Why bother Arguing?

Be honest – how many times over the course of an argument have you heard one of the following (or some variant of them)?:

“You know what, you’re absolutely right, you’ve convinced me”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but now I have, I’ve changed my mind”

“What I said just now was completely wrong”

People do change their minds in the middle of a debate, but not very often. Think how many arguments you have had in your life, and think how few of them have reached this sort of satisfying resolution. It’s so unusual and unexpected that I can’t even read the phrases above without imagining them said either sarcastically or in a wearied if-I-agree-with-you-will-you-just-shut-up-and-leave-me-alone tone of voice.

Most of the time, people are too stubborn or invested in their position to even consider changing their minds. In The Art of Always Being Right, Arthur Schopenhauer observes just this fact:

“If human nature were not base, but thoroughly honourable, we should in every debate have no other aim that the discovery of truth We should not in the least care whether the truth proves to be in favour of the opinion we had begun by expressing, or of the opinion of our adversary. That we should regard as a matter of no importance, or, at any rate, of very secondary consequence.
But, as things are, it is the main concern. Our innate vanity, which is particularly sensitive in reference to our intellectual powers, will not allow that our first position was wrong and our adversary’s right.”

This is a problem. The whole point of an argument, the rules of the game, are that you have to convince the other person. That’s how arguments are set up. It’s as if we’ve been playing football for ages without noticing that there aren’t any goals.

As a would-be philosopher, this is particularly distressing. You’ve just been told that you’ve wasted a one day to argue, for a living and so I’m having to confront the possibility that my life’s calling is futile.

It’s not just me that’s invested in the presumption that rational persuasion is possible. It’s one of the very foundations of our civilisation. One of the central principles of the scientific ideal is that if I am wrong and you are right, you should be able to convince me that is the case. Richard Dawkins has an anecdote about one of his university professors who witnessed the theory he had committed his life to expounding being disproved by a fellow biologist. Far from being angry, or resisting the new theory, he shook the man’s hand and thanked him for showing him his error. Dawkins takes this to exemplify all that is great about science and rationalism.

There’s a debate to be had about how representative this tale is. I’m not sure that all scientists are always so magnanimous and that evidence and methodology are so incontrovertible. However, given the fact that scientists generally share objective criteria according to which they can be proved wrong, scientific argumentation is likely to be different to general disputes.

Philosophers, especially political philosophers, cannot place such faith in objective evidence. We argue about matters that cannot often be reduced to the observation of external facts. Political commitments are among our strongest, the ones we will most stubbornly cling to. So what is the point of trying to sell a tax to the libertarian, or a free market to the socialist? It is often said that political commitments are like supporting a football team. Why do we bother trying to divest the Conservative of their Conservatism when we would never hope to persuade the Manchester United fan to support Liverpool?

The first point to note is that people do change their minds, and do so far often than you would think from watching debates. It is very difficult in the heat of an argument to back down and reject the view you were defending, and so lose face. This pride means that we never want to acknowledge when we have been refuse too concede lodges a seed of doubt in our minds. In the course of the argument, we pretend to be unpersuaded, but the objection or criticism nags away until, far from the public glare we relent and give in to it.

The adversarial nature of arguing means that it’s unusual to give your opponent the pleasure of seeing you change your mind. The fact that a person is willing to argue their case means that they must have some sort of pre-existing allegiance to their position. So long as a person is tied to their position, for example because of family loyalty or ideological conviction, they will not be ready to change their mind.

People will change their mind when they are ready and not before. However, this doesn’t mean that they will necessarily change their minds because they are ready to do so. How common is it for a person to say, ‘I’m not sure what I think about the situation in Palestine/global warming/spending cuts anymore, I’m going to look into changing my mind’? More often than not, such a state, if it occurs will be prompted or catalysed by some challenge to their pre-existing opinions. Thus we argue with our opponents so that when they are ready to change their minds they will remember our words. We may know that our arguments are of no use to them now, but we hope that they will carry them with them and that they will later be ready to confront them.

However, even if we could never hope to win round our adversary, I still think there is a point to arguing. The world is full of people who haven’t considered an issue or don’t know what they think about it. For the most part, they avoid getting tangled in debates because if you don’t have a position it’s harder to participate in a dispute. Yet these people are often the audience for arguments.

Many sorts of arguments presuppose such an audience, many of whom will be malleable for persuasion one way or another. Formal debates are usually public, academic disputes occur for the benefit of peers and students, and court cases take place in front of juries.

In fact, the legal analogy seems apt as an example of antagonistic argument as a means for getting to the truth. Nobody expects the opposing lawyers to convince one another, but they do address one another’s arguments and try to defend their positions as best they can. Presumably it is believed that this is a more effective way of establishing fact than if everyone sat in a cooperative Socratic circle and tried to reason it out together.

None of this, however, challenges the essential assumption that we should be open-minded, and willing to change our position. Reflecting on our innate stubbornness, Schopenhauer suggests it may not be so bad after all:

“Nonetheless, this very dishonesty, this persistence in a proposition which seems false even to ourselves, has something to be said for it.
It often happens that we begin with the firm conviction of the truth of our statement. Then our opponent appears to refute it. Should we abandon our position at once, we may discover later on that we were right after all. The proof we offered was false, but nevertheless there was a proof of our statement which was true…
Thus it is that the weakness of our intellect and the perversity of our will lend each other mutual support.”

Even if it looks like we should be persuaded, we may still be in the right, so it is better not to be persuaded. Does that mean that there is no point to arguing?

Is sex selection on non-medical grounds justifiable?

Advances in medical technology now allow parents to choose the sex of their baby without having to undergo excessively invasive or dangerous procedures. Yet most societies have recoiled from this possibility, and have severely limited parents’ freedom to choose. In the UK, for example, HFEA (Human Fertility and Embryology Authority) regulations only permit sex selection for medical reasons: to avoid serious sex-linked conditions, such as haemophilia.

Yet any close scrutiny of the common justifications for preventing parents from choosing the sex of their child shows them to be misinformed, unreasoned or weakly rationalised gut reactions. Any review of either the ethical literature or the numerous public consultations on the subject is bound to uncover the same set of objections to non-medical sex selection. This essay addresses each of the most common concerns in turn, and seeks to demonstrate that they are misplaced or mistaken.

This is a strategy that needs defence in itself, since it assumes that the burden of proof is on those that would restrict non-medical sex selection. Yet this presumption does not seem unwarranted. Forbidding selection is clearly a restriction of freedom, since it prevents someone (parents) from doing something that they wish to do (choose the sex of their baby). There is not a single moral or political theory which would deny that all else being equal, more freedom or preference satisfaction is better than less. Nor does any philosophy I am aware of permit the restriction of freedom or the frustration of preference without any justification whatsoever. To put it another way, there is no ethical system which requires us to get permission before acting – if things are not expressly forbidden, we can assume they are permitted. The consideration is just a weak one – as soon as there is a countervailing reason against an act, we may be justified in restricting it. However, it hardly seems unreasonable to require some such convincing reason against sex selection as a necessary precondition of restricting it. This article/talk attempts to show that no such compelling reason exists.

The ‘Feminist’ argument: sex selection reduces the status of women

One common concern regarding non-medical sex selection is what David Heyd calls the ‘feminist’ argument (though without referencing any actual feminists who he believes to hold it). The basic idea is that allowing parents to choose the sex of their children will allow them to favour boys over girls, and will further diminish the status of women in society.

Heyd’s first response to this line of argument is to observe that non-medical sex selection does not create or promote sexism, it merely reflects the underlying prejudices of the society. He urges feminists to reconsider their targets, and to focus on the underlying root causes of gender inequality, rather than being distracted by symptoms. For example, Heyd implies that attacking the institution of dowries would make girls less expensive, and would make parents less likely to choose boys.

This response is not fully persuasive. Even if sex selection is just a manifestation of gender inequality, it can still be harmful independently of its root causes. Sex selection could perpetuate and normalise sexist prejudices, by reassuring people that it is acceptable to hold such views and to act upon them.

Heyd also refers to the empirical work of Marcia Guttentag, who suggests that historically, the proportion of women in a society is inversely related to their status. If women are relatively rare in a society, they will be valued more, given more power and freedom. This further undermines the empirical claims of the ‘feminists’.

Heyd’s arguments are interesting and subtle. However, the strongest grounds for resisting the ‘feminist’ criticism is the assumption that boys would, in fact, be preferred to girls. In reality, this premise does not seem to hold in Western countries. Gleicher and Barad’s analysis of choices made by parents in an American clinic that offered sex selection found that those wanting boys and girls balanced each other out. Numerous surveys have established that, if anything, there is a slight preference for girls in Western countries.

The Problem of Sex Ratio Imbalance

These findings undermine perhaps the most common objection to non-medical sex selection: the fear that it will lead to a major imbalance in the sex ratio. Yet this fear is clearly unjustified. As we have seen, those that do opt to choose the sex of their children tend to be evenly split between those who want boys and those who want girls. Even if there were an imbalance in this population, the overall effect would be attenuated by the fact that most people probably wouldn’t choose the sex of their babies in the first place. Hall et al’s review of survey data demonstrates most people do not want to decide.

Of course, these findings are limited to Western countries. In many parts of the world, there would be a strong tendency for parents to choose, and in particular to choose to have boys. In countries where sex imbalance and discrimination are genuine possibilities, it would be irresponsible to facilitate them. But when a society is deciding on policies and restrictions which are binding only on it, the effects that policy would have on other societies not subject to their laws is surely irrelevant.

The only reason I can imagine for the UK or other Western societies to consider the effects of permitting sex selection on other societies is that it might leave them open to the charge of hypocrisy in dealing with those other societies. Thus if the UK permitted sex selection but tried to criticise (say) China for doing the same, it would appear inconsistent. Yet it is clear that the inconsistency is only apparent, an acknowledgement of and response to the fact that the UK and China are different social contexts. It is not that different principles are being applied to different societies, rather the application of the same principle requires different responses in different contexts.

In any case, it is important to remember that even if every parent chose the sex of their child, this would still only have a small effect on overall sex balance because sex selection is currently open to so few parents. Sex selection is limited to those who undergo assistive reproductive treatments such as IVF. These methods have much lower success rates than natural conception, so it seems implausible that many parents would jeopardise their chances of conceiving at all just to ensure they could choose the sex of their child.

Inequality of access

The fact that so few will in practice be able to choose the sex of their children may, though, be used as an argument against permitting sex selection. It simply illustrates that access to this technology will almost certainly be extremely unequal. This concern can come from two sources: the worry that the rich will be able to afford services that the poor cannot, or that those who conceive naturally will be unfairly disadvantaged.

The notion that the rich should not be able to buy a better standard of healthcare is problematic because it brings to mind the ‘levelling down’ objection against extreme versions of egalitarian thought. If nobody is made better-off by equalisation, it is hard to see why we should pursue absolute equality. If we cannot make the blind see, does this mean we should all put our eyes out to ensure we can all see equally badly? In the same way, just because some people cannot take advantage of the option to choose the sex of their child, does this mean nobody should have that option at all?

Yet even if we accept that unequal access to sex selection is wrong, it does not follow that we should ban it. Rather, it makes more sense to extend access to the technology to all. Subsidisation of the service or its provision on the National Health Service would give the poor equal opportunity to choose the sex of their children. Perhaps this focuses the issue: there are certain essential medical treatments that we believe all should have access to, rich or poor, such as emergency care, and so we ensure public provision of these. There are others which are not so crucial which we do not mind the rich having greater access to, such as cosmetic surgery, and so these are generally provided privately. The question then becomes whether sex selection is more like emergency care or cosmetic surgery, essential or not.

If we even up access to sex selection between rich and poor, this still fails to address the fact that only the infertile will be able to choose the sex of their baby (Of course, it is not only the literally infertile who will choose their child’s sex – fertile parents who carry sex linked diseases may do the same. However, the point still holds because in forgoing natural conception they are reducing their chances of conception to that of the infertile). This is a peculiar argument, since it depends on us accepting that the infertile are unfairly advantaged. Stated in these terms it seems plainly absurd: if anything the ability to choose the sex of their baby is a sort of compensation for parents’ inability to conceive naturally, and an inadequate one at that. It is helpful to consider the issue in terms of Michael Walzer’s concept of complex equality. According to Walzer, to determine whether two people are equal, it is not sufficient to look at just one dimension, or ‘sphere’ (such as income), but we must consider all indices. Thus while infertile couples are disadvantaged in the sphere of fertility, they are advantaged in the sphere of reproductive choice.

Misuse of medical technology

The distinction between essential and non-essential medical services leads us to another common objection to non-medical sex selection. Many believe that medicine should only be about curing disease. On this view sex selection is therefore a misuse of doctors’ time and resources. Yet the example of cosmetic surgery illustrates the fact that doctors can and do devote their time to other things beyond curing disease. Not many people would go as far as to call for the banning of cosmetic surgery on these grounds, however, as this position would appear to commit them to.

In any case, it is hardly self-evident that doctors have no duties beyond fighting disease. Many insist that enhancement of patients’ wellbeing is an equally important facet of medicine, for example, reducing pain.

‘Slippery slope’ to designer children

Another common fear regarding non-medical sex selection is that it is the ‘thin end of the wedge’, and that accepting it will inevitably lead to the development of ‘designer’ babies. The thought is that if people are permitted to choose one characteristic of their children – sex – then it will be impossible to prevent them from choosing other attributes, such as eye colour, hair colour, intelligence. Even accepting that this would be undesirable (not everyone agrees - see Nicholas Agar’s case for liberal eugenics), it is not clear why exactly the descent down the slippery slope is inevitable. There is no logical certainty that sex selection entails any other form of selection.

Indeed, as Heyd points out, there is a notable discontinuity between sex selection and the choosing of other attributes. While sex selection can be done through sorting of embryos or sperm cells, full-on designer babies would require genetic manipulation. This difference is key: clinical sex selection involves no interference with the human genome at all, and so is crucially different from the production of designer babies.

It is also worth remembering that most people are willing to accept sex selection on medical grounds without fearing the inevitability of designer babies. Yet this is also a case of choosing the characteristics of one’s child – so how is it any different from sex selection on non-medical grounds?

Argument from religion/nature

It is worth pressing the objection to designer babies a little harder to see why exactly these are perceived to be so undesirable. One strong strand of the argument is a religious one, which sees such tampering as questioning the will of God, and undermining His authority. On this line of thinking, to fail to leave the matter of the sex of our baby to divine providence is to fail to respect God’s wisdom and benevolence. Secularised versions of this argument are often founded on the thought that sex selection is in some way unnatural, or represent humanity in some way ‘overstepping’ its remit. For example, Michael Sandel sees the desire to master the ‘mystery of birth’ as ‘hubris’.

None of these can in themselves provide persuasive accounts of what is supposed to be wrong with non-medical sex selection. The fact that something is natural does not in itself make it right or wrong. This much has been established in ethics since G.E. Moore pointed out the ‘naturalistic fallacy’. There are all sorts of established human practices and behaviours that could hardly be classified as ‘natural’, and yet which hardly seem ethically problematic. From wearing clothes to driving cars to artificial reproduction, to reject all that is unnatural would involve rejecting most of modern human life.

The explicitly religious argument is problematic too. Even if we concede the existence of God, it is unclear why we should spend much time trying to second guess His desires and intentions. To the argument that the conception of a boy or girl is in some way the revealed will of God, we can respond that if God did not want us to choose the sex of our children, He would not have provided us with the technology and expertise to do so. God helps those who help themselves, as the old joke reminds us:

There was an old man sitting on his porch watching the rain fall. Pretty soon the water was coming over the porch and into the house.

The old man was still sitting there when a rescue boat came and the people on board said, "You can't stay here you have to come with us."The old man replied, "No, God will save me." So the boat left.

A little while later the water was up to the second floor, and another rescue boat came, and again told the old man he had to come with them.The old man again replied, "God will save me." So the boat left him again.

An hour later the water was up to the roof and a third rescue boat approached the old man, and tried to get him to come with them.Again the old man refused to leave stating that, "God will grant a miracle & save him." So the boat left him again.

Soon after, the man drowns and goes to heaven, and when he sees God he asks him, "Why didn't you save me? I thought you would grant me a miracle and you have let me down."God replied, "You idiot, I don't know what you're complaining about. I sent three boats after you!!"

The ‘Parental Love’ Objection

Perhaps we are being unjust in writing off people’s unease as superstition or luddism. Some philosophers maintain that the unease many feel with non-medical sex selection is rooted in concern for the welfare of the resultant child. This certainly appears to be the position of the HFEA, which seems to accept the argument that children who have their sex chosen by their parents will be somehow disadvantaged. Peter Herissone-Kelly tries to rigorously formalise this intuition, among the most common gut reactions to the matter of sex selection, into what he calls the parental love argument. This also seems the most charitable interpretation of Sandel’s argument above.

On Herissone-Kelly’s account, what is wrong with non-medical sex selection is that it fails to display ‘proper parental love’: “the sort of love that we think parents ought, simply in virtue of being parents, to have for their children”. Presumably, the implication is that if a parent cannot provide such love, they should not be given children. (Note possible difference between ‘giving’ and ‘letting have’)

Proper parental love must satisfy the ‘any incumbent’ model. For A to love B with proper parental love, A’s love must have only one (necessary and sufficient) condition: that B is A’s child. Another way of putting this is that A would love anyone who happened to be their child. Since parents who choose the sex of their children seem to be making their love contingent on them being the ‘right’ sex, they violate the any incumbent model, and so fail to display proper parental love.

This does not follow. These parents may seem to be making their love contingent on their children’s sex, but this is not necessarily the case, nor is it even that likely. The claim is that all parents who would prefer a boy to a girl would therefore not love their child if they were a girl (or vice-versa). This might hold in a minority of cases, where parents would rather have no child than a child of the ‘wrong’ sex. Yet there are almost certainly many parents who would love and be happy with a child of either sex, but who simply have a preference one way or the other.

It is important to separate two distinct concerns here. On one hand, we may be worried that parents with a sex preference may end up with a child of the wrong ‘sex’, and therefore fail to be good parents to it. On the other, the problem is that even if the parents get the sex they wanted, this reflects a deficiency in their attitude – a lack of proper parental love – which is bound to adversely affect their child. This draws out a central plank of the parental love objection – that our attitude to hypothetical children in different possible worlds is an indicator of our strength of feeling for our real children.

Observe that the ‘any incumbent’ model places very strong restrictions on what can be described as proper parental love. If you can imagine any circumstance under which your love for your child would falter, then you do not love them ‘properly’ as a parent. This is a test that many, if not most, real-life parents would fail. The conditions of their love may be few and weak, but only the most saintly could still love a child who lied, stole, raped, killed without repentance. Parents do disown their children, and often because of the despicable characteristics of the child. Herissone-Kelly accepts this argument, and insists that parents who would not love a ‘diabolical’ child cannot hold proper parental love for their real, non-diabolical children.

However, Herissone-Kelly is very careful to point out that he is not doubting that parents who insist upon this ‘non-monstrosity’ condition do love their children. His point is merely that they do not display ‘proper parental’ love. But what is the difference between ‘proper parental’ and other kinds of love? And why should we care about the absence of ‘proper parental’ love, if Herissone-Kelly accepts that some form of love is present? Herissone-Kelly’s answer is that parental love ought to be reliable, and that making your love contingent on a person’s characteristics makes it unreliable. This links his argument to the virtue ethics rejection of sex selection.

The virtue of ‘acceptance’

Herissone-Kelly explicitly builds on Rosalind McDougall’s virtue ethics approach to the question of non-medical sex selection. Virtue ethics is the philosophy that moral rightness consists in possessing and displaying ‘virtues’ rather than in any given action. Virtues are usually defined as dispositions or mindsets, which entail not only acting in a certain way but also certain “emotions and emotional reactions, choices, values, desires, perceptions, attitudes, interests, expectations and sensibilities”. Thus an honest person – one who displays the virtue of honesty – does not merely tell the truth, but does so because of the values, beliefs and motivations that we would associate with honesty.

McDougall seeks to adapt the virtue ethics approach to the question of sex selection, and argues that non-medical sex selection is wrong because it fails to display parental virtue. She posits that the criterion of right parental action is that an action is right if and only if it is what a virtuous parent would do. Traditionally (at least within the Aristotelian tradition), virtues have been regarded as those traits favourable to human flourishing (the Greek concept of eudaimonia). In McDougall’s account, what makes for a parental virtue is that a disposition is conducive to the child’s flourishing, based on immutable facts about human reproduction and rearing.

According to McDougall, one such immutable fact is unpredictability. Children are always capable of placing unexpected strains or demands on their parents, and so it is in the interests of a child’s flourishing to have a parent capable of adapting to this. Even if we could know a child’s entire genetic code, McDougall alleges, environmental factors are constantly capable of surprising us. For example, the child could be blinded in an accident. This fact implies that acceptance is a parental virtue. Parents must be capable of taking their children as they are, even when they fail to meet their expectations because the sheer unpredictability of children means that they will not always meet their parents’ expectations. This seems to be Sandel’s point when he argues that choosing the sex their child “deprives the parent of the humility and enlarged human sympathies that openness to the unbidden can cultivate”.

The virtue ethics account, like the parental love objection, often seems to read too much into parents’ desire to choose the sex of their baby. This one choice need not imply total obsessive control freakery, a desire to dominate every part of their child’s life. It is just one decision, one feature of the child. There is nothing inconsistent about having a preference for the sex of your child and being generally accepting of its other features: appearance, talents etc. Moreover, it does not follow from the fact that a parent has a preference for a certain sex that they would not accept and love a baby of the ‘wrong’ sex. Thus a person can have a sex preference and possess the virtue of acceptance at the same time.

McDougall accepts that it is not clear that having a preference is in itself wrong, but holds that acting on this desire would be wrong. She also insists that even if the parent’s future actions displayed the parental virtues, including acceptance, this would be irrelevant to this moral question, because it is only the act of sex selection itself that is at issue. Yet this seems to break dramatically with the spirit of virtue ethics, which evolved as a rejection of moral philosophy’s obsession with evaluating individual acts. Rosalind Hursthouse bemoans “the extreme recklessness of attributing a virtue on the basis of a single action”. One lapse does not make a person vicious, it is their general character that must be considered. Therefore, a virtue ethics account of sex selection has to account for the motivations, attitudes and characteristics of parents before pronouncing on their moral status.

However, there is a deeper point to be made against both the parental love and virtue ethics objections to sex selection: that they expect too much of parents. Even if we accept that a parent who fails to show proper parental love or the virtue of acceptance towards their children is in some way imperfective, it is not enough to show that they are negligent or incompetent. Herissone-Kelly has to concede that there are numerous well-functioning happy families where parents love their children, but simply fail to meet the (incredibly high) standards he demands. Similarly, many parents fail to be fully accepting, blame children for faults that are not their own and push them to be something they are not. Yet this one failing does not mean that they are unfit parents, or even that their children will be particularly harmed. Most parents are imperfect, rarely is love truly unconditional.

Home and Away

In the calendar year of 2010, Liverpool Football Club have won just five of their 28 away games in all competitions. At home, they have won 20 out of 27 fixtures. Despite one of their most wretched periods in recent years, Liverpool have lost just twice in normal time at Anfield (one of the defeats being the loss Chelsea in May, by which point Chelsea were still chasing the title but Liverpool’s season was over). Liverpool’s points average at Anfield in 2010 is 2.43 points per game. In the history of the Premiership, only Chelsea have sustained a higher points average over a 38 game season, playing half their games away. The point isn’t that Liverpool’s home form is particularly good (plenty of teams have had better home records – Chelsea were unbeaten at Stamford Bridge for 86 matches), but that even a decidedly mediocre Liverpool team looks world-beating at home.

It is a phenomenon Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson is familiar with, forging a reasonably successful managerial career despite winning only 13 of the 106 away games he has managed in the English league. These examples are extreme, but it’s a general and universally acknowledged trend. Of last season’s 380 Premiership games, 193 were won by the home team, just 91 by the away team.

This has always struck me as bizarre. In a game of football between well-honed professional teams, the better should generally win. Of course, part of the joy of football is that brute luck and circumstance ensure that the best team doesn’t always win. But why should brute luck and circumstance always favour the home team? And even if we accept that they do, why should they affect the game so much? Some rudimentary maths suggests that the result of something like 20-25% of matches is influenced by where the game is held.

In this era where football teams spend thousands on understanding every determinant of victory, it should be no surprise that sports scientists have given a lot of attention to this crucial one. Numerous explanations have been advanced, but none seem capable of explaining the sheer scale of the phenomenon.

Intuitively, the most obvious explanation of home advantage is the direct motivational effect of playing in front of a supportive crowd. Footballers have to run kilometre after kilometre, and the extra encouragement of all those around them willing them to succeed could account for the home side putting in the little bit more effort necessary to win.

The economists Mark Koyama and J. James Reade have come up with an inventive alternative account of how supporters influence players’ motivation. They model a classic principal-agent scenario, where supporters seek to ensure maximal effort from their team’s players, and players try to get away with putting in as little effort as possible. Since football is a team game, and results are only indirectly influenced by any given player’s effort, it is possible for players to ‘shirk’ (play at less than 100% - or should that be 110%?) without anyone realising. Koyama and Reade suggest that teams play better at home because their effort is observed by more supporters, so they are less likely to get away with shirking without being detected. They cite the declining proportion of home teams winning in the Premiership as evidence of this, arguing that with more games available on the TV and internet, it is easier for fans to monitor the effort of their team’s players and so players have less of an incentive to shirk during away games than before.

The problem with both these accounts is that they offer peculiar accounts of player motivation. Principal-agent models are usually applied to workers who don’t like their jobs. But many football players claim that they would do it for free. Sportsmen are notoriously competitive – but Koyama and Reade imply that footballers do not care whether they win or lose. As much as anything, football players are motivated by success, winning matches and trophies. This is what makes it to so surprising that home advantage is so influential – when there are promotions and titles on the line, why should the background noise be so important?

It seems clear that the noise does affect referees. Anecdotally, the rarity of penalties for visitors Old Trafford or the suspicious amounts of stoppage time in games Manchester United are losing there imply that officials are cowed by spectators. Indeed, it is hard to blame referees for doing what they can to avoid abuse from tens of thousands of people. Of course, as retired referee Jeff Winter observes, referees may go the other way and give decisions against their tormentors, or they may identify potential bias and overcorrect for it: “If as a referee you walk out to a hostile crowd, especially if you've got history with the club, by human nature you're not exactly going to bend over backwards to help them. Poor little Bolton Wanderers will get the 50-50s because the nasty Man United fans are singing songs about me”. More subtly, the human limitations of referees make it likely that they are not certain about every decision. In these circumstances, the reaction of the crowd may tip them one way or another. For example, the same tackle may provoke howls of outrage if performed on a home player, but attract little attention if carried out by a home player. Thus the referee, who may not properly have seen the incident, may be influenced by the reactions of the spectators.

Comprehensive statistical analyses show that refereeing decisions do in fact favour home teams, granting them more penalties and fewer red cards. Nevill et al carried out an experiment, showing two groups of referees the same match footage, but one set got to hear the partisan crowd noise while the others watched the game without it. As expected, the referees exposed to the noise were more lenient to the home team.

Another apparent benefit of playing at home is ‘local knowledge’. This is clearly important in cricket, where the actual playing surface plays such an important part in the game. Home cricket teams are likely to include players suited to the pitch, for instance spinners on dryer wickets. Further, many cricket teams prepare their pitches to suit their playing style. But football pitches are far more standardised and less significant to the game. There are small variations – larger pitches encourage more expansive play. Yet it seems unlikely that away teams are particularly disadvantaged on others’ turf.

More plausible is the theory that away players are discomfited by travel. This helps account for the falling significance of playing at home, as long and arduous coach rides have been replaced by rapid plane journeys. Last week’s round of fixtures in the Spanish La Liga offers further evidence that difficult journeys undermine away teams: with all Spanish aeroplanes grounded by strikes, teams were unable to fly. Result: of the away teams, only Barcelona won (and they’re so much better than anybody else they could probably have walked from Barcelona and not been fazed). Similarly, away teams seemed to struggle in European competition during the Icelandic volcano disruption earlier this year.

Yet while this clearly suggests that uncomfortable coach trips inhibit performance (though admittedly I’ve only given a small amount evidence here), it still doesn’t account for the effect on players flying and travelling well in advance. Sure sleeping in a strange bed in unfamiliar surroundings might make players less relaxed than usual, but enough to give home teams such a boost?

The psychologists Nick Neave and Sandy Wolfson have posited that physiological factors can help explain home advantage. They see it as a version of ‘territoriality’, the phenomenon by which animals are more vigorous and motivated in defending what they see as their own space. Territoriality is generally believed to result from higher testosterone levels in animals who perceive their home too be under threat. Testing footballers’ saliva for the hormone, they found that home players produced far more testosterone. This difference was not reflected in self-reported questionnaires on the players’ mood, suggesting that the process is not a conscious one. This finding is extremely interesting, but comes from a small-scale study which does not appear to have been repeated or scaled-up. In any case, the link between testosterone and on-field performance isn’t clear-cut. For example, excess testosterone could lead to over-aggression: home teams being ill-disciplined and losing focus.

Of course, it is highly possible that home advantage is greatly psychosomatic. Perhaps away teams play worse because they expect to play worse. They may be more satisfied with worse results because the concept of home advantage is so ingrained. Thus when big teams go to play, say, Birmingham City (who have a very strong home record), they will be more likely to settle for a draw instead of exerting themselves for the win they would expect at home.

This is especially apparent in teams’ tactics. It is generally expected in most games that the home team will have more possession and be more attacking. So ingrained are these tactical mindsets that ‘to play like an away team’ is often used as shorthand for a defensive outlook. It is highly probable that a significant reason for away teams’ lack of success is this concession of the tactical initiative, their diminished expectations from the start.

If my time at university has had any effect on me, it is to instil an inveterate dislike of the ‘list a load of points with pros and cons and conclude the truth lies somewhere in the middle’ approach to issues. However, on the question of home advantage, I’m not sure there’s much else I can do. There are a number of plausible mechanisms, but none of them are entirely persuasive and none of them seem to exclude the others. In any case, the sheer magnitude of the effect seems to suggest there are multiple factors in home advantage. So I still can’t say I know why Liverpool aren’t top of the table.

Jimmy Mubenga: Hypocritical Outrage

The shocked and outraged response over the past week to the death of Angolan asylum seeker Jimmy Mubenga has been interesting, if not consistent. Reports suggest that he suffocated on board an aeroplane to Luanda while being restrained by guards acting on behalf of the UK Border Agency. Admittedly, the circumstances surrounding Mubenga's death are horrific, and the failure of any of the other passengers to intervene is troubling. However, there is something slightly hypocritical about the desire to 'sanitise' deportation.

Deportation, especially of asylum seekers, is bound to be unpleasant. This is not to excuse the actions of the guards. Indeed, there is mounting evidence that deportations are excessively and unnecessarily violent. However, deaths, like Mubenga's, directly in the process of deportation, are relatively rare: only one out of an estimated seventy-seven that can be directly traced to the asylum system as a whole. Many of those were people so terrified of returning to the places they fleed that they took their own lives. It seems significant that some of the onlookers on Mubenga's flight decided not to act because "when Mubenga said 'they are going to kill me' it wasn't clear if he was referring to the guards or his political adversaries in Angola".

Does it matter? Should the British government feel any less shame or remorse if an asylum seeker is killed at the hands of their countrymen than from the action or inaction of individuals representing the British state? Or even if the terror of return drives them to suicide? In each case, the govenment's decisions have meant death - I don't see how the rest of the circumstances are at all relevant. Thus while the death of Jimmy Mubenga is undoubtedly a tragedy, one which should provoke anger and reproval, it is only one tragedy among seventy-seven, each as damning and outrageous as this one.

Browne Review

Turns out this Master’s degree lark isn’t that heavy a workload, and the Commonwealth games finished today, so I spent this evening looking through the Browne review into the future of Higher Education funding in England (Not Scotland though. Can’t help but feel a little burst of pride whenever ministers insist Scots are simply different to the free-marketeer Sassenachs).

To be honest, I’m not sure what exactly I think the solution is for Higher Education. The Scottish system where the state takes care of everything is simplest, and I’m inclined to say the best option. But, on the other hand, universal free tertiary education may well be subsidising the rich at the expense of those who do not go to university. I think a graduate tax is a plausible idea too, but it carries obvious difficulties in terms of its implementation.

Suffice to say that whatever the best option is, I have serious reservations about the Browne review’s. Here are my concerns/grievances with the report:

Public Funding of Higher Education

The report regularly repeats its concern that the quality and international competitiveness of English university education is under threat due to a lack of investment: “our competitive edge is being challenged by advances made elsewhere. Other countries are increasing investment in their HEIs and educating more people to higher standards”. Yet the authors do not seem to envisage much of a role for public funding in bridging this gap; they seem to expect the bulk of additional investment to come from tuition fees. This is despite the fact that the UK has among the lowest levels of public investment in higher education amongst advanced OECD nations - 0.6% of GDP (By comparison, Canada, Denmark, Sweden and Finland each spend 1.5% of GDP).

Some might believe this is as it should be, that the general taxpayer shouldn’t have to subsidise degrees that primarily benefit the student themselves. Indeed, this seems to be part of Browne’s reasoning, citing an OECD report which suggests that the private return of a university education is over 50% more than the public benefit. The NUS estimates that at a fee of £7000 students will be paying the equivalent of 170% of the state’s contribution.

Yet this figure includes only the monetary benefits of a university education, which the authors themselves accept are only a part of the positive effect: they refer to the reduced threat of crime, better health prospects and “higher levels of social contribution”.

Moreover, the report’s argument that it is the responsibility of students to fill the higher education funding gap only holds up as long as the government continues to pay its fair share. Yet its authors seem to have already conceded that public investment will be cut: £7000 fees are believed to be “roughly equivalent to what institutions will have to charge to maintain investment at current levels based on our assumptions about the reduction in HEFCE funding”. Yet this suggests that increases in tuition fees will do nothing to improve the relative under-funding of English universities – rather, it will simply compensate them for the money taken from them for the government. The result is that the Browne review – apparently by its own admission - seems to have done little to ease the problem it was convened to solve.

The Problem of Risk

Probably the biggest concern expressed by those that oppose the lifting of the cap on tuition fees is the impact on risk-averse students, who may be so concerned at the prospect of taking on large amounts of debt that they are discouraged from going to university at all. Further, the possibility (indeed, the likelihood) that different universities will charge different fees suggests that risk-averse students will be put off from applying to the more expensive (presumably higher quality) universities.

The Browne review’s line on this is borderline obtuse: “For all students, studying for a degree will be a risk free activity. The return to graduates for studying will be on average around 400%”. They are right to point out that, as investments go, going to university is both relatively safe and lucrative. But the point about risk-averse students, the reason that people are so concerned for them, is that they do not know this. How many people consult the economic data before making these sorts of decisions? The benefits of going to university are obvious if your parents or those around you have been or are going. But that is simply not the case for everyone.

If students are wary of taking on debt to go to university in the first place, they are likely to be all the more reluctant to consider taking on extra debt to go to the more expensive universities. It does not take a great leap of the imagination to foresee worsening access problems for the ‘elite’ Russell group universities, which already have a shoddy record on attracting students from less advantaged backgrounds.

Rejection of the Graduate tax

The Browne review claims to have fully considered, and rejected the NUS’ preferred solution, a graduate tax. Quite validly, they point out that their proposal preserves some of the attractive features of a graduate tax. As with a graduate tax, there are no upfront fees. As the report repeatedly observes, up front fees are the biggest disincentive for prospective students, so this is an important concession. Like the graduate tax, Browne’s proposals are progressive: those that benefit more financially from their degree will be required to pay more back. Yet the fact that graduates will be charged no more than the cost of their degree suggests that the proposal is less progressive than a graduate tax.

The authors suggest that a major drawback of the graduate tax is that it will not get enough money to universities soon enough to deal with the funding shortfall. Yet this appears a bit disingenuous: as they so proudly proclaim, both the graduate tax and their preferred scheme require the government to finance students in the short run. Indeed, while they condemn the graduate tax for overcharging rich students, they celebrate the possibility that the majority of students will not pay back the full value of their degree under their proposals.

Choice

Perhaps the most troubling feature of the Browne review is its repeated commitment to the principle of a free market in higher education. They look forward eagerly to a future in which “HEI s actively compete for well informed, discerning students, on the basis of price and teaching quality”. The theory is sound enough: good universities will be popular and expand, bad universities will be run out of business or taken over by their more successful rivals.

The first reason why this is troubling has already been discussed. If universities are competing in terms of price, then the more prestigious ones will have no reason not to price the less well off out of the market, with obvious implications for equality of access.

However, a deeper concern is the question of whether it is possible for universities to compete meaningfully for students in the first place. To draw an analogy, consider how competition works with restaurants. Good (or at least commercially viable) restaurants will be successful because they can attract people and convince them to return. Yet going to university is (for most) a one-off decision. Remember all the bad restaurants you have ever been to, and consider the implications of a market where all consumers have yet to sample the service they are buying.

I remember distinctly the grounds on which I decided to apply to the universities I applied to, and it was not the result of many hours of careful research. It was based on a couple of league tables and the general reputations of the institutions. The point about reputation is an important one: Browne et al want Oxford and Oxford Brookes to compete on a level playing field, but is this really possible when the Oxford brand carries such cache?

Strangely, the report pronounces prospective students as the most qualified arbiters of the quality of universities, despite openly admitting the difficulty of making such comparisons: “There is no ‘national curriculum’ for higher education. Looking at student outcomes by institution can be misleading as these reflect which students the institution selected as much as the value added by the institution”.

Admittedly, the report does emphasise the need for greater assistance to students in making their choice, but it is not obvious that the proposed help will make all that difference. Browne calls for more and better qualified careers advisers, but nobody can have the specialist knowledge on all courses and institutions to help everyone. The report suggests that statistics such as student satisfaction should be made readily available. But anyone who has filled in a student survey knows that results are not necessarily to be trusted (for instance, doing surveys online or at the last lecture of a series means only the keenest students will be canvassed).

Ultimately, there is little reason to share Lord Browne’s faith that students will be informed consumers. If these doubts are warranted, it suggests that the whole market that is to be established is open to distortion.

Maintenance funding

A crucial issue that is often overlooked in discussions of higher education finance is that of maintenance grants and loans. A large proportion of the cost of going to university is, after all, living costs such as food, accommodation and transport. The Browne review has insisted on retaining generous grants, and abolishing means testing for maintenance loans, so that all students are guaranteed an annual loan of £3 750.

I have to admit that I can see both sides of the means testing question. On the one hand, subsidising a loan to students from privileged background is effectively handing out money to the rich. Indeed, it is likely many families will simply put the money in the bank and collect the interest. Thus it seems logical to restrict maintenance funding to those who really need it.

The problem is that it is not that easy to distinguish rich students from poor students. Just because a student has rich parents, this does not mean we should assume that they will be supported generously by them. The Scottish government does assume a ‘parental contribution’ to student maintenance, the English funding system will not. Perhaps the easiest way to illustrate the drawbacks of means testing is to use myself as an example. As an undergraduate, I took as much support as I could from the government so as to minimise my dependence on my family. Under the Browne proposals would have had to take little money from them at all. As it was, I needed thousands of pounds of support from my parents. If we are to try to promote equality of opportunity, and to discourage children from hanging on to their parents’ coat tails, then surely they should be given the opportunity to support themselves independently?

Bequests

Browne et al bemoan the fact that “There is no established culture of giving to higher education in the UK. Only two UK universities have endowments of more than £1bn – Oxford and Cambridge – compared to over 40 in the US. Data from 2009 show that barely over 1% of alumni make gifts to their institutions”. They urge it should be made easier for graduates to give voluntary donations to their universities through tax relief.

Yet surely the institutions that get the highest bequests (i.e. Oxbridge) are those that least need the extra cash. It is invariably the case that the richest universities educate the richest individuals and families. Trying to replace state funding with individual donations (as in the US) will simply create a self-perpetuating cycle where a few universities prosper at the expense of the majority.

The Role of Business

“Businesses will not be compelled to contribute more – they contribute by rewarding graduates with higher wages.” The report acknowledges that businesses benefit greatly from enjoying a pool of tertiary-educated talent from which to select their employees. Yet it suggests that the incentive effect of the higher graduate wages they is a sufficient contribution from businesses. Yet it is surely the case that there is an externality effect here too. Businesses have a lot to gain from operating in a country with lots of graduates, in the same way as the rest of society gains. Therefore, it isn’t that implausible to expect a further contribution, as the NUS has suggested.

Postgraduate Funding

While the main focus of the review was the undergraduate system, it also touched on state of postgraduate education in the UK. On this, the report was remarkably complacent. Despite observing higher levels of uptake of postgraduate education among the well-off, the report simply concludes: “it is reasonable to suppose that access to postgraduate education is a function of the socio-economic make up of the undergraduate population”. In other words, fewer poor people do postgraduate degrees simply because fewer of them do undergraduate degrees. It suggests that improving access at undergraduate level will suffice to remedy the problem for postgraduate degrees.

This does not make sense. At postgraduate level, there are higher fees and less financial support. How can this possibly not affect the likelihood of talented students staying on for further study? I can say with absolute certainty that if I had been from a poorer background I could not have stayed on for a Master’s degree. I know I’m not alone. This suggests that access to postgraduate education is a much greater issue than the Browne review concedes.

Aberdonians: Ugly Women but Beautiful Heads

"Whenever I have occasion to classify the people I meet into three classes, 'good, medium, bad,' I use a needle mounted as a pricker, wherewith to prick holes, unseen, in a piece of paper, torn rudely into a cross with a long leg. I use its upper end for 'good,' the cross arm for 'medium,' the lower end for 'bad.' The prick holes keep distinct, and are easily read off at leisure. The object, place, and date are written on the paper. I used this plan for my beauty data, classifying the girls I passed in streets or elsewhere as attractive, indifferent or repellent. Of course this was a purely individual estimate, but it was consistent, judging from the conformity of different attempts in the population. I found London to rank highest for beauty; Aberdeen lowest."

"Mr Gladstone was amusingly insistent about the size of his head, saying that hatters often told him that he had an Aberdeenshire head - 'a fact which you may be sure I do not forget to tell my Scotch constituents.' It was a beautifully shaped head, though rather low, but after all it was not so very large in circumference."

- Francis Galton, Memories of My Life

On Martin Brookes' view of "The Morality of Charity"

Apparently, there’s been a fair amount of controversy surrounding Martin Brookes’ call for an independent ranking of charities according to worthiness. Brookes, the head of New Philanthropy Capital, an organisation that provides advice to charitable donors, made the comments in a talk this week. If you get a chance you should have a read of it - it's an interesting and provocative take on the state of giving in the UK. (Find the text here).

The main premise of Brookes’ argument is uncontroversial, but woefully neglected. Brookes rightfully bemoans the fact that all charities are too often lumped in together, with no appreciation of the variation in worthiness of the causes or effectiveness of the charities. Surely he is correct to insist that the distinction between giving well and giving badly is as morally salient as that between giving and not giving at all?

These are important issues, and Brookes should be lauded for trying to draw attention to them. If anything, I think he should be more aggressive in driving home the message about quality of giving. I sympathise with his concern that “criticising donors for not being ‘good’ or ‘moral’ enough” may be counter-productive. Yet I think he overestimates his own importance if he believes his criticism is going to have such a strong effect on people. The thing about moral criticism is that it is easy to ignore: ‘What does he know?’, ‘Who is he to tell me what to do?’. It is only likely to be effective if the person criticised recognises some validity in criticism, and incorporates it into their own worldview. So I think the important thing is to get people to consider the possibility that they are misguided in their approach to charity.

I think most people can agree that some charities are better than others. The difficulty is that they are unlikely to agree which ones precisely are the better ones. Brookes’ suggestion that causes are what ought to be ranked is problematic to say the least, since any such ranking is bound to be subjective and upset as many (probably more) people as it guides or helps. A league table of charities would have to decide whether animals should enjoy comparable moral status to humans, whether we have greater obligations to compatriots than to foreigners and what the precise constituents of human need are. All of these are questions that have divided moral philosophers for centuries, so any assumptions will be controversial.

Even if we agree on what our values are, it is far from straightforward to determine how best to promote them. Brookes seems to believe that donating money to fighting global disease is morally better than giving the money to Harvard University (even though much of the funding for medical research presumably goes to academics at universities like Harvard). Yet even money that is not ear-marked to directly benefit the neediest may in fact serve them better. Is it implausible to imagine that the money used to fund a scholarship for a development economist whose ideas lift millions out of poverty is better spent than tackling that poverty directly? If the goal is reducing human suffering, we simply cannot know which of our strategies is most effective for achieving that goal. Given this uncertainty, it is wise to encourage diversification, a combination of a high- and low-risk ‘investments’.

However, I think that the core idea of an independent comparison of charities is a good one. Perhaps it would be wiser to compare similar charities with similar aims in terms of their effectiveness. I think that there is certainly demand for more general information about charities, like efficiency and administration costs.

In any case, there is another complication. Brookes assumes (not unreasonably) that moral motivations are the basis for most charitable giving. Yet the statistics that he quotes clearly contradict this. Just 14% of American donors in the survey he refers to support the causes that they think constitute the greatest social good, compared to 23% who see charity as ‘repayment’ for ways in which they have been helped. Brookes sees this as evidence of the irrationality of donors, moved by empathy and testimony rather than consideration of hard facts and data.

This may be partly true, but I think that many donors are not irrational at all, but are simply driven by a mix of motives, of which morality is just one. The difficulty is that people tend to see all altruistic acts as morally good, and that a binary conception of ethics blinds us to the possibility that a morally good act can be ‘better’ or ‘worse’. Most moral systems laud altruism, so all else being equal we would praise a person for throwing their friend a lavish birthday party. We generally believe that it is good to put someone else’s interests first, and show the empathy and consideration that requires. Yet it is almost certainly true that the money spent on the birthday party would be better spent given to a worthwhile charity. However, if we were to challenge the person with the fact that they could have done more moral good with the same money, they would probably admit that moral considerations were merely one among many.

Again, we might be wary of the consequences of challenging people with the accusation that they are less moral than they appear. It is bound to upset and anger a few. The hope is that with the realisation of the good they could do, their consciences will do the rest.