scholarly journals Does impartial reasoning matter in economic decisions? An experimental result about distributive (un)fairness in a production context

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 217
Author(s):  
Laura Marcon ◽  
Pedro Francés-Gómez ◽  
Marco Faillo
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Dictator Game ◽  
Experimental Result ◽  
Main Hypothesis ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Economic Decisions ◽  
The Veil ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Impartial Reasoning

The Rawlsian social contract presents the veil of ignorance as a thought experiment that should induce agents to behave more fairly within a distributive context. This study uses a laboratory experiment to test the effect of actual reasoning behind the veil, as a moral cue, in a Dictator Game with taking and production. The main hypothesis claims that reflection from an impartial perspective should lead subjects to put themselves in the shoes of who could be the least benefited. Against our expectations, the impact of the moral cue was null and no attempt to rebalance the unjustified differences was observed.

Distributive Justice in the Lab: Testing the Binding Role of Agreement

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-136
Author(s):  
Marco Faillo ◽  
Laura Marcon ◽  
Pedro Francés-Gómez
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Dictator Game ◽  
Actual Process ◽  
Observable Effect ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Conditional Preference ◽  
The Veil ◽  
Lorenzo Sacconi

AbstractLorenzo Sacconi and his coauthors have put forward the hypothesis that impartial agreements on distributive rules may generate a conditional preference for conformity. The observable effect of this preference would be compliance with fair distributive rules chosen behind a veil of ignorance, even in the absence of external coercion. This paper uses a Dictator Game with production and taking option to compare two ways in which the device of the veil of ignorance may be thought to generate a motivation for, and compliance with a fair distributive rule: individually-as a thought experiment that should work as a moral cue- and collectively-as an actual process of agreement among subjects. The main result is that actual agreement proves to be necessary for agents to be led towards a fair distributive principle and to generate a significant amount of compliance in absence of external authority. This conclusion vindicates the role of actual agreements in generating motivational power in correspondence with fair distributive rules.

Decent Reasoning

2020 ◽  
pp. 213-234
Author(s):  
Albert Weale
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Relative Deprivation ◽  
Contract Theory ◽  
Social Contract Theory ◽  
Empirical Method ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Professional Career ◽  
The Veil ◽  
Set Up

For much of his professional career, Barry was not a contract theorist, and he relies on a number of elements from Scanlon’s construction. His general approach is built on a distinction he sees in theories of justice between those that rely on the idea that justice is agreement to mutual advantage and those that rely on the idea that justice is a matter of impartiality. His own theory is impartialist, but dispenses with the device of the veil of ignorance. Instead the contracting parties are assumed to reason with one another about the constitutional terms of their association, and all are allowed to veto proposals if those proposals and unreasonable. Unreasonable proposals are those that fail the test of avoiding absolute deprivation, relative deprivation, or failing to make provision for public goods. His anticipated theory of economic justice never materialized, and his derivation of a Rawlsian difference principle is only partially successful. However, it is possible to use the practical syllogism in a Barry set-up to derive a case for social insurance. More importantly, his principle contribution to social contract theory is his sketch of the empirical method, a method on which the future of social contract theory can be built.

scholarly journals SOCIAL JUSTICE, GENOMIC JUSTICE AND THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE: HARSANYI MEETS MENDEL

2012 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samir Okasha
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Mendelian Genetics ◽  
Division Process ◽  
Impartial Observer ◽  
The Veil ◽  
John Harsanyi ◽  
Shed Light

John Harsanyi and John Rawls both used the veil of ignorance thought experiment to study the problem of choosing between alternative social arrangements. With his ‘impartial observer theorem’, Harsanyi tried to show that the veil of ignorance argument leads inevitably to utilitarianism, an argument criticized by Sen, Weymark and others. A quite different use of the veil-of-ignorance concept is found in evolutionary biology. In the cell-division process called meiosis, in which sexually reproducing organisms produce gametes, the chromosome number is halved; when meiosis is fair, each gene has only a fifty percent chance of making it into any gamete. This creates a Mendelian veil of ignorance, which has the effect of aligning the interests of all the genes in an organism. This paper shows how Harsanyi's version of the veil-of-ignorance argument can shed light on Mendelian genetics. There turns out to be an intriguing biological analogue of the impartial observer theorem that is immune from the Sen/Weymark objections to Harsanyi's original.

Philosophical Aspects of 500-Year Planning

1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (11) ◽  
pp. 1507-1522 ◽  
Author(s):  
B E Tonn
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
Social Contract Theory ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Original Position ◽  
Philosophical Foundation ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
The Veil

A class of environmental problems, termed 500-year problems, poses significant threats to the world's societies. In 500-year planning there is a need for a sound philosophical foundation to guide the development of appropriate methods which analyze problems that cover very long time periods and that involve large uncertainties. In this paper philosophical aspects of 500-year planning, related to determining whether present generations are meeting their obligations to future generations, are addressed. Topics discussed include the treatment of future populations (as identifiable individuals or as enumerable groups) and the appropriate base for 500-year planning (utilitarianism or social contract theory). Adopting Rawls's concepts of the original position and of the veil of ignorance, a social contract is developed that guarantees the possibility of existence for all potential individuals, and sets limits on the risks that current and future populations might endure as a result of their ancestors' abuse of the environment. The specifics of the contract represent rational criteria upon which to base 500-year planning activities.

Freeman and Evan: Stakeholder Theory in the Original Position

1999 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Child ◽  
Alexei M. Marcoux
Keyword(s):  
Stakeholder Theory ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Original Position ◽  
Moral Problem ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Institutional Rules ◽  
Level Of Knowledge ◽  
The Veil

Abstract:We argue that the Rawlsian social contract argument advanced for stakeholder theory by R. Edward Freeman, writing alone and with William M. Evan, fails in three main ways. First, it is true to Rawls in neither form, nor purpose, nor the level of knowledge (or ignorance) required to motivate the veil of ignorance. Second, it fails to tailor the veil of ignorance to the fairness conditions that are required to solve the moral problem that Freeman and Evan set out to solve (whereas Rawls’s own use of the device surely tailors the veil of ignorance to the problem of designing a just social order). Third, the argument, considered apart from its claimed Rawlsian pedigree, fails to bolster the stakeholder theory because it fails to demonstrate the rationality of adopting the institutional rules that Freeman and Evan favor.

scholarly journals John Rawls and compliance to climate change agreements: insights from a laboratory experiment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaudijo Klaser ◽  
Lorenzo Sacconi ◽  
Marco Faillo
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Laboratory Experiment ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Dictator Game ◽  
International Agreements ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Voluntary Compliance ◽  
Open Issue ◽  
The Veil

AbstractThe most evident shortcoming of the international agreements on climate actions is the compliance to their prescriptions. Can John Rawls’s social contract theory help us to solve the problem? We apply the veil of ignorance decision-making setting in a sequential dictator game to study the compliance to climate change agreements and we test the model in a laboratory experiment. The veil of ignorance shows to be very powerful at inducing the subjects to converge on a sustainable intergenerational path. However, the voluntary compliance to the agreement still remains an open issue, because even small incentives to defect can undermine the compliance stability, and therefore break the whole sustainable dynamic.

scholarly journals Making the Veil of Ignorance Work: Evidence from Survey Experiments (forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Experimental Philosophy, Vol.4)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akira Inoue ◽  
Masahiro ZENKYO ◽  
Haruya Sakamoto
Keyword(s):  
Loss Aversion ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Survey Experiments ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The Veil ◽  
Impartial Reasoning

The paper provides empirical feedback on impartial reasoning to justice derived from data obtained using online survey experiments. Specifically, our study focused on whether and how different conceptions of the veil of ignorance and John Rawls’s method of reflective equilibrium affect people’s impartial reasoning to justice. Our findings revealed that ordinary people tend to support the difference principle, but their endorsement echoes neither John Harsanyi’s nor Rawls’s reasoning. The results illuminate that findings in human psychology, such as the principles of loss aversion and “perceived luckiness,” cannot be disregarded for denoting relevant impartial reasoning to justice.

scholarly journals Political Membership in the Contractarian Defense of Cosmopolitanism

2008 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 442-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lea Ypi
Keyword(s):  
Distributive Justice ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global Distributive Justice ◽  
The Veil ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
Sense Of Justice ◽  
Political Membership

AbstractThis article assesses the recent use of contractarian strategies for the justification of cosmopolitan distributive principles. It deals in particular with the cosmopolitan critique of political membership and tries to reject the claim that political communities are arbitrary for the scope of global justice. By focusing on the circumstances of justice, the nature of the parties, the veil of ignorance, and the sense of justice, the article tries to show that the cosmopolitan critique of political membership modifies the contractarian premises in a way that is both unwarranted and unnecessary. While failing to establish principles of global distributive justice, existing cosmopolitan adaptations of the social contract device simply weaken the method's justificatory potential.

BUCHANAN’S NON-COERCIVE ECONOMICS FOR SELF-INTERESTED INDIVIDUALS: ETHICS, SMALL GROUPS, AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alain Marciano
Keyword(s):  
Social Behavior ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
Market Failures ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Veil ◽  
State Interventions ◽  
Pro Social Behavior

Market failures, which are usually viewed as a consequence of self-interest, are also supposed to be a major justification for coercive state interventions. This was the view of, among others, Richard Musgrave and Paul Samuelson, but not of James Buchanan. The latter certainly admitted that individuals are self-interested, that markets fail to allocate resources efficiently, but did not believe in the need for coercion. In this paper, we show that, to Buchanan, coercion can be unnecessary if certain post-constitutional conditions are satisfied. We show that he believed that self-interested individuals voluntarily adopt pro-social behavior in small groups. Small groups or small numbers represent a post-constitutional alternative to the veil of ignorance.

scholarly journals X-Phi and Impartiality Thought Experiments: Investigating the Veil of Ignorance

Diametros ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (64) ◽  
pp. 72-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norbert Paulo ◽  
Thomas Pölzler
Keyword(s):  
Generic Version ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Personal Characteristics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Normative Judgment ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Veil ◽  
Empirical Investigations

This paper discusses “impartiality thought experiments”, i.e., thought experiments that attempt to generate intuitions which are unaffected by personal characteristics such as age, gender or race. We focus on the most prominent impartiality thought experiment, the Veil of Ignorance (VOI), and show that both in its original Rawlsian version and in a more generic version, empirical investigations can be normatively relevant in two ways: First, on the assumption that the VOI is effective and robust, if subjects dominantly favor a certain normative judgment behind the VOI this provides evidence in favor of that judgment; if, on the other hand, they do not dominantly favor a judgment this reduces our justification for it. Second, empirical investigations can also contribute to assessing the effectiveness and robustness of the VOI in the first place, thereby supporting or undermining its applications across the board.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document