Integrity and the Study of Ethics
Various books I have read claim that willpower is a limited resource. People who perform an exercise requiring willpower do worse on another willpower exercise immediately afterwards. This phenomenon is known as "ego depletion". But as I was perusing an APA article on willpower, I came across an article by Veronika Job contradicting this idea. Job suggests that the literature on the subject does not take into account individuals' beliefs about willpower. Furthermore, once those beliefs are taken into account (or manipulated with biased questionnaires) the results change. People who do not believe that willpower is a limited resource do not show signs of ego depletion. So put that in your pipe and smoke it!
I was thinking of willpower in terms of trying to practise the ethics of Peter Singer consistently. Singer's views of social justice on a global scale are draconian. To do justice to the Third World we in the First World must reduce our standard of living to bare survival (Practical Ethics, 1993, p.223). The ego depletion involved in such an act would be obvious.
But Job suggests that ego depletion is all in the mind. If so, then it is hardly a weak will that is stopping us from giving away most of our money to the Third World. Either we are simply evil people, or we do not actually believe that we have this obligation in the first place.
People obviously believe that they have some duties towards the poor. But we seem also clearly to think that we have a right to at least some nice things around us for our hard work. It does not seem at all to be wrong to think this. And yet I would argue that if you don't actually take seriously the idea that you have to practise the theory of ethics that you devise, you could miss an intuition like this. It is only when you decide that this has to be something that you'll do that something real is at stake. It clarifies your perceptions in a way that is impossible with armchair theorising.
A similar phenomenon is observable in poker. I had a friend who was very good at playing poker, to the extent that he could reliably make money from it. I found the rules of poker easy enough to learn, and enjoyed playing with pretend money. But he told me that until I started playing with real money I would never learn anything about strategy. If you play with play money, then nothing is at stake, and people consequently will bet wildly on stupid hands that have no possibility of winning. It is only when you could win or lose something of real value that you play smartly and strategically.
I strongly suspect that the same thing is true of the study of ethics. It is very easy to write wrist-slashing theories of ethics if you have no intention of practising them. It is easy to find the arguments in their favour cogent when you use hypocrisy to protect you from them. It is much harder when you decide that you have to practise them and suddenly there is something at stake. This is to say that integrity will give you far more reliable intuitions than you could expect without it.
DISCLAIMER 2014/28/12: I realise that what was said about integrity and the study of ethics probably applies to the rest of philosophy. The example that came to mind for me at the time was inductive scepticism. But since I have thought much more about ethics than the rest of philosophy, that was on what I wanted to focus for this entry.
I was thinking of willpower in terms of trying to practise the ethics of Peter Singer consistently. Singer's views of social justice on a global scale are draconian. To do justice to the Third World we in the First World must reduce our standard of living to bare survival (Practical Ethics, 1993, p.223). The ego depletion involved in such an act would be obvious.
But Job suggests that ego depletion is all in the mind. If so, then it is hardly a weak will that is stopping us from giving away most of our money to the Third World. Either we are simply evil people, or we do not actually believe that we have this obligation in the first place.
People obviously believe that they have some duties towards the poor. But we seem also clearly to think that we have a right to at least some nice things around us for our hard work. It does not seem at all to be wrong to think this. And yet I would argue that if you don't actually take seriously the idea that you have to practise the theory of ethics that you devise, you could miss an intuition like this. It is only when you decide that this has to be something that you'll do that something real is at stake. It clarifies your perceptions in a way that is impossible with armchair theorising.
A similar phenomenon is observable in poker. I had a friend who was very good at playing poker, to the extent that he could reliably make money from it. I found the rules of poker easy enough to learn, and enjoyed playing with pretend money. But he told me that until I started playing with real money I would never learn anything about strategy. If you play with play money, then nothing is at stake, and people consequently will bet wildly on stupid hands that have no possibility of winning. It is only when you could win or lose something of real value that you play smartly and strategically.
I strongly suspect that the same thing is true of the study of ethics. It is very easy to write wrist-slashing theories of ethics if you have no intention of practising them. It is easy to find the arguments in their favour cogent when you use hypocrisy to protect you from them. It is much harder when you decide that you have to practise them and suddenly there is something at stake. This is to say that integrity will give you far more reliable intuitions than you could expect without it.
DISCLAIMER 2014/28/12: I realise that what was said about integrity and the study of ethics probably applies to the rest of philosophy. The example that came to mind for me at the time was inductive scepticism. But since I have thought much more about ethics than the rest of philosophy, that was on what I wanted to focus for this entry.
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