I noted yesterday, that in writing his work on collective choice Sen had apparently read not only the work of John Rawls (which was inevitable), but responses to Rawls about the humans-only nature of the deliberations Rawls imagines behind the veil of ignorance. We are supposed to imagine ourselves as ignorant of our social class, race, and native intelligence, but presumably cognizant of the fact that, when the veil is lifted, we will turn out to be humans. The responses wondered why the species barrier is that strong. What piques my interest is that Sen refers to these critiques (he does not source them specifically -- admittedly it is a bit of a digression from the main line of his thought) as half in jest and half serious. Hmmmm. Has Peter Singer written in response to Rawls? If he has, (and I'm too lazy to look into it right now) then I can easily imagine Singer making the point Sen emphasizes in dead earnest, utterly without jesting. What Sen sees...
Amartya Sen, an economist/philosopher, was born in November 1933 and he is still with us. He may be the single most important philosopher alive. One of his works is COLLECTIVE CHOICE AND SOCIAL WELFARE. Or, perhaps, you might count this as two of his works. The first book of that title was published in 1970, then a much expanded and re-written version appeared in 2017. I'd like today to quote a bit from the 2017 edition, in which Sen is with some sympathy discussing the work of John Rawls. He says (this is a footnote): A half-jocular, half-serious objection to the criteria of fairness of Rawls and others often runs like this: Why confine placing oneself in the position of other human beings only, why not other animals also? Is the biological line so sharply drawn? What this line of attack misses is the fact that Rawls is crystallizing a rule of fairness that our value system does seem to have, rather than constructing a rule of fairness in vacuum based on notion...