Sen's parable of the flute.

The idea of Justice is different from the idea of Virtue or the idea of Benevolence or the idea of Pious Conduct. In particular, Justice is linked to justiciability which is the question- 'is a particular issue resolvable by the application of juristic reasoning?' This in turn involves what in Mathematics is called unicity or uniqueness. There must be a unique object, or a set of equivalent objects, which satisfy relevant juristic, or objective, legalistic, requirements otherwise there is no normative tie to action and hence no judgment or prescription as opposed to arbitrary toss of the coin to resolve a matter.

In general, these are 'uncorrelated asymmetries' whereby one agent is uniquely identified as having a superior right or eusocial 'bourgeois' strategy. Here, though the cause of the asymmetry is arbitrary, juristic reasoning is not. Moreover, it can be 'buck-stopped'- i.e. there is a point beyond which no further appeal is allowable. 

Where there is non-uniqueness, ideas of Virtue or Piety or Benevolence may still have purchase, but Justice is de trop. Who killed Cock Robin? 'I' said the sparrow. But if 'sparrow' is non-unique then maybe for any sparrow which killed Cock Robin, there is another sparrow more guilty of that dastardly deed. Equally, all may be both sparrow and Cock Robin while simultaneously being neither or both neither and both. 

What happens if you seek an idea of Justice in which unicity is forbidden? The answer is you get interminable nonsense. As a case in point, consider Sen's parable of the flute-itself inspired by Aristotle's remark that if there are few flutes, you would give them to those who played it best- which goes as follows-

which of three children – Anne, Bob and Carla – should get a flute about which they are quarrelling. Anne claims the flute on the ground that she is the only one of the three who knows how to play it

sadly 'knows how to play the flute' is non-unique. Some one else may turn up who can claim to know how to do it better or one of the other two can claim to be able to learn how to play it better. Finally what is the best type of playing one can do with a flute? Attach it to the lips or insert it in some other orifice?

(the others do not deny this), and that it would be quite unjust to deny the flute to the only one who can actually play it. If that is all you knew, the case for giving the flute to the first child would be strong.

No. Uniqueness is not satisfied.  There is a large class of people who can play the flute one way or another.

In an alternative scenario, it is Bob who speaks up, and defends his case for having the flute by pointing out that he is the only one among the three who is so poor that he has no toys of his own.

But 'poor' is non-unique. Anyway, Bob has a penis. He can manipulate it to urinate in a manner which produces delightful decorative patterns. Call no man poor who has a penis. Women, by contrast, can never be sufficiently compensated for their deficiency in this respect. 

The flute would give him something to play with (the other two concede that they are richer and well supplied with engaging amenities). If you had heard only Bob and none of the others, the case for giving it to him would be strong. In another alternative scenario, it is Carla who speaks up and points out that she has been working diligently for many months to make the flute with her own labour (the others confirm this), and just when she had finished her work, ‘just then’, she complains, ‘these expropriators came along to try to grab the flute away from me’.

'Made the flute' is unique. This is an uncorrelated asymmetry. It is eusocial to uphold 'bourgeois strategies' based on unique solution concepts. That's what the mathematics says.  

If Carla’s statement is all you had heard, you might be inclined to give the flute to her in recognition of her understandable claim to something she has made herself. Having heard all three and their different lines of reasoning, there is a difficult decision that you have to make. Theorists of different persuasions, such as utilitarians, or economic egalitarians, or no nonsense libertarians, may each take the view that there is a straightforward just resolution staring at us here, and there is no difficulty in spotting it. But almost certainly they would respectively see totally different resolutions as being obviously right. 

Is Sen correct?
Would an 'economic egalitarian' give a flute to a kid who can't play a flute? No. That would be stupid. You need to give kids toys they can play with, not ones which will frustrate them yet further.

What about a libertarian? Would he say 'Carla made the flute. Therefore she must keep it for all time even though she can't play the damn thing?' Of course not. The libertarian will tell Carla to sell the flute to Anne who gets utility from it and can transfer utility- that is money- to Carla who may now choose to go into the flute production business. Both Carla and Anna are free to help Bob stop being so poor by finding him remunerative work.

The 'utilitarian hedonist' would not rob Carla of her flute without compensation because Carla would suffer disutility greater perhaps than Anna would gain. This is because one resents the theft of what one regards one's own. The notion of oikeiosis- natural belonging- is relevant here. The problem with Sen's capabilities approach- which focuses on differences in the ability of agents in converting consumption into utility- is that it takes no account of disutility- including the disutility experienced by being the victim of Social Justice which may cause people to exit the jurisdiction. Moreover, there are informational and mimetic effect. More than just the production of flutes may be discontinued if it became known that they would be expropriated on production. Production disutility is closely related to opportunity cost or transfer earnings. Moreover, those who are productive are likely to be more mobile or elastic in response. After all, we all have to eat to live. But we don't necessarily have to work to live if some benevolent Benthamite planner will give us money so as to enjoy our life. 

The purpose of Sen's parable is, I suppose, to critique a naive Aristotelian view- viz that the 'telos' of the flute is that it should be played. If there is a shortage of flutes, they should end up in the hands of the best flute players. But this 'telos' could be achieved both by 'top-down' command or through a decentralized market process. The tyrant could give flutes to the best flautists or else flute owners hire flautists or sell their flutes to them. 

To be fair, Sen is not concerned with Aristotle. He has his sights on his contemporaries. The problem is that he engages only with straw-men of his own creation. It is strange that Sen, who has lived amongst Moral philosophers and Philosophical Economists for more years than I have been alive, nevertheless holds absurd beliefs about his colleagues.

Bob, the poorest, would tend to get fairly straightforward support from the economic egalitarian if he is committed to reducing gaps in the economic means of people.

WTF? How does being given a flute you can't use improve your 'economic means'. You can't sell the thing because nobody will buy a flute which will be immediately expropriated.

On the other hand, Carla, the maker of the flute, would receive immediate sympathy from the libertarian.

She'd receive more than sympathy. A libertarian would explain to her how to calculate her cost price and what sort of mark-up she should apply and how she and Anna can have a mutually beneficial relationship such that Anna's flute recitals drum up business for Carla's flute making business. Bob might earn money working for this new partnership in some capacity.

The utilitarian hedonist may face the hardest challenge, but he would certainly tend to give weight, more than the libertarian or the economic egalitarian, to the fact that Anne’s pleasure is likely to be stronger because she is the only one who can play the flute (there is also the general dictum of ‘waste not, want not’).

If Anna owns other property, she may experience great disutility- indeed she may have an incentive to emigrate- if she witnesses any arbitrary act of expropriation, even one which benefits her. 

Nevertheless, the utilitarian should also recognize that Bob’s relative deprivation could make his incremental gain in happiness from getting the flute that much larger.

What about the disutility arising from being hated by the other kids because they fear more of their toys will be confiscated just because this little beggar is their associate?  

Carla’s ‘right’ to get what she has made may not resonate immediately with the utilitarian, but deeper utilitarian reflection would nevertheless tend to take some note of the requirements of work incentives in creating a society in which utility-generation is sustained and encouraged through letting people keep what they have produced with their own efforts.

No. Deeper utilitarian reflection would note that hedonic pleasure from self-indulgence exceeds that from talking nonsense. In this particular case, the utilitarian hedonist has no strong reason to say anything. He should play with himself instead.

The libertarian’s support for giving the flute to Carla will not be conditional

yes it will. Carla should learn to beat the fuck out of Socialist cunts who try to rob her.  

in the way it is bound to be for the utilitarian on the working of incentive effects,

but the utilitarian's own incentive is to wank 

since a libertarian would take direct note of a person’s right to have what people have produced themselves.

There is no such right. I am paid to cook you a curry.  It is your curry. I'm not allowed to eat it.  

The idea of the right to the fruits of one’s labour

unless one was paid or otherwise motivated to produce those fruits

can unite right-wing libertarians and left-wing Marxists (no matter how uncomfortable each might be in the company of the other).

Actually, it unites everybody. It is a different matter that there can be different ideas about how much tax should be levied on the sale of the fruit's of a person's labour, or imputed income from self-produced goods. But, no one has ever said that stuff should arbitrarily be taken away from the producer and given to someone else. Yes, there was 'War Communism' and, yes, there are Mafias and Armies which live off the land and so on. But there is no philosophy, as opposed to paranoid hate ideology, motivating such things.

The general point here is that it is not easy to brush aside as foundationless any of the claims based respectively on the pursuit of human fulfilment, or removal of poverty, or entitlement to enjoy the products of one’s own labour.

There is no general point here because this parable is not fit for purpose. It could have been made so by adding some details. For example, Sen could have stipulated that Carla made the flute when employed by us. Anna learnt the flute at our direction. Bob's poverty has been caused by some act of omission or commission on our part. In that case, we own the flute. It is ours to dispose off. Suppose we are employed by a Charitable Trust. Then, in disposing of the flute we have to consult the Trust deed. If it says 'reduce inequality of income or wealth' then we are bound to give the flute to Bob who can sell it to Anna. If it says 'inculcate a good work and commercial ethic' then Carla gets the flute. If it says 'encourage the Arts' then it goes to Anna.

Philosophy can't actually endow either magical powers or moral authority.  Sen's parable is silly because our argument about who gets the flute is like an argument over who would win in a fight between Dracula and Spiderman. The thing is puerile though, no doubt, kids expand their imagination and powers of argument by indulging in the debate. 

The different resolutions all have serious arguments in support of them, and we may not be able to identify, without some arbitrariness, any of the alternative arguments as being the one that must invariably prevail.

Very true! We don't know whether Dracula or Spiderman will 'invariably prevail'. That's because puerile arguments aren't decided by 'serious arguments' but a punch-up or my wetting myself or you getting called home by your mum to do your homework.

 In a footnote, Sen notes-

‡ As Bernard Williams has argued, ‘Disagreement does not necessarily have to be overcome.’ Indeed, it ‘may remain an important and constitutive feature of our relations to others, and also be seen as something that is merely to be expected in the light of the best explanations we have of how such disagreement arises.

Williams is right about essentially puerile arguments. Grown ups quickly see which arguments are of the 'Dracula vs Spiderman' type and, provided they genuinely need to agree about something- i.e. solving a coordination problem has a substantial positive sum pay-off- and they agree to 'bracket' certain issues which are not germane.

Williams is wrong to say these 'bracketed' disagreements 'remain an important and constitutive feature of our relations to others' unless a discoordination game of a certain type is being strategically resorted to. But, in that case, we are speaking of a separating equilibrium of an idiographic, not nomothetic sort. It follows that ''second order' theories- i.e. theories about theories- are  useless because nothing is general, everything is specific; nothing is alethic, everything is tactical; pundits may talk yet more shite to say it aint so, but shite it remains.

Consider what Sen says next-

I also want to draw attention here to the fairly obvious fact that the  differences between the three children’s justificatory arguments do not represent divergences about what constitutes individual advantage (getting the flute is taken to be advantageous by each of the children and is accommodated by each of the respective arguments), but about the principles that should govern the allocation of resources in general.

Is Sen correct? My saying something is advantageous to me doesn't make it so. I may say 'I need to take heroin because it is the only thing that helps with my back-pain'. I may believe this statement of mine. But it isn't true.

The principles that 'should govern the allocation of resources in general' can't possibly be based simply on the verbal testimony of kids regarding what is advantageous to them.

It is a fairly obvious fact that 'differences between justifactory arguments' do represent 'divergences about what constitute individual advantage'. An argument premised on the notion that heroin is good for kids diverges very greatly from one any reasonable  person would accept.

In this case, what Bob wants is a toy he can play with. He can't play the flute. Getting it will only frustrate him. He is wrong about what is advantageous to him.

Carla can't play the flute either. But she can sell it and make more flutes. It is not advantageous for her to retain title to the flute if she can't transfer that title.

Anna can play the flute. But, she can also pay for it. It is advantageous for her to learn to buy things she can use. It might turn her mind to excelling at flute playing so as to make a living from Music.

Sen thinks the misology he attributes to his imaginary children represents some profound clash of principals regarding resource allocation.

They are about how social arrangements should be made and what social institutions should be chosen, and through that, about what social realizations would come about.

Should implies could. There is no point saying 'if you are starving, you should eat caviare and truffle chocolates. They are so tasty you will soon get your appetite back'.
It is very expensive to change social arrangements and  social institutions. Moreover, it requires a lot of coercive power. Talk, on the other hand, is cheap.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi made billions teaching people to levitate. He also launched a Political Party which contested every constituency in the U.K. Apparently, his 'yogic flying' promoted World Peace.
Sen may not have made as much money as the Maharishi. But if he thinks that 'should' needn't imply 'could' then his political philosophy is on a par with that of the Yogi. Actually, the Yogi comes out ahead. After all, levitating is cool.

It is not simply that the vested interests of the three children differ (though of course they do), but that the three arguments each point to a different type of impartial and non-arbitrary reason.

Kids have no 'vested interests'. They need to do certain things- like playing with other kids. In this case,  Bob and Carla can dance together as Anna plays the flute.

Sen's 'three arguments' don't point to 'different types of impartial and non-arbitrary reason' at all. Rather they show why 'the bourgeois strategy' is evolutionarily stable. Property rights are an example of an 'uncorrelated asymmetry'. They reduce wasteful conflict. Game theory is a first order 'impartial and non-arbitrary' type of reasoning. It can't get us very far but it can does get us out of a puerile type of Punditry's 'Dracula vs Spiderman' cul de sac of 'Public Reason'.

Where an 'uncorrelated asymmetry' exists- i.e. a situation where one agent is uniquely identified (e.g only Anna made the flute whereas Bob could suddenly become richer than Clara and thus 'poorest' does not uniquely identify anybody)- then there can be a 'public signal' to this effect which enables Society to move to a better 'correlated equilibrium'. Nobel Laureate Robert Aumann introduced the concept in 1974- i.e. before Sen turned senile. Society gains greatly when it keeps records of who owns what- as Adam Smith recognised- and upholds the sanctity of private property. China in the Eighties realised that what Marx actually said was 'to each according to his contribution' and that property rights should be governed by the 'uncorrelated asymmetry' of who actually made what, or caused it to be made using their resources. Since then China has made great strides while Sen-tentious Socialist ideas continue to be a great roadblock in rural India's upliftment. 

Fairness and impartiality begins when we recognise that while 'who is poorest' or 'who is most deserving' are subjective matters, 'who made what' is objective. It is something everybody can agree on. Sen refuses to see this so as to write utter nonsense.

This applies not only to the discipline of fairness in the Rawlsian original position, but also to other demands of impartiality, for example Thomas Scanlon’s requirement that our principles satisfy ‘what others could not reasonably reject’.

Our sense of 'fairness' is what gets pruned back by choice under scarcity. Kids grow out of whining about unfairness just as they grow out feeling embarrassed by their parents.

Nobody's principles satisfy 'what others could not reasonably reject' because it is perfectly reasonable to say that principles arise from hypocrisy or 'preference falsification' or that they are essentially ontologically dysphoric. Indeed, one can justify holding antagonomic views simply on the principle that it is right that there be dissent within Society.