Oct 8

12: OCT 8

Assigned

• Hibbing, Chapter 4: Drunken Flies and Salad Greens (96-117) (21)
• Assigned today: Fair Contract Discussion and Writing Exercise (Points)
• Recommended: Sandel, Chapter 6, The Case for Equality

In-class content

• Philosophical Moral Theories: Justice

Rawls' Theory of Justice

• Original Social Contract tradition. Another Enlightenment philosophical product! See Social Contract wiki.
• Rawls' basic method: Principles of justice should be chosen by following a kind of thought experiment in which you imagine yourself not knowing specific things about your identity and social circumstances. Adopting this special stance is what Rawls calls the "original position" (parallel in Social Contract tradition)
• Original Position in Rawls' thought: Choosing principles of justice under a "veil of ignorance" (simple intuition about fairness: How do you divide the last piece of cake?

• Note how this realizes a basic condition of moral thought: neutrality, universalization, fairness.

• In the original position:

• You still know: human psychology, human history, economic knowledge, the general types of possible situations in which humans can find themselves
• You don't know: your sex, race, physical handicaps, generation, social class of our parents, etc

• Note Rawls' argument for choosing things you don't know. He considers them "morally arbitrary." You don't deserve to be treated better or worse for your ethnicity, talents, health status, orientation, etc. Recall historically arbitrary differences like noble birth that we used to treat as morally significant.
• A conservative theorist might object. If a health person can earn more money and the freedom to earn money is a matter of moral consequence, then maybe health isn't morally arbitrary? On the other hand, you might be hard pressed to claim that you “deserve” more money because you had healthier genes. For Rawls, it might still be just for you to earn more, but we need to develop his theory to see why.

• So, what principles would it be rational to choose?

• Maybe equality? But what if that (paradoxically) made you worse off? Knowing what you know about people, motivations, talents, etc. . . .

• Rawls claims we would choose the following two principles
• 1) Principle of Equal Liberty: Each person has an equal right to the most extensive liberties compatible with similar liberties for all. (Egalitarian.)
• 2) Difference Principle: Social and economic inequalities should be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged persons, and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of equality of opportunity.

• Note other possible principles.

• Questions for understanding Difference Principle "a": Are the least advantaged better off in a society with economic inequality? Do improvements in the society's wealth improve the situation of the least advantaged? Do decreases in wealth unfairly worsen the condition of the least advantaged?

• Rawl's theory is mostly a way of justifying two principles of justice, but you can also think of these principles as guiding policy. Example of policy implications of the Difference Principle. Changes at the margins should satisfy the Diff Principle. (Mention California covid reopening mandate to mitigate effects on least advantaged. Related evidence of disproportionate effects of Covid by SES (Social and Economic Standing).

• Consider your intuitions about disaster relief in a Rawlsian context.

Fairness in Contracts

• from: Sandel, Chapter 6: Rawls (not a reading for this term)

• What is a contract? What moral rules govern contracts? We tend to focus on consent. "Liberty of contract". In employment, many jobs in the US are "at will"; either party may end the contract without giving reasons. Example of simple liberty of contract. (Note how this plays out in professional contexts.)

• We also focus on the "quid pro quo" (benefits exchanged). Lobster case challenges this.
• Lobster case: You contract for 100 lobsters at $10 a piece.

• Condition 1: You take delivery, enjoy the lobsters.
• Condition 2: You refuse delivery.
• Condition 3: You eat the lobsters and get sick and die.

• Contracts often carry implied expectations and implied commitments. Often wording in formal legal contracts is designed to anticipate these contingencies.

• Nature of a contract

• Fairness of contract may dep. on circumstances of execution. "consent" alone doesn't make a contract fair.

• Case of the $50,000 toilet repair fraud.

• Expectations change with timeline and events "benefits alone" don't determine an obligation
• Still, autonomy and reciprocity are key concepts. (Toilet case violates autonomy.)

• Consent and Benefits -- examples of fair/unfair contracts

• Baseball card trade among diff aged siblings
• Hume's home repairs (story) -- no consent but still obligation.
• Variation on Hume case: emergency measures to stop damage in your apartment. You bash in a wall to access a shutoff valve. Landlord sends you a bill.
• Car repair guy story -- what if he fixed the car? would benefit alone confer obligation.
• Squeegee men -- potential for benefit to be imposed coercively

• Point of connection with Rawls: Rawls veil of ignorance establishes theoretical equality of participants to contract. Both the Social Contract and the specific contracts we execute every day, should be fundamentally fair and guarantee autonomy and reciprocity

Hibbing, Chapter 4: Drunken Flies and Salad Greens

• History of research on finding personality traits that predict politcs: First, are authoritarian orientations identifiable as personality traits?

• Nazi research - Erich Jaensch J and S type personalities; background of trying to understand WW2 atrocities; hypothesis of authoritarian personality Theordor Adorno, note quote at p. 100. F-scale for Fascism. No validity, but interesting for using non-political questions. Han Eysenck's work on "tenderminded/toughminded"; 1960's Glenn Wilson. conservatism as resistance to change and adherence to tradition. "C-scale"

• 70's and 80s research on RWA - right wing authoritarianism. measure of submission to authority.

• Hibbing et al assessment: 102: criticisms persist in effort to find an "authoritarian personality". But claim, "there is a deep psychology underlying politics"

• 103: Personality Theory research: Big Five model:

• openness to experience, **
• conscientiousness, **
• extroversion,
• agreeableness,
• neuroticism. Two of these (**) are relevant to political orientation. conscientiousness connected to research on "cognitive closure"

• "What Foundation is Your Morality Built?" 105ff: review of Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory (We will get to this next week from Haidt)

• 108ff: Values theory of Shalom Schwartz. diagram at 109. 10 core values on axis of individual vs. collective welfare and group loyalty versus ind. pleasure. Diagram also looks like an ideological spectrum.

• Why are political orientations connected to so many other preferences? Hibbing et. al. sceptical of theories that politics drive other prefs. Second possibility, broad orientations drive politics and prefs. Third (their pref), difference come from diffs on bedrock social dilemma and mesh with other choices.

• PTC polymorphism (sensitivity to bitterness) linked to conservatism. Preliminary research from them suggesting that sensitivity to "androstenone" is correlated with acceptance of social hierarchies.

Short Writing Assignment: Resolving a Contract Dispute. (500 words)

• Stage 1: Please write an 500 word maximum answer to the following prompt by October 13, 2020 11:59pm.

• Prompt: Read about the Fair Contract Case.

• Advice about collaboration: I encourage you to collaborate with other students, but only up to the point of sharing ideas, references to class notes, and your own notes. Collaboration is part of the academic process and the intellectual world that college courses are based on, so it is important to me that you have the possibility to collaborate. It's a great way to make sure that a high average level of learning and development occurs. The best way to avoid plagiarism is to NOT share text of draft answers or outlines of your answer. Keep it verbal. Generate your own examples.

• Prepare your answer and submit it in the following way:

1. Do not put your name or any pseudonyms in the file or filename. You may put your student id number in the file.
2. Put a word count in the file.
3. In Word, check "File" and "Options" to make sure your name does not appear as author. You may want to change this to "anon" for this document.
4. Format your answer in double spaced text in a 12 point font, using normal margins.
5. Save the file in the ".docx" file format using the file name "FairContract". Do not add anything to the filename.
6. Log in to courses.alfino.org. Upload your file to the Points dropbox.

• Stage 2: Please evaluate four student answers and provide brief comments and a score. Review the Assignment Rubric for this exercise. We will be using all four areas of the rubric for this assignment. Complete your evaluations and scoring by TBD, 11:59pm.

• Use this Google Form to evaluate four peer papers. The papers will be in our shared folder, but please do not edit or add comments to the papers directly. This will compromise your anonymity.
• To determine the papers you need to peer review, I will send you a key with animal names in alphabetically order, along with saint names. You will find your animal name and review the next four (4) animals' work.
• Some papers may arrive late. If you are in line to review a missing paper, allow a day or two for it to show up. If it does not show up, go ahead and review enough papers to get to four reviews. This assures that you will get enough "back evaluations" of your work to get a good average for your peer review credit.
• You will have an opportunity to challenge a back evaluation score of your reviewing that is out of line with the others.

• Stage 3: I will grade and briefly comment on your writing using the peer scores as an initial ranking. Assuming the process works normally, I will give you the higher of the two grades. Up to 28 points.

• Stage 4: Back-evaluation: After you receive your peer comments and my evaluation, take a few minutes to fill out this quick "back evaluation" rating form: [1]. Fill out the form for each reviewer, but not Alfino. Up to 10 points.

• Back evaluations are due TBD, 11:59pm.