PATERNALISM: HARM AND RATIONALITY

So under what conditions, if any, is paternalism morally justifiable? In the Western philosophical tradition justified paternalistic intervention, has focused on detailed philosophical analysis of the interwoven concepts of harm and rationality. First of all, since John Stuart Mill, the Western liberal tradition has distinguished between “harm to self” and “harm to others” and that paternalism, by definition, must target “harm to self.” Justified governmental intervention in regard to “harm to others” involves different principles and arguments. As stated in my previous essay, most human actions and paternalistic interventions affect others. So, with all this in mind, for now let’s focus on “harm to self.”

Paternalistic intervention is, by definition, an act of beneficence, where an individual (or group) coercively violates the liberty of another individual (or group) in order to prevent and/or remove “harm.” Well, what is harm? I don’t think I can improve much on Joel Feinberg’s definition, as the “invasion of an interest.” What is an interest? Well, it’s “anything you have a stake in.” If you have a “stake” in something, it means that, ultimately, your pleasure or pain is at stake. We all have an interest in a lot of different things, but obviously, we value some interests more than others. Let’s call these individual and collective rankings “interest hierarchies.”

Are these interest hierarchies “objective” or are they “relative” to individuals, small groups, or large groups? One might argue that interest invading harms are objective to the extent that harm can be measured in terms of magnitude and probability. Magnitude is the sheer degree of harm: "Death has greater magnitude than embarassment." Probability is the sheer likelihood of that harm. Thus, some harms are of great magnitude (death), but improbable (while flying); others are lesser in magnitude (embarrassment) but highly probable (farting in public). Moreover, the magnitude and probability of harm can be assessed over both the short-run and the long-run. Hence, most of us agree that Russian roulette is a high-magnitude, high-probability harm over the short run; smoking is a high-magnitude, high probability harm over the long run. (For the sake of argument, let’s assume that our beliefs about the causal relationship between smoking and cancer are true. My only point here is that smoking and Russian roulette are different.)

But in the real world, magnitude cannot be measured in a vacuum. It is always relative to other harms and benefits, and therefore subject to trade-offs. Therefore, rationality and irrationality are about those "interest hierarchies," risk-taking and trade-offs. We take risks when we either “do things” and when we “don’t do things,” therefore paternalistic interventions can either force us to “do things,” or prevent us from “doing things.” J.S. Mill suggested that irrational persons take irrational risks; that is they do things (or don’t do things) where the potential (or actual) costs of those actions exceed the potential (or actual) benefits. In short, irrational risks are not worth taking relative to an interest hierarchy. Unfortunately, he didn’t provide much insight into what this might mean in the real world. So what kinds of risks are rational?

Bernard Gert argues there harm is more or less objective. He observes that, unless a person has a good reason to do otherwise, rational individuals tend to avoid: death, pain, disability, and loss of opportunity. So what’s a “good reason” to choose death? Well, most Americans living in the twenty-first century agree that it is not, necessarily, irrational to choose death over suffering high levels of intractable pain or disability. But what happens if suicide is sometimes a rational act, relative to a large group, but irrational relative to a small group or an individual? If a teenager wants to jump off the bridge because of social embarrassment (farting in math class), then that it seems objectively irrational. After all, over the long run, embarrassment is, at most, a low magnitude short-term harm. But note that our large group, small group, and individual judgments are based the assumption that it is irrational to kill one's self out of embarrassment. Objectively speaking, embarassment is a mow magnitude harm, therefore suicide, a major harm, can never be justified. But in many parts of the world, embarrassed fathers routinely kill their daughters in the name of “honor” (embarrassment) and many daughters commit suicide after dishonoring (embarrassing) their fathers. Although most American believe that honor-based suicides are irrational (and immoral), how does one go about establishing an objective, universal standard?

So here lies the basic paternalistic dilemma. If our individual interest hierarchies are at least influenced by small groups and large groups, what does personal liberty mean in this context? (I'll address this in the next essay.) And, when there’s a conflict between individual and collective interest hierarchies, which interest hierarchy prevails over the others? Whose risk-assessment trumps whose? Large-group communitarians tend to empower large group hierarchies (American's), and small-group communitarians tend to empower small group hierarchies (Roman Catholic's), and libertarians empower individual hierarchies (Ron White's). But the question for libertarians is whether paternalistic intervention can ever be morally justified? As stated at the outset, traditionally that question has involved the analysis of rationality and harm. But another approach to this question is to take a closer look at how human knowledge underlies specific paternalistic interventions.

Paternalistic Intervention: Part 1

My friend Bill inspired me to clarify my thoughts on the libertarian stance toward paternalism. The word “paternalism” is rooted in the Latin noun “pater,” or father. Today, the word paternalism signifies an act of intervention whereby one party, a well-meaning “benefactor,” violates the liberty of another person(s), a “beneficiary,” in order to provide an unwanted benefit. Benefits can be classified either something generally considered to be good, or the removal of something bad, a harm. The overwhelming majority of paternalistic interventions involve the removal of harms. Therefore, many (if not most) acts of paternalism seek to limit risk-taking by intended beneficiaries.

First of all, two parties are involved in paternalistic interventions: a beneficiary and a benefactor. So let’s break down this dyadic relationship a bit more. Beneficiaries and benefactors can be either individuals (individual paternalism) or groups of individuals (group paternalism). One important for of group paternalism is “state paternalism.” Examples of state paternalism include seat belt laws, drug laws, etc.

Paternalism involves the imposition of an unwanted benefit by a benefactor. On the face of it, this sounds absurd. After all, human beings tend to want benefits and not want harms. So the idea of an unwanted benefit seems irrational. That’s why RATIONALITY plays a key role in justifying paternalistic intervention. But in the real world, benefits and harms are subject to a certain degree of social construction. Thus rationality and social control tend to often overlap. We believe that there are some risks that are irrational. Why would any rational person choose to: kill one’ self, take mind altering recreational drugs, live homelessly out on the streets, refuse chemotherapy, not wear seat belts when driving etc. So the concepts of both rationality and HARM are central to paternalism.

But paternalism is only morally problematic in a social structure that places value on both PERSONAL LIBERTY and BENEFICENCE. Conversely, in cultures that place little or no value on personal liberty, or routinely value beneficence over liberty, paternalism is not regarded as problematic. Indeed, many cultures defer decision-making to husbands, parents, religious leaders, and/or government. However, in most of the Western world, especially, the United States and Europe, personal liberty has at least some value, and therefore, the violation of one’s liberty requires moral justification.

Insofar as paternalistic intervention violates the will of an intended beneficiary, it requires the benefactor to employ a certain degree of COERCIVE FORCE. Here the presumption is that if you do not want the benefit that is being offered, but you do not pose any resistant force to its imposition, it is not paternalistic because no coercive force was required.

And finally, we can explore the nature of interventions. Since all interventions involve costs and benefits, the underlying feature of paternalism is that the benefits offered by intervening outweigh the costs for not intervening. Call it REDOUNDING GOOD. Thus, there seems to be an empirical component involved in paternalistic intervention: either the intended beneficiary will, in fact, benefit from the intervention or they will not.

So we’ve established that there are five dimensions to paternalistic intervention:

1.) The presence or risk of an identifiable HARM.

2.) The value of PERSONAL LIBERTY and BENEFICENCE and the underlying assumption that individuals ought to be able to take at least some risks without being subjected to well-meaning benefactors.

3.) The RATIONALITY of the intended beneficiary and benefactor and/or the risks involved.

4.) The use of COERCIVE FORCE by benefactors

5.) The assessment of costs and benefits, or REDOUNDING GOOD of the intervention.

I’ll explore each of these dimensions in detail in subsequent blog entries.