Läs Folke Tersmans föredrag
Folke Tersman
International Seminar: Art and Ecology
October 21, 2009
Before I start I feel that I need to comment on something that came up in connection to the first talk, that there is something fishy about the aim to “save the environment”. I want to say that my concerns about global warming, and this holds for many others, do not have to do with saving the environment conceived as some kind of abstract entity. It is true that the planet would survive global warming. But in that process, hundreds of millions of people of individuals, for example those living in the big river deltas and coastal areas in Asia and Africa, will be put to risk and suffer harm. That is really, as I see it, what is at stake here. I think it is important to rememberBut I guess we can come back to those questions in the discussion.
Ok, I am not going to use any pictures, so I hope you don’t have any such expectations. We philosophers are word-people. I guess… I also have no jokes, unfortunately, and that’s because…we are boring, I guess… But to compensats I shall try to keep my talk within the set time limit…
When traveling around America in the beginning of the 19th century, the political scientist Alexis de Tovqueville visited the infamous Sing Sing prison in New York. He was surprised to find that the guards were so few and that there were no high walls that surrounded the prison. It would have been easy for a group of prisoners to gang up and the tools they were provided for their work to overpower the guards and free themselves.
However, he soon realized how the system could still work. For the prison guards enforced a policy of absolute silence at all times. Every attempt to communicate was punished brutally and, at night, the prisoners were kept in solitary confinement. In these conditions, it was impossible to plan a joint escape, and solitary attempts could easily be handled.
This system was partly motivated by humanistic concerns. The enforced silence allowed the guards to give the prisoners more leeway than was usually given in other prisons at the time. One source of inspiration was the Quaker thoughts to the effect that silence is a road to openness towards God. However, the system backfired. As an effect of the extreme solitude caused by the ban against communication, many of the prisoners became deeply depressed, and suicides were frequent. The system was eventually given up and replaced by other policies thought to be more adapted to human nature.
This story illustrates some general facts about the conditions under which we live. It illustrates the central role of our social needs and it illustrates the importance of finding ways to interact and cooperate in cases where we cannot achieve our aims by ourelves. If we are to believe an evolutionary account of the basics of human psychology, it is because of this importance that our social needs, as well as our means of satisfying them—through language, and through the emotions and attitudes that allow us to form more or less intimate relations, have evolved.
Cases when planning and cooperation are required are often called “coordination cases”. In a coordination case, the consequences of what an individual does crucially depend on what others do. Traffic is an example. If I drive on the right hand side of the road, whether I will get home safely depends on what side the others drive on. Business is another. If I set my prize too high, people will not buy, and I will fail to make a profit.
In some such cases, the interests of the individuals of the group are related in such a way that if each does what will be best for him- or herself—if each acts self-interestedly—the outcome is better for everybody. This is what underlies Adam Smith’s well-known thesis about the invisible hand and about the blessings of a free market.
However, there are other, less benign, cases, cases where the common good and the interests of the individuals conflict. In those cases, if each of the individuals of a group acts self-interestedly the group jointly give rise to an outcome that is worse for everybody (compared to other available outcomes).
Although humans have had to live with this phenomenon for a long time, it was first discovered, or at least first dissected and analyzed, in the 1950’s, by a couple of game-theorists and mathematicians who worked at the Rand Corporation. The best-known example is “the prisoners’ dilemma”.
Suppose that you have committed a crime together with a partner. Unfortunately for you, you are caught by the police and put in separate cells so that you cannot communicate. Each of you is then faced with the choice between confessing and remaining silent. You are told that the following holds: If both confess, each gets three years in prison. If you confess and your friend remains silent, your partner is punished by having to spend four years in prison, while you are rewarded by just having to spend one. Conversely, if you remain silent and he confesses, you are punished and your partner rewarded. If both remain silent, then the police cannot convict you for the crime. They can only convict you for certain lesser crimes, such as illegal possession of weapons or whatnot. In that case, each gets two years in prison.
So, what shall you do? Suppose that your only aim is to spend as little time in prison as possible—i.e., to minimize your own time in prison. Then you can reason as follow…
What will happen to you depends on how your partner will choose. Assume that your friend confesses. Then if you also confess, you’ll spend three years in prison. If you remain silent, by contrast, you’ll have to spend four. Three is better than four, so, the smartest thing in that case, given your own aim, is to confess. So far so good.
Assume instead that your friend remains silent. The smartest thing is still to confess. For then you only have to spend one year in prison. If you instead remain silent, you would have to spend two years. Therefore, since one is better than two, you confess.
So, either way, and regardless of what your partner does, the smartest thing for you is to confess. And the same holds for your partner, given that his or her aim is to minimize his or her time in prison! But if both confess you end up with three years each, in spite of the fact that there is an outcome which is better for both (two years in prison, rather than three). So, if both of you are smart—if each acts self-insteredly—you end up with an outcome which is worse for both compared to if both had acted differently (remained silent). The trap has sprung.
There is a crucial condition that has to be satisfied in order for a dilemma of this type to be a genuine one, namely that the individuals act independently of each other. That is, in a genuine dilemma, although the consequences of one’s action depend on what the other does, what one does—which choice one makes—is not determined by the other’s choice. In the prisoners’ dilemma, that this condition is satisfied is ensured by the fact that the prisoners cannot communicate. In real life, of course, when two people interact, there is seldom a policeman who stops them from influencing each other’s choices. But the reason why the prisoners’ dilemma is interesting is that it is an instance of a very general phenomenon that also covers cases where many people interact (and not just two). And in those cases, it is much more likely that the independence condition is satisfied.
In fact, there are zillions of examples of the same phenomenon in every society. For example, consider the “commuters’ dilemma”. Suppose that you live in a suburb and want to get to work in the city as quickly as possible in the morning. Then it might be rational for you to take the car rather than bus regardless of what the others do. For if the others take the car, there will be traffic jams. But the bus will also get stuck in these traffic jams (we imagine that there are no bus lanes) and must still stop to pick up people. So it takes less time for you if you take your car. On the other hand, if the others take the bus it is still best for you to take the car. For the bus has to stop to pick up people, whereas you can just drive on. So, either way, it is rational for you to take the car. And the same holds for each of the others. But if all of you take the car, all of you will come much later to work. The reason why the independence condition is satisfied in this case is that although your choice can perhaps influence the choice of some other people you cannot influence sufficiently many to make the dilemma go away.
Or take the problem of overpopulation. For each of the families in a poor country it might be rational to get another child, regardless of what the others do, since this eventually means two more helping hands on the farm. But if all families get another child, the nation will be overpopulated, and drained of its resources, which will be much worse for everybody.
Or take “the fishermen’s dilemma”. For each of the fishermen who live by a big lake or by the sea, it could be rational to increase one’s catch, regardless of what others do. For if others increase their catch, the prize one gets for one’s own will go down, which means that one has to compensate one’s loss of income. And if the others don’t increase their catch, it is still rational to increase one’s own, since it is a way of increasing one’s income. But if all the fishermen catch more fish, the fish will disappear, which is worse for everyone. Many fisheries in the world have been destroyed through this mechanism, and many more are going to be. Experts claim that a third of the world’s fisheries (I am now referring to edible fish) have already collapsed and they predict that, unless we start taking this issue seriously, all of them will have collapsed within fifty years.
And it is the same type of mechanism that underlies the other environmental problems, including global warming. From a self-interested point of view it could be rational for each not to change his or her life-style, regardless of what others do. For the changes will involve real sacrifices, or consequences conceived as real sacrifices, while the benefits of what a single person does, in terms of a better climate, are insignificant. But if none or few of us change life-style, the outcome can be much worse for everybody…
The last decades, situations of this type, and the mechanisms that underlie them, have been studied intensely within the social sciences the last decades. Incidentally, it is for her contributions to precisely this field that Ellinor Ostrom has been awarded with the so-called Nobel Prize in Economics 2009.
What has emerged from the research is that there are just two ways of trying to dodge the mechanism, and to avoid the dilemmas.
The first is to change the circumstances to make the self-interest of the individuals cohere with the common good. That is, we could change the conditions so that it doesn’t any longer benefit the individual most to make the choice that is such that if all or many make them, the outcome will be worse for everybody. We can achieve this by associating some cost with the choice in question or some reward with an alternative option. For example, we could fine people who get more than one child and reward those who stick to one (to avoid the overpopulation dilemma). This is, in effect, China’s One Child Policy. Or we could introduce fishing quotas and fine people who catch more than their quota (to avoid the fishermens’ dilemma). Or (to avoid the climate dilemma) we could impose or raise taxes on petrol, or on meat, or on cars, and reward those who buy more environment-friendly cars, if there are such things (which I doubt), for example by allowing them free parking.
I call such solutions “political”. The reason is that they presuppose the involvement of an external agent. That is, they invoke an agent who is outside of the dilemma and have other options at its disposal than the individuals that are trapped in it. And that role is usually played by the state.
The second type of solution is that we change rather than the circumstances, so that we don’t just aim to maximize our self-interest. Instead, we become more disposed, out of free will as it were, to act for the common good, perhaps because this is what we believe that morality or empathy or compassion requires of us. For example, if each of the prisoners had taken the other prisoners interests into account when deciding, then they would remain silent if they believed that the other would remain silent. That is, they would be willing to accept to spend two rather than one year in prison in order to avoid that the other would have to spend four rather than two. As a result, they would get away with two years each rather than three. I call such solutions “psychological”.
There was a study done at Cornell University in the 1980’s that illustrates how this works. In this study, students were given 100 dollars each–real money–and were divided into groups of five, depending on their discipline. Thus, astronomers went with astronomers and chemists with chemists and so on. Each of the members in the group was then faced with the following choice: Either to keep the money for themselves, or to place them in a common pool. The money in the pool was doubled by the researchers and then distributed equally among the members of the group, that is, even to those who had contributed nothing. After that, each of the students got to keep and walk away with their money.
This is a typical prisoners’ dilemma-type of situation. For, regardless of what the others do, it is rational for each not to place the money in the common pool. Suppose that you are a member of one of these groups. And suppose that the four others have placed their money in the pool. Then it is true that if you also place your money in the pool, you’ll get 200 dollars, whereas if you keep it you get first the 100 dollars that you keep and then the 160 dollars (a fourth of 800) that you get from the common pool, which together equal 260 dollars. If only three place their money in the pool it is still rational for you not to do it. And so on. You can figure it out!
But it is also true, of course, that it is better for each if all place their money in the pool compared to if none does. For if none does, each walks away with just 100 dollars, whereas if all place their money in the pool they’ll get 200 each.
So what happened? Well, basically this. Astronomers and chemists generally placed their money in the pool and walked away with 200 dollars each. The economy students, by contrast, didn’t and merely got a hundred…
What was the explanation? Well, afterwards the researchers asked the students whether they were thinking about fairness in reaching their decisions. And the astronomers said Yes. They didn’t want to be “free-riders”. They wanted to contribute to the pool in order to benefit from it. The economy students, by contrast, said No. When asked what they considered to be a fair division, they gave very complex answers that were difficult to interpret. And some refused to answer altogether. The feeling seemed to be that fairness has nothing to do with it. Instead, they just wanted to maximize their income! This is why it is so ironic that they ultimately earned less money than the astronomers. Remember that they got real money in this study. Seeing the astronomers walking away with 200 dollars each…was irritating to the economists.
When I say that psychological solutions presuppose that we change I do not mean to say that motives of this kind are not already present in society. In my view, self-interest is one important human motive. But it is not the only one. It is usually constrained by other attitudes and aims. For example, generally, we don’t like to be free-riders—and use a common resource without contributing to it. And we are, at least sometimes, willing to evaluate our behavior from a collective point of view, rather than to focus on its own consequences, by reflecting on the question: What if everyone did that? That is, we are willing to adopt the perspective associated with Immanuel Kant (“Act only in accordance with a maxim that you could will should become a universal law”), not because we think that we can somehow magically make everybody act in this way or the other, but because we feel that this is the appropriate perspective from which our behavior, in some cases, should be judged. And sometimes compassion alone motivates us to avoid the purely self-interested choices.
The presence of these attitudes form a crucial capital that every society needs, quite frankly, to survive, which in turn helps to explain why they have evolved in the first place. It is these attitudes that one tries to utilize by providing individuals with new alternatives to the self-interested choices, as was illustrated earlier today. For example, one could start to sell meat that comes from game rather than cattle, or goods that have been produced in “more ethical” ways. And one could advertise it all in Vogue magazine. This is especially likely to be successful when people are also offered new ways of reinterpreting their self-interest, by adopting new values and aims, that undermine the description of the choice in question as a “sacrifice” in the first place. I mean, we emphasize that the choices can be motivated also in other ways, with reference to health, well being etc.
Both political and psychological solutions to collective dilemmas have played an extensive, and largely successful, role in all human societies since the dawn of man. They are also intimately related, which is why the question Jakob posed at the start of the seminar—what is most important, individual action or political reform—is tricky to answer. Let me just register my own opinion, namely that every viable attempt to solve the problems is going to rely on an interplay between political measures and psychological or behavioral changes and factors at an individual level.
The interplay between political and psychological solutions can be illustrated in many ways. For example, participation in political life strengthens and promotes the attitudes that provide the resources for psychological solutions. In a political discussion, unless you, in your arguments, assign some weight to the common good, you’re arguments will soon be ignored. And it is difficult to fake such concern for too long without to some extent internalizing it.
Conversely, in a democracy at least, whether solutions to our common problems are forthcoming obviously depends on how people vote, and that in turn depends on their attitudes. In a democracy worth its salt, we get the political solutions that we deserve. Moreover, many dilemmas are centered round a collective good—something you can benefit from without contributing to, such as a fishery or a public road. Any such good can give rise to a dilemma. And it is important to realize that the political system is in itself a collective good, partly because of its role in the avoidance of other dilemmas. That is, it could be rational for each not to contribute, for example by voting or participating in other ways, even if it worse for all if none contributes. So, in order for the political institutions to emerge in the first place, and to be maintained, it is crucial that the attitudes that provide the resources for psychological solutions are in place.
So, it could be argued that, at the end of the day, it is the psychological solutions, or at least the sensibilities and attitudes that underlie them, that rule. If it had not been for them, there wouldn’t have been a room for any political solutions. Still, I think that, especially in the case of the large-scale dilemmas we face today, there are reasons for emphasizing the significance of political solutions.
There are in particular two considerations that support that view. The term “the prisoners’ dilemma” is not the only one associated with the type of problems that I have focused on. Another is the phrase “the tragedy of the commons”. The person who coined that phrase is an ecologist by the name Garrett Hardin. He is also famous for having stated what he believed to be the first law of politics, namely to never expect that people will act against their self-interest. It is not a cynicism of this kind that underlies my stress on political solutions. I think that many people do assign weight to what compassion and decency requires and that this constrains their pursuit of their self-interest, at least to some extent, and, for some people, to a significant extent.
However, many of us are not willing to do so unconditionally. We may well want to contribute to a collective good (such as by paying taxes), but only if we believe that sufficiently many others will also do so. For even if we assign weight to the interests of our fellow humans, we also hate to be exploited, or to be suckers, to use the entrenched game-theoretical term. This is why the presence of free-riders—people who benefit from a collective good without contributing—seriously undermines people’s willingness to contribute. Now, the point of political solutions is that they allow us to guarantee general compliance and that that the burdens of a policy are distributed more or less fairly and equally. That’s why people are much more willing to vote for a general policy that requires them to make sacrifices than to make exactly the same sacrifices voluntarily or spontaneously.
The second consideration is related to the first. It has to do with the significance of the contributions that are relevant in the climate case (as well as in many other cases). Consider again the prisoner’s dilemma. I just said that, if the prisoners care for each other, they will remain silent if they believe that the other will as well. For, given that the other person remains silent, what one gains is just one year less of prison-time, whereas the other will have to spend two more years. In other words, our sacrifice makes a significant difference—someone is actually benefited by it, and the benefit is greater than one’s own sacrifice. This facilitates our moral sensibilities to come into play.
The problem is that the same does not hold in the climate case or in any large scale dilemma. If one likes meat, and benefits from the advantages of using one’s car, giving those things up involves a real sacrifice—or is conceived as a real sacrifice, that’s enough. However, at the same time, the sacrifice benefits no one. The reason is that, for most people, the contribution one makes to global warming is entirely insignificant. Whether I continue to eat meat is not going to affect the severity of the floodings in Bangladesh or the melting of Greenland’s ice cap. And this is true even if it also is true that if we all continue to eat meat, etc, global warming is significantly accelerated. That all or many change their life-style is one thing. That a single person does it is another.
That a sacrifice benefits no one usually makes a person less disposed to make it, even if she assigns weight to the interests of others or the common good. Of course, it may not be decisive. Instead of focusing on the consequences of their individual contributions, people may see themselves as members of some collective and take pride in what the collective as a whole achieves (even if an individual contribution is insignificant). However, for most people, the fact that no one benefits from a sacrifice one ponders is going to be discouraging. And this is especially so if one also faces the risk of being exploited. One way of minimizing the discouraging effect, then, is to at least remove the risk of being exploited, which is exactly what political decisions allow us to achieve.
More precisely, the political route is a solution to the problem that arises from the insignificance of an individual contribution for two reasons. First, it allows us to guarantee that all will have to make the same contribution. Second, it promotes the perspective in which we see ourselves as parts of a collective instead of assessing our choices from the point of view of their own consequences. That is, when one participates in the political arena, even if only by voting, adopting the Kantian perspective (that tells us to judge actions from what would happen if all would act in the same ways) comes naturally. It is a well researched fact that when people place their votes in the ballot, they think more about the consequences of the policies they support than about the consequences of their individual acts of voting (whose consequences are likely to be minimal). In our “private lifes”, by contrast, such as when we choose a school for our children or whether to travel to Thailand or to Surahammar on vacation, it is the decision’s own consequences that are decisive.
For these reasons, political solutions to many collective dilemmas are more likely to emerge, and are more likely to be efficient, than solutions that rely on voluntary changes in people’s behavior. Again, notice that this verdict is not based on a cynical view to the effect that people are entirely unmoved by anything but self-interested considerations. People are moved by what they think compassion requires. It is just that the nature of our moral sensibilities is such that the most efficient way of letting those motives come into play, on a sufficiently large scale, is within a political framework.
So far, so good. Unfortunately, there is a problem that pertains to political solutions both of the climate dilemma and of many of the other environmental challenges we face. Through the political system, we have been able to diffuse many collective dilemmas that arise within the nation state. For example, by providing public transport in Stockholm we have handled problems having to do with traffic congestion (not entirely, of course, but things are much better than they could have been…). By introducing fishing quotas in the lake Vättern we have been able to protect the unique type of char that lives there. The problem is that global warming is caused by a dilemma which respects not border but is…yes you guessed it…global. Global warming is the result of interactions that involve billions of individuals from hundreds of countries.
There is no political structure that matches the magnitude of this dilemma. Unlike at the level of the nation state, there are no political institutions at the global level that can enforce policies and guarantee universal compliance. Instead, we have to rely on agreements between nation states. We are all painfully aware of the shortcomings of that strategy. This evidenced, for example, by the almost complete failure to establish viable strategies for managing the world’s fisheries. Decades of negotiations have not helped us to avoid today’s disgraceful result, even if we saw it coming a long time ago. It is also evidenced by the failure to agree on efficient responses to the climate crisis. Unfortunately, we will get even further evidence for those shortcomings, I predict, through the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December.
The explanation of these failures have to do with that, at the global level, we face a new kind of dilemma, where the agents consist of nation states rather than individuals. As we have repeatedly seen, representatives of the nation states are usually concerned with the (short term) interests of their own nationals rather than with the interests of the collective as a whole. The problem is that, for each nation, it could be rational not to agree to stern policies to stop global warming, regardless of what others do, even if it also holds that if none complies the outcome will be much worse for all compared to if all do.
Again, we could hope for both psychological and political solutions to this problem. For example, it would help if the representatives of the nation states become less narrow-mindedly focused on their own nationals and instead face up to their global responsibilities. Some of the initiatives taken by the Obama administration (such as the climate change bill that was introduced to the Congress last spring) might induce slight optimism at this point. However, at the same time, it should be noted that Obama’s climate bill comes nowhere close to, for example, European targets (EU has committed itself to reducing its overall emissions to at least 20% below 1990 levels by 2020, whereas Obama merely wants to reduce their omissions with 17 % of the 2005 level during the same period).
This means that we must also consider other ways of attaining political solutions, by establishing powerful political institutions at a supra-national level. EU is of course the most conspicuous example. But we need to go beyond the EU, in order to achieve the same level of coordination at the global level that we have achieved at the national level. This is one of the ideas that I and many other academics are pursuing at the moment. It could be argued that, without powerful global political institutions we are, in effect, in a position similar to that of the Sing Sing prisoners. (That is, we can communicate, of course, but we cannot coordinate.)
Such ideas are usually dismissed as being unrealistic and utopian. But one shouldn’t be too certain about what can and cannot be realized, as Max Weber, another prominent thinker, rightly understood. According to Weber, “[i]t is absolutely true, and our entire historical experience confirms it, that what is possible could never have been achieved unless people had tried again and again to achieve the impossible in this world”. And there are concrete proposals along this line, such as the project of establishing a peoples’ assembly at the United Nations, which is led by Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
What seems clear, however, is that such a project will put the attitudes that underlie psychological solutions at test, given the levels of trust and sentiments of community that is going to be required. Again, at the end of the day, it is the underlying psychological and cultural factors that rule. What we need is to reinterpret our identities, values and interests, and in order to do that we need tools. That such a process of…maturing will take place is indeed a utopian thought. But I am afraid that, unless we are able to achieve it, the hope of handling the climate crisis is going to be equally utopian.
Thanks for your attention!