In summer, social media were flooded with videos showing your friends (and celebrities of all levels of prominence) pouring buckets of icy water over their heads. While some people enjoyed watching this (and even participated in the Ice Bucket Challenge), many were unnerved by this charity campaign which was hardly distinguishable from an ordinary spam attack, were it not for the fact that now your friends and acquaintances were spamming you. A third group however, showed the most interesting reaction: they became moral about it.
For those who do not know what this is all about: the Ice Bucket Challenge was a campaign that aimed to raise funds for research in the treatment of a disease called ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), whose most prominent victim is the English Nobel Prize physicist Stephen Hawking. Most people agree that it is noble to provide funding for this cause, yet some said: “This campaign is about entertainment and competition, and people involved in it do not actually care about ALS.” There were even voices claiming that this was “narcissism behind the mask of altruism”.
This is an interesting criticism, because it claims that good deeds done for selfish motives are worthless. While those people expressing this criticism may not have been aware of it, the question how the motives of a deed relate to its moral value has not just remarkable philosophical depth but also practical implications for economics and law. Let us have a look…
KANT WOULD NOT HAVE PARTICIPATED
If you are confronted with an ethical problem and want an unnatural philosophical answer, it is always advisable to turn to Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). This philosopher set up a groundbreaking ethical system which fundamentally changed how the Western World thinks about concepts like freedom and moral duty. An impressive achievement for somebody who, during his whole lifetime, did not get further away than 30 kilometers from his home town Koenigsberg (today: Kaliningrad).
To say it briefly: Kant would not have participated in the Ice Bucket Challenger. Moreover, he would have condemned it on the very same grounds as expressed in the criticism above. Something which owes to one’s desire to show off, appear in a better light, or even serves outright narcissism, can never be a moral act. The justification of this is complicated and has to do with the fact that according to Kant morality derives from submission under a “universal moral law”. Kant tries to show that from “pure reason” follows that abiding by the moral law is an end in itself – a moral deed can never be a means to achieve another goal. If you participate in the Ice Bucket Challenge because you want to show what a great, socially responsible person you are, you are not acting morally.
Kant’s contemporary Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) found that view so preposterous that he wrote a satirical poem (the rhyme got lost in translation): “Gladly I serve my friends, but alas I do it with pleasure. Hence I am plagued with doubt that I am not a virtuous person.” (Cited after J.A. Gauthier (1997), “Schiller's Critique of Kant's Moral Psychology: Reconciling Practical Reason and an Ethics of Virtue”, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 27, pp. 513-544).
Kant’s view looks extreme, but actually it directly corresponds to a fundamental legal principle. If you run over your boss with your car, your intentionality will be the central question discussed at court, and the answer to it will determine whether you will be acquitted or sent to jail. If you can convince the judge that you did not see the boss in front of your car when you pushed the throttle, you can expect to be found innocent. Yet if it turns out that you offered your boss a lift, asking him to enter your car at the other side, making him cross in front of your car, you will have to face the legal consequences.
The underlying logic is that a person can be guilty if and only if they intentionally inflict damage on somebody else. Analogously, Kant says that a person only deserves praise if they intentionally do something good (and not for some other purpose, like showing one’s own formidability).
ECONOMISTS PARTICIPATE
Mainstream economics is based on a philosophical edifice called Utilitarianism which is diametrically opposed to Kant. The first Utilitarian Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), in clear contradiction with Kant, evaluated the value of a deed not by its compatibility with some moral law but by its consequences.
After the Second World War, it has become common in philosophical-ethical debates to pick examples relating to the Nazis and the Third Reich, in particular if a German philosopher like Kant is involved. Accordingly, in the seminal book Practical Ethics by Australian Philosopher Peter Singer (3rd edition, Cambridge University Press, 2011), we find the example of the Gestapo knocking at your door searching for Jews that are hidden in your attic. The question is: how would you react as a Utilitarian and how as a Kantian?
If you are Kantian, consequences do not matter as long as you follow the universal moral law. As the universal moral law takes the form of the Categorical Imperative, which rules out lying, you need to admit to the Gestapo that there is a Jewish family residing in your attic, even if you anticipate the horrible result. A Utilitarian, on the other hand, would evaluate a deed by its consequences and thus lie to the Gestapo.
A less hypothetical event highlighting the difference between Kant and the Utilitarians occurred in 2006, when the German Supreme Constitutional Court dismissed a law which would have allowed the government to shoot down a civilian airplane if it was hijacked and about to be used as a means for a terrorist attack (like 9/11). In its verdict, the court explicitly referred to Kant’s Categorical Imperative. Utilitarians, on the other hand, would have argued that the passengers of the plane would be dying anyway, and interception could save those who were targeted by the terrorist act.
Returning to the Ice Bucket Challenge, Bentham and his followers would not even have asked the question what the underlying motivation is but praised the Ice Bucket Challenge for its provision of funding to ALS research.
As mentioned, economists heavily lean towards Utilitarianism. They go as far as denying that there exists anything else but selfish motivation, and the outcome alone is what matters. One of the most-cited (and most controversial) economic papers of the last 15 years, “A Theory of Fairness, Competition and Cooperation” by Ernst Fehr and Klaus M. Schmidt (The Quarterly Journal of Economics 114, 1999, pp. 817-868), claims that apparently altruistic behavior observed in many situations can be explained through “other-regarding preferences”. According to their theory, humans maximize their own utility if in an experimental situation they share money that was given to them even though they were entitled to keep the money for themselves. While this may look trivial to non-economists, many consider the article a milestone in economics (the contribution of Fehr and Schmidt is also their specification and calibration of the associated utility function). Clearly, economists get rid of even the tiniest traces of altruistic behavior.
The economic viewpoint has practical consequences. Economic theories of law tend to downplay the role of motivation and focus on consequences. If you hit your boss with your car, economists would argue, the question whether it was intentional is irrelevant. If you hit him intentionally, then there is no disagreement that you deserve punishment, and if you hit him unintentionally, then you negligently did not pay attention that somebody is walking in front of your car, which also deserves punishment. Nobel Laureate Gary Becker (1930-2014), one of the initiators to the economic theory of law, stated that the only purpose of punishment is to prevent the law from being breached. If it is illegal to hit your boss with a car, then the punishment must be so severe that that you will not do it, given the probability to be detected. Accordingly, the “Becker Proposition” calls for only one punishment, namely the death penalty, which is even imposed for misdemeanors, and the only differences made between crimes are the probabilities to be caught.
What do we conclude about the Ice Bucket Challenge? We agree that the participants are posers and feel sympathetic with Kant to condemn them. On the other hand, as economists we are Utilitarians, and we acknowledge the collection of almost 90 million dollar in one month for a noble cause. Thus, dear people, please keep pouring cold water over your heads, even if the weather has turned cold now!
Comments
This discussion is quite relevant to a very wide range of phenomena. For instance, what immediately springs to mind is the concept of "strategic" Corporate Social Responsibility and the notion of "doing good and doing well". Somehow I remember feeling uncomfortable attending (more than once) the flashy parties organized by First Step-Georgia which seemed to be as much about collecting money for disabled children as about showing off. I wish it were possible to collect the same (or larger) amounts of money without the whole gala affair.
Florian and Saba are right, but for the wrong reasons. To condemn selfish motivations for doing good deeds is flawed. One could argue that all altruism is done for selfish reasons because if one wants to help at the least one is satisfying one's desires.
However the Ice Bucket Challenge, fun runs for breast cancer, growing a mustache for mens cancer, sponsoring me to each chocolate chip cookies for seal pups... All should be condemned for a much more important reason: it's all just silly.
And that this kind of stuff actually seems to work, actually raises money and manages to be effective, is worse than silly, it's depressing.
It's actually so silly and so depressing, I don't even know where to start arguing against it. It should be self evident.
how can I submit a blog?
Excellent article especially since I was expecting a disdainful moral high ground perspective (which to me is usually more about someone showing that they are superior to others so not a moral deed in Kantian terms). What is missing from both views described is the idea of fun and having fun as an essential part or goal of life. Maybe this lack of focus on fun is a Western perspective: I believe that there are Eastern philosophies which emphasise the idea of fun in our lives and of course would be covered in the American right of the 'pursuit of happiness'.
Excellent. This is how economics should be taught; both authors are two of the most enlightened at ISET. Humans are not inherently selfish (although I believe many are). In the selfish gene, Richard Dawkins thought altruism is a maladaptation. This view has now been corrected. The frontiers lie in gene-culture co-evolution. For instance, altruism has lower biological fitness relative to selfishness, so it should be wiped out on fitness grounds (hence the conclusion in Dawkings)- however, altruism, so goes gene-culture coevolution theory, is passed on from one generation to the next through parents, elders, societal institutions that reward altruism (e.g., we have bravery awards but not cowardice awards). Furthermore, because altruism helps the cooperative instinct in say hunting wild animals, it enhances the group fitness. Hence, humans have become responsive to being moralized. E.g., most people never tell their children: go become crooks and cheat others to maximize your utility. If the second effect dominates, then altruism turns out to be an evolutionary stable strategy.
The above might be too brief (and foggy) for those who have not been exposed to evolutionary game theory. And I cannot write an essay on these things here. But go to Herbert Gintis's website if you wish to explore these things more. Or get his "Bounds of reason" PUP, 2009, or his book with Samuel Bowles "A cooperative species" PUP, 2011. [Florian: do we have these books in the ISET library]. I am just finishing a part of my book where this work is prominently explained. And Herbert Gintis is going to be here with me for 2 days 14-15 Oct on his way from NY to Oxford. So I shall look forward to discussing similar issues with him.
Just a very minor point: A utilitarian maximizes the sum of utilities of all. So it is sum of the Gestapo man's utility and the utility of the hidden man. By revealing the hidden man, one person's utility goes up and the other''s utility goes down. So the answer is ambiguous. Worse, if the hidden man is extremely handicapped, then his marginal utility is lower, increasing the chances that a utilitarian should give the hidden information to the Gestapo man.
Sanjit, thanks a lot for your explanations. The theory of gene-culture co-evolution is highly interesting, provides important insights, and solves some apparent paradoxes of altruistic behavior. Currently, the only book by Herbert Gintis we have in our library is his famous "Game Theory Evolving". I will order the other two books for our library still this year. It is important that students have access to theories that are not (yet) mainstream, so that they can keep their minds open. Of course, once your book has appeared, I will also order it for our library
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Your considerations about the utility of the Gestapo greatly show the limitations of the Utilitarian approach. Even if the Jew hidden in the attic would be in a vegetative state of coma, it would still be wrong to give any weight to the utility of the Gestapo man. In fact, given his total moral squalidness, the Gestapo man's utility should count negatively -- if his utility would be minimized, the overall state would improve.
Evolutionary/historical theories of egoism and altruism (or, put differently, individualism and collectivism) are absolutely fascinating. Some of the best minds have dwelled on this issue, including Hegel in Philosophy of Right and Philosophy of History, and Marx in Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie (one of my favorites as a student at the Hebrew University).
That said, I remain puzzled by what I consider to be utterly futile attempts to "fix" a theory ("economics") that is inherently incapable of properly conceptualizing group behavior. It was created for another purpose - to explain the great puzzle of how uncoordinated individual actions by the selfish butcher, brewer and baker may (sic!) result in social harmony and progress. Whether this theory serves that purpose is a different matter. (It certainly does not do well in explaining disharmony and crisis).
In any case, to study altruism, and social behavior more generally, one would be advised to employ an altogether different toolbox. Selfish utility functions can help understand some - but NOT all - outcomes of human behavior (just like Newton's physics help explain some - but NOT all aspects of nature).
I mostly agree with these remarks. Just a couple of points.
1. The role of purely selfish utility functions in explaining behavior is decisively dismal. The evidence is so overwhelming that no other conclusion is possible.
2. The Fehr-Schmidt (1997) utility function that Florian mentions in his article above, is a good example. It allows selfishness, altruism and envy. The same utility function can explain other-regarding-behavior in bilateral and small group interaction AND selfish behavior in the marketplace with many other players (experimental results confirm this). If one started with a purely selfish function (the standard practice in economics) then one would have added untenable auxiliary assumptions to the model to explain why other-regarding-behavioral is observed in small group interaction (e.g., repeated games). This is the problem with starting from a purely selfish utility function. I have tried to explain this point before on many ocassions....The Fehr-Schmidt utility function can of course not explain several other phenomena, such as the role of human intentions in reciprocity, or type based reciprocity.
3. While there is has been a tradition of thinking about evolutionary grounds for human behavior in the past (and one could back to many classical thinkers), the evidence that has emerged in the past couple of decades is critical. We now have a strong evidence base and a strong set of theoretical models that are capable to explaining departures from selfishness. ISET subscribes to Econometrica. Have a look at this paper: Alger and Weibull (2013) Homo-Moralis...Econometrica, 81(6): 2269-2302. The show decisively that homo oeconomicus (the textbook economic man) is not evolutionarily stable. Evolution must wipe this man out in favour of Homo moralis (an individual who posseses morality.
4. Reading socio-biology is now indispensible. I suggest reading this Pulitzer prize winning paperback by an eminent Harvard Profossor: Edward O Wilson (2012) The social Conquest of Earth.
5. As some of my recent talks at many places revealed- it is dangeorous to listen to purely neoclassical economists, ill-informed laymen, and also ill-informed beahavioral economists. Find a good behavioral economist to talk to on these issues. Or failing which, I hope my book endeavour that has now lasted for 10 years may clear some of the fog that sorrounds us in varying degrees.
Sanjit, thank you for your useful remarks. The paper of Alger and Weibull and the book by Wilson might be good starting points for a blog article which explicitly discuss the evolutionary foundations of altruistic behavior. I will suggest that topic to the research associates who write blog articles.
The Alger-Weibull paper deals with dyadic interactions and uses the indirect evolutionary approach of Werner Guth. Most human interaction over evolution has been group interaction and multi-level selection (natural selection at the individual level and the goup level). So if anything, the Alger-Weibull paper already stacks its assumptions to favour the textbook economic man. Yet, remarkably, selfishness is not evolutionary stable in this stacked model. Homo-moralis (of which Homo-Kantian is an extreme case) wins out. In the bigger picture this is just one way to think about evolution.
To get a broader perspective I would suggest to go in the following sequence (although I count myself as an ill-informed layman in this area).
1. Read the Edward Wilson (2011) book "The social conquest of earth" first. It is only £8 or so on Amazon.
2. Follow up with Herbert's paper that is forthcoming in current anthropology: http://www.umass.edu/preferen/gintis/HyperCognition.pdf
3. Read Herbert's paper on gene-culture co-evolution: http://www.umass.edu/preferen/gintis/Gene-Culture%20Coev%20Print%20Version.pdf
4. Read the Bowles-Gintis (2011) book "A cooperative species" PUP.
5. Read Herbert et al., paper (2014) on a blueprint for the future of sociology (it is not on his website but he has sent me a copy). It will give you a formal model of cultural transmission of desirable human traits.
6. Pick up any introductory text on evolutionary game theory (the Dixit-Skeath book is a good introduction for undergraduates; don't know if ISET has it). OR read the draft of the 50 pages or so in my book in the chapter on learning (in return all I ask for is stringent criticism).
UP for the challenge? It would be best if you get a group of people at ISET interested in this. That is the way to accomplish learning when you are in a very small department.