A little while ago I wrote about Rawls' conception of the "original position" in work written prior to the publication of A Theory of Justice. What was apparent from that posting is that the original conception of the "original position" did not involve reference to the "veil of ignorance". The relationship of these two notions to each other is important in the methodology of Theory. However, before looking at the way they come together in the course of Chapter III of Theory I will, in this posting, simply examine the staging that enables Rawls to present the "original position" as an apt way of describing what he more neutrally describes in the first instance as the "initial situation".
The two principles of justice described in Chapter II of Theory are not set in their full context until the "original position" has been described. For Kantians this can be described by saying the initial description of the two principles of justice in Chapter II is akin to a "metaphysical deduction" whilst the introduction of the "original position" provides the "transcendental deduction" of the right to use the 2 principles. However, for the "original position" to act in this justificatory way it first has to be defended as the appropriate way of conceiving the "initial situation", a better one in its way than classic pictures of the "state of nature". Once this point is made it is evident that the defence of the "original position" does have an important role in Rawls' political philosophy though it is, in fact, treated very briefly.
The first two sections of Chapter III are the place where this "defence" of the "original position" as the appropriate way of conceiving the "initial situation" is provided with its basic justification. Rawls presents the "initial situation" as a simplified choice problem by analogy with the use of equilibrium in economic theories and it includes conditions which it is thought reasonable to impose on the choice of principles. It also has to be described in a way that participants in the choice situation would agree was fair and Rawls views this as requiring the removal of all contingencies so that the right way to construe the "initial situation" is in terms of pure procedural justice.
The capturing of the "initial situation" as an "original position" is one that involves accounting for our moral judgments including our possession of a sense of justice. As Rawls writes: "Justice as fairness is a theory of our moral sentiments as manifested by our considered judgments in reflective equilibrium". So the "original position" mirrors this in providing a pure procedural situation that allows these "considered judgments" to be set into a "reflective equilibrium". The reference to reflective equilibrium is meant as a way of indicating the difference between social theory and economic theory as the place of equilibrium in the latter is as an automatic mode of operation whereas in the former the arrival at a situation of equilibrium is rather taken to be a consequence of a rightly constructed choice situation.
The reasoning employed in the construction of this situation is, as Rawls admits, "highly intuitive throughout" and so the account of this construction does not meet the task of defeating intuitionist scepticism despite the presumption we might have got from Chapter 1's treatment of intuitionism that this would be a key constructive part of the theory being offered. Whilst admitting this Rawls indicates an ideal of "moral geometry" to which his "highly intuitive" approach aims as a kind of regulative idea.
The construction of the "initial situation" in terms of the "original position" is one that Rawls assumes can be justified despite the "highly intuitive" nature of the account given. The kind of justification involved is, however, very far from the notion of "moral geometry" that Rawls invokes as his ideal. The construction of the "initial situation" that is favoured as the "original position" is to be adopted as the one that "best expresses the conditions that are widely thought reasonable to impose on the choice of principles yet which, at the same time, leads to a conception that characterizes our considered judgments in reflective equilibrium". So there is a dual reason here suggested for the construction of the "initial situation" as the "original position". The first reason is that the "original position" relates "best" to conditions that we can see to be ones that we have good reason to impose on the choice of principles. The description of these conditions will thus form an essential part of the justification of the way the construction of the "original position" operates.
The second reason for preferring the construction of the "initial situation" as an "original position" is in terms of the consequences of so doing, namely that it produces a conception that shows how our considered judgments can be aligned by reference to "reflective equilibrium". So the principles by which the "original position" is constructed are ones that will characterize our considered judgments as a product of inter-actions that the position has modelled.
The general conditions of the "original position" being accepted as the best way of construing the "initial situation" have thus been presented. Rawls' next move is to articulate the presentation of alternatives that would be provided to the parties in the constructed situation. This move takes from us from general methodological preliminaries as we have been concerned with up to this point to a prolegomena to the construction of the position. This prolegomena has 2 parts, firstly one concerned with the alternatives that would be presented in any description of the "initial situation" and second an account of a set of constraints that would apply to the situation prior to the formal construal of constraints on the principles the situation should select. So the discussion of these "constraints" (what Rawls terms "circumstances of justice") are not yet the formal constraints that define the "initial situation" being determined as an "original position". Rather what sections 21 and 22 of Chapter 3 describe are what Rawls views as general characteristics of the "initial situation" prior to it being constructed as an "original position".
The account of a presentation of alternative principles of justice is first given with Rawls' earlier 2 principles already assumed to be present as ones available for those engaged in the choice situation. The alternatives that are presented within the choice situation are given in a "rough and ready" way that Rawls confesses is not itself satisfactory. The procedure operates by selecting a list of traditional conceptions of justice with the understanding that the construction of the situation as an "original position" will provide constraints that will determine a reasonable ground for the selection of principles.
The principles set out as open for choice are Rawls' 2 principles alongside four other sets of alternatives, one of which is, however, under the title of "mixed" conceptions, merely a way of combining Rawls' 2 principles with principles of "average utility" in certain ways. I won't dwell on these "mixed" conceptions at this point. The other 3 sets of principles are: 1) "classical teleological conceptions" which include the "classical" principle of utility, "average" utility and the principle of perfection; 2) intuitionist conceptions, pictured in terms of "balancing" principles or duties; 3) egoistic conceptions. The choice amongst these principles is understood, in the general sense of the "initial situation", to be highly guided by intuition in the sense of "balancing" considerations.
The final part of the "prolegomena" to the construction of the "original position" is by means of Rawls' account of what he terms "the circumstances of justice". These "circumstances" are understood as the "normal conditions" under which it is required that we cooperate with each other. As Rawls confesses, the conception of these "circumstances", whilst intended as broadly neutral prior to the construction of the "original position" is, nonetheless, accentuated in a Humean manner.
Essentially these circumstances are, however, characterized in ways that are also similar to the ones Kant describes in Idea for A Universal History as involving "conflict" between parties in addition to some "identity" of interests (or as Kant put it, "unsocial sociability"). The "conflict" concerns the desire each has for benefits for themselves, even at the expense of others and this produces the obvious basic problem of justice, that of "distributive shares". The basic requirement of justice is an answer to this problem, a problem that is effectively set then as part of the "initial situation".
The "circumstances of justice" is thus a grand name for a basic anthropological problem of access to resources in a way that distributes them in an acceptable and reasonable fashion. Amongst these circumstances are some that are "objective" and others that are "subjective". Amongst the "objective" conditions are the coexistence of people on a limited part of the earth, possessed of similar vulnerabilities and faced with general "moderate scarcity". The "subjective" circumstances concern the different priorities of people with regard to different personal projects and the shortcomings of knowledge and skill each suffers.
The general picture of the "objective" circumstances are routinely simplified as "moderate scarcity" whilst those of the "subjective" circumstances are "conflict of interests" though it is evident, particularly with regard to the "subjective" circumstances that these are, indeed, simplifications.
Finally, before closing this post, we should note that Rawls condenses the features of the "initial situation" by indicating that the circumstances of justice are known to the parties in this choice situation and that they have conceptions of the good that they wish to realise. Some questions about future generations are ventured here too but I will leave these aside in my account of the "initial situation" assuming at present that it is not obvious how much weight should be given to this. Part of Rawls' own description matches this when he states that the "initial situation" should not assume "extensive ties of natural sentiment". Finally, people in the situation are treated as having serious concern for their own interests. This completes the general description of the "initial situation" and allows the construction of the "original position" to be undertaken.
The "preface" to On What Matters is a lively affair in which Parfit lays out his indebtedness to other philosophers, focusing particularly upon Henry Sidgwick and Kant. The two thinkers are, however, given strikingly different treatments in the "preface". For, whilst Kant is described as "the greatest moral philosopher since the Greeks", Sidgwick is still given an overwhelming positive response in the "preface" whilst the references to Kant are invariably ones that seek to express disquiet.
The differences in reaction to Kant and Sidgwick on Parfit's part are instructive. Whilst Sidgwick is defended from the charge Parfit takes to be most usual (namely that he is "boring"), Kant is rather indicted for the charge that Parfit assumes most common (that he is "maddening"). Part of the reason for this difference is certainly cultural since Parfit expresses admiration for the distinctive modesty Sidgwick has with regard to his own achievements and disquiet with the tone of Kant, by contrast, who is taken to have the "maddening" characteristic of assuming he has substantive achievements to speak of in philosophy. The reason I take this to be, at least partly, a "cultural" matter is because of the overwhelming preference in UK culture for "modesty" of demeanour and dislike of anyone who takes themselves to people of achievement (and should, therefore, be "taken down a peg or two"). It is, by contrast, rare to find this kind of attitude in US culture (perhaps, though, US academia is, to a certain degree, infected with it). Just as Kant's tone jars with Parfit, so this element of UK general attitudes jars with me when it comes to intellectual matters.
Some of Parfit's citations from Sidgwick, however, also indicate another side to a reason for temperamental liking for him on Parfit's part. It is clearly brought out by some of the passages of Sidgwick that Parfit chooses to give that Sidgwick was a depressed and often troubled man, albeit one that was perennially dissatisfied with his own "answers" in philosophy as a consequence. Again, the drama of this self-doubt has a resonance in contemporary culture of a sort that is, perhaps oddly, related to admiration for "tortured geniuses". Related, in the sense that, the "torture" is what is admired rather than the "genius".
Another element of Partif's liking of Sidgwick that is different from that already focused on is his liking for the "precision" that Sidgwick is concerned with, a view of Sidgwick that clearly resonates with the Rawlsian conception that the Methods of Ethics is essentially the beginning of modern academic moral philosophy. In relation to praising this "precision" it is, however, odd that Parfit does not bother with page numbers when he cites the Methods of Ethics though he may have regarded this as superfluous in a "preface".
A further element of Parfit's liking for Sidgwick is perhaps the most attractive element of it and this is his citing of Sidgwick's ironical humour as when he cites Sidgwick's quick, and somewhat devastating, criticism of Bradley. This element of Sidgwick's style is nicely emphasised here and is used well to correct the conception of Sidgwick that views him in a simply bad sense as a "Victorian". (For a more extended corrective of this conception of Sidgwick see also Schneewind's book on Sidgwick.)
However, returning to the more important philosophical point that Parfit takes to be gained from reading Sidgwick, the impress of Sidgwick's style is argued to be one that consists primarily in a form of serious and continuous qualification of his own claims. This point leads Parfit to suggest that the first reading of Methods of Ethics is frequently the worst since at this point we rarely see what is exceptional in its arguments, distracted as we are by these qualifications. Parfit, however, even more importantly, takes it that Sidgwick does not make "many" mistakes in moral philosophy and this is the reason why he assumes that the Methods of Ethics is a book "it would be best for everyone interested in ethics to read, remember, and be able to assume that others have read". There is, as we shall see, no similar commendation of either Kant or of any of his works in moral philosophy.
When Parfit turns to Kant it is primarily the Groundwork he has in mind and this may be part of the problem with the image he has of Kant. It is not that the Groundwork is not an important work but to take it to be the key statement of Kant's ethics is somewhat surprising since it is pretty clear that Kant never expected it to be received in this way. The Critique of Practical Reason has, however, received and continues to receive, significantly less attention in Anglo-American contexts and the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant's culminating work in practical philosophy, is only just beginning to be read. Given these facts it is not that surprising that Parfit takes his prime image of Kant from the Groundwork though it is distorting nonetheless.
Just as Parfit claims we are unlikely to gauge the scope of the Methods of Ethics on our first reading, so, by contrast, he argues that our first encounter with the Groundwork is rather likely to be better than later. The reason for this contrast is that the qualifications we have to make to Kant are less obvious to us when we begin reading the Groundwork for the first time and become more evident to us over time. However, this attitude of Parfit's towards the Groundwork is, again, part of a cultural response to Kant that is shared with many important readers of Kant such as Kemp Smith and Onora O'Neill since Parfit assumes he understands what it is to be "clear" in philosophy and, on the basis of this assumption, can attack Kant for "lack" of clarity.
This assumption concerning "clarity" seems to touch most particularly on the view that it consists in using technical terms only in one main sense though which major philosopher can be said to have always done this is something that is at least "unclear" to me. Alongside it is the "maddening" view that when Kant speaks of "autonomy" he doesn't mean I can simply do as I like or accept laws because I feel like it. The failure of a contemporary philosopher of Parfit's stature to gauge the sense of Kantian autonomy is sadly typical.
Parfit's basic suggestion is that he is, however, in temperament more akin to the "extremist" Kant than to the "moderate" Sidgwick and that, due to this, he has worked to find the latter more congenial. This argument is less obvious than Parfit suggests though it is true that many of his arguments in the past have been thought to up-set "common sense" rather more than Sidgwick (or Kant come to that) might have liked. These opening, somewhat conversational points, have two effects. One is to show that Parfit, in explicitly adopting Sidgwick and Kant as his mentors has indeed set out, as Scheffler's "introduction" led us to expect, to relate consequentialism and Kantian thought to each other but they also reveal the "academic" style of Sidgwick to be much more formative of Partif's approach and perhaps this formation is more than stylistic.
Derek Parfit's book On What Matters has been published and threatens to become an instant philosophical classic. The work is enormous in scope and range covering, as it promises, the theory of reasons, a description of principles, a general account of moral theories and an account of normativity. In addition the work also contains a series of responses to Parfit's work from a set of commentators as well as Parfit's responses to these commentators.
Parfit's book is the product of many years work and is more than simply the follow-up to his earlier Reasons and Persons. On What Matters originated as a series of lectures and the lecture version is available on-line in an extended PDF. Subsequent to the giving of the lectures, an initial version of the manuscript circulated under the title "Climbing the Mountain" which is available courtesy of Pea Soup. There is also a substantially longer draft from 2008 freely available on-line. So in some respects the build-up to the publication of On What Matters has been intense and engaged moral philosophers for sometime. Indeed Pea Soup ran a reading group on one of the earlier versions of the manuscript. The response of commentators now published as Part 4 in Volume 2 also was part of initial responses to the Tanner Lectures of 2002. All told, then, the textual network surrounding On What Matters is very dense and complicates further the reading of a work which is, given both its length and breadth, difficult enough to engage with.
Nonetheless, such an engagement will be attempted on this blog. It will involve a certain amount of looking back at the earlier versions of the manuscript by contrast with the final published version and some reaction to other commentaries on Parfit's book. Like many others I was included in those to whom earlier versions of the manuscript were sent and, I have to confess, I failed to respond at that point, due to the usual reasons of lack of time and distraction by other tasks. However, the publication of On What Matters is surely a seminal event in contemporary moral philosophy since in the work Parfit attempts a task few others have deemed either desirable or possible. In the rest of this posting I hope to outline some of what that task appears, at least initially, to consist in, by reference to the "Introduction" to the work provided by Samuel Scheffler who also edited the final production.
Scheffler opens his "Introduction" by pointing out that it is standard in courses on moral theory to open by arguing for a deep divide between consequentialists and Kantians, on the grounds that the former believe the rightness of an act to derive entirely from its consequences whilst Kantians, by contrast, are taken to be deontologists who argue that there are certain acts that are right regardless of consequences. This divide is one that I have subjected myself to critical scrutiny on previous occasions and which has been subjected to at least one serious challenge in the work of David Cummiskey. Noticeably, however, although Cummiskey's book is listed in the bibliography of On What Matters, his name does not feature in the index suggesting that this attempt to challenge the distinction between "Kantian" ethics and consequentialism is not influential on Parfit's view, or, at least, not so in any manner Parfit thought merited discussion.
This aside Scheffler's point is to suggest that Parfit does wish to challenge this "received view" of moral theory that rests on an assumption of a divide between consequentialism and "Kantian" views. This clearly also requires Parfit to extensively engage with Kant and "Kantian" views which is one of the major reasons why it is important to address the positions Parfit advances in On What Matters and attendant texts. Parfit himself does not claim, however, to be a "Kantian" (unlike Cummiskey). Rather, he advances a view of Kant that is meant to determine a way of assessing which of Kant's ideas can be meaningfully made use of in moral philosophy.
Scheffler makes clear, however, at least one immediately surprising and potentially welcome feature of Parfit's response to Kant which concerns the way Parfit views the Formula of Universal Law (FUL) of the categorical imperative. Unlike many contemporary "Kantians" Parfit wishes to articulate a favourable view of FUL, albeit after revising it in certain key ways. The revision of FUL reads: "Everyone ought to follow the principles whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally will" which formulation ensures a lot turns on the conception of rational willing involved. Parfit's change in the formula is also intended to relate Kant to Tom Scanlon, a relation that is far from obvious either to Kantians or to Scanlon (as is evident from Scanlon's response in Volume 2, entitled "How I Am Not A Kantian").
The formulation of FUL is also related to a revised conception of rule consequentialism that Parfit suggests on which it would articulate the view that we should follow the principles which, if universally accepted, would make things go best. The relationship between this rule consequentialism and Kantian views is articulated in an interesting way by Scheffler: "Although this position is consequentialist in the content of its claims about the principles that people ought to follow, it is more Kantian than consequentialist in its account of why we should follow these principles" (my emphases).
Scheffler's articulation of the relationship between rule consequentialism and Kantianism in Parfit's formulations brings out that Parfit appears to want from Kant a theory of moral motivation or perhaps a moral psychology. By contrast, the "content" of his principle is meant to be consequentialist. This combination is certainly unexpected and, coupled with the earlier connection suggested between Kant and Scanlon, leads to a Parfitian "triple theory" of wrong that relates criteria of optimificality, universality and reasonable rejection together. At this point it becomes clear that a key substantive innovation of On What Matters is its syncretic approach to substantive claims in moral theory. As earlier suggested, it also indicates a lot rides on the view of rationality that Parfit presents.
Just as the attempt to recover the FUL is a surprisingly welcome element of Parfit's endeavour so also is a key implication of his view of reasons, namely, a profound hostility to subjectivist views of ethics (a hostility that appears to have also influenced Peter Singer). However, the other side of this welcome hostility to subjectivist accounts of ethics is the articulation of an objectivist view of ethics that must thus have serious problems with the Kantian stress on autonomy. This side of Parfit's view seems thus to have more in common with the conceptions of G.E. Moore than with Kant (though, again, I state this simply as a response to Scheffler's articulation of Parfit's view, not yet as a response to the detail of what Parfit writes).
Interestingly, accompanying Parfit's syncretic approach to moral theory is a strong form of meta-ethics that is far from syncretic. This is pointed up by Scheffler as a potential source of problem for the reception of Parfit's views. It also raises the general problem of how far removed Parfit's sympathetic readings of different traditions are from the claims made by those who situate themselves within these traditions. Parfit seems to wish to be understood as having, in a general sense, a "Kantian" moral theory despite rejecting claims of Kant's that might be thought to be of decisive importance for those who have previously taken themselves to be "Kantians".
Scheffler articulates the general point of Parfit's account as being "the drive to eliminate disagreement", a drive based on his general attachment to the view that there is a single true morality. The attempt to bring different traditions together is not one that should in itself be resisted if we can thereby get at "what matters" but if what is produced thereby leaves out something that strikes one as indeed "mattering" then there could well be some grounds for reservations about the general position Parfit articulates. In any case, this point is held here in reserve as the reading of On What Matters begins on this blog.
Chapter 2 of A Theory of Justice concludes with two little referred to sections that discuss principles for individuals, included, states Rawls, for the purposes of a "complete theory of right". A diagram accompanying this explanation also makes clear how partial the theory described in Theory is in relation to practical reason since Rawls provides no theory of value or of moral worth, two topics of some interest to Kantians and which have been productive of a fair amount of dispute both between different Kantian schools and between Kantians and other moral theorists. The point of Theory is thus merely to describe an account of "right" although what is clear from the discussion Rawls has given up to this point in the book is that his view of right appears to require reference to broader conditions than Kant thought were required for a philosophy of right.
The diagram further makes clear that the theory of right covers not only the "basic structure" and individuals but also the "law of nations", the latter being finally described by Rawls in The Law of Peoples, some years after the publication of Theory and in a fashion that many Rawlsians (particularly Pogge) were puzzled by. Leaving the discussion of the "law of nations" aside, however, Rawls' diagram makes of the reference to individuals two forms of discussion, firstly in relation to requirements on individuals and secondly permissions given to them. The account of requirements is further sub-divided between obligations and natural duties. Obligations of individuals are circumscribed in terms of fairness and fidelity whilst natural duties are either positive or negative. Positive natural duties involve upholding justice, providing mutual aid and mutual respect. Negative natural duties are restricted to prohibitions on injury and particularly on harm to "innocents". Finally, the theory of permissions is restricted to ones which are either indifferent (of which Rawls says nothing) or supererogatory (involving beneficence, courage and mercy). All this indicates at the very least that the theory of social justice was conceived at the time of writing Theory as only a small part of the general theory of right that Rawls imagined.
However despite the indication the diagram provides of an expansive general theory of right Rawls provides little within the pages of Theory to address its outline. The two sections under review are the major attempt made in the work to look at such a general theory and have been, as indicated above, little addressed in the literature on the work. (They are, however, supplemented by the first two sections of Chapter VI where the two principles for individuals are given further treatment.) One of the reasons why this is likely to be so, apart from the brevity of Rawls' discussion of these principles for individuals is that he also makes clear that in the original position he believes that the principles for individuals would be selected after the principles definitive of the "basic structure". This point is motivated by the argument that principles for individuals presuppose some form of social structure already in place though this is far from obvious to anyone who has studied the history of moral and political philosophy. In support of this Rawls refers, somewhat unexpectedly, to Francis Herbert Bradley, one of the pre-eminent British Idealists, who argued that "the individual is a bare abstraction" something taken by Rawls to mean that obligations and duties presuppose a moral conception of institutions. This interpretation of Bradley's statement is deflationary of it but the key point is that moral conceptions of institutions might be taken by some to arise from principles of individuals (if you were committed to "methodological individualism"). That Rawls takes it to be obvious this is not so is a comment on his understanding of method in political reasoning.
The result of the reference to the "original position" is that the principles of right are understood in general by Rawls to be principles that are in accord with what would be chosen in the original position. This is something that Rawls correctly understands as a revisionary approach to the concept of right so that "rightness as fairness" is intended to replace the general views of right held otherwise though it does so without reference to work on value or moral worth, something that might well surprise both Kantians and others working in moral theory.
Having made these general points it is time to consider the actual principles for individuals that Rawls provides. The first such is a principle of fairness as one would expect given that we are dealing with a view of "rightness as fairness". This notion of fairness is meant to cover the requirements on individuals that are treated as obligations rather than as natural duties. "This principle holds that a person is required to do his part as defined by the rules of an institution when two conditions are met: first, the institution is just (or fair), that is, it satisfies the principles of justice; and second, one has voluntarily accepted the benefits of the arrangement or taken advantage of the opportunities it offers to further one's interests."
Stated in this general form the principle of fairness specifies obligations in relation to institutions and so this principle for individuals is part of Rawls' general account of institutions. Given that we have already described the two principles of justice as the means by which institutions should be governed the first part of the principle of fairness simply enjoins that individuals should conform to the institutions that are socially just. It is the second element that adds something that is specific to individuals in the form of reference to voluntary engagement in the institution including acceptance of its advantages. This principle is clearly meant to ensure that mutual benefit really arises from the institutions in question and to prevent encouragement of "free riders". Hence Rawls takes the two principles of justice as defining what is "a fair share" between us given that we adhere to the principle of fairness.
One of the consequences that follows from Rawls' treatment is that one is under no obligation with regard to institutions that are patently unjust, something that would appear to rule out the kind of problem Kant is thought to run into when faced with questions about the right of rebellion. However this point clearly belongs to non-ideal theory where it would require some nuance since there are different kinds of unjust institution and some might be thought to be worth some form of fidelity even given the injustice they are incarnations of. (This is the rationale in a sense for adopting what Kant, in Perpetual Peace, refers to as "preliminary" principles.)
Obligations are generally understood by Rawls as produced by institutions which "specify what it is that one is required to do". However given that institutions include such things as promises this is not in itself sufficient to show that the principle of fairness has to be defined only in terms of the first part of the principle in relation to pre-defined general principles of social justice since the notion of a promise has a standing separate from any given particular nature of "basic structure".
Whilst Rawls describes obligations in general by reference to the principle of fairness he has no corresponding overall principle for addressing natural duties. If natural duties include duties of mutual aid and non-maleficence then it would appear that these duties would belong more naturally to a theory of virtue than to a theory of right since it is far from clear how there can be strict enforcement of such duties. Inclusion of them as part of a theory of virtue would, however, require Rawls to revisit the diagram provided and give more room to the general discussion of practical reason rather than leaving everything to be determined as part of right and this he shows no inclination to do.
Rawls distinguishes between positive and negative natural duties and assumes that negative ones have priority over positive ones although he simply makes this remark and does nothing to provide a justification of it. Natural duties are distinct from obligations in that they apply without regard to voluntary acts. The duty, for example, not to be cruel, does not require that I first have voluntarily joined something or am part of some institution that defines the sense of cruelty. So promises are not required as part of the theory of natural duties. Natural duties are also general in form, holding between all moral persons. Interestingly, one of the reasons for holding natural duties to be part of the theory of right is that Rawls takes it that such natural duties are also part of the theory of war.
The key natural duty for Rawls, however, is the duty to be just. This evidently echoes the first part of the principle of fairness. Under this understanding we all have a natural duty to act in such a way that just conduct is encouraged. Since natural duties are not, however, derived from contractual promises, the general duty to uphold fairness is not a part of Rawls' contractarianism but is rather a moral reason to support the outcome of the original position. There thus can be two kinds of reason that support a particular form of action, one that is "natural" and one that is social. Since principles of natural duties are also general they apply to all in a way that the principle of fairness does not since the latter really applies to those holding positions within institutions.
This leaves the understanding of permissions that Rawls' diagram referred to and which he states little about. Permissions are acts we are at liberty to perform as they do not violate obligations or natural duties. Since they do include the territory of supererogatory actions it remains true that a theory of permissions is not without substantive interest in moral theory. Rawls, however, says virtually nothing about this except to mention that it appears utilitarianism cannot recognise this category since it appears to require from all actions that most would take to be supererogatory.
In the last posting I did on Rawls I set out his account of the two principles of justice and concluded with his revised description of the second principle in section 13 of Chapter 2. Now we can see the second principle combines two elements together, the difference principle and the principle of fair equality of opportunity and in this posting I want to look further at the relations between these two elements.
In section 14 Rawls turns more specifically to the second part of the second principle, the part that specifies the principle of fair equality of opportunity which he had earlier distinguished from what he termed the "liberal" conception of careers open to talents. In opening his account of the principle in section 14 Rawls points out that reasons for requiring openness of positions are not primarily on grounds of efficiency as failure to allow such openness constitutes a ground for complaint as it means one is deprived of a main form of human good.
This point partly relates back to the general conception of justice as concerned with the "basic structure" of society and attention to it is now buttressed by introduction of the notion of "pure procedural justice". "Pure procedural justice" to be defined requires, however, contrast with "perfect" and "imperfect" procedural justice. As an example of "perfect" procedural justice Rawls mentions as an example the way a fair cutting of a cake can be brought about by simply ensuring that the last portion goes to the one who cuts it which gives them an incentive to ensure that their portion, as equal to the others, will be a product of an egalitarian cutting. By contrast, a criminal trial is a form of imperfect procedural justice because, while there is an independent criterion for the correct outcome of the trial, there is no feasible procedure that is sure to lead to it (and prevent miscarriages of justice from ever possibly occurring).
Both perfect and imperfect procedural justice can identify an independent criteria for the correct outcome, the difference being that the perfect form can devise a procedure to achieve this identified criteria whilst the imperfect form cannot do so. By contrast, "pure" procedural justice obtains in situations where there is no independent criterion for the right result but there is a fair procedure that enables it to be the case that we can say that the outcome is fair provided the procedure is followed. Gambling illustrates one example of this assuming that there is no cheating involved on any side.
For pure procedural justice to apply to distribution it is required that there is set up and administered a just system of institutions and the connection of this discussion to the principle of fair opportunity is that the latter principle is meant to ensure that we get a system of cooperation that we can term one of pure procedural justice. In order to apply the principle of fair opportunity we abstract from individual cases as it is not the case that it treats distribution as a question of allocative justice. The notion of allocative justice belongs rather with the utilitarian conception.
In thinking through the conception of the principle of fair equality of opportunity Rawls assumes that this principle is lexically secondary to the difference principle. The difference principle is an attempt to establish objective grounds for inter-personal comparisons and it does this by two means. The first way is by identifying the least advantaged representative person and judging the social system from their position. Secondly it allows a simplification in terms of expectations of primary social goods. "The primary social goods, to give them in broad categories, are rights, liberties, and opportunities, and income and wealth."
The good for people is the recognition of their right to these primary social goods so that the good becomes "satisfaction of rational desire". The basic question then, becomes, one of weighting primary goods for the least advantaged. This requires some intuitive estimates to enter in relation to what combination of primary social goods it would be rational for the representative person of the least advantaged social group to desire. The real point of insisting on primary goods is also well brought out as being their relationship to public recognition of a measure that reasonable persons can accept. This connection of a measure to public recognition of "reasonable" persons indicates the essential role of reference to publicity in Rawls' conception.
Rawls supposes that each person possesses at least two social positions, that defined by equal citizenship and that described by their place in the distribution of income and wealth. This allows for notions of the representative citizen and the representative persons for different social positions. The basic structure requires to be seen primarily from the standpoint of the representative citizen and this is satisfied for everyone when the two principles of justice are met. However, the reference to representative persons for different social positions is not something that can be dealt with in as satisfactory a manner, not least because the identification of the least advantaged group is not easy to do.
In responding to this point Rawls identifies some contingencies that are favoured when a group is relatively advantaged compared to another one. These include family and class origin, natural endowments, fortune and luck. All are treated as types of contingency and this again brings out the basis of the "luck egalitarian" reading of Rawls. Once these are listed we can see the general characteristics of the least advantaged group though precise specification of this group is not attempted by Rawls further than this. The reference to the representative nature of the person in relation to their group is also meant to rule out special pleading that can happen within groups. By this means it is hoped that "everyone's interests are taken into account".
Section 17 of Chapter 2 brings these points together by indicating the manner in which Rawls' treatment defines an egalitarian conception and how it differs from a meritocratic one (that he again aligns with the "liberal" view). The first point made in this section is that the difference principle is meant to give some weight to a principle of redress even though it is not equivalent to one. A principle of redress is the general claim that undeserved inequalities (contingencies) deserve to be compensated for. Given that the difference principle identifies the means to achieve such compensation in general terms it addresses the point of such a principle, not least in its 'luck egalitarian' elements.
Similarly the difference principle is meant to show the way that a society can be a system of mutual benefit showing that mutual cooperation is the means by which all can have a better life. In making this case Rawls makes even more concessions to the "luck egalitarian" conception indicating that even "character" is something contingent given that it depends on fortunate circumstances.
Rawls also aligns the difference principle with a certain account of fraternity in the sense that not wanting to have advantages if they are not to the benefit of others also is taken to be a natural understanding of the relations within a family (though this may be news to some!). Finally, Rawls distinguishes his notion of egalitarianism from meritocracy on the grounds that the latter interprets the second half of the second principle only in terms of the "liberal" understanding of careers open to talents and not in the "democratic" manner of fair equality of opportunity.
The latest news in terms of UK higher education is that there is to be a "New College of the Humanities" established in London, something that has caught the news very quickly. The New College is a private institution that is apparently for-profit but has established also a trust that has charitable status and a fifth of the places at the College will be assisted, which does not mean they will all be free. The basic fee will be £18,000 per annum which is twice the highest fee allowed in the standard state sector and some of the assisted places will have a fee cap of £7, 200 per annum whilst others will not have to pay fees. The College degrees will be treated as external awards of the University of London which will enable the students of it to borrow up to £6,000 a year in loans from the state to part-pay their fees.
A number of philosophers are involved in this initiative including the head of the College, Professor Anthony Grayling. As Mary Beard points out many of the lead names involved with the College are getting on in years and there appears to be no initial plans for post-graduate provision though this may simply be an effect of the initial statement of the College outline. As Beard adds, the College, whilst presented as an alternative to Oxbridge also has a narrower range of subjects offered than traditional public universities and is more akin to a US liberal arts college.
Put in the US context it is true, as Brian Leiter writes, that the fees of the new College are not high though they certainly are by UK standards. Meanwhile, others are involved in trying to organise against the College on the grounds that it effectively helps to entrench unequal access to higher education and is part of a general agenda that began with the Browne report into higher education.
The College includes an impressive roster of names though the mechanics of how they will interact with the student body is something that remains to be seen. There is no doubt that the launching of the College is part of the general move away from government underpinning of the education system though in principle its institution is not distinct from that of other universities in the country since no university is an official "state" entity here in the UK (given their autonomous status). It is distinct in being founded on the basis of private money and also in being focused so specifically on the humanities, including philosophy though this latter part is unusual in a way that I (unlike Mary Beard) don't see as bad.
The changes in the UK university system as a whole are what is most important since the undermining of research and the pressure on humanities in many universities (particularly those founded since 1992) are long-term trends that are pernicious in their effects. These trends ensure that there will be a narrower social base that engages with philosophy and humanities on the one hand and that less new work will be carried out in universities of many kinds on the other. The long-term effect of the establishment of this College, on the other hand, is hard to see as being as significant in its impact as these trends are. The College is a simple institution of privilege in the sense that the majority of its students will be there because they can pay.
Private education is not in itself a new phenomena in Britain given the presence of so many schools here that charge fees. What we have is an extension into the university sector of a model that has had a very long life in the "Public Schools" and which replicates models of education that are far from uncommon outside the UK. This point shows the reason why the establishment of NCH is unlikely to be widely met with a fierce response (though there are sure to be protests against it) but its arrival does illustrate further the rapid fading in the UK of a university model that was, for a brief moment, open to all.
I've been assuming for sometime that most thinking people in philosophy and academia support the general principles of Open Access and the proliferation of digital publishing so I was startled to note this recent posting that suggests some specific reservations concerning these trends. Before examining and replying to the contentions of this piece, it is worth pointing out for the sake of context of the argument that it is written as a reply to this piece which had argued precisely for Open Access and digital publishing as a general model.
Open Access is understood well by both the previous contributors to this debate as a form of publishing that does not involve fire-walls and which enables free transfer of arguments between people including the distribution of pieces in a stand-alone fashion. The objection argues that the point of philosophy can, in a general shorthand, be understood to be a concern with "truth" and this is introduced in a way that is not intended to be question-begging between different philosophical positions. The basic point in asserting this is that each philosopher, whatever their other general positions, is assumed to take their own arguments and positions sufficiently seriously as to want to convince others of them and, in this limited sense, to be convinced of their "truth".
Now, after making this point, the argument turns somewhat transcendental as the next move, at least as I understand it, involves a statement concerning the conditions of possibility of assessing the "truth" of the statements of a philosophical utterance and this condition involves being able to "control" the context in which such utterances are made. With traditional print media, so the argument goes, there is a basic way to do this as the argument appears in, for example, a standard academic journal and this journal provides the context for comprehension of the utterance in question. By contrast, with Open Access material there is no such "control" of the context of utterance and hence no way of ensuring respect of the truth-conditions of the utterance in question. Hence there are philosophical grounds for being concerned that such Open Access models should not spread.
Now there is lots to be said in response to this intriguing argument. In general, prior to going into detail, I want to suggest that there is a sense in which the argument is right and another in which it is wrong. Further, the sense in which it is right is different from what might be thought by the one who has stated the argument.
So let's first assess the basis on which the argument might be thought to be "right" and how this basis is different from what might be expected. It is clearly correct to say that the author of an Open Access piece has no way of assessing the way in which their piece will be seen, no "control", as the argument has it, over the "context" of the piece. There are mitigations of this in the sense that, if, for example, an article appears in Kant Studies Online that someone who downloads it is aware of the context of the appearance of the article in an academic journal and the standards expected of such. Further, the pages of the article all include the reference to the place of publication and this shows clearly the general "context" of the publication of the piece. These mitigations may be thought to be insufficient. But now consider the contrast with the traditional place of publication. If your article appears in a print journal or something that has a pay-wall then it is true that access to it is more restricted than in an Open Access situation. But is it true that the author has in this situation "more control" of the context of its means of publication? In fact this is so far from true that the argument advanced fails to distinguish in a meaningful way between traditional publication and Open Access publication.
Let me explain. If you appear in a traditional print journal then what happens is two things that take the "context" quite out of your control as an author. Firstly, assuming this is not a "special" issue devoted to a specific theme or question, the fact is that you have no "control" over the surrounding articles which in fact give the "context" of publication. These surrounding articles could, and often do, display characteristics that are quite different from those in one's own article arguing for positions one might well take to be quite disreputable and doing so in ways that you cannot assume to be standardly acceptable (this happens with even the "best" journals). So in this first important sense the "context" belongs not under the control of the author of the individual piece but rather under that of the editor of the journal. All this applies, mutatis mutandis, with pieces that appear in edited book collections also.
The second way in which the author manifestly lacks "control" of the "context" of the utterance in question is that the utterance can very easily be removed from this "context". It is true that such removal is not quite as easy as with an Open Access journal but it can still pretty easily take place. Articles can be downloaded from print journals that have on-line access and simply studied alone just as happens with Open Access articles. Similarly print journals can be photocopied and the articles circulated in contexts that are quite distinct from that of the original journal and used in ways that are far from under the "control" of the original author. So true is this that the basic conditions of these articles (and it was these conditions that were taken to be part of the assessment of the "truth" value of the utterances in question) cannot be meaningfully distinguished from the conditions of Open Access articles.
So the sense in which it is true to write that Open Access articles are not under the "control" of the author of them is just as applicable to the production of articles in traditional formats. And this was not the point of the original argument which suggests that the original argument has clearly missed something crucial.
What the original argument missed were the conditions of the "control" of "context" that exist with regard to traditional media. Just listing these conditions is enough to give one pause when confronted with suggestions that authors have, in some meaningful sense, "control" of this context. Take a traditional journal. An author submits their material to it freely and it is then passed by the editor, also freely, to referees who further freely give their time to assess the quality of the article. The author has, it has to be added, little by way of guidance generally in terms of how fairly his article will be treated in this process and is frequently requested to make changes of large scope to have any chance of publication, changes which could meaningfully alter his argument. However, the next point is that the result of all this free labour, assuming that it ends with the article's acceptance (something very unlikely in traditional print media) with publication in a journal that is produced under conditions of artificial scarcity that have blocked the publication of many other articles of equal or superior status to those published on grounds that are scarcely intellectually defensible.
Let me expand on these points to draw out what I mean. Artificial scarcity afflicts traditional print media as there can only be so many issues in a year and therefore only so many pieces can appear in a journal. This leads to situations where pieces can take a great deal of time to appear, often, in fact, an accepted article will appear months and even years after it was initially written. By this point the original author will, most likely, have changed their views in quite important ways and the debate to which they may have seen themselves contributing will also have altered in ways not foreseeable when the original piece was produced. So, the "context" of the reception of the article is decidedly not under the control of the author and one of the reasons why it is not is because of the scarcity of published articles in conditions that are not such as to foster academic judgment as the main criteria.
Traditional print journals do not and could not publish everything of quality submitted to them. Further, their publication cycles encourage delay in publication of a sort that is not best conducive to the reception of arguments produced. Both of these points show a lack of "control" of the author with regard to such means of production.
Returning also to the conditions of academic labour here: the journal is run at cost so that whilst all the work of the academics here (editor, readers, author) is donated for nothing, the journal subsequently sells the content that is accepted and artificially produces barriers to its dissemination. These artificial barriers frequently prevent articles reaching those who might well be best placed to respond most usefully and interestingly to the articles published. This is another way in which the traditional means of publication is far from giving "control" of "context" to the author.
By contrast an Open Access journal, by virtue of its openness, ensures that any reader who learns of its existence can read its material and it has no conditions of artificial scarcity affecting its publication assuming it is published digitally (it still does if print only). These conditions in fact give some important "control" to the author. Given that digital Open Access media can also move to publication quickly they also ensure a better environment for the author's argument in the sense that the author is still close to the material and better able, by virtue of this, to defend its contentions. They further open argument up to quicker developments whilst ensuring that only academic judgments of quality (and not questions of the space of the print) decide what gets published. In all these respects it turns out that the publication of Open Access digital journals in fact has serious advantages in terms of "control" of certain kinds of "context" for the author and suggests reasons why the original argument was false.
In conclusion the way in which the argument was true failed to distinguish significantly between traditional means of publication and those of Open Access digital media. The ways in which the argument was false showed, by contrast, insufficient reflection on the conditions of traditional media which are very far from giving authors "control of context" of the reception of their articles.
The announced arrest of Ratko Mladic cannot go without comment. Mladic was the general who led the Serb forces that stormed the so-called "safe haven" of Srebnica in 1995 that led to the massacre of thousands of men and boys who had the misfortune to live there and not be ethnic Serbs. The international possibility of this massacre taking place was grounded in the application to the conflict in Bosnia of "realpolitik" analysis that claimed the forces in possession of territory should be left in control of it and on a ban on the Bosnian government procuring arms internationally.
Since Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs could turn to Croatia and Serbia respectively for supply of arms the "embargo" penalised the only multi-ethnic actor in the war and helped to ensure the occurrence of the Srebnica massacre. Responsible here in the UK for this grotesque policy were Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, Defence Secretary Malcolm Rifkind and Dr David Owen who was held up as an international mediator and became chairman of the "Conference for the Former Yugoslavia". Owen effectively acted throughout as a stooge for the Bosnian Serbs and "trusted" Slobodan Milosevic, the President of Serbia. For a general and thorough demolition of Owen's own self-serving memoir on the subject see this report. The policies of Douglas Hurd as Foreign Secretary dove-tailed with Owen's reflexively pro-Serb position as is brought out well in this review of Hurd's memoirs. Unlike the defensive Owen and Hurd, neither of whom has admitted the error of their ways or the result of the policies they urged, Malcolm Rifkind has since stated that the arms embargo on the Bosnian government was a major error and he is at least to be commended for this, an expression of regret that has certainly influenced subsequent Western policy in Libya as Rifkind has rightly intended.
The appeasement practiced by the British government in the 1990s towards the Serbs was oddly echoed by some on the left at the time who, as usual, fretted about Western intervention anywhere and some of whom preferred to attack Germany (!) rather than Serbia. Such people have been discussed at length elsewhere on this blog and refuted in detail by David Campbell on his excellent site. The striking aspect of this peculiar convergence between the Tory "realists" and apparent leftists does strike one today, as it did then, as serious evidence of the need for a politics that, in true Kantian fashion, focuses on the cosmopolitan need for attention to human rights rather than being based on either narrow ideas of self-interest or reflexive attacks on any form of "Western intervention".
In the meantime it is certainly good to see that Mladic has followed Radovan Karadzic to the Hague and that the disastrous policies of Owen, Hurd and Rifkind are not being currently followed by Western governments.
