Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Equality and Adequacy in Education - Coggle Diagram
Equality and Adequacy in Education
Theories of social justice: concerned with the proper distribution of resources, rights, duties, opportunities, and obligations in society at large
Primary Goods
: what anyone will need to pursue their life goals, whatever those goals
may be: political rights and opportunities, socio-economic rights and opportunities, ) physical and mental abilities and socio-economic resources
Egalitarian theories
, deontological
Basic Egalitarian Thought (BET)
: all persons are equal in fundamental worth or moral status
Equal Treatment-Right (ETR)
: everyone (each citizen) has equal social + political rights. It is morally wrong when these rights are violated, including for example when people are treated unequally on the basis of irrelevant traits.
Political Equality (PE)
: A society should respect: one person one vote, equality before the law, equality of free speech and association, freedom of religion, equal basic rights e.g. non-violation of bodily integrity.
Formal Equality of Opportunity (FEO)
: desirable positions in society should be allocated by open (to all citizens) and meritocratic (“the best qualified should win”) competition.
Wealthy Parents
: say the advantages conferred by wealthy parentage are so overwhelming that only the children of the wealthy win the desirable positions via open and meritocratic competition.
Substantive Equality of Opportunity (SEO)
: any individuals in society with the same native talent and ambition should have the same prospect of success in open and meritocratic competitions for desirable positions
Equal Treatment-Right societies still allows for largely unequal distributions of resources andpersonalgoodness.
Equal-is-Better (EB)
: It is good overall to distribute resources / personal good equally
Equal-is-Better(Res)
: It is good overall to distribute resources equally.
Equal-is-Better (PG)
: It is good overall to distribute personal good equally, does not entail OG.
Sufficientarianism
: if everyone had enough it would be of no moral consequence whether some had more than others
Relational egalitarianism
: Equal-is-Better(EB): It is good overall to distribute ... equally. EB is true when "..." is filled in with a specific set
of capabilites that are required to function as a fully participating member of modern democratic society
Satz: to “function as a fully participating member of modern democratic society” one needs a sufficient level of capabilities (and associated resource and conversion factors).
Relational egalitarianism appeals, indirectly, to a sufficiency or adequacy criterion.
Aggregate function: specifies the overall good (in part) in terms of Ann and Bob's personal good
Distribution (gA, gB) is better than distribution (g’A, g’B ) if and only if G(gA, gB ) > G (g’A, g’B ). Hence, an aggregation function is also called a
distributive rule
.
Distributive theories
: claim that the true distributive rule has a particular feature, for example EB(pg)
An aggregation function / distributive rule allows for
levelling down
if there are situations x and y such that (i) y is obtained from x by making one or more persons worse off than they are in x, and (ii) by making no one better off, while (iii) the rule says that y is better overall than x.
Objection to egalitarian theories
Principle of Personal Good (PPG)
: Firstly, if x and y are equally good for every individual, they are equally good overall. Secondly, if x is better for some individual than y, and at least as good for every individual, then x is better overall.
Usually when a distributive rule (such as G1) violates the PPG then the rule allows for levelling down (and vice versa).
Utilitarian Betterness (UB)
: x is better overall than y if and only if the sum-total of personal good in x is larger than in y
Satisfies PPG, not subject to leveling down, violates EB (pg), but may satisfy EB(res)
Prioritarianism
: the less PG a person has, the better overall it would be if they had one more unit of PG, there is diminishing marginal goodness (concave function), indirect EB(pg), not subject to levelling down, satisfies PPG
Maximin distributive rule
: overall goodness is given by GMM(gA , gB) = min{gA , gB}, indirect EB, not subject to levelling down, violates PPG
Sufficientarianism
Positive claim: wee should ensure that everyone has as least as much resources / PG as the threshold.
Negative claim: Inequalities above the threshold are morally irrelevant
deontological distributive theory
Utilitarianism
is consequentialist: it defines what is morally right in terms of the good: an action is morally right just in case its consequences maximize the sum-total of personal good. If not, the action is morally wrong.
Act-utilitarianism
: an action is morally right if and only if the consequence of that action maximize the sum-total of personal goodness.
Rule-utilitarianism
: a rule is morally right if and only if the consequence of acting according to that rule in all cases maximizes the (long-run) sum-total of personal goodness.