Giving desert its due

Abstract

I will argue that a desert-based justification for treating a person in a certain way is a justification that holds this treatment to be justified simply by what the person is like and what he or she has done, independent of (1) the fact that treating the person in this way will have good effects (or that treating people like him or her in this way will have such effects); (2) the fact that this treatment is called for by some (justified) institution or practice; or (3) the fact that the person could have avoided being subject to this treatment by choosing appropriately, and therefore cannot complain of it. I will explore the implications of this understanding of desert for the role of desert-based justifications of blame, punishment, and economic reward.

Keywords:

• institutional desert
• distributive justice
• moral responsibility
• reactive attitudes

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Erin Kelly, Samuel Scheffler, and two anonymous readers for Philosophical Explorations for helpful comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

The limitations of “veracity” as a justification for responding to merit with good treatment are noted by Sher (1987, 113–22).

Sher defends this idea, on the ground that (1) those who seek value are therefore of greater value themselves; (2) the wicked are of lesser value than those who are morally good; and (3) the value of the happiness of an individual varies with the value of that individual (1987, chap. 8). I have doubts about the idea of value in terms of which this argument is stated (On this, see Scanlon 1998, chap. 2). Hence, I am somewhat unclear about claims (1) and (2). There might be a way of understanding value in terms of which these claims would be correct. Claim (1) might be, for example, that those who seek value are therefore more to be admired and emulated. However, claim (3) would not follow.

This is not true only of punishment but holds quite generally of policies that allow harm to occur. See Hart (1968a, 28–53), Scanlon (1988, Lecture 2, 1998, chap. 6).

I say that Hume was only “basically” right because it seems to me that lack of liberty is a misleading way of describing the cases in which, as he puts it, an agent lacks “the liberty of spontaneity”. A lack of liberty may seem to be the crucial element in cases like that of a person who reveals a secret but does so only because she was threatened with serious harm. It may seem that such a person is not blameworthy for revealing the secret because she did so unwillingly. However, this is misleading. The threat may undermine blameworthiness because it makes it the case that revealing the secret was justified and therefore not blameworthy. And even if it does not justify revealing the secret, the threat changes the meaning of the agent's action, by altering the reasons she had or believed herself to have. The general phenomenon at work in such cases is that blameworthiness depends on a full picture of an agent's reasons. Saying that an agent acted “willingly” or “unwillingly” is a way of referring to facts about these reasons, but it is misleading because it suggests that what is crucial is the agent's “will”, or “liberty”, rather than the reasons the agent had and those he or she acted upon. For a similar point, see Kelly (2012).

For discussion of how this applies in the case of young children and the mentally ill, see Scanlon (2008, chap. 4, esp. 156ff, 178–79, 197–98).

Strawson (2003) is the classical statement of this view, which has later been developed by many others. See, especially, Wallace (1993).

The importance of such relationships was emphasized by Strawson (2003). For fuller discussion, see Scanlon (2008, chap. 4, 2012, 84–99).

For fuller discussion of the impermissibility, and blameworthiness, of failures to blame wrongdoers, see Scanlon (2008, 166–79).

As Feinberg says, “Responsive attitudes are the basic things persons deserve and … ‘modes of treatment’ are deserved only in a derivative way, insofar perhaps as they are the natural or conventional means of expressing the morally fitting attitudes” (1970, 82).

As Feinberg points out, these responses “have ostensible desert logically built into them” (1970, 70–1).

When “fair opportunity to avoid” is required in order for a form of treatment to be justified – as in the case of legal punishment and of some other forms of legal and economic treatment – it is a question whether this involves an ability to do otherwise that is incompatible with agents' actions being caused by forces outside them over which they have no control. I argue that it does not but that this answer is more difficult to defend than the corresponding negative answer about the preconditions for moral blame. For further discussion, see Scanlon (1998, chap. 6, 2008, chap. 4, esp. pp. 204–14).

Scheffler (2001, 173–90). This is a fair criticism of what I said in my 1986 Tanner Lectures (Scanlon 1988). I corrected this error in later writing. See Scanlon (1998, 266–67, 2003, 219–33).

These would be claims of what Michael Rosen calls “desert as merit”. See Rosen (2003, 118–24).

For a fuller discussion of the parallel case of how wrongful treatment of a person can undermine someone's standing to blame that person for what he does, see Scanlon (2008, 175–79).

As Feinberg (1970) pointed out in the appendix to “Justice and Personal Desert”.