ADAM SMITH'S THEORY OF THE IMPARTIAL SPECTATOR AS DISTINCT FROM IDEAL OBSERVER THEORIES: A REPLY TO ALLAN GIBBARD

Jon Petty

In his ambitious work, Wise Choices, Apt Feelings, Allan Gibbard attempts to develop an account of rationality and moral evaluation that he coins “Norm-Expressivism.” A component of his argument is a denunciation of ideal observer theories of morality and rationality. Gibbard rejects these theories in favor of an analysis of apt feelings that stems from actual people assessing real emotions and real actions. If one feels angry over an action, then he in effect claims that he is justified in feeling anger, despite what we stipulate an ideal observer would feel. As a part of his analysis, Gibbard rejects Adam Smith’s description of the “impartial spectator,” asserting that Smith’s mechanism for moral evaluation is an ideal observer. [1] In this paper, I contest Gibbard’s interpretation of the impartial spectator as an ideal observer. After an explication of the basic components of Gibbard’s theory and his rejection of ideal observer theories, my purposes are threefold. First, I argue that Gibbard does, in fact, interpret Smith as an ideal observer theorist. Second, I claim that it is a mistake to interpret Smith’s theory as an ideal observer theory. Finally, I attempt to demonstrate why Gibbard’s criticisms of ideal observer theories do not apply to Smith’s impartial spectator.

In order to place Gibbard’s rejection of ideal observer theories in proper context, it is necessary to address components of his argument for norm-expressivism. [2] Gibbard asserts that all norms are norms of rationality and to refer to an action or belief as rational, such as “X is rational,” is to express one’s acceptance of norms that prescribe the action or belief. To claim that one has norms that prescribe a given act, Gibbard suggests, is to claim that one has a preponderance of reasons or evidence for accepting that act. However, this is not to be an acceptance based on full information, but on available evidence for a particular norm. In other words, it is not that one must have omniscience about the world in order to have reasons for accepting a norm, but only available reasons. “When a person calls something – call it R – a reason for doing X, he expresses his acceptance of norms that say to treat R as weighing in favor of doing A” (p. 163).

For Gibbard, even moral norms are fundamentally norms of rationality for guilt and resentment. To call an act moral or good is to express one’s acceptance of norms that prescribe or permit that act. We might call an action moral or morally praiseworthy, “if on the part of both of the agent and of others it makes sense to feel moral approbation toward the agent for having done it” (p. 51). Conversely, to call an act immoral is to is to express one’s acceptance of norms that prescribe that it would be rational for an agent to feel guilt for the action and rational for others to feel resentment toward the agent.

Given that individuals might hold conflicting norms of rationale, meaning they hold norms that prescribe conflicting actions, how are we to comment on another’s actions or beliefs, even when we recognize that he is fully rational given the norms he accepts? Surely, we encounter people everyday who hold moral perspectives that conflict with our own, yet we might find them rational when we recognize the norms that they accept, Gibbard suggests. For example, one may accept norms that prescribe that eating meat is immoral and worthy of disapprobation and you may hold norms of rationale that dictate that eating meat is perfectly rational and moral. When instances such as this arise and we recognize that others are rational, yet we believe that there is something incorrect about the norms they accept, what exactly are we to do? 

According to Gibbard, humans are naturally constituted to engage in normative discussion. As a species that lives in societies, we tend to discuss and work through issues and deliberate over the ways of life that make the most sense to lead. Normative discussion coordinates acts and feelings on the part of community members in several ways. First, normative discussion promotes consensus: humans are constituted to mutually influence one another and to respond to the demands of consistency. Second, normative discussion coordinates feelings and acts, according to Gibbard, in that consensus moves individuals to behave and feel in accordance with the norms they accept. If the norms I assent to, for a particular issue, are changed by way of discussion with others in my community, then it is likely that they will feel and behave differently if I hope to maintain consistency and rationality.

Frequently, normative discussion between debating parties arises over what norms to accept and why one system of norms is better than another, Gibbard notes. If I am having a debate over the moral standing of eating meat and I express my avowal of norms that prescribe that eating meat is morally wrong, then I will express reasons for believing that eating meat is wrong. Suppose that I am sharing the debate with Sam, and Sam believes that eating meat is perfectly moral. In this case, Sam is expressing his acceptance of norms that prescribe that eating meat is morally satisfactory.

When Sam and I have a conversation we are both asserting the norms that we avow are acceptable, and presumably we will each have what we take to be good reasons for accepting the norms that we do. We also believe that our reasons for accepting the norms would be rational even if we did not actually believe they were rational. “Validity, [we think], is independent of acceptance” (p. 155) Further, we may accept higher order norms that prescribe the acceptance of the lower norms. For instance, I may hold the higher order norm that I should never do something that deprives another sentient creature of life. Accepting this higher order norm might then lead me to accept the lower order norm that eating meat is wrong, given that I deprive a sentient creature of its life when I eat him.

When I have normative discussion with Sam, and I tell Sam that eating meat is wrong, I am claiming that I have reasons for believing that eating meat is wrong and they would be good reasons, even if I was not aware of them. I am making a conversational demand that entails that Sam accept the norms that I do. Gibbard suggests that I am claiming authority on the issue. I am telling Sam that I am recognizing something about meat eating that he is not. Why should Sam care what I think about meat eating? According to Gibbard, this stems from normative authority and the normative influence others have had on our norm accepting process.

When an individual holds certain higher and lower order norms and claims to have authority in believing that he has good reasons for those norms, he is claiming to have some type of authority on the issue. He takes his own authority as sufficient for believing and accepting what he does. Further, one trusts the conclusions he has made in the past and he trusts the conclusions that he would make for particular decisions in the future. Part of the authority one accords oneself today stems from the authority he accorded himself in the past. Gibbard continues:

I must accord some fundamental authority to the judgment of others. I have not rejected all past influence, and I ascribe no special status to the present. Therefore I cannot, in a blanket way, reject all future influence. I must regard some possible future influences as improving. Therefore I must give some weight to the judgments that would influence me. One must give weight to the judgment of anyone whose influence, one admits, would improve one’s own judgment (p. 183).

What does all of this have to do with ideal observers and ideal observer theories? Gibbard

suggests that when one avows her acceptance of norms that prescribe given actions, she typically claims a type of authority on the issue. Further, she takes her reasons for accepting those norms as objective in that even if she did not hold those norms, the reasons for accepting the norms would still be good reasons. However, one could hold that the reasons for accepting particular norms stem from what an ideal observer might hold to be good reasons for accepting norms. In this case, one has higher order norms that prescribe that one heeds the opinion of an ideal observer and lower order norms that indicate the ideal observer’s prescriptions.

The ideal observer would be one that transcends time and can see reasons for accepting particular norms independent of any particular time or place. [3] The ideal observer would have specific qualities and would recognize certain non-moral characteristics in actions that would make them most reasonable or most appropriate. Hence, using Gibbard’s expressivist analysis to refer to X as rational would be to claim that one accepts norms that prescribe X, and one’s acceptance of X is based on reasons that an ideal observer would find compelling or acceptable.

Firth, an ideal observer theorist, describes the ideal observer and moral propositions in the following way:

Using the term “ideal observer”, then, the kind of analysis which I shall examine in this paper is the kind which would construe statements of the form “x is P”, in which P is some particular ethical predicate, to be identical in meaning with statements of the form: “Any ideal observer would react to x in such and such a way under such and such conditions”. [4]         

Firth attempts to define the ideal observer in terms of non-moral characteristics. Given that individuals lack these “super” characteristics, they are disqualified as moral judges. We can say that if one judge has attributes that another does not, then the former is a more capable evaluator of the reasonableness of an action or emotion. Hence, the ideal judge or observer is the one that has the characteristics fully. For Firth, the ideal observer has the following attributes: (1) Omniscient with respect to non-ethical facts – lacking knowledge of non-moral facts makes one ineligible as a moral judge, [5] (2) Omnipercipient – possessing full imagination, where “full” entails that he can imagine scenarios as vividly as he would if he were actually experiencing them, [6] (3) Disinterested, or impartial – not influenced by any specific interests, meaning the interests of a specific individual or group [7] ; (4) Dispassionate – not affected by any particular emotions, “an impartial judge, as ordinarily conceived is...unaffected...by his emotions.”; [8] (5) Normal in all other humanly respects. [9]

Gibbard rejects ideal observer theories, or “full information analyses,” such as Brandt’s, Firth’s, and Rawls’, noting that they almost work for finding actions rational, but not quite. He compares the analysis of “rational” to that of other secondary qualities, such as color, taste, or sound. With secondary qualities, one can stipulate that under specified conditions one will achieve certain outcomes. For example, with seeing the color red, one can stipulate what counts as favorable conditions for seeing red – proper lighting, functioning eyes, etc. and then also a response from seeing red – the experience of “redness.” Something is red iff one experiences the redness under the specified conditions.

Similarly, Gibbard takes ideal observer theories and full-information analyses to be specifying the conditions one would find particular actions, beliefs, or emotions to be rational or reasonable. As I will demonstrate shortly, Gibbard mistakenly interprets Smith’s impartial spectator to be such an ideal observer theory. Such analyses are almost correct, Gibbard suggests, in that “the attitudes I think it makes sense to have will normally be the ones I think I would have on full confrontation with full information” (p. 185). However, this need not be the case. Gibbard claims that there will be times when one would not trust her hypothetical-self or the ideal observer. One might hold that given more information, one would change her mind and she is not willing to have her mind changed. These individuals, for instance, a bigot who does not want full information about those whom he is prejudiced against, believe that full information is not the only standard for rationality. In these cases, the individual who rejects his hypothetical-self rejects his fully informed self as a normative authority, Gibbard argues. [10]

Gibbard’s aim with this analysis is to point out that to stipulate the conditions necessary for ideal judgment is itself a normative judgment about what is proper. [11] Suppose we stipulate conditions necessary for ideal judgment, and select a specific response that would stem from that judgment. We can term the conditions C and the response A. The analysis says that normative judgment J is correct iff a person meeting conditions C has a response R. We could imagine, Gibbard argues, that an individual might recognize that under conditions C one would arrive at response R, but find that judgment J is not the appropriate judgment to make. “He makes no mistake in language or logic. Rather, he has a different account of what conditions for normative judgment are ideally favorable” (p. 186).

We can address this account in terms of feelings, Gibbard proposes. One’s feelings cannot be stipulated simply in terms of normativity. If one feels resentment over a particular action, it may not make sense for him to feel resentment, Gibbard argues, but normally, he will believe that it makes sense for him to feel resentment, despite what we say about an ideal judge and what that judge prescribes as a “proper” feeling. When I am angry at someone, it is because I feel there is a reason for me to feel anger for the individual’s behavior, beliefs, etc.; the individual merits anger in my estimation. “I accord authority, in effect, to my feelings: I accord authority to myself as I am when I both have those feelings and make normative judgments accordingly” (p. 187). We cannot simply appeal to a normative standard independent of our judgments, Gibbard claims. We cannot merely claim that a proper feeling is appropriate because it is normal. “Part of what makes conditions favorable for normative judgment...is that in these circumstances, my judgments of how it makes sense to feel are guided by the feelings I really have” (p. 188).

It has taken some time, but we are now at a point when we can explicitly address Gibbard’s criticism of Smith’s impartial spectator. To a large degree, we have been addressing that criticism for some time. The clues to Gibbard’s interpretation of the impartial spectator as an ideal observer theory are very subtle. He refers to Smith’s account of the spectator in a mere paragraph and two footnotes. Gibbard asserts that for Smith the proper emotion is the level of emotion that an impartial spectator would feel. He notes, “Adam Smith thought that the proper emotions are the ones a detached observer would have. The proper degree of an emotion is its degree in a detached observer” (p. 279). Additionally, Gibbard claims, “Smith,...thinks that to call an emotion proper is to say that it is what a detached observer in fact would feel” (p. 47). [12] Gibbard then refers the reader back to the section of his text that we have just been reviewing as his rejection of ideal observer theories: “As an account of meaning, I have rejected this” (p. 279). He reaffirms that to make such an account precise one would need to stipulate what the ideal observer is to be like. “He must be informed, alert, sober, and the like” (p. 279). Gibbard is attempting to place Smith’s account along side that of Firth and Rawls’ as ideal observer theories. Gibbard reiterates his position regarding ideal observers when referring to Smith:

Once we fill out the specification, though, a speaker could think it mistaken; he could think that a somewhat different kind of observer provides the right test. Then he could agree, say, that any observer of the kind we had specified would feel angry, and still deny that it really made sense to feel angry. He could do all this without logical or linguistic mistake – or so I claimed. What qualities make an observer a good indicator of proper feeling is itself a normative question, not a question of meaning alone (p. 279).

The first thing that should be pointed out here is that Smith does not intend for his

account to be a description of what meant by claiming that “X is wrong.” Where Firth’s ideal observer theory is an attempt at meaning, Smith’s endeavor is a psychological explanation. He believes he is describing the psychological processes we utilize in making moral judgments and the conscience we utilize to gauge and temper our own behavior. Concerning Smith’s purpose, Raphael notes,

[The impartial spectator] was meant to be a sociological and psychological explanation of some moral capacities. He was certainly not giving an analysis of the meaning of moral judgments...He was presenting a hypothesis of the actual causal process whereby judgments of conscience are formed. No doubt this is scientific rather than a philosophical function. Fortunately the division of labour had not been carried that far in Adam Smith’s time. [13]  

Perhaps the most obvious difference between ideal observer theories and Smith’s impartial spectator are the attributes that one assigns to the observer. Recall Firth’s stipulated criteria for the ideal observer. The ideal observer would be omniscient, omnipercipient, dispassionate, impartial, and normal in other humanly respects. Smith’s spectator would not meet the first three criteria.

For Smith, the impartial spectator is a representation of the average person viewing the acts of an agent. As Campbell aptly notes, “What distinguishes the impartial spectator from anyone else is not his special qualities but his particular viewpoint: he represents the reactions of the ordinary person when he is in the position of a non-involved spectator.” [14] Hence, Smith would ascribe to the impartial spectator only those capabilities that any human being would have. In this sense, impartial does not entail indifferent. Just as we find it acceptable that a mother loves her own child more than she loves the children of a stranger, so too does a well-informed impartial spectator.

To understand the formulation of the impartial spectator, it is necessary to understand how it is that we come to understand morality and our own behavior. According to Smith, human beings learn about themselves by the way they perceive others viewing them. As young children, we learn what behaviors are appropriate or inappropriate by the ways our parents, friends, and others in our community react to our behavior. Additionally, as spectators we evaluate the behavior of others. We find that certain actions and sentiments move us to approve of an agent and others move us to disapproval. Smith argues that we are naturally disposed to care about what others think of us. We crave their approval and fear their disapproval (III.2.6).

When we witness the behaviors of others, one must ask, what exactly is it that Smith supposes that we are evaluating? For Smith, we use our imaginations to place ourselves in the position of an actor to gauge whether we would behave and feel similarly if we were that person. If we find that we would feel, to some degree, similarly if we were the agent, then we sympathize with her sentiments or behavior. For Smith, sympathy denotes, “our fellow-feeling with any passion whatever” (I.i.1.5).

Sympathy can dictate our moral standards in three ways, according to Smith. First, a spectator can use sympathy to evaluate the actions and behaviors of others – to gauge whether he or she would act similarly, given the specific situation. Second, sympathy can allow the spectator to determine whether the judgments of the actor are appropriate. Third, the use of sympathy allows the actor to imagine the impartial spectator “who (a) provides the foundation for determining whether judgments of the spectator are worth abiding by, and (b) provides the foundation for determining the morality of actions when no other spectators are actually present.” [15]

According to Smith, when we sympathize with an agent, several things occur. First, we feel, in some degree, the emotion that the agent is feeling. This emotion we feel is stirred by our imagination and the context in which we are viewing the agent. By imagining oneself as the actor, a spectator creates a less intense version of the actor’s emotion within herself. Second, when we find that we can feel the shared sentiment with the agent, we also feel a sense of pleasure. This is not a joy derived from the agent’s pain, but a pleasure stemming from shared feelings – from unity or intimacy. When we are able to sympathize with the agent, we recognize the “perfect coincidence” of our shared feelings (I.iii.1.9.note). Describing the act of imagining ourselves as others, Smith writes:

By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all of the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them...so to conceive or to imagine that we are in it, excites some degree of the same emotion, in proportion to the vivacity or dullness of the conception ( I.i.1.2).

The impartial spectator is a construction of the individual’s imagination and would not be

possible if it were not for social interaction. Smith claims, “were it possible that a human creature could grow up to manhood in some solitary place...he could no more think of his own character, of the propriety or demerit of his own sentiments and conduct...then the beauty and deformity of his own face...(III.3.3).

We begin to internalize morality by recognizing that as spectators we judge others and

that as agents we are judged by others. Hence, we deliberate over our own actions and sentiments by imagining what a spectator might think of us. We internalize this standard for making moral decisions and use it even when no actual spectator is present. This imagined spectator is our conscience. “We begin,” according to Smith, “to examine our own passions and conduct, and to consider how these must appear to [others], by considering how they would appear to us if in their situation” (III.1.3). In doing this, we “suppose ourselves the spectators of our own behavior, and endeavour to imagine what effect it would, in this light, produce upon us” (III.1.3). Because we are not always in the presence of spectators and because we do not have access to the minds of spectators when they are present, the impartial spectator is the only “looking-glass by which we can, in some measure, with the eyes of other people, scrutinize the propriety of our own conduct” (III.1.3).

Given that the impartial spectator is a product of the individual’s imagination, when an individual envisions the “inhabitant of the breast” (III.3.5) she has access to her own motivations, intentions, and the actual sentiments she is feeling. In this regard, the impartial spectator is well-informed. This is not the omniscience of Firth’s ideal observer, but merely common knowledge of one’s own mental states. This is important in terms of regulating behavior. Because others do not have access to our minds, they are apt to make mistakes in evaluating our behavior. As we mature, we realize that there are times that people misinterpret

our behavior and find us praiseworthy or blameworthy when we were not deserving of that

praise or blame. Thus, we begin to gauge our behavior primarily by the standard of the impartial spectator. We cannot anticipate what others will think of our conduct, so to maintain a relatively stable standard we look to the impartial spectator. [16] Returning to Gibbard’s argument concerning an ideal observer and the impartial spectator, he claims that even if one stipulates what an ideal observer would be like, it does not entail that people will agree with the findings of the ideal judge. Gibbard asserts, “Once we fill out the specification, though, a speaker could think it mistaken; he could think that a somewhat different kind of observer provides the right test. Then he could agree, say, that any observer of the kind we had specified would feel angry, and still deny that it really made sense to feel angry” (p. 279). For Smith, this would be unlikely. This is due to the way the impartial spectator is formed – through the imagination of the individual – and what it is – the conscience. The impartial spectator is not an abstract, idealized, external individual that spectators and agents look to for guidance and approval. [17] Rather, the spectator is a standard that each person forms for herself.

Consequently, it would be improbable for someone to specify that an impartial spectator would rightly feel angry, yet deny that it makes sense to feel angry. As a spectator of others’ behavior, and by using her own ability to sympathize with others, along with the influence that her society has in forming her personality, an individual defines her own impartial spectator. [18]

Of course, one could feel a particular sentiment and suppose that the sentiment she feels is in line with her impartial spectator and later decide that she was mistaken. When we are caught up in the moment of an intense circumstance, we frequently allow our passions to get the best of us. Our abilities to evaluate the circumstances, the intentions of others, and our own behavior can be corrupted. Only later, upon reflection do we frequently realize the ways that our original judgments were misguided (III.4.2).

At other times, we may feel that a sentiment we are holding is in line with the impartial spectator only to realize that we were not utilizing all relevant information for our deliberation. For Smith, context matters greatly. What might be suitable in one circumstance may not be nearly appropriate for another. For example, suppose that someone has the belief that killing others is wrong. Then suppose that in one unfortunate circumstance, the individual is forced to kill an attacker who is about to mortally wound the protagonist’s family. Now suppose that the individual feels incredible guilt over her actions. She believes that killing others is wrong and that she just killed someone. We might say to this person that she ought to consider the circumstance a little more closely to decide whether an impartial spectator would find her guilt to be appropriate. She might find, after careful deliberation, that she had no reason to feel guilty. After all, it was not her choice that the attacker entered her home and there was no other option for her at the time. In this instance, we might say that the individual originally believed she was in line with the impartial spectator who held killing to be morally reprehensible. However, after deliberation in this specific context, the heroine realized that an impartial spectator would distinguish self-defense from viciousness and would find her actions morally acceptable. The woman was not misguided in her feelings, but she may not have been taking all relevant information into account.

As I noted, context is crucial in Smith’s theory. The circumstance will affect an impartial spectator in two ways. First, the background knowledge and life experience one has will dictate the spectator he imagines. Second, different situations will affect the impartial spectator’s judgment. An action may be perfectly suitable in one instance and morally corrupt in another. Hitting someone on the football field is part of the game and considered suitable. Blindsiding an old woman just because she has taken the last candy bar and it is your favorite is morally reprehensible.

The background knowledge and life experience one has will affect the spectator she creates. The impartial spectator of a middle-aged, middle-class, white male living in Martha’s Vineyard might look very different than the impartial spectator of a twelve-year-old girl living in Croatia. The society one lives in, the specific circumstances in one’s life, the vivacity of one’s imagination, and the moral education one receives will all play a role in the formulation of the impartial spectator. [19] In this respect, Smith’s impartial spectator is far from being the omniscient demigod described by Firth. As Smith points out, for an individual living in a society in constant turmoil, “the virtues of self-denial are more cultivated,” whereas in “civilized nations, the virtues which are founded upon humanity, are more cultivated than those which are founded upon self-denial and the command of the passions” (V.2.8).

In a related point, Smith might hope that Gibbard would amend his claim concerning feelings that average people have and the way they feel about those feelings. Recall Gibbard’s claim that “Part of what makes conditions favorable for normative judgment...is that in these circumstances, my judgments of how it makes sense to feel are guided by the feelings I really have” (p. 188). Smith would agree that it is true that the feelings we have at the time that we make a judgment are what we perceive as apt feelings. However, upon reflection and upon greater deliberation over the circumstance, we may find that our previous judgments were rash or too extreme. In this case, we would likely find that our more deliberative judgment is what we find that it makes sense to feel and we will find that our previous, passionate judgment was not the most appropriate feeling, other than at the time that we were behaving rashly. Smith would claim that this is due to the fact that at the time of the passions we were caught up in the moment and did not view ourselves from the perspective of a spectator. Upon reflection we attempt to evaluate how an impartial spectator would view our behavior.

Finally, I wish to emphasize something that may not be clear to this point. Gibbard claims that ideal theorists stipulate the characteristics of the ideal observer and that this is a normative evaluation in itself. One may get the impression that Smith is guilty of this as well. As I noted at the beginning of our discussion of Smith’s account, he is attempting to provide a psychological explanation of the mechanisms that humans use to make moral assessments and moral decisions. In this sense, Smith is not stipulating the conditions of an ideal judge. Rather, he is defining the impartial spectator in terms of the psychological mechanisms he believes we utilize when we refer to our conscience. Griswold eloquently emphasizes this point:

The impartial spectator is not a heuristic procedure...Smith has and can have no well-defined moral test or procedure here. We judge well by becoming impartial spectators. The impartial spectator does not look off to principles of impartiality, as though to a Platonic Form. The standards for impartial spectatorship are not ultimately independent of the impartial spectator, and the impartial spectator is not an “image” of some moral “original.” [20]

In this paper, I have attempted to make three claims. First, despite never explicitly stating so, Gibbard does, in fact, take Smith to be an ideal observer theorist. Second, I have argued that Gibbard is mistaken in his interpretation of Smith. The impartial spectator is a psychological explanation of moral life, not a stipulated normative account of what the perfect moral person would be like.  Third, the criticisms that Gibbard has for ideal observer theories do not apply to Smith’s impartial spectator.  Given particular limitations, many questions remain.  Despite the criticisms Gibbard has for Smith (some that we have addressed and some that we have not), I suspect that on a more careful analysis, we might find that Smith and Gibbard are much closer in their respective theories than Gibbard admits or even wants to know.  However, I must unfortunately leave the substantiation of this suspicion to the interested reader.

References

Brandt, R. B. 1959. Ethical Theory: The Problems of Normative and Critical Ethics. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall.

Campbell, T. D. 1971. Adam Smith’s Science of Morals. London: Allen and Unwin, Ltd.

Firth, Roderick. 1952. “Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 12: 317-345.

Gibbard, Allan. 1990. Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Griswold Jr., Charles L. 1999. Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Harrison, Jonathan. Dec. 1956. “Some Comments Upon Professor Firth’s Ideal Observer Theory,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 17 (2): 256-262.

Raphael, D. D. 1975. “The Impartial Spectator.” In Essays on Adam Smith, A. S. Skinner and T. Wilson (eds.). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 83-99.

Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Smith, Adam. 1982. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. A. L. Macfie & D. D. Raphael (eds.). Indianapolis: Liberty Press.

Weinstein, Jack Russell. 1997. Adam Smith and the Problem of Neutrality in Contemporary Liberal Theory. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Dissertation Services, UMI Number 9738666.

2001. On Adam Smith. Belmont, CA.: Wadsworth Publishing Company.