66. Dimensions of Morality

In his book, Morals by Agreement' David Gauthier defined a 'moral' as an 'impartial constraint' but it wasn't always clear what it was a restraint on

Asked this question, some might say that morals are a constraint on self-interest, a requirement to, say (for example) 'do unto others as you would have done onto you.'

There's no doubt that behaviour towards other people is a part of morality, but it can't be the only part.

Recall, from many posts back, Francis Fukuyama describing Max Weber's Protestant Ethic,

"The capacity for hard work, frugality, rationality, innovativeness, and openness to risk are all entrepreneurial virtues that apply to individuals and could be exercised by Robinson Crusoe on his proverbial desert island. But there is also a set of social virtues, like honesty, reliability, cooperativeness and a sense of duty to others, that are essentially social in nature."

This distinction of the morals making up the 'protestant work ethic' coincides fairly well with the division of the commercial syndrome ethics described by Jane Jacobs into two blocks, as described in an earlier post: A block containing virtues such as honesty and non-violence which is social in nature and which ensures that transactions are win-win, and a block containing virtues such as innovativeness, efficiency and industriousness that can mostly be practiced on one's own.

The first block is indeed constraints on the pursuit of self-interest while the second block is clearly a constraint on something else - in my view the primary constraint there is the constraint imposed on our tendency to place too much weight on the present and not enough on the future.

What about the guardian syndrome?

Many of the guardian syndrome ethics relate to other people, but they diverge depending on whether those 'other people' are part of a person's group or not.

Virtues such as 'exert prowess' and 'deceit for the sake of the task' and 'take vengeance' are generally directed at those who are not considered part of the group, while virtues such as ' be loyal' 'be obedient' and 'dispense largesse' are clearly directed at those who are considered part of the group.

There are a few guardian virtues that don't directly involve other people, and these 'make rich use of leisure' 'adhere to tradition' and 'be fatalistic' These seem generally designed, as far as I can tell, to counteract a desire of one person to get ahead of others via working extra hard, or innovating or imagining a better way of doing things, so perhaps there is an indirect relationship with other people there as well.

So what's my point?

My point is that what I feel we need in our quest to get to the bottom of the systems of survival is a middle ground between, on the one hand, the sort of attitude expressed by Dierdre McCloskey in 'The Bourgeois Virtues' (as covered earlier) - an attitude that says that all the different virtues are a dimension onto themselves that can't be compared to other virtues or made commensurate with them in any way, and on the other hand, an attitude that everything can be reduced to a single axis, for example, that ethics is solely about the denial (or proper role) of self-interest.

The two primary dimensions that are represented in the ethics listed by Jane Jacobs in Systems of Survival, are self vs. others and current self. vs. later self.

Within the guardian system, the dimension of self vs. others in turn seems to be further divided depending on whether the others are part of our group or part of an enemy group.

Within the commercial system, groups don't seem to play a role, and others are just others, with neither a need to treat them as hostile (with deceit and force) but neither a need to treat them with sympathy (via loyalty, obedience and generosity).

No, I didn't really cover any new ground here, just trying to organize my thoughts a little before continuing onwards.

54. Types of Interpersonal Preferences

Many models of human behaviour start with a notion that people care only for themselves and have no interest in what happens to other people. i.e. That people have independent preferences. This notion is generally a part of the economic model of humanity known as Homo Economicus.


As David Hume noted back in 1777, the primary reason for making this assumption is that it is the simplest approach.

We can call this personality type, Mr. Selfish. Note that Mr. Selfish would kill you for a $5 bill in your pocket if he felt that there was no risk of getting caught.

Compared to Mr. Selfish, every other behaviour type places more weight on the interests of others and less on their own interests. The alternatives vary based on why and how they take into account the interests of others.

The opposite to Mr. Selfish would be Mr. Selfless, who places 0 weight on his own interests, with 100% weight on the interests of others.

Another possibility would be Mr. Equal who treats all people's interests equally.

Then there is Mr. Fair. Mr. Fair weights people equally if they are equally deserving, but will weight them differently where circumstances dictate it.

Mr. Reciprocate is a special case of Mr. Fair that places a positive weighting on those who cooperate and a negative weighting on those who don't.

Mr. Referee is a special, impartial case of Mr. Reciprocate who will go out of his way to punish people who deserve it (because they aren't playing by the rules) regardless of whether the breach of the rules affected Mr. Referee personally or not.

Another possibility we can call Mr. Hume, since it was Hume who posited the possibility that our sense of empathy works a bit like our sense of perspective, in that we place more weight on the interests of those we know best (i.e. the objects that are closer appear larger in our calculations) while we place little weight on the interests of those we don’t know as well.

Then there is Mr. Spite. Mr. Spite places a reverse weighting on the preferences of those he dislikes, or considers enemies, taking pleasure in their misfortune, and being pained by their success.

Mr. Team Player places an equal weighting on all members of his team, including himself (or alternatively, places a 100% weighting on the team's interests), but places 0 weighting on people who are not part of the team (or on any non-team interests).

Mr. Obedient places 100% weight on whatever he is told to do by someone in authority, only reverting to his own pattern of behaviour in the case where there is no authority figure to follow.

Mr. Leader places 100% weight on the interests of those he leads, with 0% weighting on his own interests.

Mr. Fiduciary places 100% weight on the particular person he is acting on behalf of, in the particular context that he has a fiduciary duty, and places 0% on his own interests in this context.

Mr. Patriot places 100% weighting on the interests of his country and either a 0% weighting on the interests of other countries, or perhaps a positive weighting on the interests of allies and a negative weighting on the interests of enemies.

Mr. Imitate simply does what the people around him do. If they weight people’s preferences equally, he will do the same, if they weight their own preferences 100%, he will do the same, and so on.

Finally, Mr. Pareto places 100% weighting on his own interests and 0% weighting on other people’s interests, just like Mr. Selfish, but places an additional restraint on his actions to avoid any action that would have a negative impact on other people's interests. Note that this approach requires a benchmark to differentiate between a positive impact and a negative impact, where the logical benchmark would be the state of the other person if they never encountered Mr. Trade at all.


Considering the bewildering array of potential behaviour types, it is understandable that people attempting to construct models of human behaviour have sometimes taken the easy way out and assumed the simple case of Mr. Selfish applies to everyone, much like Hobbes did in Leviathan.

However, as I mentioned back here, both common sense and empirical research tell us that different people operate using different approaches and that even the same people use different approaches in different contexts. Just looking at your own behaviour and motivations, I imagine that, like me, you can recall situations where you were driven by concern for others interests, situations where you were trying to help your team, situations where you felt you should retaliate against someone who did you wrong, situations where you felt you should punish someone for breaking the rules, even if they didn't harm you personally, situations where you placed more weight on the interests of those you know better, situations where you were annoyed by someone else's success or pleased by their failure, situations where you simply went with the flow and behaved like everyone else, situations where you refrained from using fraud or force even though it would have been to your benefit to do so, and so on.

Briefly cross-referencing this (no doubt incomplete) list of behaviour types with the two syndromes from systems of survival, my initial guess would be that the commercial syndrome is based primarily, if not solely, on Mr. Pareto type behaviour while the guardian syndrome is a more complicated mix of Mr. Team Player / Mr. Patriot (be loyal, be exclusive), Mr. Obedient (be obedient, respect hierarchy), Mr. Leader (dispense largesse, respect hierarchy) and Mr. Spite / Mr. Referee / Mr. Reciprocator / Mr. Fair (deceive for the sake of the task, exert prowess, take vengeance).

45. Ties That Bind

My guardian-mindset brain is a little tired this week from a frenzy of commercial activity as I've been selling off many of my possession on craigslist in anticipation of moving at the end of the month. Have I mentioned I hate moving? - maybe once ... or twice, or ... well who's counting...

Point being, just a small, mostly incoherent, post this week.

Back in Francis Fukuyama's book 'Trust,' I remember him comparing Chinese society, which in his view resembled a 'tray of sand' to Japanese society which resembled something more solid like a pane of glass (I'd look up what he said exactly but my books are packed!).

Fukuyama's comment reminds me of the comments made by Hans Ritschl in 'Communal Economy and Market Economy,'

"Both the state economy and the free market economy presuppose a group of persons whom the economy encompasses and by whom it is carried. But there is a great difference in the form of social cohesion within these supporting groups. The free market economy rests on an exchange society: the relationship of the individual economic units with each other is merely 'social' in Tonnies' sense. Pictorially, the connection is mechanical rather than organic.

...

The principle of cohesion in the State is not that of society, but of community. ... 'All for each and each for all' is the motto of community. But the exchange society's motto is 'Chacun pour soi, Dieu pour nous tous'

...

In the principle of cohesion lies the primary fundamental difference between communal economy and market economy"

Ritschl' comments in turn reminded me of something that David Hume said,

"The happiness and prosperity of mankind, arising from the social virtue of benevolence and its subdivisions, may be compared to a wall, built by many hands, which still rises by each stone that is heaped upon it, and receives increase proportional to the diligence and care of each workman. The same happiness, raised by the social virtue of justice and its subdivisions, may be compared to the building of a vault, where each individual stone would, of itself, fall to the ground; nor is the whole fabric supported but by the mutual assistance and combination of its corresponding parts."

The common element in all these quotes is the notion of cohesion, or a whole that is more, or different, than the sum of its parts. A collection of molecules achieves shear strength and solidity, rather than just being a pile of sand. A collection of people forms a community rather than simply being a collection of individuals. A vault stands even though each individual stone would fall to the ground on its own and the vault would fall with the removal of any one stone.

Going back, as always, to the notion of the prisoner's dilemma, the two prisoner's each pursuing their own self-interest and getting heavy sentences after ratting each other out represent the individualistic grains of sand. If the prisoners had an attitude of 'all for one, and one for all' then the scheme by the police to get them to confess would fail. The behaviour of the two prisoners would cease to resemble the behaviour of two distinct individuals but would become indistinguishable from the actions of a single individual with a single will. Note that, by definition, a single individual, with a single will can not be affected by a prisoner's dilemma - only when there are two or more wills in play can a prisoner's dilemma type situation occur.

In the language of economics, classical economic models typically assume 'independent preferences' meaning that I only care about what I care about, and what you care about has no impact on what I care about (i.e. I am unmoved by your tears, or by your joy). But what Fukuyama and Ritschl and Hume were getting at was the notion of interdependent preferences. If I treat your preferences as being of equal weight to my own, and you do the same with me, then my preferences become dependent on yours and vice-versa. And note that this preference pattern will allow us both to act as if we shared a single will (for a more modern reference, think of the parent who asks a child what the other parent said before answering a request).

Ritschl was writing well before the development of game theory or the notion of a 'prisoner's dilemma' but it is clear he understood the point,

"In the exchange society, then, self-interest alone regulates the relations of the members; by contrast, the state economy is characterized by communal spirit within the community. Egotism is replaced by the spirit of sacrifice, loyalty and the communal spirit. In the exchange society, the individual is guided only by personal advantage; here, he thinks, feels and acts as a member of the community. His own interests take second place. The communal spirit is the principle on which rest community and State.

...

It is only when the nation is in the most desperate straits that the communal spirit of all merges into one great single will. In everyday political life there are necessarily a good many conceptions of the common weal, and they may combine with group or class interests and become tarnished by them. Yet each party pursues not only its group interest, but the realization of its own conception of the common weal."

The (still needing to be fleshed out) chain of reasoning here is that ethics like 'loyalty' and 'sacrifice' (not to mention respect for hierarchy and obedience) serve to create interdependent preferences that substitute a single will for a collection of individual ones (in marketplace terms think perfect competition replaced with perfect monopoly), and that this will better serve guardian goals.

After all, a group of people pursuing their self-interest (within the ethical guidelines of the commercial syndrome) will achieve an efficient distribution of goods, but following this behaviour in battle will lead to deserting and retreat, not victory (think Han Solo in Star Wars). In a battle, it is typically best for the army to act as if following a single will. Why? - that's a question for another time...