First of all, the there is the meta-level issue whether to engage the original version or the pop version, as the first is better but the second is far, far more influential. This is an unresolved dilemma (same logic: should an atheist debate with Ed Feser or with what religious folks actually believe?) and I’ll just try to hover in between.
A theory of justice does not simply describe a nice to have world. It describes ethical norms that are strong enough to be warrant coercive enforcement. (I’m not even libertarian, just don’t like pretending democratic coercion is somehow not one.)
Rawls is asking us to imagine e.g. what if we are born with a disability that requires really a lot of investment from society to make its members live an okay life, let’s call the hypothetical Golden Wheelchair Ramps.
Depending on whether we look at it rigorously, in a more “pop” version Rawls is saying our pre-born self would want GWR built everywhere even when it means that if we are born able and rich we taxed through the nose to pay for it, or in a more rigorous version 1% change to be born with this illness would mean we want 1% of GWRs built.
Now, this all is all well if it is simply understood as the preferences of risk-averse people. After all we have a real, true veil of ignorance after birth: we could get poor, disabled etc. any time. It is easy to lose birth privileges, well, many of them at least. More risk-taking people will say I don’t really want to pay for GWR, I am taking my gamble tha I will be born rich and able in which case I won’t need them and I would rather keep that tax money. (This is a horribly selfish move, but Rawls set up the game so that it is only about fairness emerging out of rational selfishness and altruism is not required in this game so I am just following the rules.)
However, since it is a theory of justice, it means the preferences of risk-aversge people are made mandatory, turned into a social policy and enforced with coercion. And that is the issue.
Now, how could Rawls (or pop-Rawlsians) get away with that? By assuming that all reasonable people are risk-averse anyway. In other words, turning risk-aversity into a tacit norm. Instead of seeing it negatively as a vice, or neutrally as a preference, it is basically a virtue here. Now, we have a perfect name for turning timidity into a norm: it is called cowardice.
And I think my argument managed to demonstrate avoiding in politics mind-killing up to the last sentence when I used a connotationally loaded word (cowardice), but at this point I had to, as I casually remarked earlier I feel this way about it and now had to explain why. But the last sentence refers only to my feelings and not an integral part of the argument, for the argument , just stop reading at “risk aversion should not be made into a norm and coercively enforced calling it justice”.
Again, it is not part of the argument, but an explanation of my feelings: when I try to improve one my vices or weaknesses, and I see others almost see them as norms, I feel disgust. For example, willful stupidity disgusts me—I think this feeling may be common around here. But as I am also trying to work on my own cowardice, being too accepting of it also disgusts me.
How about no theory of justice? :) Philosophers should learn from scientists here: if you have no good explanation, none at all is more honest than a bad but seductive one. As a working hypothesis we could consider our hunger for justice and fairness an evolved instinct, a need, emotion, a strong preference, something similar to the desire for social life or romantic love, it is simply one of the many needs a social engineer would aim to satisfy. The goal is, then, to make things “feel just” enough to check that checkmark.
“to each his own” reading Rawls and Rawlsians I tend to sense a certain, how to put it, overly collective feeling. That there is one heavily interconnected world and it is the property of all humankind and there is a collective, democratic decision-making on how to make it suitable for all. So in this kind of world there is nothing exempt for politics, nothing is like “it is mine and mine alone and not to be touched by others”. The question is, is it a hard reality derived by the necessities of the dynamics of a high-tech era? Or just a preference? My preferences are way more individualistic than that. The attitude that everything is collective and to be shaped and formed in a democratic way is IMHO way too often a power play by “sophists” who have a glib tongue, good at rhethorics, and can easily shape democratic opinion. I am atheist but “culturally catholic” enough to find the parable of the snake offering the fruit useful: that it is not only through violence, but also through glib, seductive persuasion, through 100% consent, a lot of damage can be done.
This is something not really understood properly in the modern world, we understand how violence, oppression or outright fraud can be bad, but not really realize how much harm a silver tongue can cause without even outright lying, because we already live in socities where silver-tongue intellectuals are already the ruling class, so they underplay their own power by lionizing consent and freedom of speech as institutions that can reasonably considered to lead to good results.
I mean, for example, a truly realistic society would censor arguments that feel good. This sounds super weird: we are used to either complete freedom of speech or to censorship based on imputed harm or untruth, but censor even true and useful ideas if they feel too good? Yes, as long as we understand censorship as a cost not an impenetrable barrier: putting a cost on ideas that feel good would neutralize that feeling and thus enable us to judge the idea on a rational basis, without an affective bias.
Compare that to the real world and realize we are living in a sophists paradize where feel-good ideas have power through democratic consent.
I would want a way more autist-friendly world than that, and the way I would imagine it is some clear fences, Schelling points, whatnot, some kind of a “this is mine, this is yours, and these things are not subject to the political process or democratic-collective consensus, only those and those things are subject to that”. This would by own risk-aversion: to have some minimal insurance against the loss “sophists” can enact on me by persuading public opinion.
First of all, the there is the meta-level issue whether to engage the original version or the pop version, as the first is better but the second is far, far more influential. This is an unresolved dilemma (same logic: should an atheist debate with Ed Feser or with what religious folks actually believe?) and I’ll just try to hover in between.
A theory of justice does not simply describe a nice to have world. It describes ethical norms that are strong enough to be warrant coercive enforcement. (I’m not even libertarian, just don’t like pretending democratic coercion is somehow not one.)
Rawls is asking us to imagine e.g. what if we are born with a disability that requires really a lot of investment from society to make its members live an okay life, let’s call the hypothetical Golden Wheelchair Ramps.
Depending on whether we look at it rigorously, in a more “pop” version Rawls is saying our pre-born self would want GWR built everywhere even when it means that if we are born able and rich we taxed through the nose to pay for it, or in a more rigorous version 1% change to be born with this illness would mean we want 1% of GWRs built.
Now, this all is all well if it is simply understood as the preferences of risk-averse people. After all we have a real, true veil of ignorance after birth: we could get poor, disabled etc. any time. It is easy to lose birth privileges, well, many of them at least. More risk-taking people will say I don’t really want to pay for GWR, I am taking my gamble tha I will be born rich and able in which case I won’t need them and I would rather keep that tax money. (This is a horribly selfish move, but Rawls set up the game so that it is only about fairness emerging out of rational selfishness and altruism is not required in this game so I am just following the rules.)
However, since it is a theory of justice, it means the preferences of risk-aversge people are made mandatory, turned into a social policy and enforced with coercion. And that is the issue.
Now, how could Rawls (or pop-Rawlsians) get away with that? By assuming that all reasonable people are risk-averse anyway. In other words, turning risk-aversity into a tacit norm. Instead of seeing it negatively as a vice, or neutrally as a preference, it is basically a virtue here. Now, we have a perfect name for turning timidity into a norm: it is called cowardice.
And I think my argument managed to demonstrate avoiding in politics mind-killing up to the last sentence when I used a connotationally loaded word (cowardice), but at this point I had to, as I casually remarked earlier I feel this way about it and now had to explain why. But the last sentence refers only to my feelings and not an integral part of the argument, for the argument , just stop reading at “risk aversion should not be made into a norm and coercively enforced calling it justice”.
Again, it is not part of the argument, but an explanation of my feelings: when I try to improve one my vices or weaknesses, and I see others almost see them as norms, I feel disgust. For example, willful stupidity disgusts me—I think this feeling may be common around here. But as I am also trying to work on my own cowardice, being too accepting of it also disgusts me.
Thanks for the explanation. Do you have any alternatives?
How about no theory of justice? :) Philosophers should learn from scientists here: if you have no good explanation, none at all is more honest than a bad but seductive one. As a working hypothesis we could consider our hunger for justice and fairness an evolved instinct, a need, emotion, a strong preference, something similar to the desire for social life or romantic love, it is simply one of the many needs a social engineer would aim to satisfy. The goal is, then, to make things “feel just” enough to check that checkmark.
“to each his own” reading Rawls and Rawlsians I tend to sense a certain, how to put it, overly collective feeling. That there is one heavily interconnected world and it is the property of all humankind and there is a collective, democratic decision-making on how to make it suitable for all. So in this kind of world there is nothing exempt for politics, nothing is like “it is mine and mine alone and not to be touched by others”. The question is, is it a hard reality derived by the necessities of the dynamics of a high-tech era? Or just a preference? My preferences are way more individualistic than that. The attitude that everything is collective and to be shaped and formed in a democratic way is IMHO way too often a power play by “sophists” who have a glib tongue, good at rhethorics, and can easily shape democratic opinion. I am atheist but “culturally catholic” enough to find the parable of the snake offering the fruit useful: that it is not only through violence, but also through glib, seductive persuasion, through 100% consent, a lot of damage can be done.
This is something not really understood properly in the modern world, we understand how violence, oppression or outright fraud can be bad, but not really realize how much harm a silver tongue can cause without even outright lying, because we already live in socities where silver-tongue intellectuals are already the ruling class, so they underplay their own power by lionizing consent and freedom of speech as institutions that can reasonably considered to lead to good results.
I mean, for example, a truly realistic society would censor arguments that feel good. This sounds super weird: we are used to either complete freedom of speech or to censorship based on imputed harm or untruth, but censor even true and useful ideas if they feel too good? Yes, as long as we understand censorship as a cost not an impenetrable barrier: putting a cost on ideas that feel good would neutralize that feeling and thus enable us to judge the idea on a rational basis, without an affective bias.
Compare that to the real world and realize we are living in a sophists paradize where feel-good ideas have power through democratic consent.
I would want a way more autist-friendly world than that, and the way I would imagine it is some clear fences, Schelling points, whatnot, some kind of a “this is mine, this is yours, and these things are not subject to the political process or democratic-collective consensus, only those and those things are subject to that”. This would by own risk-aversion: to have some minimal insurance against the loss “sophists” can enact on me by persuading public opinion.