by Scott Soames
That, of course, is not all. Being incapable of interacting with p1, p2 is also incapable of interacting with anything causally related to p1, including us, our measuring device, anything causally interacting with us or our device, anything interacting with anything that interacts with us or our device, and so on without end. In short, certain quantum events, including (but not limited to) those that occur in actual, conscious measurement, open up new dimensions of reality, new “worlds” in Everett’s sense, obeying the same deterministic laws as those in our dimension (world). These dimensions can be thought of as populated by “copies” of all entities in our dimension—including us, our measuring device, anything interacting with us or our measuring device, and so on without end. Despite traveling through different futures, these emerging entities share a common history with us and our dimension-mates.
In fact, we may not have to think of any of the elements in different dimensions (“worlds”) as copies. Perhaps, after measurement, there is just one particle, just one measuring device, and just one observer, continuing on different futures in the different dimensions. Just as there is no contradiction between my being a young philosopher at t1 and my not being a young philosopher at t2, so there is no contradiction between (i) my observing p1 to arrive at C, and not D, in dimension 1, and (ii) my observing p1 to arrive at D, and not C, in dimension 2. According to this way of conceptualizing things, when in dimension n, I measure a particle going through either route A or route B, I come, in dimension n, to observe that particle as ending up at C or D, but not both, while coming, in dimension n+1, to observe it at the other of the two. Obviously, this can be iterated when further particles are observed passing through the routes. By contrast, if, in either dimension, I send a particle through without checking the route, I always see it ending up at C. In this way, my experience through the different dimensions will match the predictions derived from quantum mechanics.
This, in oversimplified form, is what is called the “many-worlds” conception of quantum mechanics. Though philosophically and mathematically brilliant, Everett’s astounding idea was, understandably, too radical and too underdeveloped conceptually for the establishment physicists and philosophers of his day. However, his idea has been more fully fleshed out over time, and has now become one of the leading interpretations of quantum mechanics. Today, it is defended and elaborated by such luminaries as David Deutsch, professor of physics at Oxford University, David Wallace, professor of philosophy at University of Southern California, and Sean Carroll, professor of physics at California Institute of Technology (Caltech), as well as a number of others.30 Its growing success appears to be attributable to the facts that (i) the reality it postulates bears a close relationship to the mathematical formalism of quantum theory, allowing it to be read as a straightforward description of the seen, and unseen, world, and (ii) it explains the probabilities predicted by the theory in a way that is consistent with deterministic physical laws. The same cannot be said for other leading interpretations.
Nevertheless, the many-worlds interpretation remains highly controversial, in part because of the profoundly perplexing philosophical issues it raises. For this reason it seems likely that the future debate over what our most advanced physical theory is telling us will be fought out on the common ground occupied by physics and philosophy. That much, at least, shouldn’t be surprising. Twenty-four centuries after Aristotle’s observation that human beings by nature desire to know, neither the desire, nor the need for philosophical clarification of perplexing possibilities encountered in trying to satisfy it, have lessened in the slightest.
CHAPTER 11
LIBERTY, JUSTICE, AND THE GOOD SOCIETY
Hayek’s mid-twentieth-century revival in The Constitution of Liberty of political and economic philosophy in the spirit of Hume and Smith; John Rawls’s Theory of Justice and his contemporary Lockean critic Robert Nozick; Gerald Gaus’s twenty-first-century proposal in The Tyranny of the Ideal for rethinking the central aims and methods of political philosophy; Karl Marx: a cautionary tale.
Political philosophy today may be reaching a turning point comparable to one that faced the philosophy of science 50 years ago, when it was a single, abstract discipline concentrating on general issues common to the sciences—e.g., the relations between theory and observation, the logic of empirical confirmation, and the nature of explanation. Since then the philosophy of science has evolved into a cluster of specialized inquiries, including several centered on specific sciences—philosophy of physics, of biology, of psychology, etc. As illustrated in chapter 10, this change has brought philosophy closer to individual sciences, facilitating productive interactions between scientifically minded philosophers and philosophically minded natural and social scientists. One might expect, and even hope for, a similar evolution of political philosophy from what has traditionally been its focus on highly general and abstract conceptions of good and just societies into more tightly focused normative investigations of different aspects of societies—their legal systems, their economic and monetary systems, their systems of social stratification, their military and civilian establishments, and their divisions of governmental functions and jurisdictions. Although such an evolution hasn’t gotten as far as it has in the natural and the most advanced social sciences, some movement has taken place.
In the next chapter I will separate out contemporary philosophy of law for special treatment. In this chapter, I will counterpose two great classics of twentieth-century political philosophy, The Constitution of Liberty by Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) and A Theory of Justice by John Rawls (1921–2002), with a twenty-first-century work, The Tyranny of the Ideal by Gerald Gaus, which argues for a new and more empirically focused direction in political theorizing.1 I will close by examining a historical approach, that of the nineteenth-century philosopher Karl Marx, which contrasts sharply with the twentieth- and twenty-first-century political philosophers with whom the chapter begins.
FRIEDRICH HAYEK: THE CONSTITUTION OF LIBERTY
The central concept in Hayek’s political philosophy is liberty, by which he means the ability to act on one’s own decisions, uncoerced by others. Because a person generally knows his or her own interests and the means of advancing them better than others do, Hayek maintains that a high degree of individual liberty tends to facilitate individual welfare. Since pursuing our goals requires us to make use of goods and services provided by others, it is vital that others be free to acquire, share, and benefit from the knowledge they have acquired. As Hayek observes, virtually everything one does in a civilized society depends on a vast quantity of knowledge that one doesn’t possess; the higher the level of civilization, the greater the dependence. We depend not only on theoretical knowledge acquired through formal education, but also on all manner of practical skills acquired through experience. Both sorts of knowledge often arise from trial and error, in which surprising success is preceded by disappointing failures. This constant experimentation requires the widest possible liberty, consistent with similar liberty for all, to inquire, to plan, and to act without coercing, or being coerced by, others.
Hayek insists that the enormous reservoir of knowledge supporting the continued innovation on which modern life depends is too vast and widely dispersed to be centralized in the hands of any small, ruling elite. Attempts to centralize it can only inhibit the production and sharing of knowledge, threatening future progress and current well-being. Just as the innovations that brought us from the dawn of the industrial age to our present level of civilization were unforeseeable to our forebearers, so the innovations on which our future depends are unforeseeable to us now. Being ignorant not only of what we will most need, but also of what our evolving conception of the good will demand, we must, Hayek thinks, be free to improvise without closing off what may prove to be viable options. For Hayek, all institutions, from family to government and everything in between, change both the conditions and the knowledge on which those institutions depend, and are in turn ch
anged by those new conditions and that new knowledge. Since we can’t predict what an ideally good and just society will look like, let alone plot a course to it, we must preserve maximum freedom to innovate.
Freedom to innovate means freedom to fail as well as to succeed. Because success is rewarded but failure isn’t, liberty generates inequality. Though admittedly a problem to be dealt with, in part by the provision of a social minimum, Hayek takes inequality itself to be necessary to produce unprecedented benefits for all in the future.
[N]ew knowledge and its benefits can be spread only gradually.… It is misleading to think of those new possibilities as if they were, from the beginning, a common possession of society which its members could deliberately share.… [New knowledge] will have to pass through a long course of adaptation, selection, combination, and improvement before full use can be made of it. This means that there will always be people who already benefit from new achievements that have not yet reached others.2
What today may seem extravagance or even waste, because it is enjoyed by the few …, is payment for the experimentation with a style of living that will eventually be available to many. The range of what will be tried and later … become available to all, is greatly extended by the unequal distribution of present benefits.… If all had to wait for better things until they could be provided for all, that day would in many instances never come. Even the poorest today owe their relative material well-being to the results of past inequality.3
The empirical basis for his position is given by the graph and table on the next page illustrating the recent effectiveness of free market economics when compared to the rest of human history.
Although Hayek’s concern with the elimination of absolute poverty is admirable, one might object that he neglects the unhappiness caused by relative poverty. He doesn’t. Poverty, he notes, in the most advanced societies, has
become a relative, rather than an absolute, concept. This does not make it less bitter. Although in an advanced society the unsatisfied wants are usually no longer physical needs, but the results of civilization … at each stage some of the things most people desire can be provided only for a few.… Most of what we strive for are things we want because others already have them. Yet a progressive society … recognizes the desire it creates only as a spur to further effort. It disregards the pain of unfulfilled desire aroused by the example of others. It appears cruel because it increases the desire of all in proportion as it increases its gifts to some. Yet so long as it remains a progressive society, some must lead, and the rest follow.4
From Moller (2014), p. 97.
GROUP
LIFE EXPECTANCY AT BIRTH (AT 20)
Modern foragers
30s (40s)
Italian magistrates, 223 CE
25 (33)
England 1550–1599
38
Pre-industrial England 1750–1799
20 (34)
USA 1850
38
USA 1900
48
USA 1950
68
USA modern
77
From Moller (2014), p. 98.
Sometimes we see others enjoying things we had no idea anyone might possess, and so come to desire them ourselves, simply for the pleasure or good they would bring us. At other times, however, our relative deprivation is infused with envy, resentment, and a strong desire to strip the relatively advantaged of their socioeconomic superiority. Insofar as the pain of relative poverty stems from an unfulfilled desire of the first sort, it is, as Hayek observes, the inevitable price to be paid for pursuing the quickest and most effective means of diminishing human misery and spreading previously unimagined benefits to more people. But insofar as this pain is the product of envy and a fiercely resented lack of social status, he suggests, it can never be eliminated, but only managed and minimized.
Unlike the desire for material advantages, the desire for status is a zero-sum game; A’s increased status can’t be had without B’s loss. Since desire for status is among the most persistent human emotions, the best way to manage it is to encourage many status hierarchies based on a variety of human excellences, thereby increasing an individual’s chances of being highly rated on some. An open, experimental society that prizes liberty while accommodating different, multifaceted but overlapping conceptions of the good, advanced by different social groups, is well positioned to do this.
With this variety in mind, we turn to Hayek’s understanding of equality, value, and merit. For Hayek, equality includes the equality of moral agents, equal respect for our common human dignity, equality before the law in roughly the (ideal) sense of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, and a reasonable sense of equal opportunity. Equality before the law requires the objective, nondiscriminatory enforcement of laws made for the common good, the protection of natural liberties for all, and the equal freedom from coercion by others. Equal opportunity requires the freedom to compete for social and economic rewards without the imposition of artificial legal barriers by the state. If this is all one means by equal opportunity, then Hayek is a believer. But if equal opportunity is understood as requiring all to have an equal start in life and equal prospects of succeeding in whatever they choose, he isn’t. On the contrary, he regards this conception of equal opportunity as incoherent, because there is no way to equalize genetic inheritance or environmental circumstance. Even worse, he argues, attempts to implement a utopian conception of equality of opportunity by penalizing the naturally advantaged while favoring the less advantaged (beyond the provision of a social minimum) will, by undermining liberty, diminish the intergenerational welfare of all.
The demand for equality of result is subjected to a similar critique. One strand of Hayek’s critique holds that the plurality of different human goods renders the idea of using public policy to equalize them absurd. Hayek hints at this in saying that the idea would “mean that it is the responsibility of the government to see to it that nobody is healthier, or possesses a happier temperament, a better suited spouse, or more prospering children than anyone else.”5 The second strand of his critique is that equalizing prospects for all negates individual responsibility. Finally, he argues that a policy of equalizing results destroys liberty and so makes future progress impossible.
He also rejects the idea that justice requires that material rewards should be proportional to moral merit. On the contrary, he argues,
in a free system it is neither desirable nor practicable that material rewards should be made generally to correspond to what men recognize as [moral] merit and … it is an essential characteristic of a free society that an individual’s position should not necessarily depend on the views of his fellows about the merit he has acquired.6
In our individual conduct we generally act on the assumption that it is the value of a person’s performance and not his merit that determines our obligation to him.… In our dealings with other men we feel that we are doing justice if we recompense value rendered with equal value, without inquiring what it may have cost the individual [in time, money, effort] to supply us with these services. What determines our responsibility is the advantage we derive from what others offer us, not their merit in providing it.7
Hayek’s distinction between the value we gain from our transactions with others and the moral merit of those who provide goods or services is well taken. Some with whom we interact have natural gifts—inherited intelligence, beauty, or athletic, musical, or artistic talent—for which they are not morally responsible. Others have benefited from a rich and nurturing environment not of their own making. Either way, the possession of their socially desirable traits may allow some to produce—without unusual effort, motivation, or sacrifice—goods and services of great enough value to others to be richly rewarded. By contrast, those with lesser gifts may exert themselves in a highly praiseworthy way, while failing to produce anything of comparable value. Individuals who have intimate knowledge of a few members of both groups may, of course, offer t
he latter friendship and respect they don’t offer the former. Nevertheless, there is no systematic way for the social, political, and economic system to bring material rewards into line with moral merit.
We don’t, of course, all agree about what moral worth is. But even if we did, we would lack the intimate knowledge needed to make economic success proportional to it. Hayek adds that the social cost of attempting to align the two more closely might prove to be psychologically devastating to those who don’t rank highly on the coordinated scale.
A society in which it was generally presumed that a high income was proof of merit and a low income of the lack of it, in which it was universally believed that position and remuneration corresponded to [moral] merit, in which there was no other road to success than the approval of one’s conduct by the majority of one’s fellows, would probably be much more unbearable to the unsuccessful ones than one in which it was frankly recognized that there was no necessary connection between [moral] merit and success.8
Despite his objections to expansive interpretations of equality as a social norm, and his objections to attempting to link material rewards to moral worth, he sometimes seems to endorse the idea that material rewards earned by individuals in a free society are, and ought to be, closely correlated with the value they produce for society. Recognizing that society needs to motivate agents to do what produces the most social value, Hayek suggests that material rewards are, rightly, closely correlated with social value produced.