john rawls justice as fairness a restatement

However, most participants deployed similar strategies for both types of decisions. In the experiments, participants made two kinds of decisions that at first glance seem rather different: distributive decisions involved allocating payoffs to anonymous others, whereas risky decisions involved choosing between lotteries affecting their own payoffs. ( 2) links risk and fairness by showing that preferences about risk and about distribution may arise from common psychological and neural substrates. Echoing Rawls’s theory, new research by Kameda et al. He held that people should make such choices by following a risk-averse “maximin” strategy of maximizing the minimum possible outcome for themselves and others.

Rawls famously argued that we should choose the kind of society we would all prefer if our choice was made from behind a “veil of ignorance”-that is, under conditions of complete uncertainty about where we would end up. Should we maximize utility or should we aim to improve the lives of the least fortunate, even if doing so is costly for everyone else? The influential philosopher John Rawls tackled this dilemma by framing fair distributive decisions as a kind of gamble ( 1). Cases like this raise the question of how societies should make distributive decisions. The United Kingdom’s National Health Service sparked controversy when it refused to provide this drug to patients, citing its low cost effectiveness. It also happens to be incredibly expensive. Kadcyla is a drug that extends the life of breast cancer patients by an average of 6 mo.

John rawls justice as fairness a restatement