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- Catherine Wilson (2003). The Role of a Merit Principle in Distributive Justice. Journal of Ethics 7 (3):277-314.The claim that the level of well-beingeach enjoys ought to be to some extent afunction of individuals'' talents, efforts,accomplishments, and other meritoriousattributes faces serious challenge from bothegalitarians and libertarians, but also fromskeptics, who point to the poor historicalrecord of attempted merit assays and theubiquity of attribution biases arising fromlimited sweep, misattribution, custom andconvention, and mimicry. Yet merit-principlesare connected with reactive attitudes andinnate expectations, giving them some claim torecognition and there is a widespread beliefthat their use indirectly promotes thewell-being of all. After critically evaluatingarguments for and against assigning a prominentrole to merit in a distributive protocol, it isargued that an entitlement to the ``doubtful andspeculative'''' but not the ``known andpresumptive'''' components of well-being can flowfrom perceived relative merit. However,statistical equality of outcome with respect togroups is mandatory. Semi-meritocracies aredefensible institutions, but existing rewardschemes by and large do not meet the conditionsof social justice.Reading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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| | Other links: doi.wiley.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... This article argues that, in its standard formulation, luck-egalitarianism is false. In particular, I show that disadvantages that result from perfectly free choice can constitute egalitarian injustice. I also propose a modified formulation of luck-egalitarianism that would withstand my criticism. One merit of the modification is that it helps us to reconcile widespread intuitions about distributive justice with equally widespread intuitions about punitive justice.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Justice is a key guiding ethical principle in bioethics. When justice is addressed in bioethics the focus is primarily on the fair distribution of resources, that is, distributive justice. In this thesis, I argue that a distributive conception of justice is unable to adequately address many of the relevant issues of justice within bioethics. These issues are better understood and addressed using a social conception of justice. Social justice is concerned with ensuring that the norms and rules of social structures are fair and equitable. I argue that social and distributive justice are not only compatible, but also complementary. As a result, both conceptions of justice need to be applied to bioethical issues if we are to achieve a truly just outcome. As a case study, I apply this analysis to the controversial issue of the inclusion of pregnant women in clinical research trial.
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| | Scholar | More options ... Nonhuman animals are widely used in psychological research and the level of suffering and death is high. This is usually said to be justified by appealing to the scientific merit of the research. This article looks at notions of scientific merit, queries whether they are as clear-cut as commonly supposed, and argues that with contemporary conceptions it is too easy for any research to count as meritorious. A tightening of the notion of scientific merit is suggested, providing a ground for rejection of certain psychological research.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The concept of merit good is a problematic concept in economic theory. The concept was introduced in 1956 by Richard Musgrave. In 1990, on the occasion of an international conference on the concept of merit good, John Head wrote that the concept of merit good raises methodologically difficult and controversial issues. The concept raises doubt about the ultimate normative authority of the consumer sovereignty principle. I will demonstrate that the concept deserves the attention of the philosophical profession for multiple reasons.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Introduction : doing the right thing -- Utilitarianism -- Libertarianism -- Locke : property rights -- Markets and morals : surrogate motherhood, military service -- Kant : freedom as autonomy -- Rawls : justice as fairness -- Distributive justice : equality, entitlement, and merit -- Affirmative action : reverse discrimination? -- Aristotle : justice and virtue -- Ability, disability, and discrimination : cheerleaders and golf carts -- Justice, community, and membership -- Moral argument and liberal toleration -- Morality and law : same-sex marriage, for and against.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Merit review of scientific projects involving laboratory animals is a central issue in the current debate over the ethics of animal experimentation. In this essay, I examine several conceptual, regulatory, and practical problems inherent in the merit review process. Contemporary challenges to the existing merit review system and suggestions for reform are also discussed. The essay concludes with comments on legal and political questions relevant to the future of merit assessment.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Concern with material equality as the central form of distributive justice is a very modern idea. Distributive justice for Aristotle and many other writers for millennia after him was a matter of distributing what each ought to get from merit or desert in some sense. Many, such as Hume, thought material equality a pernicious idea. In the medieval village life of Bodo, villagers knew enough about each other to govern relations through norms, including, when necessary, a norm of charity. In more complex modern societies, economic destitution cannot so well be handled by individual charity, but now it can be handled by states. Hence, we begin to conceive of the idea of distributive justice as driven essentially by concern for material equality. The difference in state capacities is largely epistemological: states today can know much more about their citizens.
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| | Other links: springerlink.com dx.doi.org jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Does justice require that individuals get what they deserve? Serena Olsaretti brings together new essays by leading moral and political philosophers examining the relation between desert and justice; they also illuminate the nature of distributive justice, and the relationship between desert and other values, such as equality and responsibility.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... There are uses of the term merit in Indian religions which also appear in secular contexts, but in addition there are other uses that are not encountered outside religion. Transfer of merit is a specific doctrine in whose connection the term merit is used with an intention which is not the same as that found in nonreligious contexts. Two main types of transfer of merit can be distinguished. First, the transfer of merit has been associated with certain ritual practices in Hinduism and in Buddhism. Another main type of transfer of merit is connected with Mahāyāna belief in bodhisattvas' loving-kindness towards other beings. In the orthodox Hindu schools, in Hnayāna Buddhism and in Jainism, transfer of merit has been rejected on account of the doctrine of karma according to which the person can acquire karmic outcomes for only those actions he or she has performed by himself.
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| | Other links: informaworld.com tandfonline.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Discussion of Catherine Wilson, The role of a merit principle in distributive justice
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