What kind of being are you?

 

Self-reflection tells you that you are a conscious being that is aware of its own existence in the real world. You are aware of having a mind and a body. Since you are a thinking being, you have probably worked out that you exist even when you are not conscious. You have probably also noticed that even people who claim to believe that the physical world is an illusion tend to behave as though they believe it is real. For example, you see them walking through doors rather than walking through walls.

Does the existence of your body indicate that you are an entity. If I could see you, I would affirm that you look like a being that has a distinct and independent existence – that is, an entity.

Do you see yourself as an entity? You may think of yourself as an entity, but how do you think of yourself while you are observing your own thoughts?

You could think of yourself as an observer watching your thoughts pass by like leaves on a stream. Some of the thoughts might be about yourself. If the thought “I am a thinking entity”, passes your mind, you might observe, “I am having the thought that I am a thinking entity”. That is an interesting observation. You can’t deny that you are thinking.

However, if you are an entity, how can you be both the observer and the object that you are observing? Could you be two entities? I don’t think so. The observer, who is you, does not exist independently of the object who is observed, who is also you.

Richard Campbell suggests a way out of this dilemma in his book, The Metaphysics of Emergence. Drop the assumption that you are a fixed, given entity. The alternative he suggests is to perceive yourself as a complex process system. That enables you to perceive of radical reflexivity as a process. He writes:

“If the assumption that there is a fixed, given entity called ‘the self’ …  is rejected, the way is open to understand consciousness as a flow: a complex, emergent and interactive process which is radically reflexive”.

As I discussed in a previous article about Campbell’s book, our observations of the world tell us that many other animals are also aware of their surroundings. We have no problem in understanding that their awareness emerged or evolved to help them to survive and reproduce. Our human consciousness is just another step in that evolutionary process. Radical reflexivity - awareness of our own awareness - has emerged to help us to flourish as individuals in the cultures in which we live.

Campbell suggests that the flow of consciousness is analogous to a river maintaining its identity as it flows though different places. Your understanding of who you are is informed by the flow of your consciousness through time. In other words, your sense of identity is informed by your autobiographical memories. Campbell explains that this sense of identity also involves an element of projection into the future:

“I am a complex process system continually projecting myself out of my past into my future, my sense of myself necessarily involves my ‘has been’ and my ‘not yet’.”

As you think about your “not yet”, you might imagine a future that is different than your past. That might be just wishful thinking, or you might be considering what options are available to achieve a vision that you have for your own future.

Conclusion

You are a being that is consciously aware of its own existence in the real world. You may think of yourself as an entity – a being that has a distinct and independent existence. However, that perception is at odds with the fact that you can observe yourself thinking. A single entity cannot be both an observer and the object of observation. It makes more sense to view yourself as a complex process system.

Can historical injustice be redressed?

 

This question arose as I was reading about the theme of this year’s NAIDOC week. NAIDOC week, held this year from 4-11 July, celebrates the history, culture, and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The theme for NAIDOC week this year is “Heal Country”. The role of traditional management practices in protecting land from bushfires and droughts is mentioned specifically as part of the theme, but “country” encompasses all aspects of Indigenous culture.

The NAIDOC committee explains that “Healing Country means embracing First Nation’s cultural knowledge and understanding of Country as part of Australia's national heritage”. Australians, from all walks of life, have shown increasing concern to protect Indigenous cultural heritage. For example, when a mining company blew up an aboriginal sacred site in Western Australia last year, I found myself among the many people who felt that something significant to Australia’s national heritage had been destroyed.

The NAIDOC committee mention redressing historical injustice specifically:

“To Heal Country, we must properly work towards redressing historical injustice.”

However, that follows a statement implying that fundamental grievances would not vanish following “fair and equitable resolution” of “outstanding injustices”:

“In the European settlement of Australia, there were no treaties, no formal settlements, no compacts. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people therefore did not cede sovereignty to our land. It was taken from us. That will remain a continuing source of dispute.”

Working toward redressing historical injustice will not extinguish fundamental grievances. It would be naïve to expect that it would. Few humans find it easy to let go of their grievances, even when they accept that their personal interests would be better served by viewing historical events as “water under the bridge”.

Some readers may be thinking at this point that it is futile to attempt to redress historical injustices if such attempts cannot prevent those injustices from being viewed as an ongoing source of “grievances”. I don’t concur with that view. As I see it, the central issues of concern in redressing historical injustices are about justice, or fairness, rather than about attempting to assuage ongoing feelings of grievance felt by descendants of victims.

Historical injustice to Indigenous Australians stems from the failure of governments to recognize and protect their natural rights following colonization. It is arguable that current governments have an obligation to remedy adverse consequences flowing from the failures of their predecessors.

However, it is no easy matter to assess the extent to which opportunities currently available to Indigenous Australians have been adversely affected by historical injustices. A better understanding of history is a necessary step in the direction of any such assessment. It is pleasing to see the NAIDOC committee express the view:

“While we can’t change history, through telling the truth about our nation’s past we certainly can change the way history is viewed.”

The truth includes dispossession of land over much of the country, but it is difficult to generalize about what followed. Jim Belshaw, who knows more about history than I do, describes it recently as involving “uneasy co-existence, resistance and then survival and now, hopefully, recovery”. Even those broad stages might not be equally relevant in all parts of the country.

The truth also includes the existence of the “grave social and economic disadvantage”, referred to by the NAIDOC committee, but that cannot be wholly attributed to historical injustices.

As discussed in my recent book, Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, there has been massive growth of opportunities for human flourishing over the last 200 years in Western liberal democracies, including Australia. I suggest in the Preface:

“Those of us who have the good fortune to live in Western liberal democracies have opportunities that we might crave if we lived elsewhere in the world”.

I think that applies to the Indigenous people of Australia as well as to other Australians. The opportunities we all currently enjoy should be sufficient to offset any ongoing social and economic consequences of injustices suffered by our ancestors.

So, how can I explain the relatively poor social and economic outcomes of many Indigenous people in Australia? It seems to me that anyone seeking the truth about this should consider the adverse consequences over the last 50 years of extending unemployment benefits and other welfare support to Aboriginal communities in remote areas. Ongoing social and economic disadvantage may be strongly linked to well-meaning efforts during the 1970s to remove discrimination against Indigenous people in access to government welfare support.

That is not a novel idea, but governments have found it difficult to implement welfare policies with more appropriate incentives. There has been little progress toward “closing the gap” in social and economic outcomes. Hopefully, greater involvement of local communities will result in better outcomes in future.

In my view, as discussed in Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing, the flourishing of humans is intrinsically a matter for individual self-direction, rather than something to fostered by human development experts, or social planners. Social and economic context influence opportunities available, but the capacity of individuals for wise and well-informed self-direction is of central importance to their own flourishing. It is inspiring to see increasing numbers of Indigenous Australians achieving outstanding success in their chosen fields, despite injustices suffered by their ancestors and the limited opportunities currently available in their local communities.

Who should read "Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing"?

 

I have dedicated the book to those who reflect on what it means to be a flourishing human.

When individuals think about their own personal development, they are reflecting on what it means to be a flourishing human.  I believe that reflection on what it means to be a flourishing human also holds the key to understanding the importance of liberty, and its role in economic development.

What is the book about?

The book explains how freedom (liberty) enables individuals to flourish in different ways without colliding, how it fosters progress and enables growth of opportunities, and how it supports personal development by enabling individuals to exercise self-direction.

The importance of self-direction is a theme of the book. The introductory chapter explains that wise and well-informed self-direction is integral to flourishing because it helps individuals to attain health and longevity, positive human relationships, psychological well-being, and an ability to live in harmony with nature.

Part I discusses natural rights and the evolution of freedom since ancient times. It explains how most people living in the liberal democracies today came to enjoy greater freedom than their ancestors.

Part II discusses progress. It explains how cultural change made economic progress possible by supporting the rule of law, liberty, and interpersonal trust, as well as the advance of knowledge, respect for innovators and tolerance of diversity. It notes that progress has led to increasingly widespread opportunities for people to meet their aspirations. It also discusses reasons for apprehension about the continuation of progress.

Part III considers how it is possible for individuals to meet the challenges of self-direction and to enhance their potential to flourish by investing in personal development. It explains that while the exercise of practical wisdom has always been integral to the flourishing of individuals, it has become commonplace for people to aspire to exercise meaningful self-direction over their lives to a greater extent than has ever been possible in the past.

The main message of the book is that people who live in Western liberal democracies should count their blessings. They have many blessings to count!

What are reviewers saying about the book?

Doug Rasmussen, a philosopher, and joint author with Douglas Den Uyl of a trilogy of books about liberty and human flourishing writes:

“Freedom, Progress, and Human Flourishing is a highly informed, but not an unduly technical, account of human flourishing and the need for a political/legal order that has the primary goal of protecting individual rights. This work is informed by not only philosophical but also by psychological and economic studies. This work provides an excellent entry point for deeper discussions of these fundamental claims.”

Readers who are seeking deeper discussions will find much to think about in the books by Rasmussen and Den Uyl: Norms of Liberty, The Perfectionist Turn, and The Realist Turn: Repositioning Liberalism.

Ron Duncan, a distinguished Australian economist with particular expertise in the economics and governance of developing countries, writes:

“With so much attention on identifying issues we should be unhappy about, Winton Bates' book is a welcome relief, given its emphasis on how much the lot of most people—particularly those in western liberal societies—has improved, why the improvements have taken place, and why they should continue. Its historical coverage of the philosophical issues underpinning the role of liberty in western progress should delight all serious thinkers.”

Ed Younkins, author of Flourishing and Happiness in A Free Society and Capitalism and Commerce writes:

“This masterful feat of integration of a wide range of literature from philosophy, economics, political science, and the social sciences will inspire scholars to bring their disciplines together to advance the argument for a free society.”

What are my qualifications to write such a book?

I am an economist. I first became professionally involved in broad issues concerning human flourishing in the early 1990s. Before then, my career focused on public policy relating to economic development, international trade, productivity growth and technological progress. Whilst retaining my professional interest in such matters, I have become increasingly interested in economic history, happiness economics, behavioral economics, self-help psychology, politics, and Aristotelian philosophy. I have written extensively about freedom and flourishing and have been blogging on this site for about 12 years.

How do I perform when interviewed about my book?

Potential interviewers who need to make such an assessment should take a look at me being interviewed by Leah Goldrick. The interview entitled “Freedom Helps us Flourish” has been published on Leah’s Common Sense Ethics channel on YouTube. The interview is also a useful source of background information about the book and its author.

Where can the book be purchased?

The book has been published by Hamilton Books and can be purchased at the Rowman and Littlefield web site: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780761872665/Freedom-Progress-and-Human-Flourishing

It is also available from Amazon and some other booksellers.

How can we comprehend the emergence of consciousness?

 

It seems common for consciousness to be viewed either as an inexplicable mystery or as something we will only be able to comprehend if advances in science can explain how thoughts – a rich inner life - can somehow be created from matter. However, the problems we have in comprehending the emergence of consciousness may stem from our habit of thinking in terms of a separation between mind and body.

The idea of mind as separate from body has been part of Western philosophy for a long time, but is commonly referred to as Cartesian dualism after René Descartes (1596–1650). Descartes who famously said, “I think, therefore I am”, concluded “I knew that I was a substance, the whole essence or nature of which is to think … [that] does not depend on any material thing”. These days, not many people believe consciousness to be a substance, but dualism still seems to linger on in much discussion about consciousness.  

Descartes reached his conclusion after going through a process of considering what sources of knowledge could not be doubted, and discovering that he could not doubt that he was thinking. In his book, The Metaphysics of Emergence, Richard Campbell suggests that Descartes was on the right track in observing that he was unable to doubt that he was thinking:

“If I seriously think that I am not thinking, what I am thinking is pragmatically self-refuting.” (283)

Descartes error arose when he asked himself, “What then am I?” after observing that he could not doubt he was thinking. As Campbell points out, that question “presupposes that he takes himself to be some sort of thing”.

(Campbell’s discussion reminds me of the part of the long speech Ayn Rand had John Galt make in Atlas Shrugged in which Galt proclaims the axiom that “existence exists”, and that consciousness is “the faculty of perceiving that which exists”. Galt adds “a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms” (1015). Readers who are allergic to Ayn Rand will be pleased to note that Campbell’s book contains no references to her, or to Objectivism.)

Before going further I should note that Richard Campbell is an emeritus professor of philosophy at the ANU. The Metaphysics of Emergence was published in 2015.

Campbell asks what conclusion we can draw from the observation that we cannot doubt we are thinking. His answer:

“Thinking that one is thinking, being aware that one is aware, has to be at least a meta-level operation, interacting with the processes of more basic awareness.”

To understand what Campbell is getting at here, it may be helpful to have some knowledge of the general line of argument he develops in his book.

• In the preface, the author explains that he has come to the view that any satisfactory account of the emergence of complex phenomena has to begin with recognition that “processes underly what seem like stable enduring entities, and therefore should be accorded priority over them”.
• Campbell argues that everything is fundamentally in process. That line of argument is opposed to the dominant tradition of Western intellectual history (began by Parmenides) which views entities as the norm. The view that everything is a process presents us with the challenge of explaining the emergence and apparent stability of enduring things, whereas under the dominant tradition change requires explanation.
•  Campbell suggests that Plato may have misrepresented Heraclitus in claiming he said, “You cannot step into the same river twice”. Heraclites may have been trying to convey the insight that the river stays the same even though it consists of changing waters. Campbell suggests that rivers exemplify “that the continued existence of things depends on their continually changing”.
• The view of stability as the norm led to a focus on particular entities and the “matter” of which they were comprised. Since matter itself seemed to be comprised of entities (atoms and sub-atomic particles) it seemed to follow that everything was composed of entities (countable things). However, advances in physics make that view no longer tenable.  Although sub-atomic particles are often still talked about as though they are well-defined micro-entities, they behave more like processes than entities. Entities can no longer be accorded the role of the primary way of being.
• Entities, including living things, can be best understood as special cases of generic processes constrained in certain explicable ways. Entities are minimally homomerous – they exist in fixed portions or units. If you cut a cow in two the result is not two smaller cows.
• Many types of dynamic system retain their distinctive properties even though their constituents are replaced over time. That points to the importance of the constituent processes in maintaining the system.
• Living creatures perform actions. Interactions between internal and external processes binds them together as cohesive entities and enables them to behave as integral wholes. Their actions are an emergent phenomenon – resulting from the interaction of many processes.
• As Aristotle recognized, talk of actions carries implications of teleology – actions are directed towards some goal or end. In the case of simple multi-cellular organisms, goal-directedness is directed toward survival, but does not carry any implication of conscious choices or purposes. “The recursive self-maintenance of an organism is what requires the category of action to be predicated of it as an integrated action system and provides the necessary condition for other kinds of action which are directed at ends other than survival.” (176)    
• As evolution proceeds, living creatures become capable of performing selective actions in response to differences in their environments. In relatively simple organisms, those actions are instinctual rather than choices involving deliberation or calculation. Selection becomes more significant in more complex creatures which need to choose between fighting and fleeing, or whether to search for food or find a mate. Complex organisms can learn by detecting that some action they have performed is in error.
• The appropriate question regarding motivation is what makes an organism perform one action rather than another, rather than what makes it do something rather than nothing. Living organisms cannot do nothing, or they cease to exist as living beings.
• When an organism has the ability to learn which kinds of action yields rewards and to select actions on the basis of that learning it seems reasonable to say that it can evaluate the projected outcomes. As organisms become more highly developed, goal-seeking activity becomes increasingly self-directed, more flexible, and more generic (not confined to specific task routines). The behaviors of many species of non-human animals indicates that they have some awareness of their surroundings.
• The consciousness of humans evolved from the awareness displayed by other animals. Primate awareness includes elaborate event representations in which experience across many sources including bodily feelings are integrated and can be remembered. However, primates seem to lack the “fundamental defining capacities” to develop language skills (unless raised by humans) and do not express any kind of self-description.
• Human evolution went through several stages: a mimetic culture employing the whole body as an expressive device; the mythic stage in which spoken language evolved (arguably to meet specific cognitive and cultural needs); and the theoretic stage beginning around 5,500 years ago with invention of the first writing systems. The theoretic stage is characterized by “institutionalized paradigmatic thought” – using external symbolic devices to store and retrieve cultural knowledge.
• One’s sense of oneself is an aspect of consciousness that seems to be distinctively human, although some species of apes and elephants can recognize an image in a mirror as their own. “Our individual self-understandings are informed by our autobiographical memories, whose meaning depends on a shared oral tradition.” (290) Our consciousness of ourselves has been shaped by cultural and institutional factors that influence how our brains develop and function. While we talk metaphorically of the evolution of modern humans, this is not evolution in the Darwinian sense. A child born today differs little genetically from one born 60,000 years ago.
• The development of human brains is strongly influenced by personal experience. Cultural interactions play an important role in determining the way the brains of children develop. They do not reach their mature architecture until adulthood. 

Some further explanation can now be given of what Campbell meant by writing that being aware that one is aware has to be at least a meta-level operation, interacting with the processes of more basic awareness. He is suggesting that when he detects something with one of his five senses there is more than one operation going on:

“I am actively eliciting and processing those sensory inputs, and at the same time reflectively experiencing the qualities of that awareness. If that is right, then the way many philosophers today pose the issue of experience – how is it that certain complex physical systems are also mental – is misconceived. The situation is not that there is one phenomenon which has two aspects: one physical; one mental. Rather, experiencing is an on-going self-organizing activity which involves two distinct types of process: exploratory sensory activity (which is both bodily and neural); and another higher-level process operating upon the former. Being self-organizing, these interactions essentially involve feedback. That is why humans’ consciousness is reflective, reflexive, and thereby self-aware.” (283-4)

Before concluding, I should make clear that I prepared the above summary to improve my own understanding of the line of argument in Richard Campbell’s book. I hope it is a reasonable summary, but it not a substitute for reading the book. I am publishing this article in the hope of encouraging others to read the book.

I would also like to mention that I was prompted to read The Metaphysics of Emergence by a comment made by Robert L Campbell, a psychologist, in his review (published in JARS) of Harry Binswanger’s book, How We Know. I am pleased that I was given that prompt to read the book because I have a long-standing interest in explanations of consciousness - for example, see my comments on Alva Noё’s book, Out of Our Heads, published on this blog over a decade ago.

Conclusion

We cannot doubt that we think. That seems to me to be a profound observation. We may have reasons to doubt that what we are thinking at any moment is related to reality, but we cannot doubt that we are thinking. We are aware of both the flow of inner experiences – thoughts and feelings – and of our experience of the world in which we live. Thinking about our experience of the world enables us to contemplate the goals we seek, to make choices in pursuit of those goals, and to learn from experience. Our observations of the world tell us that many other animals also engage in similar processes - which imply an awareness of their surroundings. We have no problem in understanding that their awareness emerged/evolved to help them to survive and reproduce. Our human consciousness is just another step in that evolutionary process. Awareness of our own awareness has emerged to help us to flourish as individuals in the cultures in which we live.

Do political partisans make credible assessments of the views of their opponents?

 

The charts shown above suggest that some of the assessments that political partisans make of the views of their opponents are wildly inaccurate. The probability that a Democrat will consider that men should be protected from false accusations of sexual assault is higher than Republicans believe it to be, and the probability of a Republican accepting that racism still exists is higher that Democrats believe it to be. The organization which published the data makes the point that Americans have much more similar views on many controversial issues than is commonly thought, especially among the most politically active. My focus here is on why partisans make such large errors in assessing the views of their opponents.

Probability assessment is not always easy.

Steven Pinker included “a sense of probability” in his list of 10 cognitive faculties and intuitions that have evolved to enable humans to keep in touch with aspects of reality (Blank Slate, 220). Individuals obtain obvious benefits from an ability to keep track of the relative frequency of events affecting their lives. A capacity to reason about the likelihood of different events helps them to advantage of favorable circumstances and to avoid harm.

Pinker points out that our perceptions of probability are prone to error, but Daniel Kahneman has a much more comprehensive discussion of this in Thinking, Fast and Slow. Kahneman points out that even people who have studied probability can be fooled into making errors in assessing probability when they are led to focus unduly on information that appears particularly pertinent and to ignore other relevant information. He gives the example of a cab involved in a hit and run accident in the city in which 85% of cabs are Green and 15% are blue. A witness identifies the cab responsible as Blue, and the court establishes that he would be able to identify colors correctly 80% of the time under circumstances that existed on the night of the accident. What is the probability that the cab is Blue? Most people say 80%, but the correct answer, provided by Bayes’ rule, is about half that (Loc 3005-3020). People tend to make a large error because they overlook the fact that a high proportion of Green cabs means that there is a good chance that the witness has mistakenly identified a Green cab to be Blue, even though his observations are accurate 80% of the time.

Kahneman notes that people are more likely to make errors in assessing probability when they “think fast” rather than analytically. However, it is not necessary to understand and apply Bayes’ rule to solve problems such as the one presented above. A simple arithmetic example can suffice. If there were 1,000 cabs in the city, there would be 850 Green cabs and 150 Blue cabs. If we had no more information, the probability of a Blue cab being responsible for the accident would be 15%. We are told the witness saw a Blue cab and would correctly identify 80% of the 150 Blue cabs as Blue (i.e. 120 cabs) and would mistakenly identify 20% of the 850 Green cabs as Blue (i.e. 170 cabs). The total number of cabs that he would identify as Blue is 290 (120+170). The probability that the witness has correctly identified a Blue cab is 0.414 (120/290) or 41.4%.

Kahneman also makes a point about causal stereotypes. He does this by altering the example to substitute information that Green cabs are responsible for 85% of the accidents, for the information that 85% of the cabs are Green. Other information is unchanged. The two versions of the problem are mathematically indistinguishable. If the only information we had was that Green cabs are responsible for 85% of accidents, we would assess the probability of a Blue cab being responsible at 15%. As before, if we evaluate the witness information correctly, it raises the probability of a Blue cab being responsible to 41.4%.

However, when people are presented with the second version, the answers they give tend to be much closer to the correct one. They apparently interpret the information that the Green drivers are responsible for 85% of the accidents to mean that the Green drivers are reckless. That causal stereotype is less readily disregarded in the face of witness evidence, so the two pieces of evidence pull in opposite directions.

Political partisans don’t have much incentive to make accurate assessments of the views of their opponents.

The potential for errors in fast thinking and the impact of cultural stereotypes may account for much of the error of partisans in assessing the views of their opponents, as shown in the above charts. People do not have a strong personal incentive to ensure that they accurately assess the views of their political opponents. Potential errors do not affect their income and lifestyle to the same extent as, say, errors in the probability assessments they make relating to personal occupational and investment choices.

In addition, political partisans may not even see any particular reason to be concerned that they may be misrepresenting the views of their opponents.

Reasoning along those lines seems to me to provide a straightforward explanation for the prevalence of partisan conspiracy theories. Research by Steven Smallpage et al (in an article entitled ‘The partisan contours of conspiracy theory beliefs’) suggests that partisans know which conspiracy theory is owned by which party, and that belief in partisan conspiracy theories is highly correlated to partisanship. The authors conclude:

“Many conspiracy theories function more like associative partisan attitudes than markers of an alienated psychology”.

Extreme partisans tend to promote theories that discredit their opponents. Perhaps that is the way we should expect partisans to play politics in a society where many people think it is ok to “bear false witness” because they believe everyone has “their own truths” and objective reality does not exist.

We do not have to speculate that partisans are deluded or crazy when they hold firmly to improbable theories about their opponents in the face of contrary evidence. They are more likely to be ignoring the evidence to demonstrate loyalty to their party and its leaders.  

However, that doesn’t offer us much solace. Some of the conspiracy theories currently circulating seem similar to the false rumors that governments circulate about their enemies during wartime. Extremists among political partisans may be circulating those rumors with the intention of promoting greater political polarization and a breakdown of the values that have hitherto made it possible for people with divergent views to coexist peacefully.

Is increasing polarization inevitable?

Much depends on the attitudes of the majority of people who currently disinclined to spread rumors that they believe to be false and likely to promote social conflict. If people with moderate views make known that they expect political leaders to disavow false rumors about their opponents, they can encourage that to happen. Leaders of the major parties have an incentive to try to attract voters with moderate views away from opposing parties. If leaders disavow false rumors, partisans will tend to echo their views.

Is a good person like flowing water?

The question arises from a Lao Tzu quote that I recently stumbled across:

“A person of great virtue is like the flowing water”, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 8.

The passage appeals to me because it seems to accord with my casual observation that good behaviour seems effortless for some people. That may link to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theory of the flow experience where people in high challenge situations are so deeply involved in what they are doing that nothing else seems to matter. The good people I have in mind would not give much thought to judgements that others might make about their behaviour.

I will return to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theory later, but first I want to look for clues about the intuitions that Lao Tzu was hoping to convey. To view the quote in context, I have chosen a translation by Red Pine (Bill Porter) who also provides readers with commentary of sages and other translators. Chapter 8 reads:

“The best are like water

 bringing help to all

 without competing

 choosing what others avoid

 they thus approach the Tao

 dwelling with earth

 thinking with depth

helping with kindness

speaking with honesty

 governing with peace

 working with skill

and moving with time

and because they don’t compete they aren’t maligned.”

 

There is no explicit mention of “flow” in that translation or in the associated commentary, but it still seems consistent with the imagery of flowing water.

In his commentary, Chuck Gullion, the Libertarian Taoist, sums it up:

“It all boils down to being content to simply be yourself. We expend way too much effort comparing and competing with others. Lao Tzu is wanting to show us a better Way. Be like water!”

Red Pine notes that some translators have difficulty in accepting that kindness is the correct word in the line “helping with kindness”, because of Lao Tzu’s professed “disdain for the social virtues”. In An Introduction to Daoist Philosophy (previously discussed here)  Steve Coutinho explains that Lao Tze opposes cultivation of the ethical virtues (including humanity and rightness) on the grounds that cultivation converts the virtues into objects of desire, thus becoming an obstacle to flourishing. Paradoxically, much of the Tao Te Ching presupposes “recognizably ethical values” (pp 64-5).

In Csikszentmihalyi's view, the flow experience requires cultivation. He suggests that the normal condition of the mind is one of informational disorder, with conflicting desires, intentions and thoughts jostling each other in consciousness. Innate talents cannot develop unless a person learns to control attention to get the heart will and mind on the same page. Flow tends to occur when a person faces a clear set of goals that require appropriate responses.

 
Csikszentmihalyi’s perception of good is activity leading to the increase of complexity and order, while evil is analogous to entropy:   

“Good is the creative overcoming of inertia, the energy that leads to the evolution of human consciousness. To act in terms of new principles of organization is always more difficult, and requires more effort and energy. The ability to do so is what has been known as virtue” (Loc 2031/2382).

The idea of evolution toward greater complexity has intellectual appeal, but “creative overcoming” seems far removed from the idea that goodness is like flowing water. Csikszentmihalyi may even be seeking to distance his view of flow from that imagery, because he suggests that the evil which causes pain and suffering usually involves “taking the course of least resistance”, for example acting “in terms of instinct alone”.

Would acceptance of the imagery of goodness as being like flowing water be likely to tempt people to view instinctive “red in tooth and claw” aspects of nature as providing reason to accept that “might is right” in human conduct?

To answer that question, it is helpful to consider the view of Zhuangzi, a Daoist philosopher who followed Lao Tzu. Zhuangzi observed that there must be genuine humanity before there can be genuine understanding of the relationship between what is human and what is natural. Coutinho notes:

“According to Zhuangzi, there is something salvageable about our humanity: it is not pure artifice. There is a central core of genuineness that is natural. When we nurture this genuine humanity, we reconnect with the natural world, become more distanced from the everyday hopes, fears, and anxieties that plague us, and are more tranquil and accepting of all our circumstances” (p 112).

As I see it, cultural evolution has left us with intuitions that it is good to be the kind of person who manages his or her own life wisely in ways that respect the natural rights of others. We greatly admire those who bring out the best in the people they interact with most closely. Our language reflects an understanding that humane conduct is ethical. Cruelty is often described as inhuman. We have come to perceive voluntary cooperation for mutual benefit as good, and predation as bad. It should be easy for us to understand that a spontaneous order evolving from the actions of free individuals is the most natural form of human society.  

In that context, the imagery of a good person being like flowing water may help people to understand that ethical conduct is integral to their human nature. That kind of imagery might help people to set goals that are consistent with their values and to stay on course toward acquiring better habits, perhaps ultimately reaching the point where goodness becomes effortless.

What did Yeats mean by "Horseman, pass by"?

In one of the most popular articles on my blog I speculated about the meaning of the epitaph on W B Yeats tombstone:

“Cast a cold Eye

On Life, on Death

Horseman, pass by”.

The article was posted in October 2013 and has attracted many comments since then.

A few hours ago, Beth Prescott sent me a comment by email, which I am reproducing below, with her permission.

However, before reading Beth’s comment, it would be helpful for you to read an anonymous comment that she refers to:

“In ancient China, there is a phrase said "Human life is just like a white horse pass by a tiny crevice, it's only a blink of time." This phrase comes from the philosopher Zhuangzi's book, "Zhuangzi: Knowledge travel to the North". And the story in the book is that, when Confucius asking Laozi what is "Zhi Dao(至道,the basic reason of everything)", and Laozi answered with this phrase, and told Confucius that either life or death is inevitable and common in life, it is just a change of matter, there's no need to happy or mourn. But "Dao" is the only eternity through a man's spirit. If Yeats did take this story in his mind, then perhaps he agreed Laozi by writing these lines.
This is just my thought, and sorry for my grammar mistakes, I'm not an English speaker.”  

I think the ancient saying referred to by my correspondent can be sourced to Chuangtse. I found something very similar in The Wisdom of Laotse, and have reproduced it above.

Beth Prescott writes: 

"Horseman, pass by”

“I've been hearing this phrase in my head for several days - entirely without knowing where it came from or whom it came from. So, of course, I Googled it and quickly came upon your blog post about it from several years ago. I don't know Yeats well. I've always been intrigued and curious, but life has so far never permitted a long perusal of him and his life.

In fact, I am so distracted by current events I couldn't even make myself read the entire poem. Usually I can settle to a task better than this, but not now.

I did read through all the comments to your blog and was arrested by the anonymous comment from, presumably, a Chinese person. His (or her) use of English was very familiar to me, since I have worked with and for Chinese American researchers here at the University of Oregon.

It was the image he evoked of a white horse striding past a crevice in a rock and that that tiny crevice was the whole of a human life, even perhaps, the whole of human history. It reminded me of something an older brother told me 60+ years ago: ‘maybe the entire universe and all of its seeming eternity of time is really nothing more than the air in somebody's tire, and someday the tire may have a flat’. I think my brother added in that last bit.

This image has stuck with me all of my life: that we are necessarily constrained by our worldview and cannot easily - or at all - look outside of it. The idea that even our vast universe is really part of something else, something unknowable, something much vaster and more sweeping, something with a different purpose, possibly utterly different.

That what we think is important is, yes, important to us and we must live our lives as if these things are important. They are important. To us. Workmen must continue to work. Cradles must continue to be filled.

But we should also live our lives with the understanding that there is ‘something else going on’ and that the forces that gave rise to us and to our universe are probably beyond our understanding. Our entire universe, our entire history of life is perhaps no more than the instant in time it takes for a white horse to stride past a small crack in a wall.

If Yeats absorbed the philosophies of other cultures and times, as it appears that he did, then I think in this poem he was striving to arrive at a different perspective, a different view of himself, of his own place in the grand scheme of things, of his entire life.

I think he is saying in those final lines, that he realizes that all of the Sturm und Drang of his own life is in reality nothing more than a sliver of an insignificant moment in some much larger scheme. I think he is affirming that teaching of Lao Tze. That when he says ‘Horseman, pass by’ I think he is affirming - in a very positive way - this view of life.  He is even content with it. A quite remarkable final thing to say to the world."

Thanks Beth!

How can the traditional virtues help people to have the basic goods of a flourishing human?

After setting out a few days ago to write about the origins of the concept of progress, I was re-reading portion of The Enlightened Economy, by Joel Mokyr, when my attention was diverted to the relationship between goodness and happiness. In discussing the meaning of the Enlightenment, Mokyr mentions Roy Porter’s characterisation of it as a gradual switch from asking ‘how can I be good?’ to ‘how can I be happy?’.  Mokyr suggests that pithy summary “captures perhaps something essential” (p 33). (Porter’s discussion is in The Enlightenment in England, 1981.)

I agree both with Mokyr’s endorsement and his equivocation. Darrin McMahon, in his book Happiness: A History (2006) noted the role of St Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) in drawing renewed attention to the works of Aristotle and opening up a space in which some partial happiness can be achieved in this life.  Aquinas helped open the way for the subsequent attention given to betterment of material conditions of humanity by Enlightenment thinkers but, like Aristotle before him, he saw virtuous activity as providing the answer to human aspirations for both goodness and happiness. Many Enlightenment thinkers and, more recently, Neo Aristotelians, also see a strong link between virtuous activity and happiness.

The series of posts I have just completed about the basic goods of a flourishing human have obvious relevance to the question, ‘how can I be happy?’, but those posts don’t mention virtue explicitly. I could explain that in terms of the focus of those posts on societal institutions rather than personal development. However, my time could be better spent considering the role of virtue in helping individuals to attain the basic goods.

Ed Younkins comes to mind as a scholar who emphasises that human flourishing “comprises and requires a number of generic goods and virtues” whose proper application is unique to each person.

The role of the virtues in individual flourishing has been discussed at greater length by Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen in The Perfectionist Turn (2016). Those authors argue that the fundamental problem of ethics is taking responsibility for figuring out how to fashion one’s own life. Within the context of their template of responsibility, human flourishing is viewed as “the exercise of one’s own practical wisdom”. Integrity is the central virtue of that framework. The authors explain:

“Integrity expresses itself interpersonally in honor; but when applied to the agent herself, the term ‘integrity’ signifies a coherent, integral whole of virtues and values, allowing for consistency between word and deed and for reliability in action”.

Integrity explains how the basic goods, as I have identified them, are linked together as an integrated whole when a human is flourishing. Integrity is necessary for exercise of the wise and well-informed self-direction that, in turn, helps individuals to live long and healthy lives, maintain positive relationships, manage their emotional health, and live in harmony with nature.

Neera Badhwar, in Wellbeing: Happiness in a Worthwhile Life" (2014), offers a somewhat different perspective to that of Den Uyl and Rasmussen, but she reaches similar conclusions.  The central propositions Badhwar advances are that the highest prudential good (HPG) consists of happiness in an objectively worthwhile life, and that a person who leads such a life must be characteristically autonomous and reality-orientated.  

Although Badhwar’s view of happiness focuses on positive emotions, thoughts and evaluations, she emphasizes that the HPG also requires an objectively worthwhile life. She explains that an objectively worthwhile life must be “worthwhile for creatures with our needs interests and capacities – including the capacity for asking what sort of life counts as worthwhile”. Her view of an objectively worthwhile life incorporates external goods, such as wealth, to the extent that such goods are compatible with the ability of a person to use them virtuously and happily. It must therefore also incorporate the basic goods I have identified: physical health, positive relationships and living in harmony with nature, as well as psychological well-being and wise and well-informed self-direction.

Badhwar argues that virtue is of primary importance because it ensures the attitudes and actions that are necessary for happiness in a worthwhile life. She suggests that the integration of emotional dispositions with the practical wisdom required by virtue, “makes virtue highly conducive to happiness, since a common source of unhappiness is conflict between our emotions and our evaluations” (p 152). In other words, we can make ourselves unhappy by allowing transient emotions to distract us from acting in accordance with our values.

That brings us back to the importance of integrity to individual flourishing.

How does integrity relate to the traditional virtues of western society as they are understood in the modern world?

In considering that question I have consulted Deirdre McCloskey’s book The Bourgeois Virtues (2007).

Integrity isn’t listed specifically among either the four ancient cardinal virtues - prudence, courage, temperance and justice – or the three Christian virtues – faith, hope and love. McCloskey lists integrity as a sub-virtue of faith and, by listing honesty as a sub-virtue of justice, implicitly recognizes its connection to justice. However, integrity may be required for a person to acquire any of the virtues in a manner that is likely to enable her (or him) to do the right things, towards the right people, for the right end, and in the right way, and to take pleasure in so doing.

In order to explore that possibility, let us take a quick excursion to consider McCloskey’s perception of the virtues and what integrity involves in the context of each virtue.

Prudence (or practical wisdom):

McCloskey recognizes its importance, but is highly critical of the “prudence only” approach of schools of economic thought that have sought to equate individual flourishing with utility maximization.

In the context of practical wisdom, integrity implies reality-orientation, or a disposition to seek truth and understanding.

Courage:

McCloskey argues that courage needs to be balanced with temperance. She is somewhat critical of those who hold up the courage of ancient warriors as a relevant model for the modern world, but is also uneasy about the apparently lack of courage displayed by those in charge of a peace-keeping mission in Srebrenica in July 1995. She admires the courage of those who undertake new ventures and overcome fear of change.

Integrity helps people to act with the courage of their convictions.

Temperance:

McCloskey points out, for the benefit of confused psychologists, that it is temperance, not prudence, that is the virtue of controlling impulses. She notes that temperance is required to listen to customers and avoid temptations to cheat, as well as to save and accumulate wealth.

It is relatively easy for a person to decide to become more temperate in some contexts, but integrity is required to stay on course.

Justice:

McCloskey notes that just conduct involves, among other things, respect for property honestly acquired, paying willingly for good work and breaking down privilege.

Integrity is closely connected with justice, because both integrity and justice require individuals to be honourable and trustworthy in their dealings with others.

Faith:

McCloskey suggests that the relevance of faith is not confined to people who have religious beliefs. In support, she quotes Stephen Barr, a physicist, who suggests that when we ask questions about the real world, we have faith that those questions have answers. She also explains the connection between faithfulness and integrity, in the context of adhering to one’s commitments. She notes the Aristotelian tradition of ethics as a matter of habit and character, and Adam Smith’s account of the role of the impartial spectator, as a behaviourally instilled internal voice of conscience.  

It seems to me that integrity is also required as mature individuals exercise their personal responsibility to decide whether an annoying spectator, that was installed within as a default setting during their childhood, is consistent with their own values.

Hope:

McCloskey writes: “Hope is of course essential for eternal life, and for humdrum life, too, as one can see from the lethargy that comes over a human who, as we say, ‘has nothing to look forward to’.” Hope involves expectation as well as a wish for something good to happen.

Integrity helps steer us toward realistic optimism and away from the hazards of wishful thinking.

Love:

McCloskey is critical of major schools of thought within economics that have viewed love in the same way as other goods, by putting the beloved’s utility into the lover’s utility function, along with ice cream etc. She points out that this implies prudence only, and is contrary to the approach of Adam Smith, the founder of economics, who recognized that people seek a balanced set of virtues, including love. Smith wrote approvingly about benevolence and of “the great law of Christianity” requiring us “to love our neighbour as we love ourselves” Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759, 25 (5).

Integrity is required to ensure that love offerings are made with a pure heart and not subsequently confused with obligations for provision of reciprocal benefits.

Bottom line

Traditional virtues can help us to be both good and happy, but we require integrity if we are to do the right thing, at the right time, and for the right reasons.

How did beliefs about individual rights travel from Cicero to Locke?

This rather long post follows on from one in which I asked how we got from natural law to natural rights. In case you are wondering, the “we” referred to are people who currently have relatively broad scope to exercise natural rights to liberty. 

I concluded the preceding post by suggesting that many of the ingredients of John Locke’s view of liberty and natural rights, enunciated in the 17^th century, were already present in Cicero’s account of natural law from the 1^st century BC.

This post is about the ways in which beliefs about individual rights were transmitted, or evolved, over time. When people think about the transmission or evolution of beliefs and shared values it is common to have in mind a process in which books and other media are maintained or rediscovered, and thinkers reject or build on the premises of the reasoning of those who came before.

However, transmission and evolution of beliefs about individual rights can also occur as people observe the spontaneous evolution of rules of just conduct and social norms. It is possible for such evolution to occur spontaneously as “the result of human action but not human design” (to use an expression coined by Adam Ferguson, but much loved by Friedrich Hayek). Evolution of the English common law is often cited as an example of that process.

How much can be explained in terms of the spontaneous evolution of rules?

Hayek began his discussion on the classical and medieval tradition of the evolution of law by noting that even in the height of democracy in ancient Athens it was not possible to alter the rules of just conduct by a simple decree of the assembly. A change could only be brought about through a complicated procedure involving a specially elected body (Law, Legislation and Liberty (LLL), V1, p82). He also notes that classical Roman civil law was almost entirely the product of law-finding by jurists rather than legislation. (See the preceding post for Cicero’s quoting of Cato in support of that view. Hayek included that quote in Constitution of Liberty, p57). The famous law code of the Emperor Justinian was largely a collection of past laws and extracts of the opinions of Roman jurists.

Hayek argues that in the early medieval period, for about 1,000 years, law was again regarded as something to be discovered, not made. He quotes Fritz Kern:

“There is in the Middle Ages, no such thing as the ‘first application of a legal rule’. Law is old; new law is a contradiction in terms; for either new law is derived explicitly or implicitly from the old, or it conflicts with the old, in which case it is not lawful” (LLL, V1 p 83).

Larry Siedentop describes how the Christian church created canon law in the 12^th century by sifting through Roman law to establish which rules were compatible with Christian beliefs. Canon law covered aspects of private and criminal law including usury as well as marriage, adultery and divorce. Siedentop comments:

“Little wonder that at times civil lawyers felt their domain was under threat” (Inventing the Individual, p 212).

Hayek notes that from the 13^th century onwards, law making on the European continent gradually came to be regarded as an act of the will of the ruler. He suggests that was associated with the rise of absolute monarchy. England managed to preserve the medieval ‘liberties’, because of “a deeply entrenched tradition of common law” under which jurists “had developed conceptions somewhat similar to those of the natural law tradition” (LLL, V1, p 84-5). Hayek mentions the contribution of Edward Coke in defending the common law tradition against King James I and Francis Bacon, that of Mathew Hale in opposition to Thomas Hobbes.

That account almost takes us to John Locke. In his discussion of natural rights, Locke does not seem to have acknowledged the relevance to his views of the common law of England. However, as noted by Stephen Shepherd, Locke left evidence that he had read Coke and that he was influenced by near contemporaries, who had learned the law from Coke and the common lawyers. Shepherd also points out that Locke’s account of property rights has parallels in the common law (‘The Common Law and the Constitution’, American Society of Legal History, November 2005).

Spontaneous evolution via legal processes can explain how many ideas about natural rights evolved and persisted, but has limited capacity to explain recognition of natural rights of people who haven’t had standing in the courts. Judges can only discover individual rights in respect of cases that are brought before them. For example, the famous case (Somerset v Stewart) in which Lord Mansfield found slavery to be unsupported by the common law of England was decided in 1772 (many years after Locke died). The case was heard because Somerset's three godparents, from his baptism as a Christian in England, made application to the court on his behalf. Lord Mansfield narrowly limited his judgment to the issue of whether a person, regardless of being a slave, could be removed from England against their will, and said they could not.

A more fundamental limitation of spontaneous evolution of natural rights arose because in medieval times the common law was constrained by the influence of church authorities. For example, English common lawyers conceded jurisdiction to the church courts in relation to usury, defined then as "whatsoever is taken for a loan beyond the principal". The common law courts did not protect the rights of individuals to engage in mutually beneficial arrangements to borrow and lend money.

In order to understand the evolution of rules in relation to matters such as usury it is necessary to consider the evolution of reasoning about natural law.

How was Locke influenced by the evolution of reasoning about natural law?

Locke attributes the view that all are created equal “with no-one being subjected to or subordinate to anyone else” to Richard Hooker (1554-1600), an influential theologian in the Church of England:

“The judicious Richard· Hooker regards this natural equality of men as so obvious and unquestionable that he bases on it men’s obligation to love one another, on which he builds their duties towards each other, from which, in turn, he derives the great maxims of justice and charity”.

Such views are, of course, central to Christianity. By mentioning Richard Hooker, however, Locke was indicating that he wanted to link his views to the symbolism of natural law which, as Linda Raeder has observed, was “a well-developed tradition of Western moral and political discourse”:

“The symbol was first advanced by the ancient Greeks, impressively elaborated by the Roman Stoics (most notably the Roman orator Cicero [106-43 B.C.]), and later incorporated into the Christian tradition as the “unwritten” law embedded in the heart of man and similar constructs. During the Middle Ages Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), the “Angelic Doctor,” provided Christian civilization with a philosophical elaboration of the natural law that remains a characteristic element of Roman Catholic teaching to the present day” (The Nature and Purpose of Government, A Lockean View, 2017, p25).

As Larry Siedentop has pointed out, some leaders of the early Christian church recognised freedom of religion. Tertullian (c 155 – c 240) argued that “it is a basic human right that everyone should be free to worship according to his own convictions” (Inventing the Individual, 2015, p 78). Unfortunately, many of the church leaders who followed did not recognise such basic human rights.

Augustine (354 – 430) acknowledged the ethical significance of free will, and tried to strike a balance between fatalism and the belief that individuals could achieve salvation by their own efforts. He emphasised that it is important for individual Christians to develop a moral perspective, or conscience, and argued that it was the task of the church to try to create and tend consciences. Augustine’s emphasis on the importance of conscience set the scene for theologians who came much later to recognise freedom of conscience.

In the 9^th century, Eriugena, an Irishman, known by his contemporaries as John the
Scot, produced a vigorous defence of free will against those who claimed the authority of Augustine for their view that “predestination applies both to good and bad” (Darrin McMahon, Happiness: A History, 2006, pp 110 – 112).

Research by Brian Tierney (discussed in Larry Siedentop’s book, pp 245-9) found the idea of natural rights to be present in 12^th century canon law. Important contributions, including those of Rufinus, Odo of Dover and Hugguccio, led to a range of individual rights – overlapping those recognised by jurists in ancient Rome - being defended in terms of natural justice.

   

Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274) gave some recognition to freedom of conscience. He acknowledged that under some circumstances a person is justified in acting in accordance with an erring conscience, even if this entails disobeying the state. Nevertheless, he defended persecution of religious heretics.

Aquinas made an important contribution to liberty in recognising that laws exist primarily to enforce the rules of justice, rather than to make human beings virtuous (George H Smith, The System of Liberty, 2013 p 91).

Arguably, Aquinas’ most important contribution to liberty came indirectly via his Christianisation of the teachings of Aristotle. Aquinas argued that individuals can attain some happiness in this world through their natural capacity for contemplation of (religious) truth. Darrin McMahon suggests:

“Aquinas’s opening up of a space in which ‘some partial happiness can be achieved in this life’ continued a process of restoring agency to the individual that had received impetus from the work of Eriugena and others during the Carolingian Renaissance” (op. cit. pp 129 – 131).

In the 13^th century, John Duns Scotus argued that “an act is neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy unless it proceeds from the free will” and, in the 14 the century, William of Ockham associated reason with individual experience and choice, and saw ‘right reason’ as obligated by principles of equality and reciprocity. (I wrote about Duns Scotus and Ockham in my review of Siedentop’s book.)

In the 16^th century, the late Spanish scholastics made important contributions to recognition of natural rights. Murray Rothbard highlighted the role of Francisco de Vitoria (c 1450 – 1514) who denounced the conquest and enslavement of the Indians of the New World (Economic Thought Before AdamSmith: An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, V1, p 102). Rothbard also notes that some of those who followed Vitoria in the Salamanca school, made important contributions in defining circumstances in which the charging interest on loans was acceptable. Juan de Mariana (1536 – 1624) was the forebear of John Locke’s theory of popular consent. He held that in transferring their original political power from a state of nature to a king, the people reserved important rights, including rights concerning taxation, vetoing laws and reclaiming political power (Rothbard, op cit, pp 117-119).

 

A recent book by Ángel Fernández Álvarez points out the striking similarities between Locke’s Two Treatises on Government (1689) and Mariana’s On the King and the Royal Institution (1599). Fernández points to evidence that Locke had read Mariana’s books and that he and Mariana had the same position on the origin of property in work as well as the similar views on natural rights mentioned above.

What about Spinoza?

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was a Jewish-Dutch philosopher whose views were influential, but difficult for his contemporaries to cite. In the 17^th century, being accused of being a Spinozist was apparently as hazardous for an author’s claim to have views worthy of consideration as being accused to be an atheist. Spinoza held that there is only a single substance, which may be called either God or Nature, raising the issue of whether he was a pantheist, an atheist, or a "God-intoxicated man".(Anthony Kenny, A New History of Western Philosophy, p 550, 552).

The similarity between many of the views of John Locke and Spinoza has been noted by Wim Klever (Locke’s Disguised Spinozism). Spinoza argued:

“Inward worship of God and piety in itself are within the sphere of everyone's private rights, and cannot be alienated.”

Spinoza held that such “opinions fall within a man's natural right, which he cannot abdicate even with his own consent” (George H Smith, The System of Liberty, 2013, p91).

Conclusion

Beliefs and values supporting natural rights of individuals to life, property and liberty seem to have travelled from Cicero to Locke through both the spontaneous evolution of rules and evolution of reasoning about the natural law. Those different transmission processes interacted. There were periods when reasoning about natural law held back recognition of individual rights to participate in mutually beneficial activities e.g. lending and borrowing. Eventually, however, reasoning about natural law reinforced and extended individual rights recognised under common law.

Are values opposed to virtues?

In an article recently published in “The Australian”, Peter Kurti, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, noted:

“Unease is growing in Australia that something has changed for the worse in our live-and-let-live culture”.

The context of his comment is the “opprobrium and venom” that dissent from “prevailing new orthodoxies” about gender and sexual orientation seems to attract. The author suggests this has contributed to “the sense that the common bonds of civility that helped to build mutual trust in our society are under strain”.

I concur with those sentiments. They are consistent with views recently expressed on this blog: Does Israel Folau deserve support from advocates of free speech?

However, the headline of Kurti’s article “Israel Folau: Moral compass all askew as virtue is eclipsed by values” seems to me to be codswallop. Unfortunately, the headline accurately reflects Kurti’s explanation for the fracturing of our culture in terms of what he describes as “the eclipse of virtue by values”.

It is difficult to see how values can be opposed to virtues in terms of common usage of those terms in discussions of ethics. The Concise Oxford defines the terms as follows:

Virtue: “moral excellence, uprightness, goodness”; “the seven cardinal virtues”.

Value: “one’s principles or standards, one’s judgement of what is valuable or important in life”.

Kurti makes values appear to be opposed to virtues by claiming that values “are simply emotional statements about personal beliefs, feelings or attitudes”. He claims that values “cannot be normative because it is impossible to erect any shared meaning on the foundation of something that is personal and subjective”.

Those claims are clearly incorrect. For example, when Friedrich Hayek writes about the “values of a free civilization” he is not referring merely to emotional statements about personal beliefs, feelings or attitudes. What Hayek and others have written about shared values is clearly closely related to norms of behaviour.

Kurti doesn’t seem to recognise the existence of shared values. His constructivist perspective, evident in use of the term “erect” when discussing the possibility of shared meaning, has apparently made it impossible for him to comprehend that the common values of an open and free society could evolve spontaneously as individuals pursue what is important in their lives.

Perhaps what Kurti was intending to convey is that the common bonds of civility are fracturing because people are increasingly adopting personal beliefs, feelings and attitudes that are inconsistent with common bonds of civility. So, why does he seek to discredit values language?

I was hoping that question might be answered by reading Kurti’s recently published CIS paper, entitled Cracking Up? Culture and the Displacement of Virtue. No such luck! In that paper, Gertrude Himmelfarb and Iain Benson are quoted as asserting that values language rejects the idea of shared moral goods, but they are no less wrong about that than Peter Kurti.

I agree with much of what Kurti writes about the importance of the traditional virtues. However, when Kurti refers to virtues he is referring only to the traditional virtues. I think that poses a problem for him. He claims “prevailing new orthodoxies” exist, so he must surely acknowledge that the people who subscribe to those new orthodoxies see political correctness as a virtue.

In my view it is probably an overstatement to claim that the new orthodoxies are “prevailing”. But it is impossible to deny that there has been a shift in what many people perceive to be virtuous that is inextricably linked to a shift in their values.

There is a more fundamental problem is asserting that cracks appearing in our live-and-let-live culture can be mended by appealing to the traditional virtues. The traditional virtues have been acknowledged for thousands of years, but our live-and-let-live culture has only recently evolved.  Freedom of religion has had a firm legal basis in only a few countries for only a couple of centuries. The idea that members of minority religions should not be discriminated against has been a widely shared value and accepted norm of behaviour for less than a century in most western countries, including Australia. Our live-and-let-live culture, with harmonious collaboration between people of different religions, ethnic backgrounds and gender in work and community organisations, has only been in existence for a few decades, despite the lip service paid to civility in earlier times. Live-and-let-live has been inclusive of LGBT people for an even shorter period.

The shared values underlying our live-and-let-live culture include freedom of expression, tolerance and politeness.  The norms of behaviour associated with these shared values enable people to obtain mutual benefit from working, playing sport and socializing with people whose attitudes and behaviours they disagree with, and in some instances may even consider to be immoral.

The main threat to our live-and-let-live culture comes from those who insist that to enhance social harmony people should exercise much greater restraint in what they say and publish to avoid the possibility of giving offence to members of the religious, ethnic, gender and LGBT groups pandered to by identity politics. This gives rise to the potential for a return to tribal values as members of an increasing number of individual groups abandon shared values and threaten social disharmony in order to redress perceived disadvantages or to obtain advantages over others. 

The most obvious and straight forward way to avoid a return to tribal values is for supporters of our live-and-let-live culture to make their views heard whenever the shared values of that culture come under threat from those who take offence unreasonably. A return to tribal values can be avoided if enough people of goodwill continue to support the rights of others to express views they disagree with.