by Sen, Amartya
This is indeed a fine question, but the answer is not hard to find. In fact, there is some embarrassment of riches in deciding which part of Asian history to concentrate on, since the answer could come from many different components of that history. For example, in the context of India in particular, one could point to the importance of the atheistic schools of Carvaka and Lokayata, which originated well before the Christian era, and produced a durable, influential and vast atheistic literature.23 Aside from intellectual documents arguing for atheistic beliefs, heterodox views can be found in many orthodox documents as well. Indeed, even the ancient epic Ramayana, which is often cited by Hindu political activists as the holy book of the divine Rama’s life, contains sharply dissenting views. For example, the Ramayana relates the occasion when Rama is lectured by a worldly pundit called Javali on the folly of religious beliefs: “O Rama, be wise, there exists no world but this, that is certain! Enjoy that which is present and cast behind thee that which is unpleasant.”24
It is also relevant to reflect on the fact that the only world religion that is firmly agnostic, viz., Buddhism, is Asian in origin. Indeed, it originated in India in the sixth century B.C., around the time when the atheistic writings of the Carvaka and Lokayata schools were particularly active. Even the Upanishads (a significant component of the Hindu scriptures that originated a little earlier—from which I have already quoted in citing Maitreyee’s question) discussed, with evident respect, the view that thought and intelligence are the results of material conditions in the body, and “when they are destroyed,” that is, “after death,” “no intelligence remains.”25 Skeptical schools of thought survived in Indian intellectual circles over the millennia, and even as late as the fourteenth century, Madhava Acarya (himself a good Vaishnavite Hindu), in his classic book called Sarvadarśana-samgraha (“Collection of All Philosophies”), devoted the entire first chapter to a serious presentation of the arguments of the Indian atheistic schools. Religious skepticism and its tolerance are not uniquely Western as a phenomenon.
References were made earlier to tolerance in general in Asian cultures (such as the Arabic, the Chinese and the Indian), and religious tolerance is a part of it, as the examples cited bring out. Examples of violations—often extreme violations—of tolerance are not hard to find in any culture (from medieval inquisitions to modern concentration camps in the West, and from religious slaughter to the victimizing oppression of the Taliban in the East), but voices have been persistently raised in favor of freedom—in different forms—in distinct and distant cultures. If the universalist presumptions of this book, particularly in valuing the importance of freedom, are to be rejected, the grounds for rejection must lie elsewhere.
A CONCLUDING REMARK
The case for basic freedoms and for the associated formulations in terms of rights rests on:
1) their intrinsic importance;
2) their consequential role in providing political incentives for economic security;
3) their constructive role in the genesis of values and priorities.
The case is no different in Asia than it is anywhere else, and the dismissal of this claim on the ground of the special nature of Asian values does not survive critical scrutiny.26
As it happens, the view that Asian values are quintessentially authoritarian has tended to come, in Asia, almost exclusively from spokesmen of those in power (sometimes supplemented—and reinforced—by Western statements demanding that people endorse what are seen as specifically “Western liberal values”). But foreign ministers, or government officials, or religious leaders, do not have a monopoly in interpreting local culture and values. It is important to listen to the voices of dissent in each society.27 Aung San Suu Kyi has no less legitimacy—indeed clearly has rather more—in interpreting what the Burmese want than have the military rulers of Myanmar, whose candidates she had defeated in open elections before being put in jail by the defeated military junta.
The recognition of diversity within different cultures is extremely important in the contemporary world.28 Our understanding of the presence of diversity tends to be somewhat undermined by constant bombardment with oversimple generalizations about “Western civilization,” “Asian values,” “African cultures” and so on. Many of these readings of history and civilization are not only intellectually shallow, they also add to the divisiveness of the world in which we live. The fact is that in any culture, people seem to like to argue with one another, and frequently do exactly that—given the chance. The presence of dissidents makes it problematic to take an unambiguous view of the “true nature” of local values. In fact, dissidents tend to exist in every society—often quite plentifully—and they are frequently willing to take very great risks regarding their own security. Indeed, had the dissidents not been so tenaciously present, authoritarian polities would not have had to undertake such repressive measures in practice, to supplement their intolerant beliefs. The presence of dissidents tempts the authoritarian ruling groups to take a repressive view of local culture and, at the same time, that presence itself undermines the intellectual basis of such univocal interpretation of local beliefs as homogenous thought.29
Western discussion of non-Western societies is often too respectful of authority—the governor, the minister, the military junta, the religious leader. This “authoritarian bias” receives support from the fact that Western countries themselves are often represented, in international gatherings, by governmental officials and spokesmen, and they in turn seek the views of their opposite numbers from other countries. An adequate approach of development cannot really be so centered only on those in power. The reach has to be broader, and the need for popular participation is not just sanctimonious rubbish. Indeed, the idea of development cannot be dissociated from it.
As far as the authoritarian claims about “Asian values” are concerned, it has to be recognized that values that have been championed in the past of Asian countries—in East Asia as well as elsewhere in Asia—include an enormous variety.30 Indeed, in many ways they are similar to substantial variations that are often seen in the history of ideas in the West also. To see Asian history in terms of a narrow category of authoritarian values does little justice to the rich varieties of thought in Asian intellectual traditions. Dubious history does nothing to vindicate dubious politics.
CHAPTER 11
SOCIAL CHOICE AND INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR
The idea of using reason to identify and promote better and more acceptable societies has powerfully moved people in the past and continues to do so now. Aristotle agreed with Agathon that even God could not change the past. But he also thought that the future was ours to make. This could be done by basing our choices on reason.1 For this we need an appropriate evaluative framework; we also need institutions that work to promote our goals and valuational commitments, and furthermore we need behavioral norms and reasoning that allow us to achieve what we try to achieve.
Before I proceed further along this line, I must also discuss some grounds for skepticism of the possibility of reasoned progress, which can be found in the literature. If these grounds are compelling, then they may indeed be devastating for the approach pursued in this book. It would be silly to build an ambitious structure on the foundations of quicksand.
I would like to identify three distinct lines of skepticism that seem to demand particular attention. First, the point is sometimes made that given the heterogeneity of preferences and values that different people have, even in a given society, it is not possible to have a coherent framework for reasoned social assessment. There can be, in this view, no such thing as a rational and coherent social evaluation. Kenneth Arrow’s famous “impossibility theorem” is sometimes invoked in this context to drive the point home.2 That remarkable theorem is typically interpreted as proving the impossibility of rationally deriving social choice from individual preferences, and it has been taken to be a deeply pessimistic result. The analytical content of the theorem as well as its substantive interpretations
would have to be examined. The idea of an “informational base” already explored in chapter 3 will turn out to be crucial in this context.
A second line of critique takes a particularly methodological form, and draws on an argument that questions our ability to have what we intend to have, arguing that “unintended consequences” dominate actual history. The importance of unintended consequences has been emphasized in different ways by Adam Smith, Carl Menger and Friedrich Hayek, among others.3 If most of the important things that happen are not intended (and not brought about through purposive action), then reasoned attempts at pursuing what we want might appear to be rather pointless. We have to examine what precisely the implications are of the insights that emerge from the work in this field that was pioneered by Smith.
A third class of doubts relates to a skepticism, which many people entertain, about the possible range of human values and behavioral norms. Can our modes of behavior go at all beyond narrowly defined self-interest? If not, it is argued that while the market mechanism may still work (since it is supposed to invoke nothing other than human selfishness), we cannot have social arrangements that call for anything more “social” or “moral” or “committed.” The possibility of reasoned social change, in this view, cannot go beyond the working of the market mechanism (even if it leads to inefficiency, or inequality, or poverty). To ask for more would be, in this perspective, hopelessly utopian.
The primary interest of this chapter is in examining the relevance of values and reasoning in enhancing freedoms and in achieving development. I shall consider the three arguments in turn.
IMPOSSIBILITY AND INFORMATIONAL BASES
The Arrow theorem does not in fact show what the popular interpretation frequently takes it to show. It establishes, in effect, not the impossibility of rational social choice, but the impossibility that arises when we try to base social choice on a limited class of information. At the risk of oversimplification, let me briefly consider one way of seeing the Arrow theorem.
Take the old example of the “voting paradox,” with which eighteenth-century French mathematicians such as Condorcet and Jean-Charles de Borda were much concerned. If person 1 prefers option x to option y and y to z, while person 2 prefers y to z and z to x, and person 3 prefers z to x and x to y, then we do know that the majority rule would lead to inconsistencies. In particular, x has a majority over y, which has a majority over z, which in turn enjoys a majority over x. Arrow’s theorem shows, among other insights it offers, that not just the majority rule, but all mechanisms of decision making that rely on the same informational base (to wit, only individual orderings of the relevant alternatives) would lead to some inconsistency or infelicity, unless we simply go for the dictatorial solution of making one person’s preference ranking rule the roost.
This is an extraordinarily impressive and elegant theorem—one of the most beautiful analytical results in the field of social science. But it does not at all rule out decision mechanisms that use more—or different—informational bases than voting rules do. In taking a social decision on economic matters, it would be natural for us to consider other types of information.
Indeed, a majority rule—whether or not consistent—would be a nonstarter as a mechanism for resolving economic disputes. Consider the case of dividing a cake among three persons, called (not very imaginatively) 1, 2, and 3, with the assumption that each person votes to maximize only her own share of the cake. (This assumption simplifies the example, but nothing fundamental depends on it, and it can be replaced by other types of preferences.) Take any division of the cake among the three. We can always bring about a “majority improvement” by taking a part of any one person’s share (let us say, person 1’s share), and then dividing it between the other two (viz., 2 and 3). This way of “improving” the social outcome would work—given that the social judgment is by majority rule—even if the person thus victimized (viz., 1) happens to be the poorest of the three. Indeed, we can continue taking away more and more of the share of the poorest person and dividing the loot between the richer two—all the time making a majority improvement. This process of “improvement” can go on until the poorest has no cake left to be taken away. What a wonderful chain, in the majoritarian perspective, of social betterment!
Rules of this kind build on an informational base consisting only of the preference rankings of the persons, without any notice being taken of who is poorer than whom, or who gains (and who loses) how much from shifts in income, or any other information (such as how the respective persons happened to earn the particular shares they have). The informational base for this class of rules, of which the majority decision procedure is a prominent example, is thus extremely limited, and it is clearly quite inadequate for making informed judgments about welfare economic problems. This is not primarily because it leads to inconsistency (as generalized in the Arrow theorem), but because we cannot really make social judgments with so little information.
SOCIAL JUSTICE AND RICHER INFORMATION
Acceptable social rules would tend to take notice of a variety of other relevant facts in judging the division of the cake: who is poorer than whom, who gains how much in terms of welfare or of the basic ingredients of living, how is the cake being “earned” or “looted” and so on. The insistence that no other information is needed (and that other information, if available, could not influence the decisions to be taken) makes these rules not very interesting for economic decision making. Given this recognition, the fact that there is also a problem of inconsistency—in dividing a cake through votes—may well be seen not so much as a problem, but as a welcome relief from the unswerving consistency of brutal and informationally obtuse procedures.
In terms of the example considered at the beginning of chapter 3, none of the arguments used to make a case for hiring either Dinu or Bishanno or Rogini would be usable in the Arrow informational base. Dinu’s case rested on his being the poorest, Bishanno’s case on his being the unhappiest and Rogini’s case on her being most ill—all of which are external facts outside the informational base of the preference rankings of the three persons (given Arrow’s conditions). In fact, in making economic judgments we tend, in general, to use much broader types of information than is permitted in the class of mechanisms compatible with the Arrow framework.
Indeed, the spirit of “impossibility” is not, I believe, the right way of seeing Arrow’s “impossibility theorem.”4 Arrow provides a general approach to thinking about social decisions based on individual conditions, and his theorem—and a class of other results established after his pioneering work—show that what is possible and what is not may turn crucially on what information is taken into effective account in making social decisions. Indeed, through informational broadening, it is possible to have coherent and consistent criteria for social and economic assessment. The “social choice” literature (as this field of analytical exploration is called), which has resulted from Arrow’s pioneering move, is as much a world of possibility as of conditional impossibilities.5
SOCIAL INTERACTION AND PARTIAL ACCORD
Another point to note, on a related issue, is that the politics of social consensus calls not only for acting on the basis of given individual preferences, but also for sensitivity of social decisions to the development of individual preferences and norms. In this context, particular importance has to be attached to the role of public discussion and interactions in the emergence of shared values and commitments.6 Our ideas of what is just and what is not may respond to the arguments that are presented for public discussion, and we tend to react to one another’s views sometimes with a compromise or even a deal, and at other times with relentless inflexibility and stubbornness. Preference formation through social interaction is a major subject of interest in this study, and it will be pursued further later on in this chapter and in the next.
It is also important to recognize that agreed social arrangements and adequate public policies do not require that there be a unique “social orderi
ng” that completely ranks all the alternative social possibilities. Partial agreements still separate out acceptable options (and weed out unacceptable ones), and a workable solution can be based on the contingent acceptance of particular provisions, without demanding complete social unanimity.7
It can also be argued that judgments of “social justice” do not really call for a tremendous fine-tuning precision: such as a claim that a tax rate of 39.0 percent is just, whereas 39.5 per cent would not be (or even that the former is “more just than” the latter). Rather, what is needed is a working agreement on some basic matters of identifiably intense injustice or unfairness.
Indeed, the insistence on the completeness of judgments of justice over every possible choice is not only an enemy of practical social action, it may also reflect some misunderstanding of the nature of justice itself. To take an extreme example, in agreeing that the occurrence of a preventable famine is socially unjust, we do not also lay claim to an ability to determine what exact allocation of food among all the citizens will be “most just.” The recognition of evident injustice in preventable deprivation, such as widespread hunger, unnecessary morbidity, premature mortality, grinding poverty, neglect of female children, subjugation of women, and phenomena of that kind does not have to await the derivation of some complete ordering over choices that involve finer differences and puny infelicities. Indeed, the overuse of the concept of justice reduces the force of the idea when applied to the terrible deprivations and inequities that characterize the world in which we live. Justice is like a cannon, and it need not be fired (as an old Bengali proverb puts it) to kill a mosquito.