Lecture 2: The Original Position and Rawls’s Methodology
1. Recapitulation
We saw how Rawls’s attempts to answer the distributional question in a way that respects the
equality and liberty of people in a way that ensures stability and legitimacy and pays due deference
to the fact of reasonable pluralism.
The upshot was his principles of justice:
(1). The Liberty principle: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total
system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar liberty to all.
(2). The distribution principle:
a) Inequality in basic goods is only to be permitted when it is to the greatest benefit for
the least advantaged (the difference principle).
b) Inequalities should be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions
of fair equality of opportunity (fair opportunity principle).
Roughly put, the liberty principle guarantees stability and legitimacy, whilst the distribution
principle gives a fair way to distribute basic goods. Both together reconcile the demands of liberty
and equality.
2. Rawls’s Method: Reflective Equilibrium
Rawls is interested in how we got about settling the questions of political philosophy, for which he
proposes a method widely influential in philosophy: reflective equilibrium.
Begin by considering the contrast between two views of justification:
Foundationalism: beliefs can justify other beliefs, but eventually the chain of justification
terminates and we reach properly basic beliefs: these either require no justification or
justify themselves. For example, perceptual beliefs might be properly basic.
Coherentism: beliefs are justifed in virtue of being part of a coherent web of belief, with all
the nodes of the web mutually supporting the others.
Foundationalism faces a difficulty: how are we to divine which of our beliefs are properly basic
without falling into dogmatism? This is particularly pressing in the moral sphere, where a perceptual
model of justification seems inappropriate.
Rawls in particular is concerned to reject any hints of an intuitionist moral epistemology: he wants
to see how far we can get in moral and political reasoning without relying on a special faculty of
moral insight.
We have no Archimedean point available from which to evaluate our deeply held moral convictions.
Instead we are confined to a broadly Neurathian epistemology.
What we do is test proposed moral theories against our considered moral judgements. When they
conflict we can either modify the theory or abandon the judgement. This allows us to get some
purchase on our moral convictions. Once we have gone through this process we have reached
narrow reflective equilibrium – no more changes seem necessary.
By exposing out viewpoints to other, very different, moral outlooks we can try to achieve wide
reflective equilibrium. Importantly we can never be sure either process has terminated: we must
always be open to reconsidering parts of our framework of belief. This is just our Neurathian
position.
This proposed method, although not original with Rawls (originally suggested by Nelson Goodman
for arguing over the philosophy of logic), has found widespread influence in philosophy in part
thanks to Rawls’s use and development of it.
3. The Argument From the Original Position
Rawls’s fundamental thought is that we can get a grip on the right principles of justice by thinking
about the right form for a social contract.
This idea is found in Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau: the idea is that justice is intimately connected up
with the obligations that free and equal persons sign up to. Unfortunately the idea of a historical
contract is ludicrous, and the idea of ‘tacit consent’ was ably demolished by Hume.
Rawls instead looks for what the terms of a hypothetical social contract would be: the principles of
justice are those principles that reasonable persons would agree to, under the right conditions.
We get a grip on the right conditions for deciding on a social contract by using the device of a
bargaining game from rational choice theory. In these games participants are confronted with a
suite of options with different payouts and select among them. Think of the dictator game, the
ultimatum game, the prisoner’s dilemma. These games give us a way of thinking about what
rationality requires in suitably constrained examples.
Rawls argues that we can discover the principles of justice by thinking about what contract
reasonable people would agree to in the original position where they are behind a veil of ignorance.
Veil of ignorance: none of the participants know precisely which position they will occupy in
the society. They know they will have some conception of the good life, and what it takes in
general to pursue such a life, but they don’t know which conception they adopt. They have
knowledge of sociological and economic facts.
We use the veil of ignorance because the use of reflective equilibrium reveals that it tells us
something important about our concept of justice: justice needs to be suitably blind to the particular
positions of the persons we are building a system for.
This does seem to get at an important feature of our moral and political concerns: universalisability.
4. Would People in the Original Position Agree to the Principles of Justice?
Take the basic liberty principle: participants will know that they have some conception of the good
life, just not which. They will know that they will need the basic liberties to pursue any conception of
the good life.
What about the difference principle? Rawls argues for it by saying it is the rational choice according
to the maximin principle, rejecting the maximise expected utility principle.
Maximin: pick the outcome where the worst option is the least bad (maximise the
minimum).
Maximise Expect Utility: pick which ever option maximises your expected utility (the
outcome for each option, multiplied by the probability of that option obtaining).
The maximin rule would license the difference principle: it guarantees that the worst off do best
(distribution B).
The MEU rule may permit wide inequalities (distribution A). Which rule should we use behind the
veil of ignorance?
A
B
C
D
Expected Uility
Distribution A
100
80
76
12
67 = ((0.25x100)+(0.25x80)+(0.25x76)+(0.25x12))
Distribution B
60
52
48
40
50 = ((0.25x60)+(0.25x52)+(0.25x48)+(0.25x40))
We should favour maximin in the original position because of certain special features of the
question:
i)
Using MEU requires us to have good estimates of the probabilities of the outcomes. We just
don’t these behind the veil of ignorance (the table above makes it look misleadingly easy).
ii) Any reasonable conception of the good life is such that achieving improvements above a
certain reasonable baseline is less important than being guaranteed that basic level of
decency (security).
iii) MEU permits outcomes which are disatrous for some people – outcomes which we could
not justify to one another (gravity).
5. Problems with the Argument
What if I’m a gambler? I’d like to take the risk of a disastrous outcome in return for a chance at a
great life. Rawls responds that you don’t know how risk adverse you might be. And in this situation
it’s rational to behave as if you are risk adverse.
Rawls has argued against MEU, but what about other choice rules? Perhaps we should adopt,
instead, a sufficientarian view:
Restricted Utility: out of the options that guarantee a minimum, decent level for everyone,
pick the option that maximises expected utility.
This rule has no problems with gravity or security. So why not use this rule which does not entail the
difference principle?
Rawls argues that such a society would not guarantee reciprocity: not everyone would benefit from
improvements in standards of living. The least well off would start to feel that the system was not
respecting them as full and equal participants. This would lead to a lack of self-esteem and a
disengagement from politics.
This would threaten stability. In contrast the difference principle generates its own support.
In addition the principle of restricted utility faces an epistemic problem: how are we to work out
what the minimally decent level is without falling back on some form of intuitionism?
6. Ideal vs Non-Ideal Theory
Ideal theory considers the principles of justice for a society with full compliance. Non-ideal theory
deals with the principles of justice for a society with less than full compliance.
They can vary wildly in their implications: perhaps in a society without gender discrimination women
only discussion groups would be unjust. In the real world some women have very good reason to
seek out such safe spaces.
Non-ideal theorists have criticised the Rawlsian project on a number of grounds (e.g. Charles Mills
‘Ideal Theory as Ideology). Complaints include: ideal theory is a distraction; it leads to
conservativism; given how unvirtuous real people are ideal theory may not even be possible.
Rawls concedes that non-ideal theory is more important than his project: he just thinks that thinking
about ideal theory is useful and necessary for that project. Even if ideal theory runs the risk of
merely deepening our understanding of a morally compromised concept of justice, what else can we
do? That is just our Neurathian position.