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Katherine Johnson’s mathematical calculations helped guide some of America’s most important early space missions while she confronted the racial and gender barriers faced by Black women in twentieth-century America.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
In philosophy, the original position is a hypothetical position from which members of society would consider which principles they would select for the basic structure of their society if they had no knowledge ahead of time regarding the position which they would end up occupying in that society. The idea of having no such knowledge, because everyone is behind a veil of ignorance, represents a thought experiment often associated with the work of the American philosopher John Rawls.
In this "original position", the "veil of ignorance" prevents everyone from knowing their ethnicity, social status, gender, and (crucially in Rawls's formulation) their or anyone else's ideas of how to lead a good life. Ideally, this would force participants acting rationally to adopt an "initial agreement" on the principles impartially.[1]
In Rawls's theory the original position plays the same role as the "state of nature" does in the social contract tradition of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The original position figures prominently in Rawls's 1971 book, A Theory of Justice. It has influenced a variety of thinkers from a broad spectrum of philosophical orientations.
Rawls coined the phrases original position and veil of ignorance.[2] However, the same thought experiment had already been described earlier in social choice by William Vickrey[3] and John Harsanyi,[4][5] who independently derived proofs showing a rational observer in the original position would adopt a utilitarian framework.[6]
The concept of the veil of ignorance has been in use by other names for centuries by philosophers such as John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant whose work discussed the concept of the social contract, Adam Smith with his "impartial spectator", or the ideal observer theory. John Harsanyi was the first to mathematically formalize the concept,[4][5] using it to an argument in favor of utilitarianism rather than an argument for a social contract (as rational agents consider expected outcomes, not worst-case outcomes).[7] The usage of the term by John Rawls was developed in his 1971 book A Theory of Justice.[8][2]
Modern work tends to focus on the different decision theories that might describe the choice of the decision-maker "behind the veil".[9][10] In addition, Michael Moehler has shown that, from a moral point of view, decision theory is not necessarily central to veil of ignorance arguments, but the precise moral ideals that are assumed to model the veil. From a moral point of view, there is not one veil of ignorance but many different versions of it.[11]
Rawls states that the parties in the original position are concerned with the distribution of primary social goods, including basic rights, liberties and certain social and economic advantages.[12] He further argues that the representatives in the original position would adopt the maximin rule when evaluating alternative principles of justice. Derived from decision theory and game theory the maximin rule directs attention to the outcome for the least advantaged position. In Rawls's account this reasoning supports a conception of justice that gives particular consideration to the interests of the least advantaged members of society.[13]
It has been argued that under the veil of ignorance the parties in the original position may adopt a cautious approach when choosing principles of justice. Because they do not know what position they will occupy in society, they may favor principles that secure the best possible outcome for the least advantaged members of society. This reasoning is associated with the maximin rule which evaluates alternatives by considering the outcome for the least advantaged position.[14]
However, some scholars note that if the original position is formulated under risk neutrality rather than extreme risk aversion, the resulting principle shifts away from Rawls’s maximin approach and converges on a wealth-maximizing rule. In this respect, John Harsanyi’s analysis suggests that rational individuals, not knowing their future station but treating outcomes according to expected utility, would opt for maximizing average or total well-being.[4][15] (See wealth maximization for further discussion of this approach.)
In social contract theory, citizens in a state of nature contract with each other to establish a state of civil society. For example, in the Lockean state of nature, the parties agree to establish a civil society in which the government has limited powers and the duty to protect the persons and property of citizens. In the original position, the representative parties select principles of justice that are to govern the basic structure of society. Rawls argues that the representative parties in the original position would select two principles of justice:
Rawls returns to the concept of an original position in his The Law of Peoples (1999), where he speaks of "using the idea of the original position a second time" to show how representatives of "peoples" (a concept similar to states in Rawls's reasoning") would determine how liberal and otherwise "decent" peoples would relate to each other.[16]
Thomas Nagel further discussed the concept of the original position, emphasizing the relationship between the impartial perspective represented by the original position and the circumstances of actual individuals in society.[17]
The original position has been modeled mathematically along Wright-Fisher's diffusion, classical in population genetics.[18] The original position has also been used as an argument for negative eugenics, though Rawls's argument was limited to its use as a preventative measure.[19]
In Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Robert Nozick argues that, while the original position may be the just starting point, any inequalities derived from that distribution by means of free exchange are equally just, and that any re-distributive tax is an infringement on people's liberty. He also argues that Rawls's application of the maximin rule to the original position is risk aversion taken to its extreme, and is therefore unsuitable even to those behind the veil of ignorance.[20]
In Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982),[21] Michael Sandel has criticized Rawls's notion of a veil of ignorance, pointing out that it is impossible, for an individual, to completely prescind from beliefs and convictions (from the Me ultimately), as is required by Rawls's thought experiment.
In a 1987 empirical research study,[22] Frohlich, Oppenheimer, and Eavey showed that, in a simulated original position, undergraduates at American universities agreed upon a distributive principle that maximizes the average with a specified floor constraint (a minimum for the worst-off in any given distribution) over maximizing the floor alone or the average alone. While Rawls had argued that individuals in the original position would unanimously choose to maximize the welfare of the worst off, this principle of distribution was by far the least popular choice in the survey and was the preferred choice of less than 5% of participants.[22]
In How to Make Good Decisions and Be Right All the Time (2008), Iain King argues that people in the original position should not be risk-averse, leading them to adopt the Help Principle (help someone if your help is worth more to them than it is to you) rather than maximin.[23]
Philosopher and Law Professor Harold Anthony Lloyd argues that Rawls's veil of ignorance is hardly hypothetical but instead dangerously real since individuals cannot know at any point in time the future either for themselves or for others (or in fact know all aspects of either their relevant past or present). Faced with the high stakes of such ignorance, careful egoism effectively becomes altruism by minimizing/sharing risk through social safety nets and other means such as insurance.[24]
...the fictitious notion of 'original position' [was] developed by Vickery (1945), Harsanyi (1955), and Rawls (1971).
What Rawls says is that "Over time a society is to take steps to preserve the general level of natural abilities and to prevent the diffusion of serious defects." The key words here are "preserve" and "prevent". Rawls clearly envisages only the use of negative eugenics as a preventative measure to ensure a good basic level of genetic health for future generations. To jump from this to "make the later generations as genetically talented as possible," as Pence does, is a masterpiece of misinterpretation. This, then, is the sixth argument against positive eugenics: the Veil of Ignorance argument. Those behind the Veil in Rawls's Original Position would agree to permit negative, but not positive eugenics. This is a more complex variant of the Consent argument, as the Veil of Ignorance merely forces us to adopt a position of hypothetical consent to particular principles of justice.
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
In philosophy, the original position is a hypothetical position from which members of society would consider which principles they would select for the basic structure of their society if they had no knowledge ahead of time regarding the position which they would end up occupying in that society. The idea of having no such knowledge, because everyone is behind a veil of ignorance, represents a thought experiment often associated with the work of the American philosopher John Rawls. In this "original position", the "veil of ignorance" prevents everyone from knowing their ethnicity, social status, gender, and (crucially in Rawls's formulation) their or anyone else's ideas of how to lead a good life. Ideally, this would force participants acting rationally to adopt an "initial agreement" on the principles impartially. In Rawls's theory the original position plays the same role as the "state of nature" does in the social contract tradition of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The original position figures prominently in Rawls's 1971 book, A Theory of Justice. It has influenced a variety of thinkers from a broad spectrum of philosophical orientations. Rawls coined the phrases original position and veil of ignorance. However, the same thought experiment had already been described earlier in social choice by William Vickrey and John Harsanyi, who independently derived proofs showing a rational observer in the original position would adopt a utilitarian framework.
John Bordley Rawls (; February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American philosopher, most active in moral, legal, and political philosophy. Rawls has been described as one of the most influential modern liberal political philosophers of the 20th century. In 1990, Will Kymlicka wrote in his introduction to the field that "it is generally accepted that the recent rebirth of normative political philosophy began with the publication of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice in 1971". Rawls's theory of "justice as fairness" recommends equal basic liberties, equality of opportunity, and facilitating the maximum benefit to the least advantaged members of society in any case where inequalities may occur. His argument for these principles of social justice uses a thought experiment called the "original position", in which people deliberatively select what kind of society they would choose to live in if they did not know which social position they would personally occupy. In his later work Political Liberalism (1993), he addresses the question of how political power can be exercised legitimately in a society where citizens hold diverse and often conflicting moral, religious, and philosophical points of view. Rawls received both the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1999. The latter was presented by President Bill Clinton in recognition of how his works "revived the disciplines of political and ethical philosophy with his argument that a society in which the most fortunate help the least fortunate is not only a moral society but a logical one". Among contemporary political philosophers, Rawls is frequently cited by the courts of law in the United States and Canada and referred to by practicing politicians in the United States and the United Kingdom. In a 2008 national survey of political theorists, based on 1,086 responses from professors at accredited, four-year colleges and universities in the United States, Rawls was voted first on the list of "Scholars Who Have Had the Greatest Impact on Political Theory in the Past 20 Years".
69 or sixty-nine is a sex position in which two people align themselves so that each person's mouth is near the other's genitals, allowing each partner to simultaneously perform oral sex on the other. The participants are thus mutually inverted like in the number 69 (69), hence the code name. In this case, the numerals 6 and 9 are treated more as pictographic symbols than as numerical representations, with the bulbous part representing the heads of the performers. The name is a translation of the original French, soixante-neuf, which is also sometimes borrowed directly into English. The concept is that both partners can experience sexual stimulation and oral sensation simultaneously, but this can also distract those who try to focus solely on their own pleasure from giving oral sex well. The position can also be awkward for partners who are not similar in height.
A sex position is a positioning of the bodies that people use to engage in sexual intercourse or other sexual activities. Sexual acts are generally described by the positions the participants adopt in order to perform the acts. Though sexual intercourse generally involves penetration of the body of one person by another, sex positions commonly involve non-penetrative sexual activities. Three broad and overlapping categories of sexual activity are commonly practiced: vaginal sex, anal sex, and oral sex (mouth-on-genital or mouth-on-anus). Sex acts may also be part of a fourth category, manual sex, which is stimulating the genitals or anus by using fingers or hands. Some acts may include stimulation by a device (sex toy), such as a dildo or vibrator. There are numerous sex positions that participants may adopt in any of these types of sex acts, and some authors have argued that the number of sex positions is essentially limitless.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Mae Jemison, aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992.
