MAR 31

22: MAR 31.

Assigned

• Workshop for Position Paper #1: What We Owe Strangers
• Today's class has no reading assignment.

Philosophical Method Point: How evolutionary approaches change the philosophical problem of justice

• Old model: We need to pursue justice and fairness to overcome a "bad thing" about us. We are fallen, we are selfish.
• New (evolutionary model): We need to pursue justice because some of the really good, useful, and even beautiful things about us as socially evolved creatures create injustices.

• "Actions from love can lead to an unjust world" (from last class)
• Our evolved (automatic) responses have a bias toward discounting the well-being of outgroups and strangers. This leads to bigotry, groupishness, and racism.

Small Group Discussion: How Big is Your "Us"?

• 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. 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 each scenario, how much, if any, of your estate would you will to people or causes that do not benefit people in your preference network? After your discussion, please fill out this google form.

• Data on household net worth at retirement

The "other side" of Justified Partiality: What We Owe Strangers

• Last class looked at "justified partiality" at a "first person personal" level with the question,"How big is your "us"?" We looked at how our individual behaviors can create injustices, often by omission. Now we consider the question from the "first person plural" perspective. "What do we owe strangers?" "How big is our "us"? To take on this question, we need to round up some resources and take stock of some of the theories we have already been studying.

• Theoretical and reflective resources for developing a position on the question, "What do we owe strangers?"

• 1. Which "goods" does justice involve?

• a. Promotion of basic subjective well-being -- Do we owe any strangers (perhaps those in our social contract) an obligation to promote their basic happiness? I'll bring in some ideas from "happiness economics" here. Happiness economists critique the use of GDP as a sole goal of public policy. They point to the limited ability of money (after a threshold amount) to improve subjective well-being (SWB). Some argue that the "just society" promotes human development and that there are basic goods that at least wealthy societies could provide that would raise SWB. A typical list includes: child care, education, food security, employment security, health security, and security in meeting the challenges of aging and dying.
• b. Economic justice -- Are there economic outcomes in a society or in the world that would be fundamentally unfair or unjust? If inequality continued to increase even from normal market behaviors, would it ever be unjust? Should we think of Rawls' "veil of ignorance" on a global level?
• c. Promotion of rights and anti-discrimination -- Typically, people who feel that "rights promotion" is an international
• d. Promotion of values related to autonomy -- rights, self-determination, security
• e. Aid and development -- Some argue that valuing human dignity obligates us to provide direct aid in some circumstances, such as disaster relief. Others go further, and argue that we are obligated to help the "bottom billion" to develop productive economies. Are these just good things to do and not obligatory or are they collective obligations?

• 2. Which obligations of justice extend to which strangers?

• Strangers in your own community, your nation, and the world -- With any of the "goods" mentioned above, you may decide that they extend to different types of strangers. For example, you may not believe obligations to promote happiness go beyond borders, but you might still believe that personal or collective beneficence (charity) is a good thing. Or, you may address all of these groups with the same theory of obligation if you think obligations of justice apply to all strangers equally. Notice that the more you are like Dillion (a strong utilitarian), the less you will distinguish among kinds of strangers.

• 3. Start with the limits or lessons of justified personal partiality -- For some of you, this earlier work may set a "baseline" for thinking about obligations to strangers. Consider the positions we outlined during last class: Tribalism, Post-tribal Urbanism, Utilitarian Globalism, Extreme Altruism. You may want to use versions of these in your position.

• 4. Standard moral and political theoretical resources:

• Rawls' Theory of Justice -- which addresses both rights and economic justice.
• Duty to an ideal. This could be a Kantian ideal of supporting reason and autonomy in others, or it could be a more traditional ideal about human dignity and the importance of supporting human life and what a decent life entails. You may certainly draw on values from your faith commitments and life experience, but try to explicate them in ways that might be attractive to those who do not share your particular faith.
• Virtue Ethics -- Promoting human virtues may require specific sorts of aid or support.
• Utilitarianism -- The principle of utility has several theoretical virtues. For meeting acute human needs, it gives us a way of prioritizing need and calculating benefits. Accepting the "equal happiness" principle allows you to compare goods globally (a latte vs. saving a life).
• Libertarianism -- A good starting point if you feel very minimal "collective" obligations (such as through taxation). For libertarianism, the primary duty is not to impede other's rights while pursuing their life plan, but also to voluntarily aide those whom they wish to help (remember, Liberatarians can be individually beneficent). So, "live and let live," plus help those you like or feel deserving.

• 5. Use your understanding of culturally evolved values -- We have been studying the origins and value of cooperation, as well as psychological adaptations of WEIRD culture, such as impersonal prosociality, impartiality in rules, and other traits that seem to orient our obligations away from kin and friends. There is some evidence that these psychological adaptations facilitate markets and some forms of justice, such as those "impersonal" virtues mentioned above. If you endorse these aspects of WEIRD culture (if you think humans "survive and thrive" better with these mental adaptations), you may draw on them in thinking about your obligations to strangers. "Post-tribal Urbanism" is an example of this. We have also studied two theories (Haidt and Hibbing) that help us think about standing challenges we face as a social species. You might argue that we have duties toward those in our community to help with the most basic challenges life poses for humans.

• 6. Consult your moral matrix. Work from your identity, especially as it is reflected in your "moral matrix." Write from your own moral matrix.

PP1: "What We Owe Strangers" Position Paper: 1000 words

• Stage 1: Please write a 1000 word maximum answer to the following question by Tuesday, April 5, 2022, 11:59pm.

• Topic: What do we owe strangers and as a matter of justice? Strangers are people outside of your "personal preference network" (see definition below). Consider strangers in your immediate community, country and and the world at large. Drawing on the concepts and theories that we have been discussing, present an argued view of what we owe strangers and why.
• Your "personal preference network" includes those you are inclined to help and who are often in cooperative relationship with you (e.g. family, friends, partners, and those with whom you have some groupish bond, like being "zags," sharing ethnic identity, or co-religionists).

• Keep in mind:

• You are answering this prompt in the "first person," but you are giving reasons for your view and, implicitly, recommending it as a standard. So this is not just a statement of personally felt obligation, but also a view about what we should all accept as our collective obligation. This should be reflected in the kinds of reasons you provide as well.
• Your readers will not necessarily share your view, so you should say why your position should be acceptable to someone with a different point of view. You will not be assessed on which view (within a wide range) of justice you adopt, but on the quality of your writing and reasoning, and your focus on the prompt.

• Advice about collaboration: 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. 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, verbally. Collaboration is also a great way to make sure that a high average level of learning and development occurs in the class. 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. You will lose points if you do not follow these instructions:

1. To assure anonymity, you must remove your name from the the "author name" that you may have provided when you set up your word processing application. For instructions on removing your name from an Word or Google document, [click here].
2. Format your answer in double spaced text, in a typical 12 point font, and using normal margins. Do not add spaces between paragraphs and indent the first line of each paragraph.
3. Do not put your name in the file or filename. You may put your student ID number in the file. Always put a word count in the file. Save your file for this assignment with the name: [filename].
4. To turn in your assignment, log into courses.alfino.org, click on the [dropbox name] dropbox.
5. If you cannot meet a deadline, you must email me about your circumstances (unless you are having an emergency) before the deadline or you will lose points.

• 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 the Flow and Content areas of the rubric for this assignment. Complete your evaluations and scoring by Tuesday, April 12, 2022 11:59pm.

• To determine the papers you need to peer review, open the file called "#Key.xls" in the shared folder. You will see a worksheet with saint names in alphabetically order, along with animal names. Find your saint name and review the next four (4) animals' work below your animal name. If you get to the bottom of the list before reaching 4 animals, go to the top of the list and continue.

• Use this Google Form to evaluate four peer papers. Submit the form once for each review.

• 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 back to the key and review the next animal's paper, continuing until you get four reviews. Do not review more than four papers.

• Stage 3: I will grade and briefly comment on your writing using the peer scores as an initial ranking. Assuming the process works normally, most of my scores probably be within 1-2 points of the peer scores, plus or minus.

• 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. You must do the back evaluation to receive credit for the whole assignment. Failing to give back-evaluations unfairly affects other classmates.

• Back evaluations are due Tuesday April 19, 2022, 11:59pm.