Next up on the reading list is section 54 of Rawls' A Theory of Justice: The Status of Majority Rule.
I have difficulty reading Rawls. I largely agree with him and think he has sound arguments, but I tend to get a little lost in his exposition. So, this attempt at a summary will be a cheeky walkthrough to produce only a sentence from each paragraph.
1. Majority rule (e.g. democracy) is, hopefully, an instrumental good in that it brings about a legislative state of affairs grounded on the principles of justice (loosely liberty and equality).
2. It does not follow that what the majority wills is right, which is why we need constitutional limitations, though (interesting multiculturalism angle) we should be wary that entrenched minorities may use these limitations to preserve their illicit advantages.
3. A just constitution is "...defined as a constitution that would be agreed upon by rational delegates in a constitutional convention who are guided by the two principles of justice" and the Viel of Ignorance (VI) and Original Position (OP) come into play here as part of a conceptual ideal procedure.
4. A law or policy is just if it could be arrived at via the ideal procedure (VI and OP).
5. A problem with majority decision as an instrument of reaching a correct decision is that people influence each other (lots of human interaction stuff here: group think, evaluation apprehension, social loafing, etc... hmm... perhaps law making needs a fresh looking using the group decision making and creativity literature)
6. There are some benefits from having lots of people involved in decision making though, the exchange of opinion "...checks our partiality and widens our perspective"
7. So we want an ideal procedure.. but don't have it at the moment
8. An ideal political process is different to an ideal market process, because you won't get an efficient outcome if everyone only considers their own interest
9. We can't really bring about an ideal procedure (where people make the laws), we must rely on a certain extent on the people being just, but we should still aim to move towards it
10. Because of the equality principle, in the ideal procedure everyone's vote has equal weighting; one *cough* man one vote, which is a bit different to the ideal market, though I don't know why we should be caring about the ideal market at this stage
11. For any given legislative choice there may be a range of possible outcomes in the 'outcome landscape' that could be considered to be just
12. The role of majority decision making is to choose policies that lie on the 'justice peaks' in the 'outcome landscape', which will make the decision authoritative though not definitive.
Interesting aside: (some) theists claim that only God can provide objective morality. Setting aside the truth value of that, the subjectivity of interpreting that morality, and the Euthyphro dilemma... can the Original Position be considered a basis for objective morality? It appears to be in all but name in A Theory of Justice. Well, to be fair I've not read the whole thing so it could be in name as well.
I have difficulty reading Rawls. I largely agree with him and think he has sound arguments, but I tend to get a little lost in his exposition. So, this attempt at a summary will be a cheeky walkthrough to produce only a sentence from each paragraph.
1. Majority rule (e.g. democracy) is, hopefully, an instrumental good in that it brings about a legislative state of affairs grounded on the principles of justice (loosely liberty and equality).
2. It does not follow that what the majority wills is right, which is why we need constitutional limitations, though (interesting multiculturalism angle) we should be wary that entrenched minorities may use these limitations to preserve their illicit advantages.
3. A just constitution is "...defined as a constitution that would be agreed upon by rational delegates in a constitutional convention who are guided by the two principles of justice" and the Viel of Ignorance (VI) and Original Position (OP) come into play here as part of a conceptual ideal procedure.
4. A law or policy is just if it could be arrived at via the ideal procedure (VI and OP).
5. A problem with majority decision as an instrument of reaching a correct decision is that people influence each other (lots of human interaction stuff here: group think, evaluation apprehension, social loafing, etc... hmm... perhaps law making needs a fresh looking using the group decision making and creativity literature)
6. There are some benefits from having lots of people involved in decision making though, the exchange of opinion "...checks our partiality and widens our perspective"
7. So we want an ideal procedure.. but don't have it at the moment
8. An ideal political process is different to an ideal market process, because you won't get an efficient outcome if everyone only considers their own interest
9. We can't really bring about an ideal procedure (where people make the laws), we must rely on a certain extent on the people being just, but we should still aim to move towards it
10. Because of the equality principle, in the ideal procedure everyone's vote has equal weighting; one *cough* man one vote, which is a bit different to the ideal market, though I don't know why we should be caring about the ideal market at this stage
11. For any given legislative choice there may be a range of possible outcomes in the 'outcome landscape' that could be considered to be just
12. The role of majority decision making is to choose policies that lie on the 'justice peaks' in the 'outcome landscape', which will make the decision authoritative though not definitive.
Interesting aside: (some) theists claim that only God can provide objective morality. Setting aside the truth value of that, the subjectivity of interpreting that morality, and the Euthyphro dilemma... can the Original Position be considered a basis for objective morality? It appears to be in all but name in A Theory of Justice. Well, to be fair I've not read the whole thing so it could be in name as well.
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