Charles Taylor, Philosophical Arguments (1995)
Questions & Answers #7: "Irreducibly Social Goods

This is not a conceptually difficult essay, but it is rhetorically tricky because T. keeps his major thesis hidden until the last page. The topic of essay is the stuff of current TV & print media news. Should we do away with federal Welfare programs? We know that Clinton has apparently done so, but also know how complex politics can be. T. doesn't direct our attention in this direction, but we might usefully inquire about the origination of federal Welfare programs. Where did they come from? Many of them (including the Works Progress Administration, WPA, which built several old buildings at Tech) originated in response to the suffering incurred in the Great Depression of the 1930s. You might wish to skim over the last 3 paragraphs on p. 145 before beginning to study-read the essay.

1. "Are there any irreducibly social goods"/values (127)? What would a Utilitarian say?

T. identifies 3 "crucial philosophical assumptions" associated with the popular American/Util. answer: consequentialism (that moral value can be determined only by knowing the consequences of a proposed action); utilitarianism (if it feels good, it is good); atomism (the only real entities are individuals who possess values like nouns possess adjectives). The 3^rd characteristic commits Util.s to the position of denying irreducible social values. They must be reducible to adjectival qualities possessed by some individual (including analogical individuals, e.g., corporations, countries). Translate "values" into "money" & the logic is clear. Someone must own the money or be fiscally liable/responsible.

2. Near the bottom of p. 133 T. gives a clear statement of a well-known epistemological model: "Let's call them 'plain events' [sensations] & 'meaning events' [words/concepts]. * * * These theories ignored altogether the existence of meaning events, & imagined they could deal with everything as a plain event." Who advocated this model?

Primarily David Hume. You might also have identified John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Newton -- anyone from the materialist camp who would be inclined to attempt to reduce ideas to brain physiology.

3. In essay #6 we acknowledged the necessity to consider the temporal/performative dimension to understand many events. How does this relate to T.'s point on the middle of p. 136: "these things can only be good in that certain way"; & how does this relate to the title of this essay ("irreducibly social goods")?

T. is making an elegant point, viz. that Util.s smuggle in notions of background or social context when they claim values must be reduced to individual possessions. They do so by throwing up their hands on the question of what is more valuable; what is less valuable. They reply that that is entirely a subjective choice; that different things make various people happy. Things are "satisfying or positive after their particular fashion [i.e., within their "natural" or usual context], because of the background understanding developed in our culture," 136. The valuation choice is not as radically individual as Util.s pretend. It is fundamentally social. T. implies that Util. is an ideology, a rationalization.

4. The social/political theory that is entailed by Util. is social contractualism in which social institutions are no more than the sum of their atomic/individual parts. The only value of any institution (churches, the military, Supreme Court, etc.) must be as an instrument to better effect the principle of utility (to make individuals happier - i.e., more prosperous - than they would be without the institution/instrument. T. claims that "The idea that the culture is only valuable instrumentally in this kind of case rests on a confusion," (middle, 137). What is the confusion?

That means & ends can be fundamentally disassociated so that the end (effect?) is clear without a specific means. We can then entertain various means to reach a desired end. The idea that "these goods could come about by some other means" is a fantasy. We know the consequences of doing physics or music or sports, e.g., only by temporal investment, i.e., by dedicating long periods of life to the culture. We cannot pretend to know what it will "pay" before making the dedication. Moreover the activity profoundly alters the understanding & identity of the person who trusts the institution enough to risk being changed into a "professional" performer/expert. "If such virtue [outcomes, identities] & experience are worth cultivating [which can only be done socially, not individually], then the cultures have to be worth fostering [i.e., we must recognize their value as inherently social], not as contingent instruments, but for themselves," 137.

5. Is friendship valuable? Aristotle thought it to be an indispensable part of "the good life." A person without friends can hardly be thought to be happy, accomplished, or complete (cf. Confucian person of ren). Can this value be construed exclusively as a personal possession? See p. 139.

Obviously not. "Nor could we grasp what friendship & love consist in, becaue it is essential to them that they repose [or exist] to a large degree on common [as opposed to exclusive] understandings," 139. Other virutes work similarly, e.g., who can adequately define what it is to be an American? Yet, as in Plato's Lysis, we recognize fellow citizens when we encounter them - say on the streets of Tokyo, even if they appear to be ethnically Japanese: "it is essential to its being a good [value] that its goodness be the object of a common understanding," i.e., it is irreducibly social, 139.

6. From your/our answer #5, T. now returns to his familiar social/political concern: "It takes the life of the citizen, of a person who is not simply subjected to power [the passive recipient of orders/indoctrination] but participates in his/her own rule [a temporal performance of living in social groups] as an essential component of human dignity," 141. The value under consideration here is patriotism or citizenship. It could be the focal point of any group, e.g., scientific truth as the outcome of freely chosen, dedicated participating in the culture. Why can't these values be construed as individual possessions?

Because they require temporal & social dimensions to come into being. They are fundamentally social performances which cannot exist statically. They are games which require more than one player to be played. They are akin to verbs not nouns with their adjectives.

Unfortunately, T. seems unaware of Asian thinking, as he concludes (144): The central idea is that the good life for human beings is not to be found in some [indefinable & fuzzy notion of] higher activity; beyond ordinary life . . . . It is to be found at the very center of everyday existence. Hindu, Buddhist, & Confucian thought echo this. Ah, I am still a sucker for metaphysics. Notice the (Western) direction in T. turns on the last page (145): "This is what's wrong with welfarism." Welfare? Didn't Clinton, under pressure from the Republicans (read: lots of Util. theory about individualism) just get rid of this? How does this connect with the preceding argument?; & what precisely is wrong with "welfarism"?

"As long as you think that all goods must be individual [possessions] . . . you can't see that there is a moral argument here. The burden of advocacy [or opposition] seems entirely borne by logical arguments," 145. The end/value recognized by moral discourse is that there are people among us who are suffering & in need whom we should feel obliged to help. If you child or spouse is sick or hungry or depressed, you feel obliged to help them. You feel good when your efforts succeed. This provides a paradigm instance of what is inherently valuable in a more extended society (so says Confucianism: "Inside the family there is the serving of one's father; outside, there is the serving of the emperor," 17:9). Do we conceded that responding with an offer to aid the suffering (as in the crucified Christ) provides a paradigm model of what is morally virtues or desirable? The talk what constitutes appropriate help & what it costs is not moral discourse. It is economic, political, tactical discourse. The talk about welfare dependency or undesirable & unintended consequences is therapeutic, psychological, sociological, & medical discourse. The talk about what constitutes suffering & need is more difficult, as mothers with whining & malingering children know. T.'s point is fairly simple: a desirable society is one which is concerned to help people in need, not because they will make a good return on the investment or because they deserve it or for any other similar reason, but simply because they are perceived to be suffering and because it is the right thing to do to try to alleviate suffering because you care about the person, not as much as you care about your child or spouse (with whom you have intense & long interaction) but in way that is essentially the same. This is an irreducible social good. If such concern is entirely "privatized" or shunted into church basements & local (i.e., individual) charities & individual philanthropy, T.'s point is that this may be a financial gain, but it is a moral loss. Our sense of what we have collectively as a people suffers a diminishment.

On to #9: "To Follow a Rule" (We skipped #8)
Oct. 96