Abstract
In this paper I aim to examine some problematic implications of the fact that individuals are prone to making systematic reasoning errors, for resource egalitarianism. I begin by disentangling the concepts of preferences, choices and ambitions, which are sometimes used interchangeably by egalitarians. Subsequently, I claim that the most plausible interpretation of resource egalitarianism takes preferences, not choices, as the site of responsibility. This distinction is salient, since preference-sensitive resource egalitarianism is faced with an important objection when applied to situations in which the empirically reasonable assumption that individuals have different degrees of computational abilities is introduced. I first show that this objection can be raised in cases involving individuals who have incomplete information, but that it ultimately fails for such cases since we can appeal to higher order insurance markets in order to mitigate any initial concerns. I further claim, however, that the objection is much more powerful in cases involving individuals who have different reasoning skills, since the appeal to higher order insurance markets is no longer tenable. Consequently, the ideal principle of justice proposed by Dworkin is met with a new feasibility challenge. Finally, I claim that the problem of reasoning errors and various forms of cognitive biases also affect Dworkin’s non-ideal principle of justice, skewing the outputs of the hypothetical insurance mechanism in an unjustifiable manner.
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Notes
See Parr (2017, forthcoming) for a conceptual and normative exploration of the envy test.
Whether Dworkin's egalitarian theory is part of this family of views is debatable. On the one hand, the brute luck-option luck distinction which he introduces in Dworkin (1981b) underlies much of the luck egalitarian project and Dworkin has often been credited as the original founder of this line of thought (see Wolff 2010, pp. 336–337). This has led some authors, to argue that “there is clearly a brute luck egalitarian strand to his political philosophy, and it may be the most influential of its strands” (Knight 2012, p. 542) and many other authors (e.g. Anderson 1999; Scheffler 2003; Stemplowska 2013) to include his view within the luck egalitarian family. On the other hand, Dworkin (2003) himself has notoriously rejected this label, arguing that his theory does not ultimately seek to fully extinguish the effects of bad brute luck, and some philosophers have recently taken the distinction between resource egalitarianism and luck egalitarianism seriously (e.g. Jubb 2011; Tomlin 2013).
Both arguments are criticized by Lippert-Rasmussen (2001, pp. 552–557).
Various objections have been raised against Dwokin's insurance mechanism, of which I will only mention a few due to spatial constraints. Both Roemer (1985) and Fleurbaey (2009), for instance, argue that for individuals with similar tastes the insurance mechanism prescribes utilitarian allocations —with all their associated problems—, while for individuals with different tastes it prescribes allocations which make those who were unlucky to begin with even worse-off. Cohen Cristofidis (2004) suggests that the insurance mechanism is unable to generate distributions which satisfy the envy test, since the untalented still have legitimate reasons to envy the talented. Both Otsuka (2002) and Sandbu (2004) claim the simple availability of insurance, without any additional constraints might not be enough to properly convert brute luck to option luck. Consequently, Otsuka (2002) adds the supplementary conditions that (1) insurance must fully compensate the loss of resources associated with the bad brute luck outcome and (2) insurance must not be so expensive that it is impossible for the individual to purchase it, or even unreasonably expensive, while Sandbu (2004) refines Otsuka’s conditions with the demands that in the case where either (1) or (2) are not met, the individual who suffers a bad brute luck outcome must be compensated until the least risky reasonable prospect is equalized.
Still, Cohen casts a legitimate shadow of doubt over the separateness of choice and preference in Dworkin’s work, claiming that he uses the phrases "decide what sort of life to pursue", which tracks choices, and "decide what sort of life one wants", which tracks preferences, interchangeably (Cohen 1989, pp. 928–929).
In the context of responsibility-sensitive egalitarian theories of justice, I take this concept to embody those features on the basis of which ensuing distributive outcomes require no compensation for any of the individuals involved, as a matter of justice, since they are to be legitimately held accountable for the respective features.
Framing effects reveal the propensity of individuals to hold different attitudes towards risk when the choice context is presented either in terms of losses or in terms of gains. The prevalence of framing effects in experimental settings has been replicated in a considerable number of studies. See Kuhberger (1998) for a meta-analysis, which concludes that "framing is a reliable phenomenon" (Kuhberger 1998, p. 23).
I only take into account cases where the continuity test, which states that "a political community should regard certain conditions as disadvantaging some of its members only if those members' own views about what it is to live well also imply that those conditions disadvantage them" [Williams (2002, p. 387), also see Clayton (2000) for a different formulation and Colburn (2014) for a critique] would not be violated since individuals would consider that making choices which do not reflect their underlying preferences would be disadvantageous.
G and I represent the gamble and insurance alternatives, while W and L represent the winning or losing of the gamble. The numbers at the end of each branch represent the resources gained in the respective outcome.
See Bermudez (Bermudez 2009, pp. 25–27) for a brief overview of the most salient of these principles.
For simplicity, I assume that they do not have any information regarding the likelihood of having full or incomplete information.
The first node represents the choice of the individual to insure against having incomplete information (I) or reject the insurance and gamble (G). The next node on each branch is split between the outcome where individuals have full information and those in which individuals have incomplete information. The third series of nodes then depict the regular scenario of Fig. 2, with the premium and insurance payment incorporated into the payoff matrices. The numbers at the end of each branch represent the resources gained for the respective outcome.
Assume that the loss overestimation bias is not identical to Kahneman and Tversky’s (1979) skewing of the value function in prospect theory towards a greater weighting of losses. For purposes of simplification, it should be simply interpreted as a systematic reasoning error, which arises in the context of using expected utility theory as a decisional mechanism.
Even, for instance, sentencing decisions of professional magistrates (Englich et al 2006).
See Tversky and Kahneman (1983).
Many authors consider that the incorporation of responsibility within egalitarianism is Dworkin's most important contribution (see for instance Cohen 1989, p. 933) and it is precisely this move which has sparked the rise of luck egalitarian theories within the past few decades.
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Acknowledgements
I thank Matej Cibik, Pietro Intropi, Adrian Miroiu, Kasper Ossenblok, Tom Parr, Adam Slavny, Zofia Stemplowska and two anonymous reviewers for written comments on earlier versions of this paper. I am also grateful to an audience at the University of Warwick, where a previous draft was presented, for insightful discussions.
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Volacu, A. Preferences, reasoning errors, and resource egalitarianism. Philos Stud 175, 1851–1870 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0936-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0936-z