This paper compares and contrasts three different substantive principles of justice for making health care priority-setting or “rationing” decisions: need principles, maximising principles and egalitarian principles. The principles are compared by tracing out their implications for a hypothetical rationing decision involving four identified patients. This decision has been the subject of an empirical study of public opinion based on small-group discussions, which found that the public seem to support a pluralistic combination of all three kinds of rationing principle. In (...) conclusion, it is suggested that there is room for further work by philosophers and others on the development of a coherent and pluralistic theory of health care rationing which accords with public opinions. (shrink)

If we accept the premise that some sort of rationing of access to health care resources is necessary to contain escalating health care costs effectively, then we need to ask how that rationing might be accomplished most fairly. Calabresi and Bobbitt have argued in their book Tragic Choices that there is no 'perfectly fair' or even 'reasonably fair' way to bring this about.

Does which side of the fence we are on determine our perceptions of justice? Philosopher Eric M. Cave argues that rules of justice would benefit the members of a community little if individuals lacked an effective desire to comply with these rules. However, sometimes a sense of justice appears to do no more than to limit what individuals can do in pursuit of their own ends. Cave presents a provocative vehicle for self-examination.

The function of rationality in A Theory of Justice (1971), which is of paramount importance for John Rawls’ (1921–2002) project, is often criticised as ambiguous.David Gauthier, for example, claims that Rawls develops principles for recipients who essentially share his intuitions of morality, without managing to prove theirvalidity. In Political Liberalism (1993), Justice as Fairness (2001) and other writings Rawls himself embarks upon the task to throw more light on this issue, making the Kantian distinction between ‘rational’ and (...) ‘reasonable’. I intend to demonstrate that in A Theory of Justice the formulation and the compliance with the principles of justice are based on the interaction between the rationality, represented in the idea of the good, and the sense of justice of individuals. (shrink)

In The Idea of Justice Amartya Sen criticises ‘transcendental institutionalism’ for entertaining notions of ‘ideal justice’ that, are neither necessary nor sufficient for the advancement of justice in the real world. Sen argues in favor of a ‘realization- focused’ and ‘comparative’ understanding of justice that he associates with the names of Adam Smith, Marx, and J. S. Mill. Conceptions of ideal justice. Sen believes, are useless since in practice we do not need them to advance (...) justice. And they are ‘infeasible’ because all conceptions of ideal justice can be reasonably rejected for one reason or other. I shall address both complaints in turn and maintain that Sen’s rigid contra-position of ideal and comparative justice is overstated. It will also be discussed how the institutional focus of ‘transcendental institutionalism’ links up with the need for an ideal conception of justice. Finally, some implications of rational dissent about justice and two common strategies to deal with it will be discussed. (shrink)

A number of philosophers argue that law enforcement officers may have good reasons to racially profile suspects under certain conditions. Their conclusions rest on a claim of epistemic rationality: if members of some races are at an increased risk of criminality, then it may be rational for law enforcement officers to subject them to increased scrutiny. In this paper I contest the epistemic rationality of racial profiling by appealing to recent work in criminology and the sociology of race (...) and crime. I argue that recent studies indicate that race is a comparatively poor baseline for judging criminality. Law enforcement officers are therefore not making a cognitive error by ignoring race to focus on other correlates of crime but are keeping up with our best social science. (shrink)

Is disability disadvantageous? Although many assume it is paradigmatically so, many disabled individuals disagree. Whom should we trust? On the one hand, pervasive mistrust of already underrepresented groups constitutes a serious epistemic injustice. Yet, on the other, individuals routinely adapt to mistreatment and deprivation and claim to be satisfied. If we take such “adaptive preferences” (APs) at face value, then injustice and oppression may not be recognized or rectified. Thus, we must achieve a balance between taking individuals’ preferences and self-assessment (...) as definitive, and ignoring them entirely. Furthermore, current accounts of APs suffer from an ambiguity: are APs an unreliable guide to individuals’ interests, or to just policy? This chapter argues that we should distinguish between those that are unreliable in the former sense (“well-being APs”), and the latter (“justice APs”). Although all APs are nonautonomous, only well-being APs are irrational. Thus, preferences may be diagnosed as unreliable from the perspective of justice without impugning individuals’ rational capacities. (shrink)

Are DRGs just? This is the primary question which this essay will answer. But there is a prior methodological question that also needs to be addressed: How do we go about rationally (non-arbitrarily) assessing whether DRGs are just or not? I would suggest that grand, ideal theories of justice (Rawls, Nozick) have only very limited utility for answering this question. What we really need is a theory of “interstitial justice,” that is, an approach to making justice judgments (...) that is suitable to assessing the social practices and institutions that comprise the interstices of our social life as opposed to its basic structure. Rawls's appeal to “our considered moral judgments” provides us with a useful starting point for this task, which we shall discuss in the first part of this essay. In the second part, we shall actually assess DRGs from the perspective of interstitial justice. What we shall show is that DRGs violate a large number of our considered judgments regarding a just approach to financing health care for the elderly in a cost-effective manner. This is true to such an extent that efforts to reform DRGs and make them fairer, such as the recent effort by Robert Veatch, should be abandoned. In the concluding section of the essay we discuss one especially pernicious feature of DRGs, namely, that they represent an invisible approach to rationing access to health care. In the minds of many this is one of the virtues of DRGs. That claim needs critical examination. (shrink)

Gauthier and Hobbes reduce Prisoners Dilemmas to co-ordination problems (CPs). Many think rational, face-to-face agents can solve any CP by agreed fiat. But though an agent can rationally use a symmetry-breaking technique (ST) to decide between equal options, groups cannot unless their members' STs luckily converge. Failing this, the CP is escapable only by one agent's non-rational stubbornness, or by the group's "conquest" by an outside force. Implications: one's strategic rationality is group-relative; there are some optimums groups in principle (...) cannot rationally choose; thus justice cannot always be a rationally contracted optimum. Howard Sobel provides the point of departure. (shrink)

In this article, I analyze the circumstances of justice, that is, the background conditions that are necessary and sufficient for justice to exist between individual parties in society. Contemporary political philosophers almost unanimously accept an account of these circumstances attributed to David Hume. I argue that the conditions of this standard account are neither sufficient nor necessary conditions for justice. In particular, I contend that both a Hobbesian state of nature and a prisoner’s dilemma are cases in (...) which the conditions of the standard account obtain and yet no justice exists between parties. I propose an alternative set of generic circumstances of justice motivated by examples from game theory. Parties are in these generic circumstances with respect to each other when: (1) they are engaged in a conflictual coordination game with multiple strict Nash equilibrium points where, at any of these equilibria, some parties do not receive their greatest payoffs, and (2) they have common knowledge that each party is rational and follows her end of a strict equilibrium where no party receives her greatest payoff. These two conditions reflect the idea that justice requires all parties to make some sacrifices so that others can have more of the goods they need and want. I argue that these generic circumstances are necessary and sufficient conditions for parties to follow generic norms of justice, that is, mutually beneficial practices that require some sacrifices. Key Words: common knowledge • conflictual coordination • correlated equilibrium • moderate selfishness • moderate variable scarcity • rough equality. (shrink)

Theorists from John Stuart Mill to Robert Nozick have argued that citizens can gain insight into the demands of justice by experimenting with diverse forms of political life. I consider the rationa...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:ON THE RATIONALITY OF SACRIFICE1 Jean-Pierre Dupuy Ecolepolytechnique, Paris, andStanford University i; "came to be interested in John Rawls'sy4 Theory ofJustice—an active.interest which led me to become the publisher ofthe French version ofthat book—in part for the following, apparently anecdotal reason: 1)On the one hand, as early as the first lines ofhis book, Rawls makes it clear that his major target is the critique ofutilitarianism. Utilitarianism is the (...) defendant, charged with vindicating sacrifice. As everyone knows, "justice does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum ofadvantages enjoyed by many (...) it denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others (Theory 3-4; my emphasis). 2)On the other hand, although the term "sacrifice" pops up again and again throughout the book, you may look up the index: it doesn't figure there. "Sacrifice" is not granted the dignity of a concept. I found that shocking and my curiosity was aroused. My own research is driven by a few anthropological convictions (see Dupuy, Le Sacrifice et l'envie). I am going to list them here, for the sake of clarity and honesty, without trying to vindicate them. The arguments I am going to present do not depend in the least on whether these convictions are valid or not; they should be assessed on their own merits. a) AU non-modern social and cultural institutions are rooted in the sacred. 1 I should like to thank John Rawls and the late Robert Nozick for their remarks on earlier versions of this paper. 24Jean-Pierre Dupuy b)Of the three dimensions of the sacred: myths, rituals, and prohibitions, the most fundamental is the ritual. c)The most primitive and fundamental ritual form is sacrifice. d)Sacrifice is the reenactment bythe social group ofa primordial event which took place spontaneously: a process of collective victimage which resulted in the murder of a member ofthe community. This elimination of a victim reestablished peace and order. There lies the origin ofthe sacred. The victim is taken to be the cause or the active principle both of the violent crisis and its violent resolution. It unites within itself opposite predicates: it is at the same time infinitely good and infinitely evil. It can only be of a divine nature. e)Christ's death on the cross is just one more occurrence of the primordial event. As far as facts are concerned, there is no difference between primitive religions and Christianity. The difference lies in interpretation. For the first time in the history of humankind, the story is told from the victim's viewpoint, not the persecutors.' The story (the Gospel) takes side with the victim and proclaims its innocence. When, in our modern languages, we say that the victim was scapegoated, we just say as much. f)Modern institutions embody a tension between two contradictory drives. On the one hand, the drive to resort to more ofthe same: the drive to scapegoating. On the other, the anti-sacrificial drive set in motion by the Christian Revelation. In totality or only partially, these points have been made by several anthropological traditions, in particular the French sociological school, with the works of Fustel de Coulanges, Durkheim and Mauss; and the British anthropological school, with Frazer and Robertson-Smith. Freud and the Belgo-British anthropologist Hocart gave them a new momentum and, more recently, René Girard has produced an impressive synthesis.2 As is well known, Nietzsche's philosophy relies on point e), for which the author of The Gay Science ("there are no facts, only interpretations") felt justified in bringing a radical indictment against Christianity, taken to be the morality ofthe slaves. In this light, Kantianism appears to be a secularized form of Christianity. ThequestionIwanttoraise is: towhatextentisthistrueofRawlsianism? 2 See, in particular, his Violence and the Sacred, and also The Scapegoat. On the Rationality ofSacrifice25 It might be retorted: these references to anthropology are irrelevant to modern political philosophy, and, at any rate, the word "sacrifice" has now acquired ameaning altogetherdisconnected from its alleged religious roots. I do not think the burden ofthe proof is on my... (shrink)

In Book III, Part 2 of the Treatise, Hume presents a natural history of justice. Self-interest clearly plays a central role in his account; our ancestors invented justice conventions, he maintains, for the sake of reciprocal advantage. But this is not what makes his approach so novel and attractive. Hume recognizes that prudential considerations are not sufficient to explain how human beings – with our propensities towards temporal discounting and free-riding – could have established conventions for social exchange (...) and collective action in commercial societies. This leads him to develop an innovative account of the role that emotional aversions play in establishing trust between strategically rational agents. (shrink)

In his recent article in Philosophy and Public Affairs, 'The Paradox of Voting and Ethics of Political Representation', Alexander A. Guerrero argues it is rational to vote because each voter should want candidates they support to have the strongest public mandate possible if elected to office, and because every vote contributes to that mandate. The present paper argues that two of Guerrero's premises require correction, and that when those premises are corrected several provocative but compelling conclusions follow about the (...) class='Hi'>rationality of voting and duties of elected officials: (A) Voting is typically rational for the members of a political party’s base; (B) Voting is often (but not always) irrational for “swing” voters (i.e. independent voters who are not affiliated with any political party, as well as “undecided” voters who are considering voting across party lines); and (C) Elected officials have a moral duty to respond to changing levels of popular support once in office, as indicated by properly monitored and corroborated public opinion polls of constituents, functioning more as delegates the lower their level of popular support. Finally, I suggest that the last of these conclusions has wide-ranging implications for political ethics. I illustrate these implications by focusing on the questions -- under debate in the 2016 US Presidential election cycle -- of whether a sitting President has a moral duty to nominate or not nominate a new Supreme Court justice during his or her final year in office, and similarly, whether US Senators have a moral duty to obstruct, or not obstruct, confirmation of the President’s eventual nominee. (shrink)

[This book] develops an account of rationality and justice that is tradition specific.-http://undpress.nd.edu.

The Covid‐19 pandemic needs to be considered from two perspectives simultaneously. First, there are questions about which policies are most effective and fair in the here and now, as the pandemic unfolds. These polices concern, for example, who should receive priority in being tested, how to implement contact tracing, or how to decide who should get ventilators or vaccines when not all can. Second, it is imperative to anticipate the medium‐ and longer‐term consequences that these policies have. The case of (...) vaccine rationing is particularly instructive. Ethical, epidemiological, and economic reasons demand that rationing approaches give priority to groups who have been structurally and historically disadvantaged, even if this means that overall life years gained may be lower. (shrink)

Three main types of subjectivist ethics are distinguished and specified by the use of elementary game-theoretical notions. It will be argued that all these theories run into difficulties that cannot be overcome within the self-imposed limits of subjectivism.

Churchill argues that every society rations health care-the problem is to do so justly. The central claim of the book is that a more "social" or communitarian starting point is needed. The book concludes with a brief discussion of health care rights and a sketchy account of the role of the physician in rationing.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:An Ethics of Justice in a Cross-Cultural ContextMichael von BrückThe central thesis of this paper is, primarily, that justice is neither a qualification of actions nor a political expediency, but is an existential reality. This reality is symbolized in different ways depending on religious experience and cultural conditioning. Underlying all concepts and ethics of justice is a dimension of basic insight that is beyond rational quantifying (...) analysis.The semantics of concepts of justice is different in various contexts and meaning systems, that is, in more general political and social contexts and in the rational discourse of philosophy. The general political term for justice is more confusing than helpful for a clear conceptualization; it might be treated more as a symbol in a mythological framework than a concept. In this context justice is defined in terms of what it is not, or metaphorically in differing categories, for example, justice as impartiality, equality. Thus, many programmatic formulae, such as "International Movement for a Just World,"1 express a utopia against the frustration with regard to social, economic, and political conditions and call for action to establish a "just world" without defining what the standard of this action must be in order to qualify as just and what exactly the notion of a "just world" actually might mean conceptually. Certain political actions are condemned from a particular standpoint, but the very foundation of any standpoint remains controversial. "Just" or "unjust" are actions that are determined according to the two standards of an Aristotelian suum cuique and the principle of treating equal cases in equal ways. Here, actions and their results as well as human freedom of action and the respective responsibility are a matter of debate. The problem is how to establish criteria for what is regarded as being "equal."2I suggest that justice can be discussed in two ways: (1) as an agreement or result of negotiation and better insight that is worked out between partners in social processes, and/or (2) as a reflection of the cosmic order, the divine will, or any pre-established harmony that is not negotiable by human beings. Whereas the first assumption is reflected in the theories of Aristotle, Rousseau, John Rawls,3 and others, the second one seems to be one of the basic contents of any religious worldview. Rawls actually constructs his idea of justice as fairness in the line of the familiar theory [End Page 61] of the social contract, following Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. Accordingly, justice is the basic assumption that generates the condition for any further discourse in societies. It is an "original position," an "initial status," the "symmetry of everyone's relations to each other," which, of course, is neither an actual state of historical affairs nor a primitive condition of culture, but a purely hypothetical situation.4 For Rawls, to think justice requires the task to acknowledge interdependencies and mutual dependence of the different factors and actors in societies on the basis of reflexive reason. In religions, however, it is the dharma, the commandment of God, the Tao, or the cosmic harmony or "symmetry" of forces that is the root cause for justice in human relations.In this essay I will not argue any of these positions mentioned above as such but maintain only that any particular discourse depends on communication processes, that is, language and actors. Actors have interests that are mediated through claims. These claims may be compatible or not. However, in both cases they are part of the communication processes itself. And it is in communication that discourses materialize. Therefore, dialogue is the framework for any theory of justice, which may be inclined more to the first or the second position outlined above. Because today, due to economic, political, and cultural circumstances, all discourses are linked to each other, it is in cross-cultural communication and dialogue that a theory of justice has to be worked out. The question is whether justice should be regarded as a precondition for dialogue or a wanted result of dialogue. The hypothesis I want to argue for is that justice is neither only a precondition nor only a result, but that it is the very... (shrink)

awls’ theory of justice is the subject of numerous criticisms due to the impossibility of adequately including people with mental disabilities, either as legislators or as beneficiaries of the principle of justice. Martha Nussbaum’s criticism is directed at the question of the legislative group and the possibility of including the interests of persons who, due to the criteria of rationality and reasonableness, are excluded from the process of forming fundamental principles of justice. In this paper, I (...) recognize the problems that Rawls’s theory faces in light of the above criticisms, and as a solution, I propose a constructive and positive interpretation of his theory of justice. Such an interpretation will allow us to expand the group of legislators through the inclusion of those individuals with mental impairments who, according to Nussbaum, are capable of participating in the selection of principles of justice. Furthermore, the offered interpretation will include people with the most severe forms of mental disorders within the scope of justice, through an extended list of reasons relevant to the justification of fundamental rights and principles of justice. (shrink)

Three main types of subjectivist ethics are distinguished and specified by the use of elementary game-theoretical notions. It will be argued that all these theories run into difficulties that cannot be overcome within the self-imposed limits of subjectivism.

I want to examine the implications of a metaphysical thesis which is presupposed in various objections to Rawls' theory of justice.Although their criticisms differ in many respects, they concur in employing what I shall refer to as the continuity thesis. This consists of the following claims conjointly: (1) The parties in the original position (henceforth the OP) are, and know themselves to be, fully mature persons who will be among the members of the well-ordered society (henceforth the WOS) which (...) is generated by their choice of principles of justice. (2) The OP is a conscious event among others, integrated (compatibly with the constraints on knowledge and motivation imposed on the parties) into the regular continuity of experience that comprises each of their ongoing constitutes lives. (3) The parties in the OP thus are, and regard themselves as, psychologically continuing persons, partially determined in personality and interests by prior experiences, capable of recollection and regret concerning the past, anticipation and apprehensiveness regarding the future, and so on. Although the continuity thesis as stated above is not at odds with any of the conditions that define the OP, its exegetical validity is a matter for discussion. I shall be concerned to argue that if it is indeed contained in or a consequence of Rawls' theory, then it casts into doubt the capacity of the OP to generate or justify any principles of justice at all. On the other hand, if the continuity thesis is viewed as dispensable and unnecessary to the Rawlsian enterprise, then Rawls is correct in maintaining the irrelevance of the question of personal identity to the construction of his moral theory. In this case, the contract-theoretic, instrumentalist justification for the two principles of justice (henceforth the 2PJ) needs to be supplanted by a modified conception of wide reflective equilibrium. The considerations that form the bulk of this discussion then may be understood as providing a rationale for Rawls' recent revisions in the model of justification on which his theory of justice rests, and for his increasing emphasis on us as moral mediators between the OP and the WOS. Now I want to consider the question of whether or not, given the textual evidence, anything like the continuity thesis is stated or implied by Rawls, and what problems for his theory, if any, turn on a positive or negative answer to this question. -/- . (shrink)

The first United Nations Millennium Development Goal calls for a distinct reduction of worldwide poverty. It is now widely accepted that the private sector is a crucial partner in achieving this ambitious target. Building on this insight, the ‹Bottom of the Pyramid’ concept provides a framework that highlights the untapped opportunities with the ‹poorest of the poor’, while at the same time acknowledging the abilities and resources of private enterprises for poverty alleviation. This article connects the idea of business with (...) the poor to sustainable development and especially to the notions of inter- and intragenerational justice. These principles of justice can be linked with the ‹Bottom of the Pyramid’ approach directly through the Rawlsian principles to foster holistic thinking. On this basis, the article offers a normative-ethical reasoning of corporations’ possible responsibilities for the poorest of the poor. Today’s state of worldwide inequalities is likely to generate future tensions between the privileged western world and the uncounted mass of poor (let alone the ethical dubiousness of this status). However, it is at the same time problematic if not even impossible to improve the situation of the poor by simply copying the resource intensive western way of living to the ‹Bottom of the Pyramid’ due to the limited carrying capacity of the earth. After highlighting possible moral dilemmas which may occur through such a potential trade off, this article concludes with an outlook on how the concepts ‹Bottom of the Pyramid’ and sustainable development could be combined. (shrink)

The paper explores the logical structure of Rawlsian justice principles in order to see whether their justificatory or explanatory conditions are unproblematic. To facilitate this purpose, drawing on readers of Rawls, the author shows that the Aristotelian principle is used to explain the principles of rational choice, particularly the principle of inclusiveness. Then, on the basis of the Aristotelian principle, Rawls justifies his conclusion, via the principles of rational choice and the theory of primary goods. After figuring out the (...) logical structure of justice as fairness, the author deals with the central objective of the paper, where he exposes some problems suffered by the motivational basis of the principles of justice. The foundation on which Rawls grounds his principles of justice is problematic, and consequently, they remain as matters of contention as of today. Philosophy and Progress, Vol#71-72; No#1-2; Jan-Dec 2022 P 45-60. (shrink)

Habermas' recent work makes a major claim: to be able to determine what is the most rational thing to do. Postmodernists, notably Lyotard, have perhaps successfully belittled this claim as too positivistic. This book does not dispute the validity of the postmodern critique but it is concerned to resist the irrationality which, thus far, seems to coincide with anti-positivism. The author looks at the concept of justice, as one that is both essential to Habermas and Lyotard but is also (...) utilized in their work only in constricted and unimaginative ways. (shrink)

Good knowledge management is important for enterprises to maintain competitive advantage; however, the knowledge hiding behavior may hinder this process. Based on the conservation of resources and psychological ownership theories, using a chain intermediary model, this study investigates the effect of justice sensitivity on knowledge hiding through perceived time pressure and territoriality, and further tests the moderating role of territoriality. For the study, we collected 436 questionnaires from China through the Wenjuanxing Sample Service, of which 391 were valid. We (...) then conducted multiple regression analysis and employed the bootstrap method for our tests. The results show that victim sensitivity has a significant effect on perceived time pressure, territoriality, and knowledge hiding, and that a chain mediating effect of perceived time pressure and territoriality is established between justice sensitivity and knowledge hiding. Further, territoriality has a positive moderating effect on perceived time pressure and knowledge hiding, while the mediating effect of perceived time pressure on justice sensitivity and knowledge hiding is also moderated by territoriality. Further, the study offers important practical implications in that enterprises should not blindly pursue results by making employees work excessively overtime. And there should have rationalized regulations in organization to ensure justice. The management should pay close attention to the psychological problems of victim and perpetrator. Instead, enterprises should have a certain degree of control, offer rationales for overtime work, and give high wages to the employees to compensate for their time, thus making the employees feel the worthiness of their overtime work and reducing the probability of engaging in knowledge hiding behaviors. (shrink)

Many theorists claim that justice is a question-begging concept that has no inherent substantive content. They point to disagreements among justice theorists themselves about basic aspects of the justice theory, such as the nature of corrective justice and the distinction between it and distributive justice, as even further reason to dismiss the concept of justice or to fill it with their preferred theoretical content. Yet most persons perceive that the concept of justice is (...) not an empty shell. Since ancient times it has been thought to encompass not merely a formal equality (treating like cases alike), but also a substantive equality grounded in the equal dignity of each human being which requires giving each person his or her "due" - what is his or hers as a matter of right - a requirement that is usually understood to be in direct conflict with the basic principles of aggregate social welfare theories such as utilitarianism or its modern variant, economic efficiency. The elaboration of this substantive equality and its implications for morality, justice, and law form the core of the natural-law or natural-right theories of law. In this article I build upon a summary and critique of John Finnis's natural law theory (1) to delineate the basic assumptions and principles of the natural law theory regarding the foundations of and relationships among morality, justice, and law; (2) to demonstrate the agreement of major natural law theorists, from Aristotle through Aquinas and Kant to Finnis, on these basic assumptions and principles; (3) to distinguish these basic assumptions and principles from those of the competing theories of utilitarianism and economic efficiency; and (4) to clarify the nature of and distinctions between the two basic divisions of substantive justice: distributive justice and interactive justice. I use the term "interactive justice" instead of the usual term, "corrective justice," since the former term is much more informative and precise in conveying the distinct nature and domain of this type of justice, whereas the latter term almost always misleads people into one or both of two related misconceptions: (1) that "corrective" justice is concerned solely with the correction of wrongful injuries and has nothing to say about the nature of the underlying wrongs or the prevention of their occurrence, and (2) that it is merely a remedial corollary of distributive justice which corrects deviations from the distributively just distribution. Distributive justice and interactive justice separately address the two fundamental problems of human existence, and they employ quite different criteria of equality to resolve those problems. Together, they seek to assure the attainment of the common good (the full realization, to the extent practicable, of each person's humanity) by providing each person with her fair share of the social stock of instrumental goods (positive freedom via distributive justice) and by securing her person and her existing stock of instrumental goods from interactions with others that are inconsistent with her status as a rational being with equal, absolute moral worth (negative freedom via interactive justice). (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: I II III IV V VI.

Fines and monetary damages account for the majority of legal sanctions across the whole spectrum of legal governance. Money is, in key respects, the primary tool law has to achieve compliance. Yet money has largely been ignored by social analyses of law, and especially by social theory. _The Currency of Justice_ examines the differing rationalities, aims and assumptions built into money’s deployment in diverse legal fields and sanctions. This raises major questions about the extent to which money appears as an (...) abstract universal or whether it takes on more particular meanings when deployed in various areas of law. Indeed, money may be unique in that it can take on the meanings of punishment, compensation, denunciation or regulation. _The Currency of Justice_ examines the implications of the ‘monetization of justice’ as life is increasingly regulated through this single medium. Money not only links diverse domains of law; it also links legal sanctions to other monetary techniques which govern everyday life. Like these, the concern with monetary sanctions is not who pays, but that money is paid. Money is perhaps the only form of legal sanction where the burden need not be borne by the wrongdoer. In this respect, this book explores the view that contemporary governance is less concerned with disciplining individuals and more concerned with regulating distributions and flows of behaviours and the harms and costs linked with these. (shrink)

The present paper revisits the issue of rational decision making in John Rawls' original position. Drawing on Isaac Levi's theory of decision, I discuss how we can defend Rawls against John C. Harsanyi's charge that maximin reasoning in the original position is irrational. The discussion suggests that systematic application of Levi's theory is likely to have important consequences for ethics and political theory as well as for public policy.

This paper addresses the fairness of microcredit interest rates. Since microfinance institutions provide credit for the poor at relatively high prices, the fairness of their interest rates has been repeatedly debated. We first apply Rawls' principles of justice to the case of microcredit interest rates and suggest some limitations related to the hypothesis of rationality of the borrowers and the level of inequality. We then suggest another framework based on the analysis of the distribution of the benefits generated (...) by the transaction to assess the fairness of interest rates. We conceptualize this as the distribution of the bargaining range between the borrowers' and the institutions' reservation price and discuss what these reservation prices could be in the context of microfinance. (shrink)

Philosophical theories about justice feelings and axiological feelings generally suffer from the fact that they look for simple criteria of justice, legitimacy, fairness. For this reason, they appear as of little help to account for the findings from sociological empirical studies. Weber's notion of "axiological rationality" can be interpreted as suggesting a "cognitivist" theory of axiological feelings. According to this theory, the causes responsible for the fact that a social actor endorses an axiological statement would not be (...) basically different from the causes responsible for his endorsement of a representational statement. He would endorse the statement "X is fair" as he endorses "X is true", because these statements appear to him as grounded on strong reasons, though he may not perceive these reasons explicitly. This cognitivist theory was used by analysts of collective moral sentiments, as Adam Smith, before Max Weber. A careful examination of two empirical studies shows that the cognitivist theory can make the observational findings more easily understandable. The "cognitivist theory" eliminates the weaknesses of the major general philosophical and sociological theories of axiological feelings. It shows notably that these feelings can be context-dependent without this contextuality making them irrational. This theory includes two major principles: that instrumental rationality does not overlap with rationality shortly; that there are no simple criteria of "fairness", "legitimacy", etc. (shrink)

The First World War was supposed to end all wars, though soon followed WWII. Since 1945 wars continued to abound; now we confront a real prospect of a third world war. Many armed struggles and wars arise in attempts to end repressive government; still more are fomented by repressive governments, few of which acknowledge their repressive character. It is historically and culturally naive to suppose that peace is normal, and war an aberration; war, preparations for war and threats of war (...) belong to ‘normal’ human life. Our tolerance, acceptance or fostering of such repeated injustices and atrocities indicate pervasive failures to understand fundamentals of justice, and what we owe morally to ourselves and to all others, together with our responsibilities to preserve the biosphere, not merely our own store(s) of reserves. As matters both of justice and prudence we must re-orient ourselves, individually and collectively, to promote justice, peace and ecological responsibilities by identifying and instituting just forms of social cooperation, domestically and internationally. All of these are our problems, whether we recognize them or continue our pervasive negligence. We urgently require cogent understanding of the social dimensions of human judgment, rational assessment, right action, and public reason. This requires understanding (inter alia) how Kant’s explication of rational judgment and justification is fundamentally social, how these features of rational judgment and justification are constitutive of Kant’s account of individual autonomy, and how they are central to Kant’s account of proper public use of reason. Reasoning publically remains precarious, not because – as often alleged – the ‘Enlightenment project’ has failed. It has not failed, it has been thwarted, and in our public responsibilities we have too often failed it. (shrink)

In spite of advances in medicine and public health, malaria and other mosquito‐borne diseases are on the rise worldwide. Although vaccines, genetically modified mosquitoes and safer insecticides are under development, herein we examine a promising new approach to malaria control through better repellents. Current repellents, usually based on DEET, inhibit host finding by impeding insect olfaction, but have significant drawbacks. We discuss how comparative genomics, using data from the Anopheles genome project, allows the rapid identification of members of three protein (...) classes critical to insect olfaction: odorant‐binding proteins, G‐protein‐coupled receptors, and odorant‐degrading enzymes. A rational design approach similar to that used by the pharmaceutical industry for drug development can then be applied to the development of products that interfere with mosquito olfaction. Such products have the potential to provide more complete, safer and longer lasting protection than conventional repellents, preventing disease transmission by interrupting the parasite life cycle. BioEssays 25:1011–1020, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Rival applied ethicists have constructed arguments for and against affirmative action independently of Rawls’s theory of justice. Those arguments do not resolve the dispute about affirmative action. I reformulate them with the use of Rawls’s theory of justice and conclude that the reformulated arguments do not resolve the dispute about affirmative action either. Therefore, Rawls’s theory of justice is not useful in resolving the dispute about affirmative action. This point applies to affirmative action in science, contrary to (...) what some writers suggest. (shrink)

This first book in English by Serge-Christophe Kolm provides an overview of his far-reaching vision of distributive justice. Kolm derives justice from considerations of rationality.

In the discussion of global ethics, philosophical ethics risks losing its distinct theoretical horizons. This predicament arises primarily from philosophy's failure to anchor its own object and to provide a rational basis for global justice from within its current confined theoretical paradigm. Against this background, this paper will first prioritize global co-existence as the primary concern of global ethics, then propose ontological co-existence justice as its foundational principle, and finally argue that the normative validity of co-existence justice (...) is predicated on the nations fulfilling the critical requirements of modern civilization, namely, the advancement of individual freedom. (shrink)

This dissertation defends a “non-ideal theory” of justice: a systematic theory of how to respond justly to injustice. Chapter 1 argues that contemporary political philosophy lacks a non-ideal theory of justice, and defends a variation of John Rawls’ famous original position – a Non-Ideal Original Position – as a method with which to construct such a theory. Chapter 1 then uses the Non-Ideal Original Position to argue for a Fundamental Principle of Non-Ideal Theory: a principle that requires injustices (...) to be dealt with in whichever way will best satisfy the preferences of all relevant individuals, provided those individuals are all rational, adequately informed, broadly moral, and accept the correct “ideal theory” of fully just conditions. Chapter 2 then argues for the Principle of Application – an epistemic principle that represents the Fundamental Principle’s satisfaction conditions in terms of the aims of actual or hypothetical reformist groups. Chapters 3-5 then use these two principles to argue for substantive views regarding global/international justice. Chapter 3 argues that the two principles establish a higher-order human right for all other human rights to promoted and protected in accordance with the two principles of non-ideal theory. Chapter 4 argues that the two principles defeasibly require the international community to tolerate unjust societies, provided those societies respect the most basic rights of individuals. Finally, Chapter 5 argues that the two principles imply a duty of the international community to ameliorate the most severe forms of global poverty, as well as a duty to pursue “fair trade” in international economics. (shrink)

"John Rawls's A Theory of Justice has been widely acclaimed as a book whose influence on the discussion of central questions in moral and political philosophy will be permanent. A brief review, writes Dr. Barry, would be of little more value than would be a brief review of Hobbes's Leviathan; instead, in this book he interprets Rawls's main tenets and discusses them with appropriate thoroughness. The book is in three parts. Chapters 1-5 set Rawls's theory in its intellectual context (...) and give an account of its basic features. Chapters 6-11 examine Rawls's claim to have advanced 'two principles of justice' and provided a logical deduction of them by showing that men denied various kinds of information about themselves and their society would choose them as the most rational way of advancing their 'conception of the good'. Chapters 12-15 extend the discussion to cover the most important of Rawls's economic and political deductions. Dr. Barry's argument is that Rawls's 'theory of justice' does not work; but that A Theory of Justice is nonetheless a work with which 'anyone in future who proposes to deal with any of the topics it touches must first come to terms'. His critique may be read either in conjunction with A Theory of Justice (there is a concordance of passages discussed) or independently of it." -- Backcover. (shrink)

In health care systems where access to resources is limited, priorities must be set. The Canadian health care system relies on physicians as clinical or micro-level gatekeepers to health care access. Several studies have indicated that physicians do not tend to consider distributive justice concerns when making clinical-level resource allocation decisions. This is concerning, given that the normative literature on micro-level rationing has featured justice considerations as a necessary condition for fair decision-making. I will first discuss the basics (...) of bedside rationing and some studies which identify a possible justice “value deficit.” I will then analyze the relevant normative frameworks in the rationing literature to identify if and where decision-making may be falling short. Finally, I will use Beauchamp and Childress’ fifth and sixth editions of Principles of Biomedical Ethics to examine whether justice in micro-level rationing is best conceptualized as a principle or a virtue. (shrink)

Barbara Fried takes the view that uniform taxation—that is, a single rate applicable to all income levels—cannot be defended on any grounds of justice. She goes further by saying that, of all possible rate structures, it might be “the hardest one”? to ground in “a”? theory of fairness. Using the contractarian-constitutional perspective advanced by John Rawls and James Buchanan, this article argues that tax uniformity can be seen as a requirement of justice. After modelling how the political world (...) realistically decides to distribute tax shares (self-interested parties act under a majority constraint), I show how the uniformity principle could emerge from the constitutional contract. In other words, rational individuals would choose uniformity as a procedural constraint under a “veil of uncertainty”?; that is, with limited knowledge regarding their positions under the future application of the rule. Moreover, I elucidate how the uniformity requirement integrates generalized criteria of fairness and efficiency into fiscal politics as it precludes fiscal exploitation and constrains majorities, and their most influential subgroups, to opt for policies in the direction of the Pareto frontier, and as such promotes outcomes acceptable to all participants. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that a narrow view of justice dominates the bioethics literature. I urge a broader view. As bioethicists, we often conceive of justice using a medical model. This model focuses attention at a particular point in time, namely, when someone who is already sick seeks access to scarce or expensive services. A medical model asks how we can fairly distribute those services. The broader view I endorse requires looking upstream, and asking how disease and (...) suffering came about. In contrast to a medical model, a social model of justice considers how social determinants affect the health of a population. For example, social factors such as access to clean drinking water, education, safe workplaces, and police protection, profoundly affect risk for disease and early death. I examine one important social determinant of health, health care coverage, to show the limits of a medical model and the merits of a broader view. (shrink)

Claims about what justice “requires” and the “requirements” of justice are pervasive in political philosophy. However, there is a highly significant ambiguity in such claims that appears to have gone unnoticed. Such claims may pick out either one of two categorically distinct and noncoextensive kinds of requirement that we call 1) requirements-as-necessary-conditions for justice and 2) requirements-as-demands of justice. This is an especially compelling instance of an ambiguity that John Broome has famously observed in the context (...) of claims about other requirements (notably the requirements of rationality and morality). But it appears to have been overlooked by political philosophers in the case of claims about the requirements of justice. The ambiguity is highly significant inasmuch as failing to notice it is liable to distort our normative thinking about politics and make us vulnerable to certain kinds of normatively consequential errors: both mistakenly drawing inferences about what justice demands of us from claims that certain states or societies are not just; and mistakenly drawing inferences about what states or societies are or would be just from claims that justice does not demand of states or societies that they do certain things. Paying greater attention to the distinction between these two different kinds of requirements and the ways in which they come apart is helpful, not merely in avoiding these distortions and errors, but also in resolving, or at least clarifying, a number of other notoriously murky meta-normative debates, especially various important debates about realism and idealism in political philosophy. (shrink)

The question of the rationality of conspiratorial belief ¬divides philosophers into mainly two camps. The particularists believe that each conspiracy theory ought to be examined on its own merits. The generalist, by contrast, argues that there is something inherently suspect about conspiracy theories that makes belief in them irrational. Recent empirical findings indicate that conspiratorial thinking is commonplace among ordinary people, which has naturally shifted attention to the particularists. Yet, even the particularist must agree that not all conspiracy belief (...) is rational, in which case she must explain what separates rational from non-rational conspiratorial thinking. In this paper, I contrast three strategies to this end: 1) the probabilistic objectivist, who assesses the objective probability of conspiracies; 2) the subjectivist, who rather focuses on the perspective of the believer, and typically views the decision to believe in a conspiracy as a problem of decision making under risk. Approaches 1) and 2) rely on assessments of the probability of conspiracy which, I argue, limits their applicability. Instead, I explore 3) viewing the problem facing the potential believer as a decision problem under uncertainty about probabilities. I argue, furthermore, that focusing solely on epistemic utilities fails to do justice to the particular character of conspiracy beliefs, which are not exclusively epistemically motivated, and I investigate the rationality of such beliefs under a number of standard decision rules. (shrink)