I’ve been perusing the psychological prescriptions of Martin Hoffman lately, and his suggestions and research raise some interesting ethical questions. Essentially, Hoffman presents some research that suggests that we can, if the proper technique is used, make an individual behave ethically. Before delving into those questions, however, let’s get a grasp on some of the suggestions Hoffman has put forth in his book Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice.
He begins by noting that there are five modes of empathic arousal. Three of these modes are involuntary. They, in the words of Hoffman, “not only enable a person to respond to whatever cues are available, but they also compel him to do it – instantly, automatically, and without requiring conscious awareness.” [1]
Later, he begins describing methods of empathic education. In other words, he describes methods of essentially programming children (and when they’re older, adults) to have these involuntary empathic responses in moral situations. The usage of word “scripts” (since there is some overlap between the usage in psychology and programming) in his description of this education was particularly striking:
Doing it right means using inductions when the child harms or is about to harm another. Induction highlights both the victim’s distress and the child’s action that caused it and has been found to contribute to the development of guilt and moral internalization in children…When the child experiences, repeatedly, the sequence of transgression followed by parent’s induction followed by child’s empathic distress and guilt feeling, the child forms Transgression -> Induction -> Guilt scripts…[2]
If the reader’s initial reaction to this is at all similar to mine, then the above remarks might seem like the remarks of some manipulative and malicious evil scientist that seeks to control people. There’s something about Hoffman’s suggestions that make me uneasy. But why is this my (and perhaps the reader’s) initial reaction?
Perhaps it is because we hear the shouts of protest from the grave of Kant, “Autonomy! What about autonomy?!”
So, what about autonomy? Is there a conflict between respecting autonomy and engaging in empathic education to encourage moral behavior? If so, which is more important? How does this relate to more socially (and perhaps ethically) accepted forms of moral education?
[1] Martin Hoffman. Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice. pg. 5
[2] Ibid. pg. 10.
Immediately an error shows itself here.
We cannot “make” something “behave”, as these authors say we can. Movements that mimic the outcomes we want aren’t behaviours. They are simply movements. We can no more make a human behave ethically than we can a robot.
Autonomy is a red herring here. What the word aludes to is the innate nature of behaviour, an innateness that vanishes when behaviour is mimicked and viewed from without.
when you say autonomy, what are you exactly talking about? Every one of us have given up a part of our freedom to achieve greater social order wrt the concept of social contract. Its more like controlled autonomy which is at our disposal today. So the question is how bad is us relinquishing our freedom to an authority compared to an higher authority inducing the child to a specific mindset? If the former has the excuse of choosing with free will, you should realize that citizenship is enforced upon us and hence is the social contract. So in the actual state of things, what hoffman says is a mere reflection of the true state of affairs. I don sympathize with him but i can’t ignore him either. What do you think?
I like that you put make in scare quotes above, since I think that gets to the root of the dilemma. There are a few ways to think about the word make. One is the common every day usage you are probably referring to which is along the lines of “force”. But if we take a broader view of make, we realize that everything we do to children in some way “makes” them do something. Raising a child and sending it to school and instilling your values and belief system in it is by definition “making” it behave in certain ways through the power experience has on synaptic change. We might as well ask if it’s ethical to send a child to school.
I say this not to devalue the original question, which I find to be a powerful one, and one that we as a society need to address. But so that we accept the full implications of what “making” someone do something really involves.
I disagree with John above though, what is behavior if not movement? Seems to me that there is no distinction between mimicry and behavior. The former is a subset of the latter.
I find the question of autonomy interesting and the issue of programming of no value. To program is to compromise choice, when comromising choice, you may have unfairly disciplined a child for what has happened before you became the observer, therefore, instilling improper values. Values are a set of rules that we live by governed by self and society. We as adults question societies values everyday; so how is it our place to force our values on the youth of tomorrow? If you catch your dog doing his business in the house then you rub his nose in his business…Before long your dog accepts that it’s actions are unacceptable but begins to consume it’s business and the cats’ as well. This form of dicipline may eventually be curbed, but could we have approached the problem differently? This line of thinking may breed conformity and we as a part of society may not want to put our nose in this business…
I don’t understand how programming compromises choice. We are programmed by our genetics and that compromises choice. Our neurophysiology and psychology compromises choice. Going to school compromises choice. All our experiences necessary compromise choice by the inherent boundary conditions and intrinsic constraints on behavior.
I used the word “force” above, but maybe a better one is “cause”. Whether I cause you to engage in a particular behavior because I put a gun to your head or I instilled the beliefs of a particular religion in you as a child or because I sent you to school for 12 years seems to me semantic differences. Every individual in society is programmed in one way or another by a confluence of forces. Some we seem to find intrinsically acceptable, and others we label as distinctly different. This is a misunderstand of the causes of human behavior.
“So the question is how bad is us relinquishing our freedom to an authority compared to an higher authority inducing the child to a specific mindset?”
“Every individual in society is programmed in one way or another by a confluence of forces. Some we seem to find intrinsically acceptable, and others we label as distinctly different.”
So, what exactly is the criterion that allows to distinguish between acceptable “programming” and the not-so-acceptable methods of programming?
Would we object, for example, to the hedonistic genetic manipulations (i.e., manipulations that make people genetically happier and suited to the job that they will perform in their distopian society) that we find in Huxley’s A Brave New World? If so, why?
I think yes, we would object to those types of manipulations. And yet at the same time, I think few of us would object to other types of manipulations (removing autism, etc…). But what about a manipulation that removed dangerous proclivities to violence?
I think your question about the criteria for distinguishing is right on, but I’m not quite prepared to hash it out here.
It cannot be ethical to “make” someone act ethically. This is because ethics MUST be about intent, and it is impossible to make someone intend something by force.
Morality must be about intent because consequentialist ethics fails. You would agree that the purpose of ethics is to advise one on how they ought to act in any given situation. If one cannot know the moral outcome of an action until the action is completed, then it is impossible to know how to act. (thus defeating the purpose of morality).
Because it must advise one BEFORE action is taken, it can only look to intend and motive to judge morality. These are things that one cannot force someone to have, and thus moral action cannot be forced on someone.
rndReader, I think it depends on how you define make. I agree with your criticisms of consequentialism and what the point of evaluation of a moral action should be. But make is a tricky word. Making someone act ethically doesn’t need to involve pointing a gun to their head and saying “act ethically”. What if we “make” someone act ethically by neurosurgery or drug treatment that changes them so they now act with positive moral intent in their actions? Under your system, the intent is there. Do you still have a problem? What if we “make” someone act ethically by sending a child to school while they are young and their brain is very plastic and likely not to question much of the knowledge they are learning, and this education is such that they become an ethical person, and without it would have been immoral. Did we make them be ethical? And is that okay? Cause and affect is tricky business, your problems with consequentialism hold true here as well. What is the locus of evaluation of a consequentialist position? Similarly, what is the locus of evaluation of “making” someone do something? When you realize these snapshots in time are not useful evaluative considerations, that behavior and consciousness is an everflowing temporal process, our actions are just one aspect of that process. considerations of free will also rears its head…
Definitions are being confused here.
“Behaviour” is a condition for making a selection or set of movements. The condition is that the object performing the movement is an autonomous agent or life-form. A physical movement per se has no condition of autonomy directing its selection, and so identifies only movements of non-life forms.
The original poster reverses the logic of this by fatally assuming that the elements (movements of any type) can themselves select the very condition (an autonomous agent, or a non-life-form) that identifies and qualifies them, which is nonsense enough; the poster then goes on to argue that where there is an identical set of elements then the condition for their selection – a life and non-life form, is the same.
So, by confusing behaviour with physical movement, we reduce movements of life-forms to movements of non-life forms, and so are led to suppose the equivalence of life and non-life.
It makes no difference whether the movements of life forms mimic non-life forms. The criterion for selection of the two forms are different.
[The problems encountered here can be usefully sourced to the problem that Kant expounded in the Critique, which Wittgenstein later took up in his own way. Transcendental realism, which is the assumption behind the confusion expressed in these posts, assumes that a totum syntheticum or totality of elements, can identify its Whole. Transcendental idealism, on the other hand, regards elements as a totum analyticum – where elements are identified, qualified, pointed out, or selected, by a Whole that is a condition for selection of elements but is not itself an element. Taking the totum analyticum for the totum syntheticum, as the original poster did, and assuming the coherence of the latter, is a fundamental problem of transcendental realism, and is the problem encountered in these posts.]