Ethics and the Economic Interpretation
Frank H. Knight
[Originally published in the Quarterly Journal of
Economics 36 (May 1922): 454-81; reprinted in The Ethics of
Competition and Other Essays (New York: Harper & Brothers,
1935), 19-40]
Certain aspects of the doctrine of the "economic
interpretation" form a natural and convenient avenue of
approach to a consideration of the relations between economics and
ethics and throw light on the scope and method of both these
divisions of knowledge. It is this more general problem which is the
object of attack in the present paper, which is not primarily an
attempt to make a contribution to the technical discussion of the
famous theory named in the title. This theory is useful for present
purposes because it suggests the fundamental question as to whether
there is really a place in the scheme of thought for an independent
ethics or whether ethics should be displaced by a sort of higher
economics.
Economics and ethics naturally come into rather intimate relations
with each other since both recognizedly deal with the problem of
value. Two of these lines of relation are especially interesting in
their bearing upon the vexed problem of scope and method in
economics. In the first place, the separation between theory and
practice, or between science and art, offers special difficulties in
this field, for reasons which it would carry us away from our
central theme to elaborate here. The unfortunate but familiar result
of this fact is that economists have spent much of their energy in
disputations as to whether the science is properly concerned with
facts and cause-and-effect relations, or with "welfare."
In other provinces of science such controversies would seem absurd.
There is another and deeper source of confusion in the conception
of the method of economics which also involves the relation between
economics and ethics and which will lead directly into the problem
of this paper. It relates to the ultimate data of economics,
regarded as a pure science, dedicated to the search for truth and
purified of all prejudices as to the goodness or badness of its
principles and results. In this respect also economics has been far
behind the natural sciences. Insufficient attention has been given
to the separation between constants and variables; needless
controversy and wasted effort have resulted from overlooking the
fact that constants from one point of view may be variables from
another, particularly that factors which are sensibly constant over
short periods of time must be treated as variables when longer
periods are under discussion.
Of the various sorts of data dealt with in economics no group is
more fundamental or more universally and unquestioningly recognized
as such than human wants. Yet one main purpose of the present
discussion is to raise serious question as to the sense in which
these wants can be treated as data, or whether even they are
properly scientific data at all. We propose to suggest that these
wants which are the common starting-point of economic reasoning are
from a more critical point of view the most obstinately unknown of
all the unknowns in the whole system of variables with which
economic science deals. The answer to this question of whether and
in what sense wants are data will be found to involve a
clarification of the nature of economics as a science, of the nature
of ethics, and of the relations between the two. If human wants are
data in the ultimate sense for scientific purposes, it will appear
that there is no place for ethical theory in the sense in which
ethicists have conceived that subject, but that its place must be
taken by economics. It will be interesting to observe that in view
of a logically correct distinction between ethics and economics, the
great majority of economists not only, but in addition no small
proportion of thinkers calling themselves ethicists, have not really
believed in ethics in any other sense than that of a more or less "glorified"
economics.
To state the fundamental issue briefly at the outset, are the
motives with which economics has to do -- which is to say human
motives in general -- "wants," "desires" of a
character which can adequately be treated as facts in the
scientific sense, or are they "values," or "oughts,"
of an essentially different character not amenable to scientific
description or logical manipulation? For if it is the intrinsic
nature of a thing to grow and change, it cannot serve as a
scientific datum. A science must have a "static"
subject-matter; it must talk about things which will "stay put";
otherwise its statements will not remain true after they are made
and there will be no point to making them. Economics has always
treated desires or motives as facts, of a character susceptible to
statement in propositions, and sufficiently stable during the period
of the activity which they prompt to be treated as causes of that
activity in a scientific sense. It has thus viewed life as a process
of satisfying desires. If this is true then life is a matter of
economics; only if it is untrue, or a very inadequate view of the
truth, only if the "creation of value" is distinctly more
than the satisfaction of desire, is there room for ethics in a sense
logically separable from economics.
In a more or less obscure and indirect way, the treatment of wants
as data from which and with which to reason has already been
challenged more than once. More or less conscious misgivings on this
point underlie the early protests made by economists of the
historical variety against the classical deductive economics, and
the same is true in a more self-conscious way of the criticism
brought by the modern "historismus," the "institutional
economics" of Veblen, Hamilton, and J. M. Clark. Thus
especially Clark,[Note 1] whose position most
resembles that herein taken, observes that the wants which impel
economic activity and which it is directed toward satisfying are the
products of the economic process itself: "In a single business
establishment one department furnishes the desires which the other
departments are to satisfy." Hitherto the chief emphasis has
been placed on the factual instability of wants and their liability
to be changed as well as satisfied by business activity. This is
usually coupled with a deprecating attitude, a tendency to regard
the growth of wants as unfortunate and the manufacture of new ones
as an evil; what have not advertising and salesmanship to answer for
at the hands of Veblen, for example! From the standpoint of
hedonism, which is to say of the economic philosophy of life, this
conclusion is undoubtedly correct. If the Good is Satisfaction,
there are no qualitative differences, no "higher" and "lower"
as between wants, and that is better which is smaller and most
easily appeased.
It is not on any sentimental or idealistic ground, but as a plain
question of the facts as to how the ordinary man conceives his own
wants and interprets them in conduct that we shall argue against
this view of the matter. Wants, it is suggested, not only are
unstable, changeable in response to all sorts of influences, but it
is their essential nature to change and grow; it is an inherent
inner necessity in them. The chief thing which the common-sense
individual actually wants is not satisfactions for the wants which
he has, but more, and better wants. The things which he
strives to get in the most immediate sense are far more what he
thinks he ought to want than what his untutored preferences prompt.
This feeling for what one should want, in contrast with
actual desire, is stronger in the unthinking than in those
sophisticated by education. It is the latter who argues himself into
the "tolerant" (economic) attitude of de gustibus non
disputandum; the man in the street is more likely to view the
individual whose tastes are "wrong" as a scurvy fellow who
ought to be despised if not beaten up or shot.
A sounder culture leads away from this view, to be sure, but it
leads to a form of tolerance very different from the notion that one
taste or judgment is as good as another, that the fact of preference
is ultimately all there is to the question of wants. The
consideration of wants by the person who is comparing them for the
guidance of his conduct and hence, of course, for the scientific
student thus inevitably gravitates into a criticism of standards,
which seems to be a very different thing from the comparison of
given magnitudes. The individual who is acting deliberately is not
merely and perhaps not mainly trying to satisfy given desires; there
is always really present and operative, though in the background of
consciousness, the idea of and desire for a new want to be
striven for when the present objective is out of the way.
Wants and the activity which they motivate constantly look forward
to new and "higher," more evolved and enlightened wants
and these function as ends and motives of action beyond the
objective to which desire is momentarily directed. The "object"
in the narrow sense of the present want is provisional; it is as
much a means to a new want as end to the old one, and all
intelligently conscious activity is directed forward, onward,
upward, indefinitely. Life is not fundamentally a striving for ends,
for satisfactions, but rather for bases for further striving; desire
is more fundamental to conduct than is achievement, or perhaps
better, the true achievement is the refinement and elevation of the
plane of desire, the cultivation of taste. And let us reiterate that
all this is true to the person acting, not simply to the
outsider, philosophizing after the event.
In order to substantiate and support the doctrine thus sketched we
turn to consider briefly the opposite view, which is that of the "economic
interpretation." Historically this doctrine is associated with
the so-called "scientific" socialism,[Note
2] but we are here interested in it not in connection with any
propaganda or policy, but simply as a theory of conduct, as one
answer to the question of the relation between economics and ethics.
Our first task is to find out what the doctrine really means.
The somewhat various statements of the theory reduce in general to
the proposition that the course of history is "determined"
by "economic" or "materialistic" considerations.
All of these terms raise questions of interpretation, but the issue
may be stated briefly. In the first place, the course of history is
a matter of human behaviour, and we shall as already indicated
consider the problem in its broader aspect as a general theory of
motivation. As to the word "determined," it is taken for
granted that conduct is determined by motives; the statement is
really a truism. The issue then relates to the fundamental character
of motives; are they properly to be described as materialistic or
economic, in their nature? Between these two terms it is better to
use "economic"; a "materialistic" motive would
seem to be a contradiction in terms; a "motive" is
meaningless unless thought of as a phenomenon of consciousness. The
opposite view would merely throw us back upon a denial that conduct
is determined by motives at all. Without attempting a philosophical
discussion of this question we shall take the common-sense position.[Note
3]
Are human motives, then, ultimately or predominantly economic? If
the expression, "economic motive" is to have any definite
and intelligible meaning, it must be possible to distinguish between
economic motives and other motives. The expression is, of course,
widely used in learned and scientific discussion as well as in
everyday speech, with the feeling that such a differentiation
exists, but examination fails to show any definite basis for it or
to disclose the possibility of any demarcation which is not
arbitrary and unscientific. In a rough way, the contrast between
economic and other wants corresponds to that between lower and
higher or necessary and superfluous. The economic motives are
supposed to be more "fundamental"; they arise out of
necessities, or at least needs, or at the very least out of the more
universal, stable, and materially grounded desires of men. The
socialistic popularizers of the theory under discussion have leaned
toward the narrower and more definite and logical conception of
downright necessities.[Note 4]
The view of the man in the street, as shown by students beginning
the study of economics, and also common in text-book definitions of
the science, is that the economic side of life is summed up in "making
a living." But what is a living? If by a living we mean life as
it is actually lived, everything is included, recreation, culture,
and even religion; there is no basis for a distinction between the
economic and anything else, and the term has no meaning. At the
other extreme would be the idea of what is really necessary, the
physiological requisites for the maintenance of life. Even this
turns out on examination to be hopelessly ambiguous. Does "life"
mean the life of the individual only, or that of the group or race?
If the latter, does it include the increase of numbers, or only
their maintenance at the existing level, or some other level? Does
what is "necessary" refer to conditions under which life
will be preserved or numbers maintained or increased, or
only those under which it could be done? and under what
assumptions as to the tastes and standards, and the scientific and
technological equipment of the people? Even if we think of a
population rigidly controlled as to their reproductive function
(which is scarcely conceivable), the birth rate necessary to
maintain numbers at a constant level would depend upon the death
rate and hence would vary widely with the scale of living
itself. We doubt whether the conception of necessity can even
theoretically be defined in sufficiently objective terms to make it
available for scientific purposes.
Between these two extremes of what people actually get and what
they rigorously require in order to live, the only alternative is
some conventional notion of what is "socially necessary,"
or of a "decent minimum." It is obvious that such a
conception of a "living" is still more indefinite than the
others, and the way seems to be closed to any objectively grounded
differentiation between the making of a living and any other kind or
portion of human activity.[Note 5]
Another common-sense notion of the meaning of economic activity is
that it includes everything which involves the making and spending
of money or the creation and use of things having a money value. It
will presently be argued that this is substantially correct for
practical purposes as far as it goes, though it directly or
indirectly covers virtually the whole life activity of a modern man
and has to be limited to certain aspects of that activity. It is
interesting to ask how much of our ordinary economic activity
(economic in the sense indicated) is concerned with things which can
reasonably be argued to be "useful" not to say necessary
-- if by useful we mean that it contributes to health and
efficiency, or even to happiness. If we begin with food, the most
material and necessary of our requirements, it is obvious that but a
fraction of a modest expenditure for board in an American town would
come under this head.[Note 6] And proceeding
in order to our other "material" needs, clothing, shelter,
furniture, etc., it is apparent that the farther we go the smaller
the fraction becomes. And it is not a large fraction of a fairly
comfortable income which goes for all these items, if the purely
ornamental, recreative, and social aspects are excluded.
Moreover, when we scrutinize the actual motives of actual conduct
it is clear that the consciously felt wants of men are not directed
toward nourishment, protection from the elements, etc., the
physiological meaning of the things for which money is spent. They
desire food, clothing, shelter, etc., of the conventional kinds
and amounts. It is an ethnological commonplace that men of one
social group will starve and freeze before they will adopt the
ordinary diet and garb of other groups. Only under the direst
necessity do we think in terms of ultimate physical needs as ends;
the compulsion to face life on this level is equivalent to abject
misery. A large proportion of civilized mankind would certainly
commit suicide rather than accept life on such terms, the prospect
for improvement being excluded. This interpretation of motives,
which is the nearest approach to a definite meaning that can be
given to the economic interpretation, is almost totally false. It is
simply contrary to fact that men act in order to live. The opposite
is much nearer the truth, that they live in order to act; they care
to preserve their lives in the biological sense in order to achieve
the kind of life they consider worth while. Some writer (not
an economist or psychologist!) has observed that the love of life,
so far from being the most powerful of human motives is perhaps the
weakest; in any case it is difficult to name any other motive or
sentiment for which men do not habitually throw away their lives.[Note
7]
When we turn from the preservation of individual life to that of
the race as a motive a similar situation is met with. Men will give
up their lives for the group, but not for its mere life; it
is for a better or at least a worthy life that such sacrifices are
made. The life of the individual is logically prior to that of the
group, as our physiological needs are logically prior to the higher
ones, but again that is not the actual order of preference. Probably
few civilized men would refuse to die for their fellows if it were
clear that the sacrifice were necessary and that it would be
effective.
But when materialistic interpreters speak of the perpetuity of the
group as a motive they are likely to have in mind not this result in
the abstract, but rather sex-feeling, the means by which continuity
and increase are secured in the animal world. Here again they are
squarely wrong; social existence and well-being in the abstract are
more potent than sex attraction in any crude interpretation. With
sex experience as with food, it is not the thing as such which
dominates the civilized individual. His sex requirement is as
different from that of animals as a banquet with all fashionable
accompaniments is from the meal of a hungry carnivore which has made
a kill, or a buzzard whose olfactory sense has guided him to a mellow
piece of carrion. It is again a question of fact, and the fact
patently is that when the biological form of the motive conflicts
with the cultural, aesthetic, or moral part of it -- as more or less
it about always does -- it is the former which gives way. Sex
debauchery is, of course, common enough, but this also rather
obviously involves about as much cultural sophistication as does
romantic or conjugal love, though of a different kind.[Note
8]
On every count this biological interpretation of human conduct
falls down; no hunger and sex theory of human motives will stand
examination. It will not be denied that human interests have evolved
out of animal desires, and are ultimately continuous with them; and
an understanding of animal behaviour can throw light on human
problems, but only if interpreted with the utmost caution. Man has
risen clear above, or if this seems to beg any philosophical
questions he has at least gotten clear away from the plane where
life is the end of activity; he has in fact essentially reversed
this relation. It is not life that he strives for, but the good
life, or at the ultimate minimum a decent life, which is a
conventional, cultural concept, and for this he will throw away life
itself; he will have that or nothing. He has similar physical
requirements with the animals, but has become so "particular"
as to their mode of gratification that the form dominates the
substance. A life in which bare existence is the end is intolerable
to him. When his artificial, cultural values are in ultimate
conflict with physical needs he rather typically chooses the latter,
sacrificing quantity of life to quality, and it is hard to see how
he could be prevented from doing so. We can scarcely imagine a slave
society placed under physical compulsion so effective that men would
permanently live in it. If they were given the least sight or
knowledge of their masters and their masters' way of life, no
provision however bountiful for all physical wants would prevent
some irrational individual from setting up a cry for "liberty
or death" and leading his willing fellows to the achievement of
one or the other. It is a familiar historical fact that it is not
the violently oppressed populations which rebel, but those whose
milder bondage leaves them fairly prosperous.[Note
9] The assumption of the materialistic, or economic, or
biological interpretation of conduct is that when men must choose
between some "real need" and a sentimental consideration
they will take the former. The truth is that when the issue is drawn
they typically do the reverse. For any practical social purpose,
beauty, play, conventionality, and the gratification of all sorts of
"vanities" are more "necessary" than food and
shelter.[Note 10]
Some attention must now be given to another method of interpreting
conduct, closely related to the biological and like it aimed at
supplying an objective measure of well-being. This is the theory
that man has inherited certain instincts which must achieve
a substantial measure of successful expression in action or the
individual will develop maladjustment, baulked disposition, and
unhappiness. We cannot go at length into the failure of this theory
either to explain actual behaviour or to yield ideal requirements,
and fortunately it is unnecessary to do so as the doctrine is now
properly passing out of favour. The
significance to be claimed for the theory is that of supplementing
the biological interpretation. Certain acts not now useful in the
biological sense are assumed to have been so in the past under
different conditions, and the organism has become so adjusted to
them that its normal functioning depends upon their continued
performance.
If instincts are to be scientifically useful, it must surely be
possible to get some idea of their number and identity. But there
has always been substantially unanimous disagreement on this point.
Logically the choice seems to lie between a meaningless single
instinct to do things-in-general and the equally meaningless
hypothesis of a separate instinct for every possible act. Between
these two views is a free field for arbitrary classification. Such
fairly concrete lists as have been given consist chiefly of
enumerations of the possible alternatives of action in possible
types of conduct situations, and largely reduce to pairs of
opposites. For a single illustration, an animal in danger may fight
or run. Hence our theorists come forward with an "instinct"
for each of these types of reaction. This of course tells us nothing
of what we want to know which is, which one of the possible
reactions will take place. It is not enlightening to be told that
conduct consists in choosing between possible alternatives.
A mere classification of feelings or cravings has some interest,
however void of scientific utility it may be, but the psychologist
can hardly claim to have "discovered" the emotions. In
this connection it is interesting to consider the extent to which
motives do fall into pairs of opposites. There are numerous such
couples or polarizations which cut deeper into human nature than do
the proposed instincts. Our reasons for wanting things come down in
astonishingly large measure to the desire to be like other people,
and the desire to be different; we wish to do things because we can,
or because we cannot; we crave companionship, of the right kind, but
the requirement of privacy, even solitude, is equally imperative; we
like the familiar, also the novel, security but likewise adventure,
and so on. Acquisitiveness, the instinct which should be most
saleable to the economist, is perhaps but the opposite of our
alleged gregariousness, one being essentially the desire to exclude
others from certain interests and the other the desire to share
them. All these, like selfishness and unselfishness, have some
meaning, but are hardly suitable bases for a scientific
classification. It is significant that McDougall, the father of the
modern instinct theory, regarded the feeling element as the only
stable part of the instinct, both stimulus and reaction being
subject to indefinite shift and change. The unsuitability of such a
view as a foundation for the superstructure built upon it in the way
of scientific laws of behaviour hardly calls for comment.[Note
12]
From the instinct theory we turn naturally to the ancient doctrine
of psychology and ethics to which it is a handmaiden, that the end
of activity is a "harmonious adjustment" of the organism,
a smooth and unobstructed functioning of the digestive,
neuro-muscular, and glandular systems (and perhaps the reproductive
also, and any special structures concerned with tending the young or
other social activities) and for consciousness the feeling of
satisfaction or comfort that goes with this condition.[Note
13] Freudianism and abnormal psychology have seemed to confirm
this view, and Thorndyke[Note 14] also
though rather guardedly speaks of behaviour as controlled by "satisfiers"
and "annoyers." Perhaps a sufficient comment on the
hedonistic theory would be to run through again the main categories
of economic wants, food, clothing, shelter, amusement, etc, and
simply ask the candid question as to what fraction of the ordinary
man's expenditure for any of them makes him "feel better"
or is expected to do so. The higher one is in the economic scale,
the more successful in doing what all are trying to do, the larger
is the proportion of his consumption which tends to make him less,
and not more, "comfortable."
The authors of great imaginative literature -- always indefinitely
better psychologists than the psychologists so-called -- have never
fallen into any such palpable delusion as the belief that men either
strive for happiness or expect to be made happy by their striving.
The same has been true of philosophers and religious thinkers of all
time, and even economists have recognized the futility of attempting
to satisfy wants. It is obvious that wants multiply in at least as
great a ratio as the heads of the famous hydra. Greeks as well as
Hindus, and Epicureans as well as Stoics and Cynics perceived at the
dawn of modern culture that it is indefinitely more "satisfactory"
and "economical" to repress desire than to attempt to
satisfy it. Nor do men who know what they do want -- and who have
not sapped their vitality by unnatural living or too much of a
certain kind of thinking -- want their wants satisfied. This
argument of economists and other pragmatists that men work and think
to get themselves out of trouble is at least half an inversion of
the facts. The things we work for are "annoyers" as often
as "satisfiers"; we spend as much ingenuity in getting
into trouble as in getting out, and in any case enough to keep in
effectively. It is our nature to "travel afar to seek
disquietude," and "'tis distance lends enchantment to the
view." It cannot be maintained that civilization itself makes
men "happier" than they are in savagery. The purpose of
education is certainly not to make anyone happy; its aim is rather
to raise problems than solve them; the association of sadness and
wisdom is proverbial, and the most famous of wise men observed that
"in much wisdom is grief, and he that increaseth knowledge
increaseth sorrow." Thus the pursuit of the "higher things"
and the crasser indulgences are alike failures if the test is
happiness.
But the test is not happiness. And by this we do not meant that it
ought not to be, but the simple fact that that is not what men want.
It is a stock and conclusive objection to utopias that men simply
will not live in a world where everything runs smoothly and life is
free from care. We all recall William James's relief at getting away
from Chatauqua. A man who has nothing to worry about immediately
busies himself in creating something, gets into some absorbing game,
falls in love, prepares to conquer some enemy, or hunts lions or the
North Pole or what not. We recall also the case of Faust, that the
Devil himself could not invent escapades and adventures fast enough
to give his soul one moment's peace. So he died, seeking and
striving, and the Angel pronounced him thereby "saved": "Wer
immer strebend sich bemüht, den können wir erlösen."
The pleasure philosophy is a false theory of life; there abide pain,
grief, and boredom: these three, and the greatest of these is
boredom. The Hindus thought this question of happiness through to
the end long ago, and reached the inevitable conclusion -- Nirvana
-- just life enough to enjoy being dead.[Note
15]
The idea of a distinction between economic wants and other wants
must be abandoned. There is no definable objective, whether
subsistence, gratification of fundamental impulses or pleasure,
which will serve to separate any of our activities from the body of
conduct as a whole. Nor, we aim especially to emphasize, is there
any definable objective which properly characterizes any of
it. It simply is not finally directed to the satisfaction of any
desires or the achievement of any ends external or internal[Note
16] which can be formulated in propositions and made the
subject of logical discourse. All ends and motives are economic in
that they require the use of objective resources in their
realization; all are ideal, conventional, or sentimental in that the
attempt to define objective ends breaks down. Behind them all is "the
restless spirit of man," who is an aspiring rather than a
desiring being; and such a scientifically undescriptive and
unsatisfactory characterization is the best we can give.[Note
17]
For the purpose of defining economics the correct procedure would
appear to be to start from the ordinary meaning of the verb to
economize, that is, to use resources wisely in the achievement of
given ends. In so far as the ends are viewed as given, as
data, then all activity is economic. The question of the
effectiveness of the adaptation of means is the only question to be
asked regarding conduct, and economics is the one and all-inclusive
science of conduct.[Note 18] From this point
of view the problem of life becomes simply the economic problem, how
to employ the existing and available supplies of all sorts of
resources, human and material, natural and artificial, in producing
the maximum amount of want-satisfaction including
the provision of new resources for increased value production in so
far as the present population finds itself actually desiring future
progress. The assumption that wants or ends are data reduces life to
economics[Note 19] and raises again the
question with which we started out, Is life all economics or does
this view require supplementing by an ethical view of value?
The conception of economics outlined above is in harmony with the
traditions of economic literature. The "economic man," the
familiar subject of theoretical discussion, has been much mistreated
by both friends and foes, but such a conception, explicit or
implicit, underlies all economic speculation. The economic man is
the individual who obeys economic laws, which is merely to say that
he obeys some laws of conduct, it being the task of the science to
find out what the laws are. He is the rational man, the man
who knows what he wants and orders his conduct intelligently with a
view to getting it. In no other sense can there be laws of conduct
or a science of conduct; the only possible "science" of
conduct is that which treats of the behaviour of the economic man,
i.e., economics in the very broad sense in which we have used the
term. A scientific principle necessarily takes the form, that under
given conditions certain things can be counted upon to happen; in
the field of conduct the given conditions are the desires or ends
and the rationale or technique for achieving them.
The objections raised to the notion of the economic man, are
however also sound in their own way. They reduce to the proposition
that there is no such man, and this is literally true. Human
beings do not in their conscious behaviour act according to laws,
and in the concrete sense a science of conduct is an impossibility
They neither know what they want -- to say nothing of what is "good"
for them -- nor act very intelligently to secure the things which
they have decided to try to get.[Note 20]
The limitation on intelligence -- knowledge of technique -- is not
fatal to the conception of a scientific treatment of behaviour,
since people are "more or less" intelligent, and "tend"
to act intelligently, and all science involves a large measure of
abstraction. Far more essentially is the limitation due to the fact
that the "given conditions," the causes at work, are not
really given, that wants are not ultimately data and the individual
more or less completely recognizes that they are not.
The definition of economics must, therefore, be revised to state
that it treats of conduct in so far as conduct is amenable
to scientific treatment, in so far as it is controlled by definable
conditions and can be reduced to law. But this, measured by the
standard of natural science, is not very far. There are no data
for a science of conduct in a sense analogous to natural science.
The data of conduct are provisional, shifting, and special to
individual, unique situations in so high a degree that
generalization is relatively fruitless. For the time being,
an individual acts (more or less) as if his conduct were
directed to the realization of some end more or less ascertainable,
but at best provisional and vague. The person himself is usually
aware that it is not really final, not really an "end"; it
is only the end of the particular act and not the ultimate end of
that. A man engaged in a game of chess acts as if the
supreme value in life were to capture his opponent's pieces; but
this is obviously not a true or final end; the circumstances which
have led the individual to accept it as end for the moment come
largely under the head of accident and cannot be reduced to law --
and the typical conduct situation in civilized life is analogous to
the game in all the essential respects.
A science of conduct is, therefore, possible only if its subject-
matter is made abstract to the point of telling us little or nothing
about actual behaviour. Economics deals with the form of conduct
rather than is substance or content. We can say that a man will in
general prefer a larger quantity of wealth to a smaller (the
principal trait of the economic man) because in the statement the
term "wealth" has no definite concrete meaning; it is
merely an abstract term covering everything which men do actually
(provisionally) want. The only other important economic law of
conduct, the law of diminishing utility, is almost as abstract; is
objective content is covered by the statement that men strive to
distribute income in some way most satisfactory to the person at the
time among an indefinite number of wants and means of satisfaction
rather than to concentrate upon one or a few. Such laws are
unimportant because they deal with form only and say virtually
nothing about content, but it is imperative to understand what they
do and what they do not mean.
If one wishes to study the concrete content of motives and conduct
he must turn from economic theory to biology, social psychology, and
especially culture history. Culture history is not, therefore, a
method of economics, as the historic quarrel would lead one to
think, but a different field of inquiry. It gives a genetic,
and not a scientific account of its subject-matter. History
has, indeed, tried to become a science and the effort has brought
forth numerous "philosophies of history," but it is open
to grave doubt whether "laws" of history exist and whether
the entire project is not based on a misconception.[Note
21]
If a science of economics is limited to the abstract form of
conduct and the treatment of conduct in the concrete takes the form
of history, rather than science, what is to be said of ethics? In
addition to the explanation of conduct in terms of motives and the
explanation of the motives, common sense does raise another kind of
question, that of the evaluation of motives. But we are met
at the outset with the logically insuperable difficulty that the
criticism of an end implies some standard, which can
logically only be another end, which to enter into logical discourse
must be viewed as a datum, like the first. Hence, scientifically we
can never get beyond the question of whether one end conflicts with
another and if so which is to be sacrificed. But this mere
comparison of ends as given magnitudes belongs to the economic
calculation involved in creating the maximum amount of value or want
satisfaction out of a given fund of resources; hence there seems to
be no place for anything but economics in the field of value, and
scientifically there is none. If we are to establish a place for
ethics really distinct from economics and independent of it, it must
be done by finding ends or standards which are something more than
scientific data.[Note 22]
For those to whom ethics is only a more or less "glorified"
economics, virtue is correspondingly reduced to an enlarged
prudence. But the essential element in the moral common sense of
mankind seems to be the conviction that there is a difference
between virtue and prudence, between what one "really wants"
to do and what one "ought" to do; even if some religious
or other "sanction" makes it ultimately prudent to do
right, at least it remains true that it is prudent because right and
not right because prudent or because there is no difference between
the two. A considerable part of the literature of ethics consists of
debate over the validity of this distinction and of moral common
sense, which is to say over whether there is any such thing as
ethics or not, and the question creates perhaps the most fundamental
division between schools of thought. There was no difficulty for
the Greeks, who had no word for duty or conscience in their
language, and there is none for the modern "pagan" who
considers these things as out-worn puritan superstitions. It must
appear dogmatic to seem to take sides on the question without
working out an entire philosophic system in justification of the
position, but we wish to point out that if there is to be a
real ethics it cannot be a science, and to cite a few reasons for
believing in the possibility of a real ethics.
The first of these considerations is the argument developed in
this paper that the view of ends as scientific data breaks down
under examination. The second is that the rational, economic,
criticism of values gives results repugnant to all common sense. In
this view the ideal man would be the economic man, the man who knows
what he wants and "goes after it" with singleness of
purpose. The fact is, of course, the reverse. The economic man is
the selfish, ruthless object of moral condemnation. Moreover, we do
not bestow praise and affection on the basis of conduct alone or
mainly, but quite irrationally on the motives themselves, the
feelings to which we impute the conduct.
We cannot dwell on the moral habitability of the world under
different hypotheses or argue the question whether such implications
constitute "evidence" for the hypothesis in question. The
disillusioned advocate of hard-headedness and clear thinking would
usually admit that the "moral illusion" has stood the
pragmatic test and concede its utility while contending that it is
scientifically a hoax. But it is pertinent to observe that the
brick-and-mortar world cannot be constructed for thought out of
purely objective data. There is always a feeling element in any
belief. Force and energy are notoriously feelings of ours which we
read into things, yet we cannot think of anything as real without
force as a real. Apparently we are incapable of picturing anything
as existing without putting a spark of our own consciousness into
it. Behind every fact is a theory and behind that an interest. There
is no purely objective reason for believing anything any more than
there is for doing anything, and if our feelings tell us nothing
about reality then we know and can know nothing about it. From this
it is an easy step to see that the intolerable repugnance of the
idea that not only duty and right, but all effort, aspiration and
sacrifice are delusions is after all as good a reason for believing
that they are not as we have for believing that the solid earth
exists in any other sense than seeming to us to do so.
But the main argument for the validity and necessity of a real,
nonscientific, transcendental ethics comes out of the limitations of
scientific explanation. We have seen that the "scientific"
treatment of conduct is restricted to its abstract form, that its
concrete content can only be explained "historically." But
in dealing with human problems we are constantly thrown back upon
categories still more remote from the scientific, upon relations
which cannot be formulated in logical propositions at all, and we
must admit that a large part of our "knowledge" is of this
character. That figurative language does convey a meaning, however,
is indisputable, and it is commonly a meaning which could not be
expressed literally. When Burns says that his Love is "like a
red, red rose," etc., when Kipling tells us of Fuzzy-Wuzzy that
"'E's a daisy, 'e's a ducky, 'e's a lamb," their words
meaning something, though it is not what they say! William James has
commented on the effectiveness of these comparisons whose physical
basis is undiscoverable, illustrating by the statements that a
certain author's style is like the atmosphere of a room in which
pastilles have been burning. Let anyone take even a science
text-book and try to translate all the figurative expressions into
literal, purely logical form, and he will realize how impossible it
is to describe the world in terms which mean definitely what they
say.
Of this general description must be the criticism of values, as it
is the character of aesthetic and literary criticism. Our values,
our standards, are only more obviously of the same character which
our desires reveal on examination -- not describable because not
stable, growing and changing by necessity of their inner nature.
This is, of course, intellectually unsatisfactory. The scientific
mind can rest only in one of two extreme positions, that there are
absolute values, or that [e]very individual desire is an absolute
and one as "good" as another. But neither of these is
true; we must learn to think in terms of "value-standards"
which have validity of a more subtle kind. It is the higher goal of
conduct to test and try these values, to define and improve them,
rather than to accept and "satisfy" them. There are no
rules for judging values, and it is the worst of errors to attempt
to make rules -- beyond the rule to "use good judgment";
but it is also most false to assert that one opinion is as good as
another, that de gustibus non disputandum est. Professor
Tufts has put the question in a neatly epigrammatic way which
emphasizes its unsatisfactoriness from a rational, scientific
standpoint: "The only test for goodness is that good persons on
reflection approve and choose it -- just as the test for good
persons is that they choose and do the good."[Note
23]
If the suggestions above thrown out are sound, there is room in
the field of conduct for three different kinds of treatment: first,
a scientific view, or economics and technology; second, a genetic
view, or culture history; and third, for a Criticism of Values. The
discussion of the latter will, like literary and artistic criticism,
run in terms of suggestion rather than logical statement, in
figurative rather than literal language, and its principles will be
available through sympathetic interpretation rather than
intellectual cognition.[Note 24]
NOTES
Note 1. "Economics and Modern Psychology," Journal
of Political Economy, January and February, 1918. The quotation
is from page 8.
Note 2. It would be hard to imagine a more ill-mated team than
fatalism as the credal basis for revolutionary propaganda, and a
mechanistic philosophy of ruthless force and class war as the
background for a moral transformation of the world!
Note 3. In the writer's opinion a pure-science attitude in
psychology leads inevitably to behaviourism, to a discussion of
stimulation and response with consciousness out of it -- i.e., away
from "psychology." But it is false to the facts.
Scientists must recognize that we cannot free any science, not even
physics, to say nothing of psychology, entirely from subjective
elements and formulate it in purely objective terms.
Note 4. Quotations could be multiplied, from socialists and
others, to illustrate and prove the statement. Marx, indeed, is
typically vague and metaphysical. Perhaps as clear a statement as
any is that of Engels: "The determining consideration is always
the production and reproduction of actual life." (From an
article in the Sozialistische Akademiker, quoted in Ghent,
Mass and Class, chap. i.)
Note 5. The contrast between work and play may come to mind in
this connection, but a little scrutiny will show that it affords no
help from the difficulty. In a subsequent paper something will be
said concerning the economic and ethical bearing of play. [NOTE: See
The Ethics of Competition; (1923).]
Note 6. A considerably larger proportion may, of course be "necessary"
in the sense that under the actual conditions a person could not
obtain and live upon the requisite quantities of protein and
calories in the cheaper forms in which they might be had.
Note 7. One of the most serious defects of economics as an
interpretation of reality is the assumption that men produce in
order to consume. Except for those very low in the economic scale
the opposite is as near the truth, and the motives of a large part
of even "lower-class" consumption are social in their
nature.
Note 8. It is of interest that the conduct which men denounce by
calling it "bestial" (in the field of sex and elsewhere)
is typically of a sort in which the "beasts" never
indulge. Animals are not promiscuous on principle, but merely
indifferent to the individual; they are rarely subject to the
peculiar notion from which man is as rarely free, that one
individual of the opposite sex is for sexual purposes different from
others.
Note 9. We have omitted mention of the class struggle historically
associated with the economic interpretation. It may be remarked in
passing that the effective motive of insurrection, and especially of
its upper-class leadership, is essentially idealistic. Revolutions
would rarely if ever succeed without the belief that the cause is
right in the minds of both parties to the struggle.
The pet notion of Labriola, that people make up sentimental reasons
for their acts when their real motives are materialistic will also
gain more in truth than it will lose by being inverted. Back of the
much exploited economic motive in international antagonisms also,
conventional and sentimental considerations are clearly to be seen.
What men fight over in war is the conflict between cultures,
devotion to which is proverbially unconnected with any objective
superiority.
Note 10. This thesis cannot be elaborated and emphasized as it
deserves to be. Some reference ought to be made to the most
notorious advocate of the opposite view among social philosophers,
Herbert Spencer. His work is a development of the principle that all
human values are to be gauged by the standard of tending to the "increase
of life," which principle he views as axiomatic from the angles
of right as well as necessity. Our contention is that actually the
increase of life is rather a by-product of activity, in a sense a
necessary evil.
It is interesting to note that "quantity of life" cannot
be given an objective meaning as a measurable quantity, to say
nothing of its ethical character. Life is a highly heterogeneous
complex whose elements resist reduction to any common denominator in
physical terms. How compare the quantity of life represented by a
hog with that in a human being? They are different kinds of
things. To common sense, a handful of fleas would seem to contain
more "life" than a town meeting or the Royal Society, but
Mr. Spencer would hardly contend that it represents more "value."
The only purely physical measurement of life that is readily
conceivable would be a determination of the quantity of energy in
ergs involved in metabolic change in a unit of time.
A confusion essentially the same as that of Spencer seems to
underlie the contrast between industrial and pecuniary values
developed by Veblen and Davenport. There is no mechanical measure of
values which will bear examination, and we cannot compare values or
kinds of value without having something to say about value-standards
for reducing to common terms magnitudes infinitely various in kind.
Note 11. Cf. Ellsworth Faris, "Are Instincts Data or
Hypotheses," American Journal of Sociology, September,
1921.
Also C. E Ayres, "Instinct and Capacity," Journal of
Philosophy, October 13 and 27, 1921.
Note 12. The logical defect of the instinct theory is a
misconception of the aims and methods of scientific procedure, which
fallacy also pervades the attempt to make psychology scientific. The
significance of instincts would lie in the application of the
analytic method to the study of consciousness (here, on its conative
or volitional side). Analysis in natural science means different
things in different cases, the general basis of its employment being
that a thing can be explained by showing what it is made of. In some
cases we can predict the whole from the parts by simple addition, in
others by vector addition, as of forces in mechanics. In other cases
we can only predict empirically as in chemistry. The properties of
the compound (except mass) bear no simple or general relation to
those of the elements, but we do know by experiment that the same
compound can always be obtained from the same elements by putting
them together in the same way (and conversely). The case of colours
is interesting. One spectral colour is physically as primary as
another, yet a few are primary in the sense that we can get
the others by mixing them. None of these assumptions hold in
the study of consciousness, and analysis must be given a very
special meaning in this field if it is to have any meaning at all.
In our opinion Professor Bode has put an eternal quietus on much of
what passes for science in psychology. See his paper on "The
Doctrine of Focus and Fringe," Philosophical Review,
1914.
Note 13. The socialists have assumed hedonism rather than argued
it. Spencer regarded it as also axiomatic that life-sustaining
activities are necessarily pleasure-giving (Data of Ethics,
Sec. 34) and vice versa. Modern pragmatism seems to run in terms of
the same two-fold assumption that The Good is identical with both
the biologically beneficial and the actually desired. It seems to us
that critical thought confirms common sense in repudiating both
parts of the dogma.
Note 14. The Original Nature of Man, New York, 1913.
Note 15. There is an incident in the Life of Pyrrhus, as told by
Plutarch, which shows the nature of man and his motives as much
better than all the scientific psychology ever written that it
merits repeating substantially as that author tells it.
"When Pyrrhus had thus retired into Epirus, and left
Macedonia, he had a fair occasion given him by fortune to enjoy
himself in quiet, and to govern his own kingdom in peace. But he was
persuaded, that neither to annoy others, nor to be annoyed by them,
was a life insufferably languishing and tedious. . . . His anxiety
for fresh employment was relieved as follows. (Then follows a
statement of his preparations for making war against Rome.)
"There was then at the court of Pyrrhus, a Thessalonian named
Cineas, a man of sound sense, and . . . who had devoted himself to
Pyrrhus in all the embassies he was employed in . . . and he
continued to heap honours and employments upon him. Cineas, now
seeing Pyrrhus intent upon his preparations for Italy, took an
opportunity, when he saw him at leisure, to draw him into the
following conversation: 'The Romans have the reputation of being
excellent soldiers, and have the command of many warlike nations: if
it please heaven that we conquer them, what use, Sir, shall we make
of our victory?' 'Cineas,' replied the king, 'your question answers
itself. When the Romans are once subdued, there is no town, whether
Greek or barbarian, in all the country, that will dare oppose us;
but we shall immediately be masters of all Italy, whose greatness,
power, and importance no man knows better than you.' Cineas, after a
short pause, continued. 'But, after we have conquered Italy, what
shall we do next, Sir?' Pyrrhus, not yet perceiving his drift,
replied, 'There is Sicily very near, and stretches out her arms to
receive us, a fruitful and populous island, and easy to be taken. .
. .' 'What you say, my prince,' said Cineas, 'is very probable; but
is the taking of Sicily to conclude our expeditions?' 'Far from it,'
answered Pyrrhus, 'for if heaven grant us success in this, that
success shall only be the prelude to greater things. Who can forbear
Libya and Carthage, then within reach? . . . And when we have made
such conquests, who can pretend to say that any of our enemies, who
are now so insolent, will think of resisting us?' 'To be sure,' said
Cineas, 'they will not; . . . But when we have conquered all, what
are we to do then?' 'Why, then, my friend,' said Pyrrhus, laughing,
'we will take our ease, and drink, and be merry.' Cineas, having
brought him thus far replied, 'And what hinders us from drinking and
taking our ease now, when we have already those things in our hands,
at which we propose to arrive through seas of blood, through
infinite toils and dangers, through innumerable calamities, which we
must both cause and suffer?'
"This discourse of Cineas gave Pyrrhus pain, but produced no
reformation. . . ."
Note 16. The term happiness is as heterogeneous as any other; its
only meaning is that the end of action is some state of
consciousness. Besides being as vague as possible this statement, in
the view of practically all thinkers on ethics who were not
hoodwinked by economic logic and the price system itself, is false.
Note 17. This reasoning refutes alike such classifications of
wants as Professor Everett has given in his very charming book on
Moral Values (chap. VII, esp. sec. 11) and the distinction between
industrial and pecuniary values already mentioned. All of Everett's
kinds of value are economic; in fact nearly any specific value
belongs to most of his classes.
In regard to "real ends," we should note the futile
quest of a Summum Bonum by ethical thinkers.
Note 18. For purposes of academic division of labour this will
have to be restricted by excluding the technological aspect of
adaptation and restricting economics to the general theory of
organization. Most of the attention will practically be given to the
theory of the existing organization, through private
property and competitive free exchange, which makes economics
virtually the science of prices. Our definition of the economic
aspect of behaviour includes not only technology as ordinarily
understood but the techniques of all the arts.
Note 19. That is, on the practical or conduct side. A word may be
in place as to the relation between economics as a science thus
broadly conceived and related sciences. Conduct is not co-extensive
with human behaviour; much of the latter is admittedly capricious,
irrational, practically automatic, in its nature. Different actions
have in various degrees the character of conduct, which we define
with Spencer as "the adaptation of acts to ends," or
briefly, deliberative or rational activity. Much that is at the
moment virtually reflex and unconscious is, however the result of
habit or of self-legislation in the past, and hence ultimately
rational. But there is a place for the study of automatic responses,
or behaviourism, and also for psychology, which should not be
confused with the former.
We have by no means meant to repudiate the attempt of biology to
explain the end or motives which the science of conduct uses as
data. This is altogether commendable, as is also the effort to
explain biology in physico-chemical terms. These researches should
be pushed as far as possible; we object only to the uncritical
assumption that they have explained something when they have not,
and to dogmatic assertion (either way) as to how far it is
intrinsically possible to carry such explanations.
Note 21. It is impossible to discuss at length the relations
between historic (genetic) and scientific explanation. The
distinction is perhaps sufficiently well established to justify
using the terms without a lengthy philosophic analysis. Our point of
view is not that either of these is "higher" than the
other, we merely insist that they are different and that each can
fulfil its special purpose best by recognizing the difference.
Note 22. It was remarked early in the present discussion that one
leading school of ethicists (the hedonistic) merely enlarge the
principles of economics and do not believe in any other ethics.
Economists have usually held to this view -- the principle is the
same whether their good is called pleasure or want-satisfaction, so
long as it is held to be quantitative -- and now the same position
is being taken up by the realistic school of philosophers who regard
value as a real quality in things. Cf. R B. Perry, The Moral
Economy.
Note 23. See essay on "The Moral Life," in the volume
entitled Creative Intelligence, by Dewey and others.
Professor R. B. Perry in a review as beautifully illustrates the
inevitable scientific economic reaction to this viewpoint. See International
Journal of Ethics, vol. 28, p. 119, where Professor Perry,
referring to the statement quoted above says, " . . . it cannot
appear to its author as it appears to me. I can only record my blank
amazement."
Note 24. There is obviously a need for a better terminology, if
history and criticism are to have their methods properly named and
if they are to be adequately distinguished from the "sciences."
Such adjectives as genetic and normative, used with the word science
are objectionable, but perhaps the best we can do. They do not
sufficiently emphasize the contrasts.
It should be noted that some writers have attempted to make ethics
scientific on the basis of somewhat different logical procedure from
that sketched above They regard the end of conduct as the production
of some "stage of consciousness" (pleasure or happiness)
but assume that the common-sense being does not know the effects of
acts and hence that special study of past experience (on the basis
of the post facto satisfaction of results) is necessary to
secure rules for guidance. This reasoning does not separate ethics
from economics, however, as it is again a mere question of technique
for securing recognized needs.