Groups and roles

I’ve had a grad student, Nathan Mueller, do an independent study in social epistemology in the hope of learning from him about the area (and indeed, I have learned much from him), so I’ve been thinking about group stuff once a week (at least). Here’s something that hit me today during our meeting. There is an interesting disanalogy between individuals and groups. Each group is partly but centrally defined by a role, with different groups often having different defining roles. The American Philosophical Association has a role defined by joint philosophical engagement, while the Huaco Bowmen have a role defined by joint archery. But this is not the case for individuals. While individuals have roles, the only roles that it is very plausible to say that they are partly and centrally defined by are general roles that all human beings have, roles like human being or child of God.

This means that if we try to draw analogies between group and individual concepts such as belief or intention, we should be careful to draw the analogy between the group concept and the concept as it applies not just to an individual but to an individual-in-a-role. Thus, the analogy is not between, say, the APA believing some proposition and my believing some proposition, but between the APA believing some proposition and my believing that proposition qua father (or qua philosopher or qua mathematician).

If this is right, then it suggests an interesting research program: Study the attribution of mental properties to individuals-in-roles as a way of making progress on the attribution of analogous properties to groups. For instance, there are well-founded worries in the social epistemology literature about simple ways of moving from the belief of the members of the group to the belief of the group (e.g., attributing to the group any belief held by the majority of the members). These might be seen to parallel the obvious fact that one cannot move from my believing p to my believing p qua father (or qua mathematician). And perhaps if we better understand what one needs to add to my believing p to get that I believe p qua father, this addition will help us understand the group case.

(I should say, for completeness, that my claim that the only roles that human beings are partly and centrally defined by are general roles like human being is controversial. Our recent graduate Mengyao Yan in her very interesting dissertation argues that we are centrally defined by token roles like child of x. She may even be right about the specific case of descent-based roles like child of x, given essentiality of origins, but I do not think it is helpful to analyze the attribution of mental properties to us in general in terms of us having these roles.)

"Should know"

I’ve been thinking about the phrase “x should know that s”. (There is probably a literature on this, but blogging just wouldn’t be as much fun if one had to look up the literature!) We use this phrase—or its disjunctive variant “x knows or should know that s”—very readily, without its calling for much evidence about x.

• “As an engineer Alice should know that more redundancy was needed in this design.”

• “Bob knows or should know that his behavior is unprofessional for a librarian.”

• “Carl should have known that genocide is wrong.”

Here’s a sense of “x should know that s”: x has some relevant role R and it is normal for those in R to know that s under the relevant circumstances. In that sense, to say that x should know that s we don’t need to know anything specific about x’s history or mental state, other than that x has role R. Rather, we need to know about R: it is normal engineering practice to build in sufficient redundancy; librarians have an unwritten code of professional behavior; human beings normally have a moral law written in their hearts.

This role-based sense of “should know” is enough to justify treating x as a poor exemplar of the role R when x does not in fact know that s. When R is a contingent role, like engineer or librarian, it could be a sufficient for drumming x out of R.

But we sometimes seem use a “should know” claim to underwrite moral blame. And the normative story I just gave about “should know” isn’t strong enough for that. Alice might have had a really poor education as an engineer, and couldn’t have known better. If the education was sufficiently poor, we might kick her out of the profession, but we shouldn’t blame her morally.

Carl, of course, is a case apart. Carl’s ignorance makes him a defective human being, not just a defective engineer or librarian. Still a defective human being is not the same as a morally blameworthy human being. And in Carl’s case we can’t drum him out of the relevant role without being able to levy moral blame on him, as drumming him out of humanity is, presumably, capital punishment. However, we can lock him up for the protection of society.

On the other hand, we could take “x should know that s” as saying something about x’s state, like that it is x’s own fault if x doesn’t know. But in that case, I think people often use the phrase without sufficient justification. Yes, it’s normal to know that genocide is wrong. But we live in a fallen world where people can fall very far short of what is normal through no fault of their own, by virtue of physical and mental disease, the intellectual influence of others, and so on.

I worry that in common use the phrase “x should know that s” has two rationally incompatible features:

• Our evidence only fits with the role-based normative reading.

• The conclusions only fit with the personal fault reading.

Role kinds

Some kinds of roles succeed in imposing norms on those in roles of that kind. For instance, friends should help each other because they are friends, and spouses should be faithful to each other because they are spouses. Other kinds of roles do not succeed in imposing any norms. If I hurt you, I cannot rationalize my action by saying that I did that because I was your enemy. That may be an explanation, but being an enemy imposed no norm on me. At most it imposes merely apparent norms (before Socrates, the Greeks thought you should treat your enemies badly--they were wrong). What makes the difference? What gives some roles the genuine normative power they have?

Here is a natural law hypothesis I am attracted to. There are some natural human roles, and they each impose norms on those who fill them. I've in effect argued that spouse is one of those roles. Some other plausible examples: parent, child, friend, authority, subject of authority. Our nature specifies a potentiality to such roles, and gives them their normative power. There is a classificatory hierarchy between the natural roles. Spouse is a sub-role of friend, for instance. (An interesting and controversial question: are husband and wife natural sub-roles of spouse? If so, there will be further norms to being a husband and to being a wife.) And then all roles that have normative power are either natural roles or sub-roles specialized on the scaffolding of one or more natural roles, inheriting all their normative power from the natural roles. For instance, the roles of president and monarch are socially constructed sub-roles of authority, and their normative power over those in the role entirely comes from the role of authority. What about the normative power of the role over other people? That I suspect actually comes from the other people having the roles of citizen or subject, respectively, which are both sub-roles of the natural role of subject of authority. Being a monarch spouse is, on the other hand, a constructed sub-role of two different roles: monarch and spouse. (Think here of object oriented languages with multiple inheritance.) And while spouse is natural monarch is a constructed sub-role of authority.

In the above, I was talking about roles considered as general types, like spouse or parent or monarch. These types have tokens: spouse of Bill, parent of Joey, monarch of Canada. One can think of these token roles as also sub-roles, specializations of the role. An interesting question: is there any token role that is natural? That would be a token role whose normative force comes not just from the type role that it is a token of, as when being a spouse of Bill gets its normative force from being a spouse of someone-in-general. I think one plausible case is when the role is with respect to God. Being a subject of God may be a natural role. (What about friend of God? Perhaps that, too, but there the relevant nature may be a grace-nature.)

We can ask some interesting structural questions. Is there a highest level natural role? Perhaps being human or being a person. I have in the past speculated that it might be friend, but I now think that's mistaken, because friend roles are tied to particular individuals, while some of the other roles are not: an authority need not change qua authority when subjects are replaced by others (through conception, death and migration), but a friend does change in respect of friendship when friends come and go.

And how is this all tied to love? I suspect like this. Love isn't itself a role. But the roles determine which form one's love should take. Maybe in fact that is how they exercise their normative force, and that is what explains why there can't be a natural role such as enemy.

Marriage as a natural kind

Thesis: Marriage as a natural kind of relationships is a better theory than marriage as an institution defined by socially instituted rights and responsibilities.

Argument 1: On the institution view, we have to say that people in most other cultures aren't married since they don't have the same socially instituted rights and responsibilities. That's bad, since they say they're married when they learn English. The natural kind view holds, instead, that people in different cultures are referring to the same kind of relationship, but may get wrong what is and is not a part of the relationship.

We do not automatically accept educational credentials from other cultures. Thus, being medically educated in France does not automatically make one count as medically educated in the U.S. And being medically educated in 5th century France would make one not one whit medically educated in 21st century France (imagine a 5th century doctor who travels in time). In other words, being medically educated is always indexed to a set of standards. But we don't think of marriage in this way, with a few notable exceptions, such as polygamy or same-sex marriage. Getting married in India is sufficient for being married in France. Why? If one thinks of getting married as assenting to a set of rights and responsibilities, then getting married in India shouldn't be sufficient for being married in France, or vice versa.

Argument 2: The natural kind view explains how we can individually and as a society discover new rights and responsibilities involved in marriage. The institution view leads either to constant abolishment of the old institution and replacement with a new one, or to a stale conservatism. We learn about the rights and responsibilities of marriage experientially and not just a priori or by poring over legal tomes. That is how it is with a natural kind like water.

Argument 3: Suppose we see someone from a patriarchal culture who is failing to care for his sick wife (or at least someone he calls a wife). We might well say: "It's your duty as a husband to take care of her." On the institution view, he can respond: "No, it isn't. It would be my duty to take care of her if I were her husband-per-American-rules, but I am her husband-per-Patriland-rules, and in Patriland wives take care of their husbands and husbands do not need to take care of their wives." But on the natural kind view, we can say: "You tried to marry her, and marriage does require taking care of a sick spouse, regardless of who is of what sex. So either you succeeded at marrying, in which case you have this responsibility, or you failed at marrying, in which case you don't have the rights you thought you gained." On the institution view all we can say is: "You're in a corrupt and sexist institution, and you should divorce to stop supporting it. By the way, you're right that you have no role duty to take care of her."

Argument 4a (for conservatives): If you take the institution view, you play into Wedgwood's argument for same-sex "marriage".

Argument 4b (for liberals): If you take the institution view, you cannot advocate same-sex marriage, but only same-sex "marriage". You have to adopt the very revisionery position that marriage should be abolished, albeit replaced with something very much like it, namely marriage*, since marriage is defined by the social understanding, and that has included opposition of sexes. Moreover, such a view leads to unhappy consequences. Once we have replaced marriage with marriage*, we can't say that our grandparents are married*, only that they are married, and since marriage* is the only relationship available after the revision, you can't do what your grandparents did. Moreover, even allowing our grandparents to stay married is problematic if marriage is an unjust institution. So probably the state needs to dissolve their marriage, leaving it up to them whether to marry*. This is a politically untenable and unhappy view. A much better view is that marriage is a natural kind, and we were simply wrong in thinking marriage is only for people of the opposite sex. This (and Argument 3, too) is a species of the general point that relativistic theses run the danger of leading to stale conservatism.

Natural roles

I've been thinking about roles such as being married, being a parent, being a sibling, being a second cousin, being a firefighter, being a president or being a monarch. These roles come along with moral duties, permissions and rights. Each role has entry conditions, such that when one satisfies the entry condition, one falls under the role, and some of the roles have exit conditions. In some roles the entry conditions involve one's agreeing to enter the role—marriage, firefighting, presidency and monarchy are like that—but in some the entry conditions may have nothing to do with one. On the other hand, one need not do anything to become a sibling.

Here's what I am inclined to think about such roles. Our human nature specifies what one might call natural roles. Some of our natural roles directly give us roles. Thus, I think being married and being a parent are natural roles. I am not sure about being a sibling, and I quite doubt that being a second cousin, being a firefighter and being a president are natural roles.

Roles can have sub-roles which have more specific duties, permissions and rights. These sub-roles derive all their normative force from the full role and other conditions. For instance, the role of parent has sub-roles such as: parent of a small child and parent of an adult child. The moral duties, permissions and rights associated with the sub-role derive from the moral duties, permissions and rights associated with the full role together with the fact of the satisfaction of the condition.

My big conjecture is that all roles that are not natural are sub-roles of natural roles. Thus, there is no natural role of second cousin, but there is a natural role of distant relative, perhaps. The duties, permissions and rights of being a distant relative depend on multiple conditions, including the closeness of the relationship and the operative social conventions. So there may be such a thing as the role of second cousin in mid-twentieth century rural Pennsylvania. All the moral normative oomph in this sub-role comes from the moral normative oomph of the natural role of distant relative. It does this by means of the natural role having requirements that are conditional, in this case on closeness of relationship and the social conventions in place. For instance, the natural role of distant cousin may say: "Fulfill those non-immoral conventional duties associated with your degree d of relationship whose fulfillment does not exceed degree of onerousness c(d)", where c(d) is some function setting a cap for how onerous a conventional duty one is required to fulfill in the case of a degree d of relationship (presumably the closer d is, the higher the cap). In this way, conventional duties (which on my view are no more duties in themselves than rubber ducks are ducks) become moral duties when the natural role makes them so. Thus, a conventional duty to come to second cousins' weddings yields a moral rule that one should come to second cousins' weddings, when the onerousness does not exceed c(d), where d is the degree of relationship involved in being a second cousin.

We could have cases of non-natural roles whose moral normative oomph derives from two or more natural roles. In this case, we can say that the non-natural role is a sub-role of an aggregate of natural roles (we may or may not want to say that it is a sub-role of each natural role in the aggregate). Thus, while monarchy may simply be a sub-role of public authority, which is a natural role, being a fire-fighter and being a president may be sub-roles of public authority and being an employee.

There may also be merely conventional roles. Merely conventional roles are of no interest to me here. They do not role-ishly result in moral duties, permissions and rights, and non-moral duties, permissions and rights are of little more interest to me than rubber ducks are to ornithologists. :-)

Self-identification

To identify myself in the relevant sense with some quality is to see that quality as embodying a particularly important feature of myself, as making others who have that feature be potential particularly salient role models for me, etc. This isn't any sort of attempt at an analysis of identification, but simply to hint at which sense of "identify with" I am using. In particular, to identify myself with Q involves existentially more than just identifying myself as having Q, and does not imply a weird claim that I believe I am identical with the Platonic entity Q.

I think I should identify myself with being a child of God, a Christian, a father, a husband, a son or daughter, and maybe a philosopher. I should not identify myself with being big-nosed or lazy or a Frenchman. The last sentence may seem a mix: Maybe I shouldn't identify myself with being a Frenchman, because I am not one. Maybe I shouldn't identify myself with being lazy, because although I am lazy, that is something to fight against rather than identify with. Perhaps I shouldn't identify myself with being big-nosed, because although I have a big nose, and that's nothing to fight against, it's still superficial.

Is there some general story we can tell about what qualities of myself I should identify myself with, a story that will help with the question: Should I identify myself with my ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, etc.? 

Clearly, the virtuous person identifies with having certain values, and there are certain things that no virtuous person would identify with.

Identifying oneself with a quality, even a quite innocent quality, can carry serious dangers. There is a danger of being guided by stereotypes rather than healthy role models. There is a danger of self-reduction--of not sufficiently seeing oneself in one's individuality (and, correlatively, not sufficiently seeing others in their individuality). There may be a self-curtailing of one's autonomy.

Here is a rough hypothesis. You should only identify with having Q when having Q places you under serious role-obligations whose fulfillment either requires this identification or at least is very difficult without such identification.

Since something that constricts one to fulfill one's serious duties does not objectionably curtail one's autonomy, the autonomy worry about qualities does not apply. Moreover, when the role involves serious role-obligations, the need for role models may outweigh the danger of stereotyping. When the physician identifies herself with being a physician, there is the danger she will rely on stereotypes of her profession, but more likely it will help her fulfill her serious obligations by looking to good role-models. Moreover, one's individuality is particularly importantly expressed in one's serious role-obligations.

The hypothesis fits with what I think about the cases. I think that being a child of God, a Christian, a father, a husband, a son or daughter, and maybe a philosopher each implies serious role-obligations, and the need to fulfill these calls for a self-identification. (My choice to put "father" and "husband" rather than "parent" and "spouse", and "son or daughter" rather than "son", is deliberate and obviously controversial. I am inclined to think the parental and spousal roles are gendered in a way in which filial roles are not, though I am not able to provide a full account. But my bigger points do not depend on this controversial claim.) But being big-nosed, lazy or a Frenchman does not provide me with role-obligations. Being a Frenchman doesn't provide me with role-obligations because I'm not a Frenchman. Being big-nosed is too superficial. Being lazy provides me with an obligation to cease to be lazy, but that is just a special case of a general obligation to be industrious.