Injustice, Inequality and Ethics

A Philosophical Introduction to Moral Problems

Robin Barrow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317406662
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría filosóficas

Abortion, distribution of wealth, civil disobedience, reverse discrimination, sex-role stereotyping, censorship – what does philosophy have to contribute to these practical moral issues? In this important book, first published in 1982, Robin Barrow argues convincingly that the capacity to make fine conceptual discriminations is crucial to an informed response to such issues, and he alerts us to the degree to which this ability has been lacking in much previous philosophical thought.

The author presents a series of formidable arguments regarding the more controversial social and moral issues of our time, and in doing so he gives the general reader and the student of philosophy a clearer appreciation of the nature of the philosophical contribution.

1 Discrimination

DOI: 10.4324/9781315683607-1

If we want to understand and not just to paste labels, unfavourable and favourable as the case may be, we shall certainly begin and end with discrimination.

John Dewey, Liberalism and Social Action

Our knowledge and understanding of the world owe a lot to man's ability to see differences or to discriminate. To many people there is a nasty ring to the word ‘discrimination’. The context in which we most frequently encounter it is that of racial discrimination, and ‘racial discrimination’ is generally taken to mean something like ‘treating people differently simply on the grounds of their racial differences’. As such it is generally, and quite rightly, regarded as objectionable. But what is wrong here is the particular practice of excluding a group of people from various advantages simply because of their race. It is racial discrimination in this sense that is morally repugnant, not discrimination itself in any shape or form. The connotations or overtones of undesirability that cling to the word discrimination are in fact quite unwarranted, arising out of this particular, and possibly other, examples of unjustified discrimination.

In origin ‘discrimination’ simply means ‘the act of differentiating or distinguishing’. The verb ‘to discriminate’, coming obviously and directly from the Latin discriminare, means either (intransitively) ‘to constitute a difference between’ or (transitively) ‘to perceive a difference between’. So, in the first sense, we may say that there are certain physical characteristics that discriminate between men and women. In the second sense, we might talk of discriminating between sheep and goats, meaning by that taking notice of, or drawing a distinction between, the two types of animal. Not only is ‘the power of observing differences accurately or of making exact differences’ the original meaning of discrimination, it is also, despite the connotations of a phrase like ‘racial discrimination’, still its essential meaning today. In other words, although people may sometimes use words like ‘discriminate’ and ‘discrimination’ in a way that implies unfair differential treatment, the fact remains that such words may be, and very often are, used quite simply to refer to the making or observing of differences that are there to be made or perceived. In this latter sense most of us spend most of our day discriminating. We discriminate amongst members of our family when buying clothes, we discriminate amongst competing goods in the shops, we discriminate between the serious and the trivial at work, and so on. Discrimination in this sense is unavoidable. There just are differences to be noted and distinctions to be made in life. It is also, on the whole, eminently desirable that they should be made.

It is with discrimination in the sense of making (whether constituting or perceiving) distinctions that this book is to a large extent concerned. It is concerned with arguing for the importance of discrimination in general, with arguing for various particular acts of discrimination, and with arguing for the moral importance of certain particular examples of discrimination.

The art of discriminating is essentially philosophical. One of the philosopher's main concerns is to try and refine his conceptions until he knows precisely what his ideas of, say, God, justice or education amount to, with the consequence that he is in a position to discriminate between God and a ghost, justice and equality, or education and training. He will also want to discriminate between similar looking, but subtly different, forms of argument, between apparent analogies that are not in fact analogous, and so on. And despite the recurrent myth that philosophy is impractical, a subject fit only for day-dreamers and idle theorists, this philosophical task is of crucial and enormous practical significance. Of course it has practical significance whether people can differentiate between cause and responsibility, for instance. For, if they cannot, then they will fail to distinguish between a person being the cause of a state of affairs and a person being responsible for a state of affairs, and they will start treating clumsy fools in the same manner as homicidal maniacs. Of course it is a matter of practical significance whether or not people have a crude conception of love, undifferentiated from lust and attraction, for on that may to some extent depend their chances of happiness. Of course it matters that people should be able to see the differences between an individual robbing a bank and the Ford Motor Company producing some shoddy cars, despite the fact that some would lump both together as acts of exploitation, for, if we are not prepared to make such distinctions, all manner of criminal activity would be rife, and justifiably so. Of course it is of practical value that people should be able to differentiate between indoc trination and instruction, otherwise we should have to treat teaching the multiplication tables and inculcating a political ideology as indistinguishable, which they are certainly not. Indeed, the idea that philosophy is impractical could itself only be entertained by those who lack discriminatory ability. No doubt senses may be given to the word in which philosophy is ‘impractical’. It is not, for example, a manual activity, and it isn't very well paid! But assuming that ‘practical’ means something like ‘having value for everyday life’ conceptual discrimination is evidently of great practical value, if not for the agent himself, at least for the rest of us. The man who can't tell a spade from a shovel is, perhaps, more of a nuisance to the rest of us than to himself. But he is nonetheless a nuisance.

It should be noted however that discriminating is not simply a matter of seeing differences that are there to be seen. It may also be more or less a matter of judgement. Some distinguishing features of things present themselves directly to our senses and are hard to miss. Cows and chickens are transparently different. But even here a minimal amount of judgement is involved, for, after all, red cows and red chickens have their colour, the possession of two eyes and one or two other things in common, and it might conceivably have served our purpose to locate a class of red, two-eyed creatures. It is not written in the stars that we should make the classifications that we do, although some limits are set upon possible classifications by the facts of nature. We tend to classify people automatically by sex, when we might easily have chosen to make more of age, and could, as far as logic goes, have classified by reference to hair colour. In most people's view there is probably good reason to classify more by reference to sex than age; the point is merely that things could have been decided differently. In other cases distinctions that we commonly rely on are much more obviously based on judgement: for example, our tendency to note differences of accent and to ignore differences of stature is curious. And the way in which we have chosen to draw broad divisions in the worlds of music and literature seems, to say the least, negotiable. Some people have overstated the case and tried to suggest that all differences lie in the eyes of the beholder, rather than in the world. I am certainly not maintaining that thesis. There are obviously differences between things, regardless of who, if anyone, is looking at them. But I am underlining the point that the classifications we make use of are to some extent a matter of choice and judgement.

Much of this book is concerned with conceptual discrimination, because many moral dilemmas are inextricably bound up with questions of discrimination. If you want to decide whether a work of art ought to be censored on grounds of obscenity, you have to have a clear idea of art and obscenity. In considering the question of abortion, we need to ask what differentiates the eight month old foetus and a baby born one month prematurely. Is a foetus a person? We live in a democracy and often make appeal to the value of democracy, but what exactly is it that constitutes democracy and differentiates it from other forms of government? Must every issue be decided on the basis of one man one vote, or is it perhaps something to do with safeguarding minority interests? and what is the nature of the connection between democracy and various freedoms? If we turn to the domain of schooling, what, we need to ask, is this thing intelligence, on the basis of claiming to recognise which we make so many judgements? How is it that we think we can recognise it, and yet can scarcely explain what it is? How do we distinguish between intelligence and cleverness or wisdom? On a similar subject, how would one discriminate between merit and innate talent? What we need in answer to these kinds of question is not simply definitions, but definitions that are precise, coherent and revealing. It is no use just saying ‘what I mean by a “person” is a “being with a soul” ‘, for that leaves questions such as whether a foetus or an animal is a person no further forward. We need to understand what you mean by ‘a being with a soul’; we need a definition of ‘person’ that makes some sense to us.¹

However, the ability to discriminate, though vital, is not sufficient for solving all our problems. Assuming that we have precise conceptions, we move into a position in which we are ready to make reasoned decisions. But to have a clear idea of what something is, and to perceive what differentiates it from other similar things, is not sufficient to enable one to decide how to treat it, and, in particular, whether to treat it differently from those other similar but not identical things. To discriminate, in this new extended sense of ‘treat differently’, requires that we know not only what differences there are, but also which of those differences matter for what purposes. Nobody can deny that there is a difference between black men and white men. The question is whether that colour difference justifies different treatment in any respects. Similarly, once we are clear what a foetus is, and in what respects it can be distinguished from a newborn baby, a seed, a person with severe brain-damage and so forth, the question remains whether abortion can be morally justified. The conceptual clarification makes it clear what we are talking about—in the abortion example whether aborting is or is not an instance of killing a person—but it will not settle the question of what is justifiable. To take another example, consider the problem of euthanasia. Here also there are conceptual questions to be examined: what constitutes being a person? what constitutes being dead? The recent argument as to whether the British Medical Authority has adequate criteria to prevent organs being removed from living patients for transplant, and to know when it is appropriate to switch off life support systems, involves at rock bottom not a medical question but conceptual ones. We do need to know certain medical facts, of the order of what the physiological significance of this or that phenomenon may be. But the central question remains: do we count somebody in such and such a state as dead or not? However, my immediate point is that even with a clear conception of death, we are left with the evaluative question of whether or when we should allow people, or even help them, to die.

It may be felt that in some cases what one ought to do is rapidly apparent from an adequate conceptual grasp of the situation. To appreciate what democracy is is to perceive readily enough that it is morally desirable, it may be said. But, if there are any such cases, that is accidental. If people sense the moral rightness of democracy as soon as they know what democracy is, that is only because democracy happens to enshrine values they hold. It remains true that in all cases the question of what something involves and the question of whether it is morally desirable are logically distinct. The former, conceptual, question is necessary to the latter question of justification, but it is not a substitute for it. Having a clear grasp of what abortion involves (let us say, for the sake of example, killing a human being) does not automatically reveal whether it may be morally justifiable.

The question, therefore, remains: do the various differences that we may be able to discern demand different treatment in various respects? Certainly animals differ from human beings in various ways, and no doubt those differences constitute good reasons for not providing animals with state-subsidised schooling. But do any of them justify the practice of vivisection? Women and men differ, and will continue to differ, in various ways, but do any of those differences justify the different roles we expect them to play? What, if anything, justifies differences in wealth? Here again it is not difficult to pinpoint differences between at least some people who have wealth and some who don't. Some are born rich, some have rare ability, some work hard. But do these or any other differences justify discrimination in this respect?

There is one principle to which we all necessarily subscribe and which is of some importance in the context of trying to answer such questions. It goes by many names, but may well be called the principle of impartiality. This principle states that no difference of treatment should occur without a relevant reason for such differential treatment being cited. And it has more force than is sometimes recognised. In the first place much of our behaviour, being arbitrary or inconsistent, runs foul of the principle, and in the second place the principle has negative significance in that it clearly implies that we should not always treat all people in the same way. (I should perhaps explain why I say that we all necessarily subscribe to this principle, while admitting that much of our behaviour is not in accord with it. We may fail to abide by the principle, but we cannot sensibly repudiate it. For to be concerned with reason at all, as we all maintain we are, is to be committed to having good reasons rather than bad, and the principle of impartiality arises out of that basic commitment.)

To assert so early in the argument that we are against treating all people the same may seem rather curious, for, it may be felt, many people have thought that everybody should be treated the same. But although some people have indeed expressed that view, it must surely be doubted whether any of them meant to espouse it literally. It seems more likely that the equivocal nature of the word ‘equality’ has caused confusion. Without doubt a great many people expressly assert that they are in favour of equality or equal treatment, without qualification. But it is scarcely credible that any of them should mean by that ‘similar treatment for all, without qualification’, so that every man, woman and child would ideally be provided with exactly the same food, work, social environment and so forth. Surely no sensible person really believes that both champion wrestlers and babies should have two pound steaks set before them, as if there were no differences between them that warranted different treatment. Presumably what those who claim to believe in equality, without qualification, really mean to advocate is one of the following three positions.

Firstly, they might want to insist on exactly similar treatment for all, but restrict it to certain broad, as yet unspecified, respects. Perhaps they are concerned to argue that when it comes to certain important things such as wealth or living space every man, woman and child should have the same. Whatever our reaction to this limited kind of demand for identical treatment, it is at least coherent. (A modification of this view would confine its application to all adults, in which case, prima facie, it would be easier to extend the range of similarities in treatment demanded.) Secondly, they might mean to champion a very different view, namely that everybody should have equality of opportunity. This is a widely held view, particularly in the Western democracies, and is sometimes more specifically expressed as the view that every individual ought to have the same opportunity to fulfil himself or to live well. The upshot may be that certain particular types of treatment have to be identical for all, in order to ensure such equal opportunity. But there is no necessary incompatibility between equality in this sense and many specific differences of treatment in a society. Thirdly, they might mean by the demand for equal treatment what might be more explicitly expressed as equal concern for all people, regardless of any recognisable differences between them.

Any of these views would represent an advance on the view that all people should literally receive the same treatment in all respects in all circumstances. Nonetheless, each of them has its problems. Clearly the plausibility of the first view will depend upon the respects in which it is argued that people should receive the same treatment. The second view raises the problem of what is to count as fulfilment or well-being, as well as the question of how far a community should be expected to go to ensure equal opportunity. One readily sees that equality of opportunity demands some form of adequate schooling for all. Does it not also demand the provision of adequate homes for all? And how is one to determine when to stop? The third view raises the question of what showing equal concern for everybody actually amounts to (besides, incidentally, raising the question of why we should unhesitatingly assume that equal concern should be shown for all humans, and no animals except humans).

At this stage, therefore, it would seem unwise to commit ourselves to more than something like Aristotle's statement of the principle of fairness or impartiality.² No distinction ought to be made between those who are equal in all respects relevant to the kind of treatment in question, even though in some irrelevant respects they may be unequal. On the other hand, in any matter in which they are in relevant respects unequal, they ought to be treated in proportion to their relevant inequalities. One immediate problem that we therefore face is that of trying to determine what makes a difference a relevant difference. That there are differences between people is self-evident, but which of them, if any, are relevant to a question such as who should make political decisions? That there are respects in which Fanny Hill differs from War and Peace few would deny, but how are we to determine whether those differences are relevant to the question of censorship? That there are differences between a foetus and a baby is clear, but are they relevant to the decision to terminate life? What factors are relevant to the question of whether a situation justifies civil disobedience?

A partial answer can be provided fairly easily. Why is it that we see at once that intelligence is relevant to academic concerns and physical strength to football, while hair colour is relevant to neither? It is surely that in the first two cases there is some kind of conceptual tie-up. Academic concerns and intelligence have something in common, as do football and physical strength. I am not suggesting that relevant factors must necessarily have a conceptual or logical tie up with the matter in question. But there does have to be some kind of connection, whether logical or contingent, direct or indirect, for a difference to be a relevant difference. When the connection is logical it tends to strike us as self-evident, as in the case of the relevance of physical strength to football; whereas, very often, when the connection is contingent, one has to use reasoning to show that there is a connection. For example, I would think that personal appearance might be a relevant reason for appointing one person rather than another as a shop assistant. It is not the case that comely appearance has any logical connection with the idea of a shop assistant. (There is no logical oddity in the idea of a slovenly shop assistant.) But it is not difficult to establish a connection nonetheless. One might argue that the shop assistant has to sell goods, that customers by and large respond to neat appearances, and that it is therefore a relevant consideration that an individual should have a neat appearance.

An important point implicit in the last example is that the relevance of factors depends to some extent upon one's objectives. Neatness becomes a relevant consideration because of what we want the shop assistant to do. It might cease to be relevant, if we want the shop assistant to mind...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• FOREWORD
• 1 DISCRIMINATION
• 2 UTILITARIANISM
• 3 DOGMATISM
• 4 FREEDOM
• 5 FEMINISM: LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT
• 6 FEMINISM: SEX-ROLE STEREOTYPING
• 7 REVERSE DISCRIMINATION
• 8 ABORTION
• 9 EQUALITY AND WEALTH
• 10 DEMOCRACY
• 11 CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
• 12 ANIMALS
• 13 THE ARTS
• 14 EDUCATION
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX