Rawls's Difference Research Articles

Philosophical foundations for worst-case arguments

Certain ethical views hold that we should pay more attention, even exclusive attention, to the worst-case scenario. Prominent examples include Rawls's Difference Principle and the Precautionary Principle. These views can be anchored in formal principles of decision theory, in two different ways. On the one hand, they can rely on ambiguity-aversion: the idea that we cannot assign sharp probabilities to various scenarios, and that if we cannot assign sharp probabilities, we should decide pessimistically, as if the probabilities are unfavorable. On the other hand, they can rely on risk-avoidance: the idea that we should pay more attention to worse scenarios, even when we can assign sharp probabilities. I distinguish these two foundations. I also show how they can be modified to support versions of these views that pay more but not exclusive attention to worst-case scenarios. Finally, I argue that risk-avoidance provides a superior foundation than ambiguity-aversion for the Difference Principle and the Precautionary Principle; in particular, it correctly identifies which ethical facts should matter to those who champion these principles.

Fair Equality of Opportunity in Healthcare

The allocation of resources for health, as well as the distribution of other social goods, being a political problem, can also be observed as belonging to the universe of distributive justice, considering that all citizens must have the necessary means for an acceptable physical, psychological and social performance. Individual autonomy, paradigm of a full citizenship in a modern society, cannot otherwise be achieved. Human dignity seems to imply that no citizen can be excluded from the basic health system due to the lack of financial resources. Indeed, equal access of all citizens to basic social goods and therefore to key places in society – principle of fair equality of opportunities – is one of the core aspects of Rawls's difference principle. It is, in essence, about ensuring the exercise of the right to individual self-determination in the relationship between the individual and society, as well as the right to play a social role according to skills and merit. But, it is not only the theory of the social contract that provides for a fair equality of opportunities. Different perspectives of justice contemplate this ideal. As suggested by Tristram Engelhardt Jr individual autonomy must be interpreted as a value in itself and a determining factor for the exercise of a full citizenship. But, justice is an ideal that must be progressively built. Whether in a specific society or on a global scale. And, the great challenge of humanity is precisely to recognize the existing intercultural differences and propose sufficiently flexible ideological systems that can be applied in different countries with very different levels of social and economic development. Without detracting from the ethical principles that should underpin the construction of the 21st century global society.

Is rising income inequality far from inevitable during structural transformation? A proposal for an augmented inequality dynamics

Abstract. This paper examines whether rising income inequality is the stylised fact for the process of structural transformation by revisiting classical accounts on the transformation-inequality nexus, with a particular focus on Kuznets’s and Rostow’s theories of development and Rawls’s difference principle. In addition, a complex interaction between structural transformation and income inequality is analysed by exploring the multi-dimensions of inequality dynamics to link Kuznets-Rostow-Rawls. This critical review allows us to conclude that rising income inequality is far from inevitable by introducing a proposal for what it calls ‘augmented inequality dynamics’ which attempts to systematize circulating societal processes through social, economic, political and moral dimensions. This explains how income inequality is used to incentivise or restrain the process of various societal interactions by itself going up and down repeatedly in the context of structural transformation. Keywords. Economic inequality, Structural transformation, Kuznets curve, Rostow's stages of economic growth, Rawls's difference principle. JEL. D63, L15, O10.

May Medical Centers Give Nonresident Patients Priority in Scheduling Outpatient Follow-Up Appointments?

Many academic medical centers are seeking to attract patients from outside their historical catchment areas for economic and programmatic reasons, and patients are traveling for treatment that is unavailable, of poorer quality, or more expensive at home. Treatment of these patients raises a number of ethical issues including whether they may be given priority in scheduling outpatient follow-up appointments in order to reduce the period of time they are away from home. Granting them priority is potentially unjust because medical treatment is generally allocated based on medical need and resource utilization, and then on a first-come, first-served basis. While it is difficult to compare the opportunity cost of waiting for an appointment to different patients, nonresident patients incur higher expenditures for travel, room, and board than resident patients. Giving them priority in scheduling to reduce these costs may be justifiable. Preferentially scheduling nonresident patients may also indirectly benefit resident patients consistent with Rawls's difference principle. This potential justification, however, rests on several empirical claims that should be demonstrated. In addition to reducing resident patients' waiting times, medical centers should not prioritize nonresident patients over resident patients with more urgent medical needs. There is, therefore, a limited and circumscribed justification for prioritizing nonresident patients in scheduling follow-up appointments.

INCENTIVE INEQUALITIES AND FREEDOM OF OCCUPATIONAL CHOICE

Abstract:InRescuing Justice and Equality, G.A. Cohen argues that the incentive inequalities permitted by John Rawls's difference principle are unjust since people cannot justify them to their fellow citizens. I argue that citizens of a Rawlsian society can justify their acceptance of a wide range of incentive inequalities to their fellow citizens. They can do so because they possess the right to freedom of occupational choice, and are permitted – as a matter of justice – to exercise this right by making occupational decisions on the basis of a wide range of values and preferences.

Rawls's Difference Principle as Compensation for Social Immobility

Outside academia, John Rawls's theory of justice—justice as fairness—has had little impact. This article is part of a broader project to rectify this. I offer a distinctive, second‐best, argument for Rawls's difference principle. The difference principle requires that inequalities in income and wealth are justified only if they benefit society's least‐advantaged citizens. My paper argues that, slightly‐modified, the difference principle is an excellent principle of redress in light of the UK's continued failure to give all citizens fair career chances. I show how we might realize the difference principle at the level of policy through tax rate reductions or negative tax rates. I conclude that if you don't want to accept the second‐best argument for the difference principle you must get serious about giving all citizens fair career chances. As I suggest, this task is extremely difficult.

Restricting Justice: Political Interventions in the Home and in the Market

Restricting Justice: Political Interventions in the Home and in the Market

G. A. Cohen's Critique of Rawls's Difference Principle

G. A. Cohen's Critique of Rawls's Difference Principle

Review: Jeffrey Reiman, 'As Free and as Just as Possible: The Theory of Marxian Liberalism'

In this essay length critical review (for the online Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews) I set out the main themes and arguments of Jeffrey Reiman's new book and offer a few criticisms. Reiman offers a novel argument for Rawls's difference principle as the centerpiece of a species of liberalism he dubs Marxian Liberalism. While there are difficulties with the argument and details, Reiman does successfully draw to the surface some important Marxian themes in Rawls's thought.

Incentive Inequalities and Talents: A Reply to Shiffrin

In a recent article, Seana Valentine Shiffrin offers a distinctive egalitarian critique of the types of incentive inequalities that are permitted by John Rawls's difference principle. She argues that citizens of a well-ordered society, who publicly accept Rawls's two principles of justice and their justifications, may not demand incentives to employ their talents in productive ways since such demands are inconsistent with a major justification for the difference principle: the moral arbitrariness of talent. I argue that there is no such inconsistency. Citizens can publicly accept the claim that talent is morally arbitrary and accept incentives to employ their talents productively without inconsistency. In the standard case that Rawls envisions, citizens who do so take their preferences to be a reason for a higher salary, not their talents.

Poverty in Africa and the Forces of Change: Reflections on Rawls Difference Principle

Africa is no doubt one of the continents endowed with resources necessary for the achievement of development in all areas. The pre-colonial era as crude as being described, was to a large extent characterized by values for self sustenance. However, the crises being witnessed in Africa as it manifest in hunger, lack and scarcity over these years have been on one hand, argued to have resulted from the contact Africa had with the external forces of colonialism. These forces as claimed ushered in unbridled economic system with its implications on value system of brotherhood, reciprocity and fraternity among others. On the other hand, the internal forces which manifest in corruption, mismanagement and bad leadership, have totally grounded the development to a halt. This paper critically examines these forces of change, with the aim of identifying the missing link and attempt to suggest ways towards charting a new course in order to regain the values. The paper applies John Rawls Difference Principle as a theoretical framework, capable of ensuring that benefits and burdens are fairly distributed for the advantage of every one, more especially the less privileged in society. This would enhance the attainment of a stable social order as it promotes the ideals of reciprocity and fraternity in society.

JUSTICE, INCENTIVES AND CONSTRUCTIVISM

AbstractIn Rescuing Justice and Equality, G. A. Cohen reiterates his critique of John Rawls's difference principle as a justification for inequality‐generating incentives, and also argues that Rawls's ambition to provide a constructivist defence of the first principles of justice is doomed. Cohen's arguments also suggest a natural response to my earlier attempt to defend the basic structure objection to Cohen's critique, which I term the alien factors reply. This paper criticises the reply, and Cohen's more general argument against Rawls's constructivism.1

The difference principle and time

Rawls's difference principle contains a certain normative ambiguity, so that opposing views, including strong inegalitarian ones, might find a home under it. The element that introduces this indeterminacy is the absence of an explicit reference to time. Thus, a society that agrees on the difference principle as the proper justification of basic political-economic institutions, might nevertheless disagree on whether their specific institutions are justified by that principle. Such disagreement would most often centre on issues of fact: will a more egalitarian policy in fact prioritize the least well off or will a more libertarian policy do so? But facts are not the only possible points of contention. According to the fundamental indeterminacy, considering merely the sum of advantages to the least well off, the difference principle is indifferent among different flows of equal income over time. It cannot adjudicate among more or less unequal distributions across social groups when the sum income of the least advantaged group is constant. The fundamental indeterminacy lies at the bottom of three derivative indeterminacies: an adequate future discount rate, an acceptable absolute minimum, and a reasonable time interval. These might form the basis of political disagreement among self-proclaimed endorsers of the difference principle of left and right over the way the principal social-economic institutions ought to be structured and the distributions that ensue.

Kantianism and Legislation

Political philosophers in the Kantian tradition often assume that they can use theories of justice to evaluate laws and institutions. For example, many believe that justice requires coercive distribution of wealth, or government-enforced universal access to health care, or minimum wages. This article rejects this fallacy, which I call The Moral Turn. Principles of justice underdetermine judgments about most of the social and economic issues of the day. To be sure, a theory of justice may yield non-contingent or necessary moral content, especially in the area of basic constitutional rights. But in order to evaluate everyday pieces of legislation we need the empirical sciences. Philosophers either purport to derive institutional recommendations directly from principles of justice, or make quick and unsupported empirical assumptions to derive those institutional recommendations. On most areas of public policy, theories of justice have no institutional consequences. Kant's Universal Principle of Justice, or Rawls's Difference Principle, are compatible with a broad range of economic and political institutions, from laissez-faire to the welfare state. Which one is on the whole justified can only be decided by appealing to the empirical sciences (economics, political science, psychology). Because Immanuel Kant inaugurated the tradition of moral formalism, I first discuss Kant's own views on the matter as presented in his Doctrine of Right, and conclude that while Kant was aware of the problem, he often jumped to institutional conclusions without empirical support. I then discuss some modern neo-Kantian philosophers and show how they, too, perpetrate The Moral Turn. I use the examples of John Rawls and coercive redistribution, Norman Daniels and universal health care, and the minimum wage. Finally, I show that rejecting The Moral Turn does not commit one to utilitarianism in politics.

Principles or Imagination? Two Approaches to Global Justice

What does it mean to introduce the notion of imagination in the discussion about global justice? What is gained by studying the role of imagination in thinking about global justice? Does a focus on imagination imply that we must replace existing influential principle-centred approaches such as that of John Rawls and his critics? We can distinguish between two approaches to global justice. One approach is Rawlsian and Kantian in inspiration. Discussions within this tradition typically focus on the question whether Rawls's theory of justice (1971), designed for the national level, can or should be applied to the global level. Can and should Rawls's Difference Principle be globalized, as Thomas Pogge argues? Is this proposal superior to Rawls's Law of Peoples (1999)? Another approach to global justice has been developed by Martha Nussbaum in Cultivating Humanity (1997), Poetic Justice (1995), and other work. I will construct her view and critically examine it by looking at her arguments about the relation between empathy, literature, and global justice. At first sight, these two approaches seem to be opposed. The former puts an emphasis on principles, universal reason, and the moral aspects of institutions and their policies, whereas the latter is rather concerned with the relation between imagination and justice, with the particular, and with the individual moral development. But is this necessarily so? I will show that both approaches could benefit from each other's insights to strengthen their own position. Moreover, I will argue for middle way between, or an integration of the two approaches that combines principles and imagination. In this way, we can move towards a more comprehensive account of global justice.

Equity, Responsibility and the Cultural Dimension

We present questionnaire studies concerning equity judgments based on an axiom that underlies Rawls's difference principle. Our investigation, spanning over a period of fifteen years, was run at German, Austrian and Slovenian universities. We also modified two of our basic scenarios to check for responsibility aspects. Additionally, we included information on socio‐demographic characteristics of respondents in a probit model. Answers depend on cultural environments, but results indicate some convergence over time. Responsibility considerations are important if they can be attributed to particular persons. Although overall explanatory power of demographic attributes is low, we observe significant gender differences.

Defending political autonomy: a discussion of Charles Beitz

Among political philosophers, discussion of Charles Beitz's very important book Political Theory and International Relations has focused mainly on Part Three, in which Beitz addresses the issue of global distributive justice, and argues in favour of applying Rawls's difference principle globally: an ideally just world would be one in which the share of income and other primary goods going to the least advantaged group of persons would be maximised, no matter which society those persons belonged to. There has been much debate about whether relationships across the world are cooperative in the sense that this principle is thought to presuppose, how one might construct an international index of advantage and disadvantage, and so forth. Beitz himself has contributed to this debate, and it remains central to contemporary work on global justice.

Why Work Harder? Equality, Social Duty and the Market

The paper responds to Cohen's critical claim that for agents who sincerely accept Rawls's difference principle it is not consistent to seek material incentives towards productivity. The central argument of the paper is that productive agents in a market economy would not be as productive without material incentives unless held to be under a (controversial) duty to increase productivity. This duty is distinct from merely having a duty to contribute up to a reasonable minimum, and then equalise material benefits. The controversial duty is not derivable from the difference principle itself, nor from the background motivations for it. Therefore, if Cohen's critique is internal to Rawlsian distributive justice, it is based on a controversial version of that view of distributive justice when applied to a market system. It is the reach, and not the core insight of Cohen's critique that is attacked here. If in any way sound, that insight does not un-controversially apply to all material incentive-seeking in a market economy.

Liberalismo y derecho a la inmigración

Today, most liberal theorists either do not plead for freedom of migration or clearly reject it. In my view, it contradicts not only the traditional natural law theories, but also today's liberal principles of justice such as Rawls's difference principle. In a thought experiment, I compare the imaginary situation, in which immigration were allowed to everybody, while no social and health benefits were provided for immigrants, to the actual situation, in which immigration from the third world is allowed only to a few people, but social benefits are granted to the immigrants. Against the current view, I show that for the worst-off the actual situation is worse than the imaginary situation.

The Preferential Option for the Poor and the Marian-Christian Perspective On Distributive Justice

Liberation Theology seems to have Roman Catholic social Teaching (1) shift from a naturalistic, Aristotelian conception of distributive justice to a Biblical perspective expresses as the preferential option for the poor, (2) advocate an ‘hermeneutic privilege for the poor’ which assigns the poor a cognitive role similar to that accorded to the proletariat by Marx. The apparent hostility to capitalism reflected in the preferential option and the espousal of such a hermeneutic privilege raise the question – according to the Church’s teaching, is a committed believer obligated to work for the overthrow of capitalism? Citing (a) the formal identity of the preferential option with the Rawls difference principle; (b) the espousal of Pareto efficiency as an appropriate policy objective in key Church documents, the author concludes that commitment to the preferential option implies commitment to 'Pareto optimality’ and that Catholic social doctrine as currently taught does not require the repudiation of capitalism.