Rawls and talents: first reflection

1. It is highly unlikely that the color of the skin could be treated as a talent in a society governed by just institutions. For our knowledge of production and exchange tells us that it is highly unlikely that a society where the color of a person's skin is treated as a relevant qualification for a social position could be governed by non-improvable institutions - meaning, institutions that produce the least inequality compatible with a certain level of wealth for the worst off members of it. In fact, it is easy to think that racial discrimination prevents people having the capacity to increase the total cake of goods for society from being matched with the social positions where they would acquire the ability to do so. If that is true, it follows that by forbidding employers to treat race as a relevant "qualification" in assigning positions of responsibility, the society can easily increase its total wealth. And this suggest that it might be possible to improve the position of the worst off by simply placing in key social positions the more talented people that were prevented from getting there by racial discrimination and placing the less talented ones in their place. This would increase the distributable wealth without necessarily requiring more incentives for the more talented, hence reducing inequality without damaging the goods available to the worst off members. If one considers self-respect, beside wealth, it is even clearer that racial origin can never be treated as a talent in a society fulfilling the overall scheme of Rawlsian institutions.

Rawls and talents: second reflection

2. There is no necessary guarantee that qualities that are found to be talents in a certain culture will be Rawlsian talents. Rawlsian talents are incompatible with Walzer's idea that the movement of social goods must be determined by their meaning (as found within a culture). For the conjunction of the following two propositions violates the idea that social goods are moved according to their meaning:

1. it is part of the meaning of some social goods (e.g. esteem) that they are allocated to the most talented

2. talents are not traits to which certain cultural meanings are attached, but they are Rawlsian talents

For if talents are Rawlsian talents, then whether they are talents or not depends on facts about possible distributions of primary goods in society. So the allocation of goods such as esteem depends on facts about possible distributions of primary social goods in society. This establishes what Walzer would call a "dominance" of the good "primary social good" over the good "esteem":the allocation of esteem depends (ultimately) upon the allocation of primary social goods.

Rawls and talents

What does it mean to be "more talented" in the context of Rawls's theory? As Nozick remarks (in a footnote of his discussion of Rawls' Theory - in Anarchy State and Utopia), "most talented" individuals just means, in the contexts of Rawls theory, those who are able to produce a larger economic output or who happen to be able to trade their work more favorably or to obtain social positions connected to the highest responsibilities and powers. The most talented should not be conceived to be such "from birth". Nothing must count as a talent absolutely - prior or independently from institutional arrangements. It follows that it is the ongoing scheme of cooperation that establishes whether some quality (or lack of it), say, the ability to speak backwards, or physical strength, corresponds to a talent (or lack of it). "Being talented" is a predicate that has a meaning only relative to a social arrangement.

I will now determine some properties that some quality must have in order to be a talent in a society that is just (according to Rawls). That is I will determine a necessary condition for something to be a talent in a Rawlsian society. A society is just, according to Rawls, if its basic structure (the main institutions that govern the distributions of social advantages and burdens) satisfies the following criteria:

1. Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of
equal basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with
the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal political
liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair
value.

2. Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are
both:
(a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent
with the just savings principle, and
(b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions
of fair equality of opportunity.

The principle of fair equality of opportunity (b) says that:

Those with similar abilities and skills should have similar life chances. More specifically, assuming that there is a distribution of natural assets, those who are at the same level of talent and ability, and have the same willingness to use them, should have the same prospects of success regardless of their initial place in
the social system.

On the basis of these two principles, we can define conditions that something must satisfy to count as a talent within a just society (a Rawlsian talent):

Being good (or bad) at F counts as a Rawlsian talent (or the lack of one) only if

institutions I [which ensure that people who have F and who make the same efforts to cultivate and use F have the same chance to end up occupying social positions connected to similar powers and prerogatives] belong to a scheme of institutions SI such that
- SI guarantees the basic liberties; and
- all the inequalities SI allows go to the advantage of the worst off representative individuals of that society;

That is to say, being good (or bad) at F counts as a Rawlsian talent (or the lack of one) only if the institutions ensuring equal chances to occupy social positions to those with equal talents and efforts are part of a regime of institutions in which social inequalities connected to social positions go to the advantage of the worst off (that is, a society in which no inequality could be eliminated without making the prospects of the worst off members even worst) and in which the basic liberties are respected.

What determines whether some trait which satisfies this necessary condition is eventually a talent, that is a good trait? The answer is: the free decisions of the people living within just institutions. A sufficient and necessary condition for a trait to count as a Rawlsian talent could therefore be the following:

F is a Rawlsian talent iff

the having of F by an individual is positively correlated to F's owner occupying offices and positions attached to responsibilities and powers, in a society governed by a scheme of institution SI where:

- people who have F and who make the same efforts to cultivate and use F have the same chance to end up occupying social positions connected to similar powers and prerogatives
- SI guarantees the basic liberties; and
- SI does not produce any inequality that could be eliminated without reducing the life-prospects of the least better-off members of society

This leads to the following three reflections:
first reflection
second reflection
third reflection

Was Popper an emotivist/radical existentialist?

I am trying to assess to what extent were Popper is committed to a sort of “emotivism” or non-cognitivism, the view according to which calling a moral norm or standard “good” or “just” does not amount to a statement of fact, but to expressing some emotion or inclination of the will. Or, alternatively, to some form of “radical existentialism”, the view according to which all ultimate normative questions are a matter of ultimate existential choice, which cannot be based on further reasons.

From:
the open society and its enemies.

"Norms are man-made in the sense that we must blame nobody but ourselves for them; neither nature, nor God. It is our business to improve them as much as we can, if we find that they are objectionable. This last remark implies that by describing norms as conventional, I do not mean that they must be arbitrary, or that one set of normative laws will do just as well as another.

By saying that some systems of laws can be improved, that some laws may be better than others, I rather imply that we can compare the existing normative laws (or social  institutions) with some standard norms which we have decided are worthy of being realized."


Volume 1, ch. 5 "nature and convention". II
p. 67

[It is not easy to understand what Popper means. The use of the expression which I underline suggests that he endorses some form of emotivism or radical existentialism as defined above.

Further explications in the lines which follow the quoted passage:]

“But even these standards are of our making in the sense that our decision in favour of them is our own decision, and that we alone carry the responsibility for adopting them.”

[This is a thesis about the moral responsibility of adopting a standard. I assume that “responsible” means “morally responsible”, that is, “potentially blame/praiseworthy”. We can evaluate standards (e.g. standards of conduct) as either good or bad, just or unjust. Popper seems to be worried that, if we postulate the existence of moral facts about the goodness or justice of standards, this would threaten our responsibility for acting in conformity to the principle or standard we have decided to adopt. But this can only be true if one presupposes the implausible conjunction of the two following principles, namely 1. that we are not morally responsible for the act that follows from the correct application of a standard that we are not free to choose; 2. that we are not free to choose the standard that we find to be best or most just, because we cannot intentionally choose a standard that we regard to be morally worse, or more unjust, than some other alternative standard. More about this in the concluding remarks.]

“The standards are not to be found in nature. Nature consists of facts and of regularities, and is in itself neither moral nor immoral.”

[Of course standards are not found in nature, in the same sense as tables and chairs are, i.e. we do not “bump” into them. But this is trivial. The real question is does Popper mean that standards cannot be judged (as good or bad, just or unjust) objectively? Probably, Popper would argue that only we, human persons, and only we, can judge a standard as good or just and for that reason decide to use it to guide our action, and therefore have a sort of moral responsibility for making such judgments. But the problem is: what makes our judgments concerning what standards to use right or wrong? If we say: “a further standard”, we shift the question one step further, and we provide no real answer. Therefore Popper's position faces a dilemma: either he endorses a sort of emotivism, or he must admit that what justifies our ultimate standard is some “fact” prior to our will, so that we cannot be held responsible for it. This fact could be a fact about human nature or human rationality (which might be a-priori as Kant's categorical imperative), or a non-natural fact of Moorian kind. However it cannot be conceived as something that we invent or establish, and for which we can be held responsible.]

“It is we who impose our standards upon nature, and who in this way introduce morals into the natural world⁴, in spite of the fact that we are part of this world.”

[Here Popper seems to endorse an emotivist (or expressivist, or projectivist) position as standardly formulated in contemporary handbooks of analytic meta-ethics.]

“We are products of nature, but nature has made us together with our power of altering the world, of foreseeing and of planning for the future, and of making far-reaching decisions for which we are morally responsible. Yet responsibility, decisions, enter the world of nature only with us.”

[This is a non sequitur. Of course responsibility enters the world of nature only with us, in so far as we are the only being on Earth which can be regarded as agents in the full sense. And moral responsibility requires the fact of agency, and – if you wish, in addition to it – the fact of freedom of the will. But why should this fact support the idea that “we impose our standards upon nature” or that we “introduce morals into the natural world”, if that is taken to imply the idea that there is no standard of right or wrong, no truth in the moral sense, apart from our decisions (existentialism) or emotions (emotivism)? It seems to me obvious that moral objectivity (the idea that there are standards of right or wrong which do not depend from our arbitrary decisions or attitudes about what is right or wrong) or even cognitivism (the idea that the validity of standards of right and wrong can be discovered) or even realism (the idea that standards of right and wrong precede human decisions or attitudes in general) or even extreme realism (the idea that there are standards of right or wrong that exist independently from the existence of human agents) are all compatible with granting human beings full responsibility for their actions, in so far as they are in full possession of the agential qualities, and in so far as they are free to choose whether to act, or not to act, for the sake of what is good or right.]

Notice finally that Popper rejects emotivism in the notes corresponding to those passages, but I cannot see how he can escape the charge of defending either a form of emotivism or a form of radical existentialism. And the two views are quite similar, as it has been pointed out.