LDSP 442 Final Flashcards
Leadership exceptionalism and norm differentiation
Leadership exceptionalism
You’re special
Rooted in person or position
Norm differentiation
- Allowed to do things that other people can’t
Justifications for norm-differentiation
because he has his own morality. (leadership as norm-differentiating)
because she does not care about morality. (leadership as amoral or potentially instrumental)
because he could. (leadership as power-conferring)
because she is special. (leadership as trait-dependent)
because we said he could. (leadership as consensual, to a certain extent)
because she had to. (leadership as responsive to necessity)
because he has special obligations to his group. (leadership as partial)
because it was for a higher cause. (leadership as impartial*)
Immanuel Kant
Created Kantian Duties
working-class family
Utilitarianism
The ethical theory or argument that all action should be directed toward achieving the “greatest good for the greatest number of people.”
Mill v. Bentham
Foundational Principle of Morality
Bentham:
Principle of Utility:
approves or disapproves of an action on the basis of the amount of pain or pleasure brought about
Mill:
Greatest Happiness Principle:
Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.
Act and Rule
Bentham:
ACT UTILITARIAN: The principle of utility is applied directly to each alternative act in a situation of choice. The right act is then defined as the one which brings about the best results (or the least amount of bad results)
Mill:
RULE UTILITARIAN: By reason, we know there are rules for action that, in general, tend to produce the greatest good for the greatest number. Overall it works out that way. So maybe you don’t sit down and calculate the good for every action, but you follow these rules of conduct that support the greatest good for the greatest number, overall.
You use rules of conduct.
Kinds of pleasure
Mill
- intellectual/enlightening pleasures are better
Bentham
- no distinction
Rule versus act
RULE UTILITARIAN: By reason, we know there are rules for action that, in general, tend to produce the greatest good for the greatest number. Overall it works out that way. So maybe you don’t sit down and calculate the good for every action, but you follow these rules of conduct that support the greatest good for the greatest number, overall.
ACT UTILITARIAN: The principle of utility is applied directly to each alternative act in a situation of choice. The right act is then defined as the one which brings about the best results (or the least amount of bad results)
Principle of morality
Principle of Utility:
approves or disapproves of an action on the basis of the amount of pain or pleasure brought about
Greatest Happiness Principle:
Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.
Consequences of the theory
Difficulty of attaining a full knowledge and certainly of the consequences of our actions.
It is possible to justify immoral acts
Rule utilitarianism:
If the Rules take into account more and more exceptions, Rule Utilitarianism collapses into Act Utilitarianism.
It is possible to generate “unjust rules” according to the principle of utility.
John Stuart Mill
(1806-1873)
London, England (died in France)
Very severe parenting by James Mill - Greek by age 3; Plato at 10
Atheist, avoided university, British East India Company; depression
English philosopher, political economist, and civil servant
logic, epistemology, economics, social and political philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, religion, current affairs
classical liberalism
Henry Sidgwick: “I should say that from about 1860-65 or thereabouts [Mill] ruled England in the region of thought as very few men ever did: I do not expect to see anything like it again.”
Arguably the greatest nineteenth century British philosopher
*rule utilitarian
*quality of pleasures matters
Kant and To be able to place in conversation with Mill
both have rules
Mill has rule of conduct
- for the greatest good
Kant
- everyone abides by them; doesn’t matter if they are happy or not; must do it solely based on duty
Kant And to be able to talk about norm differentiation, leadership exceptionalism
Leadership is not norm-differentiating.
Leaders are not morally exceptional.
Their morality is not subjectively grounded (i.e. moral relativism is false).
Duties – obligations discoverable by reason
The implicature is that the leaders who engages in immoral behavior is being unreasonable.
Bernard Williams
If the math works out, justified through utilitarianism
–But it doesn’t work like that
—–Lose integrity of the person
our intuitions are foggy. We do consider the deontological view
George and Jim cases
George
(1) George, who has just taken his Ph.D. in chemistry, finds it extremely difficult to get a job. He is not very robust in health, which cuts down the number of jobs he might be able to do satisfactorily. His wife has to go out to work to keep them, which itself causes a great deal of strain, since they have small children and there are severe problems about looking after them. The results of all this, especially on the children, are damaging.
An older chemist, who knows about this situation, says that he can get George a decently paid job in a certain laboratory, which pursues research into chemical and biological warfare. George says that he cannot accept this, since he is opposed to chemical and biological warfare. The older man replies that he is not too keen on it himself, come to that, but after all George’s refusal is not going to make the job or the laboratory go away; what is more, he happens to know that if George refuses the job, it will certainly go to a contemporary of George’s who is not inhibited by any such scruples and is likely if appointed to push along the research with greater zeal than George would.
Indeed, it is not merely concern for George and his family, but (to speak frankly and in confidence) some alarm about this other man’s excess of zeal, which has led the older man to offer to use his influence to get George the job . . . George’s wife, to whom he is deeply attached, has views (the details of which need not concern us) from which it follows that at least there is nothing particularly wrong with research into CBW. What should he do?
Jim
(2) Jim finds himself in the central square of a small South American town. Tied up against the wall are a row of twenty Indians, most terrified, a few defiant, in front of them several armed men in uniform. A heavy man in a sweat-stained khaki shirt turns out to be the captain in charge and, after a good deal of questioning of Jim which establishes that he got there by accident while on a botanical expedition, explains that the Indians are a random group of the inhabitants who, after recent acts of protest against the government, are just about to be killed to remind other possible protestors of the advantages of not protesting.
However, since Jim is an honoured visitor from another land, the captain is happy to offer him a guest’s privilege of killing one of the Indians himself. If Jim accepts, then as a special mark of the occasion, the other Indians will be let off. Of course, if Jim refuses, then there is no special occasion, and Pedro here will do what he was about to do when Jim arrived, and kill them all.
Jim, with some desperate recollection of schoolboy fiction, wonders whether if he got hold of a gun, he could hold the captain, Pedro and the rest of the soldiers to threat, but it is quite clear from the set-up that nothing of that kind is going to work: any attempt at that sort of thing will mean that all the Indians will be killed, and himself. The men against the wall, and the other villagers, understand the situation, and are obviously begging him to accept. What should he do?
Remote, psychological, and precedent effects
Remote
Distant or long-term impacts or repercussions for a decision
How well can we know these repercussions if we do consider them? Many of these seem unlikely.
Psychological
The effects might be bad enough to cancel out the good done.
e.g. he might be wounded by thinking he did the bad thing
e.g. he might participate in a killing…
Precedent
One morally can do what someone has actually done, is a psychologically effective principle, if not a deontically valid one.
We tend to do what people before us have done. Actions should not set a precedent for future actions, since future actions are not the same as the original action. But they do. We can’t discount this.
Cosmopolitan versus communitarian theories
Cosmopolitanism
Acting for the many
Communitarianism
Acting for the few/a group
Epistemic concerns
(1) how do cosmopolitan leaders know which end can be identified with the greater good?
(2) how do cosmopolitan leaders know which means serve the greater good?
Cosmopolitan moral theories
Moral theory in which the particular ends to which group members are committed are ultimately subordinate to more general social ends such as human welfare
Mill and rule-breaking
(1) “In everyday life, overall utility is better served by a concern for the people we can directly affect. Because overall utility is not a practical guide for everyday action, we cannot use it to justify rule-breaking behavior.”
According to Mill, adopting a narrower scope of concern also implies respect for the “rights” of others
(2) “even if we assume that it is within the power of everyday leaders to have significant effects on overall utility, there is still substantial cause to worry about whether breaking the rules will positively or negatively affect overall utility.”
It’s likely leaders will mis-identify utility-maximizing opportunities for rule-breaking (p. 204).
Transformational leadership and Mill
Leading with a greater concern with end-values, such as liberty, justice, equality” than with “modal values, that is, values of means – honesty, responsibility, fairness, the honoring of commitments”
Burns says they are more concerned with cosmopolitan values than moral rules (although they care about both)
This is a kind of instrumental (or consequentialist) thinking.
Mill (we have already said) - LITTLE confidence that leaders can decide when the time is to break rules and act for greater utility (the common good)
**Aristotle
(384-322 BCE)
Born in Stagira, Greece
“He was born, he thought, he died.” – Heidegger
Plato’s star student
Academy to Speusippus
The Lyceum
Tutor of Alexander the Great
Key Ideas: virtue ethics, eudaimonism, 3 kinds of friendship, mixed regimes, cataloguing of the animals, soul types, hylomorphism, the 5 elements
We must start from the well known or familiar.
Reliance on common opinion (nomos) as a kind of collective imagination, then investigates those ideas
He does this often, paired with induction (specific observation and form general claim) and abduction (look at all possible answers and lean into the most probable answer)
Gary Yukl
Characteristics of Managerial Effectiveness
- Higher energy level and stress tolerance
- Higher self-confidence
- Internal locus of control
- Power motivation
High “power need” - Achievement orientation6. Low need for affiliation
- Greater emotional stability and maturity
- Greater personal integrity
Virtue, Hexis
The developmental process of acquiring virtue gives us insight into what a virtue is (a habit).
hexis – an active disposition.
Function argument
Function (Ergon) Argument: Virtues are those qualities that permit us to fulfill our function or purpose
For humans: to secure our greatest good or end (eudaimonia), which is distinctly rational – good reasons
Eudaimonia
Flourishing in accordance with virtue
It is rational, in accordance with our higher natures
A self-sufficient good
A kind of activity
How virtues are acquired
Intellectual virtue in the main owes both its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time)
Moral virtue comes about as a result ofhabit, whence also its nameethikeis one that is formed by a slight variation from the wordethos(habit)
Virtue mean
Inbetween vices of deficiency and excess
Only applies for moral virtues
Describe it in terms of the domain
–Too much or too little pleasure
Not the true middle
Voluntary, involuntary
Voluntary:
are free from internal and external impediments
Involuntary:
Force or compulsion (external impediment to free action)
Ignorance (internal impediment)
From ignorance, by reason of ignorance
By reason of ignorance is involuntary
Acting in ignorance is culpable.
- It’s on you, voluntary
Non-voluntary actions
are “non-willing.”
They are done when one chooses, but all the options available are bad.
Aristotle Application to leadership and norm differentiation
Price is interested in whether these virtues impact rule-following/rule-breaking (p. 103-4).
We care about this because of leadership exceptionalism.
Considering virtues do not lend themselves to rules (p. 103), this seems to be assessing virtue ethics on Kantian grounds.
…But the virtuous person will be inclined to do the right thing, across situations, so they won’t break rules that should be kept.
Situationism
The idea that situations are the most salient consideration for how we act, rather than any traits (or virtues)
Strong versions of the view: Situations are the only determinant for how we act because we have no traits (or virtues)
Price’s treatment of virtue and vice
(1) People in general—and leaders in particular—are bad at judging their own character and ability (Uniqueness Bias).
(2) Very few people have virtues (takeaway from the Situationist Critique).
Combined, these two reminders make it seem dubious that a leader could successfully use their presumed virtues to justify rule-breaking.
Price’s two virtues
Emotional stability and maturity
Integrity
**Temperance and intemperance
Temperance
soundness of mind, orderly behavior; temperance
Being ruled by others well: amounts to justice in the city – i.e. obedience, submission to authority
Being able to rule oneself (or self-govern) well: amounts to justice in the soul; can rule one’s own desires
Intemperance
Excessive pleasure overtakes reason
The vice occurs when the passionate or appetitive part of the self breaks loose from the control of reason, resulting in irrational behavior.
Two ways intemperance threatens leadership
It means a person cannot self-govern, let alone govern others. This is an impediment to justice
Callicles
Athenian political sophist
Young student of Gorgias
Maybe invented for the dialogue
Happiness, for Callicles, is the continual satisfaction of desires or experience of pleasure – Hedonist
Machiavelli
(1469-1527)
Florence, Italy
Italian diplomat, author, philosopher, historian during the Renaissance
Father of Modern Political Philosophy
Known for advocating deceit and other unscrupulous means to secure and maintain power
Wrote The Prince
Necessity
Advised princes to act “according to necessity”
Prescribing norm differentiation of leaders
Seeming over being
The leader is engaged in impression management. He needs to manage what his followers feel about him.
Machiavelli Other themes in the text
Reputation of a prince
‘Being perceived as’ versus ‘being’
Normative traits
–generosity, cruelty, love and fear, compassion, honesty
Managing responses of constituents
Avoiding pitfalls of power
Milgram
Behavioral Study of Obedience
Experiment, replications, and implications
Experiment (1961)
To correct the learner with increasing shocks after each mistake on a learning task
Altered replications:
The 1967 Berkowitz and LePage Study
Provoking retaliation among study participants
Will shock more frequently and longer when they are in the position of the ideas-giver, if they were (gently) shocked more as participants
Miller notes that it is very easy to trigger aggressive behavior in the lab. This is not an isolated experience…
The 1986 Wim Meeus and Quinten Raaijmakers Study
Subject assigned to give escalating criticisms of a ‘job applicant’ in the other room (not a real job applicant, but they think it is)
Subject is willing to criticize well beyond what might reasonably be fruitful, even when the applicant stops participating
91.7% make all 15 negative remarks possible
The 2015 David Gallardo-Pujul (University of Barcelona) Study
Used avatars instead of humans
Implications:
Humans do obey commands, despite normal expectations for character.
The Nazis were not special in that respect
Things to keep in mind:
Virtue is exceedingly rare. (So is vice!)
It is also longitudinal.
People did resist but felt they had their hands tied
Hannah Arendt
1906-1975
Linden, Germany New York, New York
political philosopher, author
Holocaust survivor
–Was put in an internment camp – Camp Gurs
–Only able to escape once she secured her papers
–Fled to NYC with her husband
Research topics: nature ofpowerandevil, politics,direct democracy,authority, and totalitarianism
Known mostly today for her work on Adolf Eichmann, on how ordinary people can be moved to do evil actions
Eichmann
(1906–1962)
Born in Solingen, Germany
Middle class
Not a good student – basic schooling, then training in mechanical
engineering but quit before finishing; became day laborer, traveling salesman
A friend convinced him to enlist in the Austrian National Socialist (Nazi) Party and the SS
Did well enough as an SS officer that he was promoted until he started being assigned to Jewish deportations to killing centers
Charged with managing and facilitating the mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and killing centers in the German-occupied East by train
One of the major organizers of the Holocaust
December 1961– found guilty of crimes against the Jewish people
Hanged; cremated; ashes scattered in the sea beyond Israeli boundary waters
Banality of evil
Ordinary, obvious, boring, commonplace
The point is not that evil itself is boring or ordinary but that it is occasioned by what we might imagine are average, ordinary people, such as Adolf Eichmann, rather than moral monsters.
Totalitarian context
Minimal transparency
Everyone answers to the person above
Agentic
Giving power to someone else
Autonomous
Free
Garrett Hardin
(1915-2003)
Dallas, TX to Santa Barbara, CA
American ecologist
Warned of the dangers of human overpopulation
Best known for his exposition of the tragedy of the commons
Called attention to “the damage that innocent actions by individuals can inflict on the environment”
also known for Hardin’s First Law of Human Ecology: “We can never do merely one thing. Any intrusion into nature has numerous effects, many of which are unpredictable.”
Three metaphors
Cowboy Economy - openeconomyof limitless resources; wasteful
Spaceship earth - aworldviewencouraging everyone onEarthto act as a harmonious crew working toward the greater good; acknowledging our limited resources
Lifeboat earth - There are limited resources here. We need to think of our own survival.
If we let the poor in our boats, we will all drown.
Stated differently: People are already struggling and dying because populations self-correct (through deaths). If we just act passively toward them, not welcoming them in, we don’t have to actively do anything to protect our resources.
What to do in the case of overpopulation
In particular, we need to reject help for poor countries. Why?
They reproduce more than other countries.
Otherwords, let them die to lessen overpopulation
Food aid and the ratchet effect
They are not a bank so much as a one-way transfer
Ratchets are unable to move backwards. They can’t be reversed once in motion.
Food aidkeeps people alive who would otherwise die in afamine. –> They live and multiply in better times, making another bigger crisis inevitable, since the supply of food has not been increased.
Peter Singer
Born in 1946
Australian moral philosopher
Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University.
Applied ethics
Secular, utilitarian perspective
Animal Liberation, Why Vegan
global poverty
Singer’s argument
- Lack of food and shelter and medicine is bad.
- If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.
[Later, he says “without thereby sacrificing anything morally significant,” which weakens the requirement placed on us.]
For example, getting wet in order to save a drowning child. - It is in our power to prevent this bad thing.
- We can prevent it without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance.
Conclusion 1: Therefore, we ought to prevent lack of food and shelter.
- The only way to prevent lack of food and shelter without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance is to give maximally (or at least very much more than we currently do).
Conclusion 2: Therefore, we ought to give maximally (or at least very much more than we currently do).
The drowning child example
If I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and pull the child out. This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but this is insignificant, while the death of the child would presumably be a very bad thing.
Just because they are in another country and we can’t see them does not make their lives worth any less.
There is nothing different about people far away.
The only difference is us – our psychological connection to them.
Moral mediocrity
we calibrate our moral obligations on the basis of what others are doing and want to be neither exceptional nor bad but somewhere in the middle
What to do in the face of bad leadership
Followers:
Empower yourself.
Be loyal to the whole and not to any single individual.
Be skeptical.
Take a stand.
Pay attention.
Leaders:
Limit your tenure.
Share power.
Don’t believe your own hype.
Get real, and stay real.
Compensate for your weaknesses.
Stay balanced.
Remember the mission.
Stay healthy.
Be creative.
Know and control your appetites.
Be reflective.
Optimism and the Enlightenment
More international tribunals holding people to account
Increased social sensitivity to bad leadership, e.g. misbehaving CEOs
Forced resignations signaling a “growing intolerance of bad leadership” (231)
Greater transparency
Enlightenment assumption: As we acquire knowledge, we will continue to advance as a society.
Reality:
We have advanced in some ways – medicine, technology, fewer premature deaths
Human nature is still the same – capable of great good and great evil
Knowledge itself does not effect social change; acting in terms of that knowledge effects social change (e.g. practicing good habits changes character)
Rigid
The leader and at least some of the followers are stiff and unyielding. Although they may be competent, they are unable or unwilling to adapt to new ideas, new information, or changing times.
Think of an example
Callous
The leader and at least some followers are uncaring or
unkind. Ignored or discounted are the needs, wants, and
wishes of most members of the group or organization
Think of an example
Intemperate
The leader lacks self-control and is aided and abetted by followers who are unwilling or unable to intervene
Think of an example
Corrupt
The leader and at least some
followers lie, cheat, or steal.
To a degree that exceeds the
norm, they put self-interest
ahead of the public interest.
Think of an example
Evil
The leader and at least some followers commit atrocities. They use pain as an instrument of power. The harm done is severe rather than slight.
Think of an example
Insular
The leader and at least some
followers minimize or
disregard the health and
welfare of “the other” - that is,
those outside the group or
organization for which they
are directly responsible
Think of an example
