Distributive justice can be defined as the fair distribution of society’s benefits and burdens. The notion of ‘fair’ is ambiguous and subject to debate. Some people would describe this through the idea of equality, where everybody is treated the same and given the same no matter their economic background or desert. However, others would argue, including Marx, that the benefits and burdens of society should be distributed according to desert or need. For example, those who have a limited earning potential should not be taxed as much as those who have a high disposable income.

Such a case would be the debate as to whether Wayne Rooney deserves to earn more money than a care worker. From an economist’s perspective, Rooney provides a service that provides entertainment and also contributes to a huge amount of money throughout the economy. As a result, he deserves to be paid more as he is one of a limited few who is able to provided such a service at such a high performance. A care worker requires considerably less skill and therefore there is a much larger supply to fill the demand for care workers, and so it comes at a much lower price. Based solely on desert, it can be argued that the care worker provides a more substantial benefit to society in that they care for the ill, and therefore deserve a larger amount of money for their contribution. It could also be argued, however, that Rooney works longer hours than a care worker and must follow a strict regime in order to be a footballer. He should therefore be rewarded for such hard work.

Natural rights are those which are explained in the Ten Commandments and are therefore given on a religious grounding, as claimed by Locke. They are pre-legal and the most basic desires and needs required for human existence. They are a moral code against which legal rights should be measured. They are inalienable - they cannot be taken away.

Legal rights are rights which are decided by the state.

From looking at other people, we can conclude that the best explanation for problem of other minds is that they do exist. This is considered to be a stronger view because rather than starting from the individual case we can look at the case of other people and draw a conclusion from this, that they have a mind which allows them to have mental states which cause their outward behaviour.

Mill put forward a solution to the problem of other minds. This attempts to prove the existence of other minds by analysing the behaviour of other people, who exhibit behaviour similar to your own when exposed to the same stimuli. As you know that you have qualia when you are exposed to this stimuli, it is logical to conclude that other people also have this qualia and they therefore have minds.

Objection:

This argument is based on one case of a mind, and it can be argued that this cannot be generalised from. Just because I have a mind doesnt mean that everyone else does.

Ayer then responded to this objection by saying that we are not generalising from a single case but from many. There are many behaviours of mine that correlate with many mental states of mine. Mental states are causes of behaviour. Therefore, we may legitimately infer that other minds exist.

It can then be responded to again saying that it is not many cases, it is still just one case, just lots of examples of this single case.

The problem of other minds raises epistemological questions about how we can know whether other people have minds. We can know directly that our minds exist, but we cannot have this same direct view on other people. As a result, our mind is indubitable whereas other peoples minds are both fallible and dubitable.

Many people have attempted to solve the problem of other minds.

Searle’s Biological Naturalism can be accused of not comitting to either reductive materialism and dualism. His theory makes claims on both accounts; he could be described as a reductive materialist because he claims that consciousness can be reduced to a biological process, but can also be described as a dualist because he claims that consciousness is irreducibly subjective.

Searle’s Response:

Searle highlights how this objection is based upon the idea that mind and body (mental and physical) are two mutually exclusive categories. Consciousness has both of these properties, Searle argues, and cannot be restricted to only one.

It can be said that Searle’s Biological Naturalist position is simply a version of interactionist property dualism, and as a result causal supervenience leads to over-determinism. Searle clearly makes the distinction that mental states supervene on brain states, even though intuitively we would believe that mental states cause other mental states and brain states cause other brain states. This leads to a problem with the idea that mental states cause other mental states, while mental states also supervene on brain states. This is over determinism.

Response:

Kim is assuming the wrong view of causation. Searle argues that we do not have two properties, one physical and the other mental, such that the physical one causes the mental one. This would assume a view of causation that he denies. Searle argues that the two events are simultaneous at time 1, and the next mental state and brain state are caused therefore at time 2.

John Searle put forward the theory of mind known as ‘Biological Naturalism’. He argues that consciousness is a part of our biological history in the same way that digestion and mitosis are. It is a non-reductive, materialist theory of mind that appears to be the most common-sense materlialist theory. Searle states four things:

• Consciousness is real and irreducible
• All conscious states caused by neuronal activity
• Conscious states are spacially located in the brain
• Conscious states happen causally - they are caused by something and cause something else to happen

As a result of such deductions, consciousness must be a biological process in the brain. Searle also argues that it supervenes (is dependent on) a functioning brain. For example, a neural state supervenes on a pain stimulus realised in the brain, which consequently causes a physical state of wincing. Put more simply, the mental supervenes on the physical.

Corcoran points out that there is a top down, mental physical causation as well. For example, desires cause physiological events. Searle offers the idea that thinking of moving your arm causes you to move your arm. This highlights how mental states are caused by physical states.

Colin McGinn attempts to combat the hard problem of consciousness by saying that we can never understand consciousness because we are only capable of seeing it from a subjective, conscious standpoint. It is impossible for us to step outside of consciousness in order to try to understand it from another perspective. He doesn’t doubt that consciousness arises from brain processes but argues that we will never be able to understand the physical processes from which it is derived.

He uses astronomy to illustrate this idea. Astronomy is a branch of physics, a science which is created by humans to be understood by humans. However, this can only ever be explained and understood from a human perspective and there may well be other things that are beyond human understanding. In the same way, we cannot know what consciousness is because we cannot have an objective view on it.