There’s a question I’ve been thinking about intermittently (over the course of several years) that I thought I’d lay out here, on the theory that you all have a track record of sharing smart and insightful things (including related questions of your own) in the comments.
One of the things that potentially makes a human life good (at least, from the point of view of the person living it) is setting aims and directing one’s efforts toward meeting those aims. For many people, these aims run along the lines of making the world a better place for others in some particular way – by reducing suffering, increasing cooperation, building knowledge, etc.
Some people are in situations where they can work towards their goals as part of their day jobs. Other people may find themselves in circumstances where serious work towards their goals can only be conducted on their own time (assuming they can find the discretionary time in which to pursue these goals).
So here’s the question:
How can a person get an objective read on the impacts of his or her activities — positive or negative, direct or indirect — on advancing a particular goal?
The reason I think this is a difficult question is that our various activities might not all lead in the same direction with respect to the aims to which we commit ourselves. I could have a solid record of advancing a goal in one part of my life (whether my job or my “extracurricular” activities). But there’s nothing, as far as I can tell, that guarantees that all my other activities will also work in this direction, or even that they will have a neutral effect with respect to this goal.
It’s not hard to think of examples here. Al Gore directs a good chunk of his efforts to educating the public about the dangers of global warming … and is roundly criticized for his extensive air travel, which contributes to global warming. Certain advocates of the position that women should not work outside the home are women who work outside the home to advocate this position. Certain advocates of greater inclusion of women and underrepresented minorities in science may work very hard in their outreach project while still being more critical of job or tenure candidates who are women and underrepresented minorities. Some folks who strive to help scientists become better communicators alienate some of those scientists by communicating badly to them. Some ethicists cheat at cards.
I’m sure you can provide your own.
What makes things complicated is that some of our impacts are not immediately noticeable to us. They may be far enough from us in space or time that we just don’t realizing we’re having these impacts. Or the impacts we have, whether positive or negative with respect to our goals, may be noticed by others but, for whatever reason, we’re not getting (or listening to) the information they could provide.
Clearly, there’s a distinction worth drawing between our aims and our effects. If there weren’t, no one would ever speak of good intentions as a paving material.
Some of my effects are unintended — and some of those may be largely beyond my control. But if some of the unintended effects I have are the kinds of effects I could avoid in the future (and assuming I’d want to avoid them since they work against my goal rather then contributing to it), does my commitment to my goal also commit me to making serious efforts actual to avoid those unintended effects?
Does this also mean that I have a responsibility to get the most accurate information I can about my effects with respect to my goals, rather than assuming that my good work towards a particular goal means that none of my activities work against that goal, even indirectly?
Please don’t read this as a call to make our lives significantly more complicated and burdensome to live! Obviously, if we spent all our times struggling to calculate the likely impacts of our various actions, we’d never get out of bed, let alone manage to find the time and energy to work towards the goals we hold dear.
But if we’re serious about those goals — if they are goals we intend to live rather than just to have — then doesn’t this require as well a serious effort to find out whether we’re having the effects we want to have?
If so, what’s the best way to get objective information about our effects?
Thank you. Great topic to raise (there’s one way ….)
Look up baseline studies in ecology, and how rare they are, for a great example of the need for this attention. I’m doing a little fire restoration and was well advised by a longtime Fish and Wildlife manager that if I did a good baseline, good enough someone would find it in fifty or a hundred years and be able to tell whether and what had changed, that’s more than most big well funded projects he’s worked with managed to do. And that I wouldn’t live long enough to know if what I did made a difference or how — but the baseline would.
This is something that I, too, have thought a lot about (and acted in relation to) over the years. My personal commitment to certain areas of social change (race and gender issues) and science education bleed through every area of my life. For instance, my research on race and gender issues is manifest in the volunteer work I do in my daughter’s schools (and also to a much lesser extent in the school system more broadly) and less directly in my involvement (which is very much an off and on as need and as opportunities arise) with neighborhood or political activities. So in these important areas I’m doing OK.
My interest and activism in open source projects and their promotion stops at the door when I walk into my office at The Big U. I can advocate for, ask questions about, support Open Source at work, but I can’t run an open source shop on my desktop or in my unit without getting slapped around by our local OIS. (They’re great guys but they’ve made very different commitments than I would have made!) That is a conflict that bothers me. In one area of my life I want to be and manage to be a wrench in the works, in another area I am a cog on one of the wheels and am very uncomfortable about that.
The question you raise moved over to the corporate context is of course a major area of academic interest and activism in relation to non profile and environmental and social issues. (My best bud is doing her MA on this). For instance, Microsoft foundation funds health projects for children in a certain area of South Africa. Microsoft Corporation invests a big chunk of its capitol in stocks (as all successful companies tend to do) and one of its hottest securities is the paper plant in the same region that is one of the biggest point pollution sites in the world, and causes childhood illness in the region.
I would like to know the degree to which daily recycling of household trash obviates a person’s need to drive a more fuel efficient car or walk to the gym rather than drive to it, and so on.
Listening to what other people tell us.
It depends on the nature of the unintended impact you are trying to address. If you are concerning about people’s behavior, then study past/current patterns of behavior. If you are concerned about something like environmental consequences, then you can probably find a way to get that information.
I suppose, like anything, it is a complicated cost-benefit analysis. This is worth doing, but only if these costs are too high. If certain countermeasures can be taken to avoid excessive costs, then perhaps they should be pursued (provided their own cost is not too high). The goal can be abandoned anytime the costs become too high, or the pursuit of the goal becomes fodder for its opposition.
Being open to actually hearing what other people are telling us.
some ethicists cheat at cards
Really?! I am shocked, shocked I tell you!!!11!
This is a really good topic. I struggle with it a lot when it comes to environmental issues in particular. I know there are web based applications to determine one’s carbon footprint- does anyone know if there is a version that suggests the biggest changes you could make? It’d be awesome to develop one that also ranks things by largest impact and the sorts of lifestyle changes that are most friendly for you.
@PP- I think you’re right… if the effects we are most interested in are the ones we have on others. For example, if I sleep better at night believing I am not a jerk, I should listen to whether others tell me they think I’m a jerk (whether this would also apply to taking note of the reaction to racial slurs I leave as an exercise for the reader). Sometimes, we can be very wrong about how we are percieved.
On the other hand, if I sleep better at night knowing I’m reducing carbon emissions, and I know that the data support that I am reducing said emissions by eating a more sustainable vegetarian diet, I needn’t give a fig that my carnivorous friend says my diet is bad because I’m eating up all the plants that could reduce CO2 (what the heck he thinks cows live on, I’ll never know). Sometimes, other people are very wrong about reality.
Yes, this is dificult and worthwhile to think about. One thing which may help is to think of goal and purpose as two clearly different but related things. I’ve been in many discussions where folks made no consistant or clear distinction, and the discussions were thus muddled.
A military example, which I thought profound: The purpose of field artillery is the delivery of timely and accurate fire in direct support of the infantry. The goal of field artillery is the maintainence and improvement of the ability to shoot, move, and communicate. In this example purpose is the desired outcome, and the goal is developing the ability to achieve the desired outcome. This is backwards, perhaps, to how you are using goal.
I think you are pondering about goals as I defined them here, and wondering if all your goal activities are, in fact, directed toward achieving your purpose. And how can one know? I hope you find my exposition sensible and helpful.
Gore is an interesting choice of illustration. Because, of course, there are times when in order to move toward your larger goals, you make smaller moves in the opposite direction. You may occasionally have to make even your allies uncomfortable to move a discussion forward. You may have to make unpopular decisions or cause a ruckus where people would prefer to drift along in peace. You may have to leave yourself open to biased snark. Real life gets complicated that way.
I’m guessing Gore thought quite hard about these things, even before he became a target of global warming denialists. Not that there aren’t still questions to ask him about his choices, but for someone who’s spent that much time on the issue, I suspect they have to be questions to come through. With people out to discredit him the way they are, finger pointing probably becomes just so much more noise.
I believe that most scientists have at least one goal to achieve where its impact on our society is concerned, namely, to discover or add new knowledge. Moreover, I think that for scientists, more than for other professionals, it is easier to measure that impact (number of citations of one’s publications and later the inclusion of that new knowledge in textbooks; number of invited talks one is invited to give and for a few, awards in recognition of their impact). In the blogging world, I believe that the impetus for many bloggers is the opportunity to have an impact in whatever area they are blogging on and they measure that impact through the number of comments their posts receive.
How can a person get an objective read on the impacts of his or her activities — positive or negative, direct or indirect — on advancing a particular goal?
Based on psychological research, the short answer would be honesty with oneself about one’s aims; or to paraphrase Gandhi, becoming the change we wish to see and having harmony between our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Ultimately, this implies that objectivity is best achieved by honest subjectivity/self-reflection.
The longer answer comes from research showing that attitudes (aims) and behaviors (effects) are frequently inconsistent, and, the way we perceive ourself is often different from the way others perceive us due to having more private information about ourself than others. One study (Corey, 1937) encapsulates most of these ideas.
Corey administered a survey to college students which assessed their attitude toward cheating. The survey essentially measured an individual’s ‘aim’/attitude toward cheating. Later, the students were provided with an opportunity that (outwardly) appeared to be an easy way to cheat while grading their own test. This essentially measured the effect of their aim. Two important results emerged from the study: (1) no correlation existed between the attitude reported and actual cheating behavior (e.g., those expressing a strong anticheating attitude were just as likely to cheat); (2) those who actually had a lower initial score (the instructor secretly marked the tests before the students marked their own) cheated more (i.e., changed more incorrect answers to correct) than those initially having a higher score. The former result shows that attitudes often fail to guide behavior; the latter shows that our basic self-preservation instinct can override any aesthetic instinct (e.g., self-actualization; to use Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as one theoretical reference point).
Another theoretical jumping point (which provides a somewhat more direct answer to the posed question), is Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior, which holds that the conscious intention to behave in a particular way has three components: attitude, subjective norm, and perceived control.
It can be argued that attitudes do guide behavior, but a person may have co-existing qualifying variants of an attitude. That is, predictable differences in behaviors are likely to emerge if one holds differing attitudes such as: honesty is the best policy under all circumstances; honesty is the best policy under certain circumstances; or honesty is the best policy unless it doesn’t benefit me. So this component might tap into one of your earlier postings concerned with establishing a personal ethics code and how that might conflict with those of other’s, or even our own conflicting attitudes.
Subjective norm involves social influences on one’s attitudes. So the cheating students probably cheated because they believe that other students do so, and therefore, aren’t doing anything wrong (at least in terms of a social norm). The subjective norm component probably influences what qualifying attitude is activated at any given moment. Therefore, objectivity in this instance, might be achieved by reflecting on whether a conflict exists between a personal constructed attitude/ethic/aim and one dictated by a societal norm.
Perceived control essentially involves self-confidence in carrying out one’s aims. This is the component that explains the difference in cheating among students initially scoring higher and lower on the test. But really, this is probably about a possible conflict between preconventional/survival level ethics, and conventional/postconventional/social ethics (to borrow Lawrence Kohlberg’s ideas).
So to conclude again, objectivity probably boils down to honest subjectivity/self-reflection.
I’m reminded of two things. First, as a teacher, I’ve learned that my job in those positions is not to planting seeds than to harvesting the fruit. I help to lay a foundation, but after the semester is over, I don’t see most of the students again, and so I have no real sense of what the effects of the class they took with me is. I have to trust (some might say “have faith”) that the seeds planted will bear good fruit. That is to say, sometimes there is no objective measure, and we have to move forward with the best plans for achieving our goals that we can devise, while being consciously aware that we could in fact be very far off track, and willing to work with other to get on and stay on track.
Second, I’m reminded of Plato’s philosopher king paradox. The rulers of Plato’s ideal city have two “goods”, with two incompatible sets of actions that go with them. First, as the philosopher kings are the ones in the city who possess accurate knowledge of pure Goodness, they are the only ones who are fit to rule, and so their nature place in the city is as rulers. However, upon achieving knowledge of the Good, they realize that the best life they could lead is one that is dedicated to contemplating pure Goodness, and any other action, like ruling a city, detracts from this good life. The paradox suggests (to me) that the Morally Good Life (following our moral and social obligation to others in an ethical way) and the Happy Life (living a life aimed at our own personal flourishing) are not the same thing, and often come into conflict.
Ancient philosophy aside, I think that the lesson here is that, as complex human beings, we have many different goals, each of which have different requirements for action which may not be compatible. That seems to leave us with the only real choice of actively trying to balance out the competing claims of different goals, and recognizing that while we can be better or worse at it, it is not a goal that, strictly speaking, we can ever achieve.
@ S.Rivlin – I would rank quality of comments far higher than quantity. I rarely read too many comments, or too deeply into comment threads, because most of them simply aren’t worth the time.
I’m a theoretical physicist by training, inclination, and profession (note that these are not necessarily equivalent). I’ll wager I’m older than most of you (we’ll leave it at 50+). Throughout the course of my career, I’ve seen many changes in the culture of theoretical physics. I learned long ago that this is an irresponsible profession in the sense that I was paid to work on problems that quite honestly don’t effect most of physics (e.g. evidence from the LHC that there is weak supersymmetry will not effect what MOST physicists do in any real way). That being said, the impact that I’m having on my career is obvious…tenure, promotions, grants, and publications. For elsewhere, however, I felt compelled to find other outlets that would make a clear difference to me and society. So I tried to raise my kids well, I work with hospice patients, and tutor home schoolers. For myself, I had to look outward, prob. a consequence of growing up in the 60’s and 70’s; who knows?
Greg Laden wrote:
“I would like to know the degree to which daily recycling of household trash obviates a person’s need to drive a more fuel efficient car or walk to the gym rather than drive to it, and so on.”
Not at all, from the biosphere’s point of view.
Don’t have children, don’t own a car, don’t perform medical research that increases the number of consumers…