RT Article
T1 Fairness as “Appropriate Impartiality” and the Problem of the Self-Serving Bias
JF Ethical theory and moral practice
VO 19
IS 3
SP 695
OP 709
A1 Newey, Charlotte A.
LA English
PB Springer Science + Business Media B. V
YR 2016
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1565746597
AB Garrett Cullity contends that fairness is appropriate impartiality (See Cullity (2004) Chapters 8 and 10 and Cullity (2008)). Cullity deploys his account of fairness as a means of limiting the extreme moral demand to make sacrifices in order to aid others that was posed by Peter Singer in his seminal article ‘Famine, Affluence and Morality’. My paper is founded upon the combination of (1) the observation that the idea that fairness consists in appropriate impartiality is very vague and (2) the fact that psychological studies show the self-serving bias is especially likely to infect one’s judgements when the ideas involved are vague. I argue that Cullity’s solution to extreme moral demandingness is threatened by these findings. I then comment on whether some other theories of fairness are vulnerable to the same objection.
K1 Cullity, Broome
K1 Fairness
K1 Impartiality
K1 Moral Demandingness
K1 Moral Obligation
K1 Murphy
K1 Poverty Alleviation
K1 Self-Serving Bias
DO 10.1007/s10677-015-9665-6