Corruption: A Very Short Introduction

TL;DR: Corruption means something.  Corruption is bad in a lot of ways.  It’s caused by a lot of things.  It can potentially be combated in a lot of ways.

Part 1: What is corruption?

It’s hard to fight against something that you have no understanding of.  And I suspect most people have no understanding of corruption.  When people see paradigmatic examples of corruption in the news, they rightly condemn and denounce it.  But when it comes to fighting corruption systematically and effectively, most people are at a loss for how to even start.

Part of the reason for this is because people don’t know what corruption should mean.  Various international organizations like the World Bank and Transparency International define corruption as “the abuse of public office for private gain.”  But this is hardly an uncontroversial definition.  Interpol, for instance, broadens this definition to “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.”  One important difference between the two definitions is that the former targets individuals associated with the state, whereas the latter includes individuals like executives of private corporations.

In any case, both definitions are fraught with ambiguous interpretations.  For example, what counts as private gain?  These are typically thought to be economic improprieties like embezzlement or bribery, but what about social improprieties like appointing one’s family (nepotism) or friends (cronyism) to a position for which they are not the most qualified candidate?  And what is a public office?  Many functions typically thought to be in the state’s responsibility are now outsourced to private companies.  Prisons are one example of this.  If a prison warden of a privately contracted company accepts a bribe to smuggle in drugs, are they being corrupt in the narrow sense of the word?  The phrase “private gain” is also ambiguous.  If a politician accepts a questionable donation on behalf of their political party but receives no personal benefit, have they acted corruptly?  When you throw in the fact that different cultures have different norms for how public officials ought to behave, the problem of defining corruption becomes exceptionally more difficult.

Other problems arise when trying to define concepts related to corruption.  For example, what distinguishes a gift from a bribe?  Before moving on, think about this carefully.  You may find that the distinction is blurrier than you first imagined.  Holmes offers six general guidelines for identifying the difference.  (An explanation of each guideline would make this post too long.)

1. The intention of the donor
2. The expectation of the recipient
3. The timing of the giving
4. The value of the “gift”
5. The legal perspective
6. The perceived social acceptability of the transaction

Because of the myriad difficulties in defining corruption, Holmes stipulates a definition for her book while acknowledging that this necessarily limits its scope.  She lists five necessary criteria for corruption.  An action/omission is corrupt when:

1. It involves an individual or group that occupies public office
2. The public office involves a degree of authority relating to decision-making powers, law enforcement, or defence of the state
3. It is motivated at least partly by personal interests or the interests of the organization to which the party belongs, and these interests must run counter to the interests of the state or society
4. The action is done clandestinely, and the actors know that their actions might be considered illicit
5. The action is perceived by a significant proportion of the population or the state as corrupt.  

Part 2: Why is corruption a problem?

Saying corruption is bad is banal and unhelpful.  Saying exactly how corruption is bad in all its ugly ways allows people to form more targeted and effective interventions and to form more precise hypotheses for future research.  Here are a seven ways corruption can be detrimental to the welfare of a nation.

First, for developing countries, the presence of corruption may severely reduce the amount of aid sent.  Potential donors may refuse to send aid because they rightly believe that most of the resources sent are being siphoned away to the leaders for personal gain.  Unfortunately, the people most hurt by this are often the poorest people in society.

Second, corruption can cause a sense of us vs them thinking within society both vertically and horizontally.  Vertically, because the citizens of a country may see their public officials as skimming off society’s wealth at the expense of ordinary people.  Horizontally, because people who are unwilling or unable to pay bribes for what they need may be resentful of those who can and do.  This may lead to a “return to the family.”  That is, people may increasingly tighten their social circles to include only those with whom they have a kinship relation.  One potential negative consequence of this is a greater hostility towards other groups, which may in turn exacerbate ethnic conflicts.

Third, higher levels of corruption may lead to a greater sense of insecurity, both among the public and among the officials themselves.  People who distrust the police, for instance, may be wary of reporting crimes or cooperating with authorities.  This may lead to greater crime rates, which would lead to a greater sense of insecurity.  Moreover, even a public official sincerely motivated to help their society may have their ambitions stifled by an oppressive atmosphere of corruption.  They may hesitate in fulfilling their normal and proper functions or refuse to do them altogether.

Fourth, building and safety inspectors have sometimes turned a blind eye to construction companies that have not met the appropriate standards by, for example, using subpar materials.  The result is the deaths of hundreds of people when the shoddily built apartments, schools, and houses eventually collapse.  

Fifth, corruption, by its very nature, allows people to do things that would otherwise be prohibited by a just society.  The scale of human trafficking and endangered animal trafficking are significantly higher than they would otherwise be without the collusion of corrupt government officials.  The same is true for the trafficking of weapons as well as illegal logging and deforestation.

Sixth, corruption can have significant effects on a country’s economy.  The perception of corruption may make potential investors wary of a country, which will slow down the growth of its economy.  It may also restrict the country’s admittance into certain international organizations such as the EU or the Schengen Zone.  Another economic consequence of corruption is a lower revenue for the state, since corrupt officials may exempt citizens or firms from paying fines, taxes, etc.  Further, corruption can lead to greater rates of poverty.  In a 1998 study by the IMF, researchers analysed data from an 18 year period and found that the more corrupt a country was, the more impoverished its citizens.  Moreover, poverty is known to be associated with poorer mental and physical health.  Finally, corruption may discourage firms from competition.  After all, why improve one’s product or service when you can instead bribe an official to grant you a virtual monopoly over a certain area?

Seventh, corruption may have adverse effects on the political and legal system of a country.  Corruption can undermine the competitiveness of elections.  Two ways this might happen are through ballot-rigging or vote-buying.  A lack of genuine political competition may make extremist politicians who promise to eradicate corruption more attractive.  Once elected, however, these politicians are rarely effective at actually reducing corruption.  The presence of corruption may also lead politicians to accuse and counter-accuse each other of complicity with corrupt officials.  This may cause citizens either to become cynical and alienated from the political system or to become outraged, leading to mass unrest and an overthrow of the regime.

The foregoing discussion of the harms of corruption, however, should not lead us to the conclusion that we should do absolutely everything we can to combat corruption.  This may seem counterintuitive, but it reflects a rather commonplace lesson in economics.  There is an “optimal amount” of corruption.  Holmes mentions the work of Robert Klitgaard who says that “the costs of countering corruption should not exceed the economic damage being wrought by that corruption; the point at which corruption is being maximally combated relative to resources is the optimal amount.”  In other words, if we could snap our fingers to completely get rid of corruption, we should.  But since it would take billions if not trillions of dollars to eradicate corruption, we should be mindful of the resources we’re actually spending on the problem.  A dollar spent combating corruption is a dollar that’s not spent on a cure for cancer, or on a space program, or on growing kumquats.

Part 3: Explaining Corruption

Many explanations may be obvious.  For the sake of completeness, I’d like to include them anyways.

a. Psycho-Social Explanations

The first explanation is simple: greed.  When people desire more resources, whether it be money or the basic necessities of life, they will sometimes do illicit things to get those resources.  Corruption, on this view, is a product of a more-or-less rational calculation of what the risks and benefits are of bribery, embezzlement, etc.  However, this is hardly a completely satisfactory explanation.  It doesn’t entirely explain how we see corruption manifested in all its myriad ways.  Different people may have the same greedy disposition but consider different resources valuable.  Moreover, two people may want to acquire the same thing, but one may have greater moral scruples.  Or perhaps two people are identical in every way except the fact that one is more often in contact with public officials, or is better at bribing public officials, or has greater knowledge of the legal system.  The simplistic belief that greed is the sole explanation of corruption is, at best, woefully naive.

A second explanation for corruption is similar to the first: ambition.  People not only want to acquire resources; they also want to have prestige.  They want to be promoted and respected and recognized by their peers.  People want to have a feeling of power over others, and this may lead them to engage in illicit activities to pursue that ambition if upward mobility is blocked through the official channels.

Third, corruption may be a result of a sense of insecurity.  A child, for instance, growing up in difficult circumstances may feel the need to acquire resources just in case something terrible happens again.  A politician in a country going through turmoil may likewise be afraid for their own financial and physical security.  Countries where unemployment is on the rise may see people flocking to influence public officials to appoint them to a secure government position.  In any case, the desire to survive can powerfully motivate a person to engage in corruption.

Fourth, peer approval/disapproval may explain why certain individuals become corrupt.  Police officers who join corrupt units, for instance, are more likely to become corrupt themselves.  This need not be because they are exceptionally ambitious, but rather it’s consistent with people’s innate tendency to conform to the will of those around them.  It may also be out of a sense of fear.  Police officers in areas with rampant crime activity may have their own lives or the lives of their loved ones threatened if they do not bend to corruption.

Fifth, another lens with which to explain corruption is called “labelling theory.”  The idea is that once a state or society labels someone a criminal, they are likely to remain one unless steps are taken to redress this.  If, for instance, the media constantly claims that customs officers accept bribes, some officers may end up doing so.  The thought would go something like this: “They’ll think we’re accepting bribes regardless of whether or not we do it, so why not actually do it?”

b. Cultural Explanations

First, several studies have been done that link the dominant religion of a country with its level of corruption.  Apparently, Protestant countries are less corrupt than Catholic countries, which are less corrupt than Orthodox countries, while Christian countries are generally less corrupt than Muslim countries.  The causal reason behind these trends is a matter of speculation that is addressed further in the book.

A second cultural explanation involves people’s attitudes towards the family and the state.  The more people trust their family and friends over the state, the more corruption there is in that country.  Trust towards strangers is also important.  The less the people of a country trust strangers, the more corrupt that country is.  Again, the causal direction is a matter of speculation.  

A third explanation involves a country’s historical past.  It’s been argued, for instance, that former colonies are more corrupt because the imperial powers would often rely on local tax collectors.  The tax collectors would take bribes from the locals, and once the imperial powers left, bribery had already become entrenched as a social norm.  Further, individuals in former colonies may have residual antipathy to government institutions and view their own current government as illegitimate and hence have no qualms about subverting it through corruption.  

Fourth, countries with common law systems may be less corrupt than countries with civil law systems.  The judiciary in the former are often more independent of the political elite and hence less prone to social corruption.  Additionally, common law systems are often more transparent than civil law systems.

Fifth, cultures which recognize the rule of law are less corrupt than those without such a recognition.  In authoritarian regimes, for instance, leaders seen siphoning off the wealth of the nation into their offshore bank accounts for their own personal gain foment distrust amongst the population and cause the legitimacy of the government to come into question.  This may discourage people from participating in the legal system, choosing instead to pursue justice by their own means.  In one clever study, researchers looked at the parking behavior of foreign diplomats in New York City.  They found that “there is a strong correlation between illegal parking and existing measures of home country corruption.”

c. System Related Explanations

One system related explanation for corruption involves the privatization of industries which were formerly run by the state.  As the state sells off its industries, businesspeople may offer bribes or kickbacks to public officials to gain an early advantage.  This was a major factor in explaining corruption in post-Communist transition countries in the 1990s.

Another explanation has to do with the economic characteristics of a country.  Almost invariably, the poorer the country, the greater the corruption.  Income inequality, too, is associated with greater levels of corruption.  And countries with more protectionist trade policies are also more likely to be corrupt.  

The size of government also appears to have an effect on corruption.  However, this relationship depends on a country’s level of democracy.  In robust democracies, it seems a larger government is associated with less corruption.  Whereas in countries with little or no democracy, larger governments mean greater corruption.

A final potentially relevant political variable explaining levels of corruption has to do with the gender proportions of public officials, where political systems with greater proportions of female officials tend to have less corruption (though this explanation along with all of the above explanations have been challenged.)

Part 4: What Can Be Done?

One straightforward suggestion to get rid of corruption is to take it more seriously in the legal system.  Botswana, for instance, boasts a level of corruption relatively low in Africa partly because of its high rates of prosecution.  Moreover, legal reform aimed at discouraging corruption can take the form of higher conviction rates and more severe penalties.  There are problems with this approach, however.  In several countries, a conviction of corruption may be met with the death penalty.  Moreover, people may be framed or falsely accused for political reasons, and their trials may be a farce.

Several states have agencies specifically tasked with investigating corruption.  These agencies, called anti-corruption agencies (ACAs), sometimes investigate officials who live a lifestyle incommensurate with their stated income.  However, many problems afflict these agencies.  They are sometimes poorly funded.  The lines of responsibility are blurred, especially when there are multiple such agencies tasked with similar goals.  And these agencies are not always entirely independent of the people and organizations they are tasked with investigating.

Some states have tried using public shaming and blacklisting as a means to combat corruption.  Corrupt officials’ names may be displayed on a government website, and companies found to have bribed a public official have sometimes been barred from certain government contracts.

Some states have tried combating corruption by improving the working conditions of public officials, particularly their salaries.  This may not be a feasible option for some states, however, that are exceptionally poor and could not afford to do so.  Further, without any disincentive, corrupt officials may decide to receive the higher salary and continue to receive bribes.  

Other states have rewarded people who report corruption.  This approach can backfire, however, by leading to false accusations.  Further, whistleblowers may face severe repercussions.  They may be threatened or they may face a cold shoulder from their colleagues.

Certain states have attempted to address the problem of corruption by rotating their public officials.  The administration of a bureaucracy, for instance, will be continually replaced with new staff members.  The theory is that by changing the staff members, gangs or organizations will be unable to establish their roots in the administration.  Would-be bribers would no longer have an “inside man.”  The cost of this policy, however, should be borne in mind.  Administrations that are subject to this policy will, by definition, have inexperienced people working in their offices.

Another approach governments have tried is better auditing.  In Indonesia, for instance, after a history of auditing only 4% of road-building projects, the government audited all new projects, leading to an estimated 8% reduction in corruption, an impressive result for such a simple intervention.  

Other governments have used technology to their advantage by, for example, installing cameras at border crossings where customs officials are known to be corrupt.

At a broader level, governments have tried to improve the general morality of their citizens.  The result of these measures has, at best, been lackluster, and, at worst, counterproductive.  When a government continually pledges to clamp down on corruption and fails to deliver, the next pledge may be perceived to be all but a farce.

Other measures are more drastic.  In Georgia, the president dismissed every traffic police officer and replaced them with new recruits, apparently to some success.  In the capital of Colombia, Bogota, the mayor not only dismissed the traffic police but also hired a large group of mimes to mock people caught breaking traffic rules, again, to some success.

Scome countries have tried changing the gender balance of their public officials, also with some success.  However, whether this is due to a change in the gender balance or the newness of the officials is a matter of debate.  

In well-functioning democracies, the media has a crucial role to play in exposing corruption and pressuring governments to pursue action against corrupt officials.  And citizens, too, can fight corruption by reporting known or suspected cases and expressing their concern about the issue to their representatives.

Part 5: Criticisms and Responses to the Anti-Corruption Movement

Some have accused certain international anti-corruption attempts of “cultural imperialism.”  It’s true, some interventions are intrusive and may interfere with the sovereignty of a country, but this is often in countries where corruption is a well-known and where citizens want outside help, especially if that means foreign aid can ultimately get to the people who need it most.

Another criticism against anti-corruption measures is that they have a perverse incentive.  They face what I call “The Batman Problem.”  They’re fighting for a world in which they no longer have to exist.  Though we can trust Batman to step down when the time calls, mere humans are sometimes beset by irresistible temptations.  In effect, the anti-corruption agencies have themselves been accused of corruption.  Though there’s an important insight in this criticism, it neglects an important fact.  Corruption will never by completely eradicated.  It can only be managed to tolerable levels.  So long as humans continue to be human, anti-corruption measures will always be necessary.

Part 6: My Takeaways

After reading this book, I gained a greater appreciation for the scope and severity of corruption.  My upbringing in the US has insulated me from the apparent seriousness of the problem.  With a litany of examples and empirical data, Holmes thoroughly popped my bubble, and I’m thankful for that.  The extremity of corruption, however, does not dampen my optimism about the overall state of the world.  Knowing that amazingly astute scholars like Holmes are thinking about and working on this problem is an immensely comforting thought and inspires my confidence in the future.  The exceptional breadth and crystal clear structure of this book are a breath of fresh air from the obscurantism and muddled thinking found in the news.  I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about corruption.

---

Holmes, L. (2015). Corruption: A very short introduction (Vol. 426). Oxford University Press, USA.

Some Basic Problems in Epistemology

(Based on Chapters 1-8 of Epistemology: Classic Problems and Contemporary Responses by Laurence BonJour)

TL;DR: I think, therefore I am.  Is there anything else?  Will things continue to be?  Do other things think?  What’s the deal with memory?

Have you ever met a really inquisitive kid who kept asking "Why?" over and over again? That's basically what epistemology is. Philosophers of epistemology never grew out of asking "Why?".  They want to know where (or if) it all bottoms out. Is there a reason for everything? Or is it just turtles all the way down?  This post will be a summary of some basic problems in epistemology, problems that ought to vitiate the confidence most people have of their most certain beliefs.

Cartesian Doubt

Let's start by erasing our minds of any beliefs not held to be indubitably true. Let's rid ourselves of all assumptions and start from first principles. However improbable, the sun might not rise tomorrow, and the stars might fall from the sky.  But is there anything that we couldn't possibly deny? The 16th century philosopher, Renee Descartes came up with one candidate: I exist.  Even if I were massively deluded about the physical, biological, and historical facts of nature, I couldn’t doubt that I exist. For in the act of doubting, I would be affirming the existence of something doing the doubting. Hence, Descartes' famous phrase: "I think, therefore I am."

Still, this hardly seems like a generative starting point for building up our knowledge about the world. The knowledge that I exist implies nothing about what I have been or what I will be. It also implies nothing about what others are like or what's in my immediate environment, much less what's happening in places far removed from me like Kazakhstan. And yet I think I clearly do have knowledge about these things, so how can I arrive at this conclusion from the mere fact of my own existence? Unfortunately, Descartes is unhelpful in answering these questions, and I’ll be of equally little help. This is a post on the problems of epistemology, not the solutions.

However, two directions are worth considering. One is an appeal to self-evident truths, truths which require no proof or grounding for their affirmation. Various philosophers have suggested, for instance, that our immediate sensations have this character.  To illustrate this, suppose I am hallucinating a green rat in front of me. I would be mistaken in believing there is actually a green rat in front of me, but I cannot be mistaken that I am having the experience of a green rat.  Similar things have been said about bodily sensations like pains or itches as well as propositional mental states like conscious beliefs and desires. A final, and perhaps the most important, category of putative self-evident truths is the truths of logic. I know without need of justification that A=A.  I know that a square can't also be a circle. I know that there either is or isn't a computer in front of me. Appealing to so-called self-evident truths, however, is rife with problems. What feature of these propositions make them self-evident, if in fact they are self-evident?  What does "self-evident" mean? Can self-evident truths tell us anything about non-self-evident truths? The rabbit hole goes much deeper.

Another proposed way to climb out of the hole of radical skepticism is to change how we conceive of the demandingness of knowledge. Perhaps, contra Descartes, knowledge doesn't require overcoming all possible doubt.  Instead, perhaps all that's needed is overcoming reasonable doubt. What, though, counts as reasonable doubt? How justified does a proposition have to be for our belief in it to count as knowledge? To my knowledge, no philosopher has seriously tried to argue for a determinate threshold of justification, say 80% or 85% or 90%, since any specific level would seem arbitrary.  Moreover, even if there were a determinate threshold, it's not clear why greater justification wouldn't be desirable nonetheless. Ultimately, I think a combination of the above two strategies allow us to escape radical skepticism, but that discussion is immaterial for now.  There are other problems to consider.

The Problem of Induction

Let's tentatively accept that things other than ourselves exist. Moreover let's suppose that our immediate experiences combined with our faculty of reason allow us to make justified claims about the world beyond ourselves.  (It bears emphasizing that these are huge assumptions in the field of epistemology.) Suppose, for instance, that I let go of a pen in the air expecting it to fall to the floor. How can I know that the pen will actually fall?  Readers may respond by saying, "In the past, when you've dropped a pen, it's fallen down. So now, when you drop a pen, you can justifiedly expect the same to happen." This kind of reasoning is known as “inductive” reasoning.  To simplify, we can rephrase the justification as follows: “We know the pen will fall by induction.”  Of course, the pen is just an illustrative example. The more general principle of induction might go something like this: The future resembles the past.  But, again, why?  We might imagine a hypothetical gravity-denier asking why we are justified in believing in induction.  One response might be that induction has worked in the past all those times we’ve dropped a pen, so we’re justified in believing in induction now.  But here the gravity-denier will have a quick rejoinder: “Aha!  Your argument is entirely circular.  You're using the fact that induction worked in the past to justify thinking it'll work in the future. You're using induction to justify induction!"

It’s hard, if not impossible, to come up with an argument for induction without devolving into circularity.  If this is true, though, then it seems using induction would be an unreasonable way of justifying our belief about any future events.  A similar argument might be made against our beliefs about any unobserved events whatsoever.  The upshot of this skepticism is that even if we take ourselves as having justified beliefs about the external world, we would have no way of knowing about anything about the future or about things that are presently unobserved.  We wouldn’t be able to justifiedly say that a pen would fall when dropped or that the sun will rise tomorrow.  Though this conclusion appears extremely implausible, finding a cogent justification for induction has proved challenging for over 200 years.

The Problem of Other Minds

There is another question in epistemology quite independent of the foregoing discussion of induction: How do we know anything about other people’s minds?  Again, we’re supposing here that we have justified beliefs about the external world.  But how does this let us know anything about what’s going on in another person’s head?  I’ll only make cursory remarks here because I’ll be writing another post later in the year about the basic problems in philosophy of mind.  For now, let’s take the most vivid example we can to show why this is such a big problem.  Suppose I look out my window and see a boy riding his bicycle over a large rock and suddenly falling off and landing on his knee.  His leg is bloody; a bone might be protruding from it.  The boy is grasping at it, crying and pleading for help.  All of what I’ve just seen intuitively seems like very strong evidence that the boy is in serious pain.  But why?  I would have no doubt about it in the moment, but on reflection, it’s difficult to come up with an adequate justification for this belief.

Here’s a potential one: I can remember a time when I’ve fallen down on my knee, and I remember feeling extreme pain when that happened.  So I infer that when the same event occurs to this boy, he’s also feeling the same thing.  For people who themselves haven’t fallen on their knee, they might refer back to memories about injuring some other part of their body and feeling pain.  The more general point is that I notice a correlation between some observable event and my own inner mental reaction, and I infer that another person’s mental reaction will be similar given a similar observable event.

Like I said, it’s hard to come up with an adequate justification for our beliefs about other minds, and the above paragraph only confirms what I’ve said.  The problem lies in the fact that I can only observe the correlation between the mental states and observable circumstances of myself, one person out of the potentially billions of other cases for which this argument is supposed to apply.  Perhaps trillions if animals should be included as well.  By analogy, suppose I were to make a claim about all trees based on my observation of only one example.  The weakness of that claim would be all too easily demonstrated.  The consequence of the above argument’s failure, however, is that we’re left mostly unjustified about other people’s mental states; we’re left saying there’s little reason to believe that the child outside my window really is in pain.  That seems extremely implausible, but, again, this is a post about problems not solutions.

The Problem of Memory Knowledge

I’ll end by noting one final problem in epistemology, the problem of memory.   Everyone has occasional lapses in memory; we know our memories can be mistaken, but we have a general sense that many, if not most, of our memories are largely correct.  They represent something true about the world.  Why?  How do we know that all of our memories aren’t entirely false?  There are two ways our memories could conceivably fail us.  First, the encoding or retrieval of our memory could be mistaken.  That is, we correctly perceived something, but our memory process itself introduced an error.  Second, we may have incorrectly perceived something and encoded that incorrect perception into our memory.  How do we know this hasn’t happened to all our beliefs dependent on memory?  It’s important at this point to note how dire a skeptical answer to this question would be.  Without an adequate answer, it seems the only things we would be justified in talking about would be things in our immediate experience and the self-evident truths discussed above.  Is there any non-circular way to address this?  That is, can we appeal to our memory-independent experiences and reasoning to come up with a justification for the truth of our memories and the faculty of memory itself?  At first glance, it appears not.  After all, as BonJour puts it, “memory must play an essential role in assembling and keeping track of the resources for a justification of any but the simplest, most immediate beliefs.  Any argument of any complexity...cannot all be held in mind at once, but must be collected and juxtaposed and reviewed over a period of time, using memory.”  This has been and continues to be a persistent problem for epistemologists.  How might we solve it?

It’s worth noting that this wasn’t even close to being a comprehensive survey of the problems in epistemology. More than any other area of inquiry, perhaps by definition, epistemology challenges the most basic assumptions that people have.  Some notable areas left untouched were the problem of testimony and problems associated with morality, science, and God.  There are surely more.  A decent, though somewhat technical, introductory book that addresses these questions is Robert Audi’s Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge.

---

BonJour, L. (2009). Epistemology: Classic problems and contemporary responses. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Book Review: The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics

In this very curious book, the economist Steven Landsburg asks (and answers) the big questions of morality, existence, and the limits of knowledge with implacable humor and wit.  Among his many provocative claims, he says the universe is made of numbers, free will obviously exists, and most people aren't honest truth-seekers. On the other hand, his book is filled with a plethora of odd and amusing digressions about everything from the Olympics to Godel's incompleteness theorem to internet porn.  The varied hodgepodge of topics he covers in his book makes it seem less like a treatise on life, the universe, and everything and more a feverish brainstorming session between a professional economist and his 11-year old self.  And the world is better off for it.  No one can read this book without having learned something new to talk about at the dinner table.

Indeed, the very point of the book is to highlight how ignorant and unthinking we are about an indefinitely large number of topics. And that's ok. We have other things to do with our time, and it would be prohibitively costly to check whether all our beliefs were correct. So we settle for believing the beliefs that are adequate enough for carrying out our day to day lives. What this means, however, is that the beliefs we're most confident about won't be the generalized abstractions prized by philosophers about God, the cosmos, or morality but rather the mundane facts about where we left our keys or how to type an essay or what Sherryl did with Jason last Friday.  What's more, the true limits of our ignorance will often be concealed from us.  In fact, we may even be mistaken about our own beliefs.

In chapter five, Landsburg argues that religious "believers" don't really believe what they say they do.  After all, if someone was really passionate about understanding the origins and ultimate fate of the universe, why not peruse the popular alternatives? The fact that we don't see textbooks about cosmology, astronomy, and physics lining religious fanatics' bookshelves suggests they're not quite fanatic enough.  Moreover, if someone really believed in hell, we would expect them to be scrupulously pious, and if someone really believed in heaven, they would scrimp on healthcare and take a few extra death-defying risks.  But those predictions aren't borne out by the data. Rather, what we find is that religious believers are just as criminal and risk-averse as everyone else. And it seems even the most extreme of the extreme harbor their doubts.  For instance, the world contains over a billion muslims, many millions of whom claim to believe in martyrdom. Yet each year, we see only a few dozen suicide bombings, many conducted by children (who are gullible enough to hold their beliefs sincerely) or by political activists (who accept their total annihilation for their ideology) or people duped into a suicide mission at the last minute.  The (fortunate) rarity of suicide bombers, Landsburg argues, should make us reconsider whether religious believers really believe at all.

This digression on religious beliefs is only one among a slew of thought provoking digressions. The breadth of his book, however, guarantees that every reader will leave disagreeing or disappointed with something.  His opening chapter on the philosophy of mathematics, for instance, amounts to little more than: "I'm going to assume you agree with me because it's so obvious."  Further, he begins the 14th chapter, the chapter on quantum mechanics, by saying, "This chapter is full of lies."  For the sake of the reader's understanding, he admittedly oversimplifies the experiments and concepts central to quantum mechanics.  Anyone with a deep familiarity with quantum mechanics, then, may feel irked by his lack of nuance.  Other groups that may grit their teeth include philosophers and people who study English. In one particularly snide aside, he remarks, "because I'm an economist and not a philosopher, I prefer to think about the argument a little more deeply." And in his last chapter, Landsburg advises students to steer away from classes on writing.  He says, “If you want to take a literature course or two, I won’t begrudge you; just don’t let them get in the way of your education.  But for god’s sake, avoid the writing courses.”

Landsburg's knowledge, unsurprisingly, is brightest in his treatment of economic matters. His "proof" against protectionist trade policies and his arguments for immigration are easy and intuitive enough for the layperson to understand, while rigorous and clear enough to persuade even the densest of objectors.  The arguments are miles ahead of what you’ll find in a typical op-ed piece in The New York Times or Wall Street Journal.  What’s puzzling about this, however, is that he doesn’t resort to any fancy mathematical models or contorted statistical inferences.  In clear, plain English he lays out a convincing case for his preferred economic policies.  It’s a wonder, then, why the arguments he put forward aren’t more widely used and accepted.

There's a lot to love about this book. It's a quick read. It's engaging, edifying, and can no doubt be the jumping off point for many conversations.  It’s a great book to read at the beach or on the toilet, since the chapters are short and can be read all at once or as stand-alones (or sit-alones). Though we can't and shouldn't spend all our time verifying what we believe, anyone who devotes a few hours of their time perusing through The Big Questions will put the book down as a more curious, more compassionate, and weirder person. 

---

Landsburg, S. E. (2009). The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics and Physics. Simon and Schuster.

A Taxonomy of Metaethics

(Summary of Chapter 1 of Ethical Intuitionism by Michael Huemer)

TL;DR: http://imgur.com/eRgzMmk

Ethics is about what’s right and wrong, what should or shouldn’t be done, what’s good or bad.  Examples of ethical statements include: “America should have a different immigration policy,” “Stalin was evil,” and “Honesty is  a virtue.”  In contrast, metaethics is about the nature of ethical statements.  The four branches of metaethics are constituted by semantic, epistemological, metaphysical, and psychological questions.

An example of a semantic question would be: “What does ‘goodness’ mean?” or “Can ‘goodness’ be defined, and if so, what does it refer to?”

An epistemological question would be: “How do we know that cheating is wrong?” or “How can we justify our moral judgments?”

Metaethicists interested in metaphysics might ask, “Are some ethical statements objectively true?”

And psychological questions regarding metaethics might include: “What motivates us to do what’s right?” and “Do we have reasons to be moral?”

Here I’ll just be laying out the traditional metaphysical theories, but in later weeks, I’ll probably address each of the branches of metaethics and refer to the taxonomy sketched below as a jumping off point for another post.  It’s important to note at the outset, however, that these branches do overlap considerably.  If, for instance, we can’t know any ethical truths (epistemology), that will have a bearing on why we’re motivated to do what we think is right (psychology).  And how we define concepts like “objectivity” (semantics) will be relevant to whether certain ethical statements are objectively true (metaphysics).  For now, this latter overlap needs explanation.

What I mean when I say that ethical statements are objective is that they are not subjective; and to say that ethical statements are subjective means that they constitutively depend at least in part on the psychological attitude or response that observers have (or would have) toward those statements.  There’s a lot in this definition, so some examples might be helpful.  Funniness is subjective because jokes, comedians, or gifs are funny just in case people are amused by them.  “Funny” roughly means something like “tends to amuse audiences,” and that amusement is a psychological attitude of an observer.  Hence, the subjectivity of funniness.  Likewise, sexiness is subjective because a sexy person is someone to whom other people are attracted.  Squareness, on the other hand, is an objective property, because an object is square regardless of what people think or feel about that object.  Happiness, on this view, would *not* count as a subjective property because, although it depends on a psychological attitude, it does *not* constitutively depend on an *observer’s* psychological attitude.  That is, you can be happy even if no one thinks or feels anything about you.

With these definitions in mind, then, we can begin categorizing metaethical theories.  The first distinction that’s usually drawn among philosophers is between realists and anti-realists.  To the question, “Is morality objective?” realists say yes.  Anti-realists say no.

The realists split into two camps, naturalists and intuitionists.  Naturalists believe that moral statements can be reduced to non-evaluative statements.  “Moral goodness,” on this view, might be defined or explained in terms of what promotes human survival, health, or happiness.  

Intuitionists, in contrast, believe that moral statements can not be reduced in this way.  Instead, “moral goodness” is inextricably value laden.  Though empirical investigation can inform our moral judgments, empirical truths don’t constitute morality.  Some moral truths, intuitionists claim, are known through intuition alone.  

The anti-realists come in three varieties.  The first is non-cognitivism.  Non-cognitivists hold that moral statements don’t refer to propositions at all.  “Proposition” is tricky to define, but some examples of non-propositional statements might be helpful in clarifying this point.  “Hurray!” and “Boo!” are non-propositional because they are neither true nor false.  Similarly, “Don’t steal!” is a non-propositional statement because it would be nonsensical to say that the statement is true or false.  It’s an imperative, not a declarative.  Truth and falsity don’t apply to those statements any more than smells to numbers.  The number 18 might or might not be prime, or even, or greater than 3, but asking what it smells like is a category mistake.  Similarly, non-cognitivists would say that it’s nonsensical to say that moral statements are true or false.  Moral statements, they say, are akin to expressions of emotion (e.g. Boo, Stalin! or Hurray, charity!) or imperatives (e.g. Please be kind! or Don’t murder!) rather than propositional statements like “The Earth is round.”

The other two anti-realist varieties are cognitivist.  In other words, moral statements are propositional.  Subjectivists, moreover, would say that these statements are at least sometimes true.  What makes them true, however, are not objective properties.  Rather, subjectivists maintain that morality is constituted by an individual’s or group’s (tendency to have an) attitude or reaction to something.  Egoists, for instance, would say that “X is good” just means “I approve of X.”  Cultural relativists (of a certain sort) might say that “X is good” just means “My culture approves of X.”

Because they are cognitivists, nihilists would agree that moral statements are propositional.  However, they would say that all moral statements are false.  It’s false, for instance, that murder is wrong.  It’s false that kindness is a virtue.  It’s false that we should help others.  More generally, “nihilism” as I understand the term is the belief that (1) moral statements are statements about alleged non-natural, objective properties but that (2) there really are no such properties.  The reason for this admittedly peculiar definition is that nihilists, presumably, would not deny the existence of natural or subjective properties.  They wouldn’t deny that people can be happy or that people approve of things.  They would, however, deny the existence of moral truth.  In a sense, then, nihilism is the negation of intuitionism.

These five metaethical theories I’ve sketched out exhaust the space of possible theories.  Either moral statements are or are not propositional.  If they are not propositional, non-cognitivism is true.  If they are propositional, they are either all false or at least sometimes true.  If all moral statements are false, then nihilism is true.  If moral statements are at least sometimes true, they are either objective or subjective.  If they are subjective, then subjectivism is true.  If they are objective, then they are either reducible to natural properties or not.  If they are, then naturalism is true.  If they are not, then intuitionism is true.  The TL;DR at the top of this post may be helpful for anyone who wants to quickly visualize the outline I’ve sketched so far.  Michael Huemer, the author of Ethical Intuitionism, believes the structure of the flow chart I’ve made is misleading, and I agree with him.  I’ve decided to include it anyway because I’m really really slow at making flow charts, and the alternative is only marginally more useful.

---

Huemer, M. (2007). Ethical intuitionism. Springer.