Appendix A: A Dialogue on Rational Action

Promptly at 1:00, Professor August J. ("Gus") Quibble, chairman of the Department of Platitudes, marched into Jones 205.

"Today," he informed the class, "we are going to need some volunteers. The first volunteer will be Mr. Hull."

The class was only one week into the semester, and most of the students were freshmen. Quibble always picked a freshman for his first "volunteer," just in case word of the forthcoming experiment had gotten around among upperclassmen.

Hull looked slightly stricken, and the kindly Quibble was quick to reassure him: "All I want you to do is to assume a couple of things and then answer one question based on your assumptions. You don't mind doing that, do you?"

Relaxing, the student replied, "Sure."

The professor wrote a large X on the blackboard, then continued addressing Hull. "Let's assume, first, that there is something you want. It is something specific, but for now we aren't going to say what it is. Instead, we'll just call it X. Are you willing to go along with this?"

Hull replied, "O.K."

"Secondly, let's assume that you think that you could get X if you took some particular action. Again, we won't identify the action. We'll just call it A. " And Quibble added a large A somewhat to the left of the X on the blackboard, then drew an arrow pointing from the A to the X.--->

                        A ---> X

"The arrow," he added, "stands for a cause and effect relationship."

The "volunteer" was taking this all in very intently, wondering what indignities were about to be heaped on him. It all seemed pretty harmless. "This seems reasonable, so far," he agreed cautiously.

"Fine. Now let's make a third assumption. Let us assume that you are correct in your belief that if you took action A you would get X. "

There being no reason to object, the volunteer nodded his agreement.

Quibble continued: "There is only one more thing that we need to assume. Let's assume that you ought to get what you want." The professor paused for this point to sink in, then added jocularly, "From looking at you, Mr. Hull, I'd guess that this last assumption might be debatable." (Laughter in the hall.) "But we need to assume this anyway, to keep the discussion manageable.

Hull posed no objection to this.

Professor Quibble now summarized what had been accomplished so far:

"Mr. Hull, you have assumed that you want X, that you believe action A will give you X, that you are correct in this belief, and that you ought to get what you want. If all of these things are true, it follows, doesn't it, that you should take action A?" And Quibble added a new A below the A ---> X on the blackboard, with appropriate symbols to indicate "therefore":

                          A ---> X
                          Therefore A

The relieved student, seeing the logic of this conclusion without great mental strain, quickly responded with a simple "Yes!"

"Thank you very much for your splendid cooperation." (Now addressing the whole class.) "You might be interested in knowing that I have been using this exercise in class for 15 years, and every single 'volunteer' has answered this question the same way Mr. Hull has." Quibble again paused. "And every single one of them got it wrong!"

"Misery loves company," chimed in Hull, rising to the spirit of the occasion as everybody, including himself, laughed.

"Exactly!" Picking another victim, "Mr. Kenyon, why is 'yes' the wrong answer to my question? Why, given all of the assumptions about what Mr. Hull wants, thinks, and ought to get, does it not logically follow that he should take action A? Can you tell Mr. Hull where he went wrong?"

"No!" responded Kenyon. (More laughter in the hall.)

"Well! That's a straightforward answer," observed Quibble. "Miss Arn?" (Recognizing a genuine volunteer, for a change.)

"Maybe there's a better way to get X.

"Sure. Why not? But isn't good enough good enough? A better way in what respect?"

Another student took the plunge. "Maybe action A is illegal."

Quibble looked thoughtfully at her. "That certainly is a possibility, Miss Garner. But who cares? Why not just say 'legal, schmeegal'?" At this, a senior towards the back of the room put up his hand. "Mr. Vollmer," called out the professor.

"Action A might have adverse repercussions. And there might be a simpler way to get X. "

The professor brightened up. "Now we're beginning to get somewhere! I think that 'repercussions' is on the right track. We assumed that action A would cause X to happen. But we did not assume that it would cause only X. It might cause other things to happen, too. Mr. Vollmer calls them repercussions. I call them side-effects." He wrote a plus sign and a Y on the blackboard to the right of the A ---> X:

                     A --->  X  +  Y

"Let's use the letter Y to refer to these side-effects." Quibble was watching his students intently to be sure that they were tracking. "Now, we have made the assumption that Mr. Hull ought to get what he wants. We have been told that he wants X, but we haven't been given any information about his feelings about Y What if he does not want Y?"

"Then not getting it would be to get what he wants," volunteered Garner.

"Right! So Hull is in a bind, isn't he? He sees, correctly, that action A will give him X. And he wants X. But he also sees that A will produce side-effects he most definitely does not want, Y Now what are his options? If he takes action A, he gets Y, which he wants to avoid. If he does not take action A, he does not get X, which he does want. Mr. Ward," Quibble picked another "volunteer," "how might Mr. Hull get out of this trap?"

"Find a different action," said Ward.

"Fine. Let's call it A sub one. And it is going to have two characteristics, isn't it?" responded Quibble, writing A_l on the blackboard.

"First," said Ward, "it will give you the same X.

"Second," added Miss Arn, "it will give you different side effects."

"We hope side effects that you don't object to," said the professor, continuing to write on the blackboard:

              A1 ---  X   +  Y1

"Now this may solve your problem, Mr. Hull. This is sometimes reflected in the old saying, 'There's more than one way to skin a cat.' You look for an action that will give you the same goal, but with different side effects. With luck and forethought, we can hope these side effects will be ones that don't bother you. If you can do this, great!"

Now Quibble addressed himself to another student. "Mr. Snyder, let's assume that you have thought of all the actions you can that would give you X if you took them. And every action you can think of produces side effects that are even worse than these." (Points to original formulation, A ---> X + Y.) "And these were bad enough. But you still want X. What can you do in this case?"

"Change the goal?"

"Right on!" Quibble wrote an X₁ on the blackboard. "X sub one is different in some respects from X, but still similar enough so that it might do. And then maybe you can find some still different action--let's call it A₂--that will give you that modified goal with still different side effects which, perhaps, you don't object to." (Writes A₂ ---> X₁ + Y₂).

"Great!" said Snyder. "But what if you can't figure out any way to modify your goal? Or what if even the actions that deliver changed goals cause horrible side effects?"

"That was supposed to be my next question," objected the professor. "You are a bright group. By the end of the semester you'll be giving me a hard time."

"Aren't we already?" somebody asked.

"So far I think I can take it," said Quibble. "Let's use the old 'redirective' technique. Miss Kerentoff, how would you answer Mr. Snyder's question?"

"Maybe," she ventured, "you could just give up on getting the goal."

"The ultimate modification," agreed Quibble. "But this is just one of two options that we can refer to jointly as 'making your bargain with the devil."' (Drawing a circle around the X and Y). "So far we have only said that you want X and do not want Y. But we have not talked about how much you want them. We have alluded, indirectly, to how much you want to avoid Y compared to Y_l. Now we must do the same thing with X and Y. If you are forced into this situation you must ask: Do I want to avoid Y so badly that I am willing to abandon all efforts to attain X? If your answer to this question is 'yes', then you do as Miss Kerentoff suggests. But there is another possible outcome here. The converse of this question is another question: Do I want X so badly that I am willing to put up with Y in order to get it? If your answer to this question is 'yes,' then you go ahead and take action A, bracing yourself for the side effects. "

A student asked, "Why did you draw the circle around the X and Y?"

"Because in these circumstances you have to take them or leave them as a package deal," said the professor. "By looking for different ways to skin the same cat, or for a different cat to skin, we try to avoid having to 'make a bargain with the devil.' But we can't always have everything we want. So sometimes we are forced to take a package deal. The trick is to hold these decisions down as far as we can, and then to weigh costs and benefits and take the side of the deal that leaves us best off."

Quibble moved on to the next phase of the discussion. "Let's take an example now of something specific. Mr. Schefsky, let's imagine that what you want is a Cadillac. And let's imagine that the first action that occurs to you--and I can tell that you have an honest face--is to steal it." (Laughter in the hall.) "Now what kind of side effects could you expect if you steal that Cadillac?"

"Jail!"

"Would they let you drive your Cadillac in jail?"

"Probably not."

"Not in most jails. So how do you go about finding some other action that might deliver the Cadillac?" asked Quibble.

"Pay for it," said Schefsky.

"O.K. What's the side effect of paying for it? A considerable reduction in your bank account, right? So you'll still have to decide if the Cadillac is worth it. But what if paying for it is impossible for you? You just don't have enough money, nor do you have an income that would allow you to borrow to get the car. What then?"

"Buy a Volkswagon," someone suggested. "A used Cadillac," said someone else.

"A Volkswagon is like a Cadillac in some respects," admitted the professor. "It will get you from here to there, like a Cadillac. And both cars have six wheels. But the VW doesn't have quite the snazz or status, so it isn't exactly the same. It is definitely X_l."

"Why six wheels?" asked a student.

"Don't forget the spare tire and the steering wheel," retorted Quibble. The class groaned in mock pain.

"I think you get the idea," said Quibble. "We don't need to pursue this example any further. Instead, let me point out to you that there are two kinds of issues involved in the decisions we have been talking about." He wrote on the blackboard:

1. causation
2. values

"The arrow symbolizes cause and effect, the relations between an action and its consequences. We deal with cause-effect relations constantly in our daily lives, and thinking about causality is therefore no particular problem for us. Values, however, are another matter. When we say 'I want X,' or 'I don't want Y,' we are expressing our values. But values are not easy to think about. To illustrate this, we will need another volunteer."

A student put up her hand. "Do you live on campus, Miss Mohnkern?" Quibble asked her. "This volunteer has to be someone who eats in the dining hall," he explained. Receiving a positive response from Miss Mohnkern, he continued, "If you had two choices of dessert at dinner this evening-apple pie and cherry pie-which would you pick?" (Writing these choices on blackboard.)

"Apple pie," she replied.

Quibble put a check mark next to "apple pie" on the blackboard, then drew a line and wrote down two more words:

                cherry pie
            *   apple pie

____________________________________
                           
                war
                peace

"If you had to choose between war and peace this afternoon, which would you rather have?"

Miss Mohnkem promptly answered: "Peace."

Placing a second check mark, next to "peace," the professor drew another line and wrote down two more expressions:

                apple pie + war
                cherry pie + peace

"Now, Miss Mohnkern," he said, "if you had to choose this afternoon between apple pie plus war, on the one hand, or cherry pie plus peace, which would you take?"

Without batting an eye, she responded "Cherry pie plus peace!"

Upon hearing these words Quibble threw down his chalk and glared at the unfortunate Miss Mohnkern. "Sometimes I wish I had become a physicist!" he exclaimed. "How can political science even be a science when its basic elements--people--are so blasted unpredictable?" He glared even more balefully at the student.

"Not two minutes ago, Miss Mohnkern said she wanted apple pie. Now she turns around and chooses cherry pie! People are so fickle!" Quibble tore at his none-too-ample hair.

Suddenly the professor lowered his voice, which had been approaching the bellow of a wounded buffalo, and spoke more calmly. "Enough theatrics," he announced. "Now will someone explain to us why Miss Mohnkern was perfectly consistent in her answers, and how she has answered a question that I never even asked?"

"She just told us that she thinks questions of war and peace are more important than questions of pie," said Hull.

"Good. In fact," said Quibble, "this little exercise tells us several things about values. It tells us that everybody has more than one value, and that some of our values may get in the way of others. We were getting at the same point in talking about Xs and Ys. It also tells us that the word 'values' takes in a lot of territory." He drew a long line on the blackboard and labeled it:

                     values
_________________________________________________
   pie                                    war
                                          peace

"Toward one end of the spectrum, 'values' refers to questions of mere taste. Few would argue that choices about types of pie have any cosmic significance. Down toward the other end, we find 'values' we regard as matters of basic morality. We do not feel that questions of war and peace are just a matter of individual 'taste.' No wonder," concluded Quibble, "that we find it hard to think about values. But we can't afford not to."

The professor now indicated that the rest of the hour would be devoted to political examples, suggested by the class, that could be analyzed in terms of A ---> X + Y. "First, however, I'd like to make two observations. My first observation is that until now we have studiously avoided politics in today's discussion. This may seem strange in an American government class, but there was a reason for it. People can get very emotional about politics and not think very straight as a result. By establishing some principles of decision in a totally non-political context, I hope to provide you with tools that will allow you to think about politics more profoundly than people usually do.

"Second, concepts are often hard to remember and use when we have no name with which to evoke them. It's like having a useful genie in a bottle but not knowing the word that summons the genie to your service. A ---> X + Y and its variations refer to what we can call rational action. The opposite of rational action, which we may call fanatical, is our original point of departure today:

I want X.
A will give me X.
Therefore A.

The difference between rational and fanatical action does not lie in the goal, but in how we go about thinking and acting to reach that goal."

"Are you suggesting," asked a student, "that we ought to act rationally rather than emotionally?"

"No," replied Quibble. "To speak of a 'rather than' here implies a false dichotomy. It implies that rationality is rationality and emotion is emotion and never the twain shall meet."

"What is wrong with that?"

"The problem," said the professor, "is that both our reason and our emotions are necessary participants in rational action. Imagine," he continued, "that we have a 'black box' and only limited information about its contents." He drew a figure on the blackboard.

"We know that the box has two things in it: A jackpot with one million dollars in cash. And a one megaton hydrogen bomb. There are two pushbuttons on the outside of the box, and we must push one of them. But we don't know which item is hooked to which button! Can we decide rationally what to do here?"

"No. Of course not."

"Here, we are lacking causal knowledge, so we cannot decide rationally. But consider the opposite situation. Suppose we know that button two sets off the jackpot, and button one the hydrogen bomb. But we haven't got the foggiest notion which outcome we would rather have!" (Laughter in the hall.) "Well, do we really know what it's like to be blown up by an H-bomb? 'Don't knock it until you've tried it,' as your friendly neighborhood pusher might put it."

Quibble started erasing the accumulated mess on the blackboard. "My point," he concluded, "is that unless we have feelings about the expected consequences of our actions, we cannot act rationally any more than when we can't predict the conse- quences. Rational action therefore requires that we use both our heads and our hearts."