Gift giving is a fairly common practice across the world, and likely serves numerous social and ethical functions. Within the Australian cultural setting in which I live, giving gifts is ubiquitous. So is the idea that, in giving a gift, “it’s the thought that counts”. While the importance of gift giving appears unproblematic, a paradox about it has troubled me for some time. In this essay I plan to articulate and attempt to resolve this paradox, if for no other reason than to clarify my thoughts and apply some ideas from the work of Elizabeth Anderson.

The paradox that troubles me is due to an apparent tension between the supposed value of gift giving in the thought (intentions, attitudes) that motivates it and the fact that these thoughts, and public knowledge of these thoughts, are independent of the act of gift giving. I can be formulate the problem in the following argument:

When a person Y gives a gift to a person X, the primary source of value of the gift is dependent upon an intention or attitude that Y bears towards X [premise]. An intention that Y bears towards X can exist independently of giving a gift to X [premise]. The primary value of a gift can exist independently of being given [inferred from 1, 2].

(1) attempts to more clearly formulate the idea that “it’s the thought that counts”, that is, the idea that the importance of a gift is not its monetary worth or use for the person, but rather the thought it communicates or embodies. So in giving my romantic partner flowers, the value of this gift or the gift-giving action is related to the love or affection the gift expresses, while if I give a friend a bottle of wine because they were house sitting for me, this communicates my gratitude. Now, this is not to claim that the entirety of the value of the gift is constituted by the intention behind it. Gifts can also be valued for other reasons, such as their aesthetic value (e.g. flowers, painting), their ability to satisfy our desires (e.g. chocolates, bottle of wine) or for how they allow us to grow and change (e.g. reading a gifted book, taking sky-diving lessons). But my contention is that, at least in Australian culture, the primary value of most gifts is dependent on the intention behind them: gratitude, love, remorse, concern, care etc. Each of these attitudes can, in different circumstances, require us to give gifts. To make the discussion easier, I will focus on the attitude of love towards your romantic life partner, though what I say in this case should be generalizable to other attitudes.

Now, (2) also appears commonsensical. I love my life partner, and this love for them seems like an internal, intentional mental state that is not dependent on specific actions, such as giving them a gift. While the mental state depends on some actions performed in the past (e.g. conversing with my partner, doing shared activities with them, showing and receiving physical affection from them), it seems intuitive that it will continue to exist without further actions. But, if this is the case, it would seem that the primary value of gift giving could be realized without actually giving the gift, just by continuing to feel love towards my partner. So this seems to rob the act of gift giving of its value: we could achieve the same effect without actually purchasing or making a gift. Thus, (1) and (2) combined leads to our paradoxical conclusion given in (3).

The reason (3) is paradoxical is that it seems to imply that we could detach all the value of gift giving from the act itself. This would make giving gifts redundant and potentially wasteful. This is because the process of deliberating on what gift to buy and the actual money spent upon it can be reasonably costly, and we may not even be sure if the recipient will like their gift. Thus, if the main source of value is the intention, couldn’t be communicate this intention in some other way while avoiding the costs of the gift? Couldn’t I just tell me partner “I love you”, thus communicating my attitude (the primary source of value) and not wasting time and money on a material gift? Furthermore, why do we always need to communicate our love for someone? If we have been in a relationship for a long time, don’t we both know that our love is mutual and strong? Overall, this seems to suggest that gift giving is redundant or unimportant, even to significant relationships such as my romantic commitment to my partner. This conclusion may be gladly affirmed by people who take a highly instrumental or economic approach to gift giving, or even to those who see it as overly commercial (Sandel, 2012). However, I cannot escape the feeling that gift giving is an important, rational activity, at least within an Australian context. Thus, I wish to reject the paradoxical conclusion found in (3). But how can I do this?

One argument again (3) could be that the high costs of gift giving are actually essential to its primary value. This would require us to reformulate (1) so that the cost of the gift is a necessary condition for its value. This may make sense if the implied costs of thinking about what gift to buy and spending money on it was part of the value it had in communicating the love Y has for X. The problem with this is that it seems that it wouldn’t matter if someone’s idea for a gift came as a flash of insight and it cost them very little in time or money, as long as it was motivated by a love and understanding of the recipient. Thus, I believe that a different solution is needed.

AN obvious route to take would be to inspect the grounds supporting (3). That is, if we wish to reject (3) due to its paradoxical nature, we need to determine what is problematic about (1) or (2) and either reject or reformulate them. One solution would be to reject the independence thesis stated in (2). Perhaps many of our attitudes are not fully independent of our actions: we would not attribute to ourselves or to a third party love for someone else unless there were certain actions that accompanied it. Elizabeth Anderson attempts to explain this by understanding attitudes as being structured along a potentiality-actuality and implicit-explicit dimension (Anderson, 1996; Anderson & Pildes, 2000). My love for a person is only an implicit or potential state, and is only made fully explicit and actualized when it is realized in my actions or speech (Anderson, 1996). Thus, if I fail to perform certain actions (such as giving my life partner a gift) my intention is not the same: it remains potential rather than actual, and thus its value is not fully realized.

I find this to be a compelling account, but also feel that it doesn’t fully clarify the importance of gift giving. This is a conclusion I believe Anderson would agree with: more work needs to be done to explain why one action (e.g. gift giving) realizes the value of an attitude while another (e.g. telling someone “I love you”) fails to do so. Thus, to fully understand the importance of actions like gift giving, we need to turn to premise (1) and better understand in what way the value of the action depends on the intention. To do this, I will again draw from Anderson’s work on expressive theories of action and value found in Anderson (1995), Anderson (1996) and Anderson & Pildes (2000).

In examining premise (1) more closely, the main source of paradox seems to be the ambiguity of “dependency”. It is not that the primary value of a gift doesn’t depend upon the attitude behind it, but rather how I assumed this dependency must be one of communication. Under this presumption, the value of giving the gift depends on how it communicates my love for my partner. As saying “I love you” seems to communicate my love just as well as giving a gift, this leads to our paradox.

However, I think this dependency is better understood as an expressive rather than communicative relation. Speech and action can both communicate as well as express mental states, with communication being a subset of expression. As defined by Anderson and Pildes (2000), “expression”

refers to the ways that an action or a statement (or any other vehicle of expression) manifests a state of mind. The state of mind can be cognitive-it can be a belief, idea, or theory…People can express other kinds of mental states besides beliefs, such as moods, emotions, attitudes, desires, intentions, and personality traits. They can do so not only through speech and instrumental action, but through gestures, tone of voice, posture, forms of art, and other ways.

In contrast, Anderson and Pildes (2000) state that to communicate a mental state:

requires that one express it with the intent that others recognize that state by recognizing that very communicative intention.

As communication embodies or manifests a mental state in speech or action, it is also an expression of the mental state. But many expressive actions are not communications under this definition. Think of our facial expressions: if I have an angry facial expression, this directly manifests or expresses my emotion. However, I may look angry without intending to communicate this mental state to you. Maybe I want to appear calm and composed, but can’t help expressing my feelings in my face. Thus, an action can express without intending to communicate. Perhaps this can resolve the paradox: the dependency in (1) is that of expression rather than communication, and so “I love you” is not an adequate substitute for giving a gift.

But immediately a problem seems to arise. Could it not be argued that just as giving a gift expresses my attitude, so can telling someone that I love them. I would not contest this argument, only how it bears on this particular case. Saying “I love you” does express my love. But this does not mean that it is the correct expression of my love in every context. Just as communicative acts can be evaluated as correct or incorrect to a situation or context, so can expressive acts. We can criticize someone for not complying with norms of communication in a given context-for being unclear in their use of words, for using language inappropriate to the situation, for being too long winded (something I am often guilty of!). Similarly, we can criticize someone for expressing themselves in inadequate ways: by being clumsy, unclear or ambiguous, or by expressing inappropriate attitudes (e.g. in holding a door open for a woman I may intend to express friendliness and helpfulness, but I could be criticized as expressing sexist attitudes).

In some contexts a communicative act can be an adequate expression of our intentions, but in other contexts it is not. For example, consider my support of the Australian Rules Football team the West Coast Eagles (also colloquially called “the Eagles”). In a formal work setting, an adequate expression of this support would be communicating my support (e.g. “I barrack for the Eagles”) to coworkers when an appropriate context for doing so arises (e.g. discussing an upcoming game where the Eagles play the Fremantle Dockers). However, while attending a football game in which the Eagles are playing, the correct way to express my support for them would be to cheer and applaud their efforts, and remain at the game even if they begin to lose. If I remained seated the whole time and simply told people who I supported (i.e. communicated my support), I could be criticized as not really showing supporting for my team.

Consider another example taken from Charles Taylor: apologizing to someone (Taylor, 2016). We typically apologize to someone by expressing our remorse through a speech act i.e. through communicating with them. For example, we say “I’m sorry” or “I was in the wrong” or “I was out of line” and perhaps ask for forgiveness e.g. “can you forgive me?”. In order for this to count as an adequate apology, I must feel remorse for what I did, and it seems the adequacy of the apology is dependent on this attitude, similar to gift giving. However, this is not only an act of communication, because if I simply told the person “I feel bad about what I did” or “I feel remorse”, this would generally not count as an apology. Correctly expressing my remorse requires a specific vehicle, a specific embodiment or manifestation. The seemingly descriptive statements “I’m sorry” or “I was wrong” and so on are the specific ways we manifest remorse when making an apology. There is no inherent, formal properties of these particular statements that make them more expressively adequate than “I feel bad”. Rather, their adequacy or correctness is a result of our social norms that “I’m sorry” counts as an adequate expression of remorse while “I feel bad” typically does not.

Similarly, while “I love you” can succeed at being a communication of love for someone, and in some contexts can be an adequate expression of love, in certain contexts it is inadequate. What counts as an adequate expression of love will vary in different cultures and in different contexts within those cultures. In Australia, I may adequately express my romantic love by: telling someone I love them, taking visible joy in their achievements, kissing them, holding their hand, having loving consensual sex with them etc. I hope it is obvious that some of these expressions are correct in certain circumstances but inadequate or just plain wrong in others. Now, in certain contexts, the most adequate expression of my love is giving my partner a gift. In which contexts? I don’t think I could enumerate them all, but the obvious ones include a birthday, anniversary, Christmas, Valentine’s day, or the spontaneous, surprise gifts that show your continued love and affection.

Thus, gift giving is valuable because of how it depends on our intentions towards people we care about, but this dependency is that of expression rather than communication. While expressions can also communicate, and a communication of love may be an adequate expression, this is not always the case. With this new understanding, we can reformulate (1) as follows:

1*. When a person Y gives a gift to a person X, the primary source of value of the gift is as an expression of an intention or attitude that Y bears towards X [premise].

In addition, we can add in two new statements which can clarify the relation between intentions and actions:

2. An intention that Y bears towards X can exist independently of giving a gift to X [premise].

2*. An intention that Y bears towards X cannot be expressed independently of some action [premise].

2**. An intention that Y bears towards X is a potentiality until it is actualized in some action [premise].

3. The primary value of a gift can exist independently of being given [inferred from 1, 2].

Through further specifying (1), we are no longer compelled to accept (3). (3) will not follow from (1*) and (2) combined, as while an intention can exist independently of action, the value of giving a gift is in how it expresses the intention and this depends on certain kinds of actions (2*).

An objection to this resolution may be that we need not express our intentions at all-it is sufficient to merely have them. This is based on an idea mentioned earlier: that if my partner and I have been in love for a long time, why would I need to express or communicate my love? I think this again conflates expression with love, and may rest on an inadequate understanding of mental states. In common practice, we definitely do not accept that we ought just to possess certain attitudes (e.g. love) and need not act on them. The exact opposite is the case: if you love someone, you are expected to show and express this in your actions. This could be explained through Anderson’s conception of attitudes as potentialities, which are only fully actualized in actions that adequately express them (2**).

But why can we not simply express our love in ways other than gift giving? Am I really arguing that you must give your partner gifts in order to love them adequately? I am not arguing this: in fact, I don’t think there is any necessary connection between loving someone and giving them gifts. It is simply that in my own, Australian culture, love is meaningfully expressed through gift giving and would be inadequate if this doesn’t occur. This is, at least, what I understand as one of the prevailing expressive norms for love, though there are many others. Other cultures have different norms, and perhaps the gift giving expression of love would be inadequate in these contexts or is actually becoming outdated in Australia. Just as holding the door open for a woman may express sexist attitudes, perhaps gift giving is overly commercial and should be replaced by other ways of expressing love. The crux of the matter is that the adequacy of gift giving as an expression of love is a consequence of the fact that love is a meaningful, intentional state and thus is governed by public, social norms (Anderson, 1995). Thus, it is not just up to an individual to decide what counts as an adequate expression of their love. They can have different interpretations of the norms for expressing love than others, but these interpretations must be tied back to public, social practices that make our expressions meaningful (Anderson, 1995).

To summarize:

Gift giving appeared paradoxical in an Australian context as it is commonly believed that the value of giving a gift is dependent on the attitude that motivated it, but it seems that this attitude could be just as well communicated verbally. This problem was resolved by understanding gift giving as an expressive act rather than a purely communicative act. Like apologizing or supporting your football team, certain norms govern what counts as an adequate expression of your attitudes in different situations. In Australian culture, some contexts seem to demand giving a gift as an adequate expression of your attitudes for other people. The paradigm case of this is giving a gift to express your romantic love for your life partner on birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries etc. Another example would be giving a gift as an expression of gratitude (e.g. gifting a carton of beer to a friend who helped you move) or giving a gift to apologize for doing something (e.g. a box of chocolates or roses given to a wronged lover). The adequacy of gift giving is tied to it being an expression of meaningful, intentional attitudes which are thus governed by publicly accessible norms. Just as there are norms for communicating mental states, and not everything can count as an appropriate communication, there are norms for expressing mental states, and not just anything counts as an adequate expression. Norms for expressing attitudes are not fixed either between or within cultures, and are subject to interpretation. Thus, gift giving need not always be an appropriate expression of some attitude, and other adequate expressive acts may arise over time due to social change and criticism.

References:

Anderson, E. (1995). Value in ethics and economics. Harvard University Press.

Anderson, E. (1996). Reasons, attitudes, and values: Replies to Sturgeon and Piper. Ethics, 106(3), 538-554.

Anderson, E. S., & Pildes, R. H. (2000). Expressive theories of law: A general restatement. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 148(5), 1503-1575.

Sandel, M. J. (2012). What money can’t buy: the moral limits of markets. Macmillan.

Taylor, C. (2016). The language animal. Harvard University Press.