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Decision sciences and the new case for paternalism: three welfare-related justificatory challenges

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Abstract

Several authors have recently advocated a so-called new case for paternalism, according to which empirical findings from distinct decision sciences provide compelling reasons in favour of paternalistic interference. In their view, the available behavioural and neuro-psychological findings enable paternalists to address traditional anti-paternalistic objections and reliably enhance the well-being of their target agents. In this paper, I combine insights from decision-making research, moral philosophy and evidence-based policy evaluation to assess the merits of this case. In particular, I articulate and defend three complementary arguments that, I claim, challenge even the best available calls for such case. In doing so, I identify the main justificatory challenges faced by the new paternalists and explicate the implications of these challenges for the ongoing philosophical debate about the justifiability of paternalistic interference.

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Notes

  1. Some authors put forward different characterizations of paternalism (e.g. Shiffrin 2000, holds that not all paternalistic interferences aim to enhance the well-being of the targeted agents, and Sunstein and Thaler 2003, do not regard violations of agents’ autonomy as a necessary condition for counting interventions as paternalistic). Still, I take the tripartite characterization in the text to be sufficiently precise for the purpose of my evaluation and sufficiently general to cover many entrenched characterizations of paternalism (see e.g. Dworkin 2010; New 1999; Wilson 2011).

  2. I am not concerned with assessing how the notion of autonomy is most aptly conceptualized. For my evaluation, it suffices to note that many paternalists and anti-paternalists alike hold that individuals have an interest in deliberating and acting in light of considered judgments about their own well-being, and that this interest is plausibly understood as an interest in autonomy (see e.g. Dworkin 1988, ch.1, and Hausman and Welch 2010). Some works relate paternalism to interventions that violate the freedom of choice (rather than the autonomy) of their target agents (see e.g. Carter 1999, ch.8, and Carter 2014). I mention only autonomy in the text for expositional convenience. I take my critique of the NCP to hold mutatis mutandis for characterizations of paternalism that relate it to interventions that violate agents’ freedom of choice (rather than autonomy).

  3. Several questions arise concerning the notion of consent (e.g. what circumstances license inferring that an agent consents to a particular interference? Under what conditions does consent count as fully informed or ideally rational?). I do not expand on these issues since the cogency of my evaluation does not rest on what position one holds about them (for a recent discussion, see e.g. Groll 2012; Husak 2010).

  4. The new paternalists typically allege that the interventions they advocate are superior to traditional paternalistic interventions in each of these three respects, individually considered, but rarely examine how such interventions fare in all those respects, collectively considered. I explore this issue’s implications for the NCP in Sect. 5.

  5. Anti-paternalists may draw on both deontological and consequentialist considerations to support these autonomy-related concerns. By way of illustration, suppose facing some agents engaged in self-regarding conduct that has no direct and significant effects on the well-being of others. A consequentialist may argue that since many agents value the opportunity to make autonomous decisions, and since giving agents opportunities they value often enhances their well-being, paternalistic interventions that frustrate this opportunity rarely turn out to be welfare-enhancing (see e.g. Sugden 2004).

  6. Not all conceptions of autonomy are equally hospitable to these considerations. For instance, some Kantians would presumably object that autonomous agency cannot be subjected to the instrumental considerations seemingly involved in the aforementioned intertemporal trade-offs. I expand in Sect. 5 on the justificatory challenges that violations of autonomy pose to the NCP.

  7. This obviously does not preclude one from opposing such interventions on other grounds. For instance, one may act on preferences that are not stable under reflection, be aware that her preferences are unstable, and yet attribute a high importance to the opportunity to satisfy her unstable preferences (see e.g. Sugden 2006, 2007). Furthermore, many individuals have strong preferences against having their preference-formation mechanisms influenced by third parties’ interference, and the new paternalists’ interventions often frustrate such preferences (see e.g. Sugden 2013).

  8. Similar concerns arise in relation to the possibility that paternalistic interference may lead to agents’ infantilization. The idea is that paternalistic interventions neither help nor incentivize their target agents to develop effective decision-making skills and make welfare-enhancing decisions for themselves (see e.g. Bovens 2009).

  9. A new paternalist might object that if some paternalistic intervention is welfare-enhancing, then such intervention is ipso facto justified. However, this objection presupposes that the welfare implications of paternalistic interference include all the factors pertaining to the justifiability of such interference, and the new paternalists have not offered convincing support to this welfarist presupposition (see e.g. Kagan 1992; Sobel 1998, for a discussion of the role autonomy considerations can be taken to play in the definition and measurement of well-being).

  10. Other authors (e.g. Glaeser 2006; Rizzo and Whitman 2009b) put forward epistemic and evidential criticisms of the NCP. My remarks agree with these informative criticisms in spirit, but are grounded in a different conceptualization of paternalism and do not imply that the information required to implement welfare-enhancing interventions is “in principle” unavailable to paternalists (Rizzo and Whitman 2009b, 159).

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Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Richard Arneson, Boudewijn de Bruin, Daniel Hausman, Christian Piller, Mario Rizzo, Ariel Rubinstein, Rudolf Schussler, Bob Sugden, Attila Tanyi, J.D. Trout and Alex Voorhoeve for their comments on previous versions of this paper. I also benefited from the observations of two anonymous referees and audiences at the University of Hamburg, the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, the University of Valencia, the University of Groningen, the University of Manchester, the University of Edinburgh, the University of York, and New York University.

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  1. University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany

    Roberto Fumagalli

  2. London School of Economics, London, UK

    Roberto Fumagalli

  3. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Roberto Fumagalli

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Fumagalli, R. Decision sciences and the new case for paternalism: three welfare-related justificatory challenges. Soc Choice Welf 47, 459–480 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-016-0972-1

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