The Enormous Ramifications of Human Action

The Enormous Ramifications of Human Action

By Jack Cohen, the University of Pennsylvania

A man, upon feeling remorse for having spread a rumor about the rabbi to his friend, approached the rabbi to ask for forgiveness. The rabbi told him to go home, take his pillow to the top of the hill overlooking the village, and release its feathers into the wind. The man did so and returned to the rabbi perplexed. “Now what?” asked the man.

“Put the feathers back in your pillow.”

—a famous Chassidic tale

The tragic flaw of modern civilization is our arrogance—we are overawed by our own accomplishments. From humanity’s dawn in caves, we have built empires, erected skyscrapers, split atoms, leveled cities, photographed galaxies, cured epidemics, and developed the languages to speak of it all to one another. The modern person, aware of these achievements and adorned with the spirit of the Enlightenment, can think of no mystery in the world that cannot be solved. The irony is that while she inherits this accumulation of 150,000 years of knowledge of how the world works, she dismisses the received wisdom of how to live in it as an ethical human being. It is seemingly a paradox. Why would our knowledge base of chemistry, biology and mathematics be at its zenith today, and not our understanding of ethics? What could a book written several thousand years before the development of game theory teach us about ethical decision-making? The paradox runs even deeper. With every other discipline from medicine to boxing, there is a requirement for even the most gifted of students—training. Even Picasso took art lessons. Ethics, the art of living, has been reduced to a science, but one for which one need no formal instruction or practice; it can be effortlessly learned by simply being alive.

Whether one is religious or not, religions (in which I include non-theological philosophical traditions) undeniably represent generations’ worth of wisdom regarding the way one should live. Today, religions face the challenge of making themselves intellectually relevant to societies that do not value ethical education. While one does not need to accept one tradition in its entirety to benefit from it, they are often tossed in the pile of outdated knowledge that has served its purpose.

In this essay I will look at consequentialism as paradigmatic of contemporary, reductionist ethical theories. Consequentialist theories are all founded on the principle that an action's consequences completely determine its goodness, that the goodness of an action’s consequences can be quantified, and that we as responsible human beings should act in way that optimizes this quantity to the best of our ability. These theories all rely on a superhuman ability to understand the future and perform implicit mathematical operations to make a decision. What I intend to prove is that in fact no human being would be able to perform the complex computations and operations required by these scientific ethical theories.

Mathematically, utilitarianism can be represented as follows, (formula 1):

where G is the goodness of some prospect P resulting from an action taken, and g_i is the incremental goodness for an individual i within this prospect P. In order to act as good consequentialists, we must determine the value G for every action we can possibly do at any given moment. Then, after ordering the G’s from smallest to largest, we must execute the action corresponding to the G at the top of the list.1 Unfortunately, for the individual committed to consequentialism, this is only the beginning—life becomes significantly more complicated.

What science taught us in the 20^th century is that anything is possible, even if improbable. An action does not yield one outcome with 100% certainty; an action can potentially yield infinite possible outcomes, each weighted by its own probability of realization. To do the consequentialist theory justice, it is vital to pay attention to the regrettably sparse debate regarding the causal, epistemological, and ethical connections between our actions and their seemingly never-ending chain of consequences. The ethical implications of this topic are gigantic, yet the recent discussion has done little to affect how we must alter our conception of consequentialism and its practicability. I will explore how the mathematical formulation of objective consequentialism must be modified to account for statistical uncertainty and the transitivity of action, and its implications for subjective consequentialism.

In the last fifty years, chaos theorists have discovered the surprising sensitivity of complex causal systems to variations in their initial conditions. The classic example given is how a butterfly's flapping wings in Argentina could produce a hurricane in Indonesia after a long causal sequence. At the beginning of the 20^th century, well before the development of chaos theory, the influential epistemologist G.E. Moore made the claim that no matter what course of action we take now, “it will all be the same a hundred years hence, so far as the existence at that time of anything greatly good or bad is concerned.”^² More recently, the philosopher, J. J. C. Smart made the poor analogy that the consequences of our actions “approximate rapidly to zero like the furthermost ripples on a pond after a stone has been dropped into it.”^³ Today, this “Moore/Smart Response” is generally rejected by all—our actions indeed have the undeniable potential for enormous ramifications, which we will never fully grasp.

To affirm the Moore-Smart Response is to deny the potency of human action and to discredit the value of ethics entirely. Chaos theory is sustained by the principle that a small variation causes more small variations ad infinitum. Simply by virtue of there being more remote consequences than near consequences, one can say that the consequences become increasingly more significant with time.^⁴ Every action taken seems to cause a divergence from the nearest possible reality, continuing to diverge with time as chaos predicts. This said, the discussion has centered on whether or not we are morally justified in discounting these remote consequences when considering an act. Regardless, one does not need to consider the consequences 100 years after an act is taken in order for transitivity to pose a problem for consequentialism.

James Lenman makes an important distinction between objective and subjective senses of rightness according to consequentialism. With Lenman’s definitions, objective rightness pertains to the act evaluated through its actual consequences, while subjective rightness is only concerned with the “visible” consequences.^⁵ These terms are both poorly defined. Consequentialist theories speak of ethical agents as “bringing about” some prospect; however, this contradicts both experience and our scientific understanding. Even in the laboratory, an action does not necessitate the realization of some specified outcome; many outcomes are possible, while some are more probable than others. Likewise, in the realm of human action, an action intended to bring about some outcome does not necessarily do so. There are chaotic subtleties in the world that are entirely outside of our control. Since my understanding is that at best, we can only know the probabilities of outcomes and never the actual future, I will interpret objective consequentialism to refer to the judgment a rational agent would make if she knew all of her alternatives, all of their possible consequences and associated probabilities, the consequent set of alternatives and their possible consequences and probabilities, and so on.

This causal framework is more clearly understood visually through Figure 1, an idealized representation of the complexity of a rational ethical decision. At the time of a decision, the agent exists in some scenario represented as P1, with some set of actions from which to choose. Every action has some set of possible prospects that could potentially be realized, each weighted by some probability.

Figure 1. The tree of consequences

While the diagram above looks fairly complex, it is still a highly idealized causal model. First and foremost, at any juncture, the agent has a choice between only three possible actions. It is clear, that this is not the case in reality. Robert Frazier goes so far as to say that at any given time, there is no unique set of prospects P to order and then choose from.^⁶ So, even before we begin to look at the consequences, the list of possible actions an agent can take are seemingly endless. Secondly, only three possible outcomes that could result from an action are shown. This is also empirically false. An arbitrarily large number of possible prospects could potentially result from a given action without any further action from the agent. Lastly, the tree only shows two iterations of action, and in the second iteration, only the causal tree branching from prospect 5 is shown. However, just to illustrate how complex this model is already with just two steps in the causal chain, what follows is a calculation of the goodness realized by action 2 under just these two causal iterations in this idealized model:

Formula 2:

First iteration: [(ΔG₁_-5)|<P5|a2|P1>|²+ (ΔG₁_-6) |<P6|a2|P1>|²+ (ΔG₁_-7) |<P7|a2|P1>|²

Second iteration: + [(ΔG₅_-38)|<P38|a1d|P5>|²+ (ΔG₅_-39) |<P39|a1d|P5>|²+ (ΔG₅_-40) |<P40|a1d|P5>|²] + […] + […]

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Total G for action 2 under two iterations

Here, ΔG is the marginal goodness in a given prospect over the one that preceded it chronologically, and each ΔG is weighted by its relevant probability.7 The parallel valuations of actions 2d and 3d are symbolized by ellipsis points.

This seems difficult enough, but in order to improve this model to reflect real decisions as closely as possible, we would have to expand this equation in several important ways. It does not seem reasonable that one’s decisions should be so short‑sighted so as to reflect only one extra step ahead. For example, G5 might be larger than G6 and G7, but perhaps if we expand to a few more iterations, P5 leads to worse and worse sets of prospects. This is not merely a theoretical anomaly; it is extremely common that one’s decision is beneficial in the short-term but harmful in the long-term. The equation describing utilitarianism would have to integrate (sum continuously) over a period of time since one has the potential of making decisions at every moment. Lastly, we cannot forget that contained in ΔG is the marginal good realized in some prospect for every individual. Furthermore, in calculating future outcomes and probabilities, one must account for the game interactions between agents and know what ethical systems, if any, others are using to dictate their actions.

This sketch of the requirements for this formula are reminiscent of the quantum electrodynamics path integral formulation, developed by physicist Richard Feynman, which sums a particle's motions over all possible paths between two points to determine the path that minimizes what is called the “action” S (a complicated operation in itself, but practicable with a computer).^⁸ Quantum theory, however, makes no normative predictions for individual particles in a system. At best, it can predict trends within some large sample and with some uncertainty. Moreover, the mathematical formulation of utilitarianism would analogically have to sum over all paths to all points for all the “particles” (individuals) in the system, maximizing the good G.

No mention has been made so far of the semantic content of utilitarianism—what exactly is this good G. Is it pleasure? Knowledge? Equality? Justice? These all seem to be valid definitions of the good. Is there even a scale on which values can be assigned to two things as distinct as supreme enlightenment and French fries, for instance? Maybe things can simply be ordered in some coherent way without assigning values, but this would make internalist comparisons extraordinarily difficult. If we were to extend the comparison to Feynman’s equation, perhaps each of these values could be represented as a separate dimension in value-space, making the calculation even more complex. Would each person’s g_i represent what is good to them, or is there some objective definition of the good? These questions are crucial, but beyond the scope of this paper. Although, they do help to illuminate other difficulties one would face when performing this consequentialist calculation.

You should not be concerned about me moving towards the extreme claim that an objective utilitarian rightness does not exist—that there is no act which would yield the best consequences. I am not sure what that answer to this question would be. Rather, I am trying to demonstrate just how epistemologically removed we are from that knowledge. In its expanded form, the goodness of some action in terms of its consequences is virtually incalculable. Even if an agent would be able to project out her options, prospects, and probabilities, the calculation itself would be unusable in practice. The world is not dictated by coin tosses—this is quite a complicated place we live in with probabilities that are rarely 50-50. We have established that an ethical agent cannot construct a coherent ranking in her head of the possible actions she could take based on their consequences. As a result, there is no way of knowing what the objectively right act using utilitarianism is.

But if the above analysis is sound, and we have ruled out the possibility of determining an objective appraisal of an act through its consequences, what hope is there that the subjective judgment of the foreseeable consequences even remotely resembles the objective ordering of all the consequences of all possible actions? Many consequentialists agree with Peter Railton's more sophisticated and plausible strategy of not interpreting consequentialism as a decision process, but instead as a theory of how one what should act. If this distinction seems a bit thin, it is because it is. Railton says it is an “an empirical question (though not an easy one) which modes of decision making should be employed and when,” as if a person could develop on her own some viable decision-making process that matches an inaccessible rightness more often than not.^⁹ How can any decision procedure even come close to such an unintelligible account of the objectively right action? But if an objective consequentialist vision of rightness falls, and any epistemological confidence in a subjective vision crumbles with it, what remains?

When one spreads a rumor to another, he is making an estimation of the consequences. “What are the chances that this will get back to the person it is about?” is the question that flashes through his mind before the rumor leaves his mouth. But this moment of ethical decision-making is no more than an instant, a flash of reflection prior to action. Our words and actions escape us like feathers in the wind. We as human beings are simply unable to fully consider the ramifications of our actions once they begin propagating an external world that we do not control, taken by the wind that carries our actions through space and time.

We are not entirely blind to the transitivity of action, yet none of the abovementioned moral philosophers describe what ought to change in our ethical decision procedure to incorporate it into our thinking. Elinor Mason concludes her article with a plea to not “give up on consequentialism.”10 Yet in a sense, we should let go of our intuitive drive to reformulate ethics with one neat principle, mathematical or not. For utilitarians living on a deserted island in a community of three people, where all decisions are dictated by coin-tosses, I have not presented much of a problem. For everyone else, life is more complicated. To give Mason her due credit, it is unreasonable to completely cease considering the consequences. The consequences certainly matter, but at the time of an ethical decision, one can rarely rigorously weigh the consequences of actions as if one were deciding which lottery ticket is the best to buy.

Even though we are epistemologically shut off from the “ocean of consequences,” it is critical to be conscientious of the immense power an action can have. Lenman restricts the domain of massively consequential actions mainly to “identity‑affecting” actions, namely engendering and killings.11 This is an unreasonably narrow view. A nasty rumor can for all intents and purposes kill a person. Appreciating the enormity of our actions is the first step towards being as conscientious as possible of the foreseeable consequences.

We can see that contrary to Railton's opinion, consequentialism is only of use to us as a decision procedure. We are responsible in our decision process to consider the consequences of our actions to the greatest degree that the situation allows us. The most poignant example of this ethical concept is slander. A consequentialist assessment might determine that the odds of a rumor returning to its subject are minute. However, if one were to take a moment to fathom the consequences of speaking negatively about one individual to another—if one were to work out, in rough terms, the potential for the rumor to spread uncontrollably once it is let out, and just imagine the possible long-term effects it could have on the one slandered and even the slanderer himself, it becomes increasingly more difficult to bring about that prospect in good conscience, especially with the innumerable other alternatives one has available. Consequentialists should not be disappointed at this result. As a way of thinking, this reformulated consequentialism has tremendous value in instilling awe and respect for even the most seemingly insignificant of actions, ensuring that before acting, we consider as many of the consequences as possible.

This is by no means a science. Ethics is not economics. There is more to the realm of ethics than price and quantity. We have already seen that as a science, ethics make quantum electrodynamics look like finger-painting. The meta-ethical questions of what is the good that we are trying to maximize only complicate matters. Responsible living is an art. It is implausible that an agent will ever be able to know the objective consequentialist value of a prospect, even with a consequentialist pocket calculator, there are too many conditions to input. Nor do I believe (hope?) a criminal will ever be tried in court by a consequentialist computer. There is no usable algorithm to determine the right. People are judged by people to ascertain whether the agent could have done more to prevent harm, and whether the agent was aware of the negative consequences. Every ethical instance is unique and must be dealt with as such.

It is easy to be crushed by the immensity of our actions’ consequences. But if we understand that uncertainty is part of the fabric of this universe, that our world is no more righteous now than the world of our grandparents, and that our ancestors have lived full, rich lives with this uncertainty and have recorded their words of wisdom, we might be open-minded enough to give the ethics of our fathers another chance.Ç

References

Broome, John. "Incommensurable Values." Well-being and Morality: Essays in Honour of James Griffin. Ed. Roger Crisp and Brad Hooker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, 21-38.

———————. Weighing Goods. Cambridge, Mass: Basil Blackwell Inc., 1991: 1-21.

Feynman, Richard Feynman. QED – The Strange Theory of Light and Matter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988.

Foot, Philippa. "Morality, Action and Outcome." Morality and Objectivity: a Tribute to J. L. Mackie. Ed. Ted Honderich. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul plc, 1985: 23-38.

Frazier, Robert. “Act Utilitarianism and Decision Procedures.” Utilitas 6, no. 1 (1994): 43-53.

Griffin, James. "The Human Good and the Ambitions of Consequentialism." Social Philosophy & Policy 9, no. 2 (1992): 118-132.

Harsanyi, John. “Cardinal Welfare, Individualistic Ethics, and Interpersonal Comparisons of Utility.”

Lenman, James. “Consequentialism and Cluelessness.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 29, no. 4 (2000): 342-367.

Mason, Elinor. “Consequentialism and the Principle of Indifference.” Utilitas 16, no. 2 (2004): 316-321.

Norcross, Alistair. “Consequentialism and the Unforeseeable Future.” Analysis 50 (1990): 253-256.

Railton, Peter. “Alienation, Consequentialism and the Demands of Morality.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 13 (1984): 134-171.

Sen, Amartya. "Rights and Agency." Philosophy and Public Affairs 11, no. 2 (1982): 3-39.

——————— "Rights and Capabilities." Morality and Objectivity: a Tribute to J. L. Mackie. Ed. Ted Honderich. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul plc, 1985: 130-148.

Sosa, David. "Consequences of Consequentialism." Mind 102 (1993): 101-122.

Notes