Dmitry Chernikov’s Blog

Happiness is virtuous use of one’s own powers. This covers both acting-toward-rest and acting-while-at-rest, as both presuppose a power in some righteous act. But I want to consider a particular kind of happiness, namely happiness in active life. This happiness depends crucially on the four cardinal virtues. Its first part therefore is living according to (sophisticated) rule utilitarianism. One must (1) fear and follow the law created (4) prudently, in the service to producing best consequences. Its second part may be called true-to-oneself opportunism. One must (2) be a master tactician and adapt to change but do so (3) without compromising but rather in order to enhance his integrity.

The SJ Guardian weapon is contempt; the NF Idealist weapon is temptation. In competent hands they are deadly. Of course, they can be used for evil as well as good. If used for evil, we can summarize them in the character of the devil who is a

In considering when these weapons are used for good, punishments is normally the wrong place to look. For example, in deterring offenses we do not lie; on the contrary, we carefully structure punishments to minimize overall crime (that is, violence, including the violence inflicted by the state on the criminals, and fraud), and we make them known to everybody. (But it is surely admissible to lie in order to deter a criminal for the sake of his victims from even trying to stray.) Similarly, in attempting to rehabilitate an offender we do not, at least at first, tempt him to commit further crimes; on the contrary, we supply noble goals for him to achieve. (But if a thief is thinking about stealing a car, then stealing is a temptation to him. If he overcomes it and refuses to go along with his criminal inclinations, then he will become a better person and maybe even hang up his thieving gloves for good. Here temptation is used legitimately.) In using their weapons for good, then, we can summarize each temperament’s strategy as follows:

There are four theories of punishment, but only the Artisan theory inflicts violence on a person, condemning him to greater or lesser extent. Each “weapon” can be used judiciously for its one corresponding purpose out of four.

Just as violence is an SP Artisan weapon, so deception is an NT Rational weapon. Just as self-defense is permitted violence, even given the libertarian non-aggression principle, so lying is, too, a form of self-defense. Theoretically, deceiving can even work as punishment, as you watch the person punished fail at his projects. Just as in martial arts it is best to avoid fighting altogether, and when forced to fight, damage the opponent only to the extent sufficient to neutralize him, it is the best policy always to tell the truth. But some people do not deserve the truth. Thus, a murderer seeking his victim can be legitimately misled as to the victim’s location. Just as a person becomes a good fighter through rigorous training, so one presumably can become a good liar by practicing in safe environments. Again, lying is a skill that ought only to be used in legitimate defense of oneself or another. However, I expect that just as some people have adopted pacifism as their philosophy, so others will swear never to utter a lie.

Now utilitarianism seeks to promote happiness, but the best way to do so is to teach people how to accomplish their own goals. As I have mentioned numerous times in my posts on religion, not even God can dispense with our own strivings. We must make ourselves and earn our own glory or shame. Paternalism is not a way to happiness. So, before filling a society with happiness, one must needs “fill it with truth” and enable people to make their own decisions through knowledge of this truth. Consider that the price system is means of conveying truth to market participants on the supply and demand of goods and services. Socialism destroys this truth-telling system. As I write here, “A socialist country does not have an economy; its central planners operate in the dark, unaware of how their actions affect other human beings.” The planners are blind; they have no information on how to choose rationally. As such, socialism is profoundly immoral, because people in it can’t tell when their self-interested undertakings, if successful, are going to be in the interest of the common good. Further, it is certainly in the interest of general happiness to help most people achieve their goals, but, since the punishment theory peculiar to NTs is deterrence, it is equally in this interest to hinder criminals’ attempts to achieve their goals, and potential evildoers who are contemplating some criminal act must be carefully manipulated and steered into choosing more productive ways of earning a living.

The first step to becoming a good utilitarian, then, is to know yourself and avoid any and all self-deceptions. The second step is to communicate your knowledge to others by teaching them the truth about whatever area you have mastered. The third step is to know when to tell the truth and when to lie, and if you choose to lie, do it with deadly consequences for your enemy, just as gun experts normally recommend shooting to kill in a dangerous confrontation with an aggressor, though if one is very good at shooting, he can try to minimize the damage to his enemy. The final step, if you are called to it, is to rule prudently not only yourself but others, as well.

Yeager considers a case of evil preferences, such as that “Mr A would relish gloating over an enemy’s misfortune, which in fact has occurred. Is it desirable that A should learn about it and reap his enjoyment? One might answer ‘no’ on the grounds that A’s malicious pleasure will impair his character and his capacity for future enjoyment, or that it will worsen the tone of society. A is about to die, however, so harm to his character is irrelevant. Furthermore, no one else will learn of his malicious pleasure. Wouldn’t his having it then add to the sum total of happiness?” (Ethics as Social Science, 142) Further on he gives another typical example: “A mob is bent on massacring blacks to avenge a murder supposedly committed by an unknown black man. The sheriff is sure he can pacify the mob and save many lives by framing and executing one innocent victim.” (148) What is to be done?

The fundamental problem then is that breaking a rule utilitarian (RU) commandment even to further an end consistent with act utilitarianism (AU) sets a bad example for both the rule-breaker and the general public. It tells the common man that he, too, may need to evaluate at least some acts directly on how well they promote utility, a task at which he is manifestly incompetent, as opposed to following RU rules blindly which is normally his duty. An enlightened AU elite might be able to pull this trick off more or less successfully, but a common man will just be confused. “We cannot force ourselves to consider each individual case in complete isolation from each other. We can hardly help thinking that in general and on average, a readiness to take pleasure in others’ misfortunes will promote misfortune … It would be an either vacuous or downright unacceptable ethical code that prescribed, in each individual case considered by itself, whatever actions seemed to promise the best results on the whole. An ethical code hardly counts as a code unless it prescribes, instead, general rules of behavior, principles of character development, and criteria for appraising institutions and choosing policies. Rules or indirect utilitarianism does not recommend the actions, types of character, and institutions and policies that give ample scope for Schadenfreude.” (143) For example, Mr. A may have enjoyed his final victory for free, but he must have made himself the kind of person who would gloat over another’s misfortune by numerous prior acts of such gloating, and that was bound to make him a miserable creature. The sheriff may get away with framing an innocent man to save a whole village for a while, but the truth has a way of getting out, and furthermore it may embolden the sheriff to manipulate the mob to his advantage and forget all about AU. There is no easy solution. Thus, “[o]ne must accept guilt for one action or another, and in accordance with one’s own moral character, but without brooding excessively about it. A moral person will accept the guilt without letting it destroy him.” (152)

Still, wouldn’t it be a valuable character trait to know for certain when breaking a utilitarian rule will lead to greater happiness than following it? Wouldn’t intense training in ethics to become more discerning be of use to people? Isn’t it true that the more prudent a person is, the more he will plot and plan to maximize utility while paying attention to the rules only insofar as following them actually benefited him and his? Rule utilitarianism is a practical concession to the limitations of out intelligence. But shouldn’t we strive to teach people how to calculate well for an arbitrary group of people arbitrarily far into the future? Or is it an empirical fact that the difference in the power of ethical reasoning between a Nietzschean superman and the regular Joe is sufficiently trivial for it not to be worth worrying about AU at all?

Knowledge is about all the a posteriori causes and effects. Its other name is “science.” I have speculated that, like wisdom, knowledge is quadriform. So, it may encompass more than the mere “knowedge how.”

Know-how deals with means and ends and is practical, presupposing speculative knowledge, and it describes the various ways in which one can attain a particular end, “if one wanted to” — that is, in the abstract.

Prudence is moral reasoning, such as calculation of the consequences of one’s actions or balancing and “considering all things in” duties. “A prudent man is one who sees as it were from afar, for his sight is keen, and he foresees the event of uncertainties.” He foresees and predicts. Prudence is thus concerned with the best actually available means to satisfy actual ends that people have, such as to maximize benefits and minimize costs, that is, to profit as much as possible. It is concerned with choice, the value of the ends, and the disutility of acquiring and using the means. Discernment of spirits is part of prudence, as it, along with charity, enables a person to make, perhaps crudely, interpersonal utility comparisons. Since morality is fundamentally intersubjective, prudence deals not only with one’s own happiness but with the general good of a community.

While prudence normally counsels the course of action that will yield the highest profit — whether psychic or monetary — it still obeys the mean, as do all moral virtues, insofar as it neither advises to choose what is worse than the best nor seeks impossible satisfactions.

Since prudence is a moral virtue, it offers an imperative that the perceived best action be actually performed. It is precisely prudence which is responsible for that aspect of morality which commands one to do his duty as has been determined by moral reasoning.

There is no prudence in sinners, because they act contrary to their own rightly understood self-interest. They lose rather than profit from their actions. A sinner may be a “prudent robber” (false prudence) and even a prudent “businessman” (true but imperfect prudence) without being prudent generally, with respect to his life as a whole (true and perfect prudence).

Knowledge is concerned with universal laws; prudence must of necessity deal with particular circumstances and singular things.

Wisdom is a speculative virtue, unlike prudence which is practical; wisdom is concerned not with “right” and “wrong” in merely human affairs, as prudence is, but with “good” and “evil” (again, keeping in mind its own quadriformity). And it considers good and evil absolutely, dealing potentially with the highest causes, such as God.

Note that the puzzle is that utilitarianism seems to sanction or even mandate genocide. Yet utilitarianism is a respectable moral theory. So, what goes wrong? Here are several suggestions:

1. That genocide of “inferior” people is legitimate is a dangerous rule. It is a distinct possibility that the people of Ruritania may themselves split into hostile groups (such as the redheads and the redheads-haters), such that it will be demanded that one group (”we”) exterminate the other (”them”), too. Logically, this process of mutual slaughter need not stop until only one person remains.

2. In particular, the rule that the smart can rightfully kill the stupid is easily generalized into the permission or even duty for smart Ruritanians to kill stupid Ruritanians. This is ominous, as it entails also that the smartest Ruritanian has the right to liquidate everyone else in Ruritania.

3. We can accuse the philosopher of not knowing the law of comparative advantage / association. On the free market the “strong” or “smart” do not prey on the “weak” and “stupid”; the strong will benefit from dividing labor with the weak even if he is better that the weak at the both or however many tasks being divided.

4. Violence need not be involved in the process of colonizing Waldavia. If the land and resources are unowned, as would likely be the case with only hunters-gatherers inhabiting Waldavia, then Ruritanian businessmen can exploit its land without asking anyone’s permission. If they are owned, then they can be bought from the Waldavian tribes, possibly cheaply, and, again, developed without violating anyone’s rights to life and property. And, once again, killing to steal is a bad and decivilizing rule, as it habituates the aggressors to do the same with their fellow Ruritanians, as well. In fact, it is likely that the Ruritanians have achieved their level of civilization precisely by scrupulously adhering to universal moral laws. If they had been predatory, then they would not be “smart” as the puzzle postulates.

5. Whose welfare do we care for? Utilitarianism takes benevolence as a given. Whatever the group (which may be everyone in the world) we love, (rule) utilitarianism recommends institutions, practices, character traits that will maximize general happiness over that group. It may thus be objected to the philosopher’s argument that we value the happiness of the present occupants of Waldavia, as well. Hence killing them will be contrary to his own moral theory.

6. If it is replied to (5) that the disutility of removing the Waldavians will be outweighed by the utility (experienced perhaps by as yet unborn people) of colonizing their land for reasons described, then we may refer back to (1)-(4). But in addition, if the Waldavians really are stupid, then they will enjoy lessened income in the integrated Ruritania-Waldavia economy. (Though the Waldavians will still benefit tremendously from being part of social cooperation.) Therefore, given also their small numbers, their claim on social resources will be vanishingly small. There is therefore no need to wipe them out even from the Ruritanian philosopher’s point of view; the market economy will naturally assign to the Waldavians a lower place in the social hierarchy, such that they may be quite invisible to the Ruritanian common man.

This puzzle can be rephrased in a stark way. Let A be the actual world, and P be an actual person within A with IQ / virtues / happiness equal to some number n, assuming contrary to reason that these things can be measured. Now let W be a possible world which is exactly like A except that P is replaced with Q whose IQ / virtues / happiness are equal to 2n. (Of course, replacing even a single person is bound to upset and reconfigure the entire existing society and production structure. So, the differences between A and W may be far greater than it would seem at first glance. But let’s put that point aside.) Two questions need to be considered here. First, is W better in some sense than A? Second, if W is indeed better, can we get from A to W by killing P and having some couple have another child who will grow up to be Q?

I think the answer to the first question is yes, and to the second, no, for two reasons. First, more sophisticated utilitarianism will not argue that utility can be increased in this manner. Some of the reasons why not I outline above. Second, suppose you have a kid who is, say, 15 years old or even a pet cat you’ve had for awhile; and let someone offer you a deal: he will kill your child or your cat and give you instead a better (in some sense) one. Would you accept? Of course not! You love that child, that cat for what they are. They are genuinely irreplaceable. So, if even utilitarianism commends charity and love for our fellow men, we cannot start killing people we love to replace them with better versions of themselves. That would devalue our love, substituting for it a kind of eugenics program, wherein we do not value people for their own sake nor think of them as subjects but seek to satisfy some aesthetic view of society, e.g., by allowing only “beautiful people” to live, thinking of people as mere objects, means to ends.

In addition, the problem of replacing people in this manner with regard to total (though not average) happiness could only arise in practice when the human population is at its optimal level, such that either to increase it or decrease it would yield less (overall) utility. But that limit has not been reached and will not be reached for a long time (if ever), given our commitment to freedom and capitalism.

Let there exist two countries or territories bordering each other, Ruritania and Waldavia. Let the Ruritanians be “smart” and let them have developed a high civilization. On the other hand, let the Waldavians be “stupid” and remain primitive hunters-gatherers.

Finally, let a Ruritanian philosopher (and there are philosophers in Ruritania, so sophisticated its culture has become) publish an article in which he advocates a wholesale genocide of the Waldavians, which he justifies on the following grounds. The Waldavians, he says, are a miserable people; for goodness’ sake, they walk around practically naked in their forests. They are barely rational and therefore barely human. They should be ashamed of themselves and of their own disgraceful way of life. Let us, that is, the Ruritanians, put them out of their misery. It may naively be objected that it is wrong to commit murder. But, our philosopher counters, once the Waldavians are gone, the Ruritanians can take their land, develop it, and consequently civilize it. The glory of Ruritania will be spread far and wide. Most important, the Ruritanians will colonize the land and have many children, until the total population becomes equal to what the combined total of the Ruritanians and the Waldavians was prior to the genocide. The population will then be the same, but the total and average happiness will be far greater. Being a good utilitarian, the philosopher argues that it is our (the Ruritanians’) duty to wipe out the Waldavians.

Where is he wrong?

Update. Since a modern capitalistic society can support far more people than a primitive one, after awhile there will be many more Ruritanians in Waldavia than there were Waldavians in it before the war, boosting total happiness even more.

Suppose you are an act utilitarian (AU). You strive to maximize happiness, and one day you notice that your actions follow a pattern; they are lawlike. You can be said thereby to be a rule utilitarian (RU), such that the rules describe what you actually do.

Now suppose you are a RU. This time you prescribe rules which, if followed, will result in the greatest (total or average or some combination of the two) utility. You can be said to be an AU, insofar as you don’t indulge in rule worship but rather order the rules to achieving the greatest good for the greatest number.

On the other hand, if the acts in AU do not obey any regularities, then it is an impossible ideal. No man can calculate the consequences of his actions in a Godlike manner. And if the rules in RU do not maximize utility, then it is not a true utilitarianism. Thus, AU and RU are two sides of the same coin, or had better be, for otherwise a utilitarian is in deep trouble.

“… people who heed the Biblical behest to turn the other cheek can actually harm decent people by letting predation be seen to pay off. Righteous indignation, conversely, can serve a social purpose.” (Ethics as Social Science, 66)

I once read someone’s opinion that Jesus’s counsels, such as to turn the other cheek and “if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, [to] let him have your cloak as well,” (Mt 5:39-40) were suitable in a society where the legal system was primitive and obtaining enforcement of laws and judicial verdicts was difficult. (Also, e.g., “Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.’” (Mt 18:21-22)) Today, the author argued, he’d simply call the cops.

“A person’s character at a particular time is what it is. It inclines him to the kinds of intentions and decisions and actions that it does incline him toward; so it meaningfully exposes him to admiration or reprehension, praise or blame. This is true regardless of how his character came to be what it is. A reprehensible character remains reprehensible even though it can be explained, or explained away, as the product of adverse heredity and environment. The notion of character being admirable or reprehensible only to an extent that it is internally determined, free of external influences, is a self-contradictory notion.” (Ethics as Social Science, 54) What I said exactly.

The idea is that being alive is necessary for having any valuations, and at the same time life is itself something valued. So, by valuing something, anything at all, and aspiring to attain it or to enjoy it once attained, you affirm life as a necessary condition of seeking and having happiness. The interesting case arises in instances of suicide. For in willing death to yourself you by necessity affirm life. What gives?

Now it would seem that this paradox is trivially disposed of. For let pleasure be a positive experience; pain, a negative experience; and death, the absence of all experiences and a kind of zero. It may be preferable to end your own life and achieve zero in order to avoid something negative, e.g., living with great chronic pain, or torture which is expected to culminate in death, or, in less irresponsible times, shame or disgrace or dishonor (e.g., in being unable to pay your debts). I exclude religious martyrdom as a motive for suicide, because it presupposes a subsequent afterlife and glory. But surely, it is understandable why someone might want to kill himself. (In addition, the link between life giving rise to pleasure may be broken. Either you will to punish yourself so drastically, or you despair of any deliverance, or you are in a coma, in which case life is no longer valued.)

However, the problem will not go away that easily. In willing death to yourself you despise life and therefore despise the valuations that are made possible only in the process of living. And as you reject the capacity of valuing, you concomitantly reject the search for happiness which depends on it, reject happiness itself which is inseparable from the search for it, and reject finally the things that make you happy, i.e., the content of valuing, what is valued, including the desire to kill yourself. You say, in effect, “I don’t want to want to commit suicide.” But if you want to rid yourself of the desire to commit suicide, then you don’t want to commit suicide, or will not, once you shake off the suicidal thoughts. (I may be conflating value judgments, good/bad, with desires, love/hate, but it does not matter here.) You cannot argue: “Once I’m freed from the pain, my goal is achieved.” For attaining 0 from some negative state is but a metaphor. There will not be a “you” to enjoy having no pain after you die. Nor will there be enjoyment, as despising life entails despising all valuations, including positive ones, even if “you” existed. You can’t say, further, that “I wish that I died right now without my doing anything, e.g., from a sudden heart attack.” For wishing, too, presupposes living.

You may try to counter that you value presently at t₁ an end to all future, after t₂, valuations. But that’s not the point. The unattained desire to die now is still self-contradictory, as desiring to die entails a desire to lose all desires, including the death wish itself. In desiring_n+1 to lose the desire_n we can go to infinity, but we can’t avoid the contradiction. Nor can you say, again, that after dying the death wish will be satisfied and disappear, because desires do not just disappear upon being satisfied; they turn into enjoyments. But neither you nor any enjoyments will exist after death. It’s impossible to enjoy being dead.

I submit, speaking as a philosopher rather than a psychologist, that people do not commit suicide hoping to disappear; they kill themselves envisioning some kind of existence after death, in which they are delivered from the evils that beset them or comforted. Am I right?

It might be asked of natural law theorists, how can they exist? After all, nature is red in tooth and claw; in the state of nature life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short; etc. Don’t they understand that man’s aim in life consists in survival and procreation, and he will do anything for its sake?

Much as I dislike the prospect, I’ll have to dignify these wild accusations with a response. First of all, the nature of which natural law theorists speak is not kind-essence or species such as “humanity” (although the laws indeed describe the functioning of human nature) but individual-essence and habits in particular. Now nature is for the sake of its powers; habits direct powers into various avenues and are, in turn, for the sake of acts springing from them. For example, it is within human power to operate complex machinery. The actual ability to fly a plane or write a computer program is a habit. And flying is an act. Now the chief act of any living creature is happiness. That, and not survival and reproduction, is the aim of human life. So, natural law tells men how best to achieve happiness. The problem is that pleasures or expected utilities resulting from divers habits conflict with each other. Studying natural law is useful if the goal is to discover how best to maximize pleasure, considered formally or in Mises’s words, “rightly understood.” It turns out, for example, that structuring society according to the teachings of economics results in a world which, far from being red in tooth and claw, is on the contrary civilized and peaceful. Thus, natural law is a set of technologies. It is all the causal regularities put in service of human ends. And it includes information of which ends are destructive of happiness, of which ends are best left unsatisfied or, better, driven out of the soul.

Two objections are immediately apparent. First, what of nature and its corollary powers enhanced by God’s grace? I have written that “saints, in a way, differ in species from natural men.” Those in the state of grace, then, become capable of receiving new kinds of habits. Natural law directs one to the now greater happiness which becomes possible due to this grace and these habits. Perhaps it is naturally difficult to love one’s enemies, even though doing this contributes to one’s own happiness overall. But given grace, it becomes easier or possible. The natural sentiment or the “natural bent of the will which ministers to charity” gets upgraded. Natural law extends even to such naturally inapplicable precepts of grace, insofar as it describes the nature of saints and the means to happiness given divine or deiform habits. If you’ve been lucky to receive grace, natural law is suddenly extended towards happiness that was previously closed off to you.

Second, it would seem that natural law does not resolve the questions of how and when individual happiness is to be traded off, if at all, aganist other people’s happiness. Whose ends are to be promoted? But that’s a pseudo-problem. Many suggestive rules exist. It is natural and gratifying for people to love their friends and family members, and the beloved is another self. Extension of this love to the entire world is, too, natural. At the same time no sin may be committed for the sake of any benefit to another. Selfless actions, acts of supererogation, should be encouraged with honor and glory and canonization. As much as possible the good of society and the good of the individual should be aligned. Natural law is broad enough to answer life’s many persistent questions if pondered diligently enough.

See also: Natural Rights.

Is to think of them, of everyone, as your complements, first and foremost in the worldwide division of labor:

“We may call consciousness of kind, sense of community, or sense of belonging together the acknowledgment of the fact that all other human beings are potential collaborators in the struggle for survival, because they are capable of recognizing the mutual benefits of cooperation, while the animals lack this faculty. However, we must not forget that the primary facts that bring about such consciousness or such a sense are the two mentioned above. In a hypothetical world in which the division of labor would not increase productivity, there would not be any society. There would not be any sentiments of benevolence and good will.” (Mises, Human Action, 144)

“The greater productivity of work under the division of labor is a unifying influence. It leads men to regard each other as comrades in a joint struggle for welfare, rather than as competitors in a struggle for existence. It makes friends out of enemies, peace out of war, society out of individuals.” (Socialism, 261)

In my review of one of the previous papers in this book I blithely equated moderation with temperance. Byron will have none of that: these are different habits, and the “virtue” of moderation is even aptly placed in scare quotes. Here is what our author says: “…moderate folks are contented satisficers. … Considered as a habit of feeling and desiring pleasure, temperateness is a mean because the temperate person has neither too little nor too much. But considered as a virtue and an element of a good human life, it is the best. And so the temperate person, by striving to be temperate, aims at the best and thus optimizes. … temperateness does not involve choosing what is merely satisfactory…, and so temperate action is not in itself the result of satisficing choices.” (Satisficing and Maximizing, 195ff)

Byron examines the idea that “satisficing is rational because it expresses the virtue of moderation.” (196) Even if, for example, I am just expressing my love for someone, that expression is aimed at satisfying some desire or accomplishing some goal. So, of course, he says, every action is done for an end. Hence moderation must have a purpose. Unfortunately, Byron argues, no one has shown what that purpose is. As I show below, moderation detached from temperance can be a vice contrary (by deficiency) to magnanimity.

Finally, a view that satisficing expresses the virtue of antiperfectionism is discussed. Choosing an action which is less than the best or which reflects insufficient virtue is defended on the grounds that one does not want to be too hard on himself for not being perfect. But then taking it easy and being content with one’s own character flaws is the subjectively best course of action — that is, the topmost entry on one’s value scale. You still maximize, even if you are deceived about what’s “really” best for you. Again, choosing on the basis of incorrect information retains all the qualities of normal choosing. Weakness of will is reducible to high time preference or perhaps to high coefficient of impulsivity. The alleged satisficing therefore is nothing of the sort.

In the previous post we compared the satisficing/maximizing pair to duty/supererogation. Our present author likens it rather to rightness/thresholds. His first claim is that consequentialism and satisficing are totally incompatible. This is because a consequentialist can always ask the satisficer why he has not opted for a more pleasant choice, all things considered. “If the advocate of mere satisficing refuses to explain why it makes sense to choose the lesser option, then the critics can offer considerations of their own and employ them to show that the option chosen is really best, or they can refuse to agree that the choice makes sense.” (Satisficing and Maximizing, 159) What van Roojen proposes is a deontological theory where the right is prior to the good. Then almost by definition a person who acts as morality commands need not maximize the good. And since acting morally cannot be irrational, not maximizing is not irrational either.

Now as John Rawls points out, “All ethical doctrines worth our attention take consequences into account in judging rightness. One which did not would simply be irrational, crazy.” (A Theory of Justice, 26) Deontology is saved from this perversion by admitting thresholds, in which case it becomes “moderate” rather than “strict.” Suppose that 5 people desperately need organ transplants or they will shortly die. There is a guy named Chuck in the hospital. Can the doctors kidnap him, chop him up, implant his organs into the 5 sick people and save their lives? Reason would say no, despite the (crudely speaking) greater utility of saving 5 and killing 1, as compared with the opposite.

But let’s make the situation more extreme. Suppose that a terrorist has hidden a powerful nuclear bomb inside a warehouse in downtown Tokyo. If it goes off, millions will die and billions of dollars will be lost in property damage. Unfortunately, the warehouse has only one entrance which is watched over by a security guard who is armed and instructed not to let anyone in. The guard is just a regular guy trying to make a living, hired by the warehouse owner, neither of whom has any inkling of the destructive contents of the property. Now I am rushing in to save the city, but I am confronted by the guard and, to make matters worse, he won’t believe me (or I can’t communicate with him, because I do not know Japanese). He has pulled out his gun and is clearly ready to use it if I trespass. Do I have the right to kill him in order to get in? To make the problem even more difficult, suppose that I am a cop, whose duty it is to protect the citizens. Can I now kill the guard? I think I’d have to, and God have mercy on my soul.

In other words, if by doing what is right the situation deteriorates so much as to go below or beyond some threshold, I am permitted to violate my duty (such as “you shall not kill”) and maximize the good. So, the formula ends up being: (it is rational to) satisfice until the threshold is reached, then maximize. Although Van Roojen is fully aware that he provides no defense of nonconsequentialism, it’s enough to note that satisficing seems to be compatible with it.

NB: deontology with thresholds is not equivalent to rule consequentialism: in the former the good is posterior to and serves the right; in the latter the right is posterior to and serves the good.

To be continued…

If we think of the relationship of maximizing to satisficing as of supererogation to duty, then is there a difference between ethical and rational satisficing? Dreier says there is. Ethical satisficing can be understood as declining to do the supererogatory act. This our author justifies by saying that while moral reasons may require one always to go beyond the call of duty, there can be nonmoral reasons urging you not to do so. And those nonmoral reasons can be so compelling as to outweigh the case in favor of performing a supererogatory act. For example, saving a woman’s hat which flew out of the bus window is definitely a heroic act, so heroic in fact that it may be considered silly, especially if you lose something important by doing it, e.g., arrive late to your son’s baseball game. But with respect to rationality there is only one kind of reason. “The perspective of rationality just is the perspective of all things considered.” (Satisficing and Maximizing, 152) Hence that perspective always counsels maximizing.

To be continued…

There are, according to Weber, at least two “perspectives” on life: that of the moment and that of the life as a whole. Each entails different values. What is valued from the momentary point of view may prove almost irrelevant when viewed from a “bird’s-eye perspective.” For example, getting stung by a bee is painful and elicits seemingly urgent attempts to deal with the situation. But on your deathbed or while looking at your life during a heavenly “life review” this episode might seem to be of no interest or of little significance. On the other hand, “[j]ust as some genuine values are lost to narrower perspectives, as they are accessible only to broader perspectives, some values are lost to broader perspectives, as they are accessible only to narrower perspectives.” (Satisficing and Maximizing, 85) OK, but so what? Somehow, Weber claims in an example, one might limit one’s professional aspirations, even though this does not result in a better life overall. This is permitted, however, “in virtue of the claims of the momentary perspective.” (88) On the other hand, “all the minor ups and downs of day-to-day life are of little importance from the perspective of one’s life as a whole. What matters most to the quality of one’s life are one’s long-term projects, which may include commitment to family, career, art, or politics.” (90) Immediately we see a problem. It is not written in the stars that long-term projects must necessarily outweigh (in importance or expected upon completion utility) short-term pleasures. It’s up to each individual to form his own entirely subjective preferences and thereby to decide whether to exercise his tactical or strategic intelligence and whether to care more about the moment or about far-flung future. Secondly, Weber denies that “there is a single, authoritative measure of value. … Well-being is relative to a perspective, and each perspective makes genuine normative claims.” (93) I couldn’t disagree more. The choice between favoring immediate delights as vs. those that require long-term investment is ranked on the same single value scale within the mind of every individual. And one has to choose, if the values, such as values belonging to some two “perspectives,” come into conflict. That choice demonstrates which perspective the actor has allowed to influence the choice and which perspective was, on the contrary, slighted. Choosing one or the other reflects each person’s attempt to — what else? — maximize happiness. Third, our author himself writes: “One might ask: If it doesn’t matter from the perspective of one’s life as a whole, why not go ahead and maximize momentary good … if from the momentary perspective one has a marked preference for A to B, and from the perspective of one’s life as a whole one is indifferent between A and B?” (92) Weber privileges the “life as a whole” perspective, saying that in momentary matters we can be happy with what is “good enough.” Such privileging may be sensible, but it is only an assumption and certainly not a necessary one. Some people may privilege the moment; is Weber going to claim that now in matters affecting life as a whole such a person would be content with what is good enough? What if one cares for both? After all, a life is made out of single moments. For example, suppose that in studying today I get an interesting idea. That occurs in the now, in the present moment, but surely, it contributes crucially to my overall career as a philosopher. No, the split value scale among different perspectives is an untenable idea.

Lastly, our author argues that maximizing conceptions “seem to take only one of the other perspective into account” and are therefore “not humane.” (99) Of course, he has it completely backwards. It is the maximizing individual who balances the demands of all perspectives to achieve the greatest possible happiness. Satisficing, on the other hand, calls one perspective master and makes it rational not to improve your well-being as seen from the slave perspectives. You are supposed to be happy with what is supposedly good enough. Why, I haven’t a clue.

To be continued…

Of the many things argued in this essay, two are interesting. First, Schmidtz claims that incomplete information and non-zero transaction costs, such as costs of acquiring information entail that in many cases satisficing is the proper strategy. We need a stopping point “that limits how comprehensive a body of information we insist in gathering before stopping the search…” (Satisficing and Maximizing, 37) Alright, suppose that you indeed find something “good enough.” But if you could instead get something you perceived was better and felt contributed to your happiness more at zero cost, wouldn’t you do it? What could possibly stop you? It seems that the reason to limit your resources spent on information gathering is to avoid psychic loss which occurs if the costs of getting the information necessary to make a decision outweigh the benefits. Now Schmidtz might argue that without proper information you can’t optimize at all. Let’s grant him this point for the sake of argument. Then satisficing will be the optimal strategy. Or, rather, trying to make the best choice based on incomplete information will be fully equivalent to choosing something “good enough.” But satisficing can never produce results better than optimizing; if it does, then it itself becomes the optimal course of deliberation.

Suppose, for example, that your strategy for searching for a new house is to wander around the neighborhoods aimlessly hoping to find something suitable. You don’t know the state of the market, relative house prices, where to go, or when to stop. Assuming in our example that the information costs are prohibitive, delineating the criteria for an acceptable house and stopping after finding something that satisfies them, though it seems like satisficing, might well be optimal, as well.

Second, Schmidtz gives examples of situations in which there seems to be no optimum at all.

(1) “[S]uppose you are immortal and are also fortunate to have in your possession a bottle of EverBetter Wine. This wine improves with age. In fact, it improves so steadily and so rapidly that no matter how long you wait before drinking it, you would be better off, all things considered, waiting one more day.” (42) You have to drink the wine at some point, lest the bottle proves to be useless to you, yet no matter which day you pick, you don’t want to drink it then. Reply: Pleasure from the sense of taste cannot be infinite, so the example is contrived.

(2) Computer hardware has improved in accordance to an empirical trend called the Moore’s law. That means, quite fast. The moment you buy a computer, it is already obsolete. Must you therefore always wait for a better machine, never buying one? Reply: Waiting has disutility, so that has to be weighed against the utility of a computer that allows you to do everything you want for a period of time. A future computer may be technologically superior but it need not satisfy your desires any better than a less powerful device. In that case, it is rational to buy.

(3) Suppose the bank offers you 100% per year interest on your loan. Does it mean that you will never use the money, because it will seemingly always pay to keep the money in the bank, growing at this enormous rate? Reply: Once you have, let’s say, a few billion dollars, the marginal utility of money (the utility of an extra dollar) will become negligible; the disutility of waiting will make itself felt; and it will become reasonable to withdraw and spend the money.

(4) Buying a better house will cost you $1000; living in that new house yields $100 worth more happiness than living in your original house. Abstracting from discounting the future, you will recoup your investment in 10 months. Suppose now that after 4 months of living in the new house, an opportunity arises to move into a still better house which costs $2000, and living in this third house is $200/month better than living in the first house. And so on ad infinitum. But if you keep moving forever without stopping, you will never profit. Yet stopping at any point seems arbitrary. What’s going on? Reply: Again, there seems to be a natural limit of how pleasurable a new house is going to be compared with the old house. At some point the utility of a marginal physical improvement will be reduced to 0. Hence this example is also dubious and does not entail the reasonableness of satisficing.

(The first and fourth example are Schmidtz’s; the second and third are mine.)

To be continued…

Slote raises two interesting related issues. First, whether satisficing can be likened to not having desires beyond a certain limit. Second, whether moderation is for that reason intrinsically valuable. For example, he writes: “So there is an important difference between the kind of instrumental moderation or mastery of one’s desires and an intrinsic moderation, or satisficing, that consists in (to some extent) lacking desires that need controlling.” (Satisficing and Maximizing, 16) I’ve already blogged on the difference between peace and joy, saying that the two go together, “otherwise a stone could be called at peace.”

He goes on: “But we also think better of those whose appetites aren’t limitless and insatiable than of those whose appetites are like that, and this has something to do with the fact that the insatiable pursuer of sexual or gustatory pleasure seems pathetically needy and dependent on such things.” (25) Well, sure, lust and gluttony are traditional dealy sins. But what about desires for knowledge or understanding? Do they obey a mean? Charity, e.g., certainly doesn’t, because you cannot love the infinite good “enough.” If a man exhausts himself in finding a cure for some deadly disease, because he considers it to be his life’s work and mission, and for the sake of the sick, we consider such determination commendable, even if he is never fully satisfied with his success. It is true that one must enjoy things rather than ignore the present pleasures when they come and perpetually seek new ones, failing to smell the proverbial flowers. But such an attitude is clearly pathological and leads to perpetual unhappiness. This is not to slight the virtue of magnanimity nor to deny that “no man deserves his freedom or his life who does not daily win them anew,” but to counsel one to relax at the end of the day and contemplate and enjoy what he has accomplished, certainly a reasonable piece of advice. Slote expresses this by saying that in addition to pleasure there must exist a “satisfaction with that pleasure” (23), a counting and savoring of one’s blessings.

Very well, but why must we stop desiring new things even as we enjoy what we have? Why must our desires be limited? Mises writes that “Our contemporaries are driven by a fanatical zeal to get more amenities and by an unrestrained appetite to enjoy life.” (Human Action, 318) Is he wrong about what “is”? And when Peter Kreeft considers an objection to his version of the argument for the existence of God from “desire,” that one may deny that he feels any hidden desire for God, because he is “perfectly happy now,” Kreeft gets mad (as he often does in this book): “This, we suggest, verges on idiocy or, worse, dishonesty. It requires something more like exorcism than refutation. This is Merseult in Camus’s The Stranger. This is subhuman, vegetation, pop psychology. Even the hedonist utilitarian John Stuart Mill, one of the shallowest (though cleverest) minds in the history of philosophy, said that ‘it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied’.” (Handbook of Christian Apologetics, 81) Is he wrong about what “ought to be”? And here is a gem from Aquinas, one of many such: “Science and anything else conducive to greatness, is to man an occasion of self-confidence, so that he does not wholly surrender himself to God. The result is that such like things sometimes occasion a hindrance to devotion; while in simple souls and women devotion abounds by repressing pride. If, however, a man perfectly submits to God his science or any other perfection, by this very fact his devotion is increased.” (ST, II-II, 82, 3, ad 3) So, it may be wrong to moderate the desire for one’s own perfection (if that perfection can be increased indefinitely, and in many cases it can) and for offering it all to God.

Our author attributes to Plato the view, with which he agrees, that “pleasure is good only when it is taken in measure and only when there are limits to one’s desire or appetite for pleasure.” (26) Insofar as pleasure cannot be actually infinite, sure. But not if pleasure can be potentially infinite, as may be felt by the blessed contemplating God.

Conclusion. Economists normally assume that human desires are for all extents and purposes unlimited. Here they, unlike the philosophers, got it right.

To be continued…

Update. Consider human desires such as to prevent earthquakes or to find and colonize other planets. They are far beyond what the present technology and economic capacity can accomplish. They are projects for a distant future. Yet these desires are clearly not immoderate. So, the virtues of temperance and moderation do not entail not striving for great things and therefore do not entail limited desires.

Satisficing is a term in decision theory and ethics that is opposed to “maximizing” in the sense that in real rather than idealized decisions an agent will pick not the best choice among those that occur to him but an option which is “good enough.” You rate outcomes as satisfactory or unsatisfactory. A satisfactory outcome may differ from one in which you gain the most utility. Byron gives an example of betting, in which calculations of return on bets yield one best outcome, but this outcome is judged “unsatisfactory.” (Satisficing and Maximizing, 3) This is because the agent views a chance to win $250 (B) to be so valuable despite its negligible probability that he prefers it to a chance to win $50 (T) with much greater probability and despite also the fact that calculations seem to point toward the latter as the best bet. Now is it irrational to choose B over T? Not necessarily; perhaps our betting man is a risk-preferrer who thinks little of probabilities. Perhaps the excitement of a chance to win $250 contributes just enough utility to outweigh the other choice. Perhaps he needs exactly $250 to pay off a debt to a loan shark called Vinnie, for otherwise Vinnie will break his legs. OK. But, it may be asked, what if all other things are equal?

To get to the answer, let’s consider Byron’s second example. You prefer Zinfandel to Shiraz. Can you still choose to drink Shiraz if you think it’s good enough? First of all, if you do choose the Shiraz, you have demonstrated to everybody that you “really” prefer it. But secondly, it is not “irrational” to choose the Shiraz; it is absolutely impossible, unless you hate yourself and wish to harm yourself. But even then your desire to harm yourself is satisfied and therefore you are happier than before. As Byron himself notes, “sadomasochists maximize pain.” (7) You might choose the Shiraz if you want to prove the correctness of satisficing. But still you maximize: your greatest happiness consists in finding such a proof. You simply cannot escape from seeking happiness. Now maybe the idea is that you are satisfied with less and you have no desire to pursue anything else. You are at perfect peace with the Shiraz. So, how about: you prefer the Zinfandel, but once you have consumed the Shiraz, you no longer want wine at all. You are satisfied with respect to wine. But surely, had you consumed the Zinfandel, your happiness would be greater. The will rests in the good attained either way, but the rest and satisfaction with Zinfandel is deeper or more intense. Hence, once again, under the normal assumption that you will good to yourself, you can’t choose the Shiraz. We will deal with the distinction between peace and joy and whether human desires are unlimited and in what sense later.

Thus, choosing B in our betting case is likewise impossible (so long as the cost of calculating the relevant utilities is not counted).

Finding something “good enough” can serve as a “stopping rule” to avoid further search, our author writes. But this is still maximizing, if one expects that the costs of continuing the search are likely to be greater than the benefit of the possibility of finding something better.

Byron writes that finding a satisfactory solution might be likened to fulfilling a moral duty, and finding the best solution, to doing something supererogatory, above and beyond duty. But this begs the question: why wouldn’t you apply the best solution, all other things, such as how hard it is to implement each solution, etc., being equal? What possibly stops you from becoming happier than you would be in a non-best situation? Performing duties is hard and has disutility; that’s why we honor saints and heroes who not only do their duty but go beyond it. But becoming better off is by definition pleasant. So, the analogy fails.

Byron invokes the doctrine of moderation. You might choose only one chocolate cake in a cafeteria instead of three. But in this case you are still happier with one piece. Moderation is not pursued for its own sake but for the sake of happiness, because it serves to promote it. There could be all kinds of reasons to pick only one piece: to avoid heartburn, or to lose weight, or for the reasons Aquinas mentions, viz., that “in the consumption of food, the mean fixed by human reason, is that food should not harm the health of the body, nor hinder the use of reason: whereas, according to the Divine rule, it behooves man to ‘chastise his body, and bring it into subjection’…, by abstinence in food, drink and the like,” (ST, II-I, 63, 4) or whatever else. So, this does not “intuitively” prove satisficing at all. We will consider whether moderation or what is often called “temperance” has an intrinsic value later.

It is suggested that being “under a spell, or in a grip of a passion, or otherwise impaired” may “prevent one from executing a rational choice.” (10) Who is Byron to dictate to people in any situation what is rational? None of these things entail acting on anything other than the top-most desire on your value scales. On the contrary, even when one is under a spell (a wizard’s spell?), one chooses “rationally” except that when the spell has passed, one may regret his choice. But at the very moment of choice one inevitably chooses what he thinks is best.

Our author considers a hypothesis that some values are “incommensurable”; “it will not necessarily be possible to place every pair of alternatives on a common scale such as utility.” (11) This is supposed to be a point in favor of satisficing, because it may not always be possible to maximize. However, I find it a highly implausible contention and agree with Mises who writes, to the contrary: “Choosing determines all human decisions. In making his choice man chooses not only between various material things and services. All human values are offered for option. All ends and all means, both material and ideal issues, the sublime and the base, the noble and the ignoble, are ranged in a single row and subjected to a decision which picks out one thing and sets aside another. Nothing that men aim at or want to avoid remains outside of this arrangement into a unique scale of gradation and preference.” (Human Action, 3) I should add that short-term and long-term projects are also evaluated on the same universal scale of values, subject to the laws of time preference; hence the alleged incommensurability between the perspectives of the “moment” and the “whole life” vanishes away.

Now for the final preliminary critique: Suppose that there are three satisfactory actions open to me. How do I choose between them? Surely, I should pick the one which gives me the greatest psychic profit. So, satisficing actions are in between worse choices and the best choice; they are intermediaries. And they need not take away the onerous task of calculating projected utility. So, what purpose do they serve? My only guess is that they make the choice easier.

To be continued…