MAR 21

18: MAR 21.

Assigned

• Introduction to Capabilities Approach [1], Sabine Alkire [2]
• Read, Martha Nussbaum, C2, The Central Capabilities (17-45; 28)

In-class

• "From Partiality to Justice - Justice in an Evolutionary Context"
• "How cultures commit impersonal or structural injustice."
• A continuum of justice positions (good for thinking about PP1!)

Small Group Discussion: Is there a limit to kin partiality?

• One way to promote altruism is Dillion’s strategy - give your money and maybe a kidney. But another way to assess altruism is at critical junctures in your life, such as between generations.

• Imagine three futures for yourself. In all of them, you grow up to have a successful career, a family with two kids, and a medium size extended family. You are approaching retirement and your retirement and estate planning recalls a distant memory of an ethics class which talked about "justified partiality." You and your partner are wondering if you should leave all of your estate to your children or not. Remember, you will have access to this money until you die, so you could cover end of life care for yourself and your partner. Consider these three scenarios:

• A. You and your partner retire with about 1 million dollars, a paid off house, and good health insurance.
• B. You have all of the conditions in A, but 2 million dollars in net worth.
• C. Same as B, but 8 million dollars.

• For all three scenarios, assume that all indications suggest continued growth of your assets. You are also "aging well"!

• In your group discussion, pretend you are actually making this estate planning decision. Would you give 100% of your estate to your kids and relatives in each scenario? What considerations come into the discussion? (Note: you could continue the options by imagining an estate with larger value - 16 million -- 16 billion.)

• Data on household net worth at retirement

From Partiality to Justice - Justice in an Evolutionary Context

• A basic definition of Justice: Matters of justice concern expectations that can be the basis of a claim by others upon us.

• Traditional Examples: equal treatment under the law, protection of rights, non-discrimination. Note that these are largely formal commitments, not commitments to material goods.

• More recently argued: disaster relief, health care, care for people with disabilities, early childhood care, guaranteed basic income.

• You can also make a claim of injustice against someone who defames you or cheats you on a contract. This might be a civil claim rather than a criminal complaint.

• Approaching justice in an evolutionary ethics context: We are by nature partial to ourselves, our kin, and intimates and friends. They benefit and support us in many ways. This is your personal preference network (PPN). You don't really need to justify your partiality to your PPN. It follows that you should use your resources to support your PPN. But you might have good reasons (self-interested or duty based) to allow claims of justice that will cost you resources (usually in the form of taxation). Here's a short list:

• A criminal justice system to protect rights and enforce the law.
• A system of education.
• A social safety net (disaster relief, but maybe also disability insurance, health care, early childhood care)
• A duty to promote "material rights," not just formal rights (freedoms that require resources, as in capability theory).
• A duty to prevent loss of human dignity

• Some quick information on the "cost" of different theories of justice.

How Cultures commit "impersonal or structural injustice"

• Our discussion of PPNs (personal preference networks) like the Alumni Association might help us think about another category of injustice, one supported by cultural processes.
• Main Claim: Cultures allow humans to "normalize" claims that legitimate conduct not perceived as unjust, but later determined to be unjust.

• Think of examples of cultural ideas related to justice that were considered normal, but have since been shown to be incorrect:

• Some races are superior to others.
• Some cultures are superior to others.
• Race is not just a political category, but biologically real.
• The US can't compete at soccer. Well...
• Women can't do math and science.
• Women shouldn't do strenuous exercise. Etc....

• What's interesting about "cultural impersonal injustice" is that it involves a "normalization" a set of beliefs that support practices that, from hindsight, we don't just say that we have different beliefs, but that our predecessors were mistaken. (Something we wouldn't say, for example, about other cultural beliefs, like attractive clothing styles or art.)

• An obvious example for US culture would be structural injustice against ethnic minorities that experience discrimination. If you are a formal rights theorist about justice, you might overlook or minimize the impacts on opportunity and success that come from “impersonal injustice”. Maybe an easier example to see this comes from Italian culture and the “problem of the south”. Overview of Italian attitudes toward the south, which still experiences lower socio-economic success. Northern Italians still normalize attitudes toward southerners that we now explain through culture and history. This allows them to explain lower SES in Sicily as a condition that contemporary Sicilians are responsible for. Likewise, we may underestimate the effect of disruptions of culture that come from slavery and discrimination in US history.

• Now we have better ways of understanding different outcomes for culturally distinct groups. Compare for example Sicilian cultural experience and the cultural disruption that comes from slavery and discrimination.

Martha Nussbaum, C2, The Central Capabilities

• note on the references to Vasanti from the previous chapter.

• Capabilities Theory - approach to social justice that focuses on what people in a society can do or be. (This a short of material freedom - Sen's major work was Development as Freedom. Note how a development economist looks at things.) Rather than thinking about justice as fairness in the distribution of economic goods, capabilities theory sees the measure of social justice in a society in terms of how well they support basic human capabilities.

• 20: Capabilities are kinds of freedoms. They are both internal and external. (Example: Internal: Ability to ride a bike vs. External: having a bike and a place to ride it. "Combined capabilities" are both internal and external.

• People don't only deserve to have their capabilities realized if they are smart or can afford it. Capabilities theory takes in the range of "innate capabilities" that people have, including cognitive and other disabilities.

• Capabilities theory isn't about "making" people function, but rather about giving people real options. A real option includes both the internal and external conditions for the capabilities.

• 26: problem of how to treat "options" that people might choose that damage their own capabilities: risky sports, drugs, selling organs.

• 29: Nussbaum adds a duty of dignity to the theory. This might help justify restricting options that are self-abasing (allowing oneself to be servile or live in squalor). With treatment of animals it might eliminate breeding of dogs against health, or banning cock fights or dog racing.

• 33: The List -- Health, Safety, Education, Social connection, Absence of fear or stress (note upcoming Sapolsky chapter on Stress and SES), Affiliation, recreation, autonomy.

• Note how abstract this list is, but also how it would allow a social justice critique that wouldn't just be about income transfer (Rawls).