In this segment we're going to talk about morality and gambling, and particularly as it relates to sports. Many people believe that gambling on sports, or gambling in general is morally wrong. What I'd like to do is talk a little bit about how one can understand that position in relation to different moral systems. We're going to review some of the ways in which different moral, ethical, religious systems have viewed gambling. This is not an exhaustive examination, but at least it'll give some flavor of the different perspectives that ethical systems have brought to bear on gambling. Morality is about right and wrong, not good and bad, it's about how human it applies to human conduct. We don't think of other creatures as having the same moral sense as we are endowed with. There are things that the law says we can and can't do, and that's not the same as morality. Sometimes law reflects moral perceptions, but there's more to morality than simple compliance with the law. Something might be illegal, but it could still be immoral. Even if something is legal, you still might be that you shouldn't do it. Each of us will have our own system of morality. Morality is ultimately personal. You can share moral views with others, but it must ultimately be the voice inside yourself that tells you what you must do. Here we're going to discuss what some of the moral systems that have developed through history had to say about this one footnote. Some people like to distinguish the word morality and ethics. I'm not going to draw any distinction between the two. Morals and ethics are to be the same thing, and I'm not going to draw any distinction. Here are the systems we are going to look at, we'll look at Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Confucianism, and we're going to say a little bit about the utilitarian framework for thinking about these things as well. Hinduism in interesting is religion because there isn't a single holy text. However, there are many texts which have a certain degree of holiness around which and have certain scriptural authority. In the Mahabharata, one of the key texts of Hinduism, there is a specific episode in which a king is persuaded to engage in a game of dice. The outcome of the game of dice ends in disaster. One of the King's advisors tried to persuade the gambler's father to stop the gambling and says the following, "Gambling is the foundation of all sin and leads one to hellish life. Your son does not have the strength to fight with the panda opposite mandy war, he's cheating them with the help of this prints of the cheetahs, please do not allow gambling match to continue or it will have gruesome results. I urgently request you to stop this game" There you see a very clear statement of the problem that gambling presents, the dangers it represents and considers alternatives to gambling which would be considered healthier. We might consider whether we would think those alternatives of a manly war in inverted commas, whether we think that would really be a better way to settle an issue. In Judaism, there's no specific general statement on gambling, but gambling does come out in several texts and there's concern expressed about it. One famous text in the Mishnah lists different types of men who are disqualified from serving as witnesses in legal cases, and that includes a dice player. It's also argued that the winnings in dice are actually a form of theft. As the losing party does not willingly give his money to the winner, although it's not clear why you're unwilling if you chose to enter into the gamble in the first place. But however, the Judaism's not explicitly prohibiting gambling, but is clearly taking a somewhat negative view towards it and sees it as something that should be discouraged. In Christianity, the Bible says nothing directly about gambling or prohibiting gambling, but the Christian authorities have almost always been opposed to it. The Catholic Church considered gambling a sin until the time of the Reformation. Although in more recent times it's taken a rather more relaxed view of it. The Catholic Encyclopedia, which is a source or authoritative statements of Catholic views that says, "It's not sinful to stake money on the issue of a game of chance anymore than it is sinful to ensure once property against risks." Actually taking a very ethically neutral view, in fact, some people would say ensuring your property is a sensible thing to do so clearly if it's no worse to gamble, then that's almost an encouragement. Protestant authorities have tended to be much more opposed to gambling. A recent statement from the Methodist Church said, "Gambling is a menace to society, deadly to the best interests of moral, social, economic, and spiritual life, destructive of good government. As an act of faith and concern, Christian should abstain from gambling and should strive to minister to those victimized by the practice. You see there a concern that people who gamble could actually be seen as being in some sense victims. There's a danger here involved in gambling and perhaps even a certain loss of freewill in terms of one's participation in gambling and clearly, very different view to the Catholic Church. Within Christianity, there are different attitudes towards this and clearly extreme opposition contrasted with fairly benign tolerance. Islam is perhaps the one major religion which has a very clear and explicit prohibition of gambling. The 90th versus the 5th surah says, "You who have believed, indeed, intoxicants, gambling, sacrificing on stone altars, and divining arrows are but defilement from the work of Satan, so avoid it that you may be successful. Clearly, just as Islam has a prohibition on alcohol, it has a prohibition on gambling and in fact, maybe one way to think about gambling is to think about the relationship between one's attitude to gambling and ones attitude towards alcohol. Again, many of the arguments about alcohol and gambling are similar that these are activities that can become addictive. That people who are engaged in these activities lose their Free Will and some sense become victims of these activities and that these activities are a menace to society. If we think about Buddhism, Buddha was also not very favorable towards gambling. In one of the sutta's, the Buddha advises a young man of 14 evil ways to be avoided and one of these is gambling. It's quite explicit in explaining the dangers. There are six dangers inheriting compulsive gambling: winnings breeds resentment; the loser mourns lost property; savings are lost; one's word carries no weight in a public forum; friends and colleagues display their contempt; and one is not sought after for marriage, since a gambler cannot adequately support a family. Well, that's a very interesting list, and what's interesting there is, again, much of the prohibition against gambling or much of the opposition to gambling comes often from a sense of concern about loses but actually, what's interesting about what Buddha says is that there's a danger posed by the winners in particular. If you're known as a gambler, even if you've been winning, maybe you will not be sought after in marriage, for example, which is an interesting idea. That somehow gambling attaches a stigma to the individual, regardless of whether you're a winner or loser. Although you do see also of course the consistent concern here about what happens to people who lose lots of money through gambling. Confucius opposed gambling as well up to a point, but had a slightly more balanced view of the activity. The attitude in Confucius into gambling is connected to the notion of filial piety. The fundamental requirement of a good life is to show filial piety, meaning respect for your parents and your ancestors, and gambling is an unfilial activity and therefore clearly something you should not do. However, gambling according to Confucius, is better than nothing. Sitting around and doing nothing is really completely anathenal to Confucius and if the only thing you could think of to do other than that is gambling, then maybe it's not so bad. Hard is the case of him who will stuff himself with food the whole day, without applying his mind to anything. Are they not gamesters and chess players? Even to be one of these would be better than doing nothing at all. Faint praise indeed, but certainly clearly, gambling is not at the very bottom of the pile, although clearly in Confucius' mind close to it. All of those were religious social systems. Of course, you can argue with Confucianism or Buddhism should be classified as religions or philosophies. Much of modern societies organization is structured one way or another around the principle of utilitarianism. The principle of utilitarianism was a concept that developed in the European enlightenment, which basically has the idea that policies which are adopted should generate the greatest good for the greatest number of people. That is in some sense a definition of a high moral value. Now clearly, there are exceptions and there are subtle considerations to be brought into this but this approach underlies much of public policy. For example, one of the reasons we have schools, in order to encourage people to read and write is that it provides a broad benefit to the whole of society. It's not just the benefit to the individual, it's the greatest good for the greatest number of people. In that sense, we can argue what would be a utilitarian view on gambling. It's important to note that the utilitarian calculus is very closely tied to actually the study of probability theory as well. We talked about the St. Petersburg Paradox in the last session. Well, that's based on utilitarian calculus as well, so these things are connected. But in utilitarian view, gambling would not be considered either good or bad in itself, but the approach to gambling would be to identify costs and benefits associated with gambling and to see where the benefit lies. Gambling might be beneficial under certain circumstances as long as it does not generate great harms, but by the time token it could be worthwhile to have a prohibition against gambling if the net benefits to associate with it were outweighed by the costs.
