Moral Manipulation A Kantian Take on Advertising and Campaigning Sylvia Gunn The Australian National University Author Ebba Brunnstrom Grace Engelman Matthew Flathers Editors Fall 2018 Kantian moral philosophy applied to appeals to emotion in advertising and campaigning; analysis, comparison and critique. The ethics of manipulation are important for anyone whose goals rely on changing people’s behavior, but who do not wish to violate moral laws. Kant’s emphasis on avoiding the violation of others’ humanity makes his philosophy particularly applicable to this topic. Although Kantian philosophy tells us that lying is immoral, the status of appealing to animal instincts is unclear. This essay will define a common maxim to describe these appeals in advertising and campaigning, and analyze this maxim under each formulation of Kant’s categorical imperative. Previous work has considered the ethics of advertising, Kantian and otherwise, without making the comparison to campaigning. This article will shine further light on the importance of understanding the value of emotion in Kantian philosophy, rather than rejecting appeals to emotion entirely. Kantian philosophy requires that we define a maxim to describe the action, and its context, and its intention, in order to analyze an agent’s choice and its moral implications. This essay takes ‘appeals to emotion’ and ‘appeals to animal nature’ to refer to the same behavior, namely the use of persuasive techniques to create an instinctual or emotional response in our target, rather than a purely rational response. In the Kantian sense, rationality refers to one’s deliberate actions, which can take into account emotions, higher order desires, and moral considerations. The examples of advertising and campaigning will aid in this discussion. To avoid consideration of a ‘cool-off period’ during which the emotional response might wear off or be rationally processed, we will assume that the target can act immediately in response to the appeal. The advertiser wishes to convince people to buy their product or service, and uses appeals to serve this purpose. For example, an insurance salesperson might appeal to fear, recounting tales of disasters to compel potential customers to buy the most comprehensive plans. Alternatively, a company may use associative advertising, which involves portraying someone who uses the product or service as happy, successful, or otherwise benefitted, without explicitly claiming that the product creates this result. Conversely, the campaigner may make an appeal to empathy, displaying images of starving children in order to compel potential supporters to donate. The maxim, in both cases, is “Where it serves my purpose, I will make an appeal to my target’s animal instincts, to encourage them to do what I want”. In order to determine whether my maxim is permissible in Kant, we shall put it through all three formulations of the categorical imperative in the Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals. The categorical imperative is intended to be a universal concept of morality, acceptable to all moral beings. Kant claims that there is “only a single categorical imperative”[1] which is the formula of universal law. The other formulations, that of humanity and that of the kingdom of ends, are alternative ways of spelling out the same moral ideals. Each provides guidance, particularly when maxims are vague and manipulable, or when some formulation does not produce clear results. The first half of this essay analyses the maxim under Kant’s three formulations, concluding that appeals are only ethical in the Kantian sense when there is a certain degree of certainty that the target knows that those appeals are occurring. The first formulation, the formula for universal law, tells us that maxims are only acceptable if it would be possible and acceptable for them to become universal law. According to this formula, emotional appeals are not wholly unacceptable, but they may in some cases interfere with my other ends. The second formulation, the formula for humanity, tells us that one must never violate another’s autonomy or rational capacity. Thus, appeals are only acceptable if my target is aware of their occurrence. Finally, the third formulation, the kingdom of ends, requires me to act on the expectation that others are generally rational, although they can be temporarily overcome by emotion. Thus I should make appeals only when the context makes it clear that appeals are occurring – such as in advertising slots. Moreover, in situations where I can gauge whether the person is engaging rationally, I need not exercise the same caution before the appeal is made. This implies that direct interactions, such as campaign conversations, may allow for stronger appeals to emotion than broadcast communications such as adverts. This does not draw out a clear distinction between the use of appeals in advertising and their use in campaigning, but it does give both campaigners and door-to-door salespeople some extra scope. The second section of this essay discusses two issues with this conclusion. Firstly, it fails to distinguish between appeals to harmless emotions and emotions that reflect harmful societal norms. Secondly, it does not take into account the larger good consequences of an action, particularly relating to campaigning. These objections constitute a rejection of Kantian philosophy, which does not allow for any sacrifice of human rationality for the greater good, in favor of a pluralist philosophy. Rather than a weakness, this second objection could describe a strength of Kantian philosophy: it provides a framework for a theory of slow and sure social change, which does not rely on human’s animal instincts, but only their rationality. Existing Literature Philips considers the question of emotionally manipulative advertising in relation to multiple ethical frameworks and concludes that the Kantian perspective would rule it out. His consideration of the formula of universal law finds that you should not engage in manipulative advertising that would work on you, as the universalization of this maxim would see you manipulated, which conflicts with your other ends. Interpreting Kant’s formula for humanity to mean that one must not override the will by appealing to emotion, he initially finds that his maxim does not treat humanity as an end in itself. He then provides a reshaped maxim that characterizes appeals as an argument that the target engages with rationally. To Phillips, it is unclear which of these maxims is correct under the Kantian account.[2] My account, in contrast, will apply Kantian moral psychology to appeals, incorporating the target’s engagement with the appeal. Partially because of this, and partially because my maxim only includes appeals that will work to some extent if the target is aware of its occurrence, my conclusion is different from Phillips' version. In contrast, Phillips’ maxim includes subliminal messaging, which works exclusively when the target does not know that they are occurring. Kant addresses some related topics that aid the discussion of this question, without directly addressing the issue at hand. These examples provide context to the question, and allow for assessment of our interpretation of Kant. If an interpretation changes the conclusions that we have already accepted, that interpretation is not hugely accurate to the original ideas. Beyond that, Herman’s perspective on interpretations is a good guide: it is enough to argue that one can [interpret it that way]. The rest should be decided by the fruitfulness of the concept.’[3] Rather than try to find the opinion that Kant would have held, particularly considering that his views on many issues were inconsistent with his philosophy,[4] we should develop an interpretation based on the parts of Kant’s philosophy that we accept. Kant’s discussion of the false promise finds it immoral under each formulation of the categorical imperative. The maxim ‘[I will,] when hard pressed, make a promise with the intention not to keep it’ is not universalizable, as it would not be possible if everybody applied it by law, and everyone thus became aware that promises held no value.[5] Moreover, it violates the target’s humanity on two counts. Firstly, they are unable to give or withhold consent to the lie, and secondly, they would not agree to the promise if they knew it were a lie. Deception is comparable but not equivalent to appeals to animal instinct, which can involve deception of the will. If levels of manipulation can be placed on a scale, depending on the extent that informed choice is taken from the target, the lying promise is a well-defined immoral upper bound. Kant’s discussion of our duties towards animals and children are also relevant to this discussion; they give insights into our treatment of irrational actions. Rather than interacting with less rational beings, my maxim involves appealing to the less rational instincts within rational beings. In doing this, we should acknowledge that people have different capacities for rationality. In relation to animals, one’s duty is to avoid unnecessary mistreatment, but this is primarily to protect our own moral senses. Some interpretations of Kant have expanded on these duties based on animals’ partial rationality.[6] It is also acceptable to treat children and the mentally impaired differently from fully rational adults, but with more restrictions again, noting their partial or changing levels of rationality. In valuing rationality, we should promote and enhance the rationally of such beings,[7] without holding them as responsible as we do fully rational adults. The Formula for Universal Law According to Kantian analysis, there is no perfect duty against the maxim of appeal to emotion. A perfect duty exists against a maxim where it would not be possible to will it if it were universal law.[8] Although the concept of a maxim being universal law is contested, it essentially means that any rational agent who found themself in the same context with the same intention would perform the same action. Unlike in the example of the lying promise explained above, appeals to animal nature can still be effective even when people are aware that they might be occurring, and even when people know for sure that they are happening. In our insurance advertising example, awareness of an emotional argument does not dissipate our fear that the same disasters could befall us. Knowledge that an appeal is occurring makes us more critical of the appeal in the same way that knowledge of a news publication being biased will make us more critical of the way it presents the facts. Thus, the maxim may be less likely to make the target do what I want if the maxim is universalized, but it will still encourage them. For example, a rational response to an associative advertisement for perfume would be to acknowledge that the positive emotions evoked might make me enjoy the product more, allowing this to influence my decision to buy it, along with the actual smell of the perfume, its price and my perception of the company. Universalization of my maxim would weaken its effect, but allow it the same meaning and similar result. Whether there is an imperfect duty against this maxim is indeterminate. The imperfect duty exists where the establishment of my maxim as universal law conflicts with my other end(s). A world where people, as universal law, appeal to animal instinct rather than rationality whenever it suits them could inhibit the realization of one’s other ends in a range of ways. The most obvious of these is if others used the appeals to change my behavior and in the process abandon my original ends. Phillips argues that this would only rule out making appeals that I know would work on me, which would not make for universal moral duty between different people.[9] However, this interpretation simplifies universalization, which would be a rather complex process. As Rawls argues, the formula for universal law creates an “adjusted social world” wherein agents practice such appeals as though it is inherent to their nature.[10] The existence of such a social world could involve a range of things, depending on how the idea of universal law is understood. At one extreme, we would not be able to tell when we ourselves are making these appeals, and they thus would be almost unrecognizable when others were making them to us. This would make us more susceptible to them and thus more likely to be swayed against our will. The opposite extreme, that we are aware of these appeals but still unable to stop ourselves from making them, would have different implications. The appeals would still work in some cases, but they would presumably fail whenever they were not adequately appealing to the will, which would be aware of the appeals, and decide rationally to accept them on the basis of emotional desires. However, the best interpretation seems to be somewhere in between these: although we would recognize these appeals sometimes, we would not understand them well enough to always recognize them. If this maxim were to be taken as a universal law like gravity or Pythagoras’ Theorem, it would gradually be increasingly understood through science – in particular, psychology and behavioral science. The exact effect of universalizing this maxim is, due to this complexity, unclear. The Formula for Humanity Kant’s formula of humanity as an end in itself gives us significantly clearer guidance for the maxim. Kant requires not that we never use other rational beings as means, as that would be near impossible, but that we never use them merely as means.[11] Any act where someone uses another as a means to an end consensually is acceptable. For example, if Alice buys a coffee from a barista at a mutually acceptable rate, they have both acted morally, despite Alice using the barista as her means to acquire a coffee, and the barista using Alice as their means to acquire money. However, we do not owe the same duty to irrational beings. It is the presence of a will that makes someone human, and it is this humanity to which one owes consent. Two different characterizations of humans’ decision-making capacities, which we shall respectively call ‘irrational’ and ‘rational’, point us to similar conclusions, but with slightly different implications. Kant describes our decision-making as generally rational, except in the cases where our emotions become “affects” and “passions”, and we lose some control of our actions, in which case we are irrational[12] . Under the irrational characterization, the will can be overridden by our animal nature. This occurs when people are under stress, or otherwise incapacitated, such that their emotions can override their rational sense. One common example of this phenomenon would be the ‘fight or flight’ response. In this case it is clear that my maxim conflicts with the formula of humanity. In the contexts described, I am using the target’s humanity as a means, as without it I could not get what I want. That is to say, I could not get money or political support from a child, robot or animal. However, rather than treating their humanity as an end, I am bypassing their humanity to appeal to their animal instincts, and gaining from their humanity in the process. Even if I ask for consent to make my appeal, or they have full knowledge that the appeal is occurring, if my target is behaving irrationally, the appeal can change their behavior by overriding the will and thus violating their humanity. It could be argued, as a rebuttal, that irrational persons are not deserving of this protection, as we have no moral duty to one without rational capacity. However, this would not constitute the protection of rational nature, which deserves regard even when it is incomplete or temporarily incapacitated.[13] This is why we have different duties surrounding addictive substances, and selling alcohol to the intoxicated. Like children, people behaving irrationally have latent rationality, and we should try to engage with that, rather than taking advantage of their irrationality. Under the second characterization, people are consistently rational, but animal instincts form inclinations that influence our behavior. Kant’s distinction in the original German between the willkür and wille helps aid this discussion. The willkür (will) ultimately makes the decisions, but animal inclinations and the wille (moral faculties) make up the arguments for the action. This concept is regularly characterized as ‘autonomy of the will’, which ‘is not the special achievement of the most independent, but a property of any reasoning being’.[14] Thus, the ‘appeal’ to animal instincts in my maxim does not make animal instincts decide for us, but strengthens the argument on behalf of those instincts. In this case, the target is able to consider their emotional response through their will, but surely only if they are aware that the argument is affecting their emotions. The target can only rationally engage with the appeal if they are aware of it, and this is a key factor to whether my maxim violates the target’s humanity. This has similarities with Phillips’ second interpretation of his maxim, wherein people treat emotional arguments as logical ones, assessing them from that perspective using the will. The maxim can be split into two scenarios to accommodate this change: “Where it serves my purpose, I will use persuasion to appeal to another person’s animal instincts without their knowledge, to encourage them to do what I want”. “Where it serves my purpose, I will use persuasion to appeal to another person’s animal instincts with their knowledge, to encourage them to do what I want”. In the first case, I consciously appeal to their animal instincts without their knowledge, using their humanity merely as a means to an end – they are furthering my political or economic goal in a way that a child or animal generally could not. However, in the second, the appeal to animal instincts is only as immoral as indulging one’s own animal instincts: it is an instance of a will allowing the animal instincts inherent in the human form to influence its behavior. The question that remains, on what counts as knowledge, deserves focused attention in the discussion of how this maxim would be treated by Kant’s formulation of the kingdom of ends. The Kingdom of Ends As we move into a discussion of the kingdom of ends, we have essential questions left to answer. The first formulation does not clarify our duty, but analysis of the second has ruled out appeals that my target is not consciously aware of. We still need a contextual definition of knowledge, and an account of how I may know my target possesses it. Clearly, appeals where they are completely unexpected are not allowed, as they involve a violation of trust and no opportunity for the will to make a decision. Thus, using subtle messaging to convince your friend to come to 350.org meetings is out of the question. Conversely, appeals where active consent has been gained are clearly acceptable. A door-to-door insurance salesperson who gains active consent to tell her tales of tragedy, noting that they may incite fear, should feel no qualms in doing so. However, the target’s knowledge does not necessarily require active consent. Advertising and campaigning occur in marked zones, like in television advert slots and conversations at stalls. People are aware of the norms in these areas, and not only are they able to physically tune out, they are also able to think and react critically. It would be overstepping the Kantian mark to say that we should only ever appeal to our target’s autonomous will, and never engage directly with their emotions. Abiding by such a rule would severely decrease one’s persuasive ability.[15] In a sense, this would constitute failure to respect one’s own subjective ends – the ends one desires to bring about, but which do not necessarily hold moral worth. Moreover, it is not our duty to make sure others act rationally – only to ensure that we are not violating their autonomy. While the easiest answer for the moral stickler is to consistently ask for the consent, or avoid emotional appeals altogether, those who do not wish to dampen the results of their business or campaign with unnecessarily bad persuasion should push further. Kant’s final formulation, the kingdom of ends, by his own account combines the preceding two formulations for a ‘systematic union of several rational beings through universal laws’.[16] In this moral kingdom, only humanity has ultimate worth, but rational beings’ subjective ends have substitutable value, which we have a duty to respect. Acting as though one were in the kingdom of ends involves interacting with others as though they are autonomous rational agents, giving them some degree of responsibility as well as some charity.[17] The weighing up of responsibility and charity is essential to determining the moral value and practical application of my maxim. Treating others as ends in the kingdom means not only allowing them consent, but also holding them responsible for their actions because they are a rational agent. In doing this we should be charitable, by taking into account moral education and relevant personal history, and by realizing that ‘even the best of us can slip’.[18] Korsgaard discusses judgments of rationality after someone else has acted, but the same judgments can be extended in considering the moral acceptability of an action that changes others’ actions. We have a moral obligation to judge people primarily using the second characterization of decision-making, which allows my maxim wherever the target has knowledge of the appeal. However, when we have good reason to believe their rationality is incapacitated, we should judge them under the first characterization. Within certain contexts, namely advertising and campaigning spaces, the consent to appeals to animal instincts are implicit – people are aware that these appeals happen, and they have freedom to opt out of these interactions. Moreover, in knowing that the appeals occur, they are able to engage critically with these appeals, using their will. However, a charitable view means realizing that sometimes my target will be irrational. Even though my intention is not to manipulate, a badly developed view of their rational capacities could mean that my appeal inadvertently treats them merely as a means. This is especially likely if my appeal is done with a parochial lack of awareness of the target’s culture and moral education.[19] We thus have a responsibility to gain knowledge of which maxims are likely to violate another’s human dignity, even if they would not do so if committed against us. For advertisers and campaigners, the target’s knowledge as a moral necessity means ruling out some forms of advertising, and making a concerted effort to consider the specific target audience, and avoid practices that would likely violate their autonomy. Although there will still be some risk of the target having a purely emotional response, dedicated and genuine engagement with this issue is in itself treating them as an end. Such consideration will also result in better engagement with the will, and has practical implications in terms of duty. Although these distinctions do not clearly separate campaigning and advertising, they do leave the tactics usually used by campaigners with more latitude. Advertising that purposely engages only with animal instincts is immoral. This means we have a perfect duty against advertising that tries to stimulate ‘impulse buys’, or similarly, campaigning that manipulates the weak-willed to support a campaign. Moreover, relating to the question of the target’s knowledge, it is worthwhile to consider the difference between direct appeals and broadcast appeals. Direct appeals involve interpersonal interaction where the agent witnesses the reaction of their target, while broadcast appeals do not. Although both advertising and campaigning use direct and broadcast methods, campaigning often makes more use of the first, and advertising more of the second. In interpersonal engagements, the persuader will notice many characteristics of the target. They can gauge the target’s apparent state of mind, and whether their engagement seems rational or emotional. On account of this knowledge, the persuader has heightened power to manipulate the target. However, the moral response is, rather than exploiting this power, creating the perfect balance between making a convincing case, and ensuring that their target is behaving responsibly. For broadcast methods, appeals to animal instinct must necessarily be more explicit, and practiced with caution appropriate to the situation. Evaluating the Kantian Account The Kantian treatment of this issue reveals some controversial issues with Kantian ethics in the way it avoids any consequentialist considerations. Such considerations involve weighing up the consequences of an action in analyzing its moral worth. One problem with the Kantian account lies in its lack of differentiation between different types of emotional responses. I would have liked this analysis to develop a duty against advertisements for beauty products that manipulate an irrational connection between image and self-worth. The appeal can still work even if the target knows that it is occurring, because the association gains strength from societal norms. Even with a pre-warning saying ‘this ad associates beauty with worthiness’ the advertisement will only remind the target of their experience of this association. In this way, it plays on emotions caused by social anxiety, and amplifies harmful norms in a way that appeals to hunger or empathy do not. Moreover, this appeal’s effectiveness does not depend on whether society actually values people according to aesthetics; it is about the rational, but potentially uninformed view of the target. Furthermore, the association between beauty and worthiness is not a lie, but an opinion, albeit a harmful one. There is some room to argue that such appeals normalize irrational associations, in effect decreasing the rational capacity of individuals over time. However, this relies on a subjective characterization of irrationality, verging on paternalism, and does not hold rational agents responsible for engaging with their own emotions. It would be more accurate to say that such appeals, although respecting rationality, have harmful consequences – a concept that Kantian philosophy does not incorporate. A full account of ethical appeals in advertising needs to rule out any appeals that lazily amplify existing but harmful social norms – but this consequentialist goal does not fit within Kantian ethics. In other areas, the Kantian approach rules out some appeals that a consequentialist might accept. Although this could be seen as an issue with the Kantian approach, it is also one of its strengths. Any Kantian would accept the argument that certain persuasive methods have no moral worth, no matter what their larger aim is. However, pluralist philosophies, in rejecting the primacy of rationality to place a substitutable value on the target’s autonomy, may find that the campaigner should be allowed more scope to manipulate their target emotionally. Given that their campaign has a sufficiently good end, and sufficiently high chances of success, and given that Kantian reasoning would be significantly less effective, a pluralist philosophy incorporating Kantian reasoning and and consequentialism would allow some manipulation in a campaigning context that would not be allowed in a purely selfish advertising context. The Kantian emphasis on universalization and non-interference is at odds with the goals of the campaigner, who is trying to right some wrong often caused by the immoral behavior of others. In fact, Sher’s discussion provides a framework in which the amount the product benefits the consumer may be a sufficient defense for using manipulative advertising.[20] A pluralistic view of morality would likely permit more manipulative appeals in advertising or campaigning, if the campaign or product were sufficiently good. Even accepting pluralism, the above account may not hold for campaigns, because appeals to animal instincts can have wider negative consequences. Firstly, the increased success, or likelihood of success, of the campaign may not be large enough to outweigh violation of people’s autonomy. Secondly, the recruitment of emotionally driven supporters could lead to a less principled campaign base, or a less enduring campaign. Making a moral decision incorporating such factors would require a thorough assessment of risk and benefit. The Kantian approach precludes these empirical considerations, in turn encouraging a slow, reliably moral approach to social change. This firm adherence to avoiding harm acts as a kind of safeguard to prevent blindly emotionally driven, badly considered campaigns, with supporters that are ultimately being exploited.[21] Even if my campaign is one that aims to protect others’ autonomy, for example, by freeing people from torture, my perfect Kantian duty is to not violate others’ autonomy, while the duty to protect rationality from others’ interference is an imperfect duty, and can only be achieved through moral means. Kantian ethics provides a clear account of our moral duties in the sphere of appeals to animal instincts. In some cases, where I have no reason to think that the target might engage rationally with emotional appeals, they are indefensible. In cases where the context allows for rational engagement, my duty is to consider the target as both responsible and manipulable, and genuinely consider whether I need to adapt my tactics to ensure their humanity is not violated. My intention should always be to strengthen the emotional argument, giving them ample opportunity to engage rationally with the appeal, rather than making emotions control my target. The Kantian account of duty is largely acceptable, but weakened by its failure to differentiate between benign and harmful animal instincts. Although the pluralist might find some issues with the Kantian account as it relates to campaigning, its clear conclusion provides us with a useful, albeit incomplete guide to social change without adverse consequences. Endnotes [1] Kant, Immanuel. (1997). Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals (GMM) In Gregor, Mary J. Practical Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. (4:421) [2] Phillips, Michael J. (1997) Ethics and Manipulation in Advertising: Answering a Flawed Indictment. Greenwood Publishing Group. [3] Herman, Barbara. (1997). ‘A Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends’. In Andrews Reath, Barbara Herman, Christine M. Korsgaard & John Rawls (eds.). Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays for John Rawls. Cambridge University Press. pp. 187-213 [4] Louden, Robert B. (2000). Kant's Impure Ethics: From Rational Beings to Human Beings. Oxford University Press. [5] Kant, Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, (4:402) [6] Korsgaard, Christine M. (2004). ‘Fellow creatures: Kantian ethics and our duties to animals’. Tanner Lectures on Human Values 24: 77-110. [7] Wood, Allen W. (1998). Kant on Duties Regarding Nonrational Nature. Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 72 (1):189–210. [8] Wood, Kant on Duties Regarding Nonrational Nature, 189–210 [9] Phillips, (1997), Ethics and Manipulation in Advertising. [10] Rawls, John. (2000). ‘The Four-Step CI Procedure’ In Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Harvard University Press. p. 169. [11] Kant, Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, (4:429) [12] Formosa, Paul. (2013). ‘Kant’s Conception of Personal Autonomy’. Journal of Social Philosophy 44, no. 3. pp. 193-212.p. 198. [13] Wood, (1998) ‘Kant on Duties Regarding Nonrational Nature’. [14] O'Neill, Onora. (1989) Constructions of Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 76. [15] Baron, Marcia. (2002). ‘Acting from Duty’ In Wood. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Yale University Press. pp. 92-110 [16] Kant, Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, (4:433) [17] Korsgaard, Christine M. (1992). ‘Creating the Kingdom of Ends: Reciprocity and Responsibility in Personal Relations’. Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 6 Ethics. pp. 305-332 [18] Korsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of Ends: Reciprocity and Responsibility in Personal Relations, 324 [19] Herman, (1997) ‘A Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends’. [20] Sher, Shlomo. (2011). ‘A Framework for Assessing Immorally Manipulative Marketing Tactics’, Journal of Business Ethics 102, pp.97–118 [21] One contemporary example of such a campaign is the KONY 2012 movement, which initially avoided scrutiny by motivating people’s support by appealing to their emotions. References Baron, Marcia. (2002). ‘Acting from Duty’ In Wood. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Yale University Press. pp. 92-110 Formosa, Paul. (2013). ‘Kant’s Conception of Personal Autonomy’. Journal of Social Philosophy 44, no. 3. pp. 193-212. Herman, Barbara. (1997). ‘A Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends’ In Andrews Reath, Barbara Herman, Christine M. Korsgaard & John Rawls (eds.), Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays for John Rawls. Cambridge University Press. pp. 187-213 Kant, Immanuel. (1997). Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals (GMM). In Gregor, Mary J., Practical Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. Korsgaard, Christine M. (1992). ‘Creating the Kingdom of Ends: Reciprocity and Responsibility in Personal Relations’. Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 6 Ethics. pp. 305-332 Korsgaard, Christine M. (2004). ‘Fellow creatures: Kantian ethics and our duties to animals’. Tanner Lectures on Human Values 24: 77-110. Louden, Robert B. (2000). Kant's Impure Ethics: From Rational Beings to Human Beings. Oxford University Press. O'Neill, Onora. (1989). Constructions of Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Phillips, Michael J. (1997) Ethics and Manipulation in Advertising: Answering a Flawed Indictment, Greenwood Publishing Group. Rawls, John. (2000). ‘The Four-Step CI Procedure’ In Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Harvard University Press. Sher, Shlomo. (2011). ‘A Framework for Assessing Immorally Manipulative Marketing Tactics’. Journal of Business Ethics 102. pp. 97–118 Wood, Allen W. (1998). Kant on Duties Regarding Nonrational Nature. Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 72 (1):189–210.

Neti Linzer Can Pascal Convert the Libertine? An Analysis of the Evaluative Commitment Entailed by Pascal's Wager Neti Linzer While Pascal’s wager is commonly approached as a stand-alone decision theoretic problem, there is also a crucial evaluative component to his argument that adds oft-overlooked complexities. Though we can formulate a response to these challenges by drawing on other sections of the Pensées, an examination of an argument from Walter Kaufmann highlights enduring difficulties with this response, leading to the conclusion that Pascal lacks the resources to convincingly appeal to the libertine’s self-interest. I. Introduction Pascal’s wager, an argument due to the 17th-century mathematician and philosopher, Blaise Pascal, is generally analyzed as a self-contained, formalizable problem, embodying one of the first applications of decision theory (1). In short, it calculates the expected utility of believing in God against that of not believing, and concludes that, inasmuch as rationality entails maximizing expected utility, i.e. making the decision that will most likely lead to the most preferable outcome, it is rational for us to believe in God (2). This is a “wager” insofar as we cannot know with certainty that God exists, and the most we can do is gamble on the fact that He does. But what I will argue is that the wager argument presupposes a certain evaluative commitment, which Pascal’s targeted audience, the ‘libertine,’ notably lacks (3). The libertine is someone who does not believe in God, and whose value system is instead oriented towards earthly, bodily, happiness. I claim that for someone thus constituted, Pascal’s wager fails to be convincing. The wager, however, is only one part of Pascal’s never-finished apologetic project, the preliminary notes of which are organized in the Pensées, meaning ‘Thoughts.’ I will show that if we examine some of the other arguments Pascal makes throughout the Pensées, then we can formulate a response to this objection on Pascal’s behalf. As Pascal describes her, the libertine is deeply unhappy when she thinks about the contingencies of the human condition, and she therefore values activities which entertain her and divert her from these disturbing thoughts. In his description of the libertine’s condition, Pascal p erforms something of a Nietzschean style ‘revaluation’ of this approach to life: it includes a destructive phase—in which Pascal argues that the libertine’s values are based on false p resuppositions—followed by a constructive phase—in which Pascal presents the libertine with a more attractive evaluative framework. Once she is in this new cognitive space, the libertine is p repared to be persuaded by the wager. I argue, however, that inasmuch as there are alternative ways for the libertine to revalue her mortality, Pascal fails to make an argument that will necessarily appeal to her self-interest. Drawing on the work of the 20th-century philosopher Walter Kaufmann, I argue that the libertine can instead revalue her mortality by embracing it, by recognizing the way in which the fact of her death is precisely what makes her life worthwhile. And while Kaufman’s approach certainly might also fail to be convincing it at least offers a viable alternative, and has two advantages over Pascal’s: (i) it draws on known facts (our mortality) rather than theoretical possibilities (an immortal soul), and it does not require any kind of wager. The upshot is that, while thedestructive phase of Pascal’s ‘revaluation’ may have been successful, the success of the constructive phase is dubious. As an appeal to the libertine’s self-interest, the wager falls short. The first section of this paper presents the objection to Pascal’s argument, the second section develops a response on Pascal's behalf, and the final section presents enduring difficulties with Pascal’s argument by introducing Kaufmann’s alternative approach. II. The Libertine’s Objection to Pascal’s Wager Crucially, Pascal’s wager is written in a language that the libertine will understand—the language of self-interest. We can summarize Pascal’s argument by saying that the libertine’s current lifestyle can, at most, offer her finite happiness: “what you are staking is finite.” If she gambles on belief in God, however, then the libertine opens herself up to the possibility of gaining infinite reward, and, as Pascal puts it, “all bets are off wherever there is an infinity.” As long as there are not infinitely greater chances that God doesn’t exist, than that God does exist, then, Pascal urges the libertine that, “there is no time to hesitate, you must give everything.” Pascal thereby appeals to the libertine’s instrumental rationality by identifying what it is that the libertine intrinsically desires—namely, her own “beatitude” (4)—and then by arguing that in order to truly satisfy this desire, the libertine must wager on belief in God (5). But there is a catch: the infinite happiness guaranteed by God is incomparable to any form of finite happiness that the libertine now enjoys. This is certainly true after the libertine accepts the wager, since belief in God demands that the libertine radically transform her lifestyle, substituting the dictates of her own will for the dictates of God’s. But I will argue that choosing to accept the wager requires the libertine to undergo what is arguably an even more dramatic transformation: she must transform her value system. This is because the wager does not just promise the libertine more happiness, but rather, it promises her qualitatively different happiness. And the wager only works if the libertine values this sort of happiness. It is true that Pascal never specifies what he means by “an infinite life of infinite happiness,” but inasmuch as he believes that it is the result of a life of faith, we can assume that he is referring to a traditional Catholic conception of heaven. Consider, then, the following reply in the mouth of Pascal’s libertine: an infinite life with God sounds absolutely miserable! First of all, inasmuch as my happiness is derived, at least in part, from the enjoyment of bodily pleasures, I cannot imagine being happy without my body. Happiness means hunting expeditions, games of cards, lavish feasts, and good company—where can I find those in heaven? Moreover, God promises to unite with believers in heaven. But why should I want to unite with God? You are offering me something that satisfies absolutely none of my desires. My life would not be better if God existed, even, (and this is crucial), if God rewarded me as a believer! Pascal’s wager works by presenting the libertine with a gamble: if God exists, there will be infinite happiness for those who believe and infinite misery for those who do not. This is because God promises to reward believers by uniting with them in heaven, and punishing non-believers by burning, or otherwise punishing them, in hell. But from the libertine’s perspective, there is no gamble: the prospects of heaven and hell are both unattractive, and since we are dealing with infinite amounts of time, they are both infinitely distressing prospects. There is therefore nothing worth gambling on. We might try to assure the libertine that once she is a believer, she will desire eternal life in heaven. We often persuade people to do something by promising that they might enjoy it, even if right now they cannot understand why. To take a mundane example, you might happily follow the recommendation of a friend to try a new food, even if you cannot imagine what it would be like to eat it. True, the stakes of this decision are qualitatively lower, but the same epistemic uncertainty seems to be at play: you cannot know whether you appreciate this food until you taste it, and you also cannot know whether you value a relationship with God until you attempt to build one. Inasmuch as wagering on the food does not involve any sort of evaluative transformation on your part, wagering on God might be the same way. But, there is a disanalogy between the two cases. Pascal is presenting the libertine with a certain decision matrix in which Pascal assigns an infinitely positive value to heaven and an infinitely negative value to hell (6). In order for the libertine to assign the same values to the given outcomes in the matrix, she must transform her evaluative framework, so that this-worldly happiness is no longer her highest value. The case of the new food, however, does not require a transformation of this sort. You know that you will either like or dislike the food, and you know that you value eating food that you like and disvalue eating foods that you do not like. Of course, there is still a gamble involved in trying the food since it is impossible to know how you will feel about its taste (7).But crucially, this puts you in a position that is analogous to the libertine considering Pascal’s wager only provided that she has already made the necessary evaluative transformation. It does not put you into the position of a standard libertine, who values her current happiness above all else, and therefore does not see anything to gamble for. Let’s describe a case that would be more analogous to the wager. Henrietta is a principled ascetic, meaning that she values abstention from earthly pleasures to whatever extent possible. As such, she adheres to a strict diet of only bread and water. She has sworn off earthly pleasures and adheres to a strict diet of bread and water. Suppose that her cousin, Henry, a food connoisseur, wants to convince her to try some caviar. He knows that he has never tasted caviar before, but he argues that, given her expected utility calculations, those who eat caviar enjoy it so much that he stands to gain more than lose from trying the caviar. But of course, even if Henrietta thought that Henry’s calculations were correct, they would be meaningless to her. As a matter of principle, she does not value the sensual pleasure provided by eating delicious food. Therefore, the experience of enjoying the food might be even more negative for Henrietta than the experience of disliking it, inasmuch as she has moral disdain for sensual pleasure. Henry’s calculations will only be persuasive if Henrietta abandons her current ascetic values and adopts a more hedonistic lifestyle. This is similar to the situation that the libertine finds herself in when presented with Pascal’s wager. Just as it would be meaningless to convince Henrietta to eat caviar by convincing her to abandon her ascetic lifestyle, to suggest that the libertine will desire heaven if she is a believing Christian is to reformulate the challenge rather than to address it. By formulating the libertine’s challenge this way, we realize just what Pascal’s wager requires: before the libertine can decide to wager on God’s existence, she must first revolutionize her evaluative framework, performing what the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would refer to as a “revaluation of values,” i.e. a complete reversal of her normative commitments. At present, a religious lifestyle is not in the libertine’s self-interest; the libertine’s conception of happiness is tethered to her physical existence in this world, and therefore she will not be moved by promises of her soul being rewarded in another world. Now that we have established that the libertine must be induced to reassess her values before she can be persuaded to wager on God’s existence we must ask: does Pascal present the libertine with such an argument? III. Pascal’s Revaluation There is an inherent challenge in trying to influence someone to “revalue their values”: namely, identifying which values one can appeal to in formulating the argument. Generally, pragmatic arguments like Pascal’s wager take the agent’s values as a starting point, and then proceed to demonstrate that a certain action will do a better job at furthering the agent’s values. But if we use values as a starting point, how can we cogently provide someone with practical reasons to adopt a wholly new evaluative framework, without invoking the very values that they do not yet possess? To see how we might formulate a “revaluation” without recourse to other values, we can draw inspiration from Friedrich Nietzsche, whose philosophical undertaking was just that: a revaluation of all values. In his work, Nietzsche’s Revaluation of Values: A Study in Strategies, contemporary Nietzsche scholar, E.E. Sleinis, analyzes the various strategies that Nietzsche uses to achieve his evaluative revolution. One strategy that he discusses, “destruction from within,” undermines a certain value by revealing that it is internally inconsistent (8). This undermines the value on its own terms. There are a few different permutations of this strategy. One, which Sleinis refers to as “false presuppositions,” aims to show that “the value requires a fact to obtain that, as it turns out, fails to obtain.” In attacking the factual, rather than the evaluative component of the value system, Nietzsche is able to undermine it from within, without recourse to other values. For example, Nietzsche devalues “disinterested contemplation as the ideal of aesthetic contemplation” by arguing that humans are simply incapable of disinterested contemplation. We cannot disengage from our passions, emotions, and other interests when we contemplate works of art. “We can put this point in more graphic terms,” explains Sleinis, by arguing that “the pure aesthetic contemplator is a fiction" (9). In what follows, I will demonstrate how Pascal launches a similar attack on the libertine’s value system by arguing, in a parallel manner, that the happy libertine is a fiction. As mentioned, the wager is merely a part of Pascal’s broader apologetic project, and it is within this broader project that Pascal employs this Nietzschean revaluation strategy. There are many notes in the Pensées devoted to bemoaning the wretchedness of the libertine’s condition, and arguing that man simply cannot be happy without God. And while we do not know where Pascal would have placed these ideas (if at all) in his final work, we can still argue that, Pascal’s intentions aside, they do an excellent job preparing the libertine to be receptive to the wager. Once Pascal convinces the libertine that her approach to life was premised on a false presupposition, he is able to urge her to gamble on a new one. Pascal undermines the libertine’s approach to life—happiness derived from entertainment or diversions as the ideal of happiness—in the same way that Nietzsche undermines disinterested contemplation as the ideal of aesthetic contemplation: he shows that humans are incapable of achieving happiness through their diversions (10). While traces of this argument are evident throughout the Pensées , Pascal’s most sustained argument for it appears in his section “Diversions.” After examining this argument, we will turn to the possibility of an alternative response on behalf of the libertine in the spirit of philosopher Walter Kaufmann. Pascal presents us with an imagined dialogue, presumably between a believer and a libertine, in which the libertine explains her approach to life: “is not happiness the ability to be amused by diversion?”(11). For the libertine, to be happy is to be entertained. We can understand some of the more perplexing behaviors of people if we realize that their underlying motivation is to divert and entertain themselves: “those who philosophize about it, and who think people are quite unreasonable to spend a whole day chasing a hare they would not have bought, scarcely know our nature.” People do not hunt because they want the kill, but rather, because hunting provides them with entertainment. Pascal argues that all men, even kings who are in “the finest position of the world,” are miserable, “if they are without what is called diversion” (12). The reason that we value diversion, explains Pascal, is because it allows us to avoid confronting all of the unpleasant features of our condition. We do not seek “easy and peaceful lives,” because those would force us to think about “our unhappy condition” (13). The “unhappy” quality of our condition is delineated in the believer’s reply to the libertine; the libertine asks whether happiness is not the ability to be amused by diversions, to which the believer replies, “No, because that comes from elsewhere and from outside, and thus it is dependent, and subject to be disturbed by a thousand accidents which cause inevitable distress” (14). All of the activities with which the libertine happily amuses herself are all highly contingent, and are made easily inaccessible by any number of factors that are necessarily out of the libertine’s control. Moreover, all of the libertine’s amusements are necessarily ephemeral, so that even if they are miraculously undisturbed by illness or accident, they will inevitably be disturbed by death. This is the primary source of the libertine’s inconsolable misery in Pascal’s conception—no matter how much happiness she derives from her activities in this world, her impending death constantly threatens to rob her of everything. As Pascal puts it, man “wants to be happy, wants only to be happy, and cannot want not to be so. But how will he go about it? The best way would be to render herself immortal, but since he cannot do this, he has decided to prevent himself from thinking about it” (15). Thoughts of mortality thwart the libertine’s ability to enjoy the world around, and so the libertine blocks out these thoughts with diversions. In Pascal’s example, the libertine hunts vigorously for a hare that he would never buy, because while “the hare does not save us from the sight of death...the hunt does” (16). All of this explains how Pascal can argue, in the spirit of Nietzsche, that valuing the happiness derived from diversions as the ideal of happiness falsely assumes that humans can find happiness in diversions. Pascal demonstrates that they cannot. Our diversions are inevitably “subjected to be disturbed by a thousand accidents, and this causes inevitable distress” (17). Crucially, the distress is inevitable ; even if we spend most of our time completely amused by diversions, the fact that our source of happiness is external and contingent puts us in a constant state of instability. We are rendered eternally dependent on factors beyond our control and are therefore powerless to console ourselves in the face of adversity unless the universe conspires to offer us diversion. We might wonder if Pascal’s case is overstated. Couldn’t the libertine seek happiness through something more substantial than a mere “diversion,” like, for example, self-fulfillment? I think that for Pascal the answer is no. This is because death robs any pursuit–even the pursuit of self-fulfillment–of enduring meaning. As Pascal puts it: “the final act is bloody, however fine the rest of the play. In the end, they throw some earth over our head, and that is it forever” (18). The libertine can only be satisfied if she does not think about the “final act” that will undermine “the rest of the play,” and because of this, all of her pursuits, even those that appear most meaningful, are really attempts to distract herself from this sobering fact. Pascal suggests that if the libertine actually confronted the truth of her condition, she would desist from all of her pursuits–even her desire for self-fulfillment–because they would no longer mean anything. That the libertine seeks to distract herself from the contingency of her condition with something that is itself contingent, is, I think, sufficient to undermine the libertine’s approach to life. But Pascal goes even deeper in exposing the problems with the libertine’s approach. He writes that, “The only thing that consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is mainly what prevents us from thinking about ourselves, leading us imperceptibly to our ruin” (19). The libertine’s pursuit of diversions makes genuine self-knowledge impossible—if she is always distracting herself, she will never take the time to understand herself and her condition, and search for a more reliable and stable form of happiness. How can we say that someone is happier the more diverted they are, if someone who is diverted is also wholly alienated from herself? (20). It is this consideration that motivates Pascal’s famous observation that, “man’s unhappiness arises from one thing alone: that he cannot remain quietly in his room” (21). As Pascal sees it, diversion as source of true happiness–much like Nietzsche’s detached contemplation–is, indeed, a fiction. Pascal has induced a value crisis in the libertine by rendering what she previously valued—the amusements of earthly life—fundamentally meaningless. So what now? Left to live without diversion, Pascal explains, “we would be bored, and this boredom would lead us to seek a more solid means of escape” (22). I will argue that Pascal asking the seeking libertine to consider the possibility of an immortal soul is, in a certain sense, similar, to Nietzsche’s imagined demon presenting the possibility of eternal recurrence–i.e the doctrine that our live will be repeated infinitely many times into the future. Nietzsche presents this as a mere possibility , the consideration of which is nonetheless capable of inspiring an evaluative transformation in his readers (23). Entertaining the possibility of eternal recurrence hopefully inspires us to seek meaning in the lives that we are living on earth, rather than placing all of our hopes on a life after death. Analogously, before the wager, Pascal does not expect the libertine to believe in the immortal soul as a metaphysical fact , but he nonetheless presents it to her as an attractive possibility, powerful enough to reorient her life. If the possibility of an immortal soul isn’t even on her radar, then the wager argument cannot even get off the ground. But Pascal believes that considering this possibility will induce the libertine to seek God, the wager will then point out that doing so maximizes her expected utility, and eventually she will be certain of God’s existence (24). What makes the libertine’s condition so unhappy are all of the external threats that face her at every moment, the most debilitating of which is her own death (25). The libertine’s old approach was to avoid confronting this reality. As Pascal puts it, “as men are not able to fight against death...they have it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.”What Pascal offers the libertine is a solution that is truly sustainable: instead of valuing distractions from our mortality, we can value that which denies it altogether . We can reject that part of us that gets piled with dirt, since it can only make us unhappy, and instead we can embrace our immortal soul (26). Pascal presents this as a dazzling, metamorphic possibility, writing that “the immortality of the soul is something so important to us, something that touches us so profoundly, that we must have lost all feeling to be indifferent to knowing the facts of the matter” (27). Inspired by the possibility of an immortal soul, we are primed to be receptive to the wager, which tells us that if we want to maximize the expected outcome for our soul, we must gamble on God’s existence (28). If we now believe that it is through taking care of our immortal soul that we can transcend the misery of our bodily condition, the wager will indeed have a powerful pull on us. Inasmuch as the libertine’s challenge is escaping the misery of her contingent condition, Pascal presents the possibility of the immortal soul as a powerful alternative to the use of amusements and diversions. But is this alternative persuasive? The weakness in Pascal’s argument is noted by Sleinis in his analysis of Nietzsche’s parallel argument: “pure possibilities may have some capacity to exert pressure on our choices, but this capacity can in no way be equal to that of known actualities” (29). There is, however, a limit to how influential a mere possibility can be. If you know that a certain consideration that is motivating you to act, is only possibly true, then you won’t feel like you have a decisive reason to act. Pascal is confident that if we take the possibility of an immortal soul seriously, then we will eventually be led to believe it as an actuality. The problem, however, is whether we can take it seriously enough for this epistemic transformation to occur. This doesn’t mean that Pascal’s argument can not work at all, it just means that its practical success will likely be limited to libertines with certain psychological constitutions (i.e. it will be more persuasive to someone with a credulous disposition than to someone with a skeptical disposition). IV. Walter Kaufmann on Our Misery So far, we have seen that Pascal’s wager requires a certain evaluative shift on the part of the libertine, and that certain sections of the Pensées can be read as making an argument for that shift. But there is a weakness to part of this argument, namely, the plausibility that a mere possibility can inspire a dramatic revaluation. What I would like to consider, therefore, is an alternative response to the libertine’s crisis of value that would allow her to retain her current theoretical framework, but nonetheless allow her to transcend the apparent miseries of the human condition. We can read Kaufmann as addressing the libertine at the same stage that Pascal is—once she has accepted the futility of her diversions but does not know how else to cope with her unhappy condition—and arguing that the libertine can embrace her mortality rather than try to escape from it. Examining Kaufmann’s argument helps us to appreciate the way in which Pascal’s wager falls short as a straightforward appeal to the libertine’s self-interest. At most, the wager offers the libertine one way to escape her misery, but the libertine may find Kaufmann’s ideas more persuasive. While for Pascal, the libertine is unhappy if she is left to ponder her mortal condition, Kaufmann argues that this is not so; in fact, it is our mortality that renders our lives here worthwhile. The libertine considers herself miserable because she will not live in this worldforever, but Kaufmann urges her to consider how miserable she would be if she did . It's true that death is frightening for those who “fritter their lives away,” but “if one lives intensely, the time comes when sleep seems bliss” (30). Meaning, that if the libertine embraces all that this-life throws at him, then she will welcome death as a much-needed rest. One cannot live intensely forever. This argument might seem a bit problematic. After all, it is not clear why a simple good night’s sleep (or two) would not suffice for the one who lives intensely—why should she crave eternal sleep? The answer to this lies in the second argument that Kaufmann makes, namely, that without an eternal deadline we would not be able to live our lives as meaningfully. Our impending death offers a perspective that would otherwise be impossible. Kaufmann describes the way in which the threat of death motivates us to live vigorously: “the life I want is a life I could not endure in eternity. It is a life of love and intensity, suffering and creation, that makes life worthwhile and death welcome.” Death “makes life worthwhile” b ecause it encourages us to carve out lives that are indeed worthwhile. For example, “love can be deepened and made more intense and impassioned by the expectation of impending death,” meaning that our desire to be with someone we love is made all the more acute by our knowledge that we cannot be with them forever. When the libertine worries about the fact that she may one day lose her beloved, she need not retreat from these thoughts—either by seeking diversion or by entertaining the possibility of an immortal soul—but rather, as Kaufmann advises, she should embrace them. The fact that she may never see her beloved again is all the more reason for the libertine to express her love more eloquently and fervently than she ever would have if she was not worried about losing her beloved. It is not just that such intensity and p assion would be impossible to sustain in an infinite life, but rather that in an infinite life we could never achieve it in the first place. Death offers a perspective on life that, contrary to what Pascal argues, makes our lives in this world vibrant and precious. Pascal writes that, “As men have not been able to cure death, wretchedness, ignorance, they have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about those things” (31). But Kaufmann argues that it is precisely by thinking about her own death that the libertine can be inspired to live in a way that makes her happy. Perhaps this is why Ecclesiastes muses that “it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting”—proximity to death provides the living with an invaluable lesson to truly “take to heart” (32). The libertine desperately avoids confronting her mortality, when in fact, thinking about death makes her life better right now: “one lives better” says Kaufmann, “when one expects to die,” and takes advantage of the time she has (33). This is not to deny the tragic reality that death often visits too early, but rather, to suggest that inasmuch as this is not always the case, we are, as philosopher Bernard Williams puts it, “lucky in having the chance to die” (34). Pascal might still counter that even if contemplating our death imbues our lives with urgency and significance, belief in the Christian afterlife also accomplishes this inasmuch as our conduct in this life determines how we fare in the next. But this argument will have no sway over the libertine at the stage of the argument at which we are now encountering him—when she does not yet believe in God. And what Kaufmann’s argument has demonstrated is that the libertine does not need to wager on God’s existence in order to live life meaningfully and passionately. While the Wager asked the libertine to revalue her values–which, as we have seen, is a non-trivial requirement–Kaufmann speaks directly to the evaluative commitments that the libertine already has. In a way, Kaufmann uses mortality in the same way that Pascal uses immortality: to redeem us from our misery by impressing upon us the urgency and significance of our lives. It’s true that Kaufmann and Williams don’t consider the possibility of an afterlife that is equally as exciting–if not more exciting–than earthly existence. There is, after all, no reason to assume that when we die we lose our ability to exercise agency. But the point is simply that they offer a way of seeing life on earth as meaningful regardless of what comes afterward. This is in sharp contrast with Pascal’s picture in which life on earth is miserable unless it is redeemed by belief in the afterlife. This is not to say that Pascal is wrong per sé; it is possible that Kaufmann would have lived a better life had he sought God and embraced religion. It is possible that he is currently b urning in the depths of hell, wishing his philosophical reasoning had taken a different turn. But this is of no consequence. What I am arguing is that Pascal is wrong to assume that the libertine’s mortality leaves her irredeemably miserable; Kaufmann offers an alternative perspective, whereby the libertine’s mortality is precisely what redeems her life and makes it worthwhile. Crucially, Kaufmann’s argument does not ask the libertine to entertain any theoretical p ossibilities like Pascal’s does, and it never requires that she make a wager of any sort. The libertine might still prefer Pascal’s argument, and therefore choose to see “the final act” as “bloody.” But as we have seen, she might choose to welcome death as a “blissful sleep.” And if Pascal cannot convince the libertine that mortal life is miserable, then he cannot get her into the evaluative mindset to be receptive to the wager. V. Conclusion The success of Pascal’s wager as an appeal to the libertine’s self-interest depends on his ability to convince the libertine to change her evaluative framework. At least at the outset, the possibility of an infinite life with God in heaven will repel rather than attract the libertine, giving her no reason to “wager all she has” (35). If we study the wager against the backdrop of Pascal’s broader apologetic project, however, we find the resources to persuade the libertine to “revalue her values.” This argument takes place in two stages. First, Pascal shows the libertine that the premium she places on amusements and entertainment falsely presupposes that they can truly make her happy. Pascal argues that they fail to do so, both because they are external—and therefore “subject to a thousand accidents”—and because they alienate the libertine from herself, making it impossible for her to discover what might truly make her happy. With the libertine’s evaluative framework thus dismantled, the inherent unhappiness of her condition becomes even more acute. Without diversions, she must confront the miserable fact of her mortality head-on. It is in this evaluative vacuum that Pascal offers her a new value that can save her from the misery of mortality: the immortal soul. At this stage of the argument, the libertine will not believe in the immortality of her soul as a metaphysical fact, but in considering this marvelous possibility, she will be encouraged to investigate it. And when Pascal tells her that her soul will fare best if she gambles on God’s existence, she will eagerly oblige. But this need not be the only way to save the libertine from the misery of mortality: Kaufmann suggests that the libertine should embrace and cherish her mortality because it is through the prism of her own death that her life becomes urgent and precious. This approach does not require an epistemic leap of faith like Pascal’s did; it simply requires the libertine to look at the fact of her life in a new light. The upshot is that for those who find themselves moved by Pascal’s polemic against diversions, but unmoved by her appeal to dubious metaphysical facts, there might be a more attractive solution. After he presents the libertine with her wager, Pascal urges that “there is no time to hesitate!” From what we have seen, however, there might be far too much of it. Endnotes: 1 This insight is due to Ian Hacking, quoted in: Hájek, Alan. “Pascal's Wager.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Stanford University, 1 Sept. 2017, plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/. 2 While, as Hajek notes in her article, Pascal actually presents three different wager arguments, for the purposes of this paper, I will not discuss the correct interpretation/presentation of the wager. This is because my paper is not so much about the mechanics of the wager, but about the wager as a general strategy to inspire pragmatic commitment to God. 3 For the purposes of this paper, I adopt Pascal’s use of the term “libertine” to refer to his intended audience. This is partially for convenience, and partially meant to underscore that Pascal’s argument is addressed to a specific target audience and is not necessarily applicable to anyone who does not believe in God. As we will see throughout this paper, Pascal’s libertine has a very specific set of values and concern, which at times may even seem unrealistic. Inasmuch as Pascal sees himself as addressing this sort of person, however, this paper will assume that his observations are accurate, and analyze whether Pascal’s argument is successful on Pascal’s own terms. 4 All quotations in this paragraph come from: Pascal, Blaise, and Roger Ariew. Pensées. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub. Co., 2005 pg. 212-13 (S680/L418). 5 Pascal actually argues that there are two things that the libertine desires: the true and the good. However, Pascal argues that we cannot know whether God exists, and therefore “your reason is no more offended by choosing one rather than the other.” Since the libertine only stands to gain in the realm of happiness, and not in the realm of truth (or at least not yet), I focus, for brevity, only on this claim. 6 This is a simplification. Pascal does not mention exactly how we ought to quantify the harm that will come to a non-believer if God exists. It is certainly possible that the harm will be infinite. And since this is the strongest way to formulate Pascal’s wager, I choose to present it this way. 7 The case of trying a new food is interesting in its own right. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to analyze this case, it is worth noting that it is unclear how one might weigh the value of trying a food and disliking it against the value of trying a food and liking it, since there are also different degrees of liking and disliking a food. But I think it is fair to assume that, having had the experience of eating foods that you’ve liked and disliked, you can have a rough sense of the maximum and minimum amount of pleasure that can be derived from eating a food. I would venture to say that trying a food that you love more than any food you have ever eaten, is still not a qualitatively different type of pleasure than eating a food that you really love. 8 Sleinis, E. E. Nietzsche's Revaluation of Values: A Study in Strategies. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994, pg. 168. 9 Ibid. 10 As Ariew notes in his translation, “the word ‘diversion’suggests entertainment, but to divert literally means: “to turn away” or to mislead.” By using this word, Pascal makes his critique implicit from the beginning. 11 Pascal, S165/L132. 12 Quotations in this paragraph come from Pascal, S168/L136. 13 Ibid. 14 Pascal, S165/L132. 15 Pascal, S166/L134. 16 Pascal, S168/L136. 17 Pascal, S165/L132. 18 Pascal S197/L165. 19 Pascal, S33/L414. 20 The libertine says something in this spirit in Pascal, S165/L132. 21 Pascal S168/L136. 22 Pascal, S33/L414. 23 In some interpretations of Nietzsche, the eternal recurrence is actually presented as a metaphysical truth that we must believe in. Inasmuch as I am looking for an example that will parallel Pascal, however, I have chosen to discuss the interpretation that sees it as a pure possibility. 24 Evidence that Pascal believes those who are inspired by the possibility of an immortal soul and genuinely seek God as a result will come to have sure knowledge of her existence can be found in S681/L427. 25 This is not intended to summarize Pascal’s nuanced account of why we are wretched, but rather to encapsulate what it is that the libertine recognizes as “unhappy” about her condition: that is, all of the external factors that threaten her ability to enjoy diversions, the most intractable of which is death. 26 This might seem almost like a pre-wager-wager: wager on belief in an immortal soul, since it provides the potential for immortality rather than on the belief in a mortal soul, since this will lead to a life of misery. 27 Pascal S681/L427. 28 Of course, it is possible that there are other belief systems which include the notion of an immortal soul in an equally attractive way. This is similar to the well-known “many Gods objection” to Pascal’s wager, and while addressing it is not the subject of this paper, it is worth noting its presence. When I argue later on that the argument can work, I mean that, leaving other considerations such as this objection aside, it can work. 29 Sleinis, pg. 173. 30 Kaufmann, Walter, and Immanuel Velikovsky. The Faith of a Heretic. [1st ed.] Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1961 , pg . 386. 31 Pascal S168. 32 Ecclesiastes 7:2. 33 Quotations in this paragraph come from Kaufmann, pg. 386. 34 Williams, Bernard. “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality.” Chapter. In Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972 , 82–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973. 35 Pascal, S680/L418. Bibliography: Kaufmann, Walter, and Immanuel Velikovsky. The Faith of a Heretic. [1st ed.] Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1961 . Pascal, Blaise, and Roger Ariew. Pensées. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub. Co., 2005. Sleinis, E. E. Nietzsche's Revaluation of Values: A Study in Strategies. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994. Williams, Bernard. “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality.” Chapter. In Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972 , 82–100. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973. Previous Next

Editorial board Foreword Volume II Issue II Introducing the fourth issue of JPPE In recent years, inequality has been discussed at an increasing rate in academic and political spheres. There is a growing rate of inequality along every method of measurement. Within the United States, there is growing income and wealth inequality. On an international level, global inequality studies find that a large portion of the world’s wealth is held by a shockingly small portion of the world’s population. This problem has grabbed the attention of numerous academic and nongovernmental organizations. Inequality has come to the forefront of numerous 2020 US presidential campaigns. Within the Democratic primary, many candidates cited inequality as a central concern and offered a wide variety of solutions. Brown alum Andrew Yang introduced the concept of a Universal Basic Income plan to the global stage, while Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed a wealth tax as one part of his sweeping economic policy. This edition of the Brown Journal of Philosophy, Politics and Economics is intended to help contribute to the conversation on inequality through our feature interviews and submissions. In our conversations with Former Greek Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis and American Economist Paul Krugman, we discussed the prevalence of inequality and its potential causes. While we have some recurring themes in our issue, it is our hope that this issue holds something of interest for all its readers. The Brown Journal of Philosophy, Politics and Economics continues to discuss a wide variety of topics that are analyzed through the distinct yet complementary lenses of philosophy, politics and economics. Pieces like “John Taylor and Ben Bernanke on the Great Recession – Who Was Right About What Went Wrong?” examines historical events, while “Respect for the Smallest of Creatures: An Analysis of Human Respect for and Protection of Insects” applies the lens of PPE to the theoretical. We believe that the distinct topics examined, and the insights gleaned from them, are enhanced when combined

How Are You the Same Person as When You Were Ten: Favoring the Brain Criterion View over Animalist and Neo-Lockean Views Henry Moon Author Matthew Wong Daniel Coffield Editors I. Introduction I am the same person as when I was ten years old—this is common intuition [1]. In another sense, as I have a different body and psychology, it seems that I cannot be the exact same person as I was when I was ten years old [2]. In this paper I ask how exactly we were the same people when we were ten. This question is equivalent to asking what the persistence conditions for “an entity of our kind” to remain the same over time: call these diachronic persistence conditions [3]. In asking this question, we ask two separate questions (1) What should “entities of our kind” refer to? (2) What are the persistence conditions for these entities? First, I review the literature regarding the two most popular theories of personal ontology, or the study of what we are. In doing so, I will then introduce the brain criterion based on egoistic concern—the special concern about one’s future that arises from anticipation of continued existence. Providing justification in ontological coherence and ethical plausibility, I submit that the brain criterion is the superior ontology. In the second half of this paper, I will be responding to objections to the brain criterion, specifically regarding persistence by considering commonplace thought experiments. As a synthesis from these objections, indeterminacy thesis and multiple occupancy will be defended as part of the paper’s overall argument. II. What Should "Entities of Our Kind" Refer To? To determine the persistence conditions for some entity, one must start by specifying exactly what that entity is. I say this because whether entities can survive events is subsequent to what the entity is. For example, a square cannot survive being stretched in one axis whereas a rectangle can, because a square is defined must have four sides of equal length. This is to say, the persistence conditions of a square are informed by its ontology. In the same way, the persistence conditions for a person depend on personal ontology. Despite this, much of the contemporary literature on personal identity seems to treat personal ontology as a secondary question. Instead, the focus has been placed upon a gamut of thought experiments [4]. To this, in "What Are We”, Eric Olson blames “the unserious air of many discussions of personal identity” on this lack of focus on personal ontology [5]. There are two dominant answers to the persistence question: neo-Lockeanism and Animalism [6]. Neo-Lockeanism is the view that we are creatures with certain psychological traits essentially [7] Animalism says we are human animals essentially; we are identical with our human bodies. Each view is associated with at least one ontology. Neo-Lockean theory most popularly claims that we are constituted by our animal bodies or that we are temporal parts of our animal body. Most neo-Lockeans would not say we survive a permanently vegetative state, despite our animal bodies being able to survive, and to a neo-Lockean, this is an example of how we differ from our animal bodies. Animalists simply state that we are our human bodies; if our bodies were to enter a permanently vegetative state, we would enter that state as well. Neo-Lockean views lack the “metaphysical leg up” that ontologically focused views like animalism have [8]. Contrastingly, animalism often ignores normative concerns [9]. Despite this trade off between normativity and ontology, when we refer to others, we do not do so as moral agents and organisms separately, but as one unified forensic unit: otherwise this would be absurd [10]. Parfit also touches on similar ideas when he sets out two requirements that a theory of personal identity must satisfy [11] : (1) Whether a future person will be me must depend only on our intrinsic properties. It cannot depend on what happens to other people. (2) Since personal identity is of great importance, whether a future person is me cannot depend on a trivial fact. Parfit also seems to segregate requirements on the basis of (1) a strict ontological concern and (2), an ethical concern. What idea we have converged upon seems to be this: an account of personal identity (and thus, ontology) must be, as Olson puts it, both “ontologically coherent as well as ethically plausible” [12] In the following sections I will forward an account of personal ontology which describes entities of our sort as a human animal under two constraints: (1) That the entity has certain traits that warrant continuous egoistic concern (2) That the entity is the spatial part of a human animal in which (1) necessarily and sufficiently obtains (i.e part of the brain) Evaluating the contemporary two main theories of personal identity, along with our own as delineated above, I will recommend this account of personal ontology to have best fulfilled the need to be ethically plausible and ontologically coherent. A. Ethical Plausibility I propose that to say an account of personal ontology is ethically plausible is to say that it reasonably includes all entities that our normative and ethical concerns refer to when we use the everyday pronouns of ‘I’, ‘you’ or ‘we’, and reasonably excludes all entities that do not. Further, if it is said that you and I are ‘entities of our sort’, we can expect that normative claims which apply to you would also apply to me. We start with cases where the brain-criterion provides for a necessary liberalization of inclusivity. First, in contrast to animalism, brain views allow for entities of our kind to survive after brain transplantation. The common intuition that follows is that after the brain is transplanted into another person’s head, the entity follows with it [13]. Animalists must maintain that because the human organism is left behind and dies during the process of transplantation, we must die along with it. This is a strikingly unintuitive statement to endorse. On the other hand, because physical continuity of the brain is maintained and is presumably enough to warrant egotist function once transplanted, the brain criterion successfully represents the intuition that we would survive after transplantation. Second, in contrast to neo-Lockean continuity, we are able to account for individuals who lack meaningful psychological-connectedness, yet we must still include them as one of us. Jeff McMahan illustrates that in cases of Alzheimer’s, neo-Lockeans seem to imply that the individual ceases to exist and becomes a sort of “post-person.” [14] This is because insofar as a case of Alzheimer’s progresses so that almost no function of memory remains, neo-Lockean theories suggest that this is a case where the psychological connection is broken, and individuals cannot survive [15]. When considering the ethical plausibility of this, we suspect that instead, we would still consider the Alzheimer’s patient an entity of our sort, and that our normative claims and duties would still apply to them. Concretely, if the Alzheimer’s patient was my mother, just because she lacks psychological connection does not mean she is not “one of us”. In contrast to the brain criterion based on egoistic concern, as long as there is brain continuity supporting the function of egoistic concern, we may say the entity is one of us. For example an Alziemer’s patient still has egoistic concerns because she considers actions not as disconnected events that will only impact an entity similar but identical to herself (and that she exists only for a brief moment before her psychological connection deteriorates) but that her actions will influence her future. Note the difference here is that egoistic concerns need not be a degree of psychological unity in which even a semblance of qualitative identity is sufficiently obtained [16]. We see this when we consider two statements, that normatively we take as non-mutually exclusive: My mother has not been the same person recently and does not remember me. That woman who does not remember me is my mother. The first statement expresses our intuition that people can change drastically, even to the point where psychological unity according to a neo-Lockean would be lost. The second statement, however, speaks to our intuition that numerical identity can survive far more liberally, when considering strict psychological relation, than a neo-Lockean claims. Indeed, the exclusionary policy of the brain criterion is the most ethically plausible. There are also cases where the brain criterion restricts cases necessarily. The main difference between neo-Lockean views and general brain-views is that the brain-criteria explicitly requires a physical contingency. This is to say, a sufficient part of the brain which is necessarily part of a living being must remain continuously. From this, we can locate cases that should be excluded, such as that where an entity can survive a total loss of body. Neo-Lockeanism generally endorse teletransportation as an event in which we can survive. Despite whatever prima facie intuitions we may have, consider you were being transported, but a replica of an entity at some point B was created while you were still alive. Thus, you are not the entity at point B, and for there to be one entity, you must have been destroyed at point A [17]. Moreover, Animalist views consider a fetus and an individual in a permanently vegetative state to also fall under our general normative conventions, as they are simply stages in the human animal’s development. Extreme views notwithstanding, common ethical norms tell us otherwise: we have intuitions that it is permissible to kill an early stage fetus, for example, where we do not for toddlers [18]. This is a difference that Animalists do not account for. This difference is crucial in ontology: we say it is permissible to kill a week-old fetus because at that point it more closely resembles an unconscious collection of cells than the entity we normatively refer to we say “you” or “I”. The ethical norms about “entities of our sort” that Animalism implies do not match our commonly held ones; thus, we cannot say an Animalist conception of persons is ethically plausible. Considering both comparisons to neo-Lockean and Animalists views, it is only by using the definition of brains with egoistic concern that we can arrive at a superior ontology. B. Ontological Coherence To say that a theory is ontologically preferable to any other is to say that it answers key issues concerning personal ontology at as little cost in way of unfortunate implications that one must accept. In evaluating the seven main personal ontologies, Olson generally considers one issue as most important: the thinking animal problem. The thinking animal problem is the following argument: (P1) Presently sitting in your chair is a human animal. (P2) The human animal sitting in your chair is thinking. (P3) You are the thinking being sitting in your chair. (C) Therefore, the human animal sitting in your chair is you. The crux of the thinking animal argument is that insofar as rejection of P1-P3 requires us to accrue the cost of, as Olson puts it, an “impenetrable” [19] ontology, we must conclude that we are human-animals. By proving that we can escape this conclusion, we can prove the brain criterion is preferable to neo-Lockean theories which fall victim to the argument. I will now defend the second constraint using a generalization of the thinking animal problem: (P1) There is a spatial part of a human currently located where you are. (P2) The spatial part currently located where you are is thinking. (P3) You are the thinking being located in your chair. (C) Therefore, the spatial part of a human where you are is you. Note that this argument is analogous to the thinking-animal-argument so that we may adopt its conclusion. The difference is that the conclusion is such that we must be spatial-parts of the brain, some that we can be essentially reduced to a part of the brain. Note that any spatial part of an animal with greater inclusivity than what is necessary for a thinking part to think will fall trap to this argument, given the animal with greater inclusivity contained a non-essential part was incorrectly considered essential. This is to say that the argument implies “you” are identical to infinite smaller spatial-parts unless “you” refers to the smallest possible spatial-part of an animal which thinks. This smallest possible part is the only part that is not affected by the argument since, any less inclusive and the animal loses the property of thinking, so P2 falls, making the argument inapplicable. Dualist theories notwithstanding, this smallest spatial-part of a thinking animal must refer to some part of the brain, and so we have proven our second constraint on animalism. To conclude, this makes animalism and the brain criterion at least equal in ontological coherence, which combined with a brain criterion advantage in ethical plausibility allows us to recommend over the other theories. III. What Should “Entities of Our Kind” Refer To? Given we have answered first question of this paper, there are two main objections specifically to how the brian criteria persist : 1. That the brain-criterion is unnecessary and insufficient 2. That the brain-criterion is necessary but insufficient In this section, I will deal with both of these objections, and in doing so maintain that Brain Criterion is both sufficient and necessary. A. Unnecessary and Insufficient Parfit’s “combined spectrum” shows that any account based on “empirical fact” will have cases of indeterminate identity [20][21]. This is because any empirical criteria, such as psychological or physical continuity operate on a spectrum of absolute similarity to no similarity. If that is true, then there are cases on that spectrum where it seems that the connectedness between two entities is indeterminate to whether they are the same entity. Consider our brain criterion: existence is guaranteed in the case of 100% paradigmatic brain-function, and guaranteed false in the case of no function. However, there are cases in-between whereby it is indeterminate that consciousness is present: it is hard to see an argument for consciousness given 2% function, but what of 12% or 24%? There are two possible conclusions we can make of this: That indeterminacy cannot exist, and so some “further-fact” must be considered [22]. Or, we must allow for cases where indeterminacy arises. If we accept the consideration of a “further fact” in indeterminate cases, this implies the same further fact could determine the answer to the persistence question in any other case. What rejecting cases of indeterminacy entails is accepting a “further fact” ontology, such as immaterialism. I will comment that even if we cannot assuage the issue of indeterminacy, it may be preferable than to contend with the burden of proving dualism and other theories associated with immaterialism. In our paper’s defense of the brain criterion, indeterminacy would not mitigate claims that it should be recommended over animalism or neo-Lockean views –– both rely on empirical criteria. Yet as a foundational argument, I will contribute a defense of indeterminacy. Note that indeterminacy in things other than the existence of people is uncontroversial and common, for example, given a tallness spectrum where 7ft is guaranteed to be tall and 4ft guaranteed not to, there must be indeterminate cases of tallness in between. However, indeterminacy seems to be unreasonable when it comes to issues of persistence. Bernard Williams provides a thought experiment where one has to imagine that entity X, which is indeterminately identical to me, will be tortured tomorrow if indeterminacy is true. Does it follow that the feeling of great pain will be indeterminately felt by me? Noonan points out that this merely illustrates the “very great unnaturalness of this way of thinking” that is present in these cases, not that the cases themselves are unnatural [23]. Note then because it must be accepted that indeterminacy exists in other contexts, we must simply prove that indeterminacy in persistence is also acceptable. Many metaphysical arguments have been offered to this end; I will propose a practical one: to assume that issues of persistence must have determinate answers where other reducible substances do not is to assume there is something irreducible about selves. This begs the question on whether there selves are reducible in the first place, and thus we have no reason to reject indeterminacy in persistence. B. Necessary but Insufficient A hemispherectomy is a procedure where one half of the cerebrum is removed. Despite having half their brain removed, patients that undergo hemispherectomy expect to survive the operation. Our intuitions indicate they have good reason to make this assumption: we treat postoperative entities as the same people, and indeed, as their brain hemisphere adapts to serving the role of two, often cognitive function is returned as well [24]. In other words, if I receive a hemispherectomy, theoretically there seems to be enough brain continuity so that the resulting person is me. However, the reality is that whether you survive is indeterminate. If the brain criterion is necessary and sufficient in the light of indeterminacy, we must prove that for all conclusions that could be made, but are unobservable, there is still ethical plausibility and ontological coherence. If I end up in surgery or even if it is indeterminate that surgery kills me, the discussion ends here. Things are more complicated if you survive. Given that we can accept the transplantation of the cerebrum while maintaining continuity, it can be said that transplanting half of a brain also continues the entity. However, in a case there are two candidates, both sharing physical continuity of a human animal in which egoistic concern is retained, it seems that the brain criterion is insufficient to prove persistence which entity persisted. There are three interpretations to this case [25]. (a) I do not survive. (b) I survives as either candidate-A or candidate-B (c) I survive as both First consider (a), commonly referred to as the “non-branching view” [25]. Notice that I would survive if one half was destroyed, but in the case of both being preserved, I die. This seems immediately strange: How is double success considered a failure? Given the symmetry of the problem, (b) is incoherent as well, considering facts about both candidates are equal. We must then turn to (c), the only case in which brain continuity is sufficient. To avoid implicating that candidates A and B are the same, I forward that candidates A and candidates B are distinct entities that were once spatially coincident within the original, or multiple occupancy[26]. Given that either (a) or (b) are both untenable, the implication is that if one wants to reject “further fact” accounts, multiple occupancy must be endorsed [27]. Two things must be proven for us to adopt this: It does not affect the ethical plausibility of the theory It does not affect the ontological coherence of the theory If these two requirements are met, we will have a theory that sans fission preserves our original account and considering fission, will have the most realistic account in approaching it. C. Ethical Plausibility Let us first consider ethical plausibility. Firstly, given that pre-fission agents are unified, there is no change from our original theory. Moreover, the fact that an entity undergoes fission later down the road would not retrospectively change the normative considerations we give to the pre-fission entity. Does our criterion provide the most ethically plausible account of entities post-fission? Consider your spouse undergoing the fission operation. We may measure the ethical plausibility by considering how each post-fission theory affects your duties to your spouse. If (a) is true and whether your spouse lives if there is no second transplant but dies if fission takes place, if there is a gap in time between when half your spouse’s cerebrum is removed, and when it is transplanted into a host body, do you have marital duties toward your spouse during that gap where the second transplantation did not occur, but that these duties disappear the second the operation is successful? That our duty to people should be as arbitrary as the existence of another person seems strange. Strange conclusions are also reached when (b) is considered – why would you have the martial duty to love and be faithful to one of your spouse candidates and no qualms abandoning the other? If we maintain that it is immoral to abandon our duties on arbitrary facts, so (b) is also not a viable conclusion. (c) is the only scenario which is compatible with our conventional moral ideas. Yet it is also true that our commitments to our spouse are not exactly the same: they are, in a way, inflated. I must now commit to caring and providing for two bodies instead of one, being affectionate and loving to two bodies instead of one. However, while our duties to our spouse now split between two people is a commitment that is inflated, it is inflated based upon ideas we already accept as a posteriori moral—compare this to duties suddenly appearing and disappearing based on arbitrary facts. Consider a situation where your spouse is experiencing a mental health crisis. As a result of going through this situation, it is your duty to be more sensitive around them, spend more time and energy tending to their care etc—in other words, your commitment has been inflated. However, we accept this as a natural part of our duty because we hold a duty to a loved one in a difficult situation, despite having our commitments inflated. In the same way, our duties to a spouse do not change on account of this strange situation happening to them; duty is not situational. This is the principle that only multiple occupancy can reach, given all other seniors change duty based on the arbitrary details. Thus, being that it would be most accurate to say you have a duty to both, multiple occupancy is the most ethically plausible interpretation. What may be suspect is the impact on personal ontology. Multiple occupancy does not affect the arguments for ontological coherence we have laid out before if committing to its thesis does not require committing to additional burdens. We may prove this by considering each ontological assumption that our original theory could operate under and prove how multiple occupancy is compatible with the original metaphysical assumptions. Thus, if each assumption that is compatible with our original theory is also compatible with multiple occupancy, we can say that the original theory’s ontological coherence was not affected. There were two metaphysical assumptions we could make in which our account of personal ontology retained: that four dimensionalism was true, and that four dimensionalism was false. Under the assumption of four dimensionalism, the two separate entities after the fission operation are just temporal parts of the original entity that simply stand spatially distinct. This stands unproblematic among thinkers who accept four dimensionalism [29]. However, we require an account with the original metaphysical assumptions free of four-dimensionalism. Note that multiple occupancy seems absurd because common sense counting would suggest that 1 person becomes 2 people. We may resolve this by suggesting that it is possible to count 2 people before the fission operation as well. Before the operation, a singular entity is counted because counting was done by “spatio-temporal coincidence” rather than counting by identity [30]. This itself is also acceptable: if we can say that we can be identical to some entity that is not spatio-temporal coincident with us, as we do in everyday language when we say “my past self" or my “future self,” we are saying that identity and spatio-temporal coincidence represent two different things. Thus, given multiple occupancy can be integrated within either framework without necessitating a revision of our fundamental metaphysical assumptions, we can say it has not impacted the ontological coherence of the original theory. When we consider that both the ethical plausibility and ontological coherence has been preserved, while multiple occupancy is highly counter-intuitive, it must be accepted. IV. Conclusion In answering how we are the same person as when we were ten, I have considered two important questions in personal identity: what “we” are, which is a question of personal ontology, and how "we" persist. I have evaluated the merits of the brain criterion based on egoistic concern against both Animalism and Neo-Lockeanism, arguing that it is this paper’s variant of the brain criterion which best encompasses both ethical and ontological considerations when answering what “we” are. Then, I have argued that the persistence criteria which follow from the proposition that we are brains is necessary and sufficient, on the basis that one rejects a further fact ontology. What follows is the question of multiple occupancy, which seems quite counter intuitive when considering prima facie. However, multiple occupancy as I have proven, remains the only solution to deal with the cases of fission satisfyingly. Footnotes [1] Francisco Muñoz et al., “Spatio-Temporal Brain Dynamics of Self-Identity: An EEG Source Analysis of the Current and Past Self,” Brain Structure and Function 227, no. 6 (2022): 2167–79, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-022-02515-9 . [2] There is quite a lot of unintended semantic conflation in discussions of personal identity. Even the label by which we refer to it almost assumes person essentialism. When I use the term “person”, I refer to the colloquial usage, not the neo-Lockean kind, unless explicitly stated. Moreover, in usages where “person” may be easily conflated, I have substituted the more neutral “self” or “selves”. This is why I refer to the persistence questions with the set of rather than . Most clearly neutral is the term “entities of our sort”, which I have tried to use most often, but selves serves the same purpose with less of a word count cost. [3] Harold W. Noonan, Personal Identity (London: Routledge, 2019), 85-86 [4] David Shoemaker and Kevin Tobia, “Personal Identity,” The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology, 2022, 542–63, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198871712.013.28, 9. [5] Eric Todd Olson, What Are We?: A Study in Personal Ontology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), v. [6] David Shoemaker and Kevin Tobia, “Personal Identity” [7] Eric T. Olson, “Personal Identity,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal [8] David Shoemaker and Kevin Tobia, “Personal Identity,” [9] Ibid [10] Marya Schechtman, Staying Alive: Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of a Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 49-56 [11] Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 267. [12] Gendler, Tamar Szabo and Olson, Eric T, The Human Animal. (Philosophical Review, 1999) [13] Nichols, Shaun, and Michael Bruno. “Intuitions about Personal Identity: An Empirical Study.” Philosophical Psychology 23, no. 3 (2010): 293–312. doi:10.1080/09515089.2010.490939. [14] Jeff McMahan, The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 47 [15] Lukas J Meier. “Memories without Survival: Personal Identity and the Ascending Reticular Activating System” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, no.5 (2023): 478–491. https://doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhad028 [16] Two things are qualitatively identical if they share all their properties, and numerically identical if they are not two, but one. [17] McMahan, The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life, 57 [18] Steinbock, Bonnie. “Abortion.” The Hastings Center, February 22, 2024. https://www.thehastingscenter.org/briefingbook/abortion/ . [19] Olson, What Are We?: A Study in Personal Ontology, 214. [20] Noonan, Personal Identity, 18 [21] Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 236 [22] Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 210 [23] Noonan, Personal Identity, 191 [24] Noonan, Personal Identity, 5 [25] Parfit, Reasons and Persons, 248 - 253 [26] Noonan, Personal Identity, 18 [28] Noonan, Personal Identity, 140 [29] Olson, “Personal Identity” [30] Noonan, Personal Identity, 139

Health/Disease Distinction Normative Uses Margot S. Witte Brown University Author Matthew Flathers Fengyi Wan Alex Vaughan Williams Editors Fall 2018 I consider the question of whether or not it is permissible to intervene, given a particular medical condition. Typically, we argue that healthy conditions do not permit interventions, while disease conditions do. In this paper, I argue that the distinction between “healthy” and “diseased” is too slippery to be practically useful, and suggest that we should do away with it in clinical practice, substituting a model of asking whether an individual needs help. Introduction Every time a physician faces a condition in clinical practice, they must determine whether or not to intervene. This is an ethical question: “When ought I to intervene?” The centrality of the question in the practical world means that it merits philosophical consideration. In this essay, I will be focusing on the distinction between conditions for which intervention is permissible and conditions for which it is not permissible. The first category of conditions can be further divided into conditions for which intervention is required and conditions for which it is merely permissible, but I will not be addressing this second distinction. It is also important to note that I am concerned in this paper with the question of whether or not intervention is permissible, not whether or not a physician will intervene. The answer to the second question relies on issues like resource allocation and standard practices, which are outside the scope of this paper. The distinction we draw between conditions that do and do not permit intervention ought to align with our general intuitions. There are two main reasons to pick an intuitive distinction over an unintuitive one. First, intuition is acceptable evidence in ethical decisions. We can see one simplistic reason for accepting this by considering ethical propositions that we take to be true independent of ethical analysis. For example, someone who isn’t familiar with moral theory would say that, all things being equal, it is worse to kill indiscriminately than not to kill indiscriminately. This person’s primary evidence is their moral intuition, and we think that they are justified in their conclusion. The second reason we should accept intuition as evidence in finding a normatively useful distinction between conditions that permit and do not permit intervention is that we require a practical theory. The intention of this distinction is for it to be used practically by real physicians in real clinics. If the distinction goes against general moral intuition, it will not be followed by the majority of physicians. Often, the distinction between “health” and “disease” is used to make decisions about intervention, where intervention is permissible in the case of disease and impermissible in the case of health – or, in some theories, we should be agnostic about whether to intervene in cases of health . The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate how helpful this health/disease distinction is and whether we need an alternative. I will consider various conceptual analyses of disease and see which, if any, are most helpful. Just as there are different definitions of what qualifies a state as diseased, there are different definitions of what qualifies a state as healthy. The World Health Organization defines health as more than just “the absence of disease and infirmity.” It is also a “complete physical, mental and social well-being” that every human has the right to.[1] This creates three categories: diseased, healthy, and an in-between category, in which people are neither diseased nor infirm, but lack complete well-being. Because I am focused on whether health/disease distinction works to guide us in determining whether or not it is permissible to intervene, a situation with only two options, I will be discussing the theories that have only two categories: healthy and diseased. The first part of my paper will be concerned with different versions of the health/disease distinction and specific counterarguments to each distinction. I will then consider the possible problems that arise from using the health/disease distinction, however it is drawn, to make the normative decision about whether or not it is permissible to intervene. Finally, I will propose another way to make this distinction and evaluate the shortcomings and potential areas of further investigation for this new theory. The “Health”/“Disease” Distinction There are three primary approaches to conceptualizing disease: naturalism (sometimes called objectivism), constructivism (sometimes called normativism), and the relatively recent addition of embedded instrumentalism. In this section, I will consider these three theories of disease and analyze their abilities to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for disease, with the assumption that if there are serious weaknesses with the theory as a definition, it is not advisable to employ it as a normative guide to distinguish between conditions that do and do not permit intervention. The first theory I will consider is naturalism. Naturalists believe that the label “disease” represents an objective, intrinsic category of conditions and that we can determine whether a condition falls into the category by making empirical observations. Proponents of the theory claim that it is completely value-free and non-normative.[2] Dominic Murphy summarizes naturalism with a two-step classification system meant to determine whether a condition is a disease.[3] The first step is to determine whether a biological organ or system is malfunctioning. The second step is to determine whether the malfunction is harmful to the person it is affecting. As Murphy formulates naturalism, a condition is a disease if and only if the answer to both questions is yes. Most accounts of naturalism follow a similar structure, even if they do not break it down as clearly as Murphy. There is some variation within naturalism about what counts as a “malfunction.” While some theorists appeal to a common sense notion of “functioning,” most argue that a system is functioning if it is working in the way it was evolutionarily intended to work. Under this definition, the structure of the eye was naturally selected for because of its ability to pick up a given range of wavelengths and activate the optic nerve in a given way. Christopher Boorse, a major figure in naturalism, argues for what he calls a “Bio-Statistical Theory” of what qualifies as normal functioning.[4] He claims that, for any system, we can determine a species-specific standard based on a reference class with an acceptable level of variation. If a particular organism’s system significantly varies from the standard, it is malfunctioning. So, if an eye fails to pick up a wavelength that the statistically standard eye in the appropriate population picks up, it would be considered malfunctioning. Boorse defends his Bio-Statistical Theory on the grounds that it allows us to determine whether or not a system is malfunctioning in an objective manner without inserting our own beliefs about what constitutes “normal.” The philosopher Elselijn Kingma points out that naturalism, especially as formulated by Boorse’s Bio-Statistical Theory, is not at all free of subjective value-judgments. She claims the organisms that we choose to include in the reference class are determined through normative ideas about what proper functioning is, so it would be circular to use the standard class to make determinations about what qualifies a system as properly functioning.[5] The Bio-Statistical Theory only moves the value judgment problem up a level: instead of making a value judgment about what functioning is normal, we make a value judgment in selecting which organisms are normal and should constitute our reference class. Besides the problem of circularity, general naturalists face another problem: an organ can be functioning in its proper way according to evolutionary biology, but still be considered “diseased.” Kingma gives the example of an overdose of paracetamol, an over the counter pain reliever that causes liver damage. A properly functioning liver will reduce in function when flooded with the drug. In this case, the liver certainly is not healthy, but it is functioning appropriately, given the unfortunate situation it is in. Even if an organ is functioning properly, external conditions that Kingma calls “stressors” can cause an organ to become diseased.[6] If someone came into a clinic with an overdose of paracetamol and the physician extended the naturalist theory of disease to a normative theory, she would find that the liver was not diseased and that it would be impermissible to treat the patient. The problem of circularity and the practical problem of a somewhat limited idea of diseased both seem to be major weaknesses that stand in the way of using naturalism as a normative guide in clinical practice. The second conceptual analysis of disease I will consider is constructivism, which makes no attempt to shy away from a value-based, normative conception of disease. Constructuralists see disease categories as formulated based on social constructions about which physical conditions are healthy and which are not. They claim that we cannot understand disease independent of social concepts like “culture, history, meaning, and the constructed nature of medical phenomena.”[7] Because this definition of disease is so rooted in social constructions, constructivists accept (and expect) that the conditions that are diseases will vary across cultures. Some constructivists, like Lawrie Reznek, explicitly reject the idea that a malfunction is necessary for a condition to be a disease. To support their theory, constructivists often cite conditions that used to be considered diseases but are no longer. A common example is that of homosexuality. Reznek explores the way that conditions can move between the categories of disease and healthy across time and space and uses that as evidence that these are not mere category mistakes, but that the categories themselves are variable.[8] Naturalists respond to this claim by maintaining that they really are category mistakes, and that the removal of homosexuality from the “disease” category was an example of psychologists realizing that they had mislabeled a condition in which all systems are properly functioning a disease, not that the category “disease” had changed to exclude homosexuality.[9] Constructivists claim that while a disease can be traced back to a real biological process, the determination of whether a specific biological process is a disease relies on social considerations. This determination is based on a shared idea of what constitutes a “normal” and “valued” state. The problem with this approach is that there is variation about what these states are even in a specific community. This begs the question, “What counts as a community?” which naturalists disagree on. It seems excusable that the variation of “normal” across cultures might bleed into a sense of variation of “normal” within a culture, but the theory is meaningless without an idea of “normal” specific to a culture. There are also structural problems with the constructivist position. Constructivists are most likely correct that some diseases, particular psychological disorders, are based on social ideas about what conditions are valuable, but are they right that the entire category of disease is socially constructed without any naturalistic basis? It seems possible that there are some conditions that are classified as disease merely due to social factors, but that there are others that are true biological malfunctions. This means that constructivists cannot make their case by pointing out individual conditions that have moved into or out of the “disease” category; they need to prove that the entire category is based on social norms and that there are no diseases that can be categorized as such by only empirical evidence without social judgment. The constructivists do not seem concerned with making that sort of argument, though. Constructivist Peter Conrad writes that he is “not interested in adjudicating whether any particular problem is really a medical problem… I am interested in the social underpinnings of this expansion of medical jurisdiction.”[10] This structural problem of constructivism may be accounted for by the fact that most constructivists are more concerned with social issues than with philosophical definitions, so their arguments sometimes read more as descriptions of the medical method, rather than “necessary and sufficient condition” based arguments. This problem may dissolve if we read constructivism in the tradition of social critique rather than philosophy, but if we are to consider using the theory as a normative – and necessarily philosophical – guide that can help us determine which conditions permit intervention, we must read it as a philosophical theory, and its structural problems become unavoidable. The second structural problem of constructivism is that society already makes a distinction between those who we think are diseased and those that we disapprove of for other reasons. We do not pathologize every norm-breaking condition (general laziness, ugliness, poor taste in house decor, for example) and when people do things we ethically disapprove of, we often question their morals, rather than their sanity. So if constructivists want to argue that those we classify as having diseases are merely breaking social norms, they need to account for why we classify them differently from other norm-breakers who we don’t classify as diseased. They must explain why those who are diseased are norm-breakers in a health-related way without appealing to biological notions of “health.”[11] This is a difficult explanation to provide, and there is no standard constructivist answer. The third and final analysis of disease I will consider is that of embedded instrumentalism. Kenneth Richman, who developed embedded instrumentalism, borrowed some elements from constructivism but worried that any theory of disease that is based on culturally-contingent factors could not be universal. He proposed a theory in which health is indexed to goals, such that how healthy an agent is determined by how well they can fulfill their goals. He wanted to propose “a theory of health which characterizes certain states as being valuable neither intrinsically nor merely because they are useful, but rather because of their being in an appropriate relationship to an individual’s actual values.”[12] Richman rejects the view that certain goals are intrinsically valuable. He argues that if we begin with fairly agreeable goals like “The proper functioning of a heart is an intrinsically valuable goal”, we will eventually get to more troubling organs and will have to make claims like “The proper functioning of a set of ovaries is an intrinsically valuable goal.” Of course, about 41.5% of reproductive-age people with ovaries in the United States use some form of hormonal birth control, with the specific goal of ensuring their ovaries are not functioning.[13] Richman thinks that it is impossible to form a coherent argument that a heart functioning is intrinsically good but a set of ovaries functioning is not. One possible objection to this argument is that someone with very low ambitions might be considered healthy merely by virtue of their laziness. Richman tries to account for this problem by introducing the Richman-Budson view of health. According to this view, a person’s health is not indexed to their actual goals, but to the set of goals they would choose for themselves if they were fully aware of their “objectified subjective interests,” by which he means the goals they would set for themselves if they were perfectly rational and had full knowledge of themselves and their environments. There is a counterexample to the Richman-Budson view, however. What if the goals we have are unreasonable? If I have the goal of playing 48 simultaneous chess games while blindfolded, but I can’t achieve that goal due to my poor visual memory, lack of practice, etc., am I ill? It seems like obviously, I am not, but that goal is compatible with a full (though generous) understanding of myself and my environment. Is a concept of disease helpful in deciding whether to intervene? Beyond the specific problems that each individual theory of disease faces, the structure itself of the healthy/disease distinction may not be a helpful guide for clinicians trying to decide whether or not it is permissible to intervene when faced with a specific condition. I will look at four potential issues with using the health/disease distinction to determine whether to intervene in a specific condition. First is the threat of circularity. Some philosophers of medicine explicitly use the normative distinction of whether or not a condition allows intervention to ground their healthy/disease distinction, which would make it circular for us to use the health/disease distinction as an ethical guide to determine whether intervention is permissible, and most implicitly use it. One example of the explicit use is John Harris’ “ER test,” in which he argues that a condition is a disease if the condition makes someone worse off and if we would think medical personnel would be negligent if they did not treat this person if they came into an ER.[14] If we were to try to use such a distinction to determine whether or not to treat someone, we would be stuck in a circular argument. Germund Hesslow makes a related argument that the concept of disease is not normatively useful in clinical practice because it “does not coincide with any clinically important or morally relevant categories.”[15] Regardless of what theory of disease we choose, there are examples of conditions that are not diseased that permit intervention and diseases that do not permit interventions. Hesslow considers three types of conditions where this nonequivalence surfaces. First, doctors regularly treat patients in healthy states. He cites the examples of plastic surgery, gender affirmation surgery, and vaccination. Surely, we do not think that a too-big nose, gender, or a natural susceptibility to infection make a person diseased. Second, there are conditions that are technically pathological which physicians rarely treat, including benign tumors like birthmarks. Third, physicians sometimes intentionally induce pathological symptoms. Hasslow gives the example of sterilization, but we can also consider Richman’s argument about birth control. According to Hasslow, if disease was a clinically useful category, then physicians would never intentionally induce disease-symptoms. A third argument against using the healthy/disease distinction to guide clinical practice is that the version of the distinctions discussed so far includes too much information in some ways and too little information in others. A theory of disease gets caught up in all the issues of a conceptual analysis. For instance, every theory requires a value-laden discussion of “norms” and “normality.” (Recall that naturalism claims that norms are biologically determined, constructivism claims that they are socially determined, and embedded instrumentalism that they are indexed to personal goals.) If we are only concerned with deciding whether or not it is permissible to intervene, it would be ideal to develop a theory that we can use as a clinical guide without having to develop an entire theory of disease. In other ways, the theory has too little information to provide practical clinical guidance. If we only consider “disease,” we have no way of determining whether to intervene in cases of disability or injury. But there is no obviously philosophical, ethical, or even ontological distinction between disease and injury or disability. It seems likely that the ethical norms that govern disease should also govern disability and injury, and conceptual analyses of disease fail to provide guidance in these cases. Ereshefsky makes a fourth argument again the entire project of a conceptual analysis of disease. He claims that there is a structural problem with the health/disease distinction.[16] The distinction must take into account at least two factors: the physical state of the individual and the social value or disvalue of that state. On one extreme is naturalism, which values only the former, and on the other is staunch constructivism in the vein of Conrad, which values only the latter. There are some approaches that try to balance the two, like instrumentalism. But like any philosophical problem of distinction, however we try to balance the two factors, there will always be counterexamples. In this way, Ereshefsky thinks that the project is doomed to fail. The distinction between health and disease does not map onto a permissible/impermissible intervention distinction. At best, it distinguishes between conditions that permit intervention (diseases) and conditions that require more consideration (health). If we say that all healthy conditions do not allow for intervention, we make preventative medicine impermissible. It would be much neater if we had a single theory that could give us normative guidance on whether or not it is permissible to intervene. A New Theory: “Do you want help?” I propose a new approach that is still normatively useful in that it helps decide between when intervention is permissible and when it is not, but it does not run into the same difficulties as a conceptual analysis of disease. On my account, the distinction between whether or not intervention is permissible comes down to the question of whether an agent wants help. If they do want help, one is permitted to intervene. If not, one is not permitted. This approach is most closely related to that of embedded instrumentalism but tries to eliminate the aspects of it that are not relevant to the normative distinction between intervening and not intervening. For now, I will take a relatively general view of what qualifies as “wanting help.” I imagine the theory would be used in clinical practice in which a particular symptom is brought to a clinician's attention and they have to determine whether or not it is permissible to intervene. Whether or not help is wanted would be determined by the agent, and “help” would be whatever the intervention the physician is considering. Typically, we think that the phrase “I need help” as remedying some status that the agent considers troubling, but what qualifies it as troubling is up to the agent. This approach solves some intrinsic problems of using a theory of disease as a moral guide. Although it may seem that this approach is just as circular as using a conceptual analysis of disease, it is not. To see this, we can consider the difference between asking whether someone wants help and whether one ought to help them. The first is a practical question, and therefore can be used to answer an ethical question – “Will I intervene?” – without the threat of circularity. The second is an ethical question and results in circularity when we try to use it in this case. With this new distinction, we are not substituting one distinction in for another; we are using the question of whether someone wants help as a guide to help us understand when we are permitted to intervene. Additionally, the question of whether someone needs help has exactly as much information as we need to determine whether or not to intervene. It is not bogged down by the complications of a conceptual analysis, but it covers disability and injury. Because the theory is not supposed to be used as a definition, only as a guide for action, there is no need to hold onto any “intrinsic idea of health” and we can limit the scope of our consideration to the agent’s desires. The theory is also immune to Hesslow's criticism that theories of disease are irrelevant to clinical practice. This approach is built with use in mind such that part of the theory itself is a normative guide for clinicians that clearly determines whether or not they are permitted to intervene. Although the theory draws significantly on instrumentalism, it doesn’t face the same problems. The primary counterarguments to instrumentalism are that it fails to provide a coherent conceptual analysis, which simply is not a problem for a theory that is explicitly not a conceptual analysis – the theory doesn’t have the same definitional burdens. Unlike instrumentalism, this theory doesn’t have to provide necessary and sufficient conditions to classify a condition as a disease. This new theory also aligns better with our intuitions about intervention than the normative extensions of the conceptual analyses of disease. As discussed in the introduction, it is in our interests to develop an intuitive theory both because intuition is valid evidence for ethical reasoning and because a theory that is unintuitive is much less likely to be followed and therefore considered useful. We can use case studies to test our intuitive distinction between who wants help and who does not. We can compare how closely the “help” distinction and the normative extension of the theories of diseases align with our intuitions. Case 1 : A person who knows they are pre-diabetic Intuition: Intervention (education, for example) is permissible. Case 2 : A person seeking an abortion for themselves Intuition: If we put aside the abortion debate, intervention is permissible. Case 3 : A person with delusion and hallucinations who is isolated from society (i.e. not a danger to anyone; harm to him does not impact others) and does not want help Intuition (crowd-sourced for three college students): Intervention is impermissible. A theory that relies on an evolutionary biology definition of “function” would respond that intervention is impermissible in both Case 1 and Case 2 because no system is (yet) malfunctioning. They would likely answer that intervention is permissible in Case 3 because some element of the delusional person’s psychological or physical systems is malfunctioning. These responses are the exact inverse of our intuitive responses. A constructivist based in a community similar to the one at Brown would respond that intervention is permissible in Cases 1 and 3 and not in Case 2. In Case 1, we value the condition of being pre-diabetic as undesirable. In Case 2, while we do not necessarily value the state of someone who has an unwanted pregnancy, we certainly do not pathologize the state as a disease. In Case 3, we generally see hallucinations and delusions as unacceptable. An instrumentalist would most closely align with our intuitions. They would likely respond that intervention is permissible in Case 1, assuming the person has some goals that would be more attainable if he were not diabetic. They would certainly respond that intervention is acceptable in Case 2 because we can conclude from the fact that the person is seeking an abortion that they have goals that would better be accomplished if they were not pregnant. The answer to Case 3 would depend on whether the instrumentalist subscribed to the Richman-Budson theory. If they accepted it, they would say that intervention is permissible because if the person had perfect knowledge of themselves, they would most likely have goals that would be better attained if their delusions and hallucinations stopped. If the instrumentalist accepted a more basic idea of instrumentalism where health is indexed to an individual’s actual desires, then they would claim that intervention is impermissible because the person does not have any occurrent goals that are better achieved by the cessation of their delusions. Independent of its comparison to the theories of disease, there are other reasons to adopt the “wants help” approach to intervention. By focusing on whether or not someone wants help, we are zeroing in on the normatively useful part of the much wider question of whether or not someone is in a diseased state. That is to say, when we ask whether or not someone has a disease in the context of deciding whether or not it is ethical to intervene, what we are really asking is whether or not they need help. Additionally, the theory is more humane and less pathologizing and paternalistic. It focuses on the individual and their self-determination, rather than a particular diagnosis, and it assumes that most people can properly practice their right to bodily autonomy most of the time. Shortcomings and areas of further investigation In this paper, I have laid out a new way of determining whether or not it is permissible to intervene in certain conditions, and there, of course, are major shortcomings of this theory. Some of them can be patched up, but most will require substantial consideration and reworking of the theory. The first potential problem is that if we keep the vague definition of “wants help” that makes paternalistic, value-laden ideas of “normal” and “healthy” unnecessary, we have to accept that some degree of “enhancement” (genetic, pharmaceutical, etc.) is morally permissible. If the agent finds their current situation troubling and wants an intervention that would help them, assuming that they understand the side effects, this theory would permit the intervention. This may be an acceptable conclusion, though, because the “wants help” question would be asked in a clinical setting and would not overrule any external rules or laws. So for example, a “neurotypical” person could not get a cognitive enhancer like Adderall for their SAT because it is against the rules of the College Board, but they could maybe get a prescription to keep themselves focused during a grueling day-long interview at a tech company. Another more serious problem is that our intuition about who needs help can sometimes differ from who actually wants help. Admittedly, there are significant benefits of posing the question as whether someone wants help, rather than whether someone needs help. It solves the problem of having to determine what it means for someone to need help, and it centers the agent’s autonomy and self-determination. However, someone who we may intuitively think “needs help” may not “want help.” The theory is threatened when we question someone’s ability to decide whether or not they need help. There are four types of cases in which we might think the agent lacks the ability to make these decisions: Someone who had the ability and lost it (e.g. someone with dementia) Someone who never had the ability (e.g. someone with a rare genetic disorder) Someone who may have the ability in the future but lacks it now (e.g. very young children) Someone who may be a reliable decision-maker but cannot communicate it (e.g. someone in a coma) When faced with these situations, we have two possible options. We could try to determine whether the person (or some proxy for them) wants help for themselves, or we could appeal to an idea of who “needs” help. In the first case, we have a reference of who the person was before they lost this ability, and they may even have a written account of what they want. Even though this is unlikely to answer the specific question of whether they want help in that moment, it may serve as a guide. The problem with trying to use what someone expressed in a previous state is that desires and values can change. Someone who we may not think can properly exercise their right to bodily autonomy due to illness may still be able to express feelings about whether or not they want help. The occurrent views may differ from those that they expressed in the past. In these situations, it is not necessarily clear which account to use. In the second, third, and fourth cases it seems reasonable to use a surrogate, ideally someone who has the agent’s best interests at heart and who we have reason to believe would make similar decisions to the agent if the agent had the ability (i.e. people in their normative community, family members, etc.). We could then base our action on whether the surrogate wants help for the agent. The benefit of this solution is that it resists a didactic idea of who “needs” help and places the responsibility as close to the agent as possible. On the other hand, there is no way of knowing who really has someone’s best interests at heart, and it opens up too much room for variation between what a surrogate wants and what the agent would have wanted in a counterfactual in which they could express whether or not they want help. Using a surrogate in the third case of the young child introduces new problems. The agent will actually regain the ability to express whether or not they want help, so having someone else make that determination for them is riskier because both the surrogate and the clinician are more accountable to the agent than in the first or second cases. On top of the accountability, it is difficult to determine whether an agent can exercise their bodily rights. With children especially, there is disagreement about what rights children at various developmental stages can exercise, and there is contentious literature to match.[17] ,[18] ,[19] How much bodily autonomy children, and particularly adolescents have, varies greatly across cultures and even across philosophical theories within cultures. Using a surrogate in the fourth case of the person in a coma introduces even more problems. In this case, a clinician would be overruling someone’s occurrent wants, even if they were to make the decision to intervene or not intervene that corresponded to the person’s wanting or not wanting help. Despite the fact that we have no access to them, there is something intuitively troubling about this. This new approach of asking whether or not an agent wants help and making a decision based on that information has advantages over appealing to a conceptual analysis of disease. The question of wanting help cuts straight to the normative question without being caught up in categorical issues and it aligns better with our intuitions. However, the theory has some structural problems, and it cannot account for any situation in which it is not clear what someone wants or in which we have reservations about what they want. Not only that, but fitting the theory into clinical practice would be difficult, if not impossible. Before we can consider what the theory would look like in practice, we must develop a coherent response to the situations in which what the person wants differs from what we think the person ought to have. Endnotes [1] Preamble to the Constitution of WHO as adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19 June - 22 July 1946; signed on 22 July 1946 by the representatives of 61 States (Official Records of WHO, no. 2, p. 100) and entered into force on 7 April 1948. [2] I mean “normative” in the sense of prescribing a specific state as “normal,” as opposed to “normative” in the sense of prescribing a specific course of action. [3] Murphy, Dominic. Psychiatry In the Scientific Image. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. [4] Boorse, Christopher. “On The Distinction Between Disease and Illness.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 58, no. 45 (1975): 49–68. [5] Kingma, Elselijn. "What Is It to Be Healthy?" Analysis 67, no. 2 (2007): 128-33. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25597789. [6] Kingma, Elselijn. “Paracetamol, Poison, and Polio: Why Boorse's Account of Function Fails to Distinguish Health and Disease.” Br J Philos Sci 61, no. 2 (2010): 241-264. [7] Gaines, A.D. “From DSM-I to III-R; Voices of Self, Mastery and the Other: A Cultural Constructivist Reading of U.S. Psychiatric Classification.” Social Science & Medicine 35, no. 1 (1992): 3-24. [8] Reznek, L., 1987. The Nature of Disease, New York: Routledge. [9] Murphy, Dominic. "Concepts of Disease and Health." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Spring 2015. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/health-disease/ . [10] Conrad, Peter. The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. [11] "Concepts of Disease and Health." [12] Richard, Kenneth A. and Budson, Andrew .E. “Health of Organisms and Health of Persons: An Embedded Instrumentalist Approach.” Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 339, no. 21 (2000). [13] "Contraceptive Use in the United States." Guttmacher Institute. September 23, 2016. https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/contraceptive-use-united-states . [14] Harris, John. Enhancing evolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010. [15] Hesslow, Germund. “Do We Need a Concept of Disease?” Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 14, no. 1 (1993). [16] "Defining ‘Health’ and ‘Disease’." [17] Diekema, Douglas S., M.D., M.P.H. "Parental Decision Making." Parental Decision Making: Ethical Topic in Medicine. 2014. https://depts.washington.edu/bioethx/topics/parent.html [18] Worthington, Roger. “Standards of Healthcare and Respecting Children’s Rights.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 99, no. 4 (2006): 208–210. [19] Ruccione, Kathy; Kramer, Robin; Moore, Ida K; Perin, Gail. “Informed Consent for Treatment of Childhood Cancer: Factors Affecting Parents' Decision Making .” Journal of Pediatric Oncology Nursing 8, no. 3 (1991): 112-121.

Noah Tesfaye The Black Bourgeoisie: The Chief Propagators of "Buy Black" and Black Capitalism Noah Tesfaye Introduction Following the murder of George Floyd, there was a resurgence in a phrase all-too-common in the recent US political zeitgeist: “Buy Black.” Instantly, Black businesses received an overwhelming outpour of support as many non-Black people sought performative or material actions to support the Black Lives Matter movement. Centering the narrative and vision behind these ideas of “Buying Black” was not only affluent white people but the Black commercial media and the Black bourgeois at large (1). Amidst claims to defund and abolish the police, wealthy Black people called, as rapper and activist Killer Mike said in reference to Atlanta, “to not burn your own house down” but to instead support Black businesses and seek justice righteously (2). In this press conference with Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, the stark contrast between the masses of Black people who own little to no land in the city and the select few bourgeoisie celebrities who proclaim “Buying Black” as a liberatory practice for Black people was evident. Therefore, developing a framework of a political economy of racialization allows us to view the racialized motivations of capitalism to diversify and maintain power with a critical lens. For instance, revolutionary scholar Cedric Robinson attributes the origins of racism to “the ‘internal’ relations of European peoples” (3). He maintains that racial capitalism arose from “the development, organization, and expansion of capitalist society [that] pursued essentially racial directions” (4). There is a vested interest in subverting claims of Black liberation by the Black bourgeoisie to build up the “myth and propaganda of Black buying power,” as Jared Ball coins in his book of the same title, to maintain their capitalist interests. It is through the collective efforts of the Black bourgeoisie to propagate Black capitalism that they accept the continued exploitation of working-class Black people. A Relevant History to US Racial Capitalism To develop a political economy framework of racialization and examine how Black people have assimilated into capitalism, it is imperative to center the conditions of Black Americans more broadly today. First, we will look at how race has played a role in the justification of the exploitation of Black people in America. Then, we will investigate how wealthy Black people have been able to exploit these conditions to further perpetuate such inequality within a racial capitalist hierarchy. Race is integral to understanding the economic position of Black people, not just because of the way Black people arrived on the continent but also in the legacy of government policies that have contributed to the economic segregation of today. As a result, Black people have next to no wealth in the United States; by 2053, it is estimated that median Black household wealth will be zero (5). The asset that many Americans often associate with wealth-building is buying a home. However, for decades, Black people have had little access to affordable housing and loans at market interest rates. Established in 1933, the Home Owners Loan Corporation institutionalized abstract criteria, such as “desirability,” to fulfill a loan (6). Furthermore, “the HOLC’s actions attributed property values to the racial or ethnic identity of residents then helped codify it into a national housing policy” (7). This resulted in the creation of domestic colonial projects through restrictions on the purchase of real estate and allowed for the “economic serfdom of Negroes by its reluctance to give loans and insurance to Negro businesses” (8). Meanwhile, mortgage lenders redlined neighborhoods by deeming populations as having “detrimental influences,” as a means to justify offering conservative loans with bad terms or no loans at all to Black people (9). Practices executed by the HOLC as well as state and local legislators to justify redlining also expanded into the creation of what is known as the “ghetto tax,” whereby grocery and convenience store items in inner-city communities were sometimes more expensive and sold under exploitative installment plans (10). It is not just that the economic conditions of Black people have been poor or fraught with challenges, but that with that context and contrast, a vision of “Buying Black” is hollow. Today, instead of focusing efforts towards highlighting the much higher risks Black people have faced concerning eviction since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black bourgeois have asked Black people to build and support Black business (11). Origins of Black Buying Power & Black Capitalism The origins in this rhetoric about Black capitalism and “Buying Black” in more modern examples are not from Black Americans but from the US government. Corporate America, in conjunction with the Black bourgeoisie, further developed the rhetoric of Black capitalism to exacerbate racial inequality. As discussed in Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, it was the Nixon administration that began to prop up this vision for Black capitalism as a means towards suppressing radical movements. The author Marcia Chatelain notes that “[i]n lieu of supporting critical civil rights protections for fair housing and school desegregation, Nixon promoted legislation that provided business loans, economic development grants, and affirmative action provisions on federally contracted projects as a means of suppressing black rage and securing black endorsements” (12). Amidst Nixon’s efforts towards building his Southern Strategy and winning the 1968 presidential election, he ran on the premise that Black capitalism would ensure racial equality (13). Yet, due to the logistical restraints of there being so few Black entrepreneurs along with the clear intentions Nixon had in stifling revolutionary activity, Black capitalism was, from the outset, designed to selectively help Black people (14). What is more surprising than the Nixon administration seeking to subvert and crush Black radicals is the way in which wealthier Black people began to propagate Nixon’s agenda. As fast-food restaurants were being established in areas where Black people were offered franchisee licenses during the 1970s, Black “franchise pioneers believed that business would save the day and the days to come for their people” (15). Franchise owners were complicit in letting the federal government and those in control of capital across the country use the support of their businesses as a justification to divest from public programs and instead invest in less accessible resources. In the 1980s, Black fraternities and sororities, one of the more prominent symbols of the Black elite class, even went so far as to partner with McDonald’s on an advertising campaign commercial called the “Fraternity Chant” (16). If corporate America could get the Black bourgeoisie to more openly endorse and support policies centered around Black capitalism, instead of seeking people’s programs or organizing with Black liberation groups such as the Blank Panthers, US racial capitalism could persist. Significance of Race to Studying the Bourgeois There is no shortage of books, New York Times articles, or 60 Minutes segments on the racial wealth gap. Texts like How to Be an Antiracist or articles that imply that racial inequality is simply a matter of a “battle between the souls of America” do not adequately address, with nuance, the Black bourgeoisie’s influence on upholding racial capitalism (17). Rather than seeking to identify how and why these conditions continue to be perpetuated, many point to “the government” or “Republicans.” As Cedric Robinson theorized, race has been integral to capitalism since its foundation. Due to the development of neoliberalism in the US and the heightened sense of individualism in a consumerist society, Black neoliberal politics manifests into upholding the status quo of American politics rather than taking significant measures to directly address inequality. Amidst the advancement of globalization spearheaded by the Clinton administration, the Black working class was abandoned even further due expansion in the prison industrial complex, aided by the passing of the Crime Bill of 1994. This, in conjunction with the rise in the commercialization of hip hop and mainstream Black art writ large, helped propel Black individualism to its prominent position today as an antagonism to the “superpredator” attitude the likes of Hillary Clinton and other politicians had for Black people. Black people can also utilize and exploit racial capitalism to their benefit at the expense of others. To really understand how Black people continue to be exploited and disincentivized from seeking collective organization and liberation, we must look beyond Black entrepreneurship, Twitter, and Black real estate Instagram pages, for these are individualized success stories within racial capitalism. In their article “Black Politics & the Neoliberal Racial Order,” Michael C. Dawson and Meghan Ming Francis attempt to trace through the ways in which Black people have assimilated into neoliberalism and diversified capitalism. As they see it, Black neoliberalism emphasizes “self-reliance, excessive consumerism, and individualism” (18). To buy into capitalism, Black people must shed their traditions in collectivism and community-building. Neoliberalism demands Black people to concede grassroots organizing and to instead make the most of society as it is currently constructed. That became the central mindset and rhetoric espoused as the Black bourgeoisie began to take shape. Former President Barack Obama once equated “raising one’s children, paying a decent salary,” and other private, voluntary acts to “marching” (19). Rather than proposing Black people seek to remedy the conditions they face, the same conditions that are routinely echoed throughout mainstream media, Obama implied that mere existence was a form of fighting for one’s rights. This is an example of individualizing systemic oppression; instead of calling to dismantle the entire class system that exploits poor Black people, the Black bourgeois would rather make poor Black people feel as though they are largely responsible for their class position. Obama is asking Black people to focus on their own immediate conditions as a form of struggle, instead of demanding for a greater fight for Black liberation because that call protects his class interests and not poor Black people. The Black Bourgeois and their Propaganda What makes this development of Black neoliberalism so insidious is how “neoliberalism often allows small segments of communities to be helped through community/voluntary action and activists’ searches for best practices and policies” (20). The emphasis here is “small segments.” It is not that a Black business would not benefit from more financial support as we saw in the summer of 2020, but the larger ramifications of supporting Black businesses can only go so far when correcting for centuries of irreparable harm done to Black people in and by America. Black people can and continue to receive small wins amidst the continuously shrinking wealth within the population as a whole. If Black people are truly building power and seeking to create cooperative businesses that sustain communities instead of cultivating resources within capitalism, corporations would not advertise or publicly support Black businesses like they have since June. Are we supposed to presume that Oprah or Tyler Perry or any prominent members of the Black bourgeoisie are unaware of the centuries of inequality and believe that “Buying Black” will be a substantive fix for the plight of the Black masses? No. It is not to say that wealthier Black people are acting completely with malicious intent; however, Black bourgeoisie members collectively are helping sell and deliver this Black capitalism, “Buy Black” propaganda to the masses of working-class Black people. They continue to perpetuate and oftentimes expand on rhetoric that upholds Black capitalism by blaming individuals for not working hard enough or not being smart enough to make more money. “The Story of O.J” by JAY-Z, a song released in 2017, breaks down how Black people are not building enough wealth and how Jewish people spent money on real estate while Black people would spend it at the strip club. The song in short “is a metaphor for opportunities wasted due to poor individual choices and is meant, as Jay-Z has said, to be more than just a song, saying that it is really about ‘... we as a culture, having a plan, how we’re gonna push this forward...’” (21). In reality, “The Story of O.J.” symbolizes revisionist Black history - of the centuries of exploitation Black people have faced. As JAY-Z continues to profess that the only means towards freedom is to flip buildings, buy paintings, and “Buy Black,” his words limit the scope and imagination of the masses for a politic beyond the present conditions. Even if JAY-Z is from a working class background and he was lucky to attain massive success with his music, his current class conditions prevent him from adequately calling for more substantive changes to correct for centuries of Black inequality. To a similar end “the expressed ‘plan’ is to eschew politics in favor of a sole focus on economics, Black capitalist economics with buying power as a central philosophy as the ‘only hope’ for freedom, and all presented as progressive, pro-Black, empowerment messaging” (22). If there exists any chance to adequately analyze the US through a comprehensive political economy framework of racialization and come up with solutions to free people of such dehumanizing conditions, it must be with the consideration that even those of oppressed backgrounds can uphold racial capitalism. The Black bourgeoisie has shown through their actions that they are not interested in engaging substantively or seeking to liberate the masses because they themselves have become comfortable with the comforts of capitalism evenwhile the rest of their “people” suffer. Looking forward Black radical organizers in America today are not “interested in making capitalism fairer, safer, and less racist. They know this is impossible. Rather, they want nothing less than to bring an end to ‘racial capitalism’” (23). The policy proposition that rose to prominence again this summer, in spite of uprisings and more imaginative visions for a just world, was instead to “buy Black” and “support Black businesses.” It was through the likes of Killer Mike, Beyoncé, and other members of the Black bourgeoisie who touted such demands rather than stand in line with the movement-building going on in the streets. Rihanna, for example, benefits from Black capitalism because her consumers consider supporting her business as “woke” even as it is financed and backed by white capital. “Buying Black” can act as a means not just towards individualizing the ends of this policy plan, whereby the owner of a particular business will reap the benefits of sale, but it also individualizes the way that we as citizens need to behave. We are asked to consume and spend more rather than create and collectively stand together. It is not that the Black elites are unaware of the conditions that working-class, poor Black people face, but rather they collectively have sought to propagate this vision of “Buying Black” as a means to an end to centuries of state-waged war against Black people - an end for which there is no economic policy that could help the masses. There is a reason why James Warren coined this group in 2005 “The Black Misleadership Class.” The Black bourgeoisie traffic misinformation and are purposefully complicit in the continued strife of the masses of Black people in the United States. If we hope to build a political and economic vision for a world where Black people are no longer exploited, oppressed, marginalized, or silenced, it is crucial that we seek to contextualize both the race and class position of Black people within American society to then mobilize against the Black bourgeois and against US racial capitalism. If history is anything to go by, we must be prepared to stand and organize together, collectively, against the Black Misleadership Class to build a world where Black people can truly be liberated. Endnotes 1 The term “Black bourgeoisie” used here is not directly related to E. Franklin Frazier’s text Black Bourgeoisie in which the term is used to refer to the Black middle class rather than the Black capitalist class. Along these lines, by the capitalist class, I am referring to the class that does not earn money solely through labor but also through the accumulation and exchange of assets. 2 Emmrich, Stuart, “Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’s Press Conference Shows True Leadership During A Crisis.” 3 Robinson, Cedric, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, 2. 4 Ibid, 2. 5 Asante-Muhammad, Dedrick et al, "The Road to Zero Wealth: How the Racial Wealth Divide Is Hollowing Out America’s Middle Class,” 5. 6 Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta, “Back to the Neoliberal Moment: Race Taxes and the Political Economy of Black Urban Housing in the 1960s,” 189. 7 Ibid, 189. 8 Ibid, 191. 9 Ibid, 189. 10 Ibid, 195. 11 Thomas, Taylor Miller, “Coronavirus Relief Favors White Households, Leaving Many People of Color at Risk of Being Evicted.” 12 Chatelain, Marcia, Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, 14. 13 Weems, Robert E., and Lewis A. Randolph, “The National Response to Richard M. Nixon’s Black Capitalism Initiative: The Success of Domestic Detente,” 67. 14 Weems, 68. 15 Chatelain, Franchise, 15. 16 Ibid, 177. 17 Kendi, Ibram X, “A Battle between the Two Souls of America.” 18 Dawson, Michael C. and Meghan Ming Francis, “Black Politics and the Neoliberal Racial Order,” 46. 19 Ibid, 48. 20 Ibid, 48. 21 Ball, Jared, The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power, 2. 22 Ibid, 2. 23 Robinson, Black Marxism, xi. Works Cited Asante-Muhammad, Dedrick, Chuck Collins, Josh Hoxie, and Emmanuel Nieves. Rep. The Road to Zero Wealth: How the Racial Wealth Divide Is Hollowing Out America’s Middle Class. Institute for Policy Studies, September 2017. https://ips-dc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/The-Road-to-Zero-Wealth_FINAL.pdf . Ball, Jared A. The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Chatelain, Marcia. Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America. Liveright, 2020. Dawson, Michael C., and Megan Ming Francis. “Black Politics and the Neoliberal Racial Order.” Public Culture, vol. 28, no. 1 78, 2015, pp. 23–62, https://doi.org/10.1086/685540 . Emmrich, Stuart. “Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’s Press Conference Shows True Leadership During A Crisis.” Vogue, May 2020. Frazier, E. Franklin. Black Bourgeoisie. The Free Press, 1957. Kendi, Ibram X. “A Battle between the Two Souls of America.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, November 16, 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/americas- two-souls/617062/ . Robinson, Cedric J. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. University of North Carolina Press, 1983. Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. “Back to the Neoliberal Moment: Race Taxes and the Political Economy of Black Urban Housing in the 1960s.” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, 2012. Thomas, Taylor Miller. “Coronavirus Relief Favors White Households, Leaving Many People of Color at Risk of Being Evicted.” POLITICO. POLITICO, August 7, 2020. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/07/coronavirus-relief-racial-eviction-392570 . Weems, Robert E., and Lewis A. Randolph. “The National Response to Richard M. Nixon’s Black Capitalism Initiative: The Success of Domestic Detente.” Journal of Black Studies 32, no. 1 (September 2001): 66–83. https://doi.org/10.1177/002193470103200104 . Previous Next

Staff ~ Vol. VII | Issue I Editorial Board Aimee Zheng William Loughridge Manaal Saadaat Mason Zhang, Hansae Lee Benjamin Levy, Zachary Freer Maggie Jiang, Manaal Saadaat Editor-in-Chief Content Director Marketing Director Philosophy Section Director Politics Section Director Economics Section Director Content Team Philosophy Section Editors Hansae Lee Steve Nam Alexander Gerasimchuk Matthew Wong Theodore Young Gabriel Gonzalez Coco Zhu Nahye Lee Koda Li Fatima Avila Politics Section Editors Arjun Ray Faith Li Malcolm Furman Meruka Vyas Fatima Avila Emerson Rhodes Lachlan Edwards Aditi Bhattacharjya Sophie Rukin Economics Section Editors Meruka Vyas Aditi Bhattacharjya Max Robinson Vittorio Nazzi Arjun Ray Lachlan Edwards Matthew Wong Arthur Shamgunov Operations Team Marketing Associates Claire Kim-Narita Nadya Tan Designers Julian Croonenberghs Neil Xu Founders Julian D. Jacobs '19 Daniel Shemano '19

The Mortal Futility of Contempt A Response to Macalester Bell’s Hard Feelings in the Era of Trump Jessica Li Swarthmore College Author Dorian Charpentier Galen Hall Nathan Mainster Ilana Duchan Editors Fall 2019 Download full text PDF (15 pages) Abstract In Hard Feelings: The Moral Psychology of Contempt , Macalester Bell argues that under certain circumstances contempt can be the appropriate—and indeed, even the best—response to answering those who exemplify what she calls the “vices of superiority.” But in grappling with our current political moment, this paper critiques Bell’s ethic of contempt. I argue that expressing contempt for those with whom we disagree is not effective in eliciting remorse or effecting change. In fact, contempt only further polarizes a body politic. Furthermore, I argue that contempt plays the role of holding others responsible less well than Bell thinks it does. Finally, I argue that a culture of contempt encourages in lockstep a culture of moral superiority. Theoretical Framework Contempt is in no short supply these days. In a politically turbulent era such as ours, contempt for public figures, institutions, and those with whom we vehemently disagree has become increasingly prominent. Calls to civility warn against this attitude, casting contempt as an ugly and corrosive emotion that damages our relations to one another and defies the respect we owe all persons. In Hard Feelings: The Moral Psychology of Contempt, Macalester Bell argues intrepidly against this consensus. She contends that under certain circumstances, contempt can be the appropriate—and indeed, the best—response to answering those who exemplify what she calls the “vices of superiority.” Racism, one such vice of superiority, is best responded to with counter-contempt, she argues, because “contempt corrects [the racist’s] status claim and helps to restore the equilibrium between the esteem and deference he takes himself to deserve and the esteem and deference he actually merits.” Bell concludes that upon further investigation, contempt holds an important and essential place in moral life. The outpouring of contempt surrounding the 2016 United States presidential election and its aftermath calls into question whether contempt is the best way of confronting the vices of superiority. As I will demonstrate, contempt has done nothing to disrupt President Trump’s behavior, who, I argue, epitomizes many of the vices of superiority. Contempt has also made politics more divisive, Americans more narrow-minded, and public discourse more impossible. As many Americans have experienced, talking about politics with friends and family has become so strained that many have decided to avoid broaching the topic altogether. And increasingly, in a public discourse of contempt, people are curating their news and social media to avoid encountering viewpoints that differ from their own. In grappling with our current political moment, this paper argues against an ethic of contempt. First, I summarize Bell’s account of contempt. Then, against her account I argue that expressing contempt for those with whom we disagree is not effective in eliciting remorse or effecting change. In fact, contempt only further polarizes a body politic. After responding to Bell’s arguments on contempt’s instrumental value, I turn to her arguments on contempt’s non-instrumental value. Bell claims that contempt is non-instrumentally valuable because it plays an important role in our practices of holding others responsible; but, I argue that contempt plays this role less well than she thinks. Finally, I argue that a culture of contempt encourages in lockstep a culture of moral superiority. My arguments taken together do not defend a strict prohibition against contempt; however, they do demonstrate that contempt is much more morally suspect than Bell admits. In Hard Feelings , Bell begins by examining the nature of contempt. As she prefaces at the beginning of the chapter, contempt is difficult to define and make distinctive from other emotions like resentment, disgust, and anger. Nevertheless, she outlines four of contempt’s central features. First, contempt is a response towards persons who have failed to meet an important standard, and who have as a result compromised their status . Second, contempt is a globalist emotion, meaning it takes whole persons as its object. Third, the contemnor "sees the contemned as inferior to her along some axis of comparison.” And fourth, and most paradigmatically, contempt involves withdrawal. In contrast with neighboring emotions such as anger or resentment which motivate engagement, contempt motivates withdrawal. Withdrawal, she argues, can look like “refusing to invite someone to a gathering or declining to shake someone’s hand” on the one hand; and radio personality Don Imus’ contemptuous comments about “the Rutgers women’s basketball team, referring to them as ‘nappy-headed hos’” or the Egyptian protesters who waved their shoes at then-President Mubarak in Tahrir Square, on the other. The former examples she calls “passive contempt”; the latter examples “active contempt.” Passive contempt treats the target as non-threatening, as beneath notice. Passive contempt involves withdrawal in a literal sense: evading or dismissing the target. Active contempt, on the other hand, presents the target as threatening and involves a different sense of withdrawal. With active contempt, the contemnor withdraws from the target by casting her as dangerous and morally less than. Bell writes in a later passage, “contempt is a demoting emotion [original emphasis] that presents its target as having a comparatively low status.” In other words, the active contemnor purposefully distances herself by portraying the target as someone to be looked down upon, not as someone to be capitulated to or reconciled with. Thus, in expressions of active contempt, there is an aspect of communication : the contemnor tries to communicate to the target that she is being disengaged, and why she is being disengaged. Bell’s subsequent discussion focuses primarily on “active contempt.” Bell then turns to the looming question: What makes contempt morally valuable? Bell argues that contempt is the most effective way of confronting and defeating the vices of superiority, a term which encompasses a number of vices such as arrogance, hypocrisy, and racism. As she explains, those who exemplify the vices of superiority see themselves as entitled to more esteem and deference than everyone else, and insist that others treat them as such. Bell is skeptical that we can challenge their superbia by simply discussing or reminding them of the equal worth of all persons. She elaborates in a compelling passage: For those who evince superbia do not have false beliefs about others’ moral standing ; instead, their main fault is taking themselves to have a comparatively high status and lording this presumed status over people in a way that expresses ill will. Given this, reminding the arrogant or hypocritical that others are just as worthy of respect won’t answer their vices. Such people may concede the point but continue to harbor superbia and see it as justified. In order to properly challenge the target’s perception of his superior status, one must attempt to make his inferior status felt. That is why contempt’s characteristic demotion is such an apt response to the vices of superiority. Contempt best addresses the vices of superiority, she argues. As she sketches out earlier, contempt demotes the target and presents the target as having a comparatively low status. Contempt “thereby negat[es] his sense of entitlement and undermin[es] his attempts at dishonoring or exacting esteem and deference.” Moreover, being the object of contempt can “provide us with a morally valuable second-personal perspective and can shake us into the realization that we have failed to meet certain basic standards.” The paradigmatic example is Elizabeth’s contempt for Darcy in Pride and Prejudice . Darcy began reflecting on his arrogance and in turn, began changing his ways precisely because he felt Elizabeth’s contemptuous attitude. Bell hedges, however, that contempt does not cause the target to feel remorse. Instead, “what apt contempt does is provide reasons to change: it puts those who evince the vices of superiority in a position to appreciate their reasons to change; the experience of being put down and disesteemed makes one’s reasons to change particularly salient.” Contempt is not only morally valuable as a means of answering the vices of superbia; it also holds non-instrumental value. According to Bell, contempt is “a way for persons to maintain their integrity,” and “a person of integrity is someone who not only does the right thing but also has the right attitudes toward her commitments.” Contempt is moreover constitutive of “holding persons accountable for their actions and faults” and ensuring that we hold ourselves to shared standards. In the brief paragraph in which she makes this argument, she writes: “While resentment demands that its target take responsibility for the wrong done, contempt demands that its target change her attitudes and overcome her superbia. Responding with apt contempt, then, is the clearest way of holding persons accountable for their superbia.” In short, contempt is part of the moral practice of blaming those who fail to adhere to certain standards. Bell is convincing insofar as she persuades us that contempt can, in some cases, help “put the target in a position to appreciate the reasons he has to change his ways.” The example of Darcy and Elizabeth in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice that Bell gives in her fourth chapter asserts her point forcefully; Elizabeth’s contemptuous rejection of Darcy’s proposal prompts in him a new awareness and inspires him to reform his character. However, Bell is less persuasive as to whether contempt is the best way of responding to the vices of superiority, and whether we ought to prefer an ethic of contempt to an ethic of anti-contempt. Does contempt always serve to jolt a person out of vice? What do we risk in contemning others? The rest of this paper interrogates these infirmities. As observers note, contempt is rife in contemporary politics. Screaming heads on television, Twitter trolls, and angry campus activists have become commonplace in American life. Yet, contempt has not proven effective in the ways that Bell anticipates. Perhaps the most glaring and well-known example of someone who exemplifies the vices of superiority is President Donald Trump. For example, he boasted about the purported successes of his administration to the United Nations General Assembly: “In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.” He played more than six rounds of golf in his first month in the Oval Office, despite previously criticizing President Obama for doing the same thing. And he routinely fraternizes with white supremacists such as David Duke. Even his own supporters attest to his arrogance, hypocrisy, and racism. Michael Cohen, former lawyer and supporter of President Trump, said of him during his historic testimony before Congress: “He is a racist, he is a con man, he is a cheat.” Treating him with contempt, however, has not precipitated the kind of change that Bell anticipates, or as she argues, has not provided reasons for him to change. Despite the press exposing his hypocrisy for playing golf and the public responding with contempt on Twitter and Facebook, Trump continued to visit Mar-a-Lago for golf course outings. In a Twitter thread rebuking his behavior, dozens of people tweeted at Trump a picture of him tweeting in 2011, “I play golf to relax. My company is in great shape. @BarackObama plays golf to escape work while America goes down the drain,” except they crossed out “@BarackObama” from the picture and named Trump instead. Despite the widespread contempt he earned for his performance as president, coming from even his closest policy advisors, Trump said that “nobody’s ever done a better job than I’m doing as president.” In an anonymous op-ed, a senior official in the Trump administration called the president’s leadership style “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.” And despite the contempt he received from civil rights organizations like the ACLU, the NAACP, and the Anti-Defamation League, Trump continued to highlight crimes committed by black and brown people, therefore emboldening the alt-right. As just one of many instances, consider how Anthony Romero, the executive director of the ACLU, expresses contempt for Trump in an op-ed piece about the border wall “emergency” when he writes: Trump's emergency declaration is a blatant abuse of power in the service of his anti-immigrant agenda and a brazen attempt to subvert the constitutional separation of powers. The federal treasury isn't a bank account that the president can just raid whenever he's in a bind. It's taxpayer money that the Framers specifically left in the hands of Congress. Trump is seeking to thwart Congress' will. Now we are asking the courts to give Trump another lesson in how the Constitution works. In the face of overwhelming contempt, Trump incredulously persists in being hypocritical, arrogant and racist—not once expressing remorse for his actions. Against President Trump, contempt proves unsuccessful in confronting the vices of superiority. Bell might offer two responses here. First, she might respond that one counterexample does not defeat the instrumental value of contempt. In her account, she did not venture to argue that contempt is guaranteed to answer the vices of superiority. If we read her work charitably, sometimes contempt will work, sometimes it will not. But in order to maintain that contempt has instrumental value and that it is the best way of responding to the vices of superiority, Bell must insist that by and large, contempt is effective. Second, she might assert that Trump is incapable of taking up contempt, and therefore treating him with contempt is inappropriate. She explains in a chapter about contempt’s characteristic withdrawal: The target must be able to understand what it means to fail to meet a standard and must be able to change his ways if he comes to accept the claim implicit in contempt. If a person is unable to understand what it means to fail to meet a standard or is utterly unable to take steps to address his fault, then one could not morally address him through one’s contempt. Even if we concede both responses—that presenting President Trump as one counterexample is not fatal to her argument, and furthermore, that her account can accommodate for President Trump and exceptional persons who are similarly immune from expressions of contempt—her account still faces the fact that contempt is ineffective towards ordinary Americans. For example, much of America has treated Trump supporters, including those who voted for him more tepidly, with unbridled contempt. Here, I assume that those who adamantly support President Trump and the policies that he advocates also evince the vices of superiority. Take the following headlines: “Trump Won Because Voters Are Ignorant—Literally” which has the subtitle, “Democracy is supposed to enact the will of the people. But what if the people have no clue what they’re doing?”; “Maybe They’re Just Bad People”; “Racist Americans, Not Trump, Are The Problem. There Might Be A Cure.” Trump supporters are seen not merely as incorrect or misguided, but as terrible human beings. They are cast as bigots, uneducated hicks, and even “deplorables.” But liberal contempt has done very little, if anything, to change their minds. In general, Trump supporters still hold the same positions on policy issues, the President’s comportment, and his fitness to lead. As his steady approval rating shows, Trump remains exactly as overwhelmingly popular among Republicans as he was on the first day of his presidency. I argue that by and large, contempt has not prompted the national reckoning that Bell would expect on her account, nor has it inspired Trump supporters to rise to the standards that we have accused them of not meeting. Why is this the case? I argue that a culture of contempt in American politics is not as instrumentally valuable as Bell claims because it does not take effect in the way that she describes. Bell argues that contempt answers the vices of superiority by providing reasons to change. To reiterate the quote I cited earlier, she claims that contempt “puts those who evince the vices of superiority in a position to appreciate their reasons to change; the experience of being put down and disesteemed makes one’s reasons to change particularly salient.” Contempt in American politics, however, does not seem to function in this way. Contrary to Bell’s account, widespread and strenuous contempt has failed to make white supremacists better “appreciate their reasons to change.” Why? I argue that white supremacists do not feel the withdrawing effects of contempt because—and this is crucial—they champion the approval of the President. Although they may feel contempt from liberals, white supremacists are not “put down” or “disesteemed” precisely because they are bolstered by Trump when they witness him repeatedly accusing illegal immigrants of ruining the country. They witness him repeatedly associating himself with racists and repeatedly demonstrating fealty to alt-right groups. Consider how Trump began his 2016 presidential campaign by disparaging Mexican immigrants, saying: When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best—they’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. Consider how he has retweeted white nationalist accounts with handles such as “WhiteGenocideTM” without apology (Twitter has since removed this account). In the face of contempt, white supremacists have refuge in Trump, a figure with immense social and political cachet who tacitly approves their actions, and shares their views. Bell argues that contempt is supposed to withdraw from the target and thereby ostracize them from the moral community. But withdrawal is not meaningful if the target has recourse in a president who supports and often urges anti-immigrant rhetoric. Therefore, under the aegis of the president, white supremacists do not feel the withdrawing effects of contempt. Furthermore, I argue that contempt in American politics has not just been ineffective against the vices of superiority—it has only made matters worse. On all sides of the political spectrum, a culture of contempt has only entrenched the vices of superiority and alienated those whom we want to reform. To illustrate this point with an example, consider Hillary Clinton’s contemptuously calling half of Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables.” Ostensibly, this highly controversial remark was meant as a way to answer racist, sexist, and xenophobic behavior demonstrated by those who had vocally advocated for Trump. Instead, her comment was met with public outrage and retaliation. An avalanche of stories commenting on the striking phrase flooded the Internet, conservatives were incensed, and the divide between the Democrat and Republican body politic widened only further. Consider these tweets: “Treating people as subhuman—irredeemable/deplorable—is no way to run for POTUS,” by Tim Miller, a former Jeb Bush spokesman and fervent Trump opponent, and "What’s truly deplorable isn’t just that Hillary Clinton made an inexcusable mistake in front of wealthy donors and reporters happened to be around to catch it… It’s that Clinton revealed just how little she thinks of the hard-working men and women of America,” by Jason Miller, a senior communications adviser during the Trump campaign. As she explained in an apologetic statement that draws parallels with Bell’s arguments for the instrumental value of contempt, she intended for her contempt as a way to stand up to Trump’s turpitude and to commit herself and her campaign to moral values: But let's be clear, what's really “deplorable” is that Donald Trump hired a major advocate for the so-called 'alt-right' movement to run his campaign and that David Duke and other white supremacists see him as a champion of their values. It's deplorable that Trump has built his campaign largely on prejudice and paranoia and given a national platform to hateful views and voices, including by retweeting fringe bigots with a few dozen followers and spreading their message to 11 million people. It's deplorable that he's attacked a federal judge for his “Mexican heritage,” bullied a Gold Star family because of their Muslim faith, and promoted the lie that our first black president is not a true American. So I won't stop calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric in this campaign. But calling millions of people a “basket of deplorables”—people whom she wanted to persuade—only drove them further into Trump’s arms. The “basket of deplorables” gaffe only made matters worse, and not just because it was said by a presidential candidate trying to win over voters—in other words, not just because it was a bad political play. It was also because using contempt as a means to address the vices of superiority, in general, risks alienating those whom we want to reform. Interviews with dozens of lukewarm Trump supporters bear this out. A New York Times article reports that incessant attacks on Trump are causing his supporters to rally around the President. Ms. Anders, one of the interviewees, said that when she hears “overblown” attacks on Trump, “it makes [her] angry at them, which causes [her] to want to defend him to them more.” The Times reports that Trump supporters feel protective of the President when asked the all too common question “How can you possibly still support this man?”, as well as further removed from the contemptuous liberal. Contempt, instead of addressing the vices of superiority on the other side, has only polarized our politics and cultivated an atmosphere in which contempt is traded back-and-forth, to no end. Our contemptuous public discourse also casts doubt on Bell’s arguments for the non-instrumental value of contempt. Although contempt, I agree, is an important reactive attitude that is part of our practice of holding persons accountable, I argue that contempt does not play that role as well as Bell asserts. Recall that in Bell’s view, contempt holds persons accountable by demanding that its target overcome her superbia. How does contempt issue this demand? She explains, “Through contempt’s characteristic withdrawal, its subjects do not simply seek explanations or apologies; instead, the contemnor seeks the target’s character change. If the target does not attempt to change his ways, then the contemnor will see him as someone to be avoided altogether.” Elizabeth held Darcy accountable for his arrogance by withdrawing from him, and thus morally engaging him. Shunning a person who exemplifies the vices of superiority can serve as a sort of punishment, holding persons accountable, but I argue that it is a particularly ambiguous and precarious way of doing so. It seems to me that there is an inherent tension between contempt’s characteristic withdrawal and the demand that it makes on the target—and that this tension undermines, or at the very least severely limits, the non-instrumental value of contempt. By withdrawing from the target, the contemnor does not expressly communicate the demand. The target may misinterpret, or may even be completely oblivious of, what is demanded of him. Moreover, by withdrawing from the target, the contemnor does not enforce the demand. The target is not in any way compelled to comply with the contemnor’s demand, aside from being subjected to the sanction of her ostracism. And as I argued earlier, ostracism is rendered impotent when another person or group embraces the target instead. Bell anticipates some of these worries when she writes: “It is true that contempt’s withdrawal may be misinterpreted. Silence and withdrawal are multiply ambiguous in ways that other forms of address are not.” But she seems more optimistic about contempt’s successes than wary of its risks. She argues, “But while the ambiguity of withdrawal can be disorientating, this disorientation can also be constructive. As targets think about what elicited the withdrawal, they may, like Darcy, come to recognize contemptible aspects of their characters that they had long overlooked.” She is confident that “if a target of contempt believes that the contempt directed at him is apt, then he will [emphasis added] respond with shame and an attempt to ameliorate his character,” often arguing as though the target’s response of shame and the target’s attempt to ameliorate his character are empirical inevitabilities. But I contend that we should be more skeptical of contempt’s ability to hold persons accountable. The ambiguity and precariousness of contempt that I have been discussing are especially acute in public discourse. Amid the din of daily, back-and-forth contempt about whatever news is dominating the day, it becomes especially difficult to determine what claim an expression of contempt is making and to feel compelled to answer that claim, when instead the target can simply dig in her heels and meet contempt with counter-contempt. Bell insists that if we reject an ethic of contempt, we would lose “relationships of mutual accountability for our attitudes in which we hold persons to certain standards and are held to certain standards in turn.” This seems to me to be an overly pessimistic conclusion. Holding persons accountable does not necessarily require an ethic of contempt; holding persons accountable might involve a myriad of other emotions such as resentment, disgust, shame, indifference, anger, and disappointment. Consider Martin Luther King Jr.’s seminal “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” in which he responds to criticisms made by several religious leaders in the South regarding the nonviolent protests against segregation. At different points, Dr. King expresses disappointment, indignation, and anger. For example, he writes, “But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church,” and, “I guess I should have realized that few members of a race that has oppressed another race can understand or appreciate the deep groans and passionate yearnings of those that have been oppressed …” Note however that he does not express contempt for the clergymen. He does not dismiss their concerns or cast them as unforgivable human beings—despite all the good reason he has to do so. Instead, he takes up every line in their statement and thoroughly refutes each concern. By holding the church responsible for its hypocrisy without appealing to contempt, and indeed while remaining charitable, Dr. King demonstrates that “relationships of mutual accountability” are possible absent an ethic of contempt. In fact, one might argue that it was precisely Dr. King’s willingness to engage with his detractors that held them responsible and crucially served the success of the Civil Rights Movement. By countering each of their gripes head-on, relentlessly, it becomes unequivocally clear that their criticisms of the Birmingham demonstrations were made in bad faith and hold no water. Lastly, I argue that we should reject an ethic of contempt because a culture of contempt encourages in lockstep a culture of moral superiority. In treating those with whom we disagree contemptuously, we make the assumption that we are in the morally superior position to judge whether someone has violated the community’s standards. We appoint ourselves as arbiters of what is moral and what is immoral. Seeing ourselves as morally superior and others as morally inferior not only compromises our own character but also ignores the complexity of disagreement. Indeed, in expressing contempt for the Trump voter, much of America failed to listen to the many issues that Trump voters cared about—issues that Trump was addressing and Clinton was not. Pigeonholing Trump voters as immoral and bigoted obscured a broader debate about jobs leaving, terrorism, and the nuances of immigration. Ms. Anders, the interviewee whom I cited earlier, laments, “All nuance and all complexity—and these are complex issues—are completely lost… It’s either, ‘Trump wants to put people in cages, in concentration camps.’ Or, on the other side, ‘Oh the left just wants everybody to come into the country illegally so they can get voters.’ We can’t have a conversation.” Contempt has reached a fever pitch in public discourse and has shown no sign of abating anytime soon. In the context of our present political climate, I have argued that contempt is not as morally valuable as Bell claims it to be. Instrumentally, I have demonstrated that contempt is not effective in getting the target to reflect on his character and to make reforms. Moreover, contempt risks further dividing a body politic. Non-instrumentally, I have argued that contempt plays a much narrower role in holding persons accountable, given how ambiguous and precarious contempt is for the target who exemplifies the vices of superiority. I have also shown that it is possible to hold persons morally responsible without appealing to contempt. And lastly, I have argued that a culture of contempt encourages a culture of moral superiority, which not only compromises our own moral selves but also ignores the complexity of those whom we contemn. Taking seriously the arguments that this paper advances requires that our public discourse guards against contempt instead of embracing it. Works Cited Anonymous. “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” New York Times. September 5, 2018. www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html . Accessed April 7, 2019. Barlow, Rich. “Racist Americans, Not Trump, Are The Problem. There Might Be A Cure.” wbur . November 30, 2018. www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2018/11/30/donald-trump-racism-supporters-rich-barlow . Accessed April 7, 2019. Bell, Macalester. Hard feelings: The moral psychology of contempt . Oxford University Press. 2013. Blake, Aaron. “Why President Trump’s frequent golfing is even more hypocritical than it seems.” Washington Post . February 22, 2017. www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/22/president-trumps-frequent-golfing-is-even-more-hypocritical-than-it-seems-at-first-glance/?utm_term=.0199a7da3d9a . Accessed April 4, 2019. Brennan, Jason. “Trump Won Because Voters Are Ignorant—Literally.” Foreign Policy . November 10, 2016. foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/10/the-dance-of-the-dunces-trump-clinton-election-republican-democrat . Accessed April 7, 2019. Bump, Phillip. “Trump: ‘Nobody’s ever done a better job than I’m doing as president.’” Washington Post . September 4, 2018. www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/09/04/trump-nobodys-ever-done-a-better-job-than-im-doing-as-president/?utm_term=.be6e7a1bb7a5 . Accessed January 10, 2019. Burns, Alexander. “Choice Words From Donald Trump, Presidential Candidate.” New York Times . June 16, 2015. www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/06/16/choice-words-from-donald-trump-presidential-candidate . Accessed April 7, 2019. Choi, Matthew. “Trump bragged about his presidency and world leaders laughed.” Politico . September 25, 2018. www.politico.com/story/2018/09/25/trump-united-nations-brag-839820 . Accessed April 7, 2019. Desiderio, Andrew. “Cohen testimony on Trump: 'He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat.'” Politico . February 26, 2019. www.politico.com/story/2019/02/26/cohen-trump-racist-conman-cheat-1189951 . Accessed April 4, 2019. Goldberg, Michelle. “Maybe They’re Just Bad People.” New York Times . November 26, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/26/opinion/trump-supporters-bill-white-bryan-eure.html . Accessed April 7, 2019. Higgins, Tucker. “Trump’s approval ratings are low but steady — possibly a good sign for his re-election chances.” CNBC . January 2, 2019. www.cnbc.com/2019/01/02/trump-approval-low-but-steady-possible-good-sign-for-2020-re-election.html . Accessed January 2, 2019. Holmes, Jack. “Trump’s Disgusting Retweets Suggest a Larger Problem is Brewing.” Esquire . November 19, 2017. www.esquire.com/news-politics/a13974149/trump-retweet-britain-first/ . Accessed April 7, 2019. King Jr., Martin Luther. "Letter from a Birmingham Jail." 26 UC Davis L. Rev. 791, 1992, 835. Lima, Christiano. “Hillary Clinton walks back 'basket of deplorables' remark.” Politico . September 9, 2016. www.politico.com/story/2016/09/hillary-clinton-basket-deplorables-227988 . Accessed January 9, 2019. Peters, Jeremy W. “As Critics Assail Trump, His Supporters Dig in Deeper.” The New York Times . June 23, 2018. www.nytimes.com/2018/06/23/us/politics/republican-voters-trump.html . Accessed January 8, 2018. Romero, Anthony D. “ACLU on border wall 'emergency': We'll see you in court, President Donald Trump." USA Today . February 20, 2019. www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/02/20/aclu-lawsuit-trump-emergency-declaration-illegal-unprecedented-column/2920655002/ . Accessed April 7, 2019. Sparks, Grace. “How many Americans actually support Trump?.” CNN . September 27, 2018. www.cnn.com/2018/09/26/politics/actual-trump-support/index.html . Accessed January 1, 2019. Trump, Donald J. (@realDonaldTrump). “I play golf to relax. My company is in great shape. @BarackObama plays golf to escape work while America goes down the drain.” Twitter. December 30, 2011, 10:12 a.m. twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/152814332915363840?lang=en . Acknowledgements Thank you to Lou Chen for reading over the draft of this paper. And thank you to Professor Krista Thomason for being an invaluable interlocutor. Our discussion about Macalester Bell’s Hard Feelings motivated much of my thinking on contempt in public discourse.

In Favor of Entrenchment Justifying Geoengineering Research in Democratic Systems Samantha M. Koreman Dartmouth College Author Filippo Zinni Lori Kohen Antonio Almazan Editors Fall 2019 Download full text PDF (10 pages) Abstract This paper critically evaluates the ability of structurally democratic governments to address long-term, existential problems such as climate change using the example of geoengineering. The solution to these problems is to curtail strict democracies and, instead, entrench the right of future generations in valid constitutions. Theoretical Framework Climate change is a problem that harms current generations and that will continue to harm future generations. Current generations are harmed as a result of changing temperatures, rising ocean levels, and unpredictable weather patterns. Future generations will experience much more severe effects. Most ethical theories acknowledge that individuals have some obligation to future generations. Unfortunately, this acknowledgement does not always translate into the field of political theory. Because of moral facts about representation and non-moral facts about the motivation that individuals have for stepping foot in the political arena, current democratic political institutions are ill-equipped to implement policies on behalf of current generations. This is a serious problem when it comes to solving for the harms caused by climate change. One potential solution to climate change is geoengineering—the new realm of “deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s natural systems to counteract climate change.” However, democracy has difficulty justifying this solution. In order to rightfully implement long-term climate change solutions like geoengineering research, it is necessary for democratic political institutions to entrench the rights of future generations in their constitutions. This paper will first establish a two-pronged problem for democracy. Then, it will apply that problem to geoengineering. After addressing potential solutions to the geoengineering dilemma, this paper advocates for entrenching the rights of future generations into a democratic constitution as a solution for the two problems discussed in the first two sections of the paper. Finally, this paper addresses multiple counterarguments to entrenchment and concludes that entrenchment is, in fact, a viable solution to justifying geoengineering research in the policy arena. I. A Problem for Democracy If we assume that we have some obligations to future generations, then it is necessary to solve a two-pronged problem for dealing with claims of intergenerational justice in modern democratic societies. Although some people claim that democracy has many benefits related to the idea that citizens get to have input in important political decisions through electing representatives and voting on specific policies, a major downside of the democratic procedure is that on a purely structural level, it is ill-equipped to solve long-term problems. The first prong of this democratic dilemma is that procedural accounts of representative democracy require that representatives be responsive to their constituents. This occurs through voting and tests of public approval. Neither of these methods allow representatives the leeway to directly make decisions on behalf of future generations as future generations are not the constituents of political representatives—as they do not yet exist. It is impossible for future generations to elect representatives or even have any measurable approval or disapproval for current policies. For policies with long time horizons, it will only be after the policies are implemented that future generations will weigh in on whether they approve of said implemented policy. This concern over time horizons establishes the second prong of the problem of integrating concerns about intergenerational justice in democratic procedures—because representatives want to be elected and maintain high approval ratings, they will often choose to focus on short-term projects. These short-term projects are policies that current people prioritize in their day-to-day lives. While this prong is an issue in general for democracy’s ability to pass policies that address long-term problems, it is especially problematic in the case of policy concerning climate change. While many people are in favor of addressing climate change, they rarely vote for a politician based on a policy to address climate change. Even if a small portion of the population did vote in this manner, it would still be difficult for policymakers to collectively act to pass policies that mitigate climate change as they need to cater to all constituents. For example, as in the case of America’s coal industry, politicians will often advocate for investing in economic advances that lead to increased resource use. One might have an easy answer to this and say that politicians can simply invest in decoupling in order to satisfy both current and future peoples. However, this two-pronged problem is not so easily addressed in cases where these sorts of justifications for certain environmental policies in a representative democracy reach counterintuitive conclusions that run in opposition to the interest of current people. II. The Dilemma of Geoengineering If we are to accept the context above claim that democracy is unable to establish a stable obligation to future generations, then a dilemma regarding geoengineering becomes apparent—geoengineering research to “arm the future” is unjustified and undesirable while actually implementing geoengineering is justified. Current geoengineering research focuses on the possibility of manipulating the Earth in such a way as to mitigate—or, hopefully, to solve for—the effects of climate change. While there are many proposals in the scientific community regarding specific forms of geoengineering such as injecting sulfate aerosols into the Earth’s atmosphere to increase the Earth’s albedo and decrease the Earth’s temperature, all forms of current geoengineering research are affected by the dilemma of democratic procedure. There exists an important higher-order claim in discussions of policy justification that the rationale for certain advocacies and the way that those rationales interact within an overarching political framework is important for determining the extent to which policies are justified. Proponents of geoengineering research often make the argument that even if our current population is not in favor of actually implementing geoengineering, it is important to “arm the future” with the information needed to implement geoengineering if future generations are put into a position where they must implement geoengineering for their own survival. Contrastingly, a rationale for implementing geoengineering does not categorically ignore the overarching context of democracy. An argument of this sort could proceed in the following fashion: current people are being harmed as a result of climate change. Constituents also have an interest in mitigating climate change. There has already been substantial research into geoengineering policies that prove it is both feasible and cost-effective. Therefore, there is a justification for politicians to support the implementation of geoengineering to benefit current people. This is not mere conjecture—in recent memory, members of the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States have lobbied for funds for real-world geoengineering testing and testified to congress proclaiming the wonders of geoengineering. Members of the Trump administration and high-level Republicans have publicly advocated for geoengineering as a method of solving for climate change and some pundits claim that their reason for doing this lies in protecting the interest of constituents in the oil industry. Current people have an interest in implementation and would benefit from a successful deployment of, for example, stratospheric spraying—the introduction of “small, reflective particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect some sunlight before it reaches the surface of the Earth” would act as a way to almost immediately decrease the temperature of the planet and mitigate the current effects of climate change. The question then becomes why politicians have not made more of an attempt to secure funds to create a real-world test for geoengineering. The answer is deceptively simple—people may not like climate change, but they also do not like the idea of messing with the environment or they believe that there exists a slippery slope in geoengineering, potentially leading to continued adjustments of the environment. While public opinion might be in favor of the idea of researching geoengineering, they are wary of implementation. III. One Potential Response to the Geoengineering Dilemma One might claim that interest in geoengineering research within the current population is reason enough for politicians to advocate for it. This is not a categorical solution—it is only contingent on the beliefs of current people and those beliefs could change. If geoengineering research proved to be useful and effective, it might be the case that current people would lose interest in its novelty. Support for policies can fade, and in the case of climate change it would be a mistake to let solutions be determined solely by what could be transient interest. If one accepts that a successful implementation of geoengineering will take time, resources, and extensive research then it can be argued that choosing to stop researching geoengineering is a harm to the future generation that requires that research for its survival. IV. Addressing the Democratic and the Geoengineering Dilemmas Up until this point, this paper has put forth two problems—democracy’s two-pronged dilemma and the geoengineering paradox. The two-pronged dilemma states, first, that democracy does not have a structure to address the interest of future citizens and, second, that it is ill-equipped to work on long-term projects to address long-term issues. The geoengineering paradox has been presented as an application of democracy’s two-pronged dilemma and states that democracy justifies implementing geoengineering but not researching it. If one accepts these problems and believes that we have some obligation to future generations, then a solution is needed. A solution to democracy’s two-pronged dilemma and the geoengineering paradox is for democratic states to entrench the rights of future generations in their constitutions and laws using legal language that requires policymakers to maintain a certain element of respect for future generations. This would entail positively affirming that human rights extend to the future. Ideally, this entrenchment would be flexible and focus on ideals of intergenerational equality—it would prioritize the interest of future generations to maximize their ability for free choice and maintain a standard of living that is at least at the median of the standard of living of current generations. The content and interpretation of the entrenchment of the rights of future generations is somewhat variable, but the benefits to entrenchment are multifold. First, entrenchment would allow policymakers to permissibly make decisions in the interest of future generations and avoid the first prong of the democratic problem. It would provide a structural justification for pursuing policies beyond that which can be justified by an obligation to be responsive to their constituency. Although future generations still cannot express approval or disapproval for current policies, a policymaker has reason to virtually represent their interests to the best of their ability. The second benefit is also clear—entrenchment solves the second prong of the democratic problem. Entrenchment provides a constitutional obligation to give care towards future generations and take on long-term projects. Even in cases where short-term projects might support a bid for reelection, policymakers must consider whether these short-term projects conflict with the rights of future generations. A practical example can be seen in a political debate on whether to invest in jobs in coal or green energy. Although coal jobs might have some small, short-term benefits to a single politician’s constituency, it would be impermissible to make a conscious choice to support an industry that has the ability to exacerbate environmental harms. Instead, the politician might advocate for investing in renewable energy and training programs to transition coal miners to work at a new renewable energy plant. In cases where there are geographic concerns about the feasibility of renewable energy, the burden of the politician would be to determine whether any industry practices could be changed in order to improve the sustainability of the local coal plant. Entrenchment implies consideration of the future rather than a categorical prioritization of interests. Third, and most relevant to the geoengineering dilemma, entrenchment allows for there to be an overarching political context that legitimizes the rationale for research in the name of “arming the future.” It allows politicians to support geoengineering research even in the context where the benefits of the policy will not be realized for decades-long after their time in office is done. It represents fulfilling a contractual obligation. If a politician were to propose a policy that would violate the constraints of entrenchment, then she would be liable to something like impeachment. Impeachment acts as a way to punish politicians who break laws. As entrenching the rights of future generations would be akin to proposing a law constraining conduct, the violation of entrenchment would be a violation of the law. This would give individuals and structures within the government the ability to impose sanctions on those policymakers who would seek to disrespect future generations. V. Responding to Potential Objection to Entrenchment Even if one accepts that entrenching basic rights for future generations addresses democracy’s two-pronged dilemma and the geoengineering dilemma, there are still a few powerful objections to entrenchment. A. Entrenchment is Undemocratic One could make the argument that any entrenchment of any value into a constitution is undemocratic as it could constrain the ability of policymakers to be responsive to their constituents. Values that are entrenched in a constitution—a document made by one group of people that often continues on to future generations—do not always represent the views of current people. To entrench the rights of future generations in a constitution would be to impose values on future generations; something inherently undemocratic. This is a relatively weak argument for two main reasons. First, entrenchment in this case is something that allows for procedural fairness and respects democratic tenets of equality. If one was a proponent of democracy, then she would advocate for both of these features as prerequisites for a democratic process to take place. Second, and most powerfully in the context of this paper, entrenchment explains the reason that the paradox of geoengineering exists. People often recognize respect for future generations as a value that they either have or ought to have. Although they themselves may disagree with implementing geoengineering, that does not mean that they categorically want to take that choice away from others. Although democracies do not necessarily need to possess liberal values, they often do because of concerns about fairness and equality. In order to ensure that future generations maintain an ability to choose, it is necessary to implement certain political protections against current generations unknowingly limiting the options of future generations. B. An Epistemic Worry One more powerful objection to entrenchment is the notion that current people do not even know what is in the interest of future people. After all, one of the benefits of democracy is that people can voice their own interests and concerns to policymakers. Future people cannot do this as they do not yet exist. Norms and values change over time, and opinions about policy can often be shaped by these changes. Apart from a concern about what interests future people will have, there may also be a second, purely epistemic worry that consists of something akin to the following: we cannot know what the future holds with any certainty, and we cannot make policy to address problems that we do not know about. Therefore, any policy to help the future will rely on incomplete information. First, this epistemic question applies to current people too. If individuals do not vote, policymakers are still tasked with considering them in their decisions. We do not say that they have done something wrong if policymakers make an imperfect decision—we only say they made a mistake when the decision they make directly violates the rights of those people who are not their constituents. For example, a decision to invest in infrastructure in one town that 40% of the town refrained from voting on. That by itself is not a problem. If the infrastructure investment requires bulldozing the home of someone who did not vote for this plan, then that person could say that her personal rights were disrespected and the policymaker did something wrong. Second, certain interests have remained the same. Basic goods that are key to survival are a prerequisite for having higher order interests, interests that relate to ethical determinations of what a good life would entail. In terms of higher order interests, “although moral variety undoubtedly exists, it is less extensive than is often supposed…[as] commonalities define the distinctively human forms of life.” Certain interests are human interests, and entrenchment focuses on the consideration of these interests. Even if one disagrees with the idea that there can be one common conception of the “good life” as espoused by the Skidelskys’, approaches of determining a good life based on what a rational individual would want or what capabilities we wish individuals to have also require attention to ensuring basic goods. Basic goods are “in general necessary for the framing and the execution of a rational plan of life” and capabilities require asking “what is so-and-so able to do and be?” Food, clean water, and shelter are all requirements for safe living, and all of those requirements are threatened by climate change. Third, in terms of the specific policy of “arming the future” with geoengineering research, current people are not telling the future what to do. Instead, current people would be maximizing the choices that the future can make by providing them with information. Entrenchment as a justifying account of why it would be permissible to “arm the future” does not entail an epistemic overreach as no decision is being made; the future does not need to use the information that they would be given. They have the freedom to refuse to implement geoengineering if they do not believe it is what is best for them. Finally—to address the purely epistemic worry that nobody can predict the future on a policy level—it is important to recognize that it is likely the case that climate change will pose an existential risk to some future generation. Although it is always difficult to calculate epistemic uncertainty, it is plausible to say that we are relatively certain that if climate change is currently affecting people, it will likely affect future people as well. It is also worth noting that in our current democratic system, policymakers do recognize climate change as an existential risk to future generations and often act in the international arena to combat it like with the Kyoto Protocol or the Paris Accords. C. Prioritizing the Present Another strong objection to entrenchment is the worry that policymakers would be prohibited from prioritizing the present. If there are side constraints against harming the future, policymakers may feel like they either cannot make any decision or can only make decisions that benefit the future for fear of being impeached for shirking their duties to the future. First, this misunderstands the goal of entrenchment. Entrenchment states that there is a prohibition against harming future generations with current policies. It prohibits policymakers from ignoring future generations in their calculations. It allows policymakers to permissibly take action that benefits future generations without someone claiming that they are shirking their obligations to the present. It does not state that policymakers should only prioritize future generations; it simply places a side constraint on what sorts of policies can be permissibly implemented. We still may not harm the present with our policies. Second, stating that a certain group has rights that should be protected does not imply that the current generation does not have rights. Entrenching the rights of future people does not take away the rights of current people. Certain policies might prioritize future people over current people, but in the case of justifying climate change policy that is not the case,especially when it comes to geoengineering research to “arm the future.” Third, to address the worry about undue prioritization in regard to taxation, there is a mistake in assuming that geoengineering research does not benefit current people. Scientific research has numerous fringe benefits. It benefits scientists and educational institutions in terms of providing funding and jobs as well as attracting new talent. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that an individual’s taxes go towards something that will benefit her in specific terms. If someone agrees to exist within the bounds of government and pay taxes, she agrees to pay for a set of government services rather than a specific service. There is no real mechanism to withhold a person’s taxes from being used towards services that do not directly benefit her as money is fungible. Finally, a worry about considering the interests of future people is akin to worrying about the interests of current people. A democratic system gives everyone input into the decision-making process, but equality of input does not entail that everyone’s input will be included in the final decision. Consideration of future interest does not imply that those interests will always override current interests; it is the job of policymakers to make reasoned decisions rather than a problem with entrenchment. To this final response, there is a separate worry, namely the way that democracy often considers interests is via some majority rules system. It is because of this that there can exist a tyranny of the majority where the interests of the minority are systematically discounted. If consideration of future people is meant to mean that policymakers are to consider each of the votes of the infinite future people, then it may mean that in a democratic system would always side with the infinite future people because they numerically outweigh current people. This interpretation of entrenchment is a mistake. First, consideration of basic interests does not require counting individual votes as the interests remain the same and simply act as a constraint. Second, side constraints on what policymakers can permissibly vote for exist in our current system in order to curtail the harms of the tyranny of the majority. While individual policies can fall into the trap of the tyranny of the majority, policymakers do not have the right to infringe on the basic rights of the minority. VI. Conclusion If one wishes to justify funding geoengineering research to “arm the future,” then it is necessary to solve democracy’s two-pronged problem and address its relationship with the dilemma of geoengineering. While policymakers have the ability to make any law, it is important that the laws they create are justified by a broader framework. By entrenching the rights of future generations to basic necessities that would be harmed by climate change, policymakers would have a codified reason to invest in policies that can “arm the future” with information about how to quickly counteract climate change. Works Cited Gardiner, Stephen M. “Is ‘Arming the Future’ with Geoengineering Really the Lesser Evil?” Climate Ethics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 2010. Keith, David. A Case for Climate Engineering. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, 2013. Keith, David W. “Toward a Responsible Solar Geoengineering Research Program.” Issues in Science and Technology. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: The University of Texas at Dallas, Arizona State University, 2017. Lukacs, Martin. “Trump presidency ‘opens door’ to planet-hacking geoengineer experiments.” The Guardian, 27 March, 2017. www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2017/mar/27/trump-presidency-opens-door-to-planet-hacking-geoengineer-experiments Oxford Geoengineering Programme. “What is geoengineering?” University of Oxford Martin School. 2018. www.geoengineering.ox.ac.uk/www.geoengineering.ox.ac.uk/what-is-geoengineering/what-is-geoengineering/indexd41d.html Skidelsky, Edward and Skidelsky, Robert. How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life. New York, NY, 2012.

A.S.E.A.N The Long Game: ASEAN, China’s Charm Offensive and the South China Sea Dispute Hisyam Takiudin Brown University Author David Golden Orwa Mohammad Sean Sullivan Editors Spring 2018 Identifying why multilateralism is weakening in Southeast Asia in the wake of the South China Sea Maritime Dispute. The South China Sea (SCS) is a 3.5 million-square-meters body of water within the rims of Southeast Asia. It contains islands, reefs, and low-tide elevations that are mainly grouped into the Spratly and the Paracel Islands. The SCS is of strategic importance as it is a trade route carrying $3.4 trillion worth of goods every year – an equivalent to 21% of global maritime trade – and boasts strategic sea lanes whose blockade could disrupt entire economies (O’Rourke, 2015). Recent studies estimated the SCS to contain 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (Fisher, 2016). It also accounts for over 10% of the global fishing trade. While its value is undisputed, determining who owns what in the SCS gets very complicated. There are overlapping claims between China, Japan, Taiwan, and several Southeast Asian states which has led to military standoffs, international court arbitrations, as well as disruptions to revenue-generating activities in the waters (O’Rourke, 2015). To understand the root causes and find potential solutions to the SCS dispute, this paper argues a focus on two key players: China and the Southeast Asian states. Beyond China’s lofty ambitions to become the de facto power center in the region, there needs to be a consideration of China’s modus operandi. In July 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) rejected China’s ‘nine-dash claim’ in the SCS. China responded by discrediting the ruling and continuing to assert its claims by adding sediments to low-tide elevations to build artificial islands, chasing out non-Chinese vessels, and engaging in military exercises (Fisher, 2016). This is a precedent-setting behavior, and the potential for additional players to follow the same law-defying strategy should sound an alarm for increased checks on Chinese influence in the region. More explicitly, other SCS claimants should create a more united front with the collective goal of upholding international law. Secondly, Southeast Asian states technically operate within a regional bloc called the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). ASEAN is primarily an economic bloc, but that is precisely why it is crucial to solving the dispute. A study of the economic relationship between the claimants in the dispute reveals a two-faced nature. There is a clear pick-and-choose strategy by more developed claimants (e.g. China, Japan) towards Southeast Asian states which are largely emerging markets. Capital flows can thus be an influencing instrument by more developed claimants to steer negotiations in their favor. The Southeast Asian claimants then could benefit from a more integrated economic strategy via ASEAN to ensure a level playing field. The question that remains then, why has the status quo persisted? Why is it that seemingly logical strategies such as the above not followed? Perhaps more constructively, what incremental steps are realistic and feasible for stakeholders to take in line with these big picture strategies? The rest of this paper will expand on the contexts of these observations, use data to justify the need to change the status quo, and outline potential strategies that can maximize the long-term outcome for stakeholders. The core argument will be this: a combination of ASEAN’s flawed structure, inefficient nature of international law, and the economic-incentive dependent nature of ASEAN claimants all lead to a political scenario where free-riding on other parties’ confrontations with China while reaping China’s economic incentives will bring about the best individual outcome. This is what is called a collective action problem, a Marcus Olsen (1965) notion that stresses the inability for individual actors to achieve a goal in providing a public good – in this case, a buffer against Chinese bullying (Oatley, 2016). There is then a recognition of a larger Chinese strategy to dismantle ASEAN and to shift Member States into China’s sphere of influence. Solving the SCS conflict is then not quite the priority ASEAN Member States should be giving. ASEAN as an organization is an important medium to balance against China’s creeping influence, and its Member States will need to see past the short-term benefits of China’s handouts and consider the long-term consequences of the current free-riding strategies. This paper will reveal how following a long-term strategy focusing on building ASEAN’s internal capabilities can be instrumental to maximize individual interests while ensuring China’s actions are checked. I. ASEAN and the SCS Dispute ASEAN is a regional bloc consisting of 10 Southeast Asian states and aims to promote economic, political, and security cooperation amongst its Member States. Its biggest achievement is first and foremost its ability to rally an economically, politically, and culturally diverse group of nations. By promoting regional dialogue, ASEAN, in turn, promotes regional peace and stability, a no easy feat for a group of post-colonial states (except for Thailand). However, it is important to note that in practice, ASEAN focuses on economic cooperation more so than others. This is because ASEAN decision-making is on the basis of consensus, meaning the controversial nature of political and security cooperation is by default constrained. While ASEAN managed to eliminate significant amounts of trade tariffs, no military agreements have been signed beyond joint exercises or on matters of illegal migration between its Member States. In context of the SCS dispute, the most important fact is how ASEAN as an organization has never been mandated to resolve the dispute; this responsibility falls under the claimants themselves “through legal arbitrations or political negotiations, bilaterally or multilaterally,” (Storey, 2017). In a rare exception, however, ASEAN and China did sign the non-legally binding Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) in 2002, which entails the promotion of “confidence-building measures”, engagement in “practical maritime cooperation”, and “the discussion and conclusion of a formal and binding Code of Conduct (COC).” The COC is intended to be a formal, legally binding document that would facilitate maritime engagements in the SCS. The signing of the DOC is a remarkable achievement because it also acts as a litmus test for ASEAN’s ability to act as a political unit. The decision to partake in the COC negotiations is in line with China’s current charm offensive strategy in the region –explained further in Section IV, but negotiations have been significantly delayed, so much so that even the basic provisions of non-violence and non-disruptive clauses in the DOC have not been implemented (ASEAN, 2012). The DOC also created the opposite of its intended effect: creating distrust and discouraging further cooperation. This is because the DOC lacks an enforcement mechanism, leading to rampant and unchecked interpretations, where claimants have accused each other of violating the document (Storey, 2017). China sees the Philippines’s decision to take up the case to the PCA violates Article 4 which stipulates conflict resolution “through friendly consultations and negotiations by the sovereign states directly concerned”, while other claimants see China’s sand dredging to build islands fit for military use do not exemplify an act of “self-restraint” (Storey, 2017). It was not until September 2013 – a full eleven years since the DOC was signed – when the first China-ASEAN Senior Officials’ Meeting on the COC was held (Storey, 2017). Talks remained slow until after the 2016 PCA ruling, in a move believed to be China’s way of deflecting criticisms it received from rejecting the Tribunal’s result. More strikingly, the draft contents of the COC, as of November 2017, is devoid of the term “legally binding”, raising doubts whether countries should be invested in the COC at all (Storey, 2017). Even if the final version of the COC does come with a binding clause, a few things are still worth noting. First, the insistence to take time to negotiate could mean the region remains at risk of violent escalations – there is an immediacy to have the COC passed soon considering the ongoing military installations by China and Vietnam. Secondly, the COC will not mean an end to the dispute since it will not include mechanisms aimed to do so –it will not be equipped to resolve existing conflicts. Most importantly, the DOC experience and China’s precedent-setting decision to ignore the PCA ruling calls for caution whether signatories would even honor it. Internally, cracks in ASEAN solidarity towards the SCS dispute are becoming clearer. In 2011 the ASEAN Summit failed to issue a joint statement on how to approach the dispute and in 2017, it failed to mention the dispute altogether (Hutt, 2016). President Duterte of the Philippines made the surprise move to set aside the PCA ruling – in which the Philippines was overwhelmingly favored – and strengthened ties with China through trade deals worth $13.5 billion (BBC, 2016). Malaysia held joint military exercises and signed big budget infrastructure projects with China (Permal, 2017). Vietnam, on the other hand, is in a ‘cold war’-like state with China, with both parties actively participating in reclamation efforts in the region. Vietnam has also increased strategic cooperation with the United States and Japan who both condemn China’s activities in the region, further increasing tensions (Ives, 2017). The final twist: apart from Singapore, other Southeast Asian states remained quiet on the matter altogether. The key observation here is how increasingly divergent individual ASEAN states are towards the SCS dispute. As per above, the spectrum ranges from outright confrontation to normalization and all the way to blatant disregard of the issue altogether. All things considered, it seems a balancing-against-China strategy is no longer a possibility – a clear indication of the collective action problem discussed earlier. Why then, should any stakeholder in the dispute care about ASEAN? Would it not be more productive to shift the conversation towards the maximizing the interest of an individual claimant? The following sections will peel away these questions to arrive at a two-fold argument: 1) disregarding the importance of a regional Southeast Asian strategy undermines the relevance of ASEAN as a regional bloc, and 2) ASEAN is an instrumental medium in limiting China’s questionable and precedent-setting actions in the region. II. Why Bilateralism (and Limited Multilateralism) Is Preferred To understand why and how ASEAN’s relevance could be compromised, we need to look at both internal and external factors guiding ASEAN’s current principles, and then tie these to how they play to China’s best interests instead of the ASEAN region. Internally, the baffling puzzle is why has Southeast Asian multilateralism in solving the SCS dispute been limited to the flawed DOC and COC. A good way to study this is to deep dive into why bilateralism is heavily preferred. On a surface level, the obvious explanation is because not all ASEAN states are involved in the conflict. Only five Southeast States are technically involved in the dispute – the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia. Others are either more involved in territorial disputes with each other or are geographically irrelevant to the dispute. As Section IV will argue, it may well be the case that there are strong incentives for individual states to maintain an amicable relationship with China. Still, what this argument does not explain, is why individual ASEAN states refuse to forgo these incentives for the greater good of the regional bloc, especially in light of China’s devious actions in the SCS. One explanation could be how bilateralism has worked to solve past disputes in the region. When oil and gas reserves were found in the 70s, the Philippines moved in first in 1976, establishing a commercial field in the Reed Bank near its Palawan Island. This received strong opposition from China, Taiwan, and the newly reunited Vietnam, who all claimed the Reed Bank to be within their territories (Muscolino, 2013). Bilateralism took center stage, with each claimant stressing the importance of a peaceful resolution. Negotiations with each claimant avoided escalations for the rest of the decade (Muscolino, 2013). More recently in 2008, Malaysia and Brunei agreed to resolve their dispute by demarcating the land and maritime boundaries, while also collaborating in the exploration of hydrocarbon resources. These became resounding evidence amongst ASEAN leaders that bilateralism could prevent escalations while still maximizing the interests of all parties involved (Roach, 2014). The preference for bilateralism is perhaps better explained by the oddest feature for a regional bloc: a non-interference policy where member states could not interfere with the affairs of another. In context of the SCS dispute, it effectively means that there are no binding mechanisms for the more confrontational Vietnam to coerce the more pro-China Malaysia into shifting its policy stances, for example. The non-interference policy is a result of a shared trauma from colonialism (9 out of 10 ASEAN states are former colonies), with the idea of self-governance becoming a centerpiece when state leaders signed the ASEAN Bangkok Declaration in 1967 (Molthof, 2012). It means there is a heavy reliance on political goodwill for any regional level cooperation to work. It is not surprising then, that the multilateral-centric strategies outlined earlier in this paper remain unrealistic under current conditions. A united front between ASEAN states on the SCS dispute will first require internal disagreements to be solved, which will require a regional supranational body that could fairly rule over the overlapping claims. Amassing enough political goodwill to do this considering the already contentious internal maritime politics is nearly impossible. The practical short-term solution then, as per evidenced by current strategies, is to rely on micro-level, government-to-government negotiations. III. The Role of International Law The second dimension that explains the Southeast Asian states’ current strategy is the complications brought about by international law. The earlier discussion on the DOC and COC was only one part of the legal dimension in the SCS dispute. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), intended to mitigate disputes over maritime claims such as in the SCS, exacerbated the situation in the region. This is a two-part issue: 1) vagueness in UNCLOS language allows for different interpretations, and 2) opt-outs from arbitration processes defeat the mechanisms that could have overcome the vagueness. For there to be a universally recognized dispute settlement mechanism, there also needs to be a universally recognized set of definitions for what is being disputed. UNCLOS stipulates legal definitions for the rights of states over waters beyond their shore, most controversially the provision of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs). It legally gives states the right to exploit resources 200 nautical miles off their shores (The Economist, 2012). There was no practical need for this beyond an incentive for states to sign onto UNCLOS, and that short-term incentive backfires. There is a two-part implication: 1) the importance of owning physical features in the SCS becomes of a strategic importance since EEZs establish a sizable control over a revenue-generating region, and 2) signatories regardless of size and military strength are now able to join in the conversation, which is good, but convolutes the already messy conflict by adding more players to the mix. Note also that Southeast Asian states are primarily emerging markets, and the opportunity to reap benefits from riches of SCS can be vital growth drivers. There is also a more patriotic perspective to this; states could also be pursuing purely nationalistic campaigns to enforce historical claims. The Singapore-Malaysia dispute over Pedra Branca and China-Japan dispute over the Senkaku Islands are prime examples. Irrespective of what motivates the states to enter the dispute, the demarcation process would be delicate as the SCS outlines the shores of at least nine states. Even so, a fair and peaceful delimitation of boundaries would be possible if the arbitration process is thorough all the way to the enforcement stage. This is unfortunately not the case with UNCLOS. Article 298 in UNCLOS gives signatories the option to be excluded from arbitrations of “sea boundary delimitations”, “military activities”, and those within the allowable functions of the Security Council (United Nations, 1982). This clause is effectively an ‘opt-out’ from the very legal proceedings UNCLOS was built for. It allows UNCLOS signatories to circumvent the accountabilities that come with violating the document. China, as expected, opted out of Article 298, giving it the legal backing to not have to act on the 2016 PCA ruling. Consider Section II’s discussion on ASEAN states’ preference towards bilateralism. Government-to-government negotiations can be effective if and only if both sides agree to make themselves accountable to the outcome of those negotiations. Once this accountability becomes optional, it begs the question whether it is still wise for ASEAN to rely heavily on bilateral talks. Another way to put it, what are the consequences of ignoring the apparent systemic flaws in the way ASEAN operates? IV. China’s Golden Paradise A good way to understand the full consequences of the systemic flaw referred in the previous section is to study how that flaw has been used against ASEAN. Again, China is a key player here. With ASEAN preferring bilateralism over multilateralism, there is an opportunity for China to tailor its strategy to individual ASEAN countries. Furthermore, with non-interference policy in full effect, any bilateral relationship an ASEAN country builds with China cannot be questioned even if that relationship adversely affects ASEAN as an organization. While this may not necessarily be the case, it will be argued that China’ current strategy suggests it may be pursuing a Southeast Asian political realignment to Beijing. On ASEAN’s part, with its Member States focusing on building a closer relationship with China, there exist trade-offs in capacity building an already fragile ASEAN, whose social, economic, and political linkages remain underdeveloped. In context of the SCS dispute, this could mean a chipping away of the very foundation of ASEAN as a potential balancing power. A grimmer picture could be that, in the long term, the very existence of ASEAN may be endangered, should its weak organizing power falter under a Chinese realignment. To capture how this can play out, one needs to first understand how China specifically has come to hold the bargaining chip it currently has. The obvious is China’s economic strength; with a gross domestic product (GDP) of $11.2 trillion (2016), China dwarfs even the that of a combined ASEAN at $2.6 trillion (2016) (Asian Development Bank, 2017). As primarily developing markets, Southeast Asian countries are right to leverage on larger economies such as China or the United States, where injections of investments can help speed up their development process. Nonetheless, China’s economic strength does not explain why Southeast Asian governments are leaning heavily towards China more so than the region’s traditional hegemon, the United States (US). A traumatic colonial experience for most ASEAN Member States towards the West, in general, could partially explain this (Wilson, 2017). More recently in 1997, the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s unpopular austerity policies in Thailand and Indonesia lead to disastrous results. This tattooed skepticism among Southeast Asians on long-term relationship building with the West, chiefly the US which holds the IMF’s largest voting power. An even more recent development is unrelated to ASEAN public sentiment at all; the United States is seeing a wave of populism that is pressuring both ends of the political spectrum to be more inward-looking. The election of conservative populist Donald Trump as president further solidified that the US may no longer focus on Southeast Asia. The final confirmation was in Trump’s decision to pull the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), history’s largest regional trade accord (Granville, 2016). The vacuum created by a receding US adds to the already favorable conditions for Chinese dominance in Southeast Asia. All that is left is an execution plan that avoids painting China as another superpower taking advantage of weaker nations. In a 2004 speech, China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao made a compelling remark, stating that China’s rise “will not come at the cost of any other country, will not stand in the way of any other country, nor pose a threat to any other country” (Kurlantzick, 2007). This was in the wake of China’s Peaceful Rise strategy, when it realized that its aggressive, military-centric and coercive tactics backfired badly (Kurlantzick, 2007). This is what is called a charm offensive. The strategy draws from a concept political scientist Joseph Nye calls ‘soft power’, “the ability to shape the preferences of others...It is leading by example and attracting others to do what you want,” (Kurlantzick, 2007). To exercise its soft power, China needs to first change the rhetoric surrounding China’s position in Southeast Asia. The turning point was the 1997 Asian financial crisis, where China made the smart move to lessen the devaluations of the Thai baht and the Indonesian rupiah by refusing to devalue its own currency. The decision was publicized as an Asian solidarity measure, which reframed the conversation on China in the region. China’s charm offensive was then timely; it quickly moved to establish relationships with each Southeast Asian country through cooperation in cultural, educational, and business spheres. China invested heavily to improve its diplomatic outreach, visiting its Southeast Asian neighbors twice as many times as its US counterparts (Kurlantzick, 2007). China has also integrated Southeast Asia into its larger plan to create “the world’s largest platform for economic cooperation”, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). BRI is an ambitious modern iteration of the Silk Road trade route, and it aims to promote physical, economic, and social connectivity (Jinchen, 2017). China’s $113 billion pledge in infrastructure building along the proposed trade route is a catnip for ASEAN states who, according to The McKinsey Global Institute, need over $2 trillion investments between 2016-2030 “in road, rail, port, airport, power, water, and telecommunications infrastructure across ASEAN to maintain economic growth,” (McKinsey Global Institute, 2016). This is the key dilemma created by China’s charm offensive: there is a clear need to address its questionable actions in the SCS dispute, yet the allure of Chinese economic incentives is at the same time too good to ignore. While China continued to deny any geopolitical agenda behind BRI, two observations seem to imply otherwise: 1) the timing of BRI coincides with China’s increasingly aggressive position in the SCS, and 2) selective awarding of valuable economic packages to pro-China ASEAN Member States, most evidently the Philippines $13.5 billion pledge upon President Duterte's U-turn from the PCA ruling. The latter observation is further supported by a tripling of Chinese investment value in Malaysia between 2014 and 2015, curiously coinciding with Malaysia’s refusal to answer calls by the Philippines’ then-President Benigno Aquino III to stand up to China. This sparks speculation that the fluctuating Chinese investment value in Vietnam is a means of Chinese retaliation towards Vietnamese reclamation efforts in the SCS (Cheok, 2017). Therefore, ASEAN states tiptoe the line between maintaining their sovereignty in the SCS and appearing favorable to China to exploit its generous handouts. On the one hand, maintaining control over geographical features in the Spratlys and Paracels could come with additional revenues through EEZs, but cost-benefit analyses could prove economic ties with China to potentially bring in much higher revenues. At the core of this argument is the fact that the commodities at stake in the SCS are primarily in oil and fishing stocks. Consider the difficulty of extracting oil, its price volatilities, and its grim long-term prospects: in 2016 BP estimated that the global oil reserves will last only for the next 53.3 years. A recent study by the OceanAsia project estimates depletions of up to 59% in key fishery stocks by 2045, putting the value of controlling fishery areas at stake (Sumalia and Cheung, 2015). Even in the potential unsustainability of income streams in the SCS, nationalism is such a big part of ASEAN – evidenced by an earlier discussed non-interference policy– that it begs a closer study on whether economic incentives are all it takes for China to assume a winning position in the SCS dispute. Earlier, it was argued that ASEAN’s non-interference policy creates a collective action problem where strong forms of multilateralism are hindered. This argument is also applicable to ASEAN’s inability to achieve the level of market integration required for a seamless intra-ASEAN trade and capital flows. ASEAN’s single market initiative, the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), has made way for tariff reductions of 99.2% in ASEAN-6 (Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand) and 97.52% of tariff have been reduced to 0-5% in others (ASEAN Economic Community, 2015). Albeit slow, this is a remarkable achievement and signals a strong ASEAN solidarity in spite of its shortcomings. However, a closer look reveals a different story: there is almost a four-fold increase in non-tariff barriers and measures (NTB/NTM) from 1,634 measures to 5,975 leading up to AEC’s launch in 2015 (Zulfakar, 2017). Essentially, while ASEAN Member States markets their tariff reductions as proof of their commitment to ASEAN, the apparent shifting of potential loss of income to NTB/NTM suggests a collection of countries focused on individual economic gains more than Southeast Asia’s collective wellbeing. And by virtue of non-interference policy, ASEAN Member States cannot pressure each other to change their policies, at least not within the ASEAN framework. The inference is that yes, China may have struck gold through its charm offensive strategy. V. A Chinese Takeover – Blessing or Curse? As each ASEAN Member States form a closer bilateral relationship with China, it effectively means China will compete with ASEAN to become the common denominator in the Southeast Asian region. Should it succeed, it theoretically would put the entire region under its sphere of influence. The key puzzle this section will answer is whether a pivot to China would be detrimental to the development of ASEAN. Measuring this will first require a modeling of what a Chinese ‘takeover’ of the region would look like. One way to do that is to look at Member States who are now already highly dependent on China; a good example is Cambodia whose Chinese FDI amounts to 61% of its total FDI inflows. The fascinating aspect of the Cambodian example is that its Prime Minister, Hun Sen, has not always been friendly to China, once calling the country “the root of everything that is evil”. Within twelve years, Hun Sen altered the description to “Cambodia’s most trustworthy friend”. China covered Cambodia’s shortages in aid during a 1997 coup. This has led to an over-reliance on Chinese aid, which in turn prevents Cambodia from doing anything that may irk China. One expert describes Cambodia “as an extension of China’s foreign policy,” (Hutt, 2016). This is proven by the country’s constant blocking of official ASEAN statements on the SCS dispute, all while using the term ‘neutrality’ to justify its position. Drawing a parallel to ASEAN, the Cambodia model could very well be China’s vision for the whole Southeast Asian region. Unlike the European Union (EU), ASEAN’s highest decision-making power remains at the state level, hence the logic should follow that individual Member States’ interests precede regional goals. Therefore, consider the endgame following a Chinese takeover as the region’s de facto common denominator. China’s ability and willingness to fill in investment gaps, the considerations towards ASEAN’s inherent flaws, and the realization that resources in the SCS are unsustainable all points to the perspective that China may be an ASEAN alternative Southeast Asia needs. Beyond the push and pull of power play between China and its Western counterparts, what then, is wrong with Southeast Asia embracing China? For one, several red flags exist in the Chinese brand of regionalism. Firstly, China’s ignorance of the PCA ruling – a rejection of its ‘nine-dash’ claim in the SCS – sets a precedent of disrespect towards the international law. Secondly, there are contradictions in China’s narrative to create a harmonious cooperative environment while at the same time aggressively building up military capacity in the SCS, creating an environment of skepticism and distrust. Last and perhaps most dangerously, China’s support of authoritarian regimes such as in Cambodia and Laos does not bode well for human rights improvements. A Chinese sphere of influence appears to promote norms contrasting to that of ASEAN Member States at large. Should the consensus model remain a feature of Chinese-led regionalism – which it realistically will – the aforementioned norms would not promote healthy intergovernmental relationships. To prove this point, it is appropriate to use game theory to compare Southeast Asian cooperation between ASEAN’s framework and a Chinese-led regionalism. This is because Southeast Asian regional cooperation much resembles cartels seeking oligopolistic profits; the consensus model mirrors a similar decision-making process in a cartel where each firm’s decision could not be questioned by another. Collusion returns a higher producer surplus than a market competition would. In Southeast Asia’s case, economic benefits from free trade agreements (FTA) outweigh trade without barriers eliminated. However, cartels are generally unstable due to strong incentives to deviate. Without going too much into the underlying mathematics, the price or quantities set in a cartel, while bringing overall higher profits to the market, do not follow the best response possible for each firm. This is already happening in Southeast Asia: the AEC’s effort to eliminate trade barriers. Section IV outlined that while ASEAN Member States made significant inroads to eliminate tariff barriers, it was found that non-tariff measures and barriers (NTB/NTM) had in fact increased, signaling a mere shift income stream rather than a thorough elimination. This increase in NTB/NTM is a form of deviation, following obvious calculations that Member States stand to enjoy above average benefits through NTB/NTM while still reaping from the advantages of an FTA. Game theory states that for collusion to be sustainable, it requires for there to be: 1) only a few actors in the cartel, 2) a multi-market competition, 3) a transparent market for detection of deviations, and 4) symmetry between the firms (Policonomics). ASEAN Member States violate three of these conditions. With ten players, an often-opaque regulatory framework that makes detection of NTB/NTM difficult, and diverse economic strengths, from a game theory perspective it makes perfect sense that multilateralism is weak within ASEAN. However, at least within the ASEAN framework, there is a conscious effort – a strong political goodwill – to address the issue of NTB/NTM, so much so that the AEC Blueprint 2025, a 10-year action plan for the area, includes a focused and detailed effort to tackle this very issue (ASEAN, 2015). Consider this case in a Chinese-led regionalism, with the norms of disrespect towards international law and untrustworthy narratives coming into play. In a framework that relies so much on political goodwill, an air of distrust not only discourages cooperation to solve the underlying issue, but it further incentivizes deviations in a cartel-like arrangement. There is the true danger of a Chinese realignment in Southeast Asia. While the short-term economic incentives may be attractive and essential to fill in Southeast Asia’s infrastructure gap, there may be significant losses in economic benefits of an integrated Southeast Asian region compared to a bilateral-focused, Chinese-led model. VI. Moving Forward The previous section provides a strong case for there to be check and balances in China’s charm offensive in Southeast Asia. Analyzing the root causes of the SCS dispute’s prolongation revealed China’s apparent strategy to engulf the Southeast Asian sphere of influence into its own. Any strategy moving forward then must go beyond the SCS dispute; it also needs to address China’s long-term strategy in the region. In a way, China’s charm offensive has been a blessing because it also revealed what needs to be done to counter China’s rise. The crux of the strategy should be to look for economic-incentive driven strategies to encourage multilateralism in ASEAN, thus balancing against China. There are three ways to do this: 1) diversifying FDIs, 2) creating an ASEAN investment distribution mechanism, and 3) capitalizing on state strength to engage in less lucrative, intra-ASEAN investments. For starters, there needs to be a paradigm shift from the hunt of immediate gains that appeals to voters. This refers to China’s hefty financial investments, which, as shown, in states like Cambodia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, had apparent geopolitical agenda behind them. Cambodia especially, perhaps because it has no conflicting interests in the SCS as a landlocked country, is now practically a proxy for China in the region. It was the reason behind the failure for ASEAN to issue joint statements in recent years. With the Cambodian case in mind, the logical step would be for individual ASEAN Member States to be careful not to let China be in a dominant position in any form of monetary assistance. The guiding strategy here is then to diversify the pool of incoming capital, be it in terms of FDI, aid, or trade. There are two ways ASEAN Member States can diversity, by increasing their extra-ASEAN and/or intra-ASEAN sources. In the extra-ASEAN strategy, the impending puzzle would be to find other partners as able and as willing as China in handing out economic incentives. The best alternative is perhaps Japan, another Asian economic power which, despite stagnating FDI contribution to ASEAN, remains the Chinese amount in net terms ($17.6 billion compared to China’s $8.2 billion in net inflows at 2015 levels). What needs to change in Japan’s strategy is the distribution of its investments in the region. Japan’s investments are focused on manufacturing, the largest in the region by far, which does imply that it is playing a role in filling in the infrastructure gap required by the industry. However, Japan’s factories are highly concentrated in Thailand and Indonesia, and are highly insignificant in the CLMV (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam) countries, with FDI shares in the single digits (ASEAN, 2017). The CLMV countries are key because their low-income status creates an easier path for China to supplant its influence. Apart for Vietnam’s historical adversity towards China, the country holds a giant’s share of FDI inflow into Cambodia and Laos – 22% and 66% respectively – and is currently Myanmar’s largest trade partner at a third of its total (ASEAN, 2017). The key difference between China and Japan is their motivation behind investing heavily in Southeast Asia. While both seek to balance each other out with regards to the SCS dispute, Japan does not have an apparent geopolitical agenda comparable to that of China. At least from an investment perspective, it appears Japanese companies are flocking for its economic incentives, and not for any Japanese-government mandated charm offensive. CLMV states will need to provide better economic incentives to Japan than the ASEAN-6 (Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia, the Philippines). At the moment, this is unrealistic because even with their high growth rates –averaging at 6.1% compared to 4.1% in ASEAN-6 in 2016, GDP per capita in CLMV remains 2.7 times lower than the ASEAN-6. Should ASEAN Member States fail to find a suitable substitute for China’s inflowing capital, an alternative proposal could instead be to create a regional-level capital distributing mechanism. The idea is to have all capital inflows to ASEAN to first go through a central collecting agency, which will then distribute them to areas of the highest need. An advantage of this strategy is in eliminating the ‘carrots and sticks’ strategy China currently employs in the region. China can then no longer reward obedience and punish confrontations. The strategy also encourages a more equitable development within the region, which, as stated previously, remains disparate between CLMV and the ASEAN-6. As compelling as this idea may be, it faces several challenges. First, it will face an uphill battle from ASEAN Member States because a centralized collection agency essentially implies a violation of the non-interference policy. Given ASEAN’s diverse economies with varying returns to investments, a central collecting agency may deter potential investors since they will not be able to control where their investments go. The final caveat is that the political feasibility of this strategy, given China’s charm offensive, nears impossibility. China will likely use its leverage in Cambodia and Laos to veto any binding decisions on the strategy. Taking such roadblocks into consideration, perhaps a modification of this idea can work. Instead of a centralized collection agency that becomes the middleman for foreign investments, ASEAN Member States can opt to create their own version of the ASEAN Infrastructure Fund (AIF), an initiative under the Asian Development Bank (ADB) that gives financial assistance for infrastructure building. AIF on its own is insufficient because it remains capped at $300 million a year, far below the what is needed by the region. Indonesia, for example, needs $358 billion worth of investments in infrastructure spending by 2019 to keep pace with its targets (ASEAN, 2017). More tellingly, AIF funds are tied to projects endorsed by the ADB, in which China holds the largest voting share amongst Asia-Pacific shareholders. The proposed ASEAN Regional Fund (ARF) ought to be within the full jurisdiction of ASEAN, where it can dispense funds without having to answer to China or other superpowers. It will become obvious that ASEAN governments will not be able to gather the funds necessary on their own. One possible model to follow is to engage in a public-private partnership (PPP), only instead of a single company doing a joint venture with a particular ASEAN Member State, the proposed ARF will be responsible to pool money by their relevant sectors. Any infrastructure building projects will then be on a shared value basis. That way, state-owned companies cannot exert any geopolitical agenda behind proposed projects. In 2016, intra-ASEAN investments accounted for a quarter of FDI flows in the region ($24 billion), a 500% increase from 2003 levels where an upward trend has been observed since. What is more compelling is how intra-ASEAN investments in CLMV are also getting the lion’s share of total investments (ASEAN, 2017). These figures show an increasing regionality of ASEAN businesses, and that an ASEAN-led ARF may not be far from reality. In terms of feasibility, it is to be expected that ARF’s implementation will take a long time since there remains the issue that ASEAN Member States possess varying regulatory frameworks. It would require some minimal level of harmonization to avoid issues such as double taxations. As far as short-term strategies go, ASEAN Member States are fairly limited by the constraints echoed throughout this paper. A viable short-term strategy has to navigate through the inability to legally coerce other ASEAN Member States, an international law framework that does not have a real enforcement power, and high reliance on economic incentives. Therefore, it can be argued that a state-level solution remains the most viable option. The explicit suggestion here is for Member States to individually forgo trade deals with China, and signing less lucrative deals with other external partners or other ASEAN Member States. What the strategy aims to do is to capitalize on ASEAN Member States’ incentive-driven nature to promote multilateralism. How is this politically viable on a local level? Intuitively speaking, foregoing valuable financial assistance may paint incompetence to local voters, thus potentially costing elections. ASEAN Member States, however, are ‘strong states’, where “policymakers are highly insulated from [domestic interest-group pressures]” (Oatley, 2016). It suggests that ASEAN governments have significant room to follow policies that the public may not agree with, which includes the proposed strategy above. The core logic of the strategy is the following: increasing intra-ASEAN trade and capital flow to facilitate capacity building in ASEAN. These intra-ASEAN investments will help to create formal and informal linkages that intertwine Member States’ interests beyond their own geographical border. These newfound linkages may pressure Member States to also think about their regional investments on top of China’s investments, especially as China becomes more fearless in exercising its ‘carrots and sticks’. In the long run, this could mean a greater need to align policies, hence promoting more multilateral dialogues. In context of the SCS dispute, this could also encourage the option of joint explorations in the waters, solving the dispute at least between ASEAN Member States. The three strategies outlined above focus heavily on trying to balance against China’s creeping charm offensive, but it requires a closer look to determine whether they would automatically solve the SCS dispute. On the one hand, each of these strategies seeks to cripple China’s ability to use money to pressure its ASEAN dependents to respect its interests. On the other, a decaying Chinese influence is not an easy solve; it merely equates to a leveling of the playing field. Another dimension remains unsolvable: the failure of current legal frameworks to fairly arbitrate the dispute. Unless China submits itself to the binding mechanisms under UNCLOS, or voluntarily respects the original PCA ruling, the SCS will remain a contentious issue. A further argument could be made on the possibility that the SCS is not a fight worth fighting. This is in consideration of an earlier cost-benefit analysis of maintaining EEZs in the SCS. The natural resources, namely oil and fish, are unsustainable and are expected to deplete in the near future. Beyond the pretense of sovereignty, it seems clear cut for ASEAN Member States to abandon an unwinnable battle to focus on more actionable strategies. VII. Conclusion A study of the South China Sea maritime dispute requires focus on two key players: China and ASEAN. A surface level observation sees China engaging in questionable behavior in the SCS through its aggressive militarization, island building, and blocking of fishing activities. As for ASEAN, it is striking why there is not a strong multilateral opposition against China, given the high-stakes nature of the disputed areas. A preliminary analysis of how China and ASEAN have approached this dispute so far reveals an insufficient Code of Conduct, where recent negotiations indicated China’s unwillingness to succumb to rule of law at its own expense. There is also the observation that an increasingly diverging ASEAN Member States position also weakens multilateral approaches to solve the dispute. On reasons why the boundary delimitation process has been slow, the argument is two-fold. First, the preference for bilateral process stems from a historical success of such dialogues in the past. Digging deeper, ASEAN’s own structure appears to be at fault. By having a consensus model, and a non-interference policy towards Member States, ASEAN lacks a punishment or coercion mechanism. It means that any regional-level initiatives will require the political goodwill of all Member States. A second dimension that explains the SCS dispute’s prolongation is in the role of international law. UNCLOS, designed to mitigate disputes such as in the SCS, is found to be inherently flawed in two ways. First, UNCLOS’s legal definitions for what states can claim complicates the SCS dispute; the unnecessary inclusion of EEZs contributed towards increasing competition to take control of features in the SCS. Secondly, the use of opt-out clauses from certain parts of the arbitration process defeats the whole purpose of the arbitration process altogether. Another catalyst for Chinese domination in the region is in a receding US trend, at least in terms of its soft power. China recognizes the weakness of its hard power; hence, it exercises its soft power through a charm offensive strategy. This entails changing China’s rhetoric among ASEAN Member States as well as handing out generous economic incentives. The observation that China channels capital to Member States that protect its interests, and pulls out of those who do not, showcases the country’s ‘carrots and sticks’ gameplay to become the region’s new common denominator. Between the fight for sovereignty and economic incentives, it was shown that fighting for sovereignty in the SCS may not be the best strategy after all. Depleting fisheries and oil reserves does not amount to the same long term economic benefits of a Chinese infrastructure splurge. Also, the increase in non-tariff measures and barriers (NTM/NTB) upon the launch of the AEC in 2015 shows that ASEAN Member States are inherently incentive driven. Therefore, a Chinese-led regionalism is clearly the profit-maximizing outcome. In exploring the downsides of a Chinese-led regionalism, comparing the operation of ASEAN to a cartel, leads to the equilibria where Member States are strongly incentivized to deviate from a cartel-like arrangement. The difference from an ASEAN-led regionalism is in the norms China practices. China’s rejection of the PCA, for example, shows brazen disrespect for international law. Norms practiced by China does not promote healthy intergovernmental relationships moving forward. There is now a recognition that the SCS maritime dispute is only a small part of a larger, more existential threat towards ASEAN. Strategies moving forward should not then be short-sighted to any single aspect such as the SCS dispute alone. The first recommendation would be to diversify the sources of foreign investments in the region. Japan was given a suitable alternative, but a balancing against China can only happen here if Japan invests in the same sectors and locations, which is unfortunately not the case in such a segmented region. The second strategy is to create a capital distribution mechanism to promote equitable development hence reducing the ability of external powers such as China to influence the foreign policies of any Member State. A central collecting agency may prove to be too intrusive, hence a modified version centered on pooling money through public-private partnerships (PPP) may be a good way to do this. The only downside of this strategy is that it requires significant advances in ASEAN’s regional regulatory framework. One potential short-term solution to the existential threat posed by China would be to capitalize on ASEAN Member States’ ability to pursue sometimes unpopular policies in their respective countries to encourage intra-ASEAN investments. The whole point of this strategy is to further intertwine Member States’ interests within the region, but beyond their own national borders. These will create formal and informal linkages which will pressure governments to protect their now far-reaching investments. This is a form of an economic incentive-led way of encouraging multilateralism. All in all, as the strategies proposed show, ASEAN remains an essential medium in managing internal and external threats to Southeast Asian nations. ASEAN’s flaws are being used against it, but it also exposes where it can improve on moving forward. That is good progress. Endnotes 9To meet its energy demands, China imports 54 percent of its oil from the Middle East, 80 percent of which passes through the southern SCS passage. 10 Southeast Asia technically consists of 11 countries, with Timor-Leste remaining as an observer of the bloc 11 Cambodia, widely considered as China’s “most faithful client state”, has been behind the blockade of at least two post-summit statements; their position could be because China remains Cambodia’s largest aid provider, an incentive the low-income state sorely needs to catch-up with other ASEAN Member States. 12 Malaysia’s military exercise is part of a growing bilateral military cooperation between the two countries. It has grown from cooperation in disaster relief towards sea lane protections in Straits of Malacca. China also signed a ~$13.5 billion contract to build a rail link that will cut cargo shipping by 30 hours. 13 Vietnam began dredging its military-controlled Ladd Reef in 2016, and signed a gas-drilling venture with ExxonMobil due to be in full operation by 2023. 14 Singapore is in an ongoing dispute with Malaysia over Pedra Branca and South Ledge; Thailand and Cambodia both dispute overlapping claims over Koh Kut; Myanmar does not have shore in the SCS; and Laos is a landlocked country. 15 “In the mid-1990s, China had tried to use military strength to intimidate other countries in Asia, by aggressive moves like sending ships to unoccupied, disputed reefs in the South China Sea. At the same time, Beijing called on other nations in the region to abandon their alliances, mostly with the United States, arguing that these had been made obsolete by the Cold War. This strategy backfired. Countries across the region condemned Beijing’s aggressive behavior and solidified their military links with the United States, drawing the US armed forces closer into the region, and closer to China—exactly what Beijing did not want.” 16 The FDI is on a net basis, and computed as follows: Net FDI = Equity + Net Inter-company Loans + Reinvested Earnings. The net basis concept implies that the followings should be deducted from the FDI gross flows: (1) reverse investment (made by a foreign affiliate in a host country to its parent company/direct investor; (2) loans given by a foreign affiliate to its parent company; and (3) repayments of intra-company loan (paid by a foreign affiliate to its parent company). As such, FDI net inflows can be negative. 17 Japan’s FDI share in 2016 are as follows: Vietnam, 10%; Myanmar, insignificant (collapse into Others; Lao PDR, 4%; Cambodia, 9%. 18 In 2016, intra-ASEAN investments account for: Cambodia, 28%; Laos, 18%; Myanmar, 58%; Vietnam, 18%. 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Financial Literacy, Credit Access and Financial Stress of Micro-Firms Evidence from Chile Lucas Rosso Fones University of Chile Author Christopher (Casey) Lingelbach Emily Belt Orly Mansbach Editors Fall 2019 Download full text PDF (23 pages) Abstract In Chile, as well as in the majority of the economies in the world, there exists a wide range of programs targeted towards the support of micro-entrepreneurs, providing either funding for their projects or business training. Using the 2006 and 2009 Chilean Social Protection Survey (EPS) dataset, data from the Superintendence of Banks and Financial Institutions (SBIF), and using an instrumental variables (IV) approach, this article presents evidence against financial literacy training programs as it finds no significant relationship between financial literacy on credit access or financial stress of micro-firms. Moreover, using a subsample of the data, this article shows that the results must be interpreted as an “upper bound,” thus strengthening these conclusions. I. Introduction In Chile, as in most of the world, micro-firms—firms with 10 or fewer employees—play a substantial role in the performance of the economy by their contribution to production and employment. Therefore, over the last few years, authorities have developed several policies targeted to encourage entrepreneurial activities. These policies include business skills training, asset transfers and credit subsidies. For example, since 2010, a large-scale government program run by the Chilean Ministry of Social Development offers an in-kind transfer of start-up capital plus 60 hours of business training to approximately 2,000 micro-entrepreneurs each year. Due to this governmental interest in micro-firms, there is a wide literature that has studied the effect of micro-firm support on growth, unemployment, poverty, productivity, and other economic variables. Overall, the evidence leans toward a positive and statistically significant effect of credit-access programs on these variables; however, the evidence with respect to business skills is weaker. Conversely, other studies have linked financial literacy with the probability of having access to credit and the level of debt, though these studies are usually at the individual or family level. For instance, Alvarez & Ruiz-Tagle provide evidence that financial literacy is positively related to credit access, but they find no significant evidence for financial stress. Economic models of investment often rely on the assumption that firms decide the amount of capital and labor that maximizes their profit. This assumption is called the rationality of firms. Furthermore, these models evaluate the present value of the expected cash flows in relation to the initial investment. From the work of Modigliani & Miller it follows that, in a world with taxes, levered firms (companies with more debt than equity) have a greater value than non-levered firms, at the expense of a higher bankruptcy probability. However, under the assumption of rationality of firms, these models are unable to take into account the lack of financial skills of those who run the firms, which might affect their decision-making and lead them to choose sub-optimal levels of debt. This issue is especially important in micro-firms due to the often limited human capital of their owners. Thus, it is likely that micro-firms with limited financial skills hold high levels of debt or fail to renegotiate their debts, which can affect the individuals’ utility through larger levels of poverty or unemployment, among other effects. From a policymaker’s standpoint, there are two possibilities to support entrepreneurs: business training or funding support. On the one hand, business training intends to provide skills for better management of the business. For example, such training programs may provide client negotiation skills, marketing skills, working capital management, growth strategies, and more. On the other hand, funding support seeks to fix liquidity constraints which diminish the rise of new business and the prevalence and growth of existing ones. This paper intends to establish a causal relationship between financial literacy and both credit access and financial stress of micro-firms. Evidence in favor of a causal relationship would encourage the design of business training programs as a complement to the existing asset-transfer programs for micro-entrepreneurs. Using data from the 2006 and 2009 Social Protection Survey (EPS) and information from the Superintendence of Banks and Financial Institutions (SBIF) this paper presents evidence against financial literacy programs for micro-firms given that it does not find statistically significant coefficients for either credit access or financial stress. Nevertheless, a sharp reader may have concerns about the internal validity of the results as data restraints do not allow an experimental design for a specific policy. However, this paper tries to provide evidence regarding the effect of greater financial literacy on micro-firm financial decision making, giving broad conclusions on this matter and contributing to future policy design. In addition, as there are very few financial skill programs, it is unlikely that this may drive this paper’s results. Additionally, due to the endogeneity of financial literacy (the correlation of the variable and the error term used in this model), this paper proposes an instrumental variable (IV) approach, using the number of banks at a township level as an instrument for financial literacy. As it will be argued later, this instrument satisfies both the relevance and exogeneity conditions. Likewise, given the limited amount of observations that this sample contains, it is not possible to estimate the coefficients using the fixed effects model, which may drive this paper’s results. For instance, it is reasonable to think that those who appear as micro-firm owners in both years are the ones with more financial literacy, causing biased coefficients due to a non-random attrition, the process by which the strength of the relationship gradually decreases. Hence, by comparing a pooled model with a subsample of individuals only from the EPS 2006, this paper establishes an “upper bound” for the estimated coefficients. Given that this paper finds no significant results, this work supports the evidence found on other business training studies, such as the results presented by Karlan & Valdivia. The rest of the paper is divided into seven sections. Section 2 carries out a brief literature review. Section 3 describes the data, defines the main variables and presents some stylized facts. Section 4 presents the underlying economic model that sustains this investigation. Section 5 presents in detail the empirical model and discusses the main estimation problems. Section 6 shows the main results and robustness checks. Finally, section 7 presents conclusions and public policy recommendations. II. Literature Review There is a rich literature related to studying the effect of micro-entrepreneur support on poverty alleviation, unemployment, and other variables, especially regarding the evaluation of financial aid programs (credit subsidies, asset transfers, and more) and business training programs. For instance, Bruhn & Love exploit the almost simultaneous opening of more than 800 bank branches in Mexico targeted to low-income individuals, using this event as a “natural experiment.” With this experimental design and using a difference-in-difference strategy (comparing areas that received banks to similar ones that did not across time), they present evidence of a positive relationship between credit access and poverty alleviation. In the same way, Beck, Demirgüç-Kunt & Levine, using a dynamic panel at country level, find a negative and statistically significant relationship between credit access and inequality. This relationship is due to the heterogeneity in the improvement of credit access, being low-income individuals the ones who benefit the most from improved credit access. Likewise, Levine, Loayza & Beck use both cross-section and dynamic panel approaches, as well as instrumental variables to find a negative relationship between financial intermediary development and economic growth. These results are in line with Aghion et al. which finds that higher credit restraints affect economies’ mean growth. We now turn our attention to the mixed evidence of business training programs for micro-entrepreneurs, which cover a wide range of useful managing skills such as promotion skills, working capital management, and negotiation strategies. The work performed by Karlan & Valdivia or Almeida & Galasso fail to find significant evidence of business training programs for micro-entrepreneurs in Peru and Argentina. In contrast, Berge et al. and Bjorvatn & Tungodden find positive effects of human capital accumulation programs for micro-firm owners in Tanzania, while Mano & Iddrisu find the same in Ghana. Moreover, considering micro-firm owners in Chile, Martinez, Puentes & Ruiz-Tagle use the MESP program and an experimental design to provide useful evidence regarding a positive relationship between a combination of an asset transfer and business training on employment and wages of low-income micro firm owners, most of whom are women. However, they are unable to study the effect of each component of the program by itself. Examining financial literacy levels, literature focuses mainly on individual or family level. For example, Alvarez & Ruiz-Tagle, using an IV identification strategy, find some evidence related to wider credit access for households with higher financial literacy; however, they find no evidence for the levels of financial stress. Regarding individuals, some evidence shows that lower understanding of financial concepts can trigger larger levels of debt and higher probability of default. Nevertheless, it is also important to consider that lower levels of financial literacy might suggest a lower propensity to sustain relationships with financial institutions. Finally, considering micro-firm support programs, the work performed by Drexler et al. studies the effect of two types of financial skill training programs in the Dominican Republic. The first provides standard classes covering accounting and financial contents while the second offers basic classes teaching rules of thumb of finance and accounting. Among their results, the authors conclude that lower-complexity courses are more effective on financial decision-making of the treated. Despite not finding significant effects on profit or sales of any of the programs, they find some evidence of an increase in bad week sales. Overall, literature tends to lean in favor of a positive relationship between credit access and different variables related to utility of economic agents. However, evidence is mixed regarding business training programs. Further, these programs rarely focus on financial literacy or link this variable to the probability of having access to credit (at least not at a micro-firm level) despite its potential relevance in explaining the firm's liquidity constraints. Therefore, this paper seeks to provide evidence for the relation between financial literacy and the two dependent variables of interest: credit access and financial stress, with the purpose of public-policy recommendations. III. Data and Stylized Facts The data used for this work comes mainly from the Chilean Social Protection Survey (EPS), specifically the surveys of 2006 and 2009. This paper also uses data from the Superintendence of Banks and Financial Institutions (SBIF), which provides information on the distribution of bank branches at a township level, to create the instrument proposed in this paper. In both the EPS 2006 and the EPS 2009, the surveys interview roughly 15,000 households with a total of 81,096 and 74,047 observations, respectively. That being said, this paper only considers individuals that declare being owners or partners of some business. Furthermore, defining micro-firms according to the amount of workforce, this paper drops every business with more than 10 workers. Ultimately, after cleaning the database, 935 observations remained, of which 575 come from the EPS 2006 and 360 from the EPS 2009. One of the greatest strengths of the EPS is that it has a section of questions related to financial knowledge and the risk aversion of the individual. That section allows this paper to develop a Financial Literacy Index (FLI) and a risk aversion index, both in line with the ones presented by Flores, Landerretche & Sanchez. Moreover, consistent with Alvarez & Ruiz-Tagle, this paper defines financial stress as the debt to income ratio. In this matter, financial stress is defined as the total amount of debt related to business reported by the interviewee, divided by his mean annual income. Moreover, a proxy for the formality of the business is created by generating a dummy variable that takes the value of one when the firm declares sales taxes and zero if not. In Table 1 there is a summary of the main variables used for this investigation. Regarding FLI, on average, individuals interviewed answered correctly to 41 percent of the questions. Table 2 shows the distribution of correct answers. Surprisingly, just 1.07 percent of the sample answered correctly to the six questions of basic financial concepts and less than 25 percent of those interviewed responded correctly to more than half of the questions. Moreover, regarding the compound interest rate question, which is arguably the most important question when establishing a relationship with a financial institution because loans are calculated over a compound interest rate, just a 2.78 percent answered correctly. This number is considerably lower than the one found by Lusardi & Mitchell for baby boomers in the US, which was around 18 percent. Looking at credit access and financial stress, only 16 percent of the sample has some debt when interviewed, while the mean debt represents 19 percent of the individual annual income. Nevertheless, this last number is mainly driven by the relationship (or lack of relationship) with the financial institutions. Moreover, conditional on having a loan, financial stress rises to 14.3. However, despite the magnitude of the mean, it is important to consider that this debt considers long run loans such as land or equipment loans. Appendix 3 shows the means for these variables by sex and age, showing that individuals between 24 and 54 years old have greater levels of financial stress as well as the largest share of individuals that participate in the financial markets. Now this paper proceeds to look at the township-level distribution of bank branches. Townships have on average 36 bank branches. However, it is important—especially for a geographically unique country like Chile—to consider the heterogeneity of the data given the concentration of bank branches within the wealthiest, more urbanized and more educated townships, like the ones in the Metropolitan Region. Appendix 4 details the distribution of bank branches by regions. For example, there are 75.8 bank branches in each township from the Metropolitan Region, while in the third region the number goes down to 6.1. IV. Theoretical Framework For a better understanding of the empirical strategy, it is essential to rely on a theoretical model that provides an economic interpretation for the results obtained. As mentioned earlier in this paper, assuming that the firms evaluate business projects using a simple stochastic model of present value, this statement can be formalized with the following equation: (1) Yt=-I0+i=1niEtt Where Yt is the expected present value of the project in t, yt is the cash flow on period t, δ∈ (0,1) corresponds to the discount rate, and Et is the expectation operator, conditional on the set of information t. This expression is a simplification of the one proposed by Campbell & Shiller, which is very useful for the purposes of this investigation. If we assume that not all of the individuals have access to the same set of information t, or they do not understand completely all the information available, it is reasonable to think that some entrepreneurs might forecast their cash flows incorrectly. This will likely affect the expected present value of the project; thus, these estimations can compromise the firm’s liquidity or restrain their access to external funding due to lack of information. Likewise, wrong cash flow estimations might affect the firm’s decision whether to invest or not, as well as their growth possibilities given that projects are subject to the condition Yt > 0. A key assumption of this model is that individuals overestimate their cash flows as the result of a smaller set of information, which will be called t'. This can be taken from the evidence presented by Agarwal, Driscoll & Laibson who show that on the mortgage market, individuals fail to minimize their debt costs, which can be extensible to other types of debt. In that case, individuals underestimate the debt cost as they do not understand how much they pay nor their options associated with their loan. One clear example is that, on the compound interest question (see Appendix 1), 96.3 percent of those interviewed answered incorrectly and 29.3 percent of those interviewed answered as if it was a simple interest rate, which reaffirms the conclusions of Agarwal et al. Therefore, considering the assumptions mentioned above, we have that: (2) Yt-Yt'=i=1niEtt-Ett'<0 In which the right-hand expression would be the present value of the estimation error, which depends on the information gap t-t'. Thus, the bigger the information asymmetries, the less accurate the estimations for projects run by entrepreneurs with limited access to information—or in this case, entrepreneurs with low financial literacy—will be. In addition, this model, sustained by the evidence presented by Agarwal et al. predicts that the transmission channel for illiteracy will be related to costs, not income. Another important factor is the decision of individuals to increase their stock of financial knowledge. It is easy to see that increasing financial skills endowment has costs and benefits. On the one hand, benefits are related to the model shown above as they allow better access to information and hence allow the individuals to make better investment decisions. On the other hand, the process of acquiring basic financial knowledge takes time and resources, which implies costs. Overall, theory predicts that individuals optimally choose the stock of financial knowledge that maximizes their welfare, as formalized by Jappelli & Padulla. However, this model runs out of the main goal of this investigation. Finally, it is important to mention that, according to the theoretical model presented by Modigliani & Miller, in the presence of information asymmetries between firm owners and the market, levered companies are more valuable as they signal a low bankruptcy probability to the market. This would generate, consistent with the work of Ross, an incentive to be levered. This statement generates some concern regarding the prediction that firms with bigger financial stress have owners with lower financial literacy. V. Identification Strategy For the identification strategy, two models are estimated in parallel: one for financial stress and the other for the dummy variable of credit access. As such, this paper estimates the following equation: (3) Yit=Xitβ+δFLIit+t+it In which Yit represents the two dependent variables, financial stress and credit access, for each specification. Xit is a vector of individual control variables (such as education, age, or gender) and firm control variables as a dummy for formality, business age, and amount of workforce. t corresponds to a dummy variable that takes value 1 for year 2009 and 0 for 2006, to control for year-fixed effects. Our parameter of interest, FLI, corresponds to the financial literacy index, which consists of the amount of correct answers from the set of financial questions of the EPS (see Appendix 1 for more detail). it is the error term of the model. Finally, I use robust standard errors to control for possible heteroscedasticity. Regarding the variable of interest of this work, there are reasons to believe that it presents endogeneity issues due to measurement errors of the index or spillovers from those who participate actively in financial markets, as explained by Alvarez & Ruiz-Tagle. The first issue is a result of the noisy nature of financial literacy, while the second occurs because some financial concepts might be learned by participating in financial markets. It is well known that measurement errors on right-side variables will tend to bias the coefficients towards zero, while spillovers are expected to bias the FLI upwards. Therefore, given that both sources of bias operate on opposite directions, the end result will depend on which effect is dominant. In order to tackle the problem of endogeneity, this paper suggests an IV approach, using the amount of bank branches at a township level as an instrument for the FLI. This instrument can be considered exogenous for the financial stress variable as there is no theoretical reason to believe that this might correlate with the level of financial literacy of the interviewee. However, when analyzing access to credit, the relationship is more plausible, because micro-entrepreneurs can choose where to set up their business. That being said, the EPS dataset does not ask for the township in which the business is located, but for the township where the individual lives. Individuals likely did not decide to live in a township due to the supply of financial institutions, but rather due to the accessibility of the township, supply of education establishments, green area supply, compatibility with neighbors, and other variables. Thus, this IV fulfills the exogeneity condition on both specifications. Then, the first stage regressions can be written: (4) FLIict=Xitβ+δBct+t+ict In which Bct would be the number of bank branches on the township c. Another problem related to the estimations is that, when using a pool sample with observations of the EPS 2006 and 2009, it is likely that there will be non-random attrition bias if the reason to disappear from one survey to another is correlated with the FLI. Furthermore, one can think that those interviewed with lower financial literacy will have a higher bankruptcy probability and therefore lower probability to declare being a business owner on the EPS 2009, generating upward biases. The next section tackles this issue and reaffirms the robustness of the results obtained. VI. Main Results and Robustness Checks Table 3 shows the main results of both dependent variables. Columns 1 and 3 show the estimations using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) with year fixed effects while column 2 and 4 show the results using IV. We notice that for none of the specifications is there a statistically significant coefficient for the FLI; however, in column 2, the coefficient is almost significant at a 10 percent level (p-value of 0.117). Also, we can see that coefficients are considerably larger when using an IV approach, which suggests that the attenuation bias (the underestimation of the absolute value of this data caused by errors in the independent variable) dominates the spillover effect of those who participate on the financial markets. These results are similar to the ones obtained by Alvarez & Ruiz-Tagle, in which they argue that the positive relationship between financial literacy and financial stress might be explained by greater credit access or overconfidence of the more literate individuals. The positive relationship between the FLI and the probability of having access to credit also has the expected sign; however, the significance is weaker than the one presented by Alvarez & Ruiz-Tagle. The lower panel of Table 3 shows the main results of the first stage. Shown in both models, the number of bank branches fulfills the condition of relevance as the F test is greater than 10 and the coefficients are highly significant in both specifications. Regarding the control variables, the reader can see that they all go in the expected directions. However, this paper believes it is important to discuss in detail the formality dummy variable, given that the coefficient is negative and statistically significant for credit access. At first, intuition would suggest a positive relationship between the formality of the business and the probability of getting a loan and its financial stress. Further, one would expect that formally constituted companies should have better access to request a loan on a financial institution. However, it is likely that for micro-firms as the ones studied in this paper, obtaining a loan as a formal company is more of a restraint than an advantage. The reason is very simple: an individual can leave personal assets such as his/her house or car as collateral, which reduces the bank’s risk, so unincorporated companies would take more loans than formal companies. Overall, these results suggest that business training programs related to financial skills would not be effective to diminish the financial stress (and with that the survival probability) nor the probability of having access to credit of micro-firms, as better financial literacy has no significant effect on either of these variables. Thus, a more effective policy design would be related to providing asset transfers and loan subsidies, consistent with the empirical evidence shown in the literature review. A. Robustness Checks Given that the pooled model presented in the previous subsection has observations for micro-entrepreneurs from years 2006 and 2009, it is likely that these results may be biased due to non-random attrition, in which the results gradually decrease in strength. Intuitively, it is reasonable to think that those who report themselves as micro-firm owners on both the 2006 and 2009 surveys are the ones with higher financial literacy levels (as financial literacy would be a useful tool for making optimal financial decisions and diminish the probability of bankruptcy), which would generate upward bias on the estimations presented in Table 3. In that case, results shown before should be interpreted as an “upper bound,” proving solid evidence against a causal relationship between financial literacy and the two dependent variables studied for this investigation. In order to test this hypothesis, this paper estimates again columns 2 and 4 of Table 3, but only for a subsample of year 2006 observations. If the hypothesis is true, both the significance and the coefficients must fall on this new specification. Table 4 shows the results obtained from this subsample, using the IV approach as on columns 2 and 4 of Table 3. From the table above, one can see that the results obtained are consistent with this paper’s hypothesis, as the coefficients (and their p-values) fall on both specifications when using the subsample of observations from 2006. For financial stress, the estimated coefficient falls from 3.899 to 1.698 (and the p-value increase from 0.12 to 0.36), while credit access falls from 2.693 to 2.117 (p-value changes from 0.21 to 0.30). One possible concern regarding these results is that they can be driven by the narrowing of the sample, as for the pooled model the sample was already limited on observations. However, one can see that the standard error falls when the regressions are estimated for the subsample of the year 2006, despite reducing the size of the sample. Furthermore, the instrument bank branches on township is still highly significant (at a 99 percent level for both specifications) and has an F test of 11.54. This implies that the results shown on Table 3 should be interpreted as an “upper bound,” due to the attrition bias, presenting robust evidence against financial training programs, as there is no significant relationship between financial literacy and access to credit or financial stress of micro-firms. VII. Final Conclusions This paper intended to establish a causal relationship between the financial literacy level of micro-entrepreneurs, their probability of having access to financial markets, and their financial stress. Based on the literature regarding this subject and given the large empirical evidence in favor of financial aid programs for micro-firms, as well as the mixed results in business training programs, this paper intended to contribute new evidence relative to the effectiveness of policies that involve business training for micro-firm owners. By using an instrumental variables approach, this paper tried to tackle the endogeneity problems that the financial literacy index (created following Flores, Landerretche & Sanchez) is exposed to. This paper uses the number of bank branches at a township level as an instrument for the index, which fulfills both the exogeneity and relevance conditions. Overall, my results suggest that there is no causal relationship between financial literacy and the two dependent variables studied. Further, due to non-random attrition bias, these results must be interpreted as an “upper bound” which provides solid evidence against financial training programs. Finally, for future investigations, it would be useful to check the external validity of the model and see if the results hold for other datasets in Chile or other middle-income countries. It would be also relevant to know if the conclusion on financial training projects holds for other variables, such as the probability of default. Works Cited Agarwal, S., J. C. Driscoll & D. I. Laibson. “Optimal Mortgage Refinancing: A Closed-Form Solution.” Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, vol. 45, no. 4, 2013, pp. 591–622. Aghion, P., Angeletos, G. M., Banerjee, A., & Manova, K. Volatility and growth: Credit constraints and productivity-enhancing investment. National Bureau of Economic Research, no. w11349, 2005. Akerlof, G. A. “The market for “lemons”: Quality uncertainty and the market mechanism.” Uncertainty in Economics, 1978, pp. 235-251.Alvarez, R., Ruiz-Tagle, J. Alfabetismo financiero, Endeudamiento y Morosidad de los Hogares en Chile, University of Chile, 2016. Almeida, R. K., & Galasso, E. “Jump-starting self-employment? Evidence for welfare participants in Argentina.” World Development, vol. 38, no. 5, 2010, pp.742-755. Atkinson, A., & Messy, F. A. “Promoting financial inclusion through financial education.” OECD Working Papers on Finance, Insurance and Private Pensions, no. 34, 2013. Beck, T., Demirgüç-Kunt, A., & Levine, R. “Finance, inequality and the poor.” Journal of Economic Growth, vol. 12, no.1, 2007, pp. 27-49. Beck, T., & Demirguc-Kunt, A. “Small and medium-size enterprises: Access to finance as a growth constraint.” Journal of Banking & Finance, vol. 30, no. 11), 2006, pp. 2931-2943. Berge, L. I. O., Bjorvatn, K., & Tungodden, B. “Human and financial capital for microenterprise development: Evidence from a field and lab experiment.” Management Science, vol. 61, no. 4, 2014, pp. 707-722. Behrman, J. R., Mitchell, O. S., Soo, C., & Bravo, D. Financial literacy, schooling, and wealth accumulation. 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 The Brookings Institution, 2010. Gerardi, K., Goette, L., and Meier, S. "Financial Literacy and Subprime Mortgage Delinquency: Evidence from a Survey Matched to Administrative Data." SSRN Electronic Journal, 2010. Hansen, B., Econometrics, 2016. Jappelli, T. and Padula, M. ‘Investment in financial literacy and saving decisions’, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance, University of Naples Frederico II, CSEF Working Paper no. 272, 2011. Karlan, D., & Valdivia, M. “Teaching entrepreneurship: Impact of business training on microfinance clients and institutions.” Review of Economics and Statistics, vol. 93, no. 2, 2011, pp. 510-527. Landerretche, O. y C. Martínez “Voluntary Savings, Financial Behavior, and Pension Finance Literacy: Evidence from Chile,” Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, vol. 12, no. 03, 2013, pp. 251-297. Levine, R., Loayza, N., & Beck, T. “Financial intermediation and growth: Causality and causes.” Journal of Monetary Economics, vol. 46, no. 1, 2000, pp. 31-77. Lusardi, A., & Tufano, P. “Debt literacy, financial experiences, and overindebtedness.” Journal of Pension Economics Finance, vol. 14, no. 4, 2015, pp. 332-368. Mano, Y., Iddrisu, A., Yoshino, Y., & Sonobe, T. “How can micro and small enterprises in sub-Saharan Africa become more productive? The impacts of experimental basic managerial training.” World Development, vol. 40, no. 3, 2012, pp. 458-468. Martínez, A., Puentes, E., & Ruiz-Tagle, J. “The effects of micro-entrepreneurship programs on labor market performance: experimental evidence from Chile.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, vol. 10, no. 2, 2018, pp. 101-24. Modigliani, F., & Miller, M. H. “Corporate income taxes and the cost of capital: a correction.” The American Economic Review, vol. 53, no.3, 1963, pp. 433-443. Ross, S. A. “The determination of financial structure: the incentive-signalling approach.” The Bell Journal of Economics, 1977, pp. 23-40. Saavedra, M. L., & Hernández, Y. “Caracterización e importancia de las MIPYMES en Latinoamérica: Un estudio comparativo.” Actualidad Contable Faces, vol. 11, no.17, 2008. Staiger, D. O., & Stock, J. H. Instrumental variables regression with weak instruments, 1994. Appendices Appendix 1: Creation of Variables (a.) Financial Literacy Index (FLI): Consistent with Flores et al., we designed an index following the next set of questions and the number of correct answers: • Question 1: Probability. If there is a 10 percent chance of getting a disease, How many people will catch the disease out of 1000? 
 • Question 2: Lottery Division. If five people hold the same winning ticket from a lottery of $2 million, how much will each receive? 
 • Question 3: Interest rate. Assume that you have $100 in a savings account and the annual interest rate that you receive for this savings is 2 percent. If you keep the money for 5 years on this account, how much money will you have in five years from now?
 a. More than $102 b. Exactly $102 c. Less than $102 
 • Question 4: Compound rate. Let’s say you have $200 in a savings account, which accumulate 10 percent in return each year. How much would you have after two years? 
 • Question 5: Inflation. Suppose you possess $100 in a savings account which gives you a return rate of 1 percent yearly. If the inflation is 2 percent, after one year you could buy:
 a. More than $100 b. Exactly $100 c. Less than $100 
 • Question 6: Risk diversification. Please answer if the next statement is true or false: buying a stock form a company is less risky than buying the same money on several stocks from different companies 
 (b.) Likewise, I use the following risk aversion index proposed by Flores et al. (2011). Risk aversion: 
 • Is 0 if the interviewee prefers a fixed and stable income for the rest of his life 
 • Is 1 if he/she prefers a job in which he/she can, with the same probability, have twice his income 
or 3/4 of his income for the rest of his life. 
 • Is 2 if the interviewed prefers a job in which he/she can, with the same probability, have twice his income or 1/2 of his income for the rest of his life 
 • Is 3 if the interviewed prefers a job in which he/she can, with the same probability, have twice his income or 1/4 of his income for the rest of his life 
 (c.) Type of debts considered for the Financial Stress variable: 
 • Machinery
 • Land and/or agricultural facilities • Animals (cattle)
 • Bank credit line
 • Other 
 Appendix 2: Financial Literacy Index Appendix 3: Descriptive Statistic for FLI and Dependent Variables Appendix 4: Bank Branches Distribution in Chile Appendix 5: Regressions for Financial Stress and Credit Access Detail Appendix 6: Regressions for Subsample Year 2006 Appendix 7: Instrumental Variables

Can You Rationally Disagree with a Prediction Market? Nick Whitaker Brown University April 2021 This paper brings together two literatures: That of the efficient market hypothesis in economics and the relatively recent literature on disagreement in epistemology. In economics, there has been a substantial discussion of how markets aggregate knowledge through prices. In the philosophy of disagreement literature, there is significant agreement that you should defer to those with more knowledge and better judgments than you. I argue that, given these two conclusions, we are epistemically bound to defer to prediction markets in most situations, though I discuss possible exceptions. On the website PredictIt, one can find betting markets for a number of future political events like “Who will be the 2020 Democratic nominee?”, “Will Maduro be in office at the end of 2019?”, and “Will Trump be impeached in his first term?” Shares can be bought at and sold at floating prices between $.01 and $.99, and pay out a dollar if the bet wins. Share prices can be converted into probabilities, i.e. a $0.25 share represents a P(.25). I pose the question of how a rational person must change their credence when they encounter a prediction market like those on PredictIt. I will argue that under almost all normal circumstances, it is not rational to disagree with a well-functioning market. In fact, one should adopt the credence suggested by the prediction market. As I argue, a well-functioning prediction market is, on a given issue, almost always one’s epistemic superior with regard to that issue because it tends to incorporate all available information and aggregate that information effectively in its suggested credence. Given that you are likely not incorporating all available information nor aggregating that information into your credence, you are in a worse epistemic position about a given issue than its prediction market is. Thus, upon encountering a prediction market, you are rationally bound to adopt the credence suggested by it. I see this conclusion as emerging naturally from the efficient market hypothesis (EMH) literature in financial economics and the burgeoning disagreement literature in epistemology, but I think the combined implications have been underappreciated. For example, together they imply that things which normally guide our credence on a given issue – like pundits’ predictions or our interpretations of poll data – ought to hold little influence, if any, over our credence relative to the credence suggested by a prediction market. In many cases, the suggested credence of a prediction market will be surprising. Often, one is inclined to reject it. After looking at enough prediction markets, on will almost certainly find a suggested credence that he or she is convinced is wildly wrong. Nevertheless, I will argue that we should adopt the credence implied by markets, despite how reluctant we may feel. Finally, as I will argue, if one refuses to adopt the credence implied by a betting market and they are not averse to betting, the most rational course of action would be to bet on that market. The Market as an Epistemic Tool: A Short History Markets are efficient. This is suggested by basic economic theory: Given competitive markets and free entry, if people knew the price of an asset would rise or fall, they would buy or sell the asset until the market price of the asset reflected that information. This obviously cannot be exactly the case in reality; no markets are perfectly competitive, and entry is never completely free. Yet just how efficient markets are has been surprising to many, as this fact has been established by over half a century of economic theory and empirical evidence. There are important outstanding questions about how strong a claim “efficiency” should imply, and whether there are times when markets are not efficient, referred to as market anomalies. But, let us begin by reviewing the history of the theory. Efficient Markets Hypothesis was popularized by University of Chicago economist Eugene Fama. The idea began as an outgrowth of his dissertation, published in The Journal of Business in 1965 as “The Behavior of Stock Prices.” The paper argues that stock prices are essentially a “random walk” in that the “patterns” perceived in the past performance of a stock in no way indicate the stock’s future performance. Thus, for asset price movement to be a random walk, the future price needs to be independent of past prices. As Fama writes: In statistical terms independence means that the probability distribution for the price change during time period t is independent of the sequence of price changes during previous time periods. That is, knowledge of the sequence of price changes leading up to time period t is of no help in assessing the probability distribution for the price change during time period t. (35) Given that future prices are independent from past ones, no amount of study of the past performance of a stock will allow one to predict future performance. To the extent that the future is known, we should expect that information to be already incorporated into the asset price. Thus, the question becomes: Why are future prices independent of past prices? It is this question that led Fama to his work on EMH. Roughly speaking, if markets are efficient, only what is truly unknown is not incorporated into an asset’s price, and thus future movements in that price are random. As investors with information about the future buy and sell a given asset, the price of that asset would come to reflect all available information about the future. In 1970, Fama published his most cited paper, “Efficient Capital Markets: A Review of Theory and Empirical Work” in The Journal of Finance. In the paper, Fama clearly defined the terms on which a market can be considered efficient: “A market in which prices always ‘fully reflect’ available information is called ‘efficient.’” As this cannot be exactly true, Fama proposes it rather as a null hypothesis in the paper. To test efficiency more precisely, Fama delineates three versions of the hypothesis: The weak form, the semi-strong form, and the strong form. The weak form states that markets are efficient if future performance cannot be predicted from past prices. The semi-strong form states that markets are efficient if future performance cannot be predicted based on any publicly available information. The strong form states that the future performance cannot be predicted even with insider information. As the title of the paper suggests, Fama discusses the theoretical and empirical foundations for our beliefs. The theoretical work is interesting, but perhaps not worth exploring here. Essentially, there are different mathematical models which are able to test different versions (weak, semi-strong, strong) of the hypothesis. As Fama explains, early studies mostly focused on the weak version, essentially testing for the independence of new prices from historic prices. As the weak version gradually became established, research turned to the semi-strong version, which can be thought of as the question of how quickly newly public information is incorporated into market prices. Fama finds that tests of the semi-strong EMH lend “considerable support” to the hypothesis (408). The strong hypothesis had not been extensively studied at the time, but limited evidence did show that insiders were able to generate super-normal returns, and thus asset markets are likely not strong-form efficient. As Fama concludes, “For the purposes of most investors the efficient markets model seems a good first (and second) approximation to reality” (416). Since its publication, Fama’s account of EMH has faced decades of empirical scrutiny and has become a major topic of debate in finance. This is especially true as EMH challenges the value proposition of active money managers, who charge their clients fees to supposedly “beat the market.” According to EMH, their ability to do this is essentially as good as anyone else’s. Thus, many have sought to demonstrate market inefficiencies of which savvy investors could take advantage. There is a certain irony to this process, as whenever an inefficiency becomes known it becomes accounted for in the market prices and thus the prices cease to be inefficient. Conversely, in the event that everyone believed markets were efficient and invested passively, markets would become inefficient. A major meta-analysis of EMH literature was conducted in 2002 by Burton G. Malkiel, one of Fama’s coauthors. As Malkiel writes, if market anomalies were abound, we would expect that actively managed funds would be able to capitalize on these anomalies and consistently make supernormal returns. Thus, we can test market efficiency by looking at whether actively managed funds have been able to outperform diversified index funds. When fees charged by actively managed funds are considered, investment firms have actually underperformed relative to the market (Malkiel 2002). This suggest that even to the extent markets are inefficient, we are bad at consistently identifying these inefficiencies. Beyond Finance: Prediction Markets The key insight of EMH is an epistemic one: Markets tend to reflect all publicly available information. Though the theory has been traditionally framed as a theory of asset pricing, research was quickly done as to what information about the future could be gleaned from asset prices. In 1975, Fama published a paper on “Short-Term Interest Rates as Predictors of Inflation” to do just that. Since then, the idea has been taken further, to structure assets for the explicit purpose of efficiently aggregating information about the likelihood of future events. Economist Robin Hanson has been a major proponent of this, proposing that we develop “prediction markets,” sometimes referred to as “idea futures” or “information markets”. Typically, a prediction market is structured as a binary option that pays out either 0% or 100%. Thus, the price of bets can be converted into credence. If the prediction market is quickly incorporating all publicly available information, as EMH would suggest, then we can expect the credences suggested by the prediction market to be maximally informed. Relative Epistemic Positioning Given the epistemic power of prediction markets, we may ask how we should respond when we disagree with the credence suggested by the prediction market. Perhaps the initial question in any disagreement scenario should be: “Are you in a better position to judge B than your interlocutor is?” This question can be answered by considering a number of factors. Bryan Frances, in his book Disagreement, enumerates a number of considerations for epistemic positioning. Some of his main criteria are: • Cognitive ability had while answering the question • Evidence brought to bear in answering the question • Relevant background knowledge • Relevant biases After these factors, we can follow the disagreement literature in categorizing our interlocutor as being an epistemic peer, superior, or inferior on the given issue B. With this in mind, we can ask a central question: Given the efficiency of prediction markets, what is their epistemic positioning relative to us? If prediction markets are approximately semi-strong efficient, then, by definition, they are incorporating all public information into their implied credence. In most circumstances, one’s credence is formed with less information than all publicly available information. Depending on the topic, the difference in information between you and a given prediction market may be small or vast, but regardless, the prediction market is likely your epistemic superior in this regard. Additionally, a prediction market is almost certainly has better judgment than you do. We can think of good judgment as aggregating information in an accurate way. Implicit in any bet is the bettor’s weighting of his or her evidence. Just as a bettor would have an opportunity to profit on unique evidence they possessed, so to could they profit from weighting the evidence in a more accurate way than others. For example, we can imagine a prediction market on a mayoral race for a town. Let us assume that all of the relevant information about the race was comprised of three polls, and everyone betting in the market was aware of this information. Though there is no disparity between the bettors this information, a bettor could gain an edge by having the best sense of which of the polls were more accurate than others. By making these bets, he would push the betting market towards aggregating the poll results in the most accurate way. A better would be incentivized to do this, as they could profit off of a correct opinion until it was fully represented in the market price. Indeed, we could think of good judgement (or accurately aggregating information) as another type of information, higher-order information. So, we should expect a prediction market to not only to be incorporating more information, but also to be incorporating more higher order information leading to prediction markets aggregating that information more accurately. Thus, we can classify prediction markets as epistemic superiors on their relevant proposition under normal circumstances. Disagreeing with Epistemic Superiors In his paper “Reflection and Disagreement,” Adam Elga discusses how we should be guided by our epistemic superiors. He gives the example of the weather person, to whom we defer completely. If the weather person says there is a 60% chance of rain today, my credence that there will be rain today becomes 60%. Elga calls this treating the weather person as an “expert.” When someone is an expert with regard to weather, “Conditional on her having probability x in any weather-proposition, my probability in that proposition is also x” (2). As Elga writes, this means deferring to the expert on two accounts: Information and judgement. By deferring to the weather person with respect to information, we admit that she has more information (regarding weather) than we have. By deferring to the weather person with respect to judgement, we admit that she has a better manner of forming opinions (regarding weather) than us. Presumably, some people or things should be treated as experts and some people or things should not be. If a person or thing does deserve to be treated as an expert on a given domain, we should defer to their credence. If a person or thing does not deserve expert treatment, perhaps they or it should play some other role in our credence formulation. As Elga points out, there are two obvious ways the forecaster could cease to be an expert, either by failing to have more information or in failing to have better judgement. If I knew that the weather person’s radar was broken, and thus her information was corrupted, she would cease to be an expert. Similarly, if she were very drunk such that her weather judgment was inhibited, she would also cease to be an expert. Given the previous discussion of EMH and prediction markets, I will assume that they are, in general, incorporating more information and better judgment into their suggested credence than a given individual is. Thus, a prediction market is an expert with regard to its topic, and one should normally defer to it. However, just as there are situations in which a weather person fails to be an expert with regard to weather, we might expect that there are situations in which prediction markets cease to be experts. Let’s discuss a few potential situations. Information Errors For any market to function, it must be sufficiently thick, as opposed to being a thin market, one with few buyers and sellers. If I set up a prediction market on a subject and only allow three of my friends to bet on it, the market would have only as much information as the three of my friends have, and thus could not be considered an expert. For my purposes, I will limit the following discussion to thick, functioning prediction markets, though thin markets would constitute exceptions to my arguments here. One initial first information error is that you might be privy to important insider information that has not been incorporated into prediction market prices. If that were the case, the prediction market would cease being an expert to you on account of it lacking knowledge you have. However, whether there is insider information that has not been incorporated into the price is a question of whether prediction markets are efficient in the semi-strong sense or strong sense. As has been discussed, stock markets have not been found to be efficient in the strong sense. However, in the stock market, buying and selling stocks based on insider information is illegal under insider trading laws. In many prediction markets, which are not regulated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, this is not the case. So, one might expect more insider information is incorporated. Indeed, there is a substantial question of whether the insider information you possess is not already part of the price. If it is, your disagreement with the suggested credence of the prediction market may not be justified. So, there is a substantial question of whether your “insider information” has not already been incorporated into the suggested credence of the prediction market. However, let’s assume that the information is actually something only you possess. How then, should the prediction market be treated? In this case, Elga argues that we can treat the prediction market as a “guru.” In guru cases, rather than accepting a credence unconditionally as we do with an expert, we can accept their credence conditionally. We can formalize this following Elga. Let H represent a given proposition and P’ represent the prediction market’s probability function. In the expert prediction market case: P (H| Prediction Market has P’) = P’ (H) In the guru prediction market case where “X” is your insider information: P(H|Prediction Market has P’) = P’ (H| X) Thus, Elga advises we conditionalize the guru’s probability on our unique information. So we truly have unique information, we can conditionalize the prediction market’s implied credence on it to form our optimal credence. How exactly this conditionalization should work could be simple or complex. If you were the doctor of a presidential candidate and, after an appointment with the candidate, you came to the conclusion that the candidate had a terminal illness and would die before the election, P’(H | X) would be near zero, as we would obviously expect the prediction market to suggest something similar if the information was known. However, if you were a friend of a presidential candidate, and the candidate told you: “I have just decided that tomorrow I will be announcing new policy X. I have not told anyone besides you.” How could you conditionalize a prediction market’s suggested credence on this information? It is hard to say. Perhaps you could see if any other candidate had announced a similar policy, or look at how the policy was polling, to try to get a sense of whether your candidate friend more or less likely to be elected after he or she announces the policy. Yet, this will always require some degree of guesswork and judgement. At the same time, this problem is common to conditionalizing on other types of evidence. Let us assume that your P(raintomorrow)=.5, and your friend said, “What would your credence be if I told you my Dad guaranteed it would rain tomorrow?” You might have some sense of this depending on what you knew about your friend’s father, but some degree of fuzziness here seems inevitable. Another possibility the market might have anomalies or biases which would allow for a rational disagreement with its suggested credence. The most commonly discussed bias in prediction markets is called “Favorite-Long-Shot Bias.” The bias is an empirical phenomenon; bettors have been known to over-value “long-shot” bets relative to favored ones. For example, the 1/50 horse at the horse race might actually perform closer to 1/100. Both rational expectations and behavioral explanations have been proposed to explain this phenomenon as it violates EMH. The nature of the explanations themselves is not relevant to the current discussion, but the existence of favorite-longshot bias does suggest that if a prediction market is suspected to be manifesting the bias, one should treat the market as a guru and conditionalize the market’s implied credence on the bias: P (Long-Shot | Prediction Market has P’) = P’ (Long-Shot | Long-Shot Bias) We may not be able to conditionalize perfectly, but we could look to the typical effect size of long-shot bias in similar prediction markets, and try to work towards the conditional probability from there. Thus, the bias can at least be mitigated. A final information error might be that a prediction market is being fed bad information by a manipulating bettor, who, knowing that people were using the prediction market inform their view about the future, seeks to manipulate the prediction market. Hanson discusses this potential problem in 2007 paper, “A Manipulator Can Aid Prediction Market Accuracy.” As the title implies, Hanson comes to the surprising conclusion that manipulators not only do not impede the functioning of a prediction market, they make it more accurate. As Hanson suggests, we can think of a potential manipulator as adding “noise” into the market. Because of this noise, the expected return on accurate information increases, thereby attracting more investors. With more investors, more information comes into the market, making it more accurate. However, if you did suspected that other investors were not capitalizing on the manipulator and correcting the market, you could also conditionalize on the suggested credence of the market towards what the suggested credence would look like without a manipulator. Though there are potential information related risks, they seem to be sufficiently uncommon that one should not expect them in normal circumstances. Insider information is possible, though may not actually be truly non-public. Prediction market biases may exist, but can be accounted for. Market manipulation seems counterproductive. Information related errors should be looked for, but they are not able to diminish the established informative power of prediction markets. Judgment Errors The second type of errors, judgment errors, relate to the ways in which information is aggregated. Markets are one way of aggregating information, but there are others, like deliberation. What if you came to your credence as part of a deliberating group, incorporating the knowledge of many into your credence? Let us even assume, for the sake of argument, that your deliberating group had access to all the same information as all of the bettors in a given prediction market. If your credence differs from the credence suggested from the betting market, would it be rational to conciliate? Cass Sunstein takes on this issue in a 2006 paper, “Deliberating Groups Versus Prediction Markets.” Sunstein points out that this is a particularly important case, as many of our decisions and credences come about through deliberation with others. Why should we expect this deliberative process to be desirable, especially relative to prediction markets? Indeed, as Sunstein argues, we should not expect deliberation to work better. We should actually expect it to be a less efficient way to aggregate information. Sunstein focuses primarily on two reasons: Group members failing to disclose what they know out of deference to the public information announced by others and social pressures leading members to not dissent from the group. As Sunstein writes, “Groups often amplify rather than correct individual errors; emphasize shared information at the expense of unshared information; fall victim to cascade effects; and tend to end up in more extreme positions in line with the predeliberation tendencies of their members” (192-3). On the other hand, prediction markets provide potential financial reward for individually held information and contrarian opinions, succeeding exactly where deliberation fails. Indeed, the profit motives makes uncommon knowledge especially profitable, where social, deliberative situations make group approved, desirable information most valuable. Thus, deliberation is, on average, a worse method of aggregation. One still ought to defer to the judgment of the prediction market. What about if you create another information aggregating mechanism to inform your credence on a given issue that you think may outperform a prediction market? There have been two notable recent attempts at this: Nate Silver in his elections forecasting and Philip Tetlock’s Good Judgement Project. In 2008, Nate Silver rose to prominence by using Bayesian statistical techniques to aggregate poll results, leading to highly accurate electoral predictions. Silver’s work provides a case study in whether advanced statistical techniques can aggregate information more effectively a prediction market. In 2009, economist David Rothschild tested Silver’s prediction against those suggested by a leading prediction market at the time, Entrade. He concludes, “I demonstrate that early in the cycle and in not-certain races debiased prediction market-based forecasts provide more accurate probabilities of victory and more information than debiased poll-based forecasts” (895). Rothschild’s technique is interesting. When he debiases Silver’s results, they become more accurate than the raw prediction market results. But, when he accounts for the favorite-longshot bias discussed earlier in the prediction market results, the debiased prediction market becomes most accurate. To put this into Elga’s framework, the prediction market makes for a better guru than Silver. Silver addresses the study directly in his book, The Signal and the Noise. He takes some issues with Rothschild’s methodology, that he debiases the prediction market results, and, more importantly, that the prediction markets move in response to Silver’s poll aggregation. Yet nevertheless, as Silver writes, “Over the long run, however, the aggregate forecast has often beaten even the very best individual forecast.” Silver is skeptical of the current state of prediction markets, thinking that there is not yet enough competition and the markets are still relatively thin, but is open to their potential superiority. Thus, Silver asserts the earlier caveat, that the current set of prediction markets, given the current legal restrictions on them, may suffer from the market thinness discussed. Philip Tetlock’s work on forecasting has also become an interesting potential challenge to prediction markets. In Tetlock’s Good Judgement Project, he sought out people who were outstanding at predicting the future over a number if years. He called this group “superforecasters.” In his book on the subject, Superforcasting, Tetlock describes testing the results of teams of superforecasters against prediction markets. His results: “Teams of ordinary forecasters beat the wisdom of the crowd by about 10%. Prediction markets beat ordinary teams by about 20%. And superteams beat prediction markets by 15% to 30%” (207). The result is fairly surprising, given the power of prediction markets. But, it is perhaps not entirely fair. As Tetlock admits, “I can already hear the protests from my colleagues in finance that the only reason the superteams beat the prediction markets was that our markets lacked liquidity: real money wasn’t at stake and we didn’t have a critical mass of traders. They may be right” (207). Interestingly, the argument is very similar to that of Silver, that the relatively small scale of current prediction markets suggests they are not operating as well as they could be. So, if you are a superforecaster working with a team of other superforecasters, perhaps your group’s combined judgement is sufficiently better than current prediction markets that you need not defer to them. But, this may cease to be true if better prediction markets were developed. So even between the narrow cases of Silver and Tetlock, the practitioners themselves are skeptical of their own ability to beat more robust prediction markets. And, this makes sense. As soon as a strategy develops an edge on prediction markets, they are incentivized to bet on that information until their information is fully incorporated into the betting market’s price. Indeed, a betting market can, as is actually encouraged, to subsume all other deliberation mechanisms into it until it obtains maximal accuracy. Staying Steadfast Against Your Superiors Let us assume you do not adopt the credence suggested by a prediction market because you wish to remain steadfast and think the credence suggested by the prediction market is incorrect. Bryan Frances discusses a similar epistemic situation in his piece, “Philosophical Renegades,” where an amateur astronomer retains her belief that Jupiter has fewer than 10 moons even after the vast majority of professional astronomers have come to believe the planet has over 200 moons. The astronomer has no concrete reason to reject the opinions of the expert astronomer community, but perhaps would say she expects that the others are making a mistake. This is not unlike the situation one is in disagreeing with a prediction market, as the prediction market is likely aggregating all available evidence in an effective manner. To some extent, the rationality of retaining one’s credence in the face of this disagreement depends upon how much one knows about prediction markets. If he or she were unaware of their epistemic virtues, the disagreement may be justified. But, if he or she understood prediction markets, their disagreement may be blatantly irrational. There is another interesting dimension to disagreeing with prediction markets, whether that be because you remained steadfast or because you have conditionalized on the suggested credence of the prediction market. In either of these situations, you should see yourself as having the opportunity to arbitrage. Let us assume, for example, that a prediction market suggests that the chance of Donald Trump being elected is P(.42), as PredictIt suggests at the time of writing. Let us also assume that your credence in Donald Trump being reelected is (.1). Given your credence of (.1), you would be rational to take a bet at 9/1 odds or better that Trump is not reelected. A prediction market at P(.42) would offer odds at 11/8. Indeed, if you really believe your credence is (.1), this should be seen as a profitable strategy over the long run. If you do not have an adversity to betting, then you should bet. Even if you treat the prediction market as a guru and conditionalize against its suggested probability, rationality would still suggest you bet against the market, as it would have positive expected value. Conclusion The disagreement literature discusses the different ways in which we should engage with our epistemic peers, inferiors, and superiors. As I have shown, we should look to prediction markets as our epistemic superiors, and as experts or gurus in Elga’s sense. I see this as being action guiding in a number of ways. First, if we wish to have more accurate credences about future events, we should create larger scale prediction markets. Second, when we have access to sufficiently thick prediction markets, we should defer to their suggested credences. To the extent one disagrees with a prediction market suggested credence, they should bet in the market as they would have a positive expected return. Works Cited Christensen, David Phiroze, and Jennifer Lackey. The Epistemology of Disagreement: New Essays. Oxford University Press, 2016. Elga, Adam. “Reflection and Disagreement.” Nous, vol. 41, no. 3, Sept. 2007, pp. 478–502., doi:10.1111/j.1468-0068.2007.00656.x. 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Rothschild, David. “Forecasting Elections.” Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 73, no. 5, 2009, pp. 895–916., doi:10.1093/poq/nfp082. Silver, Nate. The Signal and the Noise. Penguin, 2013. Sunstein, Cass R. “Deliberating Groups versus Prediction Markets (or Hayek's Challenge to Habermas).” Episteme, vol. 3, no. 3, 2006, pp. 192–213., doi:10.3366/epi.2006.3.3.192. Tetlock, Philip E., and Dan Gardner. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. Random House, 2016.