GA Cohen, on the currency of egalitarian justice


chapter 7

(151) freedom of non-owners is safeguarded/promoted by intervention

(152) capitalism, then, is a particular distribution of freedom AND unfreedom

(153) libertarians account of freedom, then, is not normatively neutral

(155) capitalism doesn't encode liberty--it only encodes that liberty which is compatible with the existing distribution of private property. put differently, it equally encodes nonfreedom for non-owners

(155) 'capitalism doesn't end up living up to its own professions"

(155) communal ownership can enhance liberty/freedom (idle skis, idle tools, idle homes)

chapter 2

(46) Sen's criteria, midfare, comes between goods (objective) and welfare (Subjective)

(50) vs. Sen, 'capability'

chapter 6

(128) 'justice' vs. legitimacy (which is what you get from the W. Chamberlain example)

(129) 'Justice' vs.  freedom (they can come into conflict--so something can advance freedom, but not justice)

(131) against Dworkin, "option luck" vs. "brute luck" (deliberate gambles vs. involuntary)

chapter 8


(168) to lack money is not just to lack means, it is to be interfered with (this is what Berlin, Rawls don't acknowledge)

(168) libertarians define intervention as preventing someone from continuing an action--but what about preventing someone from embarking on an action in the first place?

sharon street, objectivity and truth: you'd better rethink it 

(1) practical standpoint vs. theoretical standpoint

(2) normative realism (some normative facts/truths that hold independent of our evaluative attitutudes) vs. normative antirealism (reasons to act are not objective, but particular to agent)

(3) Kantian anti-realism (you begin from individual judgement, but this entails burdens that rule out a whole host of acts) vs .Humean anti-realism (strong substantive conclusions do not follow from particular points of view)

(5-6) naturaist realists (normative facts exist as natural facts) vs. non-natural realists (Dworkin, Scanlon, etc.)

(10) the puzzle is to make sense of this coincidence--that what I belive also happens to be what's objectively true

(11) constructivism is a response--moral reason are internal to individuals

(12) Dworkin's response, of course, is that if it's a coincidence, so be it

(18) the 'normative lottery'--just like it should be crazy to think you won the lottery, so it should be crazy to accept Dworkin's coincidence

(18-21)

richard feldman, epistemological puzzles about disagreement

(crux) we're not often honest with ourselves. if we actually agree that a capable person is disagreeing with us, and they're reasonably doing so, and they have exposure to the same facts as us, then we ought to suspend belief

(421) much rides on the definition of what makes somebody reasonable, when they disagree

(421) effects of intuition might make possession of 'same evidence' a real-world impossibility (but then we're not operating in situations of 'full discolsure'; and tolerance can't be said to be in good faith, here)

shelby, justice, deviance, and the dark ghetto (2007)

(127) if overall social arrangements are unjust, then one has to think about the obligations of the poor quite differently than if the society were just. we distinguish between civic duties that they have as citizens (which clearly they can't be said to have), and natural duties that they have as moral agents (which they can't escape)

(144) in effect, what gives us the right to demand that someone play fair in a game that is unfair

(151) duties to each other without their being duties to society (not to be cruel, to help the needy, not cause unnecessary suffering, etc.)

(152-153) there is also the duty of justice -- obligation to help bring just institutions into existence (applies to both the wealthy, and the poor provided that it doesn't impose particularly onerous burdens on the latter)

(in sum) criticism of the ghetto poor is legitimate--but hardly ever of the traditional sort (deviance in an unjust society can be justified). instead, criticism has to be founded on progressive grounds--the basic, natural duties remain important, and we should also be working for a better world

jeremy waldron, homelessness and the issue of freedom (1981)

(309) homelessness as troubling on liberal grounds

(313) homeless forever at the mercy of others, regarding where they can be

(315) "[Homelessness] is one of the most callous an tyrannical exercises of power in modern times by a (comparatively) rich and complacent majority against a minority of their less fortunate fellow human beings" [let's not hold all the non-homeless reponsible, but ok]

(316) [Take-away is that everyone needs certain prerequisites in order to make use of freedom--one of which is a place to be, but others can be freedom from want, etc., etc.]

(317) In other words, it's absurd to speak of freedom separate of 'needs'--denial of basic needs is emphatically a denial of freedom

(318): the point about homelessness can be made in terms of 'negative freed' -- this is not about enabling people, but ensuring that they're not banned  [of course, this speaks to the ambivalence of the positive vs. negative distinction]

(321) to justify a property system that condemns some to unfreedom, you need to summon other values. not freedom.

(329-330) you don't need individual intention for unfreedom to be of concern. [the 'invisible hand' can intend it, that's enough]

nozick (excerpt: 'how liberty upsets patterns')

(163) why 'forbid' capitalist acts between consenting adults'? in other words, maintenance of a given distribution requires continuous intervention (Wilt Chamberlain, etc., etc.)

[but, it should be clear that Wilt is a terrible analogy for social institutions, and the 'choice' that people make. if we could agree that people voluntarily opt for work in which they consistently lose 25 cents to their boss, then this has some merit. but that's just a terribly impoverished conception of what makes an act voluntary.

in response, Nozick's analogy--that the condition of the low-wage worker is like the condition of a man stuck with an unattractive bride--is idiotic, for three reasons. first, he takes it to suggest that unfreedom can only be the product of deliberate human intervention, which is simply untrue. second, our intuitions from one don't travel to another, because the stakes of the two realms are different. third, it depends on our assuming a limited supply of good jobs, which is not at all a natural fact in the same way that the distribution of attractiveness/unattractiveness is.]

thomas nagel, moral conflict and political legitimacy (1987)

(219) convergence (Hobbes--right because it's rationally accepted) vs. common standpoint theories (rationally accepted because it's right)

(220) liberalism as a mixture of the two, because it involves 'a form of reasoning that includes moral concerns'. more than Hobbesian convergence

(222) Is liberalism more than just another sectarian doctrine? Why should antagonists abandon their conception of the good and accept impartiality?

(223-228) this depends on interpreting impartiality in a particular way, that depends on 'loose epistemological preferences'. not asserting oneself against others who believe differently, but also not ceding to their beliefs everywhere [epistemelogically. politically, no limit on the latter save for the harm principle]

(229-230) Nagel calls this 'epistemological restraint,' not skepticism. 'liberalism should provide the devout with a reason for tolerance' (i.e., even when you're convinced in the correctness of a position, you cede). this is because our beliefs should be regarded as just that (our beliefs), unless they can reasonably be defended from an entirely impersonal standpoint. no society should legislate on the assumption that they're truth.