by Deryck Beyleveld and Shaun D. Pattinson, “Defending Moral Precaution as a Solution to the Problem of Other Minds: A Reply to Holm and Coggon,” Ratio Juris 23 (2) (2010): 258−-273.
61 61 For a more thorough treatment of this author’s views on this topic see: Michael Boylan and Kevin Brown, Genetic Engineering: Ethics and Science on the New Frontier (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002).
Basic Goods
Level One: Most Deeply Embedded 1 (That which is absolutely necessary for Human Action): Food, Water, Sanitation, Clothing, Shelter, Protection from Unwarranted bodily harm (including basic health care)Level Two: Deeply Embedded (That which is necessary for effective basic action within any given society)
Literacy in the language of the country
Basic mathematical skills
Other fundamental skills necessary to be an effective agent in that country, e.g., in the United States some computer literacy is necessary
Some familiarity with the culture and history of the country in which one lives
The assurance that those you interact with are not lying to promote their own interests
The assurance that those you interact with will recognize your human dignity (as per above) and not exploit you as a means only
Basic human rights such as those listed in the U.S. Bill of Rights and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Secondary Goods
Level One: Life Enhancing, Medium to High-Medium on Embeddedness
Basic societal respect
Equal opportunity to compete for the prudential goods of society
Ability to pursue a life plan according to the Personal Worldview Imperative
Ability to participate equally as an agent in the Shared Community Worldview Imperative
Level Two: Useful, Medium to Low Medium Embeddedness
Ability to utilize one’s real and portable property in the manner she chooses
Ability to gain from and exploit the consequences of one’s labor regardless of starting point
Ability to pursue goods that are generally owned by most citizens, e.g., in the United States today a telephone, television, and automoble would fit into this class
Level Three: Luxurious, Low Embeddedness
Ability to pursue goods that are pleasant even though they are far removed from action and from the expectations of most citizens within a given country, e.g., in the United States today a European vacation would fit into this class
Ability to exert one’s will so that she might extract a disproportionate share of society’s resources for her own use.
3 The Tragedy of the Commons
GARRETT HARDIN
At the end of a thoughtful article on the future of nuclear war, Wiesner and York (1) concluded that: “Both sides in the arms race are…confronted by the dilemma of steadily increasing military power and steadily decreasing national security. It is our considered professional judgment that this dilemma has no technical solution. If the great powers continue to look for solutions in the area of science and technology only, the result will be to worsen the situation.”
I would like to focus your attention not on the subject of the article (national security in a nuclear world) but on the kind of conclusion they reached, namely that there is no technical solution to the problem. An implicit and almost universal assumption of discussions published in professional and semipopular scientific journals is that the problem under discussion has a technical solution. A technical solution may be defined as one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality.
In our day (though not in earlier times) technical solutions are always welcome. Because of previous failures in prophecy, it takes courage to assert that a desired technical solution is not possible. Wiesner and York exhibited this courage; publishing in a science journal, they insisted that the solution to the problem was not to be found in the natural sciences. They cautiously qualified their statement with the phrase, “It is our considered professional judgment….” Whether they were right or not is not the concern of the present chapter. Rather, the concern here is with the important concept of a class of human problems which can be called “no technical solution problems,” and, more specifically, with the identification and discussion of one of these.
It is easy to show that the class is not a null class. Recall the game of tick-tack-toe. Consider the problem, “How can I win the game of tick-tack-toe?” It is well known that I cannot, if I assume (in keeping with the conventions of game theory) that my opponent understands the game perfectly. Put another way, there is no “technical solution” to the problem. I can win only by giving a radical meaning to the word “win.” I can hit my opponent over the head; or I can drug him; or I can falsify the records. Every way in which I “win” involves, in some sense, an abandonment of the game, as we intuitively understand it. (I can also, of course, openly abandon the game—refuse to play it. This is what most adults do.)
The class of “No technical solution problems” has members. My thesis is that the “population problem,” as conventionally conceived, is a member of this class. How it is conventionally conceived needs some comment. It is fair to say that most people who anguish over the population problem are trying to find a way to avoid the evils of overpopulation without relinquishing any of the privileges they now enjoy. They think that farming the seas or developing new strains of wheat will solve the problem—technologically. I try to show here that the solution they seek cannot be found. The population problem cannot be solved in a technical way, any more than can the problem of winning the game of tick-tack-toe.
What Shall We Maximize?
Population, as Malthus said, naturally tends to grow “geometrically,” or, as we would now say, exponentially. In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world’s goods must steadily decrease. Is ours a finite world?
A fair defense can be put forward for the view that the world is infinite; or that we do not know that it is not. But, in terms of the practical problems that we must face in the next few generations with the foreseeable technology, it is clear that we will greatly increase human misery if we do not, during the immediate future, assume that the world available to the terrestrial human population is finite. “Space” is no escape (2).
A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero. (The case of perpetual wide fluctuations above and below zero is a trivial variant that need not be discussed.) When this condition is met, what will be the situation of mankind? Specifically, can Bentham’s goal of “the greatest good for the greatest number” be realized?
No—for two reasons, each sufficient by itself. The first is a theoretical one. It is not mathematically possible to maximize for two (or more) variables at the same time. This was clearly stated by von Neumann and Morgenstern (3), but the principle is implicit in the theory of partial differential equations, dating back at least to D’Alembert (1717−1783).
The second reason springs directly from biological facts. To live, any organism must have a source of energy (for example, food). This energy is utilized for two purposes: mere maintenance and work. For man, maintenance