Policy-Making By the Numbers1
Ernest Partridge
For The Davis Seminar
University of Colorado
June, 1983
(Also in "Topics" in the
"Environmental Educator's Page)
I
The Homestake II Project -- A Case
History: The Holy Cross Wilderness, at the headwaters
of the Eagle River in central Colorado, is a place of spectacular
beauty, featuring abundant wildlife, rugged mountains, waterfalls,
alpine meadows and wetlands, and a pristine natural environment.
Rights to the water in the area are held by the cities of Aurora and
Colorado Springs. After completion in 1992, the Homestake II Project
would draw over twenty-thousand acre feet of water from the area each
year. The cities claim that the environmental impact of this project
would be minimal. The Holy Cross Wilderness Defense Fund replies that
the project would seriously damage the fragile alpine aquatic
ecosystems. Thus the issue is joined.
Some Value Issues. Behind the factual
disagreements are differing emphases in values. Both sides value
unspoiled wilderness. Both sides acknowledge that the basic needs of
growing populations should be met. The difference is in emphasis. The
cities feel that urgent human needs necessitate immediate action,
even though such action must entail some impact upon the wilderness.
The preservationists feel that the unique values of the Wilderness
mandate caution, restraint and careful review and, ultimately,
alternative means of extracting the water. Some may even regard the
presence of wilderness as an "urgent human need." The cities feel
that decisive action must be taken now to accommodate a rapidly
growing population. The preservationists fear that the failure to
curb population growth will, through postponement, transform a
present difficulty into a future disaster. The project proponents
feel they speak for the citizens of their municipalities, and of the
region. The opponents perceive their constituents to include, not
only some citizens of the cities and region, but also future
generations, other species, and perhaps, in a sense, the Holy Cross
Wilderness itself.
II
The Essential Facts and Values: A
Summary. The following general facts, relevant to
Homestake II Project would presumably be granted by both
sides:
-
The cities of Aurora and Colorado Springs
have experienced rapid growth of population, a growth that is
likely to continue. At current and projected rates, their
populations will exceed presently available water supplies around
1994.
-
Ground water tables in the front range are
dropping constantly.
-
The cities own the rights to the
water in the Holy Cross Wilderness, and have the legal right to
divert it for their use, despite the fact that the area of origin
has wilderness status.
-
Construction of the project would
temporarily improve the local economic conditions in Eagle County,
an area affected by mining layoffs.
-
The affected area was designated a
wilderness area in recognition of its natural and aesthetic
values. These values are recognized and cherished by many citizens
of Colorado and beyond.
-
Wilderness areas such as Holy Cross are the
source of valuable information to research scientists such as
ecologist, hydrologists, geologists, etc.
-
Natural water supply is a result of climate
(i.e., rainfall) and is thus relatively constant (within bounds of
natural fluctuation).
-
Water diverted from the Western Slope to
the Front Range is water no longer available to the population
"downstream" in the western states. (All usable water in the
Colorado River is consumed. There is virtually no flow into the
Gulf of Mexico).
The Project proponents would stress the
following value assumptions:
-
Colorado is an attractive place to live and
work, which accounts for the growing population. Those who choose
to live and raise their families in Colorado, have a right to use
the available resources necessary for a secure and abundant
life.
-
The Cities own the water rights. And yet,
they have agreed to significant concessions and have endured long
and costly delays. Further concessions and delays are
unacceptable. It is unfair for a few determined "outsiders" to
impose upon Aurora and Colorado Springs a "decision by
indecision." Such tactics are erosive to orderly civic planning
and faith in the efficacy of government.
-
Response to an urgent and present human
need for water should not be delayed by the demand of a few for an
environmentally "perfect" solution, when a minimally damaging plan
is available and ready for implementation.
The opponents of the project might appeal to
the following values:
-
Trans-basin water projects, and other
expensive and complicated "technological fixes," purchase
advantages to ourselves at the expense of harming future
generations. Such projects require constant maintenance and are
vulnerable to breakdowns. And no matter how extensive and
ingenious the engineering, there are limits to water resources. It
is better to face those limits now and attempt to curb population
growth, than to put off the day of reckoning and place the
consequences in the hands of a more numerous posterity.
-
The value of wild areas such as Holy Cross
increases as such areas become more rare, while an increasing
population desires access to them and to the experience enjoyed
therein.
-
Wild areas are best enjoyed when human
impacts (noise, pollution, etc.) are inconspicuous and when the
use is not intense.
-
Wilderness areas are necessary for
civilized humans to maintain a consciousness of their origins and
sustenance -- a sense of proportion and of place in the natural
order. Without this sense, mankind's arrogance will eventually
destroy the natural order, and with it mankind
himself.
Dr. Warren M. Hern, Past President of the Holy
Cross Wilderness Defense Fund, offers the following reflection on the
value issues:
While we are prepared to meet the
proponents claims with rigorous science and careful analysis,
those of us who oppose Homestake II do not fundamentally see this
dispute as a rational choice between alternative engineering
approaches. In fact we have a classic conflict of fundamental
values. Civic leaders and career bureaucrats of the cities see the
Holy Cross Wilderness as a "drainage basin," a "resource" which is
there to serve human exploitation and uncontrolled growth of the
human community. Maximum runoff flows are to be
"shaved."
For us, the Holy Cross Wilderness is a
place that is sacred to the point of being a religious sanctuary.
In a world that is plastic, false, exploitative, power-oriented,
commercial, insincere, and filled with predatory and mindless
destruction, this wilderness is real, it is alive, it is the way
things were and ought to be; it is a tiny remaining fragment of a
world rich in natural heritage containing endless beauty
unaffected by human vulgarity. We have seen so many similar places
destroyed before our very eyes, we know what will be lost if we do
not defend it. And defend it we will.
III
The Homestake II project presents a hard case
for the preservationist. Any way you count it, it seems that there
are far more people in Colorado Springs and Aurora desiring to wash
their cards and water their lawns, than there are likely to be
backpackers in the Holy Cross Wilderness area. Still worse, if there
were as many Holy Cross backpackers as Colorado Springs car washers,
the wilderness defender would find that the area would have lost the
very qualities that he finds most attractive: solitude and
undisturbed wildness. And if the environmentalist attempts to
enfranchise more hypothetical votes on his side by projecting into
the future, he must face the rejoinder that as long as there are
backpackers, there will likely be front-range residents wanting, even
more, needing that water. After all, as the population
increases in the front range, the water will be needed, not merely
for such luxuries as clean cars and green lawns, but for the
necessities of life.
No, the numbers apparently don't work for the
environmentalist -- not unless he awards himself and his tastes a
great many bonus points. Suppose he does; then how many proletarian
car-washers equal just one high-minded, pure-spirited
environmentalist? But we needn't follow this sort of argument very
far to discover that, in a democracy, it just won't wash. Is the
environmentalist prepared to sacrifice democracy too in defense of
his "ecological ethic"? Here we come face to face with the familiar
"elitism" charge.
Making environmental decisions "by the numbers"
-- that is, by quantifying in monetary terms, then comparing, gains
and losses -- characterizes what is known as "cost benefit analysis"
("CBA"). At first glance it seems to be an irresistible method of
making environmental policy decisions. After all, how else might we
do it? And yet, for all its immediate appeal, some particular aspects
of the economic "cost-benefit analysis approach," even the general
approach itself, have recently drawn considerable criticism. If, as I
suspect, the defenders of the Holy Cross Wilderness will lose the
"game" of "standard cost-benefit analysis," then they might do well
to reject that mode of decision-making and propose another.
Accordingly, the Homestake II Project might well be regarded as the
sort of "hard case", which may encourage the environmentalists to
refute CBA and then seek and endorse an alternative means of
environmental policy decision-making.
Economic cost-benefit analysis, a
well-established procedure of environmental policy decision-making,
developed out of public works projects in the New Deal, and later in
"operations research" during World War II. Historically, this
procedure has provided the rationale to justify a myriad of public
works projects which have transformed the face of the American West.
The use of CBA in public policy appeared to have peaked three decades
ago in the "Tocks Island Case," involving a dam project on the
Delaware River. (Though the Army Corps of Engineers CBA study yielded
a highly positive assessment, the governors of the affected states
ordered a deauthorization). However, reports of the demise of CBA
have apparently been highly exaggerated. On February 19, 1981,
President Reagan published an Executive Order requiring all agencies
and departments of his administration to justify their regulations
with positive cost-benefit analyses. The CBA approach is likewise
prominent in the assessment of the Homestake II Project and its
alternatives. CBA remains an important factor in environmental
policy-making, and thus deserves our careful examination and
scrutiny.
IV
Policy decisions are necessarily (a)
Normative, since they involve decisions among graded options
that effect the conditions of life of persons, and (b) partially
informed, since they are made by fallible and finite persons,
and not by the Almighty (or His surrogates). Policy decisions are
also generally (c) forced, since "not to decide is to
decide." (Many of the methods and presuppositions of policy-making
that are discussed and criticized herein follow from the valid
complaints "but we've got to do something" and "well, what
better way do you propose?" Value-comensuration and
future-discounting are prominent among these "forced"
practices).
The uses and abuses of "value-free
inquiry." Many scholars, scientists, and policy analysts have
rigorously attempted to exclude values from their assumptions and
their methods. Admittedly, it is difficult to quarrel with the rule
of scientific and scholarly research which insists that the
researcher confine his reports to what he observes and to
exclude from his observations those biases that might arise from what
he would like to observe. The business of science, in brief,
is to discover and report facts as they are, not as they
should be or as we wish they were. Because the task
of science is to collect data, to abstract laws, to project
hypotheses and to construct theories, human will and choice does not
and should not "mix" with the objective reporting, classification and
organization of data. Facts are facts, whatever the moral biases of
the observer. Communist missiles and capitalist missiles are subject
to the same physical laws and their trajectories are plotted with the
same mathematical formulae.2
And yet, all too often we find that the
discipline of "value neutral inquiry" is carelessly and
inappropriately extended beyond empirical science and objective
scholarship to applied science, environmental planning, policy-making
and legislation. When extended to these fields, "value-neutral
inquiry" is unwarranted and can have pernicious results.
And so, many government policy-makers, eager
for quick and easy solutions to complicated value-laden environmental
issues, have enthusiastically adopted a scheme of economic
"cost-benefit analysis" which claims to be "scientifically based" and
thus "value-free." Apparently it is neither. On the contrary, moral
philosophers who have studied the sort of "cost-benefit analysis"
that is enshrined in countless environmental impact statements and
items of federal regulation and legislation have generally concluded
that such procedures are built upon a structure of presuppositions
that are unexamined and, in many cases, highly questionable. The
following seem to be the most troublesome of these
assumptions:3
-
The "Reliable is Valid" Bias. "The
more measurable and discernible a factor, the more 'real' and
significant it is." (An engineer of my acquaintance put it this
way: "If you can't measure it, it isn't knowledge" -- and he meant
it!) This bias is particularly prominent in "educational research"
and other varieties of "applied social and behavioral science."
But a person's height and weight are more measurable and
discernible than his intelligence or his sense of justice and
duty. Therefore . . . ? It is much easier to measure, and then to
price, "usable" acre feet of water, that it is to measure
"ecological values" or "aesthetic values." By this rule, then,
water in a conduit is more valuable than water sustaining an
alpine meadow.
-
Comensuration:
"Values reduce to
costs." The value of a
"good" to you is what you are willing to pay for it, and of a
"bad" what you would pay to avoid it. The plurality of values is
thus to be measured in a single dimension: $$$. (This is called
"comensuration"). And so, in the Tocks Island Dam Case, the Corps
of Engineers devised a handy way of comparing the "recreational
value" of the wild river to a canoeist with the value of the
reservoir to a power boater; i.e., how much would the user be
willing to pay to get to use the area? Well, how many canoes,
nylon tents, cars with canoe racks (etc.) equal one Chris-Craft
and Winnebago? By this accounting, the lake trumps the river by
several orders of magnitude. But there are deeper problems with
"comensuration;" for example, by reducing all values to
costs (a non-moral value), "moral values" (e.g., virtues,
principles, rights, duties, etc.) are "factored out." This rule
leads, in turn, to:
-
"The future is to be discounted";
i.e., the further off in the future, the less a given cost or
benefit is to "count." (Thus, according to this theory of
"discounting the future," at a per-annum discount rate of 5%, one
death a year hence is equivalent to over two million deaths three
hundred years in the future). The reason this assumption follows
directly from the second (i.e., that values reduce to costs) is
that monetary costs can be, and appropriately
are discounted in the future in view of the capacity of
money to accrue interest.
-
"The
method of cost-benefit analysis
is to be regarded as detached from its
subject-matter;" i.e., the
analyst shall ignore the effects of the use of his
procedure upon the "objects" of his analysis
(viz. persons and their choices)" -- otherwise,
scientific "objectivity" will be compromised. But what is
the moral "price" of regarding persons as objects, and by
reducing their values to monetary costs? What does the application
of such a methodology do to the persons "analyzed" --
particularly to their value systems? The question itself, because
it is a "value question," is inadmissible according to the rules
of cost-benefit analysis. A troublesome result of this approach is
that it fails to account for, and thus deal with, "the moral
paradox" -- i.e., the advantage to the agent of other-directed
concern and activity. (Cf. our discussion of "Moral Psychology,"
earlier in these topics).
-
The Fallacy of Unfinished
Business. This is the assumption that technological and
environmental problems have only technical, but not social,
ethical, or political solutions. And if a policy question appears
unsettled, more "facts" from more "experts" are called for, until,
eventually, the matter is resolved "objectively." A list of the
"expert witnesses" called to testify on environmental policy
matters in Congress will indicate the strength of this
fallacy.4
Other examples of "the naturalistic fallacy" follow.
-
"'Valuable' means 'what is
valued'" in the subject population (or in "the market").
Prescriptive (or "normative") questions of "what should
be valued?" are not allowed, by procedural fiat. Nor are
"metaethical" questions allowed, such as "how do we justify our
values and moral beliefs?" To include these would be regarded by
many policy-makers as "unscientific." The procedure is thus, by
design, ethnocentric and conservative, and uncritically accepts
the highly controversial meta-ethical theory of cultural
relativism.
-
"'Good' is to be defined as 'the
maximization of utility,' and 'utility,' in turn, as 'the
satisfaction of valued desires.'" (For the denotation of
"valued," see the assumption" that immediately precedes this). We
find here an uncritical acceptance of the ethical theory of
utilitarianism. What we rarely find in the literature of
cost-benefit analysis is an argument in support of this highly
controversial ethical theory, or even a reply to the criticisms of
utilitarianism that are well-known to students of moral
philosophy. We search in vain for such discussions in the
literature of cost-benefit analysis.
Fortunately (perhaps), when these assumptions
and methods are rigorously applied, the resulting policies run
sufficiently afoul of "common sense" and intuitive morality that they
are blocked, on "unscientific grounds" by legislators and the
courts.
When I have presented this list of complaints
regarding the questionable methods and presuppositions of policy
consultants and policy makers, some economists, and even more
political scientists, complain that "this list is a straw man --
terribly over-simplified and unqualified. We don't think or talk like
this." They are right, of course. But that's not quite to the point.
For while I grant all this, I then ask, "but how much is your
policy-theory put into the practice of policy-making? How much of
this subtlety, complexity, qualification survives in the summaries
that appear before the legislators and the bureaucrats, or the
testimony offered in their committees?" (A common response to this
challenge is a pained look and a shrug). It is, I think, also fair to
ask, "while you, and others, find intuitive fault with this list of
(I contend) operative methods and assumptions, how well does your
discipline explicitly and systematically deal with the intuitive
objections to the above 'straw men?'" All too often, when such
intuitive qualms are raised, the expert will write a blank check:
"but that's outside the scope of our discipline," following which the
objection is set aside and forgotten.
I do maintain, therefore, that my list does
indicate some of the operative assumptions made by those who
actually make policy decisions, and that these "unfair
simplifications" reflect the stronger, "core," assumptions of some of
the more influential policy theorists.
The uncritical adoption of "value-free
analysis" to planning and policy-making, says the philosophical
critic, is unwarranted since planning and policy are essentially
about choices. While the scientist asks "What is the case?"
What are the facts?" the policy-maker necessarily asks "What
should be the case?" "Which of the available options should
we choose?" Because the task of the policy-maker is to choose among
feasible alternatives, he must ask "Which is the optimum -
the 'best' -- choice among the available options?" Listing and
explicating the "available options" is an appropriate task of the
"value-free" scientist. The problem arises with the four-letter word
"best" But what does the policy-maker mean by
"best"? "Best" on what grounds? What reasons does he offer us to
accept his evaluation or, for that matter, for accepting his method
of justifying his claim that such-and-such a policy is "the best" of
the alternatives?" These are not scientific questions; they are
unavoidably questions of moral philosophy (and of metaethics in
particular). Thus the moral philosopher would likely conclude that an
uncritical insistence by policy-analysts that their methodology,
"like scientific method, is value-neutral" will result, not in
"value-free" choices, but in choices that follow from unexamined and
unchallenged values. In short, if we think that scientific insight
alone will give us adequate guidance in our environmental
policy decisions, we will be making -- even worse,
continuing -- a dreadful error.
V
Consumer Preferences and Community
Principles: We come, at last, to what may be the most crucial
yet controversial tenet of cost-benefit analysis; namely, the
disposition of the CBA policy-maker to identify the locus of values
with the economist's concept of "satisfaction of preferences." This
disposition displays an insensitivity to motives to act on principle
and contrary to the motive to satisfy one's personal tastes and
desires. It also dismisses "the moral point of view" (a disposition
to act "for the good of all") in favor of the egocentric view of the
"preference maximizing" consumer. (See "Environmental Justice and
Shared Fate," and "With Liberty and Justice for Some,"
this website). Mark Sagoff's experience while teaching a class in
environmental ethics illustrates this point. In one of his
undergraduate courses he discussed the celebrated Supreme Court case, Sierra Club vs. Morton which concerned an attempt by the
Disney Corporation to build a ski resort at Mineral King Valley near
(and since, absorbed into) Sequoia National Park. Sagoff
reports:
I asked the students what they
thought about the Disney proposal. They hated it. But then I asked
how many had visited or would visit Mineral King, supposing Disney
were stopped. Very few. I asked who would visit the resort were it
built. Almost everybody. The enthusiasm was boisterous. Curious.
The students were deeply opposed to the Disney project yet they
would not visit the area unless there were a bed, alcohol, a ski
tow, and a discotheque. How do you explain that? The students saw
no inconsistency. They opposed the resort on principle: they
thought it was wrong. But as a matter of personal taste or
preference they would enjoy a ski resort much more than a
wilderness. The same might be said of adultery -- you would enjoy
it, but you know it is wrong.5
Thus we can imagine a hypothetical future
skier, thoroughly enjoying himself at the Mikki Maus Alpenhaus,
yet regretting that it was ever built. Is this irrational? Or is
there, perhaps, alongside our "enjoyments" a place for an adherence
and loyalty to the principle that magnificent natural areas have a
presumptive claim to be left undisturbed? If so, then essential to
this sentiment may be a regard for the Wilderness, apart
from any consideration of the "payoff" in human satisfaction for
"having" the wilderness, or even in the self respect for being
"high-minded" about it all. From a moral point of view, such
calculation of the "utility payoff" to oneself of principled
sentiments, motives, policies and acts, cheapens the perceived values
thereof, since much of the moral quality of caring for another
person, place or principle resides in the focusing of attention upon
the other, or in the devotion to principle itself. This
widely-perceived (and arguably essential) quality of moral
commitment leads, once again, to the moral paradox: that the greatest
value to human beings is accrued by acts motivated to
enhance the good of others -- other persons, places, causes,
principles, etc. Sagoff's students exemplified this
principle, whether or not they recognize it as such. It was
apparently much more important to Sagoff's students (and thus,
perhaps, more satisfying) to care about and preserve the wilderness
of Mineral King Valley than it was, paradoxically, for them to enjoy it. Perhaps they sensed that a world of diminished
intrinsic natural (i.e., non-utilitarian) value is a world less worth
living in.
Very few of Sagoff's students would ever see
the wild Mineral King Valley, and most would want to visit it as a
ski resort. Yet they "hated" the Disney proposal. Why? Perhaps
because they made a distinction between utility and
principle. The economist making a cost-benefit analysis may
be systematically disinclined to recognize this distinction -- much
to the ultimate detriment of the cause of preserving wild places. To
the economist, it may be sufficient for his analysis that more would
prefer skiing at the resort to hiking in the wilderness. That many
(most?) of the skiers themselves would have preferred it had the ski
area not been built -- this makes no sense to the economist. His
theory may thus be unable to account for "actions on principle" --
acts which follow a deliberate decision not to do something
that would nonetheless maximize one's enjoyments.
So for the environmentalist, the numbers may
not work. But he should remain unmoved. The rules of the CBA game are
stacked against him from the beginning. To preserve or not to
preserve a wilderness area is a political decision which ought to be
decided by reason and appeal to principle, and not by the mechanical
application of a technical device which smuggles its conclusions into
its premises while masquerading as the value-free instrument of
scientific objectivity.
VI
"Science as "Value-Free Inquiry" --
A Postscript.6
I have described the content of
science and (in a restricted sense) the methodology of science as
"value neutral." It is, I think, a correct description. But lest I be
misunderstood, I hasten to add that the moral character of the
scientist is relevant to the quality of his work. Even more,
I would suggest that the activity of science (that is to
say, of science as a human institution) is highly involved with
values. Consider an example:
When Gregor Mendel published his studies of the
genetic properties of sweet peas, he apparently gave a scrupulously
factual account. Moreover, his failures and unanswered questions were
reported alongside his verified hypotheses. Had Mendel not been
impeccably honest, humble and open with his work, his reports thereof
would have been, scientifically speaking, far less valuable. In
short, the moral quality of the researcher gave explicit value to his
findings. Yet Mendel's scientific papers themselves have not a bit of
moral evaluation within them: no prescriptions, no exhortations, no
"shoulds" or "oughts" -- only the straightforward exposition of
observations and hypotheses. The accounts were value-free; but the
conditions required to produce these documents and to give them
scientific importance were profoundly moral. In contrast, consider
the case of Lysenko, who displayed neither honesty, candor, tolerance
or modesty. Because of these very failings, his work was
scientifically worthless. Once more: the primary findings of science,
and the language that reports it, are value free, but the conditions
that permit scientific work and the attitudes of the scientists
toward their work, are deeply involved in morality.
In his little book, Science and Human
Values,7
Jacob Bronowski gives a masterful presentation of the moral
preconditions of science. The fundamental moral premise, says
Bronowski, is "the habit of truth": the collective decision by the
body of science that "We ought to act in such a way that
what is true can be verified to be so." This habit, this
decision, gives a moral tone to the entire scientific enterprise.
Bronowski continues:
By the worldly standards of public
life, all scholars in their work are of course oddly virtuous.
They do not make wild claims, they do not cheat, they do not try
to persuade at any cost, they appeal neither to prejudice or to
authority, they are often frank about their ignorance, their
disputes are fairly decorous, they do not confuse what is being
argued with race, politics, sex or age, they listen patiently to
the young and to the old who both know everything. These are the
general virtues of scholarship, and they are peculiarly the
virtues of science. Individually, scientists no doubt have human
weaknesses. . . But in a world in which state and dogma seem
always either to threaten or to cajole, the body of scientists is
trained to avoid and organized to resist every form of persuasion
but the fact. A scientist who breaks this rule, as Lysenko has
done, is ignored. . .
The values of science derive neither
from the virtues of its members, nor from the finger-wagging codes
of conduct by which every profession reminds itself to be good.
They have grown out of the practice of science, because they are
the inescapable conditions for its practice.8
And this is but the beginning. For if truth
claims are to be freely tested by the community of scientists, then
this community must encourage and protect independence and
originality, and it must tolerate dissent.
Notes and References
1. Presented originally at
a conference at the University of Colorado, June, 1983. Revised for
courses in Environmental Ethics, University of California,
Riverside.
2. And yet, to
characterize science as "value free" or "value neutral" is to employ
a simplification that demands qualification. I shall provide this
qualification in a postscript to this essay.
3. These charges against
common theories and practices of cost benefit analysis are as
controversial as they are serious. For a fuller presentation of these
and other criticisms of "value-free cost-benefit analysis," see Roszak (ed), The Dissenting Academy (Vintage, 1968); Tribe,
Schelling and Voss (eds), When Values Conflict (Ballinger,
1976), and Lawrence Tribe, "Policy Science: Analysis or Ideology?"
Philosophy and Public Affairs, 2:1, Fall, 1972.
4. See K. S. Shrader-Frechette, "Environmental Impact Assessment and The Fallacy
of Unfinished Business," Environmental Ethics, 4:1, (Spring,
1982), p. 37.
5. In "The Philosopher as
Teacher: On Teaching Environmental Ethics," Metaphilosophy,
II:3 & 4, (July/Oct., 1980), p. 318. Sagoff cites this classroom
discussion to make a different point, namely that "principles are
preferences we have not as individuals but as members of communities.
. . Principles or social norms are not values upon which we happen to
agree; they are values the logical subject of which is the community
itself." (319) While I agree with Sagoff regarding the source and
locus of principles and social norms, I wish to make a different,
though compatible, point; namely, that a loyalty to principles may
motivate sufficiently to override utilitarian motives.
6. "Auto-Plagiarized" in
"On Scientific Morality," this website, The Northland
Issues.
7. Jacob Bronowski,
Science and Human Values, (Harper, 1965).
8. Ibid.,
58-60.
