tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39832937355713198772024-02-08T13:29:58.449+00:00Inter KantGary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.comBlogger446125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-63668625834916181082013-02-26T20:58:00.001+00:002013-02-26T20:58:46.717+00:00Dieter Schönecker in *Kant Studies Online*<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The latest issue of <i>Kant Studies Online</i> has been published and includes an</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: large;"> article on the fact of reason and "Kantian intuitionism" <a href="http://www.uni-siegen.de/phil/philosophie/mitarbeiter/schoenecker/">by this author</a> whose writings on Kant are an important element of current German responses. This article, like all others published in KSO, is available to be freely consulted and downloaded and it can be found <a href="http://www.kantstudiesonline.net/KSO_Recent.html">here</a>.</span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-53598776650925029542013-02-11T12:45:00.002+00:002013-02-11T12:53:07.432+00:00Allison and Kant's Practical Deduction<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the final chapter of Allison's commentary on the <i>Groundwork</i> he describes the way he understands the "deduction" of the categorical imperative in the third part of Kant's work. Given how controversial the argument of <i>Groundwork</i> III has become it is surprising that Allison's final chapter does not <i>only</i> focus on this question. However Allison also includes here an account of the way Kant concludes the <i>Groundwork</i> by describing the limit of practical philosophy though this account is certainly much less interesting than that of the "deduction" and it is the latter that will be the focus of this posting.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is the fourth section of <i>Groundwork</i> III that is headlined "how is a categorical imperative possible?" and it is here that the focus on the reading of the "deduction" of the categorical imperative is based. As Allison puts it: "Since every imperative involves a necessitation...of the will, to account for its possibility is to account for this necessitation" (332). With regard to the categorical imperative we have a synthetic <i>a priori</i> proposition and accounting for the necessitation requires showing that the imperative is, as Allison puts it, "practically possible" by which is meant that it expresses something whose binding character can be shown.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the opening paragraph of the fourth section of <i>Groundwork </i>III Kant discusses the sense in which rational beings are forms of "intelligence" and indicates that if we were merely members of the world of understanding all our actions would conform 'perfectly' with the principle of autonomy of the pure will. Kant also goes on to claim later that the world of understanding contains the "ground" of both the world of sense and of its laws and purports to use this claim to show that as a being of intelligence I am therefore bound by the laws of the world of understanding. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Allison's analysis of the "deduction" argument begins with the claim that thinking beings place themselves in the world of the understanding but adding to this the point that it is only if such beings also have will that the argument can begin. The next step of the argument, for Allison, is the claim that the self, considered as an active being, possesses spontaneous causal power so that, when viewed as an intelligence, it is seen to be a causal agent. The third key step is that actions, when considered thus to be originated by the agent in question so viewed are part of the "space of reasons". Fourthly, this aspect of the self is contrasted with the empirical one which is governed by reference to "happiness".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Allison's major interpretative move, however, concerns the fifth and final step of the argument as he views it, a step he breaks down into two sub-steps. The first sub-step is concerned with the claim that the world of understanding contains the "ground" of that of sense. The key question with regard to this claim concerns the way the grounding relation is to be understood. Following his general deflationary manner of reading Allison dismisses the idea that this should be seen in a "metaphysical" way as a causal claim. However in addition to the general philosophical reasons Allison possesses for resisting this reading he adds an important normative one to the effect that such a reading provides no binding ground for accepting the validity of the "laws" of understanding. What is needed instead of such a reading is thus one that does show the ground of validity of these laws.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Hence it is not only "ground" that needs to be given an account of but also "laws" in the sense that there could be a "law" of understanding that was validly taken to be binding by a sensible being. In the <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i> this question drove the argument of the transcendental deduction, the schematism and the general Analytic of Principles. From the argument of this part of the <i>Critique</i> we arrived at an account of the conditions of possibility of experience and the analogy between this procedure and that undertaken here in <i>Groundwork</i> III would appear to be that the latter text must provide an additional way of viewing the "possibility of experience" that allows us now to see a way in which there is included amongst "experience" the working of moral law (in the shape of the categorical imperative). Since the will belongs also to the world of understanding it would seem that Kant views it as the basis for providing laws that have to be added to those laid out in the <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The second sub-part of the fifth claim is where Allison finds the "crux" of the argument. Here Kant includes the claim that the being of sense is nonetheless subject to the laws of understanding which Allison argues are intended to be seen as holding simultaneously with the laws of the type described in the <i>Critique of Pure Reason</i>. This is followed by a paragraph that Allison sees as "explaining" the deduction apparently now given. It opens by declaring that categorical imperatives are "possible" but Allison views this claim as only being that we have had provided to us a reason for thinking that the categorical imperative is a necessary and not a sufficient condition of the argument that the idea of freedom makes me a member of an intelligible world. Further it is the "idea" of freedom only that makes one a member of such a world. Being a member of such a world is seen by Allison as having the mere intellectual capacity to think the idea of such freedom.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However Allison's conception of the "explanation" of the deduction runs into a problem with the appearance of a "sollen" (or "ought") that arises next when Kant states that I "ought" to conform my actions to the laws of the intelligible world. Allison thinks this move is here introduced illegitimately since all Kant has shown are epistemological grounds for being in two "worlds" and that a normative requirement does not arise from this alone. Part of the problem here is that Kant had earlier suggested that entirely belonging to the world of understanding would have produced the outcome that one simply "would" have followed the laws of understanding, a point that appears to render these laws, as Allison says, "vacuous". Allison argues that the problem with the text at this point arises from Kant not yet having explicitly to hand the distinction developed later in the <i>Religion</i> between two aspects of the "will". </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Kant next provides an account that is meant to give a basis for "confirmation" of the deduction and involves the awakening of a "scoundrel" to consciousness of the moral law. The claim of how this takes place in <i>Groundwork</i> III is, however, contrasted negatively with the parallel discussion in the <i>Critique of Practical Reason</i> by Allison. In <i>Groundwork</i> III Kant appears to state that it is the idea of freedom alone which suffices to change the standpoint of the scoundrel. By contrast, in the <i>Critique of Practical Reason</i> the "fact of reason" is invoked to provide the basis for a view that one does stand independent of determination by sensuous needs. This passage, even so amended, is, however, less plausible as a piece of moral psychology than Kant provides later in the <i>Religion</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">When Allison turns to assessing the deduction as he has reconstructed it he begins with the question of how to understand the argument that the world of "understanding" provides a ground for that of sense that enables a normative claim to be made on behalf of the former. Key to this is the point that the difference between the two is centred in the argument of <i>Groundwork</i> III on the self alone. This enables Allison to make the point that we need not view the supremacy of the "world" of understanding as a claim about a specific "realm" separate from that of sense. Further at Ak. 4: 458 Kant speaks of the distinction between the two "worlds" as that of a change in "standpoint". This change requires us to view ourselves as capable of legislating laws and having the capacity to recognise our own legislation as binding upon us. When we look at the "two standpoints" practically Allison adds we can give the "law" of understanding a content by means of the moral law. Such "laws" can also then be understood as "reasons". </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Allison also looks at the question of whether there is some specific non-empirical "interest" which supports the moral law and admits that it is impossible to account for the possibility of one. So Allison does not think Kant resolves or is capable of resolving this problem. However this leads to the question of the boundary of practical philosophy since this boundary is reached in terms of arguing that it is impossible to demonstrate the impossibility of freedom. Freedom is only an idea, not an "absolute reality" and it rests, for Allison, on viewing the relationship between a subject and an action in divergent ways. Part of Kant's defence of this claim was that it is essentially recognised within common human reason itself. The world of understanding, considered from a practical point of view, is the world of the will and this point requires us, given the general picture of the world, to see the will as something non-empirical. This supports the point that the "standpoint" of freedom is one that reason takes up in order to be able to think of itself practically.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However when Allison looks at the final passages of <i>Groundwork</i> III he argues that Kant here weakens some of the claims made earlier in the same section. Kant here states that the question of the possibility of the categorical imperative can be answered "to the extent that one can state the presupposition on which alone it is possible" (Ak. 4: 461). This "presupposition" is the idea of freedom. Allison's point is that this claim involves accepting that the deduction provides only a necessary condition of the possibility of the categorical imperative not conditions that are sufficient to account for its actual possibility. Thus it would appear, on this view, that the argument of <i>Groundwork</i> III is of less moment than it initially appears to be. This points, for Allison, to the superiority of the account of the "fact of reason" in the <i>Critique of Practical Reason</i>. Indeed the commentary Allison provides to the <i>Groundwork</i> ends with the claim that this work is "in many ways a transitional as well as a foundational work". </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Allison's account of the third part of the <i>Groundwork</i> in his commentary on it is instructive as the deflationary view of transcendental idealism that is Allison's hallmark is used here primarily to buttress the sense that the transcendental distinction has a primarily practical significance. However the conception that arises of the argument of the third part of the <i>Groundwork</i> is certainly a disappointing one and worth contrast in subsequent postings with quite different readings to that of Allison.</span></div>
Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-34701341273578259482013-02-10T22:22:00.000+00:002013-02-10T22:22:56.842+00:00Allison and *Groundwork* III<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In Chapter 11 of his commentary on the <i>Groundwork</i> Allison looks at two questions concerning the interpretation of the third section of the work. On the one hand, he assesses the way freedom is discussed here and on the other looks at the nature of the apparent "circle" the argument reaches at a crucial point. In looking at these points in Chapter 11 Allison prepares the way for an account of the "deduction" apparently carried out in <i>Groundwork</i> III. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The first point Allison makes is that Kant does not really attempt to "prove" the reality of freedom but only the need to "presuppose" it (thus disagreeing with the view of Karl Ameriks who assimilates the argument of <i>Groundwork</i> III to certain passages from lectures in the 1770s). The "presupposition" in question is a necessary one in the sense that morality expresses a law for every rational being as such and so its principle must be bound up in an <i>a priori</i> fashion with the will of such a being. One of the reasons for taking this to be true is that it is requisite rationally to be able to act and one does so under the "idea" of freedom. The "idea" in question is understood by Allison to be freedom in the sense of transcendental spontaneity, the ability, that is, to begin a series absolutely. However this is not equivalent for Allison to the claim that it is necessary to "believe" that one is free or to the fictive claim that this freedom is "heuristic". Rather the idea in question is one which is a necessary product of reason and is thus possessed of objective validity. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Not only is this the case but the idea of freedom also has normative force and acting in accordance with it places one in the "space of reasons". The use of this Sellarsian vocabulary is particularly interesting given that Allison connects the question of freedom to reason in two respects, both theoretical and practical. The understanding is the source of spontaneous grasp of truth (as given in the German for "concept") and it does this in a rule-governed way which is part of its internal operation. Similarly freedom in a practical sense is a product of the internal operation of the will. However whilst Kant's argument, as construed by Allison, appears to lead at this point to the conclusion that there is operative a practical reason whose "reality" we can show, the argument instead takes the turn that leads towards the "circle" that stops its progression in the manner that appears obvious.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Allison's account of the move the argument of <i>Groundwork</i> III takes at this point is grounded on the view that all that has been established up until now is a conditional claim. Freedom has not, as yet, been shown to be actual and the consciousness of autonomy is not one whose binding validity has been shown. So the establishment of the supreme principle of morality has not been achieved and thus the reason for departing from empirical interests has not been conclusively given. This is why Kant speaks now (at Ak. 4: 453) of a "hidden circle" having been apparent in the argument up to this point. Kant's reference to this "circle" is one that has puzzled many including Paton whose commentary Allison cites as a case of misrepresentation of Kant's argument. Allison understands the "circle" to consist in an inference from freedom to autonomy or from negative to positive freedom. However this does mean that Kant was not previously really guilty of arguing in a "circle" but only of begging the question in the sense of taking freedom to have an immediate certainty. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In preparing the way for the resolution of the "circle" in question Kant discusses the notion of "two standpoints" and the rest of Allison's chapter is devoted to looking at the way these standpoints are characterised in <i>Groundwork</i> III. This distinction is one that has to be shown not to be merely an <i>ad hoc</i> device and Kant aims also to show that it is recognised by common understanding although the latter claim is regarded by Allison as dubious. The account of the distinction between appearances and things in themselves is drawn crudely enough in <i>Groundwork</i> III however and it may be, as Allison suggests, that the reason for this crudity is precisely to make the distinction one that can be related to "common understanding". It does, however, also include the distinction between two aspects of the agent, one that certainly seems at variance with "common understanding" but which is justified to it by means of the difference between active and passive aspects of the self. The active element includes the sense of spontaneity in the production of ideas, a capacity not sensibly conditioned. However the question of whether this consciousness is illusory has to be addressed. This is where the claim that all Kant is showing is that freedom is a necessary "presupposition" comes in for Allison since the presupposition is one that we have a warrant for adopting inasmuch as we consider ourselves as members of the intelligible world. This provides, on Allison's reading, a basis for claiming a "deduction" of the "moral law" though not the categorical imperative given his commitment to a "double deduction" reading.</span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-72782164359253608462013-01-28T16:33:00.002+00:002013-01-28T16:33:53.326+00:00Kant and the Laws of Nature<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It seems that there is a network of researchers who have been established now to address the theme announced in our headline. Their work is funded by the <a href="http://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/">Leverhulme Trust</a> and is coordinated by <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/philosophymassimi/">Michela Massimi</a>. Go <a href="http://kantandlaws.com/">here </a>for their blog. This promising venture focusing on one of the central topics of Kantian philosophy is well worth encouraging!</span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-82729713427988739152013-01-03T22:15:00.000+00:002013-01-03T22:15:12.110+00:00Rawls on Construction and Objectivity<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Rawls' third lecture on Kantian constructivism, as printed in <i>The Journal of Philosophy</i>, culminates the series he gave on this topic and addresses methodological contrasts between constructivism and some other views of moral theory. The central conception of Kantian constructivism has turned out to be the establishment of a connection between the first principles of justice and the conception of moral persons as possessed of freedom and equality. The connection is made by means of the procedure of construction by which rationally autonomous agents "subject to reasonable conditions" arrive at public principles. In concluding with a discussion of objectivity Rawls intends to secure the philosophical status of the constructivist procedure. This includes the basis for the view that principles of justice are best thought of as reasonable rather than true.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The first part of the third lecture consists in Rawls' summary of the work of Henry Sidgwick <i>The Methods of Ethics</i>. This work is the one that Rawls thinks of as being an "outstanding achievement" in moral theory. In making this claim Rawls also indicates what he takes "moral theory" to consist in: "the systematic and comparative study of moral conceptions" (554). Moral philosophy, by contrast, is wider since it takes its main question to be one of justification whether this is seen epistemologically or practically. Sidgwick's work is one Rawls thinks of as the "first truly academic work in moral theory" (554) which defines some of the comprehensive comparisons important to it. Sidgwick saw that moral theory was significant for moral philosophy but his work is seen as limited in at least two crucial ways by Rawls. The first key limitation in Sidgwick's approach according to Rawls is that he gives little attention to the conception of the person and the social role of morality. The reason for this is that Sidgwick assumed that a "method" of ethics is specified by first principles that aim at reaching true judgments. So justification is seen as a primarily epistemological problem.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The focus on truth does not only lead Sidgwick in this epistemic direction but it also leads him to restrict attention to first principles rather than to articulating views of the person and the social role of morality. Due to these elements of his view of "methods" of ethics Sidgwick does not articulate constructivism as a method. Sidgwick also failed to see that Kant presents us with a distinctive method of ethics since Sidgwick understood the categorical imperative as equivalent to a principle of equity that requires treating persons similarly in similar situations. Because Kant's view is not regarded as providing us with a "method" of ethics Sidgwick is left counting only egoism, intuitionism and utilitarianism as real methods says Rawls. In making this statement Rawls is wrong since he leaves out Sidgwick's view of common sense morality, something of cardinal significance in <i>The Methods of Ethics</i>. In claiming also simply that Sidgwick "favours" the utilitarian method Rawls also neglects here the large scope Sidgwick subsequently gives to intuitionist elements in his treatment. But Rawls is certainly right to claim that Kant is given no sustained analysis by Sidgwick who spends more time on replying to Kant's view of freedom than he does to any clear account of the central elements of Kant's moral theory.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">After opening with this discussion of Sidgwick Rawls moves on to a contrast between Kantian constructivism as conceived in these lectures with rational intuitionism. Rational intuitionism is presented here as grounded on two views. These are, firstly, that the central moral concepts are not analyzable in nonmoral terms and, secondly, that first principles of morals are self-evident. So it follows from these claims that agreement in judgment would be based upon recognition of self-evident truths about good reasons with these reasons fixed by a moral order that is independent of and prior to our conception of the person. In characterising intuitionism in this way Rawls sees it as favouring a priority of the good over the right and capturing this priority in terms of the moral order being prior to the person. The contents of the doctrine that ensue can be varied for intuitionists and now he outlines a sense in which utilitarian views could even be said to follow from them. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The point of discussing intuitionism is to indicate that heteronomous conceptions of morality need not be naturalistic. And heteronomy is now presented by Rawls as the claim that the basic truths of morality are independent of (or justifiable without reference to) a conception of the person. A Kantian claim, which includes the notion of synthetic a priori judgments, is, by contrast, one that requires practical reason to include central formulations of the person. So first principles are related to this sense of the person with the idea of it being embedded in the notion of practical reason in some way. By contrast the conception of the person for an intuitionist is much more sparse. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If the view of the person is one of the means by which intuitionism can be contrasted with Kantian constructivism the other that Rawls considers concerns the limitations of moral deliberations. Constructivists, as viewed by Rawls, do not view the powers of reflection and judgment involved in moral deliberation as fixed in any absolute way. Rather they are reflections of the public culture to which they belong. This is why justice as fairness can be presented through the device of the original position as arriving at public agreements. The conception of justice involved here is one that relates to the framework of deliberation that produces it rather than pre-existing such deliberation. The limitations of such deliberation are reflected also in the narrow arena within which clear agreement is defined as possible, for example, within justice as fairness, the basic structure. Requirements that relate to the subject of justice are also built into the scheme of justice as fairness such as the ability of principles to meet criteria of publicity. In order to meet such requirements principles cannot be above certain levels of complexity. Certain facts are thus rendered irrelevant in consideration of the constraints of the procedure adopted.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In principle also the procedure of constructivism requires as well priority rules of certain sorts such as the priority of justice over efficiency or that of the first principle of justice over the second. The plausibility of these priority rules enables ways of dealing with the complexity of the many prima facie rules that are generally stated. The idea of the basic structure also plays the special role of defining what background justice is understood to be like. Comparisons of what outcomes are better or worse are also enabled by the reference to the notion of primary goods. This latter notion requires some sense of the agents who are to be party to the agreement that can emerge from the original position.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Alongside these constraints of a constructivist procedure is the abandonment of moral truth as the basic pursuit of moral doctrines. No specific principles are assumed to be correct prior to the initiation of the procedure of construction and no moral facts are taken to hold separately from this procedure. The first principles single out what facts would count as reasons of justice. So the procedure of construction of the original position determines what "facts" are to be counted. Constructivism also requires no specific doctrine of truth. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The main ideals of justice as fairness are found in the "model-conceptions" of the well ordered society and the moral person. The original position enables representation of the Reasonable and the Rational and from its constraints the principles of justice emerge for the citizens of a well ordered society. So the procedure of construction has an intimate link to the way that principles of justice appear to be embedded in conditions of our life by means of reflection on that life. These conditions are what Rawls described as the circumstances of justice and consideration of these circumstances as constrained by the sense of what is Reasonable produces, in relation to our "model conceptions" the sense of the principles of justice.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Kantian view, as seen by Rawls, addressees the public culture of a democratic society in order to bring to awareness a conception of the person and social cooperation that is implicit within this culture. This does not mean our society is well ordered since the public conception of justice is disputed within it. But the procedure of construction is one that has to be congruent with elements of our existing culture in such a way that it can meet criteria of public justification. First principles that are presented by constructivism are not "true" but reasonable and what is rather "true" are statements about how derivative principles follow from first principles. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The notion of rational intuition is one that Rawls wishes to argue is an unnecessary one for the attainment of the goal of moral philosophy. Objectivity does not require the standpoint of the universe as Sidgwick suggests. It requires instead a social point of view that is publicly shared or would be in a well ordered society. Such a point of view is what is required within a basic structure and which models the conception of the person within such a structure. The person should be seen not in epistemic but in practical terms, that is, as involved in social cooperation. The means by which this determination of the person operates is through the avenue of potential agreement on public conceptions. Such agreement emerges from a view of the person as possessed of moral powers that articulate a notion of autonomous reflection. It is by these means Rawls hopes to articulate a way past the impasse in contemporary societies about the appropriate way of viewing justice.</span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-34141564531377160072013-01-03T20:15:00.000+00:002013-01-03T20:23:45.282+00:00Rawls on Freedom and Equality<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In <a href="http://kantinternational.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/rawls-on-autonomy.html">my last posting</a> I looked at and provided an exegetical reading of Rawls' first lecture on Kantian constructivism as published in <i>The Journal of Philosophy</i>. In this posting I turn to the second of Rawls' lectures in which he turns from the discussion of autonomy to the views of freedom and equality and how these features of the person are represented in the original position. This lecture also features an extended account of the notion of publicity and its place within a Kantian view.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Rawls opens this second piece however by returning to the "model-conception" of a well-ordered society. In returning to this Rawls points out that the model-conceptions he is discussing are special cases of even more general notions but he does not here undertake to determine the way of describing the latter. A well-ordered society is a self-sufficient association which strives to perpetuate itself but is also a closed system. It is viewed as productive, that is, as giving itself its own means of support and not, as is the case in some utopias, as essentially not in need of labour. The "circumstances of justice" under which it exists are both subjective and objective. The objective form of these is that there is moderate scarcity, the subjective form is that there exists contrary conceptions of the good within the society. Despite the subjective circumstances of justice the citizens of the well-ordered society take their institutions to satisfy their public conception of justice. This point is introduced as the manner in which we can both understand the way that citizens are able to have a dual view of justice and as the basis for a distinction between different levels of the notion of publicity.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Rawls distinguishes three levels of publicity. The first level is in terms of the principles of justice. These principles of justice meet the conditions of institutions defined in <i>Theory</i>. They are accepted by all and the knowledge that they are is itself general. They are also supported by the general consensus beliefs held and so buttressed in an epistemic way by "common sense". Since Rawls is working throughout with the conception of a modern democratic society this includes the methods and practices of scientific inquiry and its findings when taken to be settled. The final level of publicity includes the "complete" justification of the public conception of justice which is also taken to be fully known or at least publicly available. This "full justification" includes the connection between the model-conceptions of the person and social cooperation. A "full publicity condition" is met when a well-ordered society meets all these conditions. Such a full condition expresses fair terms of cooperation and is hence Reasonable.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The full condition is also one that is appropriate, according to Rawls, for the restricted purposes of political justice and may be less compelling for other moral notions. Given the principles of justice apply to the political constitution and to all basic institutions, and that such can shape the character and aims of the members of society, the fundamental terms of this cooperation should answer to the requirements of "full" publicity. When institutions are capable of answering to such requirements citizens can account for their beliefs in them in such a way that their account will strengthen the institutions themselves. Publicity thus ensures that free and equal persons are in a position to accept the background social influences that shape their conception of themselves as persons.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For many other moral notions public agreement cannot be reached so consensus is limited in scope to the public moral constitution and its associated terms of cooperation. With regard to public questions ways of reasoning and forms of evidence have to be presented in such a way that they are generally accessible. The conception of a well-ordered society applies to the notions of the good held by citizens the principle of liberty (effectively toleration) held previously by religion alone. The basis for this is precisely due to the role of publicity in the justification of the principles of justice.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parties to the construction of the original position assess conceptions of justice subject to the constraint that their principles can be public conceptions. The basic level of publicity cannot be met unless there is agreement on rules of evidence and forms of reasoning and these must be limited to those allowed by forms of reasoning as given to "common sense". Unless this stipulation is made no agreement is possible. So, whilst particular views of the good may hold certain institutions and policies to be wrong, the holding of them lacks public force if it does not meet these criteria of common sense (or public reason). Agreement within the original condition is thus not just on principles of justice but also on the ways of reasoning and rules of weighing evidence. The subjective circumstances of justice thus determine ways in which agreement can be articulated.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The second level of publicity concerns the way that general beliefs of social theory and moral psychology enter which is as publicly known to the parties to the construction. Citizens are aware of the factors that support the principles of justice as stated in forms that are common. This does not mean all factors that might support such beliefs are admissible within the process of reasoning since those which belong to controversial doctrines or are stated in ways which cannot avoid such controversy are not public doctrines in Rawls' sense. The articulation of the agreed principles of justice is not required to overcome the subjective circumstances of justice. Rather, it is assumed that only coercion could overcome such circumstances and this would subvert the point of reaching agreement. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Rawls' careful articulation of public doctrines does not require decision on the truth of the doctrines disallowed public roles. It does however play a role in indicating that whilst fundamental disagreement may never be overcome that such disagreement need not have adverse effects in society. The fundamental principles need to be justified in ways that are impartial to the differences within society if the subjective circumstances of justice are to be respected. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Only after these points about publicity and public reasoning have been stated does Rawls turn to the account of freedom and equality that is the principal purpose of the second part of his treatment. Moral persons were argued in the first part to be moved by higher-order interests to exercise moral powers. Within a well-ordered society citizens are free in the sense that they hold themselves entitled to make claims on the design of social institutions. Such claims are based on the self-conception persons have within this society which is that they take themselves to be self-originating sources of valid claims. A second aspect of freedom is that free persons recognize each other as having the moral power to form and articulate a conception of the good. Following from this second element of freedom is that citizens, <i>as</i> citizens, are assumed to have a reflective capacity to reflect on and to alter any final ends they have. Another way of putting this second element of freedom is that the citizens are essentially independent of the particular conceptions of the good they espouse since their public identity is not dependent on any particular such view. In private life such a conception does not apply since privately we take our views to be integral to our identity but this does not affect the public ideal of social cooperation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Returning to the notion of a well-ordered society Rawls next states that we assume in this that citizens are fully cooperating members of it over the course of their life so the ideal of it does not include special conditions that prevent this being actualized at given times. This helps to make clearer the notion of equality that is here being worked with which states that the public conception of justice is one that all are capable of honouring and of being participants in. All are thus viewed as equally worthy of being represented in any procedure that determines the principles of justice that regulate the basic institutions of society. This does not mean that we don't allow, in the structure of the society, for the fact that some, by virtue of special abilities, may be better qualified to hold offices and positions but only that all, as equal citizens, are assumed to have a sense of justice that is equally sufficient relative to what is required of them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Rawls next returns to the original position and observes that within it the two powers of moral persons are represented formally as, for example, we do not here give any specific content to the sense of justice possessed to parties within it. So the first power means here only that all participants can follow the most reasonable conception of justice. The second capacity is similarly presented formally meaning that the parties are assumed to be able to have a sense of the good. But parties are also here determinate persons in the sense that both these powers would, after the removal of the veil of ignorance, have specific content. But there is no antecedent principles external to the argument of the position to which anyone has to refer to derive their principles. Freedom as independence is represented in how the parties give priority to guaranteeing the conditions for realizing their highest-order interests. Given that parties can stand above their conceptions of the good and judge them they are independent from them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Kantian conception of the veil of ignorance is also stated by Rawls to involve this veil being "thick". It is not only, as with Hume, that we wish to prevent parties from reasoning according to threat advantage. We further wish to prevent specific given notions of the good from being decisive in determining the basis for general agreement. This thicker veil is thus intended to ensure the fullest recognition of the equal status of persons by preventing even the higher-order (but not highest-order) interests of some from weighing more than others. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Equality is represented within the original position by taking rights and powers within the procedure of it to be distributed to all. The only relevant feature here is that the capacity for moral personality is fulfilled and accidents of fortune are given no place within the construction. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Rawls unhappily concludes the second lecture with two misleading contrasts between his approach as articulated here and Kant's own views. The first contrast is between the primacy of the social in the view and the "individual" focus of the Categorical Imperative. This contrast is misleading since Rawls argues that the principles of social justice are understood by Kant to follow from personal considerations of a sort that weigh in moral decisions strictly so called. In fact the supreme principle of right is not derived from such personal considerations even though it is clearly related to the Categorical Imperative itself. The basis of such derivation is a lengthy and difficult question but suffice it to say that the rationale for treating one in relation to the other concerns the overall conditions for the possible sustaining of just relations and is not grounded on personal matters. Rawls' suggestion to the contrary here is based on a very loose reading of the Doctrine of Right, a work he nowhere gives any sustained interpretation of, including, surprisingly, in his lectures on political philosophy (which don't include lectures on Kant).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The second contrast concerns the relationship between Rawls' notion of the "full" publicity requirement and Kant's idea of the "fact" of reason. Here Rawls is emphasizing that his view of autonomy is based on the way that publicity conditions enable it to be given form. By contrast he takes the "fact" of reason to just imply a mysterious basis to autonomy. In fact Kant's account of publicity (as stated in <i>Perpetual Peace</i>) has no essential relationship to the idea of autonomy in his moral philosophy and nor does Kant model political philosophy by it though he does instead discuss a relationship between freedom and independence that has correlates with Rawls' view of full autonomy. Rawls' comparison here mixes up levels of articulation of his doctrine by reference to Kant's and is singularly unhelpful in enabling a relationship between them to be stated.</span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-32142841770636217142013-01-03T15:40:00.000+00:002013-01-03T15:48:28.994+00:00Rawls on Autonomy<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In 1980, almost a decade after publishing <i>A Theory of Justice</i>, Rawls delivered three lectures on the topic of "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory" which were subsequently published in <i>The Journal of Philosophy </i>(from which page numbers are given). Over a series of postings I intend to present an exegesis of these lectures beginning here with the first which concerns the distinction between what Rawls terms "rational" and "full" autonomy. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In opening the first lecture Rawls refers to the need to consider aspects of justice as fairness that he has not previously emphasised and to "set out more clearly the Kantian roots of that conception". This rationale for the lecture is set alongside a separate one of simply aiming to make the notion of Kantian constructivism more familiar. However the first rationale will be the more important given that what is being made familiar is integrally related to the further working out of the normative implications of <i>A Theory of Justice</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The first part of the first lecture begins with a description of Kantian constructivism as specifying a conception of the person in a reasonable procedure of construction. Otherwise put the constructivist view being advanced sets up a <i>procedure</i> of construction that answers to certain requirements and the latter are understood to have their force in their reasonableness. Essentially the idea is to buttress the apparatus of <i>Theory</i> by showing how there is a connection between the person, as understood in a certain way, and the first principles of justice. The connection is by means of "a procedure of construction". </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Having begun by stating this point about the relation between the sense of the person and the first principles of justice Rawls goes on to argue that the conditions for justifying the latter require a public culture that is capable of sustaining them. In the absence of a sufficient basis for agreement amongst citizens the task of specifying a principle of justice becomes one of showing what is most reasonable to accept given a conception of the person. Within "democratic culture" as Rawls understands it here, which understanding is very broad, it is a sense that persons have moral capacities of a sort that is key. These moral capacities are what permit us to sustain the idea of treating persons as free and equal. If there is dispute at present over the way in which justice is centrally understood democratically then the Kantian procedure has to be one of demonstrating which principles of freedom and equality most reasonably meet the conditions of potential agreement.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Phrasing the beginning of his inquiry in terms of democratic culture ensures that Rawls conceives of his inquiry in a restricted way. It is not trans-historical but rather an inquiry </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">concerned with modern conditions and it is not trans-cultural as it assumes the basic shape of democratic society. Further there is a form of hermeneutic at work in the inquiry being undertaken that expresses the view that there is at least a desire for agreement on the basic principles of justice. This desire for agreement is traced back here to the notion of "common sense" with Rawls assuming that it is either the case that we need to articulate the notions inherent within it or to propose to it instead conceptions and principles that are congenial to its "essential" form. As he further puts this:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The real task is to discover and formulate the deeper bases of agreement which one hopes are embedded in common sense, or even to originate and fashion starting points for common understanding by expressing in a new form the convictions found in the historical tradition by connecting them with a wide range of people's considered convictions: those which stand up to critical reflection. (518)</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The way the process of disinterring from common sense the resolution of the problem modern democratic culture is apparently faced with is by means of articulation, in the first instance, of a conception of the person that is affirmed within this culture or that will be acceptable to those formed by it once critical reflection on it has taken place.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So Rawls is concerned with a "public conception" of justice that can be affirmed by all who regard their person in a certain way. This idea is part of the way that Rawls now understands the notion of "congruence" as what has to be provided is a conception of justice that fits our "deeper understanding of ourselves and our aspirations". This entails then that it fits the way that moral psychology resonates with us. This is reinforced by the view that the history and traditions embedded in this public life are resonant with the reasonable doctrine that is so uncovered. This does have a radical implication: "Apart from the procedure of constructing the principles of justice, there are no moral facts"</span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">(519).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">After introducing the topic like this Rawls next specifies the way in which the conflict within democratic culture is understood by him although the ways he characterises this conflict is not singular. It is between two different traditions and one of them is associated with Locke, the other with Rousseau. However Rawls also refers to the difference Benjamin Constant spoke of between the liberties of the moderns and the liberties of the ancients with Locke associated with the moderns (and thus Rousseau with the ancients). The modern Lockean conception is concerned with civil liberties especially liberties of thought and conscience and also property rights and rights of association. The other ancient Rousseauist conception begins instead from equal political liberties and views civil liberties as subordinate. This appears to imply, in Kant's own terms, that Locke essentially provides the rudiments of a doctrine of private right whilst Rousseau provides one of public right and the task is bringing them together (as Kant sought to do in the Doctrine of Right).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now in working out a way of specifying notions of freedom and equality that bring together these traditions Rawls introduces the idea of "model-conceptions" as embedded in his notion of justice as fairness. The two key notions in question are those of the "well-ordered society" and a "moral person". The "original position" is now presented as a third model-conception that mediates between the other two (and hence provides us with the means of understanding the process of construction). The means by which the "original position" works is by showing ways in which the citizens of a well-ordered society would have, using the capacities of moral persons, selected the principles that created their own society.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the original position we begin, however, with a more restricted sense of the persons within it as being only rationally autonomous whereas the citizens of the well-ordered society would be fully autonomous. Rationally autonomous agents are those who possess the powers of formulation of hypothetical imperatives. Before proceeding further with a discussion of rational autonomy, however, Rawls first proceeds to describe the well-ordered society. Such a society would be regulated by a public conception of justice in the sense formulated by his account of institutions in the first section of <i>Theory</i>. This conception would be one understood to be accepted by all and known to be so shared. Further the basic structure of the society would be taken to actualize the conception of justice so understood and would be founded on reasonable beliefs. Within this arrangement the members of the society would treat each other as free and equal moral persons.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Moral persons would all possess the capacity to have a sense of justice and would have an equal right to determine the first principles of justice on which their society was governed. The freedom of these persons would consist in their ability to make claims on the design of institutions in the name of their fundamental aims and higher-order interests. The view of the well-ordered society is used to provide constraints on the way the original position should be set up as the idea that persons are free and equal has to be given place within the original position. In so beginning it operates fairly between persons and thus we have the idea that the procedure in question will settle the principles of justice fairly, an idea that is captured in the notion of justice as fairness.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Rawls' means of picturing the original condition is augmented, as in <i>Theory</i>, by the use of the device of the veil of ignorance. It is intended that the introduction of this device will ensure fairness between persons and thereby provide what Rawls terms "pure procedural justice". The principles of justice are to be constructed by a process of deliberation in which no antecedently given principles are given any particular weight. It is clear though that if a principle weighs heavily against rational assessment of interests it would be rejected. If the citizens of a well-ordered society are such as would regard themselves as moral persons then the parties to the original position must be such as to enable this self-conception to arise.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Having stated this much Rawls describes the capacities he takes to be essential to having moral powers. These are the capacity for an effective sense of justice on the one hand and the capacity to form and revise a rational conception of the good on the other. Persons have higher-order interests to realize and exercise these powers. These interests are then the ones that supremely have to be regulative of how the operation of the original condition is defined. We take the parties also to be "developed" morally in the sense that they aim at particular conceptions of the good. There is also a higher-order interest that each has of being able to prosecute this but this interest is not highest-order like that of realizing and exercising moral powers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">For the veil of ignorance not to prevent recognition of the powers so described we have to specify a means by which rational agreement can plausibly be reached. This is by means of an account of primary goods which will provide a yard-stick by means of which the parties to the original position can evaluate conceptions of justice. The primary goods are described here as including basic liberties (of Lockean sort), freedom of movement, powers and prerogatives of offices, incomes and wealth as all-purpose means and the social bases of self-respect. Primary goods are in general singled out as those generally necessary all-purpose means to enable us to realize and exercise our moral powers. The specified highest-order interests of persons thus select what is to count as a primary good.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So when we state that conceptions that would fail to recognise the <i>interests</i> of the parties to the agreement would fall, we are referring not to <i>material</i> interests, but rather to the interest they all have in enabling each other to develop and protect their moral powers. In the original position, therefore, the parties to the agreement are autonomous in not being bound beforehand by any given conception of justice but also in being moved solely by their highest order interests. This is what Rawls understands as the "rational autonomy" of the parties.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Full autonomy, by contrast, requires a further specification of social cooperation. Rawls argues that the notion of social cooperation contains two elements. The first is a sense of the fair terms of cooperation and these include conditions of reciprocity and mutuality. This element of cooperation is what Rawls now terms the <i>Reasonable</i>. The other element of cooperation, by contrast, is what he calls the <i>Rational</i>. The rational element of social cooperation concerns what each party to the cooperation in question is hoping to achieve by means of this cooperation. In the original position we have determined the rational by means of higher-order interests and acting rationally in relation to these interests includes adopting principles of instrumental reason. The Reasonable, by contrast, is incorporated into the background setup of the original position including in the sense that this position has to meet conditions of publicity.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The original position is set up to represent the minimum adequate notions of moral personality and when to this is added the sense equals in all relevant respects are to be treated equally this idea is meant to ensure that the original position is described in a way that is fair to all members of the agreement. The first subject of justice is also to be the basic structure of society or its main social institutions. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The summation of the remarks Rawls presents here about the Reasonable and the Rational are to the effect that the Reasonable presupposes and subordinates the Rational. The Reasonable defines the fair terms of cooperation but it presupposes the Rational as without a sense that there are distinct conceptions of the good there is no real point to such cooperation. It restates essentially the argument made in <i>Theory</i> for the priority of the right over the good.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Full autonomy is a moral ideal that is part of the comprehensive ideal of the well-ordered society. Rational autonomy, by contrast, is the device by means of which the conception of the person is related to the procedure of arriving at definite principles of justice. </span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-26469520363847282072012-12-20T11:09:00.000+00:002012-12-20T11:09:03.071+00:00Herman on Mutual Aid (II)<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In <a href="http://kantinternational.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/herman-and-mutual-aid-i.html">the previous posting</a> I began to look at Barbara Herman's reconstruction of Kant's argument for beneficence in the <i>Groundwork</i>. In this posting I want to look at the second part of Herman's argument and respond to some elements of it. If the first part of her reconstruction concentrated primarily on providing a response to prudential readings of Kant's argument, the second part, by contrast, attends to some questions that emerge from her alternative reconstruction.</span><div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Herman mentions, for example, Kant's rationale for including some sense of "true needs" in his view of beneficence given that he has apparently "excluded" empirical considerations from his argument. The basis for Kant being able to do both these things is, claims Herman, due to the way he understands the "exclusion" of empirical considerations. On the one hand, empirical considerations are not meant to account for the "foundations" of morality. This is based on Kant's view that reason itself is not to be understood on empiricist lines. Connected to this point is the distinct claim that moral requirements are separate from any contingent and empirical ends we may possess. These claims about the "exclusion" of empirical considerations need not entail (and does not for Herman) that the "content" of morality has no relation to the empirical nature of things.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Despite having made this clarificatory comment about Kant's "exclusion" of empirical data from his view of morality Herman admits that the presence of claims about agential dependence in her reconstruction of the argument for beneficence might still trouble us. After all, what is to prevent there being rational agents who are not dependent in the way we humans appear to be. Given this possibility it would appear that factors trading on contingent characteristics have been given undue weight in her reconstructed argument and this is important given that the categorical imperative is meant to apply to all rational beings. However, in reply, Herman argues that whilst the fundamental categorical imperative would apply to all rational beings this does not entail that the same duties would emerge from the application of it for all rational beings. So there would be rational beings that would not have the duty of beneficence despite being subject to the categorical imperative.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This implication of Herman's account is somewhat surprising and reveals that her claim about indispensable ends is anthropologically inflected. The duty of mutual aid emerges for her as one that attaches to beings that are dependent on each other in the way that humans are. Another surprising element of her view is that the claim of mutual aid can be said to be met if it is recognised as valid even should it be the case that no aid is able to be given. This latter claim involves saying that the claim is "met" in a sense if it is recognised that someone is of the class of persons and hence we can see that their claim is one we should meet if we can. Even though it may be we cannot meet their claim the act of recognition of its validity is a kind of way in which it is acknowledged and this itself appears to Herman to matter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This second surprising element of Herman's argument is one to which she pays more attention than the first surprising element. Seeing a claim as "valid" is seeing that it is right that the need it expresses be considered she states and this does not entail that the claim even should be met. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The next element of Herman's account worth remark is that she takes the duty of mutual aid to be one that is indeterminate with regard to action. It expresses what she calls a "general policy maxim" which expresses a form of intent with regard to the formation of specific maxims of action. The intent is that the specific maxims of action should take the general policy to guide their formulation. This view of the way the duty works is now used to begin to formulate what Herman takes to be the casuistry of mutual aid.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In outlining this casuistry Herman argues that the way a maxim is to be understood is in terms of what is "behind" a maxim. So, using the example of refusing to give to charity, she articulates the very different reasons that might lead someone to adopt such a policy and argues that the general policy behind the specific adoption of this view is what matters. The lesson of this example is then applied to other examples including the reason why someone who has ability and opportunity to help another does not do so on a specific occasion. Acknowledging another's need as a claim on one is taking it to provide a reason why one should help them. Relevant reasons for failing to act on the claim are introduced in the context of competing claims. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The basis of mutual aid is revealed for Herman to be the preservation and support of persons in their activity as rational agents. The basis of refraining from helping others in general is the threat this may pose to our own agency. The same action may therefore be mandated for one and yet not for another so the universality of the duty is not a basis for claiming uniformity of what is required to be done.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A further surprising implication of Herman's account is that if mutual aid really relates to "true needs" then many acts of helping others that we perform are not really acts that are morally mandated and therefore not duties at all. This view is distinct from the claim in the Doctrine of Virtue (Ak. 6: 387-8) that the happiness of others is an obligatory end for us, which implies a more stringent requirement of beneficence than Herman allows. Herman is unhappy with this suggestion since she thinks if interpreted strictly it fails to distinguish between different kinds of need of others. The passage cited from the Doctrine of Virtue is very thin and principally aimed at arguing against the view that I have a duty to promote my own happiness. Herman also has a more moderate view of the passage taking it to mandate no more than possessing a duty of contributing to the meeting of the true needs of others. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The focus on "true needs" as the basis of the requirement of beneficence is a way of distinguishing between the help that morality mandates and that which may be naturally given by a kindly soul but Herman does not wish to present the difference this way since she argues that a full Kantian account of helping would attempt to integrate both types of help. The problem with this is that the view of kindness offered still stands as one on Herman's account that tends to be viewed in terms of inclination as when she refers to it as "good-heartedness". This construal of it assimilates it to the position of the kindly person described as lacking in moral worth in the first part of the <i>Groundwork</i>. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Herman's account of beneficence has, in sum, three difficulties: 1) it surprisingly limits the scope of beneficence to only certain kinds of rational beings; 2) it brings in a view of a relationship between beneficence and kindness that appears to point to a fuller Kantian theory of helping but also undercuts this suggestion; 3) in ruling out more stringent accounts of beneficence it appears to leave a large amount of the filling in of the determinancy of the judgment about this duty to latitude.</span></div>
Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-9698929278407872142012-12-19T15:53:00.000+00:002012-12-19T15:53:10.228+00:00Herman and Mutual Aid (I)<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Apologies to readers of this blog for my extended absence from writing. Various things came up and for a while they created problems with finding time and space for blogging. In returning to the practice I want to look at an essay from the collection on Kant's <i>Groundwork</i> that was e<a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kants-Groundwork-Metaphysics-Morals-Critical/dp/0847686299/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1355926558&sr=1-1">dited by Paul Guyer</a>. The piece I'm going to address here and in the next posting is the one by Barbara Herman on mutual aid (which originally appeared in 1984 in an issue of <i>Ethics</i>).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Herman's piece opens with a long epigraph from the <i>Groundwork</i> (Ak. 4: 423) where Kant relates the question of beneficence to the formula of the law of nature. After citing this Herman claims that it is not a "crude misunderstanding" of the passage to see it as making a "prudential claim" for the duty of beneficence. The example as given relates the duty to the conception of a contradiction in the will and does so by pointing out that the adoption of a maxim of non-beneficence would lead an agent to deprive themselves of the help they will in future need for themselves. The "prudential" understanding of this argument has a substantial history going back to Schopenhauer and being repeated in one way by Sidgwick. It is, despite the evident reasons for championing it, a reading that runs full tilt against the overwhelming general case made in the <i>Groundwork</i> for distinguishing morality from prudential foundations. This general heuristic point gives one a clear reason for rejecting the prudential reading of the beneficence example.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In addition to referring to this heuristic point Herman points out a "double function" of the categorical imperative. One part of this is to "establish" moral requirements, the other is to assess actions and policies whose "permissibility" is uncertain. This "double function" should lead to seeing the use of examples as part of the general case for the duty in question and not as severed from it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Herman's argument subsequently develops a view of the way the test that is given in the example is meant to work. Her overall claim is that the point of it should be to establish that the categorical imperative "correlates well with our considered judgments" (134). This notion of "considered judgments" is unclear since it could involve a notion of "common sense" or it may refer to a "reflective" kind of work that is undertaken on the typical judgments of "common sense". Further Herman refers to the point that Kant takes it that the categorical imperative is, in some way, "embedded" in ordinary judgments as would seem to follow from the argument of the first part of the <i>Groundwork</i>. "Correlation" is not a strong enough link to establish this claim but this claim could itself be interpreted in a similarly dual fashion as requiring either that common sense exhibits the categorical imperative or that a reflective analysis of its operation would demonstrate the categorical imperative whose result therefore would not be equivalent to a descriptive analysis of the operation of common sense.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This first issue is thus far unresolved. The next point that arises concerns the way that Herman views the operation of the procedure of moral judgment. This is done by means of iteration of the method of the "typic" outlined in the <i>Critique of Practical Reason</i> where Kant speaks of construction of a "world" in which the maxim in question has got the status of being a law of nature. If something can't be adopted as such a law without a contradiction of one of two kinds (in either conception or in willing) resulting then the maxim must be rejected. (Herman neglects to engage here in any discussion of the theory of maxims.) The example from the <i>Groundwork</i> involves no contradiction in conception and instead Kant there insists on the notion that there is a contradiction in the will.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The prudential reading of the example produces no specifically moral reason for acting on a maxim of beneficence. It typically instead trades on considerations of the vulnerability to misfortune of the agent with the putatively non-beneficent maxim. But if the argument is a prudential one it follows that there are many situations in which helping others is very inconvenient and that a generalized maxim of non-beneficence might, on the whole, be preferable. It would also produce a non-universalizable conception of beneficence since, as Herman puts it, some might be more whilst others are less willing to "risk it" that they will need and want help in the future. The whole problem seems then to turn into one about insurance and assurance and then the degree of beneficence one is willing to practice becomes dependent upon the way one calculates one's real risks of being in need.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The result of the prudential conception of the beneficence example is that the consideration of it becomes one in which moral actions are viewed in terms of "pay-off" and resultant expectations of well-being and this seems not to capture correctly the intuition we have of the importance of morality in our life. Herman mentions a possible alternative view to the prudential reading of the example as used by Rawls in his lectures on Kant's moral philosophy. Here Rawls invokes his conception of the veil of ignorance but Herman interprets it in terms of the prudential argument for beneficence since it merely makes everyone conservative about risk taking. There are passages where Rawls suggests this in <i>Theory</i> but I don't take this to be his point here. In <i>Theory,</i> as Herman rightly states, the veil of ignorance is used against the backdrop of the "original position" but Rawls makes no reference to the latter when he interprets Kant's moral philosophy in his lectures. So I don't think the "prudential" reading that makes some sense of Rawls' overall political argument is one that is evidently right with regard to his reconstruction of Kant's moral philosophy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Herman's interpretation of Rawls' view of the beneficence argument leads to seeing it as based on a view of the "representative person" rather than on an assessment of the position individuals are placed in. The point of emphasizing the latter is that Kant's examples generally function to counter the typical strategy revealed in many maxims of "exempting" oneself, just for this once, from a rule accepted to hold generally. Seeing the example this way makes the question of testing the maxim of non-beneficence one that is merely a special case of a general problem of egoistic self-preference. This way of seeing the example has the virtue of being close to the prudential reading in one central respect whilst also presenting a case for the prudential reading being wrong overall.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A second element of Herman's resistance to the Rawlsian reading concerns the fact that maxims appear to be tested by Kant as they are willed by the agent and hence the test of them has to include information of a sort ruled out by the veil of ignorance. I am unconvinced by this second "problem" with Rawls' reconstruction since the information that is relevant is only the generic information concerning the rationale for adopting the maxim. It doesn't incorporate specifically individual features into its consideration, the Herman reading, and nor could it or should it. In not doing so however it is no better placed than the Rawlsian reading.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Herman's interpretation turns, not like the Rawlsian one, on a view of information but instead on a view of rationality. Herman wishes to show that the adoption of the maxim of non-beneficence is irrational but not because of its implications of being non-prudential. In presenting an alternative view of the irrationality of the maxim of non-beneficence Herman looks in particular at the qualities of "ends" agents adopt. She wishes to show two qualities of ends that will be sufficient to show the irrationality of the maxim of non-beneficence. These are, firstly, that there are ends that are more important to agents than any alleged benefit derived from the aim of non-beneficence and, secondly, that there are ends that it is not possible for agents to forego. These two claims could be termed the <i>importance claim</i> (as in "importance of what we care about") and <i>indispensable ends</i> claim (ends we cannot fail to have).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So the categorical imperative procedure is viewed by Herman as showing that these two claims hold with regard to our ends. Central to her reconstruction will be showing that the aid of others is something we cannot do without and thus that aiming to maintain relations with others that will ensure that such aid is forthcoming should it be required is an <i>indispensable</i> aim for us. This point requires looking again at the theory of action that Kant outlines in his account of hypothetical imperatives. The conception of these was that means are not contingently connected to ends in the sense that certain kinds of means are essential to the accomplishment of certain kinds of ends. To this Herman adds that we essentially have recourse to three kinds of means: the utilisation of our own powers (as is discussed in the duty of self-improvement), the use of "things" or "objects" and the use of the services of others. Put like this the argument concerning beneficence aims to show that one of the basic conditions of our action incorporates a relation to the services of others.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In response to this Herman conjures up the figure of a "negative Stoic" who is prepared to give up any end that will require the help of others to be realised. Such an agent has taken the Stoical end to be a limit on all other ends. This does require taking this end to have a supreme kind of value and if there are other ends that are also taken to be important the problem with maintaining such a view will be manifested in demonstrating to oneself why this end should always have over-riding value. Not only is this so but whether the conditions faced by this agent are ones that present serious problems for them are not themselves under the agent's control. It may be that one will need help to resist temptations that are very strong and if this is resisted then the maxim of independence may become self-defeating. Whilst this argument doesn't strike me as having conclusive force what it does show is that any given end has to be related to the conditions that enable it to be realized and that one of the elements that have to be considered there is the potential help of others. Cutting oneself off from this seems unreasonable whatever one's ends otherwise are.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Herman's central claim is that there are ends that a rational being cannot give up and this is her gloss on Kant's notion of "true needs". Included amongst these are the need for the help of others given the natural limits on our powers as agents. As Herman puts this: "Because we are dependent rational beings with true needs, we are constrained to act in certain ways" (143). It is not obvious how this argument fails to be a variant on the conception that the duty of beneficence turns out to be something that it is prudent to accept. Herman's view that conditions of agency include the ability to call on the help of others seems right but this ability to call on the help of others is neither always requiring of beneficent acts nor does it mandate the scope of these acts. Further whilst a relation to others does seem to manifest a "true need" there are reasons to think separation from others is also so required (as in Kant's discussion of friendship).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Herman herself, however, appears more concerned with the suggestion that an implausibly stringent requirement of beneficence might be thought to follow from her argument. So she considers a maxim of non-sacrificial beneficence as a means to counter such a result and suggests that it would fail the categorical imperative test. However, in countering the suggestion that such a result points to an implausibly strong duty she argues that what is required when sacrificial help is needed is not "sacrifice" itself but something specific and availability of this latter depends on contingent circumstances. Hence a maxim of non-sacrificial beneficence does not involve a contradiction in the will in the way that a maxim of non-beneficence generically does.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However it might seem that such an argument can be used against the duty of beneficence in general. Whenever help is needed it is something specific that is required not the help as such. Whilst this is true it is only the agency of another that can provide the help in question whatever that is.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">What Herman's argument as shown does do not do is demonstrate that there may not be imprudent consequences from acting in a way that serves our own "true needs". Further she cannot demonstrate that our "true needs" may fail to be met in future because we acted beneficently. So, in an example she considers, it may be that a rich person will give away resources beneficently that will later make it impossible for this person to get an expensive medical treatment that would have had major effects on their life. This fact shows that the argument for beneficence is far from an easy one to sell. Herman herself deals with this in terms of how there is no requirement to meet all contingent circumstances in such cases but only to show what is required for agency to be truly realised. But given that the circumstances of scarcity seem far from "contingent" if they are likely to always hold in an agent's life this argument is not clearly conclusive.</span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-38011480167301490872012-11-29T10:30:00.003+00:002012-11-29T10:31:09.983+00:00Kjartan Koch Mikalsen in *KSO*<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The latest issue of <i>Kant Studies Online</i> has been published and contains a review article by Kjartan Koch Mikalsen (NTNU) of an edited collection <i>Politics and Metaphysics in Kant</i>. The article, like all pieces in KSO, can be freely accessed and downloaded and is available <a href="http://www.kantstudiesonline.net/KSO_Recent.html">here</a>.</span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-37407748966162650432012-10-21T11:13:00.001+01:002012-10-21T11:13:39.431+01:00Adrian Piper in *Kant Studies Online*<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A new article has been published in <i>Kant Studies Online</i>. It is by Adrian M.S. Piper (APRA Foundation) and is entitled: "Reconsidering Kant's Self-Legislation Procedure". It includes, amongst other things, one of the most extensive discussions of formulas of the categorical imperative that you are likely to find. The article can be freely accessed and downloaded <a href="http://www.kantstudiesonline.net/KSO_Recent.html">here</a>. All articles published in the journal are freely available for download and consultation.</span><div>
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Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-85848331860989672712012-09-12T18:40:00.002+01:002012-09-12T18:40:32.168+01:00Donate to *Kant Studies Online*<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The e-journal <i>Kant Studies Online</i> of which I am the Managing Editor now includes on its web-site information intended to make possible donation to the journal to help us with running costs. It lists the bank details of the journal and it would be helpful should any readers wish to donate if you could set up BAC transfers to the account number listed. You can find the info in question <a href="http://www.kantstudiesonline.net/KSO_Donate.html">here</a>.</span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-64231483291571626672012-09-12T18:35:00.000+01:002012-09-12T18:36:04.452+01:00Performance Philosophy<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A new professional association has been formed for the research and study of the idea of "performance philosophy". The idea of this has been construed in a broadly inter-disciplinary way and is not restricted to the usual areas of theatre, dance and performance art though it is evidently intended to encompass them. The group welcomes new members, is free to join and includes the capacity to set up sub-groups and blogs connected to the venture. In solidarity with the venture I've joined and set up a sub-group on an area long of fascination to me, to which however, I have not, as yet tried to provide substantive pieces of work. This is the area of "fashion and performance". You can check out the broad network for this idea <a href="http://performancephilosophy.ning.com/">here</a> and see my new sub-group, which I hope some readers will consider joining there as well.</span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-47965832969134842192012-08-29T16:14:00.002+01:002012-08-29T16:15:21.803+01:00New articles in *Kant Studies Online*<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Two new articles have been published in <i>Kant Studies Online</i>. One is by Gregory Robson from Duke University on the topic of Kant's criticism of the ontological argument for the existence of God and Alvin Plantinga's response to this. The other is by Greg Lynch from Fordham University which concerns the "semantics of self-knowledge" in Kant's Refutation of Idealism. Both articles are freely downloadable and accessible <a href="http://www.kantstudiesonline.net/KSO_Recent.html">here</a>.</span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-1954377466725936192012-08-16T17:48:00.000+01:002012-08-16T17:50:09.841+01:00Parfit on Contractualism<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Chapter 15 of Parfit's <i>On What Matters</i> concerns contractualism and the first part of his re-working of the third 2002 Tanner Lectures <a href="http://kantinternational.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/parfit-kant-and-consequentialism.html">which I treated previously</a>. Contractualism is summarised by Parfit as based principally upon a claim to rational agreement concerning principles all ought to follow. However, whilst this point is relatively uncontroversial, Parfit quickly introduces a methodological reflection on the understanding of such rational agreement that is far from obvious. This is to the effect that the rational agreement in question would be one that produced outcomes that were expectably-best. In focusing on outcomes, and in relating to them in terms of what would be optimal, Parfit assumes that the best test for a contractualist view would be a consequentialist one.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parfit further makes a second assumption that comes out in his very brief account of, and reply to, the work of David Gauthier. Gauthier's Hobbesian form of contractualism is faulted by Parfit for its basic use of a state of nature device. The real problem with this device, on Parfit's view, is that it concedes ground in advance to the inequality of power that exists between people and hence allows a kind of threat advantage to dictate the terms of the resultant agreement. This ensures that many "plain duties" as Parfit calls them are effectively flouted. So this second assumption is to the effect that where there appears to be an intuitive understanding of such "plain duties" that this needs to be accounted for on any plausible contractualist view.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Having these assumptions in hand Parfit turns to examining Rawls' form of contractualism though, notably, the way he approaches Rawls is very narrow. Parfit concentrates not on "justice as fairness" but rather only on "rightness as fairness", the general moral view that Rawls refers to a few times but never systematically developed. Part of Parfit's analysis of Rawls also works on the assumption that Rawls is committed to a desire-based view of reason, an assumption that seems to me faulty. It is not that Rawls assumes "desires" to be the basis of reason but that he does take it that there is a "thin theory" of what all people can be said to want which should guide elementary moral psychology.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parfit looks at different models of the veil of ignorance that Rawls provides and finds fault with the thicker veil that Rawls appeals to. One of the reasons Parfit does this is distinctly odd, however, since he alleges that if there is a good basis for denying knowledge in the original position then such denial should apply as well even to the view that there are inequalities between people (of strength, intelligence, etc) at all. But the extension of the veil in this way has no practical purpose and even foils part of the point in invoking it. This would be the point of ensuring that the result of the procedure of construction of the original position would ensure that the design of the basic structure was most respectful of the worst off. This could not be achieved if we did not assume that there exists such a thing as a group that is worst off. The reason Parfit gets in to this discussion is that he has a prior agenda of bringing Rawls' view as close as possible to utilitarianism and in doing so he continues his methodological move of favouring axiological criteria of morality but this also cuts against the key constraints of the notion of right that Rawls builds into the original position.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">These skirmishes with Rawls are still preliminary to Parfit's key discussion in this chapter which concerns what he terms the "Kantian Contractualist Formula", a formula specified as stating that everyone ought to follow the principles whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally will. This formula is evidently intended as a version of Kant's formula of the kingdom of ends. However Parfit cuts this formula off from the general discussions of contractualism in asserting that it is not based on achieving general agreement. It is instead motivated as a formula that is applied by individuals rather than a group so that the results of many over-lapping thought-experiments are meant to point to a generally agreed result. In arguing for this peculiar move Parfit draws on the Rawlsian argument against utilitarianism which alleges that the problem with the latter view is that it enables some to be sacrificed for the sake of the many. Parfit returns to the basic inequality between persons to reject the search for a rational agreement formula using the example of Gauthier to do so though this is again a pretty odd move given that the process of Rawls' original position does not at all model Gautheir's and shows that search for a rational agreement formula need not favour the strongest over the weakest.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">More interestingly Parfit argues for a contractualist formula that does not suppose rational agreement is possible on the grounds that if unanimity is able to be achieved through a formula that is not based on presupposing it then it will be all the stronger an agreement. However what is assumed instead of such agreement is shared search by everyone for well-being that replaces the Rawlsian focus on primary goods. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parfit proceeds to make two additional moves in the chapter. Firstly he introduces Thomas Scanlon's notion of contractualism according to which everyone should follow the principles that no one can reasonably reject. In introducing this formula however Parfit appears to move away from his earlier recognition of 'plain duties', a recognition that was used against Gauthier. This is done by denying that we should appeal to judgments about what is wrong in applying the contractualist formula and thus removes the ability to appeal to the 'plain duties' that were invoked against Gauthier. Further Scanlon himself states, and Parfit quotes him stating, that the problem with utilitarianism is that it produces results that are starkly at variance with our "widely held convictions", a move that supports the view that there is some ground for thinking that such convictions do affect the evaluation of contractualist formulas and are thus not irrelevant to their application.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In noting this point of Scanlon's Parfit again returns to the principal anti-utilitarian point made by Rawls to the effect that burdens imposed on some just for the benefit of others are prima facie to be rejected. Given judicious use of thought-experiements Parfit moves away from the strict version of this point and tries instead to restrict its application to special cases (such as describe how doctors should treat patients). In so doing the basic force of the principle is weakened. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parfit's final move in the chapter concerns his implicit appeal to common sense restrictions on moral principles and these are now justified in terms of the view that contractualist principles are not themselves sufficient to describe wrong-making properties of actions but that they rather state higher-level properties of wrong-making that are intended to include the lower-level properties. This is meant to give us a reason not to include such lower-level properties in the application of the contractualist principle but rather in evaluation of its application. In making this large concession to intuitive views of what is wrong, however, Parfit also ensures that the examples to which he appeals are ones whose evidential force can be established, something of a tall order.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-22445811501950085932012-07-15T22:02:00.000+01:002012-07-15T22:12:52.159+01:00Parfit, Kant and Consequentialism<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In <a href="http://kantinternational.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/parfit-on-contractualist.html">my last posting on Parfit</a> I discussed the general problems I think there are with his notion of "contractualist consequentialism" as presented in the third of his 2002 Tanner Lectures. In this posting I want to look at the concluding section of this third lecture in order to see how Parfit brings the argument there to a conclusion and to use the discussion of this conclusion to demonstrate again some reasons for thinking that Parfit stacks the deck rather when he reaches the conclusion that Kant gives the basis for a contractualist view that is substantively consequentialist.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parfit opens the final section of this lecture with a statement that whilst Kant was not a consequentialist the argument's point is not to examine the reasons why Kant was not a consequentialist but instead to point to some reasons for taking it to be the case that we can develop a consequentialist view by appealing to some elements of Kant's positions. In making this case Parfit appeals to an important distinction. The distinction is between what he terms Kant's "moral beliefs" on the one hand and the "implications of his principles" on the other. The former are what are involved in Kant's <i>not</i> being a consequentialist on Parfit's view, whilst the latter, by contrast, point to consequentialist conclusions. This distinction is an important one, as we shall see in looking at the concluding phase of Parfit's argument.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parfit's case is built by reference to the principle he extracted from Kant's Formula of Humanity as the first part of it. This principle is what Parfit terms "Kant's Consent Principle" (KCP). The "consent" involved is framed by Parfit as "rational consent" and it is connected to the act consequentialist view that rational consent can be seen as agreement that everyone be treated in ways that would make things go best. If we look at rational consent in this manner, then treating people in a way that implies adoption of an axiological standard of value is equivalent to treating them in ways to which they could rationally consent. One of the points Parfit rushes to make here is, however, meant to assuage a problem Rawls raised against utilitarianism. Rawls indicated that a problem with accepting "classical utilitarianism" was that it required some to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of others and that such a sacrifice was one that the ones being sacrificed could accept only if they were prepared to sacrifice the very point of being in an ethical space at all (so it is connected to his problem with the "separateness of persons"). However Parfit thinks he has a reply here as if the act in question would impose great burdens on some for the sake of greater benefits for others then this act would not make things go best but instead go worse. This is despite the fact that the person in question might "rationally consent" to the act. On this basis Parfit argues that consequentialists don't have to be seen as utilitarians.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The separation of consequentialism from utilitarianism that this argument involves does, however, require, as a consequence that an optimific act is not one that can be assessed only through the prism of rational consent. Rational consent is thus not a means to determine the rightness of the act if such rightness is standardly viewed in terms of optimific understanding. In which case, whilst Parfit thinks that KCP could be accepted by act consequentialists, it is not sufficient as a standard of rightness for them. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parfit, however, takes the argument a different way as he now moves away from the consent principle and back to the principle he earlier termed "Kant's Contractualist Formula" (for which <a href="http://kantinternational.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/parfit-and-kants-contractualist-formula.html">see this earlier posting</a>). The contractualist formula requires that we appeal to principles that everyone could rationally choose and we could not rationally will that everyone accepts act consequentialist principles and so the act consequentialist principle is not one we should act upon. Notably, however, and remarkably, Parfit has here done something that cuts heavily against the grain. He has presented act consequentialism as sufficiently robust that it can provide a defence for the separateness of persons, such a defence that it can be distinguished from utilitarianism, and then, having done this, has used an appeal to contractualist views about universal rational acceptance, to undercut act consequentialism after all. It would, according to standard ways of presenting the moral situation, be rather more apt to say that act consequentialism, like act utilitarianism, is insufficiently robust to prevent appeal to demanding notions of self-denial and then use that to support a view of consent principles that did not view the latter in optimific terms. So Parfit's initial argumentative strategy is, to say the least, very odd.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parfit refers now to the argument Sidgwick famously used that it would be best, from a utilitarian point of view, if not everyone was a utilitarian. This argument, which shows that utilitarianism lacks transparency, is one that Parfit endorses here against act consequentialism. In doing so he appears to appeal to the view that moral beliefs matter in the sense that if we knew it to be true that it would not make things go best if everyone acted in ways dictated by principles of maximising what would go best, we should prefer it that not everyone had the belief that they should make things go best. Indeed, not only does Parfit appear to make this move, but he also uses it to prefer rule consequentialism to act consequentialism since rule consequentialism requires us to act on principles whose acceptance would make things go best even should this be the view that not everyone believe that they should act in ways that make things go best.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parfit now constructs an argument that is meant to move from Kant's "contractualist formula" that we ought to act on principles whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally choose to the conclusion that rule consequentialism is correct on Kantian contractualist grounds. Now there are several stages in this argument which bear close analysis if a response is to be made. The first point to look at is how Parfit views reasons. Parfit introduces and critically interrogates the premise everyone could rationally choose whatever they would have sufficient reason to choose. This premise is interrogated as what we have sufficient reason to choose is argued by Parfit to depend on facts whilst what we rationally choose is, by contrast, based on beliefs. The difference matters since false beliefs give us reasons to choose something that it is not ultimately rational to choose. So the application of Kant's "contractualist formula" requires congruence between beliefs and facts. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The next premise is to the effect that everyone would have sufficient reason to choose that everyone accept the principles whose acceptance would make things go best assuming the congruence we have established as a requirement for this. Now, in critically evaluating this premise, Parfit points to the "impartial reason-involving" sense of normative reason as the basis for viewing how to evaluate whether or not things have gone best. However, in assessing this claim, Parfit also refers back to his earlier distinction between "moral beliefs" and "principles" since he rejects the objection that such a principle might produce immoral action on the grounds that such an objection illegitimately introduces moral beliefs. There is a problem with this reply since it assumes that the contractualist procedure is thus far not loaded or is effectively neutral between different views. But it is not. In taking our standard in terms of an axiological conception of evaluation we have already adopted a consequentialist standard into our reasoning so it is evident such a standard will be our conclusion. If, however, our argument precisely concerns a question about how "rational consent" is to be understood, for example, then we cannot simply stipulate that it be seen in not merely an impartial sense but in terms of a view of impartial reason that is pre-set in terms of outcomes. Viewing impartial reason in terms of outcomes incorporates a "moral belief" into the "neutral" evaluation. And it does so in a way that is then used to appeal to "principles" as if they are not described in ways that are set against other "principles" where the other principles are then merely demoted to the status of "beliefs".</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The reason why Parfit thinks that such a division between "principles" and "beliefs" is stable is because he sees the former as tracking "facts" and making them congruent with "true beliefs" whilst an insistence on "moral belief" <i>simpliciter</i> is simply an argument from what we "already accept". However the reference to "facts" here is one that involves a view of the factual that is itself normatively loaded since it takes factual support to consist in a view about what is axiologically supported and so it is not neutral between views.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parfit argues that in pursuing this strategy he is following a standard contractualist procedure and he even appeals here to the example of Rawls to support him. Rawls, however, when constructing the original position, does so by building the position out of what he termed "formal constraints of the concept of right" and such constraints are not discussed by Parfit. Particularly important from such constraints was a solution formally argued to the "priority problem" with regard to principles. Parfit stipulates a solution by taking axiological criteria to be supreme, something that cuts precisely against his earlier recognition of the point that there is a case to be made against abstracting from the separateness of persons.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parfit next goes on to consider this claim by balancing what he regards as the considerations of personal points of view with those of impartial reason. In doing so Parfit stresses the idea that there are non-self-interested personal reasons which, indeed, there are in terms of different conceptions of the good. However, Parfit does not consider this question in terms of different conceptions of the good but only in terms of personal reasons being seen, if they conflict with impartial ones, as self-interested. Parfit does not consider that personal reasons that oppose what he views as "impartial" reason may also be principled in their opposition. Because of this Parfit simply arrives at the conclusion that it is always optimific to follow impartial reason and that we should accept impartial reasons as personal reasons given that this is so. But this is not evident at all if there are impartial reasons that are non-optimific in form as is the case with non-consequentialist views. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Because Parfit has construed the choice situation in the way he has he cannot avoid the problem of unreasonable burdens that, at the beginning of the discussion, he wished to argue was not a necessary element of consequentialist views. Assuming that one holds a non-optimific view of goodness by means of a conception of the priority of the right over the good one will always be told that ones view of the good is only personal and should be sacrificed optimifically which is to abstract from the separateness of persons in precisely the way Rawls complains of. This is still the consequence of Parfit's preferred rule consequentialism which is why it still incorporates the classic consequentialist move of requiring us to see impartial reasons as always optimific in form. Parfit thinks he can appeal against this since he argues that ultimately he is appealing to Kant's "contractualist formula" and basing rule consequentialism on this. However this is dishonest as the contractualist formula, in application, is always used to bolster the conception that impartial reason is framed in terms of optimific outcomes so it is only a supplementary principle meant as a support for consequentialism and is not, as Parfit pretends, foundational for ethical principles. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So whilst Parfit concludes by saying he has not argued that we should become rule consequentialists but only that Kantian and contractualist premises support rule consequentialist conclusions this is not what his argument shows. What his argument shows is, instead, that if contractualist and consent principles are interpreted axiologically then they support consequentialism. But that is only because they have been pre-defined in such a way that consequentialism is their inevitable focus. Parfit assumes that the only response to this argument is to favour "moral beliefs" over "principles" but, as I have argued, this division is founded on an incorporation of a "belief" into his account of "principles" in the first place.</span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-10591487574958461302012-07-11T23:21:00.001+01:002012-07-11T23:35:07.928+01:00Systematic Overview of Rawls' *Theory of Justice*<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Over the last year I have undertaken the task of providing a commentary on the whole of John Rawls' <i>A Theory of Justice</i>. The commentary <a href="http://kantinternational.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/theory-of-justice.html">began on 11th April 2011</a> and <a href="http://kantinternational.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/rawls-on-congruence-and-justification.html">concluded on 11th June 2012</a> and the postings are mainly inter-linked. I suspect, though am willing to stand corrected, that this is the most extensive commentary on <i>Theory </i>current in the blogosphere. In this posting I want to step back from the details that have been the subject of the postings that were done as the commentary was on-going to reflect on <i>Theory</i> as a whole, giving a general overview of the book and indicating the ways in which the position it articulates holds together. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><i>A Theory of Justice</i> is a work of nine chapters that is divided evenly into three parts. The titles of the three parts are not, however, particularly helpful in describing the contents of the three parts in question and nor is it the case that Rawls identifies securely the bifurcation of arguments that the work presents. Starting with the division of arguments first, it is important to identify that there are two essential strategies adopted in the work and which are meant to work together. The first and philosophically the most significant is the construction of the original position and the justification of the principles of justice and associated principles for individuals by means of this device. Included in the construction of the original position are formal constraints on the concept of right, a description of what are termed "the circumstances of justice" and a description of the conception of rationality that will enable us to derive the principles of justice. The central philosophical arguments of the book, that belong to Rawls' advocacy of "constructivism", are intended to be justified by means of the construction of the original position. However, whilst this is so, there are included within <i>Theory</i> a number of considerations that are not built from the arguments concerning the original position and hence are not "constructed" philosophically. These considerations are appealed to by reference to "intuition" or "common sense" and Rawls frequently marks them by indicating that accounts using them are not, in his favoured sense of the term, "arguments" strictly speaking. This does not mean, however, that reference to these considerations is without point or relevance within the overall structure of the book. Rather the considerations that are advanced by these means belong to Rawls' general justificatory strategy of showing that there are conditions that can be generally seen to hold or be agreed to and that the original position, in various ways, secures but which are not definitively established by means of it.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The discussion of Rawls' strategies of argument and justification can be illustrated and the nature of the work's contentions be better viewed if we now turn to the way the work is structured. I mentioned above that the titles of the parts are not very helpful in describing the content of what they deal with. The first part is broadly termed "Theory" and in some respects this does describe what is discussed in the first part of the book though only in some respects. The three chapters of the first part discuss, respectively: a) a first general and largely intuitive presentation of the main ideas of the whole theory of justice combined with an initial contrast of it to the standpoint of classical utilitarianism; b) an initial formulation of the two principles of justice and associated principles for individuals; c) an interpretation of the initial situation as the original position and a construction of the original position that culminates in a construction of the two principles of justice and a more substantive contrast of the contract view with classical utilitarianism and also with "average" utility.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is evident from viewing the structure of the first part of the book that Rawls does not begin with his philosophically favoured method of construction by means of the original position as it is only with the third chapter that he even states this method and uses it to derive both the original position itself and the principles of justice as established by means of it. The first two chapters of the book thus draw upon intuitive considerations of common sense and are meant, by this means, to lead us to accepting the view that the construction of the original position is something we have good reason to undertake and that it will provide us with a more secure basis for the two principles of justice that are initially introduced without its use. Given that the "theory" of justice essentially is a theory that argues for the two principles as the basis of the best considered view of justice and bases this on the construction of the original position it follows that it is only the third chapter of the first part that really states the "Theory" that the whole first part is named after. The first two chapters would be better viewed as being "on the way" to theory rather than statements of the theory itself.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The first chapter of the work is clearly introductory and here we find some key conceptions that are not justified as yet but which will be central to the whole theory subsequently. These include the notion of the "basic structure" as the subject of justice, the idea of the well-ordered society, the original position itself and the problem of how to resolve the difficulty of determining the priority of different principles. The basis of introduction of "intuitionism" as a position is really only in terms of it being a kind of indication of the view that this problem is insoluble and thus a proposal of ad hoc ways of dealing with it. The introduction of the "priority problem" and the other aspects of considerations that are taken to be important to the theory of justice, so important indeed, that section 3 of the first chapter identifies already "the main idea" of the theory are all presented in ways that do not derive them directly from the device of the original position itself. What this means is that the central ideas of Chapter One emerge as Rawls puts it in the concluding section of the whole book from "the tradition of moral philosophy which comprises the historical consensus" about what is central. Arguments which take issue with some of the central ideas introduced within the first chapter (such as those Gerry Cohen used against the idea of the "basic structure") are thus ones that aim not at the central constructive procedure of <i>Theory</i> but rather against its inheritance of concepts.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The second chapter of the work builds on the basic ideas introduced in the first chapter and states, albeit in a preliminary and intuitive way, the two principles of justice and attendant principles for individuals, introducing as well the notion of "primary social goods". Included in this chapter is an argument that concerns the second principle in particular and gives a basis for the second part of the second principle being termed the "difference principle", a point that leads away from certain views of equality towards a very specific way that egalitarianism is to be considered. Again these arguments are not derived from the original position and are stated prior to its construction. Similarly the principle of fairness and the natural duties individuals owe to each other are drawn from intuitive considerations and are not thus here really justified philosophically even though there are some reasons given for favouring them.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is with the third chapter that Rawls really arrives for the first time at his philosophically favoured strategy of arguing for the principles of justice by means of the construction of the original position. The construction of it proceeds by four devices: a) an outline of the alternative views of justice that will be considered by means of it; b) articulation of the formal constraints of the concept of right; c) use of the "veil of ignorance"; d) an account of the procedure of rational choice within it. Of these four elements the presentation of the alternatives is least secure since it cannot be justified through the original position that Rawls is in the process of constructing. Centrally the traditions that formed the nexus of the considerations of the first two chapters are at work in identifying the views that will be tested by means of the use of the device of the original position and hence reflect an acceptance of the "consensus" concerning the views to be taken seriously. Interestingly, although classical liberalism was considered in the second chapter discussion of the second part of the second principle of justice it is not treated here as providing a conception of justice that will be viewed as an alternative to that provided by the two principles of justice. Nor are libertarian, socialist or communist views of justice, should there be any such, regarded here as providing alternative fundamental principles that need to be viewed as competitors to the two principles of justice. The contrast is instead primarily with variant forms of utilitarianism.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The account of the formal constraints of right determines the construction of the original position by describing conditions that the principles of justice will have to meet. The requirements in question are described by Rawls as "natural enough" and said to be "suitably weak" eliminating in principle only egoistic conceptions that are viewed by Rawls as occupying only the status of the state of nature that would ensue were no agreement on principles of justice to be reached. The five conditions are not themselves constructed but rather constructive of the original position's means of determining the principles of justice that are worthy of consideration. Here we have conditions on such principles and they are five-fold: i) the principles should be general, an idea itself understood in "an intuitive fashion"; ii) they are to be "universal in application" to all who are moral persons which ensures that they have to have a certain simplicity and consistency and this element is derived from a "common basis" with generality; iii) publicity, a condition that is part of the idea of a contractarian standpoint and is said to be implied in the categorical imperative and gives a way of evaluating principles that is meant to support the stability of them; iv) provide an ordering on conflicting claims or resolve the intuitive "priority problem" that was mentioned in Chapter One; v) be final principles that are appealed to in practical reasoning or be the highest standards of such argument which shows that these principles will be over-riding in importance.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Looking at the formal constraints of right we can see that generality and universality are presented here as part of the construction of the original position despite themselves being only introduced in an intuitive way. Publicity is an idea that belongs to the very sense that it is useful to appeal to such a device as the original position so in a sense in accepting it as a criteria we do no more than take the original position seriously as a device. Similarly we have already accepted the importance of the priority problem so a resolution of it is something we have already agreed to take seriously, albeit on the intuitive grounds of its appearance from the consensus of previous forms of normative philosophy. Finally, that the principles should be over-riding is as much as to say that the procedure of construction of the original position is one that will be determinative for the principles of justice that can be seen to meet conditions of general agreement so this condition, like that of publicity, is part of the sense of accepting the device of the original position as seriously worthy of consideration. Given this review of the formal constraints of right we can see that, strictly speaking, publicity and finality emerge as the strongest arguments within the construction of the original position as they belong to the basic sense of it.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The "veil of ignorance" is a means by which the original position effects its general purpose of achieving conditions in which general agreement on principles of justice can be made. The "veil" becomes thicker as the construction of the original position progresses however as a thicker form of it is required to tackle the idea of "average" utility than is needed to respond to classical utilitarianism. The "veil" is also not so thick as to rule out an account of the "circumstances of justice". This is required since an account of these "circumstances" turns out to be part of what is meant by rational choice within the original position. These circumstances are themselves, however, an intuitive description of what Rousseau referred to as an account of "mean as they are" and pose essentially as what we might view as "realist constraints" that are separate from the constraints on the concept of right. They are "background conditions" as Rawls terms them that define necessities of life that have to be considered when the principles of justice are arrived at. Consideration of these circumstances is part of what secures the stability of the conception of justice. Included here are moderate scarcity and the sense that people have distinct conceptions of the good that often lead them to conflict with each other.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The result of the construction of the original position, a construction that defines the conditions of rational choice at work within it, is the basic argument of Chapter 3 for Rawls' two principles of justice, an argument that leads to a modification of the principles by contrast to their first intuitive presentation in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 concludes with a more general description of the requirements of classical utilitarianism that gives an idea of how the notion of impartiality that actuates it becomes one of impersonality, a contrast that allows for a first sense of the kind of persons that are engaged in making the rational choice that leads to the principles of justice being favoured, persons who are not, on Rawls' account, the "bare persons" of the impersonal utilitarian calculation, but, rather, the "determinate" persons we actually are. Interestingly this conception of "determinate" personhood arises as required by reference to the circumstances of justice.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The second part of the book concerns, so the title of it informs us, "institutions" and, again, whilst this title is not entirely apt, it is better than the title for the first part was. The three chapters of the second part are concerned with: a) a four-stage sequence for principles of institutions that are said to articulate the basic structure of society and related to a "Kantian Interpretation" of the doctrine of justice as fairness; b) a more extensive consideration of the second principle of justice that is related to a description of the functions of government; c) a construction of the principles for individuals that are related to the constitution of the basic structure of society and which lead to consideration of the special problem of civil disobedience. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">All three of the chapters of the second part thus do consider "institutions" in a sense though the way they do so requires careful refinement of the principles already given and further determination of these principles. The first of these chapters is officially centred on the idea of equal liberty but the idea of the four-stage sequence that is considered at the beginning of the chapter is said, again, to be an account of "our considered judgments", an intuitive idea. The four-stages involve an account of the justice of legislation, the constitutional arrangements for resolving the priority principle in practice, the grounds and limits of political obligation and the basis of judicial rules and following of them. The argument for the four stages involves an elaboration of the original position that allows for an ideal notion of constitutional formation that is a device for applying the principles of justice. Rawls subsequently goes on to define the conception of liberty more carefully and to consider the point that the "worth" of liberty to persons has to be also considered. This notion of the "worth" of liberty is also later presented as an account of its "fair value" to different persons and the basic structure is now determined as something that has to be arranged to "maximise the worth" to the least well off of the complete scheme of equal liberty, a point presented as defining "the end of social justice" (section 32).</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In Chapter IV the first principle is given clearer determination and the rule for its priority over the second principle described. After Rawls has constructed the first principle and its priority he states the "Kantian Interpretation" of the overall doctrine of justice as fairness and makes clear that the original position is a way of rendering Kant's idea of the kingdom of ends. The veil of ignorance is defended here as a way of preventing heteronomy and the motivational assumptions within the original position are related to Kant's notion of autonomy. The original position is here defended as a way of replying to Sidgwick's problem with Kantian autonomy to the effect that the ground for the choice of moral principles is allegedly opaque for Kant. Thus the original position is something like a parallel to the third part of Kant's <i>Groundwork</i> or to his appeal to the "fact of reason". This demonstrates the centrality of the role of the original position in Rawls' theory.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If the fourth chapter defined the first principle of justice more clearly and worked through the means of application of it to institutional formations the fifth chapter applies a similar approach to the second principle of justice. In the process Rawls considers economic systems, justice between generations and a view of the elements of government. The process of consideration of these points leads to a sharper view of both the difference principle and the principle of fair equality of opportunity. The questions considered arise intuitively though the resolution of them involves appeal to the construction of the original position.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The fifth chapter constructs the two forms of principle for individuals that Rawls considers, the principles of natural duty and fairness. Having done so the substantive argument of the chapter considers a special problem that arises from non-ideal theory, namely, the problem of how to deal with "unjust laws" and the possibility of majority rule being unjust. This allows for a statement of a basic theory of civil disobedience. Whilst this is the only form of non-ideal theory considered within <i>Theory</i> it is justified by means of appeal to a problem that is defined within terms of near-perfect compliance and hence approximates to a form of a well-ordered society. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The final part of the work is termed "ends" which suggests that what will be considered here is a general account of purposes but what is in fact at work here is a discussion of the theory of the good where Rawls moves from the "thin theory" that will be at work within the original position itself to a view of the "full theory" that would be articulated within a "well-ordered society". The three chapters of this final part consider: a) the need for a theory of the good and a basic account of the good for persons; b) the first part of the problem of stability which includes a discussion of moral psychology, the sense of justice and its basis; c) the second part of the problem of stability which includes a final argument for the priority of liberty and an account of how the good of persons is congruent with the social good of justice including a discussion of the unity of the self.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The third part of the work is particularly intricate and consideration of its role in Rawls' theory should include a sense of what kind of moral psychology is here being offered. It is a kind of ideal type of psychology that is normatively rather than "empirically" grounded though it is not intended that it should contravene the requirements for any empirical theory. The basic problem of the third part is to show that the theory of justice presents a stable conception in the sense that it would generate incentives within the members of the society it formed to maintain itself. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The first chapter of this final part includes a basic theory of deliberative rationality and the introduction of what Rawls terms the "Aristotelian Principle" which latter is presented as meeting what a perfectionist should really want. This principle states a generic form of good for persons in terms of recognition of the complexity that is part of the general acceptance of what we all tend to take to be good. Interestingly this principle is not itself constructed but is meant to echo the consideration of circumstances of justice just as the requirements of deliberative rationality define a sense of self-regard that is meant to echo the requirements of right. In this chapter Rawls also describes the virtues as forms of excellence that relate to the rational notion of self-regard that would arise from seeing it in terms that echo the requirements of right. In a sense the arguments of this chapter belong to a fuller construction of the principles for individuals and fill them out in terms of a rudimentary theory of the virtues.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The second chapter of the third part presents, after giving a general idea of the well-ordered society (which is constructed) an ideal type of moral psychology in terms of how we would develop to the stage of accepting a principled relation to morality under ideal conditions. The point of this is to make psychologically realistic the view that there would be a sense of justice that had relative stability within a well-ordered society.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The third and final chapter of this part and of the book as a whole presents some reasons for thinking that destructive psychological propensities would have little hold within a well-ordered society but this argument is largely intuitive in form. By contrast the congruence argument (in relation to the compatibility of a person's good with the social sense of justice) is one that arises after a final account of the priority of liberty and an argument has been given against "dominant ends" conceptions of the good. The final congruence argument draws upon the argument against "dominant end" conceptions of the good as it shows that the view that the good of persons is congruent with the social good of justice depends upon acceptance of the social good as a defining constraint upon one's good, something reasonable given that there could be no "dominant end" for us as individuals. Given that the congruence argument works like this it follows that its account of the relation between the right and the good depends upon a sense that the structure of the good is one that, even in a thin sense, would not be such that we could find enough determinacy in it to resist the constraints of the right. So it is a form of constructive argument but one that is also related to the ideal type of moral psychology defended in Chapter 8.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Taking the book as a whole then the argument for the construction of the principles of justice in the first part is complemented by a description of the kinds of institutions that would have just form accompanied by a view of the kinds of persons that could sustain them. As a whole it requires the sense that the person in question could themselves be constructed to have the motivations that would sustain the basic structure given that this structure would itself provide them with enough of value and worth to make this plausible. Therefore the theory is as much a theory of the good as it is a theory of the right albeit a theory of the right that constrains the theory of the good.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In future postings I will review the way Rawls' work developed after <i>Theory</i> and also look at the kinds of criticism that <i>Theory</i> has received from others in order to combine these perspectives to understand the subsequent turns his work took. The point of this will be to enable an assessment of <i>Theory</i> that goes beyond viewing it in its own terms in order to see the way it fits into Rawls' overall work and how its central contentions and devices have fared within political philosophy generally. Most important for consideration here, however, will be the fate of the specifically Kantian elements of Rawls' account and the way they are bolstered and weakened at different stages of it.</span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-8696667532731005082012-06-28T22:17:00.000+01:002012-06-28T22:27:41.256+01:00Constructivism and Common Sense<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">I've been reading and thinking about constructivism today mainly as a response of some sort to it will have to feature in work I am currently pursuing. Whilst doing so, however, a question arose for me in relation to how constructivism is understood by Onora O'Neill in her criticism of Rawls. This question concerned the priority she gives, in her criticism of Rawls, to the notion of "reflective equilibrium".</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The essay of O'Neill's I'm referring to is one that appears in <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cambridge-Companion-Rawls-Companions-Philosophy/dp/0521657067/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340914278&sr=1-5">Samuel Freeman's edited collection on Rawls</a>. In this piece O'Neill concentrates on the way in which the constructive procedure in Rawls works looking at the range of what can be constructed according to Rawls, the justification he offers of the constructive procedure and, most importantly for her critique, the <i>address</i> of Rawls' construction. The view offered by her of these topics ranges across Rawls' work, moving from <i>Theory</i> to <i>Political Liberalism</i>. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In O'Neill's picture of <i>Theory</i> the key notion is "reflective equilibrium" which is taken to provide a coherentist test of "our considered judgments" and to rely on a conception of the reasonable that is explicitly discussed in Rawls' later notion of "Kantian constructivism". O'Neill subsequently refers to this notion of "reflective equilibrium" when she draws out that "Kantian constructivism" appeals to an idealised Kantian view of the person and rests its appeal to this notion on reference to "our moral experience". Part of what enables this appeal for O'Neill is Rawls' reliance upon a coherentist justification of practical reason in his view of "Kantian constructivism". Her view of Rawls' later "political" turn is that what happens is that the conception of practical reason as rested on a generic coherence is replaced by a closed appeal to "public reason" where the resources of public reason are simply derived from the common conceptions of a democratic culture much as the earlier appeal was to "our moral experience".</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In contrast to Rawls' later political turn O'Neill sets out a view of Kantian reason as something that cannot be anchored in a given public culture but accessible in principle to anyone including "outsiders" to the culture of the West that produced Kant's own philosophy. So O'Neill's first move is to depict the appeal to "public reason" Rawls makes as a fatal concession to relativism. The point in doing so is to widen the view of what is to count as public reason suggesting that reasoning is not "completely" public when it rests on appeals to particular properties and beliefs which can appear merely arbitrary to anyone outside the original community that rests on them. In contrast to this view O'Neill states that we need justifications of claims that can be satisfied only in terms of what can be followed in principle by anyone. This is part of what motivates O'Neill's general view that the categorical imperative is not merely the supreme principle of morality but also the supreme principle of reason.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">An implication of O'Neill's argument is that reason is "cosmopolitan" for Kant and does not rest on "bounded societies" as political institutions are incapable of conferring justification. This is why O'Neill argues that Kant's view of the construction of ethical principles is more demanding than the "Kantian constructivism" described by Rawls as Kant requires justification to be capable of "aiming to reach all others without restriction". This is why practical reason itself is something that O'Neill argues is capable of construction by Kant as it was not by Rawls.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Having rehearsed O'Neill's critique of Rawls I now want to suggest that there is a central problem with her view that does not apply to Rawls' constructivism and suggests a reason for thinking that Rawls' appeal to "reflective equilibrium" and to "our moral experience" may be less alien to Kant than O'Neill's arguments would lead one to suppose. The first problem that can be posed with O'Neill's view is that it is unclear from her general picture of reason how the process of public reason is to be carried out. She argues that public reason is incomplete if it involves appeal to particular beliefs held by some and thereby appears to take the reference to universal law to require abandonment of commitment to any given prior beliefs and to provide us with a <i>de novo</i> conception of justification. It is partly due to following a view like this however that the procedure of trying to justify the Kantian appeal to universal laws off the ground gets involved in terrible tangles. The notoriously involved difficulties in providing justifications of universalised maxims that are morally permissible arises from thinking that we need to provide an account for maxims that no one normally takes to need justification at all. Necessarily any and every type of maxim has to be looked at in terms of its permissibility if the point of appeal to universal law is to provide us with a means of assessing morality without bringing in previously agreed moral data.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Moreover, the point of appeal to public reason on O'Neill's view appears to be to arrive at a standard for what can be shown to be acceptable so that the procedure of public reason is itself the arbiter of what we agree can be done. This makes the arrival at universal agreement the ground for permissibility rather than the possibility of convergence being shown to be based upon salient factors that allow the agreement to hold. This seems to put the burden of justification in the wrong place. A second but related point concerns how the standards of public reason on a neutrally determined view of universal reason are to be set out. This point concerns not the kind of consideration that Rawls was interested in with reference to "pluralism" but rather deep problems with reasoning with some who appear to be committed to principles that are deeply antithetical to universality. Racist views for example are directly in contradiction to appeal to universality and would have to be dealt with as providing non-public reason in some sense but if this is not to be stipulative through moral content (as clearly is impossible on O'Neill's view) this has to require a structural notion of formal public reasoning to rule out certain types of reasoning from the start. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In order to rule out appeal to certain kinds of reasons as non-public there have to be ways of showing to those who adopt these reasons a basis for agreement on their behalf to a standard of reasoning that rules out appeals to their favoured principles. The means that O'Neill appears to favour is by reference to a view of agency that requires us to see the agency of others as intertwined with our own in an important way. So she refers in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Towards-Justice-Virtue-Constructive-Practical/dp/0521485592/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1340916651&sr=1-1">Towards Justice and Virtue</a> </i>to activity as inclusive of plurality, connection and finitude. What is meant by these notions is that we have to relate to others as independent sources of activity (plurality) who there is a real possibility we will affect by acting (connection) and that these others are limited enough to be vulnerable to our actions (finitude). Conversely we are reciprocally related to them in the same way. So rules of action should generally take these characteristics into account. It is likely that the point of these descriptors is to give a basic notion of moral standing to O'Neill but the problem is that the notion has itself to be constructed in terms of "public reasons" and there are problems with doing so. The basic sense that we would expect from her general view is that the reasons in question would have a neutral status and not require any one to adopt specific beliefs in the sense that she criticises Rawls for requiring. If that is right, however, then the notion of plurality only points to a constraint on my action if I independently have reasons to regard others as having standing as it does not itself provide them with such standing. The fact that I am connected to others and vulnerable to them provides some general prudential constraints on action but, again, is insufficient to give others serious moral standing. The only one of these three criteria that really has the significance that it would provide a reason for morally taking others seriously is the criteria of vulnerability but if I interpret it from a first-person perspective it only grounds a prudential one and requiring as a matter of reason that I see it more broadly is not to follow the basic constructivist rule.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If O'Neill's view of public reason is one that just draws on generic criteria like these it is not going to get off the ground and it requires some additional elements to be taken seriously as a guide for a normative conception of public reason. Such further elements are available if we make the appeal to common sense that Rawls makes with his notion of "reflective equilibrium" and for which O'Neill criticises him. The ability to appeal to "common sense" as a means of understanding conditions of action is part of what is at work in Rawls' discussion of such things as the "circumstances of justice" and the "strains of commitment", both of which build into practical reason the basis for the coherence requirements that O'Neill dislikes. Without them, however, she has to fall back on a generic conception of public reason that is either too thin to build anything from or to implicitly rely on normative commitments that she has not constructively justified. Either way it seems less obvious than O'Neill may think that cosmopolitan conceptions of reason can get by without appeal to some views of pre-conceived moral standards.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Not only is this so but Kant's own procedure seems not to mirror the generic requirements of practical reason that O'Neill presents. Not only does the first part of Kant's <i>Groundwork</i> proceed from data of common human reason but the examples of how to test maxims that are supplied by Kant in this work presuppose the normative existence of practices. This is evident in the way Kant discusses promises, suicide, the cultivation of talents and benevolence. In each case Kant proceeds from a pre-existent conception of moral views and provides a means for understanding, by reference to them, reasons for thinking certain types of maxims are impermissible. The maxims in question do not arise as <i>de novo</i> tests but as ones that have pertinence against the background of a set of practices which give them the sense that they have. Perhaps thus Rawls' reference to "reflective equilibrium" is rather more Kantian than O'Neill's allegedly "cosmopolitan" view of reason.</span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-73946143307596123662012-06-13T21:30:00.000+01:002012-06-13T21:30:53.958+01:00Kostas Sargentis in *Kant Studies Online*<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A new article has been published in <i>Kant Studies Online</i>. It is by Kostas Sargentis and it concerns the topic of "Moral Motivation in Kant". It can be freely accessed and down-loaded <a href="http://www.kantstudiesonline.net/KantStudiesOnline_Recent_files/SargentisKonstantinos01212.pdf">here</a>.</span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-33139381039760450152012-06-11T13:07:00.000+01:002012-06-11T13:21:58.113+01:00Rawls on Congruence and Justification<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The last 2 sections of Chapter IX of <i>A Theory of Justice</i> are also the last 2 sections of the whole book. In this posting I will treat them both in turn. Section 86, entitled "the good of the sense of justice" is intended to complete the argument for the view that there is a reasonable expectation that, in a well-ordered society, there would be congruence between justice and the specific conceptions of the good that are adopted by individuals. Since this argument concerning congruence was also motivated at the beginning of Chapter IX as the rationale for the whole argument of this chapter section 86 essentially completes the general purpose of the chapter. The concluding section 87 is meant not to add to this argument but, rather, to offer a general overall summary of the way in which the theory of justice as fairness has been "justified" in the book as a whole.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Section 86 opens with Rawls stating that the completion of the congruence argument basically requires an overall view of the notion of the well-ordered society. In this society the two moral powers of persons - the capacity for a sense of justice and the ability to pursue a particular conception of the good - are congruent with each other or so is the assumption and the argument of the chapter, which is completed here, is intended to show the reasons for taking this to be the case. The central reason for being concerned with the congruence between the two moral powers in the well-ordered society is that such congruence is assumed to be the basis of the stability of it. This does not require reviewing again the rationality of the selection of the principles of justice within the original position as we take for granted by this stage that this selection has been justified. The problem is, rather, "whether the regulative desire to adopt the standpoint of justice belongs to a person's own good" when we view the latter in the light of Rawls' "thin" theory of the good. When we arrive at this point we are no longer behind the veil of ignorance as the "thin" theory can be fully specified.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The justification of the view that it is rational for someone, merely following the thin theory of the good, to accept the claim of the sense of justice to be regulative of their conception of the good, is not equivalent to justification of the sense of justice to an egoist. Nor does Rawls aim to show that, in a well-ordered society, even an egoist would act from a sense of justice. Rawls is instead assuming that there does exist amongst the members of the well-ordered society a settled desire to act from the sense of justice and then raising the question of whether this desire is one that is consistent with the good of these people. This question presupposes only the "thin" theory of the good as anything wider would involve wider presuppositions. So the question concerns only those with a moral psychology that is already, at least in one of its relevant aspects, as we would ideally wish it to be.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now this does not mean that the question has been so carefully curtailed as to be of little interest. So Rawls is <i>not</i> assuming for example that everyone simply does things due to motivation by pure conscientiousness. It is conceivable, even assuming that there is a settled desire to act from the sense of justice, that this settled desire is one that runs up against formidable resistance when acting upon it appears to cut against some key element of that persons' view of the good. Then the question may arise for them what to do and not be one that they simply take to have an obvious answer. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Having stated the problem in this way Rawls proceeds to describe the elements of the "grounds of congruence". The first element is that the principles of justice are public, a point he consistently stresses. Since this is so the consideration of acting in a way that does not conform to the principles of justice is one in which we think of ourselves as prepared to act as free riders upon the public good. Given that the settled disposition to act from a sense of justice is one that is given reinforcement by the publicly acknowledged justification of the principles of justice the consideration of acting in such a way is sure to have psychic cost. Not only is this the case but failure to act from the sense of justice is something whose public effect we would have to acknowledge as impacting upon the way the institutions we have accepted to have a public basis would run. The importance of this consideration is that such institutions are also supported publicly by those with whom we are close. This point gives strong grounds for preserving our sense of justice.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Another element of the grounds of congruence is the way that the participation in the public good of the well-ordered society satisfies the Aristotelian Principle. The well-ordered society is one that realises to a pre-eminent degree the forms of human activity and the way in which the cooperation of persons safeguards the well-being of each one of us. To really share in the goods of this society we must acknowledge the principles that regulate activities. A final reason underpinning congruence is bound up with the Kantian conception of the person which states that acting justly is something we want to do inasmuch as we are free and equal rational beings. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Assuming that the reference to publicity, the Aristotelian Principle and the Kantian conception of the person provide the chief reasons within the "thin" theory of the good to underpin congruence we can now ask whether these reasons are decisive in motivating members of the well-ordered society to generally act in accordance with their sense of justice. It appears that this leads us to a question about how to balance contrary principles. But an element that has not yet been considered is what it is that acting from the sense of justice really requires of us. The congruence between it and our conception of the good depends upon the content of the specific notion of right that has determined the sense of justice taking the form it does. So the good of justice is, we are clear, not akin to that provided by classical utilitarianism which required us to sacrifice our interests when this would be necessary for the greater good of all. The reason why the principles of justice defended by Rawls does not have this stringency is due to the priority of the first principle of justice. It would be hazardous to freedom to accept the stringent requirements defended by writers such as Sidgwick. This is already a point in favour of the view that it is possible to act in accordance with the sense of justice as Rawls conceives it as such a sense of justice is not so stringent and out of keeping with the demands of common sense as the view of Sidgwick.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This does not mean that there are not possible costs to following our sense of justice in action. Certain things will be ruled out for us as possible actions if we follow it. This point is defended by Rawls by an extended comparison between acting from the sense of justice and acting from a view of love of others. The Kantian conception of the person underpins this point and shows grounds for giving first priority to our sense of justice. The principles of justice meet the conditions of finality, they are regulative of our behaviour and acting in accordance with other things is constrained by the claims of the principles of justice. The Kantian conception of the person points to the way that our freedom is best expressed by acting from the sense of justice. Acting against the sense of justice is therefore sure to produce feelings of guilt and shame and set for us a demanding standard of consistency. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">It is possible that there are some persons, even in a well-ordered society, who do not take the affirmation of the sense of justice to be a good. For such people the thin theory of the good has proved insufficient to ground a regulative sentiment in favour of the sense of justice. The question of how to respond to such people requires recourse to partial compliance theory. We have seen that the principles of right are collectively rational and that affirmation of the sense of justice is a collective asset. Given this it is rational to authorise the measures required to maintain just institutions. The nature of those who have not found it part of their good to affirm the sense of justice is unfortunate for them and it is not required to provide sufficient reasons further to convince them. It would be true, however, if there were many such people that this would be an element of instability within the society and the degree to which such persons were present would effect the degree to which penal devices might be required within it. So long as there is no more stable conception of justice than the one Rawls has defined this point does not count against it.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In concluding the congruence argument Rawls specifies in more detail his definition of goodness. In a well-ordered society it is the case that behaving in a way that manifests a definite acceptance of the requirements of the sense of justice is good for each person within it. A well-ordered society is also a "good" society as it satisfies the principles of justice and enables a stable pattern to develop by which individuals come to affirm the sense of justice as regulative of their view of the good.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The final section of Chapter IX and of the book as a whole is mainly intended to address the question of what type of justification the work has produced for Rawls' theory. It is not a justification by reference to the view that there are self-evident principles, hence it is not a rationalist justification. It is also not a justification by means of reference to non-moral properties that are argued, by introducing appeals to common sense and science, to have some important normative significance. So it is also not a view that is broadly "realist" or "naturalist" and nor does it draw upon the justificatory strategies that would be appropriate for such views. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The three parts of the work are intended to make a unified argument by showing first the essentials of the structure of the view, then applying them to the examination of institutions and finally showing that the view is psychologically feasible. The first part of the argument proceeded by reasonable stipulations concerning choice. The second part related these stipulations to the ways that common sense comprehends the institutions required for our common way of life. The third part looked at questions of stability and congruence. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Rawls considers possible objections to the structure of justification his argument displays. It might be thought that Rawls' theory is grounded on a simple empirical appeal to agreement or that it depends on an unreasonably restrictive view of feasible conceptions in the choice situation. The response to the first part of this objection is that Rawls' theory proceeds from commonly held views. Now as to the charge that it is unreasonably restrictive in its consideration of alternatives it is less clear that leading candidates widely recognised are not all considered. This does not mean that all views are included and the basis of assessment of other views would require presentation of them and consideration of whether or how they related to views that have been looked at. The list considered is though one that arises from the history of moral philosophy. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The original position is intended to bring together reasonable constraints into a single conception so that the selection of principles of justice can proceed. The selection of these constraints is not arbitrary. Ordering and finality seem obvious criteria within the choice situation for example. Publicity, by contrast, ensures that the process of justification within the situation is one that can appeal to all parties involved and to be endorsed by all as something that is not chosen for special reasons by some part of the group using esoteric methods of choice. The original position is thus intended to be a kind of "constrained minimum" set of conditions. Each part of the conditions is reasonable taken singly and put together provide a criteria of right independent of the presumed good of any member of the situation. Disinterested motivation is assumed with regard to the parties and this asks little of the parties given the veil of ignorance. Part of what arises from assuming it is an obvious rational basis for freedom of conscience and convergence then on the priority of liberty.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The Kantian components of the theory are related now by Rawls to the way the theory is justified. The general conception of rational choice defines the way that autonomy and the moral law are to be understood as it does also provide a way of grasping the good of community. One thing that emerges clearly here however is that the Kantian conception of the person is part of the "Archimedean point" by means of which the basic structure of society can be judged. This occurs by means of the use of the original position to first determine the content of justice and the later reference back to what has emerged from it as the basis of our sense of justice. The original choice situation is one that allows for the interests that define parties to include determinate attachments. But the principles of justice are not derived from particular principles such as respect for persons. Rather the principles of justice are such as to give a basis for interpretation of such principles. The theory of justice is thus intended to give a rendering of Kantian ideas. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Once the original position is presented as the basis of the choice situation it provides a way that the social world can always be grasped and responded to. It is an objective situation that recognises autonomous decision. It is akin, says Rawls in his stirring conclusion, to seeing our situation <i>sub specie aeternitatis</i>. "Purity of heart, if one could attain it, would be to see clearly and to act with grace and self-command from this point of view."</span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-31945266491398191282012-06-10T22:01:00.000+01:002012-06-10T22:01:55.615+01:00Rawls on Hedonism and Social Choice<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Sections 83-5 of <i>A Theory of Justice</i> present the culminating consideration of the problems Rawls takes to afflict teleological theories of practical reason, at least when these theories tend towards hedonistic formulation. The reasons for viewing teleological theories in terms of the convergence upon hedonism are made clear within this discussion, a discussion that draws upon Rawls' earlier account of practical reason and which culminates in a basic set of reasons for thinking of social choice in the manner favoured by his own contract doctrine. In this posting I will go through the argument of these sections in order to show how the point of them is to defend and further articulate the grounds for the methodological choice of giving the right priority over the good.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Section 83 opens by stating that the general theme Rawls wishes to approach is one that he is going to deal with in an apparently roundabout way. The general theme with which he is concerned has to do with the way that just institutions frame the choice of rational plans and enable the incorporation of recognition of different conceptions of the good. In order to show this the roundabout argument has to deal with the reasons why a different methodological approach within normative theory has been preferred, the one that bases itself upon hedonism. The point, though Rawls is not here explicit about this, is to demonstrate that the flaws in the hedonistic approach provide in their turn a form of indirect argument for his own view.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In approaching the topic of hedonism Rawls begins with a discussion of a general picture of what is meant by describing someone as "happy". Rawls' earlier account of practical reason involved the notion of a "rational plan" that, if drawn up and executed under favourable conditions, can be mainly successfully executed. Essentially if a rational plan is one that is capable of going well and we have good reason to think this will continue then we can be said to be "happy". This entails that the notion of happiness includes both the plan itself as something whose success is capable of being understood by others in addition to the one who has adopted it and the states of mind of the one who is attempting to carry the plan out. So there can be views of happiness that stress one of these two elements more than the other (a division, we could say, between "objective" and "subjective" views of happiness). In terms of Rawls' own view the original position was understood to be governed by the general condition that the parties within it were ones who had true views and so the subjective and objective components of happiness would be taken to broadly coincide.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Rawls next looks at other elements of the notion of happiness as indicated by philosophers who have addressed it. So Aristotle, for example, describes happiness as something chosen for its own sake. This is not meant to rule out the view that a rational plan has sub-parts that are chosen for more or less instrumental reasons in regard to the master goal. But the whole plan would, so to speak, have the property Aristotle describes as being central to happiness. So the activity of following the plan would appear to be self-contained. Happiness is also self-sufficient in the sense that no reasons additional are required for adoption of it as a goal. This also can be translated into the view that some people have special standing in how they have succeeded in living happy lives, a standing that is <i>as </i>important if not more important than the basic claim for happiness itself. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now one wrinkle that emerges at this point is that, even assuming that the general account of happiness in terms of rational plans is an adequate one, there is a mis-match between following the plan and "pursuing" happiness. Even if following the plan and having things go well is the basic way we are going to understand the meaning of what it is to be "happy" it does not follow that in following the plan we are thereby "pursuing" happiness. One reason for this point is that happiness is not itself an aim in following the plan as following the plan is undertaken with the aim of achieving its goals, not of becoming happy. Happiness is not something separable from following the plan, it is not a specific goal of it either. Further, if we assume that following the rational plan is something we do under the constraints of right that define the original position we can also see the structural parallel between the way Rawls has here discussed "happiness" and Kant's general claim that happiness is something we have to be "worthy" of. It is the constraints of right that define what we could choose as generic goals that would meet the standards of justice, as, for Kant, it was the setting of material aims within formal constraints that determined worthiness to be happy.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Given these constraints, as specified by the original position, there can be seen to be a place for happiness in Rawls' own theory but it is a clearly subordinate one in the same way as it is for Kant. Secondly, the pursuit of happiness is something that is understood through the prism of the rational plan as really involving the pursuit of some end that is itself taken to provide the basic orientational rationale of the plan and happiness in a way then drops out of consideration. At this point, however, we may now ask a question that will allow us to begin to move towards considering what pulls people towards hedonistic views of motivation. The first step arises when we ask the question of how to choose among plans in a rational way. Rawls' own view is that essentially this requires recourse to deliberative rationality in terms of principles of rational choice. However, we could take an alternative route and analyse our aims. There appears to be a problem when we do this since there is at least an element of what we might term "purely preferential choice" where it is not at all obvious why we should choose some things over others.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If there is no ready standard of comparison between aims and aims conflict, as they often do, we may feel the need for a more objective standard to appeal to, moving us from a subjective to an objective view of deliberation. The simplest way to specify this will take us directly towards the standpoint of hedonism as the simplest way is to take there to be what Rawls terms "a single dominant end". Assuming such an end exists then all subordinate ends will be able to be related to this in more or less direct ways by means of counting principles. And then deliberative rationality would turn out to be a sophisticated process of instrumental reasoning in which there is general convergence. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Such a view of deliberative rationality in terms of dominant ends would aim to provide a method of choice that can always be followed in order to make rational decisions. So it would be a process of deliberation that would include a first-person procedure that was generally applicable and guaranteed to lead to the best (most optimal) result. Now the next question concerns what the dominant end would have to consist in. Given what we have uncovered about the structure of rational plans it would be odd to make happiness itself the dominant end since, as we have seen, happiness is attained by achieving aims set into an overall rational plan and is not itself an independent aim separable from the plan itself. This is why Rawls terms happiness not a dominant end but rather an "inclusive" one in the sense that the whole plan specifies what it would be to attain the desired state of happiness. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">If happiness does not itself appear the likely dominant end then even less fitting for such a role is a personal objective such as attaining power since any given purely personal objective such as this would surely have to modified by reference to generally accepted common sense standards of morality to have any appearance of sanity. As an example of failure to meet such a standard Rawls refers to the ways that Ignatius Loyola and Thomas Aquinas appear to present impersonal conceptions of goodness that fail to meet the standards of reference to common sense. If such views are, as Rawls, claims, "extreme" then the question arises as to how their extremity is arrived at. Rawls indicates that it occurs by means of the dominant end adopted in such cases being vague and ambiguous. Human goods are basically heterogeneous and there is something about adopting a homogeneous view of the good that is standardly distorting of the structure of aspiration. This strikes us as crazy and as disfiguring the self.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now the doctrine of hedonism strictly speaking is defined by Rawls in a non-standard way as an attempt to provide a sustainable treatment of a dominant-end conception of deliberation. As we have seen so far the convergence upon the notion of a dominant-end is meant to provide a way of resolving the indeterminacy of choice by providing an objective standard for it. The dominant end provides the overall means of assessing standards. Now if we additionally assume that pleasure is just agreeable feeling and sensation the dominant end of pleasure then pursuit of such sensation can become the dominant conception of the good. One of the ways we arrive at this view is by rejecting the outcome that was arrived at by thinkers such as Loyola and Aquinas and attempting to maintain a hold upon the requirement of justification towards common sense. In this form of hedonism we find the convergence upon sensation to be something we can see has general approval and, furthermore, has, in the first-personal case, an appearance of infallibility. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Having got this far it next becomes the general method that we select things in our rational plan according to the balance of pleasure over pain. Counting principles now appear relatively easy. The procedure becomes one of maximisation and with Sidgwick we take pleasure to be our single rational end. This does mean that pleasure is understood to have the capacity to be measured in terms of intensity and duration but the advantage of focusing upon it is we meet our standard of finding a first-person procedure as we indicated was required for a dominant end view. However this view, whilst appearing to adopt an objective process of choice is not based on viewing any particular goals as being objective. The point of this is to attempt by adopting this kind of neutrality between aims to avoid the charge of distortion of aims that we saw applied to the views of Loyola and Aquinas. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However it is also clear when we have laid the view of hedonism out like this that it does not offer what Rawls terms a "reasonable" dominant end. In making this claim Rawls points to the failure of hedonism so defined to provide us with a sufficiently definite aim. Taking the preference for sensation as having over-riding importance is something that turns out to be as unreasonable as adopting the love of God to be such. Not only does it still appear that we have here a view that is unbalanced but there are problems of priority within the prosecution of the aims set by hedonism. After all, given the disparity between intensity and duration of pleasures, which should have priority? The plurality of pleasures also simply repeats the problem that led us to seek an objective standard to begin with.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">So there would appear to be no way, within hedonistic theories, to assume a result that can seriously accord with common sense after all. Realising a rational plan of life is a merely inclusive end and the adoption of a dominant-end view is the taking of a wrong turning. It is a turning that occurs within teleological theories of value and it arises due to the problem of ambiguity with regard to the good being transferred over to the right. The right is not something that should be understood merely as an object of preference and the teleological theorist, recognising this, tries to determine the good as something objective in order to frame the right by means of it but instead transfers to the right the indeterminacy that attaches to the notions of the good. The object of this type of theory is to arrive at, as Rawls puts it, "an interpersonal currency". Whilst teleological theories do not have to be hedonistic the tendency in this direction is a result of the drive towards objectivity considered in the light of the priority being given to the good rather than the right.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Rawls' point in considering hedonism has been to show a basic problem with the teleological approach towards the theory of value. We should not, as Rawls puts it, "attempt to give form to our life by first looking to the good independently defined". It is not aims as selected by reference to an independent conception of the good that should be prior in the assessment of our own nature. It is instead the principles that would govern the background conditions under which aims can be formed and pursued. As Rawls puts this, "the self is prior to the ends which are affirmed by it" and there is no way to escape the requirements of deliberative rationality.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The conclusion of the discussion of hedonism is that there is not one dominant aim by reference to which all our choices can be reasonably assessed. Pursuit of such an aim is self-defeating and leaves us prey, after all, to the vagaries of intuitionism. The attempt to avoid this by appeal to hedonism is to no avail. So if there is no dominant end how is a rational plan after all to be identified? Rawls' answer is by means of deliberative rationality as defined by the full theory of the good. In section 85 he outlines this full theory in more detail than has occurred up to this point in <i>Theory</i>. This is by means of an account of "moral personality". On Rawls' view moral personality consists in two capacities: a conception of the good and a sense of justice. The realisation of the conception of the good is in terms of a rational plan of life whilst the realisation of the sense of justice is in terms of a regulative desire to act in accordance with the right. Following a Kantian procedure of assessment of moral psychology the latter has priority over the former.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Moral persons have ends that they have chosen and their fundamental preference is for conditions that enable them to arrive at a plan of life that express their nature as free and equal rational persons. The coherence of the plan that they adopt determines the unity of the person and their unity is founded on higher-order "desires" to follow the principles of rational choice as constrained by the sense of justice. It is in the picture of the moral agent that the real difference between Rawls' account and that of teleological theorists becomes apparent. A dominant-end view takes the person to be essentially indifferent to all aspects of themselves except in terms of how they are outlets for pleasant experiences. The view becomes even more "objective" when it frees the reference to such experiences even from the confines of a particular self and makes benevolence a general aim. Then maximisation frees itself from the confines of the self and the self essentially disintegrates as a unit as the social whole's aggregate "good" becomes rationally preferred to all else. This occurs with classical utilitarianism.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">By contrast the priority of the right in the Kantian interpretation of justice as fairness is quite different in its approach to the self. Moral personality is taken to be a fundamental aspect of the self and dominant-end conceptions are rejected. On this view maximisation has no hold as a procedure. Final ends are, instead, viewed as irreducibly plural and the problem is only how to ensure rational cooperation so that the best conditions for all being to each pursue their own view(s) of the good can be met. The priority of the right, however, constrains the acceptable boundaries and shape of the conceptions of the good. The essential unity of the self thus has its basis in the reference to the priority of the right. Given the priority of the right the indeterminacy of the good is not the problem it is for teleological theories. One reason is that the preferential elements in the conceptions of the good are precisely constrained by the form of the right. There need be no standard above the priority of the right except by reference to the processes of deliberative rationality. The principles of justice have a definite content and the argument by which we arrived at them was justified only by the thin theory of the good and the idea of primary goods. Once we have the principles of justice the priority of the right guarantees the precedence of these principles.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The principles of justice have absolute precedence in the governing of social institutions and set fundamental structural features that constrain every citizens' notions of the good. Relations of justice that conform to principles that would have been assented to by all are best fitted to express the nature of each. This does not mean that the principles of justice express a dominant-end conception themselves. This is because there is no independent conception of the good that is socially recognised. The notion guiding the conception of justice as fairness is thus "the original position and its Kantian interpretation", not a dominant-end conception of the good. This contrast is central to the notion that Rawls has provided an alternative to the utilitarian view of rational choice.</span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-5034120861952251792012-06-09T14:03:00.000+01:002012-06-09T14:03:33.400+01:00Rawls' Grounds for the Priority of Liberty<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The argument concerning the priority of liberty in <i>A Theory of Justice</i> is presented in a few places. In section 39 it was "defined" and in section 46 it was related to other cases of priority. In presenting the reasons for the principles of justice in section 26 the account of liberty that was presented was also one in which the swopping of lesser for greater liberty was shown not to be a reasonable outcome for the acceptance of contracting parties within the original position. In section 82 as Rawls moves towards the conclusion of the whole book he brings together and summarises the arguments for the priority of liberty in a well-ordered society as seen from the point of view of the original position. In this posting I am going to concentrate on how the arguments given in the latter do more than just demonstrate the grounds for the priority of liberty. The arguments also show that the suggestion made by Parfit that Rawls' account of the deliberative rationality that Rawls is articulating is desire-based and shows, to the contrary, that the recognition of interests by Rawls is one that is intrinsically normatively grounded.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The argument of section 82 opens by referring to the way the conception of the well-ordered society is a notion that requires regulation by a public conception of justice. If there is a well-ordered society then the members of it all view each other as free and equal moral persons. Now, in describing what is meant in determining each other as free and equal moral persons, Rawls refers to "the fundamental aims and interests" in the name of which each of them thinks it possible to make legitimate claims on each other. The way to understand these "aims and interests" is central to replying to the suggestion of Parfit that Rawls' moral psychology is essentially desire-based and to show in detail why this is not the case. One of the ways it becomes obvious that the account of "aims and interests" Rawls is drawing on here is not a desire-based moral psychology is that he explicitly and openly says that a right to equal respect and consideration is central to determining the principles by which the basic structure of their society is to be governed. Alongside this point about a right to equal respect is the sense of justice that would normally govern the conduct of all the members of the well-ordered society.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The original position itself is specified as governed by the constraints of right as these constraints determine the form an acceptable set of principles can take. Amongst the constraints of right that would thereby define the form of a well-ordered society is that the conception of justice that governed it should be a publicly justifiable one. It is within the constraint of such publicity that we comprehend the notion of the members of it as free and equal moral persons as this way of viewing the person (what we can generally term a "Kantian" conception of persons) are ones to whom principles of justice are publicly accessible and justifiable. The original position embodied principles of reciprocity and equality as further elements of the constraints of right and it is in the context of recognition of these principles that Rawls indicates that a basic rationale for the priority of liberty is that fundamental aims and interests of all persons are protected by it. So a first sense given to the understanding of these "aims and interests" is in terms of equal reciprocal relations between persons.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now the way that these "aims and interests" are recognised tells one a great deal about how they are understood. The first "interest" Rawls here mentions is that which people have in religion. Religious interests are recognised in terms of equal liberty of conscience for all contracting parties. The general nature of the religious interest is recognised only since no one would be aware, under the veil of ignorance, of possessing any particular religious belief. An "aim" of persons is clearly to defend any given religious belief that they may possess since they, as particular persons, will hold to some definite religion. The "strains of commitment" of the original position will be such that contracting parties will see the point of giving precedence to liberty. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Having given first a "religious" interest and specifying the concomitant "aim" that goes with it Rawls secondly looks at how "higher-order interests" in general shape and regulate the social institutions that will themselves shape other "interests". The recognition of the contracting parties as "free" persons is reflected in the understanding that they each have of an "interest" in having the ability to adopt, revise and alter, their conceptions of the good. This is another basis for recognition of the priority of liberty. The basic structure thus should be governed by the account of autonomy and objectivity that Rawls <a href="http://kantinternational.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/rawls-on-autonomy-and-social-union.html">earlier provided</a>.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The arrival at the principles of justice as a result of deliberation within the original position occurs by means not just of the constraints of right that govern the position but also by means of the way that persons within this position are moved by a "certain hierarchy of interests". The highest-order interests and fundamental aims of the parties are reflected in the priority given to liberty and the means that enable them to "advance their other desires and ends" is explicitly stated to have a <i>subordinate place</i>. Not only is this so, but, as we shall see, in the sense meant by desire-based theories of reasons, Rawls does not recognise "desires" here as having any real role at all. There are, for example, "interests" in liberty which have a real objective in terms of establishing basic liberties but this is not the kind of "interest" that is invoked by desire-based theories of deliberative rationality. The kind of "interest" involved in liberty is, as Rawls puts it, a "higher-order" one as it regulates all the ways that "interests" can be expressed within a well-ordered society.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This point is supplemented by the argument concerning the kinds of attitudes and feelings that would be generated within a well-ordered society, the argument that included the <a href="http://kantinternational.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/rawls-on-envy-and-equality.html">previous account of envy</a>. The point of the account of envy was to respond to the kind of objection to the well-ordered society that suggests that within it there could be a form of competitive/comparative relation between persons that would be socially destructive. In other words, a more equal society might make people more obsessed with their relative share of social wealth. Against this view Rawls wishes to show that the well-ordered society would lead, rather, to people taking less interest in relative positions. The presence of envy would have less sway, at least in a destructive sense. This is not due to a lack of concern with status since recognition of self-respect as a basic primary good ensures instead that relating to others as worthy of respect is something central within the society. But the basis for self-respect is grounded not on relative share of income but instead on the public recognition of the equality of rights. Since there is such equality of rights there is no incentive to politically seek other ways of having status understood as central to worth that is non-public in form. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">One of the reasons why this argument is thought to hold by Rawls is due to the symmetrical reason why no one would wish to be publicly inferior as that would be damaging to self-esteem. Similarly attempting to reach a non-public form of self-esteem has the difficulty that it indicates a view of others as inferior to oneself, a conception that has no public endorsement and would rather lead to a general aversion to the one wishing to find expression for their view. Public attitudes of mutual respect have an essential place in maintaining a political balance between persons and in assuring everyone of their own worth and the acceptance of equal liberties is a central way in which this is expressed.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The distribution of material means in the well-ordered society is taken care of by principles of pure procedural justice and the good of social union is maintained by supporting the primary good of self-respect. The application of the difference principle allows for what was previously determined as excusable envy and this helps to show the grounds for the priority of liberty. The public knowledge of the facts about each other reflected in the general recognition of the Kantian conception of the person is both based in the culture of the well-ordered society and furthered by its institutional arrangements. The reasoning that led to the principles of justice and that can support it is of a form that is publicly available.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Notable in the whole argument of section 82 is that the interests that are recognised as decisive in it are not ones that are reflective of "desires" in the sense indicated in "desire-based" views of reasons. So, for example, they are not desires simply taken as given or as reflective of mere natural facts. They are rather civilly understood desires and desires that fundamentally reflect interests in recognition of aspects of personhood that are enshrined in the Kantian conception of the person. So not only does section 82 summarise and complete the arguments for the priority of liberty but it confirms that Rawls' general moral psychology is not a desire-based one.</span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-6509190307130594382012-06-07T22:46:00.000+01:002012-06-07T22:54:05.776+01:00Rawls on Envy and Equality<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Two sections of Chapter IX of <i>A Theory of Justice</i> take up the apparently provincial question of how to respond to socially destructive psychological propensities with envy being used as the specific case for the general question. The point of this posting will not just be to critically reconstruct the argument of these sections but also to use them to answer the question of why Rawls bothers to expend space on an argument that might strike some as not particularly significant. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The introduction of this question marks a shift in the general strategy of the argument of <i>Theory</i>. Within the original position Rawls assumed that there were not operative destructive psychological propensities as something like envy was taken not to motivate a rational person. This was part of the general removal of special contingent psychological circumstances from the specific choice situation defined in the original position. In making this move Rawls correctly followed the Kantian interpretation of justice as fairness although, in so doing, he certainly simplified the situation within the original position. But part of the point in adopting such simplified assumptions is that there is no evident moral value in any special psychological states and we wished there to arrive at a situation in which contingencies that lacked moral value were eliminated. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However when introducing the question of envy Rawls strikes a new note admitting here that such psychological states as this do exist and have, in some sense, to be dealt with as part of the theory of justice. What is his justification for undertaking an examination of such a question? It is that the general discussion of justice has two separate parts. The first part, which involved the discussion of the original position, proceeding on the assumptions of aiming to clarify rational discussion of justice without introduction of contingencies that lacked moral value. The second part, in which envy comes on the scene as a topic to be discussed, asks now whether the well-ordered society is one that will encourage feelings such as envy to develop and in so doing will create circumstances that are not favourable to its survival. So the discussion of envy is a special case of a general problem of the stability of the well-ordered society. Should this society really be subject to problems in terms of its possible encouragement of destructive propensities that destabilise it then it could yet be the case that the justificatory force of the earlier arguments given could yet have to be revised.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In looking specifically at envy Rawls has to make some distinctions concerning the way it is to be understood. In doing so he distinguishes between two forms of envy: looking at what he terms "general" envy as opposed to "particular" envy. General envy has social force in terms of the <i>kinds </i>of goods some possess as against the <i>particular</i> items they have. So general envy focuses on something like the opportunities possessed by some as opposed to others. Particular envy, by contrast, is well expressed in rivalry and competition where something specific is fought over. To understand the latter it is necessary to have a conception of the kinds of things that can be fought over just as to grasp the former it is necessary to understand what types of opportunities provoke general envy. The comprehension of such questions is focused for Rawls by his notion of primary goods which includes a sense of opportunities, liberties, income and wealth. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">On this basis Rawls arrives at a general definition of envy as "the propensity to view with hostility the greater good of others even though their being more fortunate than we are does not detract from our advantages". In understanding envy in this way Rawls is pointing to the way that the comparative sense involved in it is one that is operative regardless of any specific material disadvantage suffered by the one possessed of envy. Such disadvantage may afflict them (particularly in the case of particular envy) but it is not a necessary feature of envy and even if it is given it may not be a disadvantage in practice (i.e. may not prevent the envied person achieving anything they wish to). Further envy is such that deprivation of the goods in question from the person envied may even be to the disadvantage of the one possessed by envy and yet still be desired by the latter. The other problem provoked by envy is that discovery of its existence by the one envied may provoke them to jealous clinging to their advantages in such a way that they feel obliged to protect themselves against others. So envy provokes a kind of arms race between the one envied and the one suffering envy and this is the reason why Kant discussed envy as a vice.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This does not mean that there cannot be such a thing as "benign envy" as when we describe someone as having an enviable situation as they possess something we take to be good without wishing to deprive them of it or feeling we are in any sense worse off by them possessing it. We are, in such a benign case, agreeing with the one possessing the valued thing that it is indeed valuable. Slightly differently there can be an emulative type of envy in which we engage in competition with someone for something, such as a kind of status, without either of us thereby falling into the destructive spiral described above. It is the case that emulative envy is liable to become destructive under some conditions but it is not necessarily a destructive feeling.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Rawls is careful to argue that there is nothing intrinsically moral about envy. What is meant by this claim is that there does not exist a moral principle that can be cited as a justification for envy. In saying this Rawls distinguishes envy from resentment as resentment is taken by him to be a moral feeling. When resentment is expressed it is, according to Rawls, a response to unjust situations or wrongful conduct and thus refers to an injury suffered. Rawls also distinguishes envy from other non-moral feelings that might be thought related to it, such as jealously. Rawls describes jealously, however, in a somewhat odd way as he relies on the sense of it that is used when we say that someone is "jealous" of their possessions rather than when we say that someone is jealous of the way someone else than themselves is receiving the lions' share of glory for something. Because Rawls thinks of jealously in this way he takes it to be the "reverse" of envy rather than being, as it may often be, simply a different kind of way of experiencing a very similar response to something.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">More interesting than the contrast between envy and jealously is the one that Rawls mentions between envy and spite where the latter is characterised as the inclination to deny someone else a benefit one does not need and perhaps cannot even use oneself. The latter is, like envy, a kind of vice in being a trait that is socially detrimental. This does not mean that envy is never "excusable" since if someone feels that they lack self-respect and it would be unreasonable to expect them not to feel this then envy of others might be a response to be expected from them.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Having given this general discussion of envy Rawls turns next to the likelihood of it endangering the stability of the well-ordered society. In doing so Rawls claims that the root of envy is a lack of self-confidence in our own worth combined with a sense of an inability to alter matters. Three conditions are listed by Rawls as likely to encourage envy in a destructive way. The first is that the psychological condition just mentioned prevails and the second is that social circumstances occur in which the discrepancy between oneself and others is made painfully visible to one. The third is that there is no constructive alternative open to the one who experiences the feelings in question. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The listing of these circumstances is meant to provide the means to assess the construction of the well-ordered society. In such a society self-esteem is taken to be a primary good and circumstances of arranging for its cultivation are general. So publicly all are treated as equal and everyone possesses the same basic rights. A common sense of justice prevails and instills civic relations between persons. Part of this is that no assumes that the better off are thereby morally preferable to anyone else. So the less fortunate are not taken to be inferior in any central sense and this should enable them to bear better the circumstances in which they are placed than in other forms of society.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The absolute and relative differences between members of society are to be less than in other societies as the spread of income and wealth should not be excessive in practice given the background institutions of the society. Natural duties are honoured in practice which will include the diminution of conspicuous display of social differences by means of wealth. So the liability to envy is unlikely to be strongly evoked. Finally, there will be constructive alternatives to envy within such a society. So there are no specific reasons to think that there would be troublesome conditions of envy within the well-ordered society.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The second part of Rawls' discussion of envy has a different focus than the first part. Having assessed the reasons for thinking that envy is not a problem for the well-ordered society Rawls next looks at the arguments for taking envy to be bound up with demands for a more egalitarian order. Conservative writers often present demands of this sort as motivated by envy but Rawls points out that this cannot be said to be the ground of the principles of justice. These principles are justified by means of a procedure that allows no scope for such feelings as envy and whilst it is possible that some who argue for these principles feel resentment that is quite different for the reasons given. The principles are justified by reference to criteria of universality and generality not by means of special circumstances.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Rawls also rejects other types of arguments that relate demands for justice to envy such as the ones given by Freud. Freud's arguments can be responded to on the grounds of Rawls' earlier account of the morality of authority as certainly requiring first of all inculcation of principles based on the simple standing of the one making them but as requiring, in a well-ordered society, development into the basis of character in such a way that they are autonomously justified. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The specific discussion of envy is brief and what it does is show a basis for thinking that the account of moral sentiments is provided in order to show the means by which positive feelings can be developed. The presence of negative feelings is facilitated and encouraged by conditions that breed them so Rawls' argument is meant to show that the change of such conditions is the ground for hope that destructive motivations would also thereby reduce. To the critic who alleges that Rawls has not dealt seriously enough with the topic it is possible to respond by pointing out that the general account of moral psychology he has provided can be backed up further by a Kantian conception of the person. Such a conception, when reinforced by conditions that positively affirm it, permits the hope that emotions could develop on grounds that are different in connection with background conditions that are.</span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-33039967676751911442012-06-06T16:48:00.000+01:002012-06-06T16:58:49.379+01:00Parfit on Contractualist Consequentialism<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In <a href="http://kantinternational.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/parfit-and-rawlss-formula.html">my previous posting </a>I objected to the account Parfit gives of the "veil of ignorance" and <a href="http://kantinternational.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/parfit-rawls-and-deliberative.html">in the posting prior to this</a> I advanced an account of deliberative rationality that challenged the view articulated by Parfit. Both of these postings were responses to part of the argument presented in t<a href="http://grad.berkeley.edu/tanner/0203.shtml">he third of Parfit's 2002 Tanner Lectures</a>. However the arguments discussed in the previous two postings were essentially negative in import for Parfit, ways of clearing the way for the view of contractualism that he wishes to present within this third lecture. The argument that is presented here is for something that has not previously been identified as a possible contender in the area of moral theory, a notion of contractualism that is consequentialist. In this posting I aim to do two things: both present the considerations that enable Parfit to arrive at the understanding that it is possible to reconcile consequentialism with contractualism and also to show why the combined view that thereby arises is unsustainable. So my purpose here is both reconstructive of Parfit's argument and critical of its import. This ensures that this posting will be more than usually involved.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">After replying to Rawls in the first two parts of this third lecture Parfit returns to his original account of the basic notion of contractualism in his view, the notion of 'rational agreement', a notion that requires unanimity. In doing so he contrasts the idea of such agreement as understood on the minimal view of David Gauthier with what he terms "Kant's Contractualist Formula", the derivation of which <a href="http://kantinternational.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/parfit-and-kants-contractualist-formula.html">I treated previously</a>. Now, in contrasting these two views at this point, Parfit points a methodological contrast between them based on the fact that the Gauthier type formula requires adoption of principles that everyone would choose whilst, on Parfit's construal "Kant's Contractualist Formula" (or KCF) only requires adopting principles that each reasoner could see as required themselves. (Notice that the contrast between them is thus structurally similar to that between the two versions of the veil of ignorance treated in my previous posting.) So rather than conducting one thought-experiment in which we try to find principles for all of us there are many thought-experiments, basically one each in which we use reference to an understanding of moral belief in order to reach the principles that everyone would accept if rational.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now in justifying KCF over the Gauthier type formula Parfit appeals to certain safeguards that contractualists are concerned should be in place. One of these is to eliminate inequalities of bargaining power (something Gautheir's formula does not do for reasons that Rawls provides). There is no requirement for each of us to choose principles just on the grounds that others will choose them as we first ask if they are reasonable to us. A second concern that is meant to be met is that we should avoid the outcome where some are viewed as capable of bearing burdens for the sake of others (as often arises from utilitarian conceptions). This second concern is what Parfit terms the contractualists' "protective aim". Again Parfit argues that a Gauthier type view cannot achieve this as the aim of reaching unanimous agreement gives those who possess unequal power an advantage (though, notably, only if we accept the "equal chances" view of the veil of ignorance). Parfit again misunderstands Rawls' view here since he takes Rawls to adopt a self-interest conception of rationality although he had previously indicated he knew this to be false.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">KCF neither requires unanimous agreement nor has a veil of ignorance and these characteristics of it are meant to show that it achieves the "protective aim" of contractualism better than previous alternatives considered. Further, its failure to guarantee unanimity means that should it achieve it then this would be all the more impressive. However KCF does imply a particular view of reasons which Parfit elaborates as a "wide value-based" conception as opposed to desire-based theories. The value-based conception is, however, one in which "we have strong reasons to care about our own well-being, and in a temporally neutral way". However, least one voice the view that this implies an egoistic conception, Parfit is quick to point out that it is part of KCF to assume that we can rationally care as much about some other things as well as this, including here the well-being of others and "justice" (although he takes no time here to define this latter notion). So when we adopt KCF we take with it this view of reasons. I'll return subsequently to the point that if we see KCF as involving this view of reasons then we will have grasped KCF in such a way that it precisely is <i>not</i>, despite Parfit's arguments to the contrary, really a contractualist conception at all.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">However before we move on to the reasons why I take this to the case it is important to next follow the claims that Parfit makes that enables him to arrive at the conclusion that KCF is both contractualist and consequentialist. The first point to be introduced is the criteria that Parfit gives for KCF succeeding in meeting the problem that contractualism aims to address. This is that it must meet a 'uniqueness condition', such that, there is some relevant principle, and only one principle, that everyone could rationally choose. In illustrating a way that a principle could meet such a condition Parfit gives an example in which there exists a quantity of unowned goods that no one has a special claim on and the distribution of which would have the same total sum of benefits however it was done. In such a case, says Parfit, we can all see that a basic principle of equal shares applies. It is notable that the example of application is a distributive one of some set of resources and not, for example, of a criteria that would define rights or liberties. Such an example already implies a definite conception of what type of thing we should be concerned with when aiming for a notion of unanimity.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">A wrinkle that is worth observation in terms of how Parfit justifies the appeal to equal shares is that there is a difference, on his view, between consenting to acts and choosing principles. So we might consent to an unequal share, taking less for ourselves in order to aid others. However this is quite different to adopting a principle that some (whether ourselves or others) should as a matter of course have unequal shares since that principle is not one we could rationally accept. (On the basis of the wide value-based conception of reasons.) This argument is used also to show that the type of principle we should end up with is not act utilitarianism since act utilitarianism could state that it is permissible to give some no benefits at all since the net effects would not thereby be affected.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Having reached this point in his argument Parfit turns next to a further connection between moral beliefs and beliefs about reasons suggesting that our moral beliefs may partly depend on our beliefs about reasons. There are two ways that this connection is perceived by him to go. On the one hand we might hold a view, such as contractualism, which determines the understanding of the rightness of acts by reference to the relationship of such acts to principles that everyone could rationally accept. On the other hand, we might find that moral beliefs depend in some way on our non-moral beliefs about the kinds of things that are good or bad. Now the second sort of relationship between moral and non-moral beliefs turns out to be the one that Parfit exploits and he does so at the expense of the first sort of relation. An example of this second sort of relation concerns our general understanding of hedonic states. The point that Parfit makes about these states is that our reaction to them involves us in accepting that there are certain actions that are good or bad to perform and that this understanding reflects what he terms a "reason-involving" sense of goodness and badness. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In claiming that we have a "reason-involving" response to hedonic states Parfit takes himself to be in disagreement with Kant given that Kant does not take inclinations to be themselves reason-giving. Parfit views this as a claim to the effect that whilst hedonic states may not be the ground of a moral claim they still could be the ground of a reason-giving claim and that Kant ignores the latter. This, however, is an odd reading of Kant since Kant claims not that there may not be reasons to relate to hedonic states in certain ways but that these reasons are part of the formulation of maxims and it is the endorsement of the maxims that provides the reasons in question, not simple experience of the hedonic states alone. Putting this in Parfit's terms it is not that the hedonic states are themselves "reason-involving" in the sense that the mere experience of them produces a reason to respond in a given way. It is rather that we take the states, in conjunction with maxims in which they feature, to provide grounds for appropriate actions. And this is quite different from the way Parfit puts the case as the way he puts it suggests that it is the experience of the states <i>simpliciter</i> that is reason-involving and that is what Kant denies.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parfit takes hedonic states to be "reason-involving" as he assumes that there are person-relative reasons always to avoid painful states. I have denied this claim even though it seems true intuitively. The reason I deny it is simply that the painful state is not itself motivationally sufficient for action as it has to be related to other considerations that are prevailing at the time it is experienced. Parfit's claim could be reformulated as saying that pain is something we avoid <i>cateris paribus</i> but the conditions involved remain important and indicate that the response to pain is not one we normally assume to be simply permissive of actions following a certain pattern (say, of avoidance). Further Parfit moves swiftly from the claim that the response to hedonic states has this person-relative sense to the more general claim that painful states are <i>impersonally</i> bad. It is important to note that there are counter-intuitive aspects to Parfit's claim here just as I have indicated there are to the way I denied his claim concerning person-relative reasons. The counter-intuitive sense of his claim becomes apparent in the following sentence: "If more people suffer, that would be worse, even though it may not be worse for any of these people". </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In a claim like the one just cited it becomes apparent that Parfit conceives of hedonic states in an aggregative fashion so that the more they point one way or another <i>en masse</i> the worse or better the general situation is. This is to view hedonic states, however, in complete abstraction from the experience had of them as Parfit confesses when he agrees that the "worse" outcome on his view may not be worse <i>for</i> anyone. This indicates that the "non-moral" sense of badness that he has is radically impersonal since its assessment of badness is not one that refers to criteria of what is bad <i>for persons</i>. This "non-moral" claim is, however, one that it is not obvious should be accepted as a serious criteria of goodness and badness <i>by</i> persons. Parfit sloughs over this point passing from the acceptance that the "non-moral" sense of goodness and badness he is advocating is impersonal to the quite different claim that it is agent-neutral. It is not at all evident that a seriously agent-neutral claim is one that has to be impersonal. After all if we think of the "mere means" criteria of the Formula of Humanity we refer to an agent-neutral claim as it specifies a way of relating to persons generally regardless of who they are but it is <i>not</i> thereby "impersonal".</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parfit's conception of agent-neutrality is of a form of reason that is a "reason for everyone" and this applies to the application of the Formula of Humanity but it does <i>not</i> apply to his kind of "non-moral" form of goodness since the latter is in fact a reason <i>for</i> no one which is precisely implied by the notion of its impersonality. Each of us has, Parfit implies, reasons to prevent or relieve pain, whether of oneself or others. But this is untrue not merely because it is not always possible to do so but also because the pain experienced may not be, in the given case, a "worse" state for the person in question. This is directly admitted by Parfit and since it is so it follows that the response to pain does not have the over-riding "non-moral" value Parfit claims it has. Not only is this so but if we adopted a different standard, from the "mere means" criteria of the Formula of Humanity, for example, we would have an agent-neutral way of responding to others that was not impersonal and which would be a general guide to conduct.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Now if the first point of difficulty with Parfit's view concerns the way in which he slides from 'agent-neutral' reasons to "impersonal" ones the second problem arises from the conception of how to weight the reasons that his "impersonal" view has led us to consider. Parfit states that this should be in terms of <i>outcomes</i> so that the best "impartial" reason for preferring something is if the features it has give everyone "the strongest impartial <i>outcome-given</i> reasons to prefer this outcome". At this point it appears we have simply specified a consequentialist view and so one may wonder what happened to the apparent contractualist procedure. Parfit is sensitive to this point and agrees that the impartial outcome-given reasons should not be assumed to be the <i>only</i> impartial reasons. Further Parfit also accepts that some other types of impartial reasons might outweigh on given occasions impartial outcome-given reasons. However whilst Parfit refers here to rights as other sources of impartial reasons he gives no general account of rights and nor does he provide any lexical procedure for describing the relationship between rights and impartial outcome-given reasons. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The view thus far is described by Parfit as "semi-consequentialist" since it gives some weight to impartial outcome-given reasons but not necessarily over-riding weight as yet. Consequentialism generally does give over-riding weight to such reasons as Parfit agrees in specifying act-consequentialism as the view that acts are right just in case they make things go best in terms of impartial outcome-given reasons. Parfit is clearly no more willing to endorse this view than he was act utilitarianism but this leaves him open to the attractions of rule consequentialism in which acts will be right if they are permitted by one of the principles whose acceptance would make things go best in an impartial reason-giving sense. Since this conception is related to the "wide value-based" view of reasons it is a form of consequentialism that Parfit feels able to term a reason-consequentialism. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">At this point the basic problem emerges with some clarity. Contractualism involves the conception that we aim to develop a view that understands that as right which we can all rationally accept. However Parfit understands this claim by means of the consequentialist idea that was already expressed in his value-based conception of reasons to the effect that we have strong reasons to care about considerations of well-being and subsequently moves from this to the understanding of impartial reasons in terms of impersonal outcomes that no one in particular ever has some reason to want. This ensures that his conception is one that presents as a reason we should all rationally accept a consideration that no one of us has any reason to endorse. And that hardly meets the contractualist criteria.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parfit's claim that contractualists and consequentialists are "climbing the same mountain on different sides" is essentially built on the claim that the consequentialist appeal to impartial outcome-based reasons will coincide with contractualist appeals to what everyone has a rational basis for choosing but in doing so it overlooks that the former presents for the latter reasons that no one has any particular reason to endorse. Not only is this so but there is a further problem involved in the relationship between these theories. This problem was expressed by Rawls in section 5 of <i>A Theory of Justice</i> where Rawls contrasted two methods of moral reasoning. On one of them "the good is defined independently from the right, and then the right is defined as that which maximises the good". This is the means by which consequentialism works. It has an independent conception of the good, as Parfit claims here when he speaks of hedonic criteria as providing a "non-moral" standard of goodness. This methodology contrasts with the other one that Rawls speaks of and which he follows Kant in preferring. This is outlined by Kant as indicating that it is only by means of and through the moral law that we arrive at a view of the good. So the good is not then independently defined but viewed rather through the prism of the right.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">This second type of relationship is implied in contractualism which views the good not as an independent variable but as something that is arrived at by means of right reasoning. On the contractualist conception the right is that which we would all rationally want and the good emerges as that which is constrained by appeal to this notion of the right and thus becomes manifest to us by means of it. This methodology is quite distinct from that of consequentialism and is directly opposed to it. Not only is this so but correctly seeing the right as prior to the good in the way that Rawls and Kant direct us to implies that there is always a basis of lexical priority between the "moral" and the "non-moral" goods since the nature of what can be permissibly classed under the latter is defined by the former. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parfit cites Rawls' account of the way that consequentialist theories involve giving the good priority over the right and appears to agree with Rawls that this indicates a problem with such theories. However the reason Parfit gives for rejecting the claimed priority of the good is not Rawls' reason and it is also not a good reason. Parfit states that if consequentialism requires us to take the good as prior to the right then this implies that the right is trivially defined so that we end up with tautological claims. This is not the way Rawls understands the point. Instead Rawls' point is that taking the good to be prior to the right ensures that the independently defined good is one that is given over-riding priority in considerations that inevitably require abstraction from the nature of reference to persons. This is precisely what we have seen follows also from Parfit's view. Parfit attempts to avoid this by stating that whether the right or the good is made prior you end up with trivial claims but this is simply false. On the one hand you produce a claim that there is an impartial reason-involving good which is grasped in an outcome-based way (as in his view) whilst on the other hand you arrive at a conception of law and right that defines and describes what can be taken to be good (as on Rawls and Kant's view). And the difference between these two is anything but trivial.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The development of Parfit's own view is one that he sets up as involving a criteria that he thinks does mitigate its general consequentialist thrust when he introduces criteria of distribution of benefits and burdens that is meant to favour an egalitarian conception. So the goodness of outcomes is then taken not in a bluntly aggregative sense but in a way that relates this aggregation to the way the benefits and burdens are distributed. Rawls considered such a view in section 5 of <i>Theory</i> and determined that it would no longer be "teleological" in a classical sense as it would now take distribution to be an independent variable. Taking it to be so implies a notion of right (through distribution) that is meant to apply to the impartial outcome-based reasons and to provide a way of assessing different outcomes. Notably it does not affect the understanding of agent-neutral goods as impersonal goods however so it remains in its basic orientation a theory that is still based on the priority of the good over the right. Simply accepting that not all distribution is equal so that there is some form of distribution that is morally preferable to others and thus endorsing an egalitarian principle is not in itself sufficient to dilute the general consequentialist thrust of the theory. The nature of what is good and the form of right in relation to this good remain broadly consequentialist with only the balancing of distribution taken to be one that has a basis for preference that is not blunt. But the rationale for the preference for equality is not evident and the goods distributed are still essentially understood in a way that abstracts from consideration of the good of persons.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In the next posting I am going to conclude assessment of the third of Parfit's 2002 lectures by coming back to how the conclusion of his argument relies on his assessment of KCF and what this tells us about the kind of reading of Kant that Parfit has undertaken in his work. </span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3983293735571319877.post-89537983358739756812012-06-05T17:56:00.001+01:002012-06-05T18:06:04.972+01:00Parfit and "Rawls's Formula"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">In <a href="http://kantinternational.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/parfit-rawls-and-deliberative.html">my previous posting</a> on <a href="http://grad.berkeley.edu/tanner/0203.shtml">the third of Parfit's 2002 Tanner Lectures </a>I looked at the account Parfit gave of the Rawlsian view of deliberative rationality. In this posting I'm going to look further at the third 2002 lecture in order to concentrate now on the treatment Parfit gives there of what he terms "Rawls's Formula", which is Parfit's way of describing the methodological appeal Rawls makes to the "veil of ignorance".</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The appeal to the "veil of ignorance" is as part of Rawls' discussion of the original position and is a way in which he moves from the initial situation to the original position. Parfit views it as a "revision" of the basic contractualist conception of rational agreement and he analyses the various defences Rawls gives for the appeal to it and offers what he takes to be a problem with the different versions of the "veil" that Rawls is said to present. Parfit mentions amongst the justifications Rawls gives for appealing to the veil of ignorance that it enables us to move away from contingent facts that apply to us at present and which may influence the way we currently view the situation but which should not, impartially, affect our understanding of just distributions. The way Parfit understands this is that there is no "threat advantage" in the situation, a point that we noted in the previous posting was utilised by Rawls to argue against contemporary Hobbesian views. Our ignorance of who we are in the situation removes any such advantage though Parfit, somewhat oddly, also assumes that this means that "everyone's well-being" is taken into account when, instead, it means that the outcome that is arrived at is one that is not based on considerations of well-being but instead is formally construed.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The difference between these understandings of the veil of ignorance becomes clearer when Parfit begins to assess the general claim that Rawls makes to the effect that the contract doctrine offers a general alternative to utilitarianism. Parfit is surprised that Rawls feels able to make such a claim given, as Parfit puts it, that an appeal to "a combination of self-interested rationality and impartiality" tends to produce utilitarianism. Rawls, however, has already rejected appeals to self-interest on the grounds of the formal constraints of right and his view of impartiality is not one that is shaped by appeal to well-being as Parfit assumes hence the notion of impartiality favoured by Rawls does not tend to lead to utilitarian conclusions.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The reason why Parfit thinks differently about the appeal to the veil of ignorance than I am suggesting is correct is due to how he views Rawls' consideration of the notion of "average" utility which Rawls discusses in section 27 of <i>A Theory of Justice</i>. Rawls here provides a description of why the notion of "average" utility is preferable to the "classical" notion of utilitarianism and imagines arriving at the former through recourse to a device of contractualist reasoning. The way this goes is that Rawls views the notion of "average" utility as conjoined to a conception of having an "equal chance" of being any individual within the society though he also adds to this the assumption that all individuals have "similar preferences" whether or not they belong to the same society. Given these assumptions there is a general rationale existent for the "average" principle of utility. Parfit points out, in a footnote, that there is, even given these assumptions, something to be said to favour taking the "interests" of the worst off most in the situation. In fact, Rawls goes further, pointing out, in the process, that the situation of choice involved in the original position is quite different to any other choice given that the uncertainties it involves are so great and adding that it would be rational, given such uncertainties, to go so far in weighting the position of the worst off that the principle of average utility ends up (even given the "equal chances" idea) of being practically identical with the difference principle.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parfit pays insufficient attention to this point remaining fixed on the claim that there is something of a case for the principle of "average" utility assuming the preference for criteria of well-being are tantamount for us. In making this point Parfit draws on the way that the argument of section 27 of <i>Theory</i> develops by progressing from the "equal chances" conception of the veil of ignorance to a "full" veil of ignorance in which there is no knowledge provided of the place one has in society. In fact, Parfit fails to note here that it is not only the place one has in society that is affected by moving to the "full" veil of ignorance. It is also the case that we no longer assume that individuals have "similar preferences" whether or not they belong to the society. We do not claim any knowledge of such preferences when we move to the full veil which is another way of saying that questions of well-being (understood through the prism of preferences) are not assumed in advance to guide our decision of the right principles to be chosen.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parfit points to the account Rawls gives in section 28 of <i>Theory</i> where Rawls gives a further argument for moving away from an "equal chances" conception of the veil of ignorance and where Rawls advances the argument that "there seem to be no objective grounds in the initial situation for assuming that one has an equal chance of turning out to be anybody". In stating this point Rawls refers to the way that the principle of average utility appears to presuppose a principle of insufficient reason as the ground for how probabilities are to be assessed and such an appeal is merely one to "as-if probabilities" that effectively are only ways of stipulating the principle of average utility and are not means of arguing for it as a principle to be adopted. Further the conception that is at work in the "equal chances" view of the veil of ignorance that is preferred by the advocate of average utility itself requires a very stark conception of the person which Rawls terms that of "bare" personhood so that the persons in question lack determinate characters (which is one of the ways the "equal chance" notion works out). By contrast Rawls posits a conception of determinate personhood as the basis of choice so that there really are "interests and ends" of the persons in question even if the nature of them is unknown to the parties involved. So the form of the veil of ignorance that supports the "equal chances" conception, whilst not as full as that which Rawls advocates, is more drastic in its treatment of the persons engaged in forming the contractual agreement.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parfit, however, objects to the claim that there are no "objective" grounds for favouring the "equal chances" version of the veil of ignorance on the grounds that it appears to treat the original position as an actual state rather than an hypothetical one. This is incorrect as we have seen. It is not a question of treating the original position as an "actual" state, it is rather one of specifying what assumptions are involved in the relative ways the thickness of the "veil" is presented as. The "equal chances" formula requires adoption of a particular conception of probability that is itself not neutral between principles to be considered and which is, further, thicker than Rawls' version of the "veil" in another way, in the way, that is, that it treats the persons in the contractual situation since it renders them mere vessels for utility maximisation. Thus there are two ways in which the "equal chances" view of the veil of ignorance is philosophically problematic: firstly, it assumes a form of probability assessment that is a covert introduction of the principle to be argued for and secondly it pictures the contracting parties in a way that is part of the general utilitarian conception of ignoring the separateness of persons.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Indeed returning to the way the path to the principle of average utility was earlier rendered by Rawls in section 27 of <i>Theory</i> shows that it was precisely by assuming these points that the principle was taken to be available for consideration in the first place. Rawls wrote there: "<i>if we waive the problem of interpersonal conceptions of utility, and if the parties are viewed as rational individuals who have no aversion to risk and who follow the principle of insufficient reason in computing likelihoods</i>....then the idea of the initial situation leads naturally to the average principle" (my emphasis). It is only by not following through that it is these controversial assumptions that support the advocacy of the principle of average utility under the "equal chances" view of the veil that Parfit can assume that the argument for the "equal chances" view of the veil is as good as that for the "no knowledge" view of the veil (which latter is, as we have seen, mis-named).</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Parfit assumes that the two versions of the veil of ignorance are equal <i>in their impartiality</i>. In fact, however, they express two quite different conceptions of impartiality since the "equal chances" version of the veil of ignorance takes impartiality to imply that persons are treated rightly when they are viewed only in terms of interests and desires whilst the other version of the veil of ignorance takes it that there is more to people than this. So different conceptions of the person are related to different views of impartiality and the one that supports the "equal chances" formula is one that is framed to lead us to the principle of average utility and to <i>its</i> formula of "impartiality".</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">As a separate argument Parfit considers the claim that utilitarianism conflicts with our strongest moral beliefs and that this is a distinct argument for rejection of it and to favour Rawls' principles of justice. However, against this argument Parfit states that if we use the appeal to our beliefs to favour one of the versions of the veil of ignorance we cannot also use the veil to produce a rationale for these beliefs. This fails to grasp the point of the reference to the veil of ignorance and suggests some misunderstandings on Parfit's point of Rawls' procedure. The point of appeal to the veil of ignorance is to move away, as Parfit earlier recognised, from contingent features of existing situations in order that consideration of correct principles can be undertaken. Does this entail that there are no constraints involved in the choice of the principles in question? No: Rawls is explicit in appealing to the constraints of right in the situation. He incorporates such features as, for example, the publicity condition. The point is not that such conditions are equivalent to or presented as arguments for the principles of justice. It is rather that they provide us with a way in which the criteria for what would count as a preferable conception of justice can be specified. And if some account of a principle emerges which violates some of these conditions (which include what Rawls terms the "circumstances" of justice) then this is an argument against them.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">The final argument that Parfit presents against the formula of the veil of ignorance Rawls has favoured returns to the reasons Rawls gives for taking the position of the worst off into particular account. Parfit formulates this as an argument that requires us to "<i>max</i>imise the <i>min</i>imum level" and thus terms it the "<i>Maximin Argument</i>". There is lack of specificity in terms of how Rawls understands the worst-off since there is no one specific way that definitely defines them and Parfit suggests that this group should be understood in egoistic terms despite the point that this offends against specific constraints of right on the grounds that Rawls mentions at one time a view of a "representative" person of this group which Parfit argues offends equally against specific constraints of right. However the key problem here is not so much how the group is to be defined as to understand how addressing their situation should be understood. Parfit typically takes it that we address their situation by means of application of a consequentialist process of welfare distribution whereas this is contrary to the point and process of the difference principle. The latter points not to welfare increments but instead to the conditions under which self-respect and the general primary goods (which include conditions of character formation) are to be enhanced. So the considerations Parfit applies to the "Maximin Argument" are of the wrong sort.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Finally Parfit looks at the Maximin Argument in terms of the selection of moral principles rather than in relation to principles of justice which means that the assessment of the argument is simply understood in a way that is not apt for it. One of the reasons why this odd element of Parfit's account of the Maximin Argument is followed appears to be due to an overall claim on Parfit's part that the difference between Rawslian reasoning and that of utilitarians is much less than first appears. A reason for this appears to be Rawls' remark in section 87 of <i>Theory</i> that, in the "initial situation", parties are not taken to have any particular ethical motivation but instead to decide solely on the basis of what seems best calculated "to further their interests" and this passage is meant to bolster the peculiar way Parfit understands the original position. The point here is one that Rawls is making about recognising the intuitive idea of rational prudential choice but Rawls immediately adds that the formal conditions on principles and the veil of ignorance mean that it necessarily also includes moral features and we have seen that his criticism of the average principle of utility further pointed to a conception of the persons involved in the contractual situation as having ends in addition to interests even though we did not know what they were. This passage therefore does not support Parfit's conception of the original position.</span>Gary Banhamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08518731833160149460noreply@blogger.com0