Week 6 post 1
Lecture 16:
Theories of distributive justice:
Libertarian: free market.
Meritocratic: fair equality of opportunity.
Egalitarian: Rawls difference principle (democratic conception).
Test how this theory actually works by thinking about some pay differentials that arise in our society. Average school teacher in US make $42,000 and David Letterman makes $31M. Is that fair? Rawls: depends whether the basic structure of society is designed in such a way that Letterman’s $31M is subject to taxation so that some of the earnings are taken to work for the advantage of the least well off.
Objections to the difference principle
What about incentives?
Rawls takes account of incentives and could allow for pay differentials and for some adjustment in the tax rate to take account of incentives.
The standpoint from which the question of incentives needs to be considered is not the effect on the total size of the economic pie, but instead from the standpoint of the effect of incentives or disincentives on the well-being of those at the bottom.
The naturally advantaged are not to gain merely because they are more gifted, but only to cover the costs of training and education and for using their endowments in ways that help the less fortunate as well. John Rawls
If taking too much from David Letterman, winds up actually hurting those at the bottom, that’s the test
This means incentives can not be the deciding objection against john rawl
What about self-ownership?
Doesn’t the difference principle, by treating our natural talents and endowments as common assets, doesn’t that violate the idea that we own ourselves?
Life is not fair. It is tempting to believe that government can rectify what nature has spawned. Milton Friedman’s book “Free to Choose”
The natural distribution is neither just or unjust; nor is it unjust that persons 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. John Rawls’ “Theory of Justice” section 17 !!!!!
Norzick says if you tax people to create public schools, against their will, you coerce them, which is apparently a form of theft because apparently wer hae to think of ourselves as owning our talents and endowments because otherwise we get back to just using and coercing people.
Rawls’ reply to the libertarian is we don’t own ourselves in the sense that I have privileged claim on the benefits that come from the exercise of my talents in a market economy. We can defend rights. We can respect the individual. We can uphold human dignity without embracing the idea of self-possession.
What about effort?
This objection is derived in meritocratic conception defenders. What about people working hard and having a right to what they earn because they deserve it?
Rawls’s reply to the defender of a meritocratic conception, who invokes effort as the basis of moral desert
we can claim no credit for even the work ethic, even the willingness to strive conscientiously, depends on all sorts of family circumstances and social and cultural contingencies
Second answer is for those of you who invoke effort, you don’t really believe that a moral desert attaches to effort, you mean contribution.
Two construction workers example: One is strong and can raise 4 walls in an hour and another worker is small and needs 3 days to do the same amount of work. No defender of meritocracy is going to look at the effort of the 3 days and say he deserves to make more. So it isn’t really effort that defenders of meritocracy believe is the moral basis of distributive shares. It is contribution which they weigh. But contribution takes us straight back to our natural talents and abilities, not just effort. Distributive justice is not about moral desert.
Moral Desert v.s. Entitlements to Legitimate Expectations
If I win a lottery, I’m entitled to my winnings, but not in the sense in which I morally deserve to win in the first place
A just scheme answers to what men are entitled to; it satisfies their legitimate expectations as founded upon social institutions. But what they are entitled to is not proportional to or dependent upon their intrinsic worth.
The principle of justice that regulate the basic structure… do not mention moral desert, and there is no tendency for distribution shares to correspond to it, John Rawls
Suppose that we are in a hunting society or warrior society, what would become of our talents? Would we be less worthy? Would we be less virtuous? Would we be less meritorious?
Rawls’s answer is no, we might make less money. But while we would be entitled to less, we would be no less worthy, no less deserving than we are now. The point is, the same could be said to those in our society who happen to hold less prestigious positions, who happen to have fewer of the talents that our society happen to reward
Think about, how many of us, could strive in a hunter/gatherer society? How can we think we deserve the fruits of our talents that THIS society happens to appreciate?
Lecture 17:
Affirmative action
Case of Cheryl Hopwood
Cheryl Hopwood is a white female, was denied admission to the law school despite being better qualified (at least under certain metrics) than many admitted minority candidates
One point is; colleges should still choose students for the greatest academic scholarly promise, but in reading the test scores and grades, they should take into account the different meaning those tests and grades have in the light of educational disadvantages in the background. Correcting for the effect of unequal preparation educational disadvantage.
Arguments for affirmative action
Corrective: for differences in educational backgrounds.
Compensatory: for past wrongs.
Diversity: for educational experience; for society as a whole.
Objection to compensatory argument is, is it fair to ask Cheryl Hopwood today to make the sacrifice, to pay the compensation, for an injustice that was admittedly committed and was egregious in the past, but in which she was not implicated?
In order to meet that objection, we would need to investigate whether there is such a thing as group rights our collective responsibilities that reaches over time
Harvard filed a friend of court brief to the Supreme Court in the 1978 affirmative action case. The Bakke Case.
We care about diversity, scholarly excellence alone has never been the criterion of admission, to Harvard College. 15 years ago, diversity meant students from California, and New York, and Massachusetts, city dwellers and farm boys, violinists, painters, and football players, biologists, historians, and classicists. The only difference now is that we’re adding racial and ethnic status to this long list of diversity considerations. When reviewing the large number of candidates able to do well in our classes, race may count as a plus, just as coming from Iowa may count, or being a good middle linebacker, or pianist. A farm boy from Idaho can bring something to Harvard College that a Bostonian cannot offer. Similarity, a black student can usually bring something a white student cannot offer. The quality of the educational experience of all students depends on in part on these differences, in the background and outlook that students bring with them, Harvard friend of court brief to The Bakke Case
Is there an individual right that is violated? Is Cheryl Hopwood used, denied admission for the sake of the common good in the social mission that the University of Texas Law School has denied for itself? Does she have right?
No. She doesn’t have a right. Nobody deserves to be admitted. Dessert v.s. Entitlement
Once Harvard defines its mission and designs its admission policy in the light of its mission, people are entitled who fit those criteria. They are entitled to be admitted. But no one deserves that Harvard define its mission and design its admission criteria in the first place, in a way that prizes the qualities they happen to have in abundance, whether those qualities are test scores, or grades, or to come from Iowa, or to come from a minority group
Lecture 18:
Aristotle: Justice and Virtue
Is there a principled distinction between today and 1930/1950?
The principled distinction between the invocation of the social purpose of colleges or university today, in the diversity rationale, and the invocation of the social purpose or mission of the university by Texas in the 1950s or Harvard in the 1930s, is the distinction between inclusion versus exclusion. Another distinction is malice being the motivation
Doesn’t that concede that all of us, when we compete for positions or far seats in college, in a way, are being used? Not judged, but used in a way has nothing to do with moral desert?
Is it possible and is it desirable to detach questions of distributive justice from questions of moral desert and question of virtue?
This is an issue that separates modern political philosophy from ancient political thought.
Rawls: egalitarianism is an incentive to detach. But for all thinkers, they all agree that justice is not a matter of rewarding or honoring virtue or moral desert, why?
They think tying justice to moral merit or virtue is going to lead away from freedom from respect for persons as free beings.
In order to see what they consider to be at stake and assess their shared assumption, we need to turn to Aristotle.
Aristotle who disagrees with them, who explicitly ties justices to honor, honoring virtue and merit and moral desert.
For Aristotle, justice is a matter of giving people what they deserve. Giving people their due. It’s a matter of figuring out the proper fit between persons with their virtues and their appropriate social roles. What is a person’s due and what are the relevant grounds of merit or desert? Aristotle says that depends on the sort of things being distributed.
Justice involves two factors: things and the persons to whom the things are assigned. In general we say that persons who are equal should have equal things assigned to them, Aristotle
Suppose we’re distributing flutes. Aristotle thinks the best flutes should go to the best flute players. All justice involves discrimination.
What is the relevant merit or basis of desert for flutes? The best flutes should go to the best flute players because that’s what flutes are for. To be played well. The purpose of flute-playing, the purpose, is to produce excellent music.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/the-psychology-of-the-affirmative-action-backlash/
The Psychology of the Affirmative-Action Backlash
How does affirmative action backlash-rhetoric impact students of color?
The Supreme Court re-hears Abigail Fisher’s case against the University of Texas today. Fisher, who is a white woman, claims that she was denied admission to UT because of her race. If the High Court rules in her favor, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin will shake affirmative-action policy to its core and could knock the 14th Amendment askew in the process.
To recap the case: Fisher applied to the University of Texas, Austin, twice, once through its fall 2008 cycle and again through a provisional summer program. According to court documents, African American and Hispanic applicants accounted for just five of the students with lower scores and grades than Fisher who were offered provisional admission to UT through the summer program. The other 42 arguably under-qualified students were white.*
The original suit makes no mention of the 42 white students. Conversely, according to court documents, 168 applicants of color who had higher scores than Fisher were not admitted to UT
What has intrigued me most about Fisher’s case is her earnest sense of self-righteousness even in the face of these damning facts
“There were people in my class with lower grades and who weren’t in all of the activities I was in who were being accepted into UT,” Fisher remarks in a promo video for the case. “And the only difference between us was the color of our skin.”
If we take Fisher’s claim to be more than a cynical ploy in the decades-long campaign to erode affirmative action, then it forces the question, How can she truly feel like a victim of racism?
contemporary affirmative-action policy has attracted the attention of psychologists. Beginning in the 1970s, Americans’ attitudes toward affirmative action have been studied as not just a political phenomenon but a psychological one as well.
The myth of the unworthy applicant is pervasive, and it both impacts the way white people—specifically men—think about themselves and the mental health of people of color.
In one 2001 study, researchers interviewed nearly 200 employed white men in public places in Chicago and New York City
They found that thoughts about affirmative action served to justify preexisting opinions of coworkers. The lower the opinion the men held about a coworker, the more they regarded affirmative action as the reason why the coworker was hired.
A 2007 study led by a UCLA researcher found that the white men studied tended to view their own successes and merits more favorably when they believed that affirmative action played a role in a given selection process, and thus may engage in a “downward social comparison” toward assumed beneficiaries of the policy.
subjects’ anti–affirmative action self-talk was used to denigrate the accomplishments of supposed beneficiaries and elevate the status of people (themselves) who usually do not benefit from the policy.
There’s a growing body of research that shows racism causes more than self-doubt in the individuals affected by it
The PLoS One meta-review, which was comprised of 293 studies published in 333 articles spanning 30 years, found an overall stronger correlation between racism and negative mental health outcomes than physical health outcomes.
perceived racism is a stressor that contributes to “the dysregulation of cognitive-affective regions” of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, amygdala and thalamus. Dysregulation in these areas shares similar “pathways,” or neural circuits, with mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, and psychosis
one must recognize Fisher’s unworthy-minority-applicant rhetoric as belonging to a broader set of racial biases that not only attack the material opportunities for people of color, but also take aim at BIPOCS minds, bodies, and souls.
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