3 - Toward a distributive theory

Summary

Satisfaction and social hijacking

So far my discussion has been primarily descriptive and not normative. I have been describing and explaining certain features of our moral practice, not actually justifying that practice. Specifically, in many moral contexts, including those of justice, we must judge the relative well-being of individuals or groups in order to assess the urgency or importance of claims they make on us. We do not just take their claims at face value. In our moral practice, especially in contexts of justice, we assess well-being by reference to a scale which gives more weight or importance to certain kinds or categories of preferences over others. That is, our scale for assessing well-being is selective or truncated. It discounts many kinds of preferences which would play a role on a complete or full-range scale of satisfaction. The ‘important’ preferences or needs which play a role on the selective scale seem to be necessary for maintaining normal species functioning. In turn, such normal functioning affects an individual's share of the normal opportunity range. I have suggested that it is this effect on opportunity that allows us to explain why people treat these needs as special and important: people have a fundamental interest in protecting their share of the normal range of opportunities.

This description and explanation of our moral practice falls short of giving us a normative account in two ways. First, there is the question, Should we use the objective, truncated scale of well-being we happen to use rather than a more complete measure of satisfaction?