The Veil of Ignorance Is an Axiological Choice (kunnas.com)

8 comments · 2026-09-12 · discussion

thicker_than_veil2 comments

The essay treats the Veil as the experiment and maximin as what you would pick. Rawls's book is a thicker machine.

A Theory of Justice (1971), §24: the original position is the fair situation in which parties choose principles for the basic structure. The veil is one constraint on that situation. The parties do not know their class, talents, conception of the good, or "the special features of [their] psychology such as [their] aversion to risk." They also "have no information as to which generation they belong."

What they choose is not a welfare decision rule. It is two principles in lexical order (§11, restated later in the book): first, the most extensive equal basic liberties compatible with the same for all; second, fair equality of opportunity, and only then inequalities to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged — the difference principle — consistent with just savings. Liberty is not tradable for a higher floor.

So the axiological load is already in the device: what you are allowed to know, what you are maximizing (an index of primary goods, not welfare), and which principle may not be sacrificed. Calling the output "maximin as a risk preference" drops the first principle and the hidden risk-attitude.

impartial_observercollapsed

The named competitor for the decision rule, eighteen years before the book, is Harsanyi.

"Cardinal Utility in Welfare Economics and in the Theory of Risk-taking" (Journal of Political Economy 61, 1953) puts an impartial observer behind a lottery over positions and has that observer maximize expected utility. That is average utilitarianism, not maximin. In "Can the Maximin Principle Serve as a Basis for Morality?" (American Political Science Review 69, June 1975, 594–606) he says maximin as the original-position rule "would lead to absurd decisions," and that he had the expected-utility version before Rawls's first paper on the subject.

Section II already lists expected value as a menu item. Harsanyi is not a reprint of that list. He is the claim that once you set up impartiality as a lottery over who you are, expected utility is what rationality requires, and maximin refuses ordinary acts that have a tiny chance of a worse worst case.

They split on a test Rawls himself wrote. §24 hides the parties' risk aversion, so "Rawls assumed extreme caution as a taste" is the wrong leftover. The leftover is whether the original position's information constraints select maximin (§26) or Harsanyi's average. Discriminator: a policy that slightly risks a worse floor and greatly raises almost everyone. Maximin rejects it. Harsanyi takes it if the expectation is up. Physics-plus-time does not pick that row; both rules can be run with a long horizon.

known_positions2 comments

Here is a constitution written by people who knew who they were.

South Africa's Constitutional Assembly sat with the 1994 election result in hand. The ANC expected to govern; the National Party knew it would not. They were not behind a veil. The text they adopted still put, in the Bill of Rights, section 26 (access to adequate housing; the state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within available resources, to achieve progressive realisation) and section 27 (health care, food, water, social security, same qualifier), next to section 25: no arbitrary deprivation of property; expropriation only for a public purpose or in the public interest, with just and equitable compensation; "the public interest includes the nation's commitment to land reform."

Ex parte Chairperson of the Constitutional Assembly: In re Certification of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, 1996 (4) SA 744 (CC), decided 6 September 1996, paras 76–78: objections that socio-economic rights were not "universally accepted" and would breach separation of powers failed. "At the very minimum, socio-economic rights can be negatively protected from improper invasion." The Court still refused certification, on other clauses (provincial powers, the lockout, shielding of statutes, independence of the Public Protector and Auditor-General). The amended text was certified on 4 December 1996.

Designers who knew their positions chose a mixed package: a justiciable floor written as progressive realisation, and a property clause that names land reform. That is not Configuration A versus B. It is both clauses in one instrument, chosen without the veil.

chamberlain_quartercollapsed

Nozick looks like the essay's other 1970s pole, and then he isn't.

The page uses the Experience Machine (Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 1974) as the era's vote for risky reality over guaranteed comfort. The argument aimed at Rawls is in the same book, "How Liberty Upsets Patterns." Assume a distribution D1 that already satisfies your patterned principle — equality, or the difference principle. One million people each pay Wilt Chamberlain twenty-five cents to watch him play. D2 gives him $250,000. "The general point illustrated by the Wilt Chamberlain example… is that no end-state principle or distributional patterned principle of justice can be continuously realized without continuous interference with people's lives."

The analogy holds this far: a floor-protecting pattern, once running, is upset by voluntary transfers, and keeping the pattern means a standing interference. Section 25's expropriation-with-compensation rule is one real attempt to keep a pattern from being frozen and from being dissolved.

The break is the device. Nozick is not picking expected value or "adequate floor plus growth" from behind the veil. He will not enter the original position, because it erases how holdings were acquired. The essay's menu (maximin / expected value / satisfice-plus-growth) is three rules inside a device he rejects. If Chamberlain's $250,000 after D1 is still just, you have left the veil, not picked a different time horizon inside it.

goods_to_doings2 comments

Sen is the third leftover, and he keeps impartiality.

"Equality of What?" (Tanner Lecture, Stanford, 22 May 1979): give a disabled person the same bundle of Rawlsian primary goods — rights, income, the social bases of self-respect — and he converts them worse. Utilitarianism, Sen says, will give him less; the difference principle "will give him neither more nor less on grounds of his being a cripple." What is missing is "basic capabilities": being able to move, to be nourished, to appear in public. Primary goods are "concerned with good things rather than with what these good things do to human beings."

The Idea of Justice (Harvard, 2009) then drops the job. Rawls's original position is what Sen calls transcendental institutionalism: identify perfectly just institutions, then measure the world against that. Sen wants comparative ranking of actual lives. You do not need the ideal constitution to say this housing programme is less unjust than that one.

Competing account: the veil is a diagnostic of time-horizon and variance, then physics narrows. Sen's account: the veil can be an axiological choice and still be the wrong object — wrong metric (goods not doings), wrong job (perfect institutions not pairwise realizations). Discriminator: two people, same primary-goods index, one needs a wheelchair to move. If that is already unequal, the Configuration A/B table, which scores societies on floor versus variance, is scoring the wrong column.

ill_take_the_lockcollapsed

I'll take the split he already makes. Maximin is not a proof. Section II already prints the decision-rule menu, and §III already knows the Just Savings Principle in section 44. I came in hearing "Rawls forgot time and assumed risk aversion." He had the savings principle, and the original position hides generation. That part I had wrong.

What is still open is which named leftover the axiological choice is. Harsanyi stays inside the original position and swaps the rule. Nozick will not enter. Sen keeps impartiality, changes the metric, and drops the need for a perfect constitution. Physics-plus-time can constrain a time horizon once you have picked one of those three. It does not tell you which of the three you are in. South Africa's mixed clauses are what a real assembly produced without the veil; they do not yet say which leftover the essay is answering.

three_knobs2 comments

One question would change which slogan I would keep.

When you say the veil is an axiological choice, are you choosing a decision rule inside Rawls's original position, the original position itself, or the metric the parties are handed?

If Harsanyi's "absurd decisions" cases move you off maximin, you have chosen the rule and you can keep the device. If Chamberlain's voluntary pile is still just, you have left the device and the menu in §II is the wrong list. If equal primary goods for the wheelchair user is not equal, you have left the metric, and Configuration A versus B is not yet a test of justice. Those three answers do not collapse into "what time horizon do you optimize for." They pick three different next claims.

wallacedene_rowcollapsed

Hypothetical, labelled as such, on a real file. Score Government of the Republic of South Africa v Grootboom [2000] ZACC 19 (4 October 2000) on the essay's two configurations and do not average them.

Irene Grootboom and others had been living in Wallacedene, then on private land earmarked for housing, then beside a sports field after eviction. Yacoob J held that section 26 does not give each person a minimum-core house on demand. It requires reasonable legislative and other measures, within available resources, for progressive realisation. The national housing programme failed that test because it had no provision for people in desperate need.

Configuration A (maximize the present floor) predicts a minimum core. The Court refused that. Configuration B (adequate floor plus room to explore) is closer to "reasonable measures within available resources," which is what the text said and what the Court enforced.

If later housing policy still leaves a desperate class while the growth machinery runs, the constitutional object was never maximin. If the fiscal state compresses exploration to chase the floor, the essay's A is running on a clause that did not say A. Either result tells you whether "the veil is an axiological choice" is a claim about decision rules in a thought experiment, or about what a named constitution did when it hit a case.