THESISxii
A Philosophical Review
Volume 8 • Number 2
December, 2000
Inside this Issue:
Gerol Petruzella
AGENT RATIONALITY OF MEANS AND ENDS
Kathleen Oakley
AGAINST SOLIPSISM
Shane Babcock
THE ERROR OF COLLECTIVE VALUE LEGISLATION
William Taylor
THE DIFFERENCE PRINCIPLE AND DISTRIBUTION OF INCENTIVE
Agent Rationality of Means and Ends
Gerol Petruzella
‡ The concept of rationality is generally construed as follows: a conscious agent is rational iff s/he will consistently choose, when faced with multiple courses of action whose results entail differing outcomes, that course which maximizes the agent’s preferred outcome. The idea of acting means causing a state of affairs to occur, particularly a state of affairs, A, which is not some other state of affairs, B, such that, at time t1 [before the choice was effected], the agent could have as conceivably caused B as A. Rationality, then, is the agent’s framework for relative evaluation of different outcomes.
This conceptualization of rationality, however, is more limited than that which Aristotle proposes in his Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle proposes that rationality entail a more broadly encompassing normative element, so that not only are an agent’s actions evaluated in terms of rationality, but his/her intentions are so evaluated as well. In terms of this scheme, the general idea of rationality with which this article began is insufficient, because it makes no evaluative statement about the agent’s preferred outcome, but simply leaves it as axiomatic.
Hume, in his Treatise of Human Nature, endorses the more limited, means-oriented description of rationality: “Reasoning takes place to discover this relation [of desires to action]...But ‘tis evident...that the impulse arises not from reason, but is only directed by it.” Reason is simply a calculative tool used to form the best means to attain one’s desired ends; the ends themselves are not open to evaluation in terms of reason, but exist apart from such evaluation.
The exclusion of ends from rational evaluation, however, is not clearly justified, and has troubling ethical consequences. While Aristotle sees rationality as the evaluation of both means and ends, Hume offers no way to evaluate one’s ends, simply defining them as desired outcomes. Unfortunately, any ethical system will be severely hampered in evaluating agents’ actions if their motivations are exempt from rational judgment. It is quite easy to conceive of an agent having a strong desire to torture children, and using impeccable logic to achieve his desired ends; if one is restricted to rationally evaluating only this agent’s means of accomplishing his ends, one is forced to conclude that the agent is perfectly rational – a conclusion likely abhorrent to most. Aristotle’s inclusion of both means and ends within the scope of rational evaluation gives the necessary grounds for the conclusion that the torture-inclined individual is in some way irrational – specifically, he has an irrational end.
Gerol Petruzella is a student at MCLA
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Against Solipsism
Kathleen Oakley
‡ I believe, against the idea of “solipsism,” that I am not the only thing in the universe. To assert that I am the only one in this world is to admit there might be someone or something else besides me. I would not have to say I am the only one if there is no one else here -- there would be no point. The fact that I say I am the only one signifies that I am contrasting my oneness to someone or something else.
If no others exist, I would not know that I was the only one.
In particular, I could not believe in solipsism if there were no language for me to draw upon that explains just what that belief entails. According to Ludwig Wittgenstein, "language is the vehicle we use to conceptualize a thought or idea." We do not possess language skills when we are born. If there is no one here to teach me how to use a language and eventually to understand what solipsism means, I could not possibly believe in it.
Some would argue that my existence could be real while the existence of everyone else is a figment of my imagination. If I exist alone, I would have no idea what another person looks, sounds, or feels like. I do not think it is possible that I could conjure up an image of a person in my mind without having some sense of what a person is. If nothing is there to begin with, it is impossible to imagine anything at all.
Kathleen Oakley is a student at MCLA
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The Error of Collective Value Legislation
Shane Babcock
‡ Socrates argues that Euthyphro’s claim about what is pious logically implies that that some things are both pious and impious, thus Euthyphro contradicts himself. Socrates uses premises that seem true only if one reads them uncritically, yet they do imply his conclusion validly. Because Socrates’ evaluation is full of premises that are linguistically and conceptually problematic, the argument is truly unsound. Socrates’ argument seems to be this:
P1: What is dear to the gods is pious and that which is hateful to the gods is impious.
P2: When the gods argue about what is dear to them, what is truly dear cannot be ultimately decided upon.
P3: The same things are both hated and loved by the gods.
C: Euthyphro’s earlier claim means that the same things are both pious and impious.
Socrates restates Euthyphro’s original claim as his first premise. Thus Euthyphro’s claim is employed as part of a logical argument, which eventually shows that this claim implies the statement that the same things are both pious and impious. The statement about the gods arguing implies that the same things are hated and dear to the gods; hence there can be no answer to what is truly dear in itself. Finally, Socrates states his conclusion by correctly substituting the phrase “the same things” into Euthyphro’s original claim. In this way, Socrates shows how that conclusion was logically implied by Euthyphro’s original claim. The things that the gods love and hate in the third premise are the same things that are both pious and impious to the gods in the first premise. This is so because that which is loved by the gods is pious and that which is hated by them is impious. It is on these grounds that Socrates uses substitution to state the conclusion that the same things are both pious and impious.
Overall, this argument is unsound because its validity depends on Socrates making various linguistic and conceptual errors. It is the third premise in which Socrates errs. Socrates said, “Then the same things are hated by the gods and loved by the gods….” The argument can continue to proceed validly only because Socrates fails to point out that it is the same things that are loved by certain gods that are hated by other gods, not hated and loved by the gods. He could have said that certain things are loved by Hera, Zeus, and Athena; but those same things are hated by Posiedon, Ares, and Aphrodite. It is not the gods who hate certain things and also the gods that love those same things. It is certain gods that hate those things and certain other gods that love those things. Of course Euthyphro’s earlier statement is linguistically problematic in the same way, but the error occurs when Socrates tries to relate his erroneous claim to Euthyphro’s claim by saying that if the same things are hated and loved by the gods, then by substitution they are impious and pious to the gods. But they are only pious to certain gods and impious to certain other gods, not just to the gods in general. Therefore, these same things are not pious and impious.
As Dr. Kay Mathiesen (MCLA) has pointed out, Socrates would probably respond by saying that just as spicy ingredients and sour ingredients in a soup collectively make the soup sweet and sour, god x who hates a thing and god y who loves a thing collectively as gods make the thing both hated and loved. But in the case of the soup, its objective sourness and objective sweetness is empirically viable only because both of these qualities are being collectively consumed, as sweet and sour soup, by a consumer. In the case of the gods there is no empirical apprehension of things being collectively hated and loved, only an observation of things being hated or loved by different gods in separate instances. One never sees a thing being hated and loved in-itself, only the hating or loving of a thing by a subject.
Saying that the same things are both hated and loved by the gods is different than saying that certain things are hated by certain gods, while other gods also love these same things. The first statement supports the argument because it helps support the substitutive statement that the same things would be both pious and impious. However, that statement is conceptually wrong. Things are not hated by the gods and loved by the gods. What is pious is based on subjectivity. Hera loves a thing due to her perception of it while Zeus might hate the same thing due to his own perception of it. Certain things are not pious and impious; they only appear that way because different gods perceive them in different ways. Euthyphro does not imply that things are both pious and impious in his original claim; he only seems to because of Socrates’ linguistically and conceptually unsound treatment of his statement.
Shane Babcock is a student at MCLA
~~~
The Difference Principle and Distribution of Incentive
William Taylor
‡ In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls advocates the Difference Principle -- a normative principle of distributive justice. Simply put, Rawls’ Difference Principle is this: since every person has a right to basic equality, social and economic inequalities ought to be arranged so that the greatest beneficiaries of the social and economic system are those least advantaged. (Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 1971, p. 307.)
Current social and economic inequalities are partly a result of the phenomenon of incentive. Incentive is an integral factor for almost anyone deciding whether to perform almost any task, and consequently, it is an essential part of our social ontology -- and will be in the foreseeable future. Thus, if a correct and sufficient amount of incentive is given to a particular few to perform relatively valuable tasks in a given economy, a more productive economy overall can result. While the Difference Principle renders strict equality for all in social conditions where the phenomenon of incentive does not exist, it allows for relative inequalities in conditions where the phenomenon of incentive is essential to productivity, so long as the productivity results in raising the lesser advantaged people’s absolute position to the highest degree possible -- up until the position cannot be raised any higher. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The Difference Principle.”)
It seems that the determination of how incentive ought to be distributed to people for undertaking relatively valuable professions in their economy -- while maintaining that the economy ought to be most beneficial to the least advantaged -- is a problematic one.
One may argue that this could be determined by simply calculating what is generally necessary and sufficient to induce enough people so that the profession is sufficiently undertaken in the economy overall. However, while incentive is an integral factor for almost anyone in deciding whether to perform almost any task, it also seems that the amount of incentive that is necessary and sufficient to perform a given task varies greatly among different individuals. So, it is conceivable that the actual necessary and sufficient amounts of incentive for some exceptional people to undertake this profession would be far less than what their society determines is necessary to induce enough people to undertake the profession sufficiently overall. And let us assume, for sake of argument, that the chief reason the society determines that a higher amount is needed is because a significant percentage of people within the economic niche want a comparatively gross amount of incentive to undertake the profession. In this case, these exceptional people would unfairly infringe on what would have otherwise been the benefits of the lesser advantaged had the incentive been distributed on the basis of what was actually necessary and sufficient incentive for them (as individuals) to undertake the profession.
However, if a society were to distribute incentive strictly on an individual basis, it would also produce unacceptable (and absurd) results. For there would be cases where, in order to fill an economic niche, the society would be giving more incentive to those people who selfishly want more incentive to undertake the profession than the people who are immediately willing to undertake the profession and need less incentive (because they have greater interest in the profession, or greater love for humanity, or whatever). The society in these cases would be essentially rewarding those who are less motivated and more selfish.
I propose, instead, that the society should set uniform standards in the overall economy whereby people receive gradations of incentive in direct and equal proportion to how generally valuable and burdensome a profession is compared to those respective medians in the overall economy. Factors that would determine the relative level of burden would include: amount of schooling and training that is necessary to perform the tasks within their profession, the cost of that schooling, other monies lost that would have been acquired had they not undertaken their profession, actual effort utilized in their profession, and many others as well. The former two factors mentioned (especially) also seem to be expressions of the deemed value of the profession in the society’s economy. Actual value of a given profession to a society, though, will almost always be in continuous flux. Distribution of incentive generally ought to (as much as possible) vary in direct and equal proportion to the variation of value of the profession. If the uniform standards of distribution of incentive in this proposal would not induce enough people into a particular profession, the amount of incentive could be raised dialectically, equally proportionate to the effective value for the least advantaged if the economic niche were filled. Such a process, however, would not allow for the excessive, unjustified amounts of incentive that could be acquired by some in the prior two proposals.
William Taylor is a student at MCLA
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