On Being Inconsistent (On Being Just the Right Inconsistency)
Doing is quite different to preaching. I will argue that, in most situations, it is simply wrong to act according our beliefs about how everybody ought to behave. How I should act is intrinsically different to how everyone should act. I am making a case for hypocrisy.



It is helpful to consider the different roles of rulers and subjects. A ruler is able to make laws, whereas the subject must obey them. Ruling and obedience involve different modes of thought. There are different starting points, different palettes of actions, and different valuation systems - in short, ruling and being a subject are entirely different modes of thought. 

To be a subject of rule is to be the subjective I, a subjective being - unlike being a ruler. Rulers must take the third-person stance, and to an extent, deny their own subjectivity. 

It is fascinating that each  human mind has the capacity to switch between these two modes of thought.  We can think things through from both an impersonal, bird's-eye perspective, or from the egocentric standpoint, where the primary role of thought is to turn perception into action. Many conflicts, both internal and external, may have arisen from the switch.

Whenever one distinguishes two psychological processes, one must be clear on the two things: first, the start and endpoint of each process must be clarified - at what point do the inputs diverge, and at what point to the outputs converge again; and second, the extent to which the processes overlap or have blurred bounds. In postulating we have two thought systems, we must say that they do not occur in parallel but in series, that they both access semantic facts about the world, and that they are both constrained by certain tacit assumptions we globally make. These similarities can be demonstrated by considering the streams of thought that may come into awareness as we deliberate over some mundane activity.

Although the faculty of abstract (as opposed to practical) thought is a general one, the ability to apply abstractions to practice is indeed heterogeneous. In the study of behavioural inhibition (or equivalently the phenomena termed executive function, or cognitive control), the variety in health is great, and pathology yields even further diversity. The difficulty of uniting the abstract with the practical, is one that characterises the history of western law and morality. Later I will argue that it is necessary for structured society.


Though I have been demonstrating that hypocrisy arises naturally, I have not yet shown that is in fact a good thing, or a fortiori the right way to be. So many great ideas of how we should act fall back to theories of the other. Christianity often justifies behaviour with 'as you would wish others to do unto yourself'. To assume we can impute concepts to other minds is a large step, so Kantian ethics circumvents the existential problem by the notion of universality: my ability to wish something to become a universal law. However the issue at stake is the same one, relying on the notion of homogeneity of minds. This notion is coming to be regarded with suspicion, particularly in light of present understanding of cognitive psychology, psychopathology and neuropsychology: minds vary their internal structure, processing and capability, and more importantly, are contingent on physical state. [I will skip the theoretical problems of determinism in cognition here, though see article "neuroscience is to ethics".]
Virtue ethics often surmount the difficulty at the expense of parsimony. Stipulating that the best action should satisfy a set of criteria is useful, and this in itself justifies the criteria.

But here I am suggesting that neither approach does justice to the real issue, which is that the human mind wishes different things in different contexts, and that definitions of the best action must be sensitive to the context of thought. A poignant thought here, is that to think "Everybody should pay taxes" may easily be thought simultaneously as "I do not want to pay taxes". Other corollaries include "I want to want to pay taxes, but I don't want to pay taxes". To what extent are such pairs of sentiments 'inconsistent'? The human mind remembers a vast number of facts, that could be expressed as propositions. It so happens that they are seldom expressed as propositions. If all remembered facts were tokenised into a 'semantic web', some simple literalisation and application rules could be used to generate thousands of contradictions could be generated. But so long as they remain unverbalised, no contradiction is apparent - yet we acknowledge the latent contradiction as an inconsistency. 

A simple psychological example occurs in mental maps, where we may recall at one moment that it is 15 miles from Fareham to Portsmouth, and at another moment that it is 15 miles to Southampton in the opposite direction, and at a third moment, believe it is 20 miles from Portsmouth to Southampton. Only when simultaneously bring all three facts to consciousness, and use some rules of application, do we declare a contradiction in our semantic web. The law of contradiction seems to instruct us, that one of our beliefs is false, and we generalise this to 'ought' statements. If everyone ought to phi, then I should phi. 

Certain things only work in an ensemble
A major criticism of universal-based and other-centred ethical accounts is that, even with the best will in the world, acts designated "good" may end up doing overall harm, unless everybody else in the world also applies these ethics. Skeptics from Malthus to Hume recognised that without some impositon from above, most systems fail even in theory. 

[Description of the other in terms of microeconomic profit - and the first person. ]
[Action and logical thought have different neural and psychological underpinnings.]
[Pure vs practical reason/wisdom.]
[Altruism's instability in game theory (Fehr & Fischbacher Nature 2003)]

Being hypocritical is a way of teaching people, when the teacher understands but is not capable of the good behaviour. The insight here is twofold:
1) firstly, that there is variety in the abilities of people to follow morals, and
2) secondly, that this ability may be absent even in those who possess the ability to understand and conceive of what is good.
In this way, the hypocrite whose argument is sound, even though he may sin, does good to society. He can be qualified to teach, even if he is incapable of practicing, being good. 

Indignation is the usual response to somebody who accuses other people of something that he also does. It is natural to feel cheated, unjustly accused, or chafed by such events. Biblical examples again abound, from casting the first stone, to logs in eyes. Is this visceral response the right one? Not always, I believe. There are sure occasions where the hypocrite knows he does wrong - be it rarely or often - but yet criticises others. His reasons for criticising may vary, from genuine despair at his own failings, to an insecure attempt to belittle others. If the intention is uncertain, or if it is apparently beneficient, then what reason have we to feel wronged? However if it the intention is selfish and inconsiderate, then feeling wronged appears more reasonable. On the other hand, there are occasions where hypocrites do not even know that they themselves are guilty of the same misdeeds. On these cases should we be indignant or hurt? It is clear to me that this for of hypocrisy is abundant; when the hypocrite is confronted, how often have we heard him cry "Surely not, not I?!" In this situation, it must be beneficial for the hypocrite to be made to understand his own failings, but why should there be negative emotions? In social contexts, punitive negativity is generally retributional, but when the if hypocrite's issue is purely conceptual, it seems the equivalent of shouting at a child for not knowing something that he has never been taught. In these situations, mutual education can occur without negativity, and moreover, when an educator is guilty, or when both parties are guilty.

Behavioural inconsistency as difference in expectation of internal and external rewards
Inconsistency may or may not be psychologically healthy. If it is unhealthy, it is because people feel bad about saying one thing and doing another. I have argued (effectively in reverse) that such bad feelings provide evidence that inconsistency should not be treated as a bad thing. But in fact what is at stake is much larger here: is it healthy for us to be obliged abide by global rules, when the net yield is worse for me as an individual? Two examples are theft and excess fuel consumption. In both cases, for society to function, the individual must forgo immediate reward. In the case of theft, the global rule (common law) renders it economically beneficial for me to not steal - in the longer term I will be caught and imprisoned. There is no question of inconsistency: I believe theft is wrong, and I do not steal. However when the global rule does not exert sufficient economic pressure, in the case of saving the environment, inconsistency arises. I believe we need to consume less, yet I consume excess. 

The very presence of inconsistency presses the government into making stronger rules. If everyone had the capacity to repress inconsistency - that is, to always act as they believed one ought to - then what would drive legislation? As a race, we have a natural variety of abilities. I will not make any case here to suggest that intelligence is correlated with behaving more morally. However, I would like to put it in this way: conforming to one's own standards is not always a natural thing. And it is this feature of humanity that drives all social structures, including power, economic and legal. These vast and pervasive structures allow the individual to remain an individual: that is, they allow us to make decisions locally, without understanding the whole structure of civilisation, and still act for the benefit of humankind. These structures make it economical for me to emit 'good' actions. People who are not sufficiently competent to understand the global ramifications of their choices, are now able to choose for themselves.
Even within this totalitarian world view, local freedom can be achieved.

[Freud is rarely incorporated into ethical theories. I can see why, but at the same time, I think that ethics of repression need to be laid to rest once and for all.  ]

[example
I may believe that charity is wrong, but I still donate.
I may believe that taxes should be high, but I don't want to be taxed. ]

One interesting consequence of this opinion is that, I now bear the burden of explaining why hypocrisy has, throughout the ages, been considered a sin. If inconsistency is natural and the right way to be, then not only must we revise the conception of hypocrisy, but also explain why it was for so long considered a bad thing.