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4 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Javier Ferrandis

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    Your tutor is right, and the difference changes the verdicts.

    Not agreement but rejection. Scanlon isn't asking what people would vote for. He asks whether anyone has a reasonable objection to a principle, compared with the alternatives. The negative form matters because it builds in a veto. A principle that benefits 99 people a little and crushes one person fails if that one person's objection is stronger than any objection the 99 would have to the alternative principle.

    One at a time. Objections are lodged by individuals, from their own standpoint, and compared pairwise. You can't add up the 99 small complaints into one big complaint that outweighs the one. That "individualist restriction" is what makes contractualism more than a gentler utilitarianism.

    Versus Hobbes. For Hobbes and later Gauthier, the agreement is a bargain among self-interested people, so your bargaining power matters. For Scanlon, it's a search for principles we can justify to each other, and the motive is the desire to be able to justify yourself, not advantage.

    Versus Rawls. Rawls has one choice made behind a veil, by parties who don't know who they'll be. Scanlon keeps everyone visible and asks each of them. Rawls's own view was that his parties would not choose average utility, so your EA friends need an argument there.

    Helpful · 1
    1. Ethan Mercer

      Fellow

      This is really helpful, thanks Javier. So the veto is the point. But then doesn't "reasonable" do a lot of hidden work? If I decide in advance which objections are reasonable, I've basically decided the answer before the contract starts.

      Helpful · 3
      1. Javier Ferrandis

        Fellow

        Yes, and that is the standard objection to Kantian contractualism generally. Scanlon's reply is that this isn't a bug: the test isn't meant to derive morality from nothing, but to describe what moral reasoning is like from the inside. Whether that's an answer or an admission is a good essay topic.

Other answers

  1. Johanna Reinhardt

    Fellow

    A neighbouring idea from my side of philosophy: Habermas's discourse ethics says a norm is valid only if everyone affected could accept it as a participant in a real discussion. It's often compared with Scanlon. The big difference is that Habermas wants actual dialogue under fair conditions, while Scanlon's test is something you can run in your own head by asking what each person could reasonably say. Each side thinks the other is either too idealised or not idealised enough.

    Helpful · 2