Hope you don’t mind if a crazy person leaves a silly comment!
“Pride so deleterious to one’s chances of survival is ridiculous.”
Really? Even if you’re a utilitarian, there are obvious game theory reasons why you should want to have pride (even if this commits you to unreasonable actions in some eventualities). If it’s clear that you won’t put up with humiliation, a would-be exploiter can’t use your self-interest against you. This is, as a matter of empirical fact, the reason why people across cultures and income-levels are so difficult to exploit in an ultimatum game. If I know you’ll turn down an unfair split (even at great cost to yourself), I have an incentive to make a fairer offer.
Moreover, strategy aside, I find it hard to ridicule people who choose to die rather than disavow their most cherished values. This is not an obscure idea! Look at the treatment of martyrs in religious history. Or, to give an example from popular fiction (spoiler alert for Watchmen), think of how Rorschach chooses to be incinerated rather than step aside.
Maybe they’re making a subtle mistake, or maybe they got unlucky, having internalized a value that commits them to destructive actions in unfortunate circumstances. But “ridiculous”? I don’t see it.
It seems really important to be able to distinguish (i) a disposition's being useful in a specified circumstance, from (ii) its reflecting an accurate view of the normative landscape and the real underlying normative reasons.
To borrow Parfit's example of the threat-fulfillers and threat-ignorers, there can indeed be excellent game-theoretic reasons to transparently internalize an irrational threat-ignoring disposition (so the threat-fulfillers don't bother to threaten you). But, if a threat-fulfiller messes up and threatens to blow you both up if you don't shine their shoes, it would be objectively crazy for a moral theorist to reflectively endorse the prideful refusal that results in your death by explosion. We should recognize that there's a (not especially subtle) mistake happening here.
Very fair point. (Though not everyone would accept it—Gauthier comes to mind.)
But what do you say about the person who refuses to accept the unfair split in the Ultimatum Game? Are they simply making a mistake?
I think even a utilitarian might say they’re “rationally irrational” (to borrow Parfit’s term). That is to say, they could rationally endorse their disposition even as it forces them to make what would in isolation be considered irrational choices. Having the disposition is good from behind the veil. Not everyone disposition will be endorsable in this way, of course, but dispositions to tell the truth, punish transgressions, refuse humiliation, etc. have a long history of serving people well in real-world environments.
Depending on the details, such costly punishment may have high expected impartial value by training the other person to behave better towards others in future. If one's only goal were to maximize one's own in-game profit, then it would of course be irrational. But people rightly have other, less selfish goals.
But if we played a more "pure" Ultimatum Game with the devil to decide for how long the universe would continue to exist, then yeah, refusal of an "unfair" split (resulting in immediate annihilation rather than the devil's offer of at least *some* more time for humanity) would, I think, simply be a mistake, yes.
Edited to add: I endorse plenty of "sophisticated consequentialist" dispositions (that might look superficially similar to deontological norms) on these sorts of grounds, as explained more in posts like:
Hope you don’t mind if a crazy person leaves a silly comment!
“Pride so deleterious to one’s chances of survival is ridiculous.”
Really? Even if you’re a utilitarian, there are obvious game theory reasons why you should want to have pride (even if this commits you to unreasonable actions in some eventualities). If it’s clear that you won’t put up with humiliation, a would-be exploiter can’t use your self-interest against you. This is, as a matter of empirical fact, the reason why people across cultures and income-levels are so difficult to exploit in an ultimatum game. If I know you’ll turn down an unfair split (even at great cost to yourself), I have an incentive to make a fairer offer.
Moreover, strategy aside, I find it hard to ridicule people who choose to die rather than disavow their most cherished values. This is not an obscure idea! Look at the treatment of martyrs in religious history. Or, to give an example from popular fiction (spoiler alert for Watchmen), think of how Rorschach chooses to be incinerated rather than step aside.
Maybe they’re making a subtle mistake, or maybe they got unlucky, having internalized a value that commits them to destructive actions in unfortunate circumstances. But “ridiculous”? I don’t see it.
It seems really important to be able to distinguish (i) a disposition's being useful in a specified circumstance, from (ii) its reflecting an accurate view of the normative landscape and the real underlying normative reasons.
To borrow Parfit's example of the threat-fulfillers and threat-ignorers, there can indeed be excellent game-theoretic reasons to transparently internalize an irrational threat-ignoring disposition (so the threat-fulfillers don't bother to threaten you). But, if a threat-fulfiller messes up and threatens to blow you both up if you don't shine their shoes, it would be objectively crazy for a moral theorist to reflectively endorse the prideful refusal that results in your death by explosion. We should recognize that there's a (not especially subtle) mistake happening here.
Very fair point. (Though not everyone would accept it—Gauthier comes to mind.)
But what do you say about the person who refuses to accept the unfair split in the Ultimatum Game? Are they simply making a mistake?
I think even a utilitarian might say they’re “rationally irrational” (to borrow Parfit’s term). That is to say, they could rationally endorse their disposition even as it forces them to make what would in isolation be considered irrational choices. Having the disposition is good from behind the veil. Not everyone disposition will be endorsable in this way, of course, but dispositions to tell the truth, punish transgressions, refuse humiliation, etc. have a long history of serving people well in real-world environments.
Depending on the details, such costly punishment may have high expected impartial value by training the other person to behave better towards others in future. If one's only goal were to maximize one's own in-game profit, then it would of course be irrational. But people rightly have other, less selfish goals.
But if we played a more "pure" Ultimatum Game with the devil to decide for how long the universe would continue to exist, then yeah, refusal of an "unfair" split (resulting in immediate annihilation rather than the devil's offer of at least *some* more time for humanity) would, I think, simply be a mistake, yes.
Edited to add: I endorse plenty of "sophisticated consequentialist" dispositions (that might look superficially similar to deontological norms) on these sorts of grounds, as explained more in posts like:
- https://www.goodthoughts.blog/p/naive-instrumentalism-vs-principled
- https://www.goodthoughts.blog/p/deontic-fictionalism
(But I think it's really important that they be grounded in, with their normative force conditional upon, actually serving the impartial good.)
Is "Never Let Me Go" your favourite romantic comedy?