But I want to write a note: Race and whiteness is just a concept. She had British ancestry. At some point in history, I’m sure that was a “different race” from my German/Dutch ancestry. As racially neutral as this study is attempting to be, it is actually somewhat biased. It assumes that distinctions between East Asian and Pacific Islander countries are relevant to distinguish between (Filipino vs. Vietnamese), but not between African countries. That either falls into “Black / Af. Am. / Negro” or “Some other race” (which is more derogative than “Race not listed – Print race”). Similarly, your study, at best, only works for studying racial prejudice inside “Asian” cultures in 2009. Questions 2,3,7,9, and 10 are the only ones worth keeping as truly valid, the only ones you need. #7 I’m a little iffy about trusting your interpretation; here’s hoping you’re not going to infer that people prefer people within their race as a racial preference. Because it *might just (probably) be* that people in their race do similar things and engage in similar cultural activity and that people prefer the people who they do things with (proximally) and not the race per se; you have no way of knowing which.

PS. “Negro”? Really? In this day and age? I’m not a soc. major so I don’t know, but I thought that seemed outdated / possibly offensive.

Anyway, good luck!

-Kevin V.

My question is somewhat misleading; I am more interested in asking why individuals feel that they have the right to bear children in a manner of their choosing. Why can people (1a) choose to or (1b) unintentionally have a baby, (2) not be able to adequately provide, and still (3) have subsidization by the government and (4) private ownership of the child, when the desire seems (5) selfishly motivated because raising a child is seen as fulfilling an integral part of the human experience?

Another way to reformulate the thought is to consider whether, in the original position- that is, if we as a society were to abstractly and fairly determine a just social state, we would want to declare that one of the primary social goods is the means to raise a child (or arguably, any number of children that one so desires). In political theory jargon, I am not stating that raising a child needs be defined as the good or a primary end of the human experience, but that we might consider (and seem to have in contemporary America) a right to access the goods necessary to raise a child (or children). This right competes with the right of all children to be adequately cared for, I presume, and that that competing right overrules the right of private domain regarding minors for the sake of the minor(s) and their rights and liberties.

What is a non-totalitarian alternative? There is the opposite extreme, shy of anarchy, whereupon individuals in a libertarian state care for their children with no subsidy from the government. Moving away from the minimal state, I propose that if children are unwanted (1b), that there should be government subsidized abortion and contraceptives. If parents are unable to adequately provide (2), wherein they need subsidization by the government (3), then a forced adoption scheme could be implemented, thus repudiating the need for private ownership (4) in one sense and affirming it in another. This retains the safety net procuring the safety of children while also allowing for private ownership of children, though at a more libertarian (in one sense) level. The effect is to reduce positive liberty on the disadvantaged in one dimension (their ability to have kids), while increasing it in other dimensions (ability to procure independently the goods necessary to have a prosperous life).

Such a view reconsiders child-rearing as a luxury good in itself, not a right or liberty guaranteed by the social state. That is similar to the view currently wherein the state can swoop in and take a child away if parents are neglectful. It is not clear to me that child-rearing be so eminently desirable that it is universally considered to be a fundamental human end. The reasons proposed that it might be are: (1) the continuation of the species, (2) the continuation of American progeny, (3) the joy and satisfaction resulting from possessing a child.

The commodification of children in this discussion has been deliberate. The price is high ($260,000 according to the NYTimes article), the good produced by labor of the parents own doing (which counter-factually could not exist otherwise), and the item itself tangible and generally desirable. Children may not be seen as a consumptive good because (a) at some point the child becomes an adult with reason, (b) children are conscious beings with [some] rights, (c) children cannot be bought or sold and have no market value (though real benefits and costs). It is not clear to me that the eventual development of a consciousness in a child suggests a moral reason to assure/ensure/assist-in the ability for his/her parent to raise that child.

The first two reasons (1) and (2) for why children are a fundamental end of being human seem wrong on two accounts. First, a less assistive governmental stance on child-rearing does not mean that private individuals will not have babies; since we are programmed to procreate, both well-intentioned and unintentional children will continue to be born. It is what is done with those two groups of children that differs on my account. Second, why would our reasoned human morality be tied up with what is programmed into us? Why would we necessarily need to derive laws or accounts of the good with respect to our biological ends. We do not encourage promiscuity with our laws now nor do we say that promiscuity is a human good for its ability to ensure the next generation of Americans. Why should the products of promiscuity be considered a fundamental human end?

The third reason (3) seems particularly compelling until recast in the light of seeing child-rearing as a commodity. [Note: here I have commodified the practice but not the child herself, thus objections to commodification of children do not necessarily hold here.] If child-rearing is something that gives life meaning, then that seems to me to imply that it has some (quantifiable?) benefit. In a rational world without error and perfect prediction, if the benefit were less than the cost of rearing a child, then the good would not ordinarily be consumed. My claim is thus: people do not have a right to the benefits of raising a child no more than they have a right to the benefits of a good that they may otherwise be unable to afford (e.g. a fancy car). There are here two counterarguments to my claim that no one has a right to the benefits of raising a child: the likelihood of errors and the unreality of perfect prediction. Error, here meaning unintended child-rearing as a result of an unwanted pregnancy, would not entitle a claim to the child since the resulting costs still outweigh the expected benefits. Perfect prediction (or mean-zero i.i.d. errors in expected utility) is unrealistic for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the expected benefits increase over time. Stated differently, parents who were remiss in their decision early on become happy with having had a child, typically saying by the end of their lives that raising a child was one of the most important, enjoyable accomplishments of their lives. That is there is a systematic tendency to undervalue the benefits to parents of having kids. Such a tendency might push a utilitarian to encourage unwanted pregnancies on the likelihood that these young parents might later see it as a fundamentally significant and beneficial part of their lives. However, the question of whether or not we have a right to this benefit still stands.

To summarize: I have suggested that child-rearing conveys a surprisingly large benefit to parents; the joy and satisfaction of which parents argue supports the view that society should acknowledge their right to that good. The costs are large, but the benefits even higher. Why society should ensure access to those benefits as a right and not a luxury is less clear. If the particular satisfaction with raising a child is not fungible or if the satisfaction is part of the human experience, then it seems unclear why we have a system of private payment for raising children at all (hence, some of my more meritocratic views) and not a government subsidized system for ensuring that all have nearly unimpeachable access to this bounty. This reasoning logically implies that those who do not bear children have not had the full human experience; that to some degree, sterility or deep and rational cost-benefit-analyzing poverty inhibits the ability to experience humanity. If instead, as I have suggested, the benefits which aggregate only to the parents and the costs of which are borne by all society seems more like a moral hazard problem akin to that of the present financial crisis, then there may not be a right to bear and raise children.

Essay idea from thesis ideas and from a NY Times article on the upturn in demand for vasectomies in the new economy. Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/11/health/11patient.html

Average income distributions. Macroeconomics and studies of general equilibrium tend to focus on GDP and in particular, real GDP. Since the number of people in the labor force (L) divvy up GDP (or Y), the relevant measure in growth economics is Y/L. But that only shows the average amount of income. The Gini coefficient will suggest a measure of the degree of inequality of that income distribution, but while that combined with average income tells us how much everyone is making, it doesn’t give a sense of whether or not jobs are created.

Unemployment. Unemployment again seems to indicate a measure of jobs and it does. It, however, is blind to job creation or destruction. Unemployment could be due to a recession (like now), where jobs that should otherwise exist are disappearing in the short-run but will eventually return (all things regress to the mean). Or UE could be caused by frictional unemployment of individuals changing jobs and companies going through a process of hiring and firing, where no jobs are created, only temporarily filled and not filled. Or it could be structural, where unions or minimum wages have prohibited some kinds of jobs thus increasing UE; this UE has promise for “job creation” but these jobs would only be created in the sense that they were previously limited, over the long-run this is not a continual source for job-creation (for example, one can only revoke the minimum wage once).

So maybe jobs just don’t matter. This conclusion is supported by the modern social welfare state which seems to purport that so long as GDP is the primary economic focus and welfare is a primary social focus then rises in overall income become fairly and evenly distributed amongst individuals. Another way of putting it is: if we tailor the economy not to focus on job creation but on aggregate growth of income, then redistribution at the end of the day should answer any problems with inequalities that such a system engenders. So part of me thinks that job creation is a focus of ignorant plebiscite-pandering statesmen that know that economic efficiency doesn’t matter but selling the idea of easier employment does.

The question as it turns out is more philosophical than economic. If a market system can function efficiently without you such that, for some reason, you cannot provide a function by yourself that others are willing to trade some of their scarce resources (read: money) for, is it really that bad? On the absolute scale, probably not. The poorest of the poor in America face wonderful benefits that people over a hundred years ago could hardly imagine: microwaves, the internet, refrigerators, cars, etc, etc.

Why doesn’t the libertarian argument resonate with you? Probably because your utility functions (or preferences) are not absolute or cardinal and time-insensitive, but instead other-regarding. We have no absolute measure in our mind, only a comparison with yesterday and today, only between others and myself; yesteryears pass inconsequentially and envy deludes. We don’t want just better than our moms and dads had it, we want much better. And one of the measures of income is not what you have in the world around you like WiFi in every Starbucks or complex, beautiful videogames, but the amount of moneyyou get in your paycheck. If, for some reason (like a recession), there’s no paycheck, there’s no reason to be happy you live in 21st America (*yawn*), but rather every reason to resent the market system.

So it would seem that a good and proper economic system ensures the availability of jobs and that a well-intentioned market system must maximize (with constraints) the creation of jobs. Why? Because people care about jobs in themselves. Of course, a market system allows people to work at whatever price their labor can get subject to the laws of supply and demand. This, however, feels inadequate; no 50-year old college graduate wants to be told that, given the current supply of auto mechanics, their labor is not needed and they must close up shop. I have barely touched on the surface of the question of job creation and destruction, but would like to suggest a few more key points below before ending:

• Do people appreciate technological progress enough or should we sacrifice progress and speed for job safety?
• What makes a job special as opposed to a welfare check or the benefits of living in this modern society?
• Are skills so specialized that apart from working in your industry, the only other job easily available is fast food?
• Does the market system make people feel as though they are able to pull out $10/hour (or whatever) for a job like the money is being printed for them as compensation or do they feel that they command $10/hour because the marginal benefit of their work was worth at least $10/hour?
• Why do individuals claim to be objective about quality of life?
• Can economics develop a model for job creation? job destruction?
• What is the difference between coding a new web application using [Case 1] 10 skilled programmers at $50/hour for 100 hours each at $50,000 total cost versus [Case 2] 100 less-skilled programmers at $5/hour for 100 hours at $50,000 total cost? Is the second one more fair for giving more jobs to the less-capable? Should they get more money, conversely, should the 10 skilled programmers get less? Is the same amount of work being done by each programmer in each case?

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

Her thesis discusses racial divisiveness in America. Notably, she wrote that her time at Princeton and afterwards would only lead to “further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant.”

Does a similar hopelessness exist in 2009 as it did in 1985? And why?

• “I hoped that these findings would help me conclude that despite the high degree of identification with whites as a result of the educational and occupational path that black Princeton alumni follow, the alumni would still maintain a certain level of identification with the black community. However, these findings do not support this possibility.” (from Obama’s thesis) Disidentification simultaneously separates an individual from a cultural past (which conventionally is set by birth-circumstances) while also allowing an individual to associate in groups voluntarily. When individuals are discriminated on the basis of this group, e.g. Christians, Scientologists, White Supremacists, NAACP, etc., then we are stereotyping or judging individuals based on intentional, free choice and not circumstance. Free identification can lead to assimilation or fractionation, either of which can be normatively desirable. Disappointment, as 21-year old Michelle reveals here, suggests that she had hoped that black alumni would still ‘feel black.’ On one level, such disappointment is perfectly fine; you can’t always get what you want. On another level, it’s a little more disconcerting. Do successful black Americans, in her view, have an obligation to ‘be black’?
• In 2009, we have a society marginally capable of not getting tearfully excited about electing a woman or a black President. I’m not sure that the world wasn’t ready for it back in ’85, but clearly the opportunities have changed significantly in the past two decades such that this girl’s future husband could be a strong contender in the primaries, let alone the eventual President. This said, I think the progress seen in the ’08 election was in the lack of discussion of race/gender and even though there was a lot of fanfare in electing the first-ever-oh-my-god-he’s-black African-American president, I was surprised that we weren’t even more excited at our own progress. It seems that we have entered a time and place where that need not be so surprising; are we surprised that a Columbia Univ and Harvard Law grad, former UChicago professor, and current US Senator became President?
• In the next post, I want to discuss apathy and tolerance in some detail, but I will gloss over it now. In 2009, we have the apathy or tolerance that Al Gore decries in The Assault on Reason which allows us to be swayed emotionally in some cases, ignoring our fundamental Enlightenment principles of reason and statistics. However, that same apathy which runs through the veins of so many middle-class teens allows them (or has the potential to allow them) to feel disaffected and detached when it comes to race or gender or sexuality. Or maybe I just feel less and less excited myself. The flavor of apathy in 1985 seems to have not held a principle of neutrality but rather pointed prejudice, suggesting that apathy is no panacea, but not always symptomatic of hazardous moral behavior.

Can present-day citizens of a nation be morally responsible for redressing injustices committed by past generations?  If so, on what grounds?

An Exploration into the Concepts of Responsibility and Identity

            Responsibility, moral or political, depends on three particular elements: (1) identity, (2) the freedom to reasonably change the outcome, and (3) have changed the outcome. While the relationship between these is complex and perhaps impossible to disentangle, I will turn later to the issue of national responsibility and identification to illuminate both the liberal and communitarian perspectives to guide our exploration.

Who we are is a three-fold split between nature, nuture and will. More specifically, it appears that our identity (as we will loosely define here) is causally determined by the effects of (a) ante partum environmental factors such as where we are born, who we are born to, our genetic makeup – what we identify with, (b) post partum influences from interactions with other reasoning beings such as your parents, peers, and authors of literature – who we identify with, and (c) our own discretion as embodied in the willed choices and beliefs we assert.

To begin with a more basic point, I assume that an identity as unique cannot be formulated before conception (or birth); the notion of identity requires some particularities which occur post partum that allow for identification. That is, without some influence of (b) or (c), there is no identity; however, we cannot immediately discount the effects of (a) on identification.

Individuals often identify with their ante partum environmental factors; this is the psychological attachment with one’s circumstance. While we do not interact with these directly, they have significant effects on what circumstances we face. A deaf woman  or a seven-foot tall man while not choosing to have those qualities, often find themselves in some respect ‘defined’ by them, such that the deaf woman might immerse herself in a deaf-only community to which she takes pride in. The effects of these factors are determined by the context in which they are experienced. I do not, however, reject the view that some genetic influences (among other factors) may predict identification in any society.

Similarly, they identify on the basis of the treatment given to them by others. The systematic treatment may be based upon ante partum influences, but are different in that they are special and unique to one’s own experience. I am a soccer-player, a moral legalist, an impassioned student and a family-centered individual not because I had initially chosen to be those things but rather I was raised in this particular way, with my parents and others influencing me in this direction. They are separate from environmental factors (a) in that these factors were the effects of other’s identities. Because individual’s choices appear constrained by this automatic, arbitrary process of socialization, communitarians argue these obligations are, in some cases, prior to the individual and prior to a universal concept of the right. In contrast, the liberal treatment of such socialization is that, in some regard, the obligations that follow are either required by a universal right or exist as a voluntary engagement with that identity.

The latter view is attested to robustly in the concept that I have of freely willing consciousness (c). There are, despite genetic and parental influences, some beliefs that are arrived at independently. We think, we write, we create and destroy not solely because we are, in Kantian terms, inclined to, but also because we want to. I will take it more or less for granted that there is some consciousness; without which it would seem impossibly unfair to imprison anyone, or for that matter to consider the notion of responsibility at all.

I have outlined what we identify with; the subsequent inquiry will be into how we come to identify with it. The extremes as mentioned earlier suggest either that we have some aspects of our bodily experience with which we must identify with (communitarianism) or that there are no required identifications, only voluntary ones (liberalism). The conception of the self (or being) that I put forth is an unpopular, but I believe accurate analysis of the self today.

For the realized rational being, there are only voluntary obligations. The self is unencumbered for those able to legitimately conceptualize oneself as such. If Will Hunting realizes himself to have no duties apart from the ones he has chosen, then he is free. If in some contrast, he recognizes the social need for astute mathematical genius and thus writes proofs, he is free having recognized the need as a exchange (for the benefits society confers) and not an obligation. Despite the practical fact that acting in accordance with communitarian obligations may be right in some sense, this does not mean that not doing these is necessarily wrong. These claims are largely existential in nature, conceiving of the self as fundamentally free; however, I do not extend this capability to all individuals, nor do I say at this point that individuals should aim towards completely voluntary obligations, nor does this point necessarily endorse pure libertarianism.

Many others have neither the capacity nor the will to see those obligations as voluntary; for the communitarians (broadly speaking), these encumbering obligations are real and need to be adhered to. As David Miller writes, “[W]e find ourselves identifying with other people or other groups of people, and feeling vicarious pride or shame in what they do [italics added].” Because the obligations we adhere to are perceived of as real, they are real to us; these obligations could be conceived of as voluntary, but more often it is a natural process that occurs unwilled. Alasdair MacIntyre writes, “For the story of my life is always embeddded in the story of those communities from which I derive my identity. I am born with a past; and to try to cut myself off from that past, in the individualist mode, is to deform my present relationships.” The conception of pure freedom thus seems misguided: individuals feel that they are “born with a past” to which they feel obligations towards.

While many people exist as tied, I understand individuals as fundamentally free to exert their consciousness to choose what and who they identify with. We see this tension in rebellion with identity, when in adulthood we begin to take responsibility in the identity we develop. I have personally struggled with my identity as an American when I take notice of the thousands of Iraqis killed on my (among many) behalf; I have chosen to render my political identity as more cosmopolitan, as a global citizen. However, there are parts with which we have more difficulty disidentfying with: our parents, for example, shape who we are in substantial ways and though I could free myself from that tie, the extent to which I genuinely cannot conceive of myself as independent from them does form the legitimate bond.

We would, to move from being encumbered to liberated, be required to see the extrapersonal aspects of our identification as a practical process, reversible by our will. Thus even our social identity that seems given to us would have to be, at some point not merely tacitly chosen; we would, rightfully so, conceive of the self as responsible for his or her identification.

I argue that despite that fact that human beings are fundamentally unequal in faculties, with only some having even the capacity to consider themselves so free, that as a political system we have the obligation to treat them as free. Stated alternatively, political responsibility must treat people as equal and idealized, whereas the moral weight of responsibility gives reasonable regard to the practical limitations of individuals as such.

            The question addressed by the prompt of this essay limits my scope to moral responsibility and I will curtail the discussion here and focus now on moral responsibility of those who identify with a particular nation and those who identify only as citizens of that nation and how those responsibilities relate to how individuals develop their identity.

            Professor David Miller writes, “[s]incere apology… requires both identification and disidentification – identification with the agent for whose misdeeds one is apologising, but disidentification with the deeds themselves, which are condemned by principles that the agent ought to have accepted.” Sincere apology, one of the three forms of redress suggested by Miller, here as a form of acknowledging responsibility, is tied to identification with the people but not the act; in terms put forth above, this is identification with (a) and (b) the social environmental factors but not (c) the principle.

            In my initial hypothesis, I proposed that responsibility for an act is not only tied to identity, but also to volition, specifically the options available when the act was made and the options available to change the consequences of the act now. For the sake of argument, I will constrain the nature of the act to be an unjust one.

            We know ourselves to be responsible for that which we do. If I throw a rock through a window, cheat on a test, or leave an anonymous kind note in someone’s mailbox, I am responsible for those acts. To the extent that I am an encumbered self, that I am “never more (and sometimes less) than the co-author of [my] own narrative,” I share responsibility with those that share in my being. If I am not autonomous, then I do not merit all of the glory for when my being is successful nor all of the blame when it is not; moreover, I also cannot, to paraphrase Miller, share in the pride of the actions of others without sharing in the shame. For those that cannot reason about their moral reasoning, those who do not fully author their own narrative, it is logical that the individual as a member of the wrongful community be held as morally responsible for redressing injustices. It is as if the previous generations take a legitimate stake in that person’s being. If they acknowledge that shared nature of their being, then they have a moral obligation to share in the responsibility.

            In the extreme, the autonomous voluntarist need not be held morally responsible; he or she is responsible fully for his or her choices post partum; there is a tradeoff: while they are more responsible for the individual successes they are also more responsible for the failures. However, the capacity to understand that tradeoff implies that, in subscribing to the idea of the encumbered self and not the individually responsible self, the individual has chosen to see herself as such and chosen not to reject those responsibilities. That is very much the basis, in my view, of the unencumbered self: the free choice of narrative and the ability to identify because it relates to who you are and not what you are. I do not reject social roles but rather I do not accept them as given; these are moral obligations I take upon myself because I feel that it is right to do so, and not because it is wrong not to do so.

            We are left with the uncomfortable conclusion that those who are morally responsible for a nation’s misdeeds are those who cannot see themselves as otherwise, those who have taken their identities as given rather than assume the role of the pilot and carving out their own identity. As individuals who are the product of their narrative and not authors of it, they have a limited claim on their lives. There is however, the open question of choice: if I cannot help but be the person (as embodied in the community) who throws the stone through the window, can I be held responsible? That is, we can say that those who willfully accept the benefits and consequences of membership must identify with the prior injustices though not in principle, but what about those for whom membership cannot be willful?

            For these individuals, it seems impossible to regard them as responsible in as such a strong sense, but rather it seems that these individuals are as constrained in their responsbility as they are in their choices generally. They are responsible to the extent that they shape their role in the community and shape the community itself. Where their co-authorship leads to identification in principle with some unjust goals, these identifiers  morally face responsibility.

            Citizens of a nation can be held morally responsible because there is (as expressed in those who believe this as true) legitimate community (or national) claim to the self that is prior to the right or the individual. “[O]ne cannot legitimately enjoy such benefits without at the same time acknowledging responsibility, [including] liability to provide redress [injustice] in whatever form the particular circumstances demand.” To revise an earlier statement, there seems to be an obligation to treat the moral aspects of identity as we do the politcal ones: to say that injustice should be redressed as if individuals exerted some wilful claim to that identity. If they chose it, then they are responsible; if they did not choose it, then in having no broader autonomy it is right to bring justice to the communal narrative; if instead they choose not to identify, then that community has no claim on that individual.

            Responsibility is tied with identification; we are responsible for that which we will. If I am to believe myself to be, not purely an individual, but as part of a collective with others having a shared claim in my being then I am responsible for what others have done, do and will do on our collective behalf. I am responsible for my identity as if I had chosen it. We must accord to everyone the presumption of authorship in their own narrative. Perhaps it is impossible to consciously disentangle one’s identity with their extrapersonal unwilled identifications, in very much the same way that Aristotle wrote, “man is by nature a politcal animal … the man who is isolated, who is unable to share in the benefits of political association, or has no need to share because he is self-sufficient, is no part of the city and must therefore be either a beast or a god.”

I. Mere Means

“For rational beings all stand under the law that each of them should treat himself and all others never merely as a means but always at the same time as an end in himself.”

There is something wrong with racism, something wrong with judging someone’s worth on the basis of their race. I begin by bringing us back to Kant, who touches upon a notion of human dignity. It is wrong to “use” someone rather than respecting their dignity. However, it may be said that affirmative action needs not merely use people as means towards the social end of racial equality (or reparations), but that it can also respect the valid capacities and potential for contribution in each student. Does it?

II. Purpose

Affirmative action has no legitimate purpose; it claims its purpose to be assisting the disadvantaged, but does so in a way that does not respect their basic human dignity.

This, naturally, presumes something wrong with racial discrimination (non-pejorative). Is the act of discrimination based on race wrong? From a Kantian standpoint and echoing leaders from all backgrounds, I believe that this idea “I will no one to discriminate based on race” can be universalized and passes the categorical imperative, suggesting racial discrimination is wrong in all circumstances as it is not a principle that can hold in all places at all times.

III. A Distinction

I propose a Kantian distinction to be made: that there are rational (practical, hypothetical) justifications and reasoned (abstract, categorical) ones. In line with libertarian principles, beliefs may be justified in the rational sense without punishment or any notion of a moral “wrong” when say an individual sees a menacing white skinhead in his early twenties wearing Nazi paraphernalia and rationally becomes fearful. The law, being in its principles abstract, should not have these personalized qualities but rather treat individuals as if they were fundamentally equal (Locke, Nozick). This respect of equal liberties can be constrained, however, for reasoned ends (Rawls) such that some may be taxed or made to work or put in jail for the betterment of society.

While we have not yet factored out all reasoning for affirmative action, I have stipulated this:

1. People may never be used merely as a means even towards a socially good end and are due their human dignity.
2. If race happens to group all the qualified candidates, we can (by definition, having qualified them as individuals) assert each’s entitlement on other grounds.
3. “I will no one to discriminate based on race” is a universalizable principle.
4. The law, here meaning individuals acting in a social sense, should respect the equality of individuals unless there is a justifiable, reasoned end (such that it does not conflict with #1).

IV. Affirmative Action Examined

We come now to the argument in favor of affirmative action; namely, that racism is (1) a real issue that (2) can be practically combated with affirmative action by (a) providing access to better schools, (b) providing those schools with some diversity, (c) that such schools produce leaders that can both serve racial minorities better.

I do agree that racism is not merely an abstract issue, but extremely visibly real (1) in America. While my argument rests mainly in the abstract (i.e. we should move towards a post-racial society), I believe that my prescription is both reasoned and rational. Before we move towards the positive construction, however, I would like to have a say about why Dworkin and O’Connor, and many who support racial discrimination are wrong to do so despite their good intentions.

Can racism be fought with racism? Do we pick up guns to end the war so that once won, we may resolve to put them down? We cannot because doing so endorses and legitimizes the view that race is something from which to draw an identity, something that black people suffer from and that others can segregate them if not outside these halls then at least in their minds so that, in doing so, “saving” them. The fundamental wrong in affirmative action is that it perpetuates racism, racial identification, and racial stereotyping.

Access. While affirmative action allows some in minority groups to enter into the upper echelons of society, it diminishes the social regard for those who would have succeeded anyway. Further, as Justice Thomas argued in his dissent from Grutter v. Bollinger, “the question itself is the stigma” delegitimizing minorities who are successfully admitted. Further, affirmative action questionably makes a system that places less able students into classes of more competent and able students. Before you disagree, consider this piece from Michael Brus: “‘Even if race is only one of several factors behind a decision, tolerating it at all means tolerating it as potentially the decisive factor.’ When it’s the decisive factor it may have well been the only factor. If it’s never decisive, it’s not really a factor at all.” It seems that if race is to be considered a factor in admissions as it is today, then it would follow that this has tipped the scale for some otherwise marginally competitive students. Note while you may consider the pool of qualified applicants to Harvard to be much greater than the supply of spots, at some less competitively selective institutions adopting the same policy this is unlikely to consistently be the case.

Diversity. The benefits of diverse thinking are both diverse and integrated solutions, diverse in that they may approach a problem in a novel manner, and integrated in that emergent discussions lead to cross-ideological integration in their solution. The goal of diversity of ideologies is a valid one in my opinion, whereas one that merely seeks out diversity of skin color is wrong. It is wrong because it subverts the equality of individuals in order to create a visual aesthetic, a palette of skin tones. The counterargument to this must reduce to either a desire for skin tones itself or that race is a proxy for diverse thinking, however defined. I will not continue my reasoning against the former; I leave it to the reader to construct an adequate justification, as I believe there is none. The latter, the proxy argument, has much more meat. It seems that the College believes that they can use race as a proxy for inner-city life experience, socio-economic disadvantages, and experience in overcoming hateful discrimination. However, all proxies are limited, as there are (the admittedly fewer in number) successful Hispanic-Americans who have (with great luck) had a world-class secondary school education, supportive families, well seated in the heart of the middle-class.

I consider myself in this number and thus had a crisis of identity when checking the box years ago on my Harvard application. If they intended to be using it as a proxy, then I was not “Hispanic” but if they weren’t then what was it for?.. Assuming they were using it as a proxy, this meant that they had some general assumption that being Hispanic generally meant being something other than what I was. They, the College Admissions, had endorsed a stereotype that as a Hispanic-American, I was likely (I’m guessing here) from an urban background, where I was to attend an overcrowded and underfunded high school, having overcome some culture of poverty. I identify as Hispanic because, by coincidence, my mother and her parents immigrated from Ecuador, and by choice, I chose to learn Spanish in high school, taking a deliberate interest in learning about the culture, the cooking, the news. Despite this, I am much more “white,” given the norms today. Proxies stereotype the individual on the basis of their race rather than try to understand the individual (and respect the individual as an end in themselves). Does race say more than an applicant’s essay; why not have each applicant write an essay describing how they have dealt with prejudice or for those that feel as though they have overcome something particularly difficult that they write about it in the additional essay.

Identity. Dworkin argues that there are particular benefits to black Americans as a group when a black individual becomes, for example, a doctor. This benefit is twofold; first, these doctors may be better suited to understanding the racial realities of black patients and second, these doctors serve as leaders. I disagree because I believe understanding is understanding and not something derived innately from race. It may be that only a black person has the experience (today) to understand the nuanced backgrounds that blacks share, but it seems unhelpful to create a preferential rule that neglects the minority of white persons that have both the talent and experiences that would and do serve members of another racial community. Again, there is perhaps a legitimate proxy for understanding a particular race’s issues, but the proxy ignores and subverts individual realities that reflect directly upon who someone is rather than the common experiences of those of a common color. Further, this unnecessarily burdens those few minority doctors with a responsibility to ensure quality treatment for members of their own race inclining them to discriminate and gently lessening the responsibilities of doctors of other races.

Are black doctors good role models for the black public? In other words, it seems powerfully helpful to see oneself through the successes of another and say, “I can too.” I have no disagreement with this. I only disagree in that individuals see identity as something they are given and not as something they construct. A black American only sees the successes of black doctors as relevant to him and not white doctors because he chooses to identify as black rather than seeking other characteristics of himself with which he may identify. When my Justice teaching fellow chooses to identify as a woman rather than as someone who has the incredible luck (and possibly moral desert) to be in Harvard Law School, she is identifying with a group that has less success, which by admission of her fears seems only to serve to make her anxious and stressed when, in all honesty, she should not be. Certainly and tragically, in this day and age being a woman still hinders an individual, but for our admissions system to affirm that successful minorities will help to overcome racial barriers is mistaken. These admissions decisions serve to remind us that racial inequalities exist, that we are divided along these racial lines, and that on some level it is legitimate to consider particular races to have certain qualities with some (Hispanic and black) needing saving and others (white and Asian) not.

V. After discrimination

How then, might we combat these problems in America? By analyzing each applicant not on the basis of race but rather on a holistic understanding of who they are. Whether or not the student serves the needs of the college should be determined on understanding the individual as an end in themselves, respecting the sum nature of their ideology, experience, education, passion, and struggles. It should not be based upon a plan to use the student’s characteristics, such as family wealth or prestige, or the student’s skin color to promote a social agenda, rectify certain iniquities, or have a saleable palette of colors. We have before us the methods to consider people independently from their race and given the role of colleges in promoting ideas for social progress we should use race-blind admissions. There is no substantial reason why we should infringe upon the natural equality of all persons on the basis of race for the practical benefits presented here. We can fight the core issues: minorities often attend underfunded schools, have higher crime rates, drug problems and the like by combating those issues directly rather than trying to fix the problems by proxy.

N.B. Written while taking Justice at Harvard. Wrote it in response to some of the discussion in class.

We want, but can only have 2 of 3 of the following:

1. Pareto efficiency. The socially favored outcome is as good as or better than any alternative for the aggregated social preferences.
2. Transitivity of preferences. If I like A > B and B > C, then I like A > C.
3. Minimal liberalism. There are some preferences that fall outside of the social domain. Only I get to say whether or not I read Lady Chatterley’s Lover or paint my walls pink or white.

Why? Intuitively, we can rewrite these conditions broadly as:

1. Best for society, including the individual choosing whether or not to read the racy novel.
2. The preferences are consistent; if not, we could arbitrarily get them to align however fits.
3. People have a say over some things that no one else does.

A way to seeing the contradiction is to notice that (3) what one person wants to choose within his/her domain may be in conflict with (1) what’s best for society [which is not controversial],  but that this conflict may come from a contradiction that emerges when one person’s preferences over his or her domain come into the aggregated formulation  [despite the preferences (2) being consistent].

Sen’s example involving Lady Chatterley involves two people Prude and Lewd who each have a vote in deciding what will be done with the book. The three options that could be put into place by society are (P) Prude reads – Lewd doesn’t, (L) Lewd reads – Prude doesn’t, and (N) no one reads. [Note: there is no (B) both read in this example].

Prude prefers that (N) no one reads, but if someone has to read, he’d rather bear the burden (P), than subject poor Lewd to such filth (L). Lewd revels in schadenfreude so he wants most for Prude to read it (P), but would prefer to read it himself (L) to no one (N). To recap: for Prude, N > P > L and for Lewd, P > L > N.

If the choice is between Prude reading this or not, he should not be forced to, since N > P. This is what is meant by minimal liberalism. And if the choice is between Lewd reading or not, he should be able to, since L > N. In terms of liberal values – the freedom to do what one wants to do in her own domain, L > N > P. But this contradicts individual’s preferences themselves on the whole. For if we decided to give the book to Lewd, both people would have preferred giving the book to Prude instead.

Because the criteria are so broad, it is hard to see what this impossibility theorem doesn’t touch upon. Nozick’s response is the most intuitive: drop Pareto efficiency, keep transitivity of preferences and minimal liberalism.

What do Condorcet, Arrow, and Sen mean for democracy as an institution?

1. Democracy will not, merely by design, give the majority the most preferred outcome if there at least three possibilities to choose from.
2. Democracy is suggestible by agenda setting. Notice in the original Condorcet example (previous post) that if binary votes were taken between any two choices, and then done again against the third choice, that any outcome could be engineered to be the winner. An example, suppose persons 1, 2, and 3 had preferences: (1) A > B > C, (2) B > C > A, (3) C > A > B -same as previous post. Suppose we wanted C to be the final outcome. First have an election between A and B: both 1 and 2, a majority, prefer A to B. Now vote between A and C: both 2 and 3, a majority, prefer C to A. How we decide to vote can be as important as the outcomes we decide between. Consider the Congressional system whereby bills are amended and then finalized and then the ultimate comparison is between that and the status quo. Democratically decided options may not carry the legitimacy we give them.
3. Democracy may reveal people’s inconsistent preferences. Transitivity, in practice, is rare. People are not consistent and may adamantly defend preferences which hypocritically reject other preferences. Everything else on the table can stay if people have irrational preferences. That being said, over the long-run and to arrive at truly desired outcomes must at least mean that we decide what it is that we actually want.
4. Democracy, in order to genuinely preserve minimal liberalism – and broader liberalism, must take some things off the table, that is, make illegitimate in the social realm some preference relations involving private relations whatever the costs might be, whatever might be otherwise be preferred by the individuals themselves. This point is briefly discussed in Anarchy, State, and Utopia and adds to Nozick’s theory regarding individual rights as paramount over conceptions of the good and social preferences (the combination of which leads towards socialism and towards constant interference with personal affairs).

What do we want from a system of interpersonal comparison? Well, it would be perfect to have complete cardinality of interpersonal comparisons of welfare or utility. Such a system (act utilitarianism, see Singer and Bentham) would not only allow us to say that my benefit from going to college is 1500 utils compared to not going (500 utils), but that your going to college is worth 1700 utils and not going is only 250 utils. Moreover, any decision would be (at least for the consequentialist) completely resolved with a cardinal (applying a certain number) system.

This seems difficult, however, to justify. How exactly could we genuinely compare in any significant sense utilities when that nebulous concept would require knowledge of other’s conscious (and the reasonable expectation of future conscious) selves. The comparison would, yes, be convenient, but given the impossibility – most economists have abandoned mechanisms that require its explicit use. Cardinality does feature heavily in expected utility theory and a few other notions including risk aversion, though these do not rely on interpersonal but rather intrapersonal comparisons of utility. This restriction on the domain of cardinality lends economics substantial plausibility (however, there are attacks on these grounds).

What is the alternative? In a word, ordinality. Looking at the ordinal structure of things- i.e. what is preferred to what-else- allows economists the practicality not offered in cardinality. While we may not be able to say how much more beneficial vanilla ice cream is to me versus chocolate ice cream,  we are able to say (with confidence) that I must either prefer vanilla-to-chocolate, chocolate-to-vanilla, or be indifferent between the two. Preferences, written here as greater than ” > ” or less than ” < “, underlie much of the neoclassical economic theory we use today. Preferences also have the interesting property that they seem to resolve the problem of interpersonal comparisons. For example, if we are deciding between using a tax surplus for (A) building an airport, (B) building a bus station, or (C) a cash rebate, it seems that we could just ask everyone to rank their preferences and take a majority vote to resolve the issue. No need to compare between utilities but only to find out what of the three is the most preferred and do that since that will be the best for the most people.

Condorcet’s Paradox

Let’s assume there are three people in the town of Cambridge, MA deciding between the three options A, B, C above. These people go by the names of 1, 2, and 3 (they all had strange parents). We will pick whatever gets the “most votes.”

1. A > B > C . The airport is preferred to the bus station is preferred ot the cash rebate.
2. B > C > A. The bus station is preferred to the cash rebate is preferred to the airport .
3. C > A > B. The cash rebate is preferred to the airport is preferred to the bus station.

Since two out of three people prefer A to B (persons 1 and 3), our social choice function – i.e. our societal picking order- should have A > B. Since two out of three people prefer B to C (persons 1 and 2), we should collectively have B > C. But, since two out of three also prefer C to A (persons 2 and 3), we also have C > A. Thus together we have: A > B > C >A (ad infinitum). We have no socially best option since no matter what is chosen, two out three (a majority) always prefer something else.

Condorcet noticed this paradox during the French Revolution, where he was playing a role in establishing democracy on the Continent. For nearly two hundred years, this problem lay largely unresolved.

Arrow’s General Possibility Theorem

Some good things to have in a social welfare function.

1. Pareto optimality. Given a set of social choices (options), the option that society chooses should not have another option that society deems more desirable. Pareto optimality is generally: if there is an option that makes person X better off and no other people worse off, then that option should be chosen.*This failed in the Condorcet example above.
2. Independence of irrelevant alternatives. If in deciding between vanilla and chocolate ice cream, the presence of mint chocolate chip should not change my views between vanilla and chocolate. If I prefer vanilla to chocolate when those are my only two options, then when I have three to choose from I should still like vanilla over chocolate and not the other way around (though mint chocolate chip may be better or worse than both, or in between).
3. Transitivity of preferences.** If society prefers A to B and B to C, then society prefers A to C. *This failed in the Condorcet example above.
4. Non-dictatorship. Social preferences should take into account more than one person’s preferences. That is, no one individual determines the social choice.

Arrow’s General Possibility Theorem, or informally known as Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem tells us that we cannot have all four. More stringently, if we have conditions 1 – 3, then we cannot have 4 and we have the equivalence of a dictatorship. A dictatorship here means that one person’s preferences are completely determinant, though they need not have the political affiliation/connotation of a typical dictator. Moreover, subsequent analyses have suggested that it is possible to pick any three of these, but that would mean having to give up the fourth.

Why? See wikipedia for an informal proof (there’s also a formal proof for you math concentrators out there).

What does it mean for social choice? We will return to that after discussing Sen’s Impossibility Theorem which suggests that there is a similar trade-off between pareto optimality, transitivity, and “minimal liberalism.”

** Unrestricted domain is embedded in my discussion of the transitivity of preferences. As a technical term, this more-or-less means that ordinal preferences should not include Borda preferences where aPb given distances of a and b to preferred x, such that aPb iff |a-x| < |b-x|, and other similar preference relationships.

Research paper on late fines within the Harvard College Library system. Surveyed 151 semi-randomly sampled students to analyze usage on-campus to understand why individuals would return books late, and pivotally, why students might be under-utilizing online renewal. 35 pages.

The original survey can still be found online at http://tinyurl.com/ecsurvey .

When something occurs in nature, such as how gangs of monkeys can group together and raid another group or how some birds mate for life, there is a tendency to look at the phenomenon and say, “if it occurs in nature, then that must be right.” In other words there is some correspondence between nature and moral notions of the good. “If no animals in nature have homosexual sex, then it must be wrong,” say advocates on the right. “No, but they do!,”argue those on the left. Both fail to see that whether or not something in nature occurs has no bearing on the moral legitimacy when it comes to human beings. To deny my claim (and moreover, most scientists’), is to suggest that discovering immoral behavior in nature legitimizes immoral behavior in human beings; conversely, if moral behavior exists in the wild, then it can/should/must be so for human beings. Is this the case?

The politicization of scientific information is nothing new, but this age-old fallacy manages to contribute on a wide variety of moral debates including many that make bioethics so difficult. For if such a natural morality were to exist, and I’m not denying that it does (though I don’t believe it matters in human morality), then our brains would be evolutionarily attuned to these very notions. It is unclear whether or not our evolutionary history invented this “moral sense” or if the moral sense is just attuned to a “natural order of things” much as our visual system is hard-wired to expect that a light is most likely to come from above (e.g. the sun). Thus, there might not only be a “moral sense” whose intuitions make it difficult to understand moral dilemmas from a principled and abstract point of view (see Part 2), but there may also exist a kind of “natural law” that threatens to legitimize my opposition in this piece.

Why throw out the natural law? Because it is incoherent, egoistic, and not predicated on either principles or consequences, instead on what non-rational beings do. If we are to be on some level at the mercy of the whim of nature, then on some pivotal issue- for example, abortion- we can find ourselves completely dependent upon it. If it matters at all, then it should be able to matter at the margin and push us towards one decision or another. If it doesn’t matter at the margin, then it just doesn’t matter. Human rights, conceptions of the good, and the rational pursuit of a given ends should be free from biological concerns. We will return to this point in the conclusion.

The moralistic fallacy suggests morality in the opposite direction: our moral code should inform our scientific pursuit. The easiest way to conceptualize this is the Larry Summers debacle of a few years back. It is when it becomes so morally repugnant to act on conceptions of differences in rights between men and women that we no longer differences in ability to be studied under impersonal, scientific conditions. Here, the fear seems to be that if a study could show some undesirable behavior in nature that it must imply that similar human behavior is excusable if not justified.

Oh, just came across a fabulous little debate between Prof. Pinker and Prof. Elizabeth L Spelke. It’s from the Mind/Brain/Behavior interdisciplinary initiative at Harvard. My minor (secondary field) will be finished as of this term in MBB.

A brief conclusion. Why do we turn to natural moral law? Is it because we feel an instinct and rationalize after the fact? Or could it be because we don’t have principles or reasons that support our claim? Or, and this should be deeply unsettling to social psychologists, because we have only a weak memory of the principles that do have real moral weight but have become embodied as brute rules only experienced in consciousness as “natural moral law”? That is: when we go with our “gut,” is it because it’s a shorthand for real reasons we’re not aware of in our mind? My view is that without awareness of our reasons, we have no claim to them. Without acting on reason or principle, but mere intuition, our actions cannot be accorded any moral weight. This is not to say that picking which soda at a vending machine must have a rational, axiomatic or consequential analysis but rather that in the absence of such thought, the choice is not a moral one at all (amoral, not immoral). Moral weight is given to intentions because it corresponds to our autonomy and not our biology; as freely-willing decision-makers and not as deterministic automatons, we have capability for genuine moral responsibility.