Phil 122
Anderson
Study Questions on Rawls’ Chapter Three
Section Twenty
An overview of the steps the argument will take in Chapter Three. Note his remark that
“The argument aims eventually to be strictly deductive.” (104) So, given certain
assumptions about the parties in the original position, Rawls is going to try to show that
the choice of his principles of justice is the only rational choice open to them. A difficult
challenge to say the least.
Section Twenty-one
Rawls lists the available conceptions of justice that the contractors must choose from:
Rawls’ preferred conception (justice as fairness), classical teleological conceptions (e.g.
utilitarianism), mixed conceptions which combine the basic liberties with variants of
utilitarianism, intuitionistic conceptions (which require balancing a list of prima facie
principles), and egoistic conceptions. Reasons for rejecting the egoistic conceptions are
given in Section Twenty-three. Much of the rest of Chapter Three is devoted to rejecting
the various utilitarian theories.
There are other options besides those on this list. Libertarianism is not mentioned, but
the system of “Natural Liberty” could be taken as one version of it and has already been
rejected. Desert-based conceptions of justice are considered and rejected later in Section
48. Distribution according to need is arguably accounted for by his Difference Principle.
Section Twenty-two
The circumstances of justice are those conditions under which disputes about justice
inevitably arise but are not impossible to resolve. We are not concerned here about crisis
situations such as life-boat survival or prison camp conditions. What are the
circumstances of justice?
Section Twenty-three
Any rationally acceptable principle of justice must satisfy five formal constraints.
What are those five constraints?
Despite their mere formality, these constraints have some important practical
implications. What would happen if the conditions of generality and universality were
ignored in practice (as in fact they often are)?
Rawls argues the formal constraints alone suffice to rule out any egoist principles of
justice. What is his argument here?
Section Twenty-four
What is the motive for putting the contractors in the original position under a veil of
ignorance?
What sorts of information are the contractors ignorant of? What sorts of information
are they permitted to use?
Given the veil of ignorance, each contractor is, in effect, forced to choose for
everyone. Explain that point.
Given that each contractor is forced, in effect, to choose for everyone, it becomes
more understandable why Rawls thinks it is possible to achieve unanimous agreement on
the principles of justice. Explain.
Section Twenty-five
Rawls poses a problem for his contractors under the veil of ignorance. They are
assumed to be rational agents, but they don’t know their conception of the good (what
they will regard as worth pursuing in life). So how can they decide which conceptions of
justice are most to their advantage? The answer is they know what the primary goods are
and they can be expected to prefer more of such goods rather than less.
Another problem Rawls must face is the contractors in the original position appear to
be egoists, even though Rawls has already argued that no plausible account of justice can
be given based on egoist assumptions. (128) Rawls reply is twofold: (a) The motivation
of the parties in the original position does not determine their motivation once the veil is
lifted. They are indifferent to the interests of others in the original position but they
know they will not be indifferent to the interests of others once the principles are put into
play, and their awareness of this fact plays a role in their deliberations. (b) “The
combination of mutual indifference and the veil of ignorance achieves much the same
purpose as benevolence.” (128) Why? It forces each person in the original position to
take the good of every other person into account since they might turn out to be one of
those “others”.
Section Twenty-six
The situation of persons in the original position virtually compels them to accept an
equal distribution as the initial default position on justice. Explain.
But some inequalities are seen to be rational because they make everyone better off.
Give a couple of examples of these sorts of justified inequalities.
Granted a case can be made for some kinds of inequalities, that still leaves many
different possible principles of justice to choose from. Rawls needs an argument for his
two principles over all other candidates. He argues that the two principles would be
chosen if the contactors adopted the maximin strategy of choice under uncertainty. What
does the maximin strategy involve?
Rawls gives three reasons why it would be rational to adopt the maximin strategy in
the original position. (i) Given the veil of ignorance, persons in the original position have
no way of estimating how likely they are to end up in one of the more favored positions
or less favored positions in life. (ii) Given that Rawls’ two principles of justice guarantee
a decent life even for the least well off, it would be reckless to take a chance on some
more risky principles that could leave him much worse off. Favoring the two principles
assures him of a happy life. (iii) The choice of some alternative principles could result in
a disastrous outcome, e.g., choosing an aristocracy, but ending up only a serf.
Rawls then considers an objection to his argument: the difference principle stipulates
that any improvement in the circumstances of the most well off must work to the
advantage of the least well off. This appears to prohibit any improvement in the situation
of the better off if it means even a trivially small loss to the least well off. Rawls replies
that that is only a theoretical possibility, not a realistic worry. How does he support that
response?
Sections Twenty-seven and Twenty-eight
These sections contain one of Rawls’ main attacks on utilitarian accounts of justice.
For our purposes we can ignore some of the messy details. The general strategy of the
utilitarian in the original position is to try to maximize his expected utility. He will rank
the various candidate principles of justice on the basis of estimates of probable gain. For
each such principle, he first identifies the main anticipated outcomes, e.g. slave owner,
free citizen, slave, (for a principle that allowed such outcomes), the utility or gain
associated with each outcome, and the likelihood that he would occupy each of those
positions. He then multiplies the utility of each position by the likelihood that he would
occupy it and adds up the products. The total sum is his expected utility for that
candidate principle of justice. He chooses the principle (or principles) which yield the
highest expected utility. Perhaps some numbers will make the general idea clear for a
candidate principle of justice that happens to permit slavery.
Position
Utility of that position
Likelihood
Expected utility
Slave owner
100
3%
3
Free citizen
50
60%
30
Slave
- 100
37%
-37
Total overall expected utility for that choice of principle: -4
A similar calculation would have to be made for all other candidate principles of
justice. Clearly this is a strategy appropriate for a rational gambler. Rawls rejects the
utilitarian approach for three reasons. First, given the veil of ignorance, the contractors
have no objective way of knowing the likelihood that they will end up in any particular
position. So the numbers in the “Likelihood” column above are unavailable to them.
Secondly, the parties in the original position are ignorant of their attitude towards risk; to
favor the rational gambler’s strategy is unwarranted. (149) Thirdly, Rawls questions the
meaningfulness of a single chooser estimating the utilities that go with each
representative position (the numbers in the first column). I can perhaps make estimates
of the value to me of being a slave owner, a free citizen, and a slave, but how can I
estimate the value of being, for example, a slave owner from the perspective of a slave
owner, assuming I am not one? This is not a problem for Rawls’ own system of primary
goods which are presumed to be of value to anyone regardless of their perspective.
Section Twenty-nine
In this section Rawls gives several positive reasons why his two principles of justice
would be chosen over all of the alternatives. He has already argued that they would be
chosen, given that the maximin strategy is adopted. But even if one rejects the maximin
strategy, as some of his critics advocate, there are other grounds for favoring his
principles. One advantage is those who do agree on his principles can have solid
confidence that they will continue to be motivated to abide by them once they are put into
play. He calls this the problem of the “strains of commitment”. Both the principle of
equal basic liberties and the difference principle lend credence to this claim, since both
principles prevent people from being used as mere means to the advantage of others.
Utilitarianism, in Rawls’ view, lacks this important virtue for, if a greater overall gain in
utility for the whole society can be obtained by sacrificing the interests of some targeted
individual or group, then utilitarianism seems to permit it.
A second reason for thinking justice as fairness is more reliable is that it tends to
generate its own support in the sense that people will become increasingly strongly
motivated to support just institutions over time. Rawls appeals to “the psychological law
that persons tend to love, cherish, and support whatever affirms their own good. Since
everyone’s good is affirmed, all acquire inclinations to uphold the scheme.” (155)
Utilitarianism does not contain a similar commitment to affirm the good of everyone.
A third advantage of justice as fairness is it gives greater support to men’s self-respect.
Once again, it is the fact that “when society follows these principles, everyone’s good is
included in a scheme of mutual benefit and this public affirmation in institutions of each
man’s endeavors supports men’s self-esteem” (156)
Section Thirty
The utilitarian that Rawls depicts in Sections Twenty-seven and Twenty-eight attempts
to choose the principle with the greatest expected utility; he uses the rational gamblers’
strategy. The classical utilitarian takes a rather different approach. A social system is
morally right when an ideally rational and impartial spectator would approve of it from a
general point of view, assuming he possesses all relevant knowledge of the
circumstances. The ideal observer is thought of as a perfectly sympathetic being. The
strength of his approval measures the amount of satisfaction in the society surveyed. The
classical principle of utility (maximize net satisfaction in society as a whole) reflects the
approvals of the ideal, impartial, sympathetic spectator. Note that on this analysis, there
is no element of risk taking, no idea of taking a chance on which person one will turn out
to be.
Rawls argues the parties in the original position would not opt for classical
utilitarianism unless they were perfect altruists, persons whose desires conformed to
those of the ideal spectator. But the supposition is really incoherent since a perfect
altruist can fulfill his desire (to help someone else satisfy their desires) only if someone
else has independent (non-altruistic) desires. Justice, remember, is a problem because
people have conflicting desires. The same problem arises if, in place of the ideal
spectator, one substitutes the ideal of universal benevolence or the love of mankind.
These give no real guidance in situations where the persons who are the object of one’s
benevolence or love have conflicting wants or interests.