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PhiloMadrid - Pub Philosophy Meetings in Madrid
28 February 2020
From Lawrence, Sunday PhiloMadrid meeting at 6:30pm: Equality vs. fairness
Equality vs fairness
Equality vs fairness
Equality is certainly a topic that has been at the fore
front of philosophy. We are mostly familiar with the concept of equality through
the political idea that we are all equal, we are born equal and, even more
important, we are all equal in front of the law.
The key necessary conditions of equality are not to discriminate
and applying the same rules and criteria in matters of judgement equally to
everyone. In practice such an ideal is never achieved: discrimination is rife
in all societies and lack of money excludes many people from being treated
equally. The most serious instances of this inequality are access to legal
justice, access to education and access to health care. Although there are other
services that a person needs to have a fulfilling life.
The English word, fairness (fair), has a very wide use in everyday
language and no doubt native speakers of English know how to use the word
correctly. However, unlike equality,
fairness does not have a political or legal standing as equality does. This
does not mean that law courts or politicians do not use this term in their
language. Indeed fairness does have a role to play in both disciplines only
that fairness is not a high frequency term or word.
Fairness is well documented in philosophy for example by John
Rawls writes extensively on the subject but I will not be discussing the literature
here. What I am interested for now is the use of the word fairness in everyday
life.
But first, dictionaries tend to interpret fairness on the
lines of justice, impartiality, no discrimination or no favouritism. In effect these reference books use the same
terminology as equality.
Other language translators tend to use the terms justice and
equity. Unfortunately equity in English is a more restrictive term: we use it as
a legal concept or branch of law, or something that requires a high sense of
moral standing. I would argue that fairness is much closer to equity rather
than justice. Something might be just and according to the law but it might not
be fair, equitable or moral.
I would argue that fairness ought to be interpreted as
"the right thing to do" or "the correct thing to do" or the
opposite “not the correct thing to do” but without the legal or moral
background of justice or equity.
This interpretation makes it possible for us to use the term
fairness in everyday situations without involving ourselves with high level
morality or judicial condemnation. For example, it is only fair that the first
person in a queue is the first person to be served. There is nothing moral or
legal about this example.
Another issue for us is whether our sense of equality and
fairness are acquired from the norms of our society or innately available to us
through genetics.
I am not totally convinced that these concepts are inherited
although it is clear that we do use the terms correctly and usually based on a
gut or instinctive feeling to a given situation. Many societies discriminate against select
members of that society, discriminate against females and even males and we
still condone behaviours that we know to be unfair.
If society does not guarantee its member’s equality and fairness,
the latter in a broad sense of the word, it should not be a surprise that
inequalities happen within the family structure as well. Although we are led to
believe that the next of kin are somehow different than other people and it is
altruistic and morally correct to protect our next of kin, inequality and
unfairness still happens with many families.
Favouritism by parents of one of their children is very
common. This favouritism goes beyond the natural attraction of girls being
attracted to their father and boys to their mother. Although this is natural
this shouldn't create any long term issues if managed properly by the parents. It's
when the parents favour one child at the expense of their other children that
things can progress from the parents being unfair to the parents being immoral
or even criminal.
Nepotism is an extension of favouritism within the family.
Sometimes nepotism makes sense within a certain context. We can understand a
successful business person to favour their children and we can even acquiesce
for the crown to pass on to the elder child of a king/queen. It is when an
employee of an institution who has the power to employ people and they employ a
relative that nepotism turns from understandable to unfair and maybe even
illegal.
When equality and fairness fail completely we might move from
illegal nepotism to racism and closed-shop. Closed-shop being when members of a
union in a place of work who prevent non members from joining the enterprise.
A traditional approach to issues of equality and fairness is
to create some form of categorical imperative (Kant) or a veil of ignorance
(Rawls). The idea is that our actions are based on the assumption that we might
have to experience the fate of our decisions. This is all well and good, but
inequality suggests that no one is better off than the others. As I keep
repeating myself on the subject, the problem is how to persuade those who are
better off already to stop being better off and be like everyone else. The
Russian revolution did not succeed to solve this dilemma anymore than fascism
did in Europe.
Fairness and fair behaviour in everyday life is even more
complex. The way we use these terms are related to the spontaneous events in
life. Someone jumping a queue is certainly being unfair until we discover they
have to deal with an emergency at the time. In effect it is difficult to
moralise about issues such as dilemmas and random spontaneity.
Best Lawrence
tel: 606081813
philomadrid@gmail.com
Blog: http://philomadrid.blogspot.com.es/ OR PhiloMadrid.com
MeetUp https://www.meetup.com/PhiloMadrid-philosophy-group/
Gran Clavel (Café-Bar): Gran vía 11, esquina C/ Clavel, 28013—Madrid
philomadrid@gmail.com
Blog: http://philomadrid.blogspot.com.es/ OR PhiloMadrid.com
MeetUp https://www.meetup.com/PhiloMadrid-philosophy-group/
Gran Clavel (Café-Bar): Gran vía 11, esquina C/ Clavel, 28013—Madrid
Ignacio Equality vs. fairness
Hi Lawrence,
Bellow I include not an essay, but just a few thoughts about
the proposed topic.
Equality vs. fairness
Equality and fairness are criteria to characterize social
behaviour.
In a one to one interaction, maybe reciprocity is the key
and just the fairness criteria apply.
In the case of interacting with a group, the result will
depend on the group considered. An equal or fair inheritance will be equal or
fair for the inheritors, but not if we also consider people out of this group.
Beyond that, equality seems to be an objective criteria,
fairness is inherently subjective and Justice should be some kind of fairness socially
agreed.
In my opinion in most of the cases subjective fairness is
closer to "ideal" fairness, if any, than equality. Besides we don't
know when it's not so. Does it also encourages good behaviour?
Being unfair in a good sense could be even better in some
cases. No reason to limit it to just equality.
It's true also that equality has some advantages:
- When we are the ones to be treated with fairness or with
equality, maybe we would prefer the second option some times (most of? least
of?).
- If equality is the rule, then there is no doubt, no
personal responsibility in the decision taken.
- It's also in line with the idea of no personal responsibility,
no personal freedom, just fate. Being all born equal our differences are not
our responsibility.
- With equality there's no reason for envy.
Best,
Ignacio
21 February 2020
From Lawrence, Sunday PhiloMadrid meeting at 6:30pm: Who is the winner: reason or emotions?
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Who is the winner: reason or emotions?
Who is the winner: reason or emotions?
Our question or questions of this genre are an old problem
in philosophy and as we would expect a lot has been written about it. Thus any
self respecting search engine on the internet should come up with a decent
representation of the reason-emotions problem. Indeed, any references of the
problem written these past few years would accept that there is no real problem
at all between the emotions and reason. In effect one needs the other not to
mention that both have their distinct function in human beings. Over and above
this scenario researchers in neuroscience are making inroads into how the brain
functions, especially in the context emotions.
In the context of modern day use of emotions and reason we
accept that somehow reason is by far a higher order ability than simply
reacting to events through the emotions. Emotions are the vulgar uncivilized
motivating causes. No one disputes that emotions have a causal effect on our
actions and today it is accepted that emotions also have a causal effect on reason.
We work harder to buy the latest sports car.
Indeed for many centuries in modern history we find the
rationalist philosophers and the empiricists battling it out for the high
ground of philosophy. And rational philosophy was supposed to be a higher order
philosophy: at least in the propaganda war. Rational philosophy was the quest
for true solid permanent knowledge that did not change with the weather, with
the state of our eyesight and so forth. So the emotions lived in the body and
reason (also rational reasoning) lived in the mind.
But this duality was not destined to hold forever despite
the efforts of renaissance philosophers ad beyond. How could there be two
separate entities of different forms and yet they are found in the same
historical tempo-spatial body each characteristic with its own identity? It is
not that emotions and reason are of different forms but that these are or
supposed to be diametrical different. So it is not that emotions and reason are
different but these renaissance philosophers suspended their reason in the face
of the changing empirical nature of emotions. Let me try and repeat this idea:
these philosophers used reason to create this new "entity" they
called reason (rationality) to reject the status of emotions and empirical
evidence.
However, these past philosophers were correct in assuming
that reason was a higher order form of causing or motivating action when
compared to say emotions. It is not that reason, and to remind you we also mean
rationality, generates automatically or by its very nature superior knowledge,
but that the methodology we use for reason can result in more advantageous
knowledge in many cases.
The methodology for activating the emotions and thence
action is physiological, instinctive, of the here and now. This is important
for events happening now to avoid danger; when we encounter a snake in our path
we instinctively want to avoid it, a cat would, a horse would and a normal
human being would. Unless that is the human being "knows" that this
type of snake is harmless and that it makes a good dinner when poached with
certain herbs.
The difference between us trying to avoid the snake and the
hunter trying to catch the snake for dinner is that the hunter knows the snake
is harmless, knows how to handle the snake and most important of all knows how
to cook the snake or knows someone who can do it for him or her. Whereas we
know nothing useful about the snake: only the bare survival minimum, run away
from it. Thus the same empirical information activated different parts of our
brain because we have different sets of knowledge related to snakes. This does
not mean that we are always right but that we never act without the necessary
set of information relevant to a situation. But when we don’t know the emotions
tend to kick in.
I am inclined to argue that both the emotions and reason
require a certain set of information and knowledge to be activated. The hunter
that does not see the snake is not elated that he found dinner for the evening,
and we who saw the snake are filled with fear. Thus the key factor for us is
not emotions or reason but information-knowledge or no information-knowledge.
Now in the savannah or jungle it makes sense that the first
to see the snake or the human would have a better chance of survival if one of
the two reacted quicker. Today in Western society we do not preoccupy ourselves
much with snakes, but cars are as dangerous as a snake. Except today our
proverbial hunter does not cook a car for dinner but sells the car to someone
who is not afraid of cars, or not that afraid of cars, and with the profit buys
dinner.
The reason why rationality is still today highly regarded
and considered a higher form of motivation is because reason is more in tune
with long term planning; precisely finding ways and means to avoid danger in
the future and thus have more time to be happy. But the idea that reason and
rationality can somehow lead us to a superior form of morality and ethics is
off course a load of nonsense. There is no evidence to suppose that being
rational will lead us to being good or morally good anymore than reacting from
an emotional impulse is less a moral being.
Someone who instinctively pulls a child away from a coming
car is no less performing a morally good act than someone who spent the nights
thinking about some magic creatures on how to be good. But it is all about the
information and knowledge sets we have in our brain: if the person did not see
the car the child would be dead, and if the person contemplating during the
night was happy they wouldn’t seek justice for unusual sources.
Economists, psychologists, sociologists and philosophers
have a hard time creating real life experiments to study but sometimes
politicians oblige. In 1929 German nationalists (including the Nazi party)
managed to organise a referendum against the enslavement of Germans: the context
being the Treaty of Versailles; they failed. It wasn't until the majority
result of the referendum in 1933 to leave the League of Nations that opened the
way for the Nazi party to become the monster we now know about. Basically a
rational instrument (referendums) led to one of the most evil periods on this
Earth.
The modern equivalent of a situation where reason was used
to the maximum effect to emotionally influence the electorate was the departure
of the UK from the European Union. The genesis of this event goes back to the
late 60s and early 70s when the UK
economy was practically bankrupt and the international financial institutions
forced the British governments of the day to either let these institutions
manage the British economy or join the then European Common Market. Those on
the left objected that this would reduce the protection of employees by
privatising nationalized industries and those on the right object because this
would introduce rules and discipline in the financial market something they
were not used to before.
Like Hitler (which I use as shorthand for German right wing
nationalists) the politicians in the UK had a legitimate point. Hitler was
right to object to the Treaty of Versailles which was probably one of the worst
treaties ever created. An in Britain the loss of empire, the cost of the Second
World War and the intransigence of management and workers created an
inequitable situation for people and instability for the economy. Except that
the situation of the UK in 2020 is a product of using reason to influence
xenophobic emotions and arrive at the result of the 2016 referendum and 2019
general elections.
The irony is that in 1929 and 1933 Hitler did not and did
not try to cheat in the referendum; but it is now legally accepted that the
Leave campaign criminally cheated to arrive at a leave vote in the 2016
referendum. And at the time of writing we are still waiting to find out how
Russia helped influence the 2016 referendum result and subsequent elections in
the UK.
So yes, reason does causally affect emotions, rational
justification does not necessarily lead to justice and morality, and emotions
can be the mindless slaves of reason. Thus as far as who won between emotions
and reason, none have won for the simple reason that those, in my examples from
the UK and Germany, who succumbed to emotional xenophobia believe they are
right and those who used reason to influence people emotionally won because
they got what they wanted, the protection of off shore tax havens in the case
of the UK.
But this is not the end of the story. I would argue that
today the race is not really over but that the race is now whose rational
methodology works best to influence emotionally the largest number of people to
help the few get what they want from the many. We can use reason to avoid
mindless revolutions or wars by accepting the principles of democracy or we can
use emotions to spend our income frivolous on things. The methodology does not
have the right or wrong answer, it’s just a methodology.
By the way have you noticed that this ratcheting up of
reason and rationality is very similar to the evolution of religion? One sect
proclaims to have better powers to heal and fix sins and another can reward
believers in more desirable style than another sect. The methods are the same
it’s what we put in the methods that matters.
Best Lawrence
best Lawrence
tel: 606081813
philomadrid@gmail.com
Blog: http://philomadrid.blogspot.com.es/ OR
PhiloMadrid.com
MeetUp https://www.meetup.com/PhiloMadrid-philosophy-group/
Gran Clavel
(Café-Bar): Gran vía 11, esquina C/ Clavel, 28013—Madrid
13 February 2020
From Lawrence, Sunday PhiloMadrid meeting at 6:30pm: The emotional value of things
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