Peter Singer & the False Consciousness of Smokers

A blogpost is probably an inadequate forum for arguing for something as radical as the prohibition of cigarettes, but I’m not sure if a lack of space is sufficient excuse for the weakness of Peter Singer’s argument on Project Syndicate. It’s made even more peculiar by the fact that this week Singer also signed a letter for calling for the liberalisation of drug law, or at least of their enforcement.

There seem to me to be two obvious objections to the idea of outlawing tobacco. The first is the practical one – banning such a popular activity is counterproductive. The second is the principled one – such paternalism is illegitimate. Interestingly, Singer gives essentially the same response to both objections: most smokers don’t really want to smoke – they’ve just made a mistake somewhere along the way.

This is pretty implausible as a claim about the efficacy of banning cigarettes. Even if “many smokers would actually like to see cigarettes banned because, like Obama, they want to quit”, the remaining stubborn few are likely to constitute a problem as great as the current narcotics trade. If Singer can see that the war on drugs isn’t working, why does he want to add another front to it?

Singer’s strategy in response to the paternalism objection is more intriguing. His response to those who question the state’s legitimacy to carry out such proscriptions is unpersuasive – “For those who recognize the state’s right to ban recreational drugs like marijuana and ecstasy, a ban on cigarettes should be easy to accept”. But many of those who question the state’s right to ban cigarettes will be equally sceptical of its right to ban other recreational drugs. Nevertheless, most people do accept paternalism in one form or another, the classic case being the enforcement of seatbelt wearing.

I think the reason that some forms of paternalism are seen as relatively uncontroversial is because most accept that they are genuinely in people’s interests. I think very few people would think it is plausible that the discomfort of wearing a seatbelt is worse than the risk of death and injury it protects us from. With smoking, it is not so clear. People do claim to derive such pleasure from smoking that they would be willing to sacrifice a few extra years of health to keep the habit.

Singer appears to be denying either that people do think in such a way, or that if they did, it would be a rational way to look at things. Like all claims of false consciousness, it’s difficult to prove. Singer’s problem is that it seems like he’s denying that smoking can be enjoyable at all. He presents smokers as if they’re all addicts or dupes of peer pressure and advertising, which is clearly only part of the story.

Yet it could well be that the pleasure people enjoy from smoking is almost never enough to outweigh the harm that it causes them, and that almost everybody who smokes is therefore irrational. Of course, this brings us into the philosophically thorny area of what constitutes rationality. However, the simplest (and least contentious) way to show irrationality is to demonstrate that people who take up smoking will come to regret it. This is what Singer seems to do when he suggests “most smokers take up the habit as teenagers and later want to quit”. In the context of Singer’s argument this looks a bit ad hoc, but perhaps he is aware of the recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey, which found that nearly 70% of American smokers want to quit, and over half had attempted to do so in the past year.

This is quite a striking finding, and I wonder what proportion of those wish that they had never started smoking. If there is an activity that over half of people regret undertaking with hindsight, is that enough to make the probabilistic claim that it is irrational to pursue it? It certainly doesn’t address the practical issues, but if Singer can convince people that it is almost always irrational to take up smoking, he will be a lot closer to his goal of banning smoking.

Distributive Justice and Premier League TV rights

What I often do on this blog is take some big news story, and try and show how ethics or political theory can shed some light on it, or how it highlights some argument within those disciplines. I do this partly to convince myself I’m not wasting my time in studying these subjects, and partly because I am obsessed with them, and see their echoes everywhere. Either way, I’m not sure how convincing I am when I try to persuade you of the relevance of moral and political philosophy.

However, there are occasions when the argument doesn’t have to be forced, the parallels don’t have to be stretched: the issue that people are talking about is almost exactly the same as the one we discuss in our seminar rooms. Events behind the scenes of the English Premier League this week have provided me with one of those rare joyous occasions, as the administrators of England’s elite football clubs unconsciously replay an old debate between the political philosophers John Rawls and Robert Nozick.

The philosophical question which divided Rawls and Nozick, and which has caused the rift between the Premier League clubs is basically whether egalitarian distributive principles can be justified to the most talented or productive. Or, to put it more bluntly, how can the rich be persuaded to share with the rest of us?

While Rawls and Nozick were of course pitching their discussion at the level of society, Liverpool F.C.’s managing director, Ian Ayre, has posed a similar question to the Premier League. As things stand, the twenty clubs of the English Premier League collectively sell the rights to broadcast their matches on television, and share the money more or less equally. Ayre has argued that this is unfair on the bigger, more famous and more successful clubs like Liverpool, who he believes contribute more to the quality of the Premier League, and so should receive greater reward.

For Rawls, the question of distributive justice arises in a society because it is a “cooperative venture for mutual advantage”. Everyone in society contributes in some way, and everybody is better off in virtue of the fact that the cooperative scheme exists. The problem then is how to divide the proceeds of their cooperation.

The Premier League is a perfect example of a cooperative venture for mutual advantage. The twenty clubs each play thirty-eight games every season, and are all better off as a result of participation in the league than they would be out of it. Liverpool need the Premier League if for no other reason than to provide competitive opposition to play every week. So each club plays a role in putting together the product that is the Premier League, which is packaged and sold all over the world. But how to divide the proceeds?

Rawls’ answer is that

“since everybody’s well-being depends upon a scheme of cooperation without which no one could have a satisfactory life, the division of advantages should be such as to draw forth the willing cooperation of everyone taking part in it, including those less well situated. Yet this can be expected only if reasonable terms are proposed”

The “reasonable terms” that Rawls suggests is his ‘difference principle’: inequalities can be justified only if they benefit the worst off members of society. In the Premier League context, at least, I can’t think of any such justifications for inequality, so a Rawlsian approach to the question of TV revenues would almost certainly endorse the present arrangement, equal shares.

But as Nozick observes, though distributing the fruits of cooperation equally is certainly one way to elicit the willing participation of all, it is only one of many possible arrangements. Presumably, many Premier League clubs would be willing to play for much less than an equal share of the TV revenue. A Rawlsian principle, as he sees it, arbitrarily advantages the worst endowed. The ‘worst endowed’ in Rawlsian terminology basically means the least productive, those capable of adding the least value. Thus the Manchester Uniteds and Chelseas, with their skill and glamour are well-endowed, while teams like Norwich, who draw much fewer people to the league, are badly endowed.

Nozick argues that the badly endowed gain more from cooperation than the well endowed. If Liverpool were to unilaterally resign from the Premier League, this would make it much less attractive to fans across the world, and so would harm clubs like Queens Park Rangers. If QPR were to leave the league, they could be easily replaced (as might well happen if they are relegated at the end of the season). As Nozick would doubtless insist, QPR need Liverpool more than Liverpool need QPR.

In this context, Nozick would see it as cheek for the less endowed small clubs to hold the rest of the league to ransom and demand an equal share of the Premier League spoils. The obvious alternative is to pay clubs according to their marginal product – give them the full value that they add to the league. So, for example, Liverpool would be paid as money as the league would lose by their absence.

Ian Ayre’s argument is Nozickian in tone:

"Is it right that the international rights are shared equally between all the clubs? Some people will say: 'Well you've got to all be in it to make it happen.' But isn't it really about where the revenue is coming from, which is the broadcaster, and isn't it really about who people want to watch on that channel? We know it is us. And others”.

He acknowledges that all the clubs are dependent on each other for the scheme of cooperation to work, but insists that the bigger clubs deserve more money because they contribute more to the value of the league.

So far as this argument goes, I have to say my sympathies are with Nozick. The mere fact of mutual dependence is an insufficient foundation for a persuasive argument in favour of egalitarianism. But just because they have the better of this argument does not mean we have to concede that Ayre’s behaviour is morally acceptable. There are, as T.M. Scanlon observes, a “diversity of objections to inequality”, and many of them are apt here. One objection is that inequality gives too much power to the rich, who can then buy off the power, and wield excessive influence. Another proceeds from the law of diminishing marginal utility, the observation that extra money is worth more to the poor. In the football context, the argument is that TV revenues are just a drop in the ocean for clubs with huge sponsorship deals, Champions’ League revenue and the like, but vital to clubs without these extra sources of income.

There is hardly space here to cover all the arguments made by philosophers on the subject of distributive justice, but it is a set of debates that Ayre and his colleagues may find interesting and familiar.

On the sub-optimality of bus seating

I realise that it’s pretty far down the long list of Things That Are Wrong With The World, but I am increasingly vexed by the potential inefficiency of seat allocation on buses. It is almost certainly the economist in me bridling at the casual violation of the Pareto Criterion – itching to realise the economist’s dream of making an arrangement better, and leaving nobody any worse.

Essentially, for our purposes here, there are two types of people who take the bus. There are those with companions, who want to sit with those companions. And there are those who are alone, who would rather have the space of two seats to themselves than be pressed up against a stranger.[1] I set aside the question of why people seem to be so socially retarded and jealous of their privacy that they find the idea of approaching a stranger terrifying rather than the prelude to a new friendship. If people were more open, the problem would soon disappear. Suffice to say, this cultural foible has been discussed at length elsewhere.

If the bus is not too crowded, there is ample opportunity for both types to get their wish. People can choose to sit next to the people they want to or to opt for isolation. The trouble begins when the number of free seats dips below twice the number of people who want to sit alone. That is, when there are no longer any free pairs of seats.

Suppose there are no free pairs of seats available then, and a couple – Alice and Bob – get onto the bus. They cannot sit together, and so have to sit next to other people. Alice sits next to Craig, and Bob next to Davina. Thus not only must Alice and Bob do without the pleasure of each other’s company, but Craig and Davina have to sit next to strangers. Yet if Craig and Davina must sit next to people they don’t know anyway, wouldn’t it make sense for them to sit next to one another, and so allow Alice and Bob to sit together? Alice and Bob would be better off, Craig and Davina no worse off, and Pareto can settle down in his grave. But this doesn’t happen, and all the real-life Alice and Bobs must suffer in silence.

What can be done about it all? With my neo-Stalinist tendencies, I’m inclined towards a bureaucratic statist solution. Everybody must register for their bus trip 24 hours in advance, and inform the Central Bureau of Seat Allocation who they want to sit next to. But even I have to concede that this is a bit of an overreaction. It probably isn’t cost-effective to open a whole government department to deal with the problem. One of the great virtues of buses is their relative flexibility – how many people know 24 hours in advance exactly which bus they want to take and when? Liberty, as ever, upsets patterns.

If the state fails, the obvious response is to turn to the market for a solution. Maybe Alice and Bob can pay Craig and Davina for their seats. This idea has the merit of identifying the pair who are least bothered about relinquishing their space – if Craig and Davina put too high a premium on it, they can be undercut by others who will sell for less because they care less about being alone.

However, the seat market appears to be prone to a major market failure: its transaction costs are too high. People are unlikely to go through the effort of setting up the mechanism of the market for so little reward. In any case, by the time the deals are struck, the chances are that it will be time for one of the parties to disembark, making bargaining somewhat impractical.

The best and most obvious option is what might be called the ‘ethical libertarian’ approach[2] Here, we just rely on people to use their initiative to escape these sub-optimal arrangements. We expect Craig or Davina to offer their seats, and hope Alice and Bob are not too bashful to ask for them.

The trouble with ethical libertarianism, both here and in general, is that it expects a lot of people in terms of good sense and altruism. Perhaps I’m too much of an economist to share their faith.

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[1] I assume here that seating is arranged in pairs, as on Aberdeen buses, but the idea is easily applied to other arrangements.

[2] I’ve just made up the name ‘ethical libertarianism’. I’m not sure if it’s any good. In any case, I take it to mean the position that we have extensive moral duties to other human beings, but that the government ought to execute relatively few of them

Should we abandon moralism?

One of the most interesting aspects of philosophy is its ability to provoke a variety of responses, and to be utilised for a wide variety of functions. It can be diverting and entertaining – hence the success of hit movies based more or less explicitly on thought experiments. It can be a practical tool to help us decide what to do – this is the aim of those who do practical ethics (clue’s in the name, guys). It can be pressed into little motivational or comforting soundbites (c.f. anything by Alain de Botton)

But often (and I think this is less commonly recognised or discussed), philosophy can be terrifying. It can challenge the very foundations of our existence, undermining the values and commitments we have based our lives around. Discussing Descartes’ scepticism, Mark Steel advises his viewers not to allow the thought to linger for more than 20 seconds because otherwise “it will start to drive you mental”. The same is probably true of the claims of pessimists, nihilists and determinists.

What’s always most troubled me, though, the philosophical Pandora’s box I have been desperate to keep shut, are the challenges of meta-ethics. What is morality? What do the concepts of right and wrong even mean? Why should we care about it? In most of my moral thinking, I have been content to assume that there is an answer to this question, and to get on with the substantive questions of how we should act – firmer ground where I felt more comfortable. I don’t think this is an unusual policy – in my first graduate class in Ethics, we were advised not to worry too much about meta-ethics, and assured that it is entirely separable from practical ethics.

This attitude infuriates Joel Marks, who urged moral philosophers to out themselves as amoralists in a pair of New York Times articles last month. Appealing to luminaries such as Hume, Nietzsche, Ayer, Sartre, Mackie and Rorty, Marks argues that morality does not exist. Moreover:

“This, odd as it may sound to say so, is relatively uncontroversial in modern ethical philosophy; for what I mean by morality here is its metaphysical conception as a truth or command that comes to us from “on high.” Very few well-known philosophical moralists have believed in such a thing since a century and more.

But precisely my gripe is that you wouldn’t know it from the way they speak! And even if they can communicate clearly with one another, the lay person is left to think otherwise.”

Most philosophers, according to Marks, have been doing what I have done: treating meta-ethics as though it has no bearing on practical ethics. However, Marks thinks that this common meta-ethical position has radical implications for how we think about moral problems – he calls for the abolition of moral language altogether. His point is so obvious, it seems bizarre that it should even need stating: if most philosophers do not believe that such a thing as morality exists, why should they still keep talking as though it does?

I think the meta-ethical position that Marks sets out is more or less similar to my own. Moral ‘beliefs’ are nothing more than statements of preference. So when I say that it is morally wrong that anybody should live in poverty, all I am saying is that I would really like it if poverty were eradicated. This is fundamentally no different in kind from my desire that the sun stays out, or my desire to eat cake.

Though I agree that moral claims are nothing more than preferences, I am wary of making this explicit for a couple of reasons. The first is pragmatic – to abandon moralistic argument is to lose one of the most powerful means of persuasion. Suppose it is my desire that poverty be eradicated. I am far more likely to convince people to do their bit to reduce poverty if I can couch my arguments in objective moral terms – if I can portray it as being your duty, rather than just in line with my whims. Of course, if everybody were what Marks calls a ‘desirist’, then what we once called ‘moral’ argument could be carried out in amoral terms. But for as long as moral realists exist, it is worth giving our arguments moral dressing so that they appeal to as many people as possible.

Undeniably, there is something underhanded about reasoning in this way. Should we really be using moral argument in such a manipulative way? But this thought itself shows the dangers and difficulties of trying to purge our reasoning of moral content. The idea that we shouldn’t manipulate others so that they act in accordance with our desires is itself a moral notion – it is just another preference. If we try to cleanse our language of explicitly moral terms, there is a danger that moral ideas may still sneak in through the back door.

We are so used to thinking in moral terms that we need to remind ourselves that our values are just preferences – we are liable to forget our meta-ethical commitments. Keeping our moral premises explicit ensures we compare like-for-like, and don’t mistake a preference for something more forceful, like an objective moral command. For example, a natural response to the idea that there are no objective moral values is to conclude that all moral commitments are equally valid, and so we ought to unquestioningly tolerate the views of others. Yet this, of course, ignores the fact that tolerance is a moral value itself – and so we should only care about it insofar as we have a preference for tolerance.

Peculiarly, given that he believes it to be the only novel aspect of his argument, Marks offers only a solitary paragraph towards the end of his second article to making a positive case against moralistic language. Essentially his objection is that “The most horrific acts of humanity have been done not in spite of morality but because of it”. Even putting aside the moralistic assumptions that underpin this statement, this isn’t much of an argument. The question of whether morality has been a force for good is as tiresome and irresolvable as whether religion has been beneficial or not. Some people have been motivated to do good things by morality, others have been led to commit terrible acts. And just as atheists have their fair share of atrocities on their hands, it is hardly as if no evil has come from people pursuing their own desires.

When Marks says that most philosophers do not believe in morality, what he really means is that they do not believe in an objective, transcendental set of moral truths. But this is not enough reason to abandon the language of morality altogether. Ultimately, Marks fails to make a convincing case against conceiving of morality as a special type of subjective desire.

In defence of an episodic History education

Here is a list of topics I studied in history over the course of my primary and secondary school education, more or less in the order I studied them: Celts & Romans, Tudors & Stuarts, The Stone Age, Scottish Wars of Independence, The Industrial Revolution, the female suffrage campaign, the formation of the Welfare State, the prelude to World War I and the Weimar Republic/ Nazism/ World War II (on about three or four separate occasions).

I don’t think my experience was that unusual among British history students of my generation: a more or less random assortment of topics, linked by little more than an underlying eurocentrism, and a peculiar obsession with the Nazis. It is this pick ‘n’ mix approach, I think, which is increasingly coming under attack. Simon Jenkins decries ‘optionalism’, insisting that history must have a ‘narrative’, “starting at the beginning and running to the end”. In doing so, he allies himself with Education Secretary Michael Gove, and his history tsar, Niall Ferguson, prominent opponents of ‘tapas’ or ‘smorgasbord’ history.

But I think the loud objections to Ferguson’s view of history (most entertainingly from children’s history god Terry Deary) illustrate the problems of this approach. The story that Ferguson wants to tell is the story of how and why Europe came to dominate the world. There’s two problems with this. Firstly, there is the question of the truth or otherwise of this narrative. For example, Ferguson is a revisionist historian who tends to emphasise the positive effects of European colonialism. But it would be deeply irresponsible of him to present these views as accepted historical fact, and to fail to acknowledge the number of historians who would have profoundly object to this picture.

Even if Ferguson’s answers are valid, he may still be asking the wrong questions. Ferguson’s proposed emphasis has raised eyebrows because of its unabashed eurocentrism. But it also looks like it will be strongly focused on ’history from above’ – the big picture political, economic and military story, as opposed to the details of everyday life.

The trouble with teaching history as a narrative, therefore, is that it sacrifices two different types of neutrality. In the first place, It involves favouring one narrative over another. This is particularly problematic, given the strongly ideological flavour of many of these competing accounts. Favouring one narrative over another means making a choice between using history to develop a national myth to foster patriotism, or to seek cross-cultural understanding and to mould global citizens. Methodological neutrality is sacrificed, too. To insist on teaching history as a grand narrative is to presume that history should be about big picture questions, and therefore implies that excessive focus on details is a less valid approach.

Why should we care about neutrality? Why should the people designing a history curriculum try to avoid making a stand on controversial questions? There is a ethical argument and a practical argument. The moral objection is that history should not be used as an ideological tool – children should be left to make up their own minds, and is it is illegitimate to try to ‘mould’ them in any way.

The practical point is more often missed. Children are rarely passive receptacles of education. Just because you design a course for them does not mean that they will absorb it in the way you want them to. Consequently, it is not just what children should know, but also what will engage and interest them, that must be considered when designing a curriculum.

The episodic approach to history escapes both these problems. Rather than having to choose one big, sweeping narrative, it allows students to focus on different topics in depth. An essential part of properly addressing a topic in history is to understand how it is viewed from different ideological and historical perspectives. If one topic lends itself to a given approach, the next can be used to illustrate a completely different way to do history. That way, there is a hope of finding something to suit every taste. The thing that educationalists often seem forget is that even if you spoon feed children a certain message, you cannot be sure that they will swallow it. An equally crucial task of a history education is to try and get them to develop a taste for the subject.

The objection to an episodic history education is that it leaves the student with big gaps in their knowledge, and little sense of how events fit together. But history is so vast that nobody can hope, in the limited time a child has in the history classroom, to cover even the ‘basics’. There will always be omissions, and those omissions will always be controversial.

A more plausible aim is to give the curiosity to ask their own questions, the tools to follow these interests, and the critical faculties to form their own narratives. I think the depth and pluralism of the episodic approach best serves this goal.

False Consciousness in Food and Film

According to Mark Kermode, an important part of a film critic’s job is “explaining to people why they haven't actually enjoyed a movie even if they think they have”. In his article in The Guardian on Sunday, he suggests that people who liked Pirates of the Caribbean 3 only did so because they have been weaned on mindless blockbusters, and have forgotten or are unaware that film can be any better. In his words, they are “simply suffering from the cinematic equivalent of long-term deprivation of the basics of a civilised existence”.

Kermode’s sentiments make an interesting contrast with those of Peter Preston, writing in the same newspaper the following day. Whereas Kermode’s essay is a polemic against the state of modern Hollywood cinema, Preston offers a nostalgic reminiscence of Britain’s culinary past. Stumbling upon one of his mother’s old cookbooks, he contrasts its parochialism to the ambition (or pretentiousness) of modern food. There is a suspicion of anything too exotic, and the majority of ingredients seem to come out of cans. It’s all corned beef, baked beans, tinned soup and (for some reason) pineapple rings, assorted in ingenuity-stretching combinations.

This was not good food as we would recognise it today. Peter Preston knows that. Reading his article made me feel queasy rather than appetised (though that might have something to do with the psychological aversion to corned beef I developed working in a deli). It was just the food eaten by people living under post-war austerity who knew nothing better.

Notice the similarities between these descriptions of food in 1950s Britain, and contemporary film. In both cases, we have a group of people whose aesthetic taste has been dulled by a lack of exposure to ‘quality’ produce. Yet while Kermode sees this as a problem in need of remedy, Preston appears to think it is a cause for regret that this innocence has been lost. Just as film critics are perpetually accused of having lost the ability to see movies through the eyes of ordinary cinemagoers, so modern caterers are “a little too knowing, too sophisticated” to recreate the food of the past.

So if there is such a loss involved in ‘enlightening’ people, why bother? If people enjoyed POTC, why should Kermode be so churlish as to rob them of this pleasure? One possibility is that he sees his task as combatting something like ‘false consciousness’. On this view, to enjoy bad films is to be under a misapprehension which harms your deep interests. It is to hold a false belief which makes your life worse.

This sort of account is most plausible where there is an uncontroversial human interest at stake, for example health. So Anthony Bourdain’s culinary elitism is more defensible because its target is defensible because its target – excessively fatty, fried Southern food – is genuinely injurious to those who develop a taste for it.

But what is it that Kermode is trying to protect us from? How is he making our lives better by making certain films less enjoyable?

Does John Redwood care about inequality?

A peculiar article in The Guardian yesterday. Funny in the first instance because of the mental image it suggests – John Redwood choking on his cornflakes as it dawns on him that the left might not see him as a tireless campaigner for social justice, devoting his life to protecting the vulnerable. Peculiar because halfway through, Redwood seems to lose the thread of his argument, and begin to make the exact opposite case to the one he intended to.

The article itself is a furious reply to a throwaway remark from John Harris’ column the day before. Bemoaning David Cameron’s abandonment of his initial progressive credentials, Harris contrasts him with Redwood: “There is no point in people like me having a pop at, say, John Redwood for his failure to recognise the importance of inequality. But Cameron was meant to be slightly different.”

What’s clear from this quote is that Redwood is seen as an old-style Tory, antagonistic to the left, while Cameron is a new progressive Tory, sympathetic to many lefty causes. So there’s obviously supposed to be something that Cameron and Harris believe, but that Redwood does not. Call this ‘common ground X’.

Redwood takes common ground X to be concern for the poor, which is why he is so cross at the implication that he does not share it. Consequently, his whole article is devoted to demonstrating that the right simply have a different idea of what sort of policies most benefit the poor.

But that’s not what Harris says. Harris is quite explicit that what distinguishes Cameron and Redwood is their attitudes to inequality. Not their attitudes to the poor – their attitudes to inequality. Hence his reference to Cameron’s appreciation for the The Spirit Level, a book that argues that inequality is bad for society, regardless of how materially well-off the poor are.

Redwood’s sub-editor seems to have appreciated this, given that the title of his article is ‘It's ludicrous to say that rightwingers don't care about inequality’.

But Redwood, intent on demonstrating that rightwingers care about the poor, seems to forget that he was supposed to be arguing about inequality. In fact, his argument shows that for those on the right, caring about the poor involves embracing inequality. An excessive focus on reducing inequality, Redwood argues, risks cutting off the source of wealth that would eventually trickle down to the poor. Moreover, it involves engaging in ‘jealousy’, and undermines aspiration.

So John Redwood doesn’t care about inequality, even if he does care about the poor.