How solid are the concepts of 'fairness' and 'moral equality'?

 (This post was prompted by hearing Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss "Rawls' Theory of Justice".) 

[1] Should laws be fair? What, then, is 'fairness'?

   It is clear that laws are useful, if only to regulate society. And it is clear that they are only useful if they are obeyed by a majority of citizens (a 'consensus'). We can believe, without extensive research,  that successful societies have laws that are obeyed. Further, that the enforcing of laws (i.e. the process of ensuring that they are obeyed) is most easily done when the laws are spontaneously accepted by a majority of the population as right, as just, as fair.

    Experiments on animals show that the concept of fairness is very basic. Thus, social animals like apes, dogs and rooks are very aware when one member of the group gets more, or less, than they themselves are getting. Justice requires fairness, but may not be exactly the same thing. Images of stern-but-just punishments come to mind. Perhaps Justice requires calculation, scaling a punishment up or down to match the 'crime'. 

    As for 'right' and 'wrong': it seems to me that in-justice and un-fairness must be 'wrong'; so cannot be 'right'. But there may be more to 'rightness' than the avoidance of injustice and unfairness. Perhaps a proactive element?

    Aristotle, in his "Ethics", famously (and ponderously) considered all uses of the word 'good', as when we praise a 'good' carpenter or harpist. We can admire – says Aristotle – a generous man but sneer at a showy vulgarian. What – he wonders – if a good man kills his mother? At one stage Aristotle equates 'goodness' with happiness; "to a good man, virtue is pleasurable in itself". But I get bored. I am more interested in the question of who will be the judge? Is it I, or you, or us, or God?

    From written sources we can see that, for thousands of years, priests in divers cultures have sought to tell their several tribes how to behave, claiming to know how things are; the good foods, the bad foods; how to pray for rain, how to ensure reproductive success.

In the three best known, most successful, arrogant and murderous of the monotheistic religions, the priests even claim to know the mind of God. 

    We also see, from the example of the Greeks, that there have long been philosophers who try to dispense with the authority of the priests, by attempting to derive from reason alone the rules of what they in any case find to be generally accepted as good behaviour. But that is hard work, and in many cases remains unconvincing. That lack of success is (perhaps) why many people still entertain the concept of God; an unknown to explain an unknown. And why the murderous monotheisms were, and remain, so successful.

    But perhaps we just like virtue and justice, as ants like sugar, and fruit-flies like alcohol. It is my thesis (here as elsewhere [1]) that morality is better seen as a question of biology than as one of philosophy, or (heaven forbid) religion.

[2] In what sense is each human being equally important? 

We are not equal in weight, or wealth; that is certain!  Yet it is frequently stated that all should be treated as equal. Is the universal equality that is being proposed an equality of moral worth? What, then, is moral worth?  

Is moral worth a concept we each invent to protect our own importance; to set a lower limit, a safety net. "I may not be a rich man, but I am a man." "If you prick us, do we not bleed?"

Some speak of "equal in the eyes of God" hoping (perhaps) to give thereby the concept some external authority. Or perhaps they feel that the phrase, if accepted, signals some sort of inherent human truth; a fact of nature. 

[1] West, I.C. (2019) "God for Atheists", AuthorHouse UK, or available from Amazon, Blackwells, etc or from cawstein@gmail.com

The Importance of Other People's hard Work

 The Importance of Other People's hard Work

    I noticed an article in The Daily Telegraph (Miss Chang, 22 July 20230) pointing out that the USA is getting relatively richer while the UK is getting relatively poorer, dropping from the worlds richest country (GDP per head) to the 5th. I wondered if the British knew just as well as the Americans how hard they wanted to work, and how much leisure time they wanted. Perhaps we have got it right  – for us. 

    Who, exactly, wants the British nation to work harder. Not, I suspect the British workers. Perhaps it is the owners, the directors, the accountants, and the stock market speculators. All of whom would benefit, without themselves having to work harder.  

    There seems no longer any doubt that capitalism is more successful than communism at making a country rich, but it gets rich at some considerable cost in sweat and blood; cost to the workers, and their immediate bosses. For the owners, however, there is very little to do, other than watch their bank balances grow.

    Another economic statistic that bears thinking about, is GDP per capita. There are a number of fluky countries away out at the top of the list; like Monaco and Lichtenstein. But why are Norway, Ireland, and Denmark as high as (or higher than) the USA, and therefore much higher than Britain? 

    Better distribution, perhaps. so wealth more fairly spread. (The wealth of the very, very rich may do rather little for the benefit of mankind, in general). Or do we British spend too much of our money on guns, bombs and battleships?

Please address comment to cawstein@gmail.com