Luck and equality: A reply to Hurley

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Volumn 72, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 439-446

  Cohen, G A ^a  

^a ALL SOULS COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 85068757390     PISSN: 00318205     EISSN: 19331592     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2006.tb00571.x     Document Type: Letter

References (7)

1. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Uiopia, New York, 1974, p. 41.
2. ‘‘Inductive Support of inductive Rules”, in his ProbIenis OfAnulysis, London, 1954.
3. It might nevertheless be an argument against it that its implementation fails to maximize happiness: See Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, Oxford, 1984, Chapter 1.
4. I am entirely unconvinced by Hurley’s claim that “the aim to neutralize the effects of luck treats everything as a matter of luck” (p. 172).
5. That is, in 1989, when his “Equality and Equal Opportunity for Welfare” appeared in Pliilosopliical Studies
6. Cf. David Miller, Principles qfSocial Jutice, Cambridge, MA, 1999, Chapter 1 1.
7. Hurley (pp 149-50) is mistaken that I used “currency” to denote the goods that are to be distributed in “On the Currency”. There “currency” meant what Sen and Dworkin mean by “metric”, where resources, utility and capability constitute different metrics. Hurley means by “currency” not the metric by which goods are to be distributed but the to-bedistributed objects themselves. Correspondingly, she misinterprets my eqvali.smdurn as those things that people are to have equal amounts of, as opposed to that respect in which people are to be rendered equal, which is what 1 meant by (the Anglicized Latin) “equal isanduni”