Dmitry Chernikov’s Blog

From Tyler Cowen at the Marginal Revolution blog.

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…

According to many scientists, the clergy and the Church are:

• fanatical;
• anti-intellectual;
• irrational in their mindlessly blind faith;
• moralistic and intrusive;
• eager to impose their arbitrary values onto people;
• prone to persecuting those who disagree with them “for their own good” or to save them from themselves;
• closet Inquisitors, torturers, and killers for their petty god.

A ridiculous stereotype, sure. But I’d like to point out that scientists are themselves not innocent of crimes against humanity. Consider all the terrible weapons which have been created, especially in the 20th century, and are being created now. It is scientists who are doing this work, contrary to any kind of ethical imperative or religious impulse to love our fellow man, etc. As Oppenheimer famously thought after witnessing the first nuclear bomb test, “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” according to the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. “‘Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department,’ says Wernher von Braun,” Tom Lehrer sings. Then there are the numerous issues such as stem cell research, about whose ethically controversial nature most scientists apparently could not care less. In short, an NT may give you the means to your ends, but it takes an NF to figure out if the ends ought to be striven for.

The moral from this tu quoque is, let’s understand each other, rather than thinking the worst of our temperamental complements.

The active life is led by Guardians and Artisans; the contemplative, by Idealists and Rationals — the first of each pair being the yin, the second, the yang of the temperaments.

Erich Fromm accuses many strands of the modern Christianity of being “authoritarian” rather than “humanistic.” An authoritarian religion depreciates the individual; it makes him weak, unloving, insignificant, even as it glorifies God. “The essential element in authoritarian religion and in the authoritarian religious experience is the surrender to a power transcending man. The main virtue of this type of religion is obedience, its cardinal sin is disobedience. … Submission to a powerful authority is one of the avenues by which man escapes from his feeling of aloneness and limitation. In the act of surrender he loses his independence and integrity as an individual…” (Critiques of God, 164) It is in this very act of adoring the infinite God that the human dependence and irrelevance are made manifest. “He projects the best he has onto God and thus impoverishes himself. … In worshipping God he tries to get in touch with that part of himself which he has lost through projection.” (172) This results in a man’s “alienation” from himself. Devotion to such a God is masochistic in nature, because the believer hates and despises himself in order the better to contrast the greatness of God with his own worthlessness. There is in him an “unconscious desire to be weak and powerless.” “We find furthermore that this masochistic tendency is usually accompanied by its very opposite, the tendency to rule and to dominate others…” (174)

“Humanistic” religion, on the other hand, is concerned with man’s own perfection, of power, knowledge, love and whatever else is required for happiness: “Inasmuch as humanistic religions are theistic, God is a symbol of man’s own powers which he tries to realize in his life, and is not a symbol of force and domination, having power over man.” (165) There is a difference between humility which results from knowledge of one’s own abilities and potentialities and “self-humiliation” of authoritarianism. “God is the image of man’s higher self, a symbol of what man potentially is or ought to become…” (172) There is a strand of process theism, in that “God needs man as much as man needs God” (171)

Alright, the first question I want to ask is, who psychoanalyzes the psychoanalyzers? Is Fromm an NT Rational rebelling against the SJ Guardians? His notions, though many, are not worth a penny. For example, in (ST, I, 6, 4) Aquinas writes that “everything is called good by reason of the similitude of the divine goodness belonging to it, which is formally its own goodness, whereby it is denominated good.” (italics added) So, all things possess goodness and are good in and of themselves; they are not, for example, modes of a pantheistic God. In (I, 90, 1) he writes that “Augustine mentions certain opinions which he calls ‘exceedingly and evidently perverse, and contrary to the Catholic Faith,’ among which the first is the opinion that ‘God made the soul not out of nothing, but from Himself.’” Aquinas repeatedly states that man’s task is to imitate God, e.g., “[c]onsequently both angel and man naturally seek their own good and perfection.” (I, 60, 3)

Those who say that Christianity (or Catholicism) is authoritarian fail to realize that insofar as it prescribes duties and virtues, it prescribes them according to the natural law: if or since, it says, you want to be happy, do this and that or be such and such. The Church cannot be accused of arbitrarily and incorrectly telling people how to live.

As Pope Benedict XVI said in an interview, “Christianity, Catholicism, isn’t a collection of prohibitions: it’s a positive option.”

Then there is the charge that submission to God entails a renunciation of a man’s dignity, rationality, individuality, etc. Nothing could be further from the truth. If indeed there is any submission, it means preferring the best good, which is the fullness of truth, beauty, etc. which is God to any temporal good. To be sure, winning against the flesh, the world, and the devil is difficult and can involve unpleasant experiences, such as penances. But the end is communion, righteousness, comprehension, and joy, precisely what Fromm prefers in a religion.

In other words, the case against Christianity from “psychoanalysis” is fully dismissed.