Does stasis now make more sense than dynamism?

It is now about 18 years since Virginia Postrel suggested in The Future and Its Enemies that our political, intellectual and cultural landscape was increasingly being defined by “stasis” and “dynamism”:

“How we feel about the evolving future tells us who we are as individuals and as a civilization: Do we search for stasis – a regulated, engineered world? Or do we embrace dynamism – a world of constant creation, discovery, and competition?”

The author was writing about the United States, but the ideas in her book have much wider application. The old political divisions seem to breaking down all over the world. On many issues there is not much political distance between social reactionaries, green reactionaries and technocrats. The social reactionaries yearn for the kind of world our parents lived in, green reactionaries yearn for a premodern society and technocrats fear change that is not managed by governments. They all see virtue in government regulation of innovation. As a result, we see strange alliances forming on issues such as fracking.

By contrast, dynamists share beliefs in a spontaneous order. They emphasize individual flourishing and individual responsibility, and the possibilities for progress that emerge when people are free to experiment and learn. They care about “protecting the processes that allow an open-ended future to unfold”.

Virginia suggested that dynamists don’t yet share a political identity. She notes that they may view themselves as libertarian, progressive, liberal or conservative. That still seems to be true. Many dynamists eschew politics. Of those who take an interest in politics, people who see themselves as libertarians or classical liberals would have least objection to being labelled as dynamists - if they understand what the label is intended to mean.

Misunderstanding of the meaning of ‘dynamist’ might be a problem. To the uninitiated, the word could appear to refer to history’s hastening agents who seek to activate what they perceive as ‘historical forces’ to achieve a particular vision of future society. I can’t think of a positive word that adequately captures the idea of allowing an open-ended future to emerge. A new word might be required: e.g. ‘catallaxist’ - a believer in catallaxy, or spontaneous order.

Advances in technology have helped those who believe in spontaneous order to achieve some important victories over the last 18 years. For example, the emergence of services such as Uber are helping to break down regulation protecting incumbent service providers.

Yet, on balance, it looks to me as though the stasists have been winning the economic policy debate. In the aftermath of the GFC, deregulation has often been perceived as a cause of economic crisis, overlooking the effects of the regulatory environment in encouraging some financial institutions to believe that they were too big to be allowed to fail. The actions of some leaders of the economics profession in distancing themselves from market liberalisation policies has lent weight to populist demands for a return of stasist policy prescriptions.

As I see it, identifying myself as a believer in spontaneous order does not involve an ideological commitment never to advocate government intervention under any circumstances. It has to do with where the onus of proof should lie. In the case of migration, for example, I would argue that the onus should be on those favouring restrictions on international movement of people to justify why such restrictions should exist. It is argued that free international movement of people is incompatible with welfare systems in which immigrants can qualify for social assistance, but it is not obvious why immigrants should qualify for social assistance.  A more persuasive argument immigration restrictions can possibly be mounted in terms of potentially adverse social consequences of a large influx of migrants with different cultural traditions.

Similar considerations apply in relation to new technology. It is easy to mount a persuasive argument for regulatory restrictions on access to nuclear technology, but that is obviously an extreme example. Some statists have argued that innovations in home entertainment should be regulated to avoid adverse social impacts, but they imply that individuals are not capable of learning how to make sensible decisions for themselves and their families about use of new technology. Some of us had difficulty in making good decisions about use of our leisure time following the introduction of television, but that is not a powerful argument for the government to make such decisions for us. Of course, as suggested by Daniel Lattier, we have a responsibility to learn to use technology wisely, i.e., temperately. Similar considerations have applied in many aspects of life, e.g. food, beverages, sex, since ancient times.

How should we view decisions about whether to enhance brain power with neural lace? I ended a recent post on this topic suggesting that neural lace will not be worth having unless it can be developed in such a way as to enable humans to protect the privacy, autonomy and responsibility that is integral to their individual flourishing. I should have added that the decision to have a neural lace implant will be best left for individuals to make for themselves. Anyone wants to argue that choosing to use some particular form of neural lace would be tantamount to selling oneself into slavery, is of course free to try to make a case for regulation or prohibition.

My reading about potential consequences of artificial intelligence (see blog posts here and here) has left me feeling somewhat more cautious about new technology, but that does not mean that stasis now makes more sense than dynamism. Virginia makes some relevant points. She acknowledges: “the open-ended future can be genuinely scary, the turmoil it creates genuinely painful”. However, she follows with the observation:

“Statist prescriptions … stifle the very processes through which people improve their lives – from the invention of new medical treatments to the creation of art. In their quest for stability, statists make society brittle, vulnerable to all sorts of disasters”.

Like other technological innovations, the advent of super-intelligent machines has potential to expand the possibilities for human flourishing. It will also expand the range of technology by which the flourishing of individual humans could be threatened by other entities, including governments.  New technology will not alter the fundamental principle of liberalism and that adult individuals should be free to flourish as they choose, provided they do not interfere with the rights of others.

Does individual human flourishing require entrepreneurial qualities?

Source: Gifts for professionals

When I was young it seemed possible for most people in relatively high income countries to choose a career suited to their personal abilities and inclinations, obtain the qualifications necessary to pursue that career and then look forward to working in the same occupation until their retirement. It seemed possible for people to plan their lives around stable career paths, in order to obtain the optimal combination of income, interesting work, job security, or whatever else they were seeking. Educational opportunities depended to a larger extent on wealth and/or ability, and career opportunities for women were more restricted that at present. Nevertheless, everyone who applied themselves diligently was predicted to end up having a successful career.

From an individual's perspective, such predictions were always problematic. For one reason or another, some people were more successful than predicted. Others made mistakes in their career choices and either changed paths, or came to perceive themselves as square pegs trying to fit into round holes. There was always a lot of adjustment going on in the labour market as people moved between firms and industries in search of better opportunities, or as a result of retrenchments. Most people ended up with satisfying careers, but some didn’t.

These days there is much greater uncertainty about whether young people will be able to pursue the careers they prepare for, even though educational opportunities are more widely available. Predictions can be made about the kinds of skills that are likely to be in demand in future (see, for example a post I wrote last year on this question) but we cannot be confident that any particular academic pursuits (including STEM subjects) will necessarily produce the skills that potential employers might want.  Acquiring useful skills and obtaining rewarding employment seems to be becoming more akin to an entrepreneurial process of discovering and gearing up to supply a market niche.

In thinking about the process of skill acquisition and job search it may be helpful to reflect upon Israel Kirzner’s view of the way entrepreneurial decision-making differs from economizing decision-making i.e. efficient use of known means to achieve known ends. Kirzner notes that entrepreneurial decision-making requires a posture of alertness:

‘In addition to the exploitation of perceived opportunities, purposive human action involves a posture of alertness toward the discovery of as yet unperceived opportunities and their exploitation. This element in human action – the alertness toward new valuations with respect to ends, new availability of means – may be termed the entrepreneurial element in the individual decision’ (Perception,Opportunity and Profit, p 109).

Of course, occupations are just one aspect of life. How does the forgoing discussion relate to the question I asked at the outset was about human flourishing? Is it reasonable to argue that the entrepreneurial alertness discussed by Kirzner is an important component of the practical wisdom required for individual human flourishing?

In my view, Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen make a strong case for that in their recently book, The Perfectionist Turn, aspects of which have been briefly discussed in the last two posts on this blog (here and here). After acknowledging Kirzner’s insights, the authors suggest that just as entrepreneurship involves a discovery process, so too does human flourishing. This is contrary to the view of people who imply that pursuit of our final end in life is merely an optimisation process:

‘Knowing what our end is, so it is said, will leave us only the task of utilizing the means at our disposal to effectively achieve that end. Yet, as we have tried to show in our various discussions of freedom and self-direction, our end of a perfecting or flourishing life is not like one of using known resources in their most effective manner. Rather the perfecting is more like discovering means available to such an end that are as yet unknown, or only partly known, to us. Moreover, once those means are discovered, it is equally mistaken to suppose that efficient usage is the only remaining challenge. Because perfecting or flourishing is not a passive state but an activity, there is virtually a constant reassessment of the adequacy and appropriateness of the means; this, as a consequence, suggests openness and alertness to new opportunities amidst changing circumstances. Finally, optimization suggests efficiency along only one dimension, but flourishing (at least in our view) is inclusive of multiple dimensions’ (p 287-8).

While such observations about the qualities required for individual human flourishing would probably have been as relevant in ancient Greece as they are today, we are helped to comprehend them by a sympathetic understanding of the qualities required for successful entrepreneurship. 

Can I maintain the view that human flourishing is the exercise of practical wisdom whilst remaining a fan of the social intuitionist model of ethics?

Source: Gifts for Professionals

If you want to understand individual human flourishing it is desirable to study the contributions of different academic disciplines. That is how I justify the eclectic approach adopted on this blog. That raises the possibility, however, that the views I find persuasive from different disciplines could sometimes be irreconcilable.

The above question arose because I am attracted to the view of individual human flourishing, as the exercise of practical wisdom within a teleological process. This view was presented by Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen (hereafter referred to for brevity as D&D) in their recently published book, The Perfectionist Turn, which I have not long finished reading. The teleological (developmental) aspect was discussed briefly in my last post.

I have previously been persuaded that the social intuitionist model, presented by Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind, seems to pretty well fit known facts about moral reasoning. Haidt observes:

‘Moral reasoning is part of our lifelong struggle to win friends and influence people. That’s why I say that “intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.” You’ll misunderstand moral reasoning if you think about it as something people do by themselves in order to figure out the truth’ (p 49).

On first appearances, it does look as though it might be difficult to be a fan of both social intuitionism and D&D’s philosophical approach:

‘Succinctly stated, human flourishing is understood by us to mean “the exercise of one’s practical wisdom.” (p 33)

Again:

‘Practical wisdom, as understood in our account, is the central integrating virtue of a good human life’ (p 57).

However, Haidt also recognizes the role of practical wisdom. He uses the metaphor of a rider and an elephant to discuss the relationship between moral reasoning and intuitions. The rider represents reason and the elephant represents intuition. As well as performing a public relations function in explaining and justifying the elephant’s actions, the rider can also help the elephant to reach its goals and avoid disaster because it can look further into the future and learn new skills.

As previously discussed on this blog, I think Haidt’s rider and elephant metaphor is much more realistic than Plato’s metaphor in which reason, the ‘human charioteer’, controls the dumb beasts of passion.

Haidt’s social intuitionist approach recognizes that the rider evolved to serve the elephant. It explains why people tend to have strong gut feelings about what is right or wrong, which they maintain even when they struggle to construct justifications for those feelings. Importantly, however, Haidt also recognizes that the rider is responsible for training the elephant. He suggests in his earlier book, The Happiness Hypothesis that ‘virtue resides in a well-trained elephant’:

‘The rider must take part in the training, but if moral instruction imparts only explicit knowledge (facts that the rider can state), it will have no effect on the elephant, and therefore little effect on behavior. Moral education must also impart tacit knowledge – skills of social perception and social emotion so finely tuned that one automatically feels the right thing in each situation, knows the right thing to do, and then wants to do it. Morality, for the ancients, was a kind of practical wisdom’ (p 160).

D&D argue that practical wisdom has three dimensions: the effective and excellent use of practical reason (the intellectual faculty used for guiding conduct); the development of character; and self-understanding. The authors view self-understanding as particularly important:

 ‘In sum, self-understanding is at the centre of practical wisdom because one’s self is, finally, the object of ethical reflection; and to reflect well is what it means to perfect one’s self’.

As D&D explain it, making norms of behaviour one’s own involves more than choosing to accept them. It involves self-realization – realization of their value given one’s own dispositions and circumstances, and the contribution they make to one’s own personal development.

How should we view Haidt’s moral foundation theory in the light of the role of practical wisdom in individual human flourishing? Haidt and his colleagues have identified moral foundations by connecting the adaptive challenges of life that evolutionary psychologists frequently wrote about to the virtues that are found in some form in many cultures.

They have identified six moral foundations:

·         Care/harm makes us sensitive to signs of suffering and need.

·         Fairness/cheating is concerned with reciprocity. It makes us sensitive to issues relating to trustworthiness, opportunism and punishment.

·         Loyalty/betrayal makes us sensitive to group interests.

·         Authority/subversion makes us sensitive to issues relating to rank and status.

·         Liberty/oppression makes people notice and resent signs of attempted domination by bullies and tyrants.

·         Sanctity/degradation evolved to help us meet the challenge of living in a world of pathogens and parasites. It makes it possible to invest objects with irrational and extreme values, which in turn helps to bind groups together.

Stemming from the preceding discussion about self-understanding, one point that could be made about moral foundation theory is that it might be useful for readers of this blog to do the test at yourmorals.org, and reflect on the results. I was surprised by the results when I did the test a few years ago.

Finally, it seems to me that an important moral foundation is currently missing from the list. It is still universally (I hope) considered a virtue for individuals to accept responsibility for realizing their potential or, to use more ancient language, developing their own talents and abilities.   

How can we know what we ought to do?

Dear readers, I would like you to consider a particular approach to the question of how we can know what we ought to do. I have used James’ reasoning about whether or not he is a good person in order to illustrate this approach. In case you are wondering, James is a figment of my imagination.

When you ask James whether he is a good person, he says he would like to think of himself as a good person, but he is not as good as he would like to be. He will tell you that he doesn’t claim to be righteous, but neither does he pursue his own pleasure without regard to other people and the norms of the society in which he lives. He says he is happy most of the time, satisfied with his life as a whole, and his conscience does not trouble him much.

James has been fairly successful in his life so far. He was moderately successful in sporting and academic pursuits. He is a friendly person and his relationships with other people are generally cordial. He loves his family. His marriage might not be blissful, but it has survived longer than the marriages of most of his friends. He has been a dependable and caring father to his children, but regrets not spending more time with them while they were young. James has pursued a successful career, which has been a source of great satisfaction to him.

James has a healthy lifestyle. He says that this is about cultivating good habits rather than following a strict diet and exercise regime. He claims that having a healthy lifestyle is just a matter of being the person he has potential to be.

This idea of being the person he has potential to be seems to motivate James’ behaviour in many other aspects of his life including management of finances and work habits. James says that most of the time he can manage himself best by reminding himself of his aspirations and exercising a gentle discipline, rather than by setting detailed rules and attempting to use willpower to comply religiously. He likes the idea of being spontaneous. Nevertheless, he says that there are some lines that he will never cross in his personal behaviour. He regards himself as personally responsible for his conduct, but is inclined to listen politely when people disapprove – at least until he decides whether or not they should be told to mind their own business.

James has always perceived himself to have potential to express many of the traditional virtues. It has been integral to that perception for him to develop and make good use of his reasoning powers and self-knowledge, and to develop his own character in ways that he values. As well as temperance, he has shown a great deal of integrity and courage in many aspects of his life. He takes pride in being honest and trustworthy.

James is also kind. He has not sought a reputation for kindness. He objects to being told that he has an obligation to help those less fortunate than himself. He explains his altruism – he would not object to my use of that term – as being in his nature. His acts of kindness come from the heart, without him expecting anything in return, except for the people he helps to be willing to help themselves to the extent that they are able. He is not a “soft touch”.

James says that becoming a good person is like playing cards well. He says that rather than bemoaning the fact that you have not been dealt a better hand, it is better to maintain good humour and focus on how best to play the cards you have been dealt. You never think of cheating and you avoid playing with people who cheat. You like to win, but you participate mainly to enjoy the social interaction. Playing the game is also a learning experience. You learn how to perceive opportunities, develop strategies, cooperate with others, and to win and lose graciously. As you learn to play well you become a better person.

You might be surprised that the line of reasoning James employs in evaluating whether he is a good person is somewhat controversial among philosophers. I have constructed his line of reasoning so that it is broadly consistent with the ethics of responsibility as espoused by Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen in their new book, The Perfectionist Turn.

The “perfectionist turn” referred to in the title is a turn away from the ethics of respect, which views personal ethics in terms of norms of social interaction, toward the Neo-Aristotelian, eudaimonic, naturalistic ethics of responsibility. This is called “perfectionist” because it is grounded in a developmental (teleological) process which serves to orient a person towards her or his flourishing. The perfectionism referred to has nothing to do with the psychological usage of the word in terms of striving for flawlessness and setting excessively high performance standards.

The reason why many philosophers would suggest that James is confused in his explanation of the motives for his good behaviour is because it is teleological.  James seems to be committing the error of attempting to derive an “ought” from an “is” because he has not provided a reason why he ought to be the person that he has potential to be.

From my reading of The Perfectionist Turn, I think the authors would defend James' reasoning on the grounds that he is describing his natural inclination to engage in activities that constitute the actualization of his potential or his fulfillment. Awareness of his potential for flourishing provides James with reason and motivation, and is the basis on which he determines what he ought to do.

Some critics will probably suggest that if we view individual human flourishing as our measure of goodness we have no way to judge that a person like the great Mongol warrior and emperor, Genghis Khan, was not a good person. I am not sure whether Genghis Khan believed his military conquests were helping him to achieve his potential as a human, but it seems reasonable to argue that he was deluded if that was what he thought. The authors acknowledge that through lack of awareness or misapprehension of what their good consists of humans often make the wrong decisions. They have an Afterword in the book devoted to “big morality” and the potential for some individuals to do great harm, or great good. The thrust of their argument there is that it is to the particular individual soul that one must appeal in the final analysis because “it is the nature and quality of that particular soul which will produce the actions that are to become the objects of moral concern”.

However, the authors also note that the perfectionist turn “is not a turning away from metanorms”, which were the subject of their earlier book, Norms of Liberty (2005). As I see it, there will always be some deluded egocentric leaders who will need to be prevented from impeding the flourishing of other humans. Even the activities of rational self-directed humans seeking to flourish in their own way will sometimes clash with the activities of other rational self-directed humans. As Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen still acknowledge, we need a political/legal order that answers the questions that they asked in Norms of Liberty:

“how is it possible to have an ethical basis for an overall or general social/political context -a context that is open-ended or cosmopolitan - that will not require as a matter of principle, that one form of human flourishing be preferred to another? How, in other words, can the possibility that various forms of human flourishing will not be in structural conflict be achieved?”