Thursday, April 3, 2008

Notes on Lippke's "Advertising and the Social Conditions of Autonomy"

Notes on Lippke’s “Advertising and the Social Conditions of Autonomy”

Summary of the paper:
A number of authors have argued that deceptive advertising is immoral because it undermines human autonomy. While this is true, the reason they give for why it is true is inadequate. The following is a sketch of the manner in which they argue: First, they briefly sketch an account of the nature of human autonomy. Then, they argue that advertising often undermines human autonomy in various ways: e.g., by means of implanting desires in us, by associating their products with the satisfaction of certain desires, and by misleading us by making false claims about the features of a product or service. Finally, the instrument by which this undermining of autonomy is accomplished is entirely by means of the informational content of advertisements.
The above sorts of analyses of the immorality of advertising are too shallow. First, their account of human autonomy is too shallow. The true nature of full human autonomy is much more robust than these authors maintain. Second, the real reason why normal kinds of advertising are immoral is because they suppress and stunt the development of the constitutive features of this more robust notion of autonomy, thereby making us easy to control, for the purpose of generating a society of ready and willing consumers (a thriving free market economy requires it). Finally, the real instrument by which this undermining of autonomy is accomplished is by means of continually inundating us with ads that have (what the author calls) the “implicit content” of “persuasive advertising”. Advertisers should therefore stop inundating consumers with such autonomy-suppressing advertsing.
One may object that it is wrong to prevent advertisers to from inundating the public with ads that have persuasive content, on the grounds that people should be free to accept or reject the vision of the consumer lifestyle that is implicit in this content. But this objection fails for a number of reasons.
Finally, several modest recommendations are given for making our culture one that provides and encourages the social conditions necessary for its members to develop full human autonomy.

Outline of the paper:

Introduction: the basic thrust of the paper discussed
-Argue that “advertising undermines autonomy, especially under the conditions that exist in advanced capitalist countries like the United States.” (484)
-The type of advertising focused on: persuasive advertising (this is a technical term defined by Lippke – it doesn’t merely mean “convincing advertising”).
-Compare and contrast: informational vs. persuasive advertising
-Informational advertising: (again, this type of advertising is not the focus of the paper)
-information about the features, prices and availability of a product or service.
-presupposes some interest in the product
-They can undermine autonomy in at least two ways:
-(i) by manipulating and deceiving the consumer by not providing nearly enough information to make an informed, rational decision to by the product.
-(ii) when one is exposed to such advertising over and over, it has the effect of preventing, stunting, or eroding of a key trait of fully autonomous agents, viz., intellectual honesty. (based on Lippke’s discussion on p. 484)
-Persuasive advertising:
-usually contains little informational content about the product
-often tries to associate one or more of the consumer’s (sometimes subconscious) desires with the product (p. 484)
-Why is it bad to undermine human autonomy? Because humans need it to reduce the likelihood that they will be dominated or controlled in some way by others. (pp. 484-85)

I. On a recent, inadequate version of the “undermines autonomy” argument against deceptive persuasive advertising: Roger Crisp
A. The argument: Persuasive ads undermine autonomy by manipulating consumers in a way that is morally impermissible. Two points:
1. Persuasive ads undermine autonomy by bypassing the consumer’s faculty of reason by associating their products with the consumer’s existent or ad-created desires. The consumer therefore doesn’t decide to by the product on the basis of freely and rationally choosing the product. Rather, he or she buys the product on the basis of non-rational factors: he or she never chose to buy it.
2. Persuasive ads undermine autonomy by implanting or creating new desires in the consumer, desires that the consumer doesn’t want, and therefore don’t identify with as being their desires. This one takes some explaining. First of all, people have two kinds of desires: first-order desires and second order desires. First-order desires are ordinary desires to have (or not to have) things (e.g., food, sleep, sex, company, sports…). By contrast, second-order desires are desires to have (or not to have) desires of various sorts (e.g., a desire not to desire to smoke (or eat Double-Doubles?); a desire to have the desire to study…). Now normal, healthy people have a strong second-order desire not to be manipulated by others without their consent and without good reason. But persuasive ads manipulate consumer’s in just these ways when they implant these first-order desires within them (e.g., the desire to smoke Marlboro cigarettes). Therefore, if the consumer were to reflect on the ways in which such ads manipulate them, they would repudiate the desires implanted in them by the ads. But no first-order desire that one would repudiate upon reflection is an autonomous desire: it is not a desire that the agent identifies with as their “own”. Therefore, such ads undermine autonomy by creating desires that are not autonomous.
B. Critique of the argument: Crisp attributes both too much and too little power to ads.
1. Preliminaries: two kinds of advertisement content: explicit and implicit
a. explicit content: message to “but x”, plus info about product features, price, where one can buy it, etc. This content is typically easy to resist.
b. implicit content: messages about “the consumer lifestyle”, which include “a set of beliefs, attitudes, norms, expectations, and aspirations” (p. 485) that a “normal” person has or ought to have. Such content is rarely, if ever, criticized or critically evaluated, but is implied to be the only appropriate lifestyle to adopt or aspire to. This content is in just about every commercial, and, given that commercials are constant and everywhere-present, and that most people absorb and conform to their content, they are very hard to resist.
2. Too much: Although kids can be manipulated by the explicit content of ads, most adults know what’s going on, and can resist it. The real task is to understand how ads can unduly influence adults when they know that ads are trying to manipulate them.
3. Too little: Crisp fails to account for the fact that ads have implicit content, and that this is what manipulates them.

II. Toward an adequate account of the nature of full human autonomy: Full human autonomy requires that a number of social conditions are in place; conditions that enable agents to have:
A. The ability for crisp, careful thought and evaluation of arguments and claims.
B. The knowledge of alternative belief systems and lifestyles (besides the consumer lifestyle).
C. “Venues in which agents can reasonably be expected to display these abilities and act on these motivations.” (485)
D. Freedom from coercion and manipulation, brainwashing and harassment. (485)

III. How advertisements undermine autonomy, part one:
A. by constantly barraging us with mindless, melodramatic, content.
B. By having content that portrays and recommends a simplistic approach to the problems of life, and how to solve them.

IV. How advertisements undermine autonomy, part two:
A. The main way in which ads undermine full autonomy is by suppressing it..
1. Ads discourage the emergence the skills, knowledge, attitudes and motivations that are constitutive of full autonomy. How?
2. Ads are pervasive and virtually inescapable.
3. There is an absence of presentation of views that challenge its implicit content (no public service announcements that urge us to be wary of their tactics of manipulation and seduction) (p. 486).
4. Often aimed at children, who don’t yet have the ability to critically evaluate it. They absorb the content, and its effect carry forward into their adult lives.
B. Analysis of the content of persuasive content: metamessages (i.e., “messages about how to approach claims made by others” (487))
1. They “subtly encourage the propensity to accept emotional appeals, oversimplification, and shoddy standards of proof for claims”.(487)
2. “Evidence and arguments of the most ridiculous sorts are offered in support of advertising claims.” (ibid.)
3. Ads use information selectively (they exaggerate the good features and downplay or remain silent about bad features), etc.
4. The meanings of words are routinely twisted.
5. Ads imply that the most important information about life must be communicated in a way that is entertaining, and such that it can be passively absorbed.
6. They imply that “one can’t believe or trust what other people say” (ibid.).
7. “They imply that everything (and nothing!) can be proved.” (ibid.)
8. They imply that “evidence contrary to one’s claims may be ignored.” (ibid.)
9. They imply that “success in communication is a matter of persuading others no matter how it is done.” (ibid.)
10. The point: all of these metamessages undermine “the habits and attitudes constitutive of critical competence (clarity, rigor, precision, patience, honesty, effort, etc….).” (ibid.)
11. Why do they do it? Because a thriving free market economy requires “ready and willing consumers.” (ibid.) But to ensure that they have a supply of ready and willing consumers, they must undermine social conditions that would prevent this, such as the existence of society of fully autonomous citizens.

V. An objection, several replies, and some recommendations for instituting social conditions that would encourage human autonomy.