Mind in Society

A brief history of pre-Vygotsky psychology

Until the mid nineteenth century, psychology has been a part of philosophy. The change came when three books were published almost simultaneously. Darwin argued the essential continuity of man and other animals in “Origin of Pecies”, making human mind to be experimented as it is for animals. Fechner authored “Die Psychophysik”, which provided a detailed, theoretical explanation of the relation between changes in specifiable physical events and verbalizable psychic responses. The third book was “Reflexes of the Brain” by Sechenov who had advanced out understanding of simple sensory-motor reflexes by using techniques that isolated nerve-muscle preparations from the living organism.

Once psychology became independent academic fields, people encountered key questions such as “what are the relationships between animal and human behavior, environmental and mental events, and physiological and psychological process?” One school, founded by Wilhelm Wundt in 1880, described the contents of human consciousness into their relation to external stimulation. However, Wundt ruled out such sensations as feelings of awareness or perception of relations as elements of consciousness. He concluded that human’s complex mental functions are out of the scope of psychology.

Only after WWI, scholars began to analyze human-specific higher process, e.g. thought, language, and volitional behavior, and Lev Vygotsky was the one who constructed a theory of human psychological process, arguing that the higher psychological process of human beings is due to a multiplication and complication of principles derived from animal psychology. That means, it is not the principles of psychological process that bring about difference between human and animal thought process, but the socio-economic reasons that make human thought process more sophisticated and complex than those of animals.

Marx and Engels, by whom Vygotsky were significantly influenced, noted that human beings created tool system by which they responded to the world totally in the different way from other animals. “The animal merely uses external nature, and brings about changes in it simply by his presence; man, by his changes, makes it serve his ends, masters it. This is the final essential distinction between man and other animals.”

Vygotsky thought that like tool systems of Marx and Engels, sign sytems (language, writing, number systems) are created by societies over the course of human history and change with the form of society and the level of its cultural development. He believed that the internalization of culturally produced sign systems brings about behavioral transformations and forms the bridge between early and later forms of individual development.

Sign system

In the book “Mind in Society”, he analyzed psychological development process of children. Through the comparison between human children and animals, he claimed that what distinguishes human from animals is the sign-system. Thanks to the sign system, even a small child is able to plan and execute the complex procedures.

Signs are the artificial and self-generated stimuli. For instance, when we are in a hot room, not only we feel the heat (original stimulus), but also we understand the situation using a word “hot”(sign). Thanks to language, human beings extend the operation of memory beyond the biological dimensions. Sign system is the complex thought system inside the human mind, developed by tool and speech. By using the sign system, human beings can perceive the “real objects”, i.e. “human beings do not see the world simply in color and shape but also as a world with sense and meaning” (page 33).

Originated from language, the sign system enables children to provide for auxiliary tools to cope with complicated tasks, to overcome impulsive action, to plan a solution to a problem prior to its execution, and to master their own behavior (page 28). “The system of signs restructures the whole psychological process and enables the child to master her movement. It reconstructs the choice process ona totally new basis.” (page 35)

Children’s development of mind

Vygotsyky noted that “sign-using activity in children is neither simply invented nor passed down by adults; rather it arises from something that is originally not a sign operation and becomes one only after a series of qualitative transformations. Each of these transformations provides the conditions for the next stage and is itself conditioned by the preceding one; thus, transformations are linked like stages of a single process, and are historical in nature.” (Page 46)

Infants represent the development of minds of human beings. Higher psychological functions (i.e. psychological functions of human beings) developed through dialectical process: interweaving of two lines of psychological development: one is biological origin, and another is sociocultural origin. Vygotsky claimed that “the history of the development of the higher psychological functions is impossible without a study of their prehistory, their biological roots, and their organic disposition. The developmental roots of two fundamental, cultural forms of behavior arise during infancy: the use of tools and human speech. This alone places infancy at the center of the prehistory of cultural development. “ (Page 46)

Signs and tools

Tool use is also human specific behavior. Tool and speech are together essential human natures, but they are different in their functions. Tools work as the conductors of human action, and it is externally oriented and is used to master the nature. Instead, sign system works to regulate human internal minds, and it is internally oriented and is used to master one’s own behavior.

Vygotsky thought that the combination of tool and signs is the essence of psychological activity. Thanks to these two tools, human beings can internally (in mind) construct an external operation, the construction process called “internalization” (page 56). Vygotsky noted the process of internalization consists of a series of transformation:

• An operation that initially represents external activity is reconstructed and begins to occur internally: learning how to swim would be examples. One learn external activity (swim) and then will be able to image it inside one’s mind
• An interpersonal (between persons) process is transformed into an intrapersonal (inside person) one: from conversation into self reflection
• The transformation of an interpersonal process into an intrapersonal one is the result of a long series of developmental events

Implication to education

Originally, the book aims to improve the child education. Using the arguments I introduced above, he placed importance on understanding children’s zone of proximal development. Zone of proximal development is “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers (page 86)”. When children face “tasks in the zone”, they need the assistance from teachers, and in the future the tasks will be out of the zone, i.e. children will be able to do it by themselves. That exactly is the psychological development. Through the assistance, children can imitate what their teachers & adults do, and that imitation go beyond the limits of children’s own capability. Once children experience it through imitation, they will be able to “internalize” the process, and then to reproduce the action by themselves in the future.

That is why Vygotsky emphasized that the children’s psychological development (internalization) often comes after the learning. As a practical implication, we can say that it is crucial to understand whether students need your assistance now.

He also emphasized the importance of play in children’s development. As now we understand, play (e.g. playing house) helps the development process for the tasks in the zone of proximal development. Through the play, or imitating adult’s behaviors, children will be what they cannot do independently now, and eventually they master what they cannot do before (internalization).

Remarks

It is a impressive book. Although Marx and Engels provided general model of relationship between material conditions and upper structure, as far as I know they did not provided the model to describe human psychological development. Vygotsky illuminated the development process of human mind, which is purely a historical product. The model he provided is still the foundation of developmental psychology.

Another thing I feel curious is that how our mind will be in 21st century. We now live in the unprecedented age, which will mark the ICT revolution, the third revolution after the agricultural and industrial revolution. Today, people are far more connected than before, and that will bring us about the significant psychological development. Under the circumstances, what will be the main subjects or problems of human mind? To imagine the answer to the question is exciting.

Reference: Lev Vygotsky, "Mind in Society - Development of Higher Psychological Processes", Harvard University Press

Why I write English blog

I know my English is awful now. It irritates me that I cannot articulate my ideas fully as I can do in Japanese or Korean. That said, I cannot avoid undergoing this painful process to improve my English. After I spent several years writing my Japanese blog, my Japanese has dramatically improved, and eventually I could publish my first book at the age of 27 from one of the most well-known Japanese publishers.

My father always told me that if you want to do something significant in the world, it is vital to use English almost as a mother tongue. Indeed, he was right in some sense. Even if you continue to live in your native countries, English fluency will enable you to be more successful to change the world.

Why so? It's because in 21st century English-speaking communities are where the world's wisdom and information are accumulated. Most of them won't be translated into your native languages. The information gap between English and the other languages would be widened significantly in 21st century. The main reason is the advancement of information and communication technology. Beforehand, even if one living in India is fluent in English, he or she had no many opportunities to share his idea with those who live in the US. However, now, if you can use English, you can communicate with English speakers (most of them use English as a lingua franca) all over the world. Thus, the knowledge and wisdom of the world's intelligence would be compiled onto English-speaking communities. It is obvious if you compare English wikipedia with Japanese one, see TED, read academic & business magazines, etc.

One may say that auto-translation will be in place shortly, and we may not need to learn English in the future. Granted, perfect computer translators will be available in the future, but given the current pace of technological advancement, I guess it will take at least a decade until auto-translators will be perfect for practical use, and it will take more until auto-interpretors are available. That 10 years could bring us about notable delay in learning new ideas, and it may be difficult to recoup.

Caveat1: needless to say, to be fluent in English is necessary but not sufficient. What I wanted to emphasize is that English fluency is a "prerequisite".

Caveat2: maybe I exaggerated too much. Of course, there will still be the great intellectuals even though they cannot use English. What I wrote is the probability and expected value.

That is why I began my English blog. Probably I will publish my book in English by 2017.

Business Model Generation

"Business Model Generation" is a nice book to come up with business models. The contents of this book are not quite new – rather, if you want to acquire profound understanding on this topic, Philip Kotler’s “Marketing Management”, a thick book with academic analyses and lively examples. However, this book is great at delivering key ideas in marketing.

The coolest thing in this book is its “Business Model Canvas”, which is available at http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/canvas. The business model canvas neatly shows the relationship among elements of business model: customer segments, value propositions, channels, customer relationships, revenue streams, key resources, key activities, key partnerships and cost structure.

Using the canvas, the authors show how the successful business models (e.g. Google) work. To visualize and design your business idea, the canvas would be the good start.

Using the business model canvas, the book tells us 5 key steps in creating and managing business model.

1. Mobilize: prepare for a successful business model design
2. Understand: Research and analyze elements needed for the business model design effort
3. Generate and test viable business model options, and select the best
4. Implement the business model prototype in the field
5. Adapt and modify the business model in response to market reaction

I recommend to read this book in the following way: read the first chapter “Canvas”, which is the core of the book. Then go to page 249, which shows the entire process of business model generation with relevant pages. You have your particular issues, so maybe it’s better to jump into the relevant sections first.

Reference: "Business Model Generation", Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur

The evolution of cooperation

“Under what conditions will cooperation emerge in a world of egoists without central authority?”

Robert Axelrod starts with this impressive sentence in his book “the evolution of cooperation”, which exerted significant influence on many fields: prevention of war, social evolution, cooperation among animals, human history, evolutionary game theory, networks of trust and reciprocity that build social capital, microeconomics, science fiction, etc.

Axelrod’s tit-for-tat in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma situation

By using iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma situation, Axelrod starts tackling the question. There are player A and B, and they can choose either defect (D) or cooperate(C). Under the circumstances, there are four outcomes (using the set up of his paper):

• R if both cooperate
• S if A cooperates and B defects
• T if A defects and B cooperates
• P if A defects and B defects

The author conducted his famous “computer tournament”, and found that in the iterated game, tit-for-tat is the best strategy. Tit-for-tat is the strategy to choose C in the first, and then mimic the strategy that other player chooses in the previous game. Then, if the players are all incentivized to maximize one’s own payoff, then they will adopt tit-for-tat, he claims. Thus, Axelrod’s analysis starts from the assumption that the player chooses tit-for-tat.

Let’s say player A and B adopt tit-for-tat strategy. Then, the pay off would be:

R + wR +w^2R + w^3R …

= R / (1- w)

where w = discount factor

Axelrod compared the payoff with other two strategies. One is the strategy to always choose D and the other is to alternate D and C (these two are the only potential invaders of tit-for-tat). Then, the payoff of the player will be the following:

• (T + wP)/(1-w)
• (T + wS)/(1-w^2) = wS + w^2T + w^3S…

Thus, if and only if the below conditions are satisfied, the tit-for-tat strategy is invaded by the other strategies:

• w≧(T-R)/(T-P)
• w≧(T-R)/(R-S)

If the probability of meeting certain types of players is statistically distributed, then we can provide the expected payoff of each strategy and come up with the conditions on which tit-for-tat thrives.

The result implies that tit-for-tat would be the best strategy in the following cases:

• The future is important (i.e. discount factor is enough high)
• The players interact frequently (i.e. the number of iteration is large)
• The probability to meet tit-for-tat (or “nice”) player is high

In chapter 3, he provides several additional propositions on the strategy’s robustness and stability in the prisoner’s dilemma situation. Then, he concludes:

“Thus cooperation can emerge even in a world of unconditional defection. The development cannot take place if it is tried only by scattered individuals who have no chance to interact with each other. But cooperation can emerge from small clusters of discriminating individuals, as long as these individuals have even a small proportion of their interactions with each other. Moreover, if nice strategies (those which are never the first to defect) come to be adopted by virtually everyone, then those individuals can afford to be generous in dealing with any others. By doing so well with each other, a population of nice rules can protect themselves against clusters of individuals using any other strategy just as well as they can protect themselves against single individuals. “

Application

The author applied his arguments in various fields. One was biology. In the paper published in “Science”, Robert Axelrod and William D. Hamilton (co-author) pointed out the certain cooperation shown in mutualistic symbioses: the fungus and alga that compose a lichen; the ants and ant-acacias, where the trees house and feed the ants which, in turn protect the tees; and the fig wasps and fig tree, where wasps, which are obligate parasites of fig flowers, serve as the tee’s sole means of pollination and seed set. They argue that symbioses mainly illustrate the other recent extension of evolutionary theory, the theory of reciprocation.

They said, their contribution in this area is as follows:

• They provided the probabilistic game theory model in a biological context, formalizing the strategic possibilities inherent in the situations
• Their analysis of the evolution of cooperation considers not just the final stability of a given strategy, but also the initial viability of a strategy in an environment dominated by non-cooperating individuals
• Their applications include behavioral interaction at the microbial level

Criticism from economists

When I read this book, I thought that some conclusions are not quite new in economics, or maybe it even exaggerates results of the game. As imagined, there were many criticisms from economists, as Ken Binmore summarized in his article. He says:

“Other game theorists may protest at my recognizing someone who knew no game theory at the time he made his contribution and still resolutely ignores game-theoretic commentary on his work, but it is inescapable that the evolutionary ideas pioneered by Axelrod now provide the standard approach to the equilibrium selection problem in game theory. But it is necessary to insist that to recognise Axelrod as a pioneer in evolutionary equilibrium selection is to endorse neither his claims for the strategy TIT-FOR-TAT, nor his unwillingness to see what theory can do before resorting to complicated computer simulations.”

http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/1/1/review1.html

In game theory, there already are fruitful theoretical results in iterated game, and Axelrod deliberately or indeliberately seems to ignore them. His usage of the famous “computer tournament” and of the examples seem to be arbitrary, as the arguments are lacking theoretical grounds. That said, the criticism does not destroy his entire contribution to the world, I believe. He provided the framework to think about the evolution from the perspective of game theory.

Remarks

It is a book of optimism. We can imagine what will happen in the future of cooperation. As written in this book, the more probability of continuing the game, the more cooperations. As ICT development is making us closer and more related to each other, there will be more chances of cooperation in the future. Actually, that is what’s going on in some spheres such as collaborative consumption, open source programming, etc.

My another remark is about problem solving. Technological advancement provides problems to solve. In this book, thanks to the development of computational power, the author could assess the strength of tit-for-tat strategy. Whenever one seeks for great problems, it may wise to look at the set of available technologies.

Reference

• “The evolution of cooperation” (Academic paper published in Science, Robert Axelrod and William D. Hamilton)
• “The evolution of cooperation” (Book, Robert Axelrod)
• Review by Ken Binmore, http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/1/1/review1.html

Making Democracy Work

I read a book “Bowling Alone”, in which Robert Putnam, the author, illuminated the social performance and strength of civic community. “Making Democracy is his historical book by which much of “social capital” concept proliferated.

The central question in this book is “What are the conditions for creating strong, responsive, effective representative institutions?”

The author was lucky. He had the opportunity to gather the data of Italy, which experienced the shift from centralized government system to localized one. There were 20 regional governments established during 1970s, and the 20 institutions in Italy significantly differed in their social, economic, political, and cultural contexts.

It is said that the state of institution shapes politics and the institutions are shaped by the history (i.e. it is “path dependent”). The book tries to examine that hypothesis.

1. How to measure institutional performance

Firstly, the author introduces measures of “institutional performance”. The conception of institutional performance in this study rests on a simple model of governance:

Societal demands -> political interaction -> government -> policy choice -> implementation

In this sense, a high-performance democratic institution must be both responsive and effective, that is, sensitive to the demands of its constituents and effective in using limited resources to address those demands. The author used twelve factors in determining institutional performance (page 67-):

• Cabinet stability : factor loading in institutional performance index is 0.874 (page 75)
• Budget promptness: 0.851
• Statistical and information services (which enhances the prompt and effective response to the public demand): 0.807
• Quality of the reform legislation (comprehensiveness, coherence and creativeness of the legislation, each graded from 1 to 5): 0.797
• Legislative innovation (evaluated by the factors such as strip mining regulation, promotion of fisheries, air/water pollution control, etc.): 0.779
• Provision of publicly supported day care centers per person eligible for the service: 0.681
• The number of family clinics per person: 0.640
• Industrial policy instruments (whether the regional government used six policy instruments: regional economic development plan, regional land use plan, industrial parks, regional development finance agencies, industrial development and marketing consortia, and job-training programs): 0.625
• Agricultural spending capacity: 0.580
• Local health unit expenditures: 0.577
• Housing and urban development: 0.545
• Bureaucratic responsiveness (evaluated through asking fake questions to the local bureaucracies) : 0.468

The institutional performance index composed of these 12 factors indicated striking correlation with their own historical performance and citizen satisfaction correlation (evaluated by the question “how satisfied or unsatisfied are you with the way in which this region is governed?”) and the community leaders’ satisfaction correlation(pp 76 - 81). The fact implies that institutional performance has autocorrelation (during the period, the original gap between north and south has been widened) and is well-designed to measure institutional performance in the sense that the performance augments civil satisfaction.

2. Which factors determine institutional performance - the impact of civic community

There are three schools in explaining institutional performance. The first school claims that institutional design determines the performance, the thought that has its roots in formal legal study, such as J.S. Mill’s “Considerations on Representative Government”. The second school emphasizes socioeconomic factors. They argue that the improvement of institutional performance is due to the modernization of economy.

The third school argues that sociocultural factors explain the institutional performance, and the book devoted much of its pages for examining that hypothesis.

The author argues that strength of civic community is positively correlated with institutional performance. The communitarian idea has its longest history (starting from Greek philosophy), but is feeble in these days, especially after the liberalism came to the center of political philosophy, partly because the communitarian is confused or associated with the totalitarian.

To evaluate the performance of civic community, the author used the

following factors (pp87-):

• Civic engagement
• Political equality
• Solidarity, trust, and tolerance
• Civil associations (sports clubs, cultural and scientific activities, music, etc)

The author induced “civic community index”, measured by preference voting (factor loading -0.947), referendum turnout (0.944), newspaper readership (0.893), scarcity of sports and cultural associations(-0.891). (pp96)

The civic community index shows striking results: in almost all measurements, the civic community index shows clear correlation (negative or positive) with numbers related to institutional performance: clientelism and “particularized contacting” (-) (scarce in high civic index regions), political equality (+), electoral reformism (+), clericalism (measured by church marriage rate, unti-divorce referendum, etc) (-), citizens’ feeling of powerlessness (-), satisfaction with life (+), and so on.

3. Tradition made civic communities

Prof. Putnam argues that the civic community index is coming from the civic tradition. He shows that northern part of Italy (which showed strong performance) has its civic traditions. He shows that the civic traditions correlation (based on data from 1860 to 1920) strongly is correlated to civic community index today. (pp151)

Through quoting the history, Putnam also shows that the regions without strong social tie have suffered the lack of social capital for more than a thousand year. Why is it the case? The economics theory tells us how this could happen.

Civil collaboration can be described as “iterated game” in game theory. In this set-up, there could be two equilibrium. One is cooperative and another is non-cooperative. Overall, aggregated utility of the parties would increase under the cooperative game, but it is not always the case, and often parties fall into the situation called “Prisoner’s dilemma”, where total utility of the players is lower than when they collaborate. Once the game becomes non-cooperative, it is difficult to flip the situation. Putnam claims that civic community and thus the social capital prevent the people from getting to the Prisoner’s Dilemma situation. It enhances mutual trust and thus people can be cooperative.

What the book argues is, as shortly written in the final chapter, common in microfinance. RCA (rotating credit association) is the common one as a basic microfinance scheme, and there are different types of local credit associations.

4. Remarks

What I firstly came up with was the imitation of empirical analysis about the society. One difficulty is lack of enough and neutral data, and the difficulty of numerical definition was another. Regarding the lack of enough neutral data, the author was fortunate in that they had the great opportunity to conduct empirical analysis in Italy, which experienced unique governmental changes. However, regarding the difficulty of numerical definition, it is unclear if the author overcame it. It is always possible that the author could use measurements arbitrarily (e.g. it is difficult to clarify why the civic community index in page 96 composes the four factors)

Another is the potential reverse of communities. In philosophy, communitarian notably gained the strongest popularity since the civil revolution era. Other social scientists such as Putnam also claim the importance of communities to enhance social performance.

The final remark is about its implication for organization management. In business fields, some try to revisit the value of Asian style management which requires strong social tie and commitments. Shared value and culture will enable organizations to keep internal communities. Also, the autonomy of each division would make it easy for large companies to form a small group.

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

Professor Sandel, as he does in his famous lecture series, invites us to make philosophical thinking through assuming concrete situations, the common way of reasoning in moral and political philosophy. Through using vivid examples, he represents ethical dilemma, or conflicting of moral principles, in which we ask to ourselves “what is the right thing to do?”. This book tries to answer to that question.

I. Three approaches to justice

Professor Sandel classified the approaches to justice into three ways. And the book devoted most of the contents for mentioning the strength and justice of the three approaches.

1. Maximize welfare: utilitarianism

Jeremy Bentham founded the doctrine of utilitarianism which exerts a powerful hold on the thinking of policy makers, economists, business executives, and ordinary citizens to this day. According to him, the highest principle of morality is to maximize happiness, or utility. (later John Stuart Mill contributed for the development of utilitarianism such that it becomes more humane one)

There are several objections casted to utilitarianism.

One is that it fails to respect individual rights. According to utilitarianism principle, it is possible to throw christians to lions for the sake of the happiness of the crowds (in ancient Rome), or, in general, sacrifice of individuals for the sake of majorities is allowed.

Second criticism toward utilitarianism is that utilitarianism assumes a common value among individuals, such that we can aggregate preferences of all the people. (Regarding this point, I don’t think the utilitarianism needs to assume uniformed utility function; as economists tried to establish their theory of expected utility hypothesis, they came up with some fundamental assumptions which are sufficient conditions to use the principle of utility maximization, thanks to the great contributions of John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern.)

(By the way, though I do not agree with Bentham’s idea totally, I respect him in that he is strictly consistent with what he believes in. He provided in his will that his body be preserved, embalmed, and displayed at University College London. That was his answer to the question “of what use could a dead man be to the living?” He thought, in the case of great philosophers, it is better to preserve one’s physical presence in order to inspire future generations of thinkers, rather than making one’s corpse available for the study of anatomy.

2. Respect freedom:

There are two schools holding this view: Laissez-faire school or fairness school. Those who hold laissez-fair view are free-market libertarians who believe that justice consists in respecting and upholding the voluntary choices made by consenting adults. The people who support fairness views think that justice requires policies that remedy social and economic disadvantages and give everyone a fair chance at success.

Kant gave another refinement of freedom. According to him, to act according to a law I gave myself – not according to the dictates of nature or social convention - is the freedom. Only human beings with reason can do it, and in that sense person is different from any other creatures. He placed importance on duty but on inclination (moral), autonomy but on heteronomy (freedom), and categorical imperative independent from the situation but on hypothetical imperatives dependent on the condition (reason). Prof Sandel articulately summarized the relationship among moral, freedom and reason from page 116 to 124 in this book. Let me quote a part of it.

“Acting morally means acting out of duty – for the sake of the moral law. The moral law consists of a categorical imperative, a principle that requires us to treat persons with respect, as ends in themselves. Only when I act in accordance with the categorical imperative am I acting freely. For whatever I act according to a hypothetical imperative, I act for the sake of some interest or end given outside of me. But in that case, I’m not really free; my will is determined not by me, but by outside forces – by the necessities of my circumstance or by the wants and desires I happen to have.”

Many of objections against libertarians are senseless, but there are a few strong criticisms toward libertarianism.

- Is “free choice” really free and fair?

Professor Sandel quotes the case of a homeless living under a bridge. He may need to make a “free contract” for the sake of his life (e.g. the contract asks him to offer kidneys with price of just USD 100, far cheaper than it usually takes), regardless of the intrinsic unfairness of the contract

- Is libertarianism right in light of civic virtue and common good?

For example, in many countries, conscription is the obligation as a citizen, but when we select the market system in drafting militaries, the problem that David M. Kennedy mentioned would occur: “A hugely preponderant majority of Americans with no risk whatsoever of exposure to military service have, in effect, hired some of the least advantaged of their fellow countrymen to do some of their most dangerous business while the majority goes on with their own affairs unbloodied and undistracted.” (from “The Wages of a Mercenary Army”) Jean-Jacques Rousseau said that the state in which citizens serve with their money than with their persons is not far from its fall. Here, professor Sandel says, the important issue to be discussed is that “what obligations do citizens of a democratic society owe to one another, and how do such obligations arise? (p90)”, the argument that “communitarians (seems like prof. Sandel does not like to be called so)” often make.

- Potential downgrading of personality

Let us think about surrogacy contracts (i.e. trade of pregnancy) and kidney trades. If we make even these things tradable in the market, the trade may lead to degrade those properties close to personalities. Immanuel Kant emphasized the distinction between persons (worthy of respect) and mere objects or things (open to use) as fundamental distinction in morality. In his “Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals”, he argues that morality is about respecting persons as ends in themselves on the ground that human beings possess reason.

3. Cultivate virtue: Communitarian

In contemporary society, the view is often associated with cultural conservatisms or the religious right.

Established by Aristotle, communitarian philosophy has the longest history than anyone else. Central to Aristotle’s political philosophy are two ideas (chapter 8):

- Justice is teleological. Defining rights requires us to figure out the telos (a Greek word meaning the purpose, end, or essential nature) of the social practice in question

- Justice is honorific. To reason about the telos of a practice – or to argue about it – is, at least in part, to reason or ague about what virtues it should honor and reward

According to Aristotle, virtue is not knowledge. It should be the integration of knowledge, habit and practical wisdom.

He insisted the importance of action. Habit is the first step in moral education, but that is not enough. The challenge is to do the right thing “to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way”. That means moral virtues requires judgment, a kind of knowledge Aristotle calls “practical wisdom”.

Above is the basis on which Aristotle claims that politics is essential to one’s good life (life following moral virtue). The laws of the polis inculcate good habits, form good character, and set us on the way to civic virtue. Also, the life of the citizen enables us to exercise capacities for deliberation and practical wisdom that would otherwise lie dormant. (here, citizen has narrower meaning than we use today)

II. Libertarian vs Communitarian

Libertarian’s criticism toward communitarian

Kant and Rawls reject Aristotle’s teleology because it doesn’t seem to leave us room to choose our good for ourselves. Libertarian place more importance on choice, not fit. Communitarian view could be somewhat totalitarian.

Communitarian’s Claim

In chapter 9, professor Sandel finally claim the flaw of libertarian.

“I do not think that freedom of choice – even freedom of choice under fair conditions- is an adequate basis for a just society. What’s more, the attempt to find neutral principles of justice seems to me misguided. It is not always possible to define our rights and duties without taking up substantive moral questions; and even when it’s possible it may not be desirable.

The weakness of the liberal conception of freedom is bound up with its appeal. If we understand ourselves as free and independent selves, unbound by moral ties we haven’t chosen, we can’t make sense of a range of moral and political obligations that we commonly recognize, even prize. These include obligations of solidarity and loyalty, historic memory and religious faith – moral claims that arise from the communities and traditions that shape our identity. Unlesswe think of ourselves as encumbered selves, open to moral claims we have not willed, it is difficult to make sense of these aspects of our moral and political experience.”

Here I would note that the controversy between libertarian and communitarian regarding moral is not totally different. They agree each other to some extent. Let me summarize it.

a. Natural duties: universal and don’t require consent: agreed

b. Voluntary obligations: particular and require consent: agreed

c. Obligations of solidarity: particular and don’t require consent: disagreed

Here, obligations of solidarity are the obligations native to the one’s own situation. For example, if we see two children drawing, one is your kid and one is not, you would help your child first. Prof. Sandel argues that “if you believe that patriotism has a moral basis, if you believe that we have special responsibilities for the welfare of our fellow citizens, then you must accept the third category of obligation – obligations of solidarity or membership that can’t be reduced to an act of consent”. (P234)

The obligations of solidarity may sound like it is expanded selfishness. In fact, it is not. These obligations ask us to act as if the community is the unit of moral behavior to the certain extent. That is, I am responsible for the deed of my community, regardless of past or present.

“Obligations of solidarity and membership point outward as well as inward. Some of the special responsibilities that flow from the particular communities I inhabit I may owe to fellow members. But others I may owe to those with whom my community has a morally burdened history, as in the relation of Germans to Jews, or of American whites to African Americans. Collective apologies and reparations for historic injustices are good examples of the way solidarity can create moral responsibilities for communities other than my own. Making amends for my country’s past wrong is one way of affirming my allegiance to it.”

III. Remarks

It is a nice book as a political philosophy class 101. Though professor Sandel holds his position as a communitarian, he made fair assessment of utilitarianism and liberalism. Introducing practical examples (maybe that is the way of Aristotle), he illuminated the strength and weaknesses of three main ideas in political philosophy.

The communitarian view reminds me of the idea I learned when I was a high school student. The view told me to admire my parents and my community, and correct them if they are not doing the right thing. It was not ethnocentrism, but the moral principle based on community. If applied correctly, communitarian idea would develop the society, which is, especially in developed country, dominated by libertarianism and utilitarianism.

The book is also useful for those who are interested in and participate into the social action to alleviate poverty, famine, etc. Those people are definitely following one’s own moral principle, and it would be beneficial to verbalize what you believe in. This book helps you to shape your idea of justice.

A Theory of Justice

I. Overview

Rawls in this book tried to establish the theory of justice as fairness to provide an alternative to utilitarianism and intuitionism.

He thought: “Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. Therefore in a just society the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.” According to Rawls, the society is well-ordered when it is not only designed to advance the good of its members but when it is also effectively regulated by a public conception of justice. In the society, justice exists a-priori, and then other rules follow it. Here, good is determined by “what is for him the most rational plan of life given reasonably favorable circumstances”.

He introduces the conditions on conceptions of right (23. The formal constraints of the concept of right). According to him, “a conception of right is a set of principles, general in form and universal in application, that is to be publicly recognized as a final court of appeal for ordering the conflicting claims of moral persons”.

To derive the principle of justice, Rawls used the concept of “original position”, as the other philosophers of social contract did as physics analyzes the situation assuming no friction. Rawls’s original position is a hypothetical situation in which no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does any one know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like, nor do the parties know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities. Under the circumstances, Rawls said, the principles of justice are chosen behind “a veil of ignorance”, provided that people are rational. He calls it “justice as fairness”, as the justice here is agreed to in the situation that is fair, or the participants are all equal. (p11, 3. The main idea of the theory of justice)

Then he derives two main principles of justice (P53, 11. two principles of justice).

One is justice about liberty. “Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others”. The liberty here does not include all sorts of liberties. Rawls says important among the liberties are political liberty and freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of conscience and freedom of thought; freedom of the person; the right to hold personal property and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizures. The principle primarily applies to the basic structure of society and governs the assignment of rights and duties.

Another is justice about social and economic justice. He said: “social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all. “ This principle applies to the distribution of income and wealth and to the design of organizations that make use of differences in authority and responsibility.

Regarding the second principle of justice, when Rawls say “everyone’s advantage”, it means that the inequality satisfies two principles: efficiency principle and difference principle (P57, 12.interpretations of the second principle). Efficiency principle is in the same meaning of Pareto’s optimality. Difference principle rules that the inequality is “justifiable only if the difference in expectation is to the advantage of the representative man who is worse off”. The “open to all” means the quality as careers open to talents and equality as equality of fair opportunities.

II. Righteousness of the two principles

Rawls claims righteousness of the two principles because of its reasoning, application to the institutions and comparisons with other conceptions. (26. The reasoning for the two principles)

He argues that the two principles are the result of logical reasoning from the assumption of original position.

1. Logical Reasoning

“There is no way for him to win special advantages for himself. Nor, on the other hand, are there grounds for his acquiescing in special disadvantages. Since it is not reasonable for him to expect more than an equal share in the division of social primary goods, and since it is not rational for him to agree to less, the sensible thing is to acknowledge as the first step a principle of justice requiring an equal distribution. Indeed, this principle is so obvious given the symmetry of the parties that it would occur to everyone immediately. Thus the parties start with a principle requiring equal basic liberties for all, as well as fair equality of opportunity and equal division of income and wealth.”

That is, if I understand it correctly, in the “empty” situation, rational people chose equal liberties and equal opportunities ex-ante. So what about the ex-post inequalities that would be inevitable even under the equality of opportunity?

“If there are inequalities in income and wealth, and differences in authority and degrees of responsibility, that work to make everyone better off in comparison with the benchmark of equality, why not permit them? One might think that ideally individuals should want to serve one another. But since the parties are assumed to be mutually disinterested, their acceptance of these economic and institutional inequalities is only the recognition of the relations of opposition in which men stand in the circumstances of justice. They have no grounds for complaining of one another’s motives. Thus the parties would object to these differences only if they would be dejected by the bare knowledge or perception that others are better situated; but I suppose that they decide as if they are not moved by envy. Thus the basic structure should allow these inequalities so long as these improve everyone’s situation, including that of the least advantaged, provided that they are consistent with equal liberty and fair opportunity. … Taking equality as the basis of comparison, those who have gained more must do so on terms that are justifiable to those who have gained the least.”

In original position, people are disinterested each other, and they do not care about the motives of others, but about the fact of inequality from the viewpoint of justice. Then, he says, the inequalities are allowed only if they improve the situation of everyone including the least advantaged one. It is like the maximin principle in game theory, the principle to maximize the payoff when it’s least, i.e. to minimize the severest damage. He says the principle is out of the nature of original position, where participants do not see probability distribution of the events in the future (“darkness” in his term).

“To begin with, the veil of ignorance excludes all knowledge of likelihoods. The parties have no basis for determining the probable nature of their society, or their place in it. Thus they have no basis for probability calculations. They must also take into account the fact that their choice of principles should seem reasonable to others, in particular their descendants, whose rights will be deeply affected by it. These considerations are strengthened by the fact that the parties know very little about the possible states of society. Not only are they unable to conjecture the likelihoods of the various possible circumstances, they cannot say much about what the possible circumstances are, much less enumerate them and foresee the outcome of each alternative available. Those deciding are much more in the dark than illustrations by numerical tables suggests. It is for this reason that I have spoken only of a relation to the maximum rule.”

Rawls’s approach, using original position to derive justice principles, was an alternative to the common ways of establishing ethical theories: one is to begin with the first principle and then derive the body of standard and precepts, the method called Cartesian approach; another is to introduce definitions of moral concepts in terms of presumptively non-moral ones, and then to show by accepted common sense and the sciences that the statements thus paired with the asserted moral judgments are true, naturalism approach. He argued both common approaches have defects. He said, “There is no set of conditions or first principles that can be plausibly claimed to be necessary or definitive of morality and thereby especially suited to carry the burden of justification. On the other hand, the method of naturalism so-called must first distinguish moral from non-moral concepts and then gain acceptance for the definitions laid down. For the justification to succeed a clear theory of meaning is presupposed and this seems to be lacking.” Thus he developed the alternative, and let the source of justification on its entire conception and how it fits in with and organizes our considered judgments in reflective equilibrium. (87. Concluding remarks on justification)

2. Application to the institution

Part Two of the book tries to show that the two principles provide a workable theory of social justice and are compatible with reasonable demands of efficiency, by applying the two to some main questions of social justice: conscience, toleration and the common interest, political justice and constitution, the principle of participation, political economy, the problem between generations, time preference, duty and obligation, majority rule, civil disobedience, etc.

3. Comparison with other conceptions

According to Rawls, the other principles (utility, intuition, etc) will lead to institutions that the parties would find intolerable, as when we follow utilitarian principle, we would see some minorities sacrificed for the sake of majority.

III. A few remarks

He limited his discussion of justice into the scope of social justice, or the justice applied to institutions. He said, “the principles of justice for institutions must not be confused with the principles which apply to individuals and their actions in particular circumstances. These two kinds of principles apply to different subjects and must be discussed separately”. That part is criticized by feminism, which says “the personal is social”. Indeed, Rawls may have failed to recognize that the personal relationship represents the society and the personal and social discussions cannot be separated. That said, the feminism’s arguments will not destroy entire structure of Rawls’s proposition. Rawls did not explicitly exclude the feminism issues, and his theory can be feasibly applied to the “social issues” in personal relationship.

The criticism from economists such as Kenneth Arrow seems to be correction rather than criticism. I don't think Rawls had formal economics training, and although his usage of the maxmin principle may be inappropriate, that error would not hurt the essence of his argument.

I think the strong criticism is what communitarian such as Sandel and Taylor made, as they cast doubt on the reasoning itself. Rawls used the conceptual “original position”, or empty space, to develop the two principles. The criticism is toward the setup itself. Indeed, physics made significant progress thanks to its setup of abstraction; theory is developed in the frictionless world, and then it’s applied to the reality. However, in the discussion of the issues deeply related to human beings which innately has values, aspirations, minds, etc., would that be the right setup? I would support the view of communitarians, as I believe that the concept like justice is what is out of humanity and thus that to abstract the considerations that make us human would lead to the false conclusion. With that said, though I now see the communitarian criticism to be plausible, I cannot provide the alternatives to come up with the universal and general justice theory. Maybe the good time to read “Justice” authored by Sandel.

My additional thought is that the proof of two principles is weak. Only several pages are spent for the proof, in this thick 500+ pages book. Without using any axiom, he just deduces his conclusion by using common sense. According to him, the development of two principles is “obvious” in the “original position”, but I could not understand what logical reasoning made it obvious. To introduce what is general and universal, one should start with the premise and process that are also general and universal.

A final tiny comment is that this book is verbose. Unfortunately, this prolixity seems to make the concept less clear to me.

Reference

John Rawls, "A Theory of Justice" (revised edition), Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999 Sep 30