Incentives, Motives, and Talents

Philosophy and Public Affairs

Volumn 38, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 111-142

  Shiffrin, Seana Valentine ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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EID: 77954137026     PISSN: 00483915     EISSN: 10884963     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1088-4963.2010.01180.x     Document Type: Article

References (67)

1. I use this term to refer to all of those cooperating members of a well-ordered society. "Citizens" strikes me as the best inadequate term to capture this meaning, although I intend to include permanent and other nontransient residents even if they are ineligible to vote and lack other accoutrements of full-blown citizenship; further, I do not mean here to discuss those citizens who are not cooperating members.
2. Of course, employment decisions are not the only economic decisions citizens make within our system of joint social cooperation, although they have been central to this literature. See note 39 for a brief discussion of the issues associated with economic investment and entrepreneurs. The further issue of what obligations, if any, citizens have in their consumption behavior (to the only rough extent these categories are separable) is complex and quite interesting, given the connection between consumption and pursuit of one's conception of the good, but rather neglected.
3. Although Cohen has written many important works on the subject over the last two decades, the central views and most important papers appear in Rescuing Justice and Equality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008), hereinafter abbreviated as RJE. For convenience and brevity, I will mostly confine my attention and citations to this work of his.
4. This methodology is not identified as such but plays a powerful role in Cohen's Tanner Lectures, at least as I read them. See G. A. Cohen, "Incentives, Inequality, and Community," in Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Vol. 13, ed. Grethe B. Peterson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992), reprinted in RJE as chapter 1. It later receded from his development of his argument against salary incentives but is the inspiration for the approach I sketch here.
5. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 9-10, 13, 133, 453-54 (citations will be to the original, 'classic' edition); John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 63-64; John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), p. 89.
6. Nor do I attribute such a position to Cohen's Tanner Lectures. Although Cohen does claim that some elements of the ethos cannot be codified, I do not take him as endorsing anything like the view that justice is that which the just person would do or that which just people would elect; indeed, Cohen's criticism of constructivism leads him far from positions of this kind. See, e.g., G. A. Cohen, RJE, pp. 22, 352-54. For exemplars of (metaethical) virtue ethics, see, e.g., Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Marcia Baron, Philip Pettit, and Michael Slote, Three Methods of Ethics (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1997); Roger Crisp and Michael Slote, eds., Virtue Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); Margaret Olivia Little, "Virtue as Knowledge: Objections from the Philosophy of Mind," Noûs 31 (1997): 59-79.
7. Barbara Herman, Moral Literacy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 97-104.
8. A more familiar, related move holds that the underlying justification of a principle also infuses its correct interpretation. I endorse this view as well, but I will largely put issues of interpretation and interpretative methodology aside here.
9. I explore these arguments in "Intellectual Property," in Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, 2nd ed., ed. Robert Goodin et al. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 653-68, and in "The Incentives Argument for Intellectual Property Protection," in Intellectual Property and Theories of Justice, ed. Axel Gosseries et al. (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), pp. 94-105.
10. One may object that this methodology is less one about the substantive virtues citizens would have in a just society and more an extended analysis of whether the arguments and reasons they respond to are consistent with the other intellectual commitments they have, such as their adoption and acceptance of the two principles and their justifications.In reply: Nothing crucial hangs on the label 'virtue'. Most of my argument does involve an extended foray into what, in all consistency, commitment to the two principles entails. I find it helpful to regard it as an investigation into the virtues of the just citizen because it addresses the inner life of the just citizen and how that inner life is properly manifested in human relations, e.g., how the just citizen would regard and manage a variety of self- and other-regarding desires, beliefs, and personal traits, which ones she would take to generate public reasons for action, and which she would take to have a merely private status.A more extensive discussion of the political virtues might also explore what character traits and individual behaviors are not required by consistency per se but are socially or psychologically necessary or, to a lesser degree, facilitate compliance with the requirements of justice. For instance, widespread compliance with a particular rule of justice may not be a justificatory precondition of any one citizen's compliance with that rule, but living amongst others who make similar sacrifices and undertake similar burdens may make compliance feel easier and more normal; if so, public manifestations of individual compliance - showing one has complied - may not be required by justice, but may be a virtue because they help to create a social climate that facilitates others' compliance and makes it more comfortable. Such a view should, however, be distinguished from the strong version of transparency defended by Andrew Williams. See note 22.An even broader investigation into the conditions under which principles are well realized in social contexts would ask not only what positive, facilitative features of citizens' personalities (broadly speaking) principle P and its realization require. We might also ask what needs human agents will have if they are to satisfy P and if they are to engage wholeheartedly, meaningfully, and successfully in the activities P celebrates or protects; this may then lead us to ask how, socially and politically, these needs may be fulfilled. An analysis of this form underlies many arguments for free speech and substantive due process protections. For example, a speech-protective standard of defamation may arise when considering our collective interests in criticism coupled with the reasonable fears and anxieties that beset critics about whether their criticism will provoke hostile retaliation. Or, to take another example, an argument for freedom of association may flow from considering the value of free speech as residing in part in the development of free thought within the sort of social contexts in which people are enabled and feel safe to engage in sophisticated, complex, and safe reflection and inquiry. This may in turn give rise to special protections for intimate relations: we must provide for safe, productive havens for thought, expression, confidence sharing, and mutual influence; given what we are like, these will have to include the ability to select with whom and in what ways one will share fundamental forms of intimacy. I develop this line of analysis in more depth in "What Is Really Wrong with Compelled Association?" Northwestern University Law Review 99 (2005): 839-88.
11. Cohen, RJE, pp. 8, 11, 71, 74-75, 198.
12. See, e.g., id., at pp. 16, 98-100.
13. Helpful articulations, refinements, and responses to this objection (both sympathetic and critical) may be found in G. A. Cohen, RJE, chap. 3 and passim. Joshua Cohen, "Taking People As They Are," Philosophy & Public Affairs 30 (2002): 363-86; A. J. Julius, "Basic Structure and the Value of Equality," Philosophy & Public Affairs 31 (2003): 321-55; Liam Murphy, "Institutions and the Demands of Justice," Philosophy & Public Affairs 27 (1999): 251-91; Thomas Pogge, "On the Site of Distributive Justice," Philosophy & Public Affairs 29 (2000): 137-69; John Rawls, Political Liberalism, pp. 282-83; Samuel Scheffler, "Is the Basic Structure Basic?" in The Egalitarian Conscience, ed. Christine Sypnowich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 102-30; Kok-Chor Tan, "Justice and Personal Pursuits," Journal of Philosophy 101 (2004): 331-62; Michael Titelbaum, "What Would a Rawlsian Ethos of Justice Look Like?" Philosophy & Public Affairs 36 (2008): 289-322; Andrew Williams, "Incentives, Inequality and Publicity," Philosophy & Public Affairs 27 (1998): 225-47, at pp. 228ff.
14. I will not address the concerns of those who contend that individual choices and behavior are entirely irrelevant to the justice of a society and that only the configuration and operation of social institutions in the Basic Structure matter. That view goes beyond Rawls's and is not what is primarily at issue between Rawls and Cohen, namely whether the two principles of justice apply to individuals and whether widespread labor incentives for talent would be consistent with a society that implemented Justice as Fairness. My principal claim is that a negative answer to the latter does not require a positive answer to the former. As I argue in the text, on Rawls's view, the just society is a well-ordered society and well-ordered societies involve acceptance of and compliance with the principles of justice, in addition to the execution of other individual duties of justice by individual citizens. To the extent individual citizens fail to meet these requirements and the society is, therefore, not well ordered, the society fails to be fully just. This strikes me as an eminently plausible view, but its extended defense against those who disagree would require more argument than room allows here.
15. Titelbaum, "What Would a Rawlsian Ethos of Justice Look Like?" pp. 307-20
16. Philippe Van Parijs, "Rawlsians, Christians and Patriots," European Journal of Philosophy 1 (1993): 309-42, at pp. 320-25
17. Tan, "Justice and Personal Pursuits," pp. 335, 347-52
18. See also David Estlund's argument that to avoid this difficulty, Cohen must endorse broad agent-centered prerogatives that narrow the gap between Cohen's and Rawls's interpretation of the Difference Principle's implications. David Estlund, "Liberalism, Equality, and Fraternity in Cohen's Critique of Rawls," The Journal of Political Philosophy 6 (1998): 99-112.
19. Famously, Thomas Nagel makes the thematically related point against the libertarian, to wit, that the libertarian's expectations that wealthy individual citizens will contribute large portions of their income to charity voluntarily and without coordination are overdemanding of the individual, even if a system that yielded the same resultant income would not be unreasonable
20. Thomas Nagel, "Libertarianism without Foundations," Yale Law Journal 85 (1975): 136-49, at p. 145.
21. Cohen, RJE, pp. 10-11, 61-62, 70-72, 387-94.
22. Titelbaum and Nagel both note the tension between acceptance of the grounds of the Difference Principle and purely self-interested, maximizing market behavior
23. Titelbaum, "What Would a Rawlsian Ethos of Justice Look Like?" pp. 298-99, 302
24. Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 117-18
25. I am sympathetic to their positions, but the tension they highlight is a psychological one that goes to the issue of the stability of the well-ordered society. My claim is a stronger one in one respect, since I argue the publicity requirement requires acceptance of the justification of the Difference Principle, which in turn would rule out standard motives for market maximizing behavior, on pain of inconsistency (rather than mere psychological implausibility). It is weaker, though, in another respect, because it does not rest on empirical psychological claims (although I find theirs highly plausible ones); more important, the argument does not yield any claims that acceptance of the justificatory underpinning of the Difference Principle yields a 'matching ethos' or an isomorphic 'correlate' as Titelbaum suggests, pp. 299, 306.
26. Cohen, RJE, pp. 10-11, 61-62, 68 n. 37, 70-72, 81, 387-94.
27. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 9-10, 13, 133, 453-54, and Political Liberalism, pp. 63-64.
28. These features of the publicity requirement cast doubt upon Andrew Williams's interpretation of it
29. Williams, "Incentives, Inequality, and Publicity," pp. 233-35, 238-41
30. Williams argues, inter alia, the publicity requirement demands that justice must not merely be done but must be seen to be done and, in his discussion, subjects 'norms' as well as institutional structures to this requirement, pp. 234, 246
31. He criticizes Cohen's canonical argument on the grounds that compliance with an ethos cannot be observed or verified and so it advances a conception of justice that cannot be seen to be done. Moreover, this opacity, in turn, may fray morale that depends on observable practices of reciprocity. But, Williams's reasoning that if compliance with a purported directive of justice is unobservable, the directive is therefore suspect, exaggerates the importance of observability in the Rawlsian scheme. Rawls's own understanding of the publicity requirement requires that citizens have mental states - that they accept the principles and accept the reasons for them - but these mental states are not themselves observable. (A weaker version of Williams's view might be plausible, to wit that the institutions comprising the Basic Structure must operate on public rules whose implementation is observable.)Although stability may require that citizens do not have persistent reason to fear that conditions of reciprocity are being abused, I believe that level of mutual confidence and morale may generally be sustained by a less strictly verifiable ethos, one made manifest through the practices of socialization parents engage in, the reasons citizens generally give to one another for what they do and how they discuss what they do, and those aspects of behavior from which inferences about why citizens act the way they do may reasonably be drawn. Absent evidence to the contrary, that level of semi-transparency seems sufficient to sustain the morale necessary for stability and the good-faith participation of all. See also Cohen's critique of Williams in chap. 8 of RJE.
32. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 14, 72-75. Of course, there are other justifications for the Difference Principle, as others have stressed
33. Norman Daniels, "Democratic Equality," in The Cambridge Companion to Rawls, ed. Samuel Freeman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 241-76
34. I mean here only to sketch out the implications of accepting this particular justification. Although Daniels rightly stresses the multifaceted nature of the Rawlsian justificatory structure, the interpretation I advance is consistent with the other justifications of the Difference Principle.
35. See, e.g., the influential interpretation of, and associated criticism by, Robert Nozick, that what it is to be arbitrary from a moral point of view is for it to be an accident or a matter of luck. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 227-28.
36. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 302.
37. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 83-90
38. For what it is worth, I find it less difficult than does Cohen, RJE, at p. 160, to understand why people in the original position would select fair equality of opportunity even if they are mutually indifferent. The context of opportunity provision, Rawls imagines, is a competitive one. Where we are playing a zero-sum game, if I am to protect my own opportunity and if I deploy a maximin strategy, then I must opt for fair equality for all. Otherwise, more opportunity for some may, in a competitive environment, mean less for me given that I could be anyone. Like reasoning about competitive contexts lies behind Rawls's other fair equality principle, namely the fair value of the political liberties.
39. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 311
40. Rawls, "Basic Structure As Subject," in Political Liberalism, §5.
41. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 74.
42. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, §§80, 81.
43. The argument I give here provides one (different) ground for the very plausible claims Joshua Cohen makes, and that Kok-Chor Tan elaborates upon, about how just institutions will influence the culture and individuals' motives and aspirations and thereby reduce the distance between Cohen's position and Rawls's self-understanding
44. Joshua Cohen, "Taking People As They Are," pp. 363-86; and Tan, "Justice and Personal Pursuits," pp. 342-45.
45. Of course where there has been a history of racism, race may not be entirely irrelevant to those primary goods whose distribution is intended to affect recognition and remedy for the past wrong. I put this aside because I take this case and the topic of remedies generally (though not the hazard of racism) to be a component of nonideal theory, albeit a very important one.
46. See my discussion of the ways in which the Two Principles, as written, do not fully accomplish this in "Race, Labor, and the Fair Equality of Opportunity Principle," Fordham Law Review 72 (2004): 1643-75.
47. Cohen, RJE, p. 355.
48. Here, I assume that one is asking for the higher salary merely as a bargaining maneuver to get more resources because they are useful. It is, obviously, a more complex situation (one belonging to nonideal theory) if one believes that a higher salary is positively warranted, e.g., because of a higher labor burden, but that one's employer would not recognize the warrant, but would instead grant the higher salary from a poor motive. In that case, one would not be manipulating racism for advantage but rather gaining what one is entitled to through nonideal means. It may still be a serious matter, especially if others of a different race are not getting that to which they are entitled because they are not subject to the employer's (unjust) favor. Whether one should accept that to which one is entitled when given for poor reasons when others are unfairly denied the same entitlements engages issues of solidarity; whether one ought to refuse may depend in part upon how crucial the benefit to which one is entitled is, what the most effective strategy for political change is, and what other communicative messages may be transmitted by one's partaking or one's refusal. These issues arise, for instance, around the question of whether different-sex couples should marry in jurisdictions where marriage is denied to same-sex couples. My interest in this example was provoked by William Rubenstein's talk, "Why Do Straight Couples Invite Their Gay Friends to Their Weddings? And Why Do We Go? Research into the Politics of Resistance," Faculty Research Colloquium, LGBT Studies Program and Center for the Study of Women, UCLA (November 1998).
49. The degree of the problem may be contained by the phenomenon Joshua Cohen points to, namely that the social institutions of the Basic Structure will themselves produce some ethos of mutual concern. In this way, the Right may support the Good. Cohen, "Taking People As They Are," pp. 375-80
50. Tan, "Justice and Personal Pursuits," pp. 342-45.
51. Could the extra incentives be offered on the ground that the work is of vital importance, rather than to reward talent? I take it that, on the Rawlsian view, that question suggests a distinction without a real difference. What it is for something to be a talent in this context is for it to be a quality that is socially valued.
52. The main cause of deaths from lack of organs in the United States, however, is attributable to affording a choice to individuals (and their families) not to donate after their deaths. It is estimated that thousands of people die in the United States alone each year because of this rule. Rather than adopt the market solutions that some scholars propose, I take the view that while donation by the living should be voluntary, posthumous donation should be mandatory, subject to an opt-out provision to accommodate religious and other forms of conscientious objection.
53. Sociologically, this prohibition still holds in the United States for most major organs, with the exception of reproductive material. Compensation for sperm transfer pretty clearly exceeds the costs of transfer; with egg transfers, it is less clear and, interestingly, in some jurisdictions, the payment is framed as pure compensation for costs incurred and, in others, it is framed as a way young women may make money.
54. Of course, where practices of noncommodification have been exploited or worked to a discrete group's disadvantage, marketizing may be socially beneficial. This, I take it, is some of the point of the wages-for-housework movement.
55. For that reason, the consent of the least well off would not be forthcoming (because it is inconsistent with their own internalization of the justification of the Difference Principle); even if it were, it would be insufficient to justify talent-based labor incentives given that the subversive effect on the foundations of equality affects everyone and hence the financially least well off are not the only relevant parties. Should the least well off (or other citizens) choose, voluntarily, as individuals to give extra resources to talented people who do more productive work that they would rather not (i.e., who choose to doctor rather than to garden), that might be a different matter (assuming their accumulated effect does not generate significant relational inequalities). It may be argued that gifts represent exercises of the capacity for a conception of the good by individuals as such (or, in other words, operate as consumption, not as aspects of production and the system of economic cooperation) and that their provision and acceptance operate in the more private domain.
56. What about inequalities associated with entrepreneurial and other forms of investment risk? See also Van Parijs, "Rawlsians, Christians and Patriots," p. 315
57. Cohen seems to leave this possibility open
58. Cohen, RJE, p. 34
59. It might be argued that if entrepreneurs made savvier decisions about socially beneficial investments if they personally absorbed some of the upside and downside risks of their investment, then the Difference Principle would allow the inequalities that might result. A case might be made that these inequalities differ from those ruled out by the Difference Principle and its presuppositions, to wit that the entrepreneurial incentive connects not to talent but to a general psychological propensity to pay sharper attention if one has a personal investment. Further, if entrepreneurs should (partially) absorb losses of poor risks, it is only fair for them to (partially) benefit from risks that pay off. A related feature that may distinguish the entrepreneurial case from the labor incentives Cohen focuses on is that the latter incentives are always to the benefit of the recipients and to the detriment of the least well off compared with the same labor under conditions of equality. By contrast, permitting entrepreneurs to share some of the risk in their investments does not necessarily redound to the entrepreneurs' ultimate benefit. The entrepreneurs could be the least well off, if their investments bottom out, or in the upper classes, if their investments pay off.On the other hand, one might be inclined to argue that entrepreneurs should, as a matter of justice, already be inclined to pay great attention and make savvy decisions whether or not they have anything extra at stake; to offer them incentives is to compensate them for something they have no legitimate claim to withhold. Further, those with good decision-making skills would be more likely to thrive, rendering the incentives a reward for talent.On Cohen's view, this issue might be partly resolved by asking how much is psychologically possible given the full internalization of the Difference Principle and the goal of maximizing the position of the least well off, subject to a prerogative that might be directed at spacing out a bit (or not). One could adopt my view and think that although some degree of work and attention is a precondition of participation in the joint social endeavor but beyond that, the level of attention paid and risk one is willing to tolerate may be more a matter of the sort of choices for which one bears some responsibility and may not be well regarded as entirely a manifestation of talent.
60. I introduce this term and develop this point in "Moral Autonomy and Agent-Centered Options," Analysis 51 (1991): 44-54.
61. Thus, I share some of Andrew Williams's concerns about epistemic demandingness.
62. Williams, pp. 239-45
63. But, I do not think the problem is well conceptualized as one of the violations of the publicity principle because I disagree that all requirements of justice must be mutually verifiable
64. See above note 22. When failures of transparency exacerbate the burdens of investigation and make it extremely difficult for citizens to know what their duties are, however, it may be overly demanding to locate the implementation responsibility in individuals.
65. A. J. Julius, "Basic Structure and the Value of Equality," p. 337ff.
66. Indeed, Cohen's intervention was initially introduced as a criticism not only of a particular suggestion by Rawls but also of Thatcherite tax cuts and contemporary interpersonal manifestations of class dynamics.
67. Cohen, RJE, p. 34ff.