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Defending Non-Tuism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Susan Dimock
Susan Dimock*
Affiliation:
York University Toronto, ONCanadaM3J 1P3
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Extract

Hobbes's central insight about ethics was that it should not be understood to require that we make ourselves a prey for others. It is this insight that both varieties of contractarianism [Hobbesian and Kantian] respect. Consider a relationship between two human beings that exists for reasons of either love or duty; let us also suppose that it is a relationship that can be instrumentally valuable to both parties. In order for that relationship to receive our full moral endorsement, we must ask whether either party uses the duty or the love connecting them in a way that affects the other party's ability to realize the instrumental value from that relationship. To be sure, good marriages and good friendships ought not to be centrally concerned with the question of justice, but they must also be, at the very least, relationships in which love or duty are not manipulated by either party in order to use the other party to her detriment.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , June 1999 , pp. 251 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1999

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Footnotes

1

I have incurred many debts in the writing of this paper, most notably to Bob Bright, whom I thank. Gratitude is also owed to Christopher Tucker, Paul Viminitz, Jan Narveson, Karen Wendling, and David Gauthier. Many thanks also to Christopher Morris, Donald Hubin, and Richmond Campbell, all of whom provided comments on earlier drafts of this paper that improved it greatly.

References

2 Hampton, Jean ‘Two Faces of Contractarian Thought,’ in Contractarianism and Rational Choice: Essays on David Gauthier's Morals by Agreement, ed. Vallentyne, Peter (New York: Cambridge University Press 1991), 53Google Scholar

3 Gauthier, David Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1986), 73, 86Google Scholar

4 Rawls, John A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1971)Google Scholar

5 Gauthier, Morals by Agreement

6 Vallentyne, Peter ‘Contractarianism and the Assumption of Mutual Unconcern,’ in Vallentyne, Contractarianism and Rational Choice, 73Google Scholar. This problem has also been noted by Morris, Christopher ‘The Relation between Self-Interest and Justice in Contractarian Ethics,’ in The New Social Contract: Essays on Gauthier, Paul, Ellen Frankel Miller, Fred Jr., Paul, Jeffrey and Ahrens, John eds. (New York: Basil Blackwell 1988)Google Scholar. See also Hubin, Donald ‘Non-tuism,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21 (1991) 441–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar. These essays provide a detailed examination of many defenses of the assumption of non-tuism and its place within rational choice contractarianism, and argue that all of the defenses offered thus far fail.

7 Vallentyne, ‘Contractarianism and the Assumption of Mutual Unconcern,’ 73–4Google Scholar (italics in the original)

8 Not all contractarians working within the Hobbesian framework accept the requirement of impartiality. Cf. Danielson, Peter Artificial Morality: Virtuous Robots for Virtual Games (New York: Routledge 1992)Google Scholar. I am indebted to Paul Viminitz for reminding me of this point.

9 This is, admittedly, a rough division of the subject. For at their most basic, tuistic preferences are simply preferences that range over the preferences of (some) others. Thus they may include a preference that everyone enjoy a certain, perhaps equal, level of preference satisfaction, for example, which cannot be easily characterized as either positive or negative, given that satisfying it would likely require not satisfying some of the preferences of those who are well-off and satisfying more of the preferences of those who are worse off. I think, for reasons which will become clear later, that such preferences are not properly characterized as tuistic, in the sense of contradictory with non-tuistic. For these are preferences which range over the preferences of others with whom one need not (indeed, cannot) be interacting in the relevant sense. Such global preferences about the distribution of preference satisfaction in society are not tuistic in the sense that is of concern here. I thank Don Hubin for raising this point.

10 Gauthier, David ‘Morality, Rational Choice and Semantic Representation: A Reply to My Critics,’ in Paul et al., eds. The New Social Contract, 213Google Scholar; Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 143-5Google Scholar

11 Hobbes, Thomas Leviathan, Macpherson, C.B. ed. (New York: Penguin Classics 1985), Ch. 13Google Scholar.

12 Christopher Morris considers a line of argument like this in s. VII of ‘The Relation between Self-Interest and Justice.’ Cf. Goodin, Robert ‘Equal Rationality and Initial Endowments,’ in Rationality, Justice and the Social Contract: Themes from Morals by Agreement, Gauthier, David and Sugden, Robert eds. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1993)Google Scholar.

13 Gauthier, seems to have been drawn by such reasoning in Morals by Agreement, 1Google Scholar.

14 Hume, David A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L.A. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1978), III, II, iiGoogle Scholar

15 Hume, Treatise, III, II, ii

16 Gauthier, Morals by Agreement,

17 Morris, Christopher ‘Moral Standing and Rational-Choice Contractarianism,’ in Vallentyne, Contractarianism and Rational Choice, 91Google Scholar

18 Bob Bright developed such an argument in response to an earlier version of this paper, which was presented at the Canadian Philosophical Association's annual meeting in St. John's, NF, in June 1997. Bright was the official commentator on that paper, and has been generous enough to give me permission to refer to his unpublished commentary here. I am indebted to him!

19 Cf. Morris, ‘The Relation between Self-Interest and Justice,’ s. IX for a discussion of fundamental evaluation and its role in contractarianism.

20 Note that I speak of ‘rejecting’ or ‘excluding’ our tuistic preferences from bargaining over the social contract; this is different than trying to reject any tuistic desires that we may have, in the sense of ridding ourselves of them. My argument is designed to show that we would be better off if our tuistic concerns were excluded from the bargaining situation, but not that we would be better off without such preferences.

21 Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, 11, also 251Google Scholar

22 Christopher Morris considers a rationale for the assumption of non-tuism (self-interest, as he calls it) related to this issue of exploitation. Because he thinks that we cannot evaluate our tuistic preferences consistently with the contractarian’s subjective account of value, however, he thinks that this line of argument cannot be made out. Cf. Morris, ‘The Relation between Self-Interest and Justice;’ esp. 142–3Google Scholar.

23 The example comes from Bob Bright's CPA commentary, 1997.

24 This is so, despite the fact that C positively values the utility gains of B, because she only values those gains half as much as she would value the same gains for herself, and so she still claims the whole surplus.

25 Note that nothing in this example hinges on the use of MRC particularly. Gauthier has recently expressed doubts about this principle, and is now leaning toward support of Nash's bargaining solution. Cf. Gauthier, ‘Uniting Separate Persons,’ in Rationality, Justice and the Social Contract: Themes from Morals by Agreement, eds. Gauthier, David and Sugden, Robert (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 1993)Google Scholar. We can remain undecided between MRC and Nash's solution for present purposes because both are ‘welfarist’ solutions, and it is their welfarism that allows these results. ‘Welfarism is a particular way of evaluating outcomes. Welfarism asserts that states of affairs are to be judged entirely in terms of personal utility information relating to the alternative states, the use of non utility information being ruled out.’ Wulf Gaertner, and Klemisch-Ahlert, Marlies ‘Gauthier's Approach to Distributive Justice and Other Bargaining Solutions,’ in Vallentyne, Contractarianism and Rational Choice, 167.Google Scholar

26 Bright, CPA Commentary, 1997

27 It is interesting to note that this example illustrates the irrelevance of another defense of non-tuism that is frequently invoked: that counting tuistic preferences leads to a form of ‘double-counting.’ Gauthier has suggested that the assumption of nontuism in his theory is attractive because it rules out the double counting of the preferences of those who are the objects of others’ positive tuistic concerns. Gauthier, ‘Reply to My Critics,’ 214. Now Gauthier recognizes that, like the argument from exploitation, the argument from double counting cannot be invoked on the grounds that double counting is unfair or otherwise morally objectionable; that would beg the question. Rather, we have to have some maximizing reason for objecting to double counting. That is, we have to be able to show that C's tuistic preference results in a distribution of the surplus that is unfair to A in relation to B, such that A can complain that the distribution violates what would be agreed to under MRC or some other rationally acceptable bargaining principle. But, as the example illustrates, this cannot be shown. ‘Any relative gain that B might realize as a beneficiary of C's tuistic concerns must be mirrored by a relative gain for A in order for the outcome of bargaining to be rational. Thus the so-called double counting of B's preferences immediately yields a similar double counting of everyone's preferences. In the context of bargaining, double counting is simply not an issue’ (Bright, CPA Commentary, 1997). Cf. Hubin, ‘Non-tuism’ and Christopher Morris, ‘Moral Standing.'

28 Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, 130Google Scholar

29 Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, 134Google Scholar

30 I am indebted to Don Hubin for clarifying my thinking on this point.

31 Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, 134Google Scholar

32 Gauthier, ‘A Reply to My Critics,’ 200Google Scholar

33 Let me remind the reader at this point, that in saying that A has ‘no claim’ to the extra utility that B’s satisfaction generates for C, I am not referring to a lack of moral desert or entitlement on A's part. I am merely asserting that A lacks any claim that B and C rationally must recognize; if A were to press this claim, B and C would do better to exclude A from the bargain.

34 This case is similar to one suggested to me by Christopher Tucker, and I have benefited from discussions with him on this matter.

35 Gauthier, Morals by Agreement, 151–2Google Scholar

36 Gauthier, ‘Reply to My Critics,’ 216Google Scholar

37 Harsayni, J.C. Rational Behavior and Bargaining Equilibrium in Games and Social Situations (New York: Cambridge University Press 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar