Foundations of Freedom

Welfare-Based Arguments Against Paternalism

Simon R. Clarke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136256912
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

What makes individual freedom valuable? People have always believed in freedom, have sought it, and have sometimes fought and died for it. The belief that it is something to be valued is widespread. But does this belief have a rational foundation?

This book examines answers to these questions that are based on the welfare of the person whose freedom is at stake. There are various conceptions of a worthwhile life, a life that is valuable for the person whose life it is. These conceptions will be examined to see whether they are plausible and what their connection, if any, is to freedom. Are they compelling foundations for freedom? Does freedom make a person's life better or would his/her welfare be advanced by restricting freedom?

1 Pleasure and Desire

Two common ways of understanding well-being are as pleasure or as desire satisfaction. When we think about what it means for a life to be good for the one who has it, it seems reasonable to think that the life would contain happiness or the satisfaction of one’s desires; a good life consists in being happy or getting what one wants. This chapter examines the connection between individual freedom and these two conceptions of welfare. Would pleasure and desire provide grounds for individual freedom or could people be happier or have their desires met more if they had their freedom restricted? Section 1 briefly examines and rejects the pleasure view. Section 2 examines and also rejects one way of making the connection between freedom and desire satisfaction, according to which the former is a means to the latter. Section 3 examines a different way of conceiving the relation between the two, according to which freedom is a condition of worthwhile desires.

1. Freedom as a means to Happiness

One straightforward way of trying to ground freedom on well-being is to hold that well-being consists in happiness, and that having freedom makes people happy. If these claims were true, it would be good for people to have freedom; it would follow that if we want to promote welfare, we should probably have a society in which each person is free. (I say ‘probably’ because it would still be possible that we could restrict some people’s freedom for the greater happiness of others. But the connection would still provide a presumption for individual freedom).

Hedonism—the name given to the view that welfare consists in pleasure (happiness and pleasure are used here interchangeably)—has the virtue of capturing a common-sense view of what well-being is, identifying it with a sense of contentment or satisfaction with one’s life. People naturally seek pleasure and try to avoid pain. Hedonism can even allow for complexity— there could be different types of pleasures of varying importance. John Stuart Mill, for example, distinguished between higher and lower pleasures and held that the higher are worth more than the lower.¹ This could mean that the higher pleasures always outweigh the lower, or (more moderately) that they usually do but that a large amount of lower pleasures could count more for welfare than a small amount of higher pleasures. What is important about hedonism, for present purposes, is that well-being depends upon a person’s pleasurable mental states.

The hedonistic view faces a standard objection however. Imagine that scientists create an ‘experience machine.’ When a person is hooked up to the machine he will experience pleasure; he will never know the difference between the experiences and reality. The experiences could be of different types of pleasure, of higher pleasures, or whatever pleasures are valuable. On the pleasure account, the best life would be one spent plugged into the experience machine. But this does not seem like a good life. We do not care just about mental states. There is more to one’s life going well than having the right mental states. People don’t just want the experience of having an interesting job, falling in love, spending time with friends. We want to actually do things, to lead a life, not just feel pleasure.²

Even if the pleasure account of welfare is accepted, the connection with freedom does not always hold. While it is often, perhaps usually, true that people are happy when free and unhappy when their freedom is restricted, sometimes freedom and pleasure can conflict. The experience machine again illustrates this. Someone forced into being hooked up to the machine is not free but has a lot of pleasure. A similar illustration can be found in the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. This novel imagines a future in which almost all individual conduct is controlled by a central government but the population is kept happy by being forced to take pacifying drugs (as well as through genetic engineering). The result is a society containing a lot of happiness but not much freedom.

Two responses could be made here. One is that the people in the brave new world are not really happy, perhaps because their mental states are simple unsophisticated pleasures and that what matters are the higher pleasures. People in the brave new world may feel content but they do not experience the pleasures of achievement or deep romantic love, etc. It may be that the higher pleasures are more difficult to bring about by force, however it seems clear that we could imagine a society in which people’s mental states could be shaped in sophisticated ways to give them whatever mental states are most valuable. The result would be something different from Huxley’s vision but nevertheless a world in which there is very little freedom but much happiness. Societies have after all been known to try to force people into religion and this could perhaps have been in order that they learn the ‘higher pleasure’ of religious devotion.

The second response that could be made is that while the thought-experiment might be true in theory, in practice nothing like that society is possible and so given the way things are now, happiness is most furthered by people being free. Against this however, the circumstances in which people could have their freedom restricted in ways that make them happier are not that far removed from reality. Governments could, for example, restrict and constrain people but at the same time secretly add pharmaceutics to the water supply to improve people’s moods. They could manipulate, coerce, and deceive people in various ways in order to bring about pleasurable mental states. Individuals often do this to others or attempt to and while it would be difficult for government to do it on a much larger scale it does not seem impossibly hard. Hedonism, then, sometimes but not always provides support for freedom.

This conclusion is supported by the empirical data on freedom and happiness. Freedom in the World is a yearly survey that has measured the degree of freedom in each nation since the 1970s.³ In its 2011 findings, 194 nations were rated (on a scale of 1 (most free) to 7 (least free)) in terms of civil liberties, which cover freedom of belief, expression, association, movement, the rule of law, personal autonomy, and individual rights. For a measure of happiness, the Happy Planet Index is an international survey of levels of well-being and environmental impact.⁴ Setting aside the environmental measure, a life-satisfaction measure asks people about how satisfied they are (on a scale of 0 to 10) with their life as a whole. Now, putting these measures of freedom and happiness together, there is a general tendency that greater freedom correlates with more happiness. Of the nations that scored the highest for civil liberties, the average level of happiness is 7.275 (out of 10). Of the nations that scored in the lowest two categories of freedom (a rating of 6 or 7), the average level of happiness was 5.4. People are generally happier when they have freedom.

However there are some striking exceptions to the general tendency. Some nations have high levels of happiness despite their low degree of freedom; Saudi Arabia reports happiness of 7.7 but has a ranking of 6 for freedom, while two other countries (China and Cuba) each score 6.7 for happiness and also score 6 for freedom. (Remember happiness is from 0 to 10, the greater the better; while freedom’s scale is 1 (most free) to 7 (least free)). Several other countries that score only 4 or 5 for freedom have happiness levels above 7. Looking at the issue from the other direction, several countries endure low levels of happiness despite reasonably high amounts of freedom. One nation (Benin) that scores a 2 for freedom has a dismal 3 for happiness, while the people of Tanzania are (according to the Happy Planet Index) the most miserable in the world, scoring only 2.4, and this despite enjoying a freedom score of 3. Two other nations (Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone) in category 3 for freedom both score only 3.6 for happiness. These figures, all exceptions to the general tendency of higher freedom to correlate with greater happiness, may show that whether happiness is furthered by giving people freedom depends on the special conditions that hold in a nation.⁵

These findings are further supported by the few studies that have been done on the correlation between freedom and happiness. One study looks at different types of freedom (one of which is personal freedom; the others include economic freedom, the right to vote, and capability to choose) and happiness levels in forty-four countries in the early 1990s.⁶ It finds a statistically significant positive correlation between freedom generally and happiness, but three caveats should be noted:

1. There are exceptions to the positive correlation: three nations ranked lowest in terms of freedom but were moderately high in happiness, while two other nations had the lowest levels of happiness despite moderate amounts of freedom.

2. The positive correlation is weaker with regard to personal freedom alone than with freedom generally. Of the types of freedom in the study, personal freedom (being made up of freedom of religion, movement, marriage, reproduction, and sexual orientation) is the closest to the conception of freedom being examined in this book.

3. The study also examines the contribution to happiness made by wealth and finds that once this is controlled for, the correlation between freedom and happiness is weaker, even statistically insignificant (and even more so with personal freedom).⁷

For both theoretical and empirical reasons, then, we should conclude that the contingent connection between happiness and freedom is such that, while people’s happiness will often be furthered by liberty, it need not and will not always be the case.

2. Freedom as a means to Desire-Satisfaction

Instead of happiness, well-being can be thought of as desire-satisfaction. The two (happiness and desire-satisfaction) are not the same. The former focuses on the mental states of a person, while what is important on the latter is the state of affairs of the world. People have desires, and their desires are satisfied if and only if the state of affairs of the world corresponds to the desire. If I want a successful career, on this view, my life goes better if in fact I have one. If another person wants to spend her life meditating at the top of a secluded mountain, then doing that is the best life for her. If I want to see the latest blockbuster movie then my life is improved when I do so. Such a view offers an argument for freedom that parallels in structure the argument provided by the pleasure account: welfare consists in desire satisfaction and having freedom enables people to satisfy their desires.

However, the desire-satisfaction account of well-being also faces difficulties, both in itself and in its connection with freedom. Having one’s desires satisfied does not always make one better off. If I desire to drink from the glass in front of me, not knowing that it contains poison, having that desire fulfilled will harm me rather than improve my welfare. Wanting to marry someone in the false belief that it would be a loving and rewarding relationship, when in fact it will be dismal and torturous cohabitation is another desire the fulfilment of which is not good for me. To avoid such difficulties, the desire-satisfaction view can be adjusted so that it holds that only the satisfaction of rational desires—desires one would have if fully aware of the relevant information and made no errors of reasoning—or ultimate desires—desires (such as the desire to drink good wine, not poison, and to be happily married) underlying one’s surface desires (such as the desire to drink from the glass and to marry this person)—furthers one’s well-being. Even with such adjustment, the view is still too wide. I may want a stranger on a train I meet to do well in his life, or that there are life forms living on other planets. These desires could be fully informed and ultimate, yet it is difficult to see how their fulfilment makes my life go better. Desires have to be connected with one’s own life in some significant way in order to count.⁸ A deeper objection is that the desire-satisfaction view, even suitably qualified to meet the points just raised, gets its explanation of well-being back-to-front. It is not because we want something that getting it makes our life go better. Rather, there are reasons why we want it; it is valuable for some independent reason. If that reason did not exist then we would not desire it. Consider friendship and the plausible claim that having close friends makes my life go better. I may want close friends and be fortunate enough to have them, but it is not the wanting that grounds why having them is good. Rather, having friends is valuable and that is why I want them. If I did not want them, I would think my life worse.⁹

Even if the desire-satisfaction account is accepted, despite the above difficulties, does it support freedom? Like the happiness view, it has trouble doing so. Admittedly, restrictions of freedom often prevent people from doing what they want to do. So in order for people to achieve their desires, they must have the freedom to do so. However, there is a major problem with this connection between freedom and desire-satisfaction. While restrictions of freedom may sometimes prevent people from achieving their desires, sometimes (as we have already seen) achieving one’s desires does not further one’s good if the desires are irrational. Restricting the freedom of people about to unknowingly drink poison or marry a patently unsuitable mate would not undermine the satisfaction of their informed desires. So whenever there is a conflict between informed desires and actual desires, a concern for well-being gives reason to prevent people acting on their actual desires. The result is that the desire account’s case for freedom faces a dilemma. If it focuses on actual desires, the support for freedom is firmer since restrictions of freedom often conflict with people’s actual desires. But actual desires can be mistaken and fulfilment of a mistaken desire does not advance welfare. If, instead, the justification for liberty focuses on informed desires (which seem more plausible as a measure of welfare) and if actual and informed desires conflict, then the support for freedom is less firm, since bringing about the fulfilment of informed desires could sometimes require restricting freedom. The dilemma can be avoided by bringing it about that people’s informed desires are also their actual desires. If that were so then people’s actual desires could track their real interests; there would be less reason, on the desire account, to restrict freedom since people would not have mistaken desires. But if, as will at least sometimes be the case, people have irrational actual desires, the desire account gives only qualified support for freedom.

This is the main problem with the desire-satisfaction justification for individual freedom. People’s desires are sometimes uninformed or otherwise irrational, and being free to satisfy them will not make people better off. Furthering their informed desires would sometimes warrant intervention with freedom. As Griffin puts it:

Both philosophers and social scientists have been powerfully drawn to [the actual-desire account of welfare] because it leaves no room for paternalism; . . . Yet, notoriously, we mistake our own interests. It is depressingly common that when even some of our strongest and most central desires are fulfilled, we are no better, even worse, off.¹⁰

Desires can be mistaken for a number of types of errors. They can be misinformed, as when people marry in the mistaken belief that the marriage will be a happy one or when they train for a career not realizing its true nature. Or desires can be based on errors of reasoning: ‘A lot of practical reasoning is about adapting means to ends and, like any reasoning, it can be confused, irrelevant, or question-begging.’¹¹ Illustrations of these types of errors are numerous. People sometimes mistakenly judge probabilities such as their chances of being in a traffic accident and so do not desire to wear a seatbelt while in a car.¹² People can also be bad at judging their long-term interests, irrationally discounting events far in the future.¹³ A young person may, for example, choose not to save money for the future, even though the enjoyment he would get from spending the money when old would exceed whatever enjoyment he gets from spending it now. Many worthwhile activities involve higher start-up costs at their beginning than less worthwhile activities. The pleasures of passive consumption are high at first, while the psychic costs of say learning a musical instrument or becoming a painter are great. This means that even though the payofflater on of the latter type of activities is so high that they are overall the more worthwhile choices, people may fail to choose them, due to irrational timediscounting or weakness of the will. Given a choice between options, people may ‘not bring themselves to undergo the painful learning process that is required’¹⁴ for the more worthwhile options. There is also evidence that people overestimate certain criteria in decisions; people expect to be better offif they live in a warm climate even though life-satisfaction reports in such areas are no better.¹⁵ When people make choices between options that involve qualitative and quantitative criteria, they sometimes overestimate the importance of the quantitative matters to their overall well-being; in a choice between a higher-paying but unpleasant job and one that pays less but is more fulfilling, for example, people may pay more attention to the higher pay of the first even though better offoverall (even in people’s own subjective self-reports of welfare) in the second.¹⁶ Another class of mistaken desires is comprised of those made in the light of misguided value judgements; a person can choose a couch potato lifestyle or choose cheap pop over classical music or cheap literature over Proust. He would choose differently if he had ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Pleasure and Desire
• 2. Self-Development
• 3. Autonomy
• 4. Social Forms
• 5. Endorsement
• 6. Activeness and Intention
• 7. Trust
• 8. Summary and Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibiliography
• Index