Waiting

Don’t we spend all a lot of time on waiting? Sorry, no blog this week but just wait: Next week there’ll be again a new one, as usual.

Random quote
War is always more popular with those who don’t experience it.

Mark Kurlansky (1948-)

The free rider problem

Man is basically a social being. People help each other not only strategically, so with the purpose to gain from it, but also often for non-selfish reasons. However, the less someone is related to you, the smaller the chance that you will help this person for nothing, in the sense that you’ll not profit from it in some way. You are more likely to help a family member, a friend or a neighbour than a stranger, maybe in this order. And contributing to the “common good” without a special reason is not what many people do, for the idea of common good is quite abstract: Who are they, actually, whom you are supposed to help? Moreover, nothing is free. Every contribution to the common good brings you costs, at least in time and effort, and often also in money. For instance, you are asked to deposit your plastic waste in a common container at the end of your street, but nobody will force you or fine you if you don’t. Then the easiest for you is to put your plastic in your litter bin at home.
It is in this social space that the so-called free rider problem can arise. A free rider doesn’t only ignore the social well-being of others or the “common good”, s/he also profits from doing so. Or, to use the definition of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a “free rider, most broadly speaking, is someone who receives a benefit without contributing towards the cost of its production.” An example that refers to the name of the problem is someone who takes the train but doesn’t buy a ticket. This person profits from the train service by a free train journey. Of course, there is the risk of being caught and fined, but if you are clever, you can minimalize this risk. And why wouldn’t you travel for free? One passenger more or less has no impact on the train service. True, when too many people think so, the train service will stop. That’s why the free rider problem is not simply a matter of someone who breaks the rules or the law, and that’s it. It can grow from an individual problem (an individual not paying the required contribution) into a social problem (the collective service or what kind of social activity we are talking about is undermined). The threat that the individual free rider problem becomes a social free rider problem is always in the background.
Some characteristics of the free rider problem are:
- The action is individual, the consequences are social.
- One single case of free riding doesn’t influence the availability of the common good. If enough people are vaccinated against a disease but you don’t want to have the jab for reasons of principle, nevertheless you’ll be protected by the herd immunity.
- The free rider problem is common with public goods. If enough people reduce pollution, everyone in society will benefit.
These characteristics show that the free rider problem has a clear moral aspect. It undermines the sociality of humans, so the idea that in the end we belong together and should help each other. 

Why people are free riders is sometimes explained by means of a prisoner’s dilemma game, such as this one, which I took almost literally from the website of the Corporate Finance Institute (see Sources):
Tom and Adel are considering a contribution to a public good. The personal cost of contributing is $6 and the benefit is $10. However, there is also an incentive to free ride as the benefit of this public good is freely available among the members of society.

Explanation:
- If Tom and Adel both contribute, the total benefit would be $20. Each person gains $10 for a net gain of +$4 ($10 – $6).
- If one person contributes but the other does not, the total benefit would only be $10. Each person gains $5, so the person who contributes would realize a net gain of -$1 while the person who does not would realize a net gain of +$5. So, if Adel contributes and Tom does not, Abel would be contributing $6 for a net gain of -$1 and Tom would be contributing $0 for a net gain of +$5 (because the benefit of the public good is divided among all members of society).
- If neither Adel nor Tom contributes to the public good, there would be no costs and no benefits of the public good (net gain of $0).
In the prisoner’s dilemma game above, we can see that both Tom and Adel would attempt to free ride (not contribute): If Adel thinks that Tom will not contribute, she would lose $1 for contributing, while, if Adel thinks that Tom will contribute, she would gain more by not contributing. Therefore, both people would come to the conclusion that it would be unwise to contribute. The public good, therefore, does not get built and thus a free rider problem is created. 

Several solutions are proposed for the free rider problem, such as
- Taxes, so that everybody pays, anyway.
- An appeal to altruism.
- Making a public good private, so making a barrier to profit by the once public good.
- Legislation that regulates use of the free good.
Of course, which solution is best, depends on the good concerned. 

Sources
- “Free Rider. Benefiting from a common resource without paying for it”, on https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/economics/free-rider/
- Hardin, Russel, “The Free Rider Problem”, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, on https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/free-rider/#toc 13 October 2020.
- Pettinger, Tejvan “Free Rider Problem” on https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/1626/economics/free-rider-problem/ , 22 May 2019.

Random quote
The very same mistakes and instances of forgetfulness are ascribed to normal human frailty when a younger person makes them, but to age when an aging person makes them.

Martha Nussbaum, (1947-) 

Philosophical intuitions

In my blog two weeks ago I wrote about an investigation by the Lithuanian philosopher Vilius Dranseika. In this investigation Dranseika tested a philosophical intuition on memory. Philosophical intuitions are often subject of investigation in experimental philosophy, but what are actually philosophical intuitions? To make matters short, I want to define them here as immediately justified beliefs. However, philosophical intuitions are not “just” beliefs in the sense that a philosopher who has a certain intuition thinks: It’s what I think, but maybe I am wrong and maybe matters are different. No, a philosopher who has a philosophical intuition thinks that it is true and that every reasonable person will agree that this intuition is true. Seen this way, we can define a philosophical intuition more precisely as an immediately justified true belief. Moreover, intuitions are not only true, but, as said, they are immediately true. Of course, not everybody will an intuition proposed by a philosopher immediately consider true. Then the philosopher will not say: “Maybe I am wrong and maybe the intuition is not as intuitively true as I thought.” No, s/he’ll find reasons to explain why the intuition nevertheless is true, for philosophers are good in confabulating reasons, for it is their job. And in the end she can always “play the man” and say: “Strange that you don’t see it. Everybody sees so.” Actually, it’s the last rescue in case you cannot convince your opponent, for it’s typical for an intuition that you cannot give it a factual foundation. Intuitions are simply true. Are they?
Before I want to discuss this question, I want to distinguish philosophical intuitions yet from psychological intuitions. Rather than being a form of true knowledge, psychological intuitions are a kind of “gut feelings”, and basically they are open to refutation. “Intuitively, I think that this man is a scoundrel” (but maybe he is the most honest man in the world). “Intuitively I think we should go to the left” (but maybe it was the road to the right that let to our destination). Etc.
Now I go to the question whether philosophical intuitions are true. As a first step to undermine the idea they evidently are, I want to discuss an example from psychology: The well-known Müller-Lyer Illusion. Please, click here for a picture of the illusion. Most people believe that the line on the top is shorter than the line under. Nonetheless both lines have the same length. (Measure them if you don’t believe!) Your intuitive belief is contrary to the fact. However, the Müller-Lyer figure is an illusion, so an observation error. It’s not a (false) philosophical intuition. But if such an apparently true observation about the lines in the Müller-Lyer Illusion can be false, why not then the same so for apparently true illusions? And that’s what I want to maintain here: Most philosophical illusions are false or not true to that extent as philosophers thinks. With the latter I mean that their truth is limited to certain contexts, like the context of investigation, culture, and the like (and even then I have my doubts).
There are so many intuitions in philosophy that it’s simply impossible to discuss them all, certainly in a blog like this one. It’s even impossible to discuss a representative fraction of the existing philosophical intuitions. However, they are especially used in thought experiments and therefore, by way of illustration of my critique, I want to discuss a much-used thought experiment in the discussion about personal identity in analytical philosophy: brain swapping. Such thought experiments have the form that the brain of person A is transplanted to the body of person B. Variations of this standard case are that the brains of A and B are switched; that the halves of A’s brain are transplanted into different bodies; that only the information of A’s brain is brought to B’s brain (after that first the information of B’s brain has been removed); or even that persons are copied and are “teletransported” to another place. (see here) Of course, everybody is free to invent what s/he likes, but can this thought experiment be the basis of a serious philosophical discussion? For the idea of brain swapping in one form or another is based on the implicit assumption that brain swapping is possible and that with swapping brains we swap personalities. Weren’t it so, it would have no sense to draw conclusions from such thought experiments about the characteristics of our personal identity. Nonsense will lead only to other nonsense. And that’s what is the case here. I don’t mean that the ideas about personal identity are nonsense, but if they are correct it is not because of these thought experiments. Take for example the idea that we swap personalities if we swap brains. It is founded on the intuitive idea that we are our brains. But if I formulate it this way, many philosophers will say: Of course, we are not our brains, we are more. I guess, that even some of those philosophers who use brain swap thought experiments in their discussions on personal identity will deny that we are our brains. Why then do they use such brain swap arguments in order to substantiate their views? I’ll give one example why your identity is not just in your brain. Simply said, some runners have fast-twitch muscles and others have slow-twitch muscles. Fast-twitch muscles will never make you a good long-distance runner, while slow-twitch muscles will never make you a good sprinter. Isn’t it not so then that the type of muscles a runner has is a part of his or her personal identity?
The upshot is: Philosophical intuitions are just opinions. Another thing is, of course, whether we do without them.

Recommended literature
Elijah Chudnoff, Intuition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Random quote
You can deceive some people always. You can deceive all people for some time. However, you cannot deceive all people always.

W.F. Wertheim (1907-1998)

Setting goals, also when you are old. In memory of Robert Marchand.

Recently I heard a cabaret performer say when asked what he thought of old age (he is already in his eighties): It’s fine but what I miss most is that I cannot make plans anymore. Saying this, without a doubt (he didn’t explicitly say so) he meant that in the near future you’ll die when you are old and you don’t know when. You have no longer-term perspective anymore, for there is a good chance that you cannot finish what you have started. The future has become short.
It’s true what the cabaret performer said but in a sense it isn’t. A few years ago I wrote a blog about setting targets when you are old (see here). It was a blog about the cyclist Robert Marchand. Marchand, then 105 years old, had set a world record in one-hour track cycling in the over-105 age group, a category especially created for him. Of course, before he did everybody of that age could set such a record, for you just had to ride for one hour on your bike and you had it. Not so Marchand. He didn’t want to set simply a record, but he wanted to ride the best record he could, if possible one that was faster than the time he rode when he set the world record in one-hour track cycling in the over-100 age group. As was to be expected, Marchand didn’t break his 100+ record, but he cycled an unbelievable distance in that hour on the National Velodrome at Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines near Paris: 22,547 km. Who will ever go faster? But Marchand was a bit disappointed that he didn’t.
Marchand’s record was not only a remarkable time set by a remarkable man, but it refuted also the assertion by the cabaret performer I started this blog with: That there is no future, no perspective, no planning possible when you are old. Every sportsman knows that if you want to achieve a goal and you take it as seriously as Robert Marchand did, you must determine exactly what you want to achieve and you must make a plan. You must plan how to train in order to be able to get a top performance and you must determine a date when to perform. In other words, you must create a perspective for yourself, and that’s what Robert Marchand did.
Now I am the first to say that not everybody is still given to set goals when old. Health differences become enormous above, say, the age of 70. I don’t need to mention here all the diseases, illnesses and infirmities of old age. Many of them simply make setting goals and having a perspective for the future impossible or not sensible. There is no way than making the best of it and undergo the sufferance. On the other hand, many old people are still in good health. Then, as the case of Marchand shows, you can still set goals. Obviously, you are no longer as fit as when you were young. Especially you decline physically. Many people say: Mentally I still feel as if I am thirty but my body works against me. If you would ask me, I would say the same, but actually I doubt whether in my mind I am still that young, but anyway it feels so…
As for the physical decline, there is more to do about it than many people think. Particularly when you are old inactivity will be the end. “Use it or lose it” is an adage that was already known in antiquity. So even at old age, physical exercise is important, or maybe even more important, something that also Marchand knew. So, when not so long ago he stopped outdoor cycling for medical reasons, he continued training on his indoor bike trainer and doing exercises. What many old people don’t know is that by physical training you cannot only slow down the physical decay, but you can even become better! Of course, not when you are already top fit, but certainly when you are on a lower level of your capabilities, there is room for improvement. Moreover, do not look only at the physical side of yourself. Using and exercising your mental capacities, your brain, is as important as staying physically in shape. Use your brain and be open for what is new. A healthy mind in a healthy body. However, the other way round is as much important: A body cannot stay healthy without a healthy mind. Human existence is a whole. Mind and body interact and at the same time they are one. Nonetheless, and in that sense it’s true what the cabaret performer said, gradually your perspective shrinks; naturally. Your goals come – no necessarily must come – nearer in time; naturally. Nobody can surpass human existence. On the 22th of May, 2021, Robert Marchand died, 109 years old. 

Recommended literature
Martha C. Nussbaum; Saul Levmore, Aging Thoughtfully. Conversations about Retirement, Romance, Wrinkles, and Regret. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Random quote
Creative people … are those who try to prevent that the whole becomes a harmful routine.

Peter Sloterdijk (1947-)