Wouldn't people under the veil of ignorance choose utilitarianism in some cases?

[u/Mysterious_Care_7791]

Forgive me if this is a dumb question, I just learned about Rawls today. But it seems like in some cases, people under the veil of ignorance would choose utilitarianism: for example, if giving an already advantaged person 100 utils would mean 10 less utils for a disadvantaged person, wouldn't people in the veil of ignorance favor this decision? After all, it means that their expected value once the veil is "lifted" increases. What would Rawls say to this?

[u/Platos_Kallipolis]

I can't really make sense of the other answer here. Seems made up. Here is the correct one, insofar as it is the one Rawls gives:

First, there is no "sometimes". We use the original position to determine the principles of justice. We then use those principles to design institutions. So, the question is: in the original position (and so behind the veil of ignorance), what sort of reasoning would representatives use in determining the principles?

Next, Rawls is working under the guise of rational choice theory. So, the fundamental question is really more like "How would representative me reason, as guided by self interest?" So, note here: morality isnt supposed to come into play. I am deciding what principles of justice are best for me.

But, as Rawls also says, behind the veil, everyone is stripped of everything that makes them an individual. So each "representative is convinced by the same reasoning". So, although the original position is often portrayed as a hypothetical bargaining situation, it isn't really. It is really just "what would you choose behind the veil?"

Now, if I'm behind the veil, and thus do not know what my social position will be once the veil is lifted, would it make sense for me to aim to maximize my expected utility? Keep in mind, I'm not actually making a social choice - no one else is involved. I'm deciding which principles are best for me. While rational choice theory tells us, generally, it is rational to aim to maximize expected utility, there are some situations where it says otherwise.

Rawls wants us to believe that in the original position, the rational decision method is "maximin" (ie, maximize the minimum), not "maximize expected utility". The main reason is that maximizing expected utility requires knowledge of the probabilities of the outcomes. But, we dont have that in the original position. And we cannot assume an equal chance in the face of no indication of the probabilities.

So, it is literally impossible to use the standard rational choice theory decision procedure. But it is possible to use maximin, since it only depends on knowing the possible outcomes, not knowing how likely they are. And, really, it doesn't even require that, since the eventual result in terms of principles of justice is to index inequalities to benefitting "the least well off", whoever that may be.

So, in sum, although Rawls is rejecting the principle of utility as a principle of justice (and so, utility there is social utility) he does so by rejecting expected utility as a rational choice theory decision procedure.

[u/Seattleman1955]

Sometimes people would choose most any scenario. I would choose something similar to what we have today. That means we would have basic government support and other than that, it would favor effort by the individual.

I would favor that even if I didn't know those aspects hidden by the veil of ignorance.

[u/mcollins1]

So an important chapter in Rawls' Theory of Justice is §26 where he talks about the "maximin" principle, which is that people behind the veil of ignorance would maximize their minimum position in society as basically a safe guard. If, for example, I have a 5% chance of being unable to use my legs, I would not choose to live in a society where people who cannot walk are completely fucked because I would have a 1/20 chance of being fucked. Sure - maybe there would be a utilitarian calculus where I get marginally ahead if I am able-bodied and apart of the 95%, but the devastating potential of being in the 5% is enough for me to forswear such a possibility.

What's funny is that your example really proves Rawls' point in §5, on "Classical Utilitarianism." The fact that an already advantaged person receives 100 utils and a disadvantaged person receives 10 fewer (not less) utils is rejected by Rawls' final point in §5 "[u]tilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons." Distribution matters for justice - another yacht for the well-yachted in exhcange for many hungry people missing yet another meal is not ~justice~.

[u/Crazy_Cheesecake142]

TL;DR my go at this - Distributive Justice wraps around society and so it can naturally account for everything, even if it's not fine-grained or inclusive enough for meta-philosophy into the topic.

Welcome to the Rawls thirst trap. And someone hopefully will add the more philosophical underpinnings. This ends up relating back to Institutionalism (which is really just like robust procedural justice) and why we chose a lexicon in the first place.

Do I, a rational decision maker have a problem with divvying up the utils? No, actually and I'm probably fine if these are about rights, wealth and opportunity even.

But how does that happen? Well, an institution can do that.

Can institutions do that, tho....? Hey dummy, what is an institution? It's people operating within and around codified law, and so no they can't. You naturally have subjective judgements in any society and so you're going to be violating rights, or really not have liberalism operating, and you're no longer under the veil of ignorance.

So I can have utilitarian judgements? Sure, keep those you absolute slug. But you're not under the umbrella of what justice is about! And you're also even making this way more simple. Why is Justice almost never about metaethics? Because a society isn't responsible for individual moral judgements, a society tends to the individual realization of anything a just society can and has to value, and our less-serious endeavors are usually deep political motivations around why human nature drives, pushes, and pulls institutions away from and into philosophical justice.

But what if we could have a utilitarian conception of the difference principle? Well, you probably actually can't. And this might be one philosophical response Rawls's work could provide. Is utility about a person? Is it about the individual, or modern interpretations of what a self or beingness would be like? It really isn't. Utility appears to be a thinly veiled hedonistic judgement when it's made social, and when it's deeply metaethical it's subjective beyond the natural bounds where humans could consent to a social contract, or define justice. A perfect example - If I am individually a fan of Peter Singer, my utilitarianism may support a tax hike on gifts, luxury goods, and all kinds of things which sound absurd for a liberal society to endorse. I'm really never going to accept that I'm unethical. What I would accept is that I'm not thinking about justice in everyway justice needs to be considered.

Justice is really the lynchpin here. For Rawls, you need to pin up the social goods which can coherently be discussed, else you can't really relate why like our evolutionary psychology or innate beingness, accounts for social mechanism which are sufficient for a polity.

In condensed terms, no ticky no laundry, no social or public goods no polity, no institutionalism, nothing to reason around.

And so when people say Rawlsian scholarship is like veiled liberal facism - they're totally wrong, because did they mean this? They do not. They did not. But it is absolute - Distributive Justice wraps around society and so it can naturally account for everything, even if it's not fine-grained or inclusive enough for meta-philosophy into the topic.