Michael Gorr

Rawls on Natural Inequality

One of the fundamental tenets of John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice1 is the claim that we should seek ‘a conception of justice that nullifies the accidents of natural endowment… as counters in quest for political and economic advantage … ‘ (p. 15). This contention that the unequal distribution of natural assets (such as intelligence, talent, and so on) calls for some form of ‘nullification’ on grounds of justice I shall term the ‘Natural Inequality Theses’ (NIT for short). An important issue that I think has been thus far largely ignored concerns the place of NIT within the overall structure of Rawls’ theory. As is well known, that theory is essentially a form of contractarianism: the principles of justice are what rational persons would unanimously agree to if forced to choose under a set of constraints definitive of what Rawls calls the ‘original position’. Although NIT would not itself be chosen through this process, Rawls does observe that one of the principles that would be selected, the difference principle (which states, roughly, that socio-economic inequalities are justified only to the extent that they maximize the expectations of the least advantaged class in society), ‘represents, in effect, an agreement to regard the distribution of natural talents as a common asset and to share in the benefits of that distribution whatever it turns out to be’ (p. 101). What this implies, I think, is that it is through the adoption of the difference principle that those in the original position would in fact satisfy the requirements of NIT.

Should the Law Distinguish Between Intention and (Mere) Foresight

Philosophers have long debated whether there is a morally significant difference between acting with the intention of bringing about some state of affairs and acting with the mere awareness that that state of affairs will occur as an unintended side effect of what one is trying to achieve. This controversy is mirrored in the criminal law in a number of places, most notably with respect to the question of whether the mens rea for the crime of murder should require the intent to cause death or only the knowledge that it will occur. In this paper I propose what I believe is a satisfactory way of drawing the intended/foreseen distinction and then argue, contrary to what Duff and others have supposed, that such a distinction does not underwrite a difference in moral or legal culpability. I leave open the possibility, however, that there may be consequentialist reasons for sometimes imposing greater liability in the case of intended harms than in the case of those that are merely foreseen.

Reason, Impartiality and Utilitarianism

During the last thirty years R. M. Hare has developed and defended a meta-ethical view about the meaning of moral language which he calls “universal prescriptivism”.1 During this time Hare has also professed allegiance to a normative theory which constitutes a version of preference utilitarianism. What has never been made entirely clear, however, is his conception of the relationship between those two theories. In his earlier writings Hare maintained that: Ethical theory… provides only a clarification of the conceptual framework within which moral reasoning takes place; it is therefore, in the required sense, neutral as between different moral opinions… On my view, there is absolutely no content for a moral prescription that is ruled out by logic or by the definition of terms (FR, pp. 89, 195).