Monday 11/4
Contractarian Case Analysis
Readings
Cases
Synopsis
Today we took up two cases: Anti-Vax Tax and, all too briefly, $15,000 Baby. Our puzzle was how to understand a Veil of Ignorance strategy for applying Social Contract Theory to such difficult questions as how to be fair in handling the Anti-Vax movement while encouraging vaccinations. We discovered in our considerations that it is easy to confuse SCT with, say, Ideal Rule Utilitarianism, on the one hand, and Cultural Ethical Relativism, on the other hand. Nevertheless, we found in our considerations about the Anti-Vax Tax case that the conctractarian emphasis on rules fairly applied in service of mutual benefit raises moral dimensions of difficult cases not, perhaps, found in Utilitarian or Kantian approaches.