The First Objection: the Distinction between Doing and Allowing Harm

The first argument that defenders of practice-dependent theories of justice present against the idea of the global scope of justice consists of two parts. Their proponents claim (a) that only detrimental interpersonal inequalities that are (at least in part) created by social institutions are morally objectionable.

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However, they also hold (b) that these socially -caused inequalities are only a matter within the institutional schemes in which they were produced.

The thought that motivates claim (a) is that the exclusive objects of moral evaluation are those aspects of life that are (at least in part) attributable to human actions. This means that while I owe you, for instance, an explanation for why I did not keep a promise I made to you, no one owes anyone a justification for the occurrence of natural facts and their consequences like, for example, earthquakes, tsunamis, colour blindness, or differing levels of human intelligence. This idea is expressed in one of the central claims Rawls makes in A Theory of Justice. Here he says that “the natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts.”3 5 8

For advocates of interactionist accounts like James and Elizabeth Anderson the claim that justice is concerned with “the conduct of agents”3 5 9 _{means that} justice regards “the terms of our interactions, rather than […] comparisons of the amount of some good that different individuals enjoy.”3 6 0 _{As we previously} saw, though, restricting the scope of justice to existing interactions is conditional on accepting a strong notion of interaction. As of yet we have not discovered the reason why practice-dependent philosophers think they are right to assume a rich rather than a weak notion of interaction (that could allow for a

358 _{John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 87. Supporters of practice-dependent theories of justice}

take this to mean that, for instance, the naturally occurring unequal distribution of resources (that causes the different lev els of societal affluence in the ‘natural inequality’ scenario E) cannot trigger obligations of distributiv e justice in general.

359 _{Elizabeth Anderson, “Cohen, Justice, and Interpersonal Justification”, APSA 2010 Annual}

Meeting Paper, p. 4 (retriev ed from the World Wide Web on October, 18th_{, 2010 at}

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1642011).

360 _{Elizabeth Anderson, “How Should Egalitarians Cope with Market Risks?”, Theoretical}

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practice-independent scope of justice). This is to say, we still need a justification of claim (b) that inequalities are only objectionable within the institutional schemes in which they were produced.

We can better understand the practice-dependent theorists’ focus on actual interactions and their support for claim (b) when we look at James’s and Nagel’s justification of this claim. James wants further to illuminate Rawls’s explanation of this moral dimension of our reactions to natural facts by connecting it with Thomas Scanlon’s characterization of morality. According to Scanlon the latter essentially consists in justifying our behaviour toward each other in ways no one can reasonably reject.3 6 1 _{What we thus owe to each other is first and foremost} the “recognition”3 6 2 _{of each other as persons. Making a moral judgment on the} Scanlonian picture is synonymous with the evaluation of our behaviour and the effects it has on us and others. As a result, the subject or purpose of morality is not to judge the value of natural states of affairs in the world.

Thus, as James argues with reference to Scanlon’s theory, the reasons we base our moral judgments on must be personal ones that “have to do with the claims and status of individuals in certain positions.”3 6 3 _{Alternatively, they can} be general or generic reasons that “we know people have by generally available information.”3 6 4 _{However, what James thinks cannot count as relevant for our} moral judgments are impersonal reasons such as the beauty of the Grand Canyon or the idea that it would be good if all persons were equally well off. This

361 _{See Thomas Scanlon, What We Owe to Each Other (Cambridge, MA: Harv ard Univ ersity}

Press, 1998).

362 _{Aaron James, “The Significance of Distribution”, p. 27 7 .} 363 _{Thomas Scanlon, ibid., p. 219.}

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is because to James such impersonal reasons make “no contribution to [our] minimal recognition”3 6 5 _{of each other as persons.}

James interprets Scanlon’s idea of the personal nature of morality in a particular way. To him, personal reasons and what we owe to each other is inseparable from our being causally responsible or involved in something. This becomes clear when we consider what James calls the ‘Attributability Condition.’ According to this condition, “how people stand in the moral relation depends only on events that are attributable to one or both of those people.”3 6 6 This conviction is central to the theories of practice-dependent philosophers, such as Nagel, who holds that “injustice and social responsibility are clearer when involuntary social differences cause inequality, than when involuntary natural differences do.”3 6 7

This assumed necessary connection between causal involvement and the moral relevance of inequality is what justifies accepting claim (b) for practice- dependent philosophers. The emphasis on causal responsibility can also explain the reluctance of interactionist theorists to admit that there is a problem in the ‘natural inequality’ scenario E. Here it is, of course, the case that both societies utilize the resources available to them. In this way natural resources are transformed by human actions and interaction into goods that are subject to considerations of egalitarian justice. However, the crucial point for practice- dependent thinkers employing a rich notion of interaction is that the separate societies are not causally involved in each other’s transformation of the natural resources that are available to them. Thus, James claims that

365 _{Aaron James, “The Significance of Distribution”, p. 288.} 366 _{Aaron James, ibid., p. 285 (emphasis added).}

367 _{Thomas Nagel, “Justice and Nature”, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 17(2) (1997): pp. 303-}

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It is only when, given a fair amount of luck and time, meaningful patterns of interaction become established between [the] two societies or their members that we can begin to consider the extent to which the global distribution of goods and opportunities is genuinely within their power, and so reflective of or attributable to their social relations as opposed to the mere workings of fate.3 6 8

What therefore lies at the heart of practice-dependent interpretations of justice is firstly, as Derek Parfit points out, an “analytic link between injustice and wrong-doing.”3 6 9 _{This is signified by claim (a) that only detrimental} interpersonal inequalities that are (at least in part) created by social institutions are morally objectionable.

Secondly, though, the restriction of justice to existing interactions, which is characteristic of practice-dependent views, is caused by interactionists’ particular interpretation of interaction as requiring direct causal involvement. The latter leads them to accept claim (b) that these socially -caused inequalities are only a matter within the institutional schemes in which they were produced. Since on this view the realm of distributive justice only includes those aspects of the world that are the practice-internal effects of human interference with

nature, we have an answer to the problem what factors (according to

interactionist theories) are relevant to the evaluation of our conduct as agents. On the interactionist view of morality, distributive justice does not make every feasible improvement of the world a duty. Nagel thinks that the reason this limitation of the scope of justice is important is that otherwise justice would become implausibly demanding on us. If we always would have to aim at making better all the things we can change we would have left hardly any

368 _{Aaron James, “The Significance of Distribution”, p. 294.}

369 _{Derek Parfit, “Equality or Priority?” in Matthew Clay ton, Andrew Williams (eds.), The Ideal}

of Equality (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002): pp. 81 -125, p. 91. Anderson, as well, defends this connection according to which natural facts and states of affairs only become concerns of justice if they are reflected in our actions. “Justice”, she say s, “as an ev aluation applied to states of affairs, is entirely derivativ e of justice, as an appraisal of the conduct of agents.” (Elizabeth Anderson, “Cohen, Justice, and Interpersonal Justification”, p. 4).

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resources and time to invest in other things that seem valuable to us.3 7 0 _{Such a} demanding conception of justice would leave implausibly little room for private prerogatives as well as for values other than justice that also are important to us. Nagel presents the following example to demonstrate the force of this consideration. He asks us to imagine a society in which a minority of the members will come to suffer from “an incurable degenerative condition appearing between the ages of thirty and forty, that kill[s] the victim within five years.”3 7 1 _{He then argues that it would be implausible to think that justice can} demand of us fully to compensate the ones suffering from the disease for their shortened life span or to spend large amounts of resources on delaying the advancement of the illness if that is possible. While these efforts might improve the lot of the affected people such duties, Nagel thinks, would eat up most of a society’s resources in exchange for very little gains for very few people.

This thought resembles the criticism levied against utilitarian positions such as, for example, Peter Singer’s famous argument that morality requires us to do our utmost to eradicate poverty – even if this means to give up on our personal projects.3 7 2 _{If we consider practice-dependent accounts of justice from this angle} they appear less restrictive and conservative. Given their presumption of a rich notion of interaction that is based on causal responsibility, the plausibility of practice-dependent views as a whole is crucially tied up with that of the ‘doing versus allowing distinction’. According to this differentiation “people have a greater responsibility, in general, for what they do than for what they merely allow or fail to prevent.”3 7 3 _{Thus, it is this distinction (which builds on the}

37 0 _{See Thomas Nagel, “Justice and Nature”, pp. 303, 320.} 37 1 _{Thomas Nagel, ibid., p. 314.}

37 2 _{See Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”, Philosophy & Public Affairs 1(1) (1972):}

pp. 229-243.

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difference between natural state of affairs and human involvement in the latter) that forms the normative foundation of this first objection to the idea of the global scope of justice.

Of course, if the ‘doing versus allowing distinction’ is morally relevant it would also apply within existing practices. However, this would be entirely advantageous for supporters of interactionist accounts of justice. We saw that these philosophers base their views on a rich notion of interaction or doing. Especially the works of James and Moellendorf feature the idea that we are morally responsible for the terms and conditions that regulate our purposeful practices with others.3 7 4 _{Practice-dependent philosophers think of these terms} and conditions as (at least indirectly) imposed in our name. To them, we are therefore actively involved in, and can control, the design of the rules that distribute the benefits and burdens of our social practices. Accordingly, practice-dependent philosophers hold that this sort of activities differs from the effects that an earthquake has on the population of a far-away society with which we do not causally interfere. In this way, interactionists hope to employ the ‘doing versus allowing distinction’ to deny that there is injustice in states of affairs like those occurring in the ‘natural inequality’ scenario E.