prior probability

Alternative title: Are Smith’s “impartial spectator” and his “wise and virtuous man” the same person?

In my previous post, I summarized Ryan Patrick Hanley’s portrait of Smith’s wise and virtuous man, and I also criticized Hanley’s portrait as implausible and unattractive: the wise and virtuous man does not aspire to absolute perfection (an impossible goal, in any case); nor is he an officious intermeddler. But as we say in the academy, it takes a theory to beat a theory, so here I want to offer a new interpretation of Smith’s wise/virtuous man.

As we have seen, Smith’s theory of virtue is personified by an archetype, “the wise and virtuous man,” but what does it mean for a person to be wise or virtuous or to act in a wise and virtuous manner? Let’s start with wisdom. Hanley defines wisdom in terms of “the appreciation of perfection” (p. 109), but this view is implausible at best. Smith is not Rousseau; Smith does not believe in the perfectability of man. As I read Smith, a person is wise in the Socratic sense of intellectual humility; he is aware of how little he knows. Also, this Socratic interpretation of wisdom has the additional bonus of being consistent with Smith’s praise of humility. What about virtue? As Hanley himself shows, Smith views virtue in several senses: magnanimity, self-command, charity, and Christian love. Simply put, Smith’s ideal man is intellectually humble; he is magnanimous; he has a high degree of self-command; and he is charitable to boot, full of Christian love.

Smith’s concept of virtue, however, poses a potential problem: what happens when the values of the wise and virtuous man (i.e. magnanimity, self-command, charity, and Christian love) collide or come into conflict. By way of example, how would Smith’s wise and virtuous man respond to the trolley problem? I would love to hear how Hanley and other Smith scholars would respond to this question, but in the meantime, I want to sketch out a different interpretation of Smith’s wise and virtuous man. When Smith is writing about this remarkable man–painting his portrait in words, so to speak–is it possible that he is referring to the imaginary spectator and not to any flesh-and-blood person in particular? Or in the words of Hanley (p. 110): “A wise and virtuous man strives to become an impartial spectator of himself ….” Would it be more correct to say that the impartial spectator–“the man within the breast” we are supposed to consult in cases of doubt–that this imaginary man himself should also strive to be wise and virtuous?

After all, as I read Smith, the wise and virtuous man is a fictional figure, every bit as imaginary as Smith’s “impartial spectator.” [*] We ourselves should aspire to become wise and virtuous in the various senses described above (intellectual humility, magnanimity, self-command, etc.), but how could we ever hope to pull off such an impressive, if not impossible, feat unless our respective “impartial spectators” themselves were wise and virtuous. Furthermore, this interpretation of Smith has the additional benefit that it resolves the many questions I posed to Hanley in a previous post.

1. What is the ontological status of the impartial spectator? Even if this imaginary being is not a human creation, even if he is somehow “hardwired” by natural or sexual selection into every human brain, Smith is inviting us to model our respective impartial spectators along the lines of the wise and virtuous man.
2. Timing and logistics: when does the impartial spectator come into play? Which of our decisions does he review? If my interpretation of Smith is correct, he comes into play whenever we make a decision that is not consistent with intellectual humility or not consistent with the virtues of magnanimity, self-command, charity, and Christian love.
3. What is the normative status and reliability of the impartial spectator’s moral judgements? Again, if my interpretation of Smith is correct, then the impartial spectator’s moral judgements are normatively valid and epistemically reliable only to the extent they are consistent with what Smith’s wise and virtuous man would decide.
4. Is the impartial spectator a superfluous entity? The answer to this question depends on the wisdom and virtue of the impartial spectator. Simply put, Smith’s imaginary spectator is not superfluous, but only to the extent his verdicts emulate or embody the values of the wise and virtuous man.

I will conclude my review of Hanley with some final though tentative thoughts about his book (the cover of which is pictured below) on Monday.

[*] I would make the following point in support of this proposition: Adam Smith himself is only able to identify but one flesh-and-blood person “as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will admit” (quoted in Hanley, p. 125). I will not give away the identity of this remarkable human being. Read Hanley’s book and find out for yourself!

Alternative title: Is Smith’s wise and virtuous man an officious intermeddler?

Alfred North Whitehead famously described the 2000-year European philosophical tradition as consisting of “a series of footnotes to Plato.” As we shall see, Adam Smith will be no exception to this general rule.

Thus far, we have reviewed the first half of Ryan Patrick Hanley’s beautiful new book on Adam Smith–specifically Hanley’s treatment of Smith’s imaginary spectator as well as his presentation of Smith’s theory of reciprocal sympathy. Here, we will review the culmination of Smith’s moral philosophy: “the wise and virtuous man.” Before proceeding, however, it is worth noting that Smith’s concept of virtue–his “wise and virtuous man”–is not only the focus of Hanley’s book; it is also a central feature of Smith’s moral philosophy, along with reciprocal sympathy and the imaginary spectator. Smith wrote up an entirely new section titled “Of the character of virtue” for the sixth and last (1790) edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, a datum that is significant not only because of its relative size–the section on virtue takes up a big chunk of the entire book–but also because this section on virtue represents Adam Smith’s last major contribution to the world of ideas.

So, then, what is Smith’s theory of virtue, and why does Hanley find it so appealing for our times? In summary, Smith’s theory of virtue is personified by an archetype, “the wise and virtuous man.” According to Hanley, he is not just a man of contemplation, an idle philosopher; he is a man of action–a point Hanley emphasizes throughout his book. But this observation begs the question, What actions are wise and virtuous?

Hanley responds to this key question by bringing Plato’s famous allegory of the cave into the picture. Specifically, Hanley compares and contrasts Smith’s archetype to the freed prisoner in Plato’s allegory in which a group of prisoners are chained to the wall of a cave. The chains prevent their legs and necks from moving, forcing them to gaze at the wall in front of them. Shadows are projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them. The prisoners, unable to see the objects casting the shadows, thus mistake the shadows for the objects themselves. Now, suppose one of the prisoners is freed from his chains. He has left the cave and seen the natural light outside, the truth. But what does the man do after he leaves the cave? Wouldn’t you, Hanley asks (p. 110), if you were such a person, want to stay in the world of the perfect and beautiful rather than be compelled to return to the cave? Here is Hanley’s response (ibid.):

“But in fact it’s precisely this [the act of returning to the dark cave] that the wise and virtuous man does. So far from sitting forever with his vision of absolute perfection, the wise and virtuous man takes the vision of absolute perfection that his wisdom has afforded him and carries it with him back into the real world, using it as a standard with which to judge the things of this world.”

Furthermore, Smith’s wise and virtuous man is not only a man of contemplation; he is also a man of action. Hanley claims that Smith’s archetype would return to the cave to help the prisoners trapped inside (p. 112): “Bettering the conditions of others–striving at all times ‘to promote their further advancement’–is however the project of a wise and virtuous person’s life.” In other words, the wise and virtuous man is an officious intermeddler. Legally speaking, an officious intermeddler is someone who, without any contractual or legal duty to do so, steps in to assist or confer a benefit on another. Courts have generally concluded that intermeddlers are not entitled to compensation for their voluntary intermeddling, a legal doctrine that goes back to the Roman law maxim culpa est immiscere se rei ad se non pertinenti–“it is a fault for anyone to meddle in a matter not pertaining to him.” (For a review of the caselaw, see John P. Dawson’s classic law review article “The Self-Serving Intermeddler,” Harvard Law Review, Vol. 87, No. 7 (1974), pp. 1409-1458.)

Alas, the Smithian classical liberal in me strongly rejects Hanley’s portrait of Smith’s wise and virtuous man. It is one thing to strive to become wise and virtuous for your own sake, or to set a good example for one’s children, or to lead one’s men into battle, but I strongly disagree with Hanley’s portrait of the wise and virtuous man as an officious intermeddler, as someone who wants to improve the condition of others. Also, Hanley himself seems to have forgotten the actual ending of Plato’s allegory of the cave. In Plato’s allegory, the freed prisoner does return to help his fellow prisoners, but he becomes blind upon re-entering the cave, and worse yet, the remaining prisoners infer from his blindness that the journey out of the cave is too dangerous to undertake themselves. Plato concludes that the prisoners do not want to be dragged out of the cave.

My critique of Hanley’s reading of Smith’s theory of virtue, however, does not mean that we should reject Smith’s wise and virtuous man. I agree with Smith (and Hanley) that we should aspire to become wise and virtuous, and I further agree that wisdom and virtue are necessary conditions for free markets to thrive, but I draw a different lesson from Smith. I will present my view of Smith’s concept of virtue and wrap up my review of Hanley in my next post …

My colleague and friend Oliver Scott Curry created the “moral philosophy cheat sheet” pictured below and posted it on his Twitter feed (@Oliver_S_Curry). Since I am in the process of reading and reviewing Ryan Patrick Hanley’s beautiful new book about Adam Smith’s moral philosophy, I thought I would re-post his cheat sheet here. Notice how “well-being” is an important criterion or dimension of most moral theories, but in the spirit of Smith and Hanley, I now wish to pose the following question to Curry: Whose well-being are talking about? The individual’s or the community’s? And if the latter, how should we define the term “community”? One’s immediate or extended family? One’s neighborhood? One’s city, province, or country? The whole world? (Also, what about the well-being of non-human animals? Where do they fit in?)

(With apologies to Philip K. Dick.) In a previous post I explored the role played by the “impartial spectator” in Adam Smith’s moral philosophy, but is Smith’s memorable metaphor deserving of our study and attention in our day and age, or is this imaginary being just another piece of antiquated philosophical B.S. with no operational relevance to our daily lives? (For my part, I am in the former camp.) Either way, however, above and beyond these eight questions posed by my colleague and friend Dan Klein, I would also like to pose to Ryan Patrick Hanley–author of Our Great Purpose and Smith scholar extraordinaire–the following five pesky questions about Smith’s impartial spectator (note: all author and page references are to the May 2016 issue of Econ Journal Watch, or EJW, 13(2), which contains a special symposium devoted to the impartial spectator):

1. First and foremost, what is the ontological status or metaphysical origins of this imaginary being? Specifically, is he (she?) (them?) (it?) an artificial human creation–i.e. something we conjure up out of whole cloth–or is this imaginary being somehow “hardwired” by natural or sexual selection into every human brain–an innate faculty we are born with? (Cf. McHugh 2016.) Either way (human invention or innate faculty), does this abstract entity have an ethnicity, a gender, or a sexual preference? (Cf. Weinstein 2016, p. 356.)
2. Secondly, and from a purely logistical or practical perspective, when does the impartial spectator, if he (her/them/it) really exists, actually come into play? To the point: if it’s true, for example, that the average person makes up to 2000 decisions every hour (see here), which of these myriad decisions are subject to review by one’s impartial spectator–i.e. actually go up “on appeal”, so to speak. Put another way, if Smith’s impartial spectator operates like a Court of Appeal, what criteria does he (the impartial spectator) use in deciding which of our decisions will be taken on appeal?
3. Next, what is the moral or normative status of the moral judgements generated by this heuristic, i.e. the decisions or verdicts rendered by the impartial spectator? (Note: I prefer the British spelling of the word “judgement.”) Are these verdicts/judgements fallible or infallible? Final or tentative? Put differently (cf. Mueller 2016), do the judgements and identity of this imaginary entity vary from person to person, or is Smith’s impartial spectator capable of generating universal and timeless moral judgements?
4. Also, how helpful or reliable is Smith’s imaginary spectator, really? Specifically, can he or she or them transcend or correct our “entrenched cultural biases” (Fleischacker, 2016, p. 278)? By way of example, Walt Disney’s Jiminy Cricket famously admonished Pinocchio to ”let your conscience be your guide.” This is helpful advice if your impartial spectator is able to reliably discern right from wrong, but how reliable is your conscience? Circling back to Smith, since the impartial spectator is not a real person–it is an imaginary being–it is only as reliable as the person conjuring him/her/them up. After all, the impartial spectator, being an imaginary entity, has no store of knowledge beyond that of the person who is conjuring it up.
5. Lastly, and relatedly, isn’t Smith’s impartial spectator, assuming it exists, a superfluous entity? If not, what work does this imaginary being really do? (Cf. Craig Smith 2016.) To the point: if a virtuous person is someone who is guided by the judgements of the impartial spectator, then by definition a non-virtuous person is someone who neglects or ignores these judgements. In that case, the impartial spectator falls into a circular trap; it is the mysterious quality of “virtue” (not the judgements of the impartial spectator) that is doing the heavy moral lifting.

The reference to “virtue” in the preceding paragraph takes us to the last major feature of Adam Smith’s moral philosophy, a feature that Professor Hanley himself heaps considerable–but perhaps unjustified–praise on. I will discuss Hanley and Smith’s treatment of moral virtue in my next post …

I interrupt yet again my review of Ryan Patrick Hanley’s latest book on Adam Smith in order to express my opinion about Mark Cuban’s controversial decision to cancel the national anthem during his team’s home games: although I strongly disagree with his decision, I condemn in even stronger terms the NBA Commissioner’s ham-fisted decision to compel the playing of the national anthem at all games. That is, in my libertarian opinion, pro-sports franchises should be free to make this decision without league interference.

Alternative Title: Two Problems with Mutual Sympathy and Adam Smith’s Solution

Although the sympathy of others (to paraphrase Smith) is necessary to our happiness, and although we also want to receive the sympathy, attention, and esteem of others, Ryan Patrick Hanley points out two further problems with Smith’s theory of mutual sympathy in practice. One problem is that we are often selective and superficial in choosing the objects of our sympathy. As Hanley puts it (p. 30), “the wealthy are often worshipped, and the poor willfully overlooked.” Aside from this bias issue, the other problem is that our single-minded pursuit of sympathy, attention, and esteem can itself get out of hand. We might spend way too much time and effort in trying to seek the attention of others, or we might end up painting a false picture of ourselves–as anyone who has spent time on social media can attest to. To sum up, the pursuit of attention, combined with a bias toward the wealthy, might thus lead to “mindless striving” (p. 41) and even to “mental mutilation” (p. 39).

So, what is to be done? Here is where Hanley introduces us to the ingenious distinction Adam Smith drew between “praise” and “praiseworthiness” (perhaps the most important distinction in all of Smith’s work) as well as to Smith’s imaginary device of the “impartial spectator.” And here too is where Smith’s analysis of morality and life moves from the descriptive (Hume’s “is”) to the normative (“ought”). For according to Smith, it’s just not enough to obtain the praise and esteem of others; we must also be deserving of this praise.

But this fundamental Smithian distinction between “praise” and “praiseworthiness” poses a new problem for us: how to do we know when are truly deserving of praise? Here is where the perspective of Smith’s “impartial spectator” comes into play. Ideally, this impartial spectator, this “man within,” will act as an impartial judge and juror, reviewing our actions and our motives and determining whether we are truly deserving of the praise of others. At a minimum, the impartial spectator helps us understand that “we are just one of the multitude.” Either way, whether he is operating as a neutral judge or just as a simple reminder that–contra Mr Rogers–we are not all that special, the impartial spectator invites us to take into account the perspective of others and to put our self-interest and self-concern into perspective.

Before we proceed into the last major aspect of Smith’s theory and conclude our review of Hanley, I want to call a “time out” in the name of David Hume and point out that the impartial spectator is an imaginary fellow. He does not really exist, so his ability to influence our behavior, let alone control it, is probably negligible at best. Smith or Hanley might reply by asking, Is the imaginary nature of the impartial spectator a feature or a bug? These are difficult questions, and as it happens, an entire volume of Econ Journal Watch is devoted to the impartial spectator (see here). I will weigh the pros and cons of Smith’s impartial spectator in my next post.

I am interrupting my review of Ryan Patrick Hanley’s book on Adam Smith to pay my respects to the great Mary Wilson. Update (2/15): Also, check out this collection of Mary Wilson recordings. Hat tip: Steve Lubet, via The Faculty Lounge.

Alternative Title: Adam Smith’s (Humean-Inspired?) Theory of Reciprocal Sympathy

As Ryan Patrick Hanley correctly notes in his beautiful new book on Adam Smith, the concept of sympathy or “fellow feeling” is the cornerstone of Smith’s moral philosophy. The original 1759 edition of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments of TMS had six parts, and Smith devotes the entire first part to explaining the role sympathy plays in morality. In fact, the very first line in TMS contains the following powerful observation (quoted on p. 15 of Hanley):

“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him ….”

For Smith, then, humans are not just purely selfish actors or egoistic “utility maximizers” in the parlance of modern economics. On the contrary, we not only care about the welfare of others; the happiness of others is “necessary” to our well-being! We have a natural disposition to sympathize with other people, or as Hanley puts it (p. 15), “we also naturally care about the well-being of others,” so depending on the situation, we like to share their joys and are also able feel their pain and suffering. But as original and remarkable as this observation is–especially coming from Adam Smith, the father of modern economics–Smith the moral philosopher makes an even more original and remarkable observation about the reciprocal nature of sympathy in the first part of TMS (quoted on p. 23 of Hanley):

“Of such mighty importance does it appear to be, in the imaginations of men, to stand in that situation which sets them most in the view of general sympathy and attention.”

In other words, sympathy is not just something we are naturally inclined or willing to give to others; sympathy is also something we want to receive from others, or in the words of Hanley (p. 24): “… not only are we naturally disposed to sympathize with others, we also naturally desire that others sympathize with us.” (In fact, according to Smith (as quoted in Hanley, p. 28), this is why we spend so much time trying to “better our condition”–in order “to be taken notice of with sympathy, complacency, and approbation ….”) This key Smithian insight about the reciprocal nature of sympathy is important for three reasons. First and foremost, this insight goes a long way toward solving “Das Adam Smith Problem,” toward reconciling Smith the economist and Smith the moral philosopher. Simply put, we don’t sympathize with others out of pure altruism but rather out of our own self-interest.

Second, this Smithian insight about the reciprocal nature of sympathy helps explain and unravel many of the riddles, quirks, and mysteries of human behavior. Why, for example, do young people spend so much time on social media? Because they crave the attention of their peers. In short, Smith’s insight paints a more accurate and nuanced portrait of human psychology and motives than the low-grade, utility-maximization picture painted by mainstream economists. Or as Hanley puts it (p. 17), “… we have, by nature, two parts to us that on their face pull in different directions. One leads us to care about ourselves and our own happiness, while the other leads us to care about others and their happiness.”

But perhaps the most important aspect of Smith’s key insight is that these mutual or reciprocal exchanges of sympathy–not God or the Good–are the true foundation of morality. As a result, sympathy plays a crucial role not just from an individual perspective–for our individual well-being and sense of worth–but also from a “social” or community perspective–for the well-being of society as a whole. Why? Because it is the reciprocal nature of sympathy that allows us to transcend the selfish sides of our natures and potentially bridge our many divisions and break out of our current cycles of tribalism.

Alas, I say “potentially” because Smith’s beautiful theory of reciprocal sympathy, as original and sophisticated as it is, poses a new problem: what I shall call “Das Adam Smith Problem 2.0.” If these reciprocal exchanges are so essential to our well-being (from both an individual and community or social perspective), then why do we see so much division and tribalism in our contemporary world today? My own view is that there is an optimal level of tribalism and that our current levels of disunity are probably over-hyped, but as far as I can tell that is neither Smith’s nor Hanley’s view, so rest assured we will further probe this new problem in my next few posts …

Before we discuss the main features of Adam Smith’s approach to moral philosophy (sympathy or fellow-feeling, the imaginary impartial spectator, and virtue), I want to share with you two quotes by David Hume: one about the limited role of reason in matters of morality; the other on Hume’s famous “is-ought” distinction, i.e. the notion that facts and values are two different domains. In many ways, Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments can be seen as an extended reply to Hume. (An in-depth survey of Hume’s moral philosophy can be found here.)

Ryan Patrick Hanley poses two deep philosophical questions on the first two lines of the first page of his new book Our great purpose: Adam Smith on living a better life: “What does it mean to ‘live a [good] life’? And for that matter, what exactly does it mean to ‘live a life’ in the first place?” These are perennial questions. How should we go about answering them? At a minimum, we can all agree that life is full of choices, of paths not taken. (Fun fact: according to this source, the average person makes around 2,000 decisions per hour; from a purely economic perspective, then, we might say that our lives can be defined in terms of “opportunity costs,” since life is full of delicate tradeoffs.) This insight, in turn, poses more deep philosophical questions:

1. What makes one path better than another?
2. What standard should we use to judge what choices we make?
3. And where should we turn for guidance on all this?

All of these eternal questions appear on page 1 of Hanley’s beautiful new book. His contribution is to show how the ideas of Adam Smith are relevant to these moral questions–not the ideas of Adam Smith the father of capitalism and champion of liberty–but rather the ideas of Adam Smith the great moral philosopher. For as Hanley correctly reminds us, before Smith authored his critique of mercantilism and defense of economic freedom, he was a Professor of Moral Philosophy for many years; before he wrote The Wealth of Nations (1776), he first wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759).

More specifically, three important themes in Smith’s first book are going to be especially relevant to these big questions and to our contemporary controversies today: (1) Smith’s notion of “sympathy”; (2) his imaginary “impartial spectator”; and (3) his theory of human virtue. What does Smith have to say about each one of these themes, and why are Smith’s observations relevant to our world today? I shall address those second-order questions in my next few posts …