Anthony Taylor

A prominent approach in moral and political philosophy holds that conclusions about distributive justice can be derived from what rational, self-interested individuals would want when situated behind a veil of ignorance that prevents them from knowing their personal characteristics or positions within society. One basic feature of human self-interested reasoning is the preference for our bad experiences to be in the past, even if they would be less bad if they were still to come, and our good ones to be in the future, even if they will be worse. This article demonstrates that individuals behind the veil who have that preference will unanimously favor distributive policies that are manifestly unjust. Since there is good reason to think that caring more about one’s future than one’s past is not irrational, we should be skeptical that distributive justice reflects rational self-interest from behind a veil of ignorance.

Attitudes and emotions are commonly taken not to be under our direct voluntary control. Thus, it also seems impossible for there to be obligations to have certain attitudes. Against this, proponents of attitudinal obligations argue that we have sufficient, even if not voluntary, control over our attitudes to be appropriately held responsible for them and that this implies that there are attitudinal obligations. Call this the Responsibility Argument for Attitudinal Obligations. In this paper, I discuss the Responsibility Argument as a response to the Control Problem. I argue that the Responsibility Argument fails. Its main problem is that the type of control that we have over our attitudes and emotions, according to its proponents, is always indirect. Accordingly, there can only be obligations to perform certain actions that tend to bring about certain attitudes, but no obligations to have certain attitudes.