thought experiments 02

I recently proposed the following thought experiment:

Imagine the following: Someone is driving through Pennsylvania and all the lights are out. This person pulls into a gas station to buy some gas and some gum, but here, too, the kind of darkness that points to a power failure. The gas pumps don't work. Hoping to get some gum, the driver walks into the appropriately small mini-mart. It is dark but the door is open. The customer sees that all electricity has been cut. By chance, the guy running the cash register -- the only person working there this late at night -- has fallen dead of a heart attack. He died before he could close the cash register. Many hundreds of dollars do now spill out the cash register. The customer is reasonably convinced that no surveillance cameras are operating. In addition to the gum, it would be riskless to stuff one's pockets with many hundreds of dollars.

What would individuals unrealistically (yet 'heuristically') exclusively motivated by philosophic principles do if confronted with this situation? A Hobbesian atavar walks in and sees all the money. Hobbes tells us that humans are ruled by desire for what pleases and aversion towards what harms (Leviathan, Pt 1, Chapter 6). It seems clear to me that a Hobbesian entity would take the money, whatever else was desired, and leave. The creation of a just individual in the Hobbesian scheme is dependent on the existence of a playing field that always produces more 'harm' than pleasure for actions that are contrary to public order and justice. There always has to be a Leviathan around somewhere with a big stick ready and able to strike if the individual's cost-benefit analysis is going to add up in the right way.

The same point is made in Plato's Republic via the Gyges ring story, recounted by Glaucon. His point is that people who act justly "do so involuntarily and because they have not the power to be unjust." We can confirm this truth, Glaucon argues, "if we imagine something of this kind: having given both to the just and the unjust power to do what they will, let us watch and see whither desire will lead them; then we shall discover in the very act the just and unjust man to be proceeding along the same road, following their interest, which all natures deem to be their good, and are only diverted into the path of justice by the force of law." The myth of Gyges fits the bill nicely.

According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a hollow bronze horse, having doors, at which he stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result--when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the court; whereas soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom. Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. (359c-360d)

No one wants to be just. It's a drag. We do it because we can't get away with being unjust, which is much more profitable. Both the Hobbesian and the shepherd from the Gyges story would take the money from the convenience store. The artificial conditions created by a system of surveillance and guaranteed punishment have been suspended, both at the convenience store and in the ring story. (In Lord of the Rings, the ring that Frodo or what's-his-name carries around with him makes him invisible, and this is one of the things that's supposed to be so evil about it: someone who is invisible escapes social control. Even the 'just' individual, as Frodo is made out to be, would end up being corrupted by the invisibility of the ring just as much as Gollum.) But who would refuse to take the money, and why?

Comments

[Mark]

I'd take the money (I'm assuming there'd be no CCTV since the crux of the thought experiment is that I'd know I could get away with it). This is because I think it's perfectly ok to steal from large corporation and/or dead people, though, so I would have no 'ethical' hesitation. I have consistently failed to steal from acquaintances and small businesses when I've had the chance. This crap is all an ancestor to rational choice theory - people are not utility maximisers or calculating money-grubbers.

[Mark]

BTW, if I might continue my previous line of criticism, I'd like to know why this is tagged 'postmodernism' when it appears to me to be the purest analytical ethics.

[YH]

Insofar as an answer can be given to this (and I think it involves playing along with the liberal rules of the game) I think it lies in the paraphrasing of Rawls I gave. The principle of justice requires undertaking imaginatively the self's substitution with the other. Your average Hobbesian or Glauconian is hardly able to imagine such a substitution. They have little sense of 'fraternity' (Rawls mentions fraternity as an analogue for the difference principle in section 17 of ToJ). Fraternity might well dicate that we do the just thing in your thought experiment simply because of our empathy for the other(s) affected by our action, an other who we ourselves might be, rather than doing simply what is pragmatic or in our self-interest. So I'd dispute that 'no one wants to be just'. Hegel calls Spirit "the essential nature of ethical life (Sittlichkeit) already existent" (PoR para 440), a statement which of course needs to be read speculatively - in our society the good both exists and doesn't exist. If, like the Hobbesian, you ignore what moral, altruistic, fraternal sentiments already exist you're missing just as much as if you see us as exclusively and nothing other than altruistic and fraternal.

The factor which only a notion of Sittlichkeit (as opposed to Moralitaet) introduces is that it might be just to commit an injustice in an unjust world. Thus it might actually be just to take the money if the shopkeeper has been extorting it from his customers, or if the person pulling into the gas station is penurious and the cashier wealthy (and contra Nozick not only if he has obtained his 'holdings' by illegitimate means), or if the money can be used to fund a campaign to oust George Bush. Fraternity might lead us to leave the money but it might also lead us to take it.

The Hobbesian model doesn't work for reasons which Talcott Parsons realised. If only a Leviathan keeps society from descending into a state of complete egoism we have no adequate explanation of why a social order obtains when the State is not watching us, and in spheres - the family for example - it cannot always penetrate.

[ricia]

I think one would have to combine psychology, sociology, and philosophy, in order to more adequately answer such a question. It's sidetracking a bit but... Individual egoist factors would play a large role in the scenerio, and their is no profile for the individual seeking gas and gum. There is no profile for the environment surrounding the dead man. Where the station might be a recognisable corporate chain, the customer might not associate any personal relationship to and from the dead man. Where the station might appear independently owned, and evidences of the dead man's intimate might influence the environment - the customer might first have pity and a sense of need to act before focussing in on the 'opportunity' at hand.
The age and background of the customer would also influence the perception of choice... Is this person 'in need' or quite the opposite? What position of 'power' does this person hold as a member of society? Where there is more need and less power (in terms of percieved choices in life) there is a greater chance that the opportunity will be fully realised and acted upon.

I agree with YH.

It is a fault of classical phylosophy to assume the nature of humanity is what can be observed. That 'what is' must 'be'. What is, and what is possible, are both founded upon a complexity of influences. Such is the question of 'free will' - and equally appropriate in dialogues concerning the ethics, morality or any such matters attempting to summarize 'human nature'.

[John S. Ransom]

Mark, I don't understand your point that well yet. First you say you would take the money, but then say people aren't calculating money-grubbers. Isn't taking the money the result of a calculation you've made?

YH, you bring in Rawls and say his principle of justice would require "undertaking imaginatively the self's substitution with the other." But in Section 3 of his _Theory of Justice_ Rawls says that individuals in the initial situation are "rational and mutually disinterested."

Let me go back to your earlier post, referred to above. There you write that for Rawls the concept of 'justice'

"means bracketting out our particular preferences and narrow self-interests so as to be able to think about common interests and society as a collective endeavour. One way to do this is to imagine that we don't know where we will end up in society given a wholly new redistribution of resources. Justice becomes an idea of substitution - imagining that we might be any other person in society what is the least worst economic outcome we would want for ourselves? The ability to substitute ourselves imaginatively with the other is something which is sadly lacking in our current moral make-up."

I wonder if an identification with the other can be achieved from the perspective of the original position. You're completely right when you describe the condition those behind the veil of ignorance face: they do not know what social, economic, racial or other feature of their worldly condition will greet them when they pull aside the veil. But this doesn't get them to imaginatively identify with others so much as it gets them to calculate their chances. There's a lot of poor people in the world -- information about something like that is, I think, available to participants. "Chances are" that this or that individual will end up in the larger group of poor and relatively disadvantaged. I don't think members of the original position will *identify* with others; I think it will get them to *worry* that they will end up in the less-advantaged category; they then adopt rules of justice that will maximize the position of the least-well off members of society.

What would a Rawlsian agent do, keeping in mind that Rawls' theory is not ideally suited to individual decisions like this, but is rather focused on what makes for justice in broader, institutional settings? In an imaginative return to the original position, she could say to herself, "Look, we made these rules that benefit everyone. The rule of private property does indeed benefit everyone, as it motivates with rewards an entrepreneurial spirit that contributes to the general good. If I step over here and take all this money, I am violating a law that I helped create; that I agreed to as one of the rules that make society work as a cooperative venture." The similarity to Kant's categorical imperative is clear, though maybe we could talk about that too.

[YH]

True my second gloss on Rawls was more bringing him over to my side of things and is less textually supportable. And true Rawls does give us something like a rational choice model which seems to make other-concern into basically self-concern-because-I-could-be-the-other. That's why I brought in the section on 'fraternity' which in my opinion transforms the argument of the book in interesting ways. True too that Rawls is giving us 'a political theory of justice', as he calls it in the later book Justice as Fairness, and not a moral philosophy. He realises that if it is to hold water his theory of justice must have a much more cicumscribed applicability than first appeared, one much more modest than that his critics took him to be claiming. Kant is indeed more relevant to the hypothetical moral thought-experiment you've given us, partly because his is a moral philosophy claiming universal validity. But Ricia rightly shows us why it's going to be very difficult to get a universally valid answer to this question, something that I feel confirms my turn to Sittlichkeit - because it precisely isn't a timeless guide to morals. But I feel these points conceded my others still stand.

[Amie]

as i walk into the store for a stick of gum, in the midst of a fairly extensive breakdown of 'normality', i am already exhibiting an interestingly questionable desire, but let's let that go.
i then see a cashier slumped over. how can i be entirely *sure* that the cashier is dead? would this not be my first concern? this body which i am not sure is living or dead?
or, if you will, what is 'imagined substitution', fraternity, and sittlichkeit with respect to this body that i cannot even call living or dead?

[Craig]

Re: Hobbes -- I've often wondered (but never took the time to figure it out) if the laws of human nature given by nature prior to the social contract apply once in the state of society.

Re: Frodo -- that isn't the point of the ring! Invisibility is what happens to the living vis a vis the living when the wearer of the ring is put into the spirit world. Recall that the undead "nazgul" can see him when he's invisible and wearing the ring is a beacon for Sauron to find it. The invisibility is a safety and security measure.

[YH]

Amie, Good point, though you're actually in agreement with Hegel. It's in the deeper context of an ethic of concern for others that the whole individualistic-moral question of 'what ought I to do?' (Kant) needs to be placed. And, although it sounds counter-intuitive, I think you can have fraternity with the dead. Walter Benjamin's 'Theses on the Concept of History' are all about this.

It's a point for John really, but I managed to put my finger on my misgiving about moral thought experiments of this sort. A point Hegel makes against Kant is that the moral worldview which looks for a hard and fast guide to action, relies on the individual conscience rather than shared norms, and creates hypothetical examples like that in the second Critique of the man thinking of stealing a deposit, is actually symptomatic rather than illuminating of a state of ethical diremption: "...it is only later [historically], when ethical life declines, that the subject turns back into itself and seeks its point of support in morality. It seeks what is good in itself rather than seeking it in ethical life and actuality." (Hegel, Lectures on Natural Right). We can learn about rectitude from moral thought-experiments but rectitude isn't the same as justice or the good.

[Mark]

John:
This is pretty psychologistic, but it seems to me that anyone in this situation is just going to be really confused by the situation and not really know what to do. The most obvious two reactions would just be to run away from this frighteningly abnormal scenario, or to do the proper thing and phone for the authorities. In my case, I would be employing prior principles that I have developed which are avaricious and anti-corporate in making a decision to take this money. It is not an impromptu calculation, but rather one which accords with my existing prejudices. I don't know what you'll make of this admission, but basically I try to steal from corporations in general and sometimes feel guilty if I don't avail myself of the opportunity. This is a case of personal ethical principles, which are based on a whole range of calculations. It is not based on impromptu calculation however, nor an attempt to maximise the outcome. As I say, if I found someone I didn't know dead in the street, I wouldn't rifle through their pockets. Some people would, say people who are already thieves, and most people wouldn't. If I was starving or craving for heroin then I would. But there is no universal human response to such a situation.

The Ring of Gyges is quite different, in that one has this power over a time span that is long enough to become thoroughly corrupted. Your moral principles will change with your circumstances. People who are more well off than me typically do not in my experience think petty thieving is ok. But this is not a straightforward egoistic calculation.

[roger]

To my mind, the ring of Gyges myth goes wack at the end. Plato has Gyges ascend the throne and, presumably, take off the ring to enjoy his takings. The improvement I would make -- the improvement H.G. Wells made in the Invisible Man -- is that the ring does not come off. Gyges lives. He is the State (or in The Invisible Man, tries to become the state until he dies -- which is when he becomes visible. A real fable for revolutionaries). And the subjects of the state live in an instinctive subordination to King Gyges' invisibility.

A good instantiation of the myth happened during the New Orleans flood. A lot of time and energy was spend on talking about looting. But to me, the most interesting report that dealt with this subject came in Wading towards Home, Michael Lewis' account of coming into New Orleans during the week of the flood to check on the family home. It is a beautiful piece, but the thing that struck me was this paragraph:

"The old houses were also safe. There wasn't a house in the Garden District, or Uptown, that could not have been easily entered; there wasn't a house in either area that didn't have food and water to keep a family of five alive for a week; and there was hardly a house in either place that had been violated in any way. And the grocery stores! I spent some time inside a Whole Foods choosing from the selection of PowerBars. The door was open, the shelves groaned with untouched bottles of water and food. Downtown, 25,000 people spent the previous four days without food and water when a few miles away -- and it's a lovely stroll -- entire grocery stores, doors ajar, were untouched. From the moment the crisis downtown began, there had been a clear path, requiring maybe an hour's walk, to food, water and shelter. And no one, not a single person, it seemed, took it."

The civilizing process isn't just about becoming an ethical individual and refusing to use Gyges ring -- it is about Gyges as king shifting the burden of the story to the individual. The two processes are inseparably coupled, it seems to me. Few people believe that invisibility will ever be enough, and this is the triumph of a the second level of invisibility. And I doubt there is any getting over the fear.

[Dupree]

""""The Hobbesian model doesn't work for reasons which Talcott Parsons realised. If only a Leviathan keeps society from descending into a state of complete egoism we have no adequate explanation of why a social order obtains when the State is not watching us, and in spheres - the family for example - it cannot always penetrate.""""

Nyet, nyet, nyet. The Hobbesian thief could take the money and run, and not offend any supposed fraternal or moral sentiments. Does he owe some fraternalism to the owner? Unlikely. (moreover to what degree "a social order obtains" when Leviathan is not around remains rather vague). For one, he realizes an insurance company will probably pay it off, and he is little troubled by any slight rises in premiums to store owners (is the present merchant system itself part of Leviathan? Perhaps the thief believes the social contract left him out of the loop, and thus to him "society" is still a state of nature, more or less.).