In defense of desert

When people are asked what is fair, whether in the allocation of rewards and other benefits, or in the allocation of blame and punishment, they often make reference to desert [see Miller (1999, ch. 4) for an overview]. Equally, as many experiments have shown, when they are asked to distribute sums of money to people who have been asked to complete various tasks, they have a strong tendency to give more to people who have performed better – unless they are the better performers themselves, in which case a ‘politeness ritual’ may inhibit them from taking a larger slice of the cake (Mikula, 1980). A just world is one in which everyone gets what they deserve – belief in which can also sometimes distort people’s judgments by leading them to attribute (without sufficient evidence) better performances to those who have been given higher rewards, so that fairness is seen to be preserved (see Lerner, 1980). With few exceptions, Joel Feinberg noticeable among them, this enthusiasm for desert has not been shared by philosophers, even those like John Rawls who think that philosophical reflection should at least begin with our intuitive beliefs about what is fair. Why don’t philosophers share the public’s taste for desert? There are several reasons.