Democracy and Electoral Mandates

Upon winning an election in a democratic country, a politician gets the right to govern.  They also get the right to push their agenda. The first is a legal right, the second is social. There is nothing in our constitution that says that an elected official should not be harassed, delayed, or disrupted by any legal means by the opposition. But there are things that are not acceptable for the opposition to do, even if they are legal. Redrawing district lines may fall into this category. Or purposefully slowing the operations of government. It is, I think, more or less unacceptable to go to extreme lengths to thwart a reasonable agenda from a elected official who campaigned and was elected on that agenda. Not all agendas are reasonable, and what counts as what is reasonable may be a matter of taste. But everyone can think of some policies favored by the opposition that they have a suitable right to promote. This, I take it, is the phenomena people mean when they talk about electoral mandates.

Common sense says that a mandate does not apply to an agenda that was hidden from the public and that was adverse to the announced policies of the elected official. A democrat who campaigned on economic reform has no mandate to suddenly swerve and defend the established order. Why should this be so? The natural rationale for this is that the populace, in choosing to elect a person, indirectly choose that person's policies. There may be some amount voting-for-good-sense too, but this has limits. The pre-announced policies of an elected official are democratically sanctioned. Hidden policies are not. In opposing democratically sanctioned policies policies, the opposition courts thwarting the will of the masses.

Political mandates are often the topic of discussion after an election. This recent presidential election provides a case in point. Just what kind of mandate does Donald Trump have? Trump was elected after campaigning on a variety of controversial policies that are repulsive to a large number of Americans. He lost the popular vote. (Though, of course, who's to say who would have won had the popular voted been decisive?) Yet he won the election.  To what extent is it appropriate to throw up bureaucratic obstacles to his carrying them out?

There is, I think, something deeply misguided about the notion of a political mandate, justified by appeal to democratic sanctioning, within the present system. Given a number of factors, there is little reason to think that the candidate actually elected better reflects the views of the population. At best, winning an election (even winning the popular vote) is a very weak bit of evidence for democratic sanctioning. For this reason, I think that we should refrain from attributing a electoral mandate except in the rarest of situations.

This factors are the following.

1. Votes may reflect a rejection of the competitors policies, rather than an endorsement of the winners policies.

The United States is a two party system. Third party candidates are seldom serious or reasonable choices. Thus a vote for one candidate is just as much a vote against his or her opposition. This may mean that a sizable portion of the population chose to vote for one candidate because they disliked the other, not because they liked that candidate's policies. The fact that someone disliked another set of policies less is hardly a ringing endorsement.


2. Votes do not reflect the strength of the public's desires.

Votes are an all or nothing thing. Everyone gets the same single vote whether they care much about the results of the election or not. Individuals vote for the candidate they prefer. Thus the electorate might be lop-sided: with many people strongly disliking the winning candidate, but slightly more people vaguely preferring them. In such cases, it is incredible that the winning candidate should truly reflect the will of the people.


3. Partial votes do not provide evidence for the total public, especially given the fact that there are biases on who votes.

Many many people do not vote. If the segment of the population who does vote is a random sample of the whole population, this isn't an issue. But it isn't. There are systematic distortions introduced by the fact that some segments of the population are less likely to vote than others: the young, the busy, causal decision theorists, those without politically active friends/family/spouses, etc. Their interests are no less a matter for state protection. If slightly varying the turnout among subsections of the population would lead to a different outcome, then no mandate should be forthcoming.

4. Voters are often very poorly informed, both about the policies of their candidate and about the circumstances relevant to the assessment of those policies.

Not everyone knows an equal amount about the candidates and their policies. Even if some groups are as likely to vote, confusion about which candidate best represents their particular interests makes their vote worth less. There are huge differences in political awareness among different populations, with definite systematic biases. Very busy individuals have less time to follow the news. Less intelligent, or gullible, individuals are less able to understand what different policies truly mean for them. Thus, there desires are not so clearly reflected in their selection.

5. Votes are often nearly split.

On top of the fourth previous factors, the fact that votes tend to be very close is disconcerting. A 40/60 split is a landslide. 48/52 splits seem far more common. When a different choice by 3 out of 100 people would make the difference in the outcome, and given the various distortions involved in the electorate and the limitations they face in making their collective will  heard, it is hard to believe that the winner actually definitively represents the will of the people, rather than merely the outcome of a highly chancy and random process. There is surely some evidence provided by victory, but it is weak evidence. Therefore, I think we should relinquish the idea that the winner of an ordinary election reflects the will of the people. If that is where a political mandate comes from, then we should also give up on the idea that a winner has any sort of mandate to govern, beyond what is legally entitled to them.

Necessitation and Moral Concern

Claim 1: Whether or not our actions are necessitated, in itself makes no difference to how we ought to go about moral deliberation. Knowing that you're predetermined to act in a certain way should not foreclose deliberation. Nor should the bare fact of necessitation influence it one way or the other. If you know that you're either going to tell the lie or tell the truth after deliberating, and the laws of physics and the initial state of the universe determine it one way or the other, but you don't know which you're going to do, then you have no reason not to deliberate in the standard way.

Claim 2: Some kinds of necessitation makes moral deliberation pointless. Let action maximalism be the view that for every action you could take in a given circumstance, it is true that there is one person who will take that action. Lewisian modal realism was one version of this The different people exist in different space time regions. If you squint, the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is another version. (The different people exist in different branches of space-time.)

If action maximalism is true, then you know that no matter which action you take, someone just like you will take the other. If you tell the truth, your counterpart will lie. If you lie, your counterpart will tell the truth.Your counterpart won't act that way because you did what you did, but you can be certain of it even so.


Are these claims in tension? Sometimes I feel that they are. Sometimes, that they are not.

Why should action maximalism make moral deliberation pointless, if necessitation doesn't? It can't be because of the action maximalism makes necessitation true.

If there is a difference, here is a preliminary guess: moral deliberation is worthwhile when you have the power to shape the world, even if you're disposed to use that power in some particular way. When it comes to action maximalism, it seems like your actions are not changing the world so much as revealing (or settling) your location in it. By choosing to lie, you are not choosing to add a lie to the world so much as choosing to be the liar. You know before acting that the world will contain one liar and one truth-teller. Your action decides which one you are. And your location in the world, or your identity, is just not that morally important.

Is this the right way to think about maximalism? It may depend on the metaphysical details. It is true that generally, from an epistemic perspective, your action is self-locating. You don't think, upon taking one action, that the world is any different from how you would have thought it was, if you had taken the other action. However, you may know that had you (albeit impossibly) taken the other action, the world would have turned out differently. By lying, you caused there to be one liar and one truth-teller,  for your counterpart would have told the truth no matter what you did.

This suggests that the value of moral deliberation may turn on which decision theory one accepts. A causal decision theory would say your decision is still significant. You have the power to impact the world, even if you are bound to only do so in one way, so you must deliberate. An evidential decision theorist would disagree. The power to change the world is irrelevant if you can be certain that what would result, conditional on taking either action, is the same.

Interactionism and Nomic Complexity

Interactionist dualism is thought by many to be implausible because it requires the existence of physical laws that look rather different from what we currently know about laws of physics. This objection can take several different shapes. Here are four.

First, if interactionism is true, then the movement of physical particles can't be determined solely by the distribution of fundamental properties like mass, charge, spin, etc. Conscious properties must exhibit some influence over the behavior of quarks, atoms, etc. Conscious properties are not like physical properties, and so laws involving conscious properties would require broadening the possible relata of physical laws.

Second, in addition to the mere fact that we would need to expand the relata of physical laws, interaction requires  a connections between different kinds of properties that some have thought to be mysterious. How could something non-physical effect something physical?

Third, assuming that panpsychism is false, such laws would have an unusually limited domain of applicability. It is a bit strange that there should be laws of physics that only manifest themselves inside the skulls of living animals. We don't expect to find exceptions to existing physical laws inside our brains -- for instance, we don't expect gravity to exert a different force on neurons than on other things. So why hold that there might be other forces that only have their effect on neurons?

Fourth, given what we know about how the brain functions, interactionist laws would need to look very very strange. The strangeness of these laws comes from their massive complexity. This makes them very different from existing laws in a way that really seems to matter.

I don't think that the first three possible concerns are very concerning. There is possibly something problematic about postulating additional kinds of things, but parsimony doesn't seem like a super strong theoretical consideration. If we have no evidence for something more than physical stuff, then of course we shouldn't posit anything more. But if we do have some evidence, we shouldn't let parsimony stand in our way. Laws of nature look fairly arbitrary as is, so I don't see any major problem in postulating laws between conscious properties and physical properties. And finally, if non-physical consciousness exists, it is not unreasonable to think that it requires fairly special physical circumstances, and that will be where the ordinary physical laws need supplementation.


The fourth concern however, provides more than enough reason to reject interactionism.

The brain  interacts with itself and controls the body through the signaling of neurons. Neurons communicate with each other using potentials that travel down their dendrites/axons which leads to chemical and electrical signaling across synapses. Any interaction between the mind and the brain would have to result from an influence of conscious events over one of the following:

• local electric fields (directly)
• gates (to generate electric fields)
• neurotransmitter release

And of course in order to influence any macrophysical structures like nerve cells (or Na+ channels), the mind would have to influence physical objects at lower levels: individual atoms, the quarks that they are made up of, etc.

There is nothing intrinsically odd about this. Why not allow that the occurrence of sadness or the intention to move one's arm might produce or modulate some movement of atoms?

What is odd, however, is the way in which conscious experiences would need to have a very specific influence in order to exert precise control over the brain.

Consider how an intention to move one's arm might lead to an arm actually going up. Let's suppose that the mind works directly on the motor cortex, rather than at some connected area. In order to get the arm to move, the mind would have to cause the nerve cells responsible for motor control of the relevant muscles to fire. Such nerve cells are tightly packed in alongside each other in the topographic maps of the motor cortex. To avoid causing the fingers to twitch or the shoulder to jump, the mind would need to only tickle the nerves corresponding to the muscles of the arm.

 How does this happen? The neurons that are responsible for arms are not much different from the neurons responsible for other parts of the body. Their main difference is not in their neural structure, the kinds of neural signals they employ, the strength of field they generate, or sorts of gates or neurontransmitters that they use.  Their difference lies just in their location in the topographic map, and crucially, the parts of the peripheral nervous system that they connect up with. 

Having a precise physiological effect like moving the relevant arm requires that the conscious experience directly tickle parts of the brain characterized in terms of their downstream connections rather than their local physiology. This is what makes the process so strange. What determines which neurons are influenced would need to take into account very very fine-grained facts about the neurophysiology of the creature at large: whether the intention causes a particular channel to open depends on the structure of the neuron it is part of, the structure of the neurons it is connected to, and perhaps its eventual effect on the peripheral nervous system.

Spelling this complex property out in physical terms at a fundamental level would be extremely difficult. 

The problem is compounded by the fact that conscious states seem to be simple. Even if we allow that conscious states reside spacially in the brain, we are still faced with the problem of explaining how a mental state that presumably isn't local to the neurons that it influences is able to influence those neurons and not the vast majority of other nearly-identical neurons. The only way to do this is to build hyperspecific laws. But such hyperspecific laws look very different from the laws we are accustomed to.

Amateur Philosophy

These days, analytic philosophy is almost entirely written by professional philosophers employed in academic posts. In my career as a philosopher, I can remember coming across papers who were written by individuals outside of academia (including people with PhDs who left) only a handful of times. It isn't surprising that the vast majority of research should be written by academics. It takes a lot of time to get up to speed on a subject, and more time still to conduct original research into it. But it is surprising that they should right nearly all of it. There are many examples of highly competent philosophers throughout history who have engaged, even chosen to engage, in other primary pursuits. Why does that no longer occur?

This question bears special importance to me, as I am soon to leave academia, but I do not want to leave behind the rigorous reflection that comes with serious research. It is harder to think carefully in isolation from criticism, and writing for publication is one of the best ways of receiving criticism. I hope that I will not stop writing, but the absence of good models is alarming.

So why are there not more amateur philosophers publishing their work in solid philosophy journals. A couple inadequate hypotheses:

1. The only good reason to publish is to move up the academic ladder. Once that is taken away, there is no incentive to publish, and hence no one does.

This seems to be dubious for the reasons listed above. Publication has some significant value even in the absence of professional incentives. It is good for distributing work and receiving criticism about it. It enforces clearer thinking. People published long before the present professional incentives existed. In other domains, such as fiction or history, people publish without being professionals. It might be that there are better venues for amateur publication than academic journals, but if there are, I don't know what they would be.

2. Everyone who is capable of publishing both desires and is able to get a job in academia.

This strikes me as unlikely on both counts. Academic jobs require a whole lot more than research. A huge amount of an academics time is taken up by teaching and administrative duties. Not everyone who has an interest in research also has an interest in teaching. Furthermore, academic jobs tend to be fairly restrictive in terms of remuneration and location. For many, choosing an academic job requires huge sacrifices by one's family. There should be plenty of people who enjoy academic research but who would rather have other occupations for a variety of reasons.

But even if everyone who had an interest in academic research wanted a job, it is unlikely that they could all get one. The present job market makes it extremely difficult to get a job. There are plenty of reasons why someone who is capable of research might have difficulty getting a job -- their research might be a bad fit for current universities focuses, they might not have gotten along well with their graduate advisers, or they might be terrible teachers.

Functionalism and Epiphenomenalism

Epiphenomenalism is, rightly I think, a rather unpopular view about the nature of consciousness. If consciousness has no effect on the brain, then we should be deeply suspect of our knowledge about it. In The Conscious Mind, David Chalmers suggested that dualists can't really avoid the problems of epiphenomenalism, because the intrinsic properties that constitute consciousness must always be married to separable causal powers. It is the causal powers, not the intrinsic properties, that cause us to believe we're conscious.

The same view can, I think, be applied to basically every non-functionalist account of consciousness. Consider the view that material constitution of the brain is important. It is not just what the neurons do, but how they do it, that makes us conscious. Reproduce the same network of neural connections in another medium, (a computer chip, say) and you won't reproduce the consciousness.

However, this seems to make consciousness epiphenomenal to whatever features of our brain give us knowledge of our consciousness. If you reproduce a brain in another medium that preserves its  functional architecture, its behavior should not change. It will still claim to be conscious, speak about its consciousness, etc. It's brain will come to the same conclusions for what look to be the same reasons. It won't believe that it is conscious because of the material matter comprising its brain. It will think that it is conscious solely because of the connection strengths of the 'neurons' in its neural net. 

If epiphenomenalism is troubling for dualists, it should also trouble those physicalists who think that non-functional properties, like material constitution, are important.

Why so few futurology departments?

The past century has seen extremely rapid technological changes that alter the way that we live. Medicine has extended our lives substantially, and changed the way that we die. Transportation has allowed people to remain interconnected throughout the world. Communication systems keep us in constant contact with each other. These changes will pale in comparison with the kinds of changes that we will see with the development of better artificial intelligence. If the pasty century is any guide, the next century should see much more upheaval

Beyond the next five, ten, or twenty years, society is unplanned at virtually every level. We don't have significant plans for how we will adapt to coming technologies. While we could treat them the way that we have done so so far -- allowing the market and individual preferences to dictate how technology is used -- it seems wiser to make important decisions carefully and with extensive thought. 

The most pressing question concerns how to organize society once labor is unnecessary or inefficient for the majority. What happens once almost no one needs to work? What should we do with our lives? What role should government play in this? How should we prepare for it? This is already starting to happen, and it will probably lead to greater changes in our lifestyle than anything has since the invention of culture.

Futurology, focused on the normative dimensions of coming technology, should be a significant part of research universities focus. At present, it is possible to make a career thinking about social, cultural, and political issues relating to future technologies, but it is very rare for people to actively devote their careers to it, and not much work is being done. Just as with cognitive science, there are a number of different domains in which relevant research is being done simultaneously. Researchers in economics, political science, sociology, psychology, and philosophy should be brought together for this purpose. 

While it may not currently make sense to offer futurology as an undergraduate degree, it does make sense to begin to organize and fund research with this focus, and to encourage researchers working in related disciplines to start specializing in it. 

Consequentialism and Underdetermined Conditionals

A far future conditional is a claim about how the world be in the far future conditional on some contemporary event. 

Example: If I eat cheerios for breakfast, humanity will survive for at least one thousand years.

Far-future conditionals are very difficult to assess, and not only because they concern the far future. It is very hard to trace the chain of events that might connect a given action with its consequences. Even if we knew what the far future looked like, it would be very difficult to trace its development back to actions taken at the present. Though present actions can surely have significant ramifications in the far future, those ramifications are seldom easy to spot. 

Far future conditionals are probably also subject to underdetermination. The future effects of a contemporary event might depend on more than a crude characterization of that event. The details may matter in unpredictable ways. There might be a thousand different ways that I could eat cheerios -- different bowls I could select, different quantities of cheerios to eat, different patterns of cheerio spoonings to transport cheerios from bowl ot mouth -- that would all contribute in different ways to radically different futures. 

In this case, does it make sense to say that the future turned out any particular way because I ate cheerios (as opposed to, because I ate cheerios in this exact way?). Had I not eaten cheerios, would it make any sense to ask what would have happened in the far future had I instead chosen to eat cheerios?

Suppose not. Suppose that very few things we could do, crudely characterized, would have determinate effects in the far future. This creates a problem for consequentialism.

Consequentialists think we are obligated to do whatever of our available actions have the best consequences. Presumably, we can only be obligated to undertake those of our actions that it is in our power to undertake. Although hyperspecific actions might have determinate consequences, we can't undertake them. I can't control the precise movement of my body through the air. At some point, my subconscious brain takes over.

We can only choose to take actions that are fairly crudely characterized. If such actions do not have determinate effects in the far future, then their effects are indeterminate. If their effects are indeterminate, it is likely that it will be indeterminate which actions have the best effects. We might qualify that consequentialists should undertake those actions with the best determinate effects, but it seems like it is a mistake to simply ignore the indeterminate effects. However, if it is indeterminate which actions have the best effects, then it is indeterminate what we should do.

How problematic this is depends on how frequently our actions have massively indeterminate consequences. I suspect that the vast majority of actions do, because they seem to set off small chains of events, and because so many things we do are sensitive to very precise conditions. If you put away the cheerios a little further back in the shelf, you might take half a second more to reach for them next time. If it takes you half a second more to reach for them, you might be half a second behind in the day, which might cause you to stop a red light you otherwise would have made, and make you a minute late to work....

If this is right, then it is believable that in the vast majority of cases, there is no fact of the matter what we should do.