Fairness: The Puzzle of "Knowing" and "Doing."

Why is "Fairness" (and ethics in general) such a complex line of human inquiry? There are many different possible answers to that question. In this blog I will argue that one important, but often neglected, source of moral complexity is the Aristotelian distinction between "knowing what's good" and "doing what's good." Let me start off with a few basics.


First of all ethics is inexorably teleological; that is to say it is about "goal-directed" behavior. It's about how we go about pursuing ends by various means in a social context. Hence, we argue over whether our individual and/or collective goals are "good or bad;" and we argue over whether the means that we employ in pursuit of those goals is "good or bad." Thus fairness, and ethics in general is about knowing what's good and then doing it. For Aristotle, both are necessary conditions for moral action. Sometimes we "know" what's good, can easily do it, but just choose not to do it (which is usually immoral); and sometimes we "do" what's good without "knowing" it (which is amoral). I would argue that at the level of theory, this is all pretty much self-evident and consistent with how we humans go about making moral judgments and assessing moral responsibility, especially fairness.

Second, fairness is ultimately about what we "know and don't know"; and what we "do and don't do." Are you still with me? Let me see if I can clarify this. How often do you find yourself in a situation where you know what's a good goal, such as feeding homeless people, but don't know exactly how to do it. Should I give the old guy panhandling in the Kroger parking lot $5, or should I donate that money a local charitable organization? If I give him $5 I don't "know" if he'll buy food, booze, or drugs. If I give it to a charity, I don't "know" if that charity is legitimate. If the old guy buys a six pack or if the charity pocket's my donation I really didn't do any good. Right? On the other hand, if I want to "know" these things I'll have to expend my own time, energy, and research finding out. My only point here is that moral action requires knowledge and acquistion of knowledge requires time, effort, and resources.

For now, let's assume that we all agree on a universal set of moral ends. For example, my friend Peter Corning identifies 14 basic human needs that any "Fair Society" must address in order to insure human survival: theromregulation, waste elimination, nutrition, water, mobility, sleep, respiration, physical safety, physical health, mental health, communications, social relationships, reproduction, and nurturance of offspring. I happen to agree with this basic list, although I would probably add a few other human "needs" such as: creative and artistic expression and recreation. Now if we all agree that fairness demands that we identify (know) and bring about (bring to fruition) these 14 or so goals, the logical question is how do we go about acquiring the knowledge necessary to achieve them? After all, we could all agree that we "ought" to pursue these goals, and nevertheless fail miserably to achieve them for lack of knowledge. A Fair Society, therefore, must not only "know" what's "Good" but it must also expend time, energy, and resources developing the knowledge necessary to bring about what's good. 

Take for example, one of my scholarly interests, "physical health." If we expect to maintain a reasonably healthy population, we obviously must "know" something about how the human body works and how it interacts with our social and physical environment. What kinds of food should we eat and how much? How much and what kinds of exercise do we need to maintain health? How do we avoid and/or cure diseases? This is all "knowledge." Right? But the acquisition of knowledge requires more than a Philosopher King contemplating "Truth." It's much more complex than Plato or Aristotle ever envisioned. It takes many scientists working in expensive laboratories communicating, cooperating, and competing with one another.

So if I'm right (which I am) the production of scientific knowledge is a necessary condition for human need fulfillment. This raises a whole new level of moral analysis. Here are few questions that must be addressed by any Fair Society. Where do we find the time, energy, and resources necessary to conduct scientific research? Where do we find the time, energy and resources necessary to teach scientific research? How do we go about providing incentives that might influence young people to study the natural and social sciences? How do we develop and maintain a sufficient number educational institutions that can effectively teach science to this next generation of scientists? And, finally how do we go about distributing the products and services developed by Science? Should all Americans have equal access to state-of-the-art cancer treatments? Motorized wheel-chairs? Heart transplants? If so, exactly how should that distribution be managed? My conclusion is that we are not going to meet our basic survival needs without investing in scientific knowledge. For health care, we need not only biological knowledge, but also social, political, and economic knowledge. And none of these knowledge bases can be acquired for free. "There is no free lunch!"

Now during the Pleistocene era, out hunter-gatherer ancestors "survived" for centuries without the benefits of modern science. I'm glad they did! In fact, I'm glad that over the past fifty years scientists expended time, energy, and resources studying primitive societies and other primates. Although, primitive societies were probably egalitarian (and therefore met the basic the basic needs of all members of the group, more or less "equally") they really didn't "know" very much. In fact, thanks to modern science, we know they didn't live very long. They certainly didn't know anything about how their bodies worked, or how to identify and cure diseases. They didn't know how to distinguish pure from impure water sources. The fact that they didn't "know" very much suggests that they really couldn't "do" very much, and therefore, they didn't "have very much." Hence, there really wasn't much for them to distribute fairly to begin with, maybe: food, clothing, shelter, a few tools, sex partners. In short, it's easy to be "Fair" in a society that doesn't have much to distribute. If everyone lives to be about 40 years old, and if 25% of women died during childbirth, that's certainly a "Fair Society," but not necessarily "Good." One of the fruits of the Scientific Revolution has been that we "know" a lot more, we can "do" a lot more, and as a result we "have" a lot more to distribute (especially in the area of health). The hidden puzzle for us today is how to keep the "Ball of Science" rolling in a world of "free riders;" that is a world where the cost of the acquistion of scientific knowledge is unequally distributed. We need to "know" much more today; and unfortunately, there is no guaratee that we'll continue to acquire the knowledge we need to survive as modern society. We have to know how to nurture Science.

In my next blog I'll try to make the argument that scientific knowledge requires global cooperation, global scientific institutions and free markets.  

The Problem of Future Generations: Part I

Any attempt to establish a cooperative, inter-generational morality will have to contend with the vexing puzzle known as the "Problem of Future Generations." Although this is vexing for all moral perspectives, it is especially vexing for social contract theories. Let's take a quick look at social contract theory. There are several competing formulations of social contract theory; all of which are all descended from the original eighteenth-century contractarian philosophers: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, and Immanuel Kant. The eighteenth century social contract theorists were mostly concerned with the formation of national governments, however, social contract theory, if valid, ought to be equally applicable to the formation of non-governmental groups, especially businesses, military organizations, gangs, families, and sports teams. The two basic questions that face all social contract theories are: "Why join a community?" and "Why stay?" The answers to these questions are usually based on two competing theories (narratives) of human nature: communitarianism and individualism.

Communitarians since Aristotle have argued that human beings live in cooperative groups by nature. The underlying idea behind all social contract theories is that "society" is the product of deliberate cooperation. The rub here is what do we mean my "deliberate?" Back in the eighteenth century Rousseau, a communitarian, argued that human beings living "naturally" in groups develop a "general will" or, what we'd call a "mental mechanism" that predisposes us to act based on the interests of the group, even in opposition to their own self-interest. For now, let's call it altruism.  In other words, human beings living in a "state of nature" deliberately sacrifice their own self-interest for the group. Implicit in this approach is that individual contractors actually "know" specifically what those group interests entail. Here it is important to note that the social contract theorists are are profound philosophers and that their theories are enormously complex. One such complication is how to integrate social organization based on leadership and followership into their theory. In a short blog, I can't get into that right now. But I'll try to cover it later. Sorry. My friend Peter Corning, an excellent contemporary social contract theorist has written a book called The Fair Society that addresses many of the puzzles that confront communitarian social contract theory. I'll examine some of his arguments in a forthcoming entry for the APLS Blog.
  
Locke, an individualist, argued that the "state of nature" for humans is individual, and that human beings forge groups based on self-interest. Thus, communities that violate the interests of individual members tend to lose members. Why? Because there is no "general will" apart from the wills of the individuals that comprise those groups.  Hence, all "wills" are individual and all rights are individual rights. In other words, human beings "cooperate" with others and form "groups" because they deliberately and rationally conclude that at least sometimes, we are "better off" cooperating with some groups rather than others. Therefore, in the absence of a "general will" many communities simply employ coercive force to hold their community together.

Evolutionary ethicists observe that we are most likely to form groups based on "kin-altruism;" that is to say, we are genetically predisposed to cooperate with other human beings that are genetically related to us. Knowledge of genetic relatedness is less certain for males than females, therefore, males must often rely on other sensory cues, most obviously: "Does this other person(s) look enough like me to be my son, daughter, brother, sister, aunt, uncle etc? During the Pleistocene era hunters and gathers lived in small, genetically related kin groups that formed cooperative in-groups. The "general will" for kin-altruism is genetic. So how can the social contract extend beyond kin groups? Cooperative groups comprised of strangers require trust. When Pleistocene in-groups encountered neighboring out-groups that looked very different (call them strangers) they were more inclined to compete (kill them) than cooperate. Thus evolutionarily, one of the main problems for social contract theory is how to explain how strangers can ever become included within any contracting group. There are many possible explanations. One way is to follow Rousseau and postulate a complex "mental mechanism" or brain function that corresponds to a "general will."

Individualists argue that if there is a such thing as a "general will,' it would be revealed in democratic political processes. However, consensus in large groups of strangers is rarely achieved. If there is such a thing as a general will, it is more likely to emerge out of small homogenous groups than heterogenous groups comprised of multiple racial, religious, ethnic groups, or even age groups. Thus modern democratic nation states like the United States have a problem reconciling conflicting "general wills." Therefore, any large-group communitarian social contract theory will have to explain how to develop a national (or global) "general will" that trumps conflicting wills of constitutive small groups, or individuals. Peter covers this as well as any social contract theorist.

Now, back to the problem of future generations...Here's the basic problem. If there is a such thing as a "general will," how can it extend beyond the present generation? After all, future generations are, what I'd call, the ultimate strangers. They don't even exist yet! Does the present generation of contractors have duties toward  future generations of humans? Or, in other words, do future generations have rights? If so, what are those rights? We'll cover that in Part II.                                                

Nationalism v. Globalism

Check out my friend Peter Corning's most recent blog entry on "Fair Trade" on his FAIR SOCIETY blog and my comment. http://www.thefairsociety.net/