Adam Smith’s Impartial Spectator: A Tool for Making More Ethical Decision
November 4, 2024 6:06 AM Subscribe
Adam Smith, ya know the father of Capitalism, introduced a concept called the Impartial Spectator in his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments. This idea is about an internal, invisible judge that helps us evaluate our thoughts and emotions. Smith uses the metaphor of “the man within the breast” to describe this inner observer, which helps us figure out if our actions are moral from a neutral standpoint.
There are different levels of wisdom and virtue represented by various internal observers:
1. Stage 1: Acts out of self-interest.
2. Stage 2: Considers the actions of a role model.
3. Stage 3: Emulates a superhero’s altruism.
4. Stage 4: Aspires to act like a deity, aiming to benefit the greatest number of people.
In an explainer video, a philosophy teacher breaks down this concept further using a graph. Another philosophy professor dives deep into the “man within the breast” idea in a detailed lecture.
There are different levels of wisdom and virtue represented by various internal observers:
1. Stage 1: Acts out of self-interest.
2. Stage 2: Considers the actions of a role model.
3. Stage 3: Emulates a superhero’s altruism.
4. Stage 4: Aspires to act like a deity, aiming to benefit the greatest number of people.
In an explainer video, a philosophy teacher breaks down this concept further using a graph. Another philosophy professor dives deep into the “man within the breast” idea in a detailed lecture.
Who says superheroes are altruistic? Who says deities aim to benefit the greatest number of people?! The former are corporate mascots dressed up as power fantasies, the later benefit (and can't stress this enough) Very Select People.
Not that it's bad to take a moment to consider your actions from an outside perspective, but I find it questionable to identify wisdom and virtue with degrees of power.
posted by Rudy_Wiser at 6:33 AM on November 4 [1 favorite]
Not that it's bad to take a moment to consider your actions from an outside perspective, but I find it questionable to identify wisdom and virtue with degrees of power.
posted by Rudy_Wiser at 6:33 AM on November 4 [1 favorite]
what about the beast within the man?
i got that dog in me
posted by dismas at 6:39 AM on November 4 [3 favorites]
i got that dog in me
posted by dismas at 6:39 AM on November 4 [3 favorites]
Wasn't it William S. Burroughs first talking about The Policeman Inside your Head?
posted by Rash at 6:48 AM on November 4 [4 favorites]
posted by Rash at 6:48 AM on November 4 [4 favorites]
Hey, that reminds me - I've been meaning to read The Theory of Moral Sentiments because it is referenced in this very interesting book: Melancholy Wedgewood, an "experimental biography" of Josiah Wedgewood which seems to suggest that Smith is weirder and less sanguine than we are lead to believe. I haven't finished Melancholy Wedgewood yet but 1. If you like WG Sebald this may be the book for you; and 2. my take-away is that all that early capitalism stuff is more vexed and ambiguous than we have been led to believe as our rah-rah-capitalism narratives have coalesced.
The linked article is by some kind of right-wing Catholic apologist who feels that teen culture is too immodest and that teens for some reason may be asking themselves "what would Lady Gaga do", unfortunately, which only highlights the intense risk of assuming that as an Old and a conservative white guy you understand the youths, but it does raise the really engaging point of, " the argument that Smith’s attempt anthropologically and rationally to reconstruct religion contributes to its actual decay. An impartial spectator that purports to replace a judging God with a (mere) construct, and yet relies on the original cultural force of the deity for its plausibility, ultimately undermines itself."
To anti-Kant: there are a lot of things that are dumb at the public/universal level that aren't dumb at the individual level. Or it's like the opposite of public health - there are measures that work well at the individual level ("I am going to wear a bike helmet to protect my head") that are counterproductive at the public health level (when people are required or strongly mandated to have safety equipment, they bike a lot less and average health declines).
Trying to figure out how to get to some kind of fairness in your own head by setting up an "Impartial Spectator" doesn't seem that weird or even particularly bad to me, since just trying to be fair requires pushing back against your inclincations - we all, even the cleverest and most politically right-on, fall victim to the usual cognitive biases. You needn't say, "the Impartial Spectator that you are making up must be Jehovah or Captain America, and "impartial" really means "white men are always right". In a sense fairness doesn't exist, but I feel like we live in a time which illustrates what happens when you abandon even the notion of fairness - all power-struggle all the time, and people who would rather deliberate and at least try to be fair have to engage in the power struggle or get flattened. Fairness is weakness right now and the weak go to the wall, but that doesn't mean that trying to be fair is so bad.
posted by Frowner at 7:09 AM on November 4 [10 favorites]
The linked article is by some kind of right-wing Catholic apologist who feels that teen culture is too immodest and that teens for some reason may be asking themselves "what would Lady Gaga do", unfortunately, which only highlights the intense risk of assuming that as an Old and a conservative white guy you understand the youths, but it does raise the really engaging point of, " the argument that Smith’s attempt anthropologically and rationally to reconstruct religion contributes to its actual decay. An impartial spectator that purports to replace a judging God with a (mere) construct, and yet relies on the original cultural force of the deity for its plausibility, ultimately undermines itself."
To anti-Kant: there are a lot of things that are dumb at the public/universal level that aren't dumb at the individual level. Or it's like the opposite of public health - there are measures that work well at the individual level ("I am going to wear a bike helmet to protect my head") that are counterproductive at the public health level (when people are required or strongly mandated to have safety equipment, they bike a lot less and average health declines).
Trying to figure out how to get to some kind of fairness in your own head by setting up an "Impartial Spectator" doesn't seem that weird or even particularly bad to me, since just trying to be fair requires pushing back against your inclincations - we all, even the cleverest and most politically right-on, fall victim to the usual cognitive biases. You needn't say, "the Impartial Spectator that you are making up must be Jehovah or Captain America, and "impartial" really means "white men are always right". In a sense fairness doesn't exist, but I feel like we live in a time which illustrates what happens when you abandon even the notion of fairness - all power-struggle all the time, and people who would rather deliberate and at least try to be fair have to engage in the power struggle or get flattened. Fairness is weakness right now and the weak go to the wall, but that doesn't mean that trying to be fair is so bad.
posted by Frowner at 7:09 AM on November 4 [10 favorites]
Impartiality is not identical with fairness.
posted by oddman at 7:13 AM on November 4 [2 favorites]
posted by oddman at 7:13 AM on November 4 [2 favorites]
Mod note: FYI, adjusted the title from "Ethical Decisio" to "Ethical Decision". Please go on.
posted by loup (staff) at 7:58 AM on November 4 [2 favorites]
posted by loup (staff) at 7:58 AM on November 4 [2 favorites]
impartial, except for all the cultural bias
(see also: Smith's contemporary countryman and national poet, Robert Burns, who wrote at length about the shared value of all humanity, but would've totally gone off and become an overseer of enslaved people had his health not failed)
posted by scruss at 8:47 AM on November 4 [3 favorites]
(see also: Smith's contemporary countryman and national poet, Robert Burns, who wrote at length about the shared value of all humanity, but would've totally gone off and become an overseer of enslaved people had his health not failed)
posted by scruss at 8:47 AM on November 4 [3 favorites]
I’ve figured out in my fifties that I am ASD, which partly explains why I’ve always thought like this. I can pick a side in some contexts, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking of each action in this sort of holistic abstract way. So I don’t do well with authority, sports, political parties, nationalism, or unconditional loyalty. This has caused me a lot of problems but just feels to me like the obvious way to be. At a home game when people are chanting “REFS YOU SUCK” I’m probably saying (nerd voice) “actually that was a fair call - refereeing is a hard job, why are we picking on them?” People hate me, but I’d be a fantastic judge.
posted by caviar2d2 at 8:58 AM on November 4 [4 favorites]
posted by caviar2d2 at 8:58 AM on November 4 [4 favorites]
So I don’t do well with authority
I’d be a fantastic judge
Hmm. A mediator, perhaps. Judges are authority figures serving a within a larger system authority (that limits what they can do and requires following binding decisions) and are expected to enforce rules with harsh consequences that may not feel (or be) fair within the context of a single case.
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:27 PM on November 4 [1 favorite]
I’d be a fantastic judge
Hmm. A mediator, perhaps. Judges are authority figures serving a within a larger system authority (that limits what they can do and requires following binding decisions) and are expected to enforce rules with harsh consequences that may not feel (or be) fair within the context of a single case.
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:27 PM on November 4 [1 favorite]
I don't see how a fantastic judge is at all in conflict with not dealing well with authority.
posted by Nec_variat_lux_fracta_colorem at 2:55 PM on November 4
posted by Nec_variat_lux_fracta_colorem at 2:55 PM on November 4
Here the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Smith and TMS. The highly topical praise you could give Smith's moral philosophy is that he'd obviously be giving effective altruism, as practiced by techbros, the serious side eye.
My dilettante's feeling on ethical systems is that they mostly consist of philosophers creating an algorithm that lets you rationalize all the things you already think are morally correct. Criticizing a system consists of trying to find some input for the algorithm that makes it spit out stuff that you think would be heinous.
This attitude makes me skeptical of the value of any system, but I guess at a broad level it seems like Smith is presenting a sort of anti-system: Don't overthink things from first principles, just try to be a good person. The SEP article suggests that it might be too much on moral sentiment and not enough of moral reasoning for my tastes, but it certainly seems like it's a plea to people to try to be the best version of themselves.
I read an abridged version of Wealth of Nations and I thought Smith was a good writer, and TMS has a much better reputation for clarity among contemporary readers. (TBF apparently everyone who reads the unabridged WoN finds it dull, repetitive and a slog to finish.) So it's been floating somewhere on my to-read list for a while, but I dip into "classics" (esp. nonfiction) far less often than i did in my 20s.
posted by mark k at 3:28 PM on November 4 [2 favorites]
My dilettante's feeling on ethical systems is that they mostly consist of philosophers creating an algorithm that lets you rationalize all the things you already think are morally correct. Criticizing a system consists of trying to find some input for the algorithm that makes it spit out stuff that you think would be heinous.
This attitude makes me skeptical of the value of any system, but I guess at a broad level it seems like Smith is presenting a sort of anti-system: Don't overthink things from first principles, just try to be a good person. The SEP article suggests that it might be too much on moral sentiment and not enough of moral reasoning for my tastes, but it certainly seems like it's a plea to people to try to be the best version of themselves.
I read an abridged version of Wealth of Nations and I thought Smith was a good writer, and TMS has a much better reputation for clarity among contemporary readers. (TBF apparently everyone who reads the unabridged WoN finds it dull, repetitive and a slog to finish.) So it's been floating somewhere on my to-read list for a while, but I dip into "classics" (esp. nonfiction) far less often than i did in my 20s.
posted by mark k at 3:28 PM on November 4 [2 favorites]
I don't see how a fantastic judge is at all in conflict with not dealing well with authority.
I'll try again. People who want to be invested with institutional authority to exert direct power over other's basic rights but don't feel their own actions or judgment should be constrained by any don't make great judges in our legal system.
And we have 'alternative dispute resolution' because that very legalism of the in-court process is not always the best way.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:53 AM on November 5
I'll try again. People who want to be invested with institutional authority to exert direct power over other's basic rights but don't feel their own actions or judgment should be constrained by any don't make great judges in our legal system.
And we have 'alternative dispute resolution' because that very legalism of the in-court process is not always the best way.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:53 AM on November 5
('our' being common law systems, in the framing of Adam Smith & etc)
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:31 AM on November 5
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:31 AM on November 5
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