Utilitarianism is not Ethical Relativism Ethical R elativism There is no moral principle that is true for everyone everywhere and everywhen Ethical Univeralism Absolutism ID: 777707
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Slide1
Justice as Fairness
John Rawls
Slide2Utilitarianism is not Ethical Relativism!
Ethical
R
elativism:
There is no moral principle that is true for everyone, everywhere and
everywhen
.
Ethical
Univeralism
(‘Absolutism’):
This
is
a moral principle that is true for everyone, everywhere and
everywhen
Utillitarianism
is an Ethical
Univeralist
theory:
There is such a principle:
The Principle of Utility:
An act is right if and only if it maximizes utility
If you think you’re an
ethical relativist…
…you’re
probably a Utilitarian
.
Slide3Ethical Relativism vs. Ethical Universalism
Ethical relativists hold that there is
no
kind of action that is always, everywhere and for everyone right or wrong.
Ethical
universalists (‘absolutists’)
hold that there is
some (at least one)
kind of action that is always, everywhere and for everyone right or wrong.
This
“
kind
”
can be highly abstract!
Ethical universalists do not claim that
every
kind of action is either always right or always wrong!
Slide4Kinds of actions
An action can belong to many different kinds!
You break your promise to give a madman a gun on Tuesday.
Promise-breaking
Breaking a promise when keeping it would have very bad consequences
Doing something on a Tuesday
Doing an action that brings about the greatest good for the greatest number
Doing an action with the intention of preventing someone else from being harmed…
Slide5Kinds of actions
An action can belong to many different kinds!
Promise-breaking
Slide6Kinds of actions
An action can belong to many different kinds!
Promise-breaking
Promise-breaking
when keeping the
promise would have
very bad consequences
Slide7Kinds of actions
An action can belong to many different kinds!
Promise-breaking
Promise-breaking
when keeping the
promise would have
very bad consequences
Tuesday actions
Slide8Kinds of actions
An action can belong to many different kinds!
Promise-breaking
Promise-breaking
when keeping the
promise would have
very bad consequences
Tuesday actions
Actions that bring about the
greatest good for the
greatest number
Slide9Kinds of actions
An action can belong to many different kinds!
Promise-breaking
Promise-breaking
when keeping the
promise would have
very bad consequences
Tuesday actions
Actions that bring about the
greatest good for the
greatest number
Actions intended to prevent
others from being harmed
Slide10What is Cultural Relativism?
T
1. People
’
s beliefs, attitudes, tastes, etc. are significantly affected by their culture--and people in different cultures have very different beliefs, attitudes, tastes, etc.
T
2. Methodological cultural relativism: cultures should be studied on their own terms.
F
3.
Actions are right or wrong to the extent and only to the extent that they conform or don
’
t conform to cultural norms.
Slide11Cultural Relativism says:
when in Rome do as the Romans do.
Slide12Some cultures just suck.
Slide13Charles Napier on Sati
"Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs."
Different questions
Can you blame them?
Should you stop them?
Is it wrong?
Slide15Refective
Equilibrium
The method
of reflective equilibrium
begins
with one's considered moral judgments: those made consistently and without hesitation when one is under good conditions for thinking (e.g., “slavery is wrong,” “all citizens are political equals”).
One treats these considered judgments as provisional fixed points, and then starts the process of bringing one's beliefs into relations of mutual support and explanation as described above. Doing this inevitably brings out conflicts where, for example, a specific judgment clashes with a more general conviction, or where an abstract principle cannot accommodate a particular kind of case. One proceeds by revising these beliefs as necessary, striving always to increase the coherence of the whole.
Slide16Problems with Utilitarianism
Rawls rejects utilitarianism
Slide17Primary Goods rather than Utility
What is utility?
Pleasure?
Happiness? Can it be understood in a non-circular way?
Preference-satisfaction? Poses problem of adaptive preference.
Rawls considers the distribution of
primary goods
, e.g. rights, liberties, powers and opportunities, income and wealth.
Slide18Summing vs. Averaging Utility
Both lead to crazy results:
Summing:
Parfit’s
Repugnant Conclusion – make more babies.
Averaging: kill hedonic underachievers
Rawls prefers
maximin reasoning: maximize the minimum level of primary goods so that the least well-off is better than they’d be given any alternative arrangement
Slide19MaxiMin
: Slicing the Utility Pie
MIN
MIN
MIN
We want an arrangement in which MIN, the person who has the smallest share, has a bigger slice than he would have in any alternative arrangement—even if the shares aren’t equal.
Slide20Respect for Persons
Dostoyevsky’s story of the Grand Inquisitor, a putative counterexample to Utilitarianism, our aversion to ‘using people as mere means’, etc.
Rawls
[
I]t hardly seems likely that persons who view themselves as equals, entitled to press their claims upon one another, would agree to a principle which may require lesser life prospects for some simply for the sake of a greater sum of advantages enjoyed by others
…a
rational man would not accept a basic structure merely because it maximized the
algebriac sum of advantages irrespective of its permanent effects on his own basic rights and interests. Thus it seems that the principle of utility is incompatible with the
conception of social cooperation among equals for mutual advantage.
Slide21Social Contract
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…
Thus we are to imagine that those who engage in social cooperation choose together, in one joint act, the principles which are to assign basic rights and duties and to determine the division of social benefits
Slide22Principles of Justice
Rationally chosen and impartial:
[
W]e decide to look for a conception of justice that nullifies the accidents of natural endowment and the contingencies of social circumstance as counters in quest for political and economic advantage
.
How can it be both rationally chosen and impartial?
The Veil of Ignorance thought experiment articulates the conditions for impartial rational choice.
Principles adopted behind the Veil of Ignorance are constitutive of justice—for everybody, everywhere and everywhen.
Slide23Two Principles of Justice
All social values—liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect—are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone's advantage. Injustice, then, is simply inequalities that are not to the benefit of all
.
First Principle: fair equality of
opportunity:
Each
person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all.
Second Principle: the difference principle: Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions:They are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of
fair equality of opportunity;They are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society (the difference principle). (trickle-down)
Slide24The Original position
Behind the Veil of Ignorance
Slide25The Veil of Ignorance
Parties do not know:
Their
race, ethnicity, gender, age, income, wealth, natural endowments, comprehensive doctrine, etc
. or
to which generation
they belong
.The political system of the society, its class structure, economic system, or level of economic development.Parties do know: That citizens in the society have different comprehensive doctrines and plans of life; that all citizens have interests in more primary goods.That the society is under conditions of moderate scarcity: there is enough to go around, but not enough for everyone to get what they want;
General facts about human social life; facts of common sense; general conclusions of science (including economics and psychology) that are uncontroversial.
Slide26Equality and opportunity
Is there a trade-off?
Slide27Nature is neither just nor unjust
The
natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that men are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts. Aristocratic and caste societies are unjust because they make these contingencies the
ascriptive
basis for belonging to more or less enclosed and privileged social classes. The basic structure of these
societies
incorporates the arbitrariness found in nature. But there is no necessity for men to resign themselves to these contingencies. The social system is not an unchangeable
order beyond human control but a pattern of human action.Unchosen characteristics are undeserved – sex, race, class origin, etc. shouldn’t determine one’s life prospects.Natural endowments are undeserved – neither should intelligence, etc.
Slide28Equality and Opportunity
Slide29Economic Inequality in the US
Slide30Inequality Across the Globe
Slide31CEO-to-
W
orker Compensation
Slide32How did it happen?
Slide33How does the US compare?
Slide34‘Job creators’?
Slide35Earnings Mobility & Income Inequality
Among
OECD nations, social mobility is highest in Nordic countries, which through income transfers and the provision of social services, have reduced poverty and achieved the highest levels of economic equality
.
Social
mobility is lowest in Turkey, Mexico and the US, which have the highest levels of poverty and social inequality
Note: the inequality measure is in the
Gini coefficient, expressed as a percentage. The measure of earnings mobility is calculated from the intergenerational elasticity of earnings.See Growing Unequal? OECD, 2008 at http://www.oecd.org/document/53/0,3343,en_2649_33933_41460917_1_1_1_1,00.html.
Slide36How do we get There from Here?
The social system is to be designed so that the resulting distribution is just
however
things turn out. To achieve this end it is necessary to get the social and economic process within the surroundings of suitable political and legal
institutions
Distinguish Allocation from Transfer functions, i.e. don’t expect, or manipulate, the market to allocate goods fairly
E.g. Rawls opposes minimum wage:
[T]his way of dealing with the claims of need would appear to be more effective than trying to regulate income by minimum wage standards, and the like...Since the market is not suited to answer the claims of need, these should be met by a separate arrangement.
Slide37The Tendency t
o Equality
Redress:
This is the principle that undeserved inequalities of birth and natural endowment are undeserved…[and] are to be somehow compensated for.
(against meritocracy)
But not if it degrades the average standard of life.
Questions: How much is enough? Which programs are justified on an account like Rawls?
Universal healthcare at the taxpayer’s expense?Housing to get bums off the streets?William Morris News from Nowhere compensatory compensation program?