most of their electricity from coal or have significant coal-mining industries. (The signees were Robert Byrd (WV), Blanche Lincoln (AR), Ben Nelson (NE), Evan Bayh (IN), Mark Pryor (AR), Bob Casey (PA), Carl Levin (MI), and Mary Landrieu (LA).)
The fact that greenhouse gases from burning coal (among other fossil fuels) threatens human life on this planet seems not to have been a main consideration.
David Hume famously said “It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.” Hume meant that it was the passions, not reason, that drove us to care about others.
Apparently these Senators prefer the destruction of the whole world to inconveniencing their main campaign donors. (It would of course be irrational to piss off campaign donors.) For Republicans and centrist Democrats, politics is not about taking responsibility for the welfare of the country, although they never hesitate to wave the flag. Its about protecting their little piece of turf.
Events like this convince me that our biggest problem is a deficit of care.
AIG: Moral Outrage May Be Bad for Your Health March 17, 2009
Posted by Dwight Furrow in Current Events, Dwight Furrow's Posts, Ethics, Philosophy.Tags: AIG, federal bailout, moral outrage, utilitarianism
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The exploding populist anger regarding bonuses paid to AIG executives is entirely justified. The very people who caused a lot of this mess are receiving tax-payer financed bonuses rewarding their incompetence.
But moral outrage is a cheap emotion. It is easy to generate, costs the outraged person nothing, and makes her feel better, relieving the frustration of pent up feelings by “letting of steam”. It also permits the outraged person the illusion that they have done something even though the emotion requires no action.
Most importantly, moral outrage is cognitively impoverished. One can feel and express moral outrage without ever considering the consequences of doing something to rectify the injustice.Thus, it is a dangerous emotion.
Via Mark Blumenthal at Politico:
In the survey released just today by the Pew Research Center, nearly half of Americans say they are “angry” about the government “bailing out banks and financial institutions that made poor financial decisions” (39% say they are bothered but not angry, only 12% are not bothered). Not surprisingly, this anger translates into considerable skepticism about bailouts of banks and financial institutions:
62% say the federal government has spent too much on “large banks and other financial institutions in danger of failing,” 8% say it is spending too little and 21% say the amount is about right (Newsweek [pdf]).
59% oppose “giving aid to U.S. banks and financial companies in danger of failing,” while 39% favor it (USA Today/Gallup).
50% disapprove of “the federal government providing money to banks and other financial institutions to try to help fix the country’s economic problems,” 39% approve (CBS/New York Times [pdf]).
The attitudes reflected in this poll (which was taken before the latest AIG flap) represent perilous times. As Ed Kilgore writes:
The growing frenzy over AIG’s insistence on providing $165 million in employee bonuses…reflects an entirely legitimate belief that this scandal will serve as a popular tipping point between widespread unhappiness and marching-in-the-streets popular outrage over government bailouts of the financial sector.
But for many reasons, we may have to live with the outrage and get over it. AIG was writing insurance for much of the securities trading business—trillions of dollars worth of securities all backed by this very weak link. If it can no longer function (even as a ward of the state), the already seriously weakened financial system may head over a cliff.
The moral consequences of this happening are frightening and the devastation would be felt by millions of ordinary, innocent people around the globe. Ironically, it may be that the only people who understand these transactions well enough to unpack and reassess them are these whiz-bang fraudsters who are getting the bonuses. (Here is that story via Kevin Drum)
As odious as the bailouts are, there may be no other alternative if we want to avoid catastrophe, a point that seems lost on many of the people participating in the above poll.
Far be it for me to defend utilitarianism in toto (or condemn a little moral outrage)—but consequences do matter. And moral outrage ignores them.
Moral outrage tastes good, but it contains very little nutrition and in large portions can be really bad for your health.
Faces of Evil–Duncan and Fritzl? March 16, 2009
Posted by Nina Rosenstand in Criminal Justice, Current Events, Ethics, Nina Rosenstand's Posts.Tags: Hannah Arendt; the banality of evil; the concept of evil; Joseph Duncan; Josef Fritzl
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As chance will have it, two stories that we’ve been following are unfolding in the news simultaneously, both of them making claim to revealing the face of what I call egregious evil (what Kant calls radical evil is slightly different, involving giving up on the very possibility of goodness. Good article here.) Joseph Duncan was, until Friday, facing trial in Riverside Ct, CA, for yet another murder, the murder of 10-year old Antonio Martinez (a murder he has, essentially, confessed to already). If you’ll recall my previous posts about Duncan, he was already found guilty and sentenced to death—3 times—for the murders of a family in Idaho. However, last Friday the Riverside Ct. judge put his trial on hold, citing the necessity for a new competency evaluation. Despite the fact that Duncan has been repeatedly tested by federal authorities and found competent to stand trial in Idaho, the Riverside judge (who is not bound by federal rulings) feels that it is necessary to evaluate Duncan as he is now, to determine if he is competent to stand trial. As much as some of us would just prefer for Duncan to get put back where he was, on Death Row, and spare the rest of us the sight of his face again, the CA judge’s ruling is sound. Duncan may have been utterly competent to not only stand trial but represent himself in court in Idaho, but his mental condition may have deteriorated since then (or he has found a way to fake incompetence). March 30 he will be evaluated by two court-appointed psychiatrists, and he has vowed not to cooperate. Is this Duncan’s death wish at play, or is he just toying with the court, getting a bit of extra time away from Death Row, in his usual narcissistic way?
The other case is of course the Josef Fritzl case in Austria. A quick summary: Fritzl kidnapped his daughter when she was 18 and kept her locked in a small room in the basement, where he raped her and fathered children with her, for 24 years. One sick baby was not given medical assistance and died. Fritzl is now standing trial for a number of felonies, from kidnapping to rape and incest to murder, and today he pleaded guilty—to incest. His defense lawyer has asked the jury to consider Fritzl as a “human being.” That is a dangerous road to go down—it implies that “heck, we’re all human, and don’t we all want to imprison our daughter, abuse her sexually, have kids with her and let her live in terror for 20 years?” What removes these two cases from any consideration within the category of Hanna Arendt’s concept “the banality of evil” is that in either case, the perpetrator pursued a course of action for his own self-gratification that is utterly beyond what any slightly self-centered person might dream of. What might ordinary fairly selfish people contemplate in the darkness of their soul? Killing their spouse? Killing their boss? Killing their landlord, as in the old Eddie Murphy poem/skit? Having sex with Dad’s new wife, or with Sis’s new husband, or teenage daughter’s best friend? Or perhaps hold up money transports, or some similar illegal but fairly trivial scenario. But even your run-of-the-mill criminal, or ordinary selfish person with dreams of having a “Ring of Gyges” just does not dream of killing a family so he can abduct and sexually torture the children, or kidnap his daughter, imprison her, and abuse her sexually and mentally for decades. Just another human being? Sorry, no. We may sometimes view human nature as a sad, frail, ill-tempered thing, easily tempted to do violence. But for one thing, neuroscience hasn’t found much evidence to support this view. And for another, we may be easily led into the banality of evil, but egregious evil is not a matter of being easily mislead. It is, in most cases, a matter of choice, with full awareness of the overwhelming weight of the moral and legal tradition. No innocence due to ignorance here. No claim that “I was just following orders.” This is why we tend to question the sanity of such people—because anyone who takes such radical steps to go against the social grain for the sake of personal satisfaction surely must be crazy. But both Duncan and Fritzl have been found to be at least as sane as it takes to understand the possible consequences of their actions—they hid, and obfuscated, and lied. In the spirit of Socrates, we’d rather believe them to be sick, than to have to face the fact that they made conscious choices, with their rational capabilities intact. So “sane” they are—until we abandon the criterion of rational sanity for a new criterion of emotional sanity. And that will have its own set of problems.
(Update 3/18: Fritzl has pleaded guilty on all counts.)
