Morality and Rational Choice

208 Pages·1993·4.872 MB·English

by  Jonathan Baron (auth.)

MORALITY AND RATIONAL CHOICE
THEORY AND DECISION LIBRARY
General Editors: W. Leinfellner (Vienna) and G. Eberlein (Munieh)
Series A: Philosophy and Methodology of the Social Sciences
Series B: Mathematical and Statistical Methods
Series C: Game Theory, Mathematical Programming and Operations Research
Series D: System Theory, Knowledge Engineering and Problem Solving
SERIES A: PHILOSOPHY AND METHODOLOGY
OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
VOLUME 18
Series Editors: W. Leinfellner (Technical University of Vienna), G. Eberlein (Technical
University of Munich); Editorial Board: M. Bunge (Montreal), 1. S. Coleman (Chicago),
M. Dogan (Paris), 1. Elster (Oslo), L. Kern (Munich), I. Levi (New York), R. Mattessich
(Vancouver), A. Rapoport (Toronto), A. Sen (Cambridge, U.S.A.), R. Tuomela (Helsinki),
A. Tversky (Stanford).
Scope: This series deals with the foundations, the general methodology and the criteria,
goals and purpose of the social sciences. The emphasis in the new Series A will be on well
argued, thoroughly analytical rather than advanced mathematical treatments. In this context,
particular attention will be paid to game and decision theory and general philosophical topics
from mathematics, psychology and economics, such as game theory, voting and welfare
theory, with applications to political science, sociology, law and ethics.
The titles published in this se ries are listed at the end 01 this volurne.
MORALITY AND
RATIONAL CHOICE
by
JONATHAN BARON
Department 0/ Psychology,
University 0/ Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, U.SA
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Baron. Jona than. 1944-
Mo r a 1 i t Y an d rat ion a 1 c hOl ce! b y Ja n a t h a n Ba r 0 n .
p. cm. -- <Theory and declsion 1 ibrary. Series A. Phi losophy
and methodology of the social sciences ; v. 18>
Includes index.
ISBN 978-90-481-4270-5 ISBN 978-94-015-8226-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-8226-1
1. Decision-making. 2. Utl1 itarianlsm. I. T1tle. II. Serles.
BF448.B37 1993
171' .5--dc20 93-10276
ISBN 978-90-481-4270-5
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
© 1993 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1993
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1993
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 U tilitarianism 5
1.2 Prospectus 6
1.3 Critical vs. intuitive 10
2 Morality and decision making 15
2.1 The argument for consequentialism, restated . 25
3 The nature of goals 31
3.1 Types of goals .. 33
3.2 Sadistic goals .. 35
3.3 Erroneous subgoals 35
3.4 Goals and preferences 36
3.5 What goals? . 39
3.6 Conclusion 47
4 Expected utility theory 49
4.1 Criticisms of expected-utility 53
4.2 The independence principle 54
4.3 Regret ... 57
4.4 Transitivity 58
4.5 Ambiguity. 61
4.6 Summary 64
4.7 Appendix: Utility measurement 64
5 Decisions for others 75
5.1 Interpersonal comparison 76
6 Self-other conflict 87
6.1 Normative theories of social dilemmas 87
6.2 Weighted utilitarianism 89
6.3 The effect of time. 94
6.4 Conclusion 97
7 Acts and omissions 99
7.1 The main argument ...... . 100
7.2 Why people make the distinction 110
7.3 Prescriptive implications . 114
7.4 Conclusion ....... . 119
VI
8 Utilitarian education 121
8.1 Implications for moral education .... . 121
8.2 Potential advantages: Bad intuitions .. . 122
8.3 The potential dangers of critical thinking 124
8.4 The content of moral education 125
8.5 The nature of virtue ... 129
8.6 The virtues of citizenship 1:32
8.7 Conclusion ....... . 136
9 Decision analysis and public policy 139
9.1 Issues in decision analysis 140
9.2 The value of life . 14.5
9.3 Conclusion 150
10 Equity in social policy alld liability 151
10.1 Distribution ............ . 151
10.2 Liability: deterrence and compensation . 154
10.3 Nonpecuniary damages ......... . 164
11 The risk analysis debate 167
11.1 Voluntary vs. involuntary 167
11.2 Natural vs. unnatural 168
11.3 Catastrophic vs. gradual . 170
11.4 Ambiguous risks ..... 172
11.5 Equity in risk distribution 174
11.6 Ex post vs. ex ante equity 176
12 Social decisions 179
12.1 The classification 179
12.2 An example ... 181
12.3 Rights and duties 182
12.4 Advantages and disadvantages 183
12.5 Virtues and vices 187
12.6 Conclusion 188
References 191
Index 204
I would like to thank Deborah Frisch, Jonathan Haidt, Nick Haslam
and Mark Spranca for extensive comments on the manuscript and discus
sion of the issues over se ver al years, Jonathan Adler for comments on the
manuscript, John Broome for a helpful review, David Krantz, Nicholas
Maxwell, John Monterosso, and Samuel Freeman for discussions, Colin
Camerer, Howard Kunreuther and Karen Marquiss for critiques of some
of the chapters, and the National Science Foundation for financial support
through grant SES-88-09299.
This book was written using Borland Sprint configured as FinalWord.
It was formatted, after conversion, with UTEX, and then converted to
PostScript.
vii
Chapter 1
Introduction
Public controversies - such as those about the distribution of goods between
rich and poor, trade and population policies, allocation of medical resources,
and the tradeoff between environment al protection and economic efficiency
- often hinge on fundamental views about how we ought to make decisions
tImt affect each other, that is, what principles we ought to follow. Efforts to
find an acceptable public philosophy, a set of such principles on which people
might agree, have foundered because of dis agreement among philosophers
and others who are concerned with such issues. One view, which I shall
develop and defend here, holds that decisions that affect others should be
made according to an overall evaluation of the consequences of each option.
This consequentialist view is opposed by a variety of alternatives, but many
of the alternatives have in COlllmon a basis in moral intuition.
To take a simple example, consequentialism holds that, other things
equal, if we have decided that it is better to let a terminally ill patient die
than to prolong her agony by keeping her alive, then we ought to kill her.
Most people's intuition, however, sees a great difference between killing and
letting die, and most ethical codes in medicine allow passive euthanasia but
prohibit active euthanasia (Kuhse, 1987). Various philosophers have tried
to find ways of systematizing these intuitions, but consistency has been
elusive (Kuhse, 1987). Still, opponents of consequentialism often assume
that the appropriate method for deciding such quest ion is to reflect on our
intuitions, systematizing them and, ifnecessary, changing them so that they
fit into the system we discover (Rawls, 1971).
This approach has been challenged both within philosophy (Rare, 1981),
and it is also challenged by the findings of psychologists, who have discov
ered may cases in which intuitions seem to be systematically incorrect. For
example, Ritov and Baron (1990) presented subjects with a hypothetical
scenario in which a flu was going to kill 10 out of 10,000 children but a
vaccine was available that would totally prevent the flu. The vaccine itself,
however, would cause so me deaths from side effects. Subjects were asked
whether they would vaccinate their child or not as a function of the risk
from the vaccine. Many subjects would vaccinate only if the vaccine had
no risk. Others would accept only an intermediate risk, such as 5 out of
10,000, and still others - consequentialists, it seems - would vaccinate ifthe
risk were as high as 9 out of 10,000, since the vaccine would still slightly
reduce the chance of death. The same results were found when subjects
were asked whether there should be a law requiring vaccination. The find-
1
2 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTIOiV
ing that many people would Jl ot take this kind of risk is consistent with
other findings (Spranca, :\Iinsk, &: Baron, 1991) indicating that people are
more willing to cause harmful out comes occur through their omissions than
through their acts. We call this effect omission bias because we beliew that
it is an error, analogous to many other phenomena that are more obviously
errors (Baron. 1988a).
Our claim that this is an error has two important implications. First,
citizens who support policies based on the act-omission distinction ~ such
as those concerning euthanasia ~ are in error. (They may express their
support through political Challl1els or through their own private decisions.
e.g., about medical treatment.) Second. the philosophers who try to dewlop
theories to account for such intuitions are using ftawed data. They will. at
best, discover a systematic psychological account of contemporary intuition,
but they will be wrong to argue that we ought to follow the principles they
discover. Of course, theories based on intuition are difficult to justify if it is
ewn possible that intuition is systematically \Hong. But I am making the
stronger claim that intuition 15 often wrong. This claim, if true. provides
partial justification for efforts to correct intuition through education, or to
ignore certain express ions of opinion in making public policy. Clearly, the
use of edUC'ation rather than autocracy makes for a more stable society,
in less danger of autocratic abuse, but decisions are sometimes delegated
primarily to "experts," and these experts might do better to attend to
consequences rat her than public intuitions.
The claim that omission bias is an error amounts to saying that people
are' sometimes irrational, in the sense of rnaking errors of reasoning. To say
this, we need a normative model, a standard of rationality. The first part of
this book will be, in large part, an attempt to dewlop and defend this kind
of model. The form I shall defend includes both expected-utility theory and
utilitarianism. Both of these theories assume that "utility" is a measure
of the desirability of consequences. Expected utility theory says that the
best option maximizes the mathematical expectation of utility, that is, the
sum over possible consequences of each consequence s probability times its
utility. In the vaccination case, the utility of death is assumed to be lower
than that of life, and the same regardless of the cause of death. Thus, all
that matters is the probability of death, so we should vaccinate when this
r
is lower for vaccinating than for not vaccinating. tilitarianism says that
the best' option maximizes the sum of utility over all affected individuals.
If we are deciding on a vaccination policy. we are trading off the deaths of
those who will die from the vaccine for those who will die from the Ru. If
the total is sm aller with the vaccine (and if we cannot tell who is at risk
from the vaccine or Ru), we should vaccinate everyone.
3
1.0.1 Expected-utility theory and intuition
Both expected-utility theory and utilitarianism are controversial. To many
in the emerging field of "behavioral decision theory," expected-utility theory
is by no means the obvious standard of rational decision making. Among
philosophers, it has few defenders. Yet, it seems to many of us, there
is something right about it. Some decision tlleorists (Raiffa, 1965; Von
Winterfeldt and Edwards, 19S6) have tried to defend the theory, but they
have evidently failed to answer all the questions to everyone 's satisfaction.
U nfortunately, the defense sometimes lapses into statements such as, "If you
reftect on these principles, you will want to adopt them," without telling
us how we ought to reftect.
Part of the controversy is that expected-utility theory confticts with
many people's intuitions, such as those concerning acts and omissions. Its
critics often rely on their intuitions as the justification of alternative theo
ries. Yet. as noted, these intuitions themselves could be errors in thinking.
Many clear errors have been documented, and they can often be explained
in terms of well-known psychological principles (Baron, 19S8a; 1990).
To take another example, people honor irrelevant sunk costs. Suppose
tlmt Bill lmys two identical "TV dinners" at different prices but then finds,
after putting them in the oven, that he can eat only one of them (and that
he must throw out the other). A substantial fraction of adults say that he
should eat the more expensive one because he will waste less money (Arkes
8: Blumer, 1985). They ignore the fact that the money spent cannot be
retrieved. This error can be explained as overgeneralization of a principle
opposing waste to a case in which it is irrelevant, because the waste has
already occurred (Baron, 1990). (Thaler and Shefrin, 19S1, give another
explanation in terms of a difference in attitude toward gains and losses. )
Such overgeneralization could also be occurring in the vaccination problem,
for subjects might overgeneralize such principles as "do no harm" or "let
nature take its course," principles that generally serve to maximize utility
but do not do so in this case. Of course, the claim that these responses are
overgeneralizations presupposes that they are errors, and that remains to
be shown. The point is only that, if they are errors, they are not surprising
ones.
Overgeneralizations of this sort, and the sorts of decision rules that
yielded the error in the vaccination problem, need not always be recognized
by those who commit them. People, including philosophers and social sc i
entists, can become committed to the intuitions that develop as a result
of these rules. Even in the TV dinner problem, a few people who commit
the error refuse to acknowledge tImt it is an error. We therefore cannot
rely much on intuition for the defense of normative theories, or for their