I. INTRODUCTION
Consider this argument, which I will call ‘the desert argument’:
People did nothing to have their inborn characteristics (which entails that these characteristics were not chosen; they are circumstances). Therefore, inborn characteristics are undeserved.Footnote 1
This argument seems to underlie John Rawls's difference principle, according to which gifted people may gain from their natural talents only on terms that improve the situation of the least advantaged.Footnote 2 Moreover, this argument seems to be a reason to accept the luck egalitarianFootnote 3 claim that inborn disadvantages must be compensated.Footnote 4 Finally, this argument seems to play an important role in the discussion of ‘moral luck’. It is said that inborn characteristics are a matter of luck. More precisely, natural inborn characteristics, like temperament and capacities, are a matter of ‘constitutive luck’; and social inborn characteristics, like the country where one is born, are a matter of ‘luck in one's circumstances’.Footnote 5
Now, consider the explicit premise of this argument: ‘People did nothing to have their inborn characteristics.’ This premise seems true because it follows from an obvious proposition: ‘People did not exist before their birth.’ Thus, we have a second argument, which I will call ‘the existence argument’:
People did not exist before their birth. Therefore, people did nothing to have their inborn characteristics.
The aim of this article is to assess the existence argument and the desert argument. I assess them by analyzing their shared proposition: ‘People did nothing to have their inborn characteristics.’ The analysis relies on Bertrand Russell's theory of descriptionsFootnote 6 and Peter Strawson's objection to this theory.Footnote 7 I conclude that both arguments are unsound. The existence argument is unsound because its conclusion does not follow from its premise. The desert argument is unsound because its premise is not true. The general upshot of my discussion is that talking about people deserving their inborn characteristics does not really make sense.
I will proceed in the following sequence. In section II I survey Russell's theory of descriptions, and assess the existence argument and the desert argument in light of this theory. I conclude that both arguments are unsound. Then, I expose Strawson's objection to Russell's theory and show that this objection does not affect my conclusion. In section III I explicate the general upshot of my discussion: talking about people deserving their inborn characteristics does not make sense. In section IV I address objections to my thesis. Finally, section V contains a conclusion.
II. RUSSELL, STRAWSON, THE EXISTENCE ARGUMENT AND THE DESERT ARGUMENT
(a) Russell's theory of descriptions
In ‘On Denoting’,Footnote 8 Russell presents his theory of descriptions, which consists of an analysis of sentences that involve denoting phrases. For him, these sentences could be divided into three groups. One of these groups is formed by those sentences that involve denoting phrases that denote nothing.Footnote 9 Russell discusses the truth-value of this kind of sentence. In particular, he analyzes the following example: ‘The present King of France is bald.’ Because France is a republic, Russell claims that this sentence is false. He holds that, when we display the logical structure of this sentence, we see that it contains three different assertions: (a) There is an X such that X is the King of France, (b) There is no Y, other than X, such that Y is the King of France, and (c) X is bald.
The first assertion says that there is a King of France. The second says that there is only one King of France. The third says that this king is bald. Russell's thesis is that the sentence ‘The present King of France is bald’ is true if and only if these three assertions are all true. Since the first assertion is false, the sentence ‘The present King of France is bald’ is false too.Footnote 10
Let me discuss the existence argument and the desert argument by applying Russell's analysis to the sentence they share: ‘People did nothing to have their inborn characteristics.’
(b) The existence argument
In order to make the discussion more vivid, let me apply the existence argument to a rich football player, Lionel. The argument would run like this:
Lionel did not exist before his birth. Therefore, Lionel did nothing to have his inborn characteristics.
Is this argument sound? The premise says that Lionel did not exist before his birth. What about the conclusion? I will apply Russell's theory to this sentence. When we say ‘Lionel did nothing to have his inborn characteristics’, we are asserting three different things: (a) There was an X such that X is Lionel before his birth, (b) There was no Y, other than X, such that Y is Lionel before his birth, and (c) Lionel did nothing to have his inborn characteristics.
So, in light of Russell's theory, the conclusion of the argument asserts (a), i.e. Lionel existed before his birth. Thus, the problem with this argument is that its conclusion cannot follow from its premise because these propositions contradict each other: the premise says that Lionel did not exist before his birth, and the conclusion asserts that Lionel existed before his birth. Therefore, the argument is unsound.
Generally speaking, the existence argument is unsound because the proposition that people existed before their birth is part of its conclusion, and the premise of this argument negates this proposition.Footnote 11 Therefore, only one of the two propositions can be true: either the premise or the conclusion. If the conclusion is the true statement, perhaps we might save the desert argument, whose premise is precisely the conclusion of the existence argument.
(c) The desert argument
Let me apply this argument to Paris, the daughter of a magnate:
Paris did nothing to have her inborn characteristics. Therefore, these characteristics are undeserved.
In this argument, unlike the existence argument, the conclusion could follow from the premise. It is not absurd to think that, if a person did nothing to have a certain good that, as a matter of fact, she has, this good is undeserved. For instance, the proposition ‘The fortune that Max inherited yesterday is undeserved’ is not obviously true, but at least it is not absurd.
Even granting that the conclusion follows from the premise, this argument is unsound because the premise is not true. Let me apply Russell's theory to this sentence. When we say ‘Paris did nothing to have her inborn characteristics’, we are asserting the following: (a) There was an X such that X is Paris before her birth, (b) There was no Y, other than X, such that Y is Paris before her birth, and (c) Paris did nothing to have her inborn characteristics. Russell's reasoning would be the following: The sentence ‘Paris did nothing to have her inborn characteristics’ is true if and only if these three assertions are all true. Since (a), i.e. Paris existed before her birth, is false, the sentence ‘Paris did nothing to have her inborn characteristics’ is false too.Footnote 12
Generally speaking, the premise of the desert argument asserts that people existed before their birth, so the premise is not true. Therefore, the desert argument is unsound.
(d) Does Strawson's objection affect my conclusions?
One of the main objections to Russell's theory of descriptions was developed by Peter Strawson.Footnote 13 This objection is that ‘The present King of France is bald’ is neither true nor false, but rather lacks truth-value. When someone utters this sentence, his useFootnote 14 of the sentence is spurious.Footnote 15 According to Strawson, Russell is wrong when he says that this sentence asserts that the King of France exists. Strawson claims that this sentence implies, but does not assert, that the King of France exists. Therefore, ‘The present King of France is bald’ is not contradicted by ‘There is no King of France’, but by ‘The present King of France is not bald’.Footnote 16 Thus, if, as Russell believes, ‘The present King of France is bald’ were false, ‘The present King of France is not bald’ would be true, but we know that it is not true. Therefore, both sentences are neither true nor false because they fail to refer to anything. I will take the label used by Strawson: I will say that these sentences are ‘spurious’.
Now, suppose that Strawson's objection works. Does this affect my conclusions about the existence argument and the desert argument?
Consider the existence argument applied to Lionel: ‘Lionel did not exist before his birth. Therefore, Lionel did nothing to have his inborn characteristics.’ After applying Russell's theory, I concluded that this argument is unsound because its conclusion does not follow from its premise. If the premise is that Lionel did not exist before his birth, the conclusion cannot be a sentence that asserts that Lionel existed before his birth, such as ‘Lionel did nothing to have his inborn characteristics’.
If Strawson's objection works, the sentence ‘Lionel did nothing to have his inborn characteristics’ implies, but does not assert, that Lionel existed before his birth. However, in this respect, there is no relevant difference between ‘implying’ and ‘asserting’. The conclusion is still inconsistent with the premise: the conclusion implies that Lionel existed before his birth and the premise denies it. Therefore, Strawson's objection does not affect my conclusion about the existence argument.
Consider now the desert argument applied to Paris: ‘Paris did nothing to have her inborn characteristics. Therefore, these characteristics are undeserved.’ I said that this argument is unsound because its premise is not true. If Russell's thesis is true, I am right because the premise of this argument is false. Similarly, if Strawson's objection is pertinent, I am also right because the premise of this argument is still not true: the premise is spurious. And it seems obvious that an argument with a spurious premise is unsound. Therefore, Strawson's objection does not affect my conclusion about the desert argument either.
III. WHAT HAVE I SHOWN?
In the previous section I discussed the existence argument and the desert argument by making use of Russell's theory of descriptions and Strawson's objection. I concluded that both arguments are unsound. In this section I want to be more specific about the general upshot of my discussion, i.e. that talking about people deserving their inborn characteristics does not make sense.
Generally speaking, when we wonder whether a person who has something (X) deserves it, we have in mind two different situations. The first is the situation in which this person did not have X. We evaluate whether this person deserves X on the basis of what she did in this situation. The second is the situation in which she has X. Both situations are separated by the time at which she gets X. Take a look at this line:
Now, when we wonder whether people deserve their inborn characteristics, we have in mind the second situation, in which people already have these characteristics. However, since people were born with these characteristics, we do not have the first situation, in which people did not have these characteristics. If this situation did not exist, it does not make sense to ask whether people in this situation did something to deserve their inborn characteristics. Since we need to answer this question to know whether people deserve their inborn characteristics, we could conclude that it does not make sense to evaluate whether people deserve their inborn characteristics. In other words, if it does not make sense to ask about what people did before their birth, it does not make sense to ask whether people deserve their inborn characteristics either.Footnote 17 Therefore, we are in the following situation: We cannot say that inborn characteristics are deserved, nor can we say that they are undeserved. In other words,
(A) It is not true that inborn characteristics are deserved.
(B) It is not true that inborn characteristics are undeserved.
Note that ‘not deserved’ is not the same as ‘undeserved’.Footnote 18 When I say that inborn characteristics are not deserved, I am only claiming (A), i.e. that it is not true that inborn characteristics are deserved. But it does not follow that these characteristics are undeserved. Something is undeserved when the person did something not to deserve it, e.g. she stole it, or did nothing to deserve it, e.g. she inherited it. In contrast, something is deserved when the person did something to deserve it, e.g. she worked hard to get it. In the case of inborn characteristics, since people did not exist before having them, these characteristics are neither deserved nor undeserved. They are not deserved in the sense that it is not true that they are deserved. But this does not entail that they are undeserved.Footnote 19
Similarly, ‘not undeserved’ is not the same as ‘deserved’. When I say that inborn characteristics are not undeserved, I am only claiming (B), i.e. that it is not true that inborn characteristics are undeserved. But it does not follow that these characteristics are deserved. Again: Something is undeserved when the person did something not to deserve it or did nothing to deserve it. In contrast, something is deserved when the person did something to deserve it. In the case of inborn characteristics, since people did not exist before having them, these characteristics are neither deserved nor undeserved. They are not undeserved in the sense that it is not true that they are undeserved. But this does not entail that they are deserved.
Now, in section II I said that the sentence ‘People did nothing to have their inborn characteristics’ is not true because it asserts (if we follow Russell) or implies (if we follow Strawson) that people existed before their birth (that is, this sentence means that people existed and did nothing). I claimed that, since this sentence is not true, the existence argument and the desert argument are unsound. But one might understand this sentence in a different way: non-existent people did nothing precisely because they did not exist. Under this reading, the sentence becomes true.
However, this section illustrates why understanding the sentence in this way does not solve the problem. Under this reading, all that the sentence says is that people did not exist before their birth. Although the sentence becomes true,Footnote 20 it does not entail that inborn characteristics are undeserved (it entails that they are not deserved, but this is different from ‘undeserved’). By the same token, under that reading, ‘People did nothing not to have their inborn characteristics’ becomes also true (under that reading, this sentence only says that people did not exist before their birth). But it does not entail that inborn characteristics are deserved (it entails that they are not undeserved, but this is different from ‘deserved’). That reading makes vacuously true that inborn characteristics are both not deserved and not undeserved.
In short, in order to evaluate whether a person deserves something she has, it is necessary to evaluate what she did before having it. Since people did not exist before having their inborn characteristics, these characteristics are neither deserved nor undeserved. Talking about people deserving these characteristics does not really make sense.
IV. CONSIDERING OBJECTIONS
In this section I respond to objections to my thesis. These objections try to show not only that talking about people deserving their inborn characteristics makes sense, but also that these characteristics are undeserved.
(a) Inborn characteristics as morally arbitrary characteristics
It might be argued that, when someone says that inborn characteristics are undeserved, the word ‘undeserved’ must not be taken literally. For example, saying that talent is undeserved is only a way to express metaphorically that talent is a morally arbitrary characteristic, that is, a circumstance.
However, this objection begs the question. This comes to light when we ask the objector why talent is a morally arbitrary characteristic, that is, a circumstance. He could answer either ‘because people did nothing to be born talented’ or ‘because talent is undeserved’.
The first answer refers to people before their birth, so it is either false, if we follow Russell, or spurious, if we follow Strawson. Consider now the second answer. We could ask the objector why talent is undeserved. He could only respond ‘because people did nothing to be born talented’. Once again we have a response that is not true.
Note that the argument that inborn characteristics are undeserved because they are a matter of luck fails for the same reason. If, for example, we ask why talent is a matter of luck, two responses are possible: ‘because people did nothing to be born talented’ and ‘because talent is undeserved’.
(b) Inborn characteristics as circumstances beyond our control
It might be objected that, when it is said that circumstances under which people were born are undeserved, these circumstances must not be understood as something that happened to people. Saying that something happens to a person supposes that this person existed beforehand. And since people did not exist before their birth, it cannot be said that circumstances under which people were born happened to them. When it is claimed that these circumstances are undeserved, it must be understood that people cannot control these circumstances now.Footnote 21 More precisely, if a person was born in an indigent family, we can say, according to this objection, that she cannot control this situation now: it is very difficult for her to become rich. For this reason, this circumstance is undeserved. Thus, it is unnecessary to imagine people before their birth. We only need to imagine existing people who cannot control the circumstances under which they were born.
Despite its apparent plausibility, this objection fails because the fact that a person cannot control something does not entail that it is undeserved. Imagine a person who is poor because she lost all of her money at a casino. Suppose that it is very difficult for her to improve her economic situation. We could say that she cannot control this situation. However, this person does deserve to be in this situation because of what she did before being there: she bet all of her money. So, that a person cannot control something does not entail that it is undeserved.
This applies to inborn characteristics. Sometimes people cannot control them. However, this is not the whole story. In order to know whether people deserve their inborn characteristics, we need to know what they did before having them. And in order to know this, we have to go back to the situation in which people did not exist because they had not yet been born. Once again we come across a sentence which refers to inexistent people.
(c) Inborn characteristics as circumstances that could have been different
Another possible objection might be that, for instance, a person's capacities are undeserved merely because things could have been different, that is, this person could have been born without those capacities. Thus, it is unnecessary to imagine people before their birth. We only need to imagine a counterfactual situation: existing people, but with different characteristics.
However, that things could have been different is not enough to conclude that people's inborn characteristics are undeserved. The truth of such a counterfactual claim is not typical of undeserved situations. Things could have been different even if a person deserves these things. Imagine that a person decided in a free and informed way to waste all of her money. We could also say that things could have been different: this person could have chosen not to waste her money. We could imagine a counterfactual situation in which this person owns the money that, as a matter of fact, she wasted. However, we would not say that, since this person could have saved her money, the bad consequences of wasting her money are undeserved (in fact, they are deserved). Thus, that things could have been different says nothing about people's deserts.
(d) The burden of proof objection
If I am right, inborn characteristics are neither deserved nor undeserved. Let us focus on favorable inborn characteristics, like talent or having rich parents. Someone might argue that it is people with these characteristics who should show that they deserve them. That is, those people have the burden of proof. Thus, if the state wants to levy redistributive taxes on people who were born in rich families, it does not have to show anything. Instead, it is these rich people who have to show that they deserve to have been born rich. Since they cannot show it, the state may levy those taxes.
However, this objection does not show that favorable inborn characteristics are undeserved. The fact that people cannot show that they deserve their favorable inborn characteristics does not indicate that these characteristics are undeserved: this indicates that they are not deserved. By the same token, if the state had the burden of proof, the state would not be able to show that people's favorable inborn characteristics are undeserved. However, this does not indicate that these characteristics are deserved: this indicates that they are not undeserved.
On the other hand, someone who holds that people with inborn advantages have the burden of proof seems to assume that equality of wealth is valuable. However, the interesting question is why equality of wealth is valuable. My thesis is that, if this kind of equality is valuable, it is not because inborn characteristics are undeserved. But equality of wealth could be valuable for other reasons, e.g. because it is morally obligatory for the state to have concern for people in need. It is not part of my thesis that equality of wealth is not valuable. Rather, my thesis is that one of the reasons usually invoked in favor of a more egalitarian distribution of wealth, i.e. that inborn characteristics are undeserved, carries no force.
V. CONCLUSION
In this article I discussed two arguments: the existence argument and the desert argument. The existence argument is that people did not exist before their birth and, therefore, did nothing to have their natural and social inborn characteristics. The desert argument is that people did nothing to have these characteristics and, hence, these characteristics are undeserved. I focused on the proposition shared by these two arguments: ‘People did nothing to have their inborn characteristics.’ I showed that this proposition is false in light of Russell's theory of descriptions, and that this proposition is spurious in light of Strawson's objection to Russell's theory. As a result, in the existence argument, the conclusion does not follow from the premise; and, in the desert argument, the premise is not true. The general upshot of my discussion is that talking about people deserving their inborn characteristics does not really make sense: inborn characteristics are neither deserved nor undeserved.
If my thesis works, it would set the scene for a more nuanced discussion about the foundations of equality.Footnote 22
