What We Ought and What We Can by King Alex;

What We Ought and What We Can by King Alex;

Author:King, Alex;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)


3.4 Attempt 4: Fairness as a Pretheoretical Constraint

Earlier, we briefly saw that there were two ways to interpret Cullity’s remarks. The former interpretation led us to Interpersonal Fairness, which faces problems on several fronts. On the latter interpretation, however, fairness acts as a pretheoretical constraint on the development of a moral theory. Fairness is an intuitive data point that a moral theory cannot violate. It’s a constraint that governs moral theory building, or evidence of what the correct moral theory would say. Compare our treatment of certain moral fixed points: A moral theory simply cannot demand that we harm innocents for the sheer fun of it. A moral theory simply cannot base human rights on skin color. Similarly, a moral theory simply cannot be unfair.

To understand this view better, let’s step away from morality for a moment and think about theorizing in general. Roughly speaking, our best, most accurate theories are either things that we have discovered about the world, i.e., things that truly describe how the world works; or things that we have created, i.e., mere inventions of ours. Either type of theory will be subject to pretheoretical constraints. For example, if a theory of physics is aimed at describing how the world really works, then the data will provide an important piece of evidence that a given theory is the true one. If on the other hand a theory is not aimed at discovering truths, but instead is wholly created by us, then pretheoretical constraints are regulatory principles constraining what we want our theory to look like. If we are constructing a theory of physics, then we want it to be useful, and a useful theory must be consistent with the data. Either way, data forms a pretheoretical constraint on physics.

On the present interpretation, we should think of fairness as playing a role in moral theorizing that is analogous to the role data plays in scientific theorizing. Fairness is a kind of data point in moral theory building that either is evidence for what the correct moral theory looks like or regulates what we want our moral theory to look like.

This is the interpretation that I think best captures what the fairness motivation really is.

Pretheoretical Fairness: A moral theory must be designed so that it is fair.



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