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The "Veil of Ignorance" is an idea initially developed by John Harsanyi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harsanyi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harsanyi

by yboris 4y ago

The "Veil of Ignorance" is an idea initially developed by John Harsanyi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harsanyi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harsanyi Rawls for some reason focused only on "within a country" so he failed to recognize that the true application of veil of ignorance should push us towards open borders and more aid to developing nations. ps - "veil of ignorance" is probably the best perspective to take when thinking about all the "trolley problems" - because it leads you to recognize the correct (utilitarian) solution (of saving more people).

lapcat 4y ago
> Rawls for some reason focused only on "within a country" so he failed to recognize that the true application of veil of ignorance should push us towards open borders and more aid to developing nations. Rawls discussed this in the later work "The Law of Peoples".
mistermann 4y ago
To be fair, open borders being necessarily beneficial is a bit of a presumption though. Some people are open to foreign aid, but not all of those people are open to open borders, and that being imposed could also affect their stance on aid. Humans are very complex.
- yboris 4y ago
  Humans generally don't think hard about big issues (perhaps because) in general they have very little they can do about them anyway. Humans consistently feel overconfident (and are incorrect) about many things. On the topic of ethics, many seem to go with gut feelings (an evolutionary kludge to get small groups of people to cooperate, and to cohere as a tribe). People consistently overestimate (by many orders of magnitude) the amount of their taxes that goes to foreign aid. Many people in the US are reluctant to have open borders because of racism. But most moral frameworks would endorse open borders - and there is tremendous economic benefit to open borders as well. Consider https://openborders.info/ https://openborders.info/
  - mistermann 4y ago
    > Many people in the US are reluctant to have open borders because of racism. And most people tend to speak in forms where their statements can be technically correct yet misinformative, potentially missing out on the opportunity to improve upon the tendencies you point out. For example, if you were to convert "many" to a quantitative term such as "% of people in the US reluctant to have open borders because of racism" or "% of people in the US reluctant to have open borders, by reason (of which one is racism)", it would be much more difficult to be correct. I doubt you speak this way with malicious intent, but the unknown effects remain. And this is just one bug among thousands.
    - yboris 4y ago
      I agree with your point about being precise with statements. I tried to be vague with words because I didn't look up any statistics for the statement I was making (especially that "racist" is an attitude that comes in degrees, and depending on definition we would have a different % of racist people in the US). No one doubts that racism in America has been a problem for centuries (look at how immigrants have been treated over the years). I was trying to make the generic point that besides the reasons people give against a policy, the actual reasons may be different than those voiced. I would not be surprised if of those opposing immigration, at least 50% hold different attitudes for non-white immigrants.
      - mistermann 4y ago
        Ah ok, thanks for that. And so as to give some deeper insight into the motivation for my question: I often wonder....might the degree to which agents within a system communicate accurately (both in the sending and the receiving) have any substantial effect upon events and the evolving state within the system over time? Say, if we consider two planets: one whose inhabitants speak "highly" accurately, and one who inhabitants speak.....well, like we do here on planet Earth, circa 2022 (opinions are facts, fantasy is reality, etc - and everyone does it, despite fantasies to the contrary) - all other things being equal, might this cultural norm contribute to some of the issues on this planet that people complain about constantly? To be clear: I am asking in general, not as an attack on your comments here.
slaymaker1907 4y ago
Excuse me, I wasn't aware all the philosophers got together and voted utilitarianism as being correct? In fact, Rawls suggestion for maximin helps deal more elegantly with a major problem in utilitarianism which is downwards facing risk often being more important than just expected value. While the standard trolley problem lends itself to utilitarian analysis, things get far more complicated with variations such as involuntary organ donation while the donor is still living (i.e. kill one person to get a heart, lungs, kidneys, etc. which can save multiple lives).
- guerrilla 4y ago
  To support your point, there was actually a vote[1] and consequentialism in general only came out at 24.1% (of which utilitarianism only makes up a portion.) > Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? > Other 558 / 1803 (30.9%) > Accept or lean toward: consequentialism 435 / 1803 (24.1%) > Accept or lean toward: virtue ethics 406 / 1803 (22.5%) > Accept or lean toward: deontology 404 / 1803 (22.4%) 1. https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl?affil=Philosophy+faculty+or+PhD&areas0=0&areas_max=1&grain=coarse https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl?affil=Philosophy+f...
- tylerhou 4y ago
  Utilitarianism can easily deal with downside risk by adding a discounting factor to the moral worth of higher utilities. (E.g. Instead of aggregating utilities by summing them all up, sum their logs, and pick the action that leads to the highest log-sum.) The real problem that Rawls's theory (and other alternatives) solves is the issue of aggregation in itself. If you could save one life at the cost of many, many headaches, a utilitarianist must say that, given sufficiently many minor headache sufferers, you must prevent the headaches. This seems implausible — some believe that no matter how many headaches occur, you must save the person's life instead. Also, this is a nitpick, but it is a common misconception that trolley problems are problems on whether you should turn the trolley or not. In most trolley scenarios that philosophers study, the correct answer (to turn or not) is really quite clear, and ethical theories tend to arrive at the same answer. The real trolley problem is a meta-problem: why is it in situation X we think it acceptable to turn the trolley, but in situation Y which is very similar, we think it not acceptable? What is the morally distinguishing factor between X and Y? For example, we think that it is appropriate for a bystander to turn a trolley to kill one, saving five lives. But most philosophers also think it inappropriate for a doctor to kill one healthy patient, harvesting her organs to transplant into five sick people, saving their lives (your example). In both circumstances we kill one to save five, but the second seems unacceptable. What is the morally distinguishing factor? And what are the morally distinguishing factors in more complicated trolley scenarios?
whimsicalism 4y ago
> for some reason Rawls himself extensively discussed the so-called 'cosmopolitan' critique and it not as if this objection was unanticipated.
car_analogy 4y ago
> he failed to recognize that the true application of veil of ignorance should push us towards open borders and more aid to developing nations. I'll agree to international aid, but why open borders? Plenty of people enjoy having a national identity (no man is an island), and open borders essentially forbid that. You may as well demand parents not show favor to their own children compared to the children of others.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  > I'll agree to international aid, but why open borders? Because it's in everyone's interest. The need to migrate can arise unexpectedly at any time.. natural disasters, wars, climate change, economic collapse, etc, etc, etc. You want to promote norms that will help you if you were in the same situation, which you can be quite easily.

by yboris 4y ago

lapcat 4y ago

> Rawls for some reason focused only on "within a country" so he failed to recognize that the true application of veil of ignorance should push us towards open borders and more aid to developing nations. Rawls discussed this in the later work "The Law of Peoples".

mistermann 4y ago

To be fair, open borders being necessarily beneficial is a bit of a presumption though. Some people are open to foreign aid, but not all of those people are open to open borders, and that being imposed could also affect their stance on aid. Humans are very complex.

yboris 4y ago
Humans generally don't think hard about big issues (perhaps because) in general they have very little they can do about them anyway. Humans consistently feel overconfident (and are incorrect) about many things. On the topic of ethics, many seem to go with gut feelings (an evolutionary kludge to get small groups of people to cooperate, and to cohere as a tribe). People consistently overestimate (by many orders of magnitude) the amount of their taxes that goes to foreign aid. Many people in the US are reluctant to have open borders because of racism. But most moral frameworks would endorse open borders - and there is tremendous economic benefit to open borders as well. Consider https://openborders.info/ https://openborders.info/
- mistermann 4y ago
  > Many people in the US are reluctant to have open borders because of racism. And most people tend to speak in forms where their statements can be technically correct yet misinformative, potentially missing out on the opportunity to improve upon the tendencies you point out. For example, if you were to convert "many" to a quantitative term such as "% of people in the US reluctant to have open borders because of racism" or "% of people in the US reluctant to have open borders, by reason (of which one is racism)", it would be much more difficult to be correct. I doubt you speak this way with malicious intent, but the unknown effects remain. And this is just one bug among thousands.
  - yboris 4y ago
    I agree with your point about being precise with statements. I tried to be vague with words because I didn't look up any statistics for the statement I was making (especially that "racist" is an attitude that comes in degrees, and depending on definition we would have a different % of racist people in the US). No one doubts that racism in America has been a problem for centuries (look at how immigrants have been treated over the years). I was trying to make the generic point that besides the reasons people give against a policy, the actual reasons may be different than those voiced. I would not be surprised if of those opposing immigration, at least 50% hold different attitudes for non-white immigrants.
    - mistermann 4y ago
      Ah ok, thanks for that. And so as to give some deeper insight into the motivation for my question: I often wonder....might the degree to which agents within a system communicate accurately (both in the sending and the receiving) have any substantial effect upon events and the evolving state within the system over time? Say, if we consider two planets: one whose inhabitants speak "highly" accurately, and one who inhabitants speak.....well, like we do here on planet Earth, circa 2022 (opinions are facts, fantasy is reality, etc - and everyone does it, despite fantasies to the contrary) - all other things being equal, might this cultural norm contribute to some of the issues on this planet that people complain about constantly? To be clear: I am asking in general, not as an attack on your comments here.

slaymaker1907 4y ago

Excuse me, I wasn't aware all the philosophers got together and voted utilitarianism as being correct? In fact, Rawls suggestion for maximin helps deal more elegantly with a major problem in utilitarianism which is downwards facing risk often being more important than just expected value. While the standard trolley problem lends itself to utilitarian analysis, things get far more complicated with variations such as involuntary organ donation while the donor is still living (i.e. kill one person to get a heart, lungs, kidneys, etc. which can save multiple lives).

guerrilla 4y ago
To support your point, there was actually a vote[1] and consequentialism in general only came out at 24.1% (of which utilitarianism only makes up a portion.) > Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics? > Other 558 / 1803 (30.9%) > Accept or lean toward: consequentialism 435 / 1803 (24.1%) > Accept or lean toward: virtue ethics 406 / 1803 (22.5%) > Accept or lean toward: deontology 404 / 1803 (22.4%) 1. https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl?affil=Philosophy+faculty+or+PhD&areas0=0&areas_max=1&grain=coarse https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl?affil=Philosophy+f...
tylerhou 4y ago
Utilitarianism can easily deal with downside risk by adding a discounting factor to the moral worth of higher utilities. (E.g. Instead of aggregating utilities by summing them all up, sum their logs, and pick the action that leads to the highest log-sum.) The real problem that Rawls's theory (and other alternatives) solves is the issue of aggregation in itself. If you could save one life at the cost of many, many headaches, a utilitarianist must say that, given sufficiently many minor headache sufferers, you must prevent the headaches. This seems implausible — some believe that no matter how many headaches occur, you must save the person's life instead. Also, this is a nitpick, but it is a common misconception that trolley problems are problems on whether you should turn the trolley or not. In most trolley scenarios that philosophers study, the correct answer (to turn or not) is really quite clear, and ethical theories tend to arrive at the same answer. The real trolley problem is a meta-problem: why is it in situation X we think it acceptable to turn the trolley, but in situation Y which is very similar, we think it not acceptable? What is the morally distinguishing factor between X and Y? For example, we think that it is appropriate for a bystander to turn a trolley to kill one, saving five lives. But most philosophers also think it inappropriate for a doctor to kill one healthy patient, harvesting her organs to transplant into five sick people, saving their lives (your example). In both circumstances we kill one to save five, but the second seems unacceptable. What is the morally distinguishing factor? And what are the morally distinguishing factors in more complicated trolley scenarios?

whimsicalism 4y ago

> for some reason Rawls himself extensively discussed the so-called 'cosmopolitan' critique and it not as if this objection was unanticipated.

car_analogy 4y ago

> he failed to recognize that the true application of veil of ignorance should push us towards open borders and more aid to developing nations. I'll agree to international aid, but why open borders? Plenty of people enjoy having a national identity (no man is an island), and open borders essentially forbid that. You may as well demand parents not show favor to their own children compared to the children of others.

guerrilla 4y ago
> I'll agree to international aid, but why open borders? Because it's in everyone's interest. The need to migrate can arise unexpectedly at any time.. natural disasters, wars, climate change, economic collapse, etc, etc, etc. You want to promote norms that will help you if you were in the same situation, which you can be quite easily.