M.Giraldone on Rawls & Sen

 Prof Muriel Giraldone has a good chapter on Rawls & Sen's mutual interaction here.

The following was news to me-

It must be noted that as far back as 1965 Sen, together with Runciman, provided a game-theoretic interpretation of Rousseau’s “general will” and of Rawls’s original position, wherein the principles of justice can be viewed as solutions to cooperative games in the original position: 

Our view of the “general will”, which rather follows Rousseau’s emphasis on common interests than his implication of common principles, does not offer any way of establishing principles by which some players must accept to be losers except in so far as the acceptance of rules entailing loss accords with the players’ long-term interest or preference. […] we do not extend the general will so far as to allow persons to be “forced to be free” by the criterion of any principle to which they could be supposed, if rational, to have been prepared to assent from the state of nature. (Runciman and Sen, 1965, p. 560)

Runciman and Sen raise the problem of a potential conflict between the will of all and the general will, “because of the difference between the outcome of individual strategy and of enforced collusion which arises under the conditions of the non-cooperative, non-zero-sum game”; for that reason, they consider that the general will always demands fulfillment of the conditions of Pareto optimality, “although it is not suggested thereby that Pareto optimality is a sufficient criterion of justice” (p. 557).

This is nonsense. Rawls is speaking of free agents coming to an agreement. This is not just a cooperative game it is a coordination game of a particularly stringent type. 

In any case, the will of all would achieve all feasible pareto improvements since that is simply of matter of mutually beneficial transactions without externalities. The 'general will' would not be concerned with such trifles any more than it would be concerned with how you crack open your hardboiled egg.

However, in contrast to game-theoretic approaches, Rawls’s notions of “fairness” and “justice” are not related to cooperative solutions to bargaining problems in actual situations with given interpersonal inequalities, but with cooperative solutions in a state of primordial equality – so that “[their] reservations about the former as interpretations of fairness and justice do not, therefore, apply to Rawls” (Sen, 1970a, p. 136).

This is not the case. Rawls assumes that there are no 'uncorrelated asymmetries' among agents in the original position. But such must exist because of gender, sexuality and the fact that rational agents acquired language within a particular Society. 

 In reality, a man may have a fixed objection to being a woman who has to give birth, or to being a homosexual,  whereas a woman or a homosexual may not object to occupying a male, heterosexual, body. 

Further more, unless agents are as stupid as shit, they won't agree to participating in such a foolish exercise. Why? They already have experience of living in a Society which wasn't Rawlsian- which is how come they have language- and know that their Society wasn't founded on that basis. So why agree to be bound by a foolish exercise in sophistry? Why not say 'we won't play your game. If you really have a good idea about how a given Society could be better, go pitch your idea to the people in that Society. If they adopt your plan and then become happier and better off, other Societies may ask you to come and pitch your ideas to them. If you can't persuade existing people in existing Societies that your idea is better, why should we give you the time of day?'

Sen may say humans have a natural thirst for justice and fairness and they don't find enough of it in historical Societies. So they would want fundamental root and branch reform. But this simply isn't true. We may resent what we see as unfairness or injustice suffered by us and may be prepared to pay a little money to gain redressal. But all we want is Justice as a service industry. We don't want Society to be reformulated according to the principles of Justice. Similarly I may fancy an ice-cream and be ready to pay for one. This does not mean I am committed to Government support for the ice cream industry. 

The contract in justice as fairness is not a historical contract, but rather “a firm commitment in advance […] between free persons who have no authority over each other” on some principles according to which “their competing claims are to be settled.”

But 'competing claims' have already been settled in some more or less rough and ready manner since we first started to crawl! Why would 'free people with no authority over each other' start talking bollocks about 'principles'? The thing is useless. People who talk about it are as stupid as shit.  

They add: “That this is the essence of justice, and that the social contract (in a modified form) does provide a model for it, seems to us to be adequately demonstrated by Rawls” (Runciman and Sen, 1965, p. 559).

Did they stick with that belief? No. They may have been as stupid as shit, but even stupid people, in their stupidity, find new types of stupidity to uphold.  Runciman was a Viscount. His knowledge of 'Social deprivation' in Britain was about as great as my knowledge of the habits of the British aristocracy.

The demonstration consists in showing that the notion of “social justice” does not always correspond to the notion of the “general will,”

Why the fuck would the 'general will' be interested in 'social justice'? Surely surviving and thriving has to do with fucking over your enemies? 

and can thus generate ambiguities in its interpretation. In this paper, Sen and Runciman consider Rawls’s solution for the choice of justice principles to be appropriate, with the caveat “that it involves the assumption, which we do not ourselves wish to make, that there are no conflicts between the principles of, say, needs and deserts, except those dictated by a vested position” (p. 561).

In other words, Rawls's shite isn't fair or merciful. It has nothing in common with the sort of Justice we might want.  

Indeed, we have seen that Sen does not question Rawls’s principle of fairness until the eighties, except regarding the principles that would emerge from it and the fact that his “main interest is not so much in the ordering of social states, […] but with finding just institutions as opposed to unjust ones, which is a somewhat different problem” (Sen, 1970a, p. 140).

Were any just institutions found? No. Why waste time on this shite?  

But since “Equality of what?” Sen has gradually started to cast doubt on the relevance of this starting point for a theory of justice. In The Idea of Justice he extends his criticism of the original position as a starting point for an acceptable theory of justice: “there may be no reasoned agreement at all, even under strict conditions of impartiality and open-minded scrutiny (for example, as identified by Rawls in his ‘original position’) on the nature of the ‘just society’.”

There will be no 'reasoned agreement' to do stupid shit. Justice is as much a service industry as the provision of ice-cream. It will appear where there is effective demand for it. If it shits the bed, there will be jurisdiction hopping and it will collapse because nobody will pay for it.  

This means that it may not be possible to reach a reasonable agreement on a unique set of principles of justice.

If such 'reasonable agreement' is required as a condition for the industry to function and if that industry can pay for itself, then there is a coordination game which sooner or later will be said to have a Schelling focal solution as expressed by a bunch of maxims or principles.  

According to Sen, it cannot be presumed that “there is basically only one kind of impartial argument, satisfying the demands of fairness, shorn of vested interests” (2009, p. 10).

Nor can it be presumed that every kind of argument may not be said to be impartial and to satisfy the demands of any shite you like. If the thing is necessary for an industry to create good livelihoods, then it will exist.  

Besides, this would prove to be useless if it leads to the identification of an “unavailable perfect situation that could not be transcended.”

Nonsense! We may well speak of a perfect ice-cream while carrying on eating what we can get.  

In Sen’s view, it is more relevant to identify feasible alternatives, and then choose among them on the basis of practical reason.

But everybody already does this! Why not say 'it is more relevant to breathe air into the lungs and then identify stuff while breathing out and then in so as to oxygenate the blood and not die of suffocation'?  

However, Sen acknowledges that Rawls himself has considerably softened and qualified his basic claim of the emergence of a unique set of principles of justice in the original position – generating a real tension within Rawls’s writings over the years.

Rawls started off by saying something which looked imperative and timely viz.- be nice to poor folk. That's real justice, not just chucking them in jail any time they mess up.' Some people thought that Rawls's big book could be 'operationalized' for Cost Benefit analysis or for use by Judges. But, it turned out, Rawls had just crapped out this shite coz his job was to shit higher than his arsehole. This was useless to all but coprophagous credentialized cunts concerned to compete with Rawls in crapping out virtue signaling shite. 

Not only does Rawls note that “there are indefinitely many considerations that may be appealed to in the original position and each alternative conception of justice is favored by some consideration and disfavored by others”

in which case, if Political Science is a genuine epistemic activity, much can be learnt from taxonomizing and finding correlations in this field.  

(2001, pp. 133-134; quoted by Sen, 2009, p. 58), but he goes on to concede that “the ideal cannot be fully attained.” According to Sen, “if Rawls’s second thoughts are really saying what they seem to be saying, then his earlier stage-by-stage theory of justice as fairness would have to be abandoned” (2009, p. 58).

Not if it could do something useful e.g. predict how economic changes may lead to new juristic conceptions gaining salience. This is particularly important for MNCs which need to predict how different jurisdictions are likely to evolve on the basis of structural economic or other changes.  

But Rawls has never explicitly abandoned his theory of justice as fairness, despite its inherent and now accepted problems.

Poor fellow, he was very old and the thing was a feather in his cap.  

Sen has fewer scruples against ruining the foundations of Rawls’s influential theory.

But not of declaring his own oeuvre a derivative pile of shite.  

However, this does not mean he repudiates the whole body of work to which it has given birth – and there is a good reason for that: as I have shown, a large proportion of his contributions to normative economics have been directly worked out from it. Instead, Sen suggests a “dual assessment” of Rawls’s theory of justice, in a way that is both appreciative and critical: 

My own inclination is to think that Rawls’s original theory played a huge part in making us understand various aspects of the idea of justice,

but Sen's idea is completely empty! 

and even if that theory has to be abandoned – for which there is, I would argue, a strong case – a great deal of the enlightenment from Rawls’s pioneering contribution would remain and continue to enrich political philosophy. (Sen, 2009, p. 58)

If such are riches, what is poverty? 

As can be seen, Sen’s reflections here are not just critical of Rawls’s position, but positively devastating. However, although Sen rejects the device of the original position, he admits that “there is some merit in summoning the ideas of John Rawls and his analysis of moral and political objectivity” (2009, p. 42).

Sen is saying 'if Rawls could do that stupid shit and get famous for it, why not me?'  

Indeed, he draws inspiration from Rawls on one point, namely that “a conception of objectivity must establish a public framework of thought sufficient for the concept of judgement to apply and for conclusions to be reached on the basis of reasons and evidence after discussion and due reflection” (Rawls, 1993, p. 110).

This is mad. Objectivity is established by accuracy or precision of observation and the absence of a motive to act other than on the basis of observation. There is no need for a 'public framework of thought' or any 'concept of judgement' or discussion of reasons and evidence. There are quick and easy ways to establish this. Suppose I want to sell a particular item. I ring around two or three dealers and get their 'spread' on it. Then, as in the solution to the Secretary problem, I chose the next dealer who gives me as good a price satisfied that the valuation is 'objective'. 

No doubt, in certain complex judicial cases or administrative matters, greater inquiry is needed. But an ordinary person acting in a self-interested manner has a defense in saying 'in my objective opinion- based on my domain knowledge- x was the case. I can't explain to you all the reasons why I think so but ask any man in my line of work and he'll confirm that I acted properly.' 

In other words, objectivity is linked to the idea of deliberative democracy

because, in a tyranny, there is no objective way to measure height or weight. That's how come the Soviets and the Chinese can't get rockets into outer space. They don't know what the objective value of the escape velocity is.

and to the concept of legitimacy,

which existed in medieval times before there was any democracy- deliberative or otherwise

and thus appeals to the existence of a sphere of deliberation where competing lines of reasoning, diverse experiences, new information, and knowledge can be exposed and discussed concerning the specific evaluations and choices that are to be undertaken.

There is a sphere of deliberation re. whether Spiderman can beat up Dracula or what Harry Potter's porn name would be. I'm not kidding. Some very smart people discuss these things in between betting tens of millions of dollars on complex financial instruments. Some very successful arbitrageurs can explain their bets though, an economist might not find their explanation coherent. But other even more successful people can't explain their actions to an economist though they would be able to satisfy their own compliance people that they acted properly. 

Sen adduces another important quotation from Rawls in order to stress that individual judgments, particularly if they are to carry the concerns of justice, cannot be an entirely private affair that would be unfathomable to others: “we look at our society and our place in it objectively: we share a common standpoint along with others and do not make our judgments from a personal slant” (1971, pp. 516-517; quoted at Sen, 2009, p. 134). 

Either these are 'our' judgments- in which case there is a 'personal slant'- or these are judgments we consider to be more or less focal solutions to a coordination game. The latter are robust in a completely different way from the former. It is perfectly proper to withdraw from a particular judicial case or cause for wholly private reasons. Some things, as a matter of Justice, are wholly private to us. Everything else may be equally private with the exception of a duty of a protocol bound, buck stopped, kind which requires us to state what we consider to be the focal solutions to specific coordination games. 

This point cannot but strengthen Sen’s proposal that value judgments can be discussed and, in the process, evolve, allowing the positionality of such judgments to be both acknowledged and – to some degree – overcome.

But it can weaken it just as much. The fact is any nonsense can be discussed and that discussion could evolve into an orgy featuring barnyard animals. If the positionality of judgment is similar, in a certain respect, to howling at the moon, then we ought not to gas on about it. The thing is foolish.  

However, Sen does not confine the discussion to persons who are entitled to make collective choices or engaged in social evaluation because they belong to the polity, nor to a category of “reasonable” persons. Sen departs from Rawls in urging us to consider those “outside” as admissible voices, both because of the enlightenment that their perspectives may provide for those “inside,” and because they might “bear some of the consequences of decisions taken in that particular polity” (Sen 2009, p. 134). 

We may agree to discuss things provided

1) the number of nutters we have to listen to is strictly limited

2) there is cloture- the thing terminates quite quickly

Sen's genius is to prolong the matter indefinitely and let nutters in far away lands join in to howl at the moon and do unspeakable things to barnyard animals.  

Furthermore, he considers that “all of us are capable of being reasonable through being open-minded about welcoming information

this is not the case. Sen is not capable of 'welcoming information' from me- or indeed the vast majority of Indians familiar with his oeuvre.  

and through reflecting on arguments coming from different quarters, along with undertaking interactive deliberations and debates on how the underlying issues should be seen” (p. 43). Sen departs again from Rawls who states clearly that deliberation concerns reasonable persons who “enter on an equal footing the public world of others and […] are ready to offer or to accept […] equitable terms of collaboration with them” 

So there you have it. Rawls was a fool but Sen was a greater one. That's what happens to degenerate research programs. Harsanyi was quite smart. Rawls less smart. Sen is a cretin but those who come after him struggle with issues of personal hygiene and the moral hazard posed by easy access to barnyard animals. 

 Sen prefers to focus “on the characterization of deliberating human beings rather than on the categorization of some ‘reasonable persons’” (2009, p. 44).

Either 'deliberating' is a Tarskian primitive or Sen has a definition of it. If Sen has a definition of it then that definition must fit any valid mathematical method of representing deliberation. In other words, he must have a way of giving maths 'univalent foundations'. He has no such thing. Thus 'deliberation' must be undefined. In that case we can't characterize deliberating human beings at all. Can Sen actually characterize Mochizuki's proof of the abc theorem as a case of 'valid' deliberation? No. So what he has done is focus on something he can't know- nobody can know- and which it would be useless to have a 'working agreement' or 'convention' about. By contrast 'reasonable persons' is juristic and categorizable. I am a 'reasonable person' with respect to deliberations re. Netflix series about vampires and werewolves. I'm not a reasonable person at all when it comes to very complex medical or mathematical questions. 

This qualification is to be linked to Sen’s defense of a “plurality of impartial reasons,”

the problem here is that there is no good reason to believe that there isn't just one big reason, nor to believe that it is not anthropic rather than impartial 

considering the seeking of mutual benefits, based on symmetry and reciprocity, as one form of admissible reasoning among others. 

But greater mutual benefit flows from refusing to give the time of day to talk of 'admissible reasoning'.  

The aim, though, tends to coincide with Rawls’s: ruling out the judgments that do not survive open and informed public debate.

No judgment, unless buck-stopped and equipped with cloture, would survive an endless filibuster. It is not the case that we currently believe that any empirical proposition isn't not just falsifiable but sublatable nor that any law or principle is considered to have indefeasible force. 

Nevertheless, Sen seems to be less optimistic than Rawls concerning the issue of the deliberation, allowing that there might be no consensus at the end: 

When we try to assess how we should behave, and what kind of societies should be understood to be patently unjust, we have reason to listen and pay some attention to the views and suggestions of others, which might or might not lead us to revise some of our own conclusions. We also attempt, frequently enough, to make others pay some attention to our priorities and our ways of thought, and in this advocacy we sometimes succeed, while at other times we fail altogether. (Sen, 2009, p. 88)

 

The possibility of choice, whether individual or collective, exists only on the basis of this kind of deliberation, and with an acknowledgement of conflicts of interests and values.

Yet such choices occur all the time without any kind of deliberation. By contrast, there are areas where there is plenty of deliberation but no choice is made as a result, though, no doubt, the thing happens by default while we are all yapping away.  

Deliberation does not necessarily entail a coincidence of interests or priorities, but it can highlight a disproportion of advantages according to some shared values.

Or not. Campaigning may have the effect Sen speaks about. Deliberation? Not so much. 

This statement requires surmounting divisions of class, gender, rank, location, religion, community, and other established barriers with which injustices are often linked. From this, along with “an objective analysis of the contrast between what is happening and what could have happened” (Sen 2009, p. 389), “responsibility” can emerge.

or not.  Responsibility emerges where a specific agent or group of agents have some interest- monetary, reputational, ethical etc- which is damaged by failure to discharge the responsibility. However, where that agent, or bunch of agents, are widely regarded as worthless and where nothing whatsoever is entrusted to them, any 'responsibility' they may claim to have does not in fact exist. This is particularly galling for people who paid good money to be certified as Federal Boob Inspectors and who tried to discharge their responsibilities in good faith but ended up getting slapped in the face and barred from the pub.  

Undeniably, when disadvantage is clearly exposed within an open and public framework of thought, it is then very hard to pretend to be unaware of it.

But not hard to ignore it altogether. Only if you have set yourself up as a virtue signaling cunt, do you have to bother with this shite.  

In the context of deliberation, a sentiment of responsibility, or at least the conditions for its emergence, is thus enforced.

There is no evidence for this view. Campaigners have found it hard to get legislators- who spend a lot of time deliberating- to take responsibility for all sorts of elementary things. Where campaigning is forbidden, the situation may well be worse. Deliberation can go on increasing in a self interested manner. Arguably this is what happened to the type of Political Philosophy Rawls, Sen and other gobshites have been practicing for the last sixty years.