Publicity, Utilitarianism, and Intuitionism- George
In Section 29, Rawls argues that one of his theory's advantages over utilitarianism is that knowing their basic liberties can't be violated contributes to people's self esteem. He quickly deflects the utilitarian counter-argument, which is that utilitarianism would require the publicization of Justice as Fairness if it were conducive to greater happiness, with one of the constraints from Section 23: publicity. Any principles chosen in the original position have to be "widely known or explicitly recognized," so that they can be "fully effective moral constitutions of social life," (115).
To me, this is one of the less intuitive aspects of Rawls's theory, and indicates something I found odd about the constraints more generally. Rawls derives them from his understanding "the task of principles of right in in adjusting the claims that persons make on their institutions and one another" (113). He cannot rely on the nature of this task, because it could be handled in a myriad of ways, including through public embrace of Justice as Fairness for secretly utilitarian reasons. Rawls therefore ultimately appeals to "the reasonableness of the theory" in creating these constraints (113).
That seems to me to be a massive opening for intuitionist objections. What if I don't think the theory resulting from these conditions is reasonable? Rawls is somewhat forced to acknowledge this, saying that "although egoism is logically consistent and in this sense not irrational, it is incompatible with what we intuitively regard as the moral point of view," (117). I think this should cause us to re-examine Rawls' defense against intuitionism in Sections 7 and 8, and I think that we will find it lacking.
The first thing I noticed about the discussion of intuitionism is how much he cedes, admitting several times that "there is nothing intrinsically irrational" about intuitionism (34). But then, that at the crucial juncture, he limits his solution to the reliance on intuition to the subjects of his theory and not to himself. He argues that the original position gives an opportunity for people "to reach some agreement as to how the principles of justice are to be balanced," thus "posing more limited questions and substituting prudential for moral judgement," (37;39). But this requires a massive intuitive emphasis on Rawls' part on the role of rational agreement and judgement in justice, which he never interrogates. Maybe he simply assumes that his readers share that intuition, but then he is merely relying on the hope that "men will in fact balance [principles] more or less similarly," which he describes as a key feature of intuitionism in Section 7. And his intuitive sense that justice derives from rational choice is certainly not shared by everyone. Conservative religious communities, in Islam or Judaism for example, believe that the principles of justice are received from God. What reason have they for buying Rawls' theory? And, as much as we may buy it, how can we say that they should, if Rawls is ultimately relying on an intuition that they simply do not share?
Hi George! Great blog post - I think that my main points of contention with Rawls tend to fall on the breadth of the assumptions that he poses and uses to support his argument. Although, he does note that these assumptions aren’t necessarily realistic and are more of a thought experiment than a reality we need to follow in order to reach his principles of justice. I especially agree with your point that the “intuition” lies in reaching the principles themselves rather than relying on the intuition of the parties is not a reliable assumption on Rawls’s part. Especially since these parties have to rely on their intuition to reach these principles, yet the intuitive part is placed on the subject of contention rather than the people whose intuition is needed to reach them.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I’m not entirely sure that the argument that the intuitive sense of justice may not be arrived at by everyone is necessarily the strongest critique of the process of reaching the two principles of justice as fairness. You point out that conservative, religious communities might not “buy” Rawls’s theory, but the parties are supposed to be placed under a veil of ignorance. The original position asks individuals to be “mutually disinterested.” He writes, “...no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status…” (118) nor his strengths, intelligence, and the rest (as well as these characteristics for others). Thus, the conservative religious party cannot be conservative nor religious in this scenario. Any one at any time should be able to arrive at these principles of justice; it transcends time and societal/personal characteristics. The veil of ignorance allows for the parties to arrive at the same conclusions, no matter which randomly selected person or persons are involved in the process. Rawls also points out that this process is not meant for established societies, as it is not meant to correct injustices. This experiment is not meant for an already established conservative community.
However, I think there is some merit in looking at the fact that this also may not necessarily be “intuitive” because the parties are picking from a menu of options that have sort of been pre-selected rather than intuited, which by definition is: work out or understand by instinct. While instinct does rely on past experiences, if one still operates under the veil of ignorance, it gets pretty close to intuition. The options of principles parties must choose from may also be from western-focused ideals and a male-dominated field of philosophy. Climate change was not a problem in the 1600s but definitely is now. As times have changed and as we have broadened our understanding of what justice means and requires, the menu of options will keep on expanding.
Hi Aara and George,
ReplyDeleteGreat blog posts! I think you guys bring up the really interesting question of how reliable intuition is, or how consistent it might be across different groups. Aara, I think you make a good point that intuitions deriving from membership to particular identities, such as religious affiliation or time period, are eliminated by the veil of ignorance. However, this makes me wonder what intuition is actually based upon. For example, today in the United States, gender discrimination is intuitively wrong. But this wasn’t necessarily the case in the U.S. 200 years ago. Similarly, for many Americans it feels intuitively wrong to eat animals that we think of as pets (cats/dogs) but this isn’t the case in many other countries. Of course, these societal/cultural influences would be removed under the veil of ignorance. But I wonder what would actually be left of our intuitions without any past experiences to inform them? After all, isn’t intuition based on subconscious reasoning, which is informed by our previous life experiences? I’m not sure I agree with Rawls that intuition can really exist outside the context of our actual lived experiences.
On the other hand, perhaps the only instinctual value that is really necessary for establishing the two principles is self-preservation or self-interest, which does seem to exist outside the context of the human experience (like in wild animals). Given that a person doesn’t know what identity or time period they will end up in, this self-interest will inevitably lead to the election of an equal distribution of rights and privileges, given that a rational individual would not want to risk ending up with less than their fair share.
Still, it seems to me that the issue of where intuition comes from would arise in electing how we prioritize different forms of liberty, as Rawls discusses in Section 32. Rawls writes that in choosing which forms of liberty to prioritize and how to restrict them, “There is no way to avoid some reliance on our sense of balance and judgement” (180). Thus, Rawls is differing to intuition to decide the balancing, or relative restriction, of our liberties. This is where I would question the capacity of our intuition––without the use of prior life experiences to inform us––to properly construct a system fo ranked and restricted liberties. Furthermore, I wonder if it might be valid for the liberties that we prioritize to change based on our current cultural values and norms.