The good to great of it: "Justice" runs chapter by chapter across schools of thought, highlighting a particular standout like Kant or Aristotle as the narrative goes, on what is "right" and then segueing into how to make judgements and thereby systems of law or government. The book does well in walks from Utilitarianism, Libertarianism, and so on, and uses examples from modern life to illustrate the point of view of a philosophy and the struggles you might have in adopting that view.
The bad: The book really falls apart toward the last couple of chapters in two ways: (1) his particular political leanings become the focus vs. the former focus of schools of thought being applied to relevant challenges, and (2) the author's tone deafness and inability to relate to modern relevant challenges becomes increasingly apparent. For example, the author references Laredo, Texas and Juarez, Mexico as "adjacent cities" where a child could be born on one side of the river vs. the other with obvious implications. However, Laredo is over 600 miles away from Juarez. This is an example of how the book's scholarship is on lofty ideals whereas the research and application to modern challenges are missing. When you are a Harvard professor, perhaps all west Texas vs. south Texas towns are the same. Similarly, the author writes on open immigration: "For affluent nations, however, restrictive immigration policies also serve to protect privilege. Many Americans fear that allowing large numbers of Mexicans to immigrate to the United States... for the sake of argument, that open immigration would reduce the American standard of living. Would that be sufficient grounds for restricting it? Only if you believe that those born on the affluent side of the Rio Grande are entitled to their good fortune. Since the accident of birth is no basis for entitlement, however, it is hard to see how restrictions on immigration can be justified in the name of preserving affluence."
At this point, we should be reminded that this is a Harvard professor, where his institution has a $2.3 Billion endowment while charging ghastly sums to those admitted and rejecting roughly 97% of hopeful applicants in order to protect the prestige and subsequent affluence of the institution. Earlier in the book, the author makes reference to obligations children have to their parents, even if the parent was not particularly good to the child. Again, presumably, the author did not come from an abusive and neglectful home, but in the latter part of the book chooses to place himself in places of "easy for him to say".
Further, the author writes on reparations: "With belonging comes responsibility. You can't really take pride in your country and its past if you're unwilling to acknowledge any responsibility for carrying its story into the present, and discharging the moral burdens that may come with it." Perhaps the author is missing the position in which what you take pride in is the collective effort to improve, to refine ourselves in the light of greater understandings of humanity and equity, rather than pride in various individual events and actions in a procession of evolutions. This is the tone deaf collapse of the book as the author moves from introducing philosophical schools of thought to advocating for his particular politics. In the author's support of reparations, for example, one then wonders whether Harvard owes a collective apology and reparations to those the school has rejected and harmed over it's centuries of existence.
CH 1. Do the right thing
Introduces price gouging in hurricanes, bank bailouts and bonuses, and physical vs emotional trauma vs purple hearts.. as segue into what does justice mean..
"To ask whether a society is just is to ask how it distributes the things we prize: income and wealth, duties and rights, powers a and opportunities, offices and honors. A just society distributes these goods in the right way; it gives each person his or her due. The hard questions begin when we ask what people are due, and why."
The trolley problem, going from killing either 5 or 1 on separate tracks to pushing a fat man off a bridge to derail the trolley, saving 5. Why did it feel so different to consider killing one in the track case vs pushing the fat man?
"Few of us face choices as fateful as those that confronted the soldiers on the mountain or the witness to the runaway trolley. But wrestling with their dilemmas sheds light on the way moral argument can proceed, in our personal lives and in the public square.
Life in democratic societies is rife with disagreement about right and wrong, justice and injustice. Some people favor abortion rights, and others consider abortion to be murder."
"Confronted with this tension (e.g., why ok with the other track death but not the push death?), we may revise our judgment about the right thing to do, or rethink the principle we initially espoused. As we encounter new situations, we move back and forth between our judgments and our principles, revising each in light of the other. This turning of mind, from the world of action to the realm of reasons and back again, is what moral reflection consists in."
But the perhaps biggest challenges of moral truth and justice are that it's dynamic and it's a public pursuit. An individual getting to their sense of justice is hard to separate from individual bias and harder still to implement within community.
How we frame justice and what is 'right' is subjective and changes over time and culture
Moral reflection, or determination, is dialectical - back and forth between judgements we make and the principles informing those judgements - and on to analysis and potential shifts as what information each other.
This book, per the author, is to figure out what you think and why.
CH 2. Utilitarianism - the greatest happiness principle
Three sailors on a raft eat the fourth ill cabin boy... In a true recounting.. the boy was an orphan who had become ill after a few days on the life raft. Since he was likely to die, had no family and thus no one to grieve for him, the captain and firsthand killed him. The three had children and dependents. All the sailors ate him.
". . two ways of thinking about the lifeboat case illustrate two rival approaches to justice. The first approach says the morality of an action depends solely on the consequences it brings about; the right thing to do is whatever will produce the best state of affairs, all things considered. The second approach says that consequences are not all we should care about, morally speaking; certain duties and rights should command our respect, for reasons independent of the social consequences."
"Is morality a matter of counting lives and weighing costs and benefits, or are certain moral duties and human rights so fundamental that they rise above such calcula- tions?.."
Jeremy Bentham (died Englishman 1832) launched the philosophy of utilitarianism. "The highest principle of morality is to maximize .. overall balance of pleasure over pain. According to Bentham, the right thing to do is whatever will maximize utility. By "utility," he means whatever produces pleasure or happiness, and whatever prevents pain or suffering."
"When a man attempts to combat the principle of utility," Bentham writes, "it is with reasons drawn, without his being aware of it, from that very principle itself." All moral quarrels, properly understood, are disagreements about how to apply the utilitarian principle of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, not about the principle itself. "Is it possible for a man to move the earth?" Bentham asks. "Yes; but he must first find another earth to stand upon." And the only earth, the only premise, the only starting point for moral argument, according to Bentham, is the principle of utility." (In the case of eating The cabin Boy, to argue against it is in some way to assuage the feeling that eating someone is wrong. To get rid of that feeling is to maximize pleasure and minimize pain by taking a moral stance, which Bentham appears to be arguing is utilitarian without realizing it)
Bentham proposed a system for rounding up baggers off the street. For one this would make people feel better and not feel sad nor feel angry for running into them. For two, it could potentially reduce crime and so on. For three, his system was self-financing in that they would create a ledger of cost per beggar, then put the beggar any facility to work off those costs. The bigger would be given a room and board and would earn back their freedom while financing the beggar Mill. He went so far as to suggest what type of beggars should be co-located next to other beggars. Such as those who are badly deformed next to the blind cannot see them. He did not intend this to be punitive but purely utilitarian.
Utilitarian: what's right is what promotes the common good
Argument against: individual rights
To consider the difficulty in moral philosophy through a utilitarian lens, the author provides the example of Christians being thrown to the Lions to the delight of the Roman community. Perhaps a better example, is whether you torture a suspect, or even worse you torture the suspects innocent daughter, in order to potentially find out information on how to stop a bomb from killing tens of thousands.
"On the face of it, the ticking time bomb scenario seems to support Bentham's side of the argument. Numbers do seem to make a moral difference. It is one thing to accept the possible death of three men in a lifeboat to avoid killing one innocent cabin boy in cold blood. But what if thousands of innocent lives are at stake, as in the ticking time bomb scenario? What if hundreds of thousands of lives were at risk? The utilitarian would argue that, at a certain point, even the most ardent advocate of human rights would have a hard time insisting it is morally preferable to let vast numbers of innocent people die than to torture a single person..
As a test of utilitarian moral reasoning, however, the ticking time bomb case is misleading. It purports to prove that numbers count, so that if enough lives are at stake, we should be willing to override our scruples about dignity and rights. And if that is true, then morality is about calculating costs and benefits after all."
Argument two: common currency of value
"Philip Morris does big business in the Czech Republic, where cigarette smoking remains popular and socially acceptable. Worried about the rising health care costs of smoking, the Czech government considered raising taxes on hopes of fending off the tax increase, Philip Morris commissioned a cost-benefit analysis of the effects of smoking on the Czech national budget. The study found that the government actually gains more money than it loses from smoking. The reason: although smokers impose higher medical costs on the budget while they are alive, they die early, and so save the government considerable sums in health care, pensions, and housing for the elderly. According to the study, once the "positive effects" of smoking are taken into account-including cigarette tax revenues and savings due to the premature deaths of smokers--the net gain to the treasury is $147 million per year."
People were outraged, rightly. Some view this as a failure morally in utilitarianism. However, a fuller study would estimate costs for suffering of the smokers and family, resetting the CBA to be against smoking.
Ford Pinto study on replacement costs in cars vs deaths and lawsuits... And the value of a life vs pragmatic principles of utility.. speed limits, the lower the speed the fewer the deaths but people prefer higher limits, getting somewhere more quickly, and if done at $20/hr that equated (from 55 to 65) at $1.6M per person (those that did due to increase).
"Utilitarians see our tendency to recoil at placing a monetary value on human life as an impulse we should overcome, a taboo that obstructs clear thinking and rational social choice. For critics of utilitarianism, however, our hesitation points to something of moral importance the idea that it is not possible to measure and compare all values and goods on a single scale."
A majority could see benefit, exceeding any suffering, in total by banning a minority. What of this immoral case? Insert John Stuart Mill.
"We have considered two objections to Bentham's "greatest happiness" principle—that it does not give adequate weight to human dignity and individual rights, and that it wrongly reduces everything of moral im- portance to a single scale of pleasure and pain. How compelling are these objections?" Insert John Stuart Mill.
"Mill's writings can be read as a strenuous attempt to reconcile individual rights with the utilitarian philosophy he inherited from his father and adopted from Bentham. His book On Liberty (1859) is the classic defense of individual freedom in the English-speaking world. Its central principle is that people should be free to do whatever they want, provided they do no harm to others. Government may not interfere with individual liberty in order to protect a person from himself, or to impose the majority's beliefs about how best to live. The only actions for which a person is accountable to society, Mill argues, are those that affect others. As long as I am not harming anyone else, my "independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."
"Mill thinks we should maximize utility, not case by case, but in the long run. And over time, he argues, respecting individual liberty will lead to the greatest human happiness. Allowing the majority to silence dissenters or censor free-thinkers might maximize utility today, but it will make society worse off, less happy, in the long run."
"Mill has an answer to these challenges, but it carries him beyond the confines of utilitarian morality. Forcing a person to live according to custom or convention or prevailing opinion is wrong, Mill explains, because it prevents him from achieving the highest end of human life— the full and free development of his human faculties. Conformity, in Mill's account, is the enemy of the best way to live."
"So actions and consequences are not all that matter after all. Character also counts. For Mill, individuality matters less for the pleasure it brings than for the character it reflects.
Mill's robust celebration of individuality is the most distinctive contribution of On Liberty. But it is also a kind of heresy. Since it appeals to moral ideals beyond utility -ideals of character. "
Of the two great proponents of utilitarianism, Mill was the more humane philosopher, Bentham the more consistent one. Bentham equated all pleasure, ballet or bingo, Shakespeare or the Simpsons, whereas Mill made distribution on higher vs lower pleasure.
Shortly before he died, Bentham decided it was good to preserve one's physical presence in order to inspire future generations of thinkers. "In fact, modesty was not one of Bentham's obvious character traits. Not only did he provide strict instructions for his body's preservation and display, he also suggested that his friends and disciples meet every year "for the purpose of commemorating the founder of the greatest happiness system of morals and legislation,"
"His admirers have obliged. Bentham's "auto icon," as he dubbed it, was on hand for the founding of the International Bentham Society in the 1980s. And the stuffed Bentham is reportedly wheeled in for meetings of the governing council of the college (UCL), whose minutes record him as "present but not voting."
Despite Bentham's careful planning, the embalming of his head went badly, so he now keeps his vigil with a wax head in place of the real one. His actual head, now kept in a cellar, was displayed for a time on a plate between his feet. But students stole the head and ransomed it back to the college for a charitable donation.
Even in death, Jeremy Bentham promotes the greatest good for the greatest number."
Our sense of justice sharpens by contrasting philosophical perspectives
CH 3: libertarianism
"In Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974), Robert Nozick offers a defense of libertarian principles and a challenge to familiar ideas of distributive justice. He begins with the claim that individuals have rights "so strong and far-reaching" that "they raise the question of what, if anything, the state may do." He concludes that "only a minimal state, limited to enforcing contracts and protecting people against force, theft, and fraud, is justified. Any more extensive state violates persons' rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified."
So individual rights are supreme. People can sell kidneys if they want, can eat each other if consensual (such as the "Cannibal of Rotenburg" who took out an ad on who might like to be killed and eaten and then did so), and that gov should not legislate morals or distribution.
CH 4 markets & morals
Lincoln initiated draft, you could pay someone to be your substitute.
"In the end, relatively few draftees wound up fighting in the Union army. (Even after conscription was established, the bulk of the army consisted of volunteers, prompted to enlist by bounty payments and the threat of being drafted.) Many whose numbers were drawn in draft lotteries either fled or were exempted for disability. Of the roughly 207,000 men who were actually drafted, 87,000 paid the commutation fee, 74,000 hired substitutes, and only 46,000 served. Those who hired substitutes to fight in their place included Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan, the fathers of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, and future presidents Chester A. Arthur and Grover Cleveland."
"ask .. whether they favor a draft or the all-volunteer army we have today. Almost all favor the volunteer army (as do most Americans). But this raises a hard question: If the Civil War system was unfair because it let the affluent hire other people to fight their wars, doesn't the same objection apply to the volunteer army?
The method of hiring differs, of course. Andrew Carnegie had to find his own substitute and pay him directly; today the military recruits the soldiers to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan, and we, the taxpayers, collectively pay them. But it remains the case that those of us who'd rather not enlist hire other people to fight our wars and risk their lives. So what's the difference, morally speaking?"
Draft:
A draft, draft with replacement, or paid volunteer army - which is best. Liberian would say market and anything else is immoral as a draft is equivalent to slavery, where the state owns and dictates what you do. Utilitarianism would say market also as each side makes an arrangement that is better for each, increasing wellbeing on each side.
But... "The volunteer army may not be as voluntary as it seems. In fact, it may involve an element of coercion. If some in the society have no other good options, those who choose to enlist is not that one may be conscripted, in effect, by economic necessity. In that case, the difference between conscription and the volunteer army is compulsory while the other is free; it's rather that each employs a different form of compulsion: the force of law in the first case and the pressure of economic necessity in the second. Only if people have a reasonable range of decent job options can it be said that the choice to serve pay reflects their preferences rather than their limited alternatives.
The class composition of today's volunteer army bears out this objection, at least to some extent. Young people from low- to middle- income neighborhoods (median household income of $30,850 to $57,836) are disproportionately represented in the ranks of active-duty army recruits. Least represented are the poorest 10 percent of the population (many of whom may lack the requisite education and skills) and the most affluent 20 percent (those from neighborhoods with median household incomes of $66,329 and above)." In recent years, over 25 percent of army recruits have lacked a regular high school diploma. And while 46 percent of the civilian population has had some college education, only 6.5 percent of the 18-to-24-year-old in the military's enlisted ranks have ever been to college."
450 of the 750 Princeton grads in 1956 joined the military. 9 of 1108 grads did so in 2006.
What does civic duty really mean or require? Hiring services like blackwater to fight wars, recruiting foreign Nationals like the French foreign legion or the 30,000 non-citizens in the US military, and paying people to provide those services... Should citizenship and belonging create a requirement for service like the military? As though it were jury duty?..
A husband and wife sign a contract with a woman, Whitehead, to deliver his inseminated baby. They pay her and the medical costs. She delivers and runs off with the baby. The NJ court rules in favor of the couple and their contract but the NJ Supreme Court overrules and finds for the woman. The former citing contract law and that male sperm sale is allowed so why not carrying a child. Supreme Court felt it was tainted consent and compelled.
The other argument is degradation and higher good. Respect and usage are two different forms of value. So we can value, exchange or assign utility in different ways or in ways unfitting to the thing in question depending on higher norms ".. what are those higher norms, and how can we know what modes of valuation are appropriate to what goods and social practices? One approach to this question begins with the idea of freedom. Since human beings are capable of freedom, we shouldn't be used as if we were mere objects, but should be treated instead with dignity and respect. This approach emphasizes the distinction between persons (worthy of respect) and mere objects or things (open to use) as the fundamental distinction in morality. The greatest defender of this proach is Immanuel Kant" coming up later..
"Another approach to higher norms begins with the idea that the right way of valuing goods and social practices depends on the purposes and ends those practices serve. Recall that, in opposing surrogacy, Anderson argues that "the social practices of pregnancy rightly promote" a certain end, namely an emotional bond of a mother with her child. A contract that requires the mother not to form such a bond is degrading because it diverts her from this end. It replaces a "norm of parenthood" with a "norm of commercial production." The notion that we identify the norms appropriate to social practices by trying to grasp the characteristic end, or purpose, of those practices is at the heart of Aristotle's theory of justice." ... Coming up later.
Surrogacy moved to places like India as an industry, where the author feels this shows further exploitation of females (though I guess dangerous jobs like crab fishing and coal mining that lure men with high salaries compared to their options are just a choice).. "How free are the choices we make in the free market? And are there certain virtues and higher goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?"
Libertarians: justice demands the ability to live and act as you see fit with a minimum of restrictions (e.g., murder)
CH 5 motive & Immanuel Kant
"Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) offers an alternative account of duties and rights, one of the most powerful and influential accounts any philosopher has produced. It does not depend on the idea that we own ourselves, or on the claim that our lives and liberties are a gift from God. Instead, it depends on the idea that we are rational beings, worthy of dignity and respect."
"Daunting though Kant's philosophy po- may seem at first glance, it actually informs much contemporary thinking.. "Making sense of Kant is not only a philosophical exercise; it is also a way of examining some of the key assumptions implicit in our public life. "
"... What most think of as market freedom or consumer choice is not true freedom, Kant argues, because it simply involves satisfying desires haven't chosen in the first place."
Kant vs utilitarianism
Kant saw three capacities: sense (pleasure and pain like Bentham), reason, and freedom. But what is freedom? ".. a more stringent, demanding notion of freedom... Kant reasons: When we, like animals, seek pleasure or the avoidance of pain, we aren't really acting freely. We are acting as the slaves of our appetites and desires... some end given outside us."
"Suppose what flavor of ice cream to order: chocolate, vanilla, or espresso toffee crunch? I may think of myself as exercising freedom of choice, but what I'm really doing is trying to figure out which flavor will best satisfy my preferences that I didn't choose in the first place. Kant doesn't say it's wrong to satisfy our preferences. His point is that, when we do we are not acting freely, but acting according to a determination given outside us. After all, I didn't choose my desire for espresso toffee crunch rather than vanilla. I just have it.
Some years ago, Sprite had an advertising slogan: "Obey your thirst." Sprite's ad contained (inadvertently, no doubt) a Kantian insight. When I pick up a can of Sprite it's an act of obedience. People often argue over the role of nature and nurture in shaping behavior. Is the desire for Sprite (or other sugary drinks) inscribed in the genes or induced by advertising? For Kant, this debate is beside the point. Whenever my behavior is biologically determined or socially conditioned, it is not truly free. To act freely, according to Kant, is to act autonomously. And to act autonomously is to act according to a law I give myself—not according to the dictates of nature or social convention."
"..the link between freedom as autonomy and Kant's idea of morality. To act freely is not to choose the best means to a given end; it is to choose the end itself, for its own sake—a choice that human beings can make.."
Guy doing his HW is asked why? To get an A on the paper. Why? A in the class.. Get a good job.. Make money.. Buy lobster.. "This is an example of what Kant would call heteronomous determination doing something for the sake of something else, for the sake of something else, and so on. When we act heteronomously, we act for the sake of ends given outside us. We are instruments, not authors, of the purposes we pursue.
Kant's notion of autonomy stands in stark contrast to this. When we act autonomously, according to a law we give ourselves, we do something for its own sake, as an end in itself. We cease to be instruments of purposes given outside us. This capacity to act autonomously is what gives human life its special dignity. It marks out the difference between persons and things."
Dignity is in treating humans as ends in themselves, not as means to our own ends or happiness (as in utilitarianism). This raises the question of what gives an action moral worth. It takes us from Kant's specially demanding idea of freedom to his equally demanding notion of morality.
Kant & morals
"According to Kant, the moral worth of an action consists not in the consequences that flow from it, but in the intention from which the act is done. What matters is the motive, and the motive must be of a certain kind. What matters is doing the right thing because it's right, not for some ulterior motive.
"A good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes," Kant writes."
"observing that, when we assess the moral worth of an action, we assess the motive from which it's done, not the consequence it produces... Taking pleasure in doing a good or right thing doesn't take away from the worth but.. What matters, Kant tells us, is that the good deed be done because it's the right thing to do whether or not doing it gives us pleasure." We have inclinations like preserving life but if we choose to preserve our life for the benefit or duty we have for others then it's a moral act. Duty vs including. And so without the driving force being doing good out of duty then it is not a moral act. It's about principle, not consequence.
But what's the principle?.. Kant had three pillars:
Contrast 1 (morality): duty v. inclination
Contrast 2 (freedom): autonomy v. heteronomy
Contrast 3 (reason): categorical v. hypothetical imperatives
Details:
Contrast 1 (morality): duty v. inclination
Only the motive of duty can confer moral worth on an action. see above
Contrast 2 (freedom): autonomy v. heteronomy
"... my will can be determined autonomously and heteronomously. According to Kant, I'm free only when my will is determined autonomously, gov- erned by a law I give myself. Again, we often think of freedom as being able to do what we want, to pursue our desires unimpeded. But Kant poses a powerful challenge to this way of thinking about freedom: If you didn't choose those desires freely in the first place, how can you think of yourself as free when you're pursuing them?" When my will is determined heteronomously it is made externally to me - and thus what's moral about that? It's dictated. Rather if I reason my way to govern myself then I act morally, not by conformity.
"We're not only sentient beings, governed by the pleasure and pain delivered by our senses; we are also rational beings, capable of reason. If reason determines my will, then the will becomes the power to choose independent of the dictates of nature (what society dictates) or inclination (what my biology dictates)."
To properly frame reasoning, it requires an imperative...
Contrast 3 (reason): categorical v. hypothetical imperatives
"Hypothetical imperatives use instrumental reason (not the Kantian goal): If you want X, then do Y. If you want a good business reputation, then treat your customers honestly. (Vs being honest for honesty sake or out of principle, not consequence)
Kant contrasts hypothetical imperatives, which are always conditional, with a kind of imperative that is unconditional: a categorical imperative. "If the action would be good solely as a means to something else," Kant writes, "the imperative is hypothetical. If the action is represented as good in itself, and therefore as necessary for a will which of itself accords with reason, it is categorical." The categorical imperative is not concerned with consequence or circumstance but is only about the will, the action. You are honest, come what may, not for being liked, feeling good, pleasing God or anyone else, but because it is reasoned autonomously on unconditional principles.
How does one test that their imperative is a categorical one?
A. Universalize the maxim
"By "maxim," Kant means a rule or principle that gives the reason for your action... in effect, that we should act only on principles that we could universalize without contradiction." E.g., Is it ever right to make a promise you know you won't be able to keep?.. if universalized, promises lose meaning, people don't trust promises, making a promise is pointless as promises don't mean anything or gain you anything with others. Is it ever right to not pay someone back for a loan? .. Etc
"No less a thinker than John Stuart Mill leveled this criticism (isn't Kant just following the utilitarianism approach to greater or greatest good?) against Kant. But Mill misunderstood Kant's point. For Kant, seeing whether I could universalize the maxim of my action and continue acting on it is not a way of speculating about possible consequences. It is a test to see whether my maxim accords with the categorical imperative. A false promise is not morally wrong because, writ large, it would undermine social trust... It is wrong because, in making it, I privilege my needs and desires (in the loan case, for money) over everybody else's. The universalizing test points to a powerful moral claim: it's a way of checking to see if the action I am about to undertake puts my interests and special circumstances ahead of everyone else's."
B. A person as an end
"But suppose there were something whose existence has in itself an absolute value," as an end in itself. "Then in it, and in it alone, would there be the ground of a possible categorical imperative." Kant
"Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any, not simply as a means, but always .. as an end." Kant.. This is the formula of humanity as an end.
Kantian respect is respect for humanity as such, for a rational capacity that resides, undifferentiated, in all of us. This explains why violating it in my own case is as objectionable as violating it in the case of someone else. It also explains why the Kantian principle of respect lends itself to doctrines of universal human rights. For Kant, justice requires us to uphold the human rights of all persons, regardless of where they live or how well we know them, simply because they are human beings, capable of reason, and therefore worthy of respect.
Would Kant lie?
If he had a friend hiding from a murderer at the door, would Kant lie to the murderer? "You have two choices. You could tell an outright lie: "No, she's not here." Or you could offer a true but misleading statement: "An hour ago, I saw her down the road, at the grocery store."
From Kant's point of view, the second strategy is morally permissible, but the first is not. You might consider this caviling... In both cases, you are hoping to mislead the murderer into believing that your friend is not hiding in the house.
Kant believes a great deal is at stake in the distinction... obliquely, respect for the moral law... A misleading truth includes two motives, not one. If I simply lie to the murderer, I act out of one motive-to protect my friend from harm. If I tell the murderer that I recently saw my friend at the grocery store, I act out of two motives- to protect my friend and at the same time to uphold the duty to tell the truth. In both cases, I am pursuing an admirable goal, that of protecting my friend. But only in the second case do I pursue this goal in a way that accords with the motive of duty.
The true but misleading statement, by contrast, does not threaten the categorical imperative in the same way. In fact, Kant once invoked this distinction when faced with a dilemma of his own..."
He was told to no longer write or lecture against what the king felt harmed Christianity. Kant agreed not to do so as "the King's loyal servant". The king was old and likely to pass at the time, two years later the king died and Kant lectured and wrote once again... As no longer was the man the king and thus servitude passed.
Kant: do what is right because it is right, not because of what it accomplishes or leads to
Deontology focuses on rules and reasoning to distinguish right from wrong. In Kant's case: must be free of influence, can be applied universally, and regardless of their desires or extenuating circumstances (categorical imperative).
Ch 6 the case for equality - John Rawls
John Rawls (1921-2002), an American political philosopher, wrote A Theory of Justice (1971), where he argues that the way to think about justice is to ask what principles we would agree to in an initial situation of equality.
Rawls reasons: if we gathered, just as we are, to choose the principles to govern our collective life-to write a social contract. .. Different people would favor different principles, reflecting their various interests, moral and religious beliefs, and social positions. Some people rich, poor; powerful, isolated, ethnic, or religious, etc. We might settle on a compromise. But even the compromise would likely reflect the superior bargaining power of some over others. There is no reason to assume that a social contract arrived at in this way would be just...
"Now consider a thought experiment: Suppose that when we gather to choose the principles, we don't know where we will wind society. Imagine that we choose behind a "veil of ignorance" that temporarily prevents us from knowing anything about who in particular we are. We don't know our class or gender, our race or ethnicity, our political opinions or religious convictions. Nor do we know our advantages and disadvantages—whether we are healthy or frail, highly educated or a high-school dropout, born to a supportive family or a broken one. If no one knew any of these things, we would choose, in effect, from an original position of equality. Since no one would have a superior bargaining position, the principles we would agree to would be just." The "an initial state of equality."
" Rawls invites us to ask what principles we as rational, self-interested persons would choose if we found ourselves in that position. He doesn't assume that we are all motivated by self-interest in real life; only that we set aside our moral and religious convictions for purposes of the thought experiment. What principles would we choose?"
Utilitarianism would be out - what if you're the minority in the greater good?
Libertarianism is out. What if you're the guy in the game with no chips?
Rawls believes that two principles of justice would emerge: (1) equal basic liberties for all citizens, such as freedom of speech and religion, which takes priority over considerations of social utility and the general welfare, and (2) permit only those social and economic inequalities that work to the advantage of the least well off members of society, although it does not require an equal distribution of income and wealth, it allows agreements in which the lesser off gain.
On contracts
Just because two parties agree on a contract or exchange doesn't make it just. The position, status, etc of a party can skew the justice. "ideals-autonomy and reciprocity-are imperfectly realized. Some agreements, though voluntary, are not mutually beneficial. And sometimes we can be obligated to repay a benefit simply on grounds of reciprocity, even in the absence of a contract. This points to the moral limits of consent: In some cases, consent may not be enough to create a morally binding obligation; in others, it may not be necessary."
On consent
The author's two sons traded baseball cards. One being older than the other traded two cards for one. Joe Smith and John Doe for Mickey Mantle. Knowledge (and age/exposure etc) asymmetry. Both consented.
A plumber charged $25K to fix a toilet for an 85 yr old woman. Just? Both consented and benefits each way.
In the 1980s and early '90s, "squeegee men" became an intimidating presence on New York City streets. Equipped with a squeegee and a bucket of water, they would descend upon a car stopped at a red light, wash the windshield (often without asking the driver's permission), and then ask for payment. They operated on the benefit-based theory of obligation. No consent but obligation by transfer of benefit.
"..., even a free market operating in a society with equal educational opportunities does not produce a just distribution of income and wealth. The reason: “Distributive shares are decided by the outcome of the natural lottery; and this outcome is arbitrary from a moral perspective. There is no more reason to permit the distribution of income and wealth to be settled by the distribution of natural assets than by historical and social fortune."
"Rawls concludes that the meritocratic conception of justice is flawed for the same reason (though to a lesser degree) as the libertarian conception; both base distributive shares on factors that are morally arbitrary. "Once we are troubled by the influence of either social contingencies or natural chance on the determination of the distributive shares, we are bound, on reflection, to be bothered by the influence of the other. From a moral standpoint the two seem equally arbitrary."
Rawls's solution, which he calls the difference principle, "corrects for the unequal distribution of talents and endowments without handicapping the talented. How? Encourage the gifted to develop and exercise their talents, but with the understanding that the rewards these talents reap in the market belong to the community as a whole. Don't handicap the best runners; let them run and do their best. Simply acknowledge in advance that the winnings don't belong to them alone, but should be shared with those who lack similar gifts."
Only when we judge equality from behind a "veil of ignorance" can we state what is fair. You could be wealthy or poor, what is the policy?
Objection 1: Incentives
What about incentives? If the talented can benefit from their talents only on terms that help the least well off, what if they decide to work less, or not to develop their skills in the first place? If tax rates are high or pay differentials small, won't talented people who might have surgeons go into less demanding lines of work? ... Rawls allows for incentives but only those that result in an improved lot for the disadvantaged.
Objection 2: effort
The Harvard professor author: "I point out that psychologists say that birth order has an influence on effort and striving-such as the effort with the students getting into Harvard. The first-born reportedly have a stronger work ethic, make more money, and achieve more conventional success than their younger siblings. These studies are controversial, and I don't know if their findings are true. But just for the fun of it, I ask students my how many are first in birth order. About 75 to 80 percent raise their hands. The result has been the same every time I have taken the poll.
No one claims that being first in birth order is one's own doing. If something as morally arbitrary as birth order can influence our tendency to work hard and strive conscientiously, then Rawls may indeed have a point. Even effort can't be the basis of morals."
In a meritocratic society, most people think that worldly success reflects what we deserve; the idea is not easy to dislodge. But society views different skills with different rewards at different times. Fresco painters in midevel Italy, programmers in 2000s California, warriors in Viking culture, etc. And our born-with talent, physique, and familial and social influences are all outside of choice and control, which lend themselves to those careers that may or may not be valued at a given time.
Rawls makes the solid point that it is neither just nor unjust whether one is born poor or tall or whatever but rather what is just or unjust is how we collectively respond to those individual circumstances. "The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts.
Affirmative action
The book puts forward a few reasons for affirmative action starting with correcting for the testing Gap. Where minority groups like Black and Hispanic students on the whole score lower than white students on standardized test. Then there's the argument for compensating for past wrongs, though this section is quite weak. Then there is the argument for promoting diversity as a social purpose for the institution.
Ronald Dworkin, a rights-oriented legal philosopher, addresses this objection by arguing that the use of race in affirmative action policies doesn't violate anybody's rights. "What right, he asks, has Hop- wood been denied? Perhaps she believes that people have a right not to be judged according to factors, such as race, that are beyond their control. But most traditional criteria for university admission involve factors beyond one's control. It's not my fault that I come from Massachusetts rather than Idaho, or that I'm a lousy football player, or that I can't carry a tune. Nor is it my fault if I lack the aptitude to do well on the SAT."
This section doesn't seem to address the issue of effort, which was mentioned earlier in the book. Where if the university uses extracurricular activities, academic scores, race and ethnicity, athletic performance or activities, Etc that the average person is able to better represent themselves in each of those categories other than race and ethnicity, so there is some effort from an individual that would pay off..
Except for the white students.
"Here lies the deep though contested claim at the heart of the diversity argument for affirmative action: Admission is not an honor bestowed to reward superior merit or virtue. Neither the student with high test scores nor the student who comes from a disadvantaged minority group morally deserves to be admitted. Her Admission is justified insofar as it contributes to the social purpose the university serves, not because it rewards the student for her merit or virtue, independently defined. Dworkin's point is that justice in admissions is not a matter of rewarding merit or virtue; we can know what counts as a fair way of allocating seats in the freshman class only once the university defines its mission. The mission defines the relevant merits, not the other way around."
This strikes me as a principal that won't hold in an argument without merit. What if my mission and social purpose is to bring back a sense of white community and so my criteria for admission is a family income less than $300,000, that you must live within 100 miles of our location, and that you must be white, and we are a restaurant. The law is not allow us to discriminate on who we serve. So somehow it's fine for universities to use race as an admissions policy but not a restaurant and not when it advances a goal relative to white people.
Part of the argument in affirmative action is that the there's no contempt - no one is saying a white person is worse only that the goals of the org necessitate admission of another race.
The author does s humorous job of displaying the difficulty in rejecting someone for a wider social purpose over an individual competition:
"
Dear Ms. Hopwood,
We regret to inform you that your application for admission has been rejected. Please understand that we intend no offense by our decision. We do not hold you in contempt. In fact, we don't even regard you as less deserving than those who were admitted.
It is not your fault that when you came along society happened not to need the qualities you had to offer. Those admitted instead of you are not deserving of a place, nor worthy of praise for the factors that led to their admission. We are only using them - and you - as instruments in s wide social purpose.
We realize you will find this news disappointing. But your disappointment should not be exaggerated by the thought that this rejection reflects in any way on your intrinsic moral worth. You have our sympathy in the sense that it is too bad you did not happen to have the traits society happened to want when you applied. Better luck next time. Sincerely, admissions.
"
"The renunciation of moral desert as the basis of distributive justice is morally attractive but also disquieting. It's attractive because it undermines the smug assumption, familiar in meritocratic societies, that success is the crown of virtue, that the rich are rich because they are more deserving than the poor. As Rawls reminds us, "no one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society." Nor is it our doing that we live in a society that happens to prize our particular strengths. That is a measure of our good fortune, not our virtue."
And further, another humorous but also illustrative example to the successful applicant:
"And here is the letter of acceptance, shorn of honorific implications, that a philosophically frank law school should send those it admits:
Dear successful applicant,
We are pleased to inform you that your application for admission has been accepted. It turns out that you happen to have the traits that society needs at the moment, so we propose to exploit your assets for society's advantage by admitting you to the study of law.
You are to be congratulated, not in the sense that you deserve credit for having the qualities that led to your admission you do not but only in the sense that the winner of a lottery is to be congratulated. You are lucky to have come along with the right traits at the right moment. If you choose to accept our offer, you will ultimately be entitled to the benefits that attach to being used in this way. For this, you may properly celebrate.
You, or more likely your parents, may be tempted to celebrate in the further sense that you take this admission to reflect favorably, if not on your native endowments, then at least on the conscientious effort you have made to cultivate your abilities. But the notion that you deserve even the superior character necessary to your effort is equally problematic, for your character depends on fortunate circumstances of various kinds for which you can claim no credit. The notion of desert does not apply here.
We look forward nonetheless to seeing you in the fall."
"Such letters might lessen the sting for those who are rejected, and dampen the hubris of those who are accepted. So why do colleges continue to send (and applicants to expect) letters replete with congratulatory, honorific rhetoric? Perhaps because colleges can't entirely dispense with the idea that their role is not only to advance certain ends but also to honor and reward certain virtues."
Justice means not leaving rights and welfare to chance, including those from birth to locale to period/era
Callie Smart
She was a high school cheerleader with cerebral palsy. The father of another cheerleader filed a suit that she should not be in the squad and was there only because of her disability, which is unfair.
"If Callie should be a cheerleader because she displays, despite her disability, the virtues appropriate to the role, her claim does pose a certain threat to the honor accorded the other cheerleaders. The gymnastic skills they display no longer appear essential to excellence in cheerleading, only one way among others of rousing the crowd. Ungenerous though he was, the father of the head cheerleader correctly grasped what was at stake. A social practice once taken as fixed in its purpose and in the honors it bestowed was now, thanks to Callie, redefined. She had shown that there's more than one way to be a cheerleader."
And perhaps this opens the can of all kinds of redefined behaviors that fit in 'cheerleading ' or reduced the value of the traditional skills.
Aristotle
"Central to Aristotle's political philosophy are two ideas..:
1. Justice is teleological. Defining rights requires us to figure out the telos (the purpose, end, or essential nature) of the social practice in question.
2. Justice is honorific. To reason about the telos of a practice or to argue about it is, at least in part, to reason or argue about what virtues it should honor and reward."
"Modern theories of justice try to separate questions of fairness and rights from arguments about honor, virtue, and moral desert. They seek principles of justice that are neutral among ends, and enable people to choose and pursue their ends for themselves. Aristotle (384-322 B. C.) does not think justice can be neutral in this way. He believes that debates about justice are, unavoidably, debates about honor, virtue, and the nature of the good life."
"suppose a Stradivarius violin is for up sale, and a wealthy collector outbids Itzhak Perlman for it. The collector wants to display the violin in his living room. Wouldn't we regard this as something of a loss, perhaps even an injustice—not because we think the auction is unfair, but because the outcome is unfitting? .. behind this reaction may be the (teleological) thought that a Stradivarius is meant to be played, not displayed."
"With the advent of modern science, nature ceased to be seen as a meaningful order (essential purpose of a thing). Instead, it came to be understood mechanistically, governed by the laws of physics. To explain natural phenomena in terms of purposes, meanings, and ends was now considered naïve and anthropomorphic. Despite this shift, the temptation to see the world as teleologically ordered, as a purposeful whole, is not wholly absent."
"These days, we don't think of politics as such as having some particular substantive end, but as being open to the various ends that citizens may espouse. Isn't that why we have elections- choose, at any given moment, what purposes and ends we want collectively to pursue? To attribute some purpose or end to political community in advance would seem to preempt the right of citizens to decide for themselves. It would also risk imposing values not everyone shares. Our reluctance to invest politics with a determinate telos.. reflects a concern for individual freedom. We view politics as a procedure that enables persons to choose their ends for themselves.
Aristotle doesn't see it this way. For Aristotle, the purpose of politics is not to set up a framework of rights that is neutral among ends. It is to form good citizens and to cultivate good character.
"[A]ny polis which is truly so called, and is not merely one in name, must devote itself to the end of encouraging goodness. Otherwise, a political association sinks into a mere alliance... Otherwise, too, law becomes a mere covenant . . . “a guarantor of men's rights against one another”—instead of being, as it should be, a rule of life such as will make the members of a polis good and just.""
Organizations such as NATO and NAFTA and the WTO are concerned only with security or economic exchange; they don't constitute a shared way of life that shapes the character of the participants. And the same can be said of a city or a state concerned only with security and trade and that is indifferent to the moral and civic education of its members. "If the spirit of their intercourse were still the same after their coming together as it had been when they were living apart," Aristotle writes, their association can't really be considered a polis, or political community.
"The reason people such as Pericles (and Abraham Lincoln) should hold the highest offices and honors is not simply that they will enact wise policies, making everyone better off. It is also that political community exists, at least in part, to honor and reward civic virtue, According public recognition to those who display civic excellence serves the educative role of the good city. Here ... we see how the teleological and honorific aspects of justice go together."
"for Aristotle, politics is not one calling among others, but is essential to the good life. First, the laws of the polis inculcate good habits, form good character, and set us on the way to civic virtue. Second, the life of the citizen enables us to exercise capacities for deliberation and practical wisdom that would otherwise lie dormant - you can't be moral without encountering decisions affecting others. This is not the kind of thing we can do at home. We become good at deliberating only by entering the arena, weighing the alternatives, arguing our case, ruling and being ruled in short, by being citizens."
Aristotle: to determine what is just, we need to know the purpose and goals
Teleology, from telos - aim or end, is a focus on each object having a purpose so judgement occurs as whether a means is just to achieve or fulfill its goal or end
Rawls following became moral liberalism in name. But... "The weakness of the liberal conception... If we understand ourselves as free and independent selves, unbound by moral ties we haven't chosen, we can't make sense of a range of moral and political obligations that we commonly recognize, even prize. These include obligations of solidarity and loyalty, historic memory and religious faith—moral claims that arise from the communities and traditions that shape our identity. Unless we think of ourselves as encumbered selves, open to moral claims we have not willed, it is difficult to make sense of these aspects of our moral and political experience."
I took this to mean that "no man is an island" and so (a) there is value is society getting along well and cohesively such that (b) we need common values that may trump our individual framing leading to judgements where we try to free ourselves of those values.
So what does this mean as far as moral weight?
"Alasdair MacIntyre offers a powerful answer to this question. In his book After Virtue (1981), he gives an account of the way we, as moral agents, arrive at our purposes and ends. As an alternative to the voluntarist conception of the person (we elect or volunteer ourselves to a system of government or society (else we'd leave or revolt)), MacIntyre advances a narrative conception. Human beings are storytelling beings. We live our lives as narrative quests. "I can only answer the question 'What am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question 'Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?'"
All lived narrative have a certain teleological character. This does not mean they have a fixed purpose or end laid down by some external authority. "Like characters in a fictional narrative we do not know what will happen next, but none the less our lives have a certain form which projects itself toward our future." (The next moment is completely unknown and a set of all new experiences, I could be or interpret those experiences in any of a multitude of new ways, but I have this narrative I've created that I fit the future into and I can sense that leaning forward or momentum)
To live a life is to enact a narrative quest that aspires to a certain unity or coherence. When confronted with competing paths, I try to figure out which path will best make sense of my life as a whole.
MacIntyre "I am someone's son or daughter, ... uncle; I am a citizen of .. city.. clan... Hence what is good for me has to be the good for one who inhabits these roles. As such, I inherit from the past ... a variety of debts, inheritances, rightful expectations and obligations. These constitute the given of my life, my moral starting point. This is in part what gives my own life its moral particularity... The contrast with the narrative view of the self is clear. For the story of my life is always embedded in the story of those communities from which I derive my identity."
With this lens added:
THREE CATEGORIES OF MORAL RESPONSIBILITY
1. Natural duties: universal; don't require consent
2. Voluntary obligations: particular; require consent
3. Obligations of solidarity: particular; don't require consent
(Author tries to make claims of obligation, even to the extent that a poorly treated child is obligated to the abusive infirmed parent)
Do citizens have obligations to one another that go beyond the duties they have to other people in the world? And if they do, can these obligations be accounted for on the basis of consent alone?
(The author hilariously lists Laredo Texas and Juarez Mexico as adjacent cities, reflecting part of the challenge of this book - that is quite far removed from the average person and reality of situations despite its attempts to tie back philosophical schools to real world problems.)
Author: "For affluent nations, however, restrictive immigration policies also serve to protect privilege. Many Americans fear that allowing large numbers of Mexicans to immigrate to the United States would impose a significant burden on social services and reduce the economic well- being of existing citizens. It's not clear whether this fear is justified. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that open immigration would reduce the American standard of living. Would that be sufficient grounds for restricting it? Only if you believe that those born on the affluent side of the Rio Grande are entitled to their good fortune. Since the accident of birth is no basis for entitlement, however, it is hard to see how restrictions on immigration can be justified in the name of preserving affluence."
Here, a Harvard law professor, a member of an institution with $1B endowment and a massive rejection ratio of hopeful applicants, tells us that he works at a place that preserves its value through strict entry while admonishing the country for restricting it's borders due to fear of losing affluence. This is the tone deaf collapse of the book as the author moves from introducing philosophical schools of thought to advocating for his particular politics. In the author's support of reparations, for example, one then wonders whether Harvard owes a collective apology and reparations to those the school has rejected and harmed over it's centuries of existence.
Author: "With belonging comes responsibility. You can't really take pride in your country and its past if you're unwilling to acknowledge any responsibility for carrying its story into the present, and discharging the moral burdens that may come with it." Perhaps the author is missing the position in which what you take pride in is the collective effort to improve, to refine ourselves in the light of greater understandings of humanity and equity, rather than pride in various individual events and actions in a procession of evolutions.
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