Sen and Sensibility

July 7, 2010 by
Filed under: The RSA 

Some of my friends think it amusing that I ask readers to help me write articles and speeches. The implication is that it is either cheeky or feeble minded, or perhaps a bit of both. I don’t care a jot. Last week, for example, the contributions I received ahead of my speech on public scrutiny gave me useful material and helped me feel more confident that my core argument held water. So today I am at it again.

This evening I have the great honour of chairing an event with a man who certainly ranks among the world’s leading public intellectuals, Amartya Sen. The event is being co-hosted by the RSA and the charity BookPower of which the Professor is a patron.  Our distinguished guest won’t be making a speech but will be in conversation with me for 30-40 minutes and then with the audience of what is, unsurprisingly, an over-subscribed event.     

So I have been mulling over what questions to ask, and in particularly whether I have the nerve to focus the questions around my own argument for 21st century enlightenment. My worries about this as a strategy were not assuaged when RSA colleagues suggested this was like interviewing Ronaldo and starting with the question;

‘I can do twenty five keepy-uppies – what do you think of that, Christiano?’

Here are the six question areas I have planned:

For those here who have not had the benefit of reading your work or hearing you speak, could you outline the core features of your capabilities approach to the idea of justice.

In unveiling our new strapline 21CE, I suggested that it might be useful to return to some core enlightenment values and explore how those values might be renewed or developed in light of today’s knowledge and tomorrow’s challenges. The first was the value of autonomy. In relation to this I suggested we needed to urge a more self aware and socially embedded idea of autonomy against the narrow possessive individualism with which we often associated the idea of freedom. I am interested in your view of how we should think of autonomy.

In relation to universalism I suggested that as well as exploring – as you have done so brilliantly – the content of universalism – we should examine the sentiment that drives the impulse toward universalism – namely empathy. What is it that enhances or diminishes human empathy and how is inter personal and inter communal empathy related to empathy for the other or global scale empathy?  

In relation to humanism – that our affairs should be organised to maximise human welfare – I argued that this throws up inherently ethical questions and that we need to make it easier to explore the ethical dilemmas of deciding what kind of progress we want. Given your own work on exploring alternatives ways of measuring progress to GDP I was interested…….

Running through the argument we have made for 21CE is an interest in the insights provided by behavioural sciences ranging from neuroscience to social psychology or behavioural economies, I wonder how important you think these insights into human nature are to our understanding of justice and its foundations

A thoughtful criticism of the 21CE thesis made by a number of people was this it focussed exclusively on the Enlightenment as an historical episode in the history of the West and not as the more spiritual concept that it is taken to mean in the East. Given that one of the fascinations of your writing is this bringing together of Western and Eastern philosophical traditions do you think it is useful to compare and contrast these different ideas of enlightenment?

Well, then dear readers. What do you think? Is it impudent to talk to the great man about the RSA’s strapline? Are these good questions, and if they are not what would be?

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10 Comments on Sen and Sensibility

  1. Fiona Beddoes-Jones on Wed, 7th Jul 2010 3:48 pm

    2. in my humble opinion, and for what it’s worth, these are indeed excellent questions as they will allow the great man to answer them in ways that will enable him to clarify or reiterate any particular elements of his presentation that he feels will be useful to the audience.

    As the event is being co-hosted by the RSA and you are its CEO, he will be expecting you to hijack his presentation slightly (and in the best possible way) in order to support the RSA’s 21CE project and your place within it.

    The audience will also expect you to do this, – in fact we are relying on you to so so!

    My parting comment is to wonder whether empathy is really enough …… doesn’t compassion drive action, rather than just empathy alone?

  2. Matthew Kalman on Wed, 7th Jul 2010 3:54 pm

    3. Hi Matthew,

    Amartya Sen warned us, if I remember correctly, that many people fail to distinguish between authentic multiculturalism and mere ‘plural monoculturalism’.

    How does the balance of understanding stand nowadays, I wonder? Have politicians woken up to the danger of inadvertently fostering monoculturalism, under the guise of multiculturalism?

    (Another minor point: as you know, I tend to think that the RSA’s focus on “the insights provided by behavioural sciences ranging from neuroscience to social psychology or behavioural economies” needs to be more strongly supplemented by the decades of research in Adult Development/Developmental Psychology. People like Robert Kegan, Kurt Fischer, Robert Selman, Lawrence Kohlberg, Gisela Labouvie-Vief, Jane Loevinger et al have done so much research around experiences like empathy – how it grows, how we can foster it, what blocks it etc. The related field of ‘Transformational Learning’ would be worth mining too, as it’s all about expanding the self, increasing autonomy etc. Your kind of thing!).

    My feeling is that authentic multiculturalism, ‘bridging’ social capital (rather than ‘bonding’ social capital), levels of empathy, stages of cognitive complexity, moral development, autonomy et al probably all tend to grow and mature together.

    Unfortunately much that is still today labelled ‘multicultural’ represents a move towards monocultural ethnocentrism, pre-conventional impulsiveness and decline in empathy. (Perhaps)

    One of the reasons I keep urging more focus on empirical research – eg using Kegan’s assessment to see if the Modernist ‘self-authoring’ mindset is growing in the UK or not – is that only such research will really uncover the fresh insights we need into what’s going on.

    That was behind my suggestion that we should be using these kinds of models and their related assessment tools to uncover whether particular government policies are really ‘Progressive’ or not – we could actually assess whether they are enabling more people to become autonomous and ‘self-authoring’ and empathic etc….

    Matt K

  3. Patricia on Wed, 7th Jul 2010 4:37 pm

    4. Building on your idea of ‘embedded’ autonomy, how about a question concerning an apparent conflict between equality of freedom and a notion of human flourishing in Sen’s approach – should an individual be limited in his/her freedom to choose the right conception of how to live?

  4. Claudia on Wed, 7th Jul 2010 6:00 pm

    5. Having read 21C and Amartya Sen, I think that action is what self-determines our freedom of choice in all ambits.
    In order to achieve “freedom ” , people should have access to education and the capacity of developing the ability to think.
    If “we ” could achieve this basic concept , then “we ” would not need to decide what is best for others , as “we” + others = modern society
    A modern equal society ready for active change .
    We would need to be fair, honest ,respectful .There would not be a need for being empathic .
    So I believe that you should just be modern in your approach to the conversation this evening .

  5. hk on Thu, 8th Jul 2010 7:30 am

    6. matthew, the 2020pst commissioned a paper from polly vizard exploring a ‘capabilities and human rights approach to public services’ – which you can find here in the equality, cohesion & public services report http://www.2020publicservicestrust.org/publications/

    is v good & could be useful in looking at applications of sen/capabilities
    h

  6. Stanley Parker on Thu, 8th Jul 2010 10:56 am

    7. This is another nice idea, Matthew; I’m sorry I can’t be with you but I look forward to catching up online. I’m very proud of the fact that when I was a Trustee I argued strongly and in the end successfully for the online lecture facility

  7. Response to Matthew Taylor’s ‘Twenty-first century enlightenment’ « The Network for the Post-Bureaucratic Age on Sun, 11th Jul 2010 4:22 pm

    8. [...] enlightenment’ is a lovely piece of branding; it is not a good piece of thinking. In another blogpost on the topic, Taylor calls for ‘a return to core enlightenment values’, even though [...]

  8. Geoff Beattie on Mon, 12th Jul 2010 12:58 pm

    9. Matthew, thought provoking as always, but I have to take issue with your notion of a ‘return to some core enlightenment values’. As someone who was deeply schooled in Enlightenment Europe, I find the concepts interesting from a historical perspective, but the world has moved on. As we venture ever further into the Asian Century, how useful is it to continually return to the ideas of 18th century Europe, when even many so-called Enlightenment thinkers considered slavery to be perfectly acceptable, and most people lived in conditions which we would consider straight from the horror movie channel? The idea of maximising human welfare was made much more interesting (and relevant) by great 20th Century thinkers such as John Rawls and Bertrand Russell. I would welcome a return to their ideas of humanism and justice, as I believe they are still very much relevant today. Jean Jacques Rousseau will stay gathering dust on my college library bookcase!

  9. matthew taylor on Thu, 15th Jul 2010 8:26 am

    10. Thanks for these great comments. The Sen Q and A podcast is up on the RSA site. Matthew, I must send you a copy of our forthcoming paper on a civic health audit to see whether you think we are getting to some of the capabilities you think so crucial. Geoff, my argument is that we need to explore how enlightenment ideas Ned to be updated and refocused. I guess it is a bit of an arbitrary starting point but it does connect to the origins of the RSA . Stanley thank you for spotting the opportunity – three million plus, all over the world, have now watched RSA Animate

  10. Matthew Kalman on Thu, 15th Jul 2010 11:00 am

    11. HI Matthew,

    I’d love to see your civic health audit paper :-)

    What intrigues me at the moment as I have mentioned (ie repeated incessantly, knowing me?!) is the possibility of visualising civic health in real-time via a GIS map of the community.

    I’ve come across one project – in Toronto, I think – where they are trying to map something along the lines of civic health, and even using Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ as a way to structure all the data. (This angle appeals to me, of course – as it’s developmental, about fulfilling our potentials!).

    I’m not sure how far they’ve got though…

    The softGIS/Urban Happiness Project experts in Finland say that their new project in the city of Vaasa may for the first time do real-time mapping of experiences etc. (Which presumably then could enable sliding backwards/forwards through time).

    One of their papers also mentions some other work that intrigues me:

    “Ancell and Thompson-Fawcett (2008) have developed a conceptual model for evaluating the social sustainability of housing that incorporates some of the ideas presented by earlier authors. They build their model on Maslow’s hierarchy of need and Meadow’s model of the path to sustainable development, suggesting that some housing needs are more important than others. On the fundamental level they talk about affordability and quality of housing. Intermediate needs are, according to them, transport and facilities, and ultimate needs neighbourhood quality and relationships in the community.”

    I don’t think the possibility raised by the Canadian Chief Statistician to launch household-level measurement of (Robert Kegan’s) cognitive complexity ever got anywhere….

    > to see whether you think we are getting to some of the capabilities you think so crucial

    Arguably, in some ways it’s not about boosting particular capabilities – they will emerge anyway, if the habitat is there…

    The Spiral Dynamics co-founder Dr Don Beck sometimes talks about how it’s removing the blockages that prevent people from passing from one cluster of capabilties/values through to the next one that is the key – he has a book coming soon-ish called ‘Natural Design’, I think, which will probably talk about how to achieve this.

    I think he talked about the image of a flow of water through a canal, with various locks.

    Er… quite what these blockages are, I’m not fully sure.

    Perhaps the de-emphasis of competitive sport in school removed one of the flows – between egocentric/impulsive values/capabilities and the more team-centred/sacrifiicial/conventional modes – that are vital to keeping any society healthy, and socialising the next generation,

    I seem to be laden with questions, and very few answers… ;-)

    Cheers,

    Matthew K

    PS Er… I did have an idea this morning, which could be great – or perhaps is just a cul-de-sac.

    Let’s say we can somehow map (in real-time) the prevalence of satisfaction of the whole range of civic needs in a community – using Maslow’s hierarchy to segment the needs into different levels. We might get to see which parts of town fulfill just the base of the pyramid, which parts maybe allow fulfillment of all the needs up to self-actualisation/self-trascendence….?

    So,we can see the complicated pattern of how ‘progressive’ the environment, and the life conditions, are for fostering the growth of human potential. (Are there breaks and blockages?).

    But we can also – fairly quickly – assess what Maslow level (motivations/needs/values) someone is currently grappling with in their life. (Marketers call this ‘Psychographic segmentation’ – and it’s far better than the crude generalities of demographic segments).

    If we put together these two map layers (ie how fully enabling the environment is and what needs most individuals in the area are focused on) then we might be able to do a ‘gap analysis’ – and somehow see where the environment is most likely to be holding lots of people back, ie where it is most fractured in providing for the full range of needs.

    Is this a brilliant way to find out where the health-giving flows of a community most need to be opened up, or just some just some Brave New World dystopia where fearful hordes of Daily Mail-reading Sustenance-Driven individuals are left to happily fester in communities where few would ever dream of ‘Self-Actualisation’…? ;-)

    I suspect Pad Dade might berate me for getting very muddled about what a Maslowian analysis could ever tell us… (NB You really should get him along to the RSA to chat about his forthcoming Maslow book, once it’s out. Ditto Don Beck).

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