Without you telling me what “just” means, I don’t understand the sentence “the world is mostly just most of the time for most reasonable ideas about justice”.
In particular, it’s easy to come up with reasonable ideas about justice (see e.g. a large variety of egalitarians) under which the world is NOT mostly just most of the time.
I agree that the notion of justice is hard to pin down, but if you ignore this problem many arguments around your post will be just arguments about the implied understanding of justice. It’s better to make such things explicit.
I thought I had addressed exactly this point, by stating that any relevant theory of justice had to be applicable, and talking about theories so broad they swallow fairness. The second basketball analogy is the example. To be clear, the just world hypothesis is essentially “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” “Sowing and reaping ought to be uncorrelated” is a popular theory of justice, but non-responsive to the claim being made. Relevant disputes regarding justice have to be about what it means to sow “good” and what it means to reap “good.”
any relevant theory of justice had to be applicable
Any? I have a feeling that you have a particular framework in your head that seems so natural to you that you just assume that everyone else also operates on the basis of the same framework. To you it’s perfectly clear what does “relevant” mean here and you can true-Scotsman the “irrelevant” theories of justice.
But I’m different from you and my mind reading skills are lacking.
To be clear, the just world hypothesis is essentially “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
Not quite. That’s a theory of causality, not justice.
If I had to take a stab at defining justice, I’d say something like “the positive correlation between the moral worth of actions or behavior and the value (to the actor) of the outcomes”. I’m using “correlation” here not in a technical sense, but in a loose meaning corresponding to what a statistician might call “lack of independence”.
Note the important parts of this ten-second definition: “moral worth” and “value of outcomes”. There must be some underlying theory of morality (usually virtue ethics), some value system to estimate that “moral worth”, and there also must be some ways to figure out the benefits of outcomes.
Effectively, what people consider “just” flows naturally out of their system of values and the crucial point is that different people have different systems of values, often VERY different.
“Sowing and reaping ought to be uncorrelated” is a popular theory of justice
Is it? My impression is that very few people would consider the world in which what you do doesn’t matter at all to be just—but I’m willing to look at evidence if you have any. Randomness is not justice.
have to be about what it means to sow “good” and what it means to reap “good.”
Right. And that’s precisely the discussion of the underlying morality and systems of values.
If your point is that under all human systems of value the world is just, well, that claim would need a LOT of support...
any relevant theory of justice had to be applicable
Any?
Yes, any. If you have a theory of justice that can’t be applied to the question at hand, it isn’t relevant to the question at hand. That doesn’t mean your theory isn’t a good one, it just means it has reached its limits. For example, a Rawlsian theory of justice has nothing to say about whether bananas are delicious.
To be clear, the just world hypothesis is essentially “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”
Not quite. That’s a theory of causality, not justice.
Well, that’s what the just world hypothesis states. You are fully entitled to view it as a theory of causality rather than justice, but you aren’t arguing against it by doing so. That is what I mean by “applicable” and “relevant.” If you have a theory of justice that neither supports nor contradicts the just world hypothesis, that’s all well and good, but it doesn’t speak to the questions I’m dealing with, i.e.:
What do people who believe in the just world hypothesis actually believe?
How should we approach the question of whether the just world hypothesis is true?
Is the just world hypothesis true?
Is the just world hypothesis useful to hold for the believer?
What is the effect on the world of people believing in the just world hypothesis?
Well, that’s what the just world hypothesis states.
Can you state it in less Biblical and more conventional and well-defined terms?
I doubt that the just world hypothesis specifies what kind of grain I can harvest after planting rye seeds and in a more general interpretation it boils down to “your actions will cause consequences” which is true but banal.
Third party here, but I’d consider the just-world hypothesis something like the converse of the golden rule: The world will do unto you as you do unto others.
The just-world hypothesis or just-world fallacy is the cognitive bias (or assumption) that a person’s actions always bring morally fair and fitting consequences to that person, so that all noble actions are eventually rewarded and all evil actions are eventually punished… The hypothesis popularly appears in the English language in various figures of speech that imply guaranteed negative reprisal, such as: “You got what was coming to you”, “What goes around comes around”, and “You reap what you sow.”
“Sowing and reaping ought to be uncorrelated” is a popular theory of justice
Is it? My impression is that very few people would consider the world in which what you do doesn’t matter at all to be just …
Those people usually don’t talk about it as “sowing” and “reaping”. But it is not rare for people to think of justice as some distribution of stuff that you decide on behind a “veil of ignorance” where your actions are irrelevant because “you” aren’t any specific person.
Edit: And I did not downvote you. I upvoted the parent of this comment.
Ah, I see. Yes, egalitarians (especially hard-core ones) will say that every human being should get the same “distribution of stuff” regardless of what he sows. That’s a notable part of communism: “To each according to his needs...”. Point taken.
And yet, this is only about economics and material stuff. Lack of connection between sowing and reaping means, for example, that there is no system of justice in the law-and-order sense: murder would go unpunished, etc.
Without you telling me what “just” means, I don’t understand the sentence “the world is mostly just most of the time for most reasonable ideas about justice”.
In particular, it’s easy to come up with reasonable ideas about justice (see e.g. a large variety of egalitarians) under which the world is NOT mostly just most of the time.
I agree that the notion of justice is hard to pin down, but if you ignore this problem many arguments around your post will be just arguments about the implied understanding of justice. It’s better to make such things explicit.
I thought I had addressed exactly this point, by stating that any relevant theory of justice had to be applicable, and talking about theories so broad they swallow fairness. The second basketball analogy is the example. To be clear, the just world hypothesis is essentially “whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” “Sowing and reaping ought to be uncorrelated” is a popular theory of justice, but non-responsive to the claim being made. Relevant disputes regarding justice have to be about what it means to sow “good” and what it means to reap “good.”
Any? I have a feeling that you have a particular framework in your head that seems so natural to you that you just assume that everyone else also operates on the basis of the same framework. To you it’s perfectly clear what does “relevant” mean here and you can true-Scotsman the “irrelevant” theories of justice.
But I’m different from you and my mind reading skills are lacking.
Not quite. That’s a theory of causality, not justice.
If I had to take a stab at defining justice, I’d say something like “the positive correlation between the moral worth of actions or behavior and the value (to the actor) of the outcomes”. I’m using “correlation” here not in a technical sense, but in a loose meaning corresponding to what a statistician might call “lack of independence”.
Note the important parts of this ten-second definition: “moral worth” and “value of outcomes”. There must be some underlying theory of morality (usually virtue ethics), some value system to estimate that “moral worth”, and there also must be some ways to figure out the benefits of outcomes.
Effectively, what people consider “just” flows naturally out of their system of values and the crucial point is that different people have different systems of values, often VERY different.
Is it? My impression is that very few people would consider the world in which what you do doesn’t matter at all to be just—but I’m willing to look at evidence if you have any. Randomness is not justice.
Right. And that’s precisely the discussion of the underlying morality and systems of values.
If your point is that under all human systems of value the world is just, well, that claim would need a LOT of support...
Yes, any. If you have a theory of justice that can’t be applied to the question at hand, it isn’t relevant to the question at hand. That doesn’t mean your theory isn’t a good one, it just means it has reached its limits. For example, a Rawlsian theory of justice has nothing to say about whether bananas are delicious.
Well, that’s what the just world hypothesis states. You are fully entitled to view it as a theory of causality rather than justice, but you aren’t arguing against it by doing so. That is what I mean by “applicable” and “relevant.” If you have a theory of justice that neither supports nor contradicts the just world hypothesis, that’s all well and good, but it doesn’t speak to the questions I’m dealing with, i.e.:
What do people who believe in the just world hypothesis actually believe?
How should we approach the question of whether the just world hypothesis is true?
Is the just world hypothesis true?
Is the just world hypothesis useful to hold for the believer?
What is the effect on the world of people believing in the just world hypothesis?
Can you state it in less Biblical and more conventional and well-defined terms?
I doubt that the just world hypothesis specifies what kind of grain I can harvest after planting rye seeds and in a more general interpretation it boils down to “your actions will cause consequences” which is true but banal.
Third party here, but I’d consider the just-world hypothesis something like the converse of the golden rule: The world will do unto you as you do unto others.
So is that, essentially, the idea of karma?
Karma is one flavor of it, yes.
As per Wikipedia:
If you accept this definition of the just-world hypothesis as a cognitive bias then your inquiry into whether it is true does not make any sense.
Those people usually don’t talk about it as “sowing” and “reaping”. But it is not rare for people to think of justice as some distribution of stuff that you decide on behind a “veil of ignorance” where your actions are irrelevant because “you” aren’t any specific person.
Edit: And I did not downvote you. I upvoted the parent of this comment.
Ah, I see. Yes, egalitarians (especially hard-core ones) will say that every human being should get the same “distribution of stuff” regardless of what he sows. That’s a notable part of communism: “To each according to his needs...”. Point taken.
And yet, this is only about economics and material stuff. Lack of connection between sowing and reaping means, for example, that there is no system of justice in the law-and-order sense: murder would go unpunished, etc.