Devin, Fascinating theory. I

Posted by ALW (not verified) on April 23rd, 2009.

Devin,

Fascinating theory. I think you are probably right about the deontological v. consequentalist approach probably being correlated to “right” and “left” views, generally speaking.

I wanted to come back to the “trolley problem”. There is another consideration with this problem that you haven’t touched on: that sometimes the nature/relative value of the consequences is disputable. In the basic trolley problem, the issue is (probably deliberately) clear cut: we are talking about human deaths, one versus five, and the debate is simply over what’s worse: actively killing someone, or passively killing five people.

In many analogous situations, the alternative outcomes are no so clearly defined. If for example we say that not switching the track would cause five people to lose one limb, but leaving it would cause one person to lose two limbs, it’s less clear that 1 person with a more serious handicap is a better outcome than 5 with a lesser handicap.

Indeed, this is one of the

Posted by Devin Johnston on April 23rd, 2009.

Indeed, this is one of the major criticisms of consequentialist (particularly utilitarian) ethics. In most real life situations, we simply don't have enough information available to know all of the remote (or immediate) consequences of our actions. In fact, if we were even close to being able to predict the consequences of our actions, chances are we would make way better decisions (not just ethical decisions, but practical ones).

Interestingly, there is also a related political criticism. Essentially, the left believes that I knows what is best for people and therefore feels justified in imposing it on them, whereas the right believes that individuals are best positioned to determine what is in their own interests and the government should generally leave them free to pursue that. Now, this characterization of left and right is clearly overstated as I've just presented it, but I think that is one of the tensions that exists in a lot of political debates.

Devin - even if we supposed

Posted by ALW (not verified) on April 23rd, 2009.

Devin - even if we supposed that we could know the consequences of our actions in advance, there’s still the issue of “what matters more”. If we have to choose between action X and action Y, and choosing action X means better job opportunities for young people but action Y means better long-term care available to seniors, even consequentialists will have to debate amongst themselves as to whether to do X or Y. So I think there will naturally be tension even amongst those whose share the same basic ethical framework.

As to the issue of the left believing it knows what is best for people and feeling justified in imposing it on them, as a lefty yourself, how do you respond to this criticism? As someone who believes individuals are best positioned to determine what is in their own interests, I know I am open to the criticism of “but what about those who know they can’t make these decisions, and need the help of the state to do so”? To which I would respond:

(1) Freedom is the most important value, from which all others follow, and so even if some people are not able to determine their own interests, it is more important that they be free to make bad decisions voluntarily, than to have better decisions imposed upon them;

(2) Non-state support (charity) is alive and well in our society and many people take steps every day to help people who need help in a myriad of ways. In many ways these individuals (and organizations) play a similar role to the state in assisting people, the only difference being that they lack the ability to legally force people to do something.

That said, I recognize these are still open to attacks on defining freedom and that charity may be insufficient but I’ll save those for another day.

I was thinking of the classic approaches of the left and right to social assistance and I think both are, on the face, deficient in that each only addresses one half of the problem. The right tends to support lower social assistance support, on the presumption that lower rates will provide an incentive for people to find work and get off of social assistance, and also as a future deterrent to those who, for example, might not see much difference between a low wage job and generous social assistance. However, those who currently need social assistance suffer in the meantime. The well-being of some at the present is sacrificed in the interests of society as a whole in the long term. The left takes the opposite approach, and supports higher social assistance support, ensuring that those who need help now are well taken care of, but not worrying about what the longer-term effect might be (dependency, no pressing incentive to get off of social assistance). So the well-being of some at the present is assured but without a view to the longer-term effects will be on society in the long term. I know this is something of an oversimplification, but I think you get the thrust of it.

You are absolutely right.

Posted by Devin Johnston on April 23rd, 2009.

You are absolutely right. Even if we have perfect knowledge about the consequences of actions, there is still a difficulty in assessing the relative value of those outcomes.

As a lefty, I have a couple responses to this line of criticism. In the fist place, the distinction as I framed it in my comment is over-stated. Most lefties (myself included) believe that there are some things that should not be interfered with regardless of the consequences (human rights, for example, as well as things the right often labels as "identity politics" such as intimate personal lifestyle choices); moreover, there are situations in which the political right is clearly justifying their policy choice on the basis of consequences rather than principle.

But to the extent that this characterization does hold, I think that there is a good response. While an individual's freedom to pursue goals she sets for herself is important, there are practical realities that serve as barriers to most people from exercising that freedom. While the right sees government as the primary obstacle to the exercise of free choice, the left recognizes that there are a myriad of other things that can prevent people from exercising truly free choices. One of the main goals of the left is to use the apparatus of government to remove these barriers. In this sense, the left is not actually seeking to curtail choice, but to promote it. However, in order to do so, there need to be some practical constraints on what people do (e.g. taxes and regulations).

Let's look at an example. The right believes that a free and unfettered market is both efficient (consequence-based justification) and appropriate (rights-based justification). However, real life markets are plagued with difficulties that interfere with both the efficiency and appropriateness of free and unfettered markets. One barrier is that the profit motive creates an incentive to lie, mislead, or otherwise use dubious methods to sell one's product/service/whatever (why put in an honest effort if I can make the same amount of money through deception?). This interferes with a buyer's freedom to choose because they are no longer making choices that are informed. To correct this, the left proposes regulations that govern the market in a way that promotes honesty and reliability so that consumers can make truly free choices. In this sense, the nominal interference in the freedom of the market (regulation) promotes the public's interest in a way that ultimately increases freedom and creates a fairer marketplace.

The difficulty, of course, is in trying to craft regulations that are fair, effective, and that balance the competing interests of all of the different stakeholders. This is no easy task and, as the right often points out, governments frequently get it wrong. However, regulations can be tweaked, revised, and altered over time in a way that is subject to the oversight and direct participation of all stakeholders (this doesn't happen enough currently; part of the central thrust of the social democratic movement is that we need more citizen participation in decision-making in order to craft regulatory regimes that are responsive to the changing needs and interests of the public).

Now, the response from someone on the right would be that there are market solutions to market problems. For example, dishonest brokers in the market will be discovered and shamed and then no one will buy from them. I think that this argument is flawed, though, because it assumes a marketplace in which all consumers are extremely diligent, share information with one another, do extensive research before making purchasing decisions, etc. I would suggest that this is not by and large the case. For the most part, purchasing decisions are made on-the-fly with little of the relevant information in hand. Buyers are limited by time, energy, and geographic to a narrow subset of possible sellers between whom there is often little to distinguish except branding.

Okay... I have to run for a meeting, but I will post a quick response of your points about social assistance later tonight.

Good discussion so far.

Devin, Re: consequentialism

Posted by ALW (not verified) on April 24th, 2009.

Devin,

Re: consequentialism on the right, I think we tend to see more of that in the social conservative sphere than the libertarian sphere. Indeed, this where the whole 4-directional “political compass” becomes more applicable, and frankly it’s where you an I share much overlap. (An interesting political question is why libertarians tend to throw their lot in with conservatives rather than liberal-lefties, the exception being the “reefer” wing of the libertarian movement).

I use the term “identity politics” often so I wanted to clarify what I mean by it. I consider identity politics not simply to be a comment on “lifestyle choice”, but rather, an orthodoxy whereby one’s place in society and associated worldview is determined primarily by a particular characteristic, usually gender (physical or psychological) and/or race. For example, a native woman who subscribes to identity politics, would approach civic engagement from the perspective of those who share those characteristic - female, and native - regardless of whether or not her own personal experience was atypical of others in that (arbitrarily chosen) group.

You make a great point about the exercise of freedom, and I agree that there is no way to empower some without placing constraints on others. I think this really is the crux of the debate. One reason I am a libertarian is that I am unable to find the principle that justifies violating the rights of person A in order to assist person B. In realpolitik, the acceptable compromise for me is that minimal interference with A (say, some taxation) which results in a major improvement for B (say, enough money to survive); but in the abstract I simply can’t identify by what right this can be justified other than utilitariamism or majoritarianism (which is fraught with all sorts of dangerous counterexamples, i.e. the majority can’t vote to stone a minority of people to death just because they feel like it).

It is interesting that your view seems to be that much of the regulation agitated for by the left is simply to correct market defects so that markets function properly. If it was only that, I don’t think you’d find much opposition from the right. The problem in the view of the right is that the left isn’t simply trying to fill gaps (like informational gaps) in order to correct the market, but rather, that the left does not like the outcomes of even a properly functioning market, and hence wants to interfere further to alter market outcomes. This is understandable if the left really does believe market outcomes are naturally unjust; but what isn’t understandable is that, having advocated for - and in many cases succeeded - in placing major constraints on markets, that when they later fail to produce expected outcomes, it is “free markets” that are blamed and not the constraints! (The actions of governments forcing banks to hand out cheap credit in the US is just one example).

The profit motive does create an incentive to lie - or more accurate, and incentive to do whatever it takes to profit. A capitalist will tell you that in a properly functioning market, competitive forces are what keeps this greed in check, by punishing and destroying those who are exposed as fraudulent, or who offer inferior products or services. Now, the left will say government should also assist by regulating. But, as I always like to say, people can evade the law, but no one can escape the market; you can hide from the tax man, but you can’t hide from your suppliers or your customers. So it’s not to say that greed goes away in a market system; it doesn’t. It’s that markets, in my view, are swifter and more mercilesss in punishing greed than governments are. Greed is a constant. So the question should not be “how do we eliminate greed”, but rather “what system will provide the best incentives and deterrents not to act greedily”.

I also agree that not all consumers are diligent or well-informed. But the rejoinder to that is: is it a wise idea to inculcate the idea to people that it’s okay to be careless about the choices they make? If anything, shouldn’t the government be telling people to look before they leap, rather than assuring them “don’t worry, we’ll take care of it”? Would that not lead to increasing dependency on the state? And would you agree that increased dependence on the state is not a good thing?

Great discussion, let’s keep it going..

Agreed; this is a good

Posted by Devin Johnston on April 25th, 2009.

Agreed; this is a good discussion, as usual.

I wanted to quickly respond to a couple points you raised. First, you state that the left is not simply trying to fill gaps in the market but, rather, is opposed to the outcomes of even a "properly functioning" market. I think that this is a bit question-begging. I think that the left is fine with the outcomes of a properly functioning market, but we have a very different idea of what constitutes a properly functioning market. For us, we have a much higher standard of what constitutes just social relations. In a market (as envisioned by the right with minimal intervention), there are often gross imbalances of power between the players (differences in resources, information, capacity, practical limitations, etc.) that prevent most market decisions from being properly construed as "free".

Consider, for example, a completely privatized medical system. When I pay for essential medical services, my decision is at least nominally free and voluntary. But in practice, there is a tremendous disparity of power between a person whose life or good health depends on receiving a particular service and the person providing that service. The result of the imbalance of power is that the service provider has no incentive to make the service affordable or reasonable - chances are I will pay as much as I am able for my good health, even if that price is wildly out of line with the difficulty, costs, and quality of the service.

Another example is a child raised in a poor family. Such a person finds herself at a significant disadvantage in terms of education, future employment, etc. through no fault of her own. True, many people in this situation are able to pursue opportunities to improve their situation, but most are not, and the statistics are extremely clear that those born into poverty are disproportionately likely to remain in poverty. When a person who has always lived in poverty is bargaining for her employment, her choices are severely circumscribed (again, through no fault of her own) and she faces a great disparity of power with the person (company) with whom she is bargaining. As a result of this disparity in power, she is likely to accept employment at a lower wage than her labour is worth and, thus, remain in poverty. And the cycle repeats itself.

So, for the left, we believe that one of the prerequisites for truly free market choices is that we need to correct some of the most egregious disparities in power. If everyone is on a roughly level playing field and no one is bargaining for their continued life, the decisions they make within that context should not be interfered with by the state. At that point, the stakes are a little bit lower, there is little opportunity for people to exploit one another, and people should be left free to make decisions in accordance with their personal objectives and goals.

The view that I have articulated is not shared by everyone on the left. Communists would reject what I have posited here. But most social democrats are not opposed to markets, free choice, and minimal interference in economic decisions. We just believe that there are prerequisites for a "truly" free market and that collective action (be it in the form of the state or in the form of trade unions, co-operatives, or other social movements) are the best vehicle to ensure that those prerequisites are in place.

----

You mentioned that markets create an incentive for profit, which can lead people to do good (innovate, lower prices, etc.) or bad (mislead, exploit workers, pillage the environment, etc.) I agree with this. Markets are neither good nor evil, they simply create an incentive to accumulate wealth for oneself - nothing wrong with that per se.

I think that you are absolutely right to frame the issue as which system will do the best job of minimizing the negative incentives and/or maximizing the positive incentives. But then I think this just gets us back to square one: I think state and/or collective action works best, whereas you believe that unfettered market choice does.

It is very difficult to try to convince one another on that point without extensive empirical research that is beyond the scope of a blog comment. Suffice it to say (for now) that I think you actually can hide from your customers and suppliers, and that history is rife with examples of people who conned everyone and then skipped town before being found out (or simply were never found out). It wasn't the market that stopped Bernie Madoff, it was the state.

Then again, there are (I'm sure) countless counter-examples that you would raise showing markets at their best and government at its worst.

Having said all of that, I don't think that the question "which system is more effective at reducing the negative incentives?" is the only way that we can try to assess the situation. Another question that we can ask is "which system addresses the negative incentives in a way that is more just?" On that point, a righty like you will probably say markets because they don't violate the free will of individuals, etc.

I would raise two points to suggest that collective action is a more just way of addressing problems in the market. First, the cost of changing practices is socialized. This means that poor consumers are not the ones bearing the cost of trying to change the world through boycotts and market choices (which potentially is quite harmful to their short-term self-interest, as contrasted with the long-term self-interest served by challenging poor labour and environmental practices). Socializing the cost means that no one has to risk starvation in order to advocate for change. Second, state action is subject to democratic oversight. In an ideal democracy, this means that decisions regarding market regulation (or any other state decision) are made in a public forum in which the relevant stakeholders have an opportunity to raise their questions, concerns, and suggestions and have those issues taken into consideration.

There is an argument to say that market choices are also a kind of democracy. However, looking at things from a left perspective, if we don't view market choices as being completely "free" or "voluntary", it follows that the characterization of markets as a form of democratic system is dubious because it privileges the participation of some over the participation of others.

wow...

Posted by Peter Thurley (not verified) on April 26th, 2009.

I'm in heaven...

I'm going to connect my laptop to my printer and print this blog out... I hope you're ready ;)

Peter, as both a philosopher

Posted by Devin Johnston on April 26th, 2009.

Peter, as both a philosopher and New Dem supporter, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on all of this.

Devin, I agree that we have

Posted by ALW (not verified) on April 27th, 2009.

Devin,

I agree that we have very different views of what constitutes a “properly functioning” market in terms of outcomes, but I was referring to the deficiencies that we both agreed upon, which I think were largely processes. For example, the availability of information to consumers.

I don’t really think we can distill our respective views of what constitutes “free choice” any further so I’ll set that aside and merely note that to me, the left’s “higher standard” for “just social relations” sounds incompatible with any sort of “market” outcomes, because properly defined, a market is a result of spontaneous decisions made by individuals, which cannot be planned or organized in any macro sense (which is why it’s a “market” and not a “plan”) . I recognize the dilemma that arises here, since even if we accept that central planning is a disaster in terms of economic organization, there’s still the problem of dealing with imperfect markets (i.e. most real world cases). To those on the left, to not interfere will result in unjust outcomes. But to those on the right, to interfere may actually result in even further unjust outcomes.

Suppose we assume for the moment that we could find a scenario where we agree that a market outcome is unjust. Now suppose we agree that we will implement government action A to modify the market to alter outcomes. And finally suppose that we both agree that implementation of action A has now led to a worse outcome. Would you agree that the natural reaction of the “right” would be: action A has interfered with the market, so you can’t blame the market for the worse outcome, whereas the natural reaction on the “left”: would be: action A hasn’t gone far enough, so we need further intervention to correct the market? That seems to me to be the predictable reaction on both sides.

With respect to your position on power imbalance, my response is that the incentive for a service provider to make any service affordable and reasonable is that, in a truly free market, their competitors are fighting for the same customers, which drives down prices. You might respond by saying that this might only result in prices being lowered to a point that is still too high for some people to afford. That’s true, but that’s not a function of the market: that’s just a function of the cost of the inputs. If I need to purchase a particular service or good, the lowest price I can really expect for it is a price that is at zero profit, or break even, to the provider or vendor. So if we assume that some people have no money, and that they require a subsidization of some form or another because we decide, as a society, that these people require a particular service (like health care), my question is: why is it better for the state to wipe out the entire market because some people face a power imbalance, rather than simply directly subsidizing individuals who cannot participate in the market? In other words, rather than diluting the bargaining power of the bigger party, why not increase the barging power the little party?

Interestingly, the lack of incentive is the same reason I oppose a fully state-fun health care system. What incentive is there for a particular hospital or doctor to provide better or more timely service, other than their own goodwill? There is no punishment if they don’t. They won’t go out of business or suffer any tangible penalty (and if your answer is that we should just trust that they are upstanding citizens who care about others, I could use the same argument in the market scenario). And there’s no alternative for patients to choose from!

You might argue that there’s an incentive for governments to provide good service because in a democracy, we hold the government accountable at election time, which is true to some extent - the difficulty there being what I refer to as the “bundling problem”, wherein individual citizens only get one vote which (a) has to be weighed against everything a government does, rather than each individual policy, (b) is subject to the condition that a majority or plurality of her fellow citizens shares her priorities and assessment of those policies and (c)
only comes at long intervals of every few years. Consumer responses in a market scenario do not suffer from any of these difficulties: I can punish a particular company immediately by withdrawing my patronage, and this is not dependent on anyone else agreeing with me.

I am curious about your response to the hypothetical world where all citizens begin life with precisely the same income, education, etc - in other words, by all calculable metrics, everyone is substantively equal. Over time, some people become richer and some become poorer. Is this result unjust? (I guess what I’m asking is: is all inequality unjust? Or just inequality that can be traced to unjust causes?)

If we agree that incentives matter, then I think that’s as far as we can get on that point. I am a bit confused about what you mean about being able to hide from your suppliers or customers. How can McDonalds sell a Big Mac to someone unless they come to McDonalds to buy it? A transaction by definition can’t take place unless buyer and seller agree to price and make the exchange. This is what I mean by not being able to hide from real prices: if both parties don’t agree on the price, there’s no transaction. Contrast this with the state instruments of price controls, or taxation, which attempt to artificially set prices or alter total cost. This leads to black markets and under the table arrangements, which is what I was getting at: the state can try to set the price, but if that price is too out of whack with what would otherwise be happening, a black market will form (see: drugs, cigarettes, etc etc).

I think you may have a misconception that a capitalist believes that in a free market everyone behave well and no one breaks the rules. That is not my position. My position is that even when there are “correct” incentive structures, some people will still try to cheat. It’s just that they are ultimately exposed. I don’t think there is anyone on the right (save maybe hardline anarcho-capitalist) who doesn’t believe in the state’s role to enforce breaches of contract. To me, saying that the market didn’t “stop” Bernie Madoff even though he was ultimately caught by the state sounds like saying the state didn’t “stop” a murderer or child abuser even though they are ultimately caught by the state and punished. Bad things will still happen. It’s whether people get away with them or not in the end that matters, and whether the climate we create leads to more or less bad things (which in itself is impossible to prove definitively since we have the “non occurrence problem”, i.e. we can’t know for sure what would have happened in an alternative scenario).

With respect to your point about socializing costs, I am trying to think of a situation where a consumer would have to bear a burden in order to punish a particular business. If Coke tries to poison me, is switching to Pepsi a burden? Not really. For a person to have to risk starvation, for example, would mean that every alternative food provider would also have to be abusing it’s power advantage, which seems counterintuitive, because it would be in the interests of at least one provider to break ranks and thereby scoop up the entirety of the market. (We could get into cartels, collusion here, but I would point out that isn’t a competitive market. A harder question for me to answer would be, how to prevent cartels and collusion from arising in a competitive market, and to that I’d say: in some industries, that’s really hard to do, but in the ones that affect most people at a subsistence level, it generally isn’t)

I think I’ve already addressed my concern about democratic oversight, although I could apathy to my list of concerns (although I should stress for the record I am a democrat and believe that for decisions which must be made collectively -night watchmen state stuff and national defence - democracy is the only moral and appropriate way to make those decisions; its just that I believe there a whole lot of things where no one but the individual should be making those decisions.)

I agree that markets privilege the interests of some over others, in the sense that more money usually means more power in a market. But I would contend that electoral democracy, rather than levelling the playing field, just inverts the power imbalance. Suppose Citizen X has worked hard, played by all the rules, etc etc etc and done well for herself so that her net worth is high. She can have some (most? all?) of her property taken away and redistributed to Citizens Y and Z, purely by virtue of their numerical superiority (2 to 1). They aren't required to "need" it, or deserve it. They just have the power to take it. Is that just? It sounds wrong to me. So while I can understand the instinct to defend the weak at the expense of the strong, it also seems to me that if we eliminate any incentive to establish a position of strength - since it will immediately be nullified by giving the upper hand to the relatively weak out of fear of domination of the weak - causes a different sort of problem. I’m sure you’ve heard of the “ten men go out for dinner” story. How do you respond to that?

The roots of morality

Posted by Steve Denheyer (not verified) on April 27th, 2009.

You'll probably all find Jonathan Haidt's theories on the psychological roots of liberal/conservative morality interesting. Here's a link to his TED talk:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html

And a link to his article on Edge with some worthwhile commentary: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html

Steve, Thanks for sharing the

Posted by Devin Johnston on April 27th, 2009.

Steve,

Thanks for sharing the links. I will take a look at them tomorrow.

Philosophy and Politics: What's the link?

Posted by Peter Thurley (not verified) on April 27th, 2009.

Just thought I would update any readers interested in the views of another politics junkie who also fancies himself a philosopher: I've written a response to this post on my own blog, which can be accessed by clicking on my name in the header to this comment. Any and all comments on that post are welcome.

[Ed. note: Here is the link to Peter's excellent and thoughful post.]

Steve, I had a look at that

Posted by Devin Johnston on April 28th, 2009.

Steve,

I had a look at that video and the associated article. It is definitely interesting to look at the 5 values he posits and their relationship with political views.

One thing that I noticed about his talk is that he really is not talking so much about the left-right spectrum as the libertarian-authoritarian spectrum. In the United States, there is considerable overlap between those spectra, particularly because of the American left's commitment to personal liberty. However, the American political culture is somewhat unique in that respect. In most of the rest of the world, the left is associated (rightly or wrongly) with the more authoritarian end of the spectrum (with the rise of right-wing libertarianism in the US, I think that this global view is starting to become more true of the US as well).

In that sense, it surprised me to see that the same relationship held among non-Americans who had taken the survey. On the other hand, as Haidt observes in his TED talk, he is very much talking about social issues more so than fiscal issues. In that sense, at least, it makes sense that leftist social libertarians are less inclined to value things like authority, etc.

I think that, to an extent, the findings of his survey tend to support the relationship I've posited here. In particular, the high emphasis that appears the be placed by the political left of the harm/fairness values seems to correspond to a desire to foster positive outcomes for people whereas the (relatively) high emphasis placed by the political right on values such as group loyalty, authority/respect, and purity seems to correspond to a duty-based or deontological ethical system.

I'm not sure you're carving along the joint

Posted by Steve Denheyer (not verified) on April 29th, 2009.

To be honest, Devin, it's not clear to me that group loyalty and authority/respect are deontological in nature - when defending these values the right tends to frame them in consequentialist terms: "the breakdown of society," "aid and comfort to the enemy" etc. etc.

On the other side, harm/fairness is predicated on an individual's deontological right to be free from harm and treated fairly.

Question: Do you think most conservatives would choose not to pull the lever in the trolley problem as you've stated it in your post? Do you have data that supports this?

(It's worth noting the "fat man corollary" to the trolley problem shows how you can make a person a deontologist or a consequentialist by tweaking the framing of the question - most of us become deontologists when we have to manhandle someone onto the tracks).

The devil's in the motives

Posted by Benjamin Nelson (not verified) on August 23rd, 2009.

Hey Devin, long time no see.

As you noted, there cannot be any interesting correlations between one set of ideas and another that obey clean political lines. I do suspect that there are correlations around particular issues. But I don't think these correlations between a token political stance and its token philosophical grounding tells us anything interesting about any potential meta-ethical foundations in the person's head. So long as one political issue exists side-by-side with another issue that has non-complementary philosophical grounding, the correlations will be shot-for-shot. In other words, it would not be surprising to find a hawkish type who in one breath appeals to torture-consequentialism, and in another, happily endorses Nozick's deontology. That is because most folks endorse moral intuitions, without having secure moral beliefs.

There have been some studies by Jonathan Haidt on the foundations of morality as separated by political ideology. "Our thesis ... is that there are five psychological foundations of morality, which we label as harm/care, fairness/reciprocity/, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity... As a first approximation, political liberals value virtues based on the first two foundations, while political conservatives value virtues based on all five. A consequence of this thesis is that justice and related virtues (based on the fairness foundation) make up half of the moral world for liberals, while justice-related concerns make up only one fifth of the moral world for conservatives." ("When morality opposes justice", Haidt and Graham). If you permit all of the above as moral determinants, it would not be surprising to find that a single attitude held by a person will shift its foundations when threatened in argument. If torture is cruel, that doesn't mean it's unfair. If torture is unfair, then fine, but it's expedient. If it's not expedient, then -- it's the President's responsibility to make those calls and we don't undermine the President. If it's not just the President's responsibility, then -- hey, why are you defending dirty Muslims anyway?

Assuming that the above category distinctions are apt, then there are two general explanations that I can see. First, there's the explanation in terms of authoritarianism. If you really don't want to lose an argument, then it pays to shift your goalposts. Second, there's the explanation in terms of apathy. If you haven't thought much about moral issues, then you'll respond to intuitions from any of the above sources; and since intuitions are opaque, you might have all kinds of ideas about where they come from.

A third option is that it may turn out that category distinctions like consequentialism (of care) and deontology are red herrings, ultimately shallow and meaningless. Or maybe they, in practical terms, are secretly special cases of the five posited above. I really do defer to authorities that I trust, especially when they're experts on what harms come to whom. I really do feel that betrayal is profane, and sublime moments are sacred, consistent with any medieval priest. In spite of myself, I feel disgust when people respond with bluster when I'm expecting honest reasons. And I would call those things virtues, so it's not just a personal thing, it's something I implicitly try to value in others.