In this post I'm going to argue for why we should be taking the base-$\Omega$ thesis and how we can utilise this notion to suggest the fundamental discriminatory premise.
Recall that the motivation of base Omega is the idea of 'innocent until proven guilty'. That is, taking a neutral definition of discrimination as just differential different on the basis of a factor, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such treatment. That is to say that a factor such as racial discrimination is not problematic unless we are able to provide a reason for why it is. The main reason that I am inclined towards this position is the notion of onus. It seems to me there are so many seemingly unproblematic cases of discrimination such that if we do discriminate unjustly, there must be a justification. Base-$\Delta$ theories would of course respond that there is something intrinsically wrong about such differential treatment. I can't however see why this must be the case; we must it seems rely on some additional premise to tell us why there is an issue here. There's the argument of equality, but I view this argument as complex as opposed to trivially true.
Practically there are for and against arguments for Base-$\Omega$. The main advantage is that it is practically attainable. We could in theory consider our current state as $\Omega_0$ and then reason as to why it would be wrong to discriminate based on factors such as race, sex, orientation etc. Base-$\Delta$ theories must assume an initial state $\Delta_0$ that is extremely distant from our current state. In return they are able to pick out the salient discriminatory factors. It seems to me that pragmatically, Base-$\Omega$ is in a stronger position since its initial state is something we can directly engage with.
Now, a first observation is that what counts as problematic or unjust discrimination appears to depend on context. It seems reasonable for women to be barred from men's toilets, it also seems reasonable for basketball teams to discriminate on the basis of height, or universities to discriminate on the basis of education. We can thus consider a binary relation D(c,f) which says that it is justified in context (c) to discriminate on the basis of factor (f). Now there's three things to consider:
1) The set $C$ such that $c \in C$.
I.e. which contexts can we consider
2) The set $F$ such that $f \in F$.
I.e. which factors we can can discriminate on the basis
3) The connection between $c$ and $f$.
Question 1) seems pretty simple. It seems as if we can discriminate in any context (assume Base-$\Omega$) as long as there's no specific reason not to. The best example would be to consider some arbitrary context $c$ and consider an extremely trivial factor, e.g. Deciding whether to go heads or tails on the basis of the coins colour. Irrational perhaps, but certainly nothing problematic it appears. It might be argued that this example doesn't actually affect anyone whilst discriminatory practices are contingently harmful. The response is simply to imagine that your choice of heads / tails for some reason dictates who gets a job, except you don't anything about said people.
Thus $C$ is the set of all contexts.
Now $F$ seems much more difficult. We have a vague intuition about for example racism that it is fundamentally problematic. Whilst some would argue that it is essentially about power structures and systemic oppression, there still appears to be a fundamental notion of discrimination on the basis of race. Further this itself seems wrong, almost perhaps regardless of context. Perhaps this suggests to us that it is unjust for the set $F$ to contain race. We can repeat this intuition with other factors such as sex or sociological economic status. I've already addressed a number of counter examples to these cases, but I won't deny there still seems to be some sort of intuition that it is wrong to treat people differently on some of these factors. The key relating factor here seems to be the inability to change; the fact that one is unable to control their race seems to preclude one from treating them differently on that basis. This contrasts (plausibly) with discriminating on the basis of education; in theory one can change their educational attainment.
Whilst somewhat intuitive, here's a few problems. The first is of course the existence of counter examples; we do think it is okay to discriminate on the basis of sex or gender in the case of toilets. The second is that some of these factors seem in theory changeable but this doesn't seem to change the ethical impact. For example, it is in theory possible for someone to change their sex (perhaps their race) as well as their socio-economic lives. Yet we still retain this notion of inability to change in the process of why the discrimination is back. Further imagine a case where a woman is discriminated and she decides to have a sex change to become a guy. It sounds terrible to imagine that our society would in some way endorse this, in the same way that we wish to improve our level of education. In this sense, the 'inability to change' doesn't obviously preclude these properties from belonging to the set $F$. Whilst the argument is not fully complete, I think this provides us with sufficient intuition to imagine that $F$ includes the set of all properties. Saying this, there is something extremely plausible about the idea of 'protected characteristics' such that it is useful to consider them in a separate subset $P \subset F$.
Finally the important question: what is relation between $C$ and $F$ in any specific token case of $D$? An answer to this question will tell us how fixing a context C will tell us which subset of factors are okay to discrminate on the basis on. It will also tell us by fixing a factor f, which contexts it is fine to discriminate on that basis of.
In cases like this, it seems reasonable to start by looking for intuitions across a variety of cases. Lets start by fixing factor f as gender and consider which contexts seem permissible. A few cases that we seem to have made our mind up of:
1) It is wrong to discriminate on the basis of gender in the context a normal corporate hire.
2) It is permissible to discriminate on the basis of gender in the context of changing rooms (bathrooms somewhat more contentious)
3) It is fine to discriminate on the basis of gender when expressing sexual preferences.
4) It is wrong to discriminate on the basis of gender when hiring a new professor of philosophy.
Now I'm sure there is a lot to say about the opposite conclusion for each of these cases, but I think this helps develop some intuitions. Now let's try fixing context c as a normal corporate hire.
1) It is fine to discriminate on the basis of education
2) It is fine to discriminate on the basis of performance in assessment centers (although we would need a greater analysis of what this is)
3) It is wrong to discriminate on the basis of race
4) It is wrong to discriminate on the basis of sexuality.
Whilst it might seem 'obvious' in some sense, there is a rather apparent conclusion that one can draw from these cases. It seems that at least with the case of our 'protected characteristics', it is wrong to discriminate on that basis unless there is something significantly relevant about them for that context. That is, gender seems fundamentally relevant to the expression of sexual preferences and at least for pragmatic reasons, relevant for changing rooms (although easily contended). It is however wrong to discriminate on the basis of gender, race, sexuality etc in cases where they don't hold great relevance; e.g. in the context for assessment centers, academia and so on. The idea of course seems to be that in certain cases, these factors seem critical for achieving the fundamental goal of that context. The goal in education seems to be achieving the best professors and thus educational attainment seems important but not gender. The goal for corporate hire is finding the most suitable employee so perhaps promising performance in assessments is important but not race.
Note that there is some incredibly important premise that must be at work here. Whilst I claim that these factors are not significantly relevant, I have not actually proved it or even argued for it anyway. In fact, I don't believe it myself, that is I believe that some of these 'protected characteristics' are sometimes relevant and I think it's plausible to think that in some cases, significant.
Anyhow, for the purpose of this discussion, it seems that we must make the following key assumption:
Principle of distributional equality: Across protected characteristics such as race, gender, sexuality all groups have the same talent distribution.
What this means is roughly this: for a lot of our contexts that are not explicitly related to protected characteristics there is a desire to 'maximise utility' which in this sense is maximising 'talent'. I.e. achieving the best candidate for our specific situation. This assumption is saying that 'talent' is not essentially related to these characteristics. The word essential here is important: due to social reasons certain factors are statistically correlated. For example being black is correlated with lower education achievement. However the principle here is claiming that this is not necessarily connected, only contingently. As a result, we should not look at a candidates race to infer their education, instead we should look at the education of the hire directly since this is the relevant factor to discriminate on.
No comments :
Post a Comment