Crossing Cultures in Free Will (by Guest Blogger Hagop Sarkissian)

Academic philosophers are a fairly homogeneous bunch--mostly male, mostly white. So, when a philosopher proposes a thought experiment and then goes on to make a general claim of the form "in this case, most people would surely say that P" or "in this case, it is clearly the case that P", one might wonder whether the philosopher's intuitions really are so obvious or widely shared. Perhaps only philosophers, or male philosophers, or Western male philosophers, or Western male philosophers who maintain theory x, would find it obvious (or even entertain the idea) "that P".

Indeed, in recent years, experimental philosophers interested in such intuitions about particular cases (and their role in philosophical theories) have discovered that it's not hard to find significant cross-cultural variation. For example, recent studies have shown that Americans, East Asians and Indians may differ considerably in their intuitions concerning key thought experiments in epistemology and philosophy of language.

Some colleagues and I wanted to see whether this phenomenon held true for beliefs concerning free will and moral responsibility. We asked participants in Colombia, Hong Kong, India, and the United States what they thought about the following case. (For a video presentation of these questions, click here.):

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Imagine a universe (Universe A) in which everything that happens is completely caused by whatever happened before it. This is true from the very beginning of the universe, so what happened in the beginning of the universe caused what happened next, and so on right up until the present. For example one day John decided to have French Fries at lunch. Like everything else, this decision was completely caused by what happened before it. So, if everything in this universe was exactly the same up until John made his decision, then it had to happen that John would decide to have French Fries.

Now imagine a universe (Universe B) in which almost everything that happens is completely caused by whatever happened before it. The one exception is human decision making. For example, one day Mary decided to have French Fries at lunch. Since a person’s decision in this universe is not completely caused by what happened before it, even if everything in the universe was exactly the same up until Mary made her decision, it did not have to happen that Mary would decide to have French Fries. She could have decided to have something different.

The key difference, then, is that in Universe A every decision is completely caused by what happened before the decision – given the past, each decision has to happen the way that it does. By contrast, in Universe B, decisions are not completely caused by the past, and each human decision does not have to happen the way that it does.

1. Which of these universes do you think is most like ours? (circle one)

Universe A-----Universe B

2. In Universe A, is it possible for a person to be fully morally responsible for their actions?

YES-----NO

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Previous work in cross-cultural psychology has shown that Westerners and non-Westerners differ in the way they think about moral responsibility, individual agency, and even the more fundamental notion of what it means to be a person; naturally, we expected to find some significant differences in the response patterns of these groups. Not so. In all four cultures, the majority of participants responded as indeterminists and incompatibilists! That is, the majority of participants believed our own universe to be indeterministic, and denied that moral responsibility could be compatible with determinism.





How is it, then, that individuals from such different cultural and religious backgrounds, with divergent ways of understanding the world, who have probably never been instructed on the topic of causal determinism, all tend to embrace the same two theses--indeterminism and incompatibilism? Such cross-cultural similarities in beliefs cry out for one of two kinds of explanation. The first would focus on innate endowment, such as some basic capacities concerning causal cognition or theory of mind. The second would focus on shared experience, such as the phenomenology of moral choice or the unpredictability of human action. Either approach seems worthy of exploration. It is also possible—and indeed quite likely—that the similarities here arise from a complex interaction between innate endowment and shared experience. Future research may shed light on the mechanisms involved. For now, it remains a puzzling finding in an area where one might expect some variation. 

The Problem of De in the Analects: Hard and Easy (pt. 2) (by Guest Blogger Hagop Sarkissian)

A noble knight is about to leave on a mission to an inhospitable, barbarian place. Some are skeptical that his mission will be successful. After all, he must deal with petty, uncouth individuals. The knight, however, is not troubled; he has a nifty trick. When he is among petty people or barbarians, their behavior instantly changes. They are literally transformed in his presence, bending to him as sure as grass bends to wind.

The above passage can either be about: a) a Confucian nobleman or b) a jedi knight. That, to me is the hard problem of de in the Analects. Consider the following passages which describe the nobleman's de--a kind of power or force that accrues to morally advanced individuals and has telltale effects on others:

9.14 – The master expressed a desire to go and live among the Nine Yi Barbarian tribes. Someone asked him, “How could you bear with their uncouthness?” The Master replied, “If a nobleman were among them, what uncouthness would there be?”

12.19 –The nobleman's de is wind; petty de is grass. When the wind blows, grass bends.

In the Star Wars movies, a jedi knight can--much like the nobleman above--get other, weak-minded sentient beings to bend or yield to him. This feat, dubbed either "force persuasion" or the "jedi mind trick", is accomplished through ritual gesture and verbal incantation--again, similar to the magical effects associated with the performance of rituals (such as wedding rites or ceremonial forms of greeting) in classical Confucianism.

Now, these effects might seem less impressive than those associated with political de (discussed in a previous post)--where the ruler just sits in a ceremonial position and the whole empire is ordered. Then again, the nobleman lacks many of the perks associated with rulership: a) he's not recognized as the Son of Heaven, b) he lacks all the the ceremonial regalia that comes with being the Son of Heaven, c) is considerably lower on the socio-political ladder, and d) has a pedantic day job preserving traditional rites and ceremonies. Given all this, the passages above seem incredible indeed.

How can we understand this 'force' of the nobleman? What kind of person are the 'little people' and 'barbarians' yielding to? Well, de is frequently linked to practices of self-cultivation (xiu 修 – e.g. 7.3, 12.10, 12.21, 16.1). Perhaps the key to understanding the power of de lies in these practices and the kind of nobleman they were meant to produce. Here is what we find:

The ideal nobleman says the right things at the right times. He's concerned about being a good person and works hard at it. He dresses well (clean and sharp, not flashy). He seems genuine, and has a natural ease about him. He's a good son to his father and a good father to his son, takes care of those close to him and helps others when appropriate. He's got a knack for diffusing disagreements (cleverly alluding to classical poetry and folk songs to convey subtle, delicate points). And if you need advice on wedding gifts or funeral attire, he's a godsend.

There are people I've met who've had many of these qualities, and some of them have a knack for getting along with people. So maybe I can understand how a cultivated nobleman, already enjoying a certain standing in the social hierarchy, can have an attractive, disarming charisma about him and command respect in the community. This much might explain, for example, the bending of the petty people in 12.19.

But the transformation of the foreign barbarians? That's really hard to buy. How is it that they magically behave themselves in the presence of a Confucian knight, but are otherwise 'uncouth'? I don't see how this works.

Objectivism, Relativism, and Squatter's Rights in Metaethics (by Guest Blogger Hagop Sarkissian)

Moral objectivism is the view that moral truth (or justification) is independent of tradition, custom, or social acceptance. Put another way, it's the view that there is an objective fact of the matter whether any given action is morally right or wrong, permissible or impermissible. Moral objectivism is often contrasted with moral relativism, the view that moral truths (or justification) is relative to cultures or other such groups.

To me, moral relativism is just obviously true (as I have argued previously in comments on this blog). But many philosophers have argued that moral relativism does not jibe with ordinary moral discourse. Ordinary moral discourse, they claim, assumes moral objectivism. Philospohers making this claim range from moral realists on the one hand, to moral fictionalists (or 'error theorists') on the other.

Consider J.L. Mackie, who argued that ordinary moral claims purport to describe facts about mind-independent, objective moral values. Mackie denies that such values exist. "Although most people in making moral judgments implicitly claim, among other things, to be pointing to something objectively prescriptive, these claims are all false". Mackie thinks this 'error theory' "goes against assumptions ingrained in our thought and built into some of the ways in which language is used"; and "since it conflicts with what is sometimes called common sense, it needs very solid support. It is not something we can accept lightly or casually and then lightly pass on" (35).

Does common sense morality assume objectivity? According to a recent study by Goodwin and Darley, most folk actually don't believe that their moral judgments are objectively true, except for cases involving stock examples such as gunfire, robbery, and cheating. On many other moral issues, most believe their judgments to be opinion and not fact. Goodwin and Darley sum up one of their experiments as follows:

"Participants generally agreed (on a six-point scale) with the goodness of anonymous donations (5.42), the badness of opening gunfire on a crowd (5.79), or of robbing a bank (5.77), and the wrongness of conscious racial discrimination (5.86) or of cheating on a lifeguard exam (5.72). But they varied considerably in how likely they were to regard these statements as true: 36%, 68%, 61%, 54%, and 58%, respectively. Perhaps more strikingly, although participants generally agreed (albeit not as strongly) with the permissibility of abortion (4.12), assisted death (4.36), and stem cell research (4.58) in the way we described them, they were highly reluctant to assign truth to statements expressing this agreement: 2%, 8%, and 2%, respectively."

If these findings are replicated, they suggest that, contrary to what many moral realists and fictionalists claim, people believe that their moral claims are objectively true only in a narrow range of cases that enjoy widespread agreement, the rest of them being no more 'objectively true' than matters such as one's taste in music (4%), film (9%) or art (4%).

This brings me to "squatter's rights". In a recent paper, Eddy Nahmias and colleagues argue that a philosophical theory x has 'squatter's rights' compared to a competing theory y if, all else being equal, theory x accords with our common sense intuitions while theory y doesn't. If objectivism does not turn out to be the common sense view, I find it hard to see how relativism doesn't have squatter's rights in metaethics. It's consistent with common sense morality, does as good a job as any other theory in explaining moral agreement and disagreement, and seems best able to account for the variety of moral traditions existing in the world.

The Problem of De in the Analects: Hard and Easy (pt. 1) (by Guest Blogger Hagop Sarkissian

There is a concept in the Analects of Confucius that is of patent importance to his teachings but remains obscure. This is the concept of de 德, which refers to the ability of a person to command awe and attention, to have others comply with his wishes without resorting to coercion.

Some passages describing de are frankly startling, and coming to some plausible explanation of them has proven problematic. But I think it may be helpful to distinguish between 'the hard problem of de' and 'the easy problem of de' (obviously following from Chalmers's example concerning consciousness). The easy problem of de is ruler or political de. The hard problem is the nobleman's de. Today, I want to deal with the former, leaving the latter for a subsequent post.

Consider, for example, the following passages describing ruler de:

2.1--The master said, "One who rules by de is comparable to the Pole Star, which remains in its place and receives the homage of the myriad lesser stars."

2.3--The master said, "Guide them with governance, regulate them with punishments, and the people will evade these with no sense of shame. Guide them with de, regulate them through ceremonial propriety, and the people will have a sense of shame and be orderly."

8.18--The master said, "Majestic! Shun and Yu possessed the entire world without managing it."

15.5--The master said, "Someone who ruled without acting (wu-wei 無為)--was this not Shun? What did he do? He made himself reverent and took his proper position facing south, that is all."

These and related passages (e.g. 13.6) describe the de of a ruler (or sage king). On the one hand, they seem pretty impressive, maybe even quixotic or fantastical. (Could Shun really rule by simply sitting on his throne and facing south?) Indeed, some have thought these passages rife with belief in magical powers. Donald Munro called this the 'mana thesis'. On this view, the king must possess some inner / spiritual / psychic power or energy that emanates outward and magically transforms, orders and harmonizes the kingdom. Such an interpretation is understandable because it does seem hard to explain what's going on in these passages. But in the end, I think the problem of 'ruler de' is actually the easy problem.

The reason is simple. Very early on, there were commentators who explicated the ability to rule 'effortlessly' through de as resulting from much prior effort, such as the ruler's a) effectively discharging his roles of setting policy and appointing capable officials, and b) benefitting his subjects (thereby gaining their loyalty, love, and reciprocity).

One of the ruler's most important functions (emphasized by Confucians, Mohists and Legalists alike) was to attract capable individuals to fill administrative and bureaucratic positions to properly manage the kingdom's affairs. The ruler's personal virtue would be a key factor in attracting such individuals and commanding their loyalty. The operations of this larger bureaucracy explain how the ruler could rule 'effortlessly'--by just sitting on the throne (as it were). (Even the incorruptible, wholly sagacious Shun needed the help of ministers to rule--8.20.) Moreover, with the help of capable bureaucrats and officials, the ruler would be able to meet the needs of his subjects, thereby gaining their loyalty as well.

So there's no real mystery here. An efficient bureaucracy, a loyal and loving population, and a broader political philosophy emphasizing deference and loyalty to those above in the hierarchical chain, all seems to explain ruler de rather easily. Indeed, any account of ruler de seems incomplete without these considerations. Am I missing something?

Situationism and the Self-Centeredness of Virtue Ethics (by Guest Blogger Hagop Sarkissian)

As noted in previous posts on this blog, many philosophers of late have been concerned with the implications of situationist social psychology for moral philosophy. Situationism is... well, I'll just use Eric's description from a previous post:

"Recent social psychology has shown that the factors governing human behavior are largely situational rather than characterological. If Robin behaves generously and Sanjay behaves greedily in some particular case, that's more likely to be due to differences in their situation than to differences in their personality."

Think of the Milgram Experiments, the Asch conformity studies, the Princeton Seminary study, etc.

Most philosophers have been concerned whether situationism discredits virtue ethics, a recently popular ethical theory which underscores the importance of character traits to structure guide one's conduct and lead to a flourishing moral life. Situationism, by contrast, claims that character traits are rather inefficacious when compared to the influence of external, situational variables.

I don't really have a horse in this race--i.e. whether Aristotelian virtue ethics rests on an untenable psychology, or whether character traits of a robust sort really *exist* or not. To me, the situationist literature is of concern beyond its implications for such philosophical theories. It seems genuinely troubling that one's own behavior could be shaped so decisively by situational factors, that whether one is virtuous or vicious can hinge on minor perturbations in one's environment.

So, what to do in the face of situationism? Here, we have some practical advice. Many philosophers have endorsed what I call a seek/avoid strategy. These philosophers recognize that situational influence is pervasive and weighty. However, they argue that it remains possible, when one is not caught up in novel or unusual situations, to selectively choose the general types of situations one wants to encounter and structure one's life accordingly. Individuals should seek situations that strengthen or support virtuous behavior, and avoid situations that tend toward vice or moral failure. In choosing situations, one chooses to embrace the behavioral tendencies they elicit.

That seems like sage advice to me. But I find it extremely one-sided. Here's what I mean. The seek/avoid strategy is animated by the thought that our behavior is tightly keyed to our situations--oftentimes, to the behavior of others in our situations. It therefore emphasizes one path of influence: from situations to persons. But if other people in our situations can subtly affect our own behavior, then it seems as though we must return the favor. In other words, from our own (actor's) perspective, situational influence can be responsible for our own behavior, but from another (observer's) perspective, our own behavior constitutes part of the situational influence. So, just as we should mind how others are partly responsible for our own behavior (as those motivating the seek/avoid strategy claim), shouldn't we, too, be mindful of how we are partly responsible for the behavior of others?

To me, the real lesson of situationism lies in how it shows, in striking fashion, that no person is an island--that all our behavior is heavily interconnected, and that what I do really affects what you do, and vice-versa.

You know, I've heard it said that virtue ethics--insofar as it aims for flourishing, eudemonia, or individual happiness--is a selfish or self-centered ethical theory, concerned primarily with one's own person and one's own life prospects. I can't help but think that such a self-centered attitude is pervasive in the existing responses to situationism.

Judging Others: When It's Bad, It's Worse Than You Think (by Guest Blogger Hagop Sarkissian)

When we meet others we form impressions of them, and they tend to stick. This automatic tendency motivates numerous social practices, such as grooming before a date or rehearsing before a presentation. It can be unfair, of course, to evaluate persons based on their behavior on any one particular occasion, as the behavior may not be representative. Nonetheless, first impressions are easy to form and difficult to overcome.

What's more, there is a well documented asymmetry between the impact of bad first impressions versus good ones. Consider the following: We are quicker to both form and recall bad impressions, and are also more likely to do so. We also tend to be more confident about bad impressions, take less time to arrive at them, and require less information to be convinced of them -- that is, relative to good impressions. Finally, once a bad impression is formed, we seal it away from revision or interference.

'So what?' you might think. Even granting such broad tendencies, it remains an open question whether or not any particular impression is accurate. Moreover, you might think yourself a 'good judge of character', that your initial impressions are routinely confirmed by subsequent data: the initially cold and distant colleague turns out to be just as cold and distant in the end, and those we warm up to tend not to disappoint.

Well, there's room for doubt here. At least two psychological phenomena that might play a role in producing false evidence for our impressions. The first, commonly known as the confirmation bias, is our general tendency to seek or interpret evidence in ways that confirm our previously held hypotheses. Bad first impressions render us more susceptible to noticing future behavior that is bad; behavior that is good is, by contrast, overlooked or discounted. The second is often called behavioral confirmation or self-fulfilling prophecies, and occurs when we treat others in ways reflective of our preexisting beliefs about them, thereby causing them to act in ways that conform to our preexisting beliefs. For example, we might think someone rude, and then treat her accordingly. She picks up on this, feels resentful, and reciprocates in kind, thus confirming our initial hypothesis. What's more, we are often ignorant of our own causal role in this process. In other words, owing to these biases, our initial impressions might be inapt in spite of the fact that they turn out be true!

All this brings me to the virtue of civility. In most philosophical discussions of civility, it is described as the practice of concealing one's negative appraisals so as not to hurt others' feelings, to show outward respect in spite of the fact that others are disagreeable. Here's a nice quote from Cheshire Calhoun:

In social life, there are unending opportunities to find other people boring, disagreeable, repulsive, stupid, sleazy, inept, bigoted, lousy at selecting gifts, bad cooks, infuriatingly slow drivers, disappointing dates, bad philosophers, and so on. The civil person typically conceals these unflattering appraisals, since conveying them may easily suggest that one does not take others' feelings or the fact that they may have different standards to be worth taking into consideration or tolerating. (260)

I agree that there are unending opportunities to make such judgments. I just wonder whether being civil about them goes far enough, and whether we shouldn't instead foster a habit of calling such judgments into question. It seems as though we have good reason to, given the biases above, but then again there may be bad consequences for not being vigilant in our judgments of others.