L2 - social justice Flashcards
examples
- # metoo: easy to say basically everyone is against sexual discrimination, but on the internet it suddenly looks diff, also focus on generalising
- covid19: whether it is good to not cough on people simple ethical question (based on public mandate of what is good to do) BUT is it right for gov to mandate the wearing of masks?
+ free speech and covid: people saying it is the Kung Flu, the Jew Flu -> only the Jew Flu led to broad debate - reparations: A invades B, war ends and A receides, all citizens immediately have to pay repairs = fair?
!even more complicated when reparations only generations later, should there be reparations for slavery?
hard cases
- non-events: how to deal with ethical claims we don’t know about? what should we argue about a conflict we don’t know much about?
most ethics is filtered by media: we care mostly about what we are informed about - lousy people: what to do with shitty people that technically didn’t do anything wrong (not illegal)
e.g. someone caused a shitshow when she saw an adult and kid of diff race and called the police bc she thought it was human trafficking (was a political stunt) - (new) rights? food insecurity, is there a right to have a supermarket nearby
concept vs conception
concept = basic structure of a value or principle - such as justice, or liberty
- it is broad and capacious, encapsulating many diff meanings
- own notes: big overarching set of principles (e.g. liberty, equality)
- something we should kind of all agree with, what it basically means
- concept is a vague umbrella, it includes a lot of ideas
- matter of intuition, you know what something means
conception = particular version of a concept supported by an author, honing it down to a subset of meanings and characteristics
- e.g. civic republican conception of liberty
- specific version of a concept that is defined and defended
“Concepts] are less fully specified than conceptions. For example, we may have a broadly outlined concept of freedom as the absence of constraints on agents’ actions, which still leaves open what kinds of constraints, agents, and actions matter … A full specification of those constraints, agents, and actions yields a precise conception of freedom. Different conceptions can thus be compatible with the same broad concept”
concepts and conceptions - justice example
!!!!memorize these words
concept = giving people what is due to them
- This ties justice to duty – to what is morally required that we, perhaps collectively through our political and social institutions, do for one another.
- Not just to what it would be morally good to do, but what we have a duty to do, what morality compels us
conceptions of justice:
- Rawls = justice as fairness
- Nozick: justice as entitlement
fundamentals: the right vs the good
!!!!memorize these words
the good =
- utility/utilitarianism - “ends” (idea that there is ends towards our lives)
- substance: the good life (often very specific + diff per person (almost incompatible)) -> you want a society in which everyone can live out their own conception of the good
- happiness
- Rawls: “A person’s good is determined by what is for him the most rational long-term plan of life given reasonably favorable circumstances. A man is happy when he is more or less successful in the way of carrying out this plan. To put it briefly, the good is the satisfaction of rational desire”
- whether you like to go bowling is a conception of the good
the right:
- de-ontology: “means”
- not in terms of ends, but in terms of means, not in terms of substance, but in terms of procedure
- not whether or not you got to go bowling, but whether you got to do it for the right reasons, if the system created the means for you to go
- procedure: way by which we determine rightness and wrongness
- Rawls: “A conception of right is a set of principles, general in form and universal in application, that is to be publicly recognized as a final court of appeal for ordering the conflicting claims of moral persons”
- when you say something is right: you are saying there are conflicting claims, it suggests that others are not right = opposite of the good, were neither is right or wrong
religion seen as good -> not matter of state coercion, there is no right
fundamentals: justice and morality
morality and justice are NOT identical
justice is a SUBSET of morality (ethics), some things are morally good but not part of justice
- e.g. charity: you do it because you think it is good, rather than that they have a right of your money
- if you think something can be coerced, you think it is about justice: someone has a right to it
- should we give it or would it be good to?
justice = a moral duty sufficient to justify state coercion towards that end
- Swift: The state is justified in making sure that people carry out their duties to one another. It is justified in using its coercive power to force people to do what they might not do voluntarily … To say that the state is justified in forcing people to comply with their duties is to say that citizens are justified in using the coercive apparatus of the state (laws, police, courts, prisons) to force one another to act in certain ways – including ways that some citizens might believe to be wrong
*last piece after the - crucial to distinguish the good vs the right - Rawls: “From the standpoint of the theory of justice, the most important natural duty is to support and to further just institutions. This duty has two parts: first, we are to comply with and to do our share in just institutions when they exist and apply to us; and second, we are to assist in the establishment of just arrangements when they do not exist, at least when this can be done with little cost to ourselves”
Rawls and Fairness
conception of justice = justice as fairness
thought experiment: the original position and the veil of ignorance. a kind of social contract:
- social contract: we provide consent (out of our own interest) to some contract, some rules
the ORIGINAL POSITION imagines people choosing principles of justice, behind a VEIL OF IGNORANCE:
- without any knowledge of ASCRIPTIVE characteristics (race, social class, religion, intelligence etc.) -> decision is not biased by advantage (not based on their INTERESTS)
- no knowledge of their conception of the good (what makes life worth living) -> decision not based on their VALUES
-> social contract
core: what contract would people have agreed to be be bound by if they thought about it not taking into account interests and values
thought experiment: the original position and the veil of ignorance. a kind of social contract:
- they DO KNOW they have what Rawls calls the “capacity to frame, revise and pursue a conception of the good” -> people know that in order to make use of this capacity they will need “primary goods”
as stick-figure you need to know you are gonna have preferences, you just don’t know which ones -> you will want primary goods = you don’t know what rights you’ll are about, but you do know you will care about rights - primary goods = things that every rational man is presumed to want (rights, liberties, and opportunities, and income and wealth)
quote Rawls social contract
The guiding idea is that the principles of justice for the basic structure of society are the object of the original agreement. They are the principles that free and rational persons concerned to further their own interests would accept in an initial position of equality as defining the fundamental terms of their association … Among the essential features of this situation is that no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does any one know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength and the like. I shall even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance. This ensures that no one is advantaged of disadvantaged in the choice of principles by the outcome of natural chance or the contingency of social circumstances … The original position is, one might say, the appropriate initial status quo, and thus the fundamental agreement reach in it are fair
- social contract made by patriarchal society by definition less fair/just
original position + veil of ignorance
you are not yourself in any real sense: stick-figure self, the you/ego, sense of self stripped of everything: don’t know your gender, sexual preferences, where you live etc., you’re a version of yourself with material interests, no ascriptive characteristics (race, sex, gender, wealth etc.
!you don’t know your conception of the good: what type of life you would want
as tough you enter an agreement with a veil (VEIL OF IGNORANCE) over your eyes: not knowing who you are
e.g. if you don’t know if you are religious, you’re more likely to support religious tolerance than if you are e.g. christian in a christian country
Rawls hypothetical contract
hypothetical contract determines fair terms of deliberation
the hypothetical contract gives you a fair procedure (to determine what is right) bc things that would make it unfair are kept away (invisible behind the veil)
= like cutting a cake: procedure to actualize the principle to equally distribute it = person who cuts the cake cuts last
perfect procedural justice = when the procedure is fair
but most procedures are unfair in our society = imperfect procedural project
- e.g. criminal trial: Even though the law is carefully followed, and the proceedings fairly and properly conducted, it may reach the wrong outcome. An innocent man may be found guilty, a guilty man may be set free. In such cases we speak of a miscarriage of justice: the injustice springs from no human fault but from a fortuitous combination of circumstances which defeats the purpose of the legal rules.
- The characteristic mark of imperfect procedural justice is that while there is an independent criterion for the correct outcome, there is no feasible procedure which is sure to lead to it”
- aka you can agree the right procedure is to have a jury trial, they can still convict the wrong person
- procedure is not the same as outcome
original position as ‘pure’ procedural justice:
- The original position is defined in such a way that it is a status quo in which any agreements reached are fair. It is a state of affairs in which the parties are equally represented as moral persons and the outcome is not conditioned by arbitrary contingencies or the relative balance of social forces. Thus justice as fairness is able to use the idea of pure procedural justice from the beginning”
- imagine you live in a society designed by your enemy: “the two principles are those a person would choose for the design of a society in which his enemy is to assign him his place”
!hypothetical consent trumps actual consent = hypothetical contract overrides the actual contract: you don’t care about what people actually consented to
- Hypothetical contract that overrides actual contracts: for contracts that are unjust, consent does not bind (because that is what people in their original position would decide).
If you were the stick figure version of yourself, you would not have consented to some of the terms -> Rawls doesn’t care about what people actually consented to. - Chat: Rawls zegt hier dat als mensen instemmen met onrechtvaardige sociale systemen, deze instemming hen niet moreel verplicht om die systemen te volgen, omdat de systemen zelf onrechtvaardig zijn en vergelijkbaar met situaties van dwang
Rawls - so what would people choose?
- “Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all”
- if you don’t know who you are, the first thing you protect are your liberties
- compatible with rights of others: right to punch vs right not to be punched
- right to vote, freedom of thought, freedom from oppression = LIBERALISM - social and eco inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both:
a. to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged
b. attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity
ranking: 1 > 2b > 2a
liberty is maximally guaranteed, equality isn’t, it is structured to help out the worst of (inequality is inevitable)
2 says some social inequality is tolerable, question is how we determine what degree is tolerable -> the difference principle: inequality allowed if it in the end is in favor of the worst off
- “In the event that there are social and economic inequalities (which is not in itself given), the second principle kicks in to enable (2b) that all people have equal opportunity and access, and (2a) that inequalities are tolerated only insofar as they benefit the worst off”
- inequalities are tolerated only in so far as they benefit the worst off
regarding natural inequalities = what is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts (it is not just/unjust what is naturally distributed to you, it is a matter of chance in what class, gender, skincolor, intelligence, laziness, we are chemically predisposed)
if you didn’t know how smart you were, you would want to create institutions that do not profide loopholes for smart people
-> what should be kept outside of the bounds of justice?
Rawls - the difference principle
the difference principle = to maximize the position of the worst off in society = maximin (you maximize the minimum)
- inequalities are tolerated only in so far as they benefit the worst off
diff principle roughly redress:
“Although the difference principle is not the same as the that of redress, it does achieve some of the intent of the latter principle. It transforms the aims of the basic structure so that the total scheme of institutions no longer emphasizes social efficiency and technocratic values. The difference principle represents, in effect, an agreement to regard the distribution of natural talents as in some respects a common asset and to share in the greater social and economic benefits made possible by the complementarities of this distribution
(Rawls and liberalism)
Rawls is liberalism on crack
objections to Rawls and Fairness
6
- risk aversion:
- Rawls assumes a psychological theory of an individual: people are risk averse
- why would we assume that people would be careful/cautious with their standing, rather than want to, say, gamble on their talents?
- this embeds a theory of human nature - that people are ‘pessimistic’ and ‘risk averse’ - the priority of liberty
- idea that there is never the desire to trade off liberty for economics/security is questionable: we do it all the time
- why should liberty come before economic concerns? can we value liberty before we have food/human security?
- Rawls suggests people can’t forego liberties in exchange for material gains. but what if believe we should be able to trade off (some) liberty for economic prosperity? (poor people may want to forego right to vote if they get money)
- Rawls: there have to be normal circumstances that make human coordination possible: “the circumstances of justice may be described as the normal conditions under which human cooperation is both possible and necessary … There is the condition of moderate scarcity understood to cover a wide range of situations. Natural and other resources are not so abundant that schemes of cooperation become superfluous, nor are conditions so harsh that fruitful ventures must inevitably break down” -> under what conditions might Rawls’ conditions make sense
= implication: you can only have conversation of justice if you have certain material circumstances, but have these ever existed? can they exist? - redistribution - to what extent and for whom?
- Rawls is basically saying: if you don’t know who you are, you are more likely to redistribute/protect the poor
- Rawls doesn’t say you can’t have inequality, only says it has to be justified = left concern of Rawls: he justifies to much inequality
- or does he justify too much redistribution bc every inequality needs to be justified
- Swift: “The principle (maximin) is demanding: inequalities are justified only is they serve to maximize the position of the worst off. The odd bit of ‘trickle down’ is not enough to satisfy this principle. What matters is whether the worst off are as well off as they could be, not whether they are better off than they might have been” = how do you make sure every inequality lifts up the bottom?
- what even counts as the worst off anyway? (a class, a subset, how ought it be measured?) - the hypothetical contract:
- “a hypothetical contract is not worth the paper it is not written on”
- how can it be binding? -> Rawls: it is just a thought experiment: duty comes from one’s obligation to justice, not agreement on such (bc people didn’t actually agree on anything)
- Rawls: hypothetical contract overrides other contracts bc rational part of you may not have agreed with the formal contract
- Swift (in defense of Rawls): “If somebody asks, ‘Why should I go along with Rawls’s principles of justice?’ the answer is not, ‘Because you agreed to, and are therefore under a contractual obligation to do so.’ That, as the objection observes, is not true. The answer is rather: “Because you have a duty to act justly and Rawls has correctly identified what justice requires of you.’’ - egoism:
- is it wrong to derive principles of justice out of self-interest?
- Rawls’ trick is to use (rational) self-interest without interest
- it is still egoism: he is not other regarding, he argues for a theory that is self-regarding but without knowledge of the self
- Swift: “Within the original position, people are indeed regarded as choosing principles by looking out for themselves, by thinking about how they, as individuals, will fare under them … The parties to the hypothetical contract look out for themselves, one might say, only after they have been deprived of all information that might enable them to look out for themselves”
- the reason you don’t want slavery is bc you are afraid you might be a slave
- defense: once we make ourselves stick persons, we are all the same person, we are just looking out for personhood - the private sphere
- why must justice be limited to the public sphere? (police, courts, laws)
- Rawls argues everything not in the public sphere is not about justice, it is about ethics
- is there no way to justify state action within the household? -> you have to weigh values (bodily integrity vs privacy e.g.)
- Rawls makes the decision in favor of privacy: idea that state can’t intervene in the privacy liberty
Justice 2: Nozick and Entitlement
moral basis 1
different moral basis than Rawls, a different starting point
not: what would an ideal just society look like? it is how does justice look given how society works?
*own words
moral basis 1: the world is given, and we have various forms of property
- we begin with holdings. there is no ‘manna from heaven’. if we started from scratch, then perhaps it would be just to start with a fair distribution of holdings. but we don’t - we have certain holdings
- thus justice must begin by protecting those holdings (assuming they are justly acquired)
- freedom means being able to decide what to do with one’s holdings
outcome 1 = the minimal state: state is there to protect holdings
- can’t be to create an ‘ideal distribution’ bc it would interfere with property rights
- ““Our main conclusions about the state are that a minimal state, limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on, is justified; that any more extensive state will violate persons’ rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified” (Nozick 1974)”
= he has a really strong protection of liberty, for Rawls it was weighting liberty and inequality
Nozick and entitlement
moral basis 2
different moral basis than Rawls, a different starting point
like Rawls he critiques utilitarianism: if a 100 benefit and 1 is abused, it is okay according to utilitarianism (but not according to liberatarianism)
moral basis 2: separateness of persons
- contra utilitarianism: to take seriously the ‘separateness of persons’ = we would recognize a person’s talents and achievements on their own
outcome = no taxation
- Swift: “if the wealthy are to give to the poor, they must do so voluntarily, not bc the state forces them to”
Justice 2: Nozick and entitlement
what does it mean to own someting justly/legitimately?
+ critiques
if terms of getting entitlement is fair, the result is fair (even though it may suck)
3 ways:
- acquisition
- assume an uninhabited land, its resources may be acquired AS LONG AS no one is made worse off through this acquisition
- variation of Locke’s defense of property rights - transfer = incorporates consent
- if you legitimately own something (incl. labor) you can do what you want with it
- MAIN LOGIC Nozick = whatever arises from a just situation by just steps is itself just
- from each as they choose, to each as they are chosen
- if you consent, it is just, no matter if it sucks (e.g. if you are female and cultural norms have made you to be consent easier in e.g. negotiations) - rectification
- unjust transfers must be rectified (esp. when they generate new entitlements)
!3 terms we need to know
critiques:
- acquisition: how does one acquire unowned property? do you mark it, make something from it, use it?
- acquisition: how do you know if others are made worse off?
- even in an orchard with 1000 apples, if one takes one, there is one less for someone else - acquisition: why should we believe previous land is initially unowned? what if instead it was ‘commonly’ owned
- transfer: world history hasn’t been a story of justice -> doesn’t this invalidate the principle?
- rectification: how to rectify past injustices of transfer?
Justice 2: Nozick and entitlement
what do we take from Nozick?
*Nozick basically big middle finger to Rawls
- radical amounts of inequality could be justified
- state action should be kept to a minimum
- distribution is not a matter of justice
+ makes case for “starting point” theories as opposed to “end state” theories:???????????
- shows how liberty and justice can be at odds: ‘patterned’ theories of justice necessarily take away liberty
- ‘patterned’ theories =
- Rawls = end-state theory: he points to an end-state that is ideal
- Nozick: only way to make principles of justice is to set the starting point and if all the steps are fair that is just
Swift: “Nozick assumes that the initial distribution, whatever it is, must be a distribution of full or absolute property rights: ‘full or absolute’ in the sense that they imply that people can do whatever they like with their property … [But] ownership is a complicated idea … I can have the right to use the office’s shared photocopier without having the right to sell that product to others. If people have absolute rights over what they produce, why can’t parents sell their children into slavery? Nozick it is widely thought, needs to do more to establish that property rights of the kind his argument presupposes are valid”
Nozick and ownership
what does it mean to fully own something?
it is really complicated
- e.g. we own ourselves? gov has right to intervene if you want to commit suicide
Swift: “Nozick assumes that the initial distribution, whatever it is, must be a distribution of full or absolute property rights: ‘full or absolute’ in the sense that they imply that people can do whatever they like with their property … [But] ownership is a complicated idea … I can have the right to use the office’s shared photocopier without having the right to sell that product to others. If people have absolute rights over what they produce, why can’t parents sell their children into slavery? Nozick it is widely thought, needs to do more to establish that property rights of the kind his argument presupposes are valid”
there are diff degrees of ownership
Justice 3 - desert (the conventional view)
= justice means you get what you deserve
- Desert is implicitly attractive: people should get what they deserve. This is what justice means.
- Logic of markets: hard-work and talent are rewarded
this view of market bakes in the idea of the market
what is the problem of linking the logic of the market and justice?
BUT: what determines what they get, the individual or the tastes of the market? Is it just that some people have the kinds of talents people reward = the market is arbitrary
- This follows on Rawls’ view that natural talents (esp. vis-à-vis the market) are ‘arbitrary from a moral point of view’ (just like sex and race it is given)
- assumption that the market can determine anything except preference is not true
- people can be equally talented but in different things -> not all will earn same income (e.g. Ronaldo more money than physics teacher) -> particular sets of talents are rewarded by the market
- so you can never have a justice system outside of preferences
Neither Rawls nor Nozick rely on ‘desert’. But do these philosopher’s capture our intuitions? Shouldn’t desert matter at least somewhat?
- Rawls: desert doesn’t matter, it is morally arbitrary
- Nozick: it doesn’t matter if you deserve it, you begin with stuff and it is just your stuff
Swift calls this the mixed view:
- “Rawls is right to think that its unfair for anyone to be better or worse off than others simply as a result of how they do in the natural and social lottery, but wrong if he thinks that people’s choices should also make no difference to how well off they are”
- how to determine how much peoples choices matter
But can these two kinds of ‘luck’: brute luck (natural lottery) and option luck (choices) be truly separated. The more you believe they can, the more you would likely be called a ‘luck egalitarian’. (c.f. Dworkin).
- just a teaser
