MAR 29

21: MAR 29. Unit Four: Justice and Justified Partiality

Assigned

Hidden Brain, "Playing Favorites: When kindness toward some means callousness toward others"

Introduction to Justified Partiality Unit

• A typical question for thinking about social justice is,

• "What do I owe strangers?". You can think of our approach in this unit as an indirect way of addressing that question by asking, first:
• "What are the limits (if any) of partiality to family, intimates, friends?" (Your preference network)

• Today's class is focused on "personal partiality," the kind that shows up in our interpersonal social relationships. The next class will focus on "impersonal altruism", which shows up in our commitments, if any, to benefit strangers, especially strangers in our society, but in some cases, globally.

• Three big questions:

• 1. What are some the social functions of personal preferential treatment? (Draw in material from podcast)
• 2. Could our networks of preferential treatment be the effect of and also promote injustice?
• 3. What principles or considerations might lead you to direct some resources (time, money, in-kind aid) outside your preference network? (We need additional resources for Question #3)

Hidden Brain, "Playing Favorites"

• Intro

• Expectations for unique attention from one's beloved. We'd rather an inferior unique message than a message shared with others. We want partiality. (Think about cases in which someone shows you a simple preference -- offering to pay for coffee, give you a ride somewhere, just showing you attention. It's wonderful!)
• How does partiality fit with a desire for justice as equal treatment? Can partiality cause injustice?

• Segment 1: Carla's Story

• Discrimination research: IAT - Implicit Association Test - Mahzarin Banaji (Harvard) one of the researchers on IAT.
• Mahzarin Banaji and Professor Carla Kaplan (Yale English at time of story). Also a quilter. Friends in the 80s, among the few women at Yale. Story of injury to Carla. She gets preferential treatment because she is a professor, rather than because she was a quilter. Class based.
• Is it discrimination if you are given a preference? [Imagine a system of preferences given to those we know. Could such a system support systemic injustice?] Someone decides to show you "special kindness" -- above and beyond the ordinary. Language of discrimination based on "commission". But what about omission? Hard to know if you didn't get preferential treatment. Yikes! Carla got to see both what it was like to be treated same and different.
• Most injustices of "omission" are invisible.

• Story by Mahzarin about interview from former student journalist from magazine the professor didn't respect. Suddenly, the in-group information about being a Yaley was enough to trigger a preference. Preference networks in Ivy leagues schools. But also Gonzaga!!! We actively cultivate a preferential network for you! Because we care about you!
• "Helping those with whom you have a group identity" is a form of modern discrimination, acc to Mahzarin.
• Interesting feature of favoritism -- You often don't find out that you didn't get preferential treatment.
• Favoritism doesn't get as much attention as discrimination.

• Can you avoid favoritism?
• Could be based on "green beard effect" same school, etc.

• Segment 2: Dillon the Altruist 16:00 minutes.

• What would it be like to try to overcome favoritism.
• Story of Dillon Matthews. Tries to avoid favoritism. Middle school story. Utilitarian primer: Singer's argument about helping others in need. Thought experiment: Saving a child from a pond ruins your suit. Utilitarian altruism.
• Singer's Principle: If you can do good without giving up something of equal moral significance, you should do it.
• "Give Well" - documented charity work. (One of many sources that can assure you that your money did something good. Other examples: Jimmy Carter's mission, Gates' missions. If you had contributed to such a cause, you would have been effective.)
• Hannah’s model: Value the person in front of you. Then move out to others. Courtship with Dillon involves debate over these two approaches: Partiality justified vs not justified. Debating moral philosophy on a first date! Wow! It doesn't get any better than that.
• Effective altruism movement. The most good you can do. Evidence based altruism. Vs. Hannah: Focused on family, friends, your neighborhood, city. Parental lesson. Dinner together.
• Utilitarian logic. Equal happiness principle. Dillon not focused on preference to people near him, but on effectiveness of altruism. (Feel the rationality, and maybe the unnaturalness of this.)
• Dillon donates a kidney to a stranger. Hmm. Not giving his kidney felt like hoarding something. Hannah felt her beloved was taking an unnecessary risk. "Being a stranger" made a difference to her. Audio of Dillon’s recovery. Hmm. Dillon honored by Kidney Association.
• The Trolley Problem again, this time from Joshua Greene himself!! Watch "The Good Place".
• What if the person you had to sacrifice was someone you loved, your child. Dillon might do it. Dillion would do it. "They are all the heroes of their own stories..." Dillon would sacrifice Hannah. Hannah might sacrifice Dillion just know that's what he would want that, but no. She wouldn't. Dillion jokes that he might kill himself after killing his child.
• Greene: She recognizes that what he would do is rational. He's willing to override it, but he might not be able to live with himself for doing that. (Elephant and rider.)

• Segment 3: Neurobiology of Preference. 33:15 minutes.

• Naturalness of preference. Evolutionary background: Preference promotes cooperation. Suite of capacities. A package. Don't lie, cheat, steal...
• ”Morality is fundamentally about cooperation” (Greene): Kin cooperation....Cooperation among friends... reciprocity...semi-strangers (same religion. friend of kin. friend of friend of kin. Friends!
• Moral concentric circles. How big is my "Us"? What is the range of humans I care about and to what degree?
• Greene's analogy of automatic and manual camera modes. (Two systems. Automatic (elephant) and Deliberate (rider).) Difficult decisions might require manual mode.
• Manual mode: dlPFC (activated in utilitarian thought) (high cog load). Automatic -- amygdala. Snakes in the grass. Thank your amygdala. Point: We need both systems. We need lying, cheating, and stealing to be pretty automatic NOs!
• List: Easy calls: sharing concert tickets with a friend. Buying dinner for an intimate partner. Giving a more valuable gift to one person than another. Harder: Figuring out whether to donate money to help people far away. How much?
• Crying baby scenario. Inevitable outcomes seem to matter here. Brain wrestles, as in experience. vmPFC (evaluates/weighs)
• Lack of Tribal identity might tilt us toward rule based ethics. Equal treatment. Automatic systems not designed for a world that could help strangers 10,000 miles away.
• Loyalty cases: men placing loyalty to men above other virtues. Assumptions about family relationship. Do families sometime impose on your loyalty (can be disfunctional)? [Recent example of the Jan 6 insurrectionist who threatened his family not to rat him out. They did.] The "worth being loyal to" part is sometimes unexamined. [recall the passenger dilemma]
• Example: Spending lots of money on a birthday party.
• Back to Dillon: Acknowledges limits. Liver story. Bits of liver. It grows back. Partners not so much.
• Mazarin’s story about giving to alleviate Japanese disaster. We can retriever.
• — Giving Well — you really can save lives.
• Closing point by Joshua Greene. If you ran into a burning building and saved someone, it would be a highpoint of your life. Why not consider the same outcome heroic even if it doesn't involve a burning building?

Small Group Discussion: How big is your "us"?

• Before we start adding more theory, let's process some of the moral challenges in the podcast:

• 1. Interpersonal preferences (Carla hand surgery story). Does this story exemplify a problem of doing justice? Is there a potential for systematic injustice from omissions?
• 2. Dillon and Hannah -- Which do you tilt toward? Would you be ok with Dillon's altruism? Would you draw the line at the liver? Imagine you are in an intimate relationship and raising a family. You make a median US income of about $70,000. Your partner wants to give away 10%, 15%, 20% of your family income. Where do you draw that line?

===Question #3 (from above): "What are the limits (if any) of partiality to family, intimates, friends?"

• Finding principles and resources for developing a position on "Justified Partiality"

• Let's define a couple of viewpoints to get started. Note that these views draw on both our study of morality as an evolved system as well as our philosophical theories:

• Tribalism - The view that there are no limits to partiality to our social network. Just as no one has a right to my friendship, no one has a moral complaint against me if I spend all of my resources on my partiality network. The tribalist might point the importance and naturalness of having a kin and friendship social network. Helping people outside this network might still be justified by self-interest. A libertarian might arrive at a similar practical position, though from a focus on individual liberty and "self-ownership".

• "Post-Tribal Urbanism" - You recognize that values are needed to sustain large scale societies: values supporting market exchanges with strangers, values that support impersonal trust, impersonal honesty, and impersonal altruism. Add a "Rawlsian twist" for refreshing additional theory!

• Utilitarian Globalism - Following the equal happiness principle, the view that we ought to constrain our natural tendency to favor our own. In principle, saving a life 12,000 miles from here is the same as saving a life in your community. So, if you can save two lives....etc. Your "us" is big, but you still give weight to your preference network because you accept that this is a useful part of your evolved social behaviors.

• Extreme Altruism - You feel that humans need to evolve from their preferential treatments of others. You choose to live simply. Maximize giving. Don't leave any organs un-recycled. A bit of liver can go a long way!