Many people since the times of ancient Greece have conjectured that morality is man-made and is there for some purpose beneficial to all. Included in this tradition are Protagoras, Hobbes, Hume, and more recently, Warnock, Mackie and Rawls. Hobbes claimed that man has motivations which are primarily self-interested and that, in a state of nature, that is, without an artificial morality imposed by a sovereign, man would lead a life that was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, in a continual war of all against all. Hume, Warnock and Mackie do not have quite as dim a view of natural man as this, but nevertheless they teach us that the function of morality is to mitigate the bad effects of the limitations on man's generosity and sympathy. The idea is that morality takes society a little closer to what it would be, if, contrary to fact, we were able to sympathise with all the people whom our actions were likely to affect, instead of just those who are nearest and dearest to us.

One of the questions that arises concerning the point, purpose or function of morality is 'Who is it whose purposes we have in mind, if anybody's?'. The authors mentioned above would say 'everybody'. But is it plausible that, for any given person, the moral society is likely to yield that person more satisfaction than an amoral society? We have in sections 2.5 and 3.5 talked of the vested interests of the moral elite in the moral society. But what does morality do for the lower classes besides degrading and impoverishing them? Few would enjoy these consequences. What consequences of being a moral agent in a moral society might they enjoy?

It is true that there could be, or indeed actually are, many cases when an invocation of moral attitudes is conducive to maximal satisfaction -- even for those having low status in society. But that is not the point at issue. One could say as much for the use of draconic legislation, carelessness and war. We do not, for that reason, seek to enshrine these things as social institutions -- on the contrary.

The question here is not whether the moral institution has on some occasions a useful effect. It is whether it is worth preserving given the sum total of its effects on and within society.

In the next five sections I wish to examine a belief, common since at least the days of Hobbes, that morality is useful in the resolution of social conflict. I shall then examine the possibility that morality as an institution may be useful to those who have utilitarian preferences, that is, who wish to maximise human satisfaction. The idea is that they could use the institution to establish utilitarianism as a moral system -- to impose their utilitarian preferences on their fellow citizens as moral imperatives.

Finally I shall examine Mackie's contention that morality is useful in restricting behaviour in order to mitigate the consequences of limited human sympathy.

4.2 Is Morality of any Use in Conflict Resolution?

However, conflicts can be resolved without satisfaction. A duel may resolve a conflict, but may leave one person dead and the other maimed for life. Both parties could have received more satisfaction from life if the conflict had been left unresolved. So the question is not whether conflicts can be resolved more readily using morality, but rather whether the use of morality leads to optimal satisfaction of the disputing parties. I argue in this section and the following section that morality may not be as effective in this regard as commonly supposed and, indeed, may be a positive hindrance to this end.

For moral considerations to be effective in resolving a dispute in any way at all, satisfactory or otherwise, all parties must agree on what their moral values and obligations are, about how this good has or has not more weight than that, about which obligation over-rides which in which circumstances, or, failing initial agreement on these issues, all parties must possess a common moral leadership. Where these conditions fail to obtain the dispute may develop into mutual denigration leading to one of the disputants feeling morally justified in ignoring the desires of the other party. They may even feel obliged to treat their opponent harshly, by resorting to sanctions including physical violence or even death. In this way a moral agent could have an increased, not a lessened, motive for treating his opponent like a natural disaster.

Of course there is no guarantee that moral agents in conflict will choose the same ,moral leadership or share the same moral ideals. Hence we have the situation in Ireland (unresolved after four hundred years of bloody conflict); the situation in the Lebanon (unresolved after about eight hundred years of conflict between Christian and Moslem); the Palestinian Arabs versus the Zionists; the Vietnamese versus the Khmer, the Chinese, the French and the Americans; all the wars of religion and all the blood-letting of the two world wars.

Think of any one of these conflicts and think of how the situation would have been if, by a miracle, moral thought could have been eradicated from the minds of all the agents involved. I, for one, find it difficult to conceive of how the conflicts would have proceeded. There would be no sense of duty, no sense of loyalty, no patriotism, no feeling morally obliged to fight for a cause, no sense that the people one is trying to kill or subjugate are less worthy of survival or freedom than oneself or anyone else.

There could be war without morality. But moral propaganda eases the task of those with control of the mass media to get almost all the nation determined to attack, plunder, slaughter and subjugate another group of people. Co-operation has a pleasant sound to it. But people can co-operate to do many things which disgust or endanger others. It would not seem to be unreasonable, then, to conjecture that moral disagreement tends to exacerbate conflict.

Let us turn now to the less bellicose situation in which the contenders agree on their moral values or agree to abide by the moral rulings of some member-of the moral elite whom they both respect. Let us assume they are both moral agents who want above all to do whatever is right. Then the conflict may be quickly and amicably resolved. But will it be resolved in a way that maximises satisfaction?

It may be so resolved if the guiding moral principles enjoin an attempt to maximise satisfaction, that is, if the guiding moral principals are utilitarian. However, there is no guarantee that the guiding moral principles will be utilitarian and in general they are not likely to be utilitarian if one of the disputants thinks that she or he would be better satisfied by some other principle which could be intuited to be overriding in the circumstance.

That way of putting the point may be interpreted as overly cynical. Let me put the point another way. Most systems of moral beliefs are rule inconsistent. That is to say, although the beliefs may not be inconsistent with one another, taken as a set, they may be inconsistent with the facts concerning the prevailing circumstances. For example, a polygamist who has been converted to Christianity and its attendant morality has to choose between what he believes to be the sin of continuing his polygamist ways and what he believes to be the sin of failing to honour family commitments.' Now, although it may seem reasonable to conjecture that many if not most moral agents would have a utilitarian strand or two among their moral beliefs, it seems reasonable to conjecture that most would have non-utilitarian strands also. Further, it often seems to be the case that it is these strands -- the property ethic, the doctrine of deserts, familial duties, patriotic duties and other in-group duties -- that become emphasised in just the sort of conflicts we are considering. In any case, one certainly cannot rely on any sort of utilitarian ethic being over-riding to all parties in a dispute between moral agents.

Of course it remains true that the utilitarian ethic may prevail in the situation and that accordingly the dispute will be settled with a maximum likelihood of optimal satisfaction. But given the multitude of alternative moral principles that could prevail instead, one would be unwise to encourage a moral input to conflict resolution on the basis of the mere possibility of utilitarianism prevailing. One might just as well encourage those who wished to go north to proceed in the direction they are facing -- whatever that may be. After all, its possible that they could be facing north.

If moral desires are an artificiality, the non-moral desires at the root of the conflict may well be left completely dissatisfied by the arbitration. The mere fact that morality can in some cases result in a quick resolution of conflict in no way entails that the resolution involves an optimal satisfaction of desire any more than a non amicable resolution would do. Indeed the moral arbitrator may even rule that both sides have a moral obligation to fight it out. It is not very long ago that men in Europe felt morally obliged to defend their honour by duelling. Even within this century, Hitler's bellicose morality enjoined conflict between races. But even where the moral elite are opposed to conflict between their disciples, their rulings will probably be contrary to what would otherwise satisfy one of the parties, and often the ruling will be dissatisfying to both parties, except for the artificial satisfaction that both may enjoy in doing what they falsely believe is the right thing to do. .

Again it may be objected that there could be and, indeed, are many cases when the invocation of moral attitudes and considerations yields a maximum of satisfaction in the resolution of a conflict. Again the reply is that that is not at issue. The question is whether the institution is worth preserving given the likelihood or otherwise of moral invocations having greater costs than benefits overall. It is simply invalid to argue that an institution is worth preserving on the basis that its invocation is often beneficial. Its invocation may even more often be disastrous.

4.3 The Alternative -- Conflict Resolution Without Morality

At this stage, this question may remind one of the person who suggests to the man who is hitting his mouth with a brick that he stops. 'What is the alternative?' the masochist asks as if stopping were not enough -- as if something else were required.

No-one to my knowledge, least of all myself, has ever suggested that doing without morality would be a positive cure for all the stresses, strains and conflicts within society. The proposal is that doing without it is doing without something that is likely to cause more stress and strain than it alleviates.

I If morality is ill-conducive to satisfaction in situations of conflict, and if morality has the disadvantages to society as outlined in chapter 3, then using morality as a device for the resolution of conflicts is like using a brick as a toothpick. If you want to be rid of the fibre between your teeth and you do not want broken teeth, then throw the brick away, and think of how you can rid yourself of the fibre without it. Likewise, if you want to minimise conflict and you do not want widespread denigration, guilt complexes, elitism, authoritarianism, economic inequality, insecurity, and war, then throw morality away and think about how best you can resolve conflict without it.

Even if morality were of some use in resolving conflicts, it could be used only within a moral society and we should have to put up with all the side effects that perpetuation of the moral society would entail.

So far, I have been talking about rational conflict resolution as if everybody were agreed what that was. In order to consider in more detail the effects of moralising on conflict resolution, we should first consider the kind of conflict resolution we would, in general, wish upon ourselves. The next section is concerned with that issue.

4.4 Rational Resolution of Conflicts

(a) sorting out any conceptual confusions between them relevant to the conflict, (b) finding out the facts of the case relevant to the conflict, and (c) if it is still necessary, devising ways of solving their mutual problem.

The object of requirements (a) and (b) is to eliminate the possibility of a dispute continuing when there is no conflict of interests, but merely a belief that there is. Step (c) relates to the work to be done when the detective work and conceptual analysis have made it clear that a real conflict of interests is at hand.

In this section I shall say more about the rational resolution of conflicts, amplifying (a), (b) and (c) with some examples -- and I shall give examples also of how the process can be inhibited when morality gets into play. Thus I shall continue to point out ways in which the use of morality within conflicts inhibits rational resolution of the conflict. But I stress that this is not to argue that so long as everyone is amoral, all conflicts are resolved in an amicable. rational manner. There are other passions besides moral feelings which can engender irrationality in group decision making. In particular, there is the fear of not being able to get, or the fear of losing, something for which one feels a need -- food, clothing, shelter, security, ego-satisfaction, power, the company of other people, loving and being loved in return.

I shall return to this point later. In describing now what I take to be rational resolution of conflict, I simply wish to point out a possibility that can occur within an amoral society or for that matter which occurs very frequently even within our existing moral society. The possibility is that of cooperation in reaching a resolution of the conflict -- a resolution which is satisfying to all parties concerned.

'How can there be cooperation in a situation of conflict?' it may be asked.

Cooperation in conflict situations is commonplace. Any competitive game is an example. More seriously, duelling requires a high degree of cooperation. So does any sort of fighting for that matter. It is very hard to fight someone who runs away. So if cooperation is possible in situations of extreme antipathy, it is certainly possible when people merely think that they may have a conflict of desires.

Let us turn then to requirement (a). The object of this requirement is simply to ensure that the disputants are not at cross-purposes. For example, some woman who styles herself as an anti-socialist may believe herself to be in dispute with another who thinks of herself as a socialist. During discussion it turns out that what the first woman means by 'socialism' is the bureaucratic control of the means of production, distribution and exchange whereas the second means the democratic control of the means of production, distribution and exchange. Both turn out to be in favour of the latter and opposed to the former.

Violations of requirement (a) are commonplace where the disputants are being competitive, especially when the dispute is being adjudicated by some third party or parties. Sometimes the equivocation involved goes unnoticed by everybody if only because they are more concerned about who will 'win' the dispute than with having the patience to understand the issues. But sometimes misunderstanding is deliberately fostered in a dishonest attempt to get the support of a third party. Political propaganda is loaded with deliberate equivocation in both meaning and reference.

Within moral societies, one widespread desideratum will be conformity to moral obligations, including those arising from the doctrine of deserts, namely, that morally good people should be rewarded and morally bad people punished. The equivocations between social status and moral worth, noted in section 3.4, are therefore of especial interest if unnecessary dissatisfaction of those of low social status is to be avoided.

Again, because of the incomplete nature of many sentences used to assert moral propositions, it is important to beware of conflating non-moral considerations, such as social or prudential considerations, with moral considerations -- as we saw in section 1.3. If I can invalidly convince you that what is (prudentially) best (for me) is what is (morally) best, then you may feel morally obliged to satisfy my desires at the expense of your own.

Requirement (b) means the disputants will cooperate in finding out the facts relevant to the dispute. One common cause of contention is that someone may believe falsely that an act of which they disapprove has been committed or is intended to be committed by some other person. The simple expedient of asking what has been done or what the person intends to do is usually sufficient to set fears at rest. However, if someone truly believes that an act of which she or he disapproves has been committed or is intended to be committed, the facts of the matter might not be revealed so easily. People may be less than honest about their behaviour if they fear that the resulting conflict will be competitive or in any case will result in such sanctions as withdrawal of affection, moral denigration or imprisonment. Insecurity begets dishonesty. So if one is concerned about the behaviour of another, and if one wants any resulting dispute resolved amicably, then the approach should be made as a friend, not as a potential enemy bristling with accusation, moral indignation or threats. Our legal system could hardly be better organised to make liars of those who are unfortunate enough to fall prey to it. One exception to this is the operation of the divorce legislation introduced by the Australian federal government in 1974. Within this legislation, an attempt has been made to render the notion of blame irrelevant to divorce proceedings. It would be a step in the direction towards cooperative relationships between citizens if the 'no blame' idea were extended into other areas of legislation.

Let us return, however, to the business of finding out the facts of the case. The behaviour and intended behaviour of all concerned having been established, the dispute may now hinge on what the consequences of such behaviour are believed to be. For example, grazier A is worried about the plans of grazier B to build a dam on B's property. The area is fairly arid and A's concern is whether B's dam will seriously decrease the water supply for A's own stock. But B has done his homework. He has consulted meteorological statisticians in the Department of Primary Industry and has the facts and figures to prove that with the size, type and position of the dam he is proposing to build, the water supply to A's property will not be appreciably affected. Grazier A rests assured.

Again, people may be uncooperative in having the facts of the matter revealed, or positively deceitful even to themselves let alone to others if the situation is competitive or if they are otherwise insecure about the outcome. For example, wartime propaganda is loaded not only with denigration of the enemy's character and with deliberate falsehoods about war aims, but also with deliberate falsehoods about prevailing conditions and their possible effects. This needs no elaboration for those who remember the propaganda associated with the war in Vietnam or either of the world wars.

The deceit can be as much in omission of truths as well as statements of falsehoods. News media almost invariably emphasise the disruption to public services caused by an industrial strike, yet the consequences for the striking workers and their families of their demands not being met are seldom mentioned let alone emphasised.

Often the consequences of an act are not knowable in advance, and the best that can be done is to estimate probabilities. Again people often deceive themselves and others about the chances involved.

Legislation which can be used to inhibit speech and assembly is often introduced on the pretext that the chances are negligible of its being used to prevent standardly acceptable forms of communication between citizens, despite the fact that, as civil libertarians continually point out, it is almost invariably the case that such legislation comes to be used for exactly that purpose.

Self deceit is notoriously difficult to spot. A case in point would be the mistaken equation of personal desires with moral qualities discussed in section 2.4. This could lead to an equation of the satisfaction of one's personal desires with one's moral deserts, which could nicely bias the resolution of a conflict in one's favour -- unless one's adversary indulged in the same sort of self-deceit in which case things could become dangerous.

If the two parties have different moral intuitions about which moral principle overrides which in the given situation, then there can be an outbreak of moral denigration which can only exacerbate the conflict, resulting in the parties believing of each other that they do not deserve to be treated with the altruism and trust that rational resolution of conflicts demands. This is the standard situation which prevails with respect to industrial, political and international disputes.

It is for such reasons that professionals in conflict resolution such as Nightingale, Sherif and Beal [2] advise keeping morality out of conflicts if possible.

Let us now proceed and assume that any misunderstandings have been cleared up and that the known relevant facts of the case have been determined and still there remains a dispute. What can be done now? The first thing to notice is that in most conflicts of desire, the desires in conflict are secondary. That is to say, the objects of desire are not wanted for their own sake, but rather because it is thought that they are a means to satisfying some deeper desire. These desires, in turn, may themselves be secondary to still other desires. The fact that secondary desires are in conflict does not entail that there is inconsistency between desires at a deeper level.

Thus workers choose to strike, not because they like being on strike, but because they believe that the strike is in the long term interest of themselves and their dependants. Employers are opposed to strikes because strikes threaten their prestige and power and they want their prestige and power because they are distrustful of the consequences of having their fellow citizens partaking in decisions which may affect the security of themselves and their dependants. But note that although the desire of one set of people to strike is inconsistent with the desire of another set of people that the strike should not occur, there is no inconsistency between the desires of one set of people for security for themselves and their dependants and the desires of another set of people for that same security.

At this stage in the proceedings, then, the job facing the disputants is to devise different means of satisfying their mutually consistent fundamental desires other than via the secondary desires which brought them into conflict in the first place. This is what requirement (c) is all about.

Competitive resolution of conflicts results in at most one winner. Cooperative resolution of conflicts usually results in everybody being satisfied.

Throughout the process of conflict resolution, insecurities of various kinds, including fear of moral denigration, can introduce an element of dishonesty that inhibits the rational resolution of the dispute.

But it is not only through fear of moral denigration that morality can act as an inhibition to the rational resolution of conflicts. For moral agents engaged in a dispute, the inhibition can be much more direct. If one of the parties can convince the other that his, her, or their aims or means of achieving them are contrary to this or that overriding moral principle, then the dispute is resolved, but at the expense of failing to satisfy one of the disputants in some regard or other, which may have been satisfiable were it not for the moral considerations introduced.

In the next section we shall look at two suggestions that are commonly put forward by moralists for the use of morality with respect to the resolution of conflicts when the rational resolution of such conflicts as outlined in this section fails for whatever reason.

4.5 Morality When Conflict Resolution Fails to be Rational or When Rational Procedures Fail to Resolve the Conflict

Now some people may be quite agreeable with the tenor of the previous section and may even be of the opinion that it is an abuse of morality to use it within the resolution of conflicts unless all else fails. But that is where morality comes into its own, the claim would be. One could morally enjoin others to try to resolve their conflicts in a rational manner, and one could use morality to reach a decision if the conflict remained at a fundamental level when all the procedures of rational resolution had been exhausted.

Let us first examine the moral injunction to try to resolve conflicts rationally. If the moralist really does accept that any rational resolution of conflict is devoid of moralising, then what she or he is telling us is that in certain circumstances people have a moral obligation to behave amorally.

The position, if not inconsistent, is nevertheless rather strange. Either people will have reason to believe that they have moral obligations other than those to try to resolve conflicts amorally, or they will not. But if they have such beliefs, is it not rather paradoxical for them also to accept that the corresponding obligations ought not to be invoked -- especially in a situation involving decisions on which those same obligations come to bear?

Alternatively, if people have no good reason to believe in the existence of such obligations, then why should they believe that they have the obligation to resolve their conflicts in a certain way? We could of course give them reasons outlined in the previous section which appeal to the desire of the agent to bring satisfaction to all parties within the dispute. But such reasons are merely an appeal to the altruism of the agent. They are not in themselves reasons to believe that there is a moral obligation to act in this way. One would need the extra premise that there is a moral obligation to satisfy desires as much as possible, and the question again arises as to why one should believe that there is such a moral obligation.

A similar situation prevails with respect to the use of morality to bring about resolution of the conflict in those cases where the conflict remains at a fundamental level after all the procedures of rational conflict resolution have run their course. If the moral obligations that one invokes then have any substance, why should they not be invoked at any stage of the proceedings? Conversely, if there are times when we ought not to invoke them, why should we believe that there are times when we should do so? Why, if one is to believe in moral obligations at all, should one not believe that under these circumstances one has a moral obligation to settle the dispute by drawing straws or tossing coins?

It is a logical truth that one wants to satisfy one's own desires. But it is a matter of psychological fact whether those desires include the desire to satisfy the desires of someone other than oneself, that is, whether one is altruistic. Mutual altruism is sufficient though not necessary for the rational resolution of conflicts.

Contrary to what David Hume surmised in his Treatise Concerning Human Nature, it is not so much a matter of sympathy, of automatically being affected by the feelings of others -- though of course that helps. What is more to the point is to want to satisfy the other person's desires whether or not one sympathises with them. Empathy, the ability to understand what the other person is likely to want even where one does not sympathise with those wants, is more like what is required. Though if one is not particularly empathetic, one can always ask.

Altruism facilitates the rational resolution of conflicts, particularly in those cases where the procedures of rational resolution lead to a stalemate at a fundamental level. Cases of stalemate under such circumstances would, I believe, be rare in comparison to the degree of success offered by the rational resolution procedures. Nevertheless they would be frequent enough to remain a considerable nuisance to society if enough altruism was not present to ensure that the parties in dispute would co-operate in coming to a decision which was optimally satisfying if not absolutely satisfying to all concerned.

Note how very differently altruism would operate in this regard in comparison with the intuition of moral obligations and values. Altruism would tend to optimise satisfaction. Moral intuition could lead to almost any result at all.

'So why not use morality in order to morally enjoin people to be altruistic?' one may ask. But does it make sense to request, let alone morally enjoin, someone to be altruistic? People are either altruistic or they are not. It makes sense to ask someone to stand up or to say that they have a moral obligation to stand up. But it does not make sense to ask them to be taller than they are or to say that they have a moral obligation to be taller. Likewise, it does not make sense to ask someone to have some desire or other or to say that they have a moral obligation to have that desire.

How then, can we get people to be altruistic, if not by asking them to be so or by moralising at them? If some modern psychologists such as Maslow are to be believed, then what one must do is to ensure that the people are fed, clothed, housed, and made to feel secure. [3] Perhaps Maslow's theories are in need of elucidation and development and doubtless there is a need for much more research in this area. But if we want our society to be rid of useless conflict and if one is correct to be sceptical about the existence of moral obligations, then this is the area within which we should put our intellectual effort, rather than waste our time chasing mirages in the deserts of normative ethics.

Apart from any basic altruistic motivations, there is a more self-interested amoral mechanism which encourages people to want to satisfy the desires of others and which thereby augments the possibility of the rational resolution of conflicts. Everyone soon learns the advantages in receiving the co-operation of others in achieving ends which one desires. But such co-operation is unlikely to be forthcoming from those who do not trust us -- from those who believe for whatever reason that there is a considerable possibility that we may behave in ways which are detrimental to their interests. Such people will want to distance themselves from us -- to put themselves in a position where our actions are less likely to have an effect upon them. If, therefore, we wish to reverse this tendency, it is necessary for us to become trustworthy in the eyes of as many people as possible -- to be thought of as people who are likely to act in the interests of others. It is such mechanisms, rather than any moral injunctions, which encourage us to abide by our promises and contracts, to be open and honest in our dealings with others and to be predictable and co-operative in our own behaviour.

It is true that there are occasions when people can advantage themselves by disadvantaging others or by risking a disadvantage to others, with little likelihood of any adverse reaction. Likelihoods build up with frequency, however, so, on the surface, at least, it would seem imprudent to so behave with any regularity. Sooner or later the reputation of such people for taking others into account in their behaviour is likely to suffer and with it would suffer their ability to gain the cooperation, let alone the friendship and love of others.

Robert Axelrod, in The Evolution of Cooperation [4] reports on a study of so-called iterated prisoner's dilemma situations which indicates that the above conclusion concerning the long term self-interest in co-operative behaviour is not naively optimistic. In the classic prisoner's dilemma, a district attorney presents each of two prisoners, who have been jointly involved in a bank robbery, with the following information. If neither prisoner confesses, then both will receive a sentence of two years. If one confesses and the other does not, then the confessor will be set free, and the prisoner who did not confess gets five years. If both confess, both get four years.

For each prisoner, then, there seems to be an advantage in confessing, regardless of how the other prisoner behaves. If prisoner A has confessed, then prisoner B will receive five years if he does not confess but only four years if he does. If prisoner A has not confessed, then prisoner B receives two years if he does not confess but none if he does. Each therefore, would seem to have an interest in confessing. But if they both confess, they each get four years. If both had behaved to benefit the other, then each would have received only two years.

Many conflict situations seem to be of the same type as the prisoner's dilemma. More than one party may be involved. The essential characteristics involved are that: (a) no matter how the other parties behave, it always pays to defect rather than co operate, and
(b) the average pay-off is greater if everyone co-operates than if everyone defects.

Clearly, if one wants to maximise satisfaction, one needs to encourage co-operation in these situations; but how can one do that when every individual is being rewarded for defecting? As Axelrod shows, these rewards for defection are likely to vanish when prisoner's dilemma games are iterated. It would appear that the optimum strategy in many such situations in the long term is a 'tit-for-tat' strategy of reciprocating both cooperation and defection, and never being the first to defect -- as long as the future is sufficiently important to the agent and the society contains enough fellow tit-for-tatters. (The actual proportion of tit-for-tatters needed to make tit-for-tatting pay is surprisingly small for realistic weights placed on future interactions between agents.) Societies of such strategists will, therefore, be societies of cooperators.

Further, there is happy news regarding the stability and evolution of such societies. 'Invaders' with mutant strategies get a hard time of it in a society of tit-for-tatters, whereas small groups of tit-for-tatters can successfully invade other strategies. Axelrod defines a strategy as nice if and only if the strategy does not allow defection before the other agent has defected. A strategy is defined as provokable if and only if it reacts to a defection with a defection. The forgiveness of a strategy is defined as its propensity to cooperate after other agents have defected. Tit-for-tat is nice, immediately provokable, is unforgiving for the move following a defection by someone else, but thereafter totally forgives the defection. On p177, Axelrod says:

The sorts of societies with which Axelrod is concerned, are societies which are populated by people whose interests are primarily self-oriented, even if they may be secondarily other-oriented. In the actual world, primary interests may not all be self-oriented. Sometimes they may be other-oriented, which would favour Axelrod's optimistic results, but they may also be the result of moral training in which case there will be no guarantee that they will be either self-interested or other oriented. Depending on the circumstances, the moral viewpoint may be one from which an Axelrodian defection is seen as morally worthy of reward. From an amoral point of view, the moral elite of a moral society would be seen as a bunch of free riders (if not foul dealers -- to use Philip Pettit's expression for those who disadvantage others in order to advantage themselves [5]) who survive by virtue of the doctrine of deserts, moral parsing and associated arts of good public relations, plus, above all, the fact that it is their moral intuitions which bear weight in social decision making. In effect, the tactic used by a moral elite is to re-define what is to count as a defection and what as societal cooperation.

It is ironic that so many articles written by moral philosophers about free riding are concerned about that doubtless rare, but, of course, logically possible case of the amoral free rider in an otherwise moral society and the reasons, if any, that such people might have for mending their ways. In such articles we are invited to cogitate on the paradox of the possibility of there being such free riders with no good reason to change their life-style. But there is no paradox for moral nihilists or others who would accept the moral sociology of section 2.5. For what is being claimed there is that the moral society is loaded with the free riders of the moral elite. The moral society not only harbours the mere possibility of the free rider. It positively generates an entire class of them. I digress. The point of this section is that there is reason to believe that, for those who are not of the moral elite, and even on most occasions for those who are, long term self interest would encourage them to resolve conflicts rationally without appeal to morality, if they were given the opportunity to do so.

4.6 Is Utilitarianism of any Utility?

The prime internal problem of utilitarianism is how to sum up individual states of happiness and satisfaction. Is suffering to be taken into account at all, except insofar as its relief will bring happiness? Is the happiness arising from the satisfaction of passions like revenge, drug addiction, greed or a taste for punk rock to be downgraded with respect to the happiness arising from the satisfaction of dispositions such as loving your enemy, a love of good health, generosity or a taste for the music of Mozart? How is the quiet satisfaction of a job well done to be compared with the more lively joys of, say, sexual gratification?

Assuming that there is some agreed solution to these problems, there still remain problems concerned with the distribution of happiness. Should the happiness of a lot of people be downgraded a little bit in order to generate great happiness in a few? Some may regard this as 'unfair' or they may regard it as desirable as in the organisation of a lottery or they may even regard it as necessary as in what elitist educationalists tend to refer to as the pursuit of excellence.

Further problems arise with the business of just whose happiness or satisfaction is to be considered. Is it the happiness only of people or of all animals? Is it only those animals and people which exist at the time of the action or should the happiness of future sentient beings be taken into account? Should we worry about satisfying the desires of dead people, as when we take account of their last will and testament? If we have to take account of future people and animals, problems arise because our present actions can determine the very existence of such people. Should we aim for a heavily populated world of mildly contented people, or a sparsely populated world of very happy people?

The possibility of there being many different ways of maximising satisfaction is not in itself an objection. There are many different ways of doing anything at all. No matter what our moral obligations were, there would always be an indefinite number of ways of satisfying them. The point about the sort of differences alluded to above is that these differences are just the kind about which many people feel the need for moral guidance. Insofar as that is the case, people tend to feel that utilitarianism is an incomplete moral theory, even if it is true. They feel that there is more to morality than utilitarians would have us believe.

It has been objected that since my motives, if not my ethics, seem to be utilitarian, then I should be in the same difficulties with respect to the incompleteness of those utilitarian motivations as the normative utilitarian is with her normative theory. But this is not the case. I do not claim that any utilitarian motivations I may have are my only motivations, any more than a moral person need claim utilitarianism to be her only moral principle. The objection raised above could only be to a theory that normative utilitarianism is the only moral principle from which all moral obligations are derived -- and then only if it is granted that the dilemmas do demonstrate a need for extra moral guidance.

There is much literature devoted to the problems of utilitarianism, [6] but I do not wish to dwell further on those problems here. What I do wish to emphasise are the difficulties with the suggestion that I should try to create a society which practices a utilitarian morality. The first difficulty is that this course of action is not open to the majority of those who would suggest it, let alone open to me. It would be open only to those who control the media of moral propaganda -- the moral elite -- and the moral elite, on past performance, is most unlikely to adopt a utilitarianism unsullied by appeals to would-be overriding virtues such as loyalty and patriotism, the sanctity of work and property, and the doctrine of deserts. Even if they did so there would be no guarantee that they would not begin to propagandise an alternative ethic at a later date. Indeed in any particular case where utilitarianism or any other moral doctrine was seen to undermine their status, it is likely that there would be swift 'intuitions' of the overriding nature of conflicting moral principles which did not. This happens now as it has always happened in the past. There is no reason to believe that it would not happen in any future society that was by and large utilitarian.

The second difficulty is that even if it were possible to use the morality within society to make it a utilitarian society, the idea that one should do so in order to maximise happiness or the satisfaction of desire, though initially plausible, runs into practical inconsistencies. For if it were a moral society, and if it were to be kept that way, the society would have to indulge in the perpetuation mechanisms described in Chapter 2, with all the sadness, moral denigration, guilt complexes, ego-competition, moral perversion, elitism, authoritarianism and inequality that such a mechanism entailed. One way of describing normative utilitarianism is as the doctrine that we have a moral obligation to behave towards others as if we were kindly disposed towards them. What I suggest is that it would be far more conducive to human happiness to work towards a society in which people were actually kind, than to work towards a society in which people behaved as if they were kind out of a sense of duty. So we reach again the point made in section 4.5. If it is altruism we want, let us aim directly for that. Let us not aim at a society which at best moralises its citizens into a pretence of the real thing.

4.7 Mitigating the Consequences of Limited Sympathy

The quote is from John Mackie's book Ethics. Inventing Right and Wrong. [7] There is a doctrine called rule utilitarianism which is the doctrine that we ought to act in accordance with that set of rules which yields more happiness or satisfaction than any other set of rules which we would be able to follow. Now the sort of society in which Mackie wanted to live, if I understand him correctly, indeed the sort of society in which he believed himself to be living, was a society in which people acted in accordance with some sort of rule utilitarianism. Mackie did not believe that there are moral obligations in the strict sense of those words, and he specifically rejected any sort of utilitarianism in the standard sense of that word because he did not believe that there is any 'such common measure of all interests and purposes as happiness or utility is supposed to be'. (Ethics, p.139). However, he believed that we can reach agreement about 'certain specifiable evils', and he wrote of morality in a 'narrow sense' as a device for countering such specific evils.

Warnock in his book The Object of Morality (London: Methuen, 1971) claims that the object of morality is to help ameliorate the human predicament which suffers from conflicting desires, limited sympathy and active malevolence, among other things. Warnock sees morality as a business of weighing reasons rather than following rules and hence argues that it is a set of virtues that a society has to generate for itself rather than a set of rules. In Section 2.7 it was claimed that virtues and prima facie obligations arising from moral rules or principles are interchangeable. In any case, when rules conflict, there is room for the weighting of reasons just as readily as there is if injunctions to pursue a virtuous path lead to dilemmas when more than one such path presents itself. So what Warnock calls morality appears to be, as Mackie would have said, a species of morality 'in the narrow sense'.

I take it that Mackie believed that any moral society will exhibit such a 'morality'. Certainly he claimed that such moral sentiment, widespread within a society, will give that society an evolutionary edge on its competitors and gave this as an explanation of why such sentiments are widespread (Ethics, p. 113). Perhaps this is true. Certainly it is consistent with the story told in Chapter I of the perpetuation of the moral society. Yet what survives as a result of evolution be it animal, vegetable or sociological, depends on the environment, and one of the surviving species, the human being, has the capacity to alter environments, and so is in a position to choose, at least in some cases, whether or not particular individuals, species or societies will survive. So if we can do so, and I see no reason why we cannot, the decision still remains for us whether or not to eliminate morality in any form, narrow or otherwise.

Our self-directed interests may dictate that we maximise the survival chances of the honey bee, and our altruism may dictate that we maximise the survival chances of the useless koala or even the deadly taipan. But I guess that the altruistic sentiments of very few people indeed would reach out to the malarial mosquito, the staphylococcus or an influenza virus. It is not just that these organisms are dangerous to us if we happen to come across them, rather it is the fact that the very mechanisms which allow them to survive are detrimental to the operation of our own survival mechanisms. The fact that these species are ecologically healthy does not encourage us to allow them to remain so. Likewise the fact that moral societies have a high survival rating is in itself no reason why we should allow them to survive.

Survival of a society is not to be equated with the survival of the people who make up that society. Nations at war, through the patriotic fervour of their citizens, have readily survived the most devastating inroads on their populations.. Conversely, to eliminate a sort of society, it is not necessary to annihilate any of the people who form such a society. A society is a group of people who relate to one another in specific ways. To eliminate the society, it suffices merely to eliminate those ways of relating and perhaps to substitute new ways for the people involved to relate to one another and maybe to others as well. Ways that people have of relating to one another can be as physically and psychologically dangerous to individual human beings as any microbe or virus. So it appears to be, for all our investigations so far have shown us, with the moral society.

Someone may argue that the costs of living in a moral society so far enumerated are the costs of living in a moral society of the sort we live in today. Perhaps the introduction of new mechanisms for the perpetuation of morality would reduce some of these costs, if not eliminate them altogether.

Now would any morality in the 'narrow' sense do the job? If the moral sceptic is correct, it would not. There are two possible ways in which people might continue to act as if in accordance with moral obligations. The first way is that the widespread belief in moral obligations continues and that people are conditioned to behave in accordance with what they believe their obligations to be. That is, they are conditioned to want to be good. This entails that someone does the conditioning and this in turn entails the existence of a moral hierarchy. In short, we are back to the sort of society described in Chapter 2 with all the consequences described in Chapter 3, with the possible exception that at least part of the moral elite would know they were perpetrating a hoax.

The second possibility is that people continue to act as if they are moral despite the fact that they are amoral. That is, despite the fact that they no longer believe in moral obligations, they act as if there are such things and as if they wish to conform to these fictitious moral injunctions. The reader may find it difficult to believe that whole populations could agree to live lives of continual conscious pretence in this way. So do 1. What reasons could they have for such behaviour? The only possible rational reasons they could have would be that they believed such a pretence was in their interests -- either their self-regarding interests or their altruistic interests -- at least in the long term.

Now Mackie claimed (Ethics, p.190) that if a society were to adopt in this way a set of 'moral' constraints on behaviour to protect the interests of persons other than the agent, there would still be times when it was in one's selfish interests to take advantage of the fact that everyone else was acting 'morally' by not fulfilling the 'moral' requirements of the society oneself. This is reminiscent of a point made in section 4.5, where it was agreed that even if most people behaved with the interests of others in mind, there would still be times when we could advantage ourselves to the disadvantage of others and when there would be little likelihood of being found out. It was argued there that, because of our desire for cooperation from others, together with the laws of probability, most of us would have a long-term self-interest in taking the desires of other people into account even in such cases.

Mackie's explanation for our usually conformist behaviour in these circumstances was that we have 'moral feelings'. Why we have them is 'a psychological question, a sociological question, a biological question to be answered by an evolutionary explanation. (Ethics, p.192) He went on to claim that for people with fairly strong moral tendencies, the prudential course will almost certainly coincide with what they see as the moral one, simply because they will have to live with their conscience.

We are, all will agree, creatures of habit. Doubtless our continual altruistic behaviour leads, in the great majority of cases, to knee-jerk altruism that is untutored by cost-benefit analyses. It would lead us to be the sort of person Hume described as 'virtuous' -- people who's immediate tendency was to act in a way that increased the pleasure and decreased the suffering of others, without recourse to considerations of any moral duty. But all this is a long way from having moral feelings and 'living with our conscience'. Such feelings and attitudes would occur, I suggest, only in a full-blooded moral society where people had received the appropriate moral training. How would it apply in a society where people did not even believe in moral obligations?

In view of Mackie's reference to biological evolution, one might be tempted to suggest that his 'moral feelings' and 'conscience' are to be read simply as altruistic feelings towards other humans generally, where the evolutionary antecedents of such altruism were the self-interests of people in ensuring long-term trust, respect and love from others with the cooperative actions that all of that facilitated. This interpretation of Mackie's 'moral feelings' and 'conscience' cannot be correct, however, for the object of morality in the narrow sense is supposed to cater for a widespread lack of altruism. What Mackie was referring to with the words 'moral feelings' and 'conscience' must presumably be something to do with the tendency of people to conform to societal taboos or mores regardless of their altruistic sentiments or the lack of them. He wanted us to recognise our tendencies so to conform and to tailor our mores to prevailing conditions in order to optimise whatever advantages to us there would be in such conformity.

Even if this is what the 'narrow sense' of morality amounts to, there need be nothing particularly moral about it. Conforming to mores is not necessarily acting morally. One can consistently believe that one is immoral to so conform, or that one has a moral obligation to do so or that the matter is morally indifferent. Even if the mores were of the sort that would be invented or perpetuated for altruistic reasons, one would not necessarily be acting morally in conforming to such mores. To believe otherwise is to adopt a subjectivist account of morality. So if, as Mackie himself claimed, subjectivist theories about the meaning of moral terms are mistaken, then Mackie would be using moral terminology in an extended sense in describing 'the narrow sense of morality' as a morality.. The 'narrow sense of morality' would be, strictly speaking, quite consistent with an amoral way of carrying on.

However, the question before us is whether a society in which one's behaviour is constrained in such a way as to protect the interests of people other than the agent can serve our interests better than the full-blooded moral society that we live in now. To answer this question we have to know which of our interests would be better served and which would not. Also we have to know whose interests would be better served.

The use of the first person plural in 'our interests' is misleading, for clearly any such set of constraints which can be devised will be likely to serve some people's interests more than other's. Thus the injunction 'Thou shalt not steal' is more in the interest of those that have rather than those that have not. The injunction to be patriotically loyal is clearly more in the interests of those citizens who are in positions of power rather than those who are already powerless and exploited and for whom the invasion by some foreign power, though dangerous, may feature as a welcome release in the long term. The injunction to keep one's promises clearly favours those who have the power to elicit promises by either covert or overt threat -- those who are top dog when the contract is being signed.

It is true that there are some 'specific evils' that nobody would want to happen to them and which would not happen to them if everybody obeyed a corresponding rule. Take stealing for example. Eliminating the moral connotations from this word, what we are left with is being unwillingly deprived of a possession. It is tautologous to say that nobody is willing to be unwillingly deprived of some possession. From this it does not follow that it would be in everybody's interest to see such activity wholly eliminated by virtue of everybody being inhibited from uninvitedly taking away other people's possessions. There are many people who see such behaviour as necessary in producing an egalitarian society whose introduction would clearly be in the interests of those most disadvantaged. Wealth taxes and the socialisation of industry are clearly steps in this direction. From the fact, then, that some treatment or other is distasteful to anyone who is on the receiving end, it does not follow that it is in everyone's interest that such treatment never occurs. Other interests, self-regarding or other-regarding, of the agent or of others, may be in conflict with the desire of the recipient of the treatment not to be so treated.

The effect, then, of giving extra pseudo-moral weight to 'certain specifiable evils' about which we all concur, as opposed to other interests which some of us may have wherein there may or may not be universal concurrence, serves to bias the business of rationally resolving conflicts. If two people, P and Q, have conflicting interests, the effect of societal taboos, insofar as they affect the situation at all, win in general favour P's interests over Q's or vice versa. The issue will be automatically prejudged and the conflict, though resolved, will be resolved irrationally. All the criticisms of morality as a means of resolving conflict that were made in sections 4.2 to 4.5 will apply equally well to any set of taboos which inhibit the rational resolution of conflict. In rational decision making, all relevant criteria are given weight insofar as they generate concern in the decision makers. Where taboos are effective, they serve only to distort, if not to sabotage, such procedures.

We have seen that the promulgation of specific taboos can serve the interests C)f some more than others. This raises the question as to who selects the taboos to be promulgated. To say 'we' do is once again to obscure the issue. In practice, some people, the newspaper proprietors, the lecturers, teachers, ministers of religion, those who control the mass media, the education processes and the pulpits, will have much more power in this regard than others. Perhaps this power would be considerably reduced if people were to give up their beliefs in the moral myths, including the belief that there are people who are in a better position than others to know what we all ought to do. Nevertheless, so long as the taboos remained, the power to emphasise some taboos at the expense of others would remain also, and it is unlikely that those who sought and attained this power would not use it to advantage themselves over their fellow citizens. It is doubtful, to say the least, whether this power could ever successfully be democratised. The only defence against it for the majority of people would be to have a healthy cynicism for any moralising or pseudo-moralising emanating from the mass media and the education system, and to do one's best to induce such a cynicism in others.

Nothing has been said in this section to deny the usefulness of keeping in mind the preferences of others, including those preferences that are widespread or universal, when one's actions are likely to affect others. Nor has it been denied that conformity to rules is often conducive to or even necessary for the achievement of certain ends. For example, road traffic regulations allow us to drive with some degree of safety. Again, the playing of games and our indulgence in other group activities often entail rule-governed behaviour. These are rules which are in the interest of the agent as well as people other than the agent.

However, if it is altruism we are after, it may not be at all altruistic to constrain people's behaviour with a view always to the protection of people other than the agent. Although it is altruistic to constrain one's behaviour in the light of other people's preferences, it is not always altruistic to constrain the behaviour of other agents regardless of their preferences. So if it is altruism that one wishes to encourage, the universal restriction of certain sorts of behaviour seems to be a rather biased affair. If some agent, P, wishes to do something for some reason A in some particular circumstance, and some other person, Q, wishes that P refrains from his act in view of some consideration B, then why should we give more weight to B rather than A simply because A is the agent's relevant consideration in the circumstance and B is someone else's consideration? Again why should we give more weight to consideration B if we all know that we would feel about B as Q does were we in his circumstance? The fact that we all, including P, regard consideration B with disfavour does nothing to militate against the fact that P regards A as an important reason to commit his act in these circumstances. To write off or to degrade A as a reason simply because it is the reason of an agent is bizarre enough. To do so, because it would not be a reason for everyone else or even anyone else in P's situation to do what P proposes to do, is to arbitrarily discount P's personal preference s.

[2] Many modern sociologists stress the disadvantages of moralising within conflict situations. Thus Donald Nightingale in his article 'Conflict and Conflict Resolution' (in Strauss, G., Miles, R.E., Snow, C.C., and Tannenbaum, A.S. (eds) Organisational Behaviour. Research and Issues, Belmont, Wadsworth, 1976) writes:

When a conflict situation is defined in terms of absolutistic values or in terms of ideological principles, parties have little room to manoeuvre. Beliefs about human rights, moral precepts, and ideology cannot be sacrificed piecemeal to an opponent. There is an 'all-or-nothing' quality to such conflict situations which makes resolution difficult.

Nightingale's article is a useful summary of various modern accounts of, and attitudes towards, conflict resolution. He distinguishes between two approaches which he calls the pluralist approach and the human relations approach. The pluralists are those who believe that conflict is an inevitable and, if managed properly , desirable part of human interaction and the human relationists are those who believe that conflict signifies the breakdown of normal and 'healthy' interaction among individuals and groups.

I wonder if there is not a slide here from the business of having conflicting desires to the business of arriving at social decisions competitively. Pluralists claim that conflict is inevitable -- which is plausible if conflicts are merely conflicting desires, but not if conflicts are competitive struggles. Human relationists are clearly thinking of competition involving threat and aggression when they are claiming that conflict is ill-conducive to the overall satisfaction of desire.

Muzafer Sherif in Group Conflict and Cooperation: Their Social Psychology (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967) stresses the counterproductiveness of casting blame in conflict situations. As a solution to inter-group conflict, he says, 'the assessment of blame is never more than a first step. Without mutual agreement on this step, the query "Who's to blame?" invariably leads to a vicious circle of recriminations that intensify conflict'. (p.109). Sherif also stresses the importance of finding 'superordinate goals' which both parties to the conflict may cooperate in achieving. Clearly the discovery of such goals is not a panacea for conflict, for, as Blake, Shepard and Mouton (Managing Intergroup Conflict in Industry, Houston, Gulf, 1964) have pointed out, the differences that are set aside for the achievement of the superordinate goal may readily return once this goal has been achieved. Nevertheless, as Nightingale replies (op. cit. p. 149), the attitudes and behaviour of the opposing parties towards each other may well be changed by such cooperation, enabling them to 'seriously explore the underlying causes for their conflict and attempt to deal with them directly'.

The very title of Blake, Shepard and Mouton's book -- Managing Intergroup Conflict in Industry -- unfortunately typifies the approach of many researchers engaged in conflict resolution. They write as if conflict resolution techniques were tools of management designed to minimise squabbles between employees with a view to having those employees concentrate all their efforts on the would-be superordinate goals of maximising the profits of the organisation. Of course, that does not impugn the usefulness of such research for purposes other than those for which it was intended. Nevertheless, one has to take with a pinch of salt statements about social necessity and impossibility that pervade such literature, often in a way that is not easy to detect. Thus Charles Handy in his Understanding Organisations (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1976) claims, like Hobbes, that leadership is necessary for conflict-free co-operation in society. He says that whether you 'call him chairman or co-ordinator, representative or organiser, there is a need in all organisations for individual linking-pins who will bind groups together ...' (p.87). Now this seems to me to be an exaggeration, certainly with respect to small organisations. Even with respect to large organisations, the statement seems to display some lack of imagination. For example, it seems quite conceivable that the 'linking-pin' may be something as impersonal as a communal notice board. Even if the 'linking-pin' is human, that person may be regarded as a servant of the other people in the organisation rather than as their leader. Thus a club's honorary secretary may (or may not) be regarded as a leader, but a club's paid secretary may be, and usually is, regarded as a factotum. One may think that Handy is using the notion of leader in some broader and more useful sense or at least is trying to encourage the reader to do so, but on pages 88 and 89 in a section entitled 'The Findings' it is alleged that research has revealed that good leaders, successful leaders, are intelligent, display initiative, are self-assured and have an ability to perceive a situation 'in its relations to the overall environment'. One may wonder whether the researchers who came up with such findings were considering the secretarial factotum, let alone the communal notice-board.

One would expect large cultural differences in the ways that conflicts and conflict resolution procedures are viewed. R.W. Benjamin has studied such differences between Japanese and Americans. See his 'Images of Conflict Resolution and Social Control: American System' (Journal of Conflict Resolution, 19, 1, March, 1975 pp. 123-137)

Cultural differences would appear also to have their effect on research in the area, especially by limiting perceived possibilities. For example, S. La Tour, P. Houlden, L. Walker and J. Thibaut studied the preferences of local citizens for modes of conflict resolution. ('Some Determinants of Preference for Modes of Conflict Resolution', Journal of Conflict Resolution 20, 1976, pp. 319-356.) The subjects were asked to state their preference among five different methods of conflict resolution involving various degrees of participation by a disinterested third party. The five methods were:

A -- the autocratic method, in which the third party made the decision without reference to arguments for or against by the disputants,

B -- the arbitration method, in which the third party made the decisions after hearing arguments from the disputants,

C -- the moot, in which the decision is made by the third party together with the disputants after all three have discussed the matter,

D -- the mediation method, in which the third party enters into discussion on the issue, but where the final decision is left to the disputants, and

E -- the bargaining method, where there is no third party involved, and the disputants are required to settle the matter between themselves.

It is of interest that the researchers called method E, the bargaining method. This seems to indicate that the only possibility they could envisage for two people settling a dispute between themselves was via the competitive sort of give and take at the market place. Interestingly, arbitration proved to be the most popular method for settling disputes.

Kurt Lewin's sociological research is relevant to the importance of cultural differences in conflict resolution. See his Resolving Social Conflicts (ed Gertrude Weiss Lewin, New York, Harper, 1948). Lewin was one of the early leaders of research in this area. His work was stimulated by the rise in Fascism together with the persecution of Jews in Germany and the discrimination against minority groups in America. Lewin believed that satisfaction of needs was not sufficient for the avoidance of aggressive conflict. He felt that within certain cultural backgrounds, aggressiveness could increase rather than diminish with increased security.

The two major journals which publish the results of research into conflicts are the Journal of Conflict Resolution, already mentioned, published by the Centre for Research on Conflict Resolution at the University of Michigan, and the Journal of Peace Research published by the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo.

Techniques for rational conflict resolution similar to those described in this chapter were used by Gary Malinas, Nicholas Szoreni-Reischl, myself and others in an attempt to resolve conflicts arising from the detention of the South Vietnamese Ambassador to Australia by students at the University of Queensland in 1970. Whilst engaged on this project, we met the late Joan Tully of the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Queensland, who, it turned out, had been using and teaching the use of similar techniques for many years. Joan called her techniques 'change modelling'. Joan Tully's work has been carried on since her untimely death by Bruce Crouch and Charmala Shankariah who are the editors of the book Extension Education and Rural Development, (2 Volumes, Brisbane, Queensland, University of Queensland Press, 1981), in which an article by Joan Tully, 'Changing Practices: A Case Study' first published in the Journal of Co-operative Extension 14, 3, (1966) pp. 143-152, illustrates superbly how the expert can relate to less expert people without assuming the role of a leader in the sense of a decision-making authority.

George M. Beal's article, 'The Change Agent and Change-Agent Roles', also in Crouch and Shankariah's book, examines a variety of possible roles for third parties in conflict situations. The 'change agent' is someone who is trying to bring about a change in a social situation. In this case the change would be from a situation of conflict to a situation of cooperation or at least a lack of conflict. The change agent could be acting on behalf of some other person or organisation which desires the change (the change agency) or may be acting on his own behalf or at the behest of the disputants.

Beal credits Lippett with the introduction of the concept of 'change-agent'. Change-agent roles include social worker, marriage counsellor, group dynamics specialist, labour-relations consultants, and agricultural extension workers. The work of most such change-agents involves conflict resolution: sometimes between two individuals as in a conflict within a marriage, sometimes between two or more groups of, people as between a government anxious to improve farm production by the introduction of agricultural innovations and a conservative farming community anxious to retain their relationships with the land, with one another, and the remainder of society.

As Beal points out, one does not have to be a professional to be a change-agent. Almost everyone is a change-agent now and then, if only in a minor capacity. Beal's notion of change agent is wider than the sort of person I want to talk of here which is merely a person outside a conflict who is of use to those within it in helping them to a resolution. Nevertheless. his typology for change agents serves as a typology for a typology for such third persons also. It includes what he calls researchers, educators, consultants, facilitators, enablers, brokers, advocates, organisers, administrators and arbitrators.

Beal says of arbitration that it 'does not allow the change agent to introduce a new course of action, but rather to mediate among courses of action that are the issue over which arbitration is needed'. If this is so, then arbitration would place the dead hand of external authoritative valuation on an issue and would act as a preventative for imaginative and creative group problem solving.

Of the remaining categories mentioned by Beal, there is considerable overlap in the group decision-making process. Researchers, educators and consultants tend to take a detached role, providing information and ideas, but leaving the decision-making mechanisms of the disputants untouched. Facilitators and enablers facilitate group process in decision-making bringing into the dispute their expertise in 'group dynamics, group processes, organisational structure, role definitions and relations, problem definition and diagnosis, communication and decision-making'. (p. 119) However the final decisions rest with the disputants and no values are introduced into the dispute by the facilitator or enabler.

In the same book, Napier and Gershenfeld also stress the importance of keeping value judgements out of the decision-making processes. Among conditions 'ideally present in a problem-solving group' they include the condition that 'Ideas are explored in a nonevaluative climate. (p. 217)

[3] A.H.Maslow's theories concerning human motivation are to be found in his Motivation and Personality, New York, Harper and Brothers, 1954.

[4] Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation, New York, Basic Books, 1984.

[5] Pettit, Philip, 'The Prisoner's Dilemma and Social Theory: An Overview of Some Issues', Politics, 20, 1, May, 1985, ppl-11.

[6] J.J.C.Smart is perhaps the most well known defender of normative utilitarianism. See Smart, J.J.C., and Williams, Bernard, Utilitarianism: For and Against, Cambridge University Press, 1973. This book contains an extensive bibliography on the subject.

[7] Mackie, J.L., Ethics. Inventing Right and Wrong, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1977, p. 106.