## 1. Desert and Entitlement



It is important here at the outset that we draw attention to a
distinction between *desert* and another concept with which it
might be confused. We will speak of this latter concept as the concept
of *entitlement*, though different philosophers use different
terminology to mark this distinction. 



A typical desert claim is a claim to the effect that someone -
the "deserver" - deserves something - the
"desert" - in virtue of his or her possession of
some feature - the "desert
 base".[1]
 For example, consider the claim that a certain student deserves a
high grade from her teacher in virtue of the fact that she did
excellent work in the course. A typical entitlement claim is a claim
to the effect that someone is entitled to something from someone on
some basis. For example, consider the claim that a customer is
entitled to a refund from a merchant in virtue of the fact that the
merchandise he purchased from that merchant had been sold with a
guarantee and turned out to be defective. 



There are obvious structural similarities between desert claims and
claims about entitlement. In typical examples of each sort, someone is
said to deserve (or be entitled to) something from someone on some
basis. However, there is an important difference between the concepts
of desert and entitlement. As the terminology is used here, desert is
a more purely normative concept, while entitlement is a sociological
or empirical concept. If some social or legal institution is in place
in your social group, and that institution has a rule that specifies
some treatment for those who have some feature, and you have the
feature, then you are entitled to that treatment. Thus, for example,
suppose that when the customer purchased a certain item, he received a
legally binding written guarantee from the seller. The guarantee
specified that if the item should turn out to be defective, the seller
would either replace the item or refund the money that the buyer had
spent for the defective item. In such a case, if the buyer satisfies
the conditions stated in the guarantee, and the purchased item is
indeed defective, the buyer is entitled to the refund or replacement.




Typical desert claims have a similar structure, but do not always
depend in this way on the existence of laws or contracts or other
similar social institutions. A person may deserve some sort of
treatment even though there are no rules in place in his society that
codify the conditions under which someone deserves that sort of
treatment. In such a case, a person may deserve something even though
he is not entitled to it. Similarly, a person may be entitled to
something by some rules that are in place in his society even though
he does not deserve it. Some examples may help to make this
distinction clearer. 



Consider an example involving a wealthy grandfather and two
grandchildren. One grandchild is vicious and rich; the other is
virtuous and poor. The vicious grandchild never treated his
grandfather with respect. The virtuous grandchild was always
respectful and caring. Suppose the grandfather leaves his entire
fortune to the vicious grandchild. As the terminology is used here, we
may want to describe the situation by saying that the vicious
grandchild is *entitled* to the fortune (the rules of the legal
system are unambiguous on this point), but at the same time we may
want to say that he does not *deserve* it (he already has too
much money; he is a rotten person who never treated his grandfather
respectfully). The virtuous grandchild may *deserve* at least
some of the inheritance, but he is not *entitled* to any of it.




Another example illustrates the same point. Suppose that an athlete
has her heart set on doing well in a competition. Suppose she has a
lot of natural talent and trains diligently for a long time until she
has developed championship-level abilities in her sport. Suppose that
the training involves quite a bit of sacrifice on her part. Suppose
that at the last minute the competition is cancelled, and the athlete
has no opportunity to compete. Then we might say that this was a great
misfortune for her; she *deserved* to have a chance to
participate. Unfortunately, there is no rule in the rulebook of the
athlete's sport that says that those who have trained diligently
are to get a chance to participate. Let us assume that there is no
institution in place in the athlete's society that specifies
that those who train hard shall be given a chance to compete. In this
case, it would be wrong to say (using the terminology in the way that
has been specified) that the athlete is *entitled* to a chance
to participate, yet we may still feel that she *deserved* the
chance. This seems to be an example of a case in which someone has
completely "non-institutional" desert of something. 



Some philosophers use the expression 'pre-institutional
desert' where we use 'desert', and
'institutional desert' where we use
'entitlement'. To avoid confusion, we will use
'desert' to refer to the relation that does not
essentially involve the existence of social or legal institutions, and
'entitlement' to refer to the relation that does
essentially involve the existence of such institutions. Our focus in
this article is on desert; we mention entitlement only as it bears on
desert. 


## 2. Deservers, Desert, and Desert Bases



In his seminal work on desert and justice (Feinberg 1970) Joel
Feinberg presented a catalog of types of seemingly uncontroversial
desert claims: a student might deserve a high grade in virtue of
having written a good paper; an athlete might deserve a prize in
virtue of having excelled in a competition; a successful researcher
might deserve an expression of gratitude in virtue of having perfected
a disease-preventing serum; a criminal might deserve the contempt of
his community in virtue of having committed crimes; the victim of an
industrial accident may deserve compensation from his negligent
employer; a hard-working public official may deserve to be promoted to
a higher office in virtue of her diligence. Leibniz, Kant, and others
focused on examples in which a person is said to deserve happiness in
virtue of having been morally excellent. 



In all these familiar cases, the deserver is a person. But as Feinberg
himself mentioned, there does not seem to be any conceptual barrier to
saying that non-persons may also be deservers. Thus, for example, it
seems acceptable to say that a beautiful ancient city deserves to be
preserved; that a unique and formerly vibrant ecosystem deserves to be
restored; that the scene of a horrible massacre deserves to be torn
down. In moral and political discussions, cases under scrutiny tend to
be ones in which deservers are either individual people or groups of
people. This should not blind us to the fact that non-persons can also
be deservers. 



Desert claims also typically involve a *desert*. This is the
thing that the deserver is said to deserve. As Feinberg indicated,
familiar deserts include such things as grades, wages, prizes,
respect, honors and awards, rights, love, benefits and other such
things. Leibniz and Kant would surely insist that we include happiness
among the possible deserts; and others would insist that we should
mention welfare. 



Those deserts may seem at first to be "positive." However,
there are "negative" counterparts. Indeed, some of the
items on that list are already negative. Thus, some grades are bad
grades, as for example, the F a student might deserve for a very weak
paper. Other deserts are uniformly negative: burdens, fines, booby
prizes, contempt, dishonors, onerous obligations, penalties,
condemnation, hate, etc. 



Some contributors to the literature on desert suggest that every
desert is either a plus or a minus. Some speak, in this context of
"benefits and burdens," or advantages and disadvantages.
However, there are cases in which someone deserves something that is
neither good nor bad, neither a benefit nor a burden. Suppose someone
who has done outstanding academic work deserves to get an A, while
someone who has done completely unsatisfactory work deserves to get an
F. It is reasonable to suppose that the A is a good grade -
something the recipient will be pleased to get - and the F is a
bad grade - something that the recipient will be disappointed to
get. But suppose a student did mediocre work and deserves a mediocre
grade - a C. This is neither good nor bad, neither a benefit nor
a burden. Nevertheless, someone might deserve it. This would be a case
in which someone deserves something that is neither
"positive" nor "negative." 



The same could be true of welfare. Someone might deserve happiness and
(we may assume) that would be a good thing to get; someone else might
deserve unhappiness and (we may assume) that would be a bad thing to
get. But another person might deserve to be at an intermediate welfare
level, neither happy nor unhappy. While it might be good in some way
for the person to be at that neutral welfare level, the thing he
deserves would be neither good nor bad. So while it is convenient to
say that deserts are benefits or burdens - things that will be
good or bad for the deserver to receive - in fact some deserts
are neither benefits nor burdens. 



Feinberg suggested that we can distinguish between "basic"
and "derived" deserts. He went on to say that basic
deserts are always responsive attitudes such as approval and
disapproval. On this view, derived deserts are forms of treatment that
would be fitting expressions of the more fundamental basic deserts.
Thus, giving a student an A might be the fitting expression for
approval of her work; giving a student an F might be the most fitting
expression of serious disapproval of her work. Some recent
contributors to the literature on desert seem to ignore this
distinction between basic and derived desert, but others continue to
employ the distinction and to treat it as important. Scanlon, for
example, makes it a central feature of his conception of desert (see
Scanlon 2013, 2018). 



Perhaps the most important and controversial bit of information we
typically seek in connection with a claim about desert concerns the
*desert base*. This is generally taken to be the feature in
virtue of which the deserver deserves the desert. On this view, a
desert base is always a property. If we adopt this view, we will say
(for example) that the student deserves a high grade in virtue of her
possession of the property of *having produced course work of high
quality*. On another view, a desert base is always a fact. If we
adopt this view we will prefer to say that the student deserves her
high grade in virtue of *the fact that her work was of such high
quality*. 



We are inclined to think that it makes no difference whether we take
desert bases to be properties or to be facts. The views seem to be
intertranslatable. In this article, simply as a matter of convenience,
we generally speak of desert bases as properties. 



In some cases there is little debate about whether a certain property
serves as a desert base for a certain sort of treatment. This may be
illustrated by the example of the student who produced outstanding
work in a course and deserves a high grade. Few would debate the claim
that the student deserves the grade in virtue of the high quality of
her work. The desert base in that case would be *having produced
academic work of high quality*. Similarly consider the case of the
cold-blooded criminal who has inflicted great harm on many innocent
victims. It is reasonable to suppose that he deserves a harsh penalty
in virtue of his evil behavior. In this case, the desert base is
something like *having inflicted great harm on many innocent
victims*. 



In other cases, however, there would be more controversy about desert
bases. A good example involves the desert of wages. Suppose an
employee works hard, is productive, is loyal to his employer, and in
virtue of some health problems in his family, needs more money. We may
agree in such a case that the employee deserves a raise - but we
may disagree about the basis on which he deserves that raise. 



There is general agreement that properties of certain types cannot
serve as desert bases. Consider a case in which punishing an innocent
person would have good consequences. The person has this property:
*being such that punishing him would have good consequences*.
But it would be seriously counterintuitive to say that the person
deserves punishment in virtue of his possession of this property. 



Certain general principles about desert bases have been introduced in
an effort to explain why certain properties seem ineligible to serve
as desert bases. Perhaps the least controversial principle is the
so-called "Aboutness Principle," mentioned by Feinberg. In
its propositional form, this principle says that a person can deserve
something in virtue of a certain fact only if that fact is a fact
"about the person." In its property form, the principle
would say that a person can deserve something in virtue of a certain
property only if the person actually has the property. The Aboutness
Principle does not offer any assistance with respect to the punishment
case just mentioned. After all, the innocent person in that example
actually does have the property of *being such that punishing him
would have good consequences*. The fact that punishing him would
have good consequences is a fact about him. 



Some have said that if someone deserves something, D, in virtue of
having some desert base, DB, then the deserving one must be
responsible for having DB (see, for example, Rawls 1971; Rachels 1978;
Sadurski 1985). This "Responsibility Principle" seems to
be satisfied by many of the examples already discussed. The good
student, we may suppose, is responsible for having produced good
academic work. The cold-blooded criminal, similarly, may seem
responsible for his vicious behavior. The hard working employee bears
some responsibility for having worked so hard. We may generalize from
these cases and conclude that all cases of desert are like this: if
someone deserves something, D, on some basis, DB, then he or she is
responsible for having DB. Appeal to the Responsibility Principle
would explain why the innocent person does not deserve punishment. He
is not responsible for having the property of *being such that
punishing him would have good consequences*. 



A variety of cases have been offered as counterexamples to the
Responsibility Principle. Feldman (1995a) described a case in which
patrons at a restaurant became ill as a result of having been served
spoiled food. He claimed that the patrons in such a case would deserve
compensation. The desert base here seems to be *having been harmed
by the negligent food preparation by the restaurant* - yet
the patrons were not responsible for having that desert base. They
were innocent victims. A similar thing happens in the case of someone
who has been egregiously insulted. She may deserve an apology in
virtue of having been insulted, but she is not responsible for the
insult. Another case mentioned by McLeod involves a child who, through
no fault of his own, comes down with a painful illness. He deserves
the care and sympathy of his parents, yet he is not responsible for
having become ill. 



Others have suggested what may be called "the Temporality
Principle": the idea here is roughly this: if someone deserves
something, D, in virtue of having a certain desert base, DB, then he
or she must already have DB at the time he or she begins to deserve D
(see, for example, Rachels 1978; Kleinig 1971; Sadurski 1985). You
cannot deserve something on the basis of a property you will begin to
have only later. The Temporality Principle has been invoked in an
effort to explain why it is wrong to engage in
"pre-punishment." It is said that even if a certain person
is going to commit a crime, he does not begin to deserve punishment
for that crime until he actually commits it. This line of thought has
been debated. One problem is that even before he commits the crime,
the future criminal already has this property: *being such that he
will later commit a crime*. It might be said that he deserves
punishment in virtue of already having this property even before he
commits the crime. While the Temporality Principle is widely endorsed,
counterexamples have been presented (see, for example, Feldman 1995b).
Those counterexamples have not been universally accepted (see, for
example, Smilansky 1996a, 1996b).



In many cases, when we make a desert claim we mention a
*distributor*. This is the person or institution from whom the
deserver deserves to receive the desert. In some cases, the identity
of the distributor will be clear. In other cases, it is not so clear.
Consider, for example, the motto that the McDonald's restaurants
formerly used: 'You deserve a break today.' No distributor
is explicitly mentioned in the motto. It just says that you deserve a
break. Perhaps when McDonald's made this statement, they did not
have any particular distributor in mind. Maybe they just thought that
you deserve it *from someone*. The same would be true of the
Gates Foundation's former motto according to which 'Every
person deserves the chance to live a healthy and productive
life.' The motto does not mention anyone who has the job of
ensuring that everyone gets a chance to live a healthy and productive
life. Given that no one has the capacity to ensure that everyone lives
a healthy and productive life, we may conclude that in this case no
distributor is mentioned precisely because no one is qualified to be a
distributor. 



In other cases, there is a distributor and its identity is clear.
Consider, for example, the claim that a certain elderly professor
deserves some respect from his unruly students. Here the distributor
is explicitly mentioned: it is the unruly students. Those who endorse
the notion that virtuous people deserve happiness in heaven will
presumably say that the distributor in that case is God. In social and
political contexts we often find philosophers assuming that citizens
deserve certain rights from the government of their country. 



It may seem that we could relocate this reference to the distributor.
We could build reference to the distributor into the description of
the desert. Thus, instead of saying that the desert in the example
involving the elderly professor is *respect*, we could say that
the desert is *respect from his students*. 



In some cases a desert statement may also indicate something about the
strength of the deserver's desert of the thing deserved. The
strength of someone's desert of something might be indicated
loosely, as when we say that someone's desert of something is
"very strong," or "only slight." In some cases
we can use some numbers to represent strengths of desert, though the
choice of a numbering system will be to some extent arbitrary. But
there are some important facts here: sometimes you deserve both A and
B, but you deserve A more than you deserve B; sometimes two different
deservers deserve the same thing and it is not possible for both of
them to get it; maybe one of them deserves it more than the other.
Sometimes you deserve something, but only to a very slight degree and
this desert could easily be overridden by some other consideration.




In many cases a desert statement (if fully spelled out) would also
indicate some *times*. One of these is the time of the
deserving; the other is the time when the receipt of the desert is
supposed to take place. Thus, for example, suppose a lot of money has
been withheld from a certain person's paycheck each week for a
whole year. Suppose in fact the government has withheld more than the
person owes in taxes. Then he deserves a refund. Suppose refunds are
all given out on April 1. We might want to say this: at every moment
in March, the taxpayer deserves to get a refund on April 1. In this
example, the time of the deserving is *every moment in March*.
The time at which the deserver deserves to receive the desert is April
1. 


## 3. The Justification of Desert Claims



A number of related questions have been discussed under the general
title of 'the justification of desert claims.' Some
apparently take the question about justification to be a question
about *epistemic* justification (see, for example, McLeod 1995,
89). If we understand the question in this way, we may want to know
how - if at all - a person can be epistemically justified
in believing that (for example) hard work is a desert base for reward.
Others take the question about justification in a different way. They
take it to be a question about *explanation*. Consider again
the question about the justification of the claim that hard work makes
us deserve reward. On this second interpretation, the question is:
what explains the fact that hard work is a desert base for reward?
Others speak in this context of "normative force" (see,
for example, Sher 1987, xi). They seem to be concerned with a question
about what explains the fact that when someone deserves something, it
is obligatory for others to provide it, or good that it be provided.
Still others may phrase the question by appeal to concepts of
*grounding* or *foundation*. They may ask what grounds
the fact that those who work hard deserve rewards. Still others write
a bit more vaguely about the *analysis* of desert claims (see,
for example, Feinberg 1970). 



There is a further distinction to be noted. Some who write about the
justification of desert claims seem to think that it is specific
desert claims about particular individuals that call for
justification. Thus, they might ask for a justification of the claim
that Jones deserves a $100 bonus for having worked extra hard over the
holiday weekend. Others apparently think that what calls for
justification is a more general claim about desert bases and deserts.
They might ask for a justification of the claim that *hard
work* is a desert base for *financial reward*. 



We will formulate the discussion in the admittedly vague idiom of
*justification of claims about desert bases and deserts*. But
as we understand the question, it can be explicated in this way:
suppose someone claims that in general the possession of some desert
base, DB, makes people deserve a certain desert, D. If challenged, how
could the maker of such a claim support his claim? How could he argue
for his assertion? What facts about DB and D could he cite in order to
show that he was right - the possession of DB does make someone
deserve D? 



Some who write on this topic are "monists" about
justification; they apparently assume that there is a single feature
that will serve in all cases to justify desert claims. Others are
"pluralists." They defend the idea that desert claims fall
into different categories, and that each category has its own
distinctive sort of justification (see, for example, Feinberg 1970,
Sher 1987, and Lamont 1994). We first consider some monist views. 



Some popular views about the justification of desert claims are based
on the idea that such claims can be justified by appeal to
considerations about the values of consequences. Sidgwick seems to be
thinking of something like this in *The Methods of Ethics*
where he mentions 'the utilitarian interpretation of
Desert.' He describes this by saying: 'when a man is said
to deserve reward for any services to society, the meaning is that it
is expedient to reward him, in order that he and others may be induced
to render similar services by the expectation of similar
rewards' (1907, 284, note 1). (It is not clear that Sidgwick
means to defend this view about desert; he seems to be offering it as
an account of what a determinist would have to say.) 



Sidgwick's statement has direct implications only for cases in
which what is deserved is some sort of reward and the desert base of
this desert is some sort of 'service to society.' As a
result, it is not clear that this idea about justification, taken
simply by itself, has any direct relevance to cases in which someone
deserves punishment, or compensation, or a prize for outstanding
performance, or a grade for academic work. 



According to a natural extension of the view that Sidgwick mentioned,
a claim to the effect that someone deserves something, D, in virtue of
his possession of some feature, DB, is justified by pointing out that
giving the person D in virtue of his possession of DB would have high
utility. 



While there surely are some cases in which giving someone what he
deserves would have high utility, this link between desert and utility
is just as frequently absent. To see this, consider a case in which a
very popular person has engaged in some bad behavior for which he
deserves punishment - but suppose in addition that no one
believes he is guilty. If he were punished for having done the nasty
deed, there would be an outpouring of anger from all of the popular
person's fans and friends who think he has been framed. If our
interest were in producing an outcome with high utility, we would have
to refrain from punishing him. But in spite of that, since in fact he
did do the nasty deed, he does deserve the punishment. 



In other cases, giving a person some benefit might have good results
even though the person does not deserve to receive those benefits. To
see this, imagine that a crazed maniac threatens to murder a dozen
hostages unless he is given a half-hour of prime time TV to air his
grievances. Giving him this airtime might have high utility - it
might be the best thing for those in charge to do in the circumstances
- but at the same time we might feel that the maniac does not
deserve it. 



Another serious problem with the consequentialist approach is brought
out by consideration of the famous telishment case, also known as
'The Small Southern Town.' The example was presented by
Carritt in his *Ethical and Political Thinking*, but gained
great notoriety as a result of being quoted at length in Rawls's
'Two Concepts of Rules' (Rawls 1955). Here is the passage
from Carritt:



> 
> ...if some kind of very cruel crime becomes common, and none of
> the criminals can be caught, it might be highly expedient, as an
> example, to hang an innocent man, if a charge against him could be so
> framed that he were universally thought guilty... (Carritt 1947,
> 65)
> 



In this example, punishing an innocent person has high utility because
it would have great deterrent effect. But the victim of the punishment
does not deserve punishment - after all, he is innocent. This
highlights an important fact about desert and utility: sometimes it
can be expedient to give someone a reward or a punishment that he or
she does not deserve. 



It appears then that the consequentialist approach confronts
overwhelming objections. Sometimes deserved treatment is expedient;
sometimes it is not. Sometimes undeserved treatment is expedient;
sometimes it is not. As a result, appeals to the utility of giving
someone some benefit or burden cannot justify the claim that the
person deserves that sort of treatment. 



A second approach to the justification of desert claims is based on
some ideas concerning institutions. There are several different ways
in which this "institutional justification" can be
developed. (Our discussion in this section has benefited enormously
from McLeod 1999b.) 



First, some background: an *institution* may be identified by a
system of rules that define positions, moves, penalties, rewards, etc.
In some cases the rules of an institution are carefully written down
and perhaps made a matter of legislation. The system of taxation in
some country might be a good example. In other cases the rules of an
institution are not explicitly formalized. An example might be the
system of etiquette governing the writing, sending, replying to, etc.
of wedding invitations. It is not easy to say what makes an
institution "exist" in a society. That is a puzzle best
left to the sociologists. 



We may also need to assume that when people set up institutions, they
do so with some intention. They are trying to achieve something; or
more likely, they are trying to achieve several different things.
Maybe different people have different aims. We can say -
somewhat vaguely - that the *point* of an institution is
the main goal or aim that people have in establishing or maintaining
that institution. 



A person may be *governed* by some institution even if he does
not like it, or does not endorse it. Thus, for example, suppose a
criminal justice system exists in a certain state. Suppose some
miscreant lives in that state and has been charged with some crime.
Suppose he is found guilty in a duly established court of law and is
sentenced to ten years in prison. He is governed by the rules of the
judicial system whether he likes it or not. To be governed by an
institution one must live (or perhaps be a visitor) in the state or
society where the institution exists, and one must somehow "fall
under" the rules. Those rules must "apply to" the
individual. Again, these are tricky sociological notions, not easily
spelled out. 



Some philosophers have said things that suggest that it is possible to
justify a desert claim by identifying a currently existing, actual
institution according to which the deserver is entitled to the desert.
We can state this idea a bit more clearly: 



> 
> AID: The claim that a person, S, deserves something, D, on the basis
> of the fact that he has a feature, DB, is justifiable if and only if
> there is some social institution, I; I exists in S's society; S
> is governed by I; according to the rules of I, those who have DB are
> to receive D; S has DB.
> 



This "actual institutional" account of desert is almost
universally
 rejected.[2]
 There are several independent sources of difficulty. Most of these
emerge from the requirement that a desert claim is justifiable always
and only when there is an appropriate *actual* social
institution. This produces a number of devastating objections. Suppose
a thoroughly decent person has suffered a number of serious
misfortunes. He deserves a change of luck; he deserves some good luck
for a change. Suppose he lives in a country where there is no social
institution that supplies compensatory benefits to those who have had
bad luck. If AID were true, it would be impossible to justify the
claim that he deserves it. 



An equally serious objection arises from the fact that some of the
institutions that actually exist are morally indefensible. Let us
imagine a thoroughly horrible social institution - slavery.
Suppose some unfortunate individual is governed by that institution.
Suppose the institution contains rules that say that slaves who are
strong and healthy shall be required to work without pay in the cotton
fields. Suppose this individual is strong and healthy. Consider the
claim that he deserves to be required to work in the fields without
pay in virtue of the fact that he is strong and healthy. AID implies
that this desert claim is justified. That is as preposterous as it is
offensive. 



The general point: we must not lose sight of the fundamental
difference between *entitlement* and *desert*. AID seems
to confuse these. It seems to say that you deserve something if and
only if you are entitled to it by the rules of an actual institution.
Since there are bad institutions, and cases in which desert arises in
the absence of institutions, this is clearly a mistake. 



We can deal with all of these objections by altering the institutional
account of justification. Instead of making the justification of a
desert claim depend upon the existence of an actual social
institution, we can make it depend upon the rules that would be
contained in some ideal social institution. The main change is that we
no longer require that the social institution exists. We require
instead that it be an ideal institution - an institution that
would be in some way excellent or preferable. Then we can attempt to
justify desert claims by saying that the deservers would be entitled
to those deserts by the rules of an ideal social institution. 



We can state the thesis this way:



> 
> IID: The claim that a person, S, deserves something, D, on the basis
> of the fact that he has a feature, DB, is justifiable if and only if
> there is some possible social institution, I; I would be ideal for
> S's society; S would be governed by I; according to the rules of
> I, those who have DB are to receive D; S has DB.
> 



Before we can evaluate this proposal, we have to explain in greater
detail what makes a possible institution "ideal" for a
society. We might try to define ideality by saying that an ideal
institution is one that would distribute benefits and burdens to
people precisely in accord with their deserts. With this account of
ideality in place, IID generates quite a few correct results.
Unfortunately, it would be unhelpful in the present context. After
all, the aim here is to explain how desert claims can be justified.
This account would explain desert by appeal to ideal institutions, and
then explain ideal institutions by appeal to desert. 



Following the rule utilitarians, we could attempt to define ideality
by saying that a possible institution is ideal for a society if and
only if having it as the society's institutional way of
achieving its point would produce more utility than would the having
of any alternative institution. This yields a form of the
institutional approach that seems importantly similar to the
consequentialist approach already discussed. 



Unfortunately, with this conception of ideality in place, the proposal
seems to inherit some of the defects of the simpler consequentialist
approach. It implies, for example, that if it is possible for there to
be a seriously unfair but nevertheless utility maximizing institution,
then people would deserve the burdens allocated to them by the rules
of that institution, even if it were not in place. 



A further difficulty arises in connection with actual but not
optimific institutions. Suppose, for example, the utility maximizing
ice-skating institution would have rules specifying that in order to
win the gold medal, a competitor must perform a 7 minute free program;
a 6 minute program of required figures; and that all contestants must
wear regulation team uniforms consisting of full length trousers and
matching long-sleeved team shirts. Suppose in fact that this
institution is not in place in Nancy's society. Suppose instead
that the de facto institution contains some slightly different but
still fairly reasonable rules for ice-skating competitions. Suppose
Nancy abides by all the relevant extant rules and is declared the
winner in a competition. She is entitled to the gold medal by the
actual rules. It may seem, in such a case, that her claim to deserve
the medal would be justified. But since she would not be entitled to
it by the rules of the ideal institution, IID implies that it is
impossible to justify her claim that she deserves the medal by virtue
of her performance here tonight. 



It appears, then, that difficulties confront the attempt to justify
desert claims by appeal to claims about the entitlements created by
institutions, actual or ideal. 



Some philosophers have drawn attention to alleged connections between
desert claims and facts about "appraising attitudes" or
"responsive attitudes" (see, for example, Feinberg 1970).
Commentators have understood these philosophers to have been defending
the idea that desert claims can be justified by appeal to facts about
appraising attitudes. Some have said, for example, that David Miller
defended a view of this sort in his *Social Justice* (1976).
While there may be debate about whether Miller actually intended to be
defending such a view, it is worthwhile to consider it. (In the
discussion that follows we are indebted to McLeod 1995 and McLeod
2013.) 



We need first to understand what is meant by 'appraising
attitude.' 



Admiration, approval, and gratitude are typically cited as examples of
"positive" appraising attitudes. In each case, if a person
has such an attitude toward someone, he has that attitude in virtue of
some feature that he takes the person to have. Suppose, for example,
that you admire someone; then you must admire her *for something
she is or something she did*. Maybe she worked hard; or wrote a
good paper; or can run very fast; or is able to play the violin
beautifully. Similarly for the other positive appraising attitudes.




Disapproval, resentment, contempt, "thinking ill of," and
condemnation may be cited as examples of "negative"
appraising attitudes. They are similar to the positive attitudes in
this respect, if you disapprove of someone, then you must disapprove
of him *for something he is or something he did*. Maybe he
plagiarized a paper; maybe he is totally out of shape; maybe he is
utterly talentless. 



Miller says that if we did not have these attitudes, 'we would
not and could not use the concept of desert' (1976, 89). He also
says that the range of possible desert bases coincides with the range
of bases for appraising attitudes. You cannot deserve something on the
basis of your possession of a property, DB, unless we could have an
appraising attitude toward you on the basis of your possession of DB.
But what is most important for our present purposes is that, according
to Miller, 'the existence of these appraising attitudes makes
intelligible the connection between a desert judgment and its
basis' (89). Some have understood Miller to be claiming that
something about these appraising attitudes provides the answer to our
question about the justification of desert claims. 



A certain appraising attitude may seem appropriate to a desert claim.
For example, suppose a person feels strong approval (a positive
appraising attitude) of a subject in virtue of his heroic action. The
attitude would be appropriate to the claim that the hero deserves a
reward for his heroism. On the other hand, if someone feels contempt
(a negative appraising attitude) for a person in virtue of his
cowardice, then this attitude would be appropriate to the claim that
the coward deserves some sort of penalty. On one possible view,
whether a desert judgment is justifiable depends upon whether the
person who makes that judgment has an appraising attitude that is
appropriate to the desert claim. 



This view (presumably not Miller's) is clearly confused. Suppose
the leader of a terrorist gang claims that a member of his gang
deserves respect for having set off a suicide bomb in an elementary
school. Suppose the leader has great admiration for this the gang
member precisely because he set off the bomb. On the current proposal,
since the leader in fact has a positive appraising attitude toward the
member, his desert claim is justified. That cannot be right. 



The difficulty cannot be resolved by appealing to the reactions of the
community. It is easy enough to imagine a case in which the
overwhelming majority of the bomber's community admire him for
destroying the elementary school. Surely, however, no matter how many
of his compatriots admire him for doing this deed, the claim that he
deserves admiration for having done it is still not justified. 



Instead of appealing to facts about the appraising attitudes that
others in fact have, we might consider a different question: what sort
of appraising attitude would be fitting for others to have in virtue
of the fact that he has committed this deed? If it would be fitting
for others to admire him for bombing the school, then he deserves
admiration. If it would be fitting for others to hold him in contempt
for bombing the school, then he deserves contempt. 



In general, then, we might say that the claim that S deserves a
certain benefit (burden) in virtue of having done X is justified if
and only if it would be fitting for observers to have a positive
(negative) appraising attitude toward S in virtue of his having done
X. 



This proposal seems misguided for several reasons. First, it seems to
be circular. It purports to explain the justification of desert claims
by appeal to claims about what appraising attitude would be
"fitting." But to say that it would be fitting for someone
to receive a certain benefit is dangerously close to saying that he
deserves to receive it. In this form the proposal seems circular. 



Furthermore, it appears that there are cases in which a person
deserves something but in which no appraising attitude seems to be
fitting. Suppose, for example, that an abandoned child is in need of
medical care and nurturance. The fact that the child is sick does not
make it appropriate for onlookers to admire her or to condemn her. It
does not call for any "positive" or "negative"
appraising attitude. Nevertheless, the claim that the child deserves
medical care and nurturance in virtue of her need might be justified.
This objection presents a genuine difficulty only if every appraising
attitude is a favorable or an unfavorable attitude. If we assume that
pity, or compassion, is also an appraising attitude, the problem
mentioned here will not arise.



In his (1970) Feinberg hints at a different way in which appraising
attitudes might figure in the justification of desert claims. Feinberg
starts by noting that 'reasonable men naturally entertain
certain responsive attitudes toward various actions, qualities, and
achievements.' Those who engage in the actions or manifest the
qualities thereby deserve to be the subjects of the responsive
attitudes. Going further, we can say that various forms of treatment
- punishments, rewards, prizes, etc. - are the customary
way of expressing the natural responsive attitudes. When such forms of
treatment are in this way the customary and natural ways of expressing
the attitudes, then those who engage in the action or manifest the
quality deserve, in a derived way, to receive the treatment. The
suggestion, then, is that in such cases the claim that someone
deserves D on the basis of his possession of DB can be justified by
pointing out that giving D is the conventional way of expressing the
responsive attitude that reasonable men entertain toward those with
DB. 



If understood in the suggested way, this account would rely on some
problematic assumptions about the responsive attitudes that
'reasonable men naturally entertain.' We might well doubt
whether all such men invariably entertain those attitudes in cases
where the recipients deserve to be their subject. In any case where
only *some* reasonable men entertain the attitudes, it would be
impossible to justify the associated desert claims. On the other hand,
if we required merely that some reasonable men entertain the attitudes
in question, then it would become far too easy to justify dubious
desert claims. Furthermore, it would make it possible for there to be
cases in which someone both deserves a certain treatment and also
deserves not to get that treatment. 



The details of the appraising attitudes approach remain controversial.




A few philosophers - including George Sher (1987) and Julian
Lamont (1994) - said things that suggest a pluralistic approach
to the question about the justification of desert claims. On this
view, there are several different "external values";
different values would be relevant in different cases; different
desert claims would be justifiable by appeal to different external
values. Thus, for example, consider the claim that you deserve a
reward for having saved a life. The external value in this case might
be some combination of the value of courage and the alleged value of
human life. Consider a different case in which someone claims that you
deserve a high grade for having done outstanding work in a course. In
this case, the external value might be the value of academic
achievement. In every case, a desert claim - if it can be
justified at all - can be justified by pointing out that giving
the deserver the desert would properly respect the associated external
value. A full exposition of this approach would require a detailed
account of what makes a certain external value be relevant to a desert
claim; it would also require a detailed account of what is meant by
saying that some action would "properly respect" some
external value. 


## 4. Desert and Intrinsic Value



Here is a natural and appealing idea: it is a good thing when people
get what they deserve. If I am distributing raises, and only Jones
deserves a raise, then it would be better for me to give the raise to
Jones than to anyone else.



As simple and straightforward as this idea is, given certain
background assumptions it raises difficult questions about the
connection between desert and "goodness," or intrinsic
value. 



Some consequentialist moral theories make use of (and so presuppose
the intelligibility of) the notion of the "intrinsic value of a
state of affairs," or the "intrinsic value of a possible
world." This notion of intrinsic value is a quantitative one:
consequentialists usually assume that we can choose a unit for
measuring intrinsic value, and in terms of that unit we can say that
the intrinsic value of one possible world is 100 units, while the
intrinsic value of another is, say, merely 10 units. 



Common forms of consequentialism go on to say that whether an action A
is permissible or impermissible is determined by how the intrinsic
value of the world that would be actual if A were performed compares
to the intrinsic values of the worlds that would be actual if the
alternatives to A were performed instead. (The alternatives to A are
the actions other than A that are "open" to the agent at
the time he performs A.) One standard form of consequentialism says
that an act A is permissible if and only if none of the worlds that
would be actual were the agent to perform one of the alternatives to A
has a greater intrinsic value than the world that would be actual were
he to perform A. Thus, in a consequentialist framework, if one holds
that facts about desert make a difference to intrinsic value, one may
also hold that facts about desert make a difference to whether an act
is permissible or impermissible. If, in virtue of the fact that only
Jones deserves a raise, it is better to give a raise only to Jones,
then the right thing to do is to give the raise only to Jones. 



This section started with the generalization that, other things being
equal, it is a good thing when people get what they deserve. We have
just seen that in a consequentialist framework this generalization
about value leads naturally to another one, about moral obligation:
other things being equal, one ought to ensure that people get what
they deserve. But one might endorse the second generalization without
the first. Some opponents of consequentialism hold that talk of
"the intrinsic value of a possible world" makes no sense
(for example, Thomson 2008). They could still accept that, other
things being equal, one ought to ensure that people get what they
deserve. One could hold, for example, that the obligation to ensure
that people get what they deserve is a *prima facie* duty, in
the sense that W. D. Ross (2002) attaches to this phrase. 



Some consequentialists have hoped that basing their theory of
obligation on a "desert-sensitive" theory of intrinsic
value will make their theory immune to certain common objections. To
get a sense of what these philosophers hope to accomplish we will need
a more detailed statement of a theory of intrinsic value. We will make
use of the notion of individual welfare, or well-being. Talk of
someone's well-being is talk of how good their life is for them.
We may speak of how good someone's life is at a particular
moment, or how good their life is as a whole; our focus here is on
welfare-values of entire lives. Let us assume, as is common in
discussions of desert, that welfare is a quantitative notion. We can
choose a unit for measuring welfare; then for each person there is,
relative to that choice of unit, a number that represents how good
that person's life is for them. One simple
(non-desert-sensitive) theory of intrinsic value for possible worlds
says that the (number representing) the intrinsic value of a world is
equal to the sum of the numbers representing the "welfare
values" of the lives of the people in that world. 



According to standard consequentialism, combined with this theory of
intrinsic value, "distribution does not matter." All that
matters, for determining whether an act is right, is the sum total of
the welfare in the world that would be actual if that act were
performed, and how that sum total differs from the totals in the
worlds that would be actual if some alternative act were performed; it
does not matter how good any particular individual's life is.
John Rawls famously argued that this is an objectionable feature of
the theory (Rawls 1971, 26; his target is a slightly different theory
of intrinsic value). 



A desert-adjusted theory of intrinsic value might yield a version of
standard consequentialism that evades this objection. If worlds in
which people get what they deserve are better than worlds in which
people do not, then it is not true that distribution does not matter.
A desert-adjusted theory of intrinsic value could say that, if Smith
and Jones each deserves 25 units of welfare, then a world in which
they each receive 25 units is better than a world in which Smith
receives 50 and Jones receives 0. 



Feldman (1995a, 567) is explicit that the goal of his desert-sensitive
version of consequentialism is to respond to Rawls' objection.
He suggests that his theory can handle many of the examples commonly
thought to raise problems for consequentialism, such as the Organ
Transplant. In another paper Feldman suggests that a desert-adjusted
theory of intrinsic value can avoid Parfit's Repugnant
Conclusion (see Feldman 1995c; for the Repugnant Conclusion, see
Parfit 1984; for reservations about Feldman's response to
Rawls' objection, and an alternative, see McLeod 2006). 



What might a desert-adjusted theory of intrinsic value, one that might
form the basis for a desert-sensitive version of consequentialism,
look like? To evaluate desert-adjusted theories of intrinsic value we
need to see them stated at a greater level of detail than we have seen
so far. Presumably, if it is a good thing when people get what they
deserve, then if the people in world *w*1 are closer
to getting what they deserve than the people in world
*w*2, *w*1 is better (has a greater
intrinsic value) than *w*2 (other things being equal).
But, again, intrinsic value is a quantitative notion. So it makes
sense to ask: how much better is *w*1 than
*w*2? 10 units? 100 units? Even if we say a lot more
about what worlds *w*1 and *w*2 are
like, the answers to these questions are not obvious. 



To make a start let us go back to an assumption we quietly made three
paragraphs back: that welfare levels are among the things that people
deserve. This claim does not seem controversial. It follows from the
common idea that the wicked deserve to suffer, and the saintly deserve
to prosper, for to prosper is to have a relatively high welfare level.
But philosophers who attempt to formulate (welfarist) desert-sensitive
theories of intrinsic value often make a stronger assumption: that
when it comes to determining the intrinsic value of a possible world,
*all that matters* is the extent to which people get the
welfare levels they deserve. Suppose I deserve an apology from my
neighbor in virtue of the fact that he (inadvertently) tore up some of
the plants in my yard. But suppose also that I do not really care
about my yard, or about the quality of my relationship with my
neighbor. Getting the apology would mean nothing to me, nor would I be
upset if my neighbor did not apologize. The apology would not make my
life better or worse. Then on the stronger assumption, the intrinsic
value of the world is not higher if I get the apology than if I
don't - even though only if I get the apology do I get
something I deserve. 



One possible justification for this assumption goes as follows. Even
though we may deserve all sorts of things, only instances of
someone's deserving a certain welfare level are instances of
"moral desert." And only moral desert
"matters" for the intrinsic value of a possible world. A
theory that says the world is no better if I get that apology is not
false-but-legitimately-oversimplified. It is saying the truth.
According to this line of thought, it is not, in fact, always better
when people get what they deserve. It is only better if they get what
they morally deserve. (Shelly Kagan focuses on moral desert,
presumably to the exclusion of other kinds of desert, in chapter 1 of
his 2012.) 



Justified or not, most work on desert-sensitive theories of intrinsic
value does assume that the only instances of desert that matter are
instances of deserved welfare. What should a desert-sensitive theory
of intrinsic value that makes this assumption look like? If the value
of a possible world is a function, not just of the welfare levels of
the people in that world, but also of the welfare levels they deserve,
just which function is it? 



Producing a theory that answers this question and is initially
plausible is not easy. One way to approach the problem is to start
with another simplifying assumption. The simple non-desert-sensitive
theory of intrinsic value stated above is "totalist"; the
intrinsic value of a possible world is got by summing up
"contributions" made by each individual
"separately." The amount of intrinsic value contributed by
an individual is equal to (or proportional to) that person's
welfare level. We could try for a desert-sensitive theory that is also
totalist. The contribution made by an individual will not (or not
always) be equal to their welfare level; the amount they deserve will
also be relevant. Still, the value of the world as a whole will just
be the sum of the individual contributions.



Here is a sketch of a theory like this. It treats someone's
desert level as a "multiplier." The value an individual
contributes to the intrinsic value of a possible world is equal to the
product of the welfare level they receive in that world and the
welfare level they deserve. (A more sophisticated treatment of the
idea of "desert-as-multiplier" may be found in Kagan 2012,
section 2.4.) 



This theory says plausible things about simple cases. If Smith
deserves 10 units of welfare and Jones deserves 20, and you can either
ensure that Smith receives 10 units, or that Jones receives 10 units,
the theory says that it is better to ensure that Jones receives the 10
units. For if Smith receives the welfare, the total value of the world
will be equal to 100, while if Jones does, the total value will be
equal to 200. These facts are summarized in the table below (the
multiplications in the contribution columns are "welfare level
times desert level"): 




|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Who gets the welfare? | Smith's contribution | Jones's contribution | Total value |
| Smith | 10 x 10 = 100 | 0 x 20 = 0 | 100 |
| Jones | 0 x 10 = 0 | 10 x 20 = 200 | 200 |



The idea behind using deserved welfare levels as multipliers is that
the welfare of more deserving people is worth more than that of less
deserving people. As far as the quality of the lives of the
individuals involved are concerned, 10 units of welfare is 10 units of
welfare, no matter who it "goes to": if Smith's life
is made better by 10 units of welfare, his life is made better by the
same amount as if Jones' life is made better by 10 units. But as
far as *the world* is concerned, it does make a difference who
the 10 units goes to. When 10 units of welfare goes to someone highly
deserving, someone who deserves a high welfare level, the value of
that 10 units is "augmented," so that 10 units of welfare
corresponds to a much larger number of units of value-for-the-world.




While the desert-as-multiplier idea gets some cases right, it gets
other cases very wrong. Think again of Smith and Jones, deserving 10
and 20 units of welfare, respectively. Suppose that, if you do
nothing, Jones will live a life worth 100 units, and Smith will live a
life worth 0 units. Your only two options are to act so that Jones
lives a life worth 110 and Smith "stays where he would have
been" (he lives a life worth 0), or act so that Jones stays
where he would have been, and Smith lives a life worth 10. The table
below shows the values of the worlds that correspond to each of your
options, according to this theory:




|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Option  | Smith's contribution | Jones' contribution | Total value |
| Do nothing | 0 x 10 = 0 | 100 x 20 = 2000 | 2000 |
| Augment Smith     | 10 x 10 = 100 | 100 x 20 = 2000 | 2100 |
| Augment Jones | 0 x 10 = 0 | 110 x 20 = 2200 | 2200 |



The theory says you should augment Jones. This is implausible. Even if
you do nothing, Jones will be living a life far better than the one he
deserves to be living. What sense is there in making his life better,
when instead you could cause Smith to be living a life he deserves,
rather than one worse than he
 deserves?[3]




It seems wrong to multiply every bit of welfare Jones receives by 20,
even bits of welfare that put him way above the level of welfare he
deserves, when computing his contribution to the intrinsic value of
the world. This failure of the desert-as-multiplier view suggests an
alternative mathematical role for deserved welfare levels. What is
important is not the welfare level you deserve, but *how close*
you are to the welfare level you deserve: how good the
"fit" is between what you get and what you deserve. A
natural way to measure fit is to look at the distance between what you
get and what you deserve: the absolute value of the difference between
your welfare level and your deserved welfare level. (So when Jones
deserves 20 units and gets 100, his "fit value" is the
number 80.) 



Having latched on to the importance of fit values, how should we make
use to them? The simplest way to implement the idea that 'the
closer one is to getting what one deserves, the better' defines
the contribution made to intrinsic value by an individual as follows:




>  
> Contribution = welfare level [?] fit value.
> 



The minus sign is there because someone's fit value goes up as
their welfare level gets farther away from their deserved welfare
level. Thus increases in the fit value correspond to worse states of
affairs; so we want fit values to make a negative impact on
contributions. 



This new theory gives a plausible judgment about our second
Smith/Jones case. Here are the values it assigns: 




|  |  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Option | Smith's contribution | Jones' contribution | Total value |
| Do nothing  |  0 [?] |10[?]0| = [?]10  | 100 [?] |20[?]100| = 20     | 10  |
| Augment Smith     | 10 [?] |10[?]10| = 10  | 100 [?] |20[?]100| = 20  | 30  |
| Augment Jones  |  0 [?] |10[?]0| = [?]10  | 110 [?] |20[?]110| = 20  | 10  |



Philosophers have articulated other principles they think a
desert-sensitive theory of value should entail, and have proposed yet
more complicated "contribution formulas" as parts of
theories of that sort. For example, Eric Carlson holds that if you
have a bunch of people with the same desert level, and you "have
a fixed amount of welfare to distribute between them" (really,
in each world that you can "make actual" the sum of their
welfare levels is the same), then the world in which they all receive
the same welfare level should have the greatest intrinsic value. Equal
levels of welfare are best, when everyone is equally deserving. The
theory we just described is incompatible with this idea. (For
Carlson's theory, which does entail this principle, see Carlson
1997. Feldman 1995a articulated many ideas about how intrinsic values
should be adjusted to take desert into account. Persson 1997
distinguished the idea of desert as a multiplier (he called it the
"merit idea") from the idea that what matters is the fit
between desert and receipt; he sees both ideas at work in
Feldman's paper. Other constraints people have wanted to place
on a desert-sensitive theory may be found in Carlson 1997, Arrhenius
2006, and Skow 2012.) 



The theories we have discussed so far aim to be "overall"
theories of intrinsic value, theories of intrinsic value all things
considered, even if they may make some simplifying assumptions about
what is valuable. Another approach to theorizing about desert aims to
do something different. Shelly Kagan, in his book *The Geometry of
Desert* (2012), aims at a theory of "intrinsic value from
the perspective of desert." To have a complete theory of
intrinsic value one would have to take Kagan's theory and find a
way to combine it with theories of value from other perspectives. 



Kagan's book is by far the most comprehensive discussion of the
role of desert in the theory of value. He discusses both
"noncomparative desert" and "comparative
desert." Without trying to be too precise about this
distinction, comparative desert concerns how the fit between one
person's welfare level and desert level compares to that of
others; noncomparative desert ignores these comparisons. His theory of
noncomparative desert comprises several claims, the core of which are
these: 


1. It is best, from the perspective of noncomparative desert, when
someone gets exactly the welfare level they deserve. (That is, a world
in which he gets exactly what he deserves is better than a world in
which he gets more or less, other things being equal.)
2. If someone has a positive desert level, then it is better, from the
perspective of noncomparative desert, if they get more than they
deserve, than if they get less (by the same amount); moreover, the
degree to which it is better to get more than one deserves increases
as one's desert level increases. The opposite is true if someone
has a negative desert level.



The image below illustrates these claims. Each "mountain"
plots an individual's value, from the perspective of
non-comparative desert, as a function of their welfare level. The
"peak" of a person's mountain sits directly above
the welfare level that person (non-comparatively) deserves; this
illustrates claim 1, that things are best when someone gets they
welfare level they deserve. Note also that the mountain on the
left-hand side of the y-axis has a steeper eastern slope than western
slope. This illustrates part of claim 2. It indicates that if you
could either overcompensate a person who deserves a negative amount of
welfare, or undercompensate him, by the same amount, it is better to
undercompensate him. The mountain on the right-hand side of the y-axis
illustrates the corresponding claim about someone with "positive
desert": it is better to overcompensate than to undercompensate
such a person. The image also illustrates a claim that Kagan calls
"Bell Motion" (this claim is also part of 2): the
mountains "swing" in a counter-clockwise direction, as
they move from left to right in the diagram. Mountains farther to the
right have shallower eastern slopes and steeper western slopes. This
means, among other things, that if you have to overcompensate one
person by a fixed amount, it is best to overcompensate the person with
the highest desert level. Overcompensating makes things worse from the
perspective of non-comparative desert; overcompensating the most
deserving person is, however, less bad, brings about a smaller
vertical drop in the graph, than overcompensating anyone else would.



![Non-Comparative Desert](fig1.jpg)
Figure 1.




So far we have been discussing Kagan's theory of non-comparative
desert. His theory of comparative desert is meant to answer questions
like the following: suppose that there are two people, that one of
them is getting more welfare than he deserves, and that there is
nothing we can do about that. What must the welfare level of the other
person be, if the demands of comparative desert are to be perfectly
satisfied? Kagan advocates what he calls the "Y-gap" view.
The image below illustrates this view. Suppose that the mountain on
the left represents the person whose welfare level we cannot control,
and the mountain on the right represents the person whose welfare
level we can control. Then we should overcompensate the person on the
right by that amount which results in his Y-gap being the same as that
of the person on the left. A person's Y-gap is the vertical
distance between the peak of his mountain, and his actual location (in
this case) on the eastern slope. The vertical bars in the diagram
depict the two Y-gaps. In this case, although the person on the left
is over-compensated by amount A, the person on the right must be
over-compensated by a greater amount B, to achieve the same Y-gap, and
so to perfectly satisfy the demands of comparative desert, as Kagan
sees them. 



![Comparative Desert](fig2.jpg)
Figure 2.




One question about Kagan's theory is, what exactly are we
measuring when we measure intrinsic value from the perspective of
desert? In his book Kagan remains agnostic about whether it is better
if a more deserving person gets exactly what he deserves than if a
less deserving person does. Maybe this is better; but maybe, on the
other hand, a situation in which someone who deserves a high welfare
level gets exactly what he deserves is just as good as a situation in
which someone who deserves a low (but still positive) welfare gets
exactly what he deserves (2012, section 4.3). However, on one natural
understanding of the perspective of desert, there is not much room for
debate here. It is natural to think that 'from the perspective
of desert,...' just means 'taking into account only
how close people are to getting what they deserve,...' If
this is right then it is obvious that a situation in which someone who
deserves a welfare level of 50 and gets a welfare level of 50 is just
as good, from the perspective of desert, as a situation in which
someone who deserves a welfare level of 200 gets a welfare level of
200. (One who held this view can, of course, say that in another sense
the second situation is better: it is better all-things-considered,
because the total amount of welfare in that situation is higher.) The
fact that Kagan does not think it obvious that the two situations are
equally good from the perspective of desert is evidence that he
rejects this account of what the perspective of desert is. (For more
on this question about Kagan's theory, see Appendix I of Feldman
2003, and Skow 2014.) 


## 5. Desertist Theories of Justice



There is a long tradition according to which justice is fundamentally
a matter of receipt in accord with desert. There are passages in the
writings of Aristotle, Leibniz, Mill, Sidgwick, Ross and others in
which this idea seems to be
 present.[4]
 The abstract desertist idea can be combined with different views
about what people deserve and the bases upon which they deserve these
things; for each combination of these views about deserts and desert
bases, there is a different version of the desertist theory of
justice. One of the broadest of these may be called "Universal
Desertism about Justice." It is the idea that justice obtains
when people receive everything they deserve on any basis. Although
Mill did not accept this conception of justice, he claimed that
something quite like it is very widely accepted by "the general
mind." Mill said: 



> 
> It is universally considered just that each person should obtain that
> (whether good or evil) which he *deserves*; and unjust that he
> should obtain a good, or be made to undergo an evil, which he does not
> deserve. This is, perhaps, the clearest and most emphatic form in
> which the idea of justice is conceived by the general mind
> (*Utilitarianism*, ch 5, para
>  7).[5]
> 



When combined with natural and popular assumptions about what people
deserve, Universal Desertism gives an account of a form of justice
that probably would not be of much interest to social and political
philosophers. For given these assumptions about what people deserve,
the view implies that in order for there to be perfect justice in a
society, every student would have to get every grade that he or she
deserves, and every athlete would have to win every competition that
he or she deserves to win, every neighbor would have to receive every
apology and thank-you note that he or she deserves, and everyone would
have to receive the amount of respect, and admiration, and love, and
contempt, and good luck that he or she deserves. The society would be
a veritable wonderland of requited desert in which no one would have
any grounds for complaint about being short-changed about anything.
Surely, however, when political philosophers are drawn to the idea
that justice is a matter of receipt in accord with desert, they do not
have anything quite so fantastic in mind. 



Leibniz maintained a desertist theory of justice that makes use of
considerably restricted views about the relevant desert and desert
bases. He described what he called 'the law of justice' in
these words: 



> 
> ... everyone is to participate in the perfection of the universe,
> and to have personal happiness, in proportion to his own virtue and to
> the extent that his will has contributed to the common good. (Leibniz
> 1697)
> 



Leibniz evidently was imagining a view according to which there is
only one main currency of justice ('happiness and participation
in the perfection of the universe'), and only one main desert
base ('virtue and the extent to which his will has contributed
to the common good') whose magnitude determines the amount of
the desert he deserves. Leibniz suggested that it falls to God to
ensure that people receive these deserts in the afterlife. 



We can say that "Divine Moral Desertism" is the view that
justice obtains when everyone receives from God in the afterlife
precisely the level of happiness or unhappiness that he or she
deserves on the basis of his or her level of moral virtue or vice
during life.



Clearly it is possible for there to be a situation in which the level
of justice as measured by Universal Desertism is very low, but the
level of justice as measured by Divine Moral Desertism is very high.
This would happen if people rarely received the prizes and awards and
income and other things that they deserve here on earth, but if in
addition they always received their heavenly rewards from God in the
afterlife. 



It is also possible for there to be a situation in which the level of
justice as measured by Universal Desertism is very high, but the level
of justice as measured by Divine Moral Desertism is very low. This
would happen if people often received the apologies, thank-you notes,
wages, grades, honorific jobs, etc. that they deserve on earth, but if
in addition they never received any heavenly or infernal rewards in an
afterlife for the virtue or vice that they manifested while they
lived. 



While Divine Moral Desertism might be of interest to some theologians
or philosophers of religion, it is doubtful that any social or
political philosopher would have any professional interest in it.
Social and political philosophers are more interested in
*earthly* justice - the kind of justice that obtains in
virtue of things that governments are called upon to do for their
citizens here on earth. But Divine Moral Desertism concerns things
that God does; and benefits or burdens to be received in the
afterlife, rather than on earth. 



A historically important form of desertism emerges if we continue to
maintain that the relevant desert bases are all manifestations of
moral virtue and vice, but we introduce different assumptions about
deserts and distributors. Instead of saying (with Leibniz) that the
relevant deserts are levels of happiness and unhappiness to be
experienced in heaven or hell, we can say that the relevant deserts
are levels of happiness and unhappiness to be experienced here on
earth, during our lives. Furthermore, instead of saying that the
distributor from whom we deserve to receive these rewards is God, we
can say that we deserve them from our country. The result is a form of
desertism according to which there is perfect justice in a country if
and only if in every case in which a citizen of that country deserves
to be at a certain level of happiness or unhappiness in virtue of
having lived at a certain level of moral virtue or vice, the
government of his or her country sees to it that the person comes to
be at that level of happiness during his or her lifetime. We can call
this "Earthly Moral Desertism about Justice." 



It should be obvious that justice as measured by Earthly Moral
Desertism is not equivalent to justice as measured by Divine Moral
Desertism. 



In several passages in *A Theory of Justice* John Rawls attacks
what he takes to be the desertist conception of justice. In these
passages, Rawls seems to have in mind something quite like Earthly
Moral Desertism. He mentions what he takes to be the motto of
desertism: 'justice is happiness according to virtue'
(1971, 310). Some of his objections to desertism turn on difficulties
that governments would face if they were to try to ensure a proper fit
between citizens' levels of virtue and happiness. This indicates
that Rawls was imagining (and trying to refute) a form of desertism
that would saddle the government with the task of matching happiness
levels to virtue levels. 



A more plausible form of earthly desertism might attempt to assess
states or communities for the way in which economic items such as
money, jobs, and taxes, and political items such as political rights
and opportunities and obligations are distributed. The imagined form
of desertism could purport to give an account of the circumstances
under which these things have been distributed justly even though it
is silent on the distribution of other very important things such as
happiness, or victories in sporting events, or warm loving
relationships or apologies. 



Instead of focusing on all the things that anyone could deserve, or
upon just one thing - happiness - such a theory could
focus on what we may call 'political economic deserts.'
These might include such things as political rights and obligations,
other benefits and burdens we get from our countries, security of
certain sorts, access to publicly owned or regulated infrastructure
such as transportation systems, educational systems, judicial systems,
communication systems, etc. 



Instead of focusing on all the desert bases in virtue of which anyone
could deserve anything, or simply upon the single desert base of moral
virtue, a theory of political economic justice could focus on what we
may call 'political economic desert bases.' These might
include such things as being a citizen; having been unjustifiably
harmed by a government agency; having earned a lot of money; being
keen on getting into business; being vulnerable to robbers and muggers
who might attack. The theory could thus focus on desert bases such
that it is the business of a government to take note of the fact that
its citizens manifest these bases, and it is the business of that
government to try to see to it that its citizens receive the things
that they deserve on these bases. 



Furthermore, the imagined theory could focus on what we may call our
'political economic distributors.' In the typical case,
the political economic distributor for a certain person is the
government of that person's country, or suitable representatives
of that government. The resulting theory, which we may dub
'Political Economic Desertism about Justice,' then could
maintain that there is perfect political economic distributive justice
in a country if and only if in every case in which a citizen of that
country deserves a political economic desert in virtue of having a
political economic desert base, the government of his or her country
ensures that he or she receives that desert. 



It should be clear that there might be perfect justice as measured by
Political Economic Desertism in some country even though some citizens
of that country fail to get some of the things they deserve. Maybe the
citizens are getting everything they deserve from their country, but
some fail to receive the apologies that they deserve from their
spouses and children, and others fail to receive the good luck in
sports or romance that they deserve. Indeed, there could be perfect
justice as measured by Political Economic Desertism in every country
in some possible world even though many residents of that world fail
to receive lots of things that they deserve. 



It should also be clear that there is no interesting connection
between justice as measured by Divine Moral Desertism and justice as
measured by this Political Economic Desertism. We can easily imagine a
situation in which people receive all the political economic deserts
that they deserve from their governments, but never receive any of the
heavenly rewards they deserve in the afterlife. 



Suppose the government in some country steadfastly keeps out of the
business of tracking the levels of virtue in its citizens. Suppose
this government also steadfastly keeps out of the business of worrying
about how happy its citizens are. But suppose in addition that the
government scrupulously distributes income tax refunds, in-state
tuition waivers, voting rights, police protection, and other such
things to citizens who deserve to have them. Then the level of justice
as measured by Earthly Moral Desertism in that country could be very
low, but the level of justice as measured by Political Economic
Desertism would be very high. So these are clearly distinct concepts
of justice. 



In recent work, after explicating his concept of desert, T. M. Scanlon
presents an extended argument designed to show "not just that
the particular conception of desert that [he has] examined ...
plays no role in distributive justice. It is rather that initially
plausible claims that individuals deserve certain economic benefits
turn out, on closer examination, either to be invalid or to reduce to
claims of justice of some other identifiable sort" (see Scanlon
2013, 2018). Scanlon's claim seems to be that no fundamentally
desertist theory of distributive justice is correct. 



In an effort to explicate the notion of desert that he has in mind,
Scanlon points out some principles concerning it that he means to
endorse. First he distinguishes between desert and entitlement and
reminds the reader that the mere fact that someone is entitled to a
certain form of treatment by the rules of some institution is not
sufficient by itself to show that he or she deserves that treatment.
This would be evident in cases in which the entitlement-generating
institution is itself seriously unjust. Next, Scanlon reminds the
reader that the fact that some treatment would have good consequences
is not, in itself, a basis for saying that the person deserves that
treatment. Scanlon also accepts the notion that there is a distinction
between basic and derived desert. If a person deserves a form of
treatment, then this desert must be related to a more fundamental form
of desert involving reactive attitudes. The deserved treatment must be
a standard way of expressing the deeper fact that the person deserves
the attitude. In general, Scanlon accepts the idea that if a person
deserves some treatment, the basis on which he or she deserves it must
involve his or her own behavior or character. In virtue of the fact
that Scanlon endorses all these familiar doctrines about desert, it
seems fair to say that his concept of desert is entirely within the
mainstream.



Scanlon sketches several proposed desert bases by appeal to which a
desertist might attempt to explain why justice requires that citizens
receive economic benefits from their countries. These include (a)
being morally meritorious, (b) having expended effort in productive
labor, (c) having made some other socially valuable contribution, and
(d) being in possession of some special talent. In each case, Scanlon
claims either that the alleged factor is not a desert base at all, or
else that appeal to it cannot explain why certain people deserve
greater economic benefits from their countries. 



The central problem that Scanlon emphasizes is that, as he sees it,
desertist theories of justice cannot explain how it can be just for
different citizens to receive different-sized benefits from their
countries. In this context, he hints at a two-level view according to
which citizens may be entitled to different-sized benefits by the
rules and regulations of some distributive institution that has been
established in their country. Scanlon seems to acknowledge that if the
institution itself is just, the citizens will deserve the
different-sized benefits to which they are entitled. But he emphasizes
that this desert of differential benefits will arise only if the
institution that authorizes them is itself somehow justified. Scanlon
suggests that such institutions may be justified, and so the scheme as
a whole may be on the right track, but he seems to claim that the
justification of the institution would then have to appeal to some
justifying feature other than desert. And so, as he sees it, the
scheme as a whole would not be a desertist theory of distributive
justice.



However, a defender of a desertist theory of political economic
distributive justice like the one sketched earlier might claim, in
reply, that the distributional system itself might be justified in
virtue of the fact that citizens deserve to live in a country where
such a system is in place. Perhaps it could be argued that citizens
deserve this because they need it in order to flourish as human
beings, and no individual human being is capable of establishing such
a distributional system on his or her own. If this is right, it would
apparently follow that the theory as a whole is a desertist theory of
distributive justice. It remains to be seen whether Scanlon's
objections to desertist theories of justice ultimately succeed, or
whether a desertist theory of the sort sketched may in the end prove
to be acceptable.