distributive justice

In talking with people about questions of distributive justice, one often encounters a peculiar sort of conflict or tension. It’s not just that different people hold different views on the question. Rather, each individual person seems somehow to be pulled in a number of different directions.

In an exciting new paper in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Christopher Freiman and Shaun Nichols report an experimental study that helps to shed light on this sort of conflict. Subjects were randomly assigned either to receive an ‘abstract’ question or a ‘concrete’ question.

Subjects assigned to the abstract version were told:

Suppose that some people make more money than others solely because they have genetic advantages.

Subjects assigned to the concrete version were told:

Suppose that Amy and Beth both want to be professional jazz singers. They both practice singing equally hard. Although jazz singing is the greatest natural talent of both Amy and Beth, Beth’s vocal range and articulation is naturally better than Amy’s because of differences in their genetics. Solely as a result of this genetic advantage, Beth’s singing is much more impressive. As a result, Beth attracts bigger audiences and hence gets more money than Amy.

All subjects were then asked whether it was fair for the genetically advantaged individuals in the scenario to make more money. Surprisingly enough, subjects in the abstract cases said that the genetically advantaged did not deserve more money, while subjects in the concrete cases said that the genetically advantaged actually did deserve more money.

Freiman and Nichols suggest that this study might be getting at a fundamental conflict between two different aspects of the way people ordinarily think about questions of distributive justice. They then raise a difficult philosophical question: if our intuitions in the abstract case differ from those in the concrete case, which sort of intuition should we trust when we are actually doing philosophy?

So, I’ve been thinking about utilitarianism and non-ideal theory. Although what I’ve come up with may be quite obvious, I’d be interested in reflections on the thought.

It seems to me that there are times when we might do best (even on utilitarian grounds) not to do what would maximize utility in non-ideal circumstances. Consider an instance in which this point may have practical bite. Some argue against ending child labor because the children we prohibit from working may suffer more for our good intentions. Child prostitution may be their second best option. But that this would be so, holding everything else fixed, does not mean we should not try to end child labor. What it shows is that we should try to end child labor and help educate the children we liberate. If one says that we do not have the resources to do this then we should reply that we can and need to find the resources — that is what justice requires. Even for a utilitarian, there are times when we should not do what might initially seem to maximize utility because doing that will only maximize utility conditional on facts that we can and should change. Perhaps there is reason to worry about doing non-ideal theory in some circumstances. Or, more precisely, that we have to be careful about what kind of non-ideal theory we are doing. Consider another example to support the point. Aid organizations spend a great deal of time and money figuring out how to allocate scarce resources. For instance, the WHO tries to prioritize health interventions to maximize the number of disability adjusted life years (or whatever) that it can save with its resources. But if the global distribution of medical resources is unjust and can be changed, the WHO might better spend its time trying to change the global distribution of medical resources.