WEBVTT NOTE John Rawls 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:11.360 I'm going to talk today about John Rawls, who lived from 1921 to 2002. 2 00:00:11.360 --> 00:00:16.120 Some people ask me, why am I lecturing on John Rawls? 3 00:00:16.120 --> 00:00:22.320 The reason is, although, as you'll see, I don't agree with very much of what Rawls had 4 00:00:22.320 --> 00:00:32.320 Among American philosophers, he's by far the most influential figure. 5 00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:42.320 Most analytic philosophers regard Rawls as the greatest ethical and political theorist of the 20th century, 6 00:00:42.320 --> 00:00:47.320 which, as I sometimes remind myself, we're no longer in. 7 00:00:47.320 --> 00:00:59.080 Rawls attended college in Princeton, where his main professor was Norman Malcolm, the 8 00:00:59.080 --> 00:01:10.520 famous student of Wittgenstein. After graduation, he taught at Cornell University, where Malcolm 9 00:01:10.520 --> 00:01:18.720 and Max Black were the main, led the department and he, after a short time at MIT, he went 10 00:01:18.720 --> 00:01:30.480 to Harvard where he remained for the rest of his career. He was well known among philosophers 11 00:01:30.480 --> 00:01:36.940 in the 1950s and 60s. He wrote a very influential paper called Two Concepts of Rules that came 12 00:01:36.940 --> 00:01:50.380 The Theory of Justice was published in 1971 and became known to a much wider public. 13 00:01:50.380 --> 00:01:57.100 In fact, one could say, like Laurie Byron, he awoke to find himself famous. 14 00:01:57.100 --> 00:02:05.860 That book became a best seller. It sold in its various editions over 400,000 copies, 15 00:02:05.860 --> 00:02:15.860 which is extremely unusual for a philosophy book. After the publication of that book, 16 00:02:15.860 --> 00:02:23.200 Rawls continued his work publishing other books. Most important of his later books was 17 00:02:23.200 --> 00:02:36.080 One came out in 1993 called Political Liberalism. He had one in 1998 where he applied his theory 18 00:02:36.080 --> 00:02:44.200 to how relations between societies is called the Law of Peoples. He had various other works 19 00:02:44.200 --> 00:02:50.640 such as Justice as Fairness, a Restatement. There was a volume of his collected papers. 20 00:02:50.640 --> 00:03:10.640 and then he had after lectures, notes that were published by his students, his lecture notes, lectures on the history of ethics and recently Samuel Freeman, one of his students, has edited his lectures on the history of political philosophy. 21 00:03:10.640 --> 00:03:18.640 As you see, all of his books were in the area of ethics and political philosophy. 22 00:03:18.640 --> 00:03:27.040 Now, I think to get a perspective on Rawls, I think it's useful to begin by considering 23 00:03:27.040 --> 00:03:35.360 what he was reacting against at the time he started writing philosophy. 24 00:03:35.360 --> 00:03:41.680 The most influential ethical theory was utilitarianism. 25 00:03:41.680 --> 00:03:50.240 This I talked about a little bit, or more than a little bit, in my previous talks. 26 00:03:50.240 --> 00:04:01.840 You remember, the utilitarians hold that what determines what's good is what maximizes happiness 27 00:04:01.840 --> 00:04:02.840 or utility. 28 00:04:02.840 --> 00:04:09.160 Various utilitarians have different ways of characterizing happiness or utility, but the 29 00:04:09.160 --> 00:04:28.160 The aim in utilitarianism is to maximize utility. There are variations where instead of saying try to maximize total utility, maximize average utility, but the basic idea in all kinds of utilitarianism is maximizing utility. 30 00:04:28.160 --> 00:04:33.480 Now what is wrong with this view? 31 00:04:33.480 --> 00:04:44.100 One point that Rawls stressed very much, here he was following all sorts of other writers, 32 00:04:44.100 --> 00:04:53.040 is that there are counter examples that show that utilitarianism doesn't agree with our 33 00:04:53.040 --> 00:05:00.480 ordinary moral judgments of what's right or wrong or good or bad. No doubt most of you 34 00:05:00.480 --> 00:05:06.600 are familiar with cases of this kind. For example, this is one of the most frequently 35 00:05:06.600 --> 00:05:15.920 cited cases, supposing there is a town in which there is a mob who is enraged against 36 00:05:15.920 --> 00:05:22.920 threatening to lynch various people. Now the sheriff can appease this mob and get them to stop by hanging an innocent man, somehow it turns out to be the case and we can make it the case as we're stipulating the case and we can say whatever we like, that if the sheriff executes this innocent man, then the mob will go away and they won't kill various people. 37 00:05:45.920 --> 00:05:53.920 and various other people. So killing this innocent man will stop the mob from killing all these other people. 38 00:05:53.920 --> 00:06:02.920 According to the utilitarian system, it would seem like the sheriff should kill the innocent man, 39 00:06:02.920 --> 00:06:10.920 because if he does so, utility will go up since all these people that the mob would have killed will still be alive, 40 00:06:10.920 --> 00:06:20.920 And we can assume that positive utility will be higher if they're alive than if they were killed. 41 00:06:20.920 --> 00:06:26.920 So the utilitarian seems to have to say, you should kill the innocent man. 42 00:06:26.920 --> 00:06:36.920 Now, utilitarians have tried to get around that by just saying, well, there are various side effects that could happen that would make us say, 43 00:06:36.920 --> 00:06:44.600 It wouldn't be a good idea what if this would set a bad precedent or maybe it would come 44 00:06:44.600 --> 00:06:47.880 out later and people would get upset about it. 45 00:06:47.880 --> 00:06:54.560 As Philippa Foote used to say, the utilitarians have to play side effects for whatever they're 46 00:06:54.560 --> 00:07:01.760 worth and you can come up with various kinds of complications in the case, but it works. 47 00:07:01.760 --> 00:07:09.480 It's hard for the utilitarian to reconcile his theory with our ordinary moral judgment. 48 00:07:09.480 --> 00:07:20.720 Even if he's able in some cases to do so, still there are other cases where the utilitarian 49 00:07:20.720 --> 00:07:28.320 if he comes up with the right answer seems to be getting it for the wrong reason. 50 00:07:28.320 --> 00:07:31.280 Let me just give one instance of that. 51 00:07:31.280 --> 00:07:42.460 Richard Posner, who's a utilitarian judge and lawyer, in a book claimed that the reason 52 00:07:42.460 --> 00:07:50.880 you can say that rape is wrong from a utilitarian standpoint is that it's very likely that the 53 00:07:50.880 --> 00:07:59.200 victim of the rape will lose more in utility than the rapist will gain. Now, even if this 54 00:07:59.200 --> 00:08:04.760 This is right, this seems like not the right reason for condemning rape. 55 00:08:04.760 --> 00:08:13.680 It seems like it isn't just that the balance of utility comes out that it's against doing 56 00:08:13.680 --> 00:08:14.680 it. 57 00:08:14.680 --> 00:08:21.780 It's the wrong thing to do and we shouldn't take account the rapist's benefit from his 58 00:08:21.780 --> 00:08:23.360 act at all. 59 00:08:23.360 --> 00:08:28.800 Well, as you see, there are serious problems with utilitarianism. 60 00:08:28.800 --> 00:08:35.880 Rawls had a very good way, and this I think is one of the best things in Rawls' work, 61 00:08:35.880 --> 00:08:43.400 of stating the key problem of utilitarianism, which he said, utilitarianism doesn't take 62 00:08:43.400 --> 00:08:47.920 seriously the distinction between persons. 63 00:08:47.920 --> 00:08:57.040 just considers people just as vessels holding units of utility and then it 64 00:08:57.040 --> 00:09:06.040 asks how can we maximize utility so you can on this view you can do something to 65 00:09:06.040 --> 00:09:12.720 one person can sacrifice one person if doing so will increase the total utility 66 00:09:12.720 --> 00:09:31.720 R.M. Hare, Richard Hare, at Oxford, who was a very important 20th century moral theorist and leading defender of utilitarianism, replied to Rawls and others who raised this objection. 67 00:09:31.720 --> 00:09:37.720 He said, no, it isn't right that utilitarianism doesn't take seriously distinction between persons. 68 00:10:07.720 --> 00:10:14.600 Reply, it isn't, he's right that there isn't equality in utilitarianism, but it isn't each 69 00:10:14.600 --> 00:10:22.840 person that's being considered equally, it's each unit of utility, whatever that is, that's 70 00:10:22.840 --> 00:10:31.440 considered equally, and so it can work out just in these cases that considering each 71 00:10:31.440 --> 00:10:39.720 Each unit equally works out that one person has to be sacrificed for the general good. 72 00:10:39.720 --> 00:10:45.220 So Rawls' criticism is entirely on target. 73 00:10:45.220 --> 00:10:52.560 Rawls himself first thought he could break out of this problem. 74 00:10:52.560 --> 00:10:57.640 This is in his essay that I mentioned before, Two Concepts and Rules. 75 00:10:57.640 --> 00:11:26.640 He thought we could have a two-stage style of utilitarianism that might get out of this problem, where you would try, instead of asking what maximizes utility, you would say what general practices maximize utility, what social institutions are such that if we institute them, will maximize utility. 76 00:11:27.640 --> 00:11:34.800 rather than trying to maximize utility for the individual case. This is of course 77 00:11:34.800 --> 00:11:41.520 very similar to variant of rural utilitarianism I mentioned in the lecture 78 00:11:41.520 --> 00:11:51.320 on John Stuart Mill yesterday, but there are problems with this also. One of the 79 00:11:51.320 --> 00:12:02.320 One of the problems is it doesn't seem to be a rationale offhand for coming up with maximizing the utility of the best practice. 80 00:12:02.320 --> 00:12:11.320 The utilitarian at least had a case for saying we should try to do what promotes the greatest happiness overall. 81 00:12:11.320 --> 00:12:19.320 It does seem that if something has the greatest happiness, promotes the greatest happiness after all, that's the reason to do it. 82 00:12:19.320 --> 00:12:26.400 but why should we do something suppose something just promote is greatest 83 00:12:26.400 --> 00:12:34.280 utility of any possible practice why would that be a reason to support 84 00:12:34.280 --> 00:12:39.480 particular acts that that theory dictates we would have a reason for 85 00:12:39.480 --> 00:12:44.800 setting up the practices but on a particular action why wouldn't we if 86 00:12:44.800 --> 00:12:57.200 If we're utilitarians, just try to do what the best action is rather than what is dictated by the acting in accord with the practices we've set up. 87 00:12:57.200 --> 00:13:13.300 So it seems like you can't come up with very easily a rationale in the particular case for following what this two-level system of utility dictate. 88 00:13:13.300 --> 00:13:23.940 So Rawls then said, well, can we come up with a non-utilitarian way of trying to settle moral and political questions? 89 00:13:23.940 --> 00:13:32.060 And he had this idea, he said, sometimes if we can't agree on the proper moral theory, 90 00:13:32.060 --> 00:13:37.940 maybe we can have better success not by trying to come up directly with the best theory, 91 00:13:37.940 --> 00:13:45.940 See if we can come up with a fair procedure for deciding what the best theory is, what we should do. 92 00:13:45.940 --> 00:14:00.940 He mentioned a case of this kind. Supposing, say, you have a cake, you have to cut this cake to serve it to two children, you have two children. 93 00:14:00.940 --> 00:14:10.020 Now you know, if however you cut the cake, the one who got the slightly smaller size 94 00:14:10.020 --> 00:14:11.960 will start complaining. 95 00:14:11.960 --> 00:14:18.900 You can try to cut them as close to equal as you can, but still somebody is going to 96 00:14:18.900 --> 00:14:20.340 start complaining. 97 00:14:20.340 --> 00:14:22.220 So what can you do about this? 98 00:14:22.220 --> 00:14:27.500 Well, one thing you can do is you ask one of the children to cut the cake and then you 99 00:14:27.500 --> 00:14:34.500 How You Can Use a Procedure to Solve Your Distributional Problem 100 00:14:57.500 --> 00:15:05.500 So his friend said, if I had been doing the cutting, I would have picked the smaller piece. 101 00:15:05.500 --> 00:15:09.500 Sadowski said, well, what are you complaining about then? 102 00:15:09.500 --> 00:15:22.500 So what Rawls said then, and this is one of the key ideas here in justice, 103 00:15:22.500 --> 00:15:35.500 We should try to come up with a situation, a fair initial situation, then ask what would 104 00:15:35.500 --> 00:15:43.660 people in that situation choose? What principles of justice would they choose? Before I explain 105 00:15:43.660 --> 00:15:48.580 the situation, I should say what it is people are supposed to be choosing. They're not 106 00:15:48.580 --> 00:15:55.500 not choosing particular distributions, they're not deciding how much you're going to get 107 00:15:55.500 --> 00:15:57.520 or how much I'm going to get. 108 00:15:57.520 --> 00:16:03.000 What people are supposed to be picking in this initial situation, which Rawls calls 109 00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:11.720 the original position, is they're deciding on the basic structure of society, the key 110 00:16:11.720 --> 00:16:18.200 Social Institution, what will be determining the institutions, say, what will be determining 111 00:16:18.200 --> 00:16:23.800 how resources are distributed, what rights and liberties people have, and so on. 112 00:16:23.800 --> 00:16:29.880 Say, they'll be deciding matters such as, do we have a capitalist system, a socialist 113 00:16:29.880 --> 00:16:34.280 system, what rights do people have, and so on. 114 00:16:34.280 --> 00:16:47.680 So Rawls thought that what sort of, how can we get a fairer situation for people to make 115 00:16:47.680 --> 00:16:48.680 this decision? 116 00:16:48.680 --> 00:16:56.480 And he thought that one thing we want to do is eliminate biases. 117 00:16:56.480 --> 00:17:03.000 We want to get a situation where we won't have biased results. 118 00:17:03.000 --> 00:17:12.200 So we eliminate various items of information that people might have that could affect this 119 00:17:12.200 --> 00:17:13.200 decision process. 120 00:17:13.200 --> 00:17:19.200 What we want to get is a decision process where people are, each person is acting in 121 00:17:19.200 --> 00:17:28.480 his or her own self-interest in this original position, but the results won't be contaminated 122 00:17:28.480 --> 00:17:42.120 by Bias of Various Kinds, one, this elimination, this way of eliminating various items, he 123 00:17:42.120 --> 00:17:57.840 calls this the veil of ignorance, that's V-I-L not V-A-L-E. 124 00:17:57.840 --> 00:18:05.920 E. I should say Rawls, although in general he's a very dull writer, he had a gift for 125 00:18:05.920 --> 00:18:12.600 certain phrases that stay in one's mind like the original position, the veil of ignorance, 126 00:18:12.600 --> 00:18:19.820 the difference principle. He's a bit like Hegel in this respect. Hegel was an extremely 127 00:18:19.820 --> 00:18:27.520 bad writer but occasionally comes up with some very striking phrase. So Rawls had the 128 00:18:27.520 --> 00:18:45.520 What does Rawls want to eliminate? First of all, in the original position, no one knows anything about his own personal characteristics. 129 00:18:45.520 --> 00:18:55.520 You don't know anything about your abilities, what talents you have, anything along that kind. 130 00:18:55.520 --> 00:19:02.020 Also, you don't know what your conception of the good is. 131 00:19:02.020 --> 00:19:10.520 By conception of the good, Rawls has in mind something like a moral or religious outlook on things. 132 00:19:10.520 --> 00:19:20.020 Say, we have various moral theories, say Aristotelian theory telling us how to lead a good life, utilitarian theory. 133 00:19:20.020 --> 00:19:30.260 We eliminate all of those, so people don't know what their conception of the good is. 134 00:19:30.260 --> 00:19:40.220 They do know, however, all the best facts and theories established by social science. 135 00:19:40.220 --> 00:19:49.740 They don't know how they themselves would do in various social orders. 136 00:19:49.740 --> 00:20:04.740 They do know, say, various general facts. Supposing it turns out that people respond to economic incentives, it makes a difference, say, to how much you work. 137 00:20:04.740 --> 00:20:14.740 If you know you're going to make a lot of money, you would work much harder if you can keep all or most of what you earn 138 00:20:14.740 --> 00:20:21.420 would if the resources were distributed at absolutely equal people would be 139 00:20:21.420 --> 00:20:27.520 aware of this fact if this had been well established by social science but they 140 00:20:27.520 --> 00:20:37.220 wouldn't know what their own abilities were so Rawls's idea here is that if we 141 00:20:37.220 --> 00:20:42.260 have people bargaining in their self-interest they're trying to agree 142 00:20:42.260 --> 00:21:11.260 on the procedures for the basic structure of society, the correct key social institutions and this process of agreement is not marked by any biases of the kind I've mentioned, people don't know their abilities, they don't know their conception of the good. 143 00:21:11.260 --> 00:21:19.620 When the result will be a fair procedure and we would then accept what the results of this 144 00:21:19.620 --> 00:21:29.500 original position are in so we can know what the basic institution society should be. 145 00:21:29.500 --> 00:21:39.020 I think this idea has quite a few problems in it, so before I go to what Rawls comes 146 00:21:39.020 --> 00:21:42.940 is up with what he thinks people will arrive at in the original position. 147 00:21:42.940 --> 00:21:48.820 I think there are some problems with the original position itself. 148 00:21:48.820 --> 00:22:01.020 I think there's certainly something to Rawls' idea that people can be influenced by biases 149 00:22:01.020 --> 00:22:13.020 In certain cases, in a loose, popular sense, we would say certain procedures are unfair. 150 00:22:13.020 --> 00:22:25.020 Let's take this example. Supposing Michael Jordan is my neighbor, there's a boundary dispute over our houses. 151 00:22:25.020 --> 00:22:48.020 Michael Jordan says to me, well, instead of having to waste time paying lawyers going to court, why don't we just settle this with a one-on-one basketball game? 152 00:22:48.020 --> 00:22:56.540 Now, I don't think I would come out very well if I were to accept this proposal, so I think 153 00:22:56.540 --> 00:23:05.780 here we can see what Rawls has in mind that, say, he's thinking that if people knew what 154 00:23:05.780 --> 00:23:13.220 their abilities were, then in the situation he's imagining, they would try to select whatever 155 00:23:13.220 --> 00:23:19.480 and the thought that institutions that in which they would be better off and so the result 156 00:23:19.480 --> 00:23:26.540 wouldn't be one that we could say is fair in the sense of not giving undue advantage 157 00:23:26.540 --> 00:23:28.820 to particular people. 158 00:23:28.820 --> 00:23:40.060 However, there's a, the next step that I think leads to big trouble. 159 00:23:40.060 --> 00:23:47.900 When we're trying to decide what the right thing to do is, it seems absurd to say we 160 00:23:47.900 --> 00:23:54.860 shouldn't take account of our own view of what is good. 161 00:23:54.860 --> 00:24:06.500 Supposing, say, you find convincing an Aristotelian account of how we should lead our lives, then 162 00:24:06.500 --> 00:24:19.500 You would think that's the very basis for trying to decide how the basic structure of society should be formulated. 163 00:24:19.500 --> 00:24:33.500 Isn't it absurd to say that people shouldn't take account of their own best considered moral views when they're trying to decide what the basic structure of society should be? 164 00:24:33.500 --> 00:24:38.460 Rawls would say, well but people, and we'll see this comes out very much in his later work, 165 00:24:38.460 --> 00:24:43.820 political liberalism, he'd say, well people will disagree on this and we're trying to reach an 166 00:24:43.820 --> 00:24:51.580 agreement, but that is no doubt the case, but it hardly seems an appropriate way of proceeding to 167 00:24:51.580 --> 00:24:59.100 say people should disregard their own views on morality just so they could come up with an 168 00:24:59.100 --> 00:25:08.500 and Agreement. Why, how could, just what you're supposed to take account of in deciding questions 169 00:25:08.500 --> 00:25:18.940 like that are what you think is good. Supposing, though, we put this aside, we say, all right, 170 00:25:18.940 --> 00:25:26.140 let's accept the original position the way Rawls constitutes it. There's a further problem 171 00:25:26.140 --> 00:25:39.140 is, Rawls has eliminated certain sources of bias, but why would we say that what self-interested 172 00:25:39.140 --> 00:25:51.380 people decide on in this situation is the moral or the correct moral view of what the 173 00:25:51.380 --> 00:25:59.740 basic structure should be. Morality is in self-interest or at least arguably different 174 00:25:59.740 --> 00:26:10.900 concepts. So why is self-interest with these extra features tacked on? Why is self-interested 175 00:26:10.900 --> 00:26:19.860 bargaining the proper way of arriving at the correct moral theory? Someone could just say 176 00:26:19.860 --> 00:26:26.820 and Ronald Dworkin was one who raised this objection. So what if people in the original 177 00:26:26.820 --> 00:26:32.380 position arrive at such and such conclusions? Why should we care about the original position 178 00:26:32.380 --> 00:26:39.420 at all? And I don't think Rawls really has a good answer for that. He just said, well, 179 00:26:39.420 --> 00:26:48.780 this is the way we establish a fair procedure, and then he goes on from there. We will see 180 00:26:48.780 --> 00:26:56.980 later though, he does have some supplementary, some other arguments on, aside from the original 181 00:26:56.980 --> 00:27:03.880 position itself, defending the views he comes up with, defending the conclusion, he comes 182 00:27:03.880 --> 00:27:07.460 up with certain conclusions from the original position, he has further arguments trying 183 00:27:07.460 --> 00:27:17.220 to show that those conclusions accord with our ordinary considered moral judgments. So, 184 00:27:17.220 --> 00:27:22.100 What is it that he thinks that people in the original position will agree to? 185 00:27:22.100 --> 00:27:29.220 Well, he says people will agree to two basic principles. 186 00:27:29.220 --> 00:27:34.860 The first is much less controversial than the second, the second one at least, part 187 00:27:34.860 --> 00:27:40.860 of the second one that's aroused nearly all the major critical discussion. 188 00:27:40.860 --> 00:27:46.680 The first of these is one of equal basic liberties. 189 00:27:46.680 --> 00:27:55.680 He has in mind here a fairly standard list, such as freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, 190 00:27:55.680 --> 00:28:04.680 if it's a right to vote, if he's assuming it's a democrat, we're going to have some sort of democratic political system. 191 00:28:04.680 --> 00:28:11.680 There's a standard list of rights and he thinks people will want to have 192 00:28:11.680 --> 00:28:18.680 is sort of the maximum of liberty, giving equal liberty to everyone. 193 00:28:18.680 --> 00:28:24.680 There's a conspicuous absence on this list of liberty. 194 00:28:24.680 --> 00:28:27.680 People don't have property rights. 195 00:28:27.680 --> 00:28:33.680 So he's starting off with the assumption that people don't have property rights. 196 00:28:33.680 --> 00:28:47.380 If people did have property rights, that would mean there wouldn't be any real room for 197 00:28:47.380 --> 00:28:51.680 the kinds of equalitarian measures he favors. 198 00:28:51.680 --> 00:28:56.240 We'll be seeing what these are in a couple of minutes. 199 00:28:56.240 --> 00:29:05.640 Why does he exclude property rights from the initial list of the basic liberties? 200 00:29:05.640 --> 00:29:14.280 Well, here this gets to the heart of how Rawls sees the question he's asking, the question 201 00:29:14.280 --> 00:29:17.040 of how we decide on the basic social institution. 202 00:29:17.040 --> 00:29:26.220 He said, and here he's rather Misesian, he said, social cooperation, people getting together 203 00:29:26.220 --> 00:29:38.220 benefits everyone. Say, if you imagine trying to produce everything for yourself, we wouldn't get very far. Everyone benefits from social cooperation. 204 00:29:38.220 --> 00:29:49.220 So the purpose of trying to come up with the basic rules is to establish how we distribute the gains from social cooperation. 205 00:29:49.220 --> 00:29:55.220 So we can't come up with initial property rights because just what we're trying to answer is 206 00:29:55.220 --> 00:30:00.220 How are these gains to be distributed among people? 207 00:30:02.220 --> 00:30:10.220 Here, without explicitly bringing in property rights, there's an objection. 208 00:30:10.220 --> 00:30:17.220 This one was raised by Robert Nozick, whom I'll be talking about in the next lecture. 209 00:30:17.220 --> 00:30:26.920 Nozick said, well, if we're concerned with the benefits of social cooperation, we shouldn't 210 00:30:26.920 --> 00:30:35.040 take the total amount of things people produce as subject to redistribution. 211 00:30:35.040 --> 00:30:42.760 We should just take the subject to redistribution, subject to decision about what to do, just 212 00:30:42.760 --> 00:30:50.760 The increase from what they produce by cooperating from what they would produce by not cooperating. 213 00:30:50.760 --> 00:30:59.760 Now first it doesn't seem like very much of an objection because you remember people just couldn't produce very much just if they were by themselves. 214 00:30:59.760 --> 00:31:09.760 But, you know, as it goes on, we could imagine not just people cooperating in one particular group, 215 00:31:09.760 --> 00:31:14.200 Groups, a group of people getting together, trying to cooperate, but they could have, 216 00:31:14.200 --> 00:31:22.200 we could imagine other groups also, so all that they should be subject to distribution 217 00:31:22.200 --> 00:31:30.180 is how much more is available because of this group, the ones they decide to be in, than 218 00:31:30.180 --> 00:31:39.200 would be for any other groups, it's just the difference between the top group and the next 219 00:31:39.200 --> 00:32:01.840 The best analysis of the theory of justice is in Nozick's book Anarchy, State, and Utopia 220 00:32:01.840 --> 00:32:08.880 in Section 2 of Chapter 7. That's, as I say, by far the best account and it's very much 221 00:32:08.880 --> 00:32:20.040 influenced the way I look at Rawls. So this, though, is why Rawls doesn't put in property 222 00:32:20.040 --> 00:32:27.240 rights, because he thinks everything is up for distribution. So people have a set of 223 00:32:27.240 --> 00:32:37.080 Basic Liberties. That's the first principle. Then there's the second principle. This has 224 00:32:37.080 --> 00:32:44.520 two parts. The first one is the less controversial part, that all positions of importance should 225 00:32:44.520 --> 00:32:51.400 be open to all on the basis of equality of opportunity. Everyone, or most people, like 226 00:32:51.400 --> 00:32:57.200 Equality of Opportunity. It's never very clearly specified what's involved in the 227 00:32:57.200 --> 00:33:02.760 concept, what that would entail. So I'll just pass that one by because it's the 228 00:33:02.760 --> 00:33:07.040 second part of the Difference Principle. It's the heart of the controversy and 229 00:33:07.040 --> 00:33:13.960 the second part of the Difference Principle is that all inequalities have 230 00:33:13.960 --> 00:33:19.280 to be to the advantage of the least well-off social group. So we have then 231 00:33:19.280 --> 00:33:37.280 There are two principles, there's the principle of equal liberties, and there's a second principle, the difference principle, which has two parts, equal opportunity, and this principle of all inequalities have to be the advantage of the least well-off group. 232 00:33:37.280 --> 00:33:54.280 The principles are related in a way that Rawls calls lexical priority, actually used longer term I think for his lexicographical priority, but lexical priority is better and easier to spell. 233 00:33:54.280 --> 00:34:11.000 So, what this means is that the principles are ordered in this way. 234 00:34:11.000 --> 00:34:19.140 The first principle must be fulfilled before the other two, before the other principle. 235 00:34:19.140 --> 00:34:26.940 And this says you can't, say, interfere with people's basic liberties to promote more equality 236 00:34:26.940 --> 00:34:35.680 of opportunity or redistribution under the second part of the difference principle. 237 00:34:35.680 --> 00:34:42.660 This one has priority, just like, say, in a dictionary, suppose you say the letter A 238 00:34:42.660 --> 00:34:50.940 is lexically prior to B. All the words beginning with A come before all the words beginning 239 00:34:50.940 --> 00:35:01.500 with B. So, similarly, any matter that fulfills basic liberties comes before anything dealing 240 00:35:01.500 --> 00:35:09.980 with equal opportunity. Similarly, equality of opportunity is lexically prior to the other 241 00:35:09.980 --> 00:35:15.580 Another Part of the Difference Principle. Now, now we can get to the fun part, which 242 00:35:15.580 --> 00:35:25.060 is the second part of the Difference Principle and the various problems with it. Rawls thinks 243 00:35:25.060 --> 00:35:35.100 that equality is really the fallback position. What he's thinking, what we're talking about 244 00:35:35.100 --> 00:35:40.540 Rothbard's distribution of what he calls primary social goods. 245 00:35:40.540 --> 00:35:53.340 This would include not only wealth, but honors, anything that really people need, certain 246 00:35:53.340 --> 00:35:59.540 basic goods, people need in order to live or to live well, such as we need a certain 247 00:35:59.540 --> 00:36:07.220 amount of social bases of self-respect, we need money, we need resources of various kinds, 248 00:36:07.220 --> 00:36:13.540 so these basic social goods, we're asking how they should be distributed, we're starting 249 00:36:13.540 --> 00:36:21.140 from a point of equality, then he thinks that though people in the original position, remember 250 00:36:21.140 --> 00:36:28.380 they know various facts and theories, well-established theories of social science, if it turns out 251 00:36:28.380 --> 00:36:36.980 is very likely the case that inequalities will benefit the least well-off social group, then 252 00:36:36.980 --> 00:36:48.420 we should allow those inequalities. Supposing that we allow, say, doctors to earn larger 253 00:36:48.420 --> 00:36:56.420 incomes than average, then it's likely that the poor people will get better care than 254 00:36:56.420 --> 00:37:04.940 And they would if doctors had to labor for very low wages. So Rawls thinks we should 255 00:37:04.940 --> 00:37:14.380 take account of fats like that and inequalities that benefited the least well-off group would 256 00:37:14.380 --> 00:37:22.940 be allowed. By the least well-off group, Rawls means something like, he varies what he says 257 00:37:22.940 --> 00:37:32.940 I'm not going to talk about this in different editions of Theory of Justice, but it means something like, say, the lower one-third of income earners in society. 258 00:37:32.940 --> 00:37:40.940 So inequalities are allowed to the extent they benefit this group. 259 00:37:40.940 --> 00:37:51.940 Why does Rawls think that people in the original position would choose that part of the difference principle? 260 00:37:51.940 --> 00:38:00.300 Well, he says, we have a case, however, remember each of the people in the original position 261 00:38:00.300 --> 00:38:03.660 is choosing from the point of view of self-interest. 262 00:38:03.660 --> 00:38:11.260 So he thinks that people would reason in this way, they would say it would be really bad 263 00:38:11.260 --> 00:38:21.060 if I didn't, if I went below a minimum of certain, these primary social goods, supposing 264 00:38:21.060 --> 00:38:31.220 When people chose, say, a system where you would get the average of all possible positions, 265 00:38:31.220 --> 00:38:37.940 we would just, it's kind of a utilitarian solution, we would say, imagine the various 266 00:38:37.940 --> 00:38:42.460 incomes people might make on your different system, and you would pick the one that would 267 00:38:42.460 --> 00:38:45.020 give you the highest average. 268 00:38:45.020 --> 00:38:52.060 So he said, well, if you chose that way, then if you came, it might come out that you wouldn't 269 00:38:52.060 --> 00:39:00.660 get very much, then it would be much worse to say, to find yourself in a very bad position 270 00:39:00.660 --> 00:39:06.620 without very much of the primary, or anything of the primary goods, than you would gain 271 00:39:06.620 --> 00:39:12.560 from getting a high position, a higher position than you would under his system. 272 00:39:12.560 --> 00:39:18.160 So he says this is a case of choice under uncertainty. 273 00:39:18.160 --> 00:39:22.720 We don't know, because remember people in the original position, lack any information 274 00:39:22.720 --> 00:39:32.500 about not only about what their abilities are, but what the outcomes of various social 275 00:39:32.500 --> 00:39:33.500 systems are. 276 00:39:33.500 --> 00:39:39.040 They lack this information, so they can't calculate the odds that they're going to be 277 00:39:39.040 --> 00:39:40.640 in various positions. 278 00:39:40.640 --> 00:39:49.400 I can't say, well, it's likely, say, with 50% probability that I'll end up above average 279 00:39:49.400 --> 00:39:56.240 in income, or 25% probability I'll be in the lower group. 280 00:39:56.240 --> 00:40:02.160 I can't make such calculations, I'm in a situation of uncertainty. 281 00:40:02.160 --> 00:40:09.960 So Rawls appeals to certain views of certain game theories, which says if we're deciding 282 00:40:09.960 --> 00:40:19.520 under uncertainty, we should act in a way that maximizes the worst possible outcome. 283 00:40:19.520 --> 00:40:28.960 Instead of saying what we should do is to maximize our expectation of the best outcome, 284 00:40:28.960 --> 00:40:36.760 we should choose what maximizes our chances in the worst situation. 285 00:40:36.760 --> 00:40:51.540 This is called the Maximin Principle. 286 00:40:51.540 --> 00:40:57.720 There are various disputes that I'm not competent to go into, so whether this is correct to 287 00:40:57.720 --> 00:41:01.680 count according to game theory of what people should choose. 288 00:41:01.680 --> 00:41:07.320 It's interesting in the distinction he makes between choosing under uncertainty where you 289 00:41:07.320 --> 00:41:14.160 don't know anything about the probabilities and choosing under risk where you can calculate 290 00:41:14.160 --> 00:41:15.160 odds. 291 00:41:15.160 --> 00:41:21.000 This is derived from the famous book by Frank Knight, The Risk, Uncertainty and Profit. 292 00:41:21.000 --> 00:41:28.880 You see Rawls, after he graduated with philosophy, spent a good deal of time studying economics. 293 00:41:28.880 --> 00:41:43.880 Economics, he went to graduate courses in economics, the neoclassical kind, he's very familiar with economic theory, and Knight in particular had a great deal of influence on him. 294 00:41:43.880 --> 00:41:55.520 In fact, according to one biography by Thomas Pogge, he says that Rawls said that he got 295 00:41:55.520 --> 00:42:01.800 the basic idea of deciding on justice through this kind of conversational procedure from 296 00:42:01.800 --> 00:42:05.240 an essay by Knight in his book Ethics of Competition. 297 00:42:05.240 --> 00:42:13.360 I was glad to read this because I claimed in another essay that one of Rawls' arguments 298 00:42:13.360 --> 00:42:24.240 on supporting his views on that people don't deserve their natural abilities also came from 299 00:42:24.240 --> 00:42:32.280 9th. So I always like to get, find arguments or views that confirm my own views. So I was 300 00:42:32.280 --> 00:42:41.440 glad to see that. So again, Raul said people will choose the difference principle because 301 00:42:41.440 --> 00:42:55.440 Here again there are a number of problems aside from this question whether Rawls is right about game theory. 302 00:42:55.440 --> 00:43:10.440 One, again raised by Nozick, is why is it that people are supposed to choose what the social, according to what will benefit the least well-off social group? 303 00:43:10.440 --> 00:43:18.440 Why wouldn't they, going on the same basis as Rawls does, where people are concerned about their position, 304 00:43:18.440 --> 00:43:27.440 they're concerned that they're not going to, they might not wind up with very, not very much in the way of primary goods, 305 00:43:27.440 --> 00:43:34.440 so they'll be in a very bad state of affairs if they don't follow the maximum principle. 306 00:43:34.440 --> 00:43:44.440 Why wouldn't they say we have to maximize the position of the worst-off individual, not just the worst-off group? 307 00:43:44.440 --> 00:43:56.440 So we would pick, say, someone who's very, very depressed, and say, how could we maximize that person's position? 308 00:43:56.440 --> 00:44:04.000 That seems like you would mandate much more redistribution of wealth than you would under 309 00:44:04.000 --> 00:44:07.880 the principle Rawls wants. 310 00:44:07.880 --> 00:44:19.360 I should have mentioned earlier one clarification about what Rawls means by worst-off group. 311 00:44:19.360 --> 00:44:26.360 It means that you're choosing between various systems and you say, would the worst-off group 312 00:44:26.360 --> 00:44:34.560 group say in one system be better or worse off in the worst off group in another system. 313 00:44:34.560 --> 00:44:41.860 You aren't saying let's take this one set of people who are the worst off in this system 314 00:44:41.860 --> 00:44:47.880 and say how can that group be made better off because obviously the way you do that 315 00:44:47.880 --> 00:44:54.960 is just give them all the money, give them everything that would make them best off. 316 00:44:54.960 --> 00:45:02.800 What you're doing is comparing worst-off groups among the various options. 317 00:45:02.800 --> 00:45:10.540 But to return to the problem of you, one is, why do we pick groups rather than individuals? 318 00:45:10.540 --> 00:45:24.320 Then the second problem is, let's suppose we had a situation like this, let's just say 319 00:45:24.320 --> 00:45:44.760 Say there are two groups. Now, suppose in each of these groups, in each of these situations, 320 00:45:44.760 --> 00:45:50.760 the worst off group gets five, five, we're just taking arbitrary units. In one, the best 321 00:45:50.760 --> 00:45:55.120 Best-off group gets 10, the better-off group gets 8. 322 00:45:55.120 --> 00:45:59.960 So which one would we favor according to Rawls? 323 00:45:59.960 --> 00:46:05.340 Well, it seems like the one we should favor is the first one, I mean, sort of, without 324 00:46:05.340 --> 00:46:14.080 regard to Rawls, but it seems like the first one's better because the lower group is no 325 00:46:14.080 --> 00:46:20.040 worse off in the first one than the second one, and the other people are better off. 326 00:46:20.040 --> 00:46:37.040 The top group is better off. It was a standard Pareto principle in economics. If something is to the benefit of one person and doesn't make anyone worse off, then that's a good reason to adopt that measure, it seems. 327 00:46:37.040 --> 00:46:48.040 Although there's also a problem with the Pareto criteria, that part, it does seem plausible that if somebody's better off and nobody's worse off, then that gives you a good reason for that measure. 328 00:46:48.040 --> 00:46:56.320 measure, but remember what Rawls is concerned with is justifications of deviating from equality. 329 00:46:56.320 --> 00:47:03.920 He thinks that equality is the real starting point, the fallback position. So this one, 330 00:47:03.920 --> 00:47:09.600 the eight and five is closer to equality, so it would seem like a Rawlsian would have 331 00:47:09.600 --> 00:47:16.360 So we have to say this one is better contrary to what we would ordinarily think. 332 00:47:16.360 --> 00:47:25.360 Now Rawls could get around this by what is called the staggered difference principle. 333 00:47:25.360 --> 00:47:31.160 This says we try to make things as well off as possible for the least well off group. 334 00:47:31.160 --> 00:47:37.120 Then if we've done that, we try to make things as well as possible for the next group and 335 00:47:37.120 --> 00:47:38.120 so on. 336 00:47:38.120 --> 00:47:58.120 If we apply the staggered difference principle, this one would be, we would pick this one rather than this one because we've made things as well as possible for the lowest group, then this one makes things better off for the next group than this one, so we should pick this one. 337 00:47:58.120 --> 00:48:23.120 But Rawls doesn't really, it's not really clear whether Rawls accepts this staggered principle, but there'd be a problem for him if he does, because remember, he's saying to the lower group, we should, you should accept some inequality because this is to your advantage. 338 00:48:23.120 --> 00:48:33.000 He's saying equality is the basic position, but surely you can't refuse this kind of inequality 339 00:48:33.000 --> 00:48:41.120 because you're better off under this than having pure equality. 340 00:48:41.120 --> 00:48:44.080 The inequalities are to the eventual least well-off group. 341 00:48:44.080 --> 00:48:50.880 Now, but if you try this with a staggered principle, the least well-off group isn't 342 00:48:50.880 --> 00:48:57.600 is better off because this group gets more than this group, so he wouldn't have a good 343 00:48:57.600 --> 00:49:06.520 argument to give to the lower-off, the worst-off group, that they should accept this, so someone 344 00:49:06.520 --> 00:49:13.520 who was an egalitarian would have a tough time justifying the staggered difference principle, 345 00:49:13.520 --> 00:49:20.400 but if he rejected that, then he seemed like he would have to take this very counterintuitive 346 00:49:20.400 --> 00:49:48.160 We haven't even begun to give the problems of the difference principle. 347 00:49:48.160 --> 00:50:00.480 Another one is that under the, there's sort of a misleading aspect of the difference principle. 348 00:50:00.480 --> 00:50:09.960 If we think why would someone support the difference principle, not just ask why do 349 00:50:09.960 --> 00:50:15.560 people in the Rawlsian original position support what we ask, we're not in the original position, 350 00:50:15.560 --> 00:50:45.560 We're considering Rawls' system. Why should we accept what Rawls has come up with? Well, one moral view many people have, they'll say, well, supposing someone's very poor or someone is very sick, not, say, imagine someone who's severely handicapped, can't really provide for himself, we might have a feeling that person 351 00:50:45.560 --> 00:51:15.560 should be helped in some way. I don't myself think that this justifies coercion of other people, but we certainly might very well have the intuition people of that kind should be helped, so I think that kind of feeling influences people to think, well maybe Rawls is right that the lower-off group should be made as well-off as possible, but what's 352 00:51:15.560 --> 00:51:34.560 What's leading about this is that these really badly off people aren't even included in the initial situation because remember what Rawls is talking about is how we divide the benefits of social cooperation. 353 00:51:34.560 --> 00:51:41.360 So, if people are really badly off and not able to contribute to social gains at all, 354 00:51:41.360 --> 00:51:52.240 say they're net people who drains on production, they would be people that if they weren't 355 00:51:52.240 --> 00:51:58.160 in the group at all, the gains from social cooperation would be higher. 356 00:51:58.160 --> 00:52:02.200 From a self-interested point of view, the people self-interested, they wouldn't be 357 00:52:02.200 --> 00:52:07.280 be included in the initial bargaining situation at all. 358 00:52:07.280 --> 00:52:14.120 So it's only when Rawls is talking about a lower group, he doesn't have in mind people 359 00:52:14.120 --> 00:52:17.120 who are really severely badly off. 360 00:52:17.120 --> 00:52:24.200 He does think those people should be aided in some way, but this comes in only at a later 361 00:52:24.200 --> 00:52:30.600 stage of his system, when we're trying to come up with the basic structure of society, 362 00:52:30.600 --> 00:52:38.520 are concerned only with people who were contributing to gains from cooperation. 363 00:52:38.520 --> 00:52:45.520 This point, incidentally, was made by G.A. Cohen, Jerry Cohen, who was a Marxist political 364 00:52:45.520 --> 00:52:50.960 philosopher, my favorite Marxist, he's a very good philosopher. 365 00:52:50.960 --> 00:52:57.720 I think it's a quite good point, he didn't intend it as one. 366 00:52:57.720 --> 00:53:20.720 He thinks Rawls isn't egalitarian enough. He doesn't intend it at all to defend the market position, but it's, I think, a very good point showing that at least the support one might intuitively have for Rawls' difference principle really rests on an illusion. 367 00:53:20.720 --> 00:53:36.720 So, oh, one further problem, I guess this will be with the difference between what Rawls constitutes or states it, is this, supposing, say, 368 00:53:36.720 --> 00:53:47.720 again, let's assume we're sympathetic to egalitarianism, we want equal distribution, we're only willing to modify this to help the poor. 369 00:53:47.720 --> 00:54:00.560 So, supposing, say, if there were some enormous inequality, we'll have some enormous inequality, 370 00:54:00.560 --> 00:54:03.520 the worst off group will be held slightly. 371 00:54:03.520 --> 00:54:31.680 Supposing we had this situation, let's see, let's do it this way, okay. 372 00:54:31.680 --> 00:54:43.280 On this one, Rawlsian would have to say this distribution is better because the worst-off 373 00:54:43.280 --> 00:54:47.760 group is slightly better-off than it is in this one. 374 00:54:47.760 --> 00:54:55.120 But remember, the Rawlsian is egalitarian, so this one is enormously more unequal than 375 00:54:55.120 --> 00:54:56.120 this one. 376 00:54:56.120 --> 00:55:02.960 The Rawlsian would have to say, this one is better, it's the one we should adopt, even 377 00:55:02.960 --> 00:55:05.720 though it's a very inegalitarian one. 378 00:55:05.720 --> 00:55:12.040 Of course, I have no objection to that, but it seems like a Rawlsian should, so what the 379 00:55:12.040 --> 00:55:22.440 problem here is that the Rawlsian seems to be resting everything on making things better 380 00:55:22.440 --> 00:55:33.520 are off for the worst off group he's forgetting all about, or most of all about, of what motivates 381 00:55:33.520 --> 00:55:39.280 his position in the first place in egalitarianism. 382 00:55:39.280 --> 00:55:47.040 So as you can see, I don't think Rawls' arguments for the difference principle are too convincing. 383 00:55:47.040 --> 00:55:54.560 and he's not, he hasn't really come up with a plausible reason for thinking that people 384 00:55:54.560 --> 00:56:00.880 in the initial situation, original position, even if you take that as an acceptable starting 385 00:56:00.880 --> 00:56:05.760 point, which I don't think you should, would come up with what he wants. 386 00:56:05.760 --> 00:56:14.320 This, but as I mentioned, in addition to asking why, what would people in the original position 387 00:56:14.320 --> 00:56:21.960 Pick. Rawls supports his views in this way. He said, well, what he wants to do is take 388 00:56:21.960 --> 00:56:28.960 the results of his theory and then test them against our ordinary moral judgments. And 389 00:56:28.960 --> 00:56:36.920 then he said, we think about how the theory matches our ordinary judgments and we try 390 00:56:36.920 --> 00:56:44.160 to balance the two and come up with adjustments. And what we come up with, this process is 391 00:56:44.160 --> 00:56:50.520 called reflective equilibrium, depending on what we include in reflective equilibrium. 392 00:56:50.520 --> 00:56:57.000 There are differences between wide and narrow reflective equilibrium, but I'm not going 393 00:56:57.000 --> 00:56:59.520 to reflect on those differences further. 394 00:56:59.520 --> 00:57:08.040 But anyway, the process is that we say is the result of theory, one that accords with 395 00:57:08.040 --> 00:57:10.480 our moral judgments. 396 00:57:10.480 --> 00:57:19.660 Now, Rawls thinks, he supports his view that it does in this way, he said, well, suppose 397 00:57:19.660 --> 00:57:29.400 somebody says, I don't like your system because shouldn't people with great abilities be able 398 00:57:29.400 --> 00:57:36.400 to benefit from them fully, regardless of how the Lieswaugh Group is doing? 399 00:57:36.400 --> 00:57:45.400 To return to Michael Jordan, if he's a phenomenally gifted basketball player, why shouldn't he 400 00:57:45.400 --> 00:57:50.000 be able to benefit from that? 401 00:57:50.000 --> 00:57:58.280 Why would he have to limit his income to help people who are less talented than he is? 402 00:57:58.280 --> 00:58:05.840 So Rawls replied that we don't deserve our natural abilities. 403 00:58:05.840 --> 00:58:14.040 We don't have our, say, if Jordan has these athletic abilities, he didn't acquire them 404 00:58:14.040 --> 00:58:19.160 because of certain morally good deeds he did. 405 00:58:19.160 --> 00:58:26.240 It was just that he happened to be born with extraordinary talents, or if he wasn't born 406 00:58:26.240 --> 00:58:30.260 with them, he somehow acquired them. 407 00:58:30.260 --> 00:58:39.260 It wasn't due to that, it wasn't that he did anything morally praiseworthy, he just wound up talented in a certain way. 408 00:58:39.260 --> 00:58:45.260 Isn't this really just a matter of luck that he has all this special talent? 409 00:58:45.260 --> 00:58:58.260 Why should he, how can he then say, look, you can't take income away from me just to satisfy this difference principle, 410 00:58:58.260 --> 00:59:06.260 Because I deserve to benefit from my abilities to the full extent possible. 411 00:59:06.260 --> 00:59:12.260 Rawls says he doesn't morally deserve his abilities. 412 00:59:12.260 --> 00:59:17.260 These are just part, he just got this through the natural lottery. 413 00:59:17.260 --> 00:59:23.260 And similarly, according to Rawls, luck goes even further. 414 00:59:23.260 --> 00:59:33.260 Well, it's not the reason he was able when he was playing basketball to earn such extremely high income. 415 00:59:33.260 --> 00:59:37.260 It wasn't just that he was extremely talented. 416 00:59:37.260 --> 00:59:47.260 It was that people, being talented at basketball was something that was very much in demand. 417 00:59:47.260 --> 00:59:55.180 Suppose you imagine someone with his abilities in some other field, like say someone was 418 00:59:55.180 --> 00:59:59.640 the greatest checker player of his time. 419 00:59:59.640 --> 01:00:05.080 No one could compare to this person's checker player. 420 01:00:05.080 --> 01:00:14.000 That person wouldn't be earning much money because there isn't much demand for skilled 421 01:00:14.000 --> 01:00:15.000 checker players. 422 01:00:15.000 --> 01:00:34.000 So Rawls said, isn't it just a matter of luck that some people happen to have talents that coincide with people's preferences in the market, so they get very big incomes, whereas other people might be very talented and they don't get very much. 423 01:00:34.000 --> 01:00:43.520 So, he then, so what he says is, we can't then appeal, say, people deserve, you deserve 424 01:00:43.520 --> 01:00:50.400 your natural assets, so this, we shouldn't use this feeling, intuition that people have, 425 01:00:50.400 --> 01:01:01.520 you should get what you deserve to make us reject the results of his theory. 426 01:01:01.520 --> 01:01:14.240 This view is not only seems to be confused, but has very dangerous consequences. 427 01:01:14.240 --> 01:01:22.400 One is, first there's in saying that we don't deserve our assets, I think there's kind 428 01:01:22.400 --> 01:01:27.080 of a bit of verbal trickery going on. 429 01:01:27.080 --> 01:01:34.800 If you say in ordinary language, you don't deserve something, it has a sense that you 430 01:01:34.800 --> 01:01:37.720 should have that taken away from you. 431 01:01:37.720 --> 01:01:48.280 If I say, you don't deserve to win, that suggests there's something wrong with your winning. 432 01:01:48.280 --> 01:01:53.360 If we can't do anything about it, you really shouldn't have won. 433 01:01:53.360 --> 01:01:55.280 This is a bad thing. 434 01:01:55.280 --> 01:01:58.640 But even Rawls doesn't claim that. 435 01:01:58.640 --> 01:02:05.980 All that he's claimed is that it isn't due to your moral merit that's in a superior position. 436 01:02:05.980 --> 01:02:12.960 But that doesn't have the implication at all that there's anything wrong with your being 437 01:02:12.960 --> 01:02:14.960 in benefiting from that position. 438 01:02:14.960 --> 01:02:21.360 As Nozick puts it, you can be entitled to something even if you don't deserve it because 439 01:02:21.360 --> 01:02:25.520 because of your moral merit. 440 01:02:25.520 --> 01:02:29.640 Then there's a further problem. 441 01:02:29.640 --> 01:02:37.760 This is what I think is where the real danger of Rawls' position comes in. 442 01:02:37.760 --> 01:02:46.700 What happens if you agree with Rawls that people don't deserve their natural assets? 443 01:02:46.700 --> 01:02:55.580 Let's move from that to thinking that the natural assets are up to the collective, up to the 444 01:02:55.580 --> 01:03:00.940 people in the original position to allocate as they decide. 445 01:03:00.940 --> 01:03:08.380 We're taking people's talents and abilities and saying, how can these be arranged so that 446 01:03:08.380 --> 01:03:10.940 the least well-off benefit? 447 01:03:10.940 --> 01:03:18.020 So you get to benefit from your own abilities, only if doing so will help the least well-off 448 01:03:18.020 --> 01:03:19.100 group. 449 01:03:19.100 --> 01:03:29.780 But isn't this really kind of a form of slavery, it's saying your own abilities don't belong 450 01:03:29.780 --> 01:03:30.780 to you? 451 01:03:30.780 --> 01:03:36.900 What, after all, is left of the person if you take away his talents and abilities? 452 01:03:36.900 --> 01:03:44.900 and taking the basic characteristics of the person and making them a collective asset. 453 01:03:44.900 --> 01:03:50.100 Some defenders of Rawls have said, no, no, he isn't doing that because, remember, there's 454 01:03:50.100 --> 01:03:56.580 the principle of liberty, you would have a right to free choice of occupation under that 455 01:03:56.580 --> 01:04:02.340 and that has a lexical priority to the difference principle, but I don't think this gets around 456 01:04:02.340 --> 01:04:09.780 from the point, because you could still have, say, tell someone, you don't have to work, 457 01:04:09.780 --> 01:04:17.740 but if you do, say, then you have to produce in this way, the way that will benefit the 458 01:04:17.740 --> 01:04:23.620 least well-off group, as Nozick said, you can imagine a situation where you put a harness 459 01:04:23.620 --> 01:04:31.780 on a horse and you say you don't force the horse to move, but if it does move, it has 460 01:04:31.780 --> 01:04:38.780 The Theory of Money and Credit 461 01:05:01.780 --> 01:05:06.540 You might have a so-called head tax, which would be something like this. 462 01:05:06.540 --> 01:05:16.260 You say, how, supposing someone would benefit the least well-off group a great deal if he 463 01:05:16.260 --> 01:05:23.060 worked as a doctor but he doesn't like, or he's a doctorate, rather paint pictures. 464 01:05:23.060 --> 01:05:28.160 And you say, suppose he's not very good as a painter, he just likes painting. 465 01:05:28.160 --> 01:05:35.800 So he would benefit the least well-off group if he were a doctor, but he doesn't want to. 466 01:05:35.800 --> 01:05:45.160 So could we have a system of taxation that would make it very hard for him to be a painter 467 01:05:45.160 --> 01:05:49.560 because he could have benefited the least well-off group by being a doctor? 468 01:05:49.560 --> 01:05:59.760 We can see very easily how trying to apply the Difference Principle can drastically curtail 469 01:05:59.760 --> 01:06:14.840 people's liberties and really what Rawls has done is make, turn us all into collective, 470 01:06:14.840 --> 01:06:19.740 make us all at the disposition of the collect to be really, although remember his basic 471 01:06:19.740 --> 01:06:24.840 criticism of utilitarianism were, I think he was right, is utilitarianism doesn't take 472 01:06:24.840 --> 01:06:29.880 seriously the distinction between person, he himself isn't really taking seriously 473 01:06:29.880 --> 01:06:38.880 the distinction between persons here. 474 01:06:38.880 --> 01:06:48.880 One point I should mention also, some people, you might have thought of this, I'm sure many of you have thought of this yourself, 475 01:06:48.880 --> 01:06:55.880 you might be tempted to respond to Raoul's point that we didn't do anything to deserve our abilities by saying, 476 01:06:55.880 --> 01:07:06.880 well, even if someone is born with a great many talents, doesn't he have to work hard to develop them? 477 01:07:06.880 --> 01:07:12.800 Say, the great athlete doesn't just say, imagine, Michael Jordan doesn't just go out on the 478 01:07:12.800 --> 01:07:17.240 basketball court and discover he's very good at shooting basketball. 479 01:07:17.240 --> 01:07:26.640 He spent years developing his talent, so you can probably guess how Rawls would respond 480 01:07:26.640 --> 01:07:27.640 to that. 481 01:07:27.640 --> 01:07:33.640 He said, well, supposing some people are very hardworking, they're very persistent, they're 482 01:07:33.640 --> 01:07:35.640 The Theory of Money and Credit 483 01:08:03.640 --> 01:08:13.140 I want to mention what I think is a very good argument made by David Schmitz in his book, Elements of Justice. 484 01:08:13.140 --> 01:08:20.640 Remember, I mentioned Schmitz before in one of my lectures. 485 01:08:20.640 --> 01:08:32.140 I criticized an argument he had against hypothetical consent, hypothetical arguments, but here's one where I think he's right. 486 01:08:32.140 --> 01:08:47.380 Yes, he was a very good philosopher. In fact, one could even say, when you're out of Schmitz, 487 01:08:47.380 --> 01:08:58.340 you're out of gear. So, what Schmitz does is to challenge Rawls's claim that we don't 488 01:08:58.340 --> 01:09:03.680 deserve our natural abilities. He said, we do deserve our abilities because what Rawls 489 01:09:03.680 --> 01:09:13.960 is assuming is that for us to say we don't deserve something, sort of has to go all the 490 01:09:13.960 --> 01:09:21.620 way down, as it were. Why don't we say we deserve to benefit from our abilities if we 491 01:09:21.620 --> 01:09:32.620 We make good use of what we have. Why do we have to say we not only have to deserve what 492 01:09:32.620 --> 01:09:41.400 we do with our abilities, we have to deserve our abilities also? You're imagining the starting 493 01:09:41.400 --> 01:09:47.420 point is enough. It is enough to say we're starting here now. We're very productive. 494 01:09:47.420 --> 01:10:15.420 We work hard so we deserve what we get. It has to be the initial properties we have. We have to deserve those. Also, why should we make that move that Rawls wants? If we don't do that, we can just say, sort of in ordinary, as we very often would in ordinary language, someone who's worked hard deserves what he's made of his talents. 495 01:10:15.420 --> 01:10:24.020 So Schmitt says it's more plausible to look desert in that way than what Rawls does. 496 01:10:24.020 --> 01:10:35.420 Now, in his book, Political Liberalism, which came out in 1993, Rawls comes up with a slightly 497 01:10:35.420 --> 01:10:43.620 different rationale for his difference principle in the other parts of his system. 498 01:10:43.620 --> 01:10:50.420 He doesn't change his conclusions at all but he modifies the reasons we should adopt them. 499 01:10:50.420 --> 01:10:59.420 Here he stresses very much the fact that his system is intended to apply to modern democratic 500 01:10:59.420 --> 01:11:01.940 states like the United States. 501 01:11:01.940 --> 01:11:11.280 He says here we have a situation where there's a great deal of conflict among people in their 502 01:11:11.280 --> 01:11:17.120 Conceptions of the Good. Remember, conception of good is your basic philosophical outlook. 503 01:11:18.320 --> 01:11:25.280 For example, we see in the U.S., there are some people who were very opposed to abortion. They 504 01:11:25.280 --> 01:11:32.080 say abortion is murder. Other people say, no, this isn't right. The woman has the right to choose. 505 01:11:32.080 --> 01:11:40.640 Some people have religious views that are very different from others. Some people have strong 506 01:11:40.640 --> 01:11:47.920 among egalitarian intuitions, they say. It's unfair that some people earn more than others. 507 01:11:47.920 --> 01:11:54.680 Other people don't have these views. How are we going to settle these disputes? How are 508 01:11:54.680 --> 01:12:07.280 we going to arrive at a policy that we can all reasonably accept? So Rawls once, especially 509 01:12:07.280 --> 01:12:26.620 What he has in mind, he was, besides being a philosopher, he was very interested in history, taught, I think, courses, sometimes joint courses with David Donald, who was an American historian, he studied various historical periods quite a bit. 510 01:12:26.620 --> 01:12:44.620 He was very much influenced by the situation in what happened in Europe, remember the Thirty Years War, 1618, 1648, where there were devastating conflicts because of clashes in religion. 511 01:12:44.620 --> 01:12:54.620 So he asked how can we have a society in which there's some sort of consensus in which people can agree on the basic structure, 512 01:12:54.620 --> 01:13:15.620 So he said, well, what we want to assume is supposing there are people with different conceptions of the good, but we all want to reach agreement with everyone else who is willing to reach agreement. 513 01:13:15.620 --> 01:13:34.620 People in the sense of what he calls reasonable, not just rational in the sense of being able to see how best to meet their own goals, but reasonable in the sense of wanting to achieve agreement with others. 514 01:13:34.620 --> 01:13:43.620 Then he said, what would we do? We have these different conceptions of the good, so what would we do? 515 01:13:43.620 --> 01:13:51.460 He said it wouldn't be reasonable for, say, someone with a particular conception of the 516 01:13:51.460 --> 01:13:58.260 good to use as an argument something that was peculiar to his view of the good. 517 01:13:58.260 --> 01:14:04.980 It wouldn't show respect for people with competing conceptions of the good to use such an argument. 518 01:14:04.980 --> 01:14:14.140 I think, for example, someone said that abortion should be prohibited because of various verses 519 01:14:14.140 --> 01:14:18.980 in the Bible go against it, in this person's opinion. 520 01:14:18.980 --> 01:14:26.740 This wouldn't show respect to people in the society who don't accept the Bible. 521 01:14:26.740 --> 01:14:34.580 So what Rawls says is that we have to appeal to things that could be reasons for everyone 522 01:14:34.580 --> 01:14:35.580 to accept. 523 01:14:35.580 --> 01:14:42.380 He calls this kind of process where we limit our use of conception of the good and just 524 01:14:42.380 --> 01:14:47.620 appeal to reasons that everyone could accept, calls this public reason. 525 01:14:47.620 --> 01:14:54.580 He isn't saying that everyone will always agree on all measures, it's just that though 526 01:14:54.580 --> 01:15:01.660 Each person is using reasons that other people recognize as reasons. 527 01:15:01.660 --> 01:15:07.780 They are, it isn't, in his view, we don't want a situation, say, where, let's suppose 528 01:15:07.780 --> 01:15:14.780 a majority of people come to accept the anti-abortion view based on religious grounds, that those 529 01:15:14.780 --> 01:15:21.860 people just pass the measures they want and force them on the recalcitrant minority. 530 01:15:21.860 --> 01:15:27.460 He says this wouldn't be showing respect for those with other conceptions of the good. 531 01:15:27.460 --> 01:15:33.780 So what we do according to him is we limit ourselves to public reason. 532 01:15:33.780 --> 01:15:44.100 And what happens if we do that, then it turns out we get exactly the same principles as 533 01:15:44.100 --> 01:15:45.940 we did the first time. 534 01:15:45.940 --> 01:15:58.940 Everybody now, using public reason, accepts the principles of Rawls' system, so the story is different, the ending is always the same. 535 01:15:58.940 --> 01:16:08.940 Now, Rawls suggests that, then you have a problem. 536 01:16:08.940 --> 01:16:16.340 Well, supposing you have a particular conception of the good, and the conclusions you come 537 01:16:16.340 --> 01:16:24.180 up with from that conception of the good differ with what Rawls' system says you, when you 538 01:16:24.180 --> 01:16:31.660 apply public reason, says you should favor, then what Rawls suggests is that within your 539 01:16:31.660 --> 01:16:43.660 If you have a different conception of the good, you'll find, you'll come up with aspects of that that tell you what to do when other people have different conceptions of the good. 540 01:16:43.660 --> 01:16:52.660 You'll say, well, I'm a utilitarian, but what do I do when other people aren't utilitarians? 541 01:16:52.660 --> 01:17:00.660 Then the answer will be to, again to use public reason. 542 01:17:00.660 --> 01:17:09.660 So you have each conception of the good will have reasons to accept the Rawlsian system. Rawls calls this overlapping consensus. 543 01:17:09.660 --> 01:17:21.660 There is a slight problem here. He doesn't show that from any of the standard conceptions of the good, that people will do have, 544 01:17:21.660 --> 01:17:29.660 it will follow from any standard conceptions of the good, that people faced with disagreement will support the Rawlsian system. 545 01:17:29.660 --> 01:17:36.820 System, that would only, it's, he's just taking what should be a conclusion of a very 546 01:17:36.820 --> 01:17:43.380 difficult argument as a premise, so he hasn't shown there's going to be any consents of 547 01:17:43.380 --> 01:17:45.380 the kind he wants at all. 548 01:17:45.380 --> 01:17:54.060 Even he could show that there are still big problems with his, with his system. 549 01:17:54.060 --> 01:17:59.620 Why should we attach, supposing we do find ourselves as we do in a situation where people 550 01:17:59.620 --> 01:18:13.620 Why shouldn't we just say, well, then we just try to come to some arrangement with these people and do the best we can to get our own views accepted? 551 01:18:13.620 --> 01:18:19.620 Say, if we're libertarians, we say, well, we have non-libertarian people. 552 01:18:19.620 --> 01:18:25.260 Why should we just try to convince them that they should adopt the views we think are right 553 01:18:25.260 --> 01:18:32.980 and meanwhile just live sort of as best we can with the other people? 554 01:18:32.980 --> 01:18:38.300 Why should we try to get a system where we all agree in the way Rawls suggests on the 555 01:18:38.300 --> 01:18:39.940 common set of reasons? 556 01:18:39.940 --> 01:18:45.900 Well, Rawls says if we do that, if we pursue what he calls a modus vivendi where we don't 557 01:18:45.900 --> 01:19:00.900 The Society will lack stability, but it's not clear why that's a property that we want to have. 558 01:19:00.900 --> 01:19:10.900 By stability, he seems to be just stipulating that a society where people have a sort of agreement he wants, 559 01:19:10.900 --> 01:19:19.060 He hasn't given us any reason to accept that taxability in that sense. 560 01:19:19.060 --> 01:19:28.100 All he's done is define a stable order as one where people have the sort of public reason 561 01:19:28.100 --> 01:19:29.900 in the way he suggests. 562 01:19:29.900 --> 01:19:33.060 Now, supposing though he says, no, that isn't what I mean. 563 01:19:33.060 --> 01:19:40.380 What I mean is that the society won't stay together on the basis of Morris v. Vendi. 564 01:19:40.380 --> 01:19:47.180 When he's made a, not a philosophical claim at all, he's made an empirical claim, and 565 01:19:47.180 --> 01:19:57.060 we want to know why does he think that most societies after all do carry on for long periods 566 01:19:57.060 --> 01:20:03.580 with considerable divergence, we don't follow public reason that we're still here, why would 567 01:20:03.580 --> 01:20:14.620 What do you think that public reason is necessary for stability in a non-controversial sense? 568 01:20:14.620 --> 01:20:22.660 Now I was originally planning to say something about the law of peoples, but I think I've 569 01:20:22.660 --> 01:20:27.620 said enough to show there are severe problems in all the systems, so I think we'll have 570 01:20:27.620 --> 01:20:29.620 the rest of the time for discussion. 571 01:20:29.620 --> 01:20:30.620 Yeah. 572 01:20:30.620 --> 01:20:39.620 David, just a question, given the position that you've outlined that there are laws that have for the importance of equality, 573 01:20:39.620 --> 01:20:48.620 a couple of points. There are some of us who have not been quite as successful as authors and publishers as laws were. 574 01:20:48.620 --> 01:20:54.620 Would he be offended if I not had the score and asked for a percentage of his $400,000 sales? 575 01:20:54.620 --> 01:21:10.620 Secondly, would he suggest that the policy from the publishing go to those who are in the publishing field who are less fortunate or go to the farmers, everybody else, regardless? 576 01:21:10.620 --> 01:21:25.620 And thirdly, did he voluntarily offer to turn over his wealth from his unjust acquisition of 400,002 people, or was he waiting for the taxman to come and take his money? 577 01:21:40.620 --> 01:21:48.740 Distribute the profits he got from that to less successful authors or less fortunate people. 578 01:21:48.740 --> 01:21:52.940 Did he apply his difference principle in his own life? 579 01:21:52.940 --> 01:21:58.180 Well, that's an excellent question. 580 01:21:58.180 --> 01:22:07.900 G.A. Cohen raised an objection very much like yours, you're in good philosophical company. 581 01:22:07.900 --> 01:22:15.420 He said, remember, in the difference principle, we're allowing inequalities because, say, 582 01:22:15.420 --> 01:22:24.980 we know that people who are able to earn higher incomes will have incentive to produce more. 583 01:22:24.980 --> 01:22:25.980 We know this. 584 01:22:25.980 --> 01:22:29.900 It's kind of a standard fact of economic psychology. 585 01:22:29.900 --> 01:22:34.460 So he said, well, you know, if we're really egalitarian, we shouldn't be motivated by 586 01:22:34.460 --> 01:22:35.740 such incentives. 587 01:22:35.740 --> 01:22:41.420 We should produce the same as much as before, even if we aren't getting more money. 588 01:22:41.420 --> 01:22:43.780 So he's a very similar point to the one you're making. 589 01:22:43.780 --> 01:22:51.940 I think what Rawls would say in response, and I don't think he did give away his money, 590 01:22:51.940 --> 01:22:58.460 but what he would say in response is, remember, what he's trying to do is say, what is the 591 01:22:58.460 --> 01:23:02.140 proper basic structure of society? 592 01:23:02.140 --> 01:23:09.460 He's not saying, given that structure, how should individuals act? But he's saying, he 593 01:23:09.460 --> 01:23:16.780 would say, given that, he's entitled to his money as long as the social system is set 594 01:23:16.780 --> 01:23:23.180 up in the way he suggests. But it's a very real question whether one can make that kind 595 01:23:23.180 --> 01:23:30.540 of separation that he wants. Why don't, is he right in thinking that the basic principles 596 01:23:30.540 --> 01:23:39.380 and also to determine institutions of justice don't have consequences for individual conduct 597 01:23:39.380 --> 01:23:41.260 in just the way you suggest. 598 01:23:41.260 --> 01:23:47.420 I'm inclined to think there's a great deal in the objection you're suggesting, but this 599 01:23:47.420 --> 01:23:55.540 is a matter that's very much been discussed in the journals and it's one of the big issues. 600 01:23:55.540 --> 01:23:56.540 Dan? 601 01:23:56.540 --> 01:23:58.540 Dan. 602 01:24:26.540 --> 01:24:52.540 The question was is the notion of public reason that should be taken as historically conditioned, is it a universal, we always use the same public reason, or would this change say in the Middle Ages, 13th century? 603 01:24:52.540 --> 01:24:58.500 or would this change say in the Middle Ages, 13th century people might have had, we're 604 01:24:58.500 --> 01:25:04.340 trying to use public reason, might have had much more theological views than now. Well, 605 01:25:04.340 --> 01:25:13.900 I think first that when Rawls once talked about public reason, he's confining it to 606 01:25:13.900 --> 01:25:22.320 modern democracy such as the United States, he's not at all committed to the view that 607 01:25:22.320 --> 01:25:31.600 say in other historical periods the way to solve problems is through an analog of public reason. 608 01:25:31.600 --> 01:25:46.160 I don't think he would say he hasn't addressed, at least in political liberalism, he isn't addressing 609 01:25:46.160 --> 01:26:00.800 I did want to say a couple things not directly responding to your question, but your question 610 01:26:00.800 --> 01:26:05.480 suggests one is we see in the notion of public reason where we're trying to get this kind 611 01:26:05.480 --> 01:26:14.220 of consensus, it's an idea that at least has some similarity to Rousseau's general will. 612 01:26:14.220 --> 01:26:25.220 Remember where Rousseau's general were getting everyone to agree on what the common policy is. 613 01:26:25.220 --> 01:26:36.220 Rawls in his lectures was, stresses Rousseau, lectures on history of political thought, stresses Rousseau very much. 614 01:26:36.220 --> 01:26:52.220 One of the great sociologists, Robert Nisbet, who we've written about, in a review of Theory of Justice, said, well, he's in the tradition of Rousseau, he was one of the first to spot that, and I think he's entirely right. 615 01:26:52.220 --> 01:27:00.220 The other thing I wanted to mention that your question suggested is, supposing we go back to theory of justice, 616 01:27:00.220 --> 01:27:06.220 we don't think we're not talking about public reason, we're going back to theory of justice. 617 01:27:06.220 --> 01:27:13.220 Remember, people in the original position are not supposed to take account of their own conception of the good. 618 01:27:13.220 --> 01:27:18.220 Now, this is your question, probably not the Middle Ages that suggested this to me. 619 01:27:18.220 --> 01:27:25.620 Supposing, as was the case in the certain parts of the Middle Ages, practically everybody 620 01:27:25.620 --> 01:27:31.140 had the same conception of the good, so we're imagining, let's say, people in the original 621 01:27:31.140 --> 01:27:36.660 position at a time where everybody, or practically everybody, has the same conception of good. 622 01:27:36.660 --> 01:27:41.100 On Roller's view, we couldn't, those people couldn't take account of their own conception 623 01:27:41.100 --> 01:27:47.820 of good in deciding what to do, even though we're assuming there aren't significant minorities 624 01:27:47.820 --> 01:27:54.540 with other views it would follow in Rawls' initial view as he has the odd cons when people even that state couldn't take 625 01:27:54.540 --> 01:27:57.540 and the kind of their own conception of the good. 626 01:27:57.540 --> 01:27:59.540 Yeah. 627 01:28:24.540 --> 01:28:53.040 Well, the question was, would Rawls be, how would Rawls be thought of, say, 50 or 100 years from now? 628 01:28:53.040 --> 01:29:00.560 He's now regarded as the top theorist, but what is, would it be, that might not be the case, 629 01:29:01.760 --> 01:29:08.400 it was pointed out that Hobbes was regarded as extremely controversial when he was writing, 630 01:29:08.400 --> 01:29:17.440 now he's viewed as a classic, and so couldn't it be that Rawls' reputation could go down? 631 01:29:17.440 --> 01:29:24.440 Well, I hope it does. There were people at the time who, even when the book came out, didn't like it. 632 01:29:24.440 --> 01:29:30.440 For example, Richard Hare, reviewed in Philosophical Quarterly, he gave an extremely negative review. 633 01:29:30.440 --> 01:29:38.440 I understand from David Sacks, who was, remember I mentioned him, the one who wrote on Falsing Plato's Republic, 634 01:29:38.440 --> 01:29:42.440 who was a great friend of Rawls, that Rawls was very upset by that review. 635 01:29:42.440 --> 01:29:47.440 and then the last sentence was something extremely negative I think he said 636 01:29:47.440 --> 01:29:55.940 something like this book isn't up to the standards of analytic philosophy and he 637 01:29:55.940 --> 01:30:02.160 left that out in the as his review was reprinted he left that sentence out so I 638 01:30:02.160 --> 01:30:08.560 think certainly there are critics of as I say Nozick, Anthony Flew, Murray Rothbard 639 01:30:08.560 --> 01:30:14.560 I've raised very good points against him, and we can hope that those arguments will be successful. 640 01:30:14.560 --> 01:30:21.560 But I can't at all predict the future, but I can predict that we're out of time now, so thanks very much.