Abstract
Critics allege that justice as mutual advantage excludes vulnerable people and is thus inadequate as a conception of justice. Building on Peter Vanderschraaf’s Strategic Justice, this paper considers three distinct vulnerability objections. After Sect. 1 clarifies the “vulnerable,” Sect. 2 discusses an objection according to which it is impossible for a mutual advantage view to protect the vulnerable. Answering this objection only requires a possibility proof, such as that Vanderschraaf provides. Section 3 discusses an objection according to which it is merely contingent whether, not guaranteed that, a mutual advantage view protects the vulnerable. Mutual advantage theorists indeed cannot provide such guarantees, so they must argue that such guarantees are too much to demand from a conception of justice. Section 4 discusses an objection according to which it is improbable that a mutual advantage view will protect the vulnerable. Addressing this concern opens paths for future fruitful research, including considering the conditions that make including the vulnerable more or less likely as well as the conditions that facilitate cooperative ability or create vulnerability. Section 5 builds on the foregoing by emphasizing the diversity of vulnerabilities along with the broader social contract tradition’s diversity of strategies for addressing vulnerability.
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Notes
See Gauthier (1986, 11) on the potential for exploitation through fellow-feeling (though, as an anonymous reviewer notes, Gauthier does not claim that fellow-feeling usually has this effect). The a ccount of recognized interests is complicated on Vanderschraaf’s (2019, 27 6) account because his specification of justice as mutual advantage does “not presuppose that the members of society have only egoistic preferences.” Vanderschraaf allows, for instance, altruism and concern for a community. I return to Vanderschraaf’s specification in Sect. 5.
As Vanderschraaf (2019, 281) glosses the vulnerability objection: “Justice as mutual advantage denies the vulnerable any of its advantages, which shows that justice as mutual advantage is in fact no proper account of justice at all.”
Rawls (1980, 546) provides an ideal theory account of justice assuming “that all citizens are fully cooperating members of society over the course of a complete life” and “that everyone has sufficient intellectual powers to play a normal part in society, and no one suffers from unusual needs that are especially difficult to fulfill, for example, unusual and costly medical requirements.” Nussbaum (2003, sec. IV) clearly and insightfully assesses Kittay’s criticisms of Rawls on dependency. Cynthia Stark defends dropping Rawls’s idealization and incorporating the severely disabled in Rawls’s constitutional stage but not the original position (2007) and argues that Rawls’s Kantian commitments support including the vulnerable (2009). Hartley (2011) surveys and assesses social contract theory’s treatment of disability.
Vanderschraaf (2011, 319) emphasizes that a “great advantage of justice as mutual advantage is that it employs weak and therefore widely appealing assumptions regarding what the members of society believe and what motivates them, and it includes an account of rational choice that is simple and widely accepted, at least in the social sciences.”
See also Vallentyne’s (1991a, 2–3) contrast of Rawls’s morally loaded and Gauthier’s morally neutral foundations.
One could provide significantly different specifications of vulnerability. I here start with Vanderschraaf’s and focus on refining it as I think his specification captures critics’ primary concern and arguments addressing this specification provide insights for ways mutual advantage accounts could address other sorts of vulnerability.
Minimally, we may say that the temporarily vulnerable must be included if the account is to match up with and explain real systems of justice in diverse societies. It seems that societies that hold that one’s claims to justice cease each night upon going to sleep are exceedingly rare. For an account to claim no justice is owed to the sleeping would also conflict strikingly with considered convictions about justice. Fortunately, as I argue, justice as mutual advantage readily explains why sleepers are not excluded from justice.
Vanderschraaf discusses the folk theorem at (2019, 242). Binmore (2005, Sect. 5.1-2) discusses the folk theorem and tit-for-tat strategy. Axelrod (2006) famously demonstrates the effectiveness of a tit-for-tat strategy, as well as more extreme strategies like Grim, in iterated games. Gaus (2011, Sect. 6.1-2), Gaus and Thrasher (2021, Chap. 6), and Gintis (2009, Chap. 9; 2014, Sect. 10.2) illuminatingly discuss the folk theorem and its limits.
Mutual advantage theorists may be tempted to reject special distributive benefits for the ill and elderly insofar as individuals can take responsibility for these situations, as by saving for retirement and purchasing insurance. The benefits of justice, however, include fulfilment of contracts. Justice must include requiring insurance companies to pay out.
One can note that a mutual advantage view will be sensitive to the degree of productive capacity among the non-vulnerable and that a modern economy may have many people capable of producing little social surplus while others produce vast amount of social surplus. Some mutual advantage accounts are explicitly sensitive to the relative bargaining positions of people with different productive capacities (e.g., Moehler 2018, 176), though some theorists object to this sensitivity holding that “to each according to his threat advantage is not a conception of justice” (Rawls, 1999, 116). Objections to the effects of bargaining power are importantly related to vulnerability objections, but addressing those particular concerns is beyond the scope of this paper.
Vallentyne (1991a>, 4) writes: “Gauthier explicitly takes the hard line that animals, children, the severely disabled, and members of future generations are not parties to the agreement, since they offer no benefit to current, nondisabled, adult human beings beyond what the latter can obtain unilaterally.”
Following Vanderschraaf, I focus on the issue of whether the vulnerable will receive the benefits of justice. This leaves aside issues such as whether the vulnerable are themselves owed justice or have standing to demand justice from others. Some may object to justice as mutual advantage even if it extended the benefits of justice, say in terms of material distribution, to the vulnerable as something owed to the non-vulnerable, merely by accident, or otherwise than because the vulnerable themselves have fundamental claim to the benefits. For insightful discussion of moral standing, see Cohen (2007) and Morris (1991; 2011).
Regarding intuitions, Gauthier (1986, 269; note excluded) dismissively writes: “Trusting theory rather than intuition, we should advocate the view of social relationships sketched in this chapter without regard to the intellectual fashions of the moment. If the reader is tempted to object to some part of this view, on the ground that his moral intuitions are violated, then he should ask what weight such an objection can have, if morality is to fit within the domain of rational choice.” Regarding explaining existing systems, Vanderschraaf (2011, 321) argues that justice as mutual advantage is particularly well suited, compared to alternative accounts of justice, “for explaining the complexity, diversity, and inflexibility of the actual systems that determine social inequities.”
I put the objection in terms of what justice as mutual advantage will “probably” do for ease of initial presentation, though objectors can variously specify the relevant likelihoods.
Gaus (2016, Preface) illuminatingly discusses the use of models in political philosophy.
This task is made especially difficult with contributions outside of the market. Moehler (2018, 187; note excluded) highlights the relevance of “unpaid and often underpaid social, cultural, and creative work, such as domestic work, caregiving, and volunteer work….”
Benn here follows Rawls who holds that “it would be unwise in practice to withhold justice” from people lacking moral personality (1988, 443).
See Moehler’s (2018, Sect. 6.1) Hobbesian case for a “productivist” state.
On public goods, see Gaus (1999, Chap. 10).
I discuss Moehler’s approach as but one of many ways theorists could further build on justice as mutual advantage. Alternative promising routes are to develop along the lines of a “functionalist” account of justice (Van Schoelandt and Gaus 2018; Van Schoelandt 2020) or to expand upon Humean conventionalism including those elements Vanderschraaf appeals to but also those developed by, say, Mackie (1977, Chap. 5). Such approaches bring out the complexities of social morality, including the variety of scopes of systems of justice.
Van Schoelandt (2019) argues that two is a simplification and defends recognizing a continuum between the levels.
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Van Schoelandt, C. Three vulnerability objections to justice as mutual advantage. Synthese 200, 405 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03871-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03871-z