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Category: Distribution

Democracy / Distribution / Duties / Education / General / Governance / Rights / Social justice / Work

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On Using Affirmative Action as a Tiebreaker

In this post, Shalom Chalson (National University of Singapore) and James Bernard Willoughby (Australian National University) discuss their article recently published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy on using affirmative action to break ties in competence between candidates for a job or university place.

Affirmative Action is consistent with merit-based selection practices. This is what we argue in our paper, “Using Affirmative Action as a Tiebreaker”, forthcoming at the Journal of Applied Philosophy.

This consistency is surprising. The idea that affirmative action is opposed to selecting the most competent candidates is a powerful motive to reject such policies. For example, when the United States Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that race-conscious affirmative action policies were unconstitutional, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion:

Meritocratic systems, with objective grading scales…have always been a great equalizer—offering a metric for achievement that bigotry could not alter. Racial preferences take away this benefit, eliminating the very metric by which those who have the most to prove can clearly demonstrate their accomplishments—both to themselves and to others.

The thought here is that affirmative action—such as in the form of race-conscious selection practices—removes opportunity for the marginalised to succeed by proving their competence. So affirmative action is, supposedly, inconsistent with meritocracy.

We disagree. There is at least one way that you can implement an affirmative action policy with no expected loss in competence. How? By using affirmative action as a tiebreaker.

First, identify all the people that, for all you can tell, are as competent as each other and more competent than everyone else. What you now face is a tie in competence. Second, apply affirmative action, say by preferring people from historically marginalised groups among the equally competent, to break the tie. Following these steps should not compromise competence.

What about those ‘objective grading scales’? If you are truly selecting for competence, then you might think that the scales are all that matter. But the fact is that our measures of competence don’t always measure actual competence. The same grades do not mean that two students are equally competent. All you can do in a meritocracy is identity the people you expect to be most competent.

Let’s think through an example. Suppose a newly admitted university student’s job is to get good grades in their first year. Now, suppose you know two things about each prospective student: their high school grades and their financial background (whether their family’s income is higher or lower than the average). How would you select the most competent candidate?

In suggesting that grading scales do all the work, Justice Thomas implied an answer: select the students with the best grades and ignore any other information. But this would not pick out the students who are most likely to get the best first year university grades.

According to George Messinis and Peter Sheehan (2015), when comparing students in Australia with roughly the same high school grades, the students from poorer backgrounds get better first year grades than students from richer backgrounds. So, if you preferred a poorer student whose grades were just a little behind the richer student, you would in fact select a student likely to get better first year grades. This is an affirmative action policy that is not only consistent with meritocracy but improves on a policy that focuses only on objective grading scales.

Above, we pretend that all a student must do is get good grades. This makes sense of using high school grades as a metric for competence. In reality, students also must gain the skills necessary for future employment. High school grades are much less likely to matter when assessing future competence.

As we get a more realistic understanding of what we are selecting for, it becomes more doubtful that our selection practices model a perfectly functioning meritocracy. In the actual world, we don’t always select the most competent people. In fact, sometimes the metrics that we use aren’t about competence at all.

In a 2009 article about the United States Space Program, Marie Lathers discusses the requirements for joining the first astronaut program in 1958. Candidates had to both be jet test-pilots and have a bachelor’s degree. However, no woman could be a jet test-pilot at the time. So no women qualified. Of the seven men chosen, two did not have bachelor’s degrees (but were taken to have ‘equivalent experience’). However, the requirement that candidates be jet test-pilots was unrelated to competence in flight. Lathers writes:

Although the first draft of the call for astronauts did not set the requirement of jet test-pilot experience, the final version did, following President Eisenhower’s opinion that those with security clearances who could be called to Washington at any time—that is, military personnel—would be NASA’s most efficient pool.

These metrics ruled women out. Nonetheless, when the same metrics ruled out some good male candidates, the metrics were applied more flexibly. After all, some people can have the required knowledge for a job without having a degree. But some women can be excellent astronauts, despite not being jet test-pilots.

The metrics used to assess competence can be a result of tradition, epistemic mistake, or a direct order from a superior without appropriate justification. Our current selection practices are likely replete with errors. We argue that because of these errors, policies informed by a realistic understanding of our epistemic limitations, and that use affirmative action to break the ties in competence we are likely to encounter, can be implemented without cost in competence. 

To be sure, there are many ways to object to our proposal. One might think that employing affirmative action over a lottery in the event of a tie is simply unfair. One might worry that affirmative action harms those it is designed to help, such as by bolstering stigma. And one might question whether selectors ought to prioritise competence at all. We address objections like these in our paper.

There is a common belief that affirmative action is incompatible with meritocracy. However, we don’t live in a perfect meritocracy. Affirmative action policies can be just as good as current practices for selecting competent candidates, if not better. They can do so while making our society overall more equal, more just, and a better place to live.

Shalom Chalson is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Biomedical Ethics in the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore. She works on philosophical issues to do with wrongful discrimination.

James Bernard Willoughby specialises in epistemology, and in particular, on epistemic instrumentalism. However, he is currently working on a range of experimental projects: counterfactuals and retraction; what makes people judge a belief as more or less justified; and assessing legal compliance of AI.

Distribution / Duties / General / Moral values / Social justice

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The Anarchist Banker and the Acceptability of Effective Altruism

Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister | 1539 | Massijs, Jan

In his book The Anarchist Banker, the Portuguese poet and novelist Fernando Pessoa tells the story of an anarchist who also happens to be a banker. His old comrades are shocked by this apparent contradiction of normative beliefs and actions. But the anarchist justifies his unexpected choice of occupation by pointing out that anarchists can achieve none of their ideals if they don’t have the means to do so. Becoming a banker is, in fact, the best way to contribute to the anarchist cause! Or so, at least, is the banker’s argument.

At first, one may suspect that Pessoa’s anarchist banker is not honest. We could rightly infer from his choice of occupation that he has relinquished the ideals of his youth and that his anarchist talk is just that: mere talk. But another interpretation is possible: what if the anarchist banker is in fact honest? And what if his way of life is, in fact, the best way to contribute to anarchism, because the money he generates through his banking activities allows him to support the anarchist cause more effectively than most other anarchists? Isn’t he simply a sort of effective altruist? For, like effective altruists, he has considered the evidence and applied reason to work out the most effective ways to improve the world (i.e. by becoming a banker), though he may never have heard about act-utilitarianism.

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Climate / Distribution / Economics / Environment / General / Technology

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Bednets versus Rocket Ships: Should we care more for people alive today or the future of humanity?

In this post, Elizabeth Hupfer (High Point University) discusses her article recently published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy on how to balance concern for the future of humanity with the needs of those alive today.

Made with Canva AI

Ever wonder why ChatGPT was invented? Or why billionaires have become so obsessed with rockets? The common thread in these questions is Longtermism. Longtermism is the view that concern for the long-term future is a moral imperative. The theory is caricatured by critics as a movement preoccupied with dystopian takeover by AI, a globe shrouded in nuclear winter, and colonization of distant planets. But at the heart of Longtermism are concepts intuitive to many: that future people’s lives matter and that it is good to ensure the survival of humanity. Yet, in our current world of scarce resources, Longtermist priority may go to future people at the expense of present people in need. In my paper I argue that Longtermists do not have a clear means of giving priority to people in need today without abandoning central tenets of the theory.

Longtermism

Longtermism has grown in popularity from a philosophical theory to a social movement that impacts Silicon Valley, US politics, international laws, and more. To understand this consequential theory, we need to look at two important components: time and quantity of future people.

First, Longtermists argue that time is not morally important. In What We Owe the Future, William MacAskill gives the example of a dropping a shard of glass on a hike. If you drop the glass and do not pick it up then you have harmed the person who steps on it, even if that person exists in the future.

Second, Longtermists argue that there are potentially tens of trillions of people who could exist in the future. There are various ways that Longtermists can calculate this number, but all that matters for our purposes is that it is a lot. A whole lot. More people than exist presently, and more people than have ever existed up to this point.

Combining the notion that time is not morally important and that there are a vast number of potential people, means that it is imperative to safeguard both the survival of humanity and the quality-of-life of future people.

Far-Future Priority Objection

What if this concern for the tens of trillions of future people comes at the expense of people who are living today? I call this the Far-Future Priority Objection: repeated instances of priority to far-future concerns will result in the systemic neglect of current people in the most need and potentially large-scale reallocation of resources to far-future interventions.

For example, Hilary Greaves and William MacAskill argue that the most effective way to save a current life through donation is providing insecticide-treated bednets in malaria zones. Their data shows that with these bednets, donating $100 is equivalent to saving 0.025 lives. But this is less effective than many Longtermists causes such asteroid deflection ($100 would result in around 300,000 additional lives), pandemic preparedness (200 million additional lives), and preventing AI takeover (one trillion additional lives). If Longtermists are concerned about efficiently doing the most good they can with a unit of resources (and I argue in my paper that they are), then Longtermist causes will trump even the most efficient causes for people alive today.

According to the Far-Future Priority Objection, repeated priority in this pattern could significantly shift overall resources away from those in need today over time, particularly those in low-income nations. Thus, widespread espousal of Longtermism may result in the global affluent turning their backs on these populations.

Potential Responses

In my paper, I analyse several potential responses the Longtermist could give to the Far-Future Priority Objection and argue that none of these responses can successfully mitigate the objection without abandoning basic tenets of Longtermism.

I will highlight one such argument here. Longtermists typically argue that far-future interventions cannot cause serious harm in the short term. According to my Far-Future Priority objection, individual instances of priority to the far future are not harmful but repeated instances may be. Take the following analogy: a law is enacted which is not explicitly discriminatory towards minority Group X. However, over time, implementation of the law results in resources, which would previously have gone to Group X, going to nearby (perhaps better off) Group Y. A decade later, Group X is significantly worse off. I think that one could reasonably argue that Group X was seriously harmed. Similarly, Longtermism does not intentionally or explicitly discriminate against current people, and it does not remove existing resources from them. Serious harm is likely caused nonetheless.

However, I argue that appealing to near-future serious harms results in either too strong or too weak of a response to the Far-Future Priority Objection and is not a viable avenue for the Longtermist. This is because one could be an absolutist about causing harm, which would mean that repeated priority to the future would be morally wrong and Longtermism would be undermined altogether. Alternatively, one could be a non-absolutist and say that the prevention of harm can be overridden when the stakes are high enough. Yet, since there could be tens of trillions of future lives at risk, the stakes will always be so high as to override the ban.

Conclusion

Longtermists have two options. First, they can bite the bullet and accept that Longtermism could result in systemic neglect of present people. This is counterintuitive to many. Second, they can create a new principle which allows for occasional priority for present people without abandoning basic tenets of the theory. In my paper, I analyse and dismiss several possible principles.

Elizabeth Hupfer’s research focuses on the intersection between normative/applied ethics and social/ political philosophy. She has published on distributive justice, coercion, humanitarianism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism.

Climate / Distribution / Economics / Environment / General / Governance

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Quo vadis carbon tax?

Carbon taxes represent a key part of humanity’s current strategy to avoid global warming above 2 degrees Celsius. They work by making carbon-intensive activities more expensive, thus encouraging individuals to reduce these activities. Given the existential threat climate change poses to our societies, one would hope that such a key policy tool was both effective and enjoyed broad public support. Neither of these things are true today. Why is that and what needs to change?

The carbon tax is a so-called steering tax. Its goal is to change people’s behaviour, not to raise revenue for the government. The current version of the carbon tax in place in most countries does not change people’s behaviour as effectively as it could and should. To see why, consider two frequently ignored facts.

First, rich people emit considerably more than the average person. Studies on socioenvironmental inequality estimate that the top 10% of emitters are responsible for about 50% of individual carbon emissions. Think of private jets, which emit up to 4.5 tons of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e) per hour, that is three times as much as the average human on the planet can emit per year if we want to meet our climate targets. Second, someone who falls in this category will usually not even bat an eye at a carbon price of, say, 100 Euros per tCO2e, let alone change their consumption habits. For context, the price of carbon in the European Union Emissions Trading System has oscillated around 80 Euros per tCO2e over the last three years.

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Academia / Distribution / General / Health / Moral values / Technology

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Just do(pe) it? Why the academic project is at risk from proposals to pharmacologically enhance researchers.

In this post, Heidi Matisonn (University of Cape Town) and Jacek Brzozowski (University of KwaZulu-Natal) discuss their recently published article in the Journal of Applied Philosophy in which they explore the justifiability and potential risks of cognitive enhancement in academia.

Image created with ChatGPT.

The human desire to enhance our cognitive abilities, to push the boundaries of intelligence through education, tools, and technology has a long history. Fifteen years ago, confronted by the possibility that a ‘morally corrupt’ minority could misuse cognitive gains to catastrophic effect, Persson and Savulescu proposed that research into cognitive enhancement should be halted unless accompanied by advancements in moral enhancement.

In response to this, and following on from Harris’ worries about the mass suffering that could result from delaying cognitive enhancement until moral enhancement could catch up, in 2023, Gordon and Ragonese offered what they termed a ‘practical approach’ to cognitive enhancement research in which they advocated for targeted cognitive enhancement —specifically for researchers working on moral enhancement.

Our recent article in the Journal of Applied Philosophy suggests that while both sets of authors are correct in their concerns about the significant risks related to cognitive enhancement outrunning moral enhancement, their focus on the ‘extremes’ neglects some more practical consequences that a general acceptance of cognitive enhancement may bring — not least of which relate to the academic project itself.

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Democracy / Distribution / Economics / Social justice

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In Wisława Szymborska Park: Reflections on 15 Years of Citizens’ Budgets in Poland

This is a guest post by Callum MacRae (Jagiellonian University, Krakow)

A photograph of Wisława Szymborska park. It shows a stone waterfeature running alongside an area of mixed wild plants and flowers.
Wisława Szymborska park, photograph provided by Callum MacRae

Tucked behind the public Voivodeship library, connecting Karmelicka street to the east with Dolnych Młynów to the west, lies Krakow’s Wisława Szymborska park. The park is new to Krakow, having opened just last year. But, sitting just a short walk from the historic old town, those who live in the city have already come to know and love it as a precious area of public greenspace. On warm days, the park’s carefully considered design is alive with people; playing, chatting, reading, passing time, watching the world go by.

But the park represents more than just an impressively successful example of green, public, urban design. It is a product of Krakow’s Citizens’ Budget scheme, having been approved in the 2019 round of funding, and as such it also represents the power and potential of Poland’s remarkable modern engagement with participatory budgeting in local government.

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Distribution / Economics / General / Social justice

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The small-mindedness of means-testing

The hot topic in British politics last week was the government’s decision to scrap the winter fuel payment. People over the age of 65 used to be able to claim a lump sum of between £200 and £300 pounds each winter. Desperately scrabbling around for cash, the government has changed the policy so that now only elderly people who are already receiving state financial help are eligible for the payment. This is a classic example of “means-testing”: making state benefits only available to those who do not have the means to pay for things themselves.

Means-testing tends to be popular because it seems to make a lot of sense. Why waste money providing benefits to millionaires? At the most general level, a state with any egalitarian ambitions must treat the rich and poor differently.

Nonetheless, means-testing is generally small-minded and regrettable.

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Animals / Climate / Distribution / Environment / General / Social justice

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From the Vault: Nature, Animals, and the Environment

While Justice Everywhere takes a short break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2023-24 season. 

Student climate strike in Melbourne, Australia (2021). John Englart from Fawkner, Australia, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Here are a few highlights from this year’s posts on issues relating to nature, the environment, and animals:

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Stay tuned for even more on this topic in our 2024-25 season!

Justice Everywhere will return in full swing in September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors (published on Mondays), in addition to our Journal of Applied Philosophy series and other special series (published on Thursdays). If you would like to contribute a guest post on a topical justice-based issue (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.

Democracy / Distribution / Economics / General / Governance / Punishment / Social justice

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From the Vault: Justice, Democracy, and Society

While Justice Everywhere takes a short break over the summer, we recall some of the highlights from our 2023-24 season. 

A person casts a vote during the 2007 French presidential election. Rama, CC BY-SA 2.0 FR https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/fr/deed.en, via Wikimedia Commons

Here are a few highlights from this year’s writing on a wide range of issues relating to justice, society and democratic systems:

Stay tuned for even more on this topic in our 2024-25 season!

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Justice Everywhere will return in full swing in September with fresh weekly posts by our cooperative of regular authors (published on Mondays), in addition to our Journal of Applied Philosophy series and other special series (published on Thursdays). If you would like to contribute a guest post on a topical justice-based issue (broadly construed), please feel free to get in touch with us at justice.everywhere.blog@gmail.com.

Distribution / Economics / General / Moral values / Work

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Should We Mourn the Loss of Work?

In this post, Caleb Althorpe (Trinity College Dublin) and Elizabeth Finneron-Burns (Western University) discuss their new open access article published in the Journal of Applied Philosophy, in which they discuss the moral goods and bads of a future without work.

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

It is an increasingly held view that technological advancement is going to bring about a ‘post-work’ future because recent technologies in things like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have the potential to replace not just complex physical tasks but also complex mental ones. In a world where robots are beginning to perform surgeries independently and where AI can perform better than professional human lawyers, it does not seem absurd to predict that at some point in the next few centuries productive human labour could be redundant.

In our recent paper, we grant this prediction and ask: would a post-work future be a good thing? Some people think that a post-work world would be a kind of utopia (‘a world free from toil? Sign me up!’). But because there is a range of nonpecuniary benefits affiliated with work, then a post-work future might be problematic.

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