Against Fairness

by Asma, Stephen T.

  People often associate bias with bigotry and prejudice, but this is only the worst application of a normal instinct. And the political interpretation usually prevents a more reasoned consideration of favoritism. One of the positive aspects of praising favoritism is that it will afford us an opportunity to examine some virtues that have fallen out of favor in the official cultural conversation—virtues like loyalty, devotion, allegiance, and even attachment. No one wants to be “victim” of someone else’s biases, but almost everyone is comforted by the idea that one’s brother, mother, or uncle is heavily biased in their favor. Freud reminds us that “my love is valued by all my own people as a sign of my preferring them, and it is an injustice to them if I put a stranger on a par with them.”26

  If Kongzi’s example of a sheep-stealing father is the relatively painless or easy ethical case, let’s consider the harder case of Euthyphro’s father. In the dialogue Euthyphro, Plato records (or stages) a meeting between Socrates and the very earnest and pious Euthyphro. They run into each other outside the courts. Socrates is on his way to the hearings about his own “impiety”—charges that eventually led to his famous execution. Euthyphro, Socrates discovers, is vigorously pursuing a legal case against his own father.

  Fig. 4. Socrates (c. 470–399 bc) was shocked by Euthyphro’s willingness to prosecute his own father. Drawing by Stephen Asma.

  Socrates is astonished to find the young Euthyphro prosecuting his father. Even when he learns that the charge is murder, he ironically cries, “By the powers, Euthyphro! How little does the common herd know of the nature of right and truth. A man must be an extraordinary man, and have made great strides in wisdom, before he could have seen his way to bring such an action.” To which Euthyphro arrogantly replies, “Indeed, Socrates, he must.” As he struggles to process this indictment, Socrates hits on a speculation that would make some sense of it. “I suppose that the man whom your father murdered was one of your relatives—clearly he was; for if he had been a stranger you would never have thought of prosecuting him.” In a contest of bafflement, Euthyphro is now taken aback. “I am amused, Socrates, at your making a distinction between one who is a relation and one who is not a relation; for surely, the pollution is the same in either case.”

  Euthyphro is bringing a charge of manslaughter because his father left one of his workers, bound and gagged, in a ditch. The worker was bound and gagged because he had, in a drunken fit, killed a servant. Euthyphro’s father bound the worker and sent word for religious counsel, but during the wait the man died from “the effect of cold and hunger and chains upon him.” Now Euthyphro, over the protests and pleas of his whole family, is prosecuting his father for the crime. Euthyphro’s family insists that a son who prosecutes his own father is an impious disgrace. “Which shows,” Euthyphro confidently assures Socrates, “how little they know what the gods think about piety and impiety.”27 Euthyphro lays out a notion of justice that respects no persons—an absolute, objective, transcendent tribunal. Socrates shrugs at Euthyphro’s naïveté throughout the dialogue. And while no real refutation is stated, the mocking sardonic characterization of Euthyphro and the storm of skeptical queries prevail as a strangely powerful critique. As usual, especially in the early dialogues, Plato’s lesson seems to be “Don’t be so cocksure of yourself.” But he’s also bequeathed us an ethical challenge.

  Would you prosecute your father for manslaughter? How about murder? How far will you take your favoritism? Does the love you have for your father trump the legal obligation? Do your filial connections override principles of justice? Do those more abstract principles preexist (in God’s mind or in the social contract) and thereby supersede your family bonds? Or, as in the case of Confucian ethics, do all the principles of justice (including the political) evolve out of filial piety?

  These two paterfamilias cases, Kongzi’s and Plato’s, do not admit straightforward resolution. They both draw out intuitions about favoritism and ethics, and we will return to them throughout this book. But as you might have guessed by now, I’m no fan of Euthyphro’s righteous piety. If my dad killed somebody, I don’t think I could prosecute him. Of course, if my dad was the bound and gagged worker, who your dad killed, well … I’d be absolutely eloquent about principled justice and the law (and failing that, I’d be assembling my vigilante options). Where you stand on these cases has less to do with your principles of fairness, and more to do with how and to whom you are tied.28

  My goals in this book are threefold. First, I wish to more accurately define favoritism and demonstrate its prevalence in our daily lives—revealing how it is a source of virtue and value (even when its subtle melody is usually out-screeched by the one-note song of fairness). Second, though there is much that is good about fairness, I wish to recommend favoritism instead, showing why we ought to embrace many of our current preferential tendencies and how we might further educate and refine these tendencies. As Cicero said, “Society and human fellowship will be best served if we confer the most kindness on those with whom we are most closely associated.”29 Lastly, I will ask how we balance, even if precariously, the impulses of fairness and favoritism in an increasingly cosmopolitan world.

  2

  To Thy Own Tribe Be True

  Biological Favoritism

  Socrates and Kongzi thought it was shameful to hand over one’s father to the judicial system, even if he deserved it. When I asked my own father whether he would surrender his dad or shelter him—if he had murdered someone—there was a long pause.

  “Well,” he finally said, “I’m not sure. I’m inclined, I guess, to turn him in. But, then again, it’s a weird question for me, because I never really knew my father. If I had been raised by him and had a good relationship, I would probably shelter him from the law. As it is, he’s a bit of a stranger to me.”

  My dad’s father was killed in 1947 when his car was hit by a train. Apparently the crossing guard on duty that night had too much to drink and passed out, unable to lower the guardrail for passing cars. My grandfather was thrown from his car, languished in the hospital for three weeks, and then died on Easter Sunday when my dad was still quite young.

  When I asked my father to put himself into the Euthyphro thought experiment, he confessed that he didn’t have the requisite feelings about his own father. Without the strong emotional bond with his father, he could see himself—like Euthyphro—going to court against him. Despite his detachment, however, he still hesitated and felt uncomfortable violating even a nominal filial piety.

  My mother was more definitive and unforgiving in her answer, as was her usual style. “No, problem,” she blurted out, without hesitation. “I’d turn in my father if he murdered someone.” I was startled by the speed and zeal of her response. Reading the distaste on my face, she quickly followed with “Well … wrong is wrong.” My father gently reminded her that she did not have any affection for her parents.

  “Well,” I ventured, “what if I had murdered someone?” Here she paused awhile. The look of distaste returned to my face. “That’s different,” she finally said. I half expected her to start weighing which of her three children she’d narc on and which of us she’d protect.

  My mom had been adopted when she was three weeks old by a couple who were teetering on the verge of divorce. They gambled on the idea that a child would glue them back together again, and so my mom was acquired like a desperate hand of blackjack. It didn’t work. Her adoptive father was gone within a year, and her adoptive mother embarked on an extended hunt for a new husband. My mom was raised mostly by her aunt (her adoptive mother’s sister), and eventually her adoptive mother remarried a quiet navy officer named Raymond. The three strangers then lived under the same roof, in quiet isolation, until my mom was old to enough to leave home. Her parents, my grandparents, were shadowy figures as I grew up. My mother’s parents were family in name only.

  “It’s true, I suppose,” my mom confessed to herself, forgetting for a moment that we were even in the room. “I didn’t
love my parents, because they weren’t good to me. But I love my kids,” she said, turning back to me, “and that makes all the difference in your little murder example.”

  Moral Gravity

  Why am I going on and on about murderous fathers? Because I think my “little murder example” is a very compelling case study that forces us to think about how far we might go in the service of favoritism. Families are usually the first favorites we have; they serve as the template for many of our later partialities. But as the two different cases of my parents suggest, family membership does not automatically engender the internal feelings of love that bind them and create favorites. For my mother, her parents were not centers of gravity for her, but her own children were—still are, I’m happy to report.

  Gravity is a good metaphor. Some people in our lives take on great “affection mass” and bend our continuum of values into a solar system of biases. Family members usually have more moral gravity—what Robert Nozick calls “ethical pull.”1 But modern ethical theory doesn’t know what to do with varied degrees of ethical pull. Unequal variables don’t fit well in the calculus of rights and duties.

  Peter Singer, the famous utilitarian philosopher, believes that the best way to decide between competing pulls is by using an impartial calculation. Singer describes a scenario in which he is about to go out to dinner with three friends, but then his father calls. The father is sick and would like his son to come visit. Singer explains, “To decide impartially I must sum up the preferences for and against going to dinner with my friends, and those for and against visiting my father. Whatever action satisfies more preferences, adjusted according to the strength of preferences, that is the right action I should take.”2

  If his father feels more disappointment at being left alone than he and his three friends feel pleasure at dinner, then Singer is willing to go visit his dad. In the thought experiment, Singer imagines such strong disappointment in his father, and then finally feels justified in abandoning the dinner.

  According to this bloodless approach, Singer’s father gets no special status just for being his father. Presumably, Singer’s father did the usual work of parenting (e.g., raising baby Singer, caring for little Singer when sick, feeding little Singer, sheltering him, nurturing him, etc.). These devotions, according to utilitarians, don’t win extra moral gravitas for parents, and feelings of affection between parents and children don’t win moral gravitas either.

  Singer praises a parent, Zell Kravinsky, who seems to have as much concern for the wellbeing of strangers as for his own children. Singer implies that this “new standard of giving” is not “defective parenting” (as some suggest), but praiseworthy. After all, sacrificing your own child for the greater good is something, Singer reminds us, that we “accept” in the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. The moral equality of strangers makes demands on our biased commitments, and vice versa.3

  In the case of his father, Singer implies that when he adds up preferences (and adjusts according to strengths), the summation will tip the balance toward his father. But he doesn’t say this definitively, and he quickly leaves the example with nothing but a vague provisional nod toward a computational solution. It’s also very hard to know exactly what Singer is adding up here, and how he’s adjusting for strength. He seems to be saying that the decision will be impartial (and therefore correct) after he’s added up his partialities and taken the sum. This approach seems perplexing because it pretends, in its mathematical pretensions, to go beyond subjectivities like “love” and “affection,” but then it wants to return them through some back door—with talk of differentially adjusted “strengths” of preference and his father’s “disappointment.”

  This utilitarian approach (the greatest good for the greatest number) can be pushed to its logical conclusion. The hard-core version asserts that it is more ethical to deny your elderly father expensive health care if the same money could save ten starving African strangers. From some utterly impartial, detached perspective (some fictional God’s-eye perspective), I suppose this position is “rational.” But most of us, saints notwithstanding, are wonderfully partial and irrevocably attached.

  It’s also common for egalitarian moralists to explain the heavier moral gravity of family, by saying that we have the same equal duty to all human beings but that the proximity of my family makes helping my father much easier than helping the starving African child. This sheer proximity is often taken as useful criteria for solving dilemmas of competing obligations. I want to suggest, however, that favoritism goes beyond such practical or expedient issues—we really owe more to our favorites, and not just because of their convenient locations.

  In this chapter, I will take an alternative approach to filial favoritism. I will show how such favoritism is originally generated by the development of normal affection in mammals. I will argue that biological bonding is the root system for understanding the ethical pull of favorites. Nepotism has a chemistry that neuroscience is only recently starting to understand. And I will suggest that these data bring us toward a more emotionally based, rather than rationally based, ethics.

  Ethicists like Singer tend to contrast the egocentric moral framework with the allocentric framework. The egocentric approach is, of course, the pursuit of those things that are good for the individual self, while allocentric means “centered on others.” Since philosophy has had a hard time deriving an other-centered ethic from an egocentric starting place, it has generally characterized egocentrism as the infantile natural default of human beings—but a default that must be corrected by rational allocentric civilization.

  However, this starting place seems quite wrongheaded to me, as I will endeavor to show. I will suggest that the allocentric perspective is not derived, but primordial. We are tribal-centric (allocentric) first, and then later learn both to expand this moral circle and ego-identify as we grow. Utilitarians like Singer try to build an other-centered (allocentric) ethic on rational “objective” principles, but they end up with a view that is nemocentric—centered on nobody.

  An ideal centerless view of the good may be just the thing for certain legal policy considerations, but not in our daily lives. Ethicists who argue the utility of the egalitarian ideal—the practical cost-benefit advantage of treating everyone equally—should at least consider favoritism from the same charitable perspective. In other words, if an ethics of nemocentrism (being centered on nobody) is still considered serviceable and successful despite its occasional flaws, misapplications, and even incoherences, then favoritism also should be forgiven some of its lapses and blunders if it is serviceable in our daily lives.

  Obviously, I think Peter Singer and the other utilitarians should get out of their heads, make apologies to their dinner companions and the Africans, and get straight over to see their sick dads. But why do some parents and children bond together as favorites, and some do not? Without sounding too reductionistic, the answer might be brain opioids and oxytocin.

  The Biochemistry of Favoritism

  I’ve done a fair amount of fishing in my time, but while I’ve reeled many fish to shore over the years, I’ve never seen other fish try to rescue their unfortunate hooked companions. Fish don’t rescue each other. Contrast this lack of fish succor with the amazing rescue efforts of whales, dolphins, and other cetaceans. Whales will even form protective circles around their harpooned companions to protect them from whalers. And dolphins have rescued companions from entangled fishing nets.4

  Fish don’t have favorites in the same sense that mammals, like dolphins, do. The evolution of mammals (punctuated in the Paleocene epoch) brought in new emotional bonding equipment. Stronger bonds between kin and clan facilitated sophisticated social emotions like sympathy—a sensitivity to the distress of kin—and favoritism behaviors (like rescue, grooming, consolation behavior, alliance behavior, and so on). It is these emotional ingredients, not rational calculation, that eventually give rise to our ethical lives.

  Family bonding is a very compl
ex phenomenon, especially in big-brained humans, but its roots are in the older limbic, or mammal, brain. Social mammals have a neurological process that brain scientists have recently identified and studied. We’ve known about the phenomenon of vertebrate imprinting for many years. Behavioral scientists, working on animals, have described and successfully manipulated this simple form of bonding for decades. Researchers can get baby birds, for example, to imprint on the scientists themselves, on beach balls, and even on beer bottles. This is because a “window” of bonding opens right after birth and closes quickly, so whatever proximate thing is nearby becomes “mom.” Mammals have the same, albeit much more sophisticated, mechanisms for fastening together parents and offspring. But only recently have researchers experimentally tracked the neurochemistry of bonding.

  Dr. Jaak Panksepp is the founding father of affective neuroscience, a school of brain science that studies the neurochemical pathways of animal emotions—and by extension, human emotions.5 He calls this neurochemical pathway of mother-child bonding, the CARE system.6 And it can be distinguished experimentally from other core emotional affect systems, like FEAR, LUST, SEEKING, PLAY, PANIC, and RAGE—each of which has a uniquely identifiable neurochemical substrate and functional pathway through the brain. Humans have a lot of big-brain flexibility with these biological feelings, but these feelings (part chemical, part psychological) make up the genetically determined operating systems of mammal emotions. Humans share this operating system with other mammals.

  Mother-baby bonding is an essential skill for any animal born into a hostile environment. Prey animals, especially herd animals, are born with remarkable physical adeptness. They can walk and even run within minutes of birth. This mobility is important in a predator-filled world, but it puts them at great risk of potential separation from their mothers. So, it’s not surprising that herd animals have very tight windows of opportunity for identifying their mothers and latching on. Other animals—like rats, humans, and predators—have protracted periods of bonding; the window for latching on to mom closes very slowly. Failure to lock on to mom (for any mammal species) usually means death for the offspring and possible termination of the gene line for the parents. So the natural selection pressures for bonding are intense.