Some writers think that John Rawls rejects desert as a distributive criterion because he thinks that people are not capable of deserving anything. I argue that Rawls does not think this, and that he rejects desert because he thinks that we cannot tell what people deserve. I then offer a criticism of Rawls's rejection of desert based on its correct interpretation.

Justice requires giving people what they deserve. Or so many philosophers – and according to many of those philosophers, everyone else – thought for centuries. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, however, perhaps under the influence of Rawls’s (1971) desert-less theory, desert was largely cast out of discussions of distributive justice. Now it is making a comeback. In this chapter I consider recent research on the concept of desert, arguments for its requital, and connections between desert and (...) other distributive ideals. I suggest that desert-sensitive theories of distributive justice, though they face obstacles, have a promising future. (shrink)

We cannot conclude from the assumptions that justice is a virtue and desert is an ingredient in justice that desert claims themselves express a virtue. It could be that desert is morally neutral, or even immoral, and that there are other aspects of justice which make it all-in-all virtuous. We need, in other words, an independent moral justification of desert and desert-based emotions. In this paper I take on the challenge of articulating and defending (...) a utilitarian justification of desert in distributive justice. I argue, first, that while there may be ways of accommodating desert-concerns in liberal theory, this cannot, in the view of liberals themselves, be done without considerable cost to the ideals that are closest to their hearts. By contrast, I suggest that a deceptively simple utilitarian defence of desert can be made to work. Finally, I attempt to surmount various possible objections that might be raised against my utilitarian justification and conclude that none of them confutes it. (shrink)

Why is it that we think today so very differently about distributive and retributive justice? Why is the notion of desert so neglected in our thinking about distributive justice, while it remains fundamental in almost every account of retributive justice? I wish to take up this relatively neglected issue, and put forth two proposals of my own, based upon the way control functions in the two spheres.

I will argue that a desert-based justification for treating a person in a certain way is a justification that holds this treatment to be justified simply by what the person is like and what he or she has done, independent of (1) the fact that treating the person in this way will have good effects (or that treating people like him or her in this way will have such effects); (2) the fact that this treatment is called for (...) by some (justified) institution or practice; or (3) the fact that the person could have avoided being subject to this treatment by choosing appropriately, and therefore cannot complain of it. I will explore the implications of this understanding of desert for the role of desert-based justifications of blame, punishment, and economic reward. (shrink)

This book develops a novel approach to distributive justice by building a theory based on a concept of desert. As a work of applied political theory, it presents a simple but powerful theoretical argument and a detailed proposal to eliminate unmerited inequality, poverty, and economic immobility, speaking to the underlying moral principles of both progressives who already support egalitarian measures and also conservatives who have previously rejected egalitarianism on the grounds of individual freedom, personal responsibility, hard work, or (...) economic efficiency. By using an agnostic, flexible, data-driven approach to isolate luck and ultimately measure desert, this proposal makes equal opportunity initiatives both more accurate and effective as it adapts to a changing economy. It grants to each individual the freedom to genuinely choose their place in the distribution. It provides two policy variations that are perfectly economically efficient, and two others that are conditionally so. It straightforwardly aligns outcomes with widely shared, fundamental moral intuitions. Lastly, it demonstrates much of the above by modeling four policy variations using 40 years of survey data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. (shrink)

If one wishes to give individuals what they deserve, one must find some way of appraising those characteristics that render them deserving. In modern democratic societies, it seems attractive to base this appraisal on an aggregation of the valuations individuals hold of the desert bases under consideration. Some have argued that the market can provide such an appraisal. However, I argue that the market does not provide a satisfactory democratic appraisal that is relevant for desert, as it allows (...) for the existence of net consumer surplus. Nevertheless, I submit that a procedure that does not leave any net consumer surplus would succeed where the market fails. Taking the average valuation of the individuals in society for a given desert base would meet this requirement. Hence, I claim that such a procedure can provide the satisfactory democratic appraisal that the market cannot, and can be used to give individuals what they deserve. (shrink)

In recent years, interest in desert-based theories of justice has increased, and this seems to represent a challenge to equality-based theories of justice.[i] The best distribution of outcomeadvantage with respect to desert, after all, need not be the most equal distribution of outcomeadvantage. Some individuals may deserve more than others. Outcome egalitarianism is, however, implausible, and so the conflict of outcome desert with outcome equality is of little significance.[ii] Most contemporary versions of egalitarianism (...) are concerned with neutralizing the differential effects of brute luck and not with equality of outcome. I shall argue that, in order to be plausible, a desert-based theory of justice can and must be compatible with this form of egalitarianism. There is, however, a stronger form of brute luck egalitarianism, which, as I shall explain, is concerned with equalizing the advantages from brute luck—and not merely with neutralizing the differential effects thereof. Under idealized conditions in which agents have perfect information about the outcomes that their choices generate, even this stronger form of egalitarianism, I shall show, is compatible with pure desert theory. Under conditions of incomplete information, however, strong brute luck egalitarianism is incompatible with a pure desert theory that appeals, as I shall explain, to moral, rather than prudential, desert. (shrink)

I endorse an old view that distributive justice can best be understood as people getting what they deserve. John Rawls has several famous arguments to show that such a view is false. I criticize those arguments, but agree that more work needs to be done on the clarification and explanation of the concept of desert in order for the old view to be more than a platitude. I then criticize attempted analyses of the concept of desert by Feinberg, (...) Kleinig, and Miller. I claim that desert must be taken as a primitive concept. However, even though desert is primitive, there still needs to be some account of what sorts of things make a person deserving . Some proposed desert bases include need, personhood, diligence, moral worth, autonomous action, and entitlement. I criticize George Sher's work on autonomous action, diligence, and moral worth, then propose and defend a modified version of the view that all legitimate desert bases are either virtues or vices. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly influential in most people’s lives. This raises many philosophical questions. One is what responsibility we have as individuals to guide the development of AI in a desirable direction. More specifically, how should this responsibility be distributed among individuals and between individuals and other actors? We investigate this question from the perspectives of five principles of distribution that dominate the discussion about responsibility in connection with climate change: effectiveness, equality, desert, need, and ability. (...) Since much is already written about these distributions in that context, we believe much can be gained if we can make use of this discussion also in connection with AI. Our most important findings are: (1) Different principles give different answers depending on how they are interpreted but, in many cases, different interpretations and different principles agree and even strengthen each other. If for instance ‘equality-based distribution’ is interpreted in a consequentialist sense, effectiveness, and through it, ability, will play important roles in the actual distributions, but so will an equal distribution as such, since we foresee that an increased responsibility of underrepresented groups will make the risks and benefits of AI more equally distributed. The corresponding reasoning is true for need-based distribution. (2) If we acknowledge that someone has a certain responsibility, we also have to acknowledge a corresponding degree of influence for that someone over the matter in question. (3) Independently of which distribution principle we prefer, ability cannot be dismissed. Ability is not fixed, however and if one of the other distributions is morally required, we are also morally required to increase the ability of those less able to take on the required responsibility. (shrink)

The first part of this chapter defends the claim that the over-incarceration of disadvantaged social groups is unjust. Many arguments for penal reform are based on the unequal distribution of punishment, most notably disproportionate punishment of the poor and people of color. However, some philosophers use a noncomparative conception of desert to argue that the justice of punishment is independent of its distribution. On this view, which has significant influence in 14th Amendment jurisprudence, unequal punishment is (...) not unjust. After detailing the “noncomparativist challenge,” this chapter argues that Levinasian conceptions of desert enable a theory of penal justice according to which comparative considerations are essential. In so doing, it shows that the noncomparativist challenge can be met. The chapter concludes by considering whether Levinasian conceptions of desert and responsibility show members of socially advantaged groups to be more blameworthy for their wrongdoing than members of disadvantaged groups. (shrink)

Michael Otsuka, Alex Voorhoeve and Marc Fleurbaey have challenged the priority view in favour of a theory based on competing claims. The present paper shows how their argument can be used to recast the priority view. All desert claims in distributive justice are comparative. The stronger a party’s claims to a given benefit, the greater is the value of her receiving it. Ceteris paribus, the worse-off have stronger claims on welfare, and benefits to them matter more. This can (...) account for intuitions that at first appear egalitarian, as the analysis of an example of Larry Temkin’s shows. The priority view, properly understood, is desert-adjusted utilitarianism under the assumption that no other claims pertain. (shrink)

Distribution of responsibility is one of the main focus areas in discussions about climate change ethics. Most of these discussions deal with the distribution of responsibility for climate change mitigation at the international level. The aim of this paper is to investigate if and how these principles can be used to inform the search for a fair distribution of responsibility for climate change adaptation on the local level. We found that the most influential distribution principles on (...) the international level were in turn built on one or more of seven basic principles: (P1) equal shares, (P2) desert, (P3) beneficiary pays, (P4) ability, (P5) self-help, (P6) limited responsibility for the worst off, and (P7) status quo preservation. It was found that all the basic principles, but P1, P3, and P7, are to some extent translatable to local climate adaptation. Two major problems hamper their usefulness on the local level: (1) several categories of agents need to take on responsibility; and (2) emissions do not work as a base for all principles. P4, P5, and P6 are applicable to local adaptation without changes. P4 is of particular importance as it seems to solve the first problem. P2 is applicable only if the second problem is solved, which can be achieved by using risk of harm instead of emissions as the basis for desert. (shrink)

Although Plato did not explicitly propose any principle of distributive justice, he indicated that justice involves both the doing and the having of one's own. On the interpretation I am proposing: (i) 'having one's own' refers directly to the compensation one receives for doing one's own; (ii) the principle of distribution of benefits that is actually operative in Plato's system is that any form of compensation must be such that the worker (whether ruler, soldier or producer) has his needs (...) satisfied. I also highlight how Plato's account does not quite fit any contemporary conceptual framework--either utilitarian or desert-based. But it encourages us to reflect on the moral aspects of economic interactions of exchange, resulting from a fundamental collective choice to associate in order to satisfy individual needs, broadly understood as what human beings need to flourish in their social life. (shrink)

It is a commonly held position in the literature on distributive justice that choices individuals make from an equalized background may lead to inequalities of outcome. This raises the question of how to assign consequences to particular types of behaviour. Theories of justice based on the concept of moral responsibility offer considerable guidance as to how society should be structured, but they rarely address the question of what the consequences of making a particular choice should be. To fill this (...) lacuna, these theories must rely on a theory of consequences. I argue that the most plausible theories of consequences are substantive rather than procedural in nature. Such theories of consequences are inherently based on the concept of desert. By evaluating individuals' choices society may determine the appropriate consequences of choices for which they are responsible. (shrink)

This article reconstructs and reflects on the 1989 debate between Jerry Cohen and myself on market socialism in the light of Cohen's ongoing defence of communitarian socialism. It presents Cohen's view of market socialism as ethically deficient but a modest improvement on capitalism, and outlines some market socialist proposals from the 1980s. Our debate centred on the issues of distributive justice and community. I had argued that a market economy might be justified by appeal to desert based on (...) productive contribution, but Cohen saw effort as the only relevant desert base, and claimed that only non-comparative judgements of economic desert were possible. Market-derived inequalities, therefore, could not be deserved. He also condemned markets for relying on the motives of greed and fear, and therefore as destructive of community. In reply, I asserted that markets also liberated people from fixed social roles, and that market competition could be viewed differently, as providing the most effective way for people to contribute to each other's welfare. In retrospect, this debate can be seen to raise questions about the nature of justice and the purpose of political philosophy that have come to the fore in recent exchanges between ‘realists’ and ‘idealists’. (shrink)

The paper contends that the heart of Aristotle's theory of justice is the desert-based principle of proportional equality schematically described in the _Nicomachean Ethics and applied to the organization of the state in the _Politics. It argues against the view that for Aristotle distributive justice is only a means to promoting the common good (Thomas Hurka's maximizing perfectionism interpretation of the _Politics) and against the view of Martha Nussbaum that Aristotle understands the common good in a special way (...) that leads to egalitarian conclusions. (shrink)

This chapter discusses how justice applies to public health. It begins by outlining three different metrics employed in discussions of justice: resources, capabilities, and welfare. It then discusses different accounts of justice in distribution, reviewing utilitarianism, egalitarianism, prioritarianism, and sufficientarianism, as well as desert-based theories, and applies these distributive approaches to public health examples. Next, it examines the interplay between distributive justice and individual rights, such as religious rights, property rights, and rights against discrimination, by discussing examples (...) such as mandatory treatment and screening. The chapter also examines the nexus between public health and debates concerning whose interests matter to justice (the “scope of justice”), including global justice, intergenerational justice, and environmental justice, as well as debates concerning whether justice applies to individual choices or only to institutional structures (the “site of justice”). The chapter closes with a discussion of strategies, including deliberative and aggregative democracy, for adjudicating disagreements about justice. (shrink)

Within modern liberal political philosophy, discussions on justice have been centered upon an individualism-based distributive justice and the ‘fair share’ due to each person. According to the liberal theory of justice, the individual is an entity of rational reason and moral autonomy and considers the interests of others and of the community from a viewpoint that is focused on one’s own interests. As practical principles of justice, the principle of desert has attempted to separate the individual’s natural and (...) inherent abilities (merit) from the individual’s intentional efforts (desert); while the principle of needs has transmuted into a set of minimum exclusivity rights to protect the individual’s autonomy from serious harm and injury. Procedural justice theorists such as Rawls have attempted to invalidate the merit of the individual in an attempt to establish the identity of individuals whom are independent of the community, in the effort to promote their ideas on how to mitigate the social inequality that results from natural arbitrariness. The requirement to finalize this logical process is astrong moral reason equipped individual with the capacity of rational action. However, paradoxically, the logic of excessive reason has created an individual who isexclusive-rights-empowered but becomes ‘isolated and selfish’. The issues resulting from this situation are, first, the rational individual who is equipped with moral autonomynow becomes hidden behind a system-guaranteed set of exclusive rights; and second, the individual who should have been a rational actor and actively participating in cooperation and reciprocal relationships, does not find it easy to overcome the temptations of becoming a strategically located but passive and selfish actor within the mass market order. The result is that individuals easily relinquish their moral autonomy and exhibit a tendency to focus on personal gain. This has resulted in an increase in the polarization of society, and an increase of conflict between classes; and has engendered a crisis in the common good of the family and the political community. The true ‘good life’ and the ‘well-ordered community’ cannot be obtained by individuals who are only interested in their ‘share’, but requires ‘good citizens’ who are concerned about the happiness of others and of the society. When we are able to understand that the rational and selfish individual is necessarily non-self-sufficient; and acknowledge that there is a need for mutual philia with others, we will then be able to overcome rational reason and embrace civic friendship. The good citizen of a healthy community that is based on civic friendship, is an individual who has assimilated the virtue of justice, and will be able to aid inovercoming the limitations of modern liberalism, assist in the resolution of the pressing societal and individualistic crises and contribute to theestablishment of a ‘well-ordered community’. (shrink)

There is a large and growing body of empirical work on people’s intuitions about distributive justice. In this paper, we investigate how well luck egalitarianism and desertism—the two normative approaches that appear to cohere well with people’s intuitions—are supported by more fine-grained findings in the empirical literature. The time is ripe for a study of this sort, as the positive literature on justice has blossomed over the last three decades. The results of our investigation are surprising. In three different contexts (...) (good option luck, good brute luck, and bad brute luck) in which the demands of luck egalitarianism and those of a mainstream desert-based view come apart, the latter carries the day. One ramification of these findings is that people’s intuitions about justice are moralized; that is, they appeal to particular conceptions of the good. Luck egalitarians must decide whether to embrace these moralized intuitions by adopting desertism—or to resist them. (shrink)

This dissertation concerns justifications for how economic activity is organized. The dissertation considers the role of economic theory in the process of justification and assesses justifications for specific capitalist institutions. The three essays that comprise this dissertation pursue this inquiry by addressing questions respectively in the history of thought, distributive justice, and the ethics of work. ;To advance our general understanding about the development of nineteenth-century Irish political economy in the wake of the Great Irish Famine , the first essay (...) analyzes the Famine's impact on a previously unstudied, yet uniquely authoritative, element of the discipline: the questions given to candidates for the Whately Professorship of Political Economy at Trinity College, Dublin. The essay concludes, contrary to previous arguments, that the Famine did not fundamentally influence the discipline's development. Examining justifications for government responses to the Famine in light of this conclusion, the essay considers the role of economic theory in justifying how economic activity is organized. ;Challenging the position that people morally deserve their market earnings often relies on showing that there is little that people can be said to deserve or that market imperfections undermine desert claims. The second essay argues that even if people can generally be deserving and absent market imperfections, people cannot claim to deserve their earnings with respect to four common desert bases: social contribution, effort, compensation and promise of payment. A principle of fairness that requires fulfilling legitimate expectations might ground a moral claim to market earnings, but it is much weaker than moral desert in limiting income redistribution or in justifying use of the market. ;Given the nineteenth-century American labor movement's objection to the employment relationship on grounds that it was a form of servitude, the third essay assesses the extent to which a similar objection applies in contemporary society. The essay argues that despite changes in employment practices, from the standpoint of legitimate authority the employment relationship represents a form of servitude. Given ethical objections to voluntary servitude more generally, this analysis suggests the need for alternatives to the employment relationship, such as worker-owned cooperatives, in a just economy. (shrink)

A number of contemporary philosophers have pointed out that justice is not primarily an intellectual virtue, grounded in abstract, detached beliefs, but rather an emotional virtue, grounded in certain beliefs and desires that are compelling and deeply embedded in human nature. As a complex emotional virtue, justice seems to encompass, amongst other things, certain desert-based emotions that are developmentally and morally important for an understanding of justice. This article explores the philosophical reasons for the rising interest in (...) class='Hi'>desert-based emotions and offers a conceptual overview of some common emotions of this sort having to do with the fortunes of others and of oneself, respectively. The article does not give a definitive answer to the question of whether those emotions really are virtuous, but aims at enriching our understanding of what kind of virtue they might possibly represent. (shrink)

The clear message proposed in this book is that justice matters for morality and desert matters for justice - and that emotions matter for desert, justice and morality. Moreover, and no less importantly, justice education needs to take all those facts into consideration. Kristján Kristjánsson¿s new book falls on the cutting edge of the latest developments in justice discourse, both in philosophy and in the social sciences. Written from a philosophical perspective, it gives an accessible but penetrating exploration (...) of various interlocking and interdisciplinary themes relating to justice. Kristjánsson justifies the necessary interplay between philosophers and social scientists dealing with justice, probes the role of desert in justice and explains the rising interest in the emotionality of justice. He then analyses the main desert-based emotions, connects his discussion to recent trends in developmental and social psychology, offers a moral justification of desert and desert-based emotions, and concludes by applying all those ideas in a close study of how justice and desert should be handled in moral education at school. Kristjánsson deftly weaves together insights from disparate academic areas relevant for justice, in general, and desert, in particular. This is an engaging, eye-opening and provocative book that should excite anyone interested in justice discourse and help generate debate in different areas related to justice: philosophical, psychological and educational. (shrink)

It is highly desirable for an allocation of goods to be efficient. However, one might also deem it important that an allocation gives individuals what they deserve. This paper investigates whether it is possible for an allocation to be both efficient and give people what they deserve. It will first of all consider comparative desert, and conclude that it is possible to satisfy both desiderata. It will then consider absolute desert by integrating Shelly Kagan’s work on desert (...) and economic theory. The conclusion will be that there are potential conflicts between absolute desert and efficiency. The paper will then examine how to select the best compromise between the two values, considering several different conceptions of absolute desert. (shrink)

Can the difference among people’s contributions to the society serve as a desert-based reason for unequal distributions? John Rawls contends that it cannot, though contribution may provide an efficiency-based reason for distribution. Contrary to Rawls, luck egalitarians contend that difference in contribution that is not a result of luck may provide a desert-based reason for unequal distributions. My view contrasts with both of these views. By appealing to a fundamental moral principle, the principle of (...) reciprocity, this paper argues that the difference among people’s contributions can serve as a desert-based reason for unequal distributions, even when it is a result of luck. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that the All Affected Principle generates a puzzle when applied to carbon tax referendums. According to recent versions of the All Affected Principle, people should have a say in a democratic decision in positive proportion to how much the decision affects them. Plausibly, one way of being affected by a carbon tax referendum is to bear the economic burden of paying the tax. On this metric of affectedness, then, people who pollute a lot are ceteris (...) paribus more affected than people who don’t, because the former stands to pay more in carbon taxes than the latter. Consequently, people who pollute a lot receive large voting power, while people who pollute a little receive little voting power. This is a puzzling distribution of voting power for several reasons. First, it is instrumentally counterproductive if the goal is to rectify damages to the climate. Second, it introduces prudential incentives for everyone to pollute more to gain voting power. Third, the relative difference in voting power between people who pollute a lot and people who don’t is puzzling from a desert-based point of view, since the former often make a serious effort to avoid polluting, while the latter don’t. (shrink)

There are two ways, broadly speaking, that one might conceive of meritocratic education. On a standard, ‘narrow’ conception, a meritocratic approach to education is one which distributes certain educational goods and opportunities according to merit. On a second, ‘broader’ conception, however, meritocratic education is an educational system suited to a commitment to meritocracy – where ‘meritocracy’ refers to a particular conception of distributive justice. In this article, I argue that these two conceptions are incompatible with each other, and so the (...) standard ‘narrow’ conception of meritocratic education is, in fact, incompatible with a commitment to meritocracy, at least given the typical way of understanding meritocracy. Of particular importance is that while meritocracy, as a view of distributive justice, requires a commitment to equality of opportunity principles, the narrowly meritocratic conception of education does not. The reason has to do with differences in the underlying justifications of the merit-based principles in each: Meritocracy appeals to moral desert, while the educational desert that is grounded by one’s merits is best thought of as a kind of institutional desert. Thus, I will argue, while meritocracy (and so the broad conception of meritocratic education) is constrained by a fair equality of opportunity requirement, narrowly meritocratic education is not. Recognizing the relationships between meritocracy, meritocratic education, and equality of opportunity, I argue, sheds considerable light on disagreements in the debate over equality of opportunity in education. (shrink)

Research Articles Michael S. Moore, Social Philosophy and Policy, FirstView Article.

Many have argued that individuals should receive income in proportion to their contribution to society. Others have believed that it would be fairer if people received income in proportion to the effort they expend in so contributing, since people have much greater control over their level of effort than their productivity. I argue that those who believe this are normally also committed, despite appearances, to increasing the social product — which undermines any sharp distinction between effort- and productivity-based distributive (...) proposals. However, effort-based proposals do emphasise more the importance of people having control over factors affecting their income. The second set of problems I consider is how to implement policies which hold true to this emphasis. I show that there are major problems with the accuracy of using any objective criteria to measure the level of effort a person is expending. Moreover, once any such criteria are employed the problem of ‘moral hazard’arises because people modify their behaviour in such a way as to maximise their income while minimising their effort. This violates the original motivation for using effort. Because of this and other empirical considerations, I argue that productivity may well be a better criterion on which to distribute income even if one is motivated by the same concerns which have prompted effort-based proposals. (shrink)

I defend a solution to the puzzle of petitionary prayer based on some ideas of Aquinas, Gregory the Great, and contemporary desert theorists. I then address a series of objections. Along the way broader issues about the nature of desert, what is required for an action to have a point, and what is required for a puzzle to have a solution are discussed.

If the ground of punishment is a culpable wronging, what is it about a culpable wrongdoing that allows it to morally justify deserved punishment? In particular, we want to know what it is about a culpable wrongdoing that accounts for the intrinsic value of punitive desert or the punitive-desert-related duties that comprise retributivism. I analyze both together in the context of seeking a justification for The Principle of Deserved Punishment, (1). (1) The Principle of Deserved Punishment. A person (...) deserves punishment because, and only because, she has performed a culpable wrongdoing. One approach is that more general moral principles justify it. On this approach, these moral principles support the claim that deserved punishment is morally justified and the claim that it is justified on the ground of a culpable wrongdoing. In this article, I argue against this approach. Elsewhere I argue for the truth of retributivism (which focuses on deserved punishment) based on its being the best explanation of our considered moral judgments. This latter account allows punitive desert and retributivism to function as more fundamental normative entities than is suggested by theories that attempt to derive it from other moral principles. (shrink)

Theories of Justice would be understand as a subject that dealt with liberalist view, based on methodological abstraction. But Michael Walzer tried to approach Justice in view of equality in accordance with shared cultural background of certain community. Methodological abstraction of John Rawls has internal difficulties such that the concept of value or properties which is separated from social context of community, and that the hardship of reflecting democratic ideas of the society’s actual members. Thus, Michael Walzer’s Complex Equality (...) or Egalitarianism focuses on multiple ways of various cultures’ various value system and distributive principle that composes their own society. Based on this, Walzer insists that formulation and creation of values takes priority and controls its distribution. According to Walzer, separated values could exclusively occupied but could not shifted other types of values in the Society of Complex Equality. Spheres of Complex Equality defines the range of sharing social communication or meaning, and its fundamentals are free exchange, desert, and need. This principles would be approved as an exclusive rules of each own, or suggested as the same dominant principles side by side. Complex Equality or Egalitarianism could be a logical basis of critical socialization, for it rejects and criticizes tyranny. It also formulates motivation of moral practice for social participation or interpersonal competence, by defining the Domain of Justice and trying to apply the Principle of Distribution which characterizes Complex Equality or Egalitarianism. (shrink)

The compensatory desert argument is an argument that purports to justify inequalities in (some) incomes generated by a free labour market. It holds, first, that the principle of compensation is a principle of desert; second, that a distribution justified by a principle of desert is just; and third, that (some) rewards people reap on a free labour market are compensation for costs they incur. It concludes that therefore, a distribution of (some) rewards generated by a (...) free labour market is just. In this chapter I criticise the first two premises of this argument. I argue that the principle of compensation is not a principle of desert (sections 3 and 4), and that a distribution of deserved compensatory payments may be unjust (sections 5 and 6). Before developing my critique of the compensatory desert argument, I start by illustrating further that argument in the version of it which has been defended by Julian Lamont (section 1), and to dispel two objections that have been moved against the view that compensation is a principle of desert. (shrink)

In this paper I sketch a possible answer to the question of what professional athletes deserve for their sporting activities. I take two different backgrounds into account. First, the content and meaning of desert is highly debated within political philosophy and many theorists are sceptical if it has any value for social justice. On the other hand sport is often understood as a meritocracy, in which all prizes or wins should be solely awarded based on merit. I will (...) distinguish three possible goods that can be deserved for doing professional sport – money, social status and appreciation – and show that athletes deserve them according to their achievements and that this justifies certain inequalities in their distribution. These legitimate disparities have nevertheless been embedded within a broader framework of social justice, which limits them based on a strong understanding of social equality. (shrink)

In contemporary free will theory, a significant number of philosophers are once again taking seriously the possibility that human beings do not have free will, and are therefore not morally responsible for their actions. Free will theorists commonly assume that giving up the belief that human beings are morally responsible implies giving up all our beliefs about desert. But the consequences of giving up the belief that we are morally responsible are not quite this dramatic. Giving up the belief (...) that we are morally responsible undermines many, and perhaps most, of the desert claims we are pretheoretically inclined to accept. But it does not undermine desert claims based on the sheer fact of personhood. Even in the absence of belief in moral responsibility, personhood-based desert claims require us to respect persons and their rights. So personhood-based desert claims can provide a substantial role for desert in free will skeptics' ethical theories. (shrink)

There is great injustice in the distribution of wellbeing among humans. But the situation may appear even worse once we expand our outlook to include other animals. Even a human who has a decent but not very good life plausibly has a much better life than the life of a mouse or an ant. And yet, if nonhuman animals are typically worse off than humans, does that mean that we should favor distributions that prioritize their wellbeing over the wellbeing (...) of humans? Many of the popular principles of distributive justice imply that we should, and some philosophers view this as a problem. I carefully specify this alleged problem, reject two popular approaches that have been taken to resolve it, and I then explore how a desertist approach to distributive justice handles the problem. I suggest that desertism about distributive justice sometimes favors human over nonhuman wellbeing in distributions. However, I then show that the desertist principle that I advance offers only a very limited justification for favoring human wellbeing over the wellbeing of other animals. (shrink)

Can desert be the foundation of justice? Recent attempts to redefine distributive justice in the light of the notions of desert and merit depend largely upon how much independent moral force can be attributed to these notions. This is why a number of theorists, following in Joel Feinberg’s wake, assume desert to be a natural feature (of an action, or a person, or a performance), independently of the institutions that may reward it, and of the socio-political background (...) against which it stands out. This article criticizes such a view, trying to establish that desert cannot exist but ‘in the eyes’ of some person or group who already possesses some system of values. Thus, the concept lacks the moral force for defining the rightness of a society. In the last section, David Miller’s thesis that there is one specific, right pattern for rewarding desert will be examined. (shrink)

The view that justice requires giving people what they deserve is both ancient and plausible. Yet many contemporary political philosophers, including John Rawls and Robert Nozick, have put forward distributive theories that give no place to desert. In this dissertation, I give reason to believe that the contemporary rejection of desert is mistaken, and that desert should be taken seriously by political philosophers. ;This project is incomplete in the sense that I do not say how seriously (...) class='Hi'>desert should be taken---how important it is compared to other distributive ideals . This is an important task, but I do not have the space for it. Hence, while my dissertation is an important first step in restoring desert to a place of significance in theories of distributive justice, it is not the last word. ;In chapter 1, I consider different views about what it means to be deserving, and about the necessary and sufficient conditions for desert. I do not try to solve these debates, but rather stipulate the conception of desert I am interested in. In chapter 2, I offer arguments for its use as a distributive criterion. ;In chapter 3, I consider the "metaphysical argument" against desert. Deriving from naturalistic worries about the robustness of human agency, this argument denies that people are capable of the kind of responsibility required for desert. I distinguish three versions of it, and argue that all fail. The "epistemological argument," examined in chapter 4, doubts that we can know what people deserve. In response, I suggest a way of making distribution according to desert practicable. ;I consider in chapter 5 the asymmetry of desert: the fact that desert plays an insignificant role in most contemporary theories of distributive justice, but a central role in most contemporary theories of retributive justice. I give good reason to believe the asymmetry cannot be justified, considering five potential justifications of it, and arguing that none is successful. I conclude the dissertation by summarizing what I have done, then mapping out directions for future research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Just Share: Justice and Fairness in Resource Allocation*Pat Milmoe Mccarrick (bio) and Martina Darragh (bio)Each of us has some basic sense of what the words “fair” or “just” or “fairness” or “justice” mean. Each of us probably also has an idea of what is “fair” in health care. The attempt by the state of Oregon in the mid-1980s to quantify this notion made a previously private exercise a (...) public one. This transition has been chronicled in the bioethics literature that focuses on resource allocation. These works examine both theories of justice and concepts of “health”; the fair distribution of health resources has been of continuing interest since the beginning of bioethics in the 1960s. Early writing on justice includes authors Tom L. Beauchamp, Robert H. Blank, James F. Childress, H. Tristram Engelhardt, Paul T. Menzel, Paul Ramsey, and Robert M. Veatch (VII).During the 1980s, bioethicists such as Daniel Callahan and Norman Daniels proposed thinking of health care decisions not as moments of personal crisis but as choices that span a lifetime, possibly involving tradeoffs in other areas of one’s life, e.g., education. The Oregon experience added another dimension to the discussion. The initial rank-ordering of health services by cost produced a skewed list—for example, surgery for life-threatening conditions ranked below minor, elective procedures. For the project to make sense, the ranking algorithm could not be based on cost alone, but rather on a combination of costs and benefits both to individuals and to the community—“concatenations of individual and group goods” (I, Jecker and Jonsen 1995). Various metaphors have been used in the literature to facilitate discussion of this shift from individual to individual/community trade-offs: medical services as a “commons” (I, Asch 1995, Jecker and Jonsen 1995, Michels 1994); resource allocation as a “lifeboat” (I, Campbell 1995; III, Kaveny 1994); medical care as “shares” in a community health (III, Nelson 1992, Ford and Kissick 1995; II, Anderson 1993); and rationing as traveling through the desert with one jug of water for two people (a story from the Halachah literature) (I, Zoloth-Dorfman 1995). [End Page 81]Such metaphors do not promote any one “theory of justice” but rather draw from the work of a number of bioethicists as well as from theological, sociological, economic, and business literature. The five major conceptions of justice that are referenced most frequently are: “(1) a libertarian conception, which takes liberty to be the ultimate political ideal; (2) a socialist conception, which takes equality to be the ultimate political ideal; (3) a welfare liberal conception, which takes contractual fairness or maximal utility to be the ultimate political ideal; (4) a communitarian conception, which takes the common good to be the ultimate political ideal; and (5) a feminist conception, which takes a gender-free society to be the ultimate political ideal” (I, Sterba 1995).The use of new metaphors also draws on expanded concepts of “health.” “As health care is currently practiced, the most powerful symbols for public and professional alike are those that promise the defeat of time” (I, Campbell 1995). When medical care is perceived as an unrelated series of individual cures, the fact that health care resources are finite cannot be addressed.Reflections concerning the difficulties in limiting the use of health care resources have an ancient lineage and reveal a tight bond with the obsession to postpone death at all costs. Plato in Book 3 of the Republic recognizes the quandary of infinite expectations and finite resources that characterizes the challenge of health care choices. (I, Engelhardt 1996)The proliferation of expensive medical technologies and the loss of autonomy by health care professionals further complicates perceptions of the crucial issues at hand. Some have said that Americans place too much emphasis on individualism to address these issues. Daniels et al. believe that this is too pessimistic a view and that the American commitment to protecting equal opportunity for all provides a firm basis for developing a public consensus on what is fair in health care (III, Daniels, Light, and Caplan 1996). Finally, several authors suggest that the nature of all four principles of medical ethics, not justice alone, must be... (shrink)

First published in 1848, Frederick Grimke's book, in the words of the editor, "deserves comparison with Tocqueville's justly famous work, Democracy in America, and is in certain ways superior. It is the single best book written by an American in the nineteenth century on the meaning of our political way of life." A second edition of Grimke's work was published in 1856, and a third edition appeared posthumously in 1871, but since then this classic in American thought has been almost (...) completely lost to sight. Grimke was born in South Carolina in 1791, and later moved to Ohio where he became a judge. He remained a bachelor, led a rich and cosmopolitan intellectual life, and accumulated an excellent library. His sisters Angelina (wife of the abolitionist Theodore Weld) and Sarah were both famous for deserting their South Carolina heritage and becoming active in the abolition and woman suffrage movements. In 1842 Grimke retired from the bench to devote the remainder of his life to study and writing, setting himself the task of educating his contemporaries in the nature of their society. His major achievement was The Nature and Tendency of Free Institutions. Grimke's range of topics includes the right of the majority, the character and operation of elective governments, the function of political parties, the American contrasted with the English and French constitutions, and the separation of powers in the American political systems. He sees governmental institutions as the expression of the general structure of society which calls them into being. In his Introduction, Mr. Ward points to Grimke's thesis "that the separation of powers in the frame of the American constitution works not because power is distributed within the government but because all branches of the government are, directly or indirectly, responsible to the will of the majority of the people outside the doors of government." As a result of the party system, Grimke wrote, "we may vary the paraphernalia of government as much as we please, but it still obstinately persists in every one of its departments to be a government based upon the popular will." Mr. Ward calls attention to Grimke's passionate belief that "freedom is its own justification" and that its ultimate value is that "it created the kind of character which made freedom possible." He held that "the only way to make a man fit for freedom is to give him freedom." Yet, unlike his sisters, he shared a view of race that was pervasive in his time and was unable to imagine the extension of freedom to the slave. In contradiction to his views of government and freedom, he upheld Negro slavery even to the extent of sanctioning secession to protect it. To him, "the open affirmation of the right of secession would serve to maintain the Union, not destroy it.". (shrink)

This article argues for a task-based approach to identifying and individuating cognitive systems. The agent-based extended cognition approach faces a problem of cognitive bloat and has difficulty accommodating both sub-individual cognitive systems ("scaling down") and some supra-individual cognitive systems ("scaling up"). The standard distributed cognition approach can accommodate a wider variety of supra-individual systems but likewise has difficulties with sub-individual systems and faces the problem of cognitive bloat. We develop a task-based variant of distributed cognition designed to (...) scale up and down smoothly while providing a principled means of avoiding cognitive bloat. The advantages of the task-based approach are illustrated by means of two parallel case studies: re-representation in the human visual system and in a biomedical engineering laboratory. (shrink)

All conceptions of equal opportunity draw on some distinction between morally justified and unjustified inequalities. We discuss how this distinction varies across a range of philosophical positions. We find that these positions often advance equality of opportunity in tandem with distributive principles based on merit, desert, consequentialist criteria or individuals' responsibility for outcomes. The result of this amalgam of principles is a festering controversy that unnecessarily diminishes the widespread acceptability of opportunity concerns. We therefore propose to restore the (...) conceptual separation of opportunity principles concerning unjustified inequalities from distributive principles concerning justifiable inequalities. On this view, equal opportunity implies that that morally irrelevant factors should engender no differences in individuals' attainment, while remaining silent on inequalities due to morally relevant factors. We examine this idea by introducing the principle of ‘opportunity dominance' and explore in a simple application to what extent this principle may help us arbitrate between opposing distributive principles. We also compare this principle to the selection rules developed by John Roemer and Dirk Van de Gaer. (shrink)

The paper criticizes criminal law scholarship for helping to construct and failing to expose analytic structures that falsely claim a higher level of rationality and coherence than current criminal law theory deserves. It offers illustrations of three such illusions of rationality. First, it is common in criminal law discourse for scholars and judges to cite any of the standard litany of "the purposes of punishment" -- just deserts, deterrence, incapacitation of the dangerous, rehabilitation, and sometimes other purposes -- as a (...) justification for one or another liability rule or sentencing practice. The cited "purpose" gives the rules an aura of rationality, but one that is, in large part, illusory. Without a principle defining the interrelation of the "purposes," nearly any rule can be justified by some "purpose of punishment." Thus, a decision maker can switch among distributive principles as needed to provide an apparent rationale for whichever rule the person prefers, even if that preference is not based on rational criteria. A second example is found in a central mechanism for determining an offenderâs blameworthiness: the use of an individualized objective standard. The widely used mechanism avoids the problems acknowledged to attend a strictly objective standard. A person's situation and capacities are central to an assessment of whether a person can be fairly blamed for a violation, and the individualized objective standard allows the decision maker to take these into account. At the same time, the mechanism avoids reversion to a completely subjective standard, which might exempt many blameworthy cases from liability. In reality, however, the mechanism only shifts the form of the problem. Codes that use the individualized objective standard fail to provide a principle by which one can determine those characteristics of an offender with which the objective standard ought to be individualized and those with which it ought not. Without a governing principle, the issue again is left to the discretion of decision makers, with no guidance as to how that discretion is to be exercised. A final illusion obscures whether the criminal justice system is, in fact, in the business of "doing justice." The "criminal justice" system imposes "punishment" and encourages moral condemnation of those found "guilty" of "crimes." But while the system cultivates its doing-justice image, it increasingly shifts to a system of essentially preventive detention, where a violator's sanction is derived more from what is needed to incapacitate him from committing future offenses than to punish him for a past offense. There are great advantages to the deception, but also serious costs and inefficiencies. The paper discusses why some illusions are more objectionable than others and what the existence of such illusions says about modern criminal law scholarship. (shrink)