Inside Out

According to philosopher Thomas Nagel, people tend to see their own interests and harms in moral terms.

Someone could escape from this argument if, when he was asked, "How would you like it it someone did that to you?" he answered, "I wouldn't resent it at all. I wouldn't like it if someone stole my umbrella in a rainstorm, but I wouldn't think there was any reason for him to consider my feelings about it." But how many people could honestly give that answer? I think that most people, unless they're crazy, would think that their own interests and harms matter, not only to themselves, but in a way that gives other people a reason to care about them too. We all think that when we suffer it is not just bad for us but bad, period.
"What Does It All Mean?: A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy" 1987

Professor Nagel's general point is that this works both ways. The "argument" he posits someone attempting to escape is that people should see others interests and harms as matter in a way that creates a reason to care about them. But I think that people might work "from the inside out" on things like this. Just as children are often keenly aware of when people disregard their personal interests and harms, yet are less attuned to those of other people, I think that even people grow out of that, they still start with themselves and work outward.

Immanuel Kant rejected the idea that people were motivated by the sole sake of doing something wrong. Instead he identifies two primary motivations: the love of self and the moral law.

And while I'm not sure that either Mr. Kant or Professor Nagel would approve, I'm going to link the two of them. Kant's love of self can be thought of as people's understanding that their own interests and harms create moral imperatives for other people, and the moral law can be thus linked to people's understanding that others persons interests and harms create binding moral rules for the self.

If we presume that most people do work "from the inside out," their first considerations would be what they understand that other people owe them; care for their interests and harms. And while they're focused on this need, they have less, or even no, bandwidth for other concerns. And I think the United States, with it's generally low level of social trust, illustrates this. Not just in the fact that Americans are notorious for acting in their own interests at the expense of other considerations, but also in the sense that many people seem to have difficulty understanding that this is what other people are doing, too.

I started this with a quote from Thomas Nagel, because of Professor Nagel's offhand remark about a person being crazy not to think that their own interests and harms should matter to other people. It irks me a bit, since I think that a person can be of the opinion that other people don't owe them anything and not have any mental health or ethical problems in need of addressing. But I understand that what's really at work here is an understanding of ubiquity. As far as Professor Nagel is concerned, pretty much everyone subscribes to that theory of moral obligation. And I don't think I blame him for that. Because that's the way our society behaves. In the end, Professor Nagel is attempting to put a more formal framework around "treat others as you would wish to be treated," and so he starts by defining how he understands most people wish to be treated.

The problem arises, I think, because for many people, it also ends there. People understand how they wish to be treated, see other people acting in accordance with that the moral law, and only once they are satisfied can they really flip the script, as it were. I suppose that one can think of it as a variation on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. People may have a need to act in accordance with the moral law, but until they satisfy the love of self, they're not really positioned to act on it. And maybe this is why one can say that people don't scale well, in the sense that larger communities have difficulties that smaller ones do not. Put enough disparate people together, and people are likely to find someone who they don't feel respects their personal interests and harms, and therefore. And this lack of social trust becomes as reason to act out of the love of self. After all, if others won't do it, then the individual has to, in order to have their needs met.

Of course, this is a remarkable hodgepodge for what should be a simple concept of people wanting others to treat them well, and then returning the favor; and the resulting waiting game where no one wants to make the first move. But it's interesting to posit, given how much of philosophy is about how people can, or even should, break the impasse.