RAWLS

Question 1

what is the point in the veil of ignorance?

Answer 1

• a conceptual tool that mimics the Original Position
• people tailor their principles of justice to the circumstances of one’s own case - veil of ignorance removes this bias - this is unjust
• things like race, gender, disability etc. are beyond an individual’s control - they therefore shouldn’t affect anyone’s life prospects or the theory of justice.
• a means of establishing fair terms of social cooperation - everyone behind veil of ignorance has to agree (coherentist) - in the real world everyone has a different conception of the good no means of agreement
• rational - agents base choice on self-interest
• treats every individual as an equal moral agent - this is not the case in real life.
• speaks to our intuitions about justice.

Question 2

Objections to the veil of ignorance

Answer 2

1. Fully informed choice is better when making decisions
   RESPONSE: jury’s, grading require some info missing to ensure impartiality

COUNTER 1: Sandel: the specific information abstracted in voi is morally important - community offers a morally significant factor for justice (e.g. the value of family etc.) This should not be abstracted from a theory of justice. EXAMPLE: a US citizen protesting the Vietnam War is more morally significant than a Swedish person protesting the same war because it is done in the American’s name.
RESPONSE: your relationship to community is important but it is not a matter of justice.

COUNTER 2: Justice is related to morality and goodness - it seems counterintuitive to abstract individual conceptions of the good from a theory of justice.
RESPONSE: but the good is an essentially contested subject - veil of ignorance gets around this so as to guarantee social cooperation. Self-interested choice behind the veil of ignorance is similar to altruistic choice with full information.

2. Rawls’ primary goods are not shared universally or “equally valuable to all” - they are Western ideals - you cannot abstract yourself from your identity (esp conception of good).
   Sandel: can’t be an unencumbered self
   RESPONSE: primary goods are supposed to apply to everyone (thin conception of primary goods) .: universally applicable
3. Dworkins: hypothetical contracts can’t be binding on anyone in reality - it doesn’t consider people’s actual best interest just their hypothetical interest
   [similar: voi is pointless can’t be applied]
   AMMEND (Dworkin): give everyone full knowledge of their talents and tastes - this way special interests are accounted for.
   BUT: then you risk bias interests being taken into account.

Question 3

primary goods

Answer 3

self esteem, economic and social advantages, basic rights

Question 4

Why choose the liberty principle behind the veil of ignorance?

Answer 4

1. to ensure that one can pursue one’s conception of the good, whatever it may be
2. it would be reckless and irresponsible to gamble away one’s liberties - ‘to gamble in this way would show that one did not take one’s religious or moral convictions seriously’.

RESPONSE1: not that unreasonable e.g. selling your vote, self-slavery
COUNTER: it might be rational for an individual to sell his vote but it wouldn’t necessarily be rational for him to prefer a society in which vote-selling is a general practice.

REPSONSE2: sometimes it seems ethical to gamble one’s liberties e.g. lottery to test a life saving drug on a single individual to save everyone else.
COUNTER: even against their will?

3. Liberty provides the social foundation of self-respect which is a primary good that everyone wants.

Question 5

Why choose FEO behind the veil of ignorance? Particularly over the alternative: careers open to talents. What problems might FEO still face?

Answer 5

• Formal equality of opportunity is the social foundation of equal self-respect - ensures assessment based solely on merit. (COT agrees)
• COT doesn’t address the fact that skill/talent can often in themselves be the result of the social rather than natural lottery (e.g. parents paying for private tutoring). FEO wants also to address these structural injustices - this might include affirmative action, stopping private education, preventing excessive accumulations of wealth.
• PROBLEMS: aren’t these infringements on individual freedom (of the parents) e.g. reading books to children increase their life chances but we wouldn’t/ shouldn’t stop parents from doing this. The liberty principle takes priority.
• RESPONSE: but infringes on liberty of those who cannot get jobs because of private school advantages - balancing act.
• although FEO might mitigate/ end the effects of the social lottery, it does nothing to address the unequal distribution of talents and abilities in the natural lottery - this too would concern people behind the veil of ignorance. This is where the difference principle comes in.

Question 6

Liberty Principle

Answer 6

each has a right to the most extensive basic liberties compatible with similar liberty for all

Question 7

FEO

Answer 7

offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity (priority over difference principle)

Question 8

The difference principle

Answer 8

social and economic inequalities are justified only if it is to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged.

Question 9

Why choose the difference principle in the original position?

Answer 9

1. initially attracted to full equality: ‘it is not reasonable for him to expect more than an equal share in the division of social primary goods, and it is not reasonable for him to agree to less’ but if an unequal distribution is to the benefit/ advantage of everyone (i.e. the least well off) when compared with equal distribution it is reasonable for everyone to agree to them
2. The Difference Principle provides the fairest terms of cooperation between the talented and the untalented, no one would feel unduly wronged.
   PROB (Nozick): to focus on cooperation we must compare it with a scheme of ‘social cooperation in which the better/worse endowed cooperate only among themselves, with no cross cooperation’ - from this baseline the less well endowed gain more than than the better endowed in DP - Nozick things the better endowed could thus demand more from a cooperative society than DP offers them.
3. inequality is presumptively unfair which is only justifiable if benefits the least well off - only then are you treating the less well off as ends rather than as means to an end (i.e. greater utility in society). - violates their rights as self-respecting individuals.
   EXAMPLE: Nozick suggests poverty is addressed through donations - this makes the poor dependent on the rich thus fails to treat them as moral equals
4. choosing a system like with great inequality would be too much of a gamble