In a couple of recent posts, Matt Yglesias has raised the question of how consequentialists should handle “other-regarding” preferences. He gives two examples. The first is about the possible execution of Saddam Hussein
My own take on the punishment issue leads to a somewhat paradoxical result. … If Iraqis would feel better with him executed, then go for it…
I like to think of this as a wise and sophisticated point of view, but the trouble is that my preferences depend on other people’s preferences. As long as not very many people agree with me, that’s fine, but if some huge portion of the world were to decide I was right, then you’d wind up with an unfortunate self-reference paradox. Sadly, consequentialist attitudes tend to have these kind of results and I think that if I were smarter I would dedicate my life to resolving the problems.
The second is about the preferences of people who are repulsed by overtly gay behavior. Matt concludes that their preferencesmust be counted, although they should be argued against.
This is an issue of considerable practical interest to resource and environmental economists, because of the popularity of stated preference methods for evaluating public goods such as environmental preservation. I find these methods problematic and one big problem is the treatment of other-regarding preferences.
This is why I have an article on the topic in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, (PDF and algebra alert). Not, I imagine the kind of journal that philosophers like Matt read with any regularity
In this paper, I show that the kind of disinterested (the jargon term is ‘nonpaternalistic’) altruism considered in the Iraq example, (I want whatever the Iraqis want) should not be counted in a consequentialist evalation. The argument proceeds by comparing what you’d get by looking at individual preference statements with those from M members of a mutually altruistic household or community. You’d hope that, in any operational procedure these would be the same, especially when each member of any given household wants the same thing.
This is true of a voting procedure, for example. We get the same outcome if we allow each member of each household to vote individually, or if we let them collectively cast M votes (remember that in this simple example they all vote the same way)(.
By contrast, if you try to implement a consequentialist assessment taking account of the mutual altruism of the household, you end up in a complete mess. In the case of perfect altruism, each individual gets counted M times over, once for themselves and once for every other family member. Things get even worse when some groups have negative altruism towards others (I want them to get whatever they don’t want).
So Matt’s Iraqi example can be resolved reasonably easily by saying that we should evaluate the consequences for Iraqis, on the standard assumption that they know their own preferences, and that Matt’s altruistic preferences should be disregarded. Some difficulties arise when we ask whether Kuwaitis, Iranians etc should have a say also, but I don’t hink they are insuperable.
The second problem is much trickier, and can’t be resolved at the level of abstraction we are currently using, simply because we don’t have a self-evident criterion for classing things as self-regarding or other-regarding. Consider, in addition to Matt’s example of overtly gay behavior and compare the cases of public nudity and smoking in enclosed public places. I guess that most people reading this would want to permit the first, limit the second and prohibit the third but that obviously would not have been the case fifty years ago.
As Matt mentions, Mill tried to bluster his way past this one at the beginning of On Liberty, but he also showed the correct approach with the rest of his discussion . Rather than seeking a first-principles argument that other-regarding preferences should not count, Mill gives consequentialist arguments to suggest that we are all better off if society defines a sphere of self-regarding actions and lets individuals choose for themselves within this sphere. This is true even if, in some short term sense, aggregate utility would be increased by imposing conformity with social norms. Hence, once we have decided that marriage is (largely) within the private sphere* and that homosexuals and heterosexuals should have equal rights, we should disregard, for policy purposes, the preferences of people who are uncomfortable about this. [You can strengthen this case with rule-utilitarianism if you want to, but I don’t think it’s necessary]
*Of course, there’s a huge feminist debate about this, but I don’t think it’s crucially relevant to the point I’m making.
Reference: , ‘Individual, household and community willingness to pay for public goods’, [AJAE 1998, 80(1), 58-63.
{ 6 comments }
Rv. Agnos 12.19.03 at 10:12 pm
John,
There is a way to view Matt’s viewpoint as not paradoxical at all and therefore that it should be taken into account.
Isn’t “I want what the Iraqis want” just another way of saying “I believe that the Iraqis are the appropriate people to judge”?
Others may think, “I want what the International Community wants,” or in other words, “The whole world, not one nation should judge.” That is a different viewpoint, and will lead to different results.
Omitting both viewpoints will leave unanswerable the preliminary question of who judges, since everyone who thinks one or the other will have their opinions dismissed.
Preliminary to “What is the Public Preference” is the question “Who is the Public.” Matt is merely identifying who the appropriate public is.
decon 12.19.03 at 10:15 pm
I’m having a bit of a problem following your arguement. I think you need a better defined example to illustrate the theory.
How are the problems that arise when the preferences of Iranians, Kuwatis, etc… are considered any different from the problems that arise when the preferences of Sunnis, Shiites, Ba’aathists, etc… are considered?
Are you trying to define away all divergent interests among the “insiders” before dealing with the “altruistic” interests of the outsiders? Why?
Jed Harris 12.20.03 at 5:21 am
This aversion to circularity is very unrealistic. There are good ways to resolve circular dependencies — Google, recent bayesian networks, social models, etc. use them very effectively. Altruistic preferences need not “end up in a complete mess” with the sort of multiple counting you describe; the problem is in your counting, not the preferences.
More importantly, your reluctance to follow up the circularity misses a real phenomenon. When all the members of a group are strongly other-regarding — think of the typical group trying to decide where to go to lunch at a conference — the circular dependence can’t be resolved. Eventually someone has to express a preference of their own (however weak) to break the symmetry. Thus the case you mention — a household of perfect altruists — *is* a problem, but not a “mess” — it can’t be resolved, and in fact it models real situations that we all experience.
P.M.Lawrence 12.20.03 at 10:07 am
Rv. Agnos has touched on one of the three points of incompleteness in democracy, that it cannot of itself and through itself define “we, the people”. The other two are that it can only transmit values and cannot of itself justify anything – though one special case works out as though it did – and that it is vulnerable to manufactured results and agenda control by selective editing and repeated attempts, e.g. consulting the Danes repeatedly about Europe until it came right (sorry, “until the people were ready”). That also looks like what Australian Republicans will try to push through their schemes – repeated attempts until it comes right, regardless of whether circumstances justify any further voting yet.
One point I want to bring out about all this self regarding circular stuff is something I’ve noticed among the politically correct. Practically always they are objecting on behalf of some hypothetical person, pre-emptively, and assuming that this straw man necessarily overrides an actual person’t expressed wish. They take the derivative things even further than they should, and blot out any actual interests. I’ve come across this when Australian republicans attempted to censor information about politically incorrect Republicans I wanted to tell the public about.
Jon Mandle 12.20.03 at 1:53 pm
I’m not sure there’s a self-referential paradox until you reach the point at which there are no ground-level preferences at all. But there’s something else odd about Matt’s position. He says: “Of course my preferences count to [sic], so I’ll keep trying to argue folks out of their position and into the one I like.” But exactly how is he going to try to “argue folks out of their position”?
One possibility is that he will simply state his own preference. This is hardly an argument, but a restatement of the problem, at least when others have contrary preferences.
Another possibility is to hope that simply citing non-normative facts (as opposed to preferences) will convince others to change their preferences. Maybe their preferences are based on factual errors. But maybe not. In the case we’re talking about, someone admits that their preference is “irrational” – they just think that homosexuality is “icky”.
The problem is that limiting argument to the citing of one’s own preferences and non-normative facts is a terribly impoverished basis for argument. But as soon as we allow in other considerations, we have cleared the ground to evaluate which preferences should count in the first place.
Brett Bellmore 12.20.03 at 2:48 pm
This claim that marriage is (largely) within the private sphere isn’t terrifically plausible. “Shacking up” is clearly within the private sphere, but those aspects of marriage which differ from shacking up are rather conspicuously of the public sphere.
Which has nothing to do with my policy preference, that any number of competent adults of whatever gender and/or consanguity should be able to enter into a marriage. Forget the pets, they’re not competent to make such decisions…
I only bring this up because it seemed the issue was just tossed in as a way of smuggling in the viewpoinnt without debate.
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