Tag: philosophy

Head or Heart Again

~ purplesage41 ~ Leave a comment

Before the election in 2025, I wrote a political post about head and heart and the role each played in our choice at the ballot box.If you speak Myers-Briggs, you might call it Left Brain/Right Brain, T or F for short. No,. that’s not true/false, it’s another dichotomy, thinking/feeling. Or sometimes reason and emotion. We could take on all of he four Myers-Briggs binaries–introvert/extrovert, Intuition/Sensing, and Judging/perceiving, and judging/perceiving, but let’s save those for another day..

We use both halves of our brains, sometimes one more than the other, although we tend to have a preferred first response. A classic example is being at the scene of the accident. The T, left-brained person sees it as a problem to be solved. Everybody out of the car? Police? Do we need a medic? Meanwhile, the right-brained F is feeling empathy and compassion and trying to offer comfort..At our best, we humans try to cover both bases. But if not, we can pair up, the left-‘brained person (more likely a man but not necessarily) can problem solve while the right-brained persons offers consolation and hope.Ultimately, everyone at the scene will engage both halves of the brain.

Challenging the assumed superiority of thinking or reasoning or logic over empathy or affection or compassion led to some useful answers to bothersome questions in multiple fields of thought. I am mainly aware of the the effect of this challenge to my own academic discipline, economics, but I am sure it has influenced other and ethics.( Or as one of my economist friends said, shouldn’t that be economics or ethics?)

The standard textbook in economics introduced the young scholar to homo economicus (economic man), the basis of a simplistic model of how we make economic decisions about money, spending, working, marrying, having children, investing, retiring. and so forth. Homo economicus has two sterling qualities. He is a fully informed master calculator who can do cost/benefit analysis in his head, or occasionally on a spreadsheet. And his sole goal is to maximize his personal self-interest, to get as much out of life as he can with the least expenditure of effort or money.or both. I personally find this person to be rather obnoxious, but I have encountered people who do seem to conform to that model much of the time….

There has always been an undercurrent in economics suggesting that the average actual human does not exactly conform to that model. That undercurrent can be traced from Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (a precursor to his Wealth of Nations) through Keynes’ animal spirits to Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow. Kahneman’s work earned him the only Nobel prize in economics awarded to a psychologist. Back in the 19th century, Charleston Dickens satirized economic man in his novel Hard Times, in which a paterfamilias subjected his family to cost-benefit analysis of every decision and couldn’t understand why his wife gave up and his children left home at the earliest opportunity.

What were those challenges to homo economics? First of all, most of us can only acquire a limited amount of information about all the details of all t he choices we have to make every day. There goes the assumption that our hero is fully informed. In fact, we make better choices when we employ what is called bounded rationality, limiting our options to a small number.. Second, we often lack the complex calculation skills to determine which choice would most meet our needs an desires. Finally, many of us feel that there is more to life than narrow self interest. There is family. There is culture. there is community. There is play. There is being in nature. Some of the best things in life really are free! We care with and for others and they do the same. It’s called altruism, and it messes up those tidy one-person decision models concerned only the decider’s self-interest..

There are lessons in this rethinking of our model of human choice that impact public policy choices as well as our personal choices.If we rep;lace Homo economics with homo not so sapiens, we find that we may need to revise the way we present choices to citizens and taxpayers. The first Medicare drug coverage programs offered way more choices than sick people and their caregivers could adequately evaluate. People often need a default that can make a decision for them if they forget or can’t decide. Usually the default is the one that works best for the average person. Making wise choices is itself a demand on our scarce resources of time and attention that might be better–or more joyfully!–employed elsewhere

A 20th century British philosopher, Mary Midgeley, applied the same challenge to to the practices in many fields ofdeveloping “universal”;explanations, including philosophy, history, biology and ethics–even physics in its evolution from Newton to Einstein! These theoretical models must be qualified by the diversity of context and circumstance, diversity and complexity, that challenge overly simple explanations to life’s complex questions.

Lie my blog? You may like my book. Passionately Moderate: Civic Virtues and Democracy. Available from amazon in paperback and Kindle formats.

True or false? Potholes on the Road to Truth

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Blog #4 in my non-binary series.

As one moves along the continuum from physics to biology to economics to sociology to history, the challenge of separating truth from falsehood or truth from error becomes greater. Truth is not sitting there like an apple waiting to be plucked, but deeply embedded in a web of people, places, customs, circumstances, and other dimensions. Truth must be coaxed, enticed, dragged kicking and screaming from its source.  It is a task which has become far more challenging in the era of social media and artificial intelligence, which makes every event or choice somewhat unique.

One of our currently popular true/false economic statements comes from President Donald Trump, who insists that the foreign producer will always absorb the tariff so that American consumers will not see any rise in prices.  Most of my fellow economists (and I) insist that this belief is wrong. Wrong not in the sense of either or, right or wrong, but rather wrong more often than right. Yes, there can be instances where world markets are very competitive and some part of the tariff will be absorbed by the foreign seller, but in most cases, the tariff is passed on to the buyer.

Scientific truth is a result of observation and statistical evidence that the medicine works, or the ball drops toward the earth, or anything else that combines credible evidence, repeated observation, and hopefully an explanatory theory.  But the scientific method sets the standard of truth very high.  A statistically significant number of observations must fall very close to the mean in order to be reasonably certain that the hypothesis is true.  The higher the standard (or the smaller the acceptable margin of error), the more likely it is that the hypothesis is true.  That high standard means that some true hypotheses will be rejected.  In lay terms, to keep any falsehood out, one must require a very strict criterion for what is let inside the gates. And that means  shutting out a lot of potentially very good and very useful ideas, possibilities or choices

Truth and falsehood are not strictly binary, especially as we move away from scientific methods toward the choices, analyses and decisions that guide our daily lives. Bob is an honest and dependable person–true or false?  Well, most of the time, but sometimes when he has had too much to drink, or is caught in an embarrassing situation, maybe not then.  Bob is mostly true.   Like the tariff, which is mostly passed on to the consumer, but there are exceptions. This medicine works in 95 percent of cases, but you may be in the other five percent, where it may fail to help or even cause harmful side effects.    This health insurance policy will cover all your health needs unless the company can find a good reason to deny your claim.  This house and yard are in excellent condition if you don’t visit it after heavy rain.

Perhaps the question of “What is the truth?” is most dramatic and challenging in a court of law. If you ever wonder why court cases are so complicated and use such arcane language, it’s because both sides are claiming to possess the truth.  A good legal system will recognize that there are few open and shut cases, so they rely on “preponderance of the evidence” in order to make a decision.. Along with physical evidence they must rely on the accounts of witnesses, which involve a mix of unvarnished truth, stretched truth, specious claims and downright lies. Placing the burden of proof on the prosecution and steep penalties for perjury are intended to increase the likelihood that the judge and jury will discern the most likely truth of the matter.

The next time you watch someone put a hand on a bible and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, take it with a grain of salt.  Especially the part about the whole truth, or the possibility that the witness has a faulty or incomplete recollection.  The mind is not a totally reliable instrument. Like science, law sets a high standard for conviction, because it is more just to let ten guilty parties go free than to punish one innocent person.

Habits of the Heart

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The title comes from a book by Sociologist Robert Bellah.  It is a good description of virtues. I am starting a new blog series about virtues, which will be interspersed with my more usual focus on holidays and culture and occasionally even economics.  I discovered virtue ethics in seminary, and it helped me understand the limited focus of traditional ethics, which is how to determine what is the right thing to do. Utilitarians want us to do what offers the greatest good for the greatest number.  Kantians urge us to follow an ethic of duty, which my ethics students reduced to the question, ”But what if everybody did it?”  (lied, stole, littered…). Armed with these two tools, ethics challenges people to make decisions that honor one or both of these principles.

But something was missing.  It was the question, “What makes people want to do the right thing?” The answer to that question lies in virtue ethics.  Or as Alfred B. Newman might have said, “Why be good?” And the answer from virtue ethics is, because you will be happier, have more friends and better relations, and the world will be a better place—especially if everybody did it.

The Greek word that Aristotle used, arete, is sometimes translated as virtue, but a more accurate translation is excellence. He believed that every virtue/excellence lies at a golden mean between its opposite and its extreme.  Courage, for example, lies between cowardice (its opposite) and foolhardiness (its extreme).  He also believed that the cultivation and exercise of virtue should lead to a richer and more meaningful life for the individual, the community, and society at large. 

There are lots and lots of virtues.  Auguste Comte-Sponville, a French ethicist, listed seventeen.  Aristotle had at least that many. But Aristotle focused on four that he considered primary, two for private life, two for public life. I’m pretty sure I’m not as smart as Aristotle, but I do have several millennia more of human experience to draw on in expanding his brilliant insight. Three spheres, not two—the individual, the community, the world..  And the virtues we require are, as Aristotle observed, different for those three sphere’s:  personal virtues, relational virtues, and civic virtues. 

Personal virtues are those qualities of character that make it easier to live with ourselves. Aristotle offered only two that were primary for our personal lives: prudence (wise management of resources) and temperance or moderation.  I would add diligence, patience, mindfulness. and self-awareness. Unlike relational or civic virtues, these six qualities of character primarily benefit us personally and directly in living richer, more meaningful and satisfying lives.

A prudent person is neither careless nor obsessive in the use of money and other resources, but gives it due attention, rather than hoarding or extravagance. A moderate or temperate person avoids the extremes of self-indulgence and asceticism. A diligent person is neither a goof-off nor a workaholic. A patient person avoids both endless procrastination and obsessive insistence on doing it NOW. A mindful person pays close attention to what she is doing in the moment, rather than focusing on the future or the past or being easily distracted. A self-aware person is cognizant of his gifts and strengths, limitations, and weaknesses, avoiding the extremes of pride and self-abasement. 

That’s a pretty comprehensive list.  I tend to be both impatient and easily distracted, so I have work on patience and mindfulness. I also need to work at self-awareness. On the other hand, I am reasonably prudent, moderate in most things, and generally diligent at carrying out my personal responsibilities.  At least, that’s what I think I am.  Periodically I need to check with friends and family members to see if they affirm or question my self-assessment!

Having identified my areas that need improvement, I am working on mindful eating, avoiding multi-tasking, and meditation to become more mindful. I have been keeping a journal for at least 25 years, and I have a friend whose task it is to find them and burn them when I die, because they are a tool for my self-awareness, not a record for future generations. As for patience, other people are pretty good at reminding me to slow down and let things unfold at their own pace.

How about you? That’s your ‘homework” for this week.  Which of these six personal virtues are your firmly established good habits of the heart and which ones could stand some work?

Sometime in the near future, expect Installment #2, when we will take a look at virtues that matter in relationships. (Patience gets a second chance there!)

Women’s Work

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I have been thinking about who are the people working to bring about the financial and political downfall of Trump. There is a panthean (note feminist spelling) of women. Liz Cheney. E. Jean Carroll. Letitia James. Fanni Willis. Ruby Freeman and Shay Moss. Nancy  Pelosi. Nikki Haley. Judge Chutkin. Cassidy Hutchinson.

The Latin word virtus (virtue) literally means manliness. (The made-up feminist equivalent, muliertus, doesn’t resonate very well!) Aristotle argued that there are four primary virtues, the private virtues of prudence and temperance or moderation, and the public virtues of courage and justice. (His Greek equivalent of virtus was arḗte, which translates as excellence, not manliness.)  A list of men possessing and exercising the primary public virtue of moral courage with respect to Trump would be a lot shorter. (Judge Erdogan. Jack Smith. Brad Raffensberger. Adam Kinzinger.)

Additional nominations welcome for both genders.

Our task as the middle and beyond generations is to encourage GenZ and millennials to show up at the polls, because in an era of toxic masculinity, they don’t vote like our generations do. I am working as a poll worker (6 am to 8 pm) in the South Carolina presidential on February 3rd and 24th, so it will be interesting to see who shows up.  My assignment is in a working class community, where I expect that African Americans will turn out to some degree in the Democratic primary while the numerous Trump-supporting evangelical “Christian” white angry aging folks will show up for the Republican primary.  I have to vote early 20 miles from home since I am not working in my own polling place, so in a few weeks I will be off to vote for Nikki, encouraging her to keep being a thorn in the flesh of the Donald.

My friends and blog followers, do what you can to mobilize what truly is the silent majority of our generation. My life at age 82 is much more past than future. On a personal level, I am trying to minimize any burden I leave for my daughters and grandchildren. On a communal/national/global level, I am trying to do what little I can to leave our children and heirs a safer, healthier, more livable world. Join me in trying to convince them to get engaged in the process of making that happen.

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