Sen is a crap economist because he doesn't get that if you say 'I will list out your options' then whatever you say is not necessarily the actual choice menu. Why? Because there is a difference between intension and extension. An item in the menu may be expressed in an 'intensional' manner and thus escape any extensional constraint. In other words, there is wriggle room for another option which the speaker may not have had in mind. This is the essence of the 'masked man' or 'intensional' fallacy.
Sen, it turns out, is a crap philosopher for the same reason he is a crap economist. His worldly knowledge is lacking and thus he is not able to see there are always more options than the ones he recognizes.
Dworkin says that what he calls “the hydraulic principle”
by which an act is yours if you have responsibility for it if in the sense that it only exists because of some uncaused act of will of your own
denies “responsibility if either determinism or epiphenomenalism (the view that mental events have no effects) is true.”
This follows because nothing you can do is the product of an uncaused act of will because either you have no free will or that free will can't do shit. It is foolish to speak of 'responsibility' as anything other than a title to a reward or punishment of an ethically arbitrary type.
Why does Dworkin use the term 'hydraulic model' for an obsolete type of thinking which scientifically minded people should replace with a 'creative model' where determinism does not negate responsibility?
Perhaps Dworkin was influenced by Justice O.W Holmes remark that 'great cases', like hard cases, make bad law because of the 'hydraulic pressure' of 'immediate interests' of a controversial and envenomed type which causes even long settled general legal principles to bend and become distorted. In other words, the 'hydraulic' model is Manichaean. It divides up the world between those on the side of light and the others who are destined to perdition. Dworkin, as a Liberal 'New Dealer' may have felt that the atmosphere on Campuses in the late Sixties and early Seventies had become too extreme- indeed, paranoid. Our own problem with 'toxic wokeness' enables us to have some empathy for Dworkin. However, the fact remains, there really are some evil cunts out there. The hydraulic model has its uses. We should be content to tell woke nutters who call us Nazis to go fuck themselves rather than dismiss the notion that some things about us really are the uncaused product of our own will.
Of the two, it is the claim of a conflict between determinism and responsibility that is more engaging: Dworkin’s dismissal of the reach of epiphenomenalism is swift and seems to me to be largely compelling.
It has no reach. The fact that a class of mental acts are inconsequential entails nothing about the will because its operations may not be mental at all.
The tussle with determinism is more substantial, but Dworkin’s presentation is enlightening in covering a lot of ground with care.
It is horseshit as I explain here. The fact is there is always a truth making particle for moral judgments in a Gentzen calculus. They just aint necessarily 'canonical'.
The central issue is similar to David Hume’s reasoning that outside influences may explain our judgments and even make them predictable, and yet they do not make our judgments any less genuine or any less important in assessing our responsibility.
This is not reasoning because 'inside influences' may explain 'outside influences'. As for our judgments some will always seem less genuine than others and it is always possible that they have no importance in assessing our responsibility.
This is a subject of some nostalgia for me, because in my first philosophical essay published fifty years ago, in 1959, I tried to chastise Isaiah Berlin for his belief that determinism and predictability make the idea of moral responsibility entirely unviable.
We can hold contradictory ideas. Viability is not a function of consistency.
Berlin was extremely gracious in his reply – though remaining in disagreement with me – and he answered my criticism patiently in some detail in the Introduction to his Four Essays on Liberty published ten years later.
Berlin said that Sen had accused him of confusing fatalism with determinism. This was funny coz Berlin was White. Sen was Brown. Only darkies are 'fatalists' coz they got shit for brains and quickly starve to death if Whites stops ruling over them or sending them PL480 food. It is true that any 'thoughts' a darkie may think he has is merely an 'epiphenomenon'. But that's coz those monkeys can't think to any useful purpose.
My point, basically Humean (though I had not seen the connection very clearly then), was not, of course, new.
In which case it was silly. Berlin talks up this brown monkey to chastise his white critics- ' I cannot see how one can say of Helen not only that hers was the face that launched a thousand ships but, in addition, that she was responsible for (and did not merely cause) the Trojan War, if the war was due solely to something that was the result not of a free choice - to elope with Paris - which Helen need not have made, but only of her irresistible beauty. Sen, in his clear and moderately worded criticism, concedes what some of his allies do not - that there is an inconsistency between, at any rate, some meanings attached to the contents of ordinary moral judgement on the one hand, and determinism on the other. He denies, however, that belief in determinism need eliminate the possibility of rational moral judgement, on the ground that such judgements could still be used to influence men's conduct, by acting as stimuli or deterrents. In somewhat similar terms, Ernest Nagel, in the course of a characteristically scrupulous and lucid argument, says that, even on the assumption of determinism, praise, blame and assumption of responsibility generally could affect human behaviour - for example, by having an effect on discipline, effort and the like, whereas they would (presumably) not in this way affect a man's digestive processes or the circulation of his blood. This may be true but it does not affect the central issue. Our value judgements - eulogies or condemnations of the acts or characters of men dead and gone - are not intended solely, or even primarily, to act as utilitarian devices, to encourage or warn our contemporaries, or as beacons to posterity.
On this analysis, Sen and Nagel are indulging in a 'Noble Lie'- viz determinism not being inconsistent with pi-jaw about responsibility provided it us, not our enemies, who are doing it to advance our own cause. Berlin is saying that it is foolish to instrumentalize a lie which advances your own cause if your own attachment to it was not motivated by anything other than your own moral responsibility to yourself.
Of course, a 'fatalist' may believe in a 'caste system' whereby the higher caste intellectual is programmed to tell Noble Lies to the helots. His pay off is dialethia- two truths, one higher, one lower and the glorious possibility of incessantly confusing the two so as to generate arguments and counterarguments and generally waste everybody's time.
What Dworkin does beautifully is bring out the richness of counter-arguments that have to be addressed and the counter-counterarguments needed to construct a more complete picture that corresponds to Hume’s rather rapid reasoning.
So that instead or 'rapid reasoning'- which may be useful, you have interminable nonsense. Cool.
I find Dworkin’s discussion to be both illuminating and persuasive. My main difficulty with Dworkin’s reasoning about ethical responsibility, however, concerns his principles of “self-respect” and “authenticity.” Let me go along with Dworkin to the extent of agreeing that a person is not acting responsibly if he leads his life in a way that he would have compelling reasons to judge as “a wasted opportunity”
should of spent more time killing and raping babies instead of doing cancer research.
and also agreeing that a person has some responsibility to consider what would “count[] as success in his own life.”
only to the extent that he also has some irresponsible, drug induced, experience of crazily smearing himself with feces to consider what would count as success in his own life
Nevertheless, my problems remain even after this broad agreement. To explain why, let me consider four possibly “irresponsible persons” in Dworkin’s framework: Anne, Beth, Carla, and Dora. Anne thinks that there are good reasons for her to value either a life of type A (respectful and conservative on traditional matters, without hurting anyone’s feelings), or of type B (being radically “contemporary” and reshaping lives, including her own, in a way that would give adequate recognition to what modern scientific knowledge could offer). Anne will face no difficulty from Dworkin if she proceeds then to decide that one of these lives – either A or B – would be distinctly better than the other. But suppose she does not come to that conclusion. Rather, Anne continues to believe that even though life A and life B are each better than other kinds of lives (such as confused living without adequate thought on what should count as success in her life), she has a reasoned incompleteness in ranking A and B against each other.
So what? Daddies got dicks and Mummies don't. We have reasons to value both life-forms. We may also have reasons to think it is better to have one or other type of genitals rather than be smooth down there like a Barbie doll. But we may rank Mummies and Daddies for some purposes- e.g. if you need some one to piss out a fire, Daddies are better- and refuse to rank them for others.
Given this partial ranking, which does not reflect any lack of reasoning, but which is, in fact, a result of her reasoned scrutiny, Anne believes that it would be responsible enough for her to pursue either lifestyle. Is Anne right?
No. There is some further uncorrelated asymmetry concerning herself which Anne should seek to discover before she decides to become a Daddy who specializes in pissing out fires.
And would Dworkin accept this? If Dworkin’s answer is, “Fine, that’s okay,”
Then he has shit for brains. He should say 'do a bit of 'discovery' before you make up your mind. The fact is some uncorrelated asymmetry concerning you makes you fitter for one role rather than another.
then I would like to see in his writings a greater recognition of the possibility of incompleteness of preference ranking and the far-reaching implications of reasoned choice according to partial rankings (a subject that interested John Dewey very much).
This is stupid shit. Either ranking has no 'cash value'- in which case don't bother doing it- or else you need to do a bit of 'discovery' so as to have a more complete ranking. In fairness to Sen, he was probably thinking of Dworkin's notion that- “Someone cannot lead a life if he has not formed a normative personality – a reasonably stable system of desires, preferences, tastes, convictions, attachments, loyalties, ideals, and the rest – and if he cannot make decisions that exhibit that personality'. Like everything else Dworkin wrote, this is vacuous shite. One can always impute an infinite number of such 'stable systems' to even the most impulsive sociopath.
The case would, of course, be unproblematic with what may look like a small variation: in particular if Anne found that A or B are equally good and that each would equally make her life a success. In that case, Dworkin should – and I believe would – allow Anne the freedom of being loyal either to A or to B, without calling her irresponsible.
No. If Anne has no compelling reason to prefer A to B, then maybe she should take into account the interests of those in whose welfare she is concerned. She may choose 'A' because she meets a square who lurves her and so she is a Stepford housewife and her kids grow up happy. Equally, she may choose 'B' coz she meets a dike who lurves her and they set up a plumbing business together and raise kids who...grow up to be equally happy and way cooler.
However, incompleteness is a far cry from indifference. Perhaps Dworkin has an argument why incompleteness of rankings is not permissible. Such arguments exist in the literature, but I would argue none are convincing. But more particularly, I did not see any such argument as I read the manuscript.
It is only if incompleteness has some negative 'cash value' for some useful purpose that we'd be against the thing. Thus my own desire to be a Mummy not a Daddy had negative 'cash value' coz my parents had to buy me nice sarees without, however, any prospect of my getting married to a suitable boy and thus moving out of the house.
Consider now a second case, in which Beth is certain that there is a unique way of ranking A and B,
No. There are infinite ways of ranking A and B depending on some extraneous C, D, E etc.
and that the incompleteness of her ranking the two lifestyles (A, B) is only tentative,
It can only be that unless she has some way to bind her future actions.
not assertive. So, she is not equilibrated on this (unlike Anne); not now, nor ever – even though she works hard every morning on deciding what would make her life more “successful” and less “wasted.”
In which case, that is the lifestyle which corresponds to her 'revealed preference'.
Not all our efforts yield what we hope to get, and given her efforts and commitment to resolve her dilemma, does Beth not get a passing grade because of her endeavour and application, despite her lack of “success?”
Who gives a fuck whether some fuckwit gives her a passing or failing grade? If Beth will pay some dude for this service then the thing has cash value. Otherwise, why worry about it?
Now, imagine a third person: Carla. She believes that leading a life in such a super-disciplined way is itself “a wasted opportunity.” The secret to making a life a success is not to think in those terms, but to go by spontaneous decisions, even though in hindsight some of the chosen paths may turn out to have been mistakes. Would Carla be irresponsible to herself if she follows one of Dworkin’s demands (by seriously asking what would make her life “successful”) but not another (about creating the lifestyle that she could say she had most reason to have)?
But that's exactly what Carla has done. Sen's mistake was to think that just because A and B were 'pure strategies' there were no acceptable mixed strategies on the entire menu. The fact is, Carla's following a 'mixed strategy' based on 'choice sequences' is still from an intensional point of view an authentic and self-respecting alternative.
And, finally, we come to Dora, who thinks it is very “silly” to keep asking restlessly whether her life is “successful.” “Stop this search and get a life!” she says. We should – at least she would – reasonably live without such an overriding concentration on self-assessment.
Sen was useless at assessment in Econ but developed a mania for it. Did Dworkin share this foible?
Assessment takes time away from other things one could do and is itself a part of living. To keep assessing whether one is giving “a successful performance” would itself be a part of a particular lifestyle (a rather obsessive one), and it is, Dora argues, not an especially good lifestyle. It is possible that all these cases can be well addressed within Dworkin’s general framework,
or just by using our common-sense. No responsibility is being discharged by talking witless shite about responsibility or pretending the thing is always being assessed and this could affect your grade point average and then OMG I won't get into a decent law skool and so I'll end up a crack-ho giving beejays in truck-stops.
in which case I would like to hear more from him on these issues. Or, if they really violate the demands that Dworkin imposes on personal responsibility to oneself, then I would like to know why he imposes these demands in that form. Having taught joint classes with Dworkin at Oxford for many years, I know there are few things as enjoyable as hearing him explain what exactly he wants to say – and why. I look forward to that pleasure.
I like to think that Dworkin felt the morally responsible course was to drop dead so as to deny Sen that pleasure.
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