Is Desert in the Details?

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Volumn 82, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 121-133

  Freiman, Christopher ^a   Nichols, Shaun ^b  

^a The College of William and Mary   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 78650683695     PISSN: 00318205     EISSN: 19331592     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2010.00387.x     Document Type: Article

References (54)

1. Samuel Scheffler says that "none of the most prominent contemporary versions of philosophical liberalism assigns a significant role to desert at the level of fundamental principle." Samuel Scheffler, "Responsibility, Reactive Attitudes, and Liberalism in Philosophy and Politics."Philosophy and Public Affairs 21, no. 4 (1992): 299-323
2. John RawlsSee, for example, A Theory of Justice. Revised ed. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1999, 89
3. "The Basic Structure as Subject."American Philosophical Quarterly, 162 14, (1977): 159-165
4. Ronald Dworkin, "Why Bakke Has No Case."New York Review of Books, November 10, 1977
5. Thomas Nagel, Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979
6. Brian Barry, Political Argument. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965; Robert Goodin, "Negating Positive Desert Claims."Political Theory 13, no. 4 (1985): 575-598.
7. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971, 104.
8. Eric Rakowski, Equal Justice. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991, 112.
9. Serena Olsaretti, Liberty, Desert, and the Market. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 28.
10. Peter Vallentyne, "Brute Luck Equality and Desert." In Desert and Justice, edited by Serena Olsaretti, 169-185. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, 175.
11. See David Miller, Principles of Social Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003, especially chap. 4 and 7
12. David Schmidtz, Elements of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, part 2.
13. Miller reviews corroborating empirical evidence that indicates differential desert claims based on differential productivity enjoy wide popular appeal. Principles of Social Justice, chap. 4.
14. See David Miller, Social Justice. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976, 98
15. Principles of Social Justice, 67.
16. Miller, Principles of Social Justice, 51.
17. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 1999, 41.
18. Principles of Social Justice, 51.
19. Classic examples of such distortions are illustrated in Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, "Choices, values, and frames."American Psychologist, 39 (1984): 341-350.
20. John Rawls, Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005, 300.
21. Principles of Social Justice, 61.
22. See Miller, Principles of Social Justice, chap. 4.
23. See Scheffler, "Responsibility, Reactive Attitudes, and Liberalism in Philosophy and Politics."
24. This formulation owes much to the account presented in Vallentyne, "Brute Luck Equality and Desert."
25. Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002, 73.
26. A Theory of Justice, 1999, 89.
27. Rawls's views about desert are a matter of exegetical controversy, but one common reading interprets Rawls as endorsing the brute luck constraint on desert. George Sher interprets Rawls's claim thusly: "If one person does not deserve to have X while another does not [have X], and if having X enables the first person to.... do Y while the second does not, then the first person does not deserve to have or do Y while the second does not." George Sher, Desert. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987, 26
28. Serena Olsaretti writes similarly, "Rawls's concern.... is not that of identifying the necessary conditions for desert in general. Rather, it is with casting doubt on the claim that the unequal distribution of talents and effort-making capacity may justifiably give rise to inequalities in deserts. His aim is to reject the view that the morally arbitrary and differential possession of attributes may give rise to differential deserts." Olsaretti, Liberty, Desert, and the Market, 25-26.
29. Olsaretti writes, "The defensible principle of desert is one which does not make the magnitude of people's unequal deserts depend on unchosen, and unequally distributed, factors." Olsaretti, Liberty, Desert, and the Market, 28. Peter Vallentyne recommends similarly that "the differential influence of brute luck on the distribution of benefits be neutralized. Thus, if benefits are distributed on the basis of desert, brute luck egalitarianism requires that the desert base (that which determines how much one deserves) be something that is not differentially affected by one's brute luck." Vallentyne, "Brute Luck Equality and Desert," 172. Vallentyne concludes, "Desert is not affected by brute luck factors. This is not to claim that it is incoherent for desert to be so affected; it is only to claim that such a desert theory does not yield a plausible theory of justice."
30. Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, 91.
31. G.A. Cohen, "On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice."Ethics, 931 99, (1989): 906-44.
32. F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960, 94.
33. David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986, 220.
34. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, book 3, part 3, section 4; An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Appendix 4.
35. Social Justice. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976, 96.
36. Principles of Social Justice, chap. 4.
37. Genetic endowment is typically fielded as a straightforward case of brute luck. For example, Dworkin claims that differences in wealth produced by differences "traceable to genetic luck" are unfair, 92. Vallentyne explicitly mentions genes as brute luck factors, 170.
38. David Fetherstonhaugh, Paul Slovic, Stephen Johnson, & James Friedrich, "Insensitivity to the value of human life: a study of psychophysical numbing."Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 14 (1997): 283-300
39. Tehila Kogut & Ilana Ritov. "The 'identified victim' effect: an identified group or just a single individual?"Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 18 (2005): 157-167
40. Deborah Small & George Loewenstein, "The Devil You Know: The Effects of Identifiability on Punishment."Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 18 (2005): 311-318.
41. Shaun Nichols & Joshua Knobe, "Moral Responsibility and Determinism: The Cognitive Science of Folk Intuitions."Noûs, 41 (2007): 663-685.
42. For discussion of desert and responsibility, see Fred Feldman, "Desert: Reconsideration of Some Received Wisdom."Mind 104, no. 413 (1995): 63-77
43. Fred Feldman, "Responsibility as a Condition for Desert."Mind 105, no. 417 (1996): 165-168
44. For further discussion of the significance of the abstract/concrete distinction, see Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, "Abstract + Concrete = Paradox." In Experimental Philosophy, edited by Joshua Knobe and Shaun Nichols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
45. The statistical details are as follows. In the abstract condition, the mean response to the desert question was 2.78; the mean response to the fairness question was 2.72 (4 is the midpoint between "strongly disagree" and "strongly agree"). In the concrete singers case, the mean response to the desert question was 4.57, and the mean response to fairness was 4.71; for concrete jugglers, the mean responses for desert and fairness were 4.86 and 5.5. The differences between abstract and concrete were significant in all cases. People agreed more strongly with the claim that the singer deserved the extra money (t(30)=2.51, p<.05) and that the juggler deserved the extra money (t(30)=3.09, p<.01). Similarly, people agreed more strongly with the claim that it was fair for the singer to get the extra money (t(30)=2.89, p<.01) and also that it was fair for the jugglers to get more money (t(30)=4.74, p<.001).
46. Small & Loewenstein 2005.
47. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Moral Skepticisms. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, 203.
48. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1982, part IV.2.3. Smith even suggests that ordinary judgments about the connection between luck and merit are sensitive to whether one is considering them in an abstract or concrete light, albeit in a way different from the treatment offered here. The Theory of Moral Sentiments, part II.3.Introduction.
49. Social Justice, 88.
50. See also Smith, II.i.I and Joel Feinberg, "Justice and Personal Desert." In Doing and Deserving, 55-94. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970, 70-71.
51. A Theory of Justice, 1999, 41.
52. Miller's understanding of a theory of justice is similar to Rawls's. Like Rawls, Miller draws on the linguistic analogy, suggesting that "someone who has an implicit grasp of.... the 'grammar' of justice will understand the norms of appropriateness" governing principles of social justice. Principles of Social Justice, 35. Elsewhere Miller writes, "All morally competent adults have a well-developed sense of justice that enables them to cope with the practical questions they confront from day to day. How should my neighbor and I share the cost of the new fence that will run between our properties? Which child in my class ought to get the academic prize? Should I give Smith, my employee, the leave he has asked for to look after his sick mother? We know how to think about such questions, and we can answer them without any knowledge of the many abstract theories of justice that political philosophers from Plato to Rawls have advanced."
53. Olsaretti, Liberty, Desert, and the Market, 72.
54. Miller, Principles of Social Justice, chap 4.