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From: chenr@tilt.FUN (Ray Chen)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Judging political axioms
Message-ID: <253@tilt.FUN>
Date: Mon, 25-Mar-85 02:04:05 EST
Article-I.D.: tilt.253
Posted: Mon Mar 25 02:04:05 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 25-Mar-85 06:16:35 EST
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Organization: Princeton University EECS Dept
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> Ray Chen's problem -- so many political axiom sets with no standards
> for judging between them -- is a good one.  Let me reexpress his analysis
> to motivate mine (then Ray can tell us if I understood him right).
> 
> (4) "Reflective equilibrium" is a way of testing consistency under
> the premise that justice should be fair.  Implicitly, it suggests
> that if criteria of justice can be agreed upon, then a decision
> procedure for judging between different political axiom sets will
> be available.  So the judgment implied in (3) is possible.

This isn't quite what I meant.  Reflective Equilibrium is a way
of testing consistency, yes, but not based on anything in particular.
It's a way of testing whether or not the political axioms are consistent
with judgements of what is just.  Thus, given a situation that would
be considered just by the political axioms but that you consider unjust,
then either the decision to consider the situation unjust or some of the
political axioms would be revised.  This is primarily a technique for
weeding out inconsistencies in a person's political views.

And yes, I am aiming not for a reduction, but for a transformation.
I see the problem of setting political axioms as a question of defining
justice.  After defining a conception of justice, then the question is
can you offer a set of political axioms or a method for arriving at them
that is consistent with or an embodiment of the conception of justice?

I claim that when people argue about axioms that that is what they're
really arguing about:  conceptions of justice compatible with the political
axioms.  I just wanted to make people aware of this and to formalize it a
little.  I also think it helps if people think about what conceptions of
justice certain political systems embody or whether or not the system
embodies any consistent conception of justice at all.

I offer a possible definition, "justice as fairness".

If you disagree with this definition of justice, can you offer an alternative
definition of justice?

	Ray Chen
	princeton!tilt!chenr