In this post, Ofer Malcai and Re’em Segev discuss the article they recently published in Ergo. The full-length version of their article can be found here.

Most people are value pluralists. They believe that there are several different moral values. For example, many believe that there is a reason to maximize well-being (for instance, that a greater benefit is better than a smaller one), but also that there is a reason to give some priority to the worse off such that a benefit to a person who is worse off is more valuable than a slightly greater benefit to a person who is much better off. It may seem that this is true also regarding desert (e.g., Arneson 1999, 239). However, on closer inspection, desert turns out to be different—it is much more difficult to accept desert together with other values.
Shelly Kagan (1998, 2012) has noted this unique aspect of desert regarding its relationship with equality and priority for the worse off. His argument begins with the following case:
Twin Peaks: A is a sinner, who is doing better than he deserves. B is a saint, who is doing less well than she deserves. Yet B is still better-off than A (she deserves much more). We can benefit either A or B. Here is a graphic representation of it.

In this graph, the X (horizontal) axis tracks how much wellbeing a person has, while the Y (vertical) axis tracks how morally good it is, from the standpoint of desert, that a given person has a given amount of wellbeing. The “peaks” of A and B represent the levels of wellbeing that maximize moral value, namely, the levels of wellbeing that A and B exactly deserve. Thus, in this graph, A (the “sinner”) deserves less than B (the “saint”), and his peak is accordingly at a much lower level of wellbeing than that of B.
In this case, equality and priority favor A, the sinner, since he is worse-off. However, Kagan claims that we should instead favor B, as desert advocates. After all, B is a saint who is getting less than she deserves, while A is sinner who is doing better than he deserves. Moreover, Kagan claims that there isn’t even a pro tanto reason in favor of preferring A. Therefore, he concludes that if you accept desert, you should reject equality and priority as intrinsic values.
Kagan directs his argument only against equality and priority. However, it seems to us that this argument suggests conclusions that are even more radical: a commitment to desert is discordant with a number of additional salient considerations.
First, although Kagan (1998, 305) himself denies this, we think that desert undermines utility, i.e. the reason to maximize wellbeing. Assume, for example, that we increase overall utility by 10%, but all of this increased utility goes to a sinner whose level of well-being is already higher than what he deserves. Is the resulting state of affairs indeed morally better? It seems that, to the extent that Kagan’s argument is compelling, this is because there is nothing good in increasing the sinner’s wellbeing beyond what he deserves.
One may insist that utility is valuable in itself, independently of desert, and that, for this reason, it is in one respect better if the sinner gets more utility. According to this view, if desert is also valuable, these values may clash.
This view seems odd. however. While it is perfectly coherent to accept several independent values that may clash – for example, to hold that it is pro tanto good to increase the wellbeing of a person even if this is bad in terms of equality – it seems less plausible to hold that there is something good in increasing the wellbeing of a sinner who already fares better than he deserves. This suggests that desert is incompatible with equality, priority, and utility.
We propose an even more radical conclusion: if we accept desert, we should accept monism about value. This is because the tension between desert and other values is not limited to utility, priority, and equality. For example, it appears to apply also to the relation between desert and sufficiency, namely the view that inequality is objectionable only if the worse-off is below a certain threshold of wellbeing (e.g., Frankfurt 1987).
Kagan does not consider whether his argument applies to sufficiency. However, it seems to us that it does. Consider, on the one hand, a sinner who is evil enough to grant the claim that, although he has more than he deserves, what he has is still below the sufficiency threshold. Consider, on the other hand, a saint who has much less than she deserves, although she is above the threshold. It seems that Kagan’s intuition regarding the Twin Peaks case has considerable force also regarding this case. After all, here too, the saint is getting less than she deserves while the sinner is doing better than he deserves.
This monistic view also has the theoretical virtue of simplicity: it explains diverse intuitions regarding specific cases in light of a single basic value. Moreover, it explains (away), at least partly, the intuitive appeal of the pluralistic view: equality, priority, and utility are prima facie appealing because their implications often coincide with those of desert. For example, desert implies that we should allocate benefits equally, or in a way that gives priority to the worse off when people are equally deserving or when there is no evidence that they are unequally deserving.
However, there are also strong reasons to doubt monism. One such reason is that desert does not always apply. Consider babies, non-human animals, or other individuals who are not morally responsible. These individuals still warrant moral concern, even though desert does not apply to them. If well-being, equality, and priority matter in these cases, why would they suddenly lose importance when desert becomes applicable?
Another challenge to desert monism is
the “Desert Monster” thought experiment: Imagine two persons whose initial levels of well-being accurately reflect what they deserve. Assume that both are decent persons who are, accordingly, reasonably well-off (say, each has 500 units of well-being). If one of these persons performs a good action that entitles her to an additional amount of well-being (say, 10 units), and there are no more available goods, we should allocate to her some goods at the expense of the other person, who did not perform such action (although he could have), in order to equalize the distance of the two persons from what they deserve, i.e., their “peaks” (the new distribution should thus be 495:505).

This seems plausible. But now assume that the more virtuous person keeps on performing good deeds, so we keep on transferring goods from the less virtuous to the more virtuous person. At a certain point, equalizing the distance between what the persons have and what they deserve requires that the more virtuous get all the goods, while the other gets nothing. Intuitively, this result seems wrong. The fact that the less virtuous person is very badly-off appears relevant when deciding if additional transfers are just. This means that desert cannot be the only pertinent moral factor: we should also consider the degree to which a person is worse (or better) off.
The relationship between desert and other values thus raises an interesting dilemma: both the monistic and pluralistic options involve significant costs. This may lead some to reconsider the initial assumption that desert is valuable, but this course has its costs too. Our conclusion is that there is no easy way out of this dilemma. Indeed, we suggest that this dilemma is due to the unique nature of desert. Unlike other values, desert, especially its more robust form, not only sometimes conflicts with competing considerations that favor different courses of action but rather seems to dispel other values, even as pro tanto ones.
References
- Arneson, Richard J. (1999). “Egalitarianism and responsibility”. The Journal of Ethics 3: 225-247.
- Frankfurt, Harry G. (1987). “Equality as a Moral Ideal”. Ethics, 98: 21-43.
- Kagan, Shelly. (1998). “Equality and Desert”. In O. McLeod and L. Pojman (eds.), What Do We Deserve? A Reader on Justice and Desert . Oxford University Press.
- Kagan, Shelly. (2012). “The Geometry of Desert”. Oxford University Press.
About the authors

Ofer Malcai is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on moral and legal philosophy and law and complexity theory.

Re’em Segev is a Professor at the Faculty of Law of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on moral philosophy and philosophy of law.