Abstract
The veil of ignorance argument was used by John C. Harsanyi to defend Utilitarianism and by John Rawls to defend the absolute priority of the worst off. In a recent paper, Lara Buchak revives the veil of ignorance argument, and uses it to defend an intermediate position between Harsanyi’s and Rawls’ that she calls Relative Prioritarianism. None of these authors explore the implications of allowing that agent’s behind the veil are sensitive to ambiguity. Allowing for aversion to ambiguity—which is both the most commonly observed and a seemingly reasonable attitude to ambiguity—however supports a version of Egalitarianism, whose logical form is quite different from the theories defended by the aforementioned authors. Moreover, it turns out that the veil of ignorance argument neither supports standard Utilitarianism nor Prioritarianism unless we assume that rational people are insensitive to ambiguity.
Highlights
The Veil of Ignorance is a powerful tool, that has been used by different authors to defend divergent views in distributive ethics
Why is it important to establish that ambiguity aversion is a form of risk aversion? The reason is that it shows that if we accept the fourth premise of the veil of ignorance argument, we should assume that people behind the veil adopt ambiguity averse preferences
To summarize this section, we have found that if Stefánsson and Bradley’s (2015, 2019) characterization of rational preference is correct, and by assuming general risk aversion, rational preferences behind the veil of ignorance support a form of Egalitarianism
Summary
The Veil of Ignorance is a powerful tool, that has been used by different authors to defend divergent views in distributive ethics. Prioritarians and Utilitarians who are convinced that ambiguity sensitivity is rationally permissible, can read the paper as a reductio of one of the main premises of any veil of ignorance argument, namely, the premise that the preferences of people behind the veil reveal or determine principles of distributive ethics. Such scholars could question the veil of ignorance framework employed in this paper, in particular, they could argue that we should assume knowledge of precise probabilities behind the veil.. Such scholars could question the veil of ignorance framework employed in this paper, in particular, they could argue that we should assume knowledge of precise probabilities behind the veil. one could read this paper as showing, in conjunction with the arguments of Harsanyi, Rawls and Buchak, that since the veil of ignorance argument is so sensitive to subtle modelling choices, the argument does not settle the debates between the main competing views in distributive ethics
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