Genius and self-respect
Are we responsible for our willingness to work hard?
Continuing our David Brooks kick, the NYT columnist recently summarized two books on the formation of genius: The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle and Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin.
He writes:
The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it’s deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft.
The primary trait…is not some mysterious genius. It’s the ability to develop a deliberate, strenuous and boring practice routine.
This presents a challenge for many contemporary egalitarians, whose main argument is:
1. All people are equal morally and thus, ex ante, deserve the same amount of resources or welfare.
2. Inequalities in resources or welfare are justifiable only insofar as they reflect people’s choices, and not their random-luck.
3. The luck of being born with high intelligence, nurturing parents, wealthy parents, etc. significantly determines one’s resources and welfare.
Therefore, 4. Justice demands a massive resource redistribution. One does not deserve more than another merely due to luck.
However, what if diligent practice really is the biggest factor, as Brooks implies? That doesn’t logically invalidate the egalitarian moral argument (steps 1 and 2), but it complicates its policy conclusion (step 4), since the resource/welfare distribution might not parallel the distribution of luck, but rather the distribution of diligence levels.
The egalitarian reply is that the ability to practice diligently and to focus is largely the product of circumstance, and it would be unfair if one person had a worse life than another merely because he was born with less pushy parents, or whatever circumstances makes one diligent.
This empirical claim must be true to a certain degree. To some extent, people (children) are trained to work hard and to practice; or, they are trained to train themselves.
Must we then say that those geniuses don’t morally deserve the fruits of their labor, at least not insofar as it creates an inequality with others who live worse off through no choice of their own? Many contemporary egalitarians respond: YES!
One reply is that self-respect must be one of the resources/sources of welfare to be “distributed” by society. Or at least it is a phenomenon that contains enormous moral weight. What if out of a concern for egalitarian justice, society forwarded the notion that people are not especially responsible for their achievements because they are not especially responsible for their willingness to work hard and other lucky talents? I worry that in such a situation, people’s self-respect would be threatened, and not just the self-respect of geniuses.
Self-respect means something like “I am doing a good job, according to my understanding of my capabilities and the good life.” It is subjective mostly; the job of high-school basketball coach might make one person feel like a great success and another an abject failure.
If anyone internalizes a conception of humanity whereby his free will is a constrained power, one without much control over his destiny, his possibility for self-respect will be diminished. For he can only respect himself for things that he (via his free will) has accomplished. If he believes everything he does is largely the product of circumstance, a sense of powerlessness and ennui would likely ensue. ”I didn’t achieve this status of high-school basketball coach; it just happened, like almost everything small and large in my life does. Sigh.”
But, what if it really is mostly circumstance?
If we assume, arguendo, that (a) most successes are the product of luck (via talents, parents, etc.), (b) ensuring the possibility of self-respect is one of justice’s paramount concerns, and (c) that people’s capacity for self-respect is severely diminished if they believe that life is mostly the product of luck, we are in a bit of a pickle if we accept the contemporary egalitarian argument. For that argument demands that we obliterate inequalities based on luck. But, that argument also accounts for–or should account for–ensuring the possibility of self-respect (what else is more important?). How can justice demand a conception of the person and a resulting redistribution that threatens one of the central concerns of justice? Is self-respect such a central concern?
My response might be to say that justice demands we uphold a conception of the person whereby he is responsible for his willingness to work hard and his directional life choices (i.e. what paths he pursues, both from a day-to-day and broader perspective). This ensures the possibility of self-respect, and accords with common-sense notions of person-hood that form the basis of liberal society. It also means people are a lot more responsible for their developed talents than under the standard contemporary egalitarian view. This constrains, but doesn’t necessarily preclude, discussion of redistribution.
The meat of this conclusion is that we don’t know (and will never know, maybe) to what extent people’s lives are determined by luck. And we ought to forward the conception of the person that maximizes our other moral concerns (i.e. self-respect).
The egalitarian might reply that we ought to just equalize without saying that it’s because people’s lives are largely the product of circumstance. But is this disingenuous from their perspective? Is it any less disingenuous than my proposal?
One big question is whether my self-respect worries are valid. This is empirically verifiable. Do people in egalitarian countries that forward a deterministic conception of the person have less self-respect than others? Certainly, there would be more comparative self-respect, meaning there will be less self-disrespect derived from having less than other people, since there will be more equality in general. But is this worth much in light of the deterministic conception of the person? Should it be worth much? I don’t know whether a deterministic conception of the person forms a role in the Scandinavian social welfare systems.
Another concern is that if most things are the product of circumstance, why are humans so special; why do they have rights, etc., ensuring their autonomy if they aren’t especially autonomous? Maybe they don’t deserve them, is one possible (frightening) reply.
And a final question: What is self-respect? Why is it important? How does it compare and relate to other social justice concerns (i.e. happiness, freedom, distributive justice, etc.)? The argument I made above entails at least some necessary connection between self-respect and autonomy/freedom.
I will write more later. There is much to criticize here, especially with my proposal, and I hope Marc, Sam, and John will oblige.
-Jake
Related posts:
- Nordic self-respect
- The American Dream and self-resect
- Who gets Bubbles the chimp?
- Guest Post: What does respect mean to Horst Köhler?
- Libertarianism
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[...] American Dream poses interesting questions for self-respect. I earlier argued that self-respect should be a primary concern of politics and political [...]
[...] I theorized that a deterministic conception of the person–one wherein our lives are largely the product [...]
[...] This presents the same challenge for contemporary egalitarianism that I discussed in an earlier post. [...]
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